The Color of Distance (17 page)

Ukatonen was right, something had to be done. She looked at the enkar. He was watching her, ears spread expectantly.

“What do you want me to do?” Anito asked.

“Stay here. Look after Eerin. Find out where her people might have gone. I’ll go to Lyanan and see what can be done about this.” Ukatonen gestured at the blackened devastation before them. His skin turned grey with grief at the destruction.

Agreement and sympathy passed over Anito’s body. Ukatonen touched her on the shoulder and disappeared into the forest.

Anito walked across the blackened remains of the forest, feeling exposed and vulnerable. The new creature was silent, its skin grey with sadness. It looked up as Anito approached, but otherwise remained motionless.

The new creature’s left foot was bleeding. Anito squatted down and examined the foot more closely. The sole was cut from running across the sharp rock of the cliffs. If the cuts weren’t treated, the creature would get sick.

The creature was too stupid to take care of itself, Anito thought with a sudden burst of irritation, and it wouldn’t allow her to link with it even for healing. Anito synthesized something to speed healing and keep the creature from getting sick.

“Bad feet, you,” she told the new creature in simplified speech. “Not good. Get sick.”

“Where people?” she asked as she rubbed the healing substance into the creature’s feet.

The creature shook its head. Its grey color deepened.

“Gone?” Anito asked.

The new creature’s shoulders moved up and down. It shook its head, pointed at the sun, then swung an arm in a wide arc until it was pointing directly east. Then it pointed at itself and patted the ground.

Anito pondered the creature’s gesture. It wanted to stay here. Anito nodded to let it know that she understood. She told the creature that she would go find food and come back. The creature nodded its head and leaned back against the silver tree, closing its eyes.

Anito walked back across the horrible expanse of burnt forest. A lavender ripple of relief flowed across her body as she felt the dim, cool safety of the forest enfold her. Fortunately the burnt patch of the forest was on the edge of Lyanan’s territory. She could hunt in the wild lands without worrying about disrupting the balance of the village’s atwas. They had been disrupted enough by the new creatures. She swung up into a red-barked tavirra tree, and headed into the wild lands to hunt.

Game was sparser than she had expected. The village had probably shifted its hunting pattern to make up for the loss of their forest. Anito set out some snares, picked some ripe red yarra berries, and gathered a variety of greens. Her snajes yielded a pair of ground-dwelling leang. She surveyed the birds with a critical eye. They were small, but they would do. Night had fallen by the time she returned to the clearing with food.

The new creature refused to leave the deathstone tree to eat. It felt wrong to eat in the middle of such devastation. Just thinking about it made Anito’s throat dry and tight. She set the food down and walked back into the forest.

Anito settled herself in the crotch of a half-charred tree to eat and keep watch over the new creature. She had been watching for a while when she heard a sound from the deathstone tree. She slid farther out on the branch. The new creature sat up excitedly and did something to the sharp-cornered box at the base of the tree.

Anito swung down out of her tree, and moved quietly toward the deathstone tree. A murmuring sound, like water gurgling, was coming from the box. It was like the sounds the new creature made, only deeper in pitch. The new creature listened, then made noises back to the box.

Anito watched and listened intently. What was the new creature doing? Was this some kind of mating ritual? Why would it try to mate with a box? That made no sense at all.

The new creature was always making noise. It made a lot of noises to the strange, half-alive speaking stone that it carried, and the stone responded. It made noises at the stone and the stone then spoke to Anito and Ukatonen in skin speech. They spoke skin speech to the new creature, and the box made noises. Was this some form of communication? If so, it was very inefficient. It would scare away any animals that you were stalking, and tell every predator in hearing range exactly where you were.

Anito returned to the familiar refuge of the forest to think over this strange new idea. She lay along a branch watching the new creature. Something very odd was going on here. How could a dead object like a box talk? It wasn’t even half-alive, like the speaking stone. Was there something in the box, some kind of animal? She had never heard an animal that sounded like that. Had the new creature captured a spirit, as in the old stories?

