Chapter 2
The evening was hot, dry, the open fires and torches serving only to make it more so. The sun, heavy below the Artesian Hills already, daubed the western sky with streamers of blood red.
Flint sucked at a sugar juice and then tossed the empty hull into the flames. He was stripped to his shorts now, his thin torso painted livid orange and red like Callum’s and Tarn’s and all the other adult men of the clan.
The juice was cold in his belly and Flint felt rigid with tension. At any moment he might be sick. Sometimes it took him like this.
The Hall loomed, solid behind him, a dark mass against the eastern sky. Granite walls extended from the back of the Hall, flanking a wide stockyard almost as broad as the town’s main market square. Fibrehuts adhered to the outsides of these walls, their globular, tumourous shapes contrasting with the straight lines of old.
Maybe half of Clan Treco were here tonight. Perhaps three hundred of the men and women here could claim direct descent from the clan. Twice as many again of those present were attached to the clan in some way: bondsmen and guests and other assorted favourites and hangers-on. Yet more had come from farther afield, some from as far away as the Ritt lands beyond the river Farsam. Flint had rarely seen so many humans together at one time, and then only ever at clan gatherings like this.
Many of the women were dressed in all their finery: smartfibres that changed colour in the firelight; massed feathers of jungle birds; cloaks and shawls of swamp-cotton and pikeskin.
He spotted Jescka, his mother, sitting in state by the changing vats, revelling in the attention. She was covered from head to toe in pink and crimson feathers, interwoven with sparkling fibres. Pale face paint covered the scars on her cheek and forehead.
He approached her. “Mother. Is Amber...?”
His mother was drunk already. “Is she what?” she said.
“I don’t know where she is. I haven’t seen her since mid-afternoon.”
“You got my message? I said the two of you were to come and help Callum.” She met the look of one of the women by her side and rolled her eyes melodramatically. “It wasn’t complicated. I’d have thought you could follow it. How did you lose her? You’re usually as close as tongue and spit.”
Flint tried to steer the conversation. “Where’s Father?”
“Lost him too? He’s with Callum. Probably lousing up some deal or other.” Ever changeable, she added more softly, “Don’t rile him in front of the guests, Flint. It’s not worth it.”
The drumming started then, blue-painted Treco boys pounding on great tympani shells.
Flint left his mother and pushed his way through the crowd. He approached the small group of Elders.
Tarn and Callum were talking, heads close together, arms across shoulders, bellies round and ochred.
“Father,” said Flint, stopping by the two.
“Flintreco,” said Tarn. Fists and canes were no good in public, so he used words to hurt Flint, taunting him by use of his fullname when all around should call him Flint under such circumstances.
“We have guests,” said Callum. “All the way from Clan Ritt.” He waved a hand to indicate the group of visitors standing nearby, although the gesture was unnecessary as the outsiders were obvious. There were five of them in this group, all clad in cloaks and trousers woven from the smartfibres for which their clan was renowned. Amongst the feathers and body paint of the Trecosi the Ritts stood out clearly.
One of the visiting men said to Tarn, “You didn’t tell me you have a son.”
“A daughter, too,” said Flint. “But...”
“I’m Kymeritt Elkardamy. We’re on something of a tour and we’ve come to discuss how Trecosi gennering skills might be used in fibre production. Henritt?” He turned to a portly young man of about nineteen or twenty. “This is Flintreco. You were only just saying that there was no-one of your own age in our party. Perhaps Flintreco would show you around?”
~
With the tension of the night and the knowledge of what was to come Flint was in no mood to be playing host, particularly when his guest proved to be just as arrogant and spoilt as he had appeared on first impression.
“I will lead the Ritt delegation to Farsamy Festival this year,” the young man said. “My father has just confirmed this. And you do...?”
“I tend the family fleshfruit plantations,” said Flint.
“We have mutts for that kind of thing.”
They moved past Tarn and Callum and joined a crowd of younger men by the stock pens. Flint exchanged nods and laughs with those cousins he recognised, but much attention was turned on his fancily-clothed guest. “This is Henritt Elkyme,” Flint told them. “He travels with his father.” Henritt clearly caught the belittling tone of that last remark but was quickly distracted by eager questioning about his travels and the reason for his visit.
Flint studied the crowd, held a short distance back from the changing vats by a line painted on the dirt by Father Grey. None dared cross it.
There was no sign of Amber, even now. Normally she would be there, at the front of the crowd, eager to witness, to see the beasts before and after; late into the night she would be the one waiting by the stock pens, simultaneously intrigued and horrified by the transformations taking place. Some said that with her empathy and intuitive understanding she might have made as good a Crafter as Callum if only she had been born a boy.
