“I would die! Even here the heat burns.” Kerrick smiled at this, his skin garments closed tight against the chill wind from the ocean. “We have caught much fish, sought out certain plants we must have for the takkuuk, leaves and the inner bark of certain trees for brewing with water for drinking. But the need for knives is great and we wept with fear that we would have to return without them. Now we weep with joy to have found you—and spearheads too.”

Armun came to join them, handed Kalaleq the folded square of woven charadis cloth. Kalaleq shook it out and held it to the sky.

“What is it, unbelievable! Soft as the fur on a baby’s bottom. Smells good too.”

“It is for Angajorqaq,” Armun said. “It can be worn around the head like this, let me show you. It is woven from the fibers of a certain plant. It is something the Sesak do. They are hunters who live inland, far from the sea.”

“Oh, what skills they have, even though they must weep daily not being able to see the ocean. There are so many marvels here, this charadis, your spears, your bows, your spearheads, your knives, the ekkotaz—I must eat more!”

“You have many marvels as well,” she said, laughing and pushing his hands away. Food and sex, that was the Paramutan way. “Your ikkergak that you sail in, your harpoons for killing, small boats with sails, pumps and whistles.”

“You are right—we are so good! We make so many things my mind goes around and around just thinking about it.”

Kerrick was smiling at the bragging and all the artifacts they told each other about, all the things they made. Tanu, Paramutan—even Sasku. They were so different, yet they were the same. They made things. So very different from the Yilanè who could make nothing. Only the Yilanè males were creative. They were artistic, made sculptures of metal, the two who had escaped the hanalè had even learned to fish and hunt. But the females constructed nothing. Everything they had was grown. They were good enough at this, at least the scientists were. But they were still incapable of making something even as simple as a spear.

Then Kerrick grew very still as the thought gripped him. The realization that the world was not what he had always thought it was. He had been born Tanu but grew up as a Yilanè and too much of his thinking was still Yilanè.

But no more! He could see the future with a greater clarity now. He knew just what it was he had to do.

eistaapeleghè eistaaii, yilanè’ninkuru yilanè gebgeleb.

YILANÈ APOTHEGM

A Yilanè with two eistaa? Disgustedly impossible/inconceivable.

THIRTY