~~~
One day, when I was twelve, I awoke to halos around things. Specifically around electronic items -- the light-fixture overhead, my reading lamp, my computer, my clock-radio, the television at my bed's foot...
I panicked, wondering whether I was sick, and, if so, what I should do. Tell the Colonel and Mom, so that they could take me to a doctor? Yeah, right! "Gee, Belle, your respiration rate is normal, but we can't get a pulse or a blood pressure on you."
Suppose that the doctor took X-rays of me. What fun!
Yes, I thought of Dr. Ventnor, but I'd learned that he was no medical doctor, just a psychologist playing xenobiologist. A nice guy if I wanted someone to hold my hand...
Not yet, thank you! I got up and did my normal routine. Lights flickered around me, as Mom noted in a worried tone, but I made the school bus on time. On the bus, Emily chatted with me of everyday things and said nothing of green spots on my forehead. She would've told me of them if I'd had them.
At school, though, nothing went right in terms of computers. Every one that I tried to use crashed on me. I'd brought my laptop to school, but, when I tried to turn it on, I got the blue screen of death. When I tried to reboot my laptop, it didn't even give me the blue screen.Kendra and Millie, looking at the laptop for me, told me that its hard-drive had crashed. Wonderful! As an übernerd, I'd backed up all of my files, but, now, I'd have to do chores for a month to earn money for a new hard-drive.
When I got home, I was in a foul mood. After supper, I slunk to my room and lay on my bed. I wanted to get on line and moan to the cyberworld of my woes, but I feared that, as soon as I booted up my desktop, I'd fry its hard-drive, too. Belle, having sinned, was purged from civilization.
I lay on my bed and gazed at halos. As I glanced around my room, my eye went to the brightest halo, an intense pinkish glow atop my dresser. My heart pounded in my armored chest. "The memory-crystal!" I said in a tone of wonder.
The Colonel had kept all but one of my memory-crystals locked up in a safe in the barn. One, though, I kept with me to remind me of the Homeworld. For six years, the crystal had just lain on my dresser. Emily, Kendra, and Millie had handled the crystal countless times. When they'd asked me what it was, I told them that it was a good-luck charm from Afghanistan.
I, too, had handled the crystal countless times, but it'd never glowed or awoken in me any memories but those already in my head. Now, though, the crystal's pinkish glow drew me like moth to flame. I rose, padded across the carpet, and took the crystal in my hand...
In the Hall of Evening Sacrifice, I sat at a long stone table standing at a right angle to the dais. I'd just finished eating, as the kum women were taking away dishes.
When I turned my gaze to the dais, Sor-On, wearing the three-spired crown, was rising. My gaze was directed at him, but my wonder at those seated by him: lovely Luna, his wife; Par-On, his son, in her arms; Dor-Sad, my grandfather; and I myself, Mira Das-Es, a five-year-old girl giving her grandfather a look of adoration.
When I grew aware of what Sor-On was saying, I gathered that he was telling the Tale of Origins, how the First Ancestors -- Par; his an wife, Dira, and his kum wife, Ruka -- had come from the stars in a crystal-ship to settle the Desert of Ul. I listened with joy to the tale of how the three colonists had built a home on a hostile world and brought children into it, but I felt greater joy in anticipation of what was to come.
"Now," Sor-On said when his story-telling was done, "let us go out onto the mesa, and sing and dance to honor the First Ancestors."
I rose, both the I who'd watched from the common tables and the I who'd been seated on the dais, and followed everyone else through the great double doors of clear, pale violet at the hall's western end. In chill night air, I huddled with my neighbors as we turned our eyes skywards. There, in unchallenged glory, hung Thil-i An Om, the Stars of the Great Crystal-Shaper.
A memory within a memory told me that Orion looked on Ul almost identical to how it looks on the earth.
Ten thousand voices united, my neighbors and I sang of our dedication to what the First Ancestors had taught us of Holy Light, the principles of duty, loyalty, and truthfulness, and the foundations of worship, community, and family. I felt no longer an isolated life at a deadly desert's mercy, but part of a common life with no end.
Song over, the common life broke into individuals who sought their places on the mesa. As musicians began to play bone-flutes, lutes, and drums, I found myself heading for where the royal family had gathered. Sor-On handed Mira his crown; Luna handed her Par-On. Mira took the crown into her left arm, the baby into her right. It delighted me to see her kiss him and him wave his chubby arms.
My gaze went to the royal couple. Each of them began to spin in place as an individual; then they spun into each other's arms and became a couple. Around them, three other sets of individuals spun into couples. The royal couple opened their arms to these, and the four dances of two became a single dance of eight.
Across the plateau, what the royal couple had begun was repeating itself. I gazed across rings of eight spinning under a starlit sky till my gaze was drawn to a new dance. Mira had risen and was spinning in place, crown in one arm, baby Par in the other. Grinning, he waved his chubby arms.
My gaze rose to the serene majesty of the Great Crystal-Shaper. Its stars blazed and then faded...
I was standing before a dresser, a fading crystal in my right hand. Tears streamed from my eyes. I flung myself onto my bed and sobbed helplessly, silently for what seemed to me hours.
I'd almost forgotten who I was. I'd almost forgotten that those who'd danced one last time under Orion had sent me to the earth for a purpose.
Now, I recalled the Work and the Message, and resolved to prepare for them.
Voices murmuring in the light-crystals' glow interrupt me. "That was the memory-crystal that you showed us to get us ready for tonight!" mystical Lona murmurs.
"You must've told Dr. Ventnor of our being able to wipe hard-drives," wise, artistic Sil-Tan says. "He warned me of it just before I turned twelve."
Lona shakes her head. "Dala and I told Dr. Ventnor, after we'd met Mira, and she'd told us how to use the crystals."
"You must've set to work learning of them at once, Mira," shy Dala says. "When I met you, you were already able to make light-crystals."
"I was, and I did set to work at once. One of my Tan books told the secrets of crystal-shaping. I worked on learning them night after night, after the Colonel and Mom had gone to bed. Luckily for me, once my crystal-shaping gift had awoken, I needed just four hours of sleep a night.
"I won't say much of crystal-shaping just now, though. Instead, I'll tell you how the War to Save the Earth began."
Dour, brooding Un-Thor gives me a wolfish grin. "At last, the story's good part!"
Some of us, I think sourly, have a different opinion from yours about it.
Daughter of Orion Page 15
