Judith Berman is an anthropologist specializing in the native peoples of coastal British Columbia and Southeast Alaska. She has published scholarly and non-fiction works on the languages, cultures, and history of the area, the most recent being a translation in the Random House anthology of Native American literature, Coming to Light, edited by Brian Swann. Another fantasy story in this universe will be appearing in Asimov's. This story originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy.
The day after they finished the last of the dried venison, the southside king came to Flicker House. He arrived in the afternoon, streaming wet from the storm, accompanied by only two attendants. No one expected him. Sunshell's aunts had climbed into the damp and smoky rafters to take stock of what little was left of the stores. Uncle Vanguard lay in his room napping away the afternoon, as he had napped away much of the last year. Mother was also in bed, much too ill to get up. Uncle Fool was in his room, too, but Sunshell knew he hadn't been napping; strange irregular knocks and thumps sounded every once in a while against the wall of his room that faced the central hall, and once Sunshell was certain she heard the croak of a very large frog. Sunshell herself sat glumly near the fire with most of the other residents of Flicker House, trying to ignore the smoke and her empty belly, and the way Many and Cormorant had been ignoring her. The wind and pounding surf outside were so noisy, and the king came in so quietly, that it was some moments before she noticed that he stood by the door with water streaming from his rain hat and cape. By that time Aunt Aureole was clattering down from the rafters, calling for someone to wake her husband. She ushered the king and his attendants to the hearthside, took their wet things, brought shredded cedar bark for them to dry themselves, and presented the king with a dish of dried seaweed. She was much flightier than usual, and Sunshell could tell she was embarassed at having so little to offer the king.
The king had wonderful manners; he ate just a bit to show his appreciation, but left the rest, mindful of the scarcity of food this spring in Deepriver Town. He was growing thinner just like everyone else, and his handsome face looked very sad and worn today. When Uncle Vanguard appeared, blinking and trying to smother his yawns, the king greeted him warmly, but it was plain his mind was elsewhere. After the usual pleasantries, the king said abruptly, "My two boys left early this morning to go seal hunting."
Vanguard blinked. "I thought you had forbidden that."
"Hundreds of times," said the king. "They have been asking me to go every day, ever since it was clear their older brother would not return. What is it now? Ñ nearly a year, since my eldest and his cousin paddled out in their canoe and never came back? Ever since, I have been saying no. How could I risk losing two more of my children? And the storms are much worse now than when Harpoon disappeared."
"These are not ordinary storms," said Vanguard, stifling another yawn. "The Bright Ones have been gone for a year. Something is amiss in the world."Ó
"That's just it," said the king. "Something is wrong and they seem to think it's their job to fix it. And now the people are hungry. Kings' sons are supposed to be great hunters. I should have seen it coming, but I didn't. I thought they would obey me. I didn't know how much it bothered them." His voice broke, and he paused for a moment, biting his lip. He didnÕt say it, but Sunshell had heard others do so: it was the king's job to fix these things, not his sons', not anyone elseÕs.
Then the king sighed. "I certainly thought my wizard would honor my wishes, but they wheedled a charm against wind and wave from him, and snuck out under cover of darkness."
"Resurrecting is watching over them for you, though," said Vanguard.
"Apparently, he has lost sight of them already. I have been all around the town, and every wizard tells me something different. One says they have already capsized and drowned; another says they are castaway upon an island, and will have to repair their canoe. Resurrecting says they will return. I donÕt believe any of them. The wizards could not find Harpoon when he disappeared, either. Even if he lay at the bottom of the ocean they should have been able to see his body, but everything has remained hidden this last year. I want to consult Fool."
Vanguard shifted uncomfortably on the wooden platform. "Well," he said, "Fool does have a way with the weather."
"He told me I would never see Harpoon again, and he was the only one who divined that correctly. If he tells me my other two boys are gone forever, I will give up hope." Vanguard sighed himself. After a moment, "Cormorant," he said, "Cormorant, boy, go call your father."
They always sent Cormorant. No one else wanted to do it.
Cormorant rose from beside Many with visible reluctance, and climbed the stepped platforms of the hall to the door of his father's room. It served him right to have to disturb Fool, Sunshell thought, the way he and Many had been acting. "Father," Cormorant called softly and hesitantly.
Fool had very sharp hearing. "Why do you interrupt me?" boomed his deep and angry voice. Cormorant shrank back a step. "The king is here, Father. He wants to talk to you."
There was a silence in the hall. The wind roared, the rain pounded on the roof. "A moment," the voice said.
Fool emerged from his room smiling and pleasant, though in Sunshell's mind no smile ever erased the cruelty of his square and heavy-browed face. He passed by his son without a glance or a touch, and descended toward the king.
"I want you to look for my sons," the king said.
Fool nodded slowly. He pressed his hands together and inhaled. Then, all at once, his eyes rolled into his head. He began to hum, and voices pierced the air around him, spirit voices, high clear whistles. Smoke from the fire billowed around Fool but did not touch him. Sharp knocks rattled along the walls under the rafters. Somewhere, under their feet, a massive frog croaked twice. FoolÕs body shook all over. His hands floated trembling into the air until they hung over his head. Sparks shot out of them. Sunshell watched scornfully. She had seen these small magics before. They were not what made her afraid of Fool.
