“That was the vision that I saw as the fragments fluttered down, each fiery ember was a piece of something broken, dying—a firework fast fading in a cold light. The darkday was a silver one—just two moonstars lit it lopsidedly, then phased and faded as the light that they reflected turned into the east; darkdays always went from west to east, faint shadows turned in opposition, east to west—and we wound down as the night returned—I’ve been here before—we ceased our reveries in startlement and wonder, we were a trickling of tributaries, remnants of a headlong torrent, we moved in chilly, bleary, apathetic daze and crawled into a shrouded shelter, a long abandoned humble near the docks. With bodies oiled by sweat in grimy beads, but still perfumed, still painted with the colors of our vacant joys and fading roles, we twined into each other’s limbs, hoping still to stretch the night forever, even though we knew it was already gone, and slowly, fitfully, began to fall asleep. Someone fondled me for a while, I might have fondled back, but nothing more occurred. In the corner two young Dakka-blushlings fucked quietly, compulsively—and with that, I knew the pack itself was dying—another victim of the bloody birth. They fucked not so much for pleasure, I suspect, as for the release from consciousness that exhaustion soon would bring. I fell asleep.
“In the morning, I awoke, half-alone. Some of the group was gone. Some still slumbered. The pack-identity had died sometime during the night—the group-self was gone, we were just a mass of dirty adolescents, embarrassed individuals who knew too much about each other now. I was wide awake and cured of my Enchantment, feeling gritty in the glaring day. Dawning sunday already—? I realized how bad we all must look and smell to one another. We’d shared too much, no wonder godlings were short-lived—they burned out their component souls. I looked for my case and couldn’t find it, could not remember where I’d left it, left the shelter mumbling, trying to shake the echoes of the drugs and scents we’d taken.
“Outside, the world felt different, so did I—although everything still seemed the same, rushing and confused—I could not remember where I’d been or what I’d done. My head was filled with darkly whirling thoughts, selfish ones—and pain and terror too—the price of last night’s revelry. I wanted to cry, but my eyes refused to flow with tears. I wanted to pray to Reethe, or Dakka even—anyone—I wished for stronger gods to pray to—but I feared the strongest was the huuru thing that I’d imagined in our godling; the thought of it was fading even now—or was that one of its tricks? I wanted to hide in Mother Reethe, but I feared that she would turn her back on me this baleful morning, so appalled at what I’d done. I’d become the single thing I feared the most—a thing whose sex and selfishness stood between her and the Tau—all those bodies that I’d slept with—I’d let my momentary need take precedence above the gods—I felt used and guilty and ashamed—I felt burned out in the acrid light, with no one, not even gods, to turn to. I had not value as a soul now; because of things I’d been and done, any spirit that I’d had was all used up and gone. I doubted I would ever feel anything again. I had no strength with which to heal.
“But I found a shadowed alley, and a step to sit upon. I put my head between my knees, and my arms around myself, and I sat there for a long, long time. Finally, I tried to pray. ‘Please don’t hate me, Mother Reethe, I know how wrong I’ve been. I’ve been stupid and selfish and I’ve used my body for pleasure and self-gratification—but please don’t turn your back on me. I need you more now than I’ve ever needed anything. Please—if there is anything left of my soul that has any value, let me escape from this awful place while I still have will to do so. I ask for nothing more than that, just the knowledge that you care enough to let me go home.’ I wanted to say, ‘Please give me some support so I may be a part of you again,’ but I feared that would be asking for too much—perhaps there wasn’t enough of me worthy of her support; perhaps I was so fouled now she could not accept me in herself. No, all I wanted was escape. Redemption was beyond me.
“It’s said the Holy Mother hears all prayers; no one’s soul is ever too far eaten to be ignored by her. If you have the will to pray, then there is something there worth touching, and she will, in her own way, reach out. Even praying, it is said is enough to make you part of her great flows. I hoped that they were right—what good were gods if they weren’t there when you needed them? ‘Mother Reethe, I need your help.’
“Nothing seemed to happen—except I grew a little calmer; that was something anyway. After a while, I moved on. What kind of answer I’d been hoping for, I didn’t know—but I heard no answer in that alley. All that came to me was the realization that if the Holy Mother wouldn’t help me, I would have to help myself. Somehow.
“Somehow I made it to the docks—they were as frantic as ever. I no longer had a sense of mission, though; I was resigned to my frustration, and I moved in apathy. If escape was possible for me, it would happen; and if it wasn’t, then it wouldn’t. I went to the docks because it was the only place I knew to go.
