“Put them together on one slide. See what happens.”
“Why should anything happen?”
“Well, my two organisms—or rather, the one you discovered in healthy blood, and the one I found in the blood of those with the burning sickness—they attack each other.”
“Attack each other?”
“Maybe not attack. It’s more like a game of stones and sticks. One sort surrounds the other, caging it in. Whichever side has the most, wins, I guess. At least the blood ends up with mostly that kind of creature.”
“Let me see,” I demanded, and then, looking down his tube, “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I was about to,” he replied. “But you’re engrossed with your own research. I know how to let someone work.”
I tried it at once. The tear-drop and the oval seeds swam about on my glass until two of them—one of each kind—collided. Then, under my disbelieving eye, they joined. Completely joined: became one creature, larger and darker than either had been separately. The others, instead of joining as well, began to slow their movements until they were perfectly still, and only the single, joined seed continued moving on the glass. Again and again we watched this, in sample after sample. Some signal was given or released when one pair joined, that stilled the others.
“That’s why they have to co-join with a second-year Ghen,” Kirabbis said, in one sentence destroying all my previous conclusions. “It takes both to create a Ghen.”
Still the Broghen eluded me! Walking home with my younglings, I thought of how I had been kept ignorant until I birthed. Was it Bria or Ghen who thought of that lie? Regardless, it was the storyteller who continued it. And it had made a fool of me! If I couldn’t stop the Broghen, I could at least guard Zipporis and Kayjais from those lies. I decided to keep them home from storytime.
“We can’t stay home, we can’t!” Zipporis wailed. “Tomorrow we’re performing the story of Dayannis and Heckt’er!”
“It isn’t important,” I said, “It’s just a myth.” A lie, I thought, and only the first of many. But I didn’t say this; I hadn’t decided yet how to tell them.
“We’re going, Matri,” Zipporis said. “They’re counting on us to play our parts.”
His eye was the same clear green as mine—a rarity among us—and his face bore the stubborn determination that I was often accused of. Beside him, Kayjais trembled, his wide blue eye blinking back the urge to cry. Without shifting his gaze from me, Zipporis reached sideways to clasp his sibling’s hand, thinking I wouldn’t notice.
Had I never looked at my children before?
I remembered the seed-creatures in Cammis’s breast fluid. Where had these children come from?
I was being ridiculous. Zipporis was the exact image of me; he could be no one else’s. Kayjais, on the other hand, resembled me only in fleeting expressions when I looked beyond his dark fur.
Both of them, however, had inherited my persistence. I stood firm at first, but they gave me no peace. Finally I relented, but I decided to go with them and confront Yur’i with his lies.
***
I was not surprised to see Tibellis in the storytelling grounds when I arrived. Everyone knew he and Yur’i spent more time together than most joined pairs. But why was Tyannis here? Had he nothing to do, now that his work with the mountain people was over? For a moment I pitied him. My work was slow, but I still had work to do. I would be in print again, perhaps after the coming stillseason.
Tyannis approached me. “I’m glad you came after all, Pandarris. Your younglings didn’t think you would.”
I looked at him in surprise.
“Sit with me,” he suggested. “I’ll translate for you.” He pointed to the end of a long bench placed at one side of the area. Tibellis and a number of other adult Bria and Ghen were already seated along it. The three- to five-year-olds kneeled or sat on the ground in front of them.
On one of the benches, Sulannis and Jar’od were sitting together. What were they doing here? I hadn’t seen them since they had co-joined with Brock’an and me. I stared at Sulannis’s face, shocked. Why hadn’t I noticed before? He caught my eye and smiled. I should probably greet him. And then what? Ask him why my Kayjais’s fur is dark, like his? Why Kayjais has his blue eye? Children often had the look of their parent’s co-joining Bria. There was nothing new in that. Why should it so disturb me now?
“They’re about to begin,” Tyannis whispered beside me. I followed him to the bench. The one- and two-year-olds stood in the center of the storyteller’s area, fidgeting with excitement.
