Zanja lay back, with her hair only half braided, dazed by cleanliness and sunshine and the easy rhythms of Mednc’s reading voice, and the ancient cycles of history. Medric broke off and said, “Here’s Emil, looking grumpy, and the water witch.”
Zanja sat up and rubbed her eyes. Two boats had landed on the beach. The water witch, carrying a heavy jug, went into Karis’s cave. Zanja started to get up, but Emil’s hand restrained her. Medric went back to his reading, and then he and Emil sat talking about history for hours. When at last the water witch reappeared, he crouched down beside Zanja and said, “Give her the water to drink until she has drunk dry the jug.”
“Esteemed sir, as you will,” she said, and bowed.
He got into his boat and rowed away.
“You absorb language like paper absorbs ink,” said Medric admiringly.
“Land have mercy,” Emil said, “isn’t the man tired yet? He took me on a half‑day journey upstream until my arms were about to fall off from rowing, and then we had to climb the cliff to a little spring that bubbled out from a crack in the stone. I’m certain he explained it to me, but unlike Zanja, I don’t understand a word he says.”
Zanja said, “You obviously are the elder of our tribe. Therefore, you stand witness on our behalf.”
“Witness to what, though?” Emil said, rubbing a stiff shoulder.
Medric lifted his head and smiled suddenly. Zanja turned to look at what he was seeing, and leapt to her feet and ran to the doorway of the little cave, where Karis stood, braced between stones. Karis said thickly, “If I’m to receive guests now I should be more presentable.” She dropped her shirt, which she had been unbuttoning, and walked across the beach and into the water.
Zanja picked up the shirt, which was even more rank than hers had been, and stood there feeling like a parent must feel when her firstborn suddenly ceases to be a child.
*
When Karis came out of the water, Emil wrapped her in a blanket, and gave her the last cup of tea. She sat by the coals of the fire, watching Zanja stew her shirt and spice it heavily with shavings from their solitary bar of soap. “You never told me what a peculiar feeling it is to have someone work magic on you,” she said to Zanja.
“Well, I didn’t want to seem as if I were complaining.”
“What did he do?” Medric asked.
“Water magic makes no sense to me. He did something very ordinary.”
“Surely not!”
“It was ordinary, I tell you.”
Perhaps Karis was incapable of appetite, but she ate an astonishing quantity of bread and fish, and then pursued a lengthy argument with Medric. It was well past sunset by the time the tremors began, and when Zanja went into the cave with her, the porringer under the water clock had filled to overflowing, and was surrounded by a small pond of spilled water, with the water clock nearly empty.
“I guess we need a bigger bowl,” Zanja said.
Karis sat upon her pallet of woven reeds.
“Here, you’re supposed to drink dry the jug, he said.” Zanja picked up the water jug from the floor, but it already was empty. “What did he do to you?”
Karis said, “You know how people wish for more time.”
Zanja looked at the overflowing porringer. Another drop plunked into it. “Time is water?”
“For him it is. I told you it made no sense.”
“How is it ordinary that he gave you more time?”
“People give each other time fairly commonly, don’t they? You’re giving me some of yours right now. I tend to be miserly with mine, however. I always feel like I don’t have enough of it.” She lay down. “Am I tired?”
“You should be.”
The spasms, when they came, were not nearly as violent as they had been. Afterwards, in the few moments between smoking the pipe and going under smoke, Karis said, “I think I might live.”
“You’ve faced your ordeal with great courage.”
“What choice had I?” And she was gone.
Chapter Twenty‑four
The night had been edged with a bit of autumn’s chill, and when Zanja awoke, she remembered that she had crawled into Karis’s bed in the middle of the night and covered them both with her blanket. She lay alone now upon the reed pallet, and a bowl with waves painted along its edge sat beneath the water clock, collecting time. She went out and found Karis beside the fire with Emil. He had unbuttoned and rolled up the leg of his breeches to reveal the knee that plagued him so. It was a wonder that he could walk at all, Zanja realized as she got a closer look at the scarred, distorted, swollen joint, much less run and fight the way he did. Karis laid her hand upon his knee and he began arguing with her.
“Just concede,” Zanja advised him. “She’s bigger and stronger than you are.”
Her clothing had dried enough to wear. She took Medric’s borrowed shirt to put it with his gear, and found him asleep on the reed bed he and Emil shared. He often slept late, for he often sat awake for half the night. When Zanja returned to the fire, Emil’s knee had been transformed. “I don’t know,” he said bemusedly. “Somehow, this seems like cheating.” He worked the new knee as he might work the trigger of a new pistol.
Karis said, “Five years of walking on a shattered knee seems long enough to me.”
“It’s just as well I haven’t known you all these years. How could I have kept from entreating you to heal my friends, who all are dead now? What a horror I would have made of your life, laying upon you a burden of moral quandaries, matters of life and death, that no one person should have to resolve by herself. It used to take an entire government and strength of tradition to relieve the G’deon from having to decide how to dole out his favor. You have no such protections.“
“Not even the protection of being able to pretend that I’m superior to everyone else. Good morning,” she added to Zanja. “Is it too early for such serious talk?”
“We’re out of tea,” Emil said sadly.
Karis had already eaten, but sat down with Zanja to eat again, and told her that Annis, who seemed to be living with the Otter People, had rowed over at dawn with the new bowl for the water clock, the day’s delivery of food, and a pair of sandals for Karis. “Have I met Annis before?” Karis asked.
“I doubt you remember. She’s a genius at blowing things up, and comes from a good family.”
“That’s better than I can say about myself.”
Emil took a few steps, testing his new knee. “Oh blessed day,” he said, “You’re a genius, anyway. You can always get a good family.”
Karis was still smiling as, after breakfast, she took Zanja’s arm and walked her down the beach. “You must have been cold last night.”
“I’m afraid it made me presumptuous.”
Karis had turned her face away to look over the busy waters of the lake. Now she looked back, and Zanja did not think she had ever seen such unhappiness. “Presumptuous?”
“I–”
“Let’s pretend I don’t understand why it might be presumptuous for you to share my bed on a cold night,” Karis said.
“All right.” The pretense was certainly preferable to any other alternative.
“But if I’m to be your torturer …”
“What torture? I have no false hopes.” Zanja kicked at the stones. “I thought we were pretending we didn’t know what we’re talking about.”
“I guess that’s not going to work.”
“Well, then let me say my speech about how I hope you won’t let this come between us, and how in time I’ll come to my senses–
“Come to your senses! Oh, have pity!” Karis dropped to her knees and drove her fists onto the stones with enough force to send them flying and clattering across the beach. Zanja grabbed her wrists, fearful that she would break the small bones of her hands without knowing it. Karis cried, “Let it me be who comes to her senses! Let me taste, let me feel hunger and pain and weariness and even pleasure! Let me know the name of the desire that drives me! If there be gods–”