Текст книги "A Woman of the Iron People"

Автор книги: Eleanor Arnason

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

“Okay,” I said.

He was right. The current was strong. I felt the water tug and pull every time my paddle went in. The boat accelerated. Ulzai stood in front of me, having no trouble keeping his balance. His arm was lifted. The spear was poised. He glanced around, paying special attention to the water behind us. That must be the area of real danger.

“Rocks,” said Nia. “Ahead of us.”

“Go to the east,” said Ulzai. “You are too far out.”

I shifted my paddle and drove the blade in, trying to turn the boat. What I needed—really needed—was the kind of boat I had used on Earth. Oh, for aluminum!

The canoe began to turn. I felt relief.

Ulzai exhaled. I glanced up. He was staring over my head. I glanced back. There was something in the water. A dark head. Huge. It had to be twice the size of the animal in the lagoon.

“Umazi,”said the oracle.

“Don’t look back,” said Ulzai. “Keep paddling. And watch for trouble ahead of us. I’ll take care of this.”

I paddled. After a moment he said, “It is no umazi.The shape of the head is wrong. And it isn’t big enough.”

“Aiya!” said the oracle.

The current felt rougher. There was foam on the water ahead of us. Off to the west a dark shape loomed out of the fog. A rock, not an island. We had reached the rapids, and we were still too far out.

“The lizard will stop now,” said Ulzai. “They hate fast water.”

So did I, which gave me one thing in common with the lizard. Not enough to form the basis for a friendship.

Ulzai said, “It must be hungry. Or crazy. It should have stopped.”

“It hasn’t?” I asked.

“It’s getting close.”

“Ratshit,” I said in English.

Ulzai threw the spear.

Something roared, and I glanced around. The animal was behind us. My God, almost in the boat! The enormous body twisted. I saw a pale belly and a dark spiny back. Ulzai’s spear stuck out of the back like yet another spine, long and narrow. The animal opened its mouth. Teeth and more teeth. The animal roared again.

I must have stopped paddling, though I wasn’t aware of having done it. The boat rocked—turning, caught in an eddy, going sideways to the current.

“Fool!” Ulzai cried. “I told you—”

The boat went over. I went into the cold and rushing water. A moment later the river went over a drop.

I tumbled. My mouth filled with water. The river sucked me down. I didn’t fight. Fighting would kill me. The rule was—go with the undertow. In the end it would surface. The rule was for swimming in the ocean.

God, it was hard not to struggle! My lungs hurt, and something was happening to my brain. A sense of pressure. A darkening.

The river went over another drop. I spun around. Aiya! Damn!

The current slowed. I was able to swim. Up. Up. I broke through the surface, spat out the river, and inhaled.

Ah!

I floated. The river carried me. I breathed in and out. My arms hurt and my shoulder and my lungs.

But I was alive. I lifted my head and saw fog. The water around me was gray. It rippled slightly. Ahead of me trees loomed: shadows, barely visible. An island. I was too exhausted to swim any farther. I let the current take me toward the trees.

There was driftwood on the upriver side. A great tangle. Branches and roots extended into the water, reaching out. I was going to pass them. I swam a few strokes, four or five—I couldn’t have managed any more, grabbed hold of a root, and hung on. The current pulled at me. I breathed. In. Out. So. Hum.Gradually my heartbeat slowed. My lungs no longer hurt so badly.

The pain in my arms was getting worse. I was going to lose my grip on the root. I closed my eyes and prayed to Guan Yin, the goddess of mercy, the bodhisattva of compassion. Get me out of this alive.

She, standing on her lotus blossom, smiled and gestured reassuringly.

I pulled myself hand over hand into the tangle of wood and wedged myself there. The branches held me half out of the water. Aiya! I relaxed. My arms fell, and my hands went into the river. I rested for maybe an hour.

The fog burned off. In front of me the river shone blue-green-brown. A bird, a large one, paddled on the water. It dove and surfaced, then dove and surfaced again. I couldn’t see if it caught anything.

At last I pulled myself entirely out of the water. I began to climb through the tangle of roots and branches, heading toward the shore of the island.

Lixia

By the time I reached the shore I was exhausted again. I sat down on a beach of pale gray sand. In front of me was the driftwood: a white and gray wall that hid the river. In back of me I looked around: trees and bushes.

After a while I thought, what about the others?

