Someone made a sound at the bend of the tunnel. Spinel yelled so hard he could not hear his own words. Whoever it was, she retreated. Spinel waited on in numb quiet. Time seemed to hold still.
A flashlight switched on: a Valan flashlight, whose cold white beam brought a sense of normality. Lady Nisi held the light, as she stood there, clothed as before, normal except for her own purple skin. She shook her head sadly. “You didn't know, did you. Merwen should have told you, given you time. Even she is no perfect learnsharer.
“Listen,” Lady Nisi went on. “There's nothing to fear. Breathmicrobes just breathe from the water, and store more oxygen than they need. It won't hurt you. You didn't even notice, did you?”
She crouched close to him and set the flashlight down. “Do you
know how Flossa stays under so long? You will, tooânot quite so long, you lack the extra pores in your skin, but ten minutes, perhaps, between breaths. You'll feel like a fish.”
A
fish?
Spinel dug his back into the raftwood until he ached. “No,” he croaked; his tongue was swollen. I won't ⦠turn intoâ”
“You won't change at all. Sharers took generations to evolve that way. Look at me: my fingers are free, my feet are small, my hair grows until I shave it. I'm no fish.”
“But now you're all
purple,
like them.”
“I get rid of it, when I wish. You saw me white, in Iridis.”
Hope leaped in his heart. “How did you get rid of it?”
“Spinel, listen to me.” Her hands twisted nervously. “I spent my childhood here. I played water games with Sharer children, I ate seaweed and âpudding,' I learned to understand ⦠at least, to know sisters like Merwen. Then my parents took me back to Iridis, to find a noble husband and enjoy our wealth. We never had to leave Upper Level again, never needed what servos could not bring, never had to touch the sea ⦠do you understand?
“The day came, though, when I did need something I couldn't find there. I came back to Shora, and this time I wanted to be a Sharer as much as I could. So I stopped taking medicine and let the purple bloom.”
“Medicine? What medicine?”
“I thought I would die, at first, Iâ” She choked on her words. “I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror.”
Spinel said, “I just want to be
normal.
You've got the medicine, I know,” he added breathlessly.
“But it passed,” she went on. “Now I find peace here, and a purpose I never expectedâ”
“The me-di-cine, my lady!”
“Child, don't you see what a privilege you have? On Valedon, you are nothing; you're dirt in the street. Here, you're as good as anyone, as important as a Protector.”
“No-oo,” he wailed. “Give me the medicine!”
Her talar whished as she rose. Her nose and cheekbones were set in crystal, just as on that day in Iridis. Her hand jerked at him, and pills clinked on the raftwood. “There, craven commoner.” In an instant she was gone.
Spinel lunged across the uneven floor and groped for the pills, which
hid among shadows in the flashlight's beam. He caught one and fumblingly slipped it in his mouth. It choked up again, hard as a marble in his swollen throat. Spinel closed his eyes and tried to relax. He was alone, so alone ⦠.
A simple question came, then: What next? He closed his eyes tighter, but the question remained. What would he do next, Spinel the stonecutter's son? Must he go back to Chrysoport a failure? His mother would smother him in her arms and say, “There, now, my child, it's a troll's luck you've had.”
His eyes opened, and the flashlight mocked him. He saw himself, a beggar grasping for a handout from a noble Iridian who sneered at his helplessness while condescending to help him. For a minute he hated her so much, he could have torn off her highborn clothes and beat her to a pulp. He pounded the floor with his fists until they ached.
The release of anger calmed him. Lady Nisi had brought truth, however much it stung. On the “Stone Moon,” his life meant nothing, except to a desperate family who had tearfully sent him packing, lest they lose the stoneshop. Here, though, he could prove himself as good as anyone, even Merwen. But could he pay the price to share this ocean world?
When Spinel emerged, dusk had fallen, deep as if a webbed hand cupped the sky. He came slowly, almost sleepwalking. Something itched on his palms, and he forced himself to look at them. There were brown crusts where his nails had scratched his own skin.
