“We come from beyond the Wall,” said Rigg.
The women looked at each other in astonishment, and then at Larex, who smiled and nodded, giving that slight bow of his head that Rigg had never seen Father do, but which Vadesh had done all the time.
“You came through hell to speak to us,” said the woman, and the others echoed the sentence. To Rigg, it seemed that this was some kind of quotation. Maybe a bit of scripture or an adage or a ritual greeting.
“Hell stepped aside to let us pass,” Rigg answered. Yes, they had sort of passed through hell, or parts of it, when they first crossed the Wall into Vadeshfold. But they had only heard faint echoes of hell when they came through the Wall to Larfold just now.
The woman came and enfolded him in an embrace that was anything but ritualized. She meant it with her whole body. And in a moment the other two women had embraced him as well.
“I told them you were coming,” said Larex.
“How did you know?” asked Rigg.
“When the Odinfolders made you,” said Larex, “the purpose was to make Wall crossers who would visit every wallfold. Eventually you’ll get everywhere.”
“That’s not an answer,” said Rigg.
“The knife is a communicator,” said Larex. “I’ve been following your movements.”
The women released him from their embrace—then stroked his body, his hair, his face.
“You live in the sea,” s
aid Rigg to the women.
“The sea,” they answered, saying nothing but that word, several times, and meaning different things each time they said it. Rigg understood all the meanings: Home. Dark-and-dangerous. Eating place.
“Why did you come on shore?” asked Rigg.
“Why don’t you come into the sea?” she asked in reply.
“I would die there,” said Rigg. “But your body was made to walk on land.”
“My body on land,” she said. “And my mantle in the sea. Two friends made one by blood.”
This last phrase seemed alien to Rigg, as if he were incapable of understanding some nuance that he had no mental preparation to receive. Clearly she was indicating the mantle when she spoke of friends made one, but Loaf didn’t speak of his facemask as some kind of friend.
“Hard to believe it’s a facemask,” murmured Olivenko.
“Something like it,” said Rigg. “I think we’ve answered the question of how they breathe.” He said this in the language of Odinfold, which they had spoken so long in the library that it was the first that came to mind.
Loaf stepped forward. “Can you show us how this mantle lets you live in the water?”
“You don’t know?” asked a woman.
Loaf shrugged.
“Then what is that for?” she asked, pointing to his face.
“Ugly. Ugly,” murmured the other two women, as if they were captioning a picture of Loaf’s facemask.
And it was true. Where Loaf’s facemask made him misshapen, replacing his eyes with asymmetric imitations, their mantles seemed to blend seamlessly into their bodies. When they moved, it was as if the women’s own skin moved. And maybe it was part of their skin now.
The woman who had fed a bug to Rigg passed her hand up the front of her body and closed her eyes. At once her mantle shifted, rising up her neck like someone pulling off a sweater. It covered her whole head, then suddenly sucked in and clung as if to a skeleton. New eyes—bigger ones—extruded from the sides of her head, like the eyes of a fish. And when she opened her mouth to speak, a membrane covered her mouth. It deadened her voice, though she could still speak through it.
“I can go in the water now,” she said. “But I know that I am not myself a waterbreather. My friend breathes the water, and passes the result to me in my blood.” She looked at Loaf. “He can’t go in the water, not with that one. It’s only an animal.”
“And your mantle is not?”