She built a forge downriver from the tent. It took nine days of hard work. The weather stayed the same. There were bugs every night. Tanajin gathered living wood and put it on the fire. The smoke drove away most of the bugs. Nia was too exhausted to mind the ones that remained.
Every morning she was stiff, but the stiffness wore off. The real problem was her hands. Blisters formed on the palms where the calluses had gotten thin. The blisters broke. The flesh beneath was red and tender. She wrapped pieces of fabric between her fingers and over the palms. Aiya! How clumsy that made her! She kept working.
“You don’t have to hurry,” said Tanajin.
“I like it. I understand what I am doing. It has been a long time since I’ve been able to say that.” She paused, trying to think of a way to explain. “This is the thing I do. This is my gift.”
Tanajin made the gesture of dubious comprehension.
The day that the forge was completed, something odd happened. A cloud appeared. No. A trail of smoke. It rose out of the south, going diagonally west, forming with amazing rapidity. Not like any smoke that Nia had ever seen. Up and up it went. Nia shaded her eyes. Was there something at the tip of the cloud? Something leaving the trail of smoke? That was hardly likely.
She listened. There was no sound of thunder and nothing in the sky except the trail, which had risen so high that she could no longer see the end of it.
“Huh!” She went back to work.
In the evening she went back to the house of Tanajin. The woman sat by her fire, cooking fish stew in a pot that hung from a tripod.
“What was that about?” she asked Nia.
“The cloud? I’m not certain. But the hairless people are south of here.” Nia scratched her nose. “I wonder how many islands there are in the lake. I wish I had a talking box. I’d ask the oracle or Li-sa.”
Tanajin made the gesture of inquiry.
Nia told her about the islands that fell out of the sky. “They come down with noise. Maybe they go up with smoke.”
Tanajin made the gesture of doubt. “Many things fall out of the sky. Rain of different colors, snow, hail, pieces of iron and stone. I’ve never heard of anything going back up again. Only smoke rises.”
Nia made the gesture that meant “you aren’t thinking about what you are saying.” “When the fire demons are active, the mountains throw up stones, and they can travel long distances. Ash rises at the same time, and fire.”
“You think these people are a kind of demon?”
“No. I think they have tools that are nothing like our tools, and strange things happen around them.”
Tanajin made the gesture of courteous doubt. “I am willing to believe that mountains cough up stones, though I have never seen one do it. I am not willing to believe that a lake can spit islands into the sky.”
The next day Nia began to repair the tools that belonged to Tanajin. Travelers came from the east: eight women who belonged to the People of Fur and Tin.
Tanajin ferried them across the river. It took her two days. When she got back, she said, “They have come from visiting the Amber People. A bad visit! Everyone there is quarreling. A ceremony has been ruined. They have been accusing one another.”
Nia shivered and made the gesture to avert bad consequences.
Tanajin went on. “They saw the cloud in the south. I told them about the hairless people. I said I knew the people existed. I had seen them. But I hadn’t seen any islands fall out of the sky. That news came from Nia the Smith, I told them.”
“You told them my name?”
Tanajin made the gesture that meant “don’t worry.” “I said you came from the east. They do not realize you are the woman who loved a man.”
“That’s good,” said Nia.
She continued to work on Tanajin’s belongings. The weather continued bright and hot. Late summer weather. The ground was dry, even close to the river. On the plain everything would be covered with dust. The village—traveling—would send up great dark clouds.
At night many arrows flashed out of the pattern of stars called the Great Wagon. That was ordinary. Those arrows came at the end of every summer. The Little Boys Who Never Grow Up were riding in their mother’s wagon, shooting their bows. Aiya! When she caught them!
Nia finished with Tanajin’s pots and began on her own gear: bridle bits, the rings on saddles, knives that needed sharpening, awls that would not punch through anything. Tanajin had a coil of iron wire. Nia made needles.
Now and then she saw clouds of the new kind: long and narrow. Usually they were in the south or southwest. They formed rapidly like the first cloud, and they were the same shape, but they didn’t rise to the peak of the sky. Instead they were horizontal. It was easiest to see them in the evening. The sun lit them from below. They shone like colored banners: red, yellow, purple, orange, pink. Sometimes Nia thought she could make out the glint of metal. The thing that glinted was always at the front end of the cloud, at the place where the cloud began.
She worked and thought. After a while she got an idea. It seemed crazy to her. There was only one thing to do with a crazy idea. Tell it. Only men kept quiet when something was bothering them. Or women who were doing or thinking something that was shameful.
Nia spoke to Tanajin.
“The clouds are in the south, where the hairless people are. They are new, and the clouds are new. Therefore they are responsible.”
“Maybe.”
“I told you about their boats. The boats leave a trail in the water. The trail is white. It forms rapidly and then vanishes. Maybe the clouds are trails as well.”
“In the sky?” said Tanajin. “Don’t be ridiculous. First you said these people are able to fling stones around like demons. Now you say they can float in the sky like spirits. How likely is any of this?”
Nia made the gesture of concession. “Not very.”
“You have spent too much time alone, Nia. You are getting crazy ideas.”
Nia made the gesture that meant “yes.”
Travelers came from the west and built a signal fire. Tanajin went to get them: five large morose women. Their tunics had brightly colored vertical stripes. Their saddlebags were different from anything Nia had ever seen before: large baskets made of some kind of plant fiber and striped horizontally.
The women spoke with thick accents. They belonged to the Finely Woven Basket People, they said. A boat had come to their village out of the sky.
“Huh!” said Tanajin.
“I say it was a boat because it carried people.” The travel leader spoke. She was the largest of the women with a belly that made her look pregnant. But pregnant women did not usually travel. Maybe she was fat. Nia didn’t know a polite way to ask.
“It didn’t look like any boat I have seen. It looked like the birds that our neighbors make to hang on standards. The birds are gold. Their bodies are fat. Their wings are long and narrow. They have eyes made of various kinds of crystal.”
Another woman said, “This thing—this boat—had two large eyes in front that shone like crystal. There were other eyes—little ones—that went along the sides. Hu! It was peculiar.”
The travel leader frowned.
The other woman made the gesture that was an apology for interrupting.
The travel leader said, “The people in the boat had almost no fur. One of them spoke the language of gifts, though very badly. This person said they wanted to come and visit and exchange stories.”
Tanajin looked at Nia. “You weren’t crazy.”
“What does that mean?” asked the travel leader.
“There have been clouds in the sky. This woman said they were caused by boats that belonged to the hairless people.”
“How did you know?” asked a woman.
Nia said, “Finish your story. I will tell you later.”