Moon-Flash (14 page)

“She—” The Hunter’s voice stopped the story. “I think she should tell you. It’s not easy for me to explain.” He stood up, then; she watched him. He held out his hand, a dark, still figure in the night, as she had first seen him.

“Hunter,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

She let him pull her to her feet, stood beside him, gazing down at the city of stars.

The next day, they began to see people along the riverbanks. The river grew wide; houses of bewildering shape and size crusted its banks. There were no silent places anymore. The hot air seemed to throb with a dull, constant boom, like a heartbeat growing louder and louder. Boats crowded into the water, eluding each other in a graceful, unspoken ritual. Some were beautiful, catching the breeze with colored wings. Some sped and roared; others dropped out of the air like dragonflies, drew in their feet, unfurled their wings, and loosed fishing lines as they moved upriver. Terje, trying to drive and stare at the same time, almost hit one of them. A man on it yelled unknown words at him. Orcrow took the wheel, and Terje sank down beside Kyreol on the cushions. His body looked tense, defensive, as though all the sounds and colors were storming at him. Kyreol, watching him, wondered if his face would ever become quiet
again. Then, slowly, he changed, something inside of him flowing outward, a current of peace, protecting him from the world.

“How do you do that?” she asked. He looked at her out of calm eyes.

“Do what?”

“Whatever it is you’re doing.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Well, what were you thinking about?”

He scratched his head. “I don’t know. All the different shapes the world makes.”

They saw buildings steep and high as cliffs and others the same shape as the little turtle-shell houses of the Riverworld, only a hundred times bigger. Some buildings twisted themselves into peculiar shapes; their colors were smooth, bright, glistening like water. Factories, Orcrow called them. They made everything, he explained. Boats, the cloth they were wearing, airships. The air above them hummed busily, looking as crowded as the water. Finally, rounding a curl in the river, Kyreol saw the dome again.

It looked translucent by day, floating like a cloud, catching sunlight on its rim. It was barely visible, a fragile half-bubble, so light it might be pushed with one hand. Ships buzzed in and out of it like bees. Now and then a tiny violet patch appeared in the bubble and swallowed a ship. Airy as it seemed, its walls blocked out the sky.

“Reflectors underneath it catch the sunlight,” Orcrow said mysteriously, “and pour it down over the city.” He showed her, angling sunlight into his palm with a piece of metal. “Otherwise it would cast too great a shadow.” Kyreol, dizzied by the constant, incomprehensible
variety of the city, too numb to ask questions, nodded wordlessly. Orcrow glanced at her sharply. “We’re almost there.”

“Where?” she asked helplessly. “Orcrow, I’ve never seen so many words I don’t know.”

“I know.” He withdrew the crystal from a pocket and spoke into it. They were going slowly now, because the river was so crowded, and faces, skincolorings, clothes on other boats were clearly visible. Sometimes Kyreol heard words she understood, carried at random across the water.

“Channel two. Regny Orcrow. Open channel to airdock six, please, channel to airdock six.”

“Regny Orcrow,” the stone said in a woman’s voice. “Acknowledged. All channels closed to that name except channel one priority, one priority. Please contact the Dome.”

Orcrow closed the stone. He stood silently a moment, his face the Hunter’s face again: unreadable, contemplating distant movements. Then he flicked the stone open again. “Regny Orcrow. Channel one priority.”

The stone spoke in a woman’s voice again, but this was soft, husky, with a way of pronouncing words carefully, as if they were always new. “Channel one. Orcrow.” Unlike Joran, she didn’t shout at him; her voice was very grave. “Are the children safe?”

“They’re with me. They’re quite safe.”

“Where are you?”

“Still on the river. We’ve entered Domecity. They’re tired and hungry.”

“No doubt.”

“I think I should tell you—”

The stone broke into his words. “An air-shuttle will be waiting for you at airdock six. Please maintain contact with the Dome. I must warn you that at any moment I cannot contact you, you may be liable to prosecution. You will proceed to the Dome for a full inquiry into your astonishing lack of judgment. The children, of course, will not be submitted to airflight. I’ll send someone from the Cultural Agency who speaks their language to meet them at the airdock.”

“I’d rather not leave them.”

“It seems to me,” the voice said severely, “that they have already seen far too much of you.”

Orcrow sighed. “I can’t imagine what I did in the Riverworld to get myself recognized. But having inadvertently caused them to leave, please remember that I did everything in my power to keep them from harm. Please believe me when I tell you that under the circumstances, there was nothing I could do but permit the children to come to Domecity.”

“Under what circumstances?”

“Kyreol. She’s here beside me.” He waited; the stone was silent. A breeze wrinkled across the water. In the silence, they passed from sunlight into the shadow of the Dome. “Nara,” said Orcrow gently, and Kyreol’s hands turned cold. Terje lifted his head slowly, blinking.

“Bring them to the Dome,” the woman said.

THEY FLEW, as Kyreol had flown in her dream. Only it wasn’t a butterfly, but a craft of silver, which winked and glowed within and spoke to itself. Kyreol, strapped to a seat, huddled against herself, pushed her hands against her eyes as she felt the earth fall away from her. She heard Orcrow talking in her own language; she felt Terje’s arm on her shoulders. But the Hunter’s words made no more sense than birds fluttering around her head, and fear lay like a chasm between her and Terje’s arm.
I’ve left the River,
she kept thinking.
I’ve left the River. How will I ever get back?
Then another shock of cold would go through her.
The woman’s name is Nara. Nara of the Dome. Or is it Nara of the River-Tree?
She lifted her head finally, jerkily, and interrupted Orcrow’s noises.