“And there I found a clipper, her masts tall against the western sky, her sails furled and waiting. She was anchored just offshore while her shuttles landed for supplies. Her long white hull bulked high above the waves, almost as high as she was wide, and I admired her from a distance without hope. She was one more vessel destined for the east, of course—but when I inquired of her sailors, they told me she was steaming for the south; they were hurrying, a long and treacherous passage lay ahead of them, their destination was the Polar Circle. The clipper was the Swale Friend, her passengers were mostly scientists, but there were some aboard who were both rich and scared, the owners of the vessel and their friends. The scientists wanted to study the effects on certain radiations at the south magnetic core. The others, the wealthy, frightened ones, believed that the inertia of the icecap and its massive weather envelope would protect them from disruptions of heat and wind alike. Polar days are never eclipsed anyway; whatever happened to the global bio-circle, surely the icecaps would remain secure; the temperature might rise a degree or two, or it might plunge a bit, but neither rise nor plunge would be as severe as might be experienced elsewhere. Thus they would escape the heat-storm, so they thought.
“Somehow I talked my way aboard that ship—I’d learned that I had something I could bargain with—my body. Oh, Mother Reethe; is this the price? Although it is unfashionable to admit is since the Erdik came, children in the glow of blush are considered quite desirable as bedmates—and that was me. There is no shame in sharing joy with younglings in the prime of blush, it is an honor to help one shape her Choice; but the Erdik taught us shame, pretending that children don’t feel, and therefore it is wrong to share your feelings with them. So we did it without admitting that we did it.
“I didn’t feel shame, though, not then, not later on—after the night before, I couldn’t feel shame about anything; I didn’t have anything left to feel with anyway, so I don’t apologize for what I did. It was escape—whether it was sent by Reethe or impish Dakka, it doesn’t matter, it was escape and I took it.
“I had never thought I was attractive, but apparently I was to someone; I was blushing, and there were those who wanted to put their arms around a youngling and hold her and share the mysteries of Choice again. And that was me—I let another sailor use me. I met a young one, not too pretty, and not too considerate either; but she listened to my story and when I begged her please to take me aboard the ship, I’d do anything if she would, she did. They had to stop at Cameron, and from there I could get home. I’d do anything—
“And so, she took me. She used me for two nights, then grew tired of my poor enthusiasm and passed me to another sailor, who was older, Dakkarik, and more tender; and who, for a while, I thought I loved—not in the sense of loving as in lovers, but at least in the sense that we were honest about the ways that we would use each other’s bodies. And we both were very thoughtful of each other’s needs, as if recognizing that we had not choice; the alternative was to rage within that narrow cabin. But I was on the shi
p at least.
“There were other sailors who had brought their lovers, both Dakkarik and Rethrik, but the others had their own community and regarded me as an outsider and an interloper, a common harlot who slept her way from port to port, who did not really love the sea. If I was not a harlot yet, then surely that was what I was destined to become. They ridiculed me and gave me pain; I would have hid in the cabin to stay away from them, but we shared it with two others who slept in it when we did not, and so I had to spend my days up on the deck and at the mercy of those scorn-filled, hostile others. How I ached to show them they were wrong—but every word I spoke only served to prove them right. In their eyes I was stupid and naive, idealistic, inexperienced, selfish, and worst of all, I’d come from a better family than theirs—that most of all, they would not forgive. I hid up in the bow and tried to keep apart. I felt despaired and dirty, I felt fouled because they treated me as something loathsome—as if confirming a bitter judgment of my own. Well, I was a thing of ugliness and shame, wasn’t I? I cried a lot at night. I tried to tell myself that they were jealous of my more noble breeding and my education and the fact that I would leave this ship while their lives were bound to it forever, but it was a lonely reassurance at the best, and it was too easy to accept their perceptions as the right ones—they’d elected me untouchable, a deviate, a freak, and there was nothing I could do or say that would not prove it more so in their eyes. My sailor, named Dew-Ayne, tried to understand and comfort me—‘You’re something special, sweet one,” she’d say. ‘Don’t listen to their words.’ And then she’d touch my breasts, and I would cry again. She was puzzled by my tears—I cried too easily, it seemed to her; I needed to grow a callus on my soul, as she had done. The others never bothered her, she wasn’t worth the teasing, it rolled off her like water off an oilskin; but that protection could not extend to me. Her ways of comforting always led back to the dance of love and lust—its motions are the same no matter what emotions are expressed. I could not blame her; her skills were not of people, but of sails and knots and seas and winds. She was a slow-thinking soul who could not tell the difference between love and lust and sex, to her they were the same. Her life had been a battered one, so she took what joys she could and didn’t question, and continued trying to continue. I was an altar on which she longed to worship, little more than that. If the altar would not work, if it cried and seemed distraught, then she would stroke and comfort it until it calmed, became relaxed. Stroking was a prelude anyway—once that altar was no longer crying, then it could be used as Reethe intended, and she did. Except that it was being used that way that so distressed me.
“I reached Cameron on Eighteen, another damaged darkday—even Lagin’s beacons now were gone. There was the low west twinkling of the Bogin satellite, however—someday there’d be a moondrop there, an umbrella for a sea that even now was filling. I still had a way to travel, slightly north now, mostly west. From Cameron to Lone, to Ellastone and Fire Wall, Hard Landing and then home. I hoped.