I had seen Derek doing laps in the big pool on the ship. He was good in the water, almost as good as I was, and I had grown up by the ocean. He might not know as much as I did about rough water, but he’d survived a lot of really nasty situations.

As for the natives—I had no idea if any of them could swim. The river might have gotten them. A terrible idea. I shivered, though the sun was hot and my clothes were almost dry.

I decided to take an inventory. What did I have? A denim shirt. Jeans. Underwear. My boots were gone. One sock remained. I searched my pockets and found a lighter that didn’t work. Maybe water had gotten into it. I’d try it later. A folding knife. A round gray stone with a fossil in it. Some lint.

That was it, except for the AV recorder on its chain around my neck. I touched it. It felt warm. There was a transmitter in there, a small one that broadcast a tracking signal. It didn’t reach far, but the people on the ship already knew approximately where I was. If they decided to search for me, they’d find me. All I had to do was stay alive and hope that they came looking.

In order to find me quickly, they’d have to use machines: power boats or airplanes. I tried to imagine Eddie agreeing to a search like that. It was hardly likely. But he wasn’t the only person on the ship.

I took off my one remaining sock, folded it, and put it in a pocket, then stood and brushed the sand off my clothes. Time to go exploring.

I went around the perimeter of the island, keeping as close to the shore as possible. I found no trails: a good sign. It meant there were no large animals on the island. It also meant I had to push through vegetation. I climbed over logs and under the branches of trees. Vines grew everywhere, forming lianas that were almost tropical. Bugs hummed around me. They did not bite.

A couple of times I came to foliage that was too dense to penetrate. I took to the river, wading through shallow water. Tiny fish darted ahead of me.

When I was halfway around the island, I cut my foot. I wasn’t sure on what: a sharp stone or the shell of a river animal. The cut wasn’t deep, but it did bleed. I kept out of the water after that.

By the time I got back to my starting point, it was late afternoon. Shadows extended across the beach, reaching the tangle of driftwood.

I sat down. What had I learned?

The island was below the rapids. I had gotten a glimpse of them while climbing through the bushes at the north end.

To the west were other islands. The water was quiet there, and the river shore was distant. I wasn’t even sure that I was seeing it. That dim line might be a marsh or still more islands, their edges merging in the late summer haze.

To the east was the main channel of the river. The water looked deep. The current was swift. It had cut into the island, forming a steep bank, almost vertical. Trees grew along the top. Their roots extended into air, reaching for dirt that had vanished, and many leaned out over the water. A few had fallen in. The river rushed past them, tugging at yellow leaves.

The channel was not especially wide. I could swim to the mainland. But not today. I was tired, and the cut on my foot had not stopped bleeding. I didn’t want to meet another lizard. A good night’s sleep and I’d be able to get across the river. Maybe I’d find people. Nia. Derek. The oracle. Ulzai.

O Bodhisattva, Compassionate One, save those people.

I went to the edge of the river, scooped up water, and drank. It tasted funny, but it wasn’t likely to kill me, and I had already swallowed plenty of it. I drank some more, then went to the edge of the wood and sat down, leaning against a tree.

Bugs woke me. They hummed in my ears and crawled on my face. A couple bit me. I brushed them away. It did no good. They came back and bit me again. I got up and walked along the beach. The sky was ablaze with stars. I could see the Milky Way clearly: a wide, glowing ribbon of light. A meteor fell to the east of me. A lovely night!

Except for the bugs. They followed me. They were much worse than they’d ever been before. Why? Had I finally found a species that liked the odor of humans? Or had I begun to smell like the natives? I’d been eating their food for more than sixty days.

I reached the edge of the river and looked out. I could wade in. The bugs would not be able to bite me if I were underwater. But lizards were there.

I turned and walked back the way I had come. There had to be something I could do. Cover myself with something. Figure out a way to build a fire.

I remembered a line from a teacher in college: “Always remember, in a society with a pre-industrial technology, everything takes far longer than you think it will. Everything involves a lot more work. And there are almost always a lot of bugs.”

Another meteor fell: a big one to the south. It had a white head and a long reddish tail. I began to notice a funny sensation in the pit of my stomach. Or was it in my groin? An ache. No. More intense than that. A definite pain.

Menstrual cramps! I couldn’t believe it. I had a capsule in my arm that was supposed to release hormones at a set rate for 180 days. I was safe for half a year. No menses. No cramps. No blood. Well, maybe a little spotting. They had warned us about that. The hormone level was set as low as possible.

