That, with variations, was the popular cry, as women dragged their brats out to meet their men. They went as far as the new bridge and waited there, standing on the east bank of the Voral while the kids threw stones at the ducks and geese, waiting impatiently for the men to arrive with meat — and skins.
The meat was their due, their necessity, and it was no good a hunter coming back without meat.
But what aroused frenzies of delight in the hearts of the women were the skins, the brilliant hoxney skins. Never before in their impoverished lives had they visualised a change of garb. Never before had the tanners been in such demand. Never before had the men been driven out to kill for the sake of killing. Every woman wished to possess a hoxney skin — preferably more than one — and to dress her offspring in one.
They competed with each other for brighter skins. Blue, magenta, aquamarine, cherry. They blackmailed the men in ways men enjoyed. They preened themselves, they stained their lips. They paraded. They dressed their hair. They even took to washing themselves.
Correctly worn, with those electric stripes running vertically up the body, hoxney skins could make even a dumpy woman look elegant. The skins had to be properly cut. A new trade prospered in Oldorando: tailor. As flowers put forth bells and spikes and faces along the lanes between the ancient worn towers, and flowering ivies climbed the towers themselves, so the women began more to resemble flowers. They decked themselves in bright colours their mothers had never set eyes on.
It was not long before the men, in self-defence, also cut off their old heavy furs and took to hoxney skins.
The weather became still and threatening, and the rajabarals steamed from their flat lids.
Oldorando was silent under towering cumulus. The hunters were away. Shay Tal sat alone in her room writing. She no longer cared about her appearance, and still went round in her old ill-fitting skins. In her head she still heard the creaking voices of fessups and her parents’ gossies. She still tried to dream of perfection and travel.
When Vry and Amin Lim came down from the room above, Shay Tal looked up sharply and said, ‘Vry, what would you think of a globe as a model of the world?’
Vry said, ‘It would make sense. A globe rotates most smoothly of all figures, and the other wanderers are round. So we must be too.’
‘A disc, a wheel? We’ve been brought up to believe that the original boulder rests on a disc.’
‘Much we were brought up to believe is incorrect. You taught us that, Mother,’ Vry said. ‘I believe our world revolves round the sentinels.’
Shay Tal sat where she was, contemplating them, and they fidgeted under her inspection. Both of the younger women had shed their old skins and wore bright hoxney suits. Stripes of cerise and grey ran up Vry’s body. The ears of the dead animal adorned her shoulders. Despite all Aoz Roon’s threatened restrictions on the academy, the skins had been presented to her by Dathka. She walked more confidently. She had acquired glamour.
Suddenly, Shay Tal’s temper flared up. ‘You stupid wenches, you silly gillies, you are defying me. Don’t pretend you aren’t. I know what goes on under that air of meekness. Look at the way you dress nowadays! We get nowhere with our understanding, nowhere. Everything seems to lead us to fresh complexities. I shall have to go to Sibornal, to find this great wheel the gossies speak of. Perhaps real freedom, clear truth, lives there. Here is only the curse of ignorance… Where are you two going, in any case?’
Amin Lim spread her hands to demonstrate their innocence. ‘Nowhere, ma’am, only to the fields, to see if we’ve cured the mildew on the oats.’
She was a big girl, even bigger at this time with the seed her man had planted within her. She stood there pleadingly, released by a slight flicker of assent in Shay Tal’s eye, whereon she and Vry almost scuttled from the oppressive room.
As they retreated down the dirty stone steps, Vry said resignedly, ‘There she goes again, blowing up, as regular as the Hour-Whistler. Poor thing, something is really worrying her.’
‘Where’s this pool you mentioned? I don’t feel like walking far in my condition.’
‘You’ll love it, Amin Lim. It’s only a little way beyond the northern fields, and we can walk slowly. I expect Oyre’s there.’
The air had thickened to an extent where it no longer carried the scent of flowers, but emanated a metallic trace of its own. Colour appeared dazzling in the actinic light; the geese looked supernaturally white.
They passed between the columns of great rajabarals. The stark cylinders with their concave curve were better suited to the geometries of a winter landscape; with the growing lushness they formed a forbidding contrast.
‘Even the rajabarals are changing,’ Amin Lim said. ‘How long has steam been coming out of their tops?’
Vry did not know and was not particularly interested. She and Oyre had discovered a warm pool, knowledge of which they had so far kept to themselves. In a narrow valley, the mouth of which pointed away from Oldorando, fresh springs had burst forth from the ground, some at a temperature near boiling, some rushing down to meet the Voral in a cloud of vapour. One spring, damned by rock, flowed a different way and formed a secluded pool, fringed by verdure but open to the sky. It was to this pool that Vry led Amin Lim.
As they parted the bushes and saw the figure standing by the pool, Amin Lim shrieked and threw her hand to her mouth.
Oyre stood on the bank. She was naked. Her skin shone with moisture and water dripped from her ample breasts. With no sign of shyness, she turned and waved excitedly to her friends. Behind her lay her discarded hoxney skins.
‘Come on, where you have been? The water’s glorious today.’
Amin Lim stood where she was, blushing, still covering her mouth. She had never seen anyone naked before.
‘It’s all right,’ Vry said, laughing at her friend’s expression. ‘It’s lovely in the water. I’m going to strip off and go in. Watch me — if you dare.’
She ran forward to where Oyre stood and began unlacing the cerise and grey suit. Hoxneys were tailored to be climbed in and out of. In another minute, the suit was thrown aside and Vry stood there naked, her more slender lines contrasting with Oyre’s sturdy beauty. She laughed in delight.
‘Come on, Amin Lim, don’t be stuffy. A swim will be good for your baby.’
She and Oyre jumped into the water together. As it swallowed up their limbs, they squealed with delight.
Amin Lim stood where she was and squealed with horror.
They had gorged down an enormous feast, with bitter fruits to follow the slabs of meat. Their faces still shone with fat.
The hunters were heavier than they had been last season. Food was all too plentiful. The hoxneys could be slaughtered without anyone’s having to run. The animals continued to come close, capering among the hunters and rolling their parti-coloured bodies against the hides of their dead fellows.
Still wearing his old black furs, Aoz Roon had been talking apart to Goija Hin, the slave master, whose broad back was still visible as he trudged towards the distant towers of Oldorando. Aoz Roon returned to the company. He grabbed up a chunk of rib still sizzling on a stone and rolled over in the grass with it. Curd, his great hound, frisked playfully with him, growling, until Aoz Roon brought a branch of fragrant dogthrush down to keep the brute from his meat.
He kicked out at Dathka in a friendly way.
‘This is the life, friend. Take it easy, eat as much as you can before the ice returns. By the original boulder, I’ll never forget this season as long as I live.’
‘Splendid.’ That was all Dathka said. He had finished eating, and sat with his arms wrapped round his knees, watching the hoxneys, a herd of which was wheeling fast through the grass not a quarter of a mile away.