Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“What are they saying?” Pamra stopped, straining to hear, until Bethne tugged her along.

“Come along. It isn’t polite to listen in. What he’s singing is ‘Tell me of my children … ‘ It’s a song the young males sing. So she sings to him of his children, how strong and graceful they will be.”

“Tell me of my children,” Pamra mused. Sentimental, that. Unlike Neff. He was all “tell me,” but about a hundred other things.

“Tell me about the South shore.”

“Neff, no one knows anything about the South shore. Maybe people went there once, but no one does now. Thrasne says the World River is twenty-four hundred miles wide, and no one goes farther out than Strinder’s Isle. All the measurements are in the old chart-of-towns. That amazes me, but it’s true.”

“Are there Treeci there?” “For all I know there could be.” “I could get there, in a boat. With a sail.” “Why would you want to do that?” “I just thought of it, that’s all.” He rose, jittering, unable to keep still, pulled her up to dance with him. This was new, their dancing together. When they were exhausted by it, they lay curled in the moss bed side-by-side, she stroking his feathered chest, dreamy and quiet.

“You are my sister,” he said. “Aren’t you. It’s all right for me to be here. You really are my sister.”

“Of course,” she choked. “Of course I am.”

The next evening Pamra and Joy found the approach to her lookout place ankle deep in water. “Conjunction,” said Joy, measuring the water with her eyes. “Moons are pulling that water right up here, aren’t they. Well, if Thrasne doesn’t get back for you in the next few days, he won’t come until low-water-after-the-moons. There’s no place to tie up for long at the west end. He’ll have better sense than to try.”

Pamra tried to feel disappointment. The feeling would not come. She was not concerned. Not upset. All it meant was she would have more time with Neff. More time to dance, to sing, to lie together in the dusk watching the moons move among the stars. He had become so beautiful in recent days. Because of their friendship, she told herself. Because he had someone to talk to.

“Only ten days or so to Conjunction,” said Joy, saddened by some recollection, some nostalgic connection that Pamra could not follow. “Think I’ll go over to the village tomorrow to visit … Werf. Few days she’ll be too busy.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“No. No, just a friendly visit between Werf and me, I think. Two old friends. You can visit later. After Conjunction. There’ll be plenty of time. Thrasne’s not going to get here before.”

The drums began to sound nightly, throbbing like hearts, like bruises, like the pulse in wounds, painfully immediate. Joy stood at the window, listening, tears standing in her eyes. “Memories,” she said abashedly, wiping the tears away. “So many memories.”

Of her childhood, Pamra thought. Of her young womanhood, of her children. Sad to be old and almost alone with only these other-people for company; sad to think of their children as one’s own because one has none of one’s own.

Still the drums. Pamra put Lila in a shawl and started to go visiting.

“No,” said Joy. “You wouldn’t be welcome.”

“I thought I’d just watch the dancing.”

Joy didn’t speak.

“It’s their religious time,” said Bethne. “Their farewell time.”

“The old year?” Pamra asked, unwillingly taking off her shawl, remembering the celebrations of her childhood when they said farewell to the old year and welcome to the new.

“Something like that,” said Bethne.

Neff came earlier each day. He was thinner, fined down to pure muscle and bone, light as reeds in the wind. “All the dancing,” he explained. “I haven’t been hungry.”

She tested this, bringing cakes, bringing tea in a bottle. He drank the tea thirstily but gagged at the cakes. “Too much dancing.”

She worried about him as he lay in her arms, eyes shut in sleep. And yet he didn’t look at all unhealthy but vital and alive, his beak bright red along the edges, the feathers on his neck and chest turning a brilliant crimson. He had never asked so many questions, had so many things he wanted her to tell him. He seemed to want to be with her so much it was an agony to leave him and return to the house.