Crystal Heat

10

Lylunda drew the pole knife across the torech vine, stepped back to let the sticky white sap drip from the cut, then finished slicing through the vine and used the hook set into the back of the blade to pull the vine away from the tree trunk, twisting it to break loose the tendrils that had knotted themselves into the fibrous bark. She grimaced as the black flies that she’d dislodged with the vine swarmed about her face and shoulders. She’d rubbed herself with juice from wax-berry leaves, but the effect was starting to wear off and the flies were landing and biting.

The vine rustled away as Seruchel and Beroos tugged it free of the tangle. The two girls would strip off the tendrils and the leaies and wind the length into a coil for Emiud to pick up when he came by and carry over to the retting ponds.

Before she started work on the next section of vine, Lylunda crossed to the water jug and poured herself a cup of water, then stood sipping at it and watching as the girls worked with their tiny crescent-shaped knives, nip nip scrape, tug another section in front of them. She pushed the hair back from her face. “The Berotong Pandai, Seru. Should we expect them soon?”

“Mm hm. They usually come around when the time of the big storms is past. You’ve got those pearls you found, you should be thinking about trading for a pot Me…” She giggled and poked her elbow into Beroos’ arm. “I’m going for stuff I need for my gonna-be family, you know, needles and a knife and maybe some beads just for me. Mam says it’s time to start thinking about gonna bes. She says probably next year I’m a woman and the year after that, maybe there’s a chebech feast and I go move in with…” She giggled again, blushed a little. “What you thinking about trading for, Berry?”

“I think those red dyes like Aleko got last year. I like red and it’s so hard to get a good bright color.”

“Red. Chebech color.” Seruchel dropped her knives and clapped her hands. “Who you gonna go with, Berry? Tommas? I saw you’n him the other night.”

“Silly Serry, ’tisn’t just for chebech mezus; your own Mam puts red in her batiks. Anyway nothing’s settled yet.”

Lylunda looked at the smiling pink face of the girl, shook her head, and took up the pole knife again. She couldn’t be more than fourteen. Not that I’ve anything to brag about where I come from. What do you call a teenage femme in the Izar? Mother. That’s what. Which brings up another thought. I’ve got my implants, but who knows what the tung is doing to those? Anyone around here want to wager that the Lung akar doesn’t like antifertility drugs?

She separated out a second vine of the proper diameter, cut one end free as high as she could reach, and hooked the vine away from the tree. Pulling with the hook and prying with the blade, she unraveled it as far as she could from the rope of smaller vines that looped from tree to tree, then cut that section loose.

When she finished, she looked back. Seruchel and Beroos were working over the vines again, the knives flying as they cleaned the stem, but they’d looped it around so their heads were close together and they were whispering and giggling together. A pang of longing and loneliness surprised her. She wanted that intimacy again. But not here. Never here. Back to dangerous hauls and high times in the Pits, belly dancing with Qatifa or another of the partners she’d found in the past five years. She wanted that so terribly that for a moment her eyes blurred. Then she shook off the malaise and went back to work cutting the Aries and trying to plan her escape from all this.

The Bemtong. the canoe Pandai… they traded with the Jilitera… maybe with other ships… Ordonai said only Jilitera came here, but maybe that was hope more than truth… maybe… this place is spooky enough to scare off some of the free traders I know… but not all of them… if there’s a reason to be here, there’ll be others… maybe the Canoe Pandai don’t tell the Jilitera everything… maybe? Odds are good on that if they’re anything like the Chioutis… if I can convince them to take me along… how? I have to talk with Outocha… she’s the only one who’s tried to help.. maybe… She sighed and moved on to the next rope of vines.

She worked at cutting vines until her arms were trembling and her joints started aching. This was something else that worried her. With the tung and the cherar warring inside her, she had no stamina at all. When I get away… when when when… let it be when not if… when I get back where 1 belong, I’ll spend some of the crystal money on a work-over at the nearest meatfarm. Jaink! 1 won’t go like my mother. 1 won’t!

She was sitting on the lava outcropping singing a sad song to the whispery tump to of the drum when she heard what at first sounded like an echo-but an echo louder than the source. She sat up and listened, her hands on the drumhead.

TOOM TOOM TOOM came across the water, blqwn on the brisk wind that swept the whitecaps off the waves. She set her drum aside and jumped to her feet, stood staring in the direction of the sound, holding her breath in shock and desire as a horn of some kind wove a simple tune about the drumbeats.

A raft came gliding around the end of the island. No, not a raft, a trimaran with three crescent-shaped bows rising dark and elegant from the water, a fenced floor built across the middle of the three hulls, a large triangular sail on a central mast and a smaller jib cleated to a stay from the tip of the central bow to the top of that mast. A Pandai in a red mezu stood on the floor in front of one of the structures built on it, beating on a broad drum half as tall as he was. Beside him a smaller figure wrapped in bright gold stood blowing into a huge shell.

As the beronta came closer, the size became more evident. It was huge. No wonder Seruchel said the Berotong Pandai spent most of their lives on their canoe. Their beronta.

She stood shading her eyes and watched it come sliding along the coast, moving at a speed that surprised her. When it was even with the outcropping, it was close enough for her to see children hanging perilously over the railing round the deck, waving at her. She waved back, then snatched up her drum and went running for her house.

By the time she reached the village, half a dozen small boats were tied up at the jetty, and the open space was swarming with Berotongs and Choutis. Standing in a ring of laughing preening girls, a teen boy blushed and smiled and was gradually recovering his poise enough to laugh and answer the girl’s teases with quips of his own that made them giggle and wiggle into the closest thing Lylunda had seen to a dance since she’d been here. She smiled and eased through the crowd until she was standing next to Outocha. “Who’s the boy?”

