The Boat Builders

By R. Silver Ransom

The Boat Builders is the first part of an epic trilogy that follows a remarkable woman named Cana as she makes a journey from a desolate wasteland to an unimaginable future. The story is rich in characters, filled with action and adult sexuality, and vivid in its descriptions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329085299

Book preview

The Boat Builders

The Boat Builders

R. Silver Ransom

2015

For Giles and Neville

Foreword

I first met R. Silver Ransom through a mutual friend in 1987. He was living outside of Manchester in the UK at the time, although he has asked me to be no more specific than that. He had lived in England for some years, I surmised, and yet from his accent I wondered if he had not been born and raised in the United States. He was in disguise when I met him, even wearing a mask that concealed his face. This, I later learned, was typical of his almost fanatical desire for anonymity. The mask lent him a mysterious, even disquieting air.  He seemed an above average person in height, but his loose, baggy clothing made it hard to ascertain what kind of frame he possessed. The friend who had arranged our meeting had, with Ransom’s permission, shared some of his stories with me. I found them strangely compelling, even absorbing. Ransom excels at creating alternative realities in his work. He was disdainful of publishers, and preferred to circulate hand-written copies of his work among a very small circle of people. These people had repeatedly urged Ransom to publish his work, without success. After a brief conversation, Ransom excused himself and I did not meet him again for many years. I found him to be deeply eccentric but fascinating.

In 1992, I heard that Ransom had conceived a huge, sweeping narrative set in a post-apocalyptic world deep in the future. He was said to be working on this project fitfully. In 1995 small excerpts from this work began circulating among about a dozen people. Ransom was forever being sidetracked from the project, however. He seemed to have disappeared from the UK completely for several years. There were rumours of an odd writer who liked to conceal his face living in the Seattle region of the U.S. but nothing definite could be pinned down. In any event, Ransom was definitely in Britain again by 2000. I know because I was one of a group of five individuals who met with him in December of that year in a small house in the Lake District of England. (Again, he asked me to be no more specific than that.) He handed us some pages from a work he called The Boat Builders. It was an exceedingly unusual story, its characters engaged in both rugged combat  and raw, earthy sexual expression. I told him I thought it was worthy of development. That was the last I heard of it.

Until this year.

Ransom has been persuaded to make this work available. He has completed an immense, sprawling, three-volume epic. He is not making this available out of any financial necessity on his part. (As far as I can tell, he is the scion of a very wealthy family.) But he now feels ready to share his remarkable literary vision with a wider audience. Having avidly read the first volume, it is my prediction that The Boat Builders will find a wide and appreciative group of readers. I am honored that Ransom chose me to write the foreword to this epic. I think you will be drawn into its world as deeply as was I.

Giles Gilmore, London, 2015

1.

She looked out on the dying remains of the afternoon and squinted in the light of the harsh Sun, which was finally making its way toward the horizon. It had been a day of brutal heat so she had been in the mouth of the cave since morning. She was naked except for the foot coverings she had fashioned from the skin of an unlucky desert animal. Her blonde hair was tied back by a leather strap. Her muscled body was taut and strong. She knew her life depended on it being that way. She was from the tribe of the Northern Ones, but her skin was browned from years of living in the Far Lands. She was indifferent to the scars, perhaps a dozen, that served as a map of the combat she had seen, endured, and survived. The slash across her lower abdomen was her most prominent scar. The man who inflicted it had died looking at her holding the remains of his severed manhood in her left hand, and the blade she had conjured in her right. She hadn’t thought about that attack in months, but whenever she did, she always thought about it the same way—the pleasure of her revenge made up for the searing pain of the wound. It had been worth it just to see his eyes in those last moments. 

