“Do you mean to cause trouble?” Nia asked.

“No. Why do you think I agreed to help you? Tanajin is the ferry woman. I am not.” He paused for a moment. “Do you think it is easy for me to spend three days with other people? There are so many of you! And those two are peculiar.” He glanced at me and Derek.

Nia made a barking noise. “There is a woman to the east of here. She thought she knew me. She tried to kill us.”

“When Tanajin first heard your story, she said to me, ‘We are not alone. We are not the first people to have done this thing.’ ” Ulzai frowned. “I do not entirely agree with her. In the story they tell about you, you chose to treat a man like a sister or a female cousin. It was not an accident. You deliberately set out to do something offensive.”

By this time the cave was dark, except for the light cast by the fire. It flickered on the walls. The eyes of the people around me gleamed: red, orange, yellow, and—most startling—blue. Thunder rumbled outside. Rain fell.

Nia said, “I will not argue with a story that has been told over and over. Let people believe what they want to believe.”

“It was different with us,” said Ulzai. He looked around. “I brought a jar of beer.”

Derek found it and handed it over. Ulzai drank. “I have never told the story to anyone. I do not want to be famous on the plain.”

Nia barked again. Ulzai gave the jar to her. She drank.

He hunched forward, staring at her, ignoring the rest of us. “It is not true that men like to be silent. We learn to be silent. Who is there to talk to in the marshes? The spirits. The lizards. The dead folk who wander at night. It is possible to see them. They are dim lights over the pools. They never speak. Neither do the spirits. Or if they do—” He glanced at the oracle. “I cannot hear them. I am not holy.”

“I am,” the oracle said.

“Tanajin told me.” He looked at the fire. After a moment he rubbed the side of his face, running his hand along the lines of white fur. “I have kept the story in me for winter after winter. It is like a stone in my belly. It is like a bad taste in my mouth. It aches like an old wound in the time of rains. I do not understand it. I do not see what else we could have done.”

Nia sighed. “Tell it then. I warn you. It will not help. Words are less use than you think.”

“Maybe,” said Ulzai.

The oracle said, “Can I have some beer?”

“What about your stomach?” asked Derek.

“Beer is good for the digestion.”

Nia gave him the jar.

Ulzai scratched his head. “It’s a long story.”

“We have time,” said Derek. “That storm isn’t going to end soon.”

“You two.” He glared at Derek and me. “Keep quiet about what you hear. And you as well, o holy man.”

We made the gesture of agreement, all three of us.

“First of all, I have to tell you about the People of Leather. I used to belong to them. So did Tanajin. They live in the marshes where the Great River goes into the plain of salt water. Their houses are not like any I have seen in other places. The marshland is flat and when the river rises, the land is flooded. All of it. The people build their houses on top of frames made of wood. I do not know how to describe these frames. They look something like the frames that people use to dry fabric or fish. But they are much bigger and solider. On top of each frame is a platform. On top of the platform is a house. The walls are made of reeds and branches woven together. The roof is made of bundles of reeds. The bundles are thick. Not even the heaviest rain can get through.” He paused for a moment, his eyes half-closed, remembering. “There are no trees in the marsh, only reeds—though they can grow taller than a man. The houses rise above the reeds. They are taller than everything. A man can look up and see them, even at a distance. At night he can see the cooking fires on the platforms.”

Derek leaned forward. “If there are no trees, where do you get wood for the houses?”

“The river brings it. When the river gets to the marshes, it spreads out. The water moves slowly then. The river drops whatever it has been carrying. There are sandbars at the entrance to the marshes and a great raft of wood. The raft fills most of the river, and it is so long that a man can paddle for days, going upstream, and never see the end of all that wood. There are more trees than anyone can count tangled together. Most are worn by the water. They have lost their bark. They are as gray as sand. They are as white as bone. But they are not rotten. They can be used.”

“Aiya!” said the oracle.

Ulzai frowned at the fire. “Now I have forgotten what I was going to say.”

“You were talking about your people,” I said.

He made the gesture of agreement. “The women live in the houses, high above the reeds. The men live in boats. That is what every boy gets when it is time for him to leave the house of his mother: a boat with a carved prow and a set of spears, a knife for skinning and a cloak of lizard skin. Those four gifts are always the same.

“The boy gets them. He says farewell to his mother and to his other relatives. He paddles away. He does not return until he has killed a lizard. A big one. An umazi.”

“What do you mean when you say, he returns?” asked Nia.

“I know the people here on the plain would not approve of our behavior. Our gift is leather. The men hunt the umaziand cut off their skins.

“But the skin is good for nothing, unless it is tanned, and the women do the tanning. They are the ones who have the big vats made of wood and iron. They are the ones who have the urine. Where could a man possibly get enough urine to fill a tanning vat? And where would he keep the vat? Not in his canoe and not on the islands, which are often covered with water.

“When a man kills an umazi,he brings the skin to his mother or to a sister if his mother is dead.”

“I have never heard of such a thing,” said the oracle.

“It is done decently. The man waits till the big moon is full. Then—at night—he goes to the house of his mother. He ties up his boat. He climbs onto the platform. She is inside. The windows are covered. The door is fastened. She makes no noise at all.

“He lays down his gift. The raw umaziskin. He gathers up the gifts she has left for him outside the door. He goes. Nothing is said. They do not see each other.

“This must be done. Otherwise we have no leather, and we are the People of Leather.”

“Hu!” said Nia.

“This is what you did?” asked the oracle.

Ulzai made the gesture of affirmation. “Until my mother died. My sisters were dead already. I had no female cousins. That is how it began.”

“How what began?” asked Derek.

“I am a good hunter. No man killed more umazithan I did. My mother had more skins than she could handle. She gave away half of what I brought her.

“Sometimes at night I’d bring my boat in to the home channel. I’d drift below the houses in the darkness. I’d hear the women singing. They would praise my skill and her generosity. You have to understand, it was good to listen.”

“You should not have been there,” said Nia.

“I like praise,” said Ulzai. “She died. I had no close relatives in the village. There was no one to bring my skins to. They were useless to me. All my skill as a hunter was useless.”

“Aiya!” said Derek.

“Get more wood,” said Ulzai.

Derek obeyed. Ulzai put two branches on the fire and watched until they caught. I listened. The rain was still falling.

He lifted his head. “Sometimes, when a thing like this happens, the man—the hunter—gives up hunting. He goes deep into the marsh and lives by fishing. He becomes ragged. He forgets how to speak. I have seen men like that at the time of mating. They try to force their way back into the area close to the village. I have faced two or three. They do not shout insults like ordinary men. They growl and make grunting noises. They draw their lips back and show their teeth. One raised his spear, as if he planned to use it against me. In the end he did not. He made a strange noise—something like a groan—and ran away.” Ulzai added branches to the fire.