“At that, they must have adapted; there must have been natural selection. Many can think craftily, like the female who reaved your holdings, Rolf Mariner. I wonder if her kind are not born dependent on the poison.
“You should thank her, though, that she got you cast out as early as she did!”
Ivar covered his face. “O God, no.”
“I need clean sky and a beast to hunt,” Erannath grated. “I will be back tomorrow.”
He left. Ivar wept on Riho Mea’s breast. She held him close, stroked his hair and murmured.
“You’ll get well, poor dear, we’ll make you well. The river flows, flows, flows…. Here is peace.”
Finally she left him on her husband’s bunk, exhausted of tears and ready to sleep. The light through the windows was gold-red. She changed into her robe and went onto the foredeck, to join chaplain and crew in wishing the sun goodnight.
XII
South of Cold Landing the country began to grow steep and stony, and the peaks of the Cimmerian range hung ghostlike on its horizon. There the river would flow too swiftly for the herds. But first it broadened to fill a valley with what was practically a lake: the Green Bowl, where ships bound farther south left their animals in care of a few crewfolk, to fatten on water plants and molluscoids.
Approaching that place, Ivar paddled his kayak with an awkwardness which drew amiable laughter from his young companions. They darted spearfly-fast over the surface; or, leaping into the stream, they raced the long-bodied webfooted brown osels which served them for herd dogs, while he wallowed more clumsily than the fat, flippered, snouted chuho—water pigs—which were being herded.
He didn’t mind. Nobody is good at everything, and he was improving at a respectable pace.
Wavelets blinked beneath violet heaven, chuckled, swirled, joined livingly with his muscles to drive the kayak onward. This was the reality which held him, not stiff crags and dusty-green brush on yonder hills. A coolness rose from it, to temper windless warmth of air. It smelled damp, rich. Ahead, Jade Gate was a gaudily painted castle; farther on moved a sister vessel; trawlers and barges already waited at Cold Landing. Closer at hand, the chuho browsed on wetcress. Now and then an osel heeded the command of a boy or girl and sped to turn back a straggler. Herding on the Flone was an ideal task, he thought. Exertion and alertness kept a person fully alive, while nevertheless letting him enter into that peace, beauty, majesty which was the river.
To be sure, he was a mere spectator, invited along because these youngers liked him. That was all right.
Jao maneuvered her kayak near his. “Goes it well?” she asked. “You do fine, Rolf.” She flushed, dropped her glance, and added timidly: “I think not I could do that fine in your wilderness. But sometime I would wish to try.”
“Sometime … I’d like to take you,” he answered.
On this duty in summer, one customarily went nude, so as to be ready at any time for a swim. Ivar was too fair-skinned for that, and wore a light blouse and trousers Erannath had had made for him. He turned his own eyes elsewhere. The girl was far too young for the thoughts she was old enough to arouse—besides being foreign to him—no, never mind that, what mattered was that she was sweet and trusting and—
Oh, damnation, I will not be ashamed of thinkin’ she’s female. Thinkin’ is all it’ll ever amount to. And that I do, that I can, measures how far I’ve gone toward gainin’ back my sanity.
The gaiety and the ceremoniousnesses aboard ship; the little towns where they stopped to load and unload, and the long green reaches between; the harsh wisdom of Erannath, serene wisdom of Iang Weii the chaplain, pragmatic wisdom of Riho Mea the captain, counseling him; the friendliness of her husband and other people his age; the, yes, the way this particular daughter of hers followed him everywhere around; always the river, mighty as time, days and nights, days and nights, feeling like a longer stretch than they had been, like a foretaste of eternity: these had healed him.