Shadows in the Cave (8 page)

“Her body goes to the Darkening Land?”

“Without a spirit.”

Shonan turned to Chalu and let his disgust curl his words. “This is childish talk.”

The Amaso chief glared back. He had thoughts, but he didn’t speak them.

“A chief who is a true ally would warn us before inviting us to live here.”

Chalu had nothing to say. Aku knew he held himself back out of sympathy for Shonan’s grief.

“What do you think we should do?”

Chalu pieced words out. “You can send a runner to your nearest village and get enough men to go against the Brown Leaves.”

“My daughter would be dead before they started.”

No one had anything to say.

Shonan turned back to Aku. “My son and I will leave at first light. We need to know where to go.”

“Come eat at my hut,” Oghi said, “and our men will tell you what we know.”

Aku saw a flicker in his eyes, the eyes that were old and young at once, serious and funny at once. He wondered what this meant.

Outside the council lodge Iona wrapped both her arms around Aku and looked at him with love. “I’ll miss you tomorrow evening.” At every sunset they slipped away and took pleasure in each others’ bodies.

“Every evening,” he mumbled.

“I better kiss you good-bye now.”

Oghi gave everyone roasted chestnuts and tea. His uncles and cousins had to crowd into the small hut.

Aku nibbled at his chestnuts. Shonan waited hardly longer than he could have held his breath, while the Amaso men spoke of where the Brown Leaf village was, how many people the Brown Leaves had, and how many fighters. At the first pause Shonan asked in the Galayi language, “What way will they go?”

Feeling embarrassed for his father, who resisted learning the Amaso tongue, Aku signed the words haltingly. Though Oghi understood some Galayi, a host had a right to use his own language.

Taking his time, Oghi got a hairless deer hide from a pile at the back of the round hut and took a half-burnt stick from the fire. He sketched a very irregular first line and said, signing his own words, “This is the shoreline.” He drew lines to show two streams flowing to the sea. “Two wide rivers. There’s a trail here that warriors use sometimes,” he said. “It’s shorter, but you’d get lost. There are big stretches to swim. For sure they won’t take a captive on a litter this way.”

He kept drawing until he made a third stream. “This is Big River,” he said. “Along it a path runs back inland to the main trail.”

Now he changed burned sticks and made a thick, weaving line that led from the Amaso village away from the coastline. He sketched in bumps to show where it went through the hills, long lines to show creeks. “This is the main trail. The streams are not too deep or wide,” he said. “Women and children can use this trail.”

He brought the main trail to Big River. “The two trails meet here.”

Then he extended the thick line much further north and drew a huge inlet protected by an arc of land. “Brown Leaf Bay,” said.

He fishhooked the trail line toward the sea and drew a circle. “The Brown Leaf village, near the shore.” He ran his finger along the thick line. “This trail is easy to see, easy to walk. They’ll take it.”

“You’re sure they won’t worry about us following them?”

Oghi shrugged. “They’ve never been afraid of us before.”

“Can we catch them?” asked Shonan.

“No doubt,” said the sea turtle man. “Carrying a litter, it’s more than a quarter moon’s journey. We can run.”

“Damn right,” said Shonan.

They all studied the map, thinking separate thoughts.

“We have two days after they get back?” said Aku.

“The stories say the sacrifice is made like that, yes, in a ceremonial way.”

“That ceremony will never start,” said Shonan.

His eyes on Aku’s felt like a strong grip.
How?
Aku wondered. How, with two men against a dozen or a score? Shonan the Red Chief was sure of everything. Aku was sure of nothing.

Oghi said, “Why not get ahead of them? Use the coastal route and beat them to the junction of the two trails?”

They looked at him. His eyes were jumping and hallooing now.

“I like surprises,” said the sea turtle man.

“You said we’d get lost,” said Shonan.

“Not if you have a very good guide. Such as me.”

Salya was gone, gone, gone. Shonan let that single word be the mark of his rhythm as he loped along the sand behind Oghi. As far as he was concerned, the sea turtle man didn’t run hard enough. On the other hand, Oghi was small, and at least he never stopped. He trotted step after step over the dunes, through the marshes, and across the creeks. He waded into the river without even slowing down. Their dog Tagu, with elk blankets and deer hides wrapped around dried meat, stayed at Oghi’s heels, as if following a new master. At the rear Aku kept up, relieved that they didn’t have to go faster.

When they came to the first creek, the turtle and dog swam the same way, head up and legs waggling below. The father and son swam like most Galayi men, on their sides. Oghi got to the other bank first.

The sea turtle man called a food break, brooking no disagreement. While the warriors munched their deer meat, he waded into the tide pools, popped shelled creatures off the rocks, and scooped out the meat. When he sat back down with them, he smiled and said, “Mother sea.”

When they came to a big river marked on their map, they faced a high palisade on the far bank. “We can’t land over there,” Oghi pointed out.

“Let’s swim upstream,” said Shonan. He was leery of the sea.

“Can’t,” said Oghi. “The tide’s going out. Formidable current.” Aku was tickled by the formal way the sea turtle man talked. “The only way is the ocean,” Oghi said cheerfully.

Without waiting for a response, Oghi plunged into the salt water and led them, swimming, parallel to the shore. Gradually, the palisade became a hill, a slope, then just some dunes. The sea was calm and glassy. The sea turtle angled toward the beach.

