Dreamfisher Read online

  Dreamfisher

  By Nancy Springer

  Copyright 2012 by Nancy Springer

  Cover Copyright 2012 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  Previously published in print as Perchance to Dream, February 2000.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Nancy Springer and Untreed Reads Publishing

  #20

  Alpha Alpha Gamma

  American Curls

  The Boy Who Plaited Manes

  The Scent of an Angel

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  Dreamfisher

  By Nancy Springer

  “…except for the inhabitants of a nameless mountain in Barbary, who themselves have no names; nor have they dreams.” (From a fragment attributed to Herodotus.)

  They lived on the mountainside very simply, the men hunting meat, the women gathering nuts and berries, the children playing at being men or women. They spoke names of things, of course, to say “Bring me sticks for the fire,” or “I am going to dig roots,” but these names had come down to them through generations, bestowed by some creator at the beginning of time. Fearing to take upon themselves the function of gods, they did not name one another; they were few enough, and needed only to point. To say “that man” would have been impolite, and to say “the fat man” or “the bent old woman” would have been very rude. Children learned early only to point. They learned early to kill rock rabbits and skin them and cook them and eat them. They learned to throw stones and gather firewood.

  All the children learned these straightforward ways readily, except for a certain girl.

  She looked no different than the others—dark eyes and shaggy dark hair, tawny skin, bare callused feet—but wrong things came out of her mouth. “Cake!” she cried, pointing at the round russet disc of the setting sun, one edge hitting against scalloped clouds. “Cake! Someone is eating it!”

  “No, no!” her mother whispered, glancing around to see whether others had heard. (They had.) “It is the sun.” Sun was sun, not a round flat cake of seed meal baked on the hot stones by the fire.

  “It looks like a cake!”

  The mother should have punished her then and there, the others declared. But the mother was too tenderhearted, and the girl went on in her wrongheaded ways. “It looks like a flower!” she would declare of a rose-and-white cloud. Or, “See, the shadows in the moon, they look like a rabbit sitting up on its hind legs!” But the moon was the moon, not a rabbit. “See that yellow flower, it looks like a dragon’s head!” And the wrongnesses she said grew more perilous day by day, so frightening that other children stayed away from her, or were ordered away, and adults muttered when they saw her coming.

  All too soon the girl began to experience the monthly courses of a woman, and it was time for her to find a mate.

  Often this process took care of itself, but not in the case of this girl. Her mother acted on her behalf, arranging matters with an older man who, although respected, had no woman, because—well, it would have been very, very rude to say, but—

  “No! He looks like a bear turd on feet!” the girl wailed when her mother brought the man to her by the village spring, where everyone had gathered for the rite of joining. “No, I can’t! I won’t!”

  The man’s lumpy brown face flushed even darker with anger. “Be silent,” he ordered.

  “No! You are a giant turd!”

  “Turd,” some boy in the back whispered, snickering.

  His mother hit him to hush him, but the damage was done. Folk gabbled with terror; what unknowable craft was in this girl? The man now called Turd picked up a stone from the ground and hurled it at the girl who had named him.

  It struck her on the chest hard enough to stagger her. Others roared with echoing wrath and joined in, elder men and women throwing stones the size of their fists. If any had caught the girl on the head they would have felled her, but they cut and bruised her body and legs so that she cried out. Looking for her mother, she saw her standing to one side, weeping but not trying to stop the others as they all joined in. Smaller stones flung by children hit the girl in the face. She turned and fled down the mountainside until she could no longer run. Then she fell to the rocky ground, sobbing.

  * * *

  She awoke at dawn, shivering from lying on cold stone, stiff and bruised. Blinking, she sat up to rub her eyes, but winced when she touched her sore, swollen face. Then she winced anew at the memories, and her heart hurt worse than her body or her face.

  Close at hand lay a deerskin bunched into a bundle. The girl stared at it a moment before she fumbled it open. Inside she found a few rounds of cake and three strips of dried venison. And a stone even larger than a man’s clenched fist.

  The girl flung the rock away, but its message stayed with her, all too clear: she was not to return.

  At least someone cared whether she might starve. She stared at the flat cakes. They looked like the cakes her mother made. But then, all cakes looked much the same.

  Her throat closed against the sight of the cakes, but she felt thirst. Drink. She needed to find drink.

  Many nameless shallow waters sprang out of that mountainside, running down over rocks to no one knew where. Taking the deerskin laden with provisions, the girl walked aimlessly until she heard a trickling sound. When she found the stream—it could have been any mountainside rill, perhaps a few fingers deep and no broader than her slender body—she cupped her hands to drink, then splashed water on her face. Its cold touch stung her reddened eyes, yet soothed her soul.

  She started downmountain, following the stream.

  She had no reason for doing this except that she had to go somewhere, and the water would give her drink.

  None of her people ever ventured downmountain.

  But they were not her people anymore.

