the foul words men use for women. As she cast off the rope he cried out, howling in rage and grief—"Gavir! Gavir!"
I huddled down with my head in my arms, hiding from him. It was silent then. We were out on the water. It was raining a little. I was too sick and weak and cold to lift my head. I lay huddled against the thwart. The visions came around me, swarming, faces, voices, places, cities, hills, roads, skies, and I began again to journey on and journey on.
***
FOR GEGEMER TO COME to Dorod's house and stand at his very threshold had been an act of transgression barely justified by the urgency of her message to me. She could not bring me into the women's village of East Lake; she could not enter the men's village herself. She took me to an unused marriage hut between the villages, made the bed up for me, and left me there, coming to look after me a couple of times a day—a common enough arrangement when a man fell ill and a wife or sister wanted to nurse or visit him.
So I lay in the tiny, flimsy hut, the wind flapping the reedcloth walls, the rain beating on them and dripping between the reed bundles of the roof. I shivered and raved or lay in stupor. I don't know how long I had stayed with Dorod, or how long my recovery took, but it was summer when I went with him, and when I began to come to myself, be myself again, it was early spring. I was so thin and wasted my arms looked like reed stems. When I tried to walk I panted and got dizzy. It took me a long time to get my appetite back.
My aunt told me something about the drugs Dorod had given me. She spoke of them with hatred, with spite. "I took eda," she said. "I was determined to know where your mother went. I listened to what the seer-men told me, the wise men in the Big House, may they choke on their words, may they eat mud and drown in quicksand. Take eda, they said, and your mind will be free, you will fly where you will! The mind flies, yes, but the belly pays, and the mind too. Fool that I was, I never saw your mother, but I was sick for a month, two months, from a single mouthful. How much did he give you, how often? And bile root, shardissu—that makes you dizzy and your heart beats too hard, and your breath comes short—I never took it, but I know it. I know what men do to each other and call it sacred medicine!" She hissed like a cat. "Fools," she said. "Men. Women. All of us."
I was sitting in the doorway of the hut and she nearby on a wicker seat she'd brought with her; the women made such light, folding seats of cane and carried them to sit in, anywhere outdoors. The ground was still wet from recent rain, but the sky was pale radiant blue, and there was a new warmth to the sun.
My aunt and I were at ease with each other. I knew she had saved my life, and so did she. I think that knowledge softened her self-reproach for having let my mother go to her death. Gegemer was harsh, hard, with a bitter temper, but her care of me in my illness had been patient, even tender. Often she and I didn't understand each other, but it didn't matter; there was an understanding beneath words, a likeness of mind beneath all differences. One thing we both knew without ever saying: that when I was well enough, I would leave the Marshes.
I was in no hurry, but she was. She had seen me going north with death pursuing me. I must go. I must cross the second river to be safe. I must go as soon as I could. She said that to me at last.
"No matter when I go," I said, "death will pursue me."
"Eng, eng, eng," she said, shaking her head fiercely, frowning. "If you put off going too long, death will be waiting for you!"
"Then I'll stay here," I said, half joking. "Why should I leave my kin and clan and go running after death? I like my people here. I like to fish..."
I was teasing her, of course, and she knew it and didn't really mind, but she had seen