Free Moon-Flash by Patricia A. McKillip Page B

a brush of wind, leaving not even a name they could call. A boy, kin to the moon, learning how to live under the sun.
    “I wonder what his dreams are like,” Kyreol murmured later as they lay beside the embers, listening to the river sigh. “Terje.”
    He grunted.
    “We never even spoke. Terje . . .”
    “What?”
    “That was a different Moon-Flash. How many things can Moon-Flash mean?” She didn’t hear if he answered; she was drifting gently into her night journey. The thin moon-paring hovered before her in her dreaming, giving her no answers.
    The land began to change, then. The silky desert sand bunched up into hard dry hills covered with stones and scrub brush. Far in the distance a mist slowly became a line of blue mountains, marching across the desert. Kyreol wondered what kinds ofpeople lived among the high jagged peaks. They began to be wakened by odd noises in the dead of nights. One morning, their boat curved around a bend in the river and interrupted a herd of animals, big as small huts, lumbering into the water to drink.
    Kyreol groped urgently for the stone, which she had all but forgotten, while Terje, his muscles hard with exertion, sped to the far side of the river.
    “Stone. This is Kyreol.” She spoke softly, so as not to annoy the animals. But they seemed more interested in blowing water out of their noses at each other. “Stone.”
    “Kyreol!” the stone shouted.
    “Sh!”
    “You’re still alive!”
    “Stone, there are some enormous animals in the river—they’re grey and black, and they have teeth as long as this boat sticking out of their mouths.”
    “Stay away from them.”
    “Oh, we will.” Her mouth was dry. “Will they stay away from us?”
    “I hope so.”
    “Stone, what are they?”
    The stone hesitated. “Animals,” it said finally.
    “Well, I know that, but—” A blaze of color caught her eye. “Now there is a cloud of birds. Green, with white stripes down their wings. As tall as people.” She listened, entranced as one of them sang. It was a haunting song, deep and pure as notes out of a huge reed pipe. “Stone—”
    “I hear it.”
    “Where are we? Is this the same world?”
    The stone seemed to sigh. It spoke to itself a moment, quickly, incomprehensibly. Then it said carefully,“There are places in the world where animals are gathered to live freely, away from people. You’re passing through one of them. Kyreol—”
    “What language were you speaking?” she asked abruptly. “Is it the Hunter’s language?”
    “It—yes.”
    “Will you teach it to me?”
    There was another conversation within the stone, much longer than before. Then it said resignedly to her, “Wouldn’t you rather go home?”
    “No.”
    “Then—all right. At least I’ll know you’re still alive. Now listen carefully.” It said something slowly. “That means, ‘My name is Joran.’ Now say this.”
    She repeated it delightedly. “My name is Kyreol. Terje, listen!” She caught his arm, making the boat swerve. “You say this: ‘My name is Terje.’”
    He pulled up his oar, looking in disbelief at an enormous, silky animal with a mane sunning itself on the shore and then at her. “My name is Terje,” he said huskily. “Now ask it what that is.”
    They spoke to the stone intermittently throughout the day, learning the names of dozens of birds and animals, along with the words for boat, fish, fire, tired, hungry, river, world. Only when Kyreol asked the word for Moon-Flash did the stone refuse her.
    “You’ll have to ask the Hunter.”
    The stone advised that they stay in the boat, so they rarely left it. They kept it in mid-river, taking turns sleeping at night while the other rowed. During the day, in clearings where they saw no animals, they stopped briefly to cook the fish they caught, to gather fruit that Joran told them was safe to eat.
    One night Kyreol, lulled to sleep by the water eddying in moonlit circles away from the lift and dip of Terje’s oar,