Down in The Bottomlands (and Other Places)

When he showed up at Pauljuu’s house that evening, Park was carrying a large bouquet of pink kantuuts. He didn’t know if flowers were customary here, but didn’t think they’d hurt. From the way the maid who opened the door exclaimed over them, he’d guessed right.

Kuurikwiljor exclaimed over them too, and had a servant fill a bowl with water so they could float in it. “Very lovely,” she said. “Such an unusual gift.” So they weren’t customary, he thought. They were a hit anyhow. In a way, that was even better. It got him points for originality.

A moment later, he had to risk them: “Where shall we go?” he asked. “What shall we do? This is your city, not mine.” This world had never invented movies, eliminating one obvious way for couples to spend decorous time together.

“We could walk the walls of Saxawaman,” Kuurikwiljor suggested.

“The old fortress?” Park said, surprised. She nodded. He shrugged. It wasn’t what he’d had in mind, but — “Why not?”

Before they could walk Saxawaman’s walls, they had to walk to Saxawaman, which lay on a hill north and west of the built-up area of Kuuskoo. Park let Kuurikwiljor take the lead; to him, one poorly lit street seemed much like another.

“You don’t have many robbers here, do you?” he asked, impressed by the way she confidently strode ahead. In his New York or Vinland’s New Belfast, he would have been nervous about strolling around like this after dark.

But Kuurikwiljor only answered, “No, not many,” as if the idea that things could be otherwise had never entered her mind. Park suspected it hadn’t. She was lucky, he thought.

A path zigzagged up the hillside to the fortress. Park puffed along after Kuurikwiljor. He’d long since put Ib Scoglund’s body on a calisthenics program, but no lowland man could match someone equally fit and native to this altitude. When he finally struggled up a stone stairway to the top of a wall, he panted, “Could we — rest — on the walls of Saxawaman?”

“Of course,” Kuurikwiljor said. To his relief, his admission of weakness did not make her scornful. She went on, “The view is magnificent, is it not?”

“Hmm? Why, so it is.” Kuuskoo lay spread out before them. Flickering torches and the occasional brighter, steadier glow of electric light defined its irregular grid of streets. One square in the northern part of the city was especially well-lit. Park pointed to it. “What’s that?”

“The royal square, the square of Awkaipata,” Kuurikwiljor answered.

“I should have guessed.” If anyone wanted such lavish illumination, it would be the king and his court.

Park turned. They had ascended only the lowest of Saxawaman’s walls. Other curtains of unmortared stone, pale in the starlight, climbed the hill behind them. And beyond those walls were the greater stone ramparts of the Andes, black against the sky.

The sky — In the north and overhead lay the constellations with which Park was familiar, though here they looked upside down. But to the south the stars were new to him, and made strange patterns. And there were so many of them! In Kuuskoo’s thin, clear air, they seemed almost close enough to reach out and touch.

Kuuskoo’s air was also chilly. Park had been sweating as he went up the stone stairs, but a few minutes of quietly looking about were plenty to make him start shivering. “Now I see why you wanted to walk the walls,” he said, matching action to word. “We’d freeze if we just stood here.”

“This is a fine mild night,” Kuurikwiljor protested; but she fell in step beside him. “Are all people from Vinland so sensitive to cold?”

“It’s like I told your brother: I don’t think all people from anywhere are any one thing. In Vinland, though, most people would not think this night is mild.”

“How odd,” Kuurikwiljor said. “In what other small ways are our folk different, I wonder? Color is plain at first glance, and faith soon becomes clear, but I never would have thought we might find different kinds of weather comfortable.”

“Tawantiinsuuju has provinces that get much hotter than Vinland, and stay hot the whole year around,” Park said.

“How do people from those lands like it here?”

Kuurikwiljor laughed. “They shake all the time, and wrap themselves up in blankets even at noon. I did not think you were so delicate.”

“I’m not, but it’s-” Park paused, trying to work out how to say it’s a matter of degree, not kind in Ketjwa. He was still thinking when he heard someone kick a pebble not too far away. “What was that?” His fists bunched. Kuuskoo had to have a few footpads, and no one was close by to hear him if he needed to shout for help.

But Kuurikwiljor laughed again. “Just someone else — or rather, some two else — walking the walls of Saxawaman. Did you think we were the only ones?”

“I hadn’t thought about it at all.” Now Park did, hard. So she’d taken him to the local lovers’ lane, had she? In that case… His arm slid round her waist. She didn’t pull back. In fact, she moved closer. That was doubly nice. Not only was she a pleasant armful of girl, she was also warm.

He kissed her. She put her arms around his neck. When at last they separated, she stared up at him, eyes wide and wondering. “You really do still care for me, knowing I am a widow?”

“Yes, I care for you,” Park said. “And what does your being a widow have to do with anything? I’m very sorry you lost your husband, but-”

Kuurikwiljor’s soft, breathy laugh made him stop. She said, “Another of those small differences between your people and mine, I see. In Tawantiinsuuju, most widows stay chaste, and most men want little to do with them. Indeed, if I had children it would be against the law for me to marry again.”

“That’s a foolish law,” Park blurted. Then, lawyerlike, he hedged: “At least, it would be in Vinland. As you say, our people are not the same.”

He noted that she’d told him she wasn’t forbidden to remarry, which probably meant she wanted to. He thought marriage a fine institution — for people who liked living in institutions. That didn’t mean he had anything against some of its concomitants. He kissed Kuurikwiljor again; she responded with an ardor he found gratifying. But when he slid a hand under her tunic, she twisted away.

“It’s fine to feel cared for, wanted,” she said, “but I do not give myself to a man I’ve known only a day. If that is all you want from me, better you should find a pampairuuna, a woman of the marketplace.”

“Of course it’s not all,” Park protested, hoping he sounded indignant. “I like your company, and talking with you. But — forgive me, because I do not know how to say this in fancy talk — you are a widow, and you know what goes on between men and women.”

“Yes, I do.” Kuurikwiljor did not sound angry, but she did not sound like someone who was going to change her mind, either: “I also know that what goes on between men and women, as you say, is better when they are people to each other, not just bodies. Otherwise a pampairuuna would be honored, not scorned.”

“Hmm,” was all Park said to that. She had a point, although he was not about to admit it out loud. After a moment, he went on, “I would like to know you better. May I call on you again?”

She smiled at him. “I hope you will, for I also want to know you. Now, though, I think we should go back to my brother’s house. It has grown cooler.”

“All right.” Feeling as if he were back in high school, Park walked her home.

Just around the corner from Pauljuu’s house, where none of his people could see them, she stopped and kissed him again, as warmly as she had up on Saxawaman. Then she walked on to the door. “Do call,” she said as she clapped for a servant to open it.

“I will,” he said. “Thanks.” Just then the door opened. Kuurikwiljor went in.

Allister Park headed back toward the house where he was staying. As he walked, he wondered (purely in a hypothetical way, he told himself) how to go about finding a pampairuuna.