Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

As he struggled with the buttons of his shirt, he examined the row of carvings set on his storage chest. There was a long, slender piece of clear fragwood he’d been saving, and he thought he’d make a fish of it. A surprised fish, with blight halfway up its tail. The carvings stared back at him from the chest top: merchants, children, the tall robed figure of an Awakener, even a worker, shapeless and hopeless in its canvas wrappings. The little figures seemed almost to breathe. One at the near end of the row looked at him in eternal supplication, and Thrasne took it into his hands with a little groan, warmth pouring into his belly.

“Suspirra,” he whispered. It was his name for her, the otherwise nameless ideal, loveliest of all women, created out of his head and his aching loins. She lay on his pillow when he sought his solitary comforts. She watched him when he dressed and washed himself, always with the same expression of supplication and entreaty. “Love me,” she begged silently. “Love me.” And he did love her, in a lonely fever, almost forgetting sometimes that she was no longer than his forearm. He had carved her in one daylong frenzy of creation, the wood curling away from his blade as though it sought to reveal what lay within it, the pale soft grain of the face, the darker grain of the long, smooth hair, the gown, clinging to her as though wet so he could see every line of her sweet breasts and belly, the curve of her thighs and the soft mound where they joined. Even her feet had sprung out of the wood magically, every toe perfect, the fines of the nails as clean as the line of her lips.

“Suspirra,” and he set her down, turning her slightly away from him.

“You should be artist caste,” Blint had said when he first saw Thrasne’s carvings. “Some of these towns give high status to artists.”

Thrasne had shaken his head. “I’d rather see everything. Not just stick in one town. Maybe, someday, when I’m tired of the River.”

Though he could not imagine being tired of the River. There was always something to see on the River. As there was right now the new piers fringing the edge of Baristown.

When he reached the deck he gave it a careful look over. No signs of nets or hooks. The net poles were put away. He could still smell the sulphur and frag, but the River breeze would carry it out river this time of day. He checked the hatch over the net locker to see it was tight. Funny the way shore bound fishermen resented any fishing done by the Riverboats. Even though the Riverboats caught different kinds of fish, to say nothing of the deep River strangeys, which probably weren’t fish at all. Glizzee spice, now. Everyone wanted that, even fishermen. And Glizzee spice was nothing but ground strangey bone, though the boatmen didn’t tell everyone that.

When he’d completed the round, he went back and climbed up to the rudder man. “What did Blint say?”

“Told me to pick the longest pier and see could I come around it.”

“No side wharfs, hmm?”

“None we can see from here,” Some of the towns had at the end of their piers sideways extensions that ran along the River flow rather than across it. A Riverboat could steer close, toss a line to be made fast, then let the tide turn the boat on the line to lay alongside. Coming around a long pier was harder work than that.

“Is Blint getting the sweeps set?”

“He got Birk out of his hammock. Said for you to stand by here where you could see everything.” The man sniggered, not maliciously, and Thrasne grinned at him. Taken all in all, the boatmen rather liked having a carver aboard. There wasn’t one of them he hadn’t carved something for, as a pretty for themselves or a gift for someone they treasured. When a man only came to his home place every six to eight years, he wanted to have something special for his children, at least. Though it wasn’t uncommon to find more children than reason suggested was appropriate. Many a man gone six years came back to find two- and three-year-olds, but such was the life of a boatman and accepted as such. The women couldn’t be blamed, not with the procreation laws the way they were. And after all, if things like that mattered to a man, he wouldn’t be River.