What had gone wrong? Had the capsule been defective? Maybe it was stress. I’d been through a lot in the past few days. And stress could do a lot to the endocrine system.

I kept walking. The pain got worse, and the bugs kept following and biting.

I knew just what to do. Get a blanket and a container of tea spiked with whiskey. Crawl into bed in my cabin. Turn on the blanket and consume the tea. Listen to music. Go to sleep. Unfortunately—

At dawn the flow began. The cramps eased. The bugs became less active. I sat down. The sun came up, and the last of the bugs departed. I lay back and put an arm over my face.

I dreamt. There was a tower that looked like Inahooli’s tower. It was in Hawaii in my front yard, surrounded by flowering plumeria trees.

I was sitting near the tower in the shadow of a tree, talking to someone, having an argument. At first I had no idea who the person was. Then I realized it was very small, about knee high to me. It kept changing as it talked, shrinking, then expanding, then shrinking again. Its shape changed as well as its size. At times it seemed to be a tiny human. At other times it was a tiny furry person. Strangest of all, at times it seemed to be a bug, standing on six legs and waving a pair of forearms at me. At all times it was brown and shiny, the color of a cockroach. I couldn’t tell what sex it was.

It had a high shrill voice.

“I am the Little Bug Spirit. I come to people when they begin to take themselves too seriously. They think they are big. I cut them down to size.”

This angered me. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t get my thoughts together.

The person went on, “I am the stone under your foot. I am the bug that bites you in the ass. I am the fart that comes when you are introduced to the important visiting professor. I am menstrual cramps and diarrhea.”

I kept getting angrier.

“My tools are lies and tricks, misunderstandings and accidents. Everything stupid and undignified happens because of me. Hola! I am something!”

I reached to grab the person. It scurried away, and I was alone, feeling happy.

A voice said, “That does no good.”

I looked up. The person was above me, sitting on a branch, surrounded by cream-white plumeria flowers. It waved its antennae. Its dark body glinted.

“The oracle will think this happened because of the spirits in the cave. Ulzai will think it happened because of the umazi.Nia will feel guilty and angry, as if she is responsible. And you will think the boat went over for no good reason.

“I tell you, I did it. Hola! I am something, even though I am small!” The person spread wings and flew away, making a whirring noise. It passed the tower and disappeared into the blue-green sky.

I woke. It was midmorning, and I lay in sunlight under a cloudless sky the color of the sky in my dream. I felt confused for a moment. Where was I? Not Hawaii. Nor Minnesota. I sat up and remembered. I was eighteen light-years from home. My skin itched. I looked at my arms. They were covered with lumps.

“Don’t panic,” I told myself after a moment in which I panicked. “Those are bug bites, and the mosquitoes in Minnesota have done a lot worse to you.”

My voice sounded calm. That was a comfort. I stood up. My clothes stuck to me. Sweat, mostly. There was a dark stain in the crotch of my jeans. Sweat and blood.

The first thing to do was take a bath, then wash my clothes and do my yoga.

I walked down the beach till I was past the wall of driftwood. Then I dug a hole in the sand close to the water. It was slow work. I had no tools except my hands and a piece of driftwood.

When the hole was large enough, I dug a channel to the river. Water flowed in. I undressed and knelt in the sandy little pool and washed, using my one remaining sock as a washcloth.

Afterward, I put my clothing in to soak and did yoga, ending by meditating, looking out at the river with half-shut eyes. Light flashed off the green-brown water. O you jewel of the lotus.

I wrung out my clothes and spread them on the sand to dry, sat down and examined my tools. This time the lighter glowed. I tested it on my piece of driftwood. The wood caught fire. That solved two problems. The bugs and how to signal other people.

I put the lighter aside and examined the knife. The blade was ten centimeters long, made of rustproof steel. Sharp. I could use it to cut up food.

I had no intention of trying to cross the river until I’d stopped menstruating, which meant I was stuck on the island for at least four days. What was I going to eat?

I could fast, of course. I had done that before. But I might end up too weak to swim and looking for food was an occupation. I had once read a book by Leona Field, one of the leaders of the Second American Revolution. Leader was the wrong word. Leona was an anarchist; she didn’t believe in leaders. She had spent a lot of her life waiting, in prison and out. Her advice was—plan the next step, be patient, keep busy. I decided to take her advice.

