Kesair did not answer. He could have enjoyed an argument, but he had no coping skills for female silence.
Fintan tried to recall what he knew about her, seeking some sort of leverage. She was a latecomer to the crafts colony, having arrived with neither man nor child, only her loom and her skill, but she had proved to be an exceptionally creative weaver. Soon her work had been in great demand among the colony's customers, becoming a
mainstay of their economy. No one had been willing to risk offending her by prying into her private life.
Very little was known about Kesair, Fintan realized. She was something of a mystery.
A most intriguing mystery.
He must get her to trust him. “I don't much care for the company of men myself,” he told her confidingly. “I really prefer women, always have. I think women are the best of us.” He favored her with his most winning smile, knowing his teeth were white and even and his eyes crinkled boyishly.
Kesair stared right through him, unimpressed.
Fintan choked back his annoyance. Did she not understand that men were now at a premium? That he could have his choice of any woman he wanted? He could walk out right now and it would be her loss, not his. He had forty-five others to choose from.
But he did not walk out. There were forty-five others, but Kesair was the leader. She was not beautiful, like Kerish, but she was special, she had an indefinable something extra. And he was Fintan, whose pride demanded he go for the best.
Wiping his smile from his face, he replaced it with a studiedly serious expression he thought she might like better. “What we need to do, Kesair, is to divide the women into three groups. Each man will take responsibility for one third of the women, do you see?” He paused. “Well, not Byth, perhaps. He may be a little old. But he can at least take a few and Ladra and I can handle the rest.”
“Responsibility? What sort of responsibility? There is already a leader. Myself.”
She is pretending to be stupid to irritate me, Fintan thought. She wants to be blunt; very well. I can be blunt. “Responsibility for them sexually. For getting them pregnant,” he elaborated, trying to stare her down.
To his astonishment, she laughed. “Is that all? Fine. Pick out yourâhow many would you say, twenty each for you and Ladra, and ten for Byth?âpick out your twenty and get on with it. Just don't impregnate all the sturdiest ones at the same time, we need to keep an able work force. And wait for the younger girls to grow a few more years before you start with them.”
Fintan's jaw sagged with dismay. What had happened to the titillating mating games a woman was supposed to play? He had
imagined a very different sort of afternoon in Kesair's hut, listening to the rain on the roof, talking first impersonally and then very personally of sexual matters, advancing, holding back, weighing selected phrases with double meanings, gradually offering more intimate caresses. The mounting excitement, the thrill of the chase â¦
“Which women do you want?” Kesair drawled with supreme indifference. She twisted her upper body to put back a piece of chinking that had fallen from between the timbers of the hut wall beside her. The repair had her total attention.
Fintan got to his feet. “Not you, anyway!” he told her. He stomped furiously from the hut into slanting silver rain.
Kesair turned her head to watch him go. A light flickered in her eyes. He's proud, she thought. I like that in a man.
Fintan sought Ladra, whom he found at the edge of the cliff, throwing rocks down at the sea as if he were pelting an enemy. There was hatred and anger in every throw.
The sea had swallowed the world he knew. Ladra hated the sea. From time to time he yelled curses at it.
“Come with me to the men's hut,” Fintan said to him. “We need to talk.”
Ladra squinted at him from beneath dark, tangled eyebrows. Ladra was slightly taller than Fintan, with long arms but disproportionately short legs. He looked as if he had been made from the parts of several men. “Is it important?”
“I think so,” Fintan replied.
Ladra hurled one last stone, then shrugged and followed Fintan. “I'm tired of being wet anyway,” he said.
The men's hut was empty. Byth was elsewhere. Fintan and Ladra went in out of the rain. The hut was small and dark and smelled of mud and freshly cut logs.
“It's time we organized our social structure for the future,” Fintan began earnestly. “I've been giving it a lot of thought and I've come up with a workable, sensible plan.”
Ladra listened, frowning, as Fintan outlined his idea. Then Ladra said, “I don't much care for all this organizing. It smacks of a desire to control. And I think the desire to control has caused a lot of mankind's problems, Fintan.”
“There will be more problems if we don't agree on a plan soon
and start to follow it. You can't put this many people together in this sort of situation without trouble, sooner or later. I'm just making the most intelligent suggestion. People need to know what to expect.”
“But Kesair wants us to use our energies for getting dug in here for the winter, making more tools and weapons, setting up some sort of defensive perimeter in caseâ”
“We can do all that too,” Fintan interrupted impatiently.