“I stole a boat. The docks were deserted, the natives had fled eastward out of fear. There were catamarans and dinghies tied up everywhere, but few to move among them. I picked one out, then went and bought a store of food—Dew-Ayne had given me some cash and I took it without shame—then I went and took the boat. I told myself that it had been abandoned, that I needed it far more, and what I did was necessary. ‘I’m sorry, Mother Reethe, but I am soulless now, I cannot feel guilt for this when I have done far worse.’ Besides, worse things were being done all in the name of virtue. The craft had a single sail, and a small field-effect motor for when the winds were wrong. I caught a head wind almost immediately—Reethe’s way of warning me?—and so I used the motor to head for Kossarlin. I could be home before the long sunday began.
“Darkday faded in the east behind me, and the stars came out like jewels. There was the curve of Tango’s Arms cradling the Infant Graye; looking north from there, following the Infant’s gaze, one could trace the Pilgrim’s Course; it was sheltered by the Hand of Squeak. A bright red star named Chorizon marked the Heart of Darkness; it was called the Bloodstone and was said to be the home of all the evil pranks that Dakka’s ever loosed on us. I kept the Bogin beacon just ahead and to my right. I had to pass by Wullawen and circle Van Cott crater, then through Crabtooth Straits. Hard Landing was dead ahead, beyond was home. I sailed ten hours west and slightly north. I watched the stars and shivered in a robe that someone had left inside the little cabin. The night was warm and getting warmer. I watched the Bogin beacon creep higher in the sky, knowing when it reached the point halfway between the zenith and horizon that I was nearly home.
“It felt eerie to sail beneath a sky without a zenith beacon. I felt naked, unprotected—but the beacon had been terminated to keep unwary travelers from sailing into those unshielded waters. Only a fool would set her course for empty skies.
“Dawn is defined as the moment when there is enough light to distinguish a black thread from a white one. It was shortly after dawn that I stood up and sighted Easterlin, our jagged boundary rock. Behind, a disk of sun was glaring white and baleful, awakened from its rest beneath the shadowed waves. It climbed upon the dark horizon. It spread its eye like molten light upon the pale pan of the sea; the sky was pink around it. Ahead, my shadow stretched across the waters. I could see the bottom of the sea; plants and coral made a garden underwater. Morning fish leapt through the air, playing tag with motes of twinkling light; they flashed through sprays of water. This was the Shallows and I had to watch my navigation. The catamaran had a shallow draft, but still I had to watch for coral and occasional jagged rocks. Soon there would be buoys to mark a deeper channel, but even if I had to, I could have walked the distance—the seas here never averaged more than a meter deep. There were colored shells and waving plants along the ocean bottom and I slid across them like a dove. The water was so clear I might have been aloft above a vast and wondrous landscape—
“Kossarlin bounced up on the horizon shortly after. My shadow now was shorted, but still pointed straightly toward it; the boat raced my shadow home. Even from this distance, I could see that much was wrong. There was smoke rising from the shore—not a lot of it, just the smoldering remainder of a larger fire. As I drew closer, I could see the vegetation on one side of the mountain had been burned away. The rest of the island looked brown and dead. There had been six long sundays now without a shield—I was afraid of what I’d find. And for the first time, I began to wonder why I’d come. If anyone was still alive, they would have left by now. There was no point in staying in a place turned uninhabitable. And yet, I could not imagine my family fleeing home . . .
“There were no boats tied at the dock, except Thoma’s gaudy dinghy; her one extravagance had been the colored filigree we’d added in a bit of silliness. It looked baked and faded now. All the paint was peeling. I tied my boat and hurried up the path with dreadful fear; as I ran, the dead moss crunched beneath my feet, like bones of tiny creatures. One either side, the graceful sky-feather trees had wilted, lost their shading leaves. The ferns were lying withered on the ground, their blossoms looked like shrouds. Everything was silent. There were no birds, no bugs, no buzzing things, nothing flittered, crawled or climbed or hopped. No mice, no moths, no dragonflies nor lizards. No wings, no legs no beaks—no voices. All was covered with a pall of gravestone white, a dusty layer of powder, like ash—but finer, like a fall of smoke—painting the world with a gray mood of despair. It was a land of dead and dying things—this was the death of hope. Everything was gray, except above; the sky was blue and patient. Kossarlin was waiting for immersal in the fire once again.
“The family dome was fallen, like a ball punched in one side. A storm? A fire? It didn’t matter, I couldn’t tell—half of it was ashes, the other half was sodden. There were brackish puddles everywhere. Kuvig’s pride, her silken hangings, were draped across a fallen beam and soiled beyond repair. And here—Suko’s handmade chandelier—and the bed-stands, and the chai
rs—and this porcelain bowl, I used to eat my rice from it—and this cap that lay in pieces, this was my favorite one; when you drank down to the bottom, a fat green frog grinned up at you. Now the frog was chips of glaze and pottery, lost in ash.
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