What was available? Fish in the river. The trees were full of birds, and I had seen a little animal about the size of a squirrel. It was furry and arboreal with a long tail that looked prehensile. The animal was common on the island.

I had no way of catching the birds or the furry animals. I might be able to make a fish trap. I had watched Nia.

There were plants. I was a little worried about them. Organisms that couldn’t run often relied on poison as a protection.

I could collect some likely specimens and test them by eating small quantities.

There were bugs. Grubs were a source of protein. I didn’t think they were likely to be poisonous.

What about animals other than fish? Were there things like clams or crayfish? There was a lot about this planet I didn’t know.

Time for more exploring. I used the wet sock to wash off my legs, thinking—as I did so—that I was going to have to find something to use as a menstrual pad. This was awfully damn messy and maybe dangerous: I did not like the idea of leaving a trail of blood. I rinsed the sock and laid it out to dry, put on my underpants and shirt, and walked to the forest.

For the next couple of hours I lifted fallen branches and turned over stones, picked leaves and pulled up roots. It was hot among the trees. After a while I took off my shirt and turned it into a carry bag. Sweat ran down my back and between my breasts. Bugs hummed around me. Only a few bit. I didn’t know why. Maybe there was only one species that thought I was edible, and that species came out at night. Maybe … To hell with it. I wasn’t going to theorize.

I found a bush covered with round purple berries. Birds flew out of it as I approached. The ground was covered with purple-white droppings. That seemed to indicate edibility.

A dead branch turned out to be the home of many yellow grubs. I added them to my bag. They squirmed among the berries.

Another dead branch had no animal life that I could find, but the inner bark was soft and came off easily in long sheets. I ought to be able to fashion an absorbent pad. The bark went in with the grubs and berries.

I spent half an hour watching the arboreal animals. They whistled and chirped and threw things at me. Twigs, mostly. I stayed where I was and stared at them, hoping they’d throw something useful. One finally did. A half-eaten fruit. I picked it up.

Somewhere on the island was a tree that bore fruit that was oval and indigo-blue and edible. I put the fruit into my bag, added a few samples of plant life, and went back to the shore.

My clothes were almost dry. I washed again—myself and the underpants. Then I constructed a pad out of bark. The result was not lovely, and I had no way to attach it to my pants. One of the senior members of my family had told me over and over, “Never go anywherewithout at least two safety pins.”

Here I was, years and light-years from home on a planet in another star system, proving that Perdita had been right.

I put on my jeans and tucked the pad into them. With luck, it would stay in place.

I got out the indigo fruit—the grubs were still lively—and cut away the part that had been chewed by the arboreal animal. I ate the rest. It was mushy and sweet. Not bad, though I preferred fruit that was a little less ripe.

What next? I was getting hungry, but not hungry enough to eat the grubs. I ought to find a use for them. It would be wasteful to let them die. If they weren’t going to be dinner, then they’d have to be bait.

I glanced at the sky. It was still full of light. I ought to have time to make a fish trap. I had seen a plant in the middle of the island that I might be able to use.

I carried my bag full of maggots into the shade, left it there, and went back into the forest.

There was a slight depression in the middle of the island. The ground was boggy, and the chief form of vegetation was something that looked like a reed. Each plant consisted of a single purple stalk a little over two meters tall. At the top of each stalk was a crest made of magenta fibers—like gossamer, they were so fine and light.

I cut a dozen of the stalks. As I sawed, the plants shook, and the magenta fibers broke free.

When I was half done, I noticed that all the plants were losing their fibers—even the ones I had not touched and hadn’t gone near. Some of the fibers drifted down and lay in the mud. Most floated off, twisting and coiling in currents I could not feel. A few landed on me. They were quite ordinary—like thread. I brushed them off and finished cutting. By the time I was done the entire grove was bare.

No way of telling what my recorder had seen, dangling and swaying at the end of its chain. I described what had happened out loud. “My bet is—the fibers are flowers or maybe runners that travel through the air. The plants release them when they are injured. Somehow the plants are connected. An injury to one is an injury to all. If I’m wrong and the fibers are a method of protection—maybe this message will serve as a warning.” I carried my stalks back to the beach.

Now. String. I decided to use my sock. It was made of a really remarkable yarn, a cotton-and-synthetic combination—not as absorbent as cotton, but far more durable. The sock had no holes, even after all the traveling I had done.

