Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

Thrasne stopped before an ancient tree, twisted and gnarled by a century’s growth. “The leaves are the same,” he said, pointing first at the tree, then at one of the dead a small distance away. “The leaves. And see! It blooms.” At the tips of the twigs were blossoms like waxen crowns, magenta and sea blue, with golden centers.

“We bloom,” corrected a voice from behind them. “And the seeds blow out upon the River and sink down. And grow there into a kind of water weed. Which grows, and after a time takes fins and swims. To become the blight. Which seeks a body to house it. And brings it to life again. And comes to the islands. To grow. To bloom. . . .”

She who spoke had been a woman once. Now she fluttered with leaves, and her feet were deeply planted in the soil.

“And you,” Thrasne whispered, needing to know. “Are you well?”

“Oh, yes. I am well.”

“There is no pain?”

“No pain.”

“Memories?”

“Memories?”

“Your name? Who you were?”

“I am,” the tree-woman replied. “I am, now. It is enough.” She did not speak again.

“This tree does not grow on Northshore,” said Thrasne. “You’d think somewhere, in the forests there. Some of them …”

“The strangeys probably don’t take them there,” said Taj Noteen. “Probably they bring them only here, or on other islands.”

“Why? How?”

“You will have to ask the strangeys, Thrasne,” he said. “Those, swimming there in the deeps, with the foam around their faces.”

For they did swim there, south of the island, shining mounds lifting great, eyed fringes, sliding through the waters like mighty ships of flesh, calling to one another in their terrible voices, deep and echoing as caves.

“Come,” Taj Noteen urged him. “Come back to the Gift, Thrasne. It will seem less strange tomorrow.” And in truth, he hoped it would, for his soul cowered in terror within him.

None of them felt they could leave on the day that followed, or the day after that. Thrasne did not find Blint again, though Taj Noteen found the woman he had once known, spoke to her, and returned to the Gift dazed and uncomprehending. On the third day, they wished to leave, tried to set sail, and were prevented from moving. Around them the strangeys moved, pushing the boat back against the shore each time they tried to move away. They had refilled all the water casks. Here and there among the strange trees on the island were some familiar fruiting kinds, and they had gathered all the fruits that were ripe. There was nothing more they could do, but the strangeys would not allow them to leave. It was time, Thrasne felt, to ask some questions.

What Thrasne wanted to know he could not ask from the crowded deck of the Gift, with all the crew clustered about thinking him crazy. He did not want to talk to the strangeys at a stone’s throw, with old Porabji’s cynical eye upon him. He wanted—oh, he wanted to be close to them. Close as their own skins or fins or whatever parts and attributes they had. He wanted to see them!

“Pull the raft around to the Riverside,” he ordered. “And rig some kind of oarlocks on it.”

It was not a graceful craft. Still, it was sturdy enough, and he could maneuver it with the long oars in the high oarlocks, standing to them as he plied them to and fro.

Once he knew well enough what he was doing with the raft, he thought to sneak off at dawn, when the strangeys usually surfaced. He set his mind to wake himself early, a skill most boatmen had, and rose in the mist before the sun. As he slipped over the rail, he did not see Eenzie the Clown standing in the owner-house door watching him, wrapped tight in a great white robe over which her hair spilled in a midnight river of silken strands. As he left, she came to the railing to watch the raft heave away, clumsy as a basket.

It was dead slack tide with the moons lying at either horizon. Only a light wind blew into Thrasne’s face from the south, laden with scents strange to him. “There is more land there,” Thrasne breathed, assured of it for the first time. “I smell it!”