by Anissa Gray
It was then that Chveya reached her profound insight that the adult world and the children’s world were probably identical in the way they worked, except that the children were perpetually subservient to the adults. It began in a conversation with her mother as she combed Chveya’s hair after her bath. “The younger boys are, the more disgusting they are,” Chveya said, thinking of her second brother Motya, who had just discovered how much tumult he could cause by picking his nose and wiping it on his sisters’ clothing, a practice which Chveya had no intention of tolerating, whether he did it to her or to little Zuya, who couldn’t defend herself.
“That’s not necessarily true,” said Mother. “They simply find different ways of being disgusting when they get older.”
Mother said it offhandedly, like a joke, but to Chveya it was a grand illuminating moment. She tried to picture Krassya’s father, Obring, for instance, picking his nose and wiping it on Mother, and knew that it could never happen. But perhaps there were other disgusting things, adult things, that Obring might do. I must watch him and find out, thought Chveya.
She didn’t question that it was Obring she should watch—she had often seen the way Mother grew impatient when Obring spoke in council meetings. She had no respect for him, and neither did Father, though he hid it better. So if any adult male might exemplify disgusting behavior, it would certainly be Obring.
From now on, Chveya would focus all her attention on the adults around her, watching to see who was the Dazya of the mothers and who was the Proya of the fathers. In the process, she began to understand things that she had never understood before. The world was not as clear and simple a place as she had thought till now.
The most shocking revelation came on the day she discussed marriage with her parents. It had recently dawned on her that eventually the children would all grow up and pair off with each other and have babies and start the whole cycle all over again—this because of some vile remark by Toya about what Proya really wanted to do to Dazya. Toya had meant it to be an obscene horror, but Chveya realized that, far from being a horror, it was probably a prophecy. Wouldn’t Proya and Dazya be the perfect pair? Proya would be just like Elemak, and Dazya would probably smile at Proya with complete devotion the way Eiadh did with Elemak. Or would Dazya be like her mother Hushidh, so much stronger than her husband Issib that she even carried him around, and bathed him like a baby? Or would Proya and Dazya continue their struggle for supremacy all through their lives, trying to turn their own babies against each other?
That thought led Chveya to wonder which of the boys she would marry. Would it be one of the boys of the first year, her own age? That would mean either Proya or Okya, and the thought of either one repelled her. Then what about boys of the second year? Dazya’s little brother Xodhya, Proya’s little brother Nadya, or the “adult” Yaya—what a proud selection! And the children of the third year were the same age as her revolting brother Motya—how could she dream of marrying someone that young?
So she broached the subject with her parents as they were eating breakfast on a morning when Father was not going hunting, so they could eat together. “Will I have to marry Xodhya, do you think?” she asked—for she had decided that Xodhya was the least disgusting of all the alternatives.
“Definitely not,” said Mother, without a moment’s hesitation.
“In fact,” said Father, “we would forbid it.”
“Well, who then? Okya? Yaya?”
“Almost as bad,” said Father. “What is this, are you planning to start a family anytime soon?”
“Of course she’s thinking about it, Nyef,” said Mother. “Girls think about such things at this age.”
“Well, then, she might keep in mind that she isn’t going to marry a full uncle and certainly not a full double first cousin.”
These words meant absolutely nothing to Chveya, but they hinted at dark mysteries. What unspeakable thing had Xodhya done to become a “full double first cousin”? So she asked.
“It’s not what he did,” said Mother. “It’s just that his mother, Hushidh, is my full sister—we both have the same mother and the same father. And Zaxodh’s father, Issib, is your father’s full brother—they both have the same mother and father, who happened to be Grandmother and Grandfather. That means that you have all your ancestors in common—it’s the closest blood relation among all the children, and marriage between you is out of the question.”
“If we can possibly avoid it,” added Father.
“We can avoid that one, anyway,” said Mother. “And I feel almost as strongly about Oykib and Yasai, because they are also sons of both Rasa and Volemak.”
Chveya took all this in with outward calm, but inwardly she was in turmoil. Hushidh and Mother were full sisters, but not daughters of Grandmother and Grandfather! And Father and Issib were full brothers, as were Oykib and Yasai, and this fullness of their brotherhood was because they all were sons of Grandmother and Grandfather. Yet the very use of the word full implied that there were some here who were not full brothers, and therefore not sons of both Volemak and Rasa. How could that be?
“What’s wrong?” asked Father.
“I just . . . who is it that I can marry?”
“Isn’t it a little early . . .” began Father.
Mother intervened. “The boys who disgust you today will look far more interesting to you as you get older. Take that on faith, my dear Veya, because you won’t believe that particular prophecy until it comes true. But when that wonderful day comes . . .”
“Dreadful day, you mean,” muttered Father.
“... you can certainly cast your gaze on Padarok, for instance, because he’s not related to anybody at all except his baby sister Dabrota and his parents, Zdorab and Shedemei.”