I made my trap, stopping now and then to close my eyes and visualize Nia at work, bending and fastening branches. She had deft fingers, the backs covered with brown fur. Dark bare palms. Muscular forearms. Her voice—deep and slow—explained what she was doing.

How I missed those people!

I added a stone for weight, as she had told me, then the grubs. They were getting less lively. I waded into the river. In that area—in front of my beach—it was shallow. There was an inlet protected by the tangle of driftwood. Where the driftwood stopped, the river bottom went down. The water changed from transparent to a dark opaque greenish brown. A drop-off. I set my trap there, next to the drop-off and close to the tangle of driftwood.

I waded back, looking down through the water. There were trails in the sand. I followed one. Where it ended, I dug. Aiya! Something hard! I pulled it out. A gray cone, full of pink tentacles. The tentacles waved in an agitated fashion.

I tossed the creature on the shore and went on hunting. I found half a dozen of the animals. Hermit squid, I called them. The shells ranged in size from five to ten centimeters. The animals looked edible to me. More edible than the grubs or the various plants I had gathered.

The sun was low by now. My beach was in shadow. I gathered driftwood and built a fire. The stars came out. I wrapped a hermit squid in leaves and baked it in the coals. It sizzled but did not scream, for which I was grateful. I was willing to kill animals and eat them. I accepted that addition to my karmic burden. But I didn’t like my victims to be noisy.

I pulled the bundle of leaves out of the fire and unwrapped it. The shell was still gray. The tentacles had turned a lovely cherry-red. I opened my knife and dug the animal out of its shell. The body was cone-shaped and mottled red and orange. I sniffed. It smelled of nothing in particular. I cut it open. There was nothing repulsive inside. No gut full of black gunk. No sack of ink or venom. No bones and no spines.

“Here goes.” I ate the thing. It was rubbery and had a peppery flavor. I liked it.

I thought of cooking another animal, but decided to wait and see if the first one killed me.

A hard decision. My stomach rumbled. I could eat some berries. No. One food at a time. If I got sick, I wanted to be able to tell what to avoid in the future.

Bugs appeared out of the darkness. I put more wood on the fire and shifted position. I was in the smoke now. The bugs left me alone.

After an hour or so I looked at the rest of the animals. Their tentacles waved feebly. They were dying. If they were like shellfish on Earth, they would go bad fast. And I was getting really hungry. I decided to take the risk. I wrapped them up and stuck them in the coals. They sizzled.

How could I ask the bodhisattva for compassion when I felt nothing for these little beings except an ineffectual guilt? And what in hell was wrong with me? Was I reverting? I was a modern person, a native of Hawaii. I knew nothing about the religious beliefs of the ancient Chinese, except what I had read in books or heard when I did a study of the Chinese community in Melbourne. So why was I praying to the bodhisattva? And why did I care what happened to these wretched little animals? I added more wood to the fire.

I ate the rest of the hermit squid, then told the recorder what I had done and went to sleep. I woke in the morning, feeling perfectly okay.

Another bright day. I paid a visit to a log in the wood and—as I did so—thought longingly of the bathrooms on the ship. Washed at the edge of the river. Ate berries. Got bark and made a new menstrual pad. I put the damn thing on and buried the previous one. Then I waded out to my fish trap. I pulled it up.

I had something. It was not a fish.

It sat hunched in the middle of the trap, legs folded up. There were—I counted—ten legs. Each was long and narrow, folded three times. The body was round and hard, striped and spotted brown and tan. There was a head at one end. The head consisted of mandibles and eyes. The mandibles clicked. The eyes glared up at me. I counted. The animal had six eyes, four large and two small. All were faceted. What I had was a large spider in a hard shell. A spider with too many legs.

Click. Click.

I had wanted a tasty little fish.

“Okay,” I said. “Are you edible? How do I cook you?”

Click.

It might be delicious, as good as the hermit squid. The folded legs moved slightly. The eyes glared. I was—of course—reading expression into the eyes, which looked like black beads and did not, in reality, express anything. The mandibles clicked. I opened the trap and shook.

The animal fell into the water and was gone. I carried the trap back to shore and set it down. Then I returned to the inlet. I waded around, looking for trails in the sand, and found three hermit squid. They were breakfast.

After I was done I went exploring in the wood. I found more grubs and a plant that looked familiar. It had frilly blue leaves and a fat root. I was pretty sure that Nia had gathered plants like this. The root was baked, as I remembered. It was starchy and tasteless but filling. I pulled up nine or ten.

