Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“You know I would do that without any oath, Blint. You have been a father to me. You may rely on me.”

“Tie ballast to my bones, boy. Don’t let the Awakeners get me into those damn pits. Put me deep as the strangeys swim.”

“I’ll do it, owner Blint. And where no blight is, either.”

The man looked at him oddly then, and for a bit Thrasne thought he had given something away, but nothing more was said. Time went on. Blint seemed to recover some of his jovial ways. He put on a little weight. Thrasne sighed in relief. He was to open the document if anything happened, and he knew Blint-wife would be furious that Blint had not given it to her. Still, he owed much to Blint.

“Why didn’t he give it to her?” he asked Suspirra.

“Because he knew he could rely on you to do what he wanted. He knew she might not. Often she does the opposite of what he says, you know, only to remind herself she is still a person. Otherwise, she forgets.”

Thrasne knew it. He made a carving of it. A man, climbing, carrying a woman on his back, not looking at her. She, gazing at him, tripping him as he went. The faces were not anyone’s faces. Still, Blint blinked when he saw it and looked at Thrasne with widened eyes.

Suspirra went on changing. Now that Thrasne had the hang of it, he simply drew a picture of her every twenty days or so, binding them together as he had previously. He thought she was beginning to say the same thing again. More than that, however, her body was changing shape. She, who had been slender as a frag sapling, yielding as a reed, seemed thicker, more stolid, as though she fattened upon the air of the little room, gained substance from their conversation.

They came one warm second summer to the Straits of Shfor. All the boatmen were on deck with the fending poles. They had lashed great bundles of rope and sacks of pamet to the side of the boat to protect it against the fanglike stones of Shfor. One could not go through at slack water on the oars, for the way was too narrow. One wanted a low, easy tide and a slight wind to get through the straits, or one wanted a long voyage out into World River to go around. As they moved into the canyon, Thrasne looked up to see great birds gathered in hundreds along the rimstones.

“Owner Blint,” he called, pointing up.

“Ah? Oh, this is a Talon, boy, full of fliers as a strangey is of bones. There’s many of ‘em up there, isn’t there. Servants of Abricor. Takes a clear day to see ‘em. Last time we were through was wrapped up in fog like a blanket, remember? Those peaks up there are all full of holes and caverns, so I’ve heard. And you never see any young ones at the Talons, so they say. Certain the big ones gather up there, though. Other things, too, from what I hear tell.”

“What other things?” Thrasne drew nearer, drawn by something mysterious in his tone.

“There’s Talkers and Writers up there.”

“Now, owner Blint! Are you joshing me?”

“Well now … “ The old man squinted against the sun, moving along the side to assist a boatman who was thrusting against a toothy rock. When he came back panting, holding his chest, he sighed. “I’m trying to remember what it was I heard about that. My old owner told me. He was a flier watcher, he was, and he said there was two kinds of fliers.”

“Sure.” Thrasne laughed. “Big ones and little ones.”

“No, no. Two kinds of big ones. He said the kind that nested up there on the Talons could talk. And write.”

Thrasne could not help himself. He sniggered. “Like in die stories about when men came to North shore, owner Blint? Talking fliers?”

Blint shook his head reproachfully. “I didn’t say I believed it, Thrasne. I just said that’s what he told me. According to him, there’s some people up there, too. They live there, to talk to the fliers.”