That was the first time Chveya realized that Zdorab and Shedemei weren’t kin to the others, but now she remembered that she had long disliked Padarok because he always referred to Grandmother and Grandfather as Rasa and Volemak, which seemed disrespectful; but it was not disrespectful at all, because they really weren’t his grandmother or grandfather. Did everybody else understand this all along?
“And,” added Father, “because there’s only one Rokya to service the nubile young girls of Dostatok ...”
“Nyef!” said Mother sharply.
“. . . you’ll have no choice but to also—how did you say it, my dear Waterseer?—oh yes, cast your gaze upon Protchnu or Nadezhny, because their mother, Eiadh, is no kin of anybody else here, and their father, Elemak, is only my half-brother. Likewise with Umene, whose father, Vas, is not kin of ours, and whose mother, Sevet is only my half-sister.”
Never mind about Proya and Nadya and Umya. “How can Sevet be only half your sister?” Chveya asked. “Is that because you have so many brothers that she can’t be a whole sister to you?”
“Oh, this is a nightmare,” said Mother. “Did it have to be this morning?”
Father, however, went ahead and explained about how Volemak had been married to two other women in Basilica, who gave birth to Elemak and Mebbekew, and then had married Rasa long enough to have Issib; and then Lady Rasa “didn’t renew” the marriage and instead married a man named Gaballufix, who was also Elemak’s half-brother because his mother had been one of Volemak’s earlier wives, and it was with Gaballufix that Lady Rasa had given birth to Sevet and Kokor, and then she didn’t renew him and returned to marry Volemak permanently and then they had Nafai and, more recently, Okya and Yaya.
“Did you understand that?”
Chveya could only give a stupefied nod. Her entire world had been turned upside down. Not just by the confusion of who was really kin to whom after all, but by the whole idea that the same people didn’t have to stay married all their lives—that somebody’s mother and father might end up being married to completely different people and have children who thought of only one of them as Mother and the other one as a complete stranger! It was terrifying, and that night she had a terrible dream in which giant rats came
into their house and carried off Father in his sleep, and when Mother woke up she didn’t even notice he was gone, she simply brought in little Proya—only full-sized now, because this was a dream—and said, “This is your new father, till the rats take him.”
She woke up sobbing.
“What was the dream?” asked Mother, as she comforted her. “Tell me, Veya, why do you cry?”
So she told her.
Mother carried her into Father’s and her room and woke Father and made Chveya tell him the dream, too. He didn’t even seem interested in the most horrible thing, which was Proya coming into their house and taking his place. All he wanted to know about were the giant rats. He made her describe them again and again, even though she couldn’t think of anything to say about them except that they were rats and they were very large and they seemed to be chuckling to each other about how clever they were as they carried Father away.
“Still,” said Father, “it’s the first time in the new generation. And not from the Oversoul, but from the Keeper.”
“It might mean nothing,” said Mother. “Maybe she heard of one of the other dreams.”
But when they asked her whether she had heard stories of giant rats before this dream, Chveya had no idea of what they were talking about. The only rats she had heard about were the ones that were constantly trying to steal food from the barns. Did other people dream of giant rats, too? Adults were so strange—they thought nothing of families being torn apart and children having half-brothers and half-sisters and other monstrosities like that, but a dream of a giant rat, now, that was important to them. Father even said, “If you ever dream of giant rats again—or other strange animals—you must tell us at once. It can be very important.”
It was only as Luet was covering her up again in bed that Chveya was able to ask about the question that was gnawing at her. “Mother, if you ever don’t renew Father, who will be our new father then?”
Instantly a look of understanding and compassion came to Mother’s face. “Oh, Veya, my dear little seamstress, is that what’s worrying you? We left laws like that behind when we left Basilica. Marriages are forever here. Till we die. So Father will always be the father in our family, and I will always be the mother, and that’s it. You can count on that.”
Much reassured, Chveya settled down to sleep. She thought several thoughts as she was drifting off: How awful it must have been, to live in Basilica and never know who would be married to your parents from year to year—you might as well live in a house where the floor might be the ceiling tomorrow. And then: I am the first of the new generation to have a dream of giant rats, and somehow that is very wonderful so I must be very proud of myself and if I’d known that I would have dreamed about giant rats before. And then: Rokya is the boy who is no kin to anybody, and so he’s the very best one to marry, and so I shall marry him and that will show Dazya who’s the best.
Nafai and Luet got little sleep that night. Each had keyed in on a different aspect of Chveya’s dream. To Luet, what mattered was that one of the children had finally shown some of the ability that the Oversoul had been selecting for. She knew it was vain of her, but she felt it appropriate that the firstborn of the waterseer should be the first to have a meaningful dream. She could hardly bear to wait until she could first take her daughter into the water of the river to see if she could learn to deliberately fall into the kind of sleep that brought true dreams, the way Luet had schooled herself to do.
