Zollocco: A Novel of Another Universe Read Free Page B

couldn't stay in the module hiding from bushes forever, so I took the risk, and stepped out into the warm, sweetly smelling day. I went directly to the pond, waded into the water; gorged myself with kelp; dunked myself; and climbed out of the water onto an islanded rock to nap. I figured a forsythia bush wouldn't be too likely to swim out into the middle of the pond to get me. When I awakened from my nap, I was beginning to feel hungry again. I swam to the bank, dried off, dressed, and went off to hunt. I caught sight of a rabbit eying me from under some brush. I threw the dagger I had gotten from the big ship at it, and was incredibly lucky in my aim. The knife struck the rabbit squarely in the neck, practically decapitating it. The rabbit had seemed to wait for the knife. Feeling somewhat guilty, I went to the animal and tried to explain to it why I had killed it. Skinning the rabbit was nasty. I had never done it before. I was just going to have to get used to it.
     
    The birds are in a dither because the human didn't get enough to eat from the rabbit and dreams about eating them. The human does have to eat though. It is irritating to have an unnatural thing among Us, but at least this human is not offensive in its manners. It walks quietly, and sometimes it sings.
     
    One afternoon, wandering around in the woods, I saw a cluster of bushes laden with berries. They really weren't too far from my module, and so I wondered why I hadn't seen them before. This made me uneasy. Maybe I hadn't seen the bushes before because they had just walked by that day, like the formidable forsythia. Then I realized the reason I hadn't seen the berry bushes before was that they were in a sunken, marshy section shielded from my module's view by other plants. I took off my boots, tied them to my waist, and went squishing through the foot deep mud to the bushes. The mud felt cool and pleasant on my feet, and I thought of other women putting mud masks on their faces. Were my feet getting a special cleaning treatment? A few dun-colored birds fluttered out of the bushes twittering anxiously, disturbed by my approach. The berries were a rich blue-black and shaped like enormous strawberries. Some of them were as big as my fist. Tentatively I sampled one. It was delicious! I spent the next half hour or so stuffing my shirt, held-out apron-like, and stuffing my mouth with the wonderful berries. With fingers, shirt, and mouth stained purple, I sighed happily, happily, and waded once more through the cool, sweet-smelling mud.
     
    As I walked through it, I became aware of a slightly alarming sensation. I felt the mud oozing up my legs. Funny, it didn't seem as though I were sinking into the mud. I looked down around my feet. I almost dropped all of the berries I had gathered. The mud, of its own accord, was creeping up my legs! I broke into a run, slipping and sliding as I raced for my module. I dumped the berries inside the module, seized a blunt knife, and frantically scraped the mud off of my legs. When I had scraped off as much as possible, I headed for the stream to wash off the remainder. As I waded in the stream slowly the pounding of my heart subsided.
     
    Mirnie marsh mud is mischievous, climbing up the human's legs after it had promised not to do anything until We had warned the human in its dreams. Fortunately, the human is over its fright, and often goes to relieve the mirnie bushes of over-bearing fruit. Sometimes, even, the human wraps its long bark-colored hair in a towel and sits, otherwise nude, in the mud, allowing the mud to ooze all over it. Then it walks away, letting the mud partially dry on its skin before washing the mud off by swimming in the pool. After swimming and eating the kelp, the human lounges on the moss munching a stalk or fern it is fond of. It kills a viper, whenever it sees one, eats that, and every so often, with a skilled arm, manages to throw a knife into a feathered bird, killing the bird quickly and cleanly.