Ingathering - The Complete People Stories

by Zenna Henderson

  There was a silence, broken only by the vast rush of the wind. Surely not so loudly now that warmth was in the room.

  Then Papa moved to the fireplace and kicked thoughtfully at the crowbar. “I’m not sure I want to be warmed by this warmth,” he said, his voice rolling deep through the unaccustomed length of his sentence. “It may be of evil. This will take some thinking out.”

  “Papa,” Nathan’s voice was urgent. “It can’t be evil. She knew Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, only she said they called them something else. Other languages—”

  “And yet,” said Papa, “the Devil can quote Scriptures for his purposes. This will take some thinking out.” And he sat again in his chair, the Bible on his lap again, his eyes deep-shadowed by his heavy brows, and stared into the almost visible warmth of the bar.

  “Too easy,” he muttered. “By the sweat of thy brow—”

  ~ * ~

  The storm cleared from the skies and the crackling cold came. It lay heavily on the land, so heavily that it crushed every vestige of color from everything so that, in a black and white world, Nathan’s red cap was like a sudden shout.

  He had walked over the crispness of the frozen world to the thicket where even Kelly Cow had sense enough not to venture this day. He stood on the other side of the thicket, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched against the cold, and looked across the smooth, stumpless, sunless field beyond, wondering how those people were doing.

  Then he heard a clear call and the sound of laughter, and shrank back, startled, into the shadow of the thicket.

  A streak of color shot across the smoothness of the field, dark hair streaming free, bright blue clothes an exclamation point against the white. Eliada? It seemed of a size.

  Then came the others, staying in a little cluster, a small child piggyback on one of them. Brightly, laughingly, they followed Eliada, skimming the snow as if—

  Nathan clutched a limb for something solid to hang on to. Eliada swung by him, close enough for him almost to touch. And was gone before he could blink. But she couldn’t have! No one— Then the cluster swirled past, the laughing child clinging to the hair of the laughing man. Then they were all at the far side of the field again.

  “They can’t!” Nathan whispered indignantly. “They can’t skate with no skates on. And without moving their feet! They can’t.”

  And a thin, sweet memory stabbed back to him from Back Home. A red sled, and a very high hill, and the delightful terror of letting go at the top—and collecting your breath again at the bottom. But you had to have a hill—and a sled—

  He looked across the flatness of the field. The people had stopped now and were clustered together. Then one slid away from the others, and Eliada was skimming the snow, back across the field. Toward him? He shrank farther back in the thicket, suddenly afraid.

  Eliada came slower and slower and stopped. “Nathan?” she called. “Nathan?”

  Nathan crunched snow to face her. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Oh, Nathan!” Eliada took his two hands and pulled him out of the thicket. “I sensed you as we went by! But I wasn’t sure, so I came— Isn’t it a beautiful day?” She whirled lightly around Nathan, making him feel heavy-footed and as awkward as a hub. Then she shot away from him— not even touching—but, yes, because, as she turned, a skiff of snow sprayed briefly—and again when she returned to him and stopped, laughing and panting.

  “You’re all right now?” he asked. “You have plenty to eat?” Her glowing face told him how unnecessary was the question.

  “Oh, Nathan!” she laughed. “It would be all funny, if we hadn’t so nearly been Called because of hunger.”

  “What happened?” Nathan hunched and shivered. Standing still, the cold flowed into you fast.

  “Oh, I forgot,” said Eliada. “Here, I’ll extend.”

  And a motion came between Nathan and the cold, a motion that circled him completely and closed him into warmth with Eliada.

  “How do you do that!” he asked, unhappily.

  Eliada’s face sobered. “Does it offend you?” she asked. “It is more comfortable, merely.”

  Nathan rubbed his nose, which had started to tingle.

  “What was funny?” he asked.

  Eliada’s face brightened. “After we ate your food—and, Nathan, nothing, not even the festival foods we had to leave behind on The Home, ever tasted so good. We cried for its goodness as we ate. And laughed because we cried. But the food didn’t last very long. And we thought to sleep again to our Calling rather than to take food again from your family. But one morning I received a directive to go dig in the little hill behind the house. Such a silly thing to do! But a directive! So two of us went. I could hardly lift the digging thing, but Roth was stronger. He has no sight because of the Crossing, but he is strong. So we tried to dig— and blocks fell away and there was a door! And we opened it—and food! Food!”

  “The root cellar,” said Nathan. “The people before you put the food by for the winter. How come they didn’t tell you before they left?”

  Eliada’s face saddened. “There was only one, and he did not leave. He was Called the day we arrived. One of the life slips shattered and his body was too broken to hold him more. So he was Called. With my brother. It was his slip that shattered.” She tightened her lips and a tear slid from the corner of one eye. “How joyfully he went Otherside, but how lonely for us who are still this side.”

  “Your brother—” Nathan swallowed with an effort that didn’t get rid of the heavy lump choking him. “My—my—” He watched his toe kick against a skeletal bush until he could stop his lips.

