The next morning, Hondjetat insisted I come with her to visit Lord Sun.
Though the hawk was not on its perch, the man sat in the circle of clay heads. Seventeen of them. I thought of the story Essferend had told, the first night I remembered. Crane and Heron, Snake and Lizard, Antelope and Wolf, Starling and Hummingbird, Fox and Shrew, Aurochs and Boar, Owl and Vulture, Squirrel and Mouse. Ant. I remembered Ant saying, He had only to speak us into captivity. They must all be tied here somehow, bound to the jars.
“My lord!” said Hondjetat when she had prostrated herself.
“You’re going to say,” said the man, “that Itet is cured and you think your place is rightfully hers.”
“Lord Sun sees everything.” Hondjetat sounded as though she were about to cry.
“I have reasons for everything I do,” said the man. “Your place is rightly yours. Or don’t you want it?”
“I do, Lord! I want it so much, only....”
“You feel you’ve stolen it, or gotten it unfairly. But you haven’t. Wipe your eyes and go home. All will be well. Itet, stay, I wish to speak with you.”
After Hondjetat left, the man said, “Ant! This is your specialty. Is Itet cured?”
The sound of air in a hollow jar became words. “In some respects. Her ability to speak is restored. Her memory, however, is impaired. She remembers nothing before her near-drowning.”
“What causes this?”
“I would not dare speculate. Some cases of memory loss are caused by damage to the brain. Others by an overpowering desire to forget things too painful to bear.”
“And the business down by the river? She shouldn’t have survived the Schael possessing her like that. Is it related?”
“I would not dare speculate,” said Ant airily. “But it strikes me as at least possible. She was in the Schael for quite some time. That sort of cold-water almost-drowning is rare. Victims don’t usually survive long after rescue unless assisted.”
“That’s an interesting thought,” said the man. “I’d wondered...it looked so much like she had died and come back. Which was worrisome. But at the time you said nothing threatened, and now I’m wondering if this isn’t the Schael’s doing. What can she be up to?” He looked at me. “Itet, go down to the river and ask her what she’s doing.”
My first impulse was to say, You go ask, but it occurred to me that the Schael might use me to answer. The man must have seen my hesitation, because he smiled and said, “Don’t be afraid. Just go ask. She is angry with me just now, but perhaps she’ll talk to you.”
The boat the Zuxugo had come on was disassembled, ready to be walked to the other end of the rapids. Two more boats rested on the shore, these pointed at each end. Those can go upstream as well as down, Ant said to my unspoken question. Armed men watched as the boatmen unloaded baskets and bales. I wondered if Essferend had gotten her salt.
I walked upstream until I couldn’t hear the sound of the people by the boats. Then I knelt at the edge of the water and called out, “River Schael!” And sat back on my heels. It was cold by the water, even in late afternoon, even in the sunshine. I shivered. “She won’t answer,” I said.
Be patient, said Ant, but before it had finished speaking a gray-green fish with a whiskered, pointed snout broke the surface two feet from the shore. Its head was large as a man’s. Its body must have been seven feet long.
“You again,” it said in a voice like water over rocks.
I had expected more time to compose my thoughts. “River Schael,” I said again. “Why did you let those....” I looked around. No one else was in earshot, but I lowered my voice anyway. “Those butterflies come down the river?”
“The Zuxugo procured safe passage from the Nalendar,” said the fish. “The Nalendar asked that I extend my protection to them, in order that she could keep her word. Their luggage was not an issue.”
“So you didn’t know?”
“I did not,” gurgled the fish. “Though it amused me. Those brave men, that god who fancies himself so powerful, afraid of a picture of a bug.” It gurgled more, and I realized it was laughing.
“Why,” I asked, wondering aloud as much as asking the Schael, “would the Nalendar require them to bring....” I stopped.
“It amuses the Nalendar to send humans back and forth carrying things,” said the fish. “And she is powerful enough that I do not wish to provoke her anger.”
I thought about that for a moment, and about the things Lord Sun most wanted me to find out. “Lord Sun is worried that...that she might have returned.”
Gurgling laughter. “The bird told me that she would never trouble me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was I who broke the power of the land-gods your peoples held in esteem. And in among the rocks of the rapids are the bones of her own people who fought for her to the last. She is older than I am and very possibly more powerful. And her memory is long. I think it likely that if she returns she will attempt to give me some difficulty, and perhaps the bird will not be able to stop her.”
“Why doesn’t he just say she’s permanently dead?” I asked.
“He would destroy himself if he were mistaken or if he were insufficiently powerful,” said the fish. “Humans—or something like enough—have been here two million years. But she is more than ten times older. One of the ancient ones.”
That didn’t make sense to me. “How could there be gods so long before humans? I thought gods lived on prayers and sacrifices.”
“They do now. Tell me, what is Ant up to?”
I blinked. Opened my mouth. Closed it.
“Of all the land-gods your peoples revered, Ant was closest to her. Now it keeps close about you and its handiwork is obvious in your mind. I saw it when I was inside you.”
Ant had said it wouldn’t dare speculate about the reasons for my lack of speech or memory. That must have been an evasion—it didn’t dare reveal the truth. “But why?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Or did Ant’s surgery dull your wits as well?”
I had no answer.
“I would not trouble myself,” said the fish disdainfully, “except that Ant’s involvement—among other things—strongly suggests that she will be returning. I don’t care particularly whether she does or doesn’t, so long as she doesn’t cause me any difficulties. Perhaps the bird cannot ensure that. She is capricious and sometimes deadly in her caprice. She has reason to resent me. I do not think she is able to destroy me, but she may be able to injure me despite the bird’s promise. Tell Ant, if she gives her word that she will not trouble me, I will not trouble her.”
“But.” I frowned.
“I alone,” said the fish wetly, “matter to myself. What do I need that I do not have?” It dipped below the water and then re-emerged, river water pouring off its whiskered snout. “Ant seems to think that each must be tied to another in a web of obligation and promises. I am not an ant. I do not care which queen rules what nest. In the end they are still ants, and still do what ants do.”
A web of obligations and promises. “What about your obligations to Lo...to the bird? What if I go back and tell him everything you’ve said?”
“Do, if it amuses you,” said the fish, and sank below the water. I waited several minutes, but she did not return.
That night, when everyone was asleep, Hondjetat crept over to where I lay on my mat. “Itet,” she whispered.
I propped myself up on one elbow. One of the girls sighed, muttered unintelligibly, and was still again.
Hondjetat was a motionless, crouching shadow in the dark. “I cried when I heard it was to be you, and not me. I wished....” She stopped.