Leavetaking was hard. Ladra's death had made them aware of possibilities they had not wanted to consider before. Some of the women clung to one another and cried. But at last the final goodbyes were acknowledged, and Fintan and his party left Byth's valley.
After its first chill herald, the autumn was mild, a long and golden season. Kesair's rivers eventually led her to a vast deep lake with a
strange red cast to its waters on certain days, and mountains standing like sentinels on either side. The land beside the lake, though hilly, was composed of rich loam, and there were fertile valleys not far away.
It seemed a good place to end their wandering.
A river flowing from the north fed the lake at its upper end, and that same river emerged at the lower end of the lake, wider, stronger, flowing toward the distant sea.
Surely flowing toward the distant sea.
I could follow the river and find the sea again any time I wanted to, Kesair told herself.
“There is timber here,” she said. “We can build permanent houses of wood and stone, and we shall always have fresh water. There is no life without water.”
She often stood by the lake shore, as she had once stood by the seashore. The same sense of reverence enveloped her. Instead of white sand she gazed upon reedy shallows, yet she could feel the water's presence just as strongly. Fresh or salt, it did not matter. What mattered was the element itself. It might be endlessly transformed yet it was always the same.
Holy, Kesair thought. Holy.
She wished the others could feel what she felt. She tried to explain to them.
In time, some listened.
Some did not.
In late winter, the body of water Kesair named the Red Lake was bitterly cold. Fires were kept burning night and day in the snug, small houses of stone and timber on the western shore of the lake, where the nearby mountains cut the wind to some extent.
Even on the coldest day, however, Kesair left the warmth of her hearthfire to stand beside the lake. Her house was hers alone, unshared. The other women lived five or six to a small cabin; only Fintan also had a place to himself. He invited the woman of his choice to it each night.
Kesair invited no one to hers.
Sometimes, she saw Fintan look at her in a way which she interpreted to mean he was going to ask her to his bed. Her reaction was always the same. She said something cruel or cutting or cold, and he invited someone else instead.
One by one, his women ripened with child. Kesair remained barren, big-boned and tawny-colored and barren, with angry eyes.
Salmé was also barren, though Fintan slept with her repeatedly. On the mornings after Salmé had been with him, Kesair spent a very long time beside the lake, communing with the water. Scooping it up in her shell, pouring it back.
“What are you thinking?”
His voice startled her from her reverie, but she did not look around. She knew Fintan was standing behind her.
“Thoughts are private,” she said.
He ignored the rebuff. “You looked lonely standing here by yourself.”
“I'm never lonely.”
“I don't believe you. Everyone is lonely sometimes.”
“You aren't. You couldn't possibly be.”
“Because there's usually some woman with me? Surely you understand why, Kesair.”
“Oh yes, I understand.” Her voice was flat.
He waited. She said nothing more. How did we become so distanced from each other? Fintan wondered. Of all the women, she is the most intriguing, the one I thought would be closest to me once we got settled. “Kesair, what have I done to turn you against me?” he asked bluntly.
“Nothing.” She was annoyed at his lack of subtlety, and she let him hear the annoyance in her voice.
He would not give up. “To tell you the truth, I'm getting very tired,” he said confidingly. “Of the demands made upon me, I mean. It takes a lot out of a man, being the only male for so many. Sometimes I wish I could just sit and talk with an intelligent woman. Like you.”
“You and I have nothing to say to each other.”
“I think we do. There's mystery about you, you know. Layers to you. You've had experiences you haven't shared with the rest of us, that have made you what you are. I think I could learn from you.”
She turned toward him then. Her expression was guarded. “Do you?”
“Of course. I admire you more than you know. The others are pleasant enough, but ⦔ He smiled his winning, boyish smile, and gave a slight shrug.
Be careful, Kesair warned herself. His is a very practiced charm.
He's trying it on you simply because he can't bear to think any woman could resist him. “The others aren't stupid, you could talk to any one of them,” she said aloud.
“Not the way I could talk with you. I need more than a warm body and someone to agree with me, Kesair. I'm not just a breeding animal. I need ⦔
He left the thought hanging unfinished on the cold air, like a cloud of vapor. She saw it there, hanging.
On the cold air, permeated with silvery light reflected from the cold lake.
Beyond the lake the mountains rose, each peak an icy solitude against the vast and empty sky. Cold. Cold.
The frozen liquid core of Kesair longed for the spring thaw.
Looking at Fintan, she saw heat in his eyes.
Turning from him, she looked at the water. Red Lake. Usually it was a deep, dark blue, but today it had taken on the strange red hue that occasionally resulted from the invasion of some unidentified life form.
The lake could not always maintain its integrity. Life intervened.
Byth is old, Kesair thought, and we have heard nothing from him since we came here. He might be dead by now. Fintan might be the last man I shall ever see.
The last man.
How precious is anger?
Abruptly she said, “I was thinking of Byth.”
“Has anyone come with news of him?”
“No. I doubt if they could spare a messenger, and if they did, I doubt if a messenger could find us. We've come a long way from Byth's valley.”
“I hope they're all right.”