“Is that my mother?”

“Yes,” Orcrow said, and went on talking, but “yes” was all she heard.
Nara.
She saw her own dark face in her mind, heard the low, careful voice again. Then the voice out of her dream said, “Cleared.” Blinking,
she saw the Dome yawn open in front of them, and she hid her eyes again.

“Kyreol,” Terje said. “Kyreol.” She heard him dimly, as though she were dreaming. “Kyreol.” She realized suddenly that the ship had stopped. People were standing; a hatch had opened. “Kyreol.”

She drew a deep breath. Orcrow was gazing at her anxiously. He unfastened the strap across her quickly. Her whole body was tense; her fingers clung like bird claws to the arms of the seat. She heard herself say shakily, “I was afraid, Orcrow.”

“It’s all right.”

She looked up at Terje wistfully. “Weren’t you afraid?”

His face was so white it might have shown in the dark like a moon. “You didn’t give me a chance.” He coaxed her up. She closed her eyes again, envisioning the airy nothingness the Dome rested upon.

“Kyreol,” Orcrow said. “The world itself floats like a bubble in space.”

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. Her lips felt numb. She took a step and didn’t fall through clouds. She took another. “Orcrow . . . How—how can people build things like this?”

She saw them both smile, as in relief. Then she saw her mother.

It was as though she looked into water and saw her own reflection. Only her reflection was dressed like Orcrow, like the people of Domecity. Her hair was drawn severely back from her face and knotted on top of her head. She belonged to a world of airships and dwellings that floated above the air. But her skin was black as the gleaming, water-carved walls of the Face,
and her eyes, as she gazed at Kyreol, were overflowing with memories.

Her voice was the gentle, careful voice of the stone.

“My little Kyreol.” Then she brushed at her tears and slowly, tentatively, Kyreol smiled.

Nara led them out of the silver ship, through a door at the dockwall, into a tiny room whose doors closed like a mouth. Nara spoke to the room; it rose upward, unsettling Kyreol’s stomach. Ships that flew, rooms that moved and understood words . . . How did people dream such things? The doors opened again; they entered a vast domed room full of light.

“This is the very top of the Dome,” Nara said. “This is where I live.”

Trees and flowers dwelled under the soft light of the tinted roof. Fountains and small pools sparkled among the leaves. The trees didn’t seem to mind being detached from the earth; they gathered light eagerly into their many-colored leaves. But they had forgotten how to speak; there was no wind. Doors circled the walls. People came in and out of them, their voices muted among the growing things. Some of them, catching sight of Nara and Kyreol together, stared in amazement. Kyreol could see the wonder, the questions in thir faces.
The children—the Riverworld children. How dared they leave the River to float higher than a mountain above the earth? What will they do now? What language do they speak? Can they live without wind?
But they only smiled a welcome and left Nara to ask their questions.

Nara opened a door in the circle of doors. Kyreol, stepping inside, had an impression of light, bird cries, green growing things. The room seemed full of leaves,
like a forest. She blinked. Then she realized the bright birds were caged; the trees and ferns were in pots. Nara, watching her, smiled a little, almost shyly.

“I made a tiny Riverworld for myself,” she explained. “Except there is no water.” On the wall beside the bird cage hung familiar things: a painted leather amulet, a necklace of seeds, feather ankle-bracelets, a gold feather vest. Nara followed Kyreol’s gaze. “I was married in that vest. I lost the marriage skirt, coming downriver, when my boat overturned.”

“What did you do then?” Terje asked. Memories came into her eyes again.

“I made a raft. I had a bundle of clothes—I found them farther down, snagged on the bank.”

“Your betrothal skirt,” Kyreol said abruptly. Nara nodded surprisedly. Kyreol thought of her, homeless and alone on the great river, not knowing where it might take her. “You didn’t have a speaking stone.”

“No. Not then. Nor a Hunter. Sit down.” They sat on the soft carpet among the trees. But she didn’t move; she was looking at them as though she were trying to understand how they could have changed so from the children she had held. “Terje, do you remember me at all?”

He nodded, frowning a little. “I think so,” he said shyly. “You used to—you used to tell us stories. Like Kyreol does now. You took us with you when you went to find herbs for—for the Healer.” His face had flushed scarlet. “You—then you weren’t there anymore. Ever. We looked for you . . . We thought you must be somewhere. Behind the next tree. The next rock. We would meet you at the next bend in the River. I would go to your house and think,
This morning
Kyreol’s mother will open the door for me.
But—” He shrugged a little. “You never did.” He added huskily, remembering, “We were so small.”

Nara’s head bowed. “I missed you,” she said to Kyreol, in the language of the Riverworld. “Going down the River, I cried for you.”

Kyreol’s eyes filled. “How could you do it? At least I had Terje with me.”

“Aren’t you angry with me for leaving you?”

“No. I was sad for a long time. That went away and, after another long time, when my—when my father said you weren’t dead, I started to wonder where you went. Where the River went.”

“You . . . How did he know?” Nara said wonderingly.

“He had a dream.”

“Of me? Here?”

“He dreamed a beautiful stone opened and said your name. And you followed it into the sky. He never said your name during the chants for the dead.” She added, “When I saw Orcrow for the first time, he was talking to a stone. So I thought of my father’s dream. I started to wonder if it were the same stone. If the Hunter knew you.”