Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

They lowered a man over the side to swim a line to the land. When the light line was made fast, ropes were hauled in, tying them fast to trees ashore, and then the winch tugged the Gift in almost to the land’s edge. The island fell sharply at this point, and the mooring was deep enough for the Gift to come very close. They built a small raft of empty kegs and planks to get back and forth, the sailors muttering meantime about the loss of the Cheevle.

Thrasne left a three-man watch aboard and went ashore with all the rest. He was heartily sick of the Gift himself, though the emotion made him feel guilty. The longest he could recall having traveled before without coming to land was a week or two, and that had been when sickness had struck a section of towns near Vobil-dil-go and all the boatmen had been warned away. Years ago, that had been, and then he had had the airy owner-house to live in. Now the little cabin he had squeezed himself out below was cramped and airless. He had considered slinging a hammock among the men a time or two, and would have except for the danger to discipline. It was hard to take orders from a man in his underwear, or so Thrasne had always believed.

At any rate, he was glad to walk on land again. He strolled along the narrow beach, really only a rocky shelf between the River and the cliffs, with a few hardy trees thrust through it. As he walked west, however, the shelf widened, dropped, became a real beach with sand on it, and the cliffs on their right hand also became lower, spilling at last into hillocks edged with dune grass and crowned with low, flat trees. The men of the Gift scattered toward the hills, into the woods, searching for water. The Melancholies had dropped behind to poke among the tide pools at the island’s edge, where they were finding brightly colored dye mulluks and flat coin fish. Thus it was only Thrasne at first who saw the carved man, buried to his knees in the sand. “Ha,” Thrasne said, a shocked sound, as though he had been kicked in the stomach. “That looks like old Blint.” He stopped short, knowing what he had said was ridiculous and yet filled with a horrible apprehension.

The carved man began to turn toward him, as though he had heard Thrasne speak. As though he had heard his name.

He turned so slowly that Thrasne had time to measure every familiar line of him, the undulating sag of the belly, the littlehairy roll of fat at the back of the neck, the wiry ropes of muscle-on the legs and arms where old rope scars still showed, the slant of the shoulders. When he was turned full toward him he saw it was Blint, Blint as though carved in dark fragwood, Blint with his mouth opening slowly, so slowly, to give him greeting.

“Thraaasneee,” the carved man said.

“Blint?” Thrasne bleated, terror stricken. What was this? His arms trembled, and the world darkened around him, shivering in a haze of red.

A voice in his mind said, “Remember Suspirra, Thrasne. You were not afraid of Suspirra!”

For a time this was only mental noise with no sense to it. After a time his vision cleared, however, and he turned toward the strange figure in astonishment. Yes. He had taken Suspirra from the River, still living—in a way. She, too, had seemed carved. Now Blint—Blint, who had gone into the River that time long, -long since, with weights tied to his ankles.

“I put you in the River,” Thrasne cried to the motionless figure.

“I know,” the carved man said, each word stretching into an infinitely long sound, fading into a silence more profound than had preceded it, as though other sounds upon the island stilled to allow this speech room in which to be heard. “The blight, Thrasne. The strangeys came. Now I am here.”

“Where?” Thrasne begged. “Where is here?”

“The Island of All of Us,” the carved man replied, his lips twisting upward into the ghost of a smile, the lids of his eyes moving upward also, the face lightening for that instant almost to a fleshy look. “You have come to the Isle of Those Who Are Becoming Otherwise. …”