Nightpool

Chapter 11

“Hah,” said Charkky, “it’s barely light. I’ll just nip down for a flounder, on our way.”

“You keep pushing the raft,” said Mikk. “I’ll get the flounder.” He dove so suddenly he seemed to disappear, and was back in no time with a fine silvery flat fish with both its eyes on one side of its head. He bit it in half and gave the tail half to Charkky; then both otters swam along pushing the raft, each holding the great piece of fish in his mouth, chewing away. Teb watched them for a moment, then turned his attention to the gray heaving sea and the first hint of sunrise in the east where the sea met the sky. He had breakfasted on cattail root and a plant that Mitta called water lettuce, and he thought with longing of cooked food, porridge and mutton and berry pies and ham. Though he could not imagine the food in any setting, not a room, or even catch the vision of a cookfire. He knew what a flint striker would look like, though, and he hoped there would be a flint somewhere on the battleground. He had turned to watching the high cliff that marked the edge of the mainland when the raft gained speed suddenly, and four more otters popped up with dripping whiskers to stare at him as they pushed. Jukka and Hokki and Litta, three bright young females, and Kkelpin, a black scar on his shoulder showing beneath the foaming water. The raft moved so fast now Teb felt he was almost flying, and a song made itself in his head as they sped along, about the six otters and the sea and the tall black cliffs and the gulls.

“What are you grinning about?” Charkky said, poking his head up over the edge of the raft. “What are you thinking, Tebriel?”

“That I’m going as fast as king of the ocean now, and you’re six fine steeds pulling me.”

He got a face full of water for that, and he managed to push Charkky under, but only because Charkky let him. By midmorning the sun had burned the clouds away and the day was hot, and Teb watched the swimming otters with envy, and let his feet trail over, until he realized it made a drag on the raft.

“Come in,” shouted Charkky, popping up in a distant wave. They were taking turns now, pushing.

“Hah,” said Mikk, leaping up onto the raft. “Have a swim, Tebriel.”

“I don’t know if I can swim. I don’t remember . . .”

“We’ll help you. It’s simple.”

“Simple for you, maybe.” He was so hot and itchy, and the water was so cool. He knelt, watching the swells and wondering if he would sink. But how could he sink with six otters crowded around ready to pull him out? If he couldn’t swim, though, he would look like a fool.

But then at last he could stand it no longer, and he slipped in and let the cool water take him, easy, buoying him—and he was floating.

“If you can float,” said Charkky, “you can swim.”

Jukka looked skeptical, her dark face close to Teb’s, as if she meant to save him.

He tried wriggling as the otters did, but he went under, and when he came up they were all laughing at him.

“You’re not an otter,” Charkky said. “I don’t think . . .”

“You’ve no tail for wriggling and thrusting,” Jukka said, huffing at him with an otterish giggle.

“Float again,” said Mikk. “Move your arms and legs; they’re all you have to move when you haven’t a tail.”

“He doesn’t even have webs between his toes,” said Litta, with a small female smirk. “How can he . . . ?”

“Just do it,” said Mikk, scowling at Litta.

“Don’t think about it,” said Kkelpin. “It will come easier if you just do what comes naturally.”

Teb lay flat on his face and felt the cool salty water soothe him, and soon he was stroking out, kicking. Then he was really swimming, as if his body had known all along. He kicked and reached in a long, easy crawl in the rolling ocean, surrounded by diving, laughing otters. He glanced back to see the raft coming along, pushed by one otter, then another. He hadn’t realized how much they had been slowing for him, bobbing and waiting and pacing him patiently; now he felt he was almost flying through the clear green sea.

Then at last, when the muscles of his hurt leg began to ache, he flipped back onto the raft, and again his steeds sent it speeding.

“You swim like a fish,” said Charkky. “Look ahead, we’re coming to the cave of the ghost.”

“What is that?” Teb could see a dark cleft dividing the cliff; then when they drew closer he could see it was a cave. A clattering rose suddenly, and an immense flock of birds burst out and went sweeping away over the sea, to wheel far out, screaming.

“Cormorants,” shouted Mikk.

“Is that the ghost?”

This made Charkky and Hokki laugh and dive.

“You won’t see the ghost,” Mikk said. “No one does; he lives on the white cliffs in the cave.” They were opposite the opening now, and Teb could see that the cave was huge. A damp, cold breath blew out of it, smelling of bird droppings, and the jagged stone inside was covered with droppings heavy and white as snow.