“This is a very important story,” Tyannis translated Yur’i’s signing.
Yur’i appeared to be addressing the older children seated on the ground facing him, but he made sure the younger ones, waiting to perform, could see what he was signing. I was embarrassed to notice that even the adults seated on the bench understood him. I was the only one who needed a translator.
How long had he been teaching? No, wait, Savannis had taught the sign language first, hadn’t he? That was the year I’d convinced Matri to allow Sandarris and me to quit storytime. Savannis’s last year as storyteller. That’s why no one had stopped him. He was so old, our parents had all been his pupils. Everyone my age and younger must know it. I glanced along the bench. Sulannis and Jar’od watched Yur’i’s signing without embarrassment, as did all the others. In fact, I saw Sulannis use the same signs to make a comment to Jar’od. Joined couples no longer created their own language! What a release of time.
Tyannis’s voice brought me back. “The reason the one- and two-year-olds are performing,” Tyannis whispered as Yur’i signed, “is because I want you all to remember that the Ghen and Bria in this story were children. This is a very frightening story—you won’t be afraid, will you?” He had turned, addressing this last remark to the little actors who giggled self-consciously. Frightened? Hadn’t they been practicing it for weeks?
“No? But you must pretend to be afraid, because Dayannis and Heckt’er and the other children this happened to were frightened at the time.”
The one-year-olds, including my Zipporis and Kayjais, stared at him solemnly, while the two-year-olds shrugged happily, proud that he took their roles so seriously. I’d been wondering why he’d chosen the youngest children to perform his story and was caught short when he referred to Dayannis and Heckt’er as children. That wasn’t the way I’d heard it.
The next remove was almost a surreal experience. Familiar parts of the story blended with outrageous additions that I could hardly credit, and yet they explained so many of the questions I’d had about that ancient tale. The three-year-olds appeared as the children’s dying parents—Breath of Wind, why would he have the children portray such a horrible thing?—and yet they seemed undisturbed by it. It was just a story to them. The blend of the new and the old was what made it shocking to me.
Later, the three-year-olds appeared again as raging Broghen, screaming out-side the cave where Dayannis and his peers huddled in fear. I wasn’t the only parent who panted for breath, stunned into disbelief. The bench was so still with motionless Bria it could have been one of Tibellis’s models, before the springs were added.
The most shocking part, however, came at the end when Dayannis, alone with Heckt’er in their separate cave, gave birth to a Broghen! What a distortion....or not, I thought. My little Kayjais played the Broghen, his dark fur lying on the pale gray arm of the small Ghen playing Heckt’er. He half-carried, half-led Kayjais away while Kayjais dramatically rolled his blue eye and stuck out his tongue in a parody of madness. It made him strange to me, so that I found myself wondering again where he had come from, even while part of my mind recognized the question as foolishness.
“Don’t tell anyone!” Tyannis whispered beside me. I looked at him in surprise, but he was just translating little Dayannis’s signs to the pretend Heckt’er as he led my youngling, the Broghen, away into the forest. His role finished, Kayjais skipped around behind the others and ra
n to climb onto my lap. I held him stiffly.
The youngling playing Dayannis had risen to deliver his final soliloquy. “I gave birth to a Broghen as well as two Bria and a Ghen,” he lisped it as he signed so that there was no need for Tyannis to translate. “I thought it was bad and I kept it a secret. But it was just the way things are. We all have a Broghen. But it’s just a baby. It didn’t hurt me and it won’t hurt you.”
The children took this calmly but I heard gasps along the bench. Not from Tyannis or Tibellis—they must have been in league with Yur’i in plotting this.
Sulannis rose from the bench, his blue eye fierce with anger. “How can you tell the children such lies?” he cried.
Kayjais twisted in my lap, looking up at me. Over among the now-seated one-year-olds I could feel Zipporis, who had played Dayannis’s young friend, gazing at me as well.
