He sniffed deeply, recognizing components of the odor as resinous, humusy, fecund smells. Swamps and forests. On the island the closer trees were only dark shadows against the mist behind them, a ground fog that rose only slightly above their tops to leave the taller trees outlined against the dawn. This retreating sequence of river mist, shore trees, mist again, taller trees, and yet again mist rising from some valley and the tallest trees on the hills behind it lent an appearance of great distance to the island, as though it had stretched away from him in the night, becoming a place in dream in which no distance could be measured. The far, hilltop trees were an open lacework against the opal sky, motionless in the morning light, with only an occasional flutter of wings among them to let one know they were not painted there, or carved.
He sculled through the rising fogs into the deep channel on the south side of the island. Behind him on the Gift the watchman raised his voice in a plaintive call, like a lonely bird. Moving through the shore mist, the dead men and women walked like an orchard come up from scattered seed. Though most of them stood or walked alone, there were a few twos and threes of them who seemed to stay together. As though they had been friends or kin in life? Thrasne wondered, then gave up wondering as the River surged about him, belling upward in huge arcs of shining water.
Upon that swelling wave were winged things, smaller than strangeys, peering at him from myriad eyes. Then they were gone.
“Perhaps they are strangey children,” said Thrasne in a conversational tone to himself. “And here are the adults,”
They were all around him, their long, eye-decked fringes suspended above the raft, peering at it through the mists, monsters from dream.
“I need to talk with you,” Thrasne called. “I want to ask some questions.”
A rearrangement took place among the fringes. Eyes were replaced by others. Water swirled, and from the top of a belled wave a comber of lace slid toward him, foaming around the boat. “Yes,” said a terrible strangey voice. “We will talk.”
“You are preventing our leaving the island,” he called. “If we have offended you in some way, we wish to make reparation. We cannot stay here. We must go on. Southward.”
“No,” the strangey boomed, diving under the water to leave Thrasne bobbing above it, then emerging a little distance off. “Your other one is coming to you.”
“Other one?”
“The one you lost. The one you have yet to find. Babji.”
“Coming here?” His heart swelled within him, suddenly joyous, leaping like a flame-bird chick from the nest. “Here? Medoor Babji?”
“The Treeci are bringing her.”
This baffled him. It could not be the Treeci of Strinder’s Isle. Some other Treeci. Before him the strangeys sank from sight, except for one.
“Do you have other questions?” it asked.
“Yes.” He licked dry lips. “A long time ago, it was almost twenty years ago. A woman drowned herself off the piers at Baris. She was pregnant.”
There was no sound but the River sound, yet Thrasne had a feeling of colloquy, a vibration of the water beneath the boat, a great voice asking and answering in tones beneath his ability to hear them. “Yes,” said the strangey voice at last. “Her name was Imajh.”
“I don’t know what her name was. I called her Suspirra. I thought she was only wood, you know. But she wasn’t. She was alive.”
“She was alive in a way,” assented the voice. “If you had not taken her from the River too soon, we would have brought her here and she would have been alive here, in a way. As the others are.”
Thrasne slumped. “I killed her?”
Swirl of water. Sound as of what? Not laughter. No. Amusement. Something like amusement, but of so huge a kind that one could not call it that. Thrasne tried to identify the tone as the strangey spoke. It seemed important to know what the strangey felt as it answered. “She was already dead, boatman. What she was given after that was the blessed time. Perhaps she used it better for her where she was than if she had come here.”