“He’s from Emtoched, that’s an island about two days west of here. All the girls on Emtoched are either too young or related to him, so he’s traveling with the Berotong till he can find a girl he likes and a village to settle into.”

“And we have several extra girls here. Do girls travel, too?”

“Sometimes. If she’s eighteen or more and no one’s come by that she likes.”

“I see. So they do take outsiders on those berontas?”

Outocha didn’t look at her, but as usual she cut through obliquity with the razor of her mind. “That might be a good idea, Luna. Perhaps the Berotong life would suit you better than ours. You are welcome here, but we do want you to be happy.”

Lylunda wandered about, listening to the gossip from the other islands, watching the rituals of trade, watching the boy maneuver around local boys his age, another sort of courting ritual. It couldn’t be easy, making himself welcome in a new place-even with the Bond to help.

She walked out to the end of the jetty and stood looking at the beronta, wondering what it’d be like to live so cramped together for so long.

“Her name’s Remeydang.”

Soaring House, she thought. Nice. And a bit disconcerting. She turned her head, smiled at the Berotong boy. “Pretty name,” she said. “How far do you go?”

“Round the world and round again.” He had sun spots like Seruchel, looked a little like her when he grinned. “Me; I’ve only been halfway so far.” His hand was closed in a loose fist and he was shaking it gently, two shells or stones or something similar clicking together inside the fist, making a small music. “Name’s Tudil.”

“Mine’s Luna, Tudil. Smarada diam.”

“Diam,” the boy said, then looked startled when he saw her catch and echo the beat, snapping her fingers and swaying her body; after a moment’s thought, his face lit up. “You’re the star woman.”

“Yes.” The Bond, she thought and groaned silently. “I miss mousika.”

“Huh?”

“That.”

“Oh. Chelideyr.”

“I don’t know that word.”

“Well, you wouldn’t. The land Pandai don’t have it. It’s only us Berotongs who can know what it is and that’s because it’s part of the sea dance.”

“1 tried making a drum. It’s not very good.”

“Would you like to see ours?”

“Oh, yes. I’d love that. Would your folks mind?”

“Why should they? It’s not like you’re going to steal the beronta.” He grinned again, slipped his clickers into a pouch on his belt, then swung over the side of the jetty into one of the boats tied there. “So come on down.”

“Mengar, toss the ladder. I’ve brought a visitor.”

One of the oldest Pandai that Lylunda had seen peered over the rail at them, his mouth stretched in a broad grin showing mostly toothless gums. “Star mama, hah? Treat her gentle, boy.”

Lylunda blinked, startled.

Tudil chuckled. “Omel oma, Luna, don’t be worried by him. Ol’ Mengar sniffs all the news in the world from the air that runs past that nose of his.” He caught the rope ladder as it unrolled down the side of the outer hull. “Can you climb if I hold this steady?”

“I can climb better if I do the following,” she said.

He giggled, shook his head. “Omel oma, watch close, then.” He went up the ladder as if he had fingers instead of toes, shook his narrow behind at her, then was over the rail with an easy kick of his feet.

She followed more cautiously, but found it no more difficult than working an umbilical in an unlicensed fueling station. She got over the rail with a bit more decorum than the boy, then let the two Pandai show her about the ship, smiling at their pride, but understanding it thoroughly, a small ache around her heart because her own ship was so far out of her reach.

Tudil led her to the Great Drum, but he didn’t touch it, so she didn’t either. He slid out some pegs and opened the top of a chest, took out two much smaller drums, closed the top again, and pegged it tight. “We practice on these,” he said.

“May I?”

“You are my guest.”

She turned the drum in her hands, tested the weight of it, drew her fingers across the single head. Parchment. Someone on Bol Mutiar knew about skins and how to treat them. The wood was dark and tight grained, hard enough to carve thin. She sat on the chest, held the drum on her knees, and tapped the head. The sound was sharp and pure. It was joy. She closed her eyes and touched it some more, testing the different areas of the head, using all the hand gestures she could remember. Then she made a song for herself and Tudil with her hands and this giving drum.

After a minute, though, she sighed and stilled the sound. “Better than food,” she said. “But I don’t know how to play it, not really.”

Tudil was crouched by her feet, looking up at her. “But it’s there. It’s in you. YOU should come with us, not stay with them on land. You don’t belong there.”

“I don’t belong here at all,” she said and sighed as she bent to give him back the drum. “My father forgot I’m not a child any more. But that’s the way he is. He thinks he knows better than most people how to run their lives and he has the power, so he does it.”

Tudil nodded gravely. “I’ve seen that,” he said. “The Bond rejects folk like that. After a while, anyway. And then they die.”

“Either you’re in the Bond or you die? Is that the way it is? What about the traders?”

“They respect the Bond, they don’t hurt any Pandai and they leave in a few days.” His teeth closed on his lip and his eyes glazed. After a minute he said, “You’re fighting the Bond. Trying to be with it but not of it. You want to be like them. The traders. Come and go.

“Yes. Traders. Do you know if there are different kinds of traders or only those who call themselves Jilitera?”

Tudil looked down. He scratched uneasily at a sliver that was separating from the wood of the deck. “Maybe you should talk to Menget about that, he’s the Drummer. I could ask, if you want.” He sighed. “You think you can’t play, but I watched you, you know things about the drum I hadn’t even thought of. I wish you’d want to be of us.”

“I can’t, Tudil. I think the land Pandai’s life is good, and yours is even better, but not for me. It’s just the way things are. I’d like it if you talked to the Drummer about what I asked.” She got to her feet. “Thank you for showing me your home. I think we’d best be going back now.”