The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

There was a folding table next to Hattali’s chair. The matriarch’s relatives brought out food and drink. In any ordinary circumstance, it would have been rude to eat while conversing with other people, especially guests, but the old lady had not been eating. Good health always goes in front of good manners.

At first, Hattali ignored everything except water, brought in a glass goblet. This she held, turning the precious object between her bent fingers.

The first mask was the animal on Hattali’s funeral pot: a long narrow head, the jaw hinged and moved with a string, the mouth full of pointed teeth. Snap! Snap!

The skin would be mottled green, Haik decided; the eyes large, round, and red. There were existing animals-small hunters with scaly hides-that had triangular pupils. She would give this creature the same. The spines on the back would be a banner, supported by a harness over Dapple’s shoulders. Hah! It would flutter when her lover danced! As she worked, she described the mask to Hattali.

“Have you ever found large animals?” the old woman asked.

“Not complete. But large bones, yes, and teeth that are longer than my hands. The layer they are in is high on my native cliffs and was laid down when the country was above water. They were land-dwellers, those animals, larger than anything living now, at least in the regions I’ve visited, and with teeth that remind me of birds’ teeth, though more irregular and much larger.”

“What eyesight you have!” Hattali exclaimed. “To see into the distant past! Do you really believe these creatures existed?”

“They did,” said Haik firmly.

Gradually, as their conversation continued, the old lady began to eat: hard biscuits first, then pieces of fruit, then halin in a small, square, ceramic cup. Hattali was sitting upright now, her bony shoulders straight under an embroidered robe. Hah! She was licking her fingers! “Can you write, Haik?”

“Y es.”

“I want you to write down your ideas and draw the animals you’ve found in stone. I’ll have one of my female relatives make a copy.”

“You believe me,” said Haik in surprise.

“Most of what you’ve told me I knew already,” Hattali answered. “How could any woman not know about inheritance, who has lived long enough to see traits appear and reappear in families of people, sulin, and tsina? But I lacked a framework on which to string my information. This is what you’ve given me. The frame! The loom! Think of the patterns the Ettin will be able to weave, now that we understand what the Goddess has been doing with sex and death and time!” The old woman shifted in her chair. There was a cup of halin next to her on the folding table. She felt for it, grasped it and drank, then reached for a piece of fruit. “I have been wondering whether it’s time for me to die. Did you notice?”

“Yes,” murmured Dapple.

“The blindness is hard to endure; but life remains interesting, and my kin tell me that they still need my judgment. I can hardly refuse their pleas. But when I fell, I thought-I know this illness. It strikes women down like a blow from a war club. When they rise, if they rise, who can say what the damage will be? Paralysis, stupor, the loss of speech or thought.

“This time the only damage was to one leg. But I may fall again. I have seen relatives, grave senior female cousins, turn into something less than animals-witless and grieving, though they do not remember the cause of their grief. Maybe, I thought, it would be better to stop eating now and die while I am still able to choose death.

“But I want your book first. Will you write it for me?”

Haik glanced at Dapple, who spoke the word “yes” in silence.

“Yes,” said the potter.

The matriarch sighed and leaned back. “Good! What a marvel you are, Dapple! What a fine guest you have brought to Ettin!”

The next day, Haik began her book, drawing fossils from memory. Fortunately, her memory was excellent. Her masks went to the costume maker, who finished them with the help of the apprentices. It was good work, though not equal to Haik’s. One apprentice showed real promise.

The old lady was eating with zest now. The house resumed the ordinary noise of a house full of relations. Children shouted in the courtyards. Adults joked and called. Looking up once from her work, Haik saw adolescents swimming in the river below the terrace: slim naked girls, their fur sleeked by water, clearly happy.

By the time the Ettin war party returned, Taiin looking contented as he dismounted in the front courtyard, the book on evolution was done. Taiin greeted them and limped hurriedly to his mother’s terrace. The old woman rose, looking far stronger than she had twenty days before.

The war captain glanced at Dapple. “Your doing?”

“Haik’s.”

“Ettin will buy every pot you make!” the captain said in a fierce whisper, then went to embrace his mother.

Later, he looked at Haik’s book. “This renewed Hattali’s interest in life? Pictures of shells and bones?”

“Ideas,” said Dapple.