  “It’s too bad you didn’t get the directive before you got that hungry,” he said, still not looking at her. “Whatever a directive is.”

  “A directive?” asked Eliada. “But surely—I mean, maybe you have another name for it. For when the Power says to you, Do, unless you are too far separated from the Presence, you do for that is what must be done, when it must be done.”

  “No,” said Nathan. “At least, I don’t know. Still think it could have passed the word—”

  “We sometimes wonder,” said Eliada, “but we never question. If the directive had come sooner, I would not have gone to you. And I would not now be saying, how can I help loose you from the burden you bear of sorrow and—and evil, Nathan? Evil?”

  Nathan turned his face away, biting his lip to hold his face straight. Eliada moved to where she could see his face again. “And evil? Oh, Nathan!”

  “My father killed my brother!” Nathan’s voice grated his throat with its suppressed intensity. “I hate him!”

  “Killed?” Eliada touched Nathan’s arm. “You mean, sent him ahead of his time, back into the Presence? Oh, surely not! Not really so?”

  “The same as—” Nathan raked a violent fist across his face because of the wetness.

  “But—but his own son—” Eliada’s face was troubled. “Oh, Nathan, tell me!”

  “My father.” The words were bitter in his tight mouth. “He decided it was an evil power you used to heat up the crowbar. He raked it out of the fireplace with a stick and shoved it out the door into the dark. He said you had no right to warm us better than he could, and that at least we know why wood makes us warm. Lucas—” his voice died and he gulped. “Lucas cried and grabbed my father’s arm, trying to keep him from throwing the warm away, but my father back-handed him clear across the room and did anyway. And Lucas coughed and coughed and wouldn’t put the quilt around him again. He sort of settled down, only crying and coughing and shivering, and he wouldn’t go over by the fire.

  “Then all at once he had the door open and was out in all that wind and storm, trying to find the crowbar in the puddle of water it had melted in the snow. By the time we got him back inside, he was sopping wet, with ice sliding out of his hair when I lifted him.

  “And he died. He only lasted a day. My father killed him.”

  And Nathan cried into the crook of his elbow and into
the vast warm comfortingness that flowed from Eliada.

  “Nathan,” Eliada said finally. “We cannot know if Lucas was truly Called or if he was sent ahead, but you must not hate. It is an evil you must not take for a burden. It will eat your heart and cloud your mind and, worst of all, it will separate you from the Presence.”

  “But Lucas is dead.” Nathan’s voice was dull.

  “He is back in the Presence,” said Eliada. “He is healed of the body that was so frail and so often with pain.”

  Nathan shook his heavy hanging head. “Words—all kinds of words. But Lucas is dead and my father killed him.”

  He surged away from Eliada and felt a sudden tightness against his forehead. It released suddenly, flooding him with the crisp, cold air. He blinked at the sun as he ran clumsily. The sun? The sun was still shining?

  ~ * ~

  Spring came slowly. Then, one day, it seemed as if every drop of water tied up in every snowflake let go all at once. For days the house perched on a rise that was usually hardly noticeable but that held it above the rising waters. Then the waters began to move, coursing down to the river. The river came up to meet the house and nibbled away at the rise, slowly, slowly, with the whole world a-swim.

  Then the torrents began. They ripped across the field Nathan and his father had worked so hard to clear, gouging out gullies and wiping out almost every trace of last year’s furrows.

  Then the barn went, hardly splashing, as it slid into the greedy waters, just after Nathan and his father had led Kelly Cow and the other stock up the hill behind the barn and left them there with three raggedly wet chickens. The rest of the flock was gone.

  Water gathered around the house closer and lapped at the bottom course of logs. The whole family watched from the small window and the door—watched the waters quiver and lift towards the house. Once, the sun came out suddenly and they were in the middle of a glittering sea of brightness. They had to squint their eyes against the glory. Then it was gray and miserable again.

  Adina’s breath was a warm tickle on Nathan’s ear. “It’s gone, Nathan! It’s gone!” And hot tears started down her scalded-looking cheeks.

  “What’s gone?” Nathan whispered.

  “Where,” she gulped. “Where we buried Lucas. Under the little tree. The tree’s gone. The grave’s gone. Lucas is gone!” Nathan held her while she shook with crying. He lifted his head as Mama came heavily across the floor. She sat down on the bed, then lay back, her feet still on the floor. One bent arm covered her eyes and she said, in a tight, small voice, “Lucas is gone. And I have to carry this other one to be born and be killed—”

  Father turned from the window, but he didn’t go to Mama.

  “I didn’t kill him,” he said, his voice tired of making the same words over and over. “I didn’t kill him. Before that evil creature—”

  “She isn’t evil.” Nathan’s voice was loud and defiant in the room. “She wanted to warm us—”

  “With evil,” said Father. “With evil.”

  “Is everything you don’t understand evil?” asked Nathan. “Do you know what makes the sun shine? But you let it warm you anyway.”

  “God—” said Father.

  “God,” said Nathan. “God made her, too. And taught her how to warm the crowbar.”