The woman who had adopted her thirty years before had named her Cana. The name meant little to her. She seldom heard it said. Her adoptive mother had been kind to her, one of the few people who ever had been. She died when Cana was 11, a victim of yet another mass killing inflicted by the Death Spirit. After that, the young girl was pretty much on her own. A life of camp fires, second-hand clothes, stealing food, and bedding down in forests had followed. She made her way from the Shore into the depths of the continent. She had first been able to conjure when she was 14. It was a minor conjuring, a small, sharp knife, but it had saved her from being raped by a man twice her age. He backed off when she threatened him with it; she never forgot the lesson of that day. She grew strong in body, working any job that made her lift and move heavy things, determined that no one would ever beat her and violate her. She had seen those things happen to weak girls more times than she could count. She would never be one of those girls. Never.

The first time she had taken another person’s life, when she was 17, she was shaken by the experience. By the ninth time it was simply an inconvenience. Most of the people she had killed were men. Men didn’t intimidate her. She had both fought them and felt them between her legs. Neither had impressed her. It was as if men expected her to be cowed by muscular arms or instantly aroused at the sight of an erection. Cana could only shake her head about men like that, the stupid ones, the blind ones, the ones she held in contempt.

But there was one man she did fear. His name was Tec. And he lived only a thousand long paces away.

She set her gaze toward the opening of the canyon, its jagged rocks growing long shadows in the twilight. She was grateful that she was tall enough to look over the rocks that bordered her shelter without having to strain too much. In her lean, strong arms, she cradled a fierce, bladed weapon, one she had made herself. She kept her eyes fixed. Was he awake? Was he alive? With grim humor she thought, does he want to come out and play today? That her land was his desire was a story grown tired in the telling. And he knew the canyon’s riches fired her imagination. One of them would stand triumphant over all of it. The other would be a feast for the sky eaters, who would shriek with delight as they tore bloody shreds from the loser’s body.

Nothing had happened today. Whenever she squatted down to urinate she was sure he knew she was vulnerable, but nothing had come. Now, at twilight…she sensed it.

It was never anything she could pinpoint. She saw the visions as vague pictures that popped into her head unbidden, images that were hazy around the edges, like a dream…

But she trusted them.

In the near distance flyers began to sing their sundown chorus. No wind stirred. A distant howler sounded off for no one in particular. The Sun was turning from yellow to orange. A few high clouds stretched out above her.

He was there. He could see her.

She knew it…

She could feel it…her arms tensed, and her eyes practically scalded the air.

He would try it again tonight. It had been almost seven days since their last combat, maybe more. It was hard to say, really. She had fought off the attack quickly, but the conjuring left her almost disabled for two days. It was a rough one. And the battle hurt. Damn, did it hurt. She had used up almost all her supply of the cactus that eased pain. She breathed more quickly, thinking about what he might do…what he could do. He spoke in childspeak. He knew almost nothing of the outer world. The howlers had more brains than he did. And yet, he was strong like her, and somehow this dimwitted fool conjured as well as she did. It was his only talent. Just my luck, she thought.

He would do it tonight. In this hour. In this minute.

Right now.

Anger flooded through her. Do it NOW, you bastard…Do it NOW.

The flyer chorus grew frantic.

Do it n—…

ON HER, it was ON HER, a bad one, a real bad one, its claws practically in her face. GET OFF ME!, Cana screamed, more in rage than terror. She turned her body in a whirling motion to disorient the hideous being that was trying to skin her alive. Her blade, as if by its own reflex, rammed into the attacker’s reptilian belly. The creature jumped back momentarily, roaring and spitting, indifferent to its wound, a tangle of claws and dagger-like fangs preparing to tear her guts out with maximum efficiency. She shouted, SHIELD! A metal disc, fifty hands across, covered her immediately. It stopped the saurian in its tracks, briefly knocking it on its back. But within moments, fire torching out from its claws was cutting through the shield with horrifying ease. FLYING SPEARS she commanded. Cana dove to the ground as 200 combat spears flew at the saurian’s face and hind quarters. Blood spurted from a dozen quick hits. She could see her opponent better now. It was a brownish and gray animal that looked like the river monsters she had heard of. It roared out in fury as a spear cut into one of its dead-looking eyes. But suddenly the saurian was covered with fresh scales of armor, and those spears that had embedded themselves were blasted out with a sickening popping noise. She only just avoided one flying toward her head, the blade whistling as it flew inches from her left ear.