Like a shadow, Ukatonen appeared on a nearby branch.

“How is Eerin?” he asked, his words enlarged to be visible through the thick fog and the pre-dawn gloom.

“The new creature is fine.”

The enkar swung over and joined Anito on her branch. “Have you found out where her people are?”

“No, but I think that those noises it’s making are like skin speech. It ulks’ to the box, and the box talks back. How could a dead thing like a rox talk, en?”

“I don’t know,” Ukatonen said in mauve hues of puzzlement. He sat silent, eyes hooded, lost in thought.

At last, unable to contain herself, Anito touched his shoulder. “What is it, en?” she asked him. “What’s going on? Is it spirits, like in the stories?”

“I don’t know, kene,” he told her. “I have lived a long time and I have never seen a spirit. Spirits live here,” he said, touching her forehead. “Not out here among us.”

“Then what is the new creature doing?”

“Perhaps Eerin really is talking to her people.”

Anito turned a doubtful shade of puce. “How could it do that? It says ihat its people are far away.”

“I don’t know,” Ukatonen admitted, “but you’ve seen that strange talking stone that she’s always playing with. I don’t know how it works, but » talks, both in Eerin’s language and ours. I spoke to the villagers last night. They said that the new creatures have many dead-but-alive objects, Ike that box, that do many strange things. These new creatures are very odd.”

There was a noise from the deathstone tree. Anito and Ukatonen leaned forward, straining to see through the thick morning fog. The two of them swung silently down to the ground and crept closer, skins the mournful color of the fog around them. The new creature was completely absorbed in the strange noises from the box. They could walk right up to it, Anito thought scornfully, and the new creature wouldn’t notice until riiey touched it. The box talked for a long time. The fog began to thin. Ukatonen touched Anito’s shoulder and motioned with his head, and the two of them slipped back into the forest, silently as the fog itself. The creature never even looked up.

Ukatonen acted strangely subdued when they reached the trees. He sat hunched in thought, his eyes locked on the figure under the strange deathstone tree. At last he blinked, shook himself, and looked at Anito.

“I had a hard time believing some of the villagers’ stories, but now—” He paused. His skin flickered several times as though he was about to say something.

“I don’t know what to think,” he said at last. “It’s very strange.” His skin had a faint tinge of orange fear to it. Anito felt the venom sacs in the red lines on her back tighten.

Ukatonen held up a gathering sack. “I brought you some food. Keep an eye on Eerin. Bring the creature back to the village tonight. I want the elders to get a good look at her.”

Anito flickered agreement and settled back into the crotch of the tree to watch the new creature. It remained sitting under the strange death-colored stone tree, heedless of the burning sun and its exposed position. Anito found herself scanning the sky, looking for the black shadow of a koirah. They usually hunted in the mornings, before the clouds gathered. The new creature was protected by the strange death-colored stone tree that it sat under, but Anito still felt anxious. The sky remained a blank blue slate, so bright it made her eyes ache. As the morning progressed, heat began to rise off the scorched plain. The air danced in bright waves over the ashes. Anito’s skin was dry and her throat ached with thirst. Duty held her to this hot, dry spot, though she longed to retreat to the coolness of the inner forest. She shifted uncomfortably on the branch. How could the creature stand the heat and the terrible glare?

At long last the new creature got up and headed for the forest. Anito glanced anxiously at the pale bright sky, but there was no sign of a koirah. That didn’t make it safe. Koirah sometimes came diving down out of a seemingly empty sky. Fortunately, the big flying reptiles were rare, and they preferred to pick their prey out of the top branches of the canopy.

The new creature reached the forest safely. It was sitting unhappily on a branch, scratching itself, when Anito swung up beside it.

“People come?” Anito asked.

The new creature nodded.

“When people come?”

The creature shook its head and gestured wildly.

“Don’t you know?” Anito asked. “You’ve been talking to them for a long time.”

The creature shook its head again. It couldn’t understand her, Anito realized. It was too busy scratching to follow a conversation. Anito examined the creature’s skin. It had the dry, dull look of a serious sunburn.