Many sisters were waiting. Only Merwen dared approach him, and she did not speak.
Spinel looked at her. “Share the dusk, Merwen.” The low voice did not sound like his own.
“And all the days after.” Her eyes pleaded with him. “Did you choose? Are you one of us, now?”
Spinel raised a blood-streaked hand. “What else will I have to share?”
She let out a long sigh. “Now you know why I am called Impatient.” She fit her hand to his, and the thin scallops spanned briefly between their fingers. “Nonetheless,” she said, “I will die to keep you from such pain again.”
FOR SEVERAL DAYS Spinel kept to himself. As his color deepened, palms to amethyst and legs to coal, he found he could dive ever deeper beneath the raft branches. It was nothing for him to reach the airbell, now. A sense of power thrilled him and partly filled the well of strangeness.
Now he had time to absorb the silent drama that pulsed below the waves. Hungry eels hid in wait beneath raft seedlings, which now dotted the sea like copper medals. A fanwing's egg stretched and strained until the tadpole burst out and flittered away, to swim and grow until it sprouted wings. At the coral forest, a beakfish crunched the hard stalks with enormous jaws that never tired. After some minutes of this calciferous grazing, a puff of sand would spout from its tail. Spinel wondered how long a beach a beakfish could fill, were the sand not destined to fall several kilometers below.
Spinel was now more than simply curious about Shora. Something compelled him to come to grips with this place that was inexorably becoming a part of him. At times, he still wondered about his family, and whether his mother had sent him a letter, which he could not pick up from the trading post. He wondered more about that trade boycott, and just what all the fuss was for.
Even Flossa and Wellen chattered about the boycott as they mended their fishing nets, and the evening schooltime was full of it. Lystra and others had been dumped in the sea, for sitting like coral stalks upon the shop steps to prevent trade. After the dumping, of course, the last Gatherings holding out for trade gave way, and the boycott was total.
Merwen, however, was disappointed because the traders refused to speak with any Sharer who would not trade. “In effect, we are Unspoken,” she said. “This door will be hard to unstick.”
For the first time, Spinel seriously considered these questions for himself. He descended to the chambers of lifeshaping to ask Usha, “Why does Lystra fear stone? Is she allergic or something?”
“Nonsense.” Usha was fondling Weia with one hand while snaking vines into a plant gall with the other, a procedure intently scrutinized
by Mirri, the apprentice lifeshaper. “People fear stone,” Usha said, “because it contains never-life.”
“Non-life? You mean, death?”
“Nonsense,” she repeated vehemently. “What's to fear about death? Death is natural. Stone is
never
-life.”
Spinel took another tack. “If they fear it, then how come enough Sharers want it so the traders stock shelves full?”
“How should I know? Why do Valans drink the toxic waste product of sugar-eating yeast?” Usha picked up Weia, who was whining for attention, and started to murmur in Sharer tongue with Mirri about the vines and the plant gall.
Much annoyed, Spinel stomped back up the tunnel.
At sleep time, he caught Lady Nisi before a mirror tacked onto a rib of the wall-ceiling. Nisi was shaving herself all over with an electric razor. Spinel watched thoughtfully, then stole a glimpse of himself: over a month's growth of matted hair and beard. He looked again at the shaver. “Can I borrow that?”
“Very well. I'll help, if youâ”
But he did it himself. The bladeless Iridian firetoy amused him as it cleanly swept his locks to oblivion. Fingertips of air brushed his head and his armpits; it gave him
gooseflesh
. “Now I look worse than a plucked chicken,” he ruefully told the mirror. “That, or a dyed egg.” As he watched the black face and indigo scalp that were his own, fear welled up in him, a sense of falling into a frenzied unknown. This time, he submerged the fear.
“Well, don't let it go a month, next time.” Lady Nisi cocked her head and looked him over, as she might a statuette for sale.
“How many
solidi?”
She laughed and clicked the razor into its case.
“Lady Nisi, what does Lystra fear about stone?”
“Why not ask her?”