She ran back toward the cave opening. The attacker, standing on its hind legs, at least forty hands high, seemed to smile at the prospect of devouring her. Its rear legs flexed as it prepared to leap on her a second time. She jumped onto a long rope that was tied to a tree sticking out of the cliff side. She pulled herself up on it with practiced speed, and shouted, LIGHTNING. She barely hung on as the air lit up with savage bolts The thunder was so intense it made her heart vibrate in her chest. But the river monster was only momentarily stunned, and it immediately waved huge, fan-like protectors from its forelimbs, batting the lightning bolts away. This was going to take it all out of her, she knew. Each conjure was harder. Each one strained her more. Each one drained her energy. She knew the one that lived in the canyon was watching, himself being weakened by the massive effort the combat conjures took. So she had to decide…

Two or three more small moves that would leave her with some of her strength…

Or one huge one that would leave her with nothing…

There was no choice.

She tied herself to the rope, and with exhausted desperation shouted, PIT! Her mind writhed and shook, and she felt as if her head were being crushed. The ground underneath the river monster opened up and the horrible reptile was hurled downward three hundred long paces. She screamed, FIRE! FIRE! FIRE Huge tongues of flame locked their embrace on the saurian. The river monster shrieked out in agony as it was being consumed. Then its innards exploded, sending hunks of flesh out of the pit, as if the fiery trap were a huge pot boiling over. The ground closed, and she hung there, from the rope, completely spent.

Near the canyon opening she could see him lying on the ground, his limbs spread eagled. Not today, you loser. Not this day, Tec. Not this day, or any day. Her arms were useless, as the full energy drain caused by the conjures crashed down on her. She hung from the waist for long minutes, and then, only with the greatest effort, was she able to untie herself and slide down the rope. Upon reaching the ground, she collapsed and allowed herself to drift into sleep. He wouldn’t be able to attack her for several days. Making any kind of big animals used up huge amounts of conjure energy just by themselves, much less the kind he liked to make. He was no threat tonight.

And as she slipped into the dream world, she once again pictured herself killing him.

********

That night, she dreamed of the woman who had adopted her. Sometimes in Cana’s dreams she simply saw her mother standing before her, saying nothing. Her mother’s beautiful, kind face looked somber and serious in these dreams, as if she were quietly examining the woman Cana had become, a woman that her mother hadn’t lived to see. In this night’s dream, Cana’s mother was sitting with her and cradling her, showing her an object that Mother called a bock,  something that held pieces of paper together. The bock had pictures of animals with words underneath the pictures. Cana couldn’t make out the words, but she felt safe in her mother’s arms. In that dream moment she felt a gentle contentment that wrapped around her like a warm, soft nest. She wanted it to stay.

Then it was gone.

When she awakened she had no idea how long she had been asleep. The Sun was already well up in the morning sky. There was only the slightest breeze, and in the distance a lonely flyer’s song floated in the air. She was always shocked at how much she ached after these battles with the savage that lived so close to her. Her head was throbbing; it felt as if it were shouting at her. There was one—no, two—new scars on her left arm from where the river monster had raked her with one of its claws. She thought, where the hell does Tec come up with these things? He’s too stupid to imagine them himself.

She stood unsteadily and weaved her way to the mouth of the cave. A leather pouch hanging there held water. She drained it. She’d have to refill it from the well later, when she felt stronger. She sat down a few paces inside the cave, resting in its welcome shade. Next to her was a small basket which Cana had woven. It held several squat little cactus plants. She ate one, wincing at its bitterness. Within a few minutes the aches and pains grew less, and her head stopped pounding. Dried meat hung in a net from the ceiling of the cave, held by a hook Cana had fashioned herself. She stood and undid the net, took the meat in her hands, and sat down. She attacked the food with her mouth. She would check the traps later that day. She hoped any animals she had caught had been killed cleanly. They usually were.

When she finally killed Tec, she thought, he was going to know he was dying.

