Radix

For three days and nights the riverain forest jangled with the festal sounds of kettledrums, wood clappers, harps and flutes and frenzied laughter. The dirt streets of Miramol were jammed with frolicking distorts, swirling together in ritual dances and processions.
Sumner was carried to a large, bamboo-rafted ceremonial hall. On the way, women and men tussled with each other to touch him and toss petals and blossoms in his lap. He was seated on a tortoiseshell throne flanked by huge scarlet ferns and arrays of purple and black fronds. Before him was laid out a continuous offering of foods: slit-bellied trout stuffed with shelled nuts, leaf pouches of monkey stew, crisped snake cubes speared on thin sweet roots, spicy bean paste in blossom cups, and ornate jugs of wine and honey beer.
Sumner sampled everything and tried to laugh at every-body that that served him a new dish, though he often succeeded only in gagging on his food. When his glazed eyes and slack expression made it obvious that he could eat no more, Drift escorted him out of the feeding hall. They avoided the festivity-crowded main roads and followed the dark back lanes to the silverwood ne lodges. There the festivities ended.
In the clouded, flower-heavy air of a small moss garden, Drift told Sumner the history of the Serbota. It skipped the origin myths and the spirit tales and began with the finding of the Road.
Dog Hunger found the Road. He was a seer or what passed for a seer in those days—he was gendered, you understand, so his clarity was weak. Yet it was strong enough to lead him through the wastes to where no one had gone before, because the land was the sun's lair.
How did he find himself so far from the tribe? That's a long story, and I can see you 're weary. Let me tell you only this: The Serbota have always been a gentle people. Always we retreated from our enemies until, finally, there was no place else to run. We were pushed right into the desert and left there to die.
Dog Hunger, who was named that because he never had a full meal in his life, wandered off, like many others had before him, to die where the sun would witness his passing and perhaps, out of pity, accept his spirit. The early people believed such nonsense. Anyway, he didn't die. Instead, his power led him deep into the wastes, and he became the first to meet the magnar.
Well, when the magnar heard of our plight, he came personally, and for many years he was our tribal leader. He taught us the ways of the riverain forest and the desert so that we could eat again and make houses and, if necessary, kill to protect ourselves. We became like any creature of the forest. But most importantly, he showed us how to be differ-ent from the forest creatures by doing what no animal can do—laugh. We learned to laugh at everything, even our enemies — which was a wise thing. Our enemies thought we had become spirit-possessed. Suddenly we had well-trained warriors who fought using the strategies of jungle beasts and who laughed as they killed and even as they died. Now we have no enemies. And yet we still have laughter— and the n6 have life.
You see, before the magnar came, the Mothers killed all the infants born without gender. The magnar stopped that. Not with force but with cunning. He saw that the Mothers were superstitious, and so he told them that their deity, Paseq the Divider who separates night from day and man from woman, was itself without gender. And so we are al-lowed to live because it is believed we are the image of Paseq.
The n6 have done much for the Serbota. Our seers are much clearer than any gendered seer, and though we are not as loud in our laughter as the others, neither are we as cruel in our anger. We keep to ourselves, for we have no other family. And yet we are happy. For isn't that what it means to be human?
The Serbota would have celebrated Sumner's arrival for a full week, but on the fourth day the monsoons began. Sumner watched in amazement as Miramol was transformed from a forest village into a river town. The vegetable fields were quickly harvested and all the huts were dismantled except for the silverwood lodges, which were located like the Mother's Barrow on precious high ground.
With the first lull in the rains, the dugouts were un-sheathed, and the river hunters began their work. Each canoe had elaborately carved gunwales done in the style of their owners. Ardent Fang's had a boar's head with curved tusks. Only men with boats were allowed to hunt, and Sum-ner was left behind to build his own dugout.
Drift found him late in the afternoon at the dry edge of the cloud forest among giant violets and mossy tree limbs. He was hollowing out a log with a stone adze, and his head and shoulders were quilled with needles of gold light. Drift helped him steady the log. Bonescrolls sent a message for you last night.
Sumner put down his adze and squinted into the cloud-driven light. It would rain by nightfall. He looked at the seer, his vague eyebrows raised in a question.
He orders you to obey the Mothers.
Sumner nodded and picked up his adze. "Tell me about the Mothers."
It's best I don't, for I have no love of them.
"Tell me anyway."
They're the tribe leaders. They decide who will hunt, who will farm and fish, and who will breed. All women must obey them without question until they bear a gendered child that lives to pass the puberty rites.
"And then?"
Then they become one of the Mothers.
"Why do you hate them?"
They despise n6. It's only because of the magnar that they tolerate us. And besides, they're polluted with superstition. . . .
"Why then does the magnar order me to obey them?" Drift shook its round head. There's no second-guessing the magnar. He's as unknowable as the clouds.
At night, nulling toward sleep in a tree hammock, Sum-ner was grateful to be free of the voor. He listened to the rain creaking in the jungle, heard a child crying, and smelled the languor of a dampened bonfire. Not a squirm of voor noise touched him. Gazing into the darkness at the crayoned out-line of trees, his night-vision was clear, without the listless-ness of the lusk.
"Bonescrolls." He said the name just loud enough to feel it in his throat. The sound calmed him, and he closed his eyes, feeling his deepest muscles relaxing, his whole being easing up, more complete for what it had lost.
Sumner's dugout took three days to complete, most of the work done in the animal-skin shelter of a tree dwelling while the rains slashed through the jungles. At the first letup, he showed it to Ardent Fang. The tribesman studied it care-fully, marveling at the sleekness of its line and jealous of how high it rode in the water. But it had no carvings on its prow, and he suggested that Sumner give it a spirit.
One of the ne, a master of wood, loaned him some tools. Sumner, who had come to be known as Lotus Face because of his burns, carved lotus petals on the gunwales. The first day he went out, he speared a mature, full-flanked tapir. He presented it to the ne woodmaster when he returned his tools, which caused a stir in the village. All first catches were traditionally offered to the Mothers.
The next day the Mothers sent for him. Three of them sat on round leather-polished stones beneath a fronded rain-canopy. The rain drummed loudly, and Sumner couldn't hear their voices. They wore black shapeless shifts, and their gray fog hair covered most of their shrunken features. One of them had only one eye. Another had silver scales at the corners of her mouth and eyes. The third one was silent and stared only at his genitals.
They're ordering you to give up your dugout, Drift sent, standing behind him.
"Why?" Sumner snapped, and one of the women shrieked so loud his ears rang.
You're not to speak in their presence unless questioned. Drift thought of fields of scarlet larkspur and their sweet, moribund redolence until he saw Sumner's jaw stop throbbing.