Let go, Grace chanted. Let go. I am here. Let go. I am with you. Let go.
It did. The fragile bond broke and the egg sagged away from the wall, free.
I am with you, Grace said. I am here. Be calm.
Contraction after contraction, they eased down the passageway to freedom. Rolling, riding, turning, they slipped on.
I am here. I am here.
Then, a light ahead. We are almost free, Grace said. Almost free. The embryo consciousness shrank back, a little afraid, but too excited now not to look ahead. What was next? Would She be there?
Soon, Grace said. Soon.
The light grew and with it the speed of their passage. Freer and freer. The light was brighter, stronger. It was blinding. The air was dryer, colder. The warmth was slipping away. The awareness of the egg recoiled in new panic. Cold! Dry! Bright!
Let go, Grace said. You will be all right. Go with it. You are safe. I am here. Come with me.
Unsure, it stayed close to Grace. The light was so bright. And the dryness—it wasn’t warm!
You will be warm soon. I promise. Come with me. Come.
They burst free. The elements around them seemed harsh and abrasive, cold and unnurturing. From a level of awareness that drifted above the treetops, Grace could see the scene—Mot at his wife’s side, Lylah, pale, drawn, perspiring—a lamp beside her, damp clothes. She would lie abed for a time, but she would live, and be grateful for it.
Now, Grace told the egg, let go once more. Let go of this physical envelope. Let go of this dense matter, and release the spirit of your energy. Let go, and we will fly. Let go of the weight here. Let go of gravity. Fly with me.
Beyond shock, the embryo did as it was bid. The light that shone from the core dimmed, slowly, slowly; dimmed and went out. The dense matter fell in on itself. They shot free.
Fly! Grace called. Fly with me.
Stunned, the particle of consciousness hesitated. It was so free, so ... everything.
Yes, Grace said, you are everything. You are light and color and sun and rain. You are animal and stone and air and fire. You are the world. You are All.
Come with me, she said. Fly with me. To the Goddess.
They flew, rising higher and higher above the forest, the earth. The planet dropped away. The universe dimmed.
There, Grace said. That is where we are going.
Ahead, a light glowed, but not simply a light. It was a flashing brilliance of color, an exploding spectrum of all the hues, all the tones and colors of every beautiful jewel in existence. The colors pulsed and flowed, their brightness surged, and they reached out to the embryonic spark. Banners of color like arms stretched across the eternity to the lost one, and slowly, gently, enfolded it. Grace moved back and the softly weaving ribbons of color took in the lost soul, embraced it and drew it in.
Grace watched it go, somehow sad. It was truly free now, truly in belonging. It would rest, and become strong in love, and then return again. It would have a life of its own next time, instead of being sacrificed for another’s growth. It would be loved next time. It would be blessed.
Slowly, she fell away. She was tired, but still reluctant to leave. The colors were fading; the light was dimming. It was so beautiful. But not for her; not yet. Slowly, wearily, she turned away, back toward her world. Be blessed, she told the small spirit.
But it was past hearing.
CHAPTER 16
The days later that summer seemed particularly glorious to Grace. Sitting in the yard with Balat, shelling nuts, the sky seemed fiercely blue through the trees. The sun shone warm and golden, and the treetops sloughed gently in the wind. It was truly the most beautiful time she could remember.
Unknowingly, she sighed.
Balat smiled at her. “What was that for?”
“It is just such a pretty day,” she told him. “I wish all days could be as nice.”
“If all days were like today, we would have no rain for our fields in spring, no snow for our rivers in winter and we would all die. Is that what you wish?”
She threw nutshells at him. “Of course not. You know what I mean.”
He nodded. “Yes, I do. But we must let go of what we desire if we are to ever have it.”
Grace’s hands stilled in her lap. “Yes, I know,” she said dreamily. “I said the same thing to Lylah’s lost child. We must release our hold on things if we are ever to have what we truly desire. Yet, sometimes it seems as if our lives are constant loss, constant giving up. It almost seems we are always losing something.”