How long had her enemy been there, she wondered. She was pretty sure five winters had passed since he had come. She had only seen him at a distance. He was a Northern One, like her. It looked like he had brown hair, long and unruly. She couldn’t make out much about his face. He shouted insults at her sometimes, and when the wind blew his words toward her, she could make out some of his disgusting childspeak idiocy.

You gone die! You die soon! Me kill you good! You hurt! I take what you got! You no stop me!

As she ate, she began thinking about the next battle. He had attacked her twice in seven days. Just like the crude, stupid man he was, he always liked to make these horrible monsters.  She had to fight back hard, and soon. She would try to recover her strength quickly, and then attack him as viciously as possible. She liked to hit him with things she didn’t think he could figure out quickly, but he had proven to be surprisingly hard to destroy. She had once hurled ram horns at the canyon that produced deafening, shrieking noises, so loud it almost made her ears hurt. He had quickly covered his ears with a thick layer of mud, and then he blasted the ram horns out of the air with sheets of boulders. She had sent thunderclaps to tear him apart; he had covered himself with a metal shelter within seconds. She had rained down poisoned daggers on him; almost instantly he had conjured a huge hand to stop them. She had once sent a burning twister storm to destroy him. He blew it out with a bigger one. He had beaten everything she had thrown at him. She knew she was many times smarter than he was, and yet she couldn’t destroy him. It angered her and puzzled her at the same time.

He was good on defense, there was no doubt about it. She had to think of something so unexpected, so new, that he would be too confused to figure out how to fight it until it was too late. Then she would run to the canyon while he was still dazed and bleeding, and do what she most wanted to do: cut him open while he was still alive—and take her time doing it.

Cana chewed some of  the leaves that always woke her up and made her senses alert. She sighed. She needed more of the leaves and more of the pain-killing cactus plants. She needed more dried yellow fruit, too. She didn’t know why, but the people who never ate any of its sour flesh eventually were covered with sores. Their teeth fell out, too. So that was something she had to have. She would have to make a trip to the settlement to trade meat for what she needed. And there would be men there who would try to have her. It was something she’d have to deal with when the time came.

As the day wore on she felt stronger. She sat in the mouth of the cave, working on a new bow for the arrows she used to bring down flyers. The days in the hot months were absolutely merciless. It was dangerous for her to go out in them except when it was necessary. The well near the very back of the cave had water that wasn’t too bad, so she drank some of it and chewed leaves while she worked. After a couple of hours, she grew tired of it. There was a leather sack lying on the right side of the cave. It held two of her most prized possessions. She decided to look at them again, for perhaps the hundredth time. She brought the sack out near the daylight at the cave opening. Reaching in, she pulled the larger of the two objects out.

It was a bock, one of the rarest of all objects. Cana could read it because her mother had taught her how to read so many years ago. Her mother had managed to scrape together any stray bits of bock she could find during the eleven years she was with Cana. Cana read everything she could. It wasn’t much, really. She had come across this bock in a settlement many years ago. She was lucky it was in Angish, the language she knew. The bock was old, maybe three hundred summers, with a brown cover that was starting to come apart at the edges. But to Cana, it was as precious as anything she had ever owned. She gazed at the title: The World of the Passed. She opened it to one of her favorite parts:

Many kinds of different people lived in Yerp, and they spoke many different tongues. In the north, there were people called Scands. In the east, there were Rushes and Roms. In the south there lived Talias and Spanch. Other people were the Mans, Ench, and Brish. They fought many wars with each other. They would trade things with each other. Sometimes those from Yerp went to other lands and fought wars there, too.

Yerp had many great sitties. Many, many people lived in those sitties. Sity of Don was very large. It was on a big river. So was Va, in east. Other big sitties were Pars, Athe, Ram, and Pag. All these cities were lost when the Fire came.

