Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

Behind Thrasne the shouts of the searchers stilled. Before them on the long, pale beach there was movement. Lumps and piles that Thrasne had assumed were flotsam or clumps of grass stood up, turned, became men and women. On some, fragments of clothing still hung, as irrelevant as wind-driven leaves clinging on a fence. Though it was possible to tell that some were male, some female, there was nothing sexual about them, as there had been nothing really sexual about Suspirra. In many, breasts or penises had dwindled into a general shapelessness. Or shapeliness, Thrasne thought half-hysterically, his artist’s eyes assuring him that the shapes of those least human in appearance were also the most beautiful. As he thought these things, clinging tight to his sanity, willing himself to show no fear, the carved people approached him, slowly.

“Is he frightened of us?” one asked, the question seeming to take up most of the afternoon.

“Does he think we are ghosts?” asked another.

“What are they?” asked Taj Noteen from just behind him, his voice strained and shaking. “I told all the others to get back to the boat.”

Thrasne responded calmly, betrayed only by the smallest quiver in his voice. “They are the dead, Taj Noteen. Those whom the Rivermen have consigned to the River. Blighted then. And, seemingly, given a new life by the blight, as the workers in the pits are given life by the Tears of Viranel.”

“But these . . . these can talk.”

“Talk, yes,” said one of the carved people in long, slow syllables. “And observe. And hear.”

“Cannot taste,” said one. It was a chant, an intonation, perhaps an invocation. “Not smell,” said another. “Not feel,” said Blint. “Not much.” Thrasne’s immediate terror had begun to subside, and he looked closely at Blint. There was no fear or horror on that face. There was none on any face he could see. There was calm. Expressions that might betoken contentment. A kindly and very moderate interest, perhaps, though no excitement. With this analysis, his heart slowed and he swallowed, conscious of a dry throat and scalp tight as a drumhead.

“Are you well, Blint?” he found himself able to ask, almost conversationally.

“Oh, yes, Thrasne. I am well.”

“Are all the River dead here, all of them?”

“Here. Or on some other island.”

“How did you get here?”

“The strangeys brought us. They bring us all.”

Throughout this last exchange the carved people had turned away and begun moving slowly back to the positions they had occupied before. There, they faded into the landscape once again, becoming mere manlike hillocks along the sand. Only Blint remained.

“Blint-wife is well.” Thrasne bethought himself that Blint might like to know this.

Blint did not seem to care. “I’ll leave it in your good hands,” he said, each word drawn into a paragraph of meaning. “Thraaaasneeee.” Blint’s eyes were fixed on some more distant thing. They followed his gaze out across the waters to a swelling beneath the waves, a heaving, as some mighty creature rising from the depths, the great, glassy shells of its rising flowing with a tattered lace of sliding foam.

“The strangeys,” said Blint once again, his hands folded before him as though he had been in Temple. Though they spoke to him several more times, he did not answer. At last Taj Noteen tugged Thrasne away, back across the sands to the edge of the forest. By the time they arrived there, Thrasne was shaking as with an ague.

Taj held him, clasped him tightly, until he stopped shivering. Taj was as shaken as Thrasne. Among the dead he had seen were some he thought he knew, one he had known very well indeed.

“Come,” said Thrasne at last. “We will explore a little.” He knew himself. In a moment his eyes would start to function, his fingers itch for the knife. In a little time, he would start to think. This shock had come only because he had known the old man, known him almost as a father. So, let him move to let the shock pass. “Come.” He moved away down a forest path.

They walked. Here and there along the way were others of the dead. Some, evidently the more recent, looked up as they passed. One or two of them spoke. Others did not seem to see them. And some, those who had been longest upon the island, Thrasne thought, were rooted in place like trees, stout trees with two or three stout branches, small tendrils of growth playing about their heads and shoulders and from their fingertips.