  * * *

  She walked through days and shivered through nights and saw many deer but no folk, nor did she expect to find any; she presumed no people in the world but those—those who were no longer her people.

  A day came when she had nothing left to eat except her last half-round of cake. Following the rill, she saw it run through a cleft of stone too narrow for her. A rift of rock stood in her way; she climbed it, as she had climbed many others. But this time, as she reached the top, she stiffened to a halt, dropped to a crouch and stared.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  A dark bright bigness filled a hollow of the rocks, gleaming and giving off sparks of white light amid colors, sky stone tree colors all blended. What was this shining mystery? And where had her rill gone?

  For a long time she froze like a rabbit, only her nostrils moving to catch any hint of danger. When her fear lessened, she clambered to the cleft where the stream ran. Peering down, she traced the stream’s shadowed course.

  “Water?”

  The bigness had to be water, it grew out of water and therefore must be water, yet—she stood atop the crags at a cautious distance and stared—yet how was it water? It seem
ed packed or piled in such a way as she had never seen, so much water in one place that it took on gloss and color, and she could not look through it to whatever lay beneath. Perhaps there was no bottom? But there had to be. Stone held it.

  “Like when I hold water in my hands to drink,” she breathed. The mountain held this water in one place?

  Slowly she walked forward for a better look—then leaped back, for she had seen the form of a person moving on the sheen of the water. Her knees weakened. She sat trembling atop the rocks.

  Yet she did not leave. She whispered, “It looks like—like….”

  She had to know what it was, this place that made water look like other things.

  Still trembling, she eased forward on her hands and knees. Crouching over the stillwater wonder she gazed, gazed, and in the muchwater she saw intimations of light, dark, shift, change; the personform was only a shadow now, blended with darker green shadow that hinted of tree. After a time fascination put an end to the girl’s trembling, and she sat atop the rocks with her legs dangling over the edge, staring down into wonder.

  It looks…like….

  Like the surface of night sky, glinting with stars behind which she sensed depths she could not guess. Or like a dusky rainbow—

  Hunger pain interrupted her thoughts; she reached for her last half-round of cake and bit into it. A tiny crumb fell from her mouth onto the top of the muchwater—

  A flash, a splash, a glimpse of something that shone, and then circle circle circle opening wider and wider like her own eyes.

  Circles faded and ceased. Muchwater lay still again. Without giving herself time to be afraid, the girl dropped another crumb.

  Flash, splash, an arc gleaming like cold fire. She squeaked with wonder and terror but gazed intently, and she thought she saw something flitting away under the surface. Something that flies in the water, she thought, like birds in the sky, but soaring down in darkness. She felt herself quivering again, but she had to know, she had to know whether there were more than one, she dropped a whole scattering of crumbs, then gasped as the surface was broken by brightnesses flying up like great sparks, glimpsed, gone, and circling ring ring rings and more mysteries skimming just beneath sight.

  Such glory, such beauty, gave her blissful calm; muchwater calmed also. She sat still and rapt; muchwater lay still and shining. She gazed down, and from the water a dark-eyed girl gazed up at her. Within the face of that shadowy girlform she saw something scud bright, like thought.

  The girl gasped, “It’s like me! It is me!”

  Something roiled like thunder just below the face of stillwater. Something roiled like thunder and lightning and cataracts after a springtime storm within the girl’s selfhood as she sat looking.

  * * *

  For days the girl camped nearby and did not quite starve, snaring rock rabbits to char over the fire she cherished on a hearth of stone; it had taken a whole day to start, so she never let it go out. In the chill nights she curled by the fire with her deerskin wrapped around her shoulders. At dawn she would look to the muchwater, awed anew each day to see it breathe mists of steam like a living thing. She grubbed for ground nuts, robbed a rock rat’s nest of its pine seeds, found some sour bunchberries. Then found that a berry dropped onto the surface of wonderwater brought forth a bright swirl out of the darkness. After that, bunchberries were for muchwater, not for her. Day after day, whenever her hungry belly would let her, the girl studied the shadowshining water, in rain and sun and twilight and starlight. Sitting atop the lowest rock she still felt not close enough. There came a blue-sky day when she lay belly down on the rock with her head stretched over the lip, her arms reaching for the water, yearning.

  She dropped a bunchberry, watching intently as it made itself a bed on the face of the water, which was also her face, shadowy eyes staring back at her with the berry lying red like a wound in between. A moment later there came the flash, the shining, and this time she glimpsed an eye like the dark of the moon, and a gleaming maw rising out of deep girlself almost close enough to touch. If only she could grasp it, hold it in her hand a moment, then she would—maybe she would know. Maybe she would understand the wrongness in herself.

  Maybe she would be able to go home.

