Both Olikea and Likari seemed renewed by the mushrooms as well, and for a time we travelled more swiftly.
Occasionally, I heard splashes from the stream, as if small startled frogs or fishes were taking alarm at our light. The sheen on the rocky wall on that side of the cave showed more water sliding down to feed the stream. It flowed merrily beside us, and this, more than any sensation of descending, told me that our trail was leading us downward.
When Soldier’s Boy finally decided to stop, the others were footsore, cold and weary. Olikea seemed grateful that he had chosen a regular stopping site. Here the cavern widened out substantially and there was a large blackened fire circle. Olikea was able to salvage quite a bit of partially burned wood. While she kindled it, Likari went off to investigate an odd structure built into the stream. He came back with three pale fish. ‘There wasn’t much in the trap. These ones were barely big enough to get caught in it.’
‘Usually, it teems with fish and there is plenty and to spare.’ Olikea shot Soldier’s Boy a meaningful glance.
‘We are the last, most likely, to make the passage this year. When we come in the wake of so many people, it is not surprising that others have harvested and hunted before us. Three fish are enough for us, for tonight.’
‘Enough?’ she asked him, shocked.
‘None of us will starve,’ he clarified.
‘But you will not look like a Great One when we arrive.’
‘That is my concern, not yours,’ he rebuked her.
‘It is not my concern if others mock me that I have tended my Great One so poorly that he looks like a rack of bones? Not my concern if we reach the Wintering Place and you have not even enough magic to kindle a fire for yourself? I shall be completely humiliated, and you will be mocked and disregarded. This does not concern you?’
‘Other things concern me more,’ he told her. Then he turned away from her in a way that suggested the conversation was over. Muttering, she went about the task of preparing the fish for cooking. Likari wandered at the edges of the firelight, exploring the abandoned trash. He came back to his mother’s fire with a tattered piece of fabric. ‘Can we make shoes from this?’ he asked her, and they were soon both involved in that task.
Soldier’s Boy walked away from them. His personal light went with him. He walked towards the wall of the cavern. There the ceiling dropped low, but he ducked down and walked hunched for a time. The dim circle of light around us showed me little more than the stony floor in front of his feet. His back began to ache and I wondered where he was going and why. When the ceiling of the cavern retreated, he straightened up and stood tall again. He closed his eyes, then breathed out hard and suddenly light burst into being all around me. It was no longer his personal light that shone. We were in a different chamber, separate from the long rift we had been following. The cavern we were in was as large as a ballroom, and everywhere I looked, the walls sparked with crystals. Somehow Soldier’s Boy had woken light from them, and it illuminated the cave.
The crystals glittered brightly as he drew closer to them. They were wet and gleaming and appeared to be growing from the walls of the cavern. Some were quite large, their facets easy to see and other were tiny, little more than a sparkle against the cavern’s dark wall. Soldier’s Boy seemed to consider them for a long time; then he chose a protruding crystal structure and broke it from the wall. I was surprised at how easily it came away, and also at how sharp it was. Blood stung and dripped from his fingers as he carried it away from the wall and back to the centre of this cavern.
There was a pool there, as dark as the crystals were brilliant. Soldier’s Boy lowered himself down to sit beside it. He dipped his fingers in it and they came up inky with a thick, slimy liquid. He nodded to himself. Then he began to systematically prick himself with the point of the crystal and then dab some of the noxious liquid onto each tiny cut. The cuts stung, but the slime itself did not add to the pain. In fact, it seemed to seal each tiny wound as he dabbed it on.
He worked systematically, doing both his arms from the shoulders down and then the backs of his hands. He was working on his left leg, jabbing and dabbing when I became aware that a new light had joined us in the cavern. It was yellow and flickering. Olikea had wedged two burnt torch ends together to make one that was barely long enough for her to hold without scorching her hand. As she drew near to us, she exclaimed in sudden pain and then dropped it. She no longer needed it. The light of the crystals glittered all around us still.
‘I didn’t know where you had gone. It worried me. Then I saw the light coming from here. What are you doing?’ she demanded.
‘What you suggested. Becoming a Speck, so the People will accept me,’ he replied.
‘This is only done to babies,’ she pointed out to him. ‘During their first passage.’
‘I am not a child, but this is my first passage. And so I have determined that it will be done to me, even if I must do it myself.’
That silenced her. For a time, she stood watching him prick my flesh with the broken crystal and then dab the wound with the black slime. Her feet were wrapped now in clumsy shoes made from the old fabric that Likari had found. Her failing torch added a flickering yellow to the light around us and was reflected in the glittering crystals that surrounded us. As it began to die away, Olikea asked quietly, ‘Do you want me to do your back?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you … how do you wish it to be? Like a cat? Like a deer? Rippled like a fish?’
‘You may decide,’ he said, and then bowed his head forward on his chest to present his full back to her. She took the broken crystal from him. She worked swiftly as if this were something she had done before. She made a series of punctures, then daubed them all with a handful of the thick, soft muck. The pain seemed more intense when someone else did the jabbing.
I heard a sound behind us and became aware that Likari had joined us. ‘The fish is cooked. I took it away from the fire,’ he said. Uncertainty filled his voice.
‘This won’t take long. You may eat your share,’ Olikea told him. But the boy didn’t leave. Instead he hunkered down carefully on the shard-strewn floor and watched.
When Soldier’s Boy’s back was finished, Olikea had him stand, and did his buttocks and the backs of his legs. Then she came around in front of him and regarded him critically. ‘You haven’t done your face yet.’
‘Leave it as it is,’ he said quietly.
‘But—’
‘Leave it. I am of the People, but I do not wish any of them to ever forget that I came to them from outside the People. Leave my face as it is.’
She puffed her cheeks, her disapproval very evident. Then she handed him back the crystal. ‘The food will be cold, and our fire dying,’ she observed, and turned and left him there. He stood by the muck-filled pond, turning the crystal slowly in his hands. He remembered something then, something of mine. When I was just a boy and Sergeant Duril was training me to be a soldier, he always carried a sling and a pouch of small rocks. Whenever he caught me unwary, I could expect the thud of a rock against my ribs or back or even my head. ‘And you’re dead,’ he’d always tell me afterwards. ‘Because you weren’t paying attention.’
After a time, I’d begun to save the different rocks he used to ‘kill’ me. I’d had a box full of them before I’d left home.
He