“She'd throw me to the fleshborers if I did.”
Nisi's lip curved downward. “You should know Sharers better than that.”
“But you know them even better. Can't you say why?”
She gazed pointedly at his palms. “Few fears are rational.”
“I'm no commoner, anymore.”
Startled, she glanced away. “No, I suppose not.” She paused
thoughtfully. “Sharers ⦠envision a life force, a sort of living ether, that pervades every atom of their universe. Each drop of water, each breath of air, holds a thousand bits of life in it, growing and struggling.”
“Ugh.” His flesh crawled.
Nisi laughed. “Why, even without breathmicrobes, the bacteria in your gut outnumber your own body cells. And you'd be very sick without them, even on Valedon.
“On Shora,” she went on, “life builds everything, from raft to coral. Whereas Valedon's ocean breaks upon crustal rock, a thing never shaped by lifeâ”
“There's coral on Valedon, too.”
“But the granite that makes up the foundation; this was born of fire, not water. In Sharer experience, only the dead ever reach that foundation.”
Spinel was not satisfied. “Seashells are as dead as granite. Do Sharers fear death that much?”
“What you know as death is the least of their fears. That death is but a passage, a Last Door, between one being and the next. Only a kind of death that is, without beginning or end, can really scare a Sharer.”
Â
The next morning, Wellen threw a tantrum because Spinel had lost his hair, and if he kept on changing, her friends on the next raft would not believe a genuine Valan creature was living on Raia-el anymore. Spinel ignored her, tired of children's games, and from then on the younger girls ignored him.
He looked out to sea, where the raft seedlings were growing at such a rate that they would clog the surface before long. The morning breeze gave him a slight chill. Sharers whispered that the raft system had gone farther north than it should, because the current was strong and because starworms on several rafts had been torn loose in the storm. More starworms must be installed, but that would take time, and mooring cables were in short supply. If the boycott did not end soon, a shockwraith would have to be caught. Already scouts were exploring the raft underside, where those dreaded beasts dwelled.
“Share the morning, Spinel,” said Lystra abruptly. “Will you share a boat ride with me?”
It was the first time she had addressed him in Sharer tongue. Spinel stood a little taller. “A boat to where?”
“To see a friend.”
“Someone I know?”
“Rilwen.”
Spinel blinked. “Not ⦠is she no longer Unspoken?” It could be, he thought. Just recently a sister on Umesh-el raft had returned from a year Unspoken for
death-hastening;
that is, causing a fatal accident. They said she had spoken to someone in whitetrance, though how that could hasten death Spinel had no idea.
At any rate, from Lystra's expression he guessed that Rilwen had not returned.
“Once in a while,” Lystra said, “one must check to see that she is well, physically, and wants for nothing. And just perhapsâ” Lystra stopped short and turned her head.
She had packed food and blankets into the boat. She rowed out just past the branch channels, slowly, giving Spinel a chance to push aside the raft seedlings. They came to a miniature raft, an offshoot of a trunk that dipped from the main raft and reemerged. It was mostly open branches, with barely an acre matted solid in the center.
Lystra got out, swung the bundles over her shoulder, and walked ahead as if unconscious of Spinel. There was one small shelter of seasilk, half a dozen panels, with frayed strands that stirred in the keening breeze. Beside the shelter lay a heap of pebbles. Spinel peered at them curiously. Gemstones glittered at random: blood-red garnets next to creamy opals, agates, turquoise, and starstones, a veritable troll's hoard. The oddness of it set his scalp tingling.
Meanwhile, Lystra had located Rilwen, the emaciated form whose appearance in Kyril's shop had unleashed Lystra's fury. Rilwen sat crosslegged beside the shelter, her back slumped, facing out to sea. Her pelvic bones stood out like the rim of a bowl.
“Don't you ever eat?” Lystra was saying.
That surprised Spinel. The Gathering would be angry with Lystra, if they knew; they might Unspeak Lystra, too. Rilwen's reply escaped him on the wind. He inched nearer.