Tyannis stood up. “I gave birth to a Broghen,” he said, signing as he spoke. “Every parent with children in this city has borne a Broghen, and every parent to be will bear one.” He looked along the bench, challenging us all.
I looked down at Kayjais who had played the infant Broghen. What had I done? It was an infant!
Would Kayjais and Zipporis be driven to do the same one day?
“You’re wrong,” I said, rising. The eyes of every child turned to me but I saw only two: one blue eye and one green. “You won’t bear Broghen,” I promised them. My arms rose in the wind as though to take a vow, but then I clasped them behind my back, hiding my guilty hands from the children. “You won’t birth a Broghen because I will put an end to it!”
***
Yur’i was able to have that story performed by three sets of children before Council stopped him. All the children had seen the practices and heard his version of the story, however. Those whose parents had kept them home because the storyteller was Ghen heard about it from their playmates. Every child in the city learned about Broghen.
Most of their parents denied it but some appeared relieved by the end of the deception. And it was completely ended, despite any attempts to retain the old lies.
Not only by Yur’i’s story: Tibellis had made a life-sized statue of a birthing. They kept it at Yur’i’s house, where the children could see it, and anyone else who wanted to. Also, I believe, to keep it from being destroyed. I went to see it. Tibellis, after all, had worked with me to display my findings.
It wasn’t life-sized; that would have been too much, but it was so realistic it fascinated me. The subject was repelling and yet I found the statue as a whole reassuring; it was so much less horrible than my memory of the event. I hoped, for Tibellis’s sake, that others who saw it would feel the same.
The Bria was sculpted lying upon a sleeping ledge, with a Ghen and two Bria newborns suckling at his breasts. The adult Ghen stood calmly beside the birthing ledge, holding the infant Broghen. The Broghen was no larger than the infant Ghen, and the look on its face was pathetic rather than fierce as it struggled helplessly in the attending Ghen parent’s large hands. Its scales were the dark gray most common among our Ghen and the tufts of Bria fur which poked out at intervals were the same light brown as its Bria womb-parent.
For parent he clearly was, staring at it in a mixture of pity and regret which only heightened my discomfort. The entire sculpture swayed slightly, as though cupped in the hands of Wind. A peaceful scene for children to look upon. More peaceful than the reality. Well, secrets must be revealed with care.
Later, I asked my parent why Council hadn’t banned it.
“We’ve been asked to,” he admitted, “but the harm is done. It would be worse if we tried to hide it now, and let memory exaggerate it. We have to learn to live with the knowledge of Broghen. Personally, I hate it. I’d rather forget. But it may assuage the pregnant Bria’s fears. Right now, that’s more important.”
“Single-by-Choice are teaching their members to fight. Sandarris told me.”
“That’s not what we were born for.”
“What were we born for, Matri? For deceit?”
Instead of reacting to my sarcasm, he asked, “Have you ever spoken to Brock’an about hunting?”
“Hunting?”
“Once, when I was weary of responsibility,” he smiled dismissively, “I asked Igt’ur why Ghen always returned home from their hunts. They love the wild forest, they love the hunt. What brings them back?” He paused to give me time to think about it.
I thought of the young Bria who were coming to my studio daily begging me for answers, as desperate as Cammis had been. My impulsive promise at storytime to stop the birth of Broghen had been repeated until I heartily regretted it. How peaceful my days had been before. Oh yes, I understood my parent’s question.
“Igt’ur mistook me,” he continued. “He replied that Ghen always know where home is. One of those instinctive things, like a wild bird finding its way back to the same tree to nest in every stillseason. I was too embarrassed to tell him that I’d been wondering about will rather than bearings. I’m glad I didn’t try. He wouldn’t have known what I was talking about. For Ghen, home is an orientation; intent and direction both.”
“You’re implying that they’re more moral than Bria? More responsible? They kept the secret, too.”
“Not from each other.”
“They kept it from us.”
“We kept it from ourselves.” He held my gaze until I looked aside.
“A subtle difference,” I murmured.
“An important one.”
“Look where subtlety got us.”
