On Blue's waters

Seawrack asked where the boy was, and I told her that he had gone ashore to hunt, which tasted like a lie in my mouth although it was true. My slug gun was still under the foredeck in the place where we slept, and I was afraid she had seen it there and would want to know how he could hunt at night without Babbie and without the gun. Perhaps she thought it, but she never said anything of that sort. What she actually said was “We could sail away without him.”

I shook my head.

“All right.”

“Will you forgive me?” I asked her.

“Because you won’t leave him?” She shrugged, her shoulders (thin shoulders now) rising and slumping again. “I hope we will, sometime, no matter what you say now.”

“To get out of the pit, I had to promise him that we’d take him to Pajarocu with us, and try to get a place for him on the lander.”

“I haven’t promised him anything, and I won’t. Is there any more corn flour?”

“No.”

She got up to look at my fishing lines. “Do women catch fish?”

“Sometimes,” I told her. It had been a very long time since Nettle and I had gone fishing.

“How? Like this?”

“Yes,” I said. “Or with a pole, or a net. Sometimes they spear them, too, just as men do. Men fish more, but there’s nothing wrong with women fishing.”

“If you would tie your knife to your stick for me, I might be able to spear some for us.”

“In the water?” I shook my head. “You’d start to bleed again.”

She made no reply, and she was a step too far from the firelight for me to judge her expression.

“I’ll hunt tomorrow myself,” I promised her. “This time I’ll get something, or Babbie and I will.”

“What are those?”

I had to rise to be certain that she was pointing toward shore.

She said, “Those little lights?” and I went up onto the foredeck for a better view. The weather was calm, although not threateningly so; and we were anchored some distance from the naked coast of the mainland, Krait and I having been unable to find a protected anchorage before shadelow. North along the coast so far that they were practically out of sight were two or three, possibly four, scattered points of reddish light. As I stood there shivering, one vanished-then reappeared.

Behind me Seawrack said, “I thought the boy might have decided to stay there, but there are too many.”

I nodded, and returned to our own fire. To my very great surprise and delight, she sat down beside me. “Are you afraid of them?”

“Of the people who built those fires? Not as much as I ought to be, perhaps. Seawrack, it would be easier for me, a great deal easier, if you were angry with me. If you hated me now.”

She shook her head. “I’d like it if you hated me, Horn. Don’t you understand why I hid?”

“Because I’d attacked you, and you were afraid I would hurt you again, or even kill you.”

She nodded solemnly.

“I’m sorrier than I can say. I’ve been trying and trying to think of some way I can-can at least show you how sorry I really am.”

She touched my hand and fixed me with her extraordinary eyes. “Never leave me.”

I wanted to explain that I was a friend, not a lover. I wanted to, I say, but how could I (or anybody) say that to a woman I had forced that very day? I wanted to tell her, as I had several times before, that I was married, and I wanted to explain all over again what marriage means. I wanted to remind her that I was probably twice her age. I wanted to say all those things, but I knew that I loved her, and all the fine words stuck in my throat.

Later, when we lay side by side under the foredeck, she asked me again, “Don’t you understand why I had to hide from you today?”

I thought that I did, but I had given my answer already; so I asked, “Why?”

“Because I made you and wouldn’t let you.”

“You didn’t make me,” I told her.

“Yes, I did, by singing. The song does that. I’m trying to forget it.”

“Your singing made me want you more than ever, but it didn’t make me do what I did. I surrendered to my own desire when I should have resisted.”

She was quiet so long that I had nearly fallen asleep when she said, “The underwater woman taught me to sing like that. I wish I could forget her, too.”

“Your Mother?” I asked.

“She wasn’t my mother.”

“ ‘The Mother.’ You called her that.”

“She wanted me to. I was on a big boat, and I remember a woman who talked to me, and carried me sometimes. I think that was my mother.”

I nodded; then realizing that Seawrack could not see me said, “So do I.”

“After that, there was only the underwater woman. She doesn’t look like a woman unless she makes part of herself a woman.”

“I understand.”

“She’s another shape, very big. But she is one. She told me to call her Mother, and I did. My real mother drowned, I think, and the underwater woman ate her.”

“The sea goddess. Do you know her name?”

“No. If I ever did, I’ve forgotten it, and I’m glad. I don’t want to remember her anymore, and she doesn’t want me to. I do remember that much about her. Would you like me to sing for you again?”

“No,” I said, and meant it.

“Then I’m going to try to forget the song.”