In Green's Jungles (The Book of the Short Sun #2)

In Green's Jungles (The Book of the Short Sun #2) Page 42

"Why did the Vanished People die out here before they did there?"

"On Green you mean?"

"Uh huh. You were looking at it."

"So I was. Because of the depredations of the inhumi."

A breathless voice from the shadows beyond our fire said, "I see I'm just in time," and both horses neighed in fright.

I motioned to Hide. "See to our horses, my son. They'll bolt if they're not well tied."

Jahlee stepped into our circle of light, tossing back long, sorrel-colored hair that was not her own. "Never mind, Hide. I'll stay away from them."

"Go." I motioned to him again, and she snickered.

I said, "You've been close enough to frighten them twice. Why have you come?"

"You know."

I shook my head.

"To complete your son's education."

"I should kill you instead of inviting you to sit down." I listened again-this time to Hide, who was speaking to the horses to quiet them.

"Do you have a needier?"

"If I did, I wouldn't tell you."

"I suppose not. You're not going to kill me. Not really."

I shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps not."

"You care what your gods think, and you know I have a human spirit."

"Stolen."

"I was one of you when we went to that place, that old, rotten city."

Hide rejoined us. "Where the Duko died?"

Jahlee nodded. "They treated him with herbs and things when he needed blood. I told them."

I said, "You are an acknowledged expert, but they cannot have known that."

Hide asked her, "What are you doing here? Are you coming with us?"

She smiled, her heavy, crimson lips tight. "I may."

"All the way to New Viron?"

"Farther, I hope."

"I won't do what you want," I told her flatly, and Hide turned his puzzled expression from me to her and back.

"I'd like to show you Green," Jahlee explained to him. "It's the whorl on which I was born and on which I grew up, just as your father was born and grew up on that little white one he tries to point out to you sometimes."

"The Long Sun Whorl? I've seen it. Can I ask a question, Jahlee, while you're here?" He waited for her nod. "I'd like to ask you and Father both."

"Yes." Her intonation answered a question that Hide had not yet asked, and she favored him with the tight-lipped smile that hid her toothless gums.

"Why did the trooper who'd been watching the cemetery gate beat you? I don't know his name."

"It was Badour." For a moment her eyes watched something far away. "We had a falling-out, Hide. Men and women frequently do. Ask your father about that."

"I doubt that you will, Hide. But if you did, I would tell you that the fallings-out men have with women, and that women have with men, are in no essential way different from the fallings-out that men have with other men, and women with other women. Whenever a man and a woman come to words or blows, fools are quick to attribute it to the differences between the sexes. The sexes differ much less than they wish to believe, and such differences as are real tend less to promote strife than to prevent it."

He nodded slowly.

"The differences between an inhuma such as Jahlee and a human woman-Mora, for example-are far more profound than those between a man and a real woman. Have you ever seen an inhuma's fangs? Or an inhumu's?"

"No, Father." He paused. "I'd like to."

Jahlee told him, "Well, you won't see mine!"

"We human beings have fangs too, in some sense. We usually call them the eyeteeth, because they originate under the tear ducts." I drew back my lips and touched the small, somewhat pointed teeth that go by that name. "It doesn't trouble us when others see them, however. An inhuma's fangs are hollow, like a viper's; but instead of injecting poison as a viper does, an inhuma uses hers to inject her saliva, which keeps your blood from clotting, and then to withdraw the blood. You've been bitten by a leech at some time or other, I'm sure. They were only too common around Lake Limna when I was young; and they are equally common here, and a good deal larger."

Hide nodded again, and gestured toward the marsh. "I was bitten right here. I didn't have a horse then, so I got a man to take me across in his boat." He swallowed and drew a deep breath. "Silk was over here, they said. Over on this side. That was what I'd heard, and I knew you'd gone to look for him, Father. So I thought you might be with him."

I shook my head.

