Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“They’ll talk ashore, you know, Thrasne,” said Obers-rom. “Seems to me you aren’t sayin’ much about this and would rather the matter was kept quiet. But they will talk, Thrasne. You know that. Best you give them something to say, or they’ll say something you won’t like.”

Thrasne thought on this. It was true. The men would talk ashore, and the more mystery they made, the more likelihood of curiosity seekers trying to sneak aboard to catch a glimpse.

Something close to the truth would be best. “Tell them the baby’s mother was pregnant. She drowned in the River and was blighted. So the baby was born different from you and me. She has a different sense of time, that’s all. Perhaps all creatures which are blighted have that sense of time. Maybe blighted fishes live their whole lives out but do it a lot slower than we do. Now, my old friend Suspirra–her I had the statue of until she herself came aboard Suspirra calls the Baby her sister because the drowned woman was her … her friend, and she cares for her friend’s child as she would for a baby sister. It wouldn’t be fitting for her to call Lila her own child, her being an unmarried woman. And Suspirra came to stay with us because the Awakeners wouldn’t leave the child alone, not if they knew. You know that. She had to come to the River to be safe. That’s all there is to it.”

This won their sympathy and went a way to shutting their mouths. Boatmen were accustomed to avoiding Awakener attention and keeping shut about River business. It began to seem to all of them that Lila and Suspirra were River business right enough.

Obers-rom gave it considerable thought. Next time he stopped to speak to Lila he stroked her face, at which she made an indeterminate sound of pleasure, almost a word. “She’s not so different, really,” he said to Pamra. “She just moves real slow, that’s all. Real slow. I’ll call her slow-baby.” He turned away, smiling, the smile vanishing as he thought of the watchful, perceptive expression in the child’s eyes. “Not so different,” he repeated to himself, “except for that.” He still determined to call her slow-baby.

Which, thereafter, Lila heard more often than she heard her name.

11

Where the great log came from, Thrasne could not say. It had the look of something prehistoric about it, like some ancient monster heaving up from the depths to wreak havoc upon the works of man. As it did. The Gift of Potipur ran upon the log–or the log came up beneath her–with such force as to stave a man-sized hole in her bow planks, through which the water alternately poured and gurgled as the Gift rocked from the shock. There were several hours of panicky struggle, after which the Gift gurgled rather less, though still dangerously, and the most threatening part of the damage had been controlled for the moment.

“What will you do now?” asked Pamra. She had stayed out of the way during the worst of it, trying not to show how frightened she was, clinging to Lila as though to some raft on which she might have expected to float to safety. Later, when they had patched the hole, she had gone below to see the black water oozing around the patch and had realized it could be only temporary. “You’ll have to fix it ashore, won’t you?”

Thrasne nodded, still numb. It was the first real injury the Gift had received, and he felt it himself, looking at his ribs from time to time as though expecting to see great bruises and rents there, surprised to find himself whole. “It’ll take a while. That third rib back is sprung all out of line. All the planks are loose along there. They’re not leaking now, but they will be. Next town’s hopeless, no piers, no shipwrights. Next one on down’s some better, but I’ll have to do most of it myself, most likely.”

“How long?”

“A long time. Thirty, forty days, at least. Probably more. They won’t have the planking we need. It’s almost impossible they’d have seasoned wood available. Chances are if they have any, it’ll be green. Or, more likely, still standing. Over a month.” A month was fifty-one days. “Sixty days, maybe. Seventy.” Still in shock, he wasn’t thinking of her at all. Then he turned to see her look of fear and apprehension, understanding it in the instant. “That’d be too long for you to be in one place, wouldn’t it? Dangerous for you. Those hunting you would likely find you. I should have thought of that right off.”