Pallahaxi by Michael Coney

Author:Michael Coney [Coney, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Speculative Fiction,
Publisher: PS Publishing
Published: 2012-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

The mist turned to a fine snow and the world turned white. Hunting and farming were finished for the year. The domestic lox hibernated in the barns and the only creatures fool enough to venture outside daily were the lorin; heads down, shaggy coats white with snow, plodding through the countryside on Phu alone knows what errands. The rest of us gathered around our hearths to stardream, tell stories and wait out the freeze.

And I dreamed of Charm.

I tried to stardream instead. Winter is a great time for stardreaming; there’s little else to do and we can learn a lot of history that way, and broaden our experience. But every time I lit up my pipe of hatch and lay back on the cushions, that pretty face rose before me and those warm brown eyes watched me gravely. Mister McNeil tells me that human memories are faint things; just indistinct pictures that lack reality and sequence. So it may be difficult for you to understand the vivid nature of stilk memories, with all the colors and sounds, the smells and the emotions still there. When I thought of Charm, I relived that short time we were together, minute by minute, word by word.

I wonder if Dad guessed what was going on it my mind. I couldn’t have explained it if he’d asked. It was different from our normal sex drive; it was somehow beyond that. It was going to be a long winter before I could see her again.

And anyway, she was a flounder.

Dad and I lived in the center of the men’s village in a small cottage passed down our male line for generations. Uncle Stance and Trigger lived next door in the big chief’s house. We saw all too much of them.

The temple was still busy, its keeper holding frequent services to reassure the superstitious that summer would come again, one day. The Great Lox still guarded us from the ice-devil Rax. It was a peculiar metaphor for the sun and its dead companion, but it was what the people wanted to hear. That, and word that the unlikely Drove and Browneyes still waited in the wings ready to prance forth and deliver us, should matters take a further turn for the worse. I never visited the temple, but I did take a short walk to the big barn on the outskirts of the women’s village one day, well-armed with hot bricks. We were running short of flour.

I found my mother, Yam Spring, in charge of the stores.

Her face lit up when she saw me. “Hardy!”

Embarrassing. There is a public heater in the barn and a handful of men and women lounged around it, chatting and drinking ale, and they all turned and looked. Most mothers have the commonsense to ignore their sons, particularly in public, but not Spring; oh, no. She’s a big woman with a round cheerful face and a loud voice, and her greeting had the kind of love in it that a fellow only wants to hear from his father.

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