It was not long before Mitigan came swarming down a rope and Snark began lowering bundles. The last thing down the cliff was a large jar, not unlike some of the pottery made in Dinadhi hives, followed by Snark herself. When she arrived at the bottom, she picked the jar up tenderly and carried it into our cavern before she brought anything else.
“My mother’s bone jar,” she said to me, noting my curious look. “Likely I’m not going back up there. Likely there’s room enough in there for me, too.”
Lutha looked up, startled. I kept my own face expressionless, though I knew our thoughts were the same. It was unlikely there would be anyone left to put our bones anywhere in particular. We, like the Procurator, would probably be washed by waves, dismembered by sea creatures, dispersed by the tides.
Snark brought us blankets and one of the little stoves, which gave us a welcome warmth and light. We huddled around it, all but Mitigan, who remained at the entrance to keep watch for whatever was coming. Something was, we all knew that, and all our eyes shifted to the entrance, then away, then to the entrance again. All we saw was the warrior sharpening his blades, a vague silhouette against the gray spread of a chilly dawn.
Poracious Luv subsided onto the sand with a moan of exhaustion, her head on her knees. I thought she’d fallen asleep, but after a moment she lifted her head and said plaintively, “I wonder if Behemoth is out there, waiting … ”
Lutha glanced at the opening, as though someone had sounded an alarm. “Behemoth,” she said in a wondering voice. “An odd word for you to use, Poracious.”
“Why so?” asked the older woman. “A behemoth is a great beast, isn’t it? An old word for some kind of hugeness that lived a long time ago?”
Lutha nodded. “It’s an old word, yes.”
It was a word I’d heard somewhere. “Is it a real word? I mean, does it mean something real?”
Lutha nodded. “It isn’t what it means so much as what it denotes. It means beasts, actually. Plural. But it conveys something more than a mere animal. The connotations are of intractable mightiness, of inexorability and fatefulness.”
Poracious nodded slowly as she slumped, the heavy lines of her body seeming to me inexpressibly weary and dejected.
“Fatefulness,” she said. “I said the same to the old Proc while the world shook around us. That was after we’d had the vision, you see.”
Lutha’s eyes came back to us. She raised her eyebrows.
“I say vision, though maybe it was only old minds playing tricks on old bodies. The old Proc and me, we’d stopped a bit, to rest. He was gray, holding his arm across him as though it hurt. We’d found this place where we could sit … So, we were looking out to sea, and suddenly there was an ark, a great primitive sort of boat, rocking against a wrack of cloud, rain slanting across it like a curtain, wind driving it. It was made out of wood, don’t you know. We could see the marks of tools on the sides, and it was loaded with animals … Well, you know the old story, only this was real! And one of the animals put back its head and howled words! ‘Beware,’ it cried. ‘Was it not commanded that each kind should be saved?’ “
Leelson had been listening. Now he frowned down his nose at Poracious, slowly shaking his head. Thus did Fastigats reject the fanciful. Poracious took no notice of him.
Jiacare, on the other hand, was intrigued. “The ark story is from an ancient literature, isn’t it? What was the book called?”
“It was called, simply, the Book,” Leelson said in his usual didactic manner. “It was supplanted by the doctrines of Firstism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries of the predisperion era.”
He rose, brushed himself off, then went to join Mitigan at the cave entrance.
The ex-king nudged Poracious. “Did you see anything else in your vision?”
She shook her head. “Leelson thinks I am hallucinating, but I did see it, and I heard the voice so very clearly.” She sighed, dropping her head once more. “Of course, I hadn’t eaten for a long time, and we’d been walking endlessly. I know people who are very hungry and tired can see things … ”