The entire village was in motion now, heading west. She guided her animal among the wagons, going in the opposite direction. The air was full of dust. Women shouted. Children yelled. Bowhorns made the grunting noise that meant they were working hard and not liking it.
She reached the end of the village. There was nothing ahead except the rutted trail and the droppings of bowhorns. The droppings were fresh and shiny black. She reined White Spot for a moment. There was something else that she had not told Angai. When the parting was over, when the people were gone, she began—always—to feel happy. Aiya! To be traveling! Aiya! To be alone!
She was not sitting properly. Her back was curved, and her shoulder went down as if she carried a heavy load. Nia straightened herself and pushed her chest out. That was better. Now her lungs had room.
A voice said, “I have something to tell you, and I didn’t want Angai to hear.”
She looked back. It was Anasu. His animal breathed heavily through its open mouth.
She made the gesture of inquiry.
“I am planning to visit the hairless people—this winter, before I go through the change.”
“Why?”
“Nothing like this has ever happened. There are no hairless people in any of the old stories and no boats like the one I rode on and certainly no men who live with women. This is utterly new. I want to see it, Nia! I want to understand.
“If I wait—who knows what will happen? Maybe I will turn into one of those men who can endure no one, not even women in the time for mating. Maybe I’ll go crazy.”
“That doesn’t happen in our family,” Nia said.
Anasu made the gesture of uncertainty. “And if everything goes well, if the change is perfectly ordinary, I will end up in the south. I’ve heard about that place! No women get down there. No one brings any information. The big men get everything, and the young men sit and wonder—what is going on in the rest of the world?”
Nia grunted and looked at her son. In the sunlight his dark fur gleamed, and there was—she could see now—a little red in it. Like copper, like his uncle Anasu.
“Be careful,” she told him.
“Of course. I’m not a fool. I’ll do nothing to get myself in trouble. I don’t intend to end up like Enshi or like you.”
“Be polite as well.”
The boy made the gesture of assent. “If you come to the village of the hairless people—in the winter, not before—I’ll be there.”
“Most likely I will come,” she said.
He made the gesture of satisfaction and the gesture of farewell and turned his animal away.
She rode north all day, following the trail of the village. In evening she made camp by a stream. A trickle of water ran down the middle of a wide sandy bed. It was enough. Nia watered her animal and then gathered wood from the bushes along the stream. She made a fire. There was food in the saddlebags: dried fruit and hard, dry travel-bread.
Hu! It was comfortable to sit and watch the flames dance red and yellow. White Spot was nearby. Nia heard the crunching of vegetation and the gurgle of the fluid in the bowhorn’s stomach.
Out on the plain a tulpa cried, “Oop-oop. Oop-oop.”
Nia listened for a while, then went to sleep.
She followed the trail of the village for two more days. On the morning of the third day she came to another trail, this one narrow and deep. Travelers had made it. They never used wagons. Instead they led strings of bowhorns loaded down with fine gifts from the Amber People and the People of Fur and Tin. Nia turned east, following the new trail. She traveled for another day. The weather stayed the same: hot and bright and clear. Hu! It was boring! She made up poems. She wondered what had happened to the oracle and Li-sa and Deragu. Were they back in their village? What about her children? Would they be all right? Would they be happy?
Angai had done a good job raising them. Why hadn’t she praised her friend? Why hadn’t she told Hua and Anasu, “You are good children”?
Toward evening there was a noise like thunder: loud and sharp. White Spot broke into a run.
Nia pulled on the reins. The animal did not stop. Instead it plunged off the trail into the vegetation. Nia kept pulling. The animal ran until they came to a stand of blade-leaf. It rose over both of them. The animal reared, then came down on all fours, shaking and snorting and sweating like one of the hairless people.
“This is no way to act,” said Nia. “Be safe! Be happy! There is nothing to harm you.” Nia stroked the animal’s neck, then looked around. The sky was empty. “I’ve heard that before,” she told the bowhorn. “It means that an island has fallen into Long Lake.”
The animal shook its head, snorting again. Nia turned it back toward the trail.
At twilight she came to the river valley. She made camp on top of a bluff, and in the morning she rode down through a narrow ravine. Vines covered the walls, their leaves as red as copper. The air smelled of dust and dry vegetation.
At the bottom of the ravine the land was flat and covered with forest. She continued east. The trail was dry, but she could see that a lot of it would be underwater in the spring. Logs had been laid down in the low places and dirt piled over the logs, so the trail was raised. Aiya! What a construction! She had never seen anything like it before. Who had done it? Tanajin? Or some of the travelers? It was a good gift. Many people would praise it.
In the middle of the afternoon she came to the river. Brown water ran through a narrow channel. On the other side of the channel was an island. There was a raft pulled up on the shore of the island between the river and the trees.
Nia dismounted. The ground around her was covered with ashes and pieces of burnt wood. There were footprints in the dirt—people and bowhorns—and heaps of dung. All the dung was old.
She took care of her animal, then gathered wood and built a fire. Dead wood first. Not the rotten pieces that bugs had eaten. Good dry pieces, solid, with nothing on them except patches of the red scale plant. When the fire was burning really well, Nia added living wood. That made smoke. It rose up like the trunk of a tree, thick and dark.
Nothing happened for the rest of the day. She kept the fire burning. At night she slept close to it and woke several times to add wood. Anything could be in the forest: lizards as big as the umazi, killers with sharp claws, osupai or tulpai. The plain was better. She liked to see what was coming after her.
In the morning she gathered more wood. Her food was almost gone. She got the fire burning well, then sat down and waited. Her body was stiff. Her mind felt like an iron pot: heavy and empty.
In the middle of the day a person emerged from the forest on the island. She pushed the raft into the water and climbed onto it. A forked stick was fastened to the side of the raft. The person fitted a long paddle into the fork of the stick.
The raft drifted out into the river. The person began to move in a way that Nia did not understand at first: bending and straightening. The paddle rose and fell. Water dripped from the wide long blade.
Up and down. In and out of the water. After a while Nia could see what was happening. The paddle was driving the raft. Instead of going downstream with the current, it went across.
Slow work! And hard! Nia watched, feeling restless. It was never easy to sit with empty hands when other people were doing something useful. She got up and moved to the edge of the water.
The raft was close. The person on it was Tanajin. She glanced at Nia, but made no gesture of recognition. Instead she kept the paddle in motion. In spite of all her effort, the raft was drifting downstream. It would come to shore below Nia.