Father Grey emerged from the shadows of a smartfibre hut, moving with a rhythmic, shuffling gait. He was a small man, his silver hair tied tightly back in a single braid that reached the small of his back. His bony body was completely naked, painted in a series of swirling hoops of colour that appeared to shift as he moved. A single cord was tied hard around his waist, trapping his penis in place, flaccid but upright.
Nearby, Henritt started to speak but was instantly shushed.
Father Grey’s eyes... his eyes set deep in their sockets were somehow lit up, the whites brilliant in the evening light. He moved with his arms forward, hanging loose at the elbow, his head rolling, and now he started to sing.
It was a wordless song, a tapestry of tones and sighs and clicks made deep in his throat.
Moving in this way, chanting and singing and shuffling his feet, he completed a full circle around the changing vats and the crowd stood silent before him.
When he had finished, he gave a sudden shriek, like the cry of a bird, and then threw himself to the ground twitching. Petria and some adolescent girls rushed to him, fanning him, offering him some potent brew to drink, and gradually his twitching subsided and the staring madness departed his eyes.
It was time for the Crafting to begin.
At a signal from Callum, the Clan Elders gathered around the first of the vats and Flint and the other young men flipped the catch of the holding pen and let the gate swing halfway open.
“That one,” snapped someone–maybe Mallery, Flint couldn’t quite see.
A pole with a looped rope at the end swung across and the rope closed around the neck of a young goat. The thing bleated and struggled but was dragged free of the pen by two of Flint’s cousins.
Callum took the pole from them and unceremoniously directed the animal down a ramp and into the vat. As its hooves came into contact with the acrid golden soup in the vat, the creature bleated and struggled ever more frantically, its every instinct telling it to escape.
Someone slapped its rear with a cane and Callum dragged it steadily onward into the changing soup, dunking its head under, holding, holding, and then, finally, pulling it clear.
At the far end, he handed the pole to old Tessum and returned to guide the next of the animals through the vat.
Once the goat had passed through, those at the far end handled it with far greater caution, guiding it into another holding pen. When it was safely restrained, they withdrew the pole and dunked it in a cleansing trough.
Flint concealed himself in the depths of the crowd of helpers, part of the event, yet safe from any direct involvement.
~
The goats and swine and other livestock were only the start, however. The climax of the changing came with the turn of the mutts.
A mother cowered at the back of her holding pen, one pup clinging to her leg, another squashed against her thin, drooping teats.
“Give pups,” said one of the youths approaching her, his hands outstretched.
She struggled–the torment in her eyes was clear, as she was torn between two powerful forces: the maternal bond and the ingrained devotion to her human masters.
She gripped the youngest pup around its midriff and held it out as far as her arms would stretch. Immediately the thing started to wail, a pitiful, baby’s shriek.
The youth seized the pup and then was momentarily puzzled about how to handle it. He settled for a firm grip on the scruff of its neck, and set off through the crowd, holding it triumphantly at shoulder height.
The second pup still clung to its mother’s leg.
“Hey, pup. Come.”
Cousin Bellar stood before the pup, hand held out. It stepped forward, took his hand, instinct powerful even in one so young.
The Elders had moved on to the final vat now, the one used for mutts. A short time later Flint found himself standing with Henritt, both squeezed into a space at the front of the crowd, leaning and swaying dangerously over the vat, only two armspans across the gulf from Callum.
His cousin’s face was intense, lit up from below in a golden splash of light.
Flint stared downward, his eyes drawn to the glutinous, glowing mass of the changing brew. The stuff looked thick, almost solid, an illusion created partly by its viscous nature and partly by the skin on its surface. The mix wasn’t a smooth golden colour, as it first appeared, but rather a swirling, granular pattern of yellow, gold, orange, pink, interspersed with muddy striations. The smell, this close, was sulphurous, astringent.
Callum had spent weeks mixing this brew to an ancient formula, using fluid from beds tended by the Clan for generations.
Now, the crowd unfolded to allow passage for the youth, still holding the youngest pup shoulder-high. Its cries had subsided to a steady whimpering now. Behind them, the second pup walked solemnly, as if hypnotised.
Callum stepped forward and took the youngest of the two. It fell silent as soon as the Elder’s hands closed around it.
He turned, and placed it in a fibre basket, suspended from a hook over the vat. Then he started to feed a cord through his hands, lowering the basket. When it met the surface there was a sudden swirling of colour, a belch of steam.
The pup sank below the surface and Callum held it there for longer than Flint could hold his breath. Then he pulled on the cord, the basket broke the surface and the pup began to cry again.
Someone hooked the basket with a pole and took it away to be cleansed–no one would touch the thing before the changing mix had been neutralised.
Now it was the older pup’s turn.
“Walk,” Callum commanded, and it stepped forward from the crowd. It barely hesitated, even when–partway down the ramp–its toes touched the soup. It walked forward until only its head emerged from the soup and then it paused.
