The Line Between

The country continued high desert, simmering with murages, but there were moments in the ever–colder nights when I could smell fresh water: or perhaps I felt its presence in the water composing my own body. The old man did finally reveal that in less than a week, at our current rate we should strike the Nai, the greatest river in this part of the country which actually begins in the Skagats. There are always boats, he assured me — scows and barges and little schooners, going up and down with dried fish for this settlement, nails and harness for that one, a full load of lumber for the new town building back of the old port. Paying passengers were quite common on the Nai, as well as the non–paying sort — and here he winked elaborately at me, looking enough like the grandfather I still think I almost remember that I had to look away for a moment. Increasingly, as the years pass, I prefer the fox–shape.

«Not that this will lose our Goro friend," he said, «not for a moment. They're seagoing people — a river is a city street to the Goro. But they dislike rivers, exactly as a countryman dislikes the city, and the further they are from the sea, the more tense and uneasy they become. Now the Nai will take us all the way to Druchank, which is a hellpit, unless it has changed greatly since I was last there. But from Druchank it's a long long journey to the smell of salt, yet no more than two days to… "

And here he stopped. It was not a pause for breath or memory, not an instant's halt to find words — no interruption, but an end, as though he had never intended to say more. He only looked at me, not with his usual mockery, nor with any expression that I could read. But he clearly would not speak again until I did, and I had a strong sense that I did not want to ask what I had to ask, and get an answer. I said, at last, «Two days to where?»

«To the place of our stand.» The voice had no laughter in it, but no fear either. «To the place where we turn and meet them all. Yours and mine.»

It was long ago, that moment. I am reasonably certain that I did not say anything bold or heroic in answer, as I can be fairly sure that I did not shame myself. Beyond that … beyond that, I can only recall a sense that all the skin of my face had suddenly grown too tight for my head. The rest is stories. He might remember exactly how it was, but he lies.

I do recollect his response to whatever I finally said. «Yes, it will come to that, and we will not be able to avoid facing them. I thought we might, but I always look circumstance in the eye.» (And would try to steal both eyes, and then charge poor blind circumstance for his time, but never mind.) He said, «Your Hunters and my Goro — " no more sharing of shadows, apparently — «there's no shaking them, none of them. I would know if there were a way.» I didn't doubt that. «The best we can do is to choose the ground on which we make our stand, and I have long since chosen the Mihanachakali.» I blinked at him. That I remember, blinking so stupidly, nothing to say.

The Mihanachakali was deep delta once — rich, bountiful farmland, until the Nai changed course, over a century ago. The word means black river valley — I suppose because the Nai used to carry so much sweet silt to the region when it flooded every year or two. You wouldn't know that now, nor could I believe it at the time, trudging away from Druchank (which was just as foul a hole as he remembered, and remains so), into country grown so parched, so entirely dried out, that the soil had forgotten how to hold even the little mist that the river provided now and again. We met no one, but every turn in the road brought us past one more abandoned house, one more ruin of a shed or a byre; eventually the road became one more desiccated furrow crumbling away to the flat, pale horizon. The desert had never been anything but what it was; this waste was far wilder, far lonelier, because of the ghosts. Because of the ghosts that I could feel, even if I couldn't see them — the people who had lived here, tried to live here, who had dug in and hung on as long as they could while the earth itself turned ghost under their feet, under their splintery wooden ploughs and spades. I hated it as instinctively and deeply and sadly as I have ever hated a place on earth, but the old man tramped on without ever looking back for me. And as I stumbled after him over the cold, wrinkled land, he talked constantly to himself, so that I could not help but overhear.

«Near, near — they never move, once they … twice before, twice, and then that other time … listen for it, smell it out, find it, find it, so close … no mistake, it cannot have moved, I will not be mistaken, listen for it, reach for it, find it, find it, find it!» He crouched lower and lower as we plodded on, until he might as well have taken the fox–form, so increasingly taut, elongated and pointed had his shadow become. To me during those two days crossing the Mihanachakali, he spoke not at all.