Cana wondered, what had it been like there, before the Fire and the Great Death Spirit? Yerp must have been many days away from where she now lived. Even if she had a riding animal, it would probably take her many days of journeying before she reached it. But there was no point anyway. There was probably hardly anyone there, she thought, and the sitties were all ruins, if even that. She carefully closed the bock and gently placed it back in the pouch. She gingerly took out the smaller of the two volumes, It was called The Erth. This bock didn’t talk about the world that was gone; it described how the world Cana lived in worked. She opened it to a passage she was very familiar with, as familiar as the land she lived on now:

In each long time, Sun goes around Erth 300 sunrises and sunsets. It is a big, burning piece of metal that is more than 10 million long paces from Erth. It gets hotter in some parts of the long time, which is why summer comes. When it cools off, winter comes. It heats up when it gathers more things to burn.

Cana didn’t know how much a million of anything was, but it sounded like a very big number. She was awed to think that Sun could be that far away and yet glow so hot that she was forced to hide in her cave during the worst of the summer days.

She flipped to another page she had read dozens of times:

There is a big body of water called Oshan. It covers much of Erth. There are many kinds of swimmers living in Oshan. Some of these swimmers can eat people. Some of the swimmers can be catched and people can eat them. Some people call the swimmers Piskez. There was many more of them living in Oshan before The Fire.

Cana wanted to know so many things. She was good at everything she did. She could hunt, fight, trap, conjure, weave, make things out of skin, and live in a place that almost no one else could. But there was so much she didn’t know. Was Erth a big ball, like some said, or a big, flat shield? No one knew. She put her priceless copy of The Erth back in the pouch, and she wondered if she would ever come across a bock again.

As the daylight was lessening, she put on a piece of  leather that wrapped around her waist, and a leather covering for her upper body. Men seemed to get too excited if she wore any less than that. On one of her trips to the settlement she had just worn the leather wrapped around her waist, and her foot coverings. After she had thrown three men to the ground, she decided she needed to cover her chest whenever she was around men. She filled a sack with dried meat and tied the sack to her backside, so she could carry it more easily. She tucked a nasty little metal knife into a pocket. In the settlement she would trade for a long stick with animal grease on the top. She would light the stick with fire to help her see her way back at night. With that, she set off on the trip to the settlement.

2.

The settlement had been there as long as anybody could remember. No one had bothered to give it a name. About 3,000 people lived there, which was about 3,000 more than Cana liked. At any given time, there were people visiting the settlement from all over that region of the Far Lands. It took her from late afternoon to almost dark to get there. She could see its torchlights and campfires in the distance. She could smell it almost at the same time she could first see it. It was a place where traders brought goods they had scrounged up from who-knows-where to barter for other goods or services. Most of the settlement’s people lived there all the time, while some just drifted in and out. Some of the people who came to the settlement simply offered their bodies in exchange for food or whatever else they needed. They would do anything the people who hired them wanted them to do, no matter what it was. Cana didn’t know whether to feel sorry for them or just despise them.

As she walked into the settlement’s outskirts, traveling along its crooked, winding pathways, she got a few looks of recognition. Sometimes she could hear, in a whispered voice, Conjure woman. If they knew her and were wary of her, that was good as far as she was concerned. Some of the young men she passed looked at her a long time, fixing their eyes on her. They knew from looking at her that they couldn’t force her to have sex. They seemed to think Cana would ask them. She just smiled and shook her head. She passed little booths, made out of desert wood and dried clay bricks, offering foot coverings, or pots of boiled desert veg, or people who offered to sharpen up metal weapons. Something made of genuine metal was rare, and usually cost a hefty barter. Half-naked, dirty children ran around everywhere. Old women with most of their teeth gone were hawking their wares or their services. Good arrows to kill flyers! Fried long ears! Fried long ears! Just killed today! I fix your foot coverings! Make good again! Yellow fruit! Yellow fruit! You need, I got! Cana found it tiresome very quickly. She would get what she needed, and get out, the sooner the better.