Callum took a pole and pushed the pup’s head below the surface.
Flint pulled back from his place at the front of the crowd, the press of bodies too intense, a dizziness confusing his senses.
He was breathing rapidly, remembering and not wanting to remember. Memories better suppressed. He edged his way through the crowd, stopping only when he was free, when he could breathe cool air.
Henritt found him by the arched opening in the compound wall that led through to the seed patches and holding pens. “You left,” he said.
Flint closed his eyes and remembered the heaving of the crowd, the intensity, the massed, staring faces. He felt dizzy again. He opend his eyes and Henritt was watching him closely.
“You ran away,” said the visitor. “Why? What from? You must have seen a hundred changings...”
“Memories,” said Flint. “I ran from my memories.”
~
Jenna was two years older than Flint. Little enough difference, perhaps, but he still saw her as the girl he had grown up seeing as so much older and more worldly, always unattainable.
But even though she was then promised to Shemesh, at the start of the previous wet season she had been the first woman Flint had kissed, a nervous pressing of lips, of tongues, snatched in a rough banana-leaf shelter on the banks of the River Elver.
She had made as if to kiss him again, on that afternoon, but he had been scared, uncertain, and he had fled, sheets of rain drenching him instantly, washing away the heat.
Running then, too, from the past.
Now, she was before him, tonguing stick-spirit, kissing flame. A long feather boa twisted around the gentle curves and slopes of her body, tying dark hair back from her slender face.
Dark eyes flashed at him and she spat fire into his face.
Stick-spirit flames were white and cold. They stung Flint’s skin where they struck, and he turned, bathed in their sterilising whisper.
Jenna spat again and he felt the pigment fizzing from his skin, leaving him bare, brown. Cleansed.
Cleansing always followed the dipping, cleansing in flame and spirit.
In sudden abandon, Flint held Jenna to him, touched flesh taut beneath feather, smelt stick-spirit so sharp he felt his lungs afire.
She slithered away from him, tongued spirit, kissed fire, spat cleansing flames at someone else.
He felt intoxicated, senses swirling. He made his way over to the bathing trough, peeled his shorts off and dropped into the cool, scented waters. Others frolicked and splashed, but Flint found a place at the side and let the waters revive him gently.
~
Later, dressed in long shorts and a tunic, he took another stick of sugar juice from the stall.
He had looked for Amber again, but no luck. He was cross with her now, resentful at his own sense of responsibility for her. This was by no means the first time she had gone off with friends, left him worrying like a fool over what might have happened.
He sucked on the stick.
Jenna.
He would find Jenna. She had broken off from Shemesh recently, so now Flint would have a chance to make an approach, see if she would consider him.
He had rehearsed the words so many times. He knew she liked him. He just needed the courage, the composure.
Out beyond the changing vats and the stock pens, the old stone walls of the Hall ended and a scattering of podhuts had been grown. A lot of them were ordinarily empty, used occasionally for storage and for guests at times like this. Now, fires burnt high in the night, and people were all about in the spaces between the buildings.
A drum band struck interwoven rhythms into the darkness, surging melodies of pitch and pace, the intensity and volume irresistible to the young of Clan Treco.
Flint resisted the urge to sway and shuffle as he walked, the music tugging at his steps. He tipped his head up, saw dancing stars–the clear sky a sure sign that the dry season was now well established.
He saw Jenna, then, still in her feather boa, one end of it draped over her dancing partner’s shoulder. Henritt. She was dancing with the visitor from the Ritt clan.
Flint turned away and went to lean against the old fleshfruit tree, leaf-frogs chirruping from the lower boughs.
A short time later, he wandered around the party, exchanging jokes with cousins, asking if anyone had seen Amber. No one had.
He found Mallery and Bellar with a small group by the seed-patches, the rough gardens where some of the mutts grew food and fibres to supplement their keep.
“Hey, Flint,” murmured Mallery, waving a smouldering headstick at him. “You come join we.” He was talking Mutter-pidgin, no doubt the effect of alcohol and whatever it was they were burning.
Flint squatted and took the headstick. He knew what to do with it, had tried it once, but the loss of control had disturbed him. He took a sniff, trying not to inhale too deeply, and passed the stick on to eager hands.
He leaned back against a wide tree-bole. It felt as if the earth was rolling beneath him.
~
Much later, he returned to the stock pens, sure that Amber would be there. Fascinated as she was by the dipping ceremonies, she was even more strongly drawn to the changing as it started to take effect afterwards.
Dark figures were silhouetted by a few desultory torches. Callum, Father Grey, Tessum and Shemesh were gathered around the holding pens set aside for the newly dipped mutts.
Grey was humming, the same tune he had sung more stridently earlier in the evening when he had performed the Dance of the Possessed around the changing vats.
