He kept looking at her. “Better?”
“Yes.”
He rapped his fingertips against her throat.
She yelped, and Bravis and Jode both turned in shock toward the healer.
“Why?” Bravis asked.
“What is the matter with you?” Jode asked.
“I’m concerned,” Apocay said.
“You should be if you’re going to hurt my sister!” Jode’s signal boomed.
Gryshen was certain this accusation had almost nothing to do with the shaman.
“Why?” Bravis repeated, holding out a hand to steady her quaking brother.
“I’m concerned,” repeated Apocay, as if Jode’s eyes weren’t bulging out at him, “because that tapping shouldn’t hurt her. It should be completely healed. That’s an incredibly powerful ointment, epsoneem berries. They never fail. Extremely difficult to come by, but an unbeatable pain diffuser.”
“Well, obviously it fails sometimes.” Jode had calmed down, but his boldness was in place, decked out with a degree of rude her father would have nipped immediately.
Things were already starting to decay.
“I’m sure it will heal quickly. It’s almost all better,” Gryshen signaled. She started to work at untying the straps in place around her.
Bravis and Jode turned back to Apocay for his approval. He didn’t give any consent, just stared at her with a farsighted search in his eyes.
Gryshen kept going, as if propelled. She saw her brother’s lost little lax look, the fear and pain in Bravis, and each thought, each pause was like the scalding sting of a thousand rays around the place where she had tried so desperately to keep her heart safe. It was time to make a new choice. No more safety. No more anything. Except movement. Desperation could easily masquerade as duty.
So be it.
Chapter 9
“Well, what’s next?” she signaled. Jode and Bravis looked beyond perplexed.
“Bravis, see how much more that maker has to go. Our pod will need this burial as soon as possible.” She heard how she sounded. Gryshen saw Jode flinch at her words, but she couldn’t afford to care. “We have no time.” She would have been pleading if she had allowed emotion to slip through.
“Then we will need to take you through your Forms, beginning at daylight,” the shaman said.
“Apocay, please. Surely a little more time. She needs to heal more. You just said you were . . . concerned.” Bravis’s signal was weighted.
“She’s healed enough. She needs to find her function. That could do more than any medicine. I will be ready to do the chief’s Burial Blessing. We can do it in the dark. It’s a very sacred time.”
“The dark . . . as in tonight?” Bravis couldn’t hide his surprise.
The dark seemed just right. It suited the whole picture. Maybe she could block it all out.
If only everything could be in the dark.
There was a silence. Then Apocay broke it. “The pearl?” He looked to Bravis and Gryshen.
Now with a focus in desperation, Gryshen was gifted the ability to piece together decisions. “First the bone pit, then I begin my Forms. How quickly can those be completed?” she asked.
“It depends. We can pile tasks together, so you can move more quickly, I suppose,” Apocay said.
“Let’s do that. What if we do them all tomorrow?”
Even Jode came back out of his hurt at this. “Grysh!”
“Absolutely not,” Bravis signaled.
“It would be . . . highly unwise,” Apocay agreed.
“It could kill her,” Bravis told him tersely.
Let’s hope, Gryshen thought to herself.
“Grysh! Gryshie!” Jode kept exclaiming.
“Of course I wouldn’t permit that. Some could, but not this one. Perhaps two days,” Apocay said.
Apocay and Gryshen ignored the protests of their companions, and formed a plan.
They all insisted that Gryshen rest awhile longer while they took on the details of her father’s burial. The shaman went to prepare for the ceremony, while Bravis left to check in on members of the pod and confirm the burial chamber for Frall.
Jode stayed back. No one had given him a job. It was clear he wasn’t really up for it. He floated in silence by his sister while she lay and practiced turning her head from side to side, still wincing at the pain she felt whenever she made swift movements. Slower, steady movements made for less pain. Apocay had given her a pouch of the berries, a handful to be taken tonight, some at dawn, then that was it.
“The ceasid can’t handle more. It’s too potent. I’m afraid you’ll have to just hope for the best before your Forms.” His off-putting way of signaling in such a disconnect always had irritated Gryshen. She had never much cared for him. But now, as she practiced signaling clearly, trying to find how loud she could pitch before her throat burned up, she felt like she understood him.
She kept her face smooth and her eyes forward to ignore the tortured looks from her brother as she streamed sips of oxygen from the lone tube in the medicine chamber. It was her best shot at making it.
And “making it” was a simple act of attending her dead father’s burial, going through two days of rigorous Forms, finding her function, and getting back the pearl herself.
The shaman was right.
Blackest night is perfect for his blackest sleep, Gryshen thought to herself, in the detached way she was becoming more and more accustomed to.
It was possibly the maker’s legacy, this piece of art her father’s corpse was to be sealed in. It was some kind of massive trunk, the kind of thing that landkeepers might pack their beautiful, frail fabrics in, made up of boards of glossy wood framed with corner crowns of shining golden metal. That was probably its original state, save for the polishing. Even in the thick darkness, it shone like a trophy from the light of lanterns carried by half the tribe. The other half were occupied with carrying and passing Frall’s body from iloray to iloray down the line, toward the end, where Bravis, Apocay, Jode, and Gryshen were posted with his new wooden body-home. The light on it displayed a collection of carvings, ancient symbols of the tribe—some so old that their meaning had seemed to evolve through myth, others as clear as the summer sea in their translation.
Gryshen could see the mark for leadership, her father’s mark, at the center of the circle of functions. It told his story beautifully—the lax who was all things to his beloved pod.
Her observations were interrupted by a low moan of a signal. Now the torches had been placed against the wall in this narrower hall of the cavern, and the blue and white washed over her brother’s face, the face that always wore a grin. Bravis awkwardly patted his shoulder, like the statue from a sunken ruin had come to life to offer comfort.
Gryshen knew her father would want her to be the one holding him up, keeping him afloat, but she also knew that this weight was better carried by stoic Bravis. She had to keep her expression measured, her face smooth. Even this darkness wouldn’t shelter her from the gaping crowd.
She could pull out different signals from the pod, like picking notes from a song. The sisters whispered loudly, of course, spitting and hissing like two writhing serpents.
“Look at the casket. The detail! So exquisite!”
“Well, he was a fine, fine leader, of course.”
“And now?”
“And now we have the one who swam away.” They both cooed and clicked at this.