Northshore by Sheri S. Tepper Read Free Book Online Page B

make puddles on the cobbles. Lanterns are scarcely bright enough to see by. Jetties lying in shadow. He stands, Peasimy, head cocked, listening to the song-fish. Something there, disturbing them. Most nights they’ve finished up by now, danced on their tails, done all their calling and telling, but tonight there’s something keeping them awake. So Peasimy listens, almost understanding what it is the song-fish sing, as much in tune with them as with the dark and the fog.
    ‘Oh,’ he whispers to himself, ‘don’t I hear you, don’t I? Somethin’ comin’. Somethin’ wonderful comin’. Don’t I know that? Haven’t I been told? No need to keep say in’ it, over and over. No matter was it tomorrow or forever, I’d still be here, waitin’ for it.’ He rocks to and fro on his heels, thinking they may stop now, now that he’s told them, but the song-fish go on, harummm, harummm. No, whatever they’re telling him, it’s something different from the ordinary.
    Peasimy tiptoes along to the Riverbank, out onto the jetty, down to the place the reed bed thins out and the fish sing, flings himself down with his head snaking out over the slosh and slurp of the black water.
    Harumm, lumm, sloon, rumm. Fish playing with something, pushing it back and forth. They do that. Push an old barrel back and forth. Push a log, a stump. Chunk, chunk on the jetty, far down. Chunk, chunk, coming closer. And he can see it! Even in the dark, down there under the water, glowing, shining, a greeny glow, like new leaves in the sun, like moon on grass, light!
    He stares and stares as the fish bring her up, up to the surface, she glowing ever more brightly, until at last helooks directly into her face. All around her the fishes, singing, the glowing fishes spread either side of her like wings. Bump, bumping her against the stones, looking up at Peasimy as though to say, ‘Here she is!’ He knows her at once, one of the creatures from his dreams, one of those who bring the light.
    Oh, but she has changed since Thrasne carved her and put her into the River. All the features are the same, and the hard fragwood has not softened, but the little creatures of the depths have been at her, smoothing her all over with their phosphorescent slime so she gleams, shines, beams up from the waves like a beacon of greeny light, smiling, one hand held out as though for Peasimy to take it and welcome her ashore.
    And Peasimy reaches down, stronger than he could possibly be, tugging and lifting, pulling like a boatman at the capstan, hauling with an excess of power he has never had and will never have again, until she stands there, dripping on the jetty, peering at the town of Thou-ne. Only then does he go screaming off after the crier and the watch, hallooing for the lantern man, for the people to come see, and such is his fervor and volume of voice it is not long before there is a crowd gathered, full of muttering as the reed beds, staring at the woman from the River, who smiles back at them, shining, shining, shining in the dark.
    ‘There,’ Peasimy cries, over and over, in a voice totally unlike his own. ‘There in the River. The Truth Bearer. The Light Bearer. She shines, oh, she shines!’
    ‘What’s he saying?’
    ‘Says she’s the Truth Bearer.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Somebody who brings the truth, I guess. Look at her. Ain’t she lovely.’
    ‘What’d they say?’
    ‘Said the lovely Truth Carrier was come, I think. That’s her. Up there.’
    ‘What’s a Truth Carrier?’
    ‘Oh, that’s religion, that is. Foretold to happen.’ Thisfrom one of the standabouts, a know-it-all who makes up half of what he says and switches the other half around to suit himself. No one believes a thing he says in daylight, but the dark and mist make him an anonymous voice, speaking with the authority of conviction. ‘Foretold to happen,’ he says again, pleased with the way this is received.
    And the circumstances of it all, the mist, the dark, the