“This is a benevolent land, Fintan. We haven't seen any predators large enough to be a danger to us, and there are plenty of natural resources. Everyone is subject to illness and injury and age, but we all have a chance. We all have a chance,” she repeated. “We've been very fortunate.”
The day was still and cold. When a bird called in the distance, its voice carrying across the lake, the sound was like a spear of beauty lancing through the silence.
For once even the customarily busy human settlement on the lake shore was quiet. No sounds of human activity came from the
huts. The women inside were resting, sleeping, mending their garments, tending their fires.
An ineffable and timeless peace hung over the Red Lake. Kesair and Fintan might have been the only two people in the world.
“Are we the only survivors, do you think?” Fintan asked in a low voice.
“We who made it to this island?”
“Yes.”
“No. There are others.”
She spoke with such certainty he looked at her in astonishment. “How can you say that? How can you know?”
“I know.”
“You mean, you want to believe. So do I, Kesair; I very much want to believe that other people reached dry land somewhere, and life goes on. But I don't know.”
“The sea knows.”
“What are you talking about?”
Gazing fixedly at the lake, she replied, “Did you ever enter a room that was totally dark, yet you were aware someone else was already in it?”
“I suppose so.” He thought for a moment, remembering. “Yes, I have.”
“Your senses told you of that other person through some faint disturbance in the air.”
“Perhaps. But that was an enclosed room. You can't expect me to believe you somehow sense survivors on the other side of the ocean ⦔
“I don't. I told you. The sea does, the sea is aware of them and if you listen to it ⦔
He was beginning to lose patience. This was more of that wild mystical talk of hers that some of the others had complained of before. “We aren't anywhere near the sea, Kesair.”
“We're near a lake. And all water is one water.”
How tranquil her voice was; how at peace she sounded. Was she mad? Fintan wondered. If so, was she more comfortable in her madness than he in his sanity?
“Do you expect me to believe you talk to the
water?
”
She shook her tawny head. In the cold blue light of winter her face was pale, her eyes large and luminous.
“I don't talk
to
water. What could I possibly say of any
importance to a force so much greater than myself? I merely listen. I am quiet, and I listen.”
Mad, Fintan decided. Yet there was an allure in her tranquillity, in the knowledge and conviction she contained deep within herself. He was inexorably drawn. “What does the water tell you?”
“Whatever it wishes to tell me. Tales of other times. Ideas from the stars.” She paused meaningfully. “How to survive, if we but listen and learn.
“The water brought us this far, across the sea, along the rivers and streams. It has forgiven us the damage we have done and allowed us to start afresh. But we must not make the same mistakes again, Fintan. No god is endlessly forgiving.”
“No god ⦠are you saying you worship the water?”
For the first time, she took her gaze from the lake and fixed it on him. The radiance in her eyes took his breath away. “We have not worshiped anything, Fintan, except ourselves and our own puny achievements. And see what has happened to us. We are reduced to abject helplessness. We are forced to admit our total dependence on that which is beyond our control. Earth and air, fire and water. The fine trappings and comforts we prided ourselves on having are stripped from us. The way of life we knew is gone forever.
“But some things remain because they are immortal. And is not the immortal, holy?
“In the future, if we are to continue to survive, we must revere the holy, the essential, the powers above our own. We must not put our faith in temporary things. We must listen to the immortal voices of sea and lake, river and stream. They have great powers, Fintan. We must listen and obey.”
“Create new gods, you mean? We put that behind us long ago. We've outgrown superstition.”
“By âwe' you mean humankind? And where is humankind now?” Kesair made a show of looking first in one direction, then another. “Gone, most of them,” she concluded. “But the water remains.”
He could not find a way to refute her. He was aware that a few of the women had begun to listen to her, during the long winter nights when there was little to do but sit around the fires. A few of them now joined her each dawn beside the lake, to dip up water in a jug and pour it over their hands into a basin, then empty the basin back into the lake. He had thought the ritual harmless, women's foolishness.
Perhaps it was.
Perhaps it was homage to a power that should be placated by people in a situation of tenuous survival.
Kesair believed this, and her belief carried its own power. Standing face to face with her in the silvery loneliness, he could feel the power.
What had she said? Water sustains life?
It does, Fintan thought. I cannot deny it.
She was looking at him intently.
“The water remains,” he echoed.
The tension in her face eased. “That is the beginning of understanding. We are starting over, Fintan.” She reached into the neck of her gown.
To his disappointment, she withdrew a simple seashell. She held it up. “Look, Fintan.”
He looked, puzzled as to what she wanted.
The shell was white with the faintest rosy tinge that darkened to a deeper color within its fluted lip. Round at one end, it spiraled to a pointed tip at the other. When he looked more closely he realized how beautiful it was.
We share a love of beauty, he thought. I could make something of that â¦
“Listen, Fintan.”
Kesair held the shell to his ear, pressing the fluted edge against the curled ear flap that was so like the curve of a shell.
Obediently, Fintan listened, keeping his eyes on hers.
She waited.
At first he heard nothing but a sound that might be the muffled beating of his own heart.