“Losing, but gaining,” Balat said. He pointed to a place on the ground near them, where leaves had pyramided against a tree. “Do you see that pile of leaves? How long has it been there?”
Grace thought back. “It seems it has always been there. The wind tends to sweep in that way and swirl right there; I’ve noticed that before.”
“So that same pile of leaves has been there a long time?” Balat pressed.
Grace checked herself. “Well, perhaps not that exact same pile ...”
Balat was pleased. “Right.” He gestured with his hands, the high teacher again. “Every time the wind blows, it may bring in two, three, four new leaves and deposit them in the pile and when it leaves it may take two or three away with it, also. Day after day, month after month it may do that, taking a few, leaving a few, until eventually, there are none of the original leaves left in the pile but all new ones, yet the pile looks the same to us.”
“Yes,” Grace said quickly, “I see that. And that is the same for us, too. I may look the same to others on the outside, but in the last year or more I have gained in small ways and lost in small ways, also, so that I am not the same person I was.”
“Exactly.” Balat beamed at his star pupil.
“Yes, I see that life is like that. Yet it seems that we notice the losses much more deeply than the additions. And I feel that I have witnessed so many losses lately.”
“Perhaps, then, the Goddess is giving you a lesson,” Balat said. “If you need to work on an aspect of life, trust in Her to send you many opportunities to do so.”
Grace laughed. “And if I learn this lesson well? Will She stop teaching, then?”
Balat grinned. “If you learn it well, She will continue to give you opportunities to use your knowledge. If you do not learn, She will continue to give you opportunities to do so.”
“So either way,” Grace started, then shrugged.
“Exactly.”
Grace looked out at the trees. “It seems to me,” she said slowly, thinking it out as she spoke, “that life is a river that flows through my fingers. It flows regardless of what I do, and I cannot hold onto it, nor can I stop it from flowing. I can only feel that particular part of it that engulfs me at this moment. Does that sound right to you?”
“Yes.”
“And I must go where it takes me. A person cannot fight a wall of water with her bare hands.”
“No.”
She sighed, then turned to Balat and laid her hand over his. “So I guess it is a good thing that you have taught me well, because I am willing to go where my river takes me.”
Balat smiled sadly. “It is all any of us can do.”
The heat of high summer began to sear the leaves on the trees and they began to fall early. Nights were still warm and humid, days were hot and bright, yet the leaves fell. It was an odd time.
Grace and Balat had his cabinet of medicines almost completely stocked and there were no pressing chores to see to. They had even started their autumn storing already, so if anything they were ahead of the seasons by a good month. Lazy, carefree, Grace decided to take a trip to her cliffside cave.
“Will you be all right overnight?” she asked him as she packed.
“Of course. We have nothing that needs doing. Stay longer if you like.”
She paused, thinking. “That does sound appealing. Not that I don’t enjoy your company, because I do, but a stretch of alone time sounds very appealing. If you’
re sure you don’t mind ...”
“Go,” he said. “Take all the time you want.”
Grace went over and kissed the top of his grizzled head. “I love you, Balat.”
He winked at her. “I know.”
She walked effortlessly to the rift, then scaled the cliff face in a leisurely climb. There was no hurry, no pressure, no strain. This was a time set apart, a time out of time, for her to do whatever she felt. She settled into her cave and leaned back against the sun-warmed rock. The world sprawled out below her.
Yes, time alone was what she needed—no caretaking, no doctoring, no officiating, no prophesying. Just time to be herself, to enjoy being ... her own pile of leaves. She smiled at the thought. Yes, she was a different person than she had been a year ago, and two years ago—she wondered who she was two years ago. But she was certainly different. So many new leaves had swept in on that current of life, and so many more had swept out. She was different even today than yesterday, so quickly yet subtly did those changes take place. Every morning she awoke a new person, new and different in some small way.