“What does Kesair say to your plan? You did discuss it with her, didn't you? She and I should beâ”
“You're making assumptions. You can't just appropriate a woman for yourself, Kesair or anybody else. We have to be sensible about our, ah, breeding arrangements. We have to use our heads.”
“Our
heads?
” Ladra said with a grin. “That's not how I do it.”
Fintan had the grace to laugh. “You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean all right.” The other man sobered. “I suppose you expect the best women for yourself?”
“To avoid arguments I thought we might, well, draw lots for them.”
Ladra shook his head. “I can imagine you trying to convince those women out there that it's all right for us to draw lots for them. Good luck. I don't want to be around when you try to sell the idea.”
“You always criticize,” Fintan complained, “but you never have a better suggestion.”
Ladra said smugly, “As it happens, this time I do. The other women accept Kesair as leader. So have her make the assignments, just as she assigns work. If she's willing to accept this plan of yours at all, that is. I'm not sure she is, I'd like to hear what she thinks.”
“She said we should get on with it,” Fintan said with perfect honesty.
“Did she now? Ah. Well then.” Ladra seemed satisfied.
He thinks Kesair will give herself to him, Fintan thought darkly.
When Byth returned to the hut and was told of Fintan's plan another problem arose. Byth was insulted at the suggestion that he take fewer women than the other men.
“But you're always complaining about your age and your infirmities,” Ladra reminded him. “You even call yourself Grandfather!”
“And so I am, which is just my point. Before my wife died I sired
seven children on the dear woman, all of whom grew up to have more children. They went out on their own long ago, but let me assure you I am patriarch of a large brood of extremely healthy ⦔ A shadow crossed his face. “At least, they were healthy. Strong, intelligent. Exactly the sort of people we need. I can give the colony many more like them. Divide the women equally and I can take care of mine, never fear.”
Later, Fintan said privately to Ladra, “How many women are going to want to go with an old man?”
“That will be Kesair's problem, won't it?”
Kesair. As he lay wrapped in his blankets that night, listening to Byth snore like pebbles rattled in a bucket, and Ladra toss restlessly in his own bed, Fintan thought of Kesair and brooded on the choices she might make.
The perpetually moist air of the land they had found lay lightly on his skin; permeated his lungs; surrounded and contained him. A damp, penetrating cold seeped into his bones.
Fintan pulled his blankets more tightly around his shoulders. He was uneasy.
He did not sleep well.
When he emerged from the hut in the morning, the rain had passed and a radiant autumn sunshine was gilding Kesair's face as she came toward him. She was returning from a dawn visit to the
seashore, a strange habit she had adopted. Beckoning her aside, Fintan told her of his discussion with the other men, and Ladra's suggestion.
“So Ladra thought of that, did he?” She smiled, which irritated Fintan. “Good for him. Of course I'll divide the women among you. They will see the necessity for it; I'll talk to them and explain. Some of them may not like it, however. It's a pity we don't have a better choice of men.”
Fintan bristled. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, I assume I shall have to select one of the three of you for myself, and it's not a particularly appealing thought.”
There! she thought. See how you like that!
Fintan bit back an angry response. The thought briefly crossed his mind that Kesair might prefer women, but he discarded the idea. There was something in the back of her eyes that told him otherwise, he was sure of it.
Perhaps she just was not interested in sex. But he did not believe that either.
When Kesair talked to the other women, she got mixed responses. Some were plainly horrified. “It sounds like dividing a herd of cows among three bulls,” Leel complained.
“I don't see what else there is to do,” Kesair said flatly. “There aren't enough men to go around, and we have to think of the future. If this island has enough resources to allow us to survive, we must start planning for the next generation here.”
“I refuse to be a breeding animal!”
“That's your prerogative, no one's going to force you. You'll simply be left out.” Kesair folded her arms, waiting.
Left out. Leel hesitated, considering the ramifications. Kesair had chosen the phrase deliberately, and it carried weight. In a more subdued tone, Leel said, “Can't we at least choose our men?”
“If we tried, there would surely be quarrels and resentment. And the distribution would probably be uneven. No, I think it's better we make an unemotional assignment and abide by it. We can do that, I know we can,” she added with a confidence she did not feel.
Some of them accepted. Others refused for a while. But in the end they agreed. Kesair had been thinking about the matter for longer than they had, and had her arguments skillfully prepared.
