paddled a short distance off, very carefully. The evatim parted before me. The tip of my paddle never touched one.
Behind me, in the darkness, I heard someone coming down the ladder onto the dock. Then something heavy splashed in the water. The evatim hissed, all as one. It was like the rising of a great wind.
I paddled for what felt like hours among the posts and pillars and stilts, groping my way with my paddle sometimes, until at last I came to open, deep water. I let the current take me a short distance, and looked back at the City of the Reeds where it crouched amid the marsh like a huge, slumbering beast. Here and there watchlamps flickered, but the city was dark. No one goes outdoors in the city at night: because the mosquitoes swarm in clouds at sunset, thick as smoke; because the marsh is full of ghosts who rise up out of the black mud like mist; but mostly for fear of the evatim, the crocodile-headed servants of Surat-Kemad, who crawl out of the water in the darkness and walk like men through the empty streets, their heavy tails dragging.
Where the city reached into deep water, ships lay at anchor, bulging, ornately-painted vessels come upriver from the City of the Delta. Many were ablaze with lights, and from them sounded music and laughter. The foreign sailors do not know our ways or share our fears.
* * * *
In the City of the Reeds, all men who are not beggars wear trousers and leather shoes. Children wear loose robes and go barefoot. On the very few cold days they either wrap their feet in rags or stay indoors. When a boy becomes a man, his father gives him shoes. It is an ancient custom. No one knows the reason for it.
Father had hurried me out of the house without even a cloak. So I passed the night in quiet misery, my teeth chattering, my hands and feet numb, the cold air burning inside my chest.
As best I could, I steered for the shallows, in among the grasses and reeds, making my way from one patch of open water to the next, ducking low beneath vines, sometimes forcing my way through with my paddle.
A vision of sorts came to me, but all disjointed. I did not understand what the god was trying to say.
The moon seemed to set very suddenly. The river swallowed it, and for an instant moonlight writhed on the water like Mother’s thousand-jointed crocodile image somehow glowing with light.
I set my paddle down in the bottom of the boat and leaned over, trying to make out the thing’s face. But I only saw muddy water.
Around me, dead reeds towered like iron rods. I let the boat drift. I saw a crocodile once, huge and ancient and sluggish with the cold, drifting like a log. But it was merely a beast and not one of the evatim.
A bit later I sat in a stagnant pool surrounded by sleeping white ducks floating like puffs of cotton on the black water.
Night birds cried out, but I had no message from them.
I watched the stars, and by the turning of the heavens I knew it was no more than an hour before dawn. I despaired then and called out to Surat-Kemad to send me my vision. I did not doubt that it would come from him, not from some other god.
At the same time, I was afraid, for I had made no preparation, no sacrifice.
But Surat-Kemad, he of the monstrous jaws, was not angry, and the vision came.
The light rain had stopped, but the air was colder yet, and, trembling and damp, I huddled in the bottom of my boat, both hands against my chest, clutching my paddle. Perhaps I slept. But, very gingerly, someone touched me on the shoulder.
I sat up in alarm, but the stranger held up a finger, indicating that I should be silent. I could not see his face. He wore a silver mask of the Moon, mottled and rough, with rays around the edges. His white, ankle-length robe flapped gently in the frigid breeze.
He motioned me to follow, and I did, silently dipping my paddle into the water. The stranger walked barefoot on the surface, ripples spreading with every step.
We travelled for a long time through a maze of open pools and tufts of grass, among the dead reeds, until we came to a half-submerged ruin of a tower, no more than a black, empty shell covered with mud and vines.
Then hundreds of other robed, masked figures emerged from the marsh, not walking on the water as had my guide, but crawling, their movement a curious waddle, their bodies swaying from side to side as does that of a crocodile when it comes out on land. I watched in amazement as they gathered around us, bowing low at the upright man’s feet, as if in supplication.
He merely spread his hands and wept.
Then I recalled one of my father’s stories, about a proud king, whose palace was more resplendent than the sun, of whom the gods were jealous. One day a crocodile-headed messenger came into the glittering court and hissed, “My master summons you, O King, as he summons all.” But the king, in his pride, bade his guards beat the messenger and throw him into the river whence he came, for the king did not fear the gods.
And Surat-Kemad did not care to be feared, only obeyed, so the Great River flooded the land, swallowing the palace of the king.
“That’s not much of a story,” I’d complained to Father.
“It is merely true,” he said.
Now I looked on in awe, desperate to ask so many questions but afraid to speak. But the sky lightened, and the weeping of the standing man became merely the wind rattling in the reeds.
The sun rose, and the supplicants removed their masks and became merely crocodiles. Their robes were somehow gone in the shifting light. I watched their dark bodies sink into the murky water.
I looked to the standing man, but a long-legged bird remained where he had been. It let out a cry and took to the air, wings thundering.
* * * *
The warm sun revived me. I sat up, coughing, my nose running, and looked around. The sunken tower was still there, a heap of dead stone. But I was alone.
It was midday before I got back to the City of the Reeds.
The city is a different place in the daylight, bright banners waving from towers, houses likewise bright with hangings and with designs painted on walls and roofs. The ships of the river unload by day, and the streets are filled with the babble of tongues, while traders and officials and barbarians and city wives all haggle together.
It is a place of sharp fish smells and strange incense and leather and wet canvas and unwashed rivermen who bring outlandish beasts from the villages high in the mountains, near the birthplace of the river.
By day, too, there are a thousand gods, one for every stranger, for every tradesman, for everyone who has ever passed through or resided or merely dreamed of a new god during an afternoon nap. In the street of carvers one can buy idols of all these gods, or even have new images made if one happens to be divinely inspired at the time.
At night, of course, there is only Surat-Kemad, whose jaws rend the living and the dead, whose body is the black water, whose teeth are the stars.
But it was by day I returned, making my way through the tangle of ships and smaller boats, past the wharves and floating docks, then beneath the city until I came out the other side near my father’s house.
Hamakina ran to me when I emerged through the trapdoor, her face streaming with tears. She embraced me, sobbing.
“Oh Sekenre, I’m so afraid!”
“Where is Father?” I asked, but she only screamed and buried her face in my robe. Then I said, “Where is Mother?”
Hamakina looked up into my face and said very softly, “Gone.”
“Gone?”
“She has gone to the gods, my son.”
I looked up. Father had emerged from his workroom, his sorcerer’s robe wrapped loosely over soiled white trousers. He hobbled toward us, dragging himself as if he didn’t quite know how to walk. I thought there was something wrong with his legs.
Hamakina