The arboreal animals made noises above me. They threw more twigs. I waited, hoping for another piece of fruit. No such luck. I gave up finally and went back to the shore, rebaited my trap and gathered driftwood. I was starting to feel a little bored. I was going to be stuck on the island for another three or four days. I wasn’t going to starve and I didn’t need a shelter. What was I going to do?

I scratched myself absently. I could look for a natural bug repellent. I could practice my calligraphy in the sand. I could sleep a lot. I could negotiate with the spirits: Guan Yin and the Mother of Mothers or the odd little spirit who had appeared in my dream.

Ask them for what? To save me and my friends.

I could think about what I was going to do after I crossed the river. There was forest over there. Tanajin had mentioned an animal called the killer of the forest. It did not sound like anything I wanted to meet. What about the lizards? They were migratory. They did not like fast water. Maybe they went overland when they came to the rapids. I imagined them, huge and dark and dangerous, moving through the shadows of the forest.

How fast were they on land? Could I outrun them?

I could build a signal fire. If my friends were alive, they’d see it.

I decided to build the fire. Not today. The sun was well into the west. By the time I had enough wood gathered, it’d be night. That would be tomorrow’s project.

I checked the trap again. It was empty. I looked for hermit squid. I found none. Dinner would have to be the roots. I washed them in the river and baked them in my fire.

The sun went down. I ate the roots. They tasted like nothing in particular. I described them—and the creature I had found in the trap—to my recorder. Then I went to sleep.

I woke with indigestion. The fire was a heap of coals. Stars filled the sky. And I had a really terrible case of gas.

Those damn roots! I must have been wrong. They weren’t the kind that Nia had found. I rebuilt the fire and sat next to it, waiting for the pain to go away or worsen.

If I got out alive, I was going to name this place. If I had to, I would stand over the members of the cartography team as they input the information. Most likely I would call it Little Bug Island, though I also liked the Island of Petty Aggravations. That had a ring. I imagined people in the future looking at the name and saying, “There has to be a story here. What were the aggravations? And who was the person who was aggravated?”

The pain stopped finally. I went back to sleep.

The next morning was sunny with a bit of haze, cool at the moment. I waded out to my trap.

Ah! I had a fish. It was large and orange with a dark blue dorsal fin. There were long, narrow, pale blue tendrils around its mouth. They moved slowly, feeling the air or maybe tasting it.

“You’re ugly,” I said.

The fish opened its mouth and croaked.

“The same to me, eh?”

The fish croaked again.

I wasn’t especially hungry, not after a night of indigestion. The fish would keep. I lowered the trap into the water and waded to shore.

I spent the morning gathering driftwood. By noon I was covered with sweat and a little queasy from the heat. The sky was full of high clouds, barely visible through the haze. The trees along my beach were motionless. There was going to be a storm, but not for a while. I lit the signal fire.

It caught slowly. I added dry leaves and pieces of bark. The flames licked around the twisted white branches. Smoke rose. The heat was intense. I moved back and looked around. The sky was empty except for the clouds and the haze.

No one else was signaling.

Be patient, I told myself. I added more wood.

I kept the fire going most of the afternoon. More clouds moved in. A wind began to blow. My trail of smoke went sideways rather than up. I went and got my fish and killed it, cleaned it, and baked it in the coals at the edge of the fire.

There were whitecaps on the river now. Thunder rumbled to the west of me. I ate the fish. It had a muddy flavor. I should have kept it alive for three days in clean running water or else smoked it. That’s what you did with carp. I licked my fingers. The first drops of rain came down, hissing in my fire. I moved into the shelter of the trees.

Lightning flashed. Thunder made loud noises. Rain fell in sheets that swept over the river, billowing in front of the wind. I huddled under a bush, and water dripped through the foliage above me, forming pools on the ground.

The storm moved east finally. The rain stopped. I crawled out from under my bush, took off my clothes, and wrung them out, then went to look at my fire. It was soaked. There was no way to relight it. Tomorrow maybe.

But everything was still wet then, and I spent the day foraging. The hermit squid had vanished. I found new grubs and the tree with indigo fruit. The tree had a straight trunk, and the fruit was high up. This was no problem. The branches were full of animals. I stood and waited. The animals became uneasy. They chirped and whistled.