Page 3 of The Summer Pass

“Yes, and then—you can guess—he wasn’t as dead as they’d hoped, and he came and took us back.”

“At that point they just let him go,” Shan added. “He’d already killed a couple of them. And of course he did untie us then, so we could help bandage him up, and … ” He looked at his companion as if he wondered whether she could explain this part of the story any better than he could.

“I suppose one might think we should have left him for dead ourselves,” she said, “after everything, but we were quite far from home by then and more than a little lost, and he had rescued us from the king’s men … ” She shook her head, obviously unsatisfied with that explanation.

“He tried to tell us where he was headed,” said Shan, “that he was going somewhere up in the mountains, but that it wasn’t far—at least that’s what we thought he was saying—and we could see he needed our help. The king’s men had taken his horse at the same time they took us. So … we went with him, and here we are.”

“I understand,” said Lill. “I’m sure I would have done the same, in your position.”

He wasn’t sure of that at all—in fact, he was pretty sure he would have abandoned the wounded raider himself—but he did understand doing something and not being able to explain afterward why you did it.

Chapter 2

A New Bird in the Wild

Nakhana came out of the bedroom where they had put the injured raider. The shaman had left a few minutes earlier. Lill and the other lowlanders looked up expectantly.

“He’ll be all right,” Nakhana signed. “He’s tough, and Shaman Tati is a good healer.”

“Is he a friend of yours?” Lill asked. He picked up the empty teacups and got down from the seating platform. Then he realized that with his hands full he wouldn’t be able to talk to Nakhana, so he hastily set down the cups.

“My cousin,” Nakhana signed. “His mother lives in the village—I don’t know why he didn’t go to her, but maybe he didn’t want to alarm her. I’d better go see her now, give her the news.” He heaved a sigh. “She doesn’t sign worth shit. She’ll think I’m saying he’s dead. I’ll have to get Ma to come with me.” He looked across the room at Shan and the woman, who were sitting nervously staring at him and Lill as they communicated silently. “Who the fuck are those two, anyway? Did you talk to them?”

“I did,” said Lill, and he gave a summary of the story the two had told him.

The blacksmith groaned aloud. “Fucking typical. Hostages? When he wakes up, I’m going to knock him out again.”

He stalked out, banging the door, and Lill turned back to Shan and his companion. It was clear from their expressions that they had begun to fear their ordeal was not yet over.

“You were … talking about us, weren’t you?” Shan ventured.

“Um, Nakhana—that’s the smith—he wanted to know who you were, and I explained what you told me. The man who took you prisoner is his cousin, and Nakhana doesn’t seem to like that he did it. I think he’s on your side, more or less.” He gave them what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

“Oh,” said the woman, obviously doing her best to look reassured. “What is all this that he does with his hands? Is that how he talks?”

“Yes, it’s hand language. Most of the people in the village speak it.”

“Most of the people in the village?” She looked astonished. “You mean none of them talk?”

Lill resisted the urge to point out that hand language was talking. “No, most of the villagers can hear and talk aloud, but some of them are deaf, like Nakhana, and so everyone—almost everyone,” he amended, remembering Nakhana’s complaint about his aunt, “speaks hand language too, for their sake.”

“Ohh,” said Shan, with a thoughtful look. “He speaks it too, I guess.” He pointed toward the bedroom door. “He was trying to tell me something in gestures, early on, and he … did a lot of gestures, you know, some that I could understand, and some that were probably that, hand language. What’s his name, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Lill admitted. “People have different names in hand language. They give you a name sign when they get to know you—if they want to talk about you. Mine’s—” and he made the sign, little snake. He was used to introducing himself that way in Tsuruva.

“So you must have lived here a while,” the woman guessed, “to get a—a hand name.”

“I’ve been here for six weeks. But the villagers didn’t give me the name—I got it from my husband.”

This wasn’t something he’d told anyone in Tsuruva. When they asked how he came to know hand language so well, he just said that he liked languages, that he’d learned it from friends. It wasn’t a lie. They would have been perplexed, at first, at the idea of his having a husband, but when they got over that, they’d have assumed his husband must have been from Tsuruva and would want to know who he was. It was a small place; he couldn’t pretend it was someone they didn’t know.

Vanu wasn’t from Tsuruva, exactly, but they certainly knew him.

But now Lill had said “my husband,” and it had the effect on the two lowlanders that he’d hoped and half-expected. They lit up a little. They glanced at one another and then back at him.

“You have a husband?” said the woman. “You were a boy bride?”

Lill nodded.