And still the river flowed.
It ran now, as she sat quietly contemplating the world. It had her in its tide, and it carried her on even as she mused, endless, perennial, inexorable. She drifted in its gentle current. Deathlike, she floated in its gossamer stream.
The time that was out of time ceased to be. She felt plucked from the world and set down in a shadowless place of now and never. She was and was not. She lived and yet the world went on without her.
She opened her eyes and the world that spread out before her was cast in an eerie, blue light. As dark as night yet as clear as a moon-bright landscape, the world pulsed and shone. She turned her vision to the things about her and that blue light was there, clear, dark, somber. It was as if everything lay in shadow, yet she could see as well as on the brightest day. It was, she thought, as if her eyes themselves projected that cold, blue light, as if it were her sight that threw the beam of clear darkness on everything. If she tried, she could imagine her eyes glowing with an unholy light, boring with blue beams into the things around her.
In truth, she looked down at her own hands and her vision passed through the skin, revealing to her bones and muscle and surging blood. Fascinated, she watched as the blood pulsed through the tiny veins, as the muscles tautened in answer to her thought, as the bones flashed white even in that blue stare.
She looked further. Staring down at her own body, she saw her lungs filling with air and then gently deflating; she saw her heart pump and throb, pushing the blood pulse by pulse through the arteries. She looked deeper, and saw all her organs—liver, spleen, intestines and kidneys—working, working, working, doing what they did as she lived. It was all laid bare to her; her unearthly blue eyes saw everything.
Through her body she looked now, past the organs and flesh, right down into the living rock of the bluff. Her vision led her through shale and sandstone, through layers of sediment, down into the densest, compressed rock of its base. On down she looked, through the granite, through the very mantle of the planet itself, through the fiery red, viscous rock of the netherworld. There liquid rock seethed and ran, boiled and bubbled, and her blue vision turned red. Through clouds of gasses and steam, she probed deeper into the heart and blood of the world. And there the heart of the world pulsed and pumped, just as hers had.
On down her magical vision probed, through the far side of the planet, out into the universe beyond where again her sight was blue-shadowed and crystalline. Now the cosmos lay before her, and she could see all—all of creation—from her simple vantage point. The galaxies wheeled on gossamer breezes and long ribbons of stardust streamers waved sinuously in the blue darkness. Stars expanded and pulsed, then collapsed inward, imploding, brilliant in a blaze of death.
And all around, the universe sang to her.
From her vantage point it was as if she could see all that was; as if the All were a wisp of smoke she held in her hand. She was larger, greater, than the universe itself; her own boundaries were infinity and eternity. She floated in the nothingness beyond that, the cosmos a small speck within her. She was All.
Yet there was more. There was a presence beyond her. As the cosmos was a speck in her, she was a speck in ... the Goddess. Now she knew Who was there; it was She.
Her senses quickened, for she saw the form and the face and the color of the Goddess whirling out of the black timeless eternity toward her, a mist, a cloud, a shimmer of stars. Like a chimera, She ghosted before her senses, floating, drifting, beckoning.
My child, She said somehow, and the words echoed in her mind. The feeling and the spirit and the love of the mother-child bond spiraled inside her and she felt protected, secure and wholly accepted for just who she was. Unconditional love flowered in her like a bloom of fire and warmed her.
My mother, She said, and a sense of knowing, of teaching, radiated through her. Caretaker and confidante were her roles, and protectoress and nurturer. Now that same unconditional love looped out and streamed back, catching her up in its opposite and she knew she held it within her now, waiting to be given away.
My sister, She said, and with the words came the terrible, resounding, undeniable responsibility of equality. They faced each other, eye to eye across eternity, as different as two individuals must be, as inseparable as one being from itself; what One promised, the other must do; what One said, the other must live out. The serpents of destiny wound around them both and linked them in eternity.
