friend. All Downers are sad.” He put a hand on her shoulder, this tall
Konstantin-man, and she turned and put her arm about him and her head against
his chest, hugged him solemnly, about the wet, awful-feeling yellow clothes.
“Good Bennett make Lukas mad. Good friend for Downers. Too bad he gone. Too, too
bad, Konstantin-man.”
“I’ve heard,” he said. “I’ve heard how it was here.”
“Konstantin-man good friend.” She lifted her face at his touch, looked
fearlessly into the strange mask which made him very horrible to see. “Love good
mans. Downers work hard, work hard, hard for Konstantin. Give you gifts. Go no
more away.”
She meant it. They had learned how Lukases were. It was said in all the camp
that they should do good for the Konstantins, who had always been the best
humans, gift-bringers more than the hisa could give.
“What’s your name?” he asked, stroking her cheek. “What do we call you?”
She grinned suddenly, warm in his kindness, stroked her own sleek hide, which
was her vanity, wet as it was now. “Humans call me Satin,” she said, and
laughed, for her true name was her own, a hisa thing, but Bennett had given her
this, for her vanity, this and a bright bit of red cloth, which she had worn to
rags and still treasured among her spirit-gifts.
“Will you walk back with me?” he asked, meaning to the human camp. “I’d like to
talk with you.”
She was tempted, for this meant favor. And then she sadly thought of duty and
pulled away, folded her arms, dejected at the loss of love. “I sit,” she said.
“With Bennett.”
“Make he spirit look at the sky,” she said, showing the spirit-stick, explaining
a thing the hisa did not explain. “Look at he home.”
“Come tomorrow,” he said. “I need to talk to the hisa.”
She tilted back her head, looked at him in startlement. Few humans called them
what they were. It was strange to hear it. “Bring others?”
“All the high ones if they will come. We need hisa Up-above, good hands, good
work. We need trade Downbelow, place for more men.”
She extended her hand toward the hills and the open plain, which went on
forever.
“There is place.”
“But the high ones would have to say.”
She laughed. “Say spirit-things. I-Satin give this to Konstantin-man. All ours.
I give, you take. All trade, much good things; all happy.”
“Come tomorrow,” he said, and walked away, a tall strange figure in the slanting
rain. Satin-Tam-utsa-pitan sat down on her heels with the rain beating upon her
bowed back and pouring over her body, and regarded the grave, with the rain
making pocked puddles above it.
She waited. Eventually others came, less accustomed to men. Dalut-hos-me was one
such, who did not share her optimism of them; but even he had loved Bennett.
There were men and men. This much the hisa had learned
She leaned against Dalut-hos-me, Sun-shining-through-clouds, in the dark evening
of their long watch, and by this gesture pleased him. He had begun laying gifts
before her mat in this winter season, hoping for spring.
“They want hisa Upabove,” she said. “I want to see the Upabove. I want this.”
She had always wanted it, from the time that she had heard Bennett talk of it.
From this place came Konstantins (and Lukases, but she dismissed that thought).
She reckoned it as bright and full of gifts and good things as all the ships
which came down from it, bringing them goods and good ideas. Bennett had told
them of a great metal place holding out arms to the Sun, to drink his power,
where ships vaster than they had ever imagined came and went like giants.
All things flowed to this place and from it; and Bennett had gone away now,
making a Time in her life under the Sun. It was a manner of pilgrimage, this
journey she desired to mark this Time, like going to the images of the plain,
like the sleep-night in the shadow of the images.
They had given humans images for the Upabove too, to watch there. It was fit, to
call it pilgrimage. And the Time regarded Bennett, who came from that journey.