“It is said he comes out to make the storms of the sea,” said Jukka, shaking water over Teb. “That his birds stir the wind into storm, and he himself roils the sea and makes it heave and churn.”

The birds returned, wheeling over them, and when the raft was past the cave, the flock swept back in and vanished. And suddenly a song filled Teb’s mind with words crying in his head, and he sat wondering at it and examining it as the tall cliffs passed, for it was not just a song about the ghost and the things he was seeing, but stretched far back in time, a song alive with wrecked ships and drowned cities and things he had never known.

Or, things he thought he had never known—but how could he tell?

He watched Charkky dive down to retrieve oysters from the undersea caves, then lie on his back shucking and eating them. He could not see the land above the cliffs—they were far too tall—but green grass hung over where some of the cliff had crumbled out from beneath the turf. And once, just beyond the cave of the ghost, he saw horses silhouetted against the sky, and that, too, made a yearning in him, so he could almost smell their sweet scent and feel them warm and silky beneath his hands.

Why did it all stay hidden? And what was the song that had come, so different from the others? Why did it make him lonely?

The sun was just overhead when they came to the Bay of Ottra and were surrounded at once by a mob of splashing, diving, huffing otters. He remembered the sea alive with them when he had come this way before, shaken with fever and pain, his leg like a shattered stone hung to his body, heavy and useless and hurting. He remembered being taken to the marsh and fed there among the tall, bright green grass in a bright green otter holt. He had not remembered all this before. But of course, Charkky and Mikk had told him how it was; he was only remembering their tale. He looked at the crowd of curious otters splashing and pushing close to the raft and listened to Mikk tell why they had come, and he felt very silly when they rolled over in the water laughing and barking because the little band was going to steal fire.

“Not steal fire,” said Mikk. “Steal the thing that makes fire.”

“But who would want fire? What’s it good for? Oh, humans use it in Ratnisbon, all right, but it makes such a smell.”

“It’s to cook food,” Teb said. “I want. . .”

“He wants to cook his food,” said Charkky. “He’s human; his habits aren’t the same as ours.”

The otters went silent, staring up at Teb, thinking about this strange new idea.

“Well,” said one at last, “yes, they do cook food in Ratnisbon. On the boats, too, in the harbor. You can smell it.”

“But what is it that makes fire?” cried someone.

“A small flint, a little piece of metal that can strike a spark,” Teb said. “Like a tiny bit of lightning. That will light the kindling, and the kindling will make the wood burn. Every soldier carries a flint,” he said, puzzling that he should know this.

“You won’t find much on that battlefield,” said old Flokk, who was a friend of Ekkthurian’s. “A band of soldiers went back and carried a wagonload away. And then the buzzards came and stayed for weeks.”

“Ebis’s soldiers took it all into Ratnisbon,” said a pale old female with a torn ear, who was floating near the raft. “Saddles, cooking gear, blankets. They buried the dead soldiers.” The Rushmarsh otters were more sophisticated than the Nightpool clan, living as they did so close to Ratnisbon. They made a hobby of watching humans, though they kept themselves hidden and secret.

Teb sighed. “It sounds as if there won’t be anything left.”

“Maybe,” said Mikk. “Who knows what a band of soldiers might overlook?”

“There’s a great cage there,” said a broad-faced otter. “Big enough for ten hydruses. You wouldn’t believe that men could build a cage that big, or that they would want to. Made out of whole trees, it is. We don’t know what it’s for, but the door to it stands wide open.”

Teb frowned, puzzled. But the fleeting twinge of memory vanished into shadow and left only fear behind it. He saw Mikk watching him, and he thought Mikk guessed what he was feeling.

“There are a great many boats anchored at Cape Bay,” said the Rushmarsh leader. Feskken had surfaced moments before, his pale tan coat bright amid the darker crowd. His dark muzzle made him look as if he’d had his nose in the mud. He looked Teb over. “You look much better now, boy, than last time I saw you with your leg all swollen. I expect you had all better come into Rushmarsh and wait until it grows dark to cross the bays, with all the boats about. A raft can’t dive and swim underwater. Come, and take a meal with us.”

So the raft was pulled into Rushmarsh along a small stream and wedged deep into the tall eelgrass. Then the otters led Teb across the marsh to their green grass holts, nearly invisible until one was right on them. Inside the largest holt, they feasted on raw oysters and shrimps and on the nutty roots of marsh lilies, which Teb found delicious.

“We have none of that at Nightpool,” Mikk said. “It’s one of the reasons we like to come to Rushmarsh. “

“Couldn’t you plant it?” Teb said. “Wouldn’t it grow in the valley at Nightpool?”

