She heard the sound from inside, where she was drying herself after a shower. A long, rhythmic cry, several voices. Her heart lurched, then raced. In the lane outside, she heard a nearer, answering cry, and then the quick click-and-thud of the creatures running.
Their friends—their families?—must have arrived. Ofelia finished drying between her toes, very slowly, so that she could think. It would be different again. She was tired of difference, but the world had never yet shaped itself to her measure. How many had come this time? And would they, like her creatures (she almost allowed herself to think friends) allow her the freedom to do what she wished?
She put on the necklaces she had left on the kitchen table. It did not feel like enough. She opened her door and saw nothing in the lane. Down by the river she heard excited voices, then the cattle. She considered. The garment she had been working on, ribbonlike strips of cloth in brilliant colors . . . or the sea-storm one, or the cloak she had embroidered with flowers and faces? The voices came nearer. The cloak: it took less time to put on, and she had it here at home. With the cloak over her shoulders, and her necklaces layered over it, she felt she still lacked something. Bracelets around her wrists, yes, and the bit of crocheted netting that she had once put over her head: the creatures had widened their eyes at that, she recalled.
She went out, along the lane to the turning and then toward the river. She would meet them, not wait at home. It was her place, after all. The cloak lifted a little from her shoulders in the breeze; she peered down it at the upside-down faces with their staring eyes. She could not quite remember why that one had three eyes, and why she had run a double row of eyes down either side, between the faces in front and the flowers behind.
Ahead, a cluster of the creatures coming up from the river. She recognized her necklace on one of them—had the original three returned? And newcomers, one much darker than the others, and one wearing a sky-blue cloak that came halfway to the ground. She paused beside the last house. They were moving now, coming toward her, carrying sacks. Food? Equipment? And the new ones—at least the one in the blue cloak—moved more slowly than the ones she was used to.
Close to, they were obviously the same kind of creatures, but she felt a different intelligence. She had never noticed much organization among her creatures, never been sure who was in charge. Except when going off to hunt, they had seemed to drift through the days intent on nothing but following her, studying her. Now she noticed that her creatures had shifted to the back of the group; the cloaked creature went first, as if it had the right.
Her heart pounded; her blood hissed in her ears. Was it fright or excitement? She stared at the cloaked one, trying to find some clue in its features. Under the cloak she could just see criss-crossing straps and slings, hung with the same sort of gourds and sacks she was used to.
It halted some five meters from her. The others halted behind it. The breeze tugged at her cloak, lifted its cloak in a ripple. It moved its hands out slowly, turned them up, spread its fingers. That she could recognize: empty hands, no threat. She did not have to believe it to answer. She spread her own hands, palms up. It brought its hands together, talon to talon, posed as carefully as the devotional figurines she remembered from her childhood. Again she imitated the pose. Whatever these creatures meant, it was not what her people meant. She had never believed in what her people meant. Guilt stabbed for a moment, then she drove it away. These creatures could not know that she had never believed.
The cloaked one spread its arms now, in a slow gesture that evoked the village behind Ofelia, and then seemed to wrap it into a tidy package, which it handed her. If she had any understanding at all, that meant “This whole place is yours.” Or it might be asking. Ofelia, remembering a childhood song, drew a big circle in the air with her hands, swept a hand from that to the horizon, and then repeated the wrapping-up gesture the creature had used. She handed the invisible package to the cloaked one, as if it were both large and precious. This whole world is yours, she meant to say.
Behind the newcomers, her own creatures bounced a little, though the cloaked one showed little reaction for a long moment. Then it looked around, and gestured to the other creatures. Two of them—one her own player, and one new—brought out instruments and piped a thin tune against the wind. Then the drumming began.
She had known they had drums of course. She had heard drumming before, night after night. But she had not imagined how they did this, or how it would affect her.
TWELVE
Their throats swelled, bulged into grotesque sacs; their arms twitched; they seemed to vibrate all over. And from the distended throats came the sharp pulse of rhythm. Ofelia felt it shaking the air, rolling through her body as if she were one of them, much louder than the drumming her creatures had done before. The soles of her feet itched with a different, unmatched rhythm, as if an army marched in step with each other, out of step with music. When she looked, the creatures were stamping in unison, but not in time with the higher drumming.
She didn’t like the feel of the discordance; her body wanted to move with one or the other, but could not move with both. Or could she? Her feet twitched; she felt the discordance move into syncopation, and her arms lifted, swayed . . . she moved into what she felt as both dance and song, though she had never danced so before, and had no idea what her movements sang to the creatures who had begun the music.
Beat and beat, step and step again. Now the cross-current of rhythm steadied; she found she was marking the accented beats, and their feet matched hers. Which had changed? She could not be sure. She felt breathless, and yet light-footed, ready to dance a long way.
Her creatures moved from the rear of the group, moving to flank it like wings. Ofelia looked from one to the other. Player, Hunter/Killer, Gardener, the others for whom she had found no name. They danced a step nearer. Ofelia moved back; they moved forward. Comprehension came with a quickening beat, with the unison movement of their feet toward hers. They would not enter the village without her lead, her . . . permission?
A moment’s rebellion: what did she want with all these creatures, who would plague her even more than the ones she knew? But the music held her, steadied her. She could not stop them if they wanted to come, and this way they would come at her pace, at her will. She turned a full circle, one arm extended: this, too, may be yours.
Then, to the combined drumming of vocal sacs and feet, she led the way into the village. Behind her, the drumming steadied to a single pulse she felt in her entire body, as if the earth itself pulsed. She led them up the lane, past the shuttered homes, past the place where she had seen the first storm-battered one, the house where they had sheltered together. She came to the turn, the lane past her own house, and then to the center. Here her breath stabbed at her; she stopped, leaning over with her hand pressed to her side.
The drumming slowed, became softer and more vocal, almost a song, almost words. Her creatures approached. Were they concerned, or merely hungry? Ofelia put out a hand to steady herself on the wall. It could be funny . . . here she was, the center of attention, the attraction that had drawn alien creatures across thousands of kilometers, and because she was just an old lady she might die of excitement and waste all their time. The thought made her chuckle against the pain; the chuckle made her cough.