Woman on the Edge of Time

She felt Luciente’s firm embrace and then she stood in her hut.

“We lost you suddenly last time.” Luciente hugged her. “You weren’t injured?”

“I think if I remember something too well it breaks this—whatever you call this link.”

“Could be you stop catching when your attent shifts. I guess we’ll get used to these abrupt discorporatings and hoppings to and fro in time.” Luciente was wearing shorts and a sleeveless shirt. She reminded Connie of an athlete, of a woman tennis player; except that they were hardly ever as dark as Luciente. Bee, on the bed’s edge, wore a long red and black robe covered with fine embroidery that stiffened it, with a softly rolled hood cast back on his broad shoulders.

“Come!” Luciente urged her, huskiness catching with haste. “Hurry! Bee’s coms wait.”

Indeed, squatting carefully outside so as not to stain their costumes were two women as dressed up as Bee, women she recognized from the lunch table. One wore a long shirt and leggings of soft pale deerskin much worked with shell and quill appliqué; she had braided her long black hair with strips of dyed leather into a tower precariously fastened. The other’s chestnut hair was loose and she wore long filigree earrings and a flowing blue gown. With quick grace both women rose to greet them.

Sitting a little apart on a stone was a fair-haired girl, yes, of thirteen or so. This child was easy for Connie to distinguish because her cotton shirt was open all the way down like a jacket, and her small cups of breasts were visible as she got up and turned toward them. The skin of her chest looked tattooed. Connie stared. As they moved into a close group, she could see it was paint. The girl wore pants and that open shirt and had at her feet a basket, which now she swung up to wear like a rucksack. She also picked up a bow and slung it over her shoulder. Connie could see at her waist a knife sheath, hanging under the shirt-as-jacket.

“This is our child, Innocente. Innocente, here is Connie, from the past.” Bee turned to her, stately today in his movements. “This day is Innocente’s naming. Otter, Luxembourg, and I are about to leave together by floater to see per safely landed. We’ve been Innocente’s mothers, and this is end-of-mothering.”

“As if you won’t be tumbled to get rid of me!” Innocente stuck out her tongue at him.

“You guessed it. We plan to drop you in the bay.”

“Except that you float like a bladder.” Otter, the woman in deerskin, spoke.

“When I’m eaten by a bear, you’ll bottom!”

Otter slipped her arm around Innocente. “A skinny bit like you? And tough! Like chewing on locust wood.”

“Do you not want to go?” asked Luxembourg, in the flowing blue dress. “Say it—don’t comp yourself. If the time isn’t ripe, wait. We’re not nipping to let you escape us.”

Innocente screwed up her nose, kicking at the stone with new-looking heavy boots. “Fasure I want to go. It’s not that I’m running eager to get away from you lugs. Only, my two best friends are already youths. I think it’s time. I keep dreaming about going. Besides, what a ticky name you stuck me with. What am I supposed to be innocent of?”

“You said that twice you dreamed going,” Otter commented. “That sounds right. Nobody ever feels yin-and-yang sure.”

“Of that or anything else on earth.” Bee stroked the child’s shoulder. “You have me to blame. Innocente was a naming from the heart, partly for Luciente, who speaks Spanish. We’d been lovers only a short time. Partly I liked the sound, pretty in my mouth. Finally I’d just finished a task period working on reparations to former colonies, when I came home and put in to be a mother. I’d been traveling for a year in Latin America. It made me brood about those centuries of the rape of the earth, the riches stolen, the brutalizing and starving of generations … toward that day when all trace of that pillaging will be healed … . That’s how you got named. It’s up to you now to improve on it.” Bee stepped back. “Did you sharpen your knife?”

“Fasure. I checked everything. Canteen, stringing of my bow, arrow points.” Innocente looked at Connie. “Are you coming?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Just where are you going?”

“Where it’s been decided.” Innocente gave a dry, choppy laugh.

“Innocente will be dropped into one of the wilderness areas we use,” Luciente said. “This is how we transit from childhood to full member of our community.”

“Drop her in the wilderness? Alone?” Her voice rose.

“Fasure I’ll be alone,” Innocente said with indignation. “What point would there be, at now? I’ve been in the woods plenty.”

Connie turned to Bee. “Does she stay out there overnight?” They had to be crazy.

“For a week. Then the aunts person selected—advisers for the next years—return for per. Not us.” Otter adjusted her elaborate hair.

“But theywon’t be able to speak to me for threemonth when I come back.” Innocente sounded gleeful. “They aren’t allowed to.”