The night before Kesair was to announce her decisions, she walked alone by the sea. Without even bothering to eat an evening
meal, she had gone to the beach, drawn by the hissing of the foam. The white sand glimmered in the moonlight. A cold wind blew off the ocean. Kesair shivered, then wrapped her woolen cloak more tightly around her shoulders.
After tomorrow, she thought, our lives will be changed in ways we cannot yet imagine.
She had counseled a pragmatic, unemotional approach to the situation, but she was too wise to believe it possible. By its very nature sex involved passion, and when human passions were aroused anything might happen.
Like someone exploring a sore tooth with just the tip of the tongue, Kesair let her thoughts skim the surface of her personal history. She thought for one brief moment of the man who had hurt her more than she would have believed possible. She had thought her emotions were cauterized by the experience.
Now she knew they were not. She could feel. She could be hurt again. She did not want to be hurt again.
In sharply delineated footprints the soft sand recorded every step she took at the ocean's edge. A blurred area showed where she finally halted and stood gazing outward, lost in thought, then started forward as if to enter the water, hesitated, scuttled backward, stopped again, stood at last immobile. Caught. Held.
She breathed shallowly. She did not want the sound of her own breath to interfere with the voice of the sea. She listened, and that voice built, became a great rolling thunder resonating through her bones, a massive muffled booming as if some mighty heart were beating there, out beyond the breakers. A long sigh â¦
“What?” Kesair asked eagerly. “What?”
The new day dawned cold and crisp. As the people assembled in the open space around which they had built the huts and pens, Kesair studied their faces. The men looked more anxious than the women. In their faces was a tension, a wary watchfulness of one another.
By contrast the women stood quietly, looking from one male face to the other with a glance both dispassionate and measuring.
“The sooner we get this over the better,” Kesair announced. “There is no way to divide fifty evenly, so I've decided that two men will take seventeen women each, and the other man will have sixteen. Fintan and Byth have seventeen.” She saw the look of
surprised anger on Ladra's face but went on smoothly, “Byth's group will include Nanno and the girl children, because I am sure Nanno would prefer being with a man of her generation and the children already consider Byth as a grandfather.”
Ladra's expression eased slightly. “Fintan still has more women than I do,” he pointed out. “Shouldn't I get the best ones, to make up for that?”
“âBest' women?” Leel challenged. “Do you think it's your place to grade us on merit? Are you asking for the prettiest as if the others were inferior?” Her eyes were blazing. Leel was thin and dark and very intense, with a temper like the crack of a whip.
Kesair smiled to herself. She meant Leel for Ladra; let the two of them blunt their bad tempers on one another.
“Silence, both of you,” she commanded.
Smoothly, without pausing for comment or reaction, she called out the names as she had mentally arranged them the day before. Ramé, who was calm and steady, was assigned to Ladra. The reliable Ayn, who had nursing skills, was paired with Byth. Kesair wanted to have at least one woman whose common sense she trusted in each group. Elisbut she assigned to Fintan. Velabro for Ladra. Barra for Byth. Salmé for Fintan. Murra for Ladra.
When she paired Kerish with Byth an astonished light leaped in the old man's eyes.
“Kerish will warm your blood,” Kesair told him, smiling.
So the beauty of the colony went to a grandfather. To their credit, neither Ladra nor Fintan voiced an objection. Each grudgingly admitted to himself the wisdom of the choice, and was thankful that at least his rival would not have Kerish. She was ideal for stimulating an old man's virility.
As the number of unassigned women dwindled, Ladra kept trying to catch Kesair's eye. Fintan did not look at her. He accepted the assignments impassively, with a brief nod to each woman who was named for him. He might have been accepting a portion of food, or clothing, for all the emotion he showed.
He does not want to be hurt, so he pretends not to care, Kesair thought.
The day before, she had decided to assign herself to Byth's group. Byth in the role of father figure was appealing to her. Her own father had been loved, but was long dead. Besides, Byth would
probably not make much in the way of sexual demands on her, not when he had Kerish.
The naming went on.
Kesair had given so much thought to her choices that she could recite them automatically, allowing her tongue to follow the grooves she had worn in her mind. she hardly had to think, merely to say, “Ashti to Ladra, Datseba to Byth, Kesair to Fintan ⦔
The words flashed through the air before she realized what she had said. Her tongue had betrayed her. She drew in a startled breath, as if she could unsay the words by inhaling them.
Fintan was looking at her now.
She dare not contradict herself and say she meant Byth instead. She would look like a fool.