"Anyway, that's why I went across. I gave him some things I'd brought from home, and he poled us across. It took two days."

"And in the course of them, you were bitten by a leech."

"Yeah, a big blue one. It felt soft and slimy, but it was really tough."

I smiled, or at least I tried to. "That is a surprisingly good description of the inhumi. When you know them as well I do, you'll appreciate the justice of my remark."

Jahlee hissed, "Is this your thanks for my hospitality?"

"Fundamentally, yes. It is always a service to prevent someone from becoming worse than she is already."

"I pulled it off," Hide said, "and the place on my leg bled a lot. The inhumi are like that, isn't that what you're saying? They're like leeches?"

"Much more like them than may at first appear."

"Only they can fly, can't they? That's what everybody says."

I nodded.

"Leeches can't. People can't either, except in a lander or something. But we'd like to." He looked at Jahlee. "Could you show me?"

She shook her head.

"I understand about the teeth, but it must be wonderful to fly. It's not like I'd make fun of you or anything."

"No!"

He turned back to me. "I've seen it, but only when I was a long way away. They look kind of like bats?"

"Somewhat."

"Only their wings don't move real fast, I suppose because they're so much bigger. You saw them up close, I bet, on Green."

"Here too. I know I've mentioned Krait to you. He took wing once when he was close enough for me to touch him, because he was very frightened."

"Of you!" Jahlee spat.

"No. I gave him far too much reason to be afraid of me, but it was not of me that he was afraid at that moment."

Hide asked her, "Can you tell me what that trooper was fighting with you about?"

"I..." She fell silent, darting a glance at me. Her face, the face that she had molded and painted for herself, looked less beautiful than angry in the firelight.

"May I tell him?" I asked. "To help complete his education, as you say. It would be good for him to know."

"You don't know yourself!"

"Of course I do. I saw your trooper. Badour, isn't that what you said his name was? In the Bear Tower, as well as you and your bruises. I'm trying to be polite, you see. I haven't pledged myself to keep that secret."

"Then tell me, Father. It sounds like something I ought to know about. You said so yourself."

"I will, if Jahlee won't-or if she tries to deceive you."

She spat into the fire. "What a fool I was to come here!"

"Then go. No one will hold you here against your will."

"I can fly. I'm not your dog, and I won't do my little trick just because you tell me to, but I can."

"Surely you can. I've never denied it. Like Hide, I envy you that ability."

"I might be able to find a way across this swamp. It would be of service to you."

I shrugged. "Oreb's doing that now. Looking for a way across."

Hide said, "Sometime I want to ask you about him, too."

"Why he looked as he did in the Red Sun Whorl? Because he is more nearly human in spirit than he appears, I suppose, and larger, too."

Hide shook his head. "Why he's with us now. Why he was with you when I first met you. I mean, when they said you wanted to see me and gave me a horse and sent me back. I read some of that book you and Mother wrote. I know you didn't think we did, any of us. But we did."

"I'm flattered."

"He was Silk's bird. That's what you said in there. Silk's pet bird."

Jahlee laughed. She has a good laugh, but I found it unpleasant then. "Haven't you noticed that his bird calls him Silk?"

"I am his owner," I explained to Hide. "I feed him, play with him, and talk to him; therefore he calls me Silk, the name he is accustomed to give his owner. Haven't you noticed that he knows very few names? He calls you 'boy,' and Jahlee 'bad thing.' "

Hide nodded. "He doesn't know a lot of words, but he's really good with those he knows."

Jahlee rose. "Useless! Utterly useless! I flew thirty leagues to offer my friendship and my love. What a fool!"

When she had vanished in the darkness, Hide said, "I wonder where she'll go now? Back to the farm?"

I shook my head. "Its rightful owners will have reclaimed it by now, I would think." I sighed and tugged at my beard, my head overfilled with thoughts. "You've complained that I don't teach you enough. If I labor to teach you a little about the inhumi now, and perhaps a bit about the Vanished People-you seem very eager to learn about them-will you listen and store it up?"