“Skin bad. Don’t go out until it starts raining.”

The creature shook its head once more.

A trickle of yellow irritation forked down Anito’s back. If the new creature’s skin was too badly damaged, the creature would be vulnerable to the things that made it sick. She synthesized a sunburn cure in her allu-a and squirted it on the troublesome new animal’s back. Then she gave it food and persuaded it to stay in the cool gloom of the forest until it started raining.

When the rains came, the new creature returned to the silvery death-stone tree. It stayed there, talking and listening to the box at the base of the tree until it was dark. Anito met it at the forest’s edge, and followed the scent trail Ukatonen laid down to guide them to the village of Lyanan.

Anito could feel the hostility of the village as soon as they reached the tree. Tilan bees hovered around them, unwilling to trust their unfamiliar scent. The village elders’ greeting was terse and rudely informal. Nevertheless, Anito greeted them with all the politeness due their station, not one feather’s-weight more or less. It was what Ilto would have done. Glancing over, Anito saw a tiny ripple of approval trickle down Ukato-nen’s arm.

The enkar stepped forward and fanned his ears wide, commanding the attention of the entire village with this one small gesture. “I am assisting Anito in the matter of the new creatures, and I appreciate the kind welcome you have given us.”

A faint brown stain of embarrassment passed over the villagers. Ukatonen had neatly and gently shamed them for their rudeness. The subtlety of the maneuver impressed Anito.

Ukatonen went on with his speech. “Although Anito is young, she was well-raised by one of the finest inkata I have known, the chief elder of Narmolom. He judged Anito to be capable of accepting this challenging and difficult atwa. I have traveled with her and the new creature for almost a month and I agree with his judgment of this fine young elder.”

Anito raised her ears in surprise at Ukatonen’s words.

The enkar turned and gestured at her to come forward. “Please, kene-sa, tell her all of the stories that you have told me. Tell her everything that you have observed about the new creatures. This is her atwa, and she needs our help to bring it into harmony with the rest of the world.”

Ukatonen stepped back, leaving Anito alone in the speaker’s position. The elders looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to speak. She felt suddenly very small and frightened. The weight of the elders’ gaze fell upon her like the coils of a huge matrem snake. She needed to act before it crushed her.

“Kene-sa,” she said, using the collective, formal title of the elders, “I am eager to hear what you know about the new creatures. I need to understand these creatures before I can work with them. Please give me your help.” She stepped back beside Ukatonen, out of the speaker’s position, wishing that she had delivered a more impressive speech.

Ukatonen’s knuckles brushed her shoulder; out of the corner of her eye she caught a flicker of reassurance and approval.

Lalito, the chief elder, stepped up to the speaker’s position. “We will try to help you. Please, be welcome and eat.” She picked up a basket full of neatly folded packets of yarram and held it out to the two of them. Ukatonen took a packet, then Anito stepped forward and took two packets, one for herself, and one for the new creature. A ripple of surprise fluttered over the assembled villagers at this gesture. Ukatonen thanked Lalito calmly, as though Anito had done nothing unusual.

The ceremony over, everyone sat down and began eating. Ripples of laughter and flickers of conversation passed across the villagers’ bodies. Anito felt suddenly homesick for Narmolom. She was a stranger here. She wanted to be home again, learning to be an elder in her own village, with an atwa she understood. She longed to be a part of things instead of an outsider.

Ukatonen brushed her shoulder. “You did well,” he told her. “The villagers are on your side now.”

Anito looked away, embarrassed by his praise. “It was your doing.”

“I merely said good things about you. You proved them to be true.”

“How did I do that?”

“By not being angered when they were rude. By not trying to be more than you are. You showed them a courageous young elder, coping well under enormously difficult circumstances. They sympathize with you now. They want to help.”

“But I only did what was polite. Any well-raised Tendu would do the same in a similar situation.”

“Exactly,” Ukatonen said. “You proved that you were smart and well-raised.”