The otters had never thought of such a thing.

“Why not?” said Feskken. “Great fishes, why didn’t anyone think of that? I’ll send some youngsters at once to dig the plants up. They multiply well, we know that, for the whole south stream bed is alive with them.”‘

“It would be better,” Teb said, “to get them on our way back so they’d be fresher.” He didn’t know how he knew about gardening, but he did know. “They start to die the minute you pull them, and they need to have life to take root.”

“I’m glad we didn’t try to cross the harbors in the daytime,” Mikk said. “I’ve never seen so many boats.” The otters had a clear view of the ocean down the stream channel, though to the humans out there, looking toward the marsh, nothing was visible but a mass of green eelgrass.

“Word is,” Feskken said, “that fighting in the north has driven those folk out, that the dark raiders are defeating the lands east of Chagrel. Ebis the Black has given the refugees sanctuary. They have made a large camp at the edge of the city just at the skirts of the castle.”

Teb sat very still when he heard the name Ebis the Black. And when Feskken spoke of Sivich, he went chilled and thought he was really on the edge of remembering. And yet he could not remember. Mikk was watching him again, with that worried little cock of his head. Teb felt sure that when he got to the place of battle where he had been hurt, he would remember.

It was well after dark when they started out again on the sea, and Teb found the heaving ocean frightening in darkness. The raft seemed small and frail now, and where starlight touched the water, he kept watching for sharks, though the otters all said they could feel the vibrations of such creatures long before they were close.

They passed the harbors at Cape Bay and the Bay of Fear, and in both bays they could see in the starlight rows and rows of boats of all kinds and sizes anchored and tied one to another. On some, lamps burned, though most were dark and quiet. They could smell meat cooking, which made Teb wild with desire, and the scent of frying onions was nearly more than he could stand.

Beyond the Bay of Fear the coast belonged to Baylentha, and they reached the scene of battle near to midnight. There they came ashore and curled down among the heavy marsh grasses to sleep. A smell of death clung to the place, and Teb lay awake a long time.

The knowledge of himself was here, and he thought if he could go to sleep in just the right way, he would wake in the morning knowing who he was, knowing why he had been in this battle. Maybe he was a refugee, like the people on the boats.

But when he woke at dawn he didn’t know any more than he had the night before. The sky was barely light, like tarnished silver, and the hills in the south and west black silhouettes. He looked up across the marsh to the battlefield and saw the huge, towering cage.

It was immense, made of whole trees, just as the otters had said, and held together with chain as big as a man’s leg. Its door was propped open, and he. knew he had been in there, and he rose and began to walk toward it almost as if he walked in a dream, stepping around the still-sleeping otters, who lay curled together in a silky brown tangle.

The battlefield was strewn with the bleached skeletons of horses. They were grisly in their broken helplessness, their wild spirits fled, their lovely warm, moving bodies gone, their collapsing bones sinking now into the earth, their eye sockets empty and their brains eaten away, and whatever else it was that had made those wild spirits all vanished. The smell of death and rotting meat lingered, and here and there a hank of hide and hair still clung to the bone. A few saddles lay broken beneath the bodies, though most had been taken away. As Teb stared around him, a ghost of the battle touched him, distant shouting and the thunder of hooves and the clashing of swords rang in his head, then was stilled, and he could not make the battle come clear; but his fear had increased, so he was sweating and cold. And a song of the skeletons and of death formed quickly and harshly, with a stark white beauty.

There were no skeletons of men. He looked for the mound of a common grave, but saw none.

He approached the cage and stood looking, and knew he should remember this. He stared inside at the earth, striped with the shadows of the great bars, and almost knew. Almost. There had been terror in that cage.

And wonder. It was gone now. He turned away at last, strangely lonely, and began to prowl among the tangled heaps of bones, trying not to think of them as horses.

He found a rusted knife in a patch of weed between the bodies and thought it would be fine when it was polished. He found a single boot and let it lie. He saw the paw prints of foxes crossing the battlefield, marked over with hoof prints, and he stood looking at them, puzzling.

Why would fox prints stir him? Why was he so sure they were foxes?

He glanced toward the cage, then toward the grass where the otters slept. He wished they would wake and come to keep him company. But the sky had grown orange with sunrise before he saw Mikk rear up out of the grass to look around him, then soon Charkky, then the others. He grinned and felt better when they came across the battlefield, hah-hahing, to help him search.