He raised his hand solemnly. "I swear by all the gods that there are that I'll remember every word."

"Be careful of what you swear to," I told him. "The thought of your failures will haunt you as you grow older.

"About the inhumi first. They love abandoned buildings. You know what happened in the farmhouse in which we slept. The threat of war drove the family out, and Jahlee moved into it almost at once, perhaps that same day. Duko Sfido and I arrived with our troops and found her occupying it. We assumed that she had a right to be there. I identified her unconsciously one night when I heard her voice without seeing her face, which was then that of a toothless old woman and very different indeed from the starved, sensual face I had seen her wear in Gaon."

"They can just do that? Change the way they look?"

"Correct. They mold their features with their fingers, as a sculptor does a piece of clay, and augment their artistry with cosmetics. What I began to say was that whenever you come upon what appears to be an abandoned house-or anything of that kind-and find that it is not really abandoned, that someone is in fact living in it, you should be very suspicious of that person."

"I will be."

"Fine."

Hide stared thoughtfully into the fire for a moment or two. "Couldn't Jahlee come back with a new face, pretending to be someone we didn't know?"

"Certainly, though I flatter myself that I would see through her imposture before long."

"Could I? I mean, isn't there some way I could tell she was a inhuma?"

"No certain way, unless you saw her feeding or flying." I considered the matter. "Be very suspicious of a man with powder on his face, or anything of that kind, and of a woman who wears more powder, more rouge, and more perfume than is customary." Recalling Fava, I added, "Also of a child who wears any at all. Be careful, too, of anyone who appears not to eat, or to eat very little."

"Somebody animals are afraid of," Hide offered. "Jahlee scared our horses, and Oreb doesn't like her."

"Very good. Most of all, be careful of anyone whose fingers seem clumsy, who has never learned to write or says he or she has not, and has difficulty effecting simple repairs, tying knots, or making common objects from wood. Hands are not natural to them, you see; because they are not, their minds never develop in that way as much as ours do. Imagine a baby who had no hands until he was old enough to make crude ones for himself."

"You said they were like leeches." Hide looked thoughtful.

"No doubt I did. Certainly there are marked similarities."

"When Hoof and I were real little we used to play in the pools up above your mill."

"I remember."

"One time we found a really pretty one, that had a lot of pretty little fish in it, and spotted frogs. Green with blue spots, I think." He fell silent, and looked uncomfortable.

"Yes. What about it?"

"Well, while we were looking at them we saw this one leech, a red one. It was pretty big. It was swimming right at one of the frogs, and me and Hoof yelled for it to look out. You know how kids do?"

"Surely."

"Only the frog didn't pay any attention, and just about the time it opened its mouth I figured out that it thought the leech was a fish, and it was going to eat it."

To encourage him, I said, "They can't be eaten, not even by Oreb. I suppose it must be some chemical in their slime."

"Yeah. The frog got it in its mouth and spit it out, and it swam around in back where the frog couldn't get at it, and fastened onto the back of its head. When we came back there was a dead frog, only the leech was gone. What I was thinking of was they don't look enough like fish, not really, to fool us. But that one fooled the frog, he thought it was a little fish, and it probably fooled the fish, too. Jahlee fooled me the same way until you told me. I thought there was two women in the house, an old one and the young one, but they were both her."

I nodded.

"You said they made their hands. Could they make paws instead? Like dog or something?"

"I suppose they could. I've never seen it."

"And could they fool a real dog then?"

"I doubt it."

"You said you were going to tell me a lot about the Vanished People." His voice challenged me.

"I can't have said I'd tell you a great deal, because I don't know a great deal myself. But I will tell you something, and try to make it something that will bear upon the subjects we have been talking about tonight."

Oreb swooped to a landing on the handle of my staff, which lay across my legs. "Bird back! Bad thing!"