Daniel Akamarino is mooching along beside a dusty two-lane asphalt road, enjoying a bright spring morning. Yesterday, when he was chatting over a drink with a local merchant, he took a close look at the armlet the Skinker was wearing on one of his right arms, flowing liquid forms carved into a round of heavy reddish brown wood. Tbday he is on his way to find the Skinker who carved it, said to live in an outshed of a warren a kilometer outside the porttown. Now and then a jit or a two-wheeler poots past him, or a skip hums by overhead. He could have hired a jit or caught the local version of a bus, but prefers to walk; he doesn’t expect much from this world or from the woodcarver, but it’s an excuse to get away from town clutter and merchants with gold in their eyes; he wants to look at the world, sniff its odors, pick up its textures and sound patterns, especially the birdsong. The local flying forms have elaborate whistles and a capacity for blending individual efforts into an astonishing whole.
Daniel Akamarino strolls along a two-lane asphalt road in a humming empty countryside listening to extravagant flights of birdsong; the grass verge having turned to weeds and nettles, he is on the road itself now, his sandals squeak on the gritty asphalt. A foot lifts, swings, starts down…
Daniel Akamarino dropped onto a rutted dirt road, stumbled and nearly fell. When he straightened, he stood blinking at an utterly different landscape.
The road he’d landed in curved sharply before and behind him; since it also ran between tall hedges he couldn’t see much, only the tops of some low twisty trees whose foliage had thinned with the onrush of the year; withered remnants of small fruits clung to the topmost branches. Real trees, like those in-his homeplace, not the feathery blue analogs on the road he’d been following an instant before. A raptor circled high overhead, songbirds twittered nearby, distractingly familiar; he listened and thought he could put a name to most of them. Insects hummed in the hedges and crawled through dusty gray-green grass. A black leaper as long as his thumb sprang out of the dust, landed briefly on his toe, sprang off again. He sucked on his teeth, kicked at the nearest rut, sent pale alkali dust spraying before him. If the sun were a bit ruddier and had a marble-sized blue companion, this could have been Rainbow’s End. But it was egg-yellow and solitary, and it was low in what he thought was the west and its light had a weary feel, so he shouldn’t waste what was left on the day boggling at what had happened to him. He took one step backward, then another, but the fold in spacetime that brought him here seemed a oneway gate. He shrugged. Not much he could do about that. He knelt in the dust and inspected the ruts. Inexpert as he was at this sort of tracking, it seemed to him that the heaviest traffic went the way he was facing. Which was vaguely northeast (if he was right about the sun). He straightened, brushed himself off, and started walking, accepting this jarring change in his circumstances as
Cradled in a warm noisy crowded line family, always someone to pick him up and cuddle him when he stubbed a toe or stumbled into more serious trouble, he had acquired a sense of security that nothing since had more than dented (though he’d wandered in and out of danger a dozen times and come close to dying more than once from an excess of optimism); he’d learned to defend himself, more because of his internal need to push any skill he learned to the limits of his ability than because he felt any strong desire to stomp his enemies. It was easier not to make enemies. If a situation got out of hand and nothing he could do would defuse it, he generally slid away and left the argument to those who enjoyed arguing. One time a lover asked him, “Don’t you want to do something constructive with your life?” He thought about it for a while, then he said, “No.”
“You ought to,” she said, irritation sharpening her voice, “there’s more to living than just being alive.” He gazed at her, sighed, shook his head and not long after that shipped out on the Hairy Mule.
He swung along easily through a late afternoon where heat hung in a yellow haze over the land and the road was the only sign of habitation; he wasn’t in a hurry though he was starting to get thirsty. He searched through the dozens of pockets in his long leather overvest, found an ancient dusty peppermint, popped it into his mouth. A road led somewhere and he’d get there if he kept walking. The sun continued to decline and eventually set; he checked his pocketchron, did some calculations of angular shift and decided that the daylength was close to shipstandard, another way this world was like Rainbow’s End. He kept on after night closed about him; no point in camping unless he found water, besides the air was warm and a gibbous moon with a chunk bitten out of the top rose shortly after sunset and spread a pearly light across the land.
Sounds drifted to him on a strengthening breeze. A mule’s bray. Another. A chorus of mules. Ring of metal on metal. Assorted anonymous tunks and thuds. As he drew closer to the source, the sounds of laughter and voices, many of them children’s voices. He rounded a bend and found a large party camped beside a canal. Ten carts backed up under the trees. A crowd of mules (bay, roan and blue) wearing hobbles and herded inside rope corrals, chewing at hay and grain and each other, threatening, kicking and biting with an energy that made nothing of the day’s labors. Two hundred children seated around half a dozen fires. Fifteen adults visible. Eight women, dressed in voluminous trousers, tunics reaching to midcalf with long sleeves and wide cuffs, head-cloths that could double as veils. Seven men with shorter tunics and trousers that fit closer to the body, made from the same cloth the women used (a dark tan homespun, heavy and hot), leather hats with floppy brims and fancy bands, leather boots and gloves. They also had three bobtail spears slanted across their backs and what looked like cavalry sabers swinging from broad leather belts; several carried quarterstaffs. The last were prowling about the circumference of the camp, keeping a stern eye on the children while the women were finishing preparations for supper.
One of the men walked over to him. “Keep moving, friend. We don’t want company here.”
Daniel Akamarino blinked. Whatever or whoever had brought him here had operated on his head in the instant between worlds; he wasn’t sure he liked that though it was convenient. “Spare a bit of supper for a hungry man?”
Before the man could answer, a young boy left one of the circles carrying a metal mug full of water. “You thirsty, too?”
A woman came striding after the boy, fixing the end of her headcloth across her face, a big woman made bigger by her bulky clothing. She put a hand on the guard’s arm when he took a step toward Daniel. “He’s a wayfarer, Sinan. Since when do Owlyn folk turn away a hungry man?” She tapped the boy on the head. “Well done, Mi. Give him the water.”
Hoping his immunities were up to handling this world’s bugs, Daniel gulped down the cold clean water and gave the mug back with one of his best grins.
“Thanks. A hot dusty walk makes water more welcome than the finest of wines.”
“You’ll join us for supper?”
“With enthusiasm, Thine.” The epithet meant Woman of High Standing, and came to his lips automatically, triggered by the strength and dignity he saw in her; she rather reminded him of one of his favorite mothers and he brought out for her his sunniest smile.
She laughed and swept a hand toward the circle of fires. “Be welcome, then.”
They fed Daniel Akamarino and dug him out a spare blanket. The boy called Tre drifted over to sit by him while he ate, bringing an older girl with him that he introduced as his sister Kori. Ire said little, leaving the talking to Kori.
“This is one big bunch of kids,” Daniel said. “Going to school?”
She stared at him, eyes wide. “It’s the Lot. It’s Owlyn’s month.”