As she walked around one curve, she entered a part of the settlement where there weren’t many booths. There was a younger man, a boy really, maybe 16 or 17 years old, about twenty, thirty short paces away. He had taken off his lower body covering and was about sit with his rear end sticking out past a log, to empty himself. He was almost frozen when he saw Cana. Without being touched, his manhood swelled up to its full size. Cana briefly considered walking over to him, grabbing him by his member, and twisting it for all she was worth. But she simply glared at him and shook an angry finger in his direction. He turned away from her, and lowered his head. She didn’t hurt him because she knew he couldn’t help himself. She had surprised him, after all, and he was a boy-man, too weak and stupid to control his reactions. She walked onward. That boy was lucky, she thought. Some months ago a man had tried to lure her by deliberately crossing her path and showing off his erect manhood to her, his face covered by a smirk. Cana took great satisfaction at the memory of him lying on the ground, writhing in pain from a kick by one the strongest legs in the Far Lands.

She reached her first destination, a small booth occupied by a single man of middle years. The man sitting there was a Southern One, the sweat on his dark brown skin reflecting the light of the campfire he had going. He was the one who had the leaves that woke a person up and made their senses as sharp as the tip of a blade weapon. Cana knew that many years ago he had lived with a woman, a Western One with deep bronze skin and long, dark hair, but she had died giving birth to their baby boy, who had himself died within five sunrises. The leaf trader had been alone since that time. Cana had visited him at least a dozen times since she had moved to this part of the Far Lands. In all that time she had never seen him smile once. Nor had he ever offered his name.

He looked up at her with only the barest interest. Hey Cana, what you got for me tonight? She unslung the sack from her backside and opened it wide. I got a lot of meat to trade. Traps have been full lately, and you know I can bring down a flyer. I got long ears, I got houk, I got digging rut. The leaf trader’s face showed no emotion. Cana had saved the best for last. She had a genuine treat to offer. And look here. Bay-son. The leaf trader’s eyes grew slightly wider, although to say he was excited would have been an exaggeration. Bay-son were huge animals, with a lot of meat on them, and some of them lived in the Far Lands. Cana had killed one sixty sunrises earlier and had preserved it with smoke and desert salt. It was always good eating when you had bay-son. She saved plenty of the meat for trading. The leaf trader looked at her offerings. Don’t want digging rut. Mean looking little things, not much meat. Houk? Stringy from flying so much. Can make soob out of one, I guess, if you have water you don’t need to drink. Long ears I can get from many others. He looked at the bay-son meat and pondered it for a while. He got up and walked out from behind the front of his booth, bringing a bag of wake-up leaves. He used his hands to indicate how big a portion of the bay-son he was interested in. It was about half of what Cana had brought. He dug into his bag and brought up a big handful of the dark, chewy leaves. He held a pile between his thumb and forefinger. I give you this much for the bay-son.

Cana laughed. I’d be better off keeping the bay-son for myself. You don’t want it, I know many who do. The leaf trader said, in a tired voice, K, I give you two piles.

She replied, Two BIG piles for this much. She used her hand to indicate about a quarter of the bay-son meat. I throw in some long ears for free.

The leaf trader thought about it for a while, and then said, K, but only ‘cause I know you. So the deal was done. Cana cut off a fourth of the bay-son meat and grabbed the carcasses of two fat long ears. The leaf trader was unusually generous. Cana thought, he’s the nearest thing I have to a friend. Not a bad man, like most of them. Cana stuffed the leaves into a pocket of her lower body covering. She would have stayed to talk to the leaf trader a little while, but he was looking at the ground, and didn’t look like he had anything to say. Cana simply said, K then, I see you next time. The leaf trader neither acknowledged her nor looked up as she left.

This was a burden on her, this wrangling with settlement people, but it was necessary. Everything she could obtain by trading was something she didn’t have to use up energy conjuring. Food was surprisingly hard to conjure, especially meat. She had to save her conjuring energy to fight that damn Tec. Conjured weapons were less hard to make, but they didn’t seem to last very long. Her first knife, the one she had saved herself with when she was 14, had disintegrated within a few days. Real weapons, the kind she could ram into one of those monsters her idiot enemy assaulted her with, had to be bargained for or made herself. 