They quartered the battlefield back and forth, the otters rummaging around the heaps of bones, soon making a game of it. They chased one another in and out among the skeletons, picking up useless objects—a thrown horseshoe, a broken bridle rein—and stopped to eat the blackberries that grew along the edge of the marsh. Teb listened to their huffing laughter and shook his head and kept searching, though he was growing discouraged.

But then at last, in a small ravine that pushed back against the rising hills, he found a leather pack down among the thick bushes. He pulled it out, undid the strings, and spilled the contents onto the ground.

There was a pair of brown socks with a hole in one toe. A pair of linen drawers for a very big man. Another knife, not so rusted. A twist of tobacco. A sewing kit—needle and thread and scissors—in a little cloth bag. And something dried that might once have been cheese, for it had stained the leather and cloth with its oil. He put the socks and knife and sewing kit in the pack and left the rest. There was no flint, so he kept searching, though in the end it was Jukka who found it as she rummaged into a tangle of blackberries. She found the flint and played with it, ate some berries, then at last came loping up the hills to Teb to ask if this might be what he searched for, this little unimportant-looking bit of metal in the wire holder, with the second piece of metal dangling from it by a chain.

Teb took it from her and gathered some dry grass into a pile, then struck the metals. The sparks made Jukka back off in alarm, huffing at him. The others gathered at once as he got the tiny fire smoldering.

“Hah,” said Charkky. “It smells bad. No wonder we never had any.”

“On Nightpool,” Mikk said, “you’d best do this where old Ekkthurian can’t smell it.”

But to Teb the fire smelled wonderful, and he felt disappointed that the others found it useless and silly. They gave it another look, then went off again playing among the nut grass and blackberry bushes. Teb dropped the flint into his pack, and snuffed out the tiny fire reluctantly. It was much later, when he had stopped to eat some blackberries for his breakfast, that he found the bow, tangled down among the blackberry vines.

It was a good bow, made of oak, but broken. He wondered if he could mend it. He went back among the skeletons to pick up arrows, and soon had ten, then fourteen, that he thought he might use if he sharpened the steel tips and replaced the feathers. He showed the otters how it would shoot once he repaired it, and this impressed them far more than the fire.

“How far will the arrows go?” Charkky said.

“Oh, maybe clear to the hills, if I fix it right.”

Mikk examined the bow, the curves so perfectly formed, the little notches where the bowstring would fasten.

“It would be fine for rabbit,” Teb said.

“Yes, and for shooting sharks from the bank,” Mikk said. “Could you do that?”

“I could try. I could learn to.” Why not? He wasn’t sure how to mend the bow, but he guessed he would think of a way. He had gone to scavenge some strips of leather when Kkelpin came clumsily dragging an iron cookpot.

“Is this of any use? It might make a good bowl for clams.”

“Oh, it’s more than a bowl. I can cook in it. It’s perfect. And it will fit in the pack, I think.” It was not a very large pot and was coated with dirt and ashes. He brushed it off and rearranged the pack so it fit, then went with Kkelpin back to the site of the camp cookfire, but there were no other prizes; it had all been taken away. There should be a big iron grid, he thought, then puzzled that he knew nothing more, was still puzzling over a fleeting vision of men around the cook-fire as they set out for home in late afternoon, the bow and arrows across his knees, and the pack strapped to his waist with a bit of bridle rein. How could he know something down inside but not remember it? What would it take to make him remember who he was and why he had been here? And why did the great cage make him feel so strange?

He watched the sea roll green, shot with light in the afternoon sun, the dark otter bodies flashing beneath the glassy water and dark faces bobbing up to stare at him with laughing eyes, and at last he forgot his own puzzling for the joyous games of the otters. They passed the crowded harbors well after dusk and slipped into Rushmarsh, the raft churning and rocking in the busy water as a crowd of otters dove and played around it in greeting.

But this was more than joyous greeting; there was something wrong. The plunging agitation of the Rushmarsh otters soon infected the six, and from the raft Teb strained to make sense of the tangle of words as everyone talked at once.

“There has been something in the sea,” said Feskken, swimming up to the raft. “Something huge and unfamiliar.” His dark muzzle pointed off toward the darkening horizon, as the old pale female joined him.

“It came to the mouth of the bay,” she said. “It was thrashing and churning out there, and then lay still for a long time, as if it were watching us.”

“It stayed until the sun went down,” Feskken said; “then it sank deep, too deep for us to feel its vibrations. Maybe it went away, maybe not. You had best spend the night in Rushmarsh.”