On Blue's waters

I stood up, and stepped into the river, finding the water that had been so refreshing unpleasantly cold, and pulled off my tunic. “This is something I should have done as soon as you swam out to the sloop,” I said. “Here, take it. Put it on, and please don’t argue with me.”

She began to protest, but fell silent when she saw that she was only making me angry. “Women in New Viron never let strangers look at their breasts,” I explained. “Allowing it would be like sing- ing that song you’re trying to forget. Do you understand?”

In a whisper so soft I could scarcely hear her, she said, “You’re not a stranger.”

“I know, and there are exceptions. This is best, just the same. Put it on.”

“You’ll be cold. I was.”

I told her that I had been getting chilled anyway when I was wearing my tunic, which was not particularly warm. After that, we waded upstream for two or three leagues before the water became so frigid that we had to get out and try to trace the river from one side after all.

Shadelow (I still have no other name by which to call it) is a colder continent than ours, from what I saw of it. Even places we would consider southern are colder than New Viron, and much colder than this town of Gaon. I would think that it must be due to the western winds, or to unfavorable currents in the sea.

It was nearly dark by the time we reached the lean-to Krait had visited. It belonged to a family of four-a husband and wife, a boy of twelve or thirteen, and a plump little girl whom I judged to be eight or nine. The man was away hunting when we arrived, and the boy was spearing fish in the river. His mother called out to him when she saw us, and he came at a run, brandishing his barbed spear. Seawrack and I smiled and tried to show by signs (since the woman seemed not to understand the Common Tongue) that we were friendly.

The girl had been Krait’s victim. She lay on her back beside their fire, deathly pale beneath her deep tan and only occasionally opening her eyes; I do not believe she spoke the whole time we were there. Remembering what Silk had told me about Teasel, and what Teasel herself had told Nettle and me later, I tried to show her mother by signs that she should be kept very warm and given a great deal of water, at last fetching a soft greenbuck skin myself and covering her with it. The boy was-or rather, seemed to be-more intelligent, bringing water in a gourd as soon as I pointed to his sister and pretended to drink from my hand.

Soon the father returned carrying two big gray-and-red birds he had killed with arrows. He proved to speak the Common Tongue fairly well, and asked us many questions about Babbie, having never seen a hus before. When I told him that Babbie could understand what we were saying, he explained (with some difficulty, but very earnestly) that it was true of every animal. “He listen. No talk. Sometimes talk. Long time the shearbear, he talk me.”

It was an animal I had never heard of; I asked him what the shearbear had said.

He shook his head. “No tell.”

“Change blood,” his wife explained, making Seawrack blink with surprise.

That sounded as if it might be significant, so I asked her about it.

“He-pen-sheep cut arm, shearbear cut same.” She crossed her arms to illustrate the mingling of their blood, then pointed upward. Her husband and son pointed upward as well, he with his bow and the boy with his fishing spear. I pointed upward with my slug gun, and they nodded approval, at which Seawrack too pointed upward as the woman had.

They invited us to join their meal, and we accepted eagerly. After we ate, I traded two silver pins for a soft skin smaller than the one with which I had covered their daughter, saying that I was cold.

He-pen-sheep (who was naked to the waist himself) cut a slit in the middle of it for my head and cut away a long, thin strip that he tied around my waist as one would tie a trouser cord, making a rough but warm leather tunic with half sleeves of the skin. “You stay,” he urged me. “She-pick-berry make together for you.”

Neither Seawrack nor I understood “make together,” so he brought out a pair of beautifully made hide boots and pointed out the stitching. Too eagerly, perhaps, I offered them a silver necklace if She-pick-berry would make a pair for Seawrack, since the pair that he had shown us would have been much too large for her. After some discussion we agreed that the boots could be undecorated, and I offered another pin in addition to the necklace.

She-pick-berry then made the boots in something less than an hour, folding and cutting soft leather around Seawrack’s feet, punching holes in it with one of the pins she had gotten from me already, and sewing it quickly with a big bone needle. They were very simple in construction, one piece forming the sides and the sole, another the front and top, and a third the back.

Pretending ignorance, I asked He-pen-sheep what had happened to his daughter.

“Inhumu bite.” He indicated the inner part of his own thigh.