All four were stooped in concentration, barely glancing at Flint as he came to join them.
In the pen before them were the two mutts Flint remembered being dipped earlier. Four others had been dipped, too, this evening, after Flint had withdrawn.
These two now lay unmoving in the straw. Their mother sat against the far wall, knees pulled up defensively, trembling. She was clearly drawn to her offspring, but something at least as powerful was holding her back. The unseen hand of change.
The older pup lay on its back, its spine arched. Its skin was beaded with fever, the fur on its head and shoulders slicked smooth. Every so often a faint, whimpering mewl escaped its lips, as Callum concentrated on its changes, muttering prayers and liturgies.
There was hope for this one, Flint saw. It looked fit, and the changes wrought had not distorted it beyond what was viable. Only the years would tell if it would grow into a usable morph and if it then bred true.
Most mutt lines had a tendency to drift towards flawed traits, weakening over generations. It was a constant battle to bring new forms into the breeding lines, new vigour. Most mutts were left undipped, but a few from each generation were offered up for change. The vats held a multiplicity of potential, a soup of traits that could be gennered into malleable recipients. It was for these ancient arts that Clan Treco was so widely renowned.
The changes were not without cost, however.
Tessum, a grey-haired old man, brother of Father Grey, was struggling over the youngest of the pups. He groaned, as he fought to master the gennering currents, battling to shape the changes wrought by the dipping.
There were some who dismissed this as mumbo-jumbo, a mystical overlay to a straightforward biological process. Now, watching the old man exert himself so, Flint had no doubt that these men had a grasp of some source of power to which Flint and most others he knew were blind: some way of directing the tiny changing vectors these mutts had absorbed from the vat.
Yet still, despite Tessum’s valiant efforts, the youngest pup lay dying in the straw. The skin was stretched tight across its skull, the bones within grossly expanded.
Sometimes it happened like this: the transformations were often beneficial, often benign, but sometimes when they found flawed material to work with the results were like this.
This pup would never have been named even if left undipped, Flint suspected. Its inner flaws would have revealed themselves before it reached naming age and it would have been exposed on the Leaving Hill.
Flint had long since come to terms with the apparent brutality of this regime. In a world where change and corruption were rife, even human offspring were not regarded as truly human until they were three, by which age most of the traits of the Lost would have revealed themselves.
A soft popping sound drew his attention to the Lost pup before him. The skin across the dome of its swollen head had split, revealing an expanse of white bone beneath, still growing.
Tessum moved away, four more changed pups to deal with.
~
Flint slept in Callum’s family chambers that night.
The outer walls had vented themselves, circulating air on what had become a dry, hot night. He lay and stared out through the slits at the stars pocking the night sky.
His mind was restless in the afterwash of the evening’s gathering, disjointed fragments of scenes and voices jostling for attention. Jenna and her feathers, the mutt mother, his father’s sneering bonhomie, the smothering scent of Mallery’s headstick, the dancing light from the changing vats, Father Grey’s possessed twitching as he lay in the dirt.
But there was more than just the aftermath of stimulation that was tying Flint to wakefulness.
There was the steadily growing certainty that something was seriously wrong. Amber had not been seen all evening. Now, when she should be asleep in the cell next to Flint’s, the sleeping pallet set aside for her lay empty.
Outside, trees and frogs called in the darkness and somewhere in the distance he heard the screech of fighting cats.
He sat up on his pallet, pushing the swamp-cotton shawl aside. He rubbed at his face, then stood.
There was a light downstairs, a single oil-candle in a dish in the family cell.
Callum sat at the table, face tired and lined. Petria was at his side, their pup at her breast.
“Still no sign?” asked Callum. He had clearly only just returned from the stock-pens.
Flint shook his head. “I thought I might go out and look around,” he said.
“And find what? Nothing, in the dead of night, Flint. Nothing but drunks and street rats. Save it until morning when you can see beyond your nose and there are people around to answer questions.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Clearly. Guilty conscience? Did you two have a row or something?”
Flint met Callum’s look, resenting the words yet giving them serious thought.
“Not really,” he said. No more than usual, at least. But had her teasing of him had more behind it than usual? Her accusations that he was too straight? What undercurrents had he missed in her words? Had she been trying to make more serious accusations about the way he treated her, but only been able to come out with teasing and jokes?
Maybe he was too oppressive, too protective. Maybe she was trying to assert her independence.
“Well... maybe,” he conceded. “I don’t know.”
“Go back to bed,” said Petria. “Let me talk to her tomorrow to see if I can find out what’s wrong.”
Grateful, he stood, then left them together.
Back in his sleeping cell he lay down, leaving himself uncovered in the heat of the night.
Outside, a cat screamed again. He did not think it was a good omen.