My Sibling, She said, and the word—and all that went with it—crashed across her mind and she felt struck, battered, beaten. All the glory and all the pain rushed into her; all the adoration and all the hate; all the faith and all the doubt. It poured into her, rushing streams of contrasting colors, the waters all churning together in an ocean of senses until she felt overcome by it, pulled down, sucked under—breathless, yet deathless. She was and was not; she died and was born; she was terrifyingly alone and would never be alone again. She drowned in the waters of emotion and floated there, waiting.
It was still blue night—still, or again. The basin below glittered jewel-like in the blue brilliance.
Her eyes were all-seeing. She looked beneath the canopy of the forest and saw the small and the timid nocturnal animals in their wary, patient pursuits. She could see under every leaf and branch, through rocks, beyond distance. Nothing escaped her.
Someone was calling her; someone, something? There was a string tied to her soul and it was being pulled, gently, inexorably. She must go. Not for her the cave in the cliff; not for her the water skin or the chunk of cheese. The world waited. Waited for her.
Her far-flung vision flew the forest. There was a cabin. Could she tell him goodbye? It was time to move on—how cold an excuse. Her destiny awaited and would not be denied longer. She would go.
His thin body lay on his cot, a light blanket over it. She felt a stranger to him. She was cold. How could she tell him?
There was no need, ultimately. He had gone before her. His chest was still, his breath gone. His eyes were sightless behind his lids. She commended him to the Goddess.
Now nothing bound her save the string upon her soul. It tugged at her; come now. Ghostlike she followed its pull, scaling the last of the cliff to the island of forest atop it. It seemed as if neither her hands not feet actually touched the earth, but as if she drifted across it. The forest was dark, blue, shimmering.
Something moved. She stood still and it came toward her. A young deer she had never seen before; she recognized it as a friend, an adorer. Its liquid eyes reflected the blue of the night; its soft fur sheathed the grace of virile young muscles. It moved inevitably toward her.
Only half-grown, it seemed very small. Its nose quivered constantly with an inborn attention to danger. It moved warily, alert, hesitant, yet with her as its ultimate goal. Slowly, step by step, it came to stand before her.
She met its eyes—dark, limpid, soulful. It was f
ragile and beautiful and wild and trusting. It trembled, taut.
She put out a hand to it and it touched her fingertips with its cold, damp nose.
Then it lay down on the ground before her and died.
A feeling of awe and gratitude filled her and a high, keening cry tore from her. She sank to her knees before the small lifeless form and laid hands on it, feeling the warmth seep out of its body. She trembled with the awesomeness of another creature giving its life to her.
Taking her knife from her belt, she put it to the soft belly and only then realized how ravenous she was. How long had it been since she’d eaten? Time was meaningless in the dream places she had been. She pierced the soft skin of the belly and drew the knife upward. Organs, warm and blood-rich, spilled out. She took the liver, still pulsing, and devoured it. Blood streaked her hands and face; she wiped sticky fingers on her shift and reached for more. Alive with a feeling she’d never known before, a sharp, clear keeness, she ate the life organs of the deer and felt its blood suffuse her own. The force of creation throbbed in her.
She ate with the mindlessness of an animal, yet knew somewhere that this was a communion, a passage, a nativity. At one point in the shifting dreamtime, her fingernails seemed more like claws, yet her hands had the long, tapering fingers of a woman enthroned. She may have heard harsh, guttural sounds from her own throat, yet the song of the universe floated around her. She was a beast, a creation, an animal, a deity, and as the flesh of the deer became her flesh, she walked through a portal of holiness.
Some time later, she was sated. She stood and looked around, trying to piece out where she was—who she was.
Smeared with blessing-blood, she stood alone at the verge of the forest, on the edge of the cliff. Her belly was full of the selfless young deer’s great gift—its own flesh—and her blood sang in her ears. She was empowered, transformed, entitled. Turning to the dark forest and to the bright sky, she declared herself.
“I am the Sibling,” she said, her voice ringing out. “I am Greer.”
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