Cana made her way back to the stand that sold yellow fruit, and got a good quantity for some long ears and some houk. She threw in a digging rut to clinch the deal. As she was walking away from the fruit trader, a man with deep set eyes stepped into her path. His face was cruel, and covered in part by skin drawings.  It was not her womanhood he wanted; he was more dangerous than that. Cana suspected that he was a Fear Thrower. Fear Throwers tried to look into your head and figure out what you were most afraid of, the thing you couldn’t bear to confront in any way. They would throw a picture of this feared thing into the air in front of you, a picture that looked so real it was if the terrible thing were about to destroy your soul right then and there. While you were helpless and frozen in fear, they would rob you, or even rob you and then kill you, just for fun.

This Fear Thrower was a Western One, wearing a filthy, tattered blanket. His hair was very long, reaching halfway to his waist. Cana had confronted people like him many times. She waited to see what the Fear Thrower would come up with to horrify her. She could  have dropped him with one blow, but this was something like a game to her. The Fear Thrower looked at her for a long time, and then threw his picture into the air. It was a huge tarantula, one with menacing, restlessly moving legs, and long, ugly, needle-like hairs sticking out of it. Cana laughed out loud. I kill those with rocks for sport, she half-shouted. She then smashed the Fear Thrower in the face hard, using the base of her right hand as a weapon instead of using a fist. He fell to the ground, his nose shattered. Cana then delivered a furious kick to the Fear Thrower’s left side. She heard the satisfying cracking of ribs as she did. She left him there, bleeding and prostrate. No Fear Thrower had ever defeated her, and she was determined to keep it that way.

Her last stop was to the cactus trader, the one that sold the little plants that eased big pains. She always had to tell herself to be strong for this trade, to get herself ready. The cactus trader knew how valuable his little painkillers were, so he could demand big amounts of meat in exchange for them. Cana disliked going to the cactus trader for another reason. He traded plants that gave those that ate them strange visions, filled with dancing colors and crazy, twisted images. As she walked up to his booth, a big one compared to the others, there were many people standing near it laughing hysterically or looking into the night sky as if seeing a ghost. Over by a tree there was a woman on her hands and knees emptying out her stomach. Within a short time she would be traveling into the Next World, the one that appeared only to those who ate the magic plants.

Cana went up to the booth. Sitting behind it was a short, fat little man who greatly resembled the cactus plants he sold. He was a Northern One, with orange hair. Near him was a big hat, very wide, that he no doubt used to shield his pale skin during the day time. On a table made from tree stumps he had samples of his wares: the squat little plants Cana needed, dried shrums that made people see wild, fiery shades of red, orange, and purple, and a whole array of others. He knew Cana. He knew what she could offer him, too. He smiled upon seeing her and said, Well Cana, you’re back, and sooner than I thought you’d be. How is life out in the cave?

Cana had an irritated expression on her face. She replied, As long as it keeps me away from you, life in the cave isn’t bad at all. He laughed like a man who had the upper hand, and knew it. So you need some more of those wonderful little plants that drain all the hurt out of injuries. What are you prepared to give me in return? He spoke like a man who had seen many bocks. His language reminded her of the Angish her mother had spoken.

A tall, thin man about ten paces from Cana started crying helplessly, babbling to some person only he could see. Another man, with yellow hair like Cana’s and about thirty paces away, was sitting on his rear, curled up as if it were cold outside, and rocking himself back and forth, chanting and singing. Cana did her best to ignore both of them. I have plenty of meat, but I’m not going to let you take everything just because you want to, Cana said somewhat defensively. The fat little man laughed again and said, We’ll see, we’ll see. Yes, there was a reason why she came here last.

In an open area well behind the booth, two men wrestled with each other, laughing. They would stop briefly and look into each other’s eyes with amazement, and touch each other’s face. Then they resumed wrestling in the dust, laughing, rolling around as if they were a living, breathing log.  A woman even farther back from the booth, one barely visible in the fire light, was howling and baying like one of the animals that lived near Cana. Cana looked at them, mystified, and wondered what was going on inside of them. Would they even remember any of this when sunrise came again?

The negotiation with the cactus trader was harsh, as usual. Cana had to give up almost all of her remaining bay-son, and some houk and long ears as well. The little man put only about half the plants he usually did into the woven sack. Cana looked at him, her eyes narrowing, and said, I should cut your throat right here.

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