Just then he rocked in the water and called out, “Riptide!” Bizarrely, he started sailing out to sea.

In a moment Tagu was bobbing along behind Oghi, Shonan behind both of them, and Aku last. It was an odd sensation. Aku felt like he was flying above the sea floor, riding some sort of water-air to a destination.

What the hell was happening? He turned and swam as hard as he could toward the shore.

“Keep … ! Don’t … !” Oghi yelled, but his words were garbled.

Aku yelled, “What?!”

“
Swim,
” yelled Shonan. He waited for a moment while the sea sloshed over his head. “Don’t …”

Aku stopped swimming for a moment. He felt as if he were sailing as fast as an eagle that launches off a rocky point and soars on firm wings. Except that he was soaring out to sea, and to death.

He aimed straight toward the shore and kicked hard again. After a furious effort, he stopped, turned, and saw that he was much further from the beach than anyone else, and not as far past the mouth of the river. Tagu issued one ferocious bark. Aku felt himself flying backward into the infinite ocean.

He looked down. The water was clear, and probably only
two or three times as deep as Aku was tall. He thought for a moment about stretching out on the bottom and not being able to breathe. He felt panicky. The more he looked, the more panicky he felt. And he could see that, all along, he was floating further and further into the ocean that went on forever.

In a flurry he set himself for one more charge toward the land. He kicked his legs and flailed his arms and kicked his legs and flailed his arms. Then he took a careful look down and saw that he was still sailing out to sea, as a cloud sails the skies at the mercy of the winds.

He stopped. He looked back toward the familiar land, where a person could walk, talk, find something to eat, and never come to a single place completely without air. The land was getting farther and farther away, and the palisade looked lower, much lower, and vague. He realized that he could float so far out onto the everywhere-is-water that he wouldn’t be able to see the land. As the sky was everything above, the water would be everything below.

He looked down and saw the no-air-at-the-bottom place drifting along beneath him. He let himself imagine, just for a moment, how much of the no-air place there must be. Some people thought the ocean went all the way around the Earth, to the far side of the rolling country that was on the other side of the mountains where the Galayi people made their home. Some people said that, if you could walk on water, it would be a hundred days’ walk all the way around to that rolling country. Other people said a thousand days. And probably the everywhere-water was as big up and down as it was across. The no-air part of Earth might be as big as Turtle Island herself was. Or bigger. At the very beginning, when all the plants and animals, including human beings, were ready to come down and live on Earth, the entire planet
was water. Then Water Beetle started diving down and bringing up dirt, making places to walk and build houses and live. No one knew how much of the everywhere-water Water Beetle had covered with dirt.

Aku decided he couldn’t swim anymore. He was far too tired in his muscles and he felt woozy in his head, too. He would sail like a cloud. Why not? He didn’t have any choice, and it felt good. He would wag his legs gently and sail and sail and sail until the water was as big as the sky and then … He guessed he would slide down and lie on the bottom.

“We’ve got to do something!” Shonan said.

“There’s nothing to do,” said Oghi, looking out to sea. He couldn’t see Aku. “He’s in the riptide. He can’t swim straight against it, but he kept trying, and going the wrong way.”

Both men were mixing in words of the Galayi and Amaso languages, hoping the other would figure it out.

“Where will he end up?”

Oghi shrugged. “Nobody who swam against one ever came back. We learned to swim across them.”

“I’m going to do something.”

Oghi looked at Shonan with questions in his young-old eyes.

“He’s my son,” Shonan said.

Tagu let out three soft barks.

Shonan could see that Oghi was pondering something, but he had no idea what.

“We could ride the tide out, just like he did.”

Oghi stared into space.

“We could take something …” Shonan looked around and saw various pieces of flotsam, but they were all spindly.
He wasn’t sure they’d hold him and Aku. Then he spotted a big piece of driftwood no more than twenty steps into the water. It was taller than a human being and thicker than a man’s thigh.

“How far out does the riptide go?”

Oghi shrugged.

“I’m taking that log and going after my boy.”

The sea turtle man let a beat go by, gave a truly odd smile, and said, “Me, too.” He broke into a grin. “Tie Tagu to a tree, will you?” No question they couldn’t make the dog stay, not when his master was out there.

Shonan waded into the water, climbed onto the log, and straddled it. He looked back and in amazement beheld …

The sea turtle man’s fingers and toes turned to claws. His arms and legs were rough, bumpy, like a turtle’s.

Oghi wore a scrunchy look of deepest concentration on his face. He fell onto all fours. His back metamorphosed into a carapace. His neck developed a wattle. His nose and mouth joined into a beak. His body doubled in size.

The turtle four-footed his way to the edge of the water. Only his young-old eyes stayed the same. Shonan would have sworn that he grinned, except that a turtle couldn’t do that.

“A small person,” said the sea turtle man, “but a giant turtle.”

Oghi pointed. “Right over there’s where the riptide starts.” He launched into the water, swam with extraordinary grace to the log, and started pushing it toward the rip.

Shonan joined in. He didn’t intend to say anything, certainly not ask for anything, not for a long time. The two of them got behind one end of the log and chugged it into the rip, and away they went.