  “The devil,” said Father. He turned back to the window, hunched inside the body that suddenly looked too big for him, that skunched down on Father, bending and stooping, trying to fit.

  Then suddenly, briefly, the whole cabin lifted a little and settled again. There was a dark wetness along the long cracks of the rough floor.

  “Good,” said Mama into the startled silence. “Take it all. Take it all.” And she turned her face away from all of them.

  But the waters had taken all they were to take, and they shrank away from every rise, compressing down into all the low places. There was one spot in the front yard that held a puddle of water for a long time, and it glittered like a watching eye until long after everything else had dried up.

  Nathan and his father now faced the task of clearing more land to replace that scoured-out, washed-away, deeply gullied part of the farm. Everything around shouted and hummed and smelled of spring and new life and abundant blossoming, but Nathan had no part in the singing, springing upsurge of delight that was on the land. He was a dark, plodding figure, bowed and unresponsive in the sunlight.

  ~ * ~

  The tree shuddered under every blow of Father’s ax. The brightness of the sky hurt Nathan’s eyes, and his neck ached from looking up at the shaken branches. Every move that he made was awkward and aching because of the tight hampering of the darkness inside him. He squatted down against a bank of earth and pulled his knees up to his chest, trying to ease the endless aching.

  A sharp crack from the tree snatched his eyes upward. The tree was twisting—turning unnaturally—splitting!

  Something in Nathan cried out, rejoicing—Now he’ll die, too! Now he’ll die, too! But even before the thought formed itself in his mind, he was surging forward on his hands and knees, scrambling to get to his feet.

  “Papa!” he yelled. “Papa!”

  Papa looked up, dropped his ax, and stood for one long, stunned moment before turning to run—to run in exactly the wrong direction. The splintering tree twisted again and seemed to explode. Papa’s cry and Nathan’s cry were drowned in the crash.

  “Papa!” Nathan groped frantically among the branches. “Papa! Papa!”

  Then he found Papa’s face. And his hands groped to slide under Papa’s shoulders. He cried out as he fell forward over Papa’s chest. There was nothing under Papa’s shoulders! His head and neck and part of his shoulders were pushed out across the bank of the ragged gully. The weight of the splintery heaping of the tree across his legs and body was all that kept him from slithering backwards down into the rock-jumbled gully behind and below him.

  “Papa!” Nathan whispered urgently. He touched the quiet face, his hand wincing away, almost immediately, from the intimacy of the touch.

  The face twisted to pain, and the eyes opened, unfocusing beyond Nathan’s left shoulder. Then the eyes focused with a vast effort.

  “Get it off!” The whisper jerked with the painful effort. “Get it off!” The eyes rolled shut and the head rolled to press against Nathan’s startled hand.

  “But, Papa!” The words were so loud they splintered the silence. “But, Papa!” he whispered. Then he turned to the twisted mountain of limbs behind him. He scrambled over and grabbed one piece of the splintered trunk. But it was shredded to another piece that peeled from another piece that rocked the edge of the gully, spilling more dirt and rocks from under Papa’s shoulder.

  Nathan let go hurriedly and could see even that little movement of release flow jerkily through the whole scrambled length of the trunk. And it pushed two more pebbles from under Papa’s shoulders.

  Nathan slumped down to his knees and slid sideways, his hands grabbing each other and his arms going up to hide his scared face. “What can I do? What can I do? Oh, God, help me—!”

  He jerked around, lifting himself on his knees. Nathan! Nathan! Calling him? Not Mama—not Adina!

  “Eliada!” he called. “Eliada! Come help! I need—”

  There’s need? Eliada’s call came clearly to him.

  “Yes!” he called. “There’s need! Come help! I can’t—!”

  For a long, tight pause Nathan listened to all the busy small sounds of the world of growth. Then a rustle in the trees just back of the jagged half-stump snatched his attention. The branches shuddered and parted, and an anxious-looking Eliada threw herself over the fallen tree to Nathan.

  “Oh, Nathan!” She caught her eyes checking Nathan rapidly. “There was a directive—so strong! So strong! You have need?”

  “Papa,” gulped Nathan. “The tree fell on him. I can’t move him—”

  “Tree?” Eliada’s eyes widened. “The broken one? But your papa—”

  “Can you help?�
�� Nathan scrambled back to the branches. “Papa is caught under the tree. I can’t lift it. Can you help?”

  Eliada crouched beside him. “Let me—let me—” She took a deep breath and sat back on her heels, her hand on Papa’s arm, her hair swaying forward over her intent face.

  “I cannot lift the tree from him,” she said from behind the curtain of her hair. “He would fall to the rocks. I cannot lift him and the tree at one time. It is two different Persuasions—animate and inanimate. If he would not waken—but he would—”

  “You gotta help!” cried Nathan. “We can’t let him—”

  “So you must take from under him the rocks and dirt—” as though Nathan hadn’t spoken. “And I will hold him until you have freed him—” She backed away and huddled herself over the edge of the slope down in the gully. “You have digging things?”