To Nafai, on the other hand, what mattered was that after so long a silence, someone had received some kind of message at all. And the message, however vague it was, however tied to childish puzzlements, was nevertheless from the Keeper of Earth, which somehow made it more important than if it had come from the Oversoul.
After all, they had conversation with the Oversoul all the time, through the Index. The Index only allowed them access to the Oversoul’s memory, however. It did not let them plumb the Oversoul’s plans, to find out through the Index exactly what the Oversoul expected them to do this year or the next. For that they waited, as they had always waited, for the Oversoul to initiate things through dreams or a voice in their own minds. All these years in Dostatok, and the Oversoul had sent no dream, no voice, and the only message the Index had for them, beyond their own research into memory, was: Stay and wait.
But the Keeper of Earth was not tied to any plan or schedule of the Oversoul; it sent its dreams through the lightyears from Earth itself. It was impossible to guess what the Keeper’s purpose was—the dreams it sent seemed to get tangled up in the concerns of the person having the dream, just as happened with Chveya’s dream of the rats. Yet there were themes that kept recurring—hadn’t Hushidh dreamed of rats also as enemies, attacking her family? This seemed to hint that somehow these large rats were going to be a problem to them on Earth—though there were also the dreams that showed the rats and angels of Earth linked with humans as friends and equals. It was so hard to make sense of all of it—but one thing was certain. The dreams from the Keeper of Earth had not stopped coming, and so perhaps something would happen soon, perhaps the next stage of their journey would begin.
For Nafai was growing impatient. Like all the others, he loved the way they lived at Dostatok, yet he could not forget that this was not the object of their journey. There was an unfinished task ahead of them, a journey through space to the planet where humankind originated, the return of humans for the first time after forty million years, and Nafai longed to go. Life in Dostatok was sweet, but it was also far too closed and neat. Things seemed to have ended here, and Nafai didn’t like the feeling that somehow the future had been tied off, that there would be no more changes other than the predictable changes of growing older.
Oversoul, said Nafai silently, now that the Keeper of Earth has awakened again, will you also awaken? Will you also set us on the next stage of our journey?
Nafai was keenly aware of how different were his and Luet’s responses to Chveya’s dream. He was at once disdainful and envious of Luet’s attitude. Disdainful, for she seemed to have let Dostatok become her whole world—what she cared most about was the children, and how this meant that they might also become visionaries, and most specifically how wonderful it was that their Chveya was the first to dream true dreams. How could this matter compare to the news that the Keeper of Earth was stirring again? And yet he envied her very connectedness with their present life in Dostatok—he could not help but think that she was far happier than he, because her world did center around the children, the family, the community. I live in a larger world, but have little connection with it; she lives in a smaller one, but is able to change it and be changed by it far more than I.
I can’t become as she is, nor can she become like me. Individual people have always been more important to her than to me. It’s my weakness, that I don’t have her awareness of other people’s feelings. Perhaps, had I been as observant, as empathic as she, I would not have inadvertently said and done the things that made my older brothers hate me so much, and then our whole path through life might have been different, Elya and I might have been friends all along. Instead, even now when Elemak gives me respect as a hunter and listens to me in council, there is still no closeness between us, and Elemak is wary of me, watching for signs that I seek to displace him. Luet, on the other hand, seems to cause no envy among the other women. As Waterseer, she could just as easily be seen as a rival to Mother’s dominance over the women as Elemak is the rival to Father’s leadership, and I am the rival to Elemak, but instead there is no sense of competition at all. They are one. Why couldn’t Elemak and I have been one, and Elemak and Father?
Perhaps there is something lacking in men, so that we can never join together and make one soul out of many. If so then it is a terrible loss. I look at Luet and see how close she is to the other women, even the ones she doesn’t like all that well; I see how close she and the other women are to the children; and then I see how distant I am from the other men, and I feel so lonely.<
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With those thoughts Nafai finally slept, but only a few hours before dawn, and when he got out of bed he found Luet just as weary from undersleeping, stirring the morning porridge virtually in her sleep. “And there’s no school today,” Luet said, “so we have all the children and there’s no hope of a nap.”
“Let them play outside,” said Nafai, “except the twins of course, and we can probably leave them with Shuya and then we can sleep.”
“Or we could take turns ourselves, instead of imposing on them,” said Luet.
“Take turns?” said Nafai. “How dull.”
“I want to sleep,” said Luet. “Why is it that men are never so tired that they stop thinking about that?”
“Men who stop thinking about that, as you so sweetly call it, are either eunuchs or dead.”
“We need to tell your parents about Chveya’s dream,” said Luet.
“We need to tell everybody.”
“I don’t think so,” said Luet. “It would cause too much jealousy.”
“Oh, who but you will care about which child was first to have true dreams?” But he knew as he said it that all the parents would care, and that she was right about needing to avoid jealousy.
She made a face at him. “You are so completely above envy, O noble one, that it makes me envious.”