  Her chest heaved with wanting. Wriggling on her belly like a serpent, she pushed herself closer to the water, head and shoulders and half her body over the lip of the rock, arms stretched down. Almost-near-enough-to-touch—

  Making herself like a willow wand, she dropped a berry. She saw the mystery flash up out of darkness, shining so close—the sight quivered her whole body and sent her lunging toward it, her hands opening like stars—

  In her ears something roared like a dragon as she flew down into the water-like-a-night-sky, cold, its icy coldness thick all around her and in her, ears, mouth, nose—breathing water hurt very much. But then it became like sleeping, dark and blurry, like the inside of her mind when she closed her eyes. And then there was not even darkness.

  * * *

  She awoke to find herself lying beside a blazing fire, shivering even in its warmth, wrapped in—what was this thing?

  “If you desire to go fishing, young woman,” said a man’s gruff voice, “you should do so by means of the proper equipment.”

  She was home, somehow, with one of her people? But—whoever he was, he spoke her language, yet she could not understand what he was talking about. Fishing? Means? She sat up to peer at him over the flames of the fire.

  He was not one of her people. She had never seen him before, a strong old man with flossy white hair and beard, his skin lizardy and much lighter than hers—that frightened her, and so did his eyes, pale like a watery sky between saggy lids. She had never seen such sky-colored eyes. But they seemed not unkind, although it was hard to tell in firelight.

  Firelight? Why was it night already?

  The pale-eyed man nodded at her as if she had done well to sit up and gawk at him. “Greetings from the civilized world,” he told her. “I am Herodotus, at your service. And what might be your name?”

  There again, he spoke and she understood yet she did not understand at all. Civilized? Name? Hero dotus? She felt herself frowning from listening to him.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you also.” Nodding, he turned the spit he had rigged up over the fire, upon which something sizzled. It smelled good, the girl’s belly noticed, but her mind did not wonder what it was, being all taken up with the stranger. Where had he come from?

  “I first became aware of your whereabouts when I sighted your fire,” the old man said as if in answer. “For the past two days I have been observing you at a discreet distance. But when you performed your remarkable feat of fishery, I essayed to pull you out. I did not care to let a perfectly good barbarian drown.”

  The girl gave up listening and only heard, her eyelids drooping, no longer trying to understand but only to know what he was like.

  “Up you popped,” he went on, “hanging onto an exceptionally large, exceptionally placid trout with both your little brown paws. I jumped about, I offered you a hand, I called to you, but you would not let go of the confounded fish. Not even when you went under again. I had to grapple you out by the hair. You are fortunate to have such long, strong hair, young lady.”

  He was like…he was perhaps a god? One who gave names to things?

  Despite this thought, she felt not at all afraid of him any longer. He had put her by the fire, had wrapped her in something not a deerskin but soft and warm. She lay down again and closed her eyes.

  The next thing she noticed he was shaking her by the shoulder to awaken her. “Dinnertime.”

  She peered at him.

  “Time to eat.”

  She sat up. The old man brought her something on a dock leaf and laid it on the ground beside her. His clothes, pale like his skin and eyes, were very odd, made of some sort of thin droopy hide that was not hide, for no hide was colored so white, as white as his hair. What had he called himself, Hero—a her
o… It did not matter. The food smelled good, fatty, like meat, but it did not look like any she had ever seen.

  “What’s that?” she whispered.

  “Eureka! She speaks!”

  She stared at him.

  “Excuse me. I beg your pardon. Dinner is your precious trout, that’s what it is, the most enormous trout I have ever seen. More than large enough for both of us. I’m obliged to you for catching my supper as well as your own.”

  “Trout?”

  “Fish,” the hero man said. “Eat it.”

  She understood nothing except the last two words. Eat. Yes. She felt weak, her gut ached with hunger, and whatever the flaky white meat was, it smelled wonderful. She ate.

  * * *

  She stood at the narrow mouth of a cave, stones hitting her from behind. Her people stoned her because they wanted her to go into the darkness under the mountain and face the dragon for them. The stones hurt and she could not understand what they were yelling at her, but her mind leaped like a deer, flew like a winged flint, and she understood that there was something they needed, her people, something they wanted the dragon to give them or give back to them. She sweated with fear but she had to do it, because she, the girl who said “looks like,” was the only one who could. She went in…

  “Water eyes,” she murmured. “The dragon had water eyes.”

  “Go back to sleep,” said a man’s gruff voice. “It was just a dream.” As usual, she did not understand.

  Odd. It was night, and she lay by a campfire, that was all, wrapped in something warm. Sleepy…

  Her mother wept, her mother was a greatness the size of the mountain, her mother’s tears ran down over crags like snowmelt falling in cataracts ever greater until tears filled the world like water in the palm of a god’s hand. In the face of the water—no, it was her mother’s face, eyes red from weeping, eyes like bunchberries. They were big red berries awash in tears. The girl flew, she could fly in water, she had winged hands, she flew to the surface and gulped her mother’s red berry eyes. They filled her and made her content.