Moon-Flash by Patricia A. McKillip Page B

smell the various herbs that hung in little pouches from the Sun-Woman’s cloak—herbs her father used. The Sun-Woman’s face was painted sky-blue, with the blood red moon at moon-flash on one cheek and a ring of stars at the other. In the sudden silence, her voice curled upward in a question. Trembling, Kyreol removed the reed mask from her face.
    Both Terje and the Sun-Woman stared at her. Before either of them could speak, Kyreol knelt down in the sand. She drew rapidly, without stopping to think. The River-sign. The sign for River-Tree and for Turtle-Crossing. She drew jagged lines for Fourteen Falls, with the rainbows arched over them, and the Sun-Woman made a soft noise. She drew the Moon-Flash and the Face beneath it, and then, in memory of her betrothal ritual, she laid her hand flat in the sand and made her handprint. She stopped a moment and realized that the jumble of pictures made no sense. So she began drawing again, more slowly.
    This is the Face. This is the River. This is the boat with Terje and me in it, going toward the Falls. This is the boat, breaking in half, with two tiny people falling out of it. This is the cave where I slept.
She drew a square face with square eyes over the sleeper. The cave where the mask-people came.
    The woman squatted and stopped her hand then.She tapped at Reed-Face several times, saying a word over and over, until Kyreol understood what she wanted.
    Where is Reed-Face?
    She turned, pointed up the river, and the Sun-Woman nodded shortly. Then she looked at Kyreol for a long time out of her shrewd, wrinkled eyes. She snapped her fingers again, speaking, and two mudmasks came forward with bowls and began to paint Kyreol’s face blue.
    She and Terje huddled together later in a vast, firelit cave full of paintings of dreams and nightmares. They were alone; the cave entrances were guarded. Kyreol was surrounded by pots and bowls of paint, and Terje by weapons, drums, fierce masks, and round red shields with the flash of light hurtling into them.
    Terje, scowling back at the masks, only answered Kyreol’s questions in grunts until Kyreol asked in wonder, “Terje, did you forget your own language?”
    He stirred. “No.” His frown moved from the mask to her. But he wasn’t seeing her. “They made me—They were waiting for me just outside the cave. They scared me. I tried to run, but they caught my arms and all the berries scattered all over the cave. I didn’t understand for a while that the masks weren’t their real faces. It was raining; night was coming; it was hard to see. They came out of the shadows like bad dreams . . . Then they put a face on my face, and I knew they were people. Like us. Only . . .” He paused, drawing breath. He let his head drop back against one of the dreams on the wall. “They took me to another cave. They kept touching my hair, looking into myface. I think they think I’m a ghost. They kept trying to teach me to throw a spear. At a mask and a bunch of twigs. Maybe they needed a hunter. Only the mask was a man’s skull.” He touched a spear point. “They kill each other.”
    “I know.”
    “Well, why?”
    “I don’t know.”
    His brows pinched together. “I can’t think of any reason. How could people on the River come to be so different from us?”
    “They have signs. They have a dream-cave. They know the Moon-Flash. Only here it doesn’t mean good fortune or betrothal. It means—”
    “Killing.”
    “That’s so strange,” she breathed. “The Moon-Flash has nothing to do with that. Everyone knows what it means.”
    “Maybe they’re younger than we are. Their world hasn’t been on the River as long as the Riverworld. So they make mistakes.”
    “Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “Terje, how can people see and dream the same things, yet have a different language for them?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know. Kyreol, let’s go home.”
    “You dream.” She sighed. “And then you tell me your dream bcause