Fool's show went on for some time, and then it stopped as suddenly as it began. His eyes rolled forward again.
"What did you see?" asked the king, tense and anguished.
"You will not see your sons again," said Fool, panting a little. "I am sorry, sir."
"Well, then," the king said, rising. "Well, then." He started blindly toward the door. Sunshell wanted to run after him and say, Don't believe Fool! He pretends! He lies! He's lost his power just like the rest of them! But she couldn't, not in front of Fool. And Fool had been right about Harpoon, the only thing any wizard had seen right all year.
Halfway to the door, the king came to himself and turned. Manners exquisite as always, he held out a beautiful dagger to Fool, a king's copper dagger varnished with oolachan oil, with a wooden pommel inlaid with pearlshell and abalone and carved like the radiant sun. Payment far in excess of the services rendered, as was the proper way for a king. It was too bad the king could not summon more than good manners in the face of fast-approaching starvation.
Fool took the dagger, expressionless. And then the king shook himself, as if recalling some other duty. He took a few steps back toward Vanguard.
"Which ones are the Swimmers?" he asked.
"The twins?" Vanguard said. "Oh, Many and Sunshell." He gestured vaguely toward first one side of the hearth, then the other.
The king stepped down into the square hearthwell again. "The father's dead, isn't that right?"
Sunshell huddled against her aunt; she wasn't used to being the object of royal attention. But the king walked over to Many.
"The father's dead," said Vanguard. "The mother's ill. She's my sister-in-law." Many seemed untroubled by the king's regard. He stared up at him, solemnly. The king nodded once. "We may want the twins," he said. "We may want them. Maybe they can help." He retraced his steps, jamming his rain hat on his head, and ducked into the storm. His attendants followed reluctantly.
Dinner that night was dried seaweed in broth, three moldy dried clams, and a quarter of a cake of hemlock sapwood. Mother took only a little food and water, and hardly seemed to recognize her children. Many and Sunshell tried to talk to her but soon Aunt Aureole shooed them away. "Let her rest," Aureole said snappishly. "Give her some peace."
Many was restless and angry after that. He drummed on AureoleÕs now-useless cooking boxes with a stick, threw twigs and bits of rubbish at Sunshell, until finally she jumped up from the fire and ran after him, shouting. Then Aureole yelled at Sunshell, as if ManyÕs misbehavior were her fault.
Sunshell came back to the fireside reluctantly and plopped down beside Aunt Brighthead, who twined away at yet another in an endless series of spruce-root rain hats. Sunshell picked up her own misshapen attempt. Sunshell had recently taken up trying to copy her youngest and quietest aunt, both Brighthead's incredibly fine and even stitches, and the way she sang serenely to herself as she worked, shutting out the world. Sunshell had had little success on either count. She was too hungry, too anxious, too frustrated; she could not concentrate. Now Sunshell was distracted yet again by a familiar, hesitant voice:
"Shall we go yet, sire? Is it time now to bring summer to the Mountain Land?"
"It is not yet time," intoned another familiar voice.
"Shall we prepare yet to make flesh for the people of the Mountain Land?"
"No," Many said, "it is not yet time. Do not put on your salmon mask just yet."
Not again. All spring Many had been at this game, over and over again, as if he couldnÕt think about anything else, and Cormorant, as always, followed his lead. Sunshell looked around, furious. Many now sat cross-legged atop a cooking box in the solemn and courtly posture so recently assumed by their king. Cormorant, squatting below, had assumed the role of attendant, or perhaps an overly obsequious house lord. Grownups thought Many a cute boy, with his round face and his clever, soot-black eyes, but all Sunshell could see now was an obnoxious, heartless brat. "Stop it!" She threw down her hat and jumped to her feet. "Why do you keep doing it?"
Cormorant flicked a nervous glance over his shoulder, but he went on. "The people are hungry there," he reminded Many. "The children and the sick and the old ones will begin to die soon."
"Let them die, then," said Many. "It is nothing to us."
"Stop it, stop it!" she yelled, advancing on them.
"What shall we do while we wait, then?" asked Cormorant, shuffling back a judicious step.
"We shall feast!" Many cried. "We shall feast on drowned men!" and with that he leapt from the cooking box onto Cormorant, who transformed himself half-heartedly from the lord of the sockeye salmon into a fisherman drowned in a storm; he fell backward, limp, onto the hard dirt floor at Sunshell's feet, and let Many bite his thin arm unresisting. He yelped when ManyÕs teeth sank further than he evidently expected.
"Stop it!" Sunshell kicked at them hard. "Why do you do it? It's cruel!"
Many sprang to his feet, his eyes hard, bright and angry. "Well, the Bright Ones haven't come yet, have they?"
"That doesn't give you the right to mock them!"
"IÕm not mocking them!" Many said. "We're all starving, aren't we?"
