if Terez hadn’t been there, Ulaume and Flick might have been lost forever. Who could tell?
Terez had made it clear that he did not want to be Mima’s kin. Despite this, he came to find them sometimes, perhaps twice a year. None of them knew why he did, because Mima found it too painful to be near him and his presence was always accompanied by a sour unpleasant atmosphere. He didn’t care for any of them, not really, but still he kept in touch. He could sniff them out wherever they were. He had not found Dorado, and Pell’s ghost had remained silent. Lileem quietly respected Terez for not making up stories about Pell speaking to him. He could easily have done so, and she suspected that if he had Ulaume would have believed him, too. Terez was a loner. He had not joined the Uigenna, perhaps because the har he had longed for among them had disappeared. He might be dour, aloof and without finer feelings, but he was honest. That counted for something. Of all of them, Lileem had the most time for Terez. She had forgiven him for calling the Uigenna to Casa Ricardo. There was something about him she couldn’t help but like. Over the years, his personality had gradually revealed itself. He had a sharp sense of humour and didn’t hold grudges. He accepted that he wasn’t truly liked by Mima and the others, and didn’t appear resentful of it. He told fascinating stories about his travels, and all the different tribes he’d met, and when he visited ‘Esmeraldarine’, liked to sit up all night drinking and talking. The others said they only tolerated his visits because they got to hear the stories, but Lileem noticed that not even Mima went to bed early when Terez was there, even if she did sit away from the rest of them, showing them all how good she was at being moody. Terez had many fine qualities, Lileem thought, and often she wished he were still with them all the time. He’d had a bad start, that was all. These opinions she kept wisely to herself.
They had run from the sierras and cordilleras of the south, into much greener territory. Now, they travelled up and down the great river hara called the Cloudy Serpent, trading what goods they could produce of wood and clay and leather. Majestic mountains soared around them, wreathed in mist. Life was movement and the undulating coils of the serpent ever beneath them. Lileem was not afraid of hara finding out she was different, because she no longer felt she was. When they had to meet others, she kept her secret to herself and became ‘he’ again. On the outside, she looked no different to a Wraeththu har. She had grown into a lithe and sinewy creature, a harish adolescent, who was only eight years old but appeared like a human would have done in their mid teens. Mima too had camouflaged herself more than adequately. She wore her hair in braids and smoked a long pipe, and when she sat on top of the boat at sunset to smoke, she sprawled with her limbs splayed out in a manner that Flick said was utterly unfeminine, but Lileem didn’t really know what that was. Although both Lileem and Mima possessed the vestiges of feminine breasts, these were not prominent enough to warrant extra disguise. A loose shirt was enough to conceal them. Ulaume also said he’d met true hara who had possessed similar attributes but who had otherwise been Wraeththu in every way. Flick said that in the past, a human’s voice had been the biggest giveaway concerning gender, but that harish voices were, like their bodies, not exactly male or female. Mima had this voice, as did Lileem herself. Animal camouflage: a cry through the trees.
One late afternoon in summer, they docked at a small Unneah settlement, where they had made acquaintances. It had taken several years to reach that stage of friendship with the privacy-loving hara of this area. Lileem went with Flick to pay respects to the community leader and he offered them a meal. Soon the sun would begin to set. Usually, Flick made excuses to avoid social situations, but for once he accepted the invitation. Lileem knew then that Flick had finally lost the fear of hara guessing she was unusual. They could risk being sociable.
The Unneah was named Rofalor and he lived with his chesnari Ecropine in a