“What do you mean, âno time'?” Lystra demanded. “What else have you got, if not time? You need to eat fish, not time. Eat time, and time eats you.”
Rilwen caught sight of Spinel, and her sunken face swung around.
“A friend of Merwen's,” said Lystra. “Remember, at the trader?”
She pulled back, her bones flowing into the raft. “Are sisters becoming worm-fingered malefreaks? What illness is this?”
“Spinel is Valan-born. Even his seaname is a âstone.'” Lystra used the Valan word.
“How can that be?” Rilwen wondered. “Shora would never share a dead name ⦠.” She swallowed with difficulty. “If I could be a child againâ”
“You
are
a child again,” Lystra said grimly. “You have been for two years and more. When will it end?”
Rilwen seemed not to hear.
“Then tell Spinel why you stay here, Unspoken. Spinel is a shaper of stone.”
Her eyes widened at him. Uneasily Spinel stepped back a pace, thinking that the Gathering could Unspeak him, too. But Rilwen lunged at the mound of pebbles and scooped up a palmful, which she held in his face. “Then you ⦠explain ⦠which cups nothingness into a shape one can touch and feel.”
Spinel flinched at this demand, of which he had missed half the words. “Well,” he muttered, “it's just, you know, the stuff a planet's made of.”
“Not lifestuff. No living thing made these.”
“Well, people can make some kinds, out of fire andâ” He lacked the Sharer words. “Anyhow, people cut stones, polish them, and even add colors.”
“But do you
shape
stone from your own flesh, as you grow bone, as the snail grows its shell?”
“A lot of sweat goes into it, I'll say that.”
Rilwen considered this. “If I could just see that ⦠it might make a difference. Traders never shape stone. They call it ⦠that prisons nothingness.”
Spinel knew he had missed something.
“Magic,” Lystra translated. “Magic shells of emptiness. That is what Kyril calls stone.”
Blood rushed to his face. “It is not magic. It's hard workâour hard work.”Where do you think traders get their gemstones? I should know.” Crystal structures, cleavage planes, and all his father's teachings
whirled in his mind, trapped in words he could not translate.
Rilwen held up a starstone. “A star from the sky, trapped inside. That is what they say.”
“Some of us know better,” said Lystra.
“You don't.”
Lystra shuddered all over. “I should not be here.
Eat
something, will you? I'll wait for you, always.”
“Always I go back to the Valan raft,” Rilwen went on, “always hoping that the next stone I find will reveal the mystery. And when I do find out, Lystra, I will share it with you.”
Lystra tore herself away, and Spinel hurried after her.
As they rowed back to the raft core, Spinel's eyebrows knotted and he jabbed angrily at the raft seedlings that lay ahead. What right did any merchant have to deny Spinel's craft, that which earned his father bread? Nisi was a trader; he would get the truth from her. How in Torr's name had she dared return to Shora, knowing what her own House had done?
“By all the Nine Legions,” he exclaimed in Valan, “you should call on the Patriarch for justice.”
“Whose fault is obsession?” Lystra asked. “What would your âPatriarch' say? Should we not share our own cure, first?”
“Sickness is bad,” he agreed, “but to feed on someone else's sickness is worse.”
“That's why we stopped sharing with traders. We must not feed on their sickness.”
Spinel thought this over. The boat swayed as a broad raft seedling bumped up against it, unheeded. “Do you still sit on the traders' steps?”
“Always. At each shop, a few of us witness. My shift is this afternoon.
“Then I'll go with you.” Immediately he felt better, knowing he could do something, however small. What would old Uriel the Spirit Caller say, if he knew the use of starstones on Shora?
Â
When Spinel and Lystra arrived at the traders' raft, there were five sisters sitting on the doorstep of Kyril's shop. Trurl and Yinevra he knew, and Elonwy the Fearful, a wormrunner whose belly was full and stretchmarked with child. The others Lystra named from Kiri-el and
from another neighboring raft. Yinevra got up to let Lystra take her place. Yinevra's needle eyes stared at Spinel, but she left without a word.