He touched his breath. “Off-track, I agree.”
“’Off-track’? You think we simply lost our path?” I asked. “What path were we supposed to follow in birthing monsters?”
“‘The Creator put us here to civilize Wind’,” he quoted.
“I don’t believe those stories.”
“It enlarges us, doesn’t it? Larger than life, perhaps.” He smiled, using my terms. “But you know how to correct for that, don’t you? What’s the word you use for that other glass?”
“The shrinking glass.”
“Shrinking, yes. Personally, I think learning to kill is too great a correction. Something between the two distortions is needed. Do you think you can find it for us, Pandarris?”
***
My parent wasn’t the only one on Council putting pressure on me to bring my work to a conclusion. I, who had longed for acclaim, now regretted the loss of anonymity. Everyone wanted to know about my work, and I had nothing certain to report.
Young adult Bria were angry, resentful, terrified. The children might receive Yur’i’s revelation about Broghen as easily as the other stories he taught them, and accept their parents’ promise that they need not fear it; but those of mating age had been raised with lies and gave no credit to anyone’s reassurances now. How could they feel otherwise?
Everything didn’t rest on me, fortunately. Ocallis, carrying Mant’er’s second child, was a visible symbol of Bria courage. He was often called on to speak before groups of young Bria, trying to give them strength.
Ocallis did what he could to reach the young, but it was the older Bria, those who’d had their children already, who most admired him. He stood for parenthood, and they were parents.
Which made them the adversaries of their young, who were beginning to openly rebel. Many who had joined but not yet mated dissolved their union, and those who weren’t joined were very unlikely to do so. Some who had mated once declared they would not mate again, preferring to let their younglings die in their wombs. They considered my promise just another lie.
Kirabbis looked at me with that same suspicion. Although I’d never lied to him about Broghen, I hadn’t disclosed the truth, either. Another subtle difference.
Finally I said, “Kirabbis, I’m not your matri. And even as your friend, what can you accuse me of? That I didn’t warn you? You were never joined, there was nothing to warn you about.”
“My understanding of our relatio
nship was wrong,” he said with the righteous dignity of the young. “I thought we were both bound to the truth.” After that he was silent.
He didn’t come into the studio the next day.
Stillseason was almost on us. The mood in the city was tense. I felt the tension as I fruitlessly sought a third organism, one I could clearly identify as Broghen. Finally I put my samples aside to work on a new enlarging tube I had agreed to make. Another young Bria wanted to study with us after stillseason.
Ocallis and the other glass blowers were working in the studio as well, mostly ignoring me. It seemed that everyone who knew me felt betrayed because I had not shared discoveries they hadn’t cared to ask about, and now I was not making the ones they wanted. I sat alone, the object of their hope, the subject of their resentment and distrust.
I don’t know when I first became aware of the commotion outside. The glass blowers must have heard the distant voices coming nearer, settling into a steady chanting, because most of them were already at the windows when I finally looked up.
I was on the point of inserting a lens into the still hot tube which I held in my gloved left hand. I’d removed the glove from my right hand to hold the long tweezers with which I was trying to wedge the lens between the narrow grooves half-way down the tube before the metal cooled and tightened around it, enough to keep it from falling but not so much that the tiny screws on either side couldn’t make minute adjustments to its distance when I turned them. Not an activity conducive to interruptions. I frowned, trying to tune out the chanting crowd. Some idiot had opened the studio doors. Had none of the glass blowers anything better to do than satisfy idle—
Suddenly my light was blocked off. I looked up with a curse to find myself surrounded by silent, grim-faced Ghen. Ignoring my protests, they hauled me to my feet and hustled me through the studio toward the door. There were five of them, surrounding me so closely I couldn’t see what was going on.
“Where are you taking me?” I cried, powerless to resist them. Of course they didn’t understand Bria, but my question must have been obvious. When they ignored me I began to scream, “Help! Help!”
Walls of Wind and the Occasional Diamond Thief Boxed Set Page 30