She made herself go on. “Leel to Ladra ⦔ But her heart was pounding as it had pounded the night before, when, all her choices made, she had gone for a walk by the sea.
Fintan's grey eyes were gazing at her fixedly. Ladra was flushed with anger.
She swallowed hard, trying to steady herself. Listening to her own words, she realized she had almost completed the list of names. The mother with the baby she must now give to Byth, to make the numbers come out right.
When the woman smiled with relief Kesair felt a stab of jealousy.
Once the divisions were made, people were curiously uncomfortable with each other. No one seemed to know what to do next until Byth said, “Come to me, all my chicks. This occasion deserves to be celebrated.”
After a momentary hesitation, his women joined him. The littlest girl, Datseba, stood close beside him and slipped her small hand into his.
Byth grinned. Ignoring the arthritic twinge in his shoulder, he made an all-encompassing gesture with his free arm. “Follow me, please.”
He led them to the men's hut, where he kept his small hoard of personal effects. Each female was given something. Datseba received a tiny carved figurine he had once meant for his own granddaughter, but not sent to her before the flood separated them forever. Old Nanno beamed toothlessly when Byth wrapped his
favorite woolen scarf around her neck. Kerish was awarded the only gold ornament Byth possessed. He presented it with a gallant speech. “This dims by comparison with your beauty,” he said.
The others watched from a distance as Byth won the hearts of each of his women in turn.
“An old man can get away with that,” Ladra muttered. He began calling the names of his own assigned women. They stepped forward, some willingly, several reluctantly. When they were gathered around him he turned toward Kesair. “Am I expected to build individual homes for them or what? How are we going to do this?”
Kesair gave him a blank look, suddenly embarrassed to realize her careful planning had not foreseen the next step.
Fintan spoke up, and she was silently grateful. “We should stay as we are through the winter, until we know what winters are like on this island. In the spring we can go out and let each group find a different location for itself, some place with good soil for farming.
“This winter will give us time to get used to the new, ah, arrangements, and to plan for the future. Plus we will have the security of being together through the hard season.”
Ladra cleared his throat. “What are we going to do about beds? As it is, the women sleep in several huts, the men sleep in another, it's awkward, considering.”
In spite of himself, Fintan glanced at Kesair. She met his eyes unflinchingly but said nothing.
He scratched his jaw reflectively, wondering why she was leaving it to him to answer. “I don't think we should rush things,” he said at last. “This isn't the way relationships were ⦠before. We're all going to have to get used to the idea. Allow some time, and I suspect it will sort itself out. We might build a few, ah, private huts, where couples can be alone together. When they want to. But it's up to you, of course.”
Fintan's words relieved some of the tension. As if saved from some disaster, the people threw themselves into their day's tasks with excessive enthusiasm, talking about everything but the change in the social order. Yet Kesair noticed the way Velabro kept glancing at Ladra. The way Elisbut winked at Fintan.
Kesair said nothing to Fintan beyond the requirements of their
tasks. She was more formal with him than she had ever been. He showed the same attitude toward her. There was a new brittleness in their voices when they spoke to each other.
If she is so indifferent to me, Fintan was thinking, why did she burden me with herself?
Is he angry? Kesair wondered. He said he didn't want me, but I didn't think he meant it. What if he did?
They had other things to worry about. Winter was rushing in upon them. Every day seemed perceptibly shorter than the one before, and an awareness of night and dark and cold permeated everyone's thought. Almost daily, Kesair examined their supplies, watching with alarm as they dwindled. She organized hunting parties. The men went after the red deer with limited success; they were unused to hunting for the sake of survival. The deer, who were accustomed to avoiding predators, usually escaped them. Two does and a half-grown buck were all the men could bring down in a fortnight of hard effort. Then the deer took to the mountains and were seen no more, hiding successfully in enshrouding mist.
“You've led us to this place to starve,” Ladra accused Kesair.
She read the same accusation in other eyes. They were already cold, and growing increasingly fearful of hunger. They had found a good harvest of autumn nuts and berries, but these would not see them through the winter.
In an effort to cheer them, Kesair ordered a huge fire built in the center of the compound and kept burning night and day, so its warmth was constantly available and its light could challenge the increasingly gloomy atmosphere. There were numerous cloudmuffled days when the sun never broke through the heavy overcast and the people were trapped in a perpetual twilight.
Kesair fought their depression with the fire. They huddled around it gratefully.