Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

It was a long time later she opened her eyes to see the stars again. She was cradled on Thrasne’s shoulder, his right arm under her and around her, blankets piled atop them like leaves over fallen fruit. No sound on the ship except the water sounds, the creak of timbers, the footsteps of the watch on the forward deck, the rattle of ropes against wood.

“Babji,” he said again, not singing, in a voice totally sober and a little disconsolate.

“What?” she said, knowing he had been awake while she slept. “What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking about what you said the other day, Medoor Babji. About the two kinds of people in the world. Those like you and me, who see puncon jam on our bread, and those others who see other things. I have been thinking about that. Those of us who see jam are the most numerous, I know. But does that mean the jam is really there?”

She stared at the silhouette of his face against the night sky. “Does it not, then?”

“I don’t know. After a great, long time thinking of it, I could tell myself only that. I don’t know.”

He brought her closer to him, reached down to arrange the blankets against the night’s chill. The wind was cold, his voice was colder yet. “It was Pamra’s madness made me think of it. She does not see the world as we do. As you and I see it. As the boatmen see it. As your people see it. And so we call her mad. She will not come into the world I wanted for her, so I call her mad. She will not love me and bear my children, so she’s mad. She talks with dreams and consorts with visions, so she’s mad. I was thinking of that as I lay here, listening to you sleep.” She did not reply, halfway between sobbing and anger, not knowing which way to fall. After what had just passed between them, and it was Pamra in his mind still! She took refuge in silence.

He went on, “The Jarb Mendicants could come with their blue smoke to sit beside me and tell me, ‘Yes, she’s mad.’ But what would it mean, Medoor Babji? It would mean only that they see the same dream I see, not that the dream is real. So—so, if I were to share her dream, couldn’t that be as real as my own?”

“How?” she asked him, moving from sadness to anger. “Your good, sensible head wouldn’t let you do that, Thrasne.”

“If the Jarb root gives one vision of reality, perhaps other things give other visions. Glizzee, perhaps.”

“Glizzee is a happy-making thing, truly, Thrasne, but I have never heard that visions come of it.”

“Then other things,” he said thoughtfully. “Other things.” He looked down at his free hand, and she saw that he held a jug of the brew old Porabji had made. “Other things.”

She moved away from him, less angry now, though he did not seem to care that she went, for he began to lace up the canvas cover of the little boat. In the owner-house she undressed and braided the long crinkles of her hair into larger braids to keep them from tangling while she slept. Perhaps tomorrow she would cry. There was a bleak hollow inside her full of cold wind. Perhaps she would not get up at all.

Eenzie stirred. “Doorie? Where’ve you been? Up to naughty with the owner, neh?”

“Talking,” she said tonelessly, giving nothing away.

“About his madwoman, I’ll wager,” Eenzie said with a yawn, turning back into sleep. “He has nothing else to talk about.”

The morning found many less joyous than on the night before, with Obors-rom leaning over the rail to lose all he had eaten for a day or more.

“It’s that brew of old Zynie’s,” he gasped. “I should have had better sense than to drink it.”

“Perhaps,” Thrasne suggested, “you should only have had better sense than to try and drink it all.” Medoor Babji was passing as he said it. He saw her and looked thoughtfully at her, half remembering he had done something unwise, perhaps unkind. He needed to apologize to her for whatever it had been, if he could only have a moment to remember. She stared through him, as through a window.