"Nobody knows why they're staying away! Nobody!"
"I'm a salmon! I can play at being a salmon if I want!"
"The Bright Ones aren't cruel!" Sunshell said, and she struck at her twin. Many lunged at her, teeth bared, but she danced backward and landed another punch. Cormorant sat up and watched the argument with his sad and nervous eyes.
"Children!" Aureole snapped from the other side of the fire.
Sunshell subsided, fixing her gaze angrily on the blackened beams that framed the hall's half-closed smoke vent. Many climbed atop the wooden box again. He should have known what was wrong with his game. Before this last year, she and Many had always known each other's thoughts, had always understood everything the same way. They were twins, and all twins were salmon, immortal Bright Ones who had schooled for a time into a human womb. Sunshell and Many shared the same flesh, the same birth, the same powers. They had swum here together from the Land of Wealth beyond the ocean. So everyone said.
They had always done everything together. But last summer, in the month of blackberries, the world had begun to change. The sockeye salmon had mysteriously disappeared from the river. Then the winter storms had started months early, rain, and gales, and terrible seas, and the southside king's son and his steersman disappeared on an unseasonable seal hunt. None of that, at first, had driven a wedge between her and Many. They both had expected that the kings of Deepriver Town, or their wizards, would discover the source of the Bright OnesÕ anger, that something magical and heroic would happen, and the salmon would return.
Instead everything only got worse. Swallow died, struck by a falling tree limb as she and Fool returned from Round Bay Town. Cormorant had already been motherless, and now he lost the sister who had taken his motherÕs place. They had all loved Swallow, Many and Sunshell nearly as much as Cormorant, and her funeral had been grim and wet and horrible. Sunshell had barely been able to speak for days. At first, she blamed Fool. He had always claimed he could call or calm the winds. He should have been able to slow the gale, stop the tree branch, heal the blow. But over time, as the ocean grew too rough for even the most intrepid fishermen and sea hunters, and the king salmon did not come to the river, and then the silver salmon, and then the humpbacks and the dog salmon, Sunshell realized she had made a mistake. No one could discover why the Bright Ones did not come, not the kings with their hereditary powers, nor the wizards aided by dreams and spirit messengers. The inexplicable divine anger aimed now against the Mountain Land had sapped everyone's strength. It wasn't FoolÕs fault he had lost his power; but she still hated him for pretending it wasn't gone.
Soon all the shores around Deepriver Town had been scoured clean of shellfish and seaweed, and the forest hunted empty of game for many days' walk in all directions, and the people began to eat old food, last year's leftovers. Then Mother fell ill, and Fool could not cure her. He had put on a grand show, singing and drumming all night, all to no effect. That was when Sunshell first realized how far apart she and Many had grown. "I donÕt want him to do it," she had said. Not that her opinion, or Many's, mattered. They might be twins, but no one treated them differently because of it.
"He'll make Mother better," Many argued.
"He can't! None of them have power any more!"
Many hit her, nearly weeping. "They have power! They're going to stop the storms! He's going to cure Mother!"
Fool hadn't cured Mother, but Sunshell couldn't bring herself to say told-you-so. Something painful rooted deeper and deeper inside her as the year wore on. She had heard what the aunts were saying among themselves, the thing that Cormorant had just now repeated so callously: the children and the sick and the old ones would die first. First the weak, like Mother, then the strong, like Fool: eventually all would grow so hungry and thin they would just lie down and die. No one mentioned whose fault it would be. She knew it in her heart, though. She and Many were twins, Bright Ones. They weren't mortal. Their powers should transcend the human ones of kings and wizards. They should be able to save the people, to stop the storms and call their kin. The endless winter and looming starvation weren't the kings' fault. They were hers and ManyÕs.
"When will we go to the Mountain Land, sire?"
Sunshell looked down at her hands, rage blazing in her. Why wouldn't they stop!
"Please, sire," said Cormorant, softly, hesitantly. "Let us know. We are used to donning our salmon masks and swimming to the Mountain Land; it is our way."
Many did not answer for a long moment. Sunshell raised her head, hating him as she had never done in her life.
Then he scowled. "We will go when the humans return the strangled children to the water!"
Cormorant stared up at Many, perhaps as appalled as Sunshell at ManyÕs newest and grisliest addition to their make-believe. "Strangled?" he said hoarsely. "Children?"
"Yes," Many said. "We will go when they return the strangled children to the water."
Sunshell jumped to her feet. "Stop it, stop it!" And she leapt on Many and began punching him with all her strength. He yelled and hit back.
Then a firm hand gripped her shoulders and hauled her to her feet. Sunshell twisted and lashed out. "ThatÕs enough!" said Aunt Aureole, smacking her on the cheek and sitting her down forcibly on the wooden platform so hard her teeth clattered. Many scrambled to his feet and glared at Sunshell. Cormorant stayed squatting by the cooking box, forlornly glancing at first one, then the other of the twins. Singing to herself, Aunt Brighthead put down her half-finished rain hat and went to throw another damp log on the fire.