“Not far,” said Father, “and Lared will come with me.”
They went out the south-facing kitchen window, bundled to the eyes so that they climbed like clumsy infants. On the south side the snow wasn't quite so deep, though walls of drifted snow flanked the house left and right. The snow was still falling, straight down this time.
“Where are we going?” Lared asked.
“To the forge.”
It was almost painful, the sound of their footsteps in the silence. For a while, between inn and forge, neither building was visible. Only the unfamiliar landscape of the drifts. Only his father, plowing awkwardly through the waist-deep snow ahead of him. Then the forge became a dark streak in the snow ahead, only the edge of the roof of it visible. Lared had never been outside in such weather before, but Father unerringly found the shallowest snow, avoiding the deep drifts that were higher than their heads.
A trick of the wind had put a drift in front of the south-facing door of the forge. They forced through it to the wide window in the top of the left-hand door; it opened inward, and the snow gave way, and they lowered themselves inside.
“Help me stoke the fire.” It was still alive, from the day before. But what work was so urgent that they had to risk their lives in such a storm?
The answer came when Lared tried to close the window.
“The fire!” said Father. “And leave the window. The others need to see the light.”
The others. Lared understood at once. They would make him be a man tonight. It was a great honor, to do it in such a storm as this, provided that the others came. And they did come, two by two, until eighteen men were crowded, sweating, into the hot smithy. They left a clear aisle from the open window to the fire of the forge.
“We stand,” said Father, “between fire and ice.”
“Ice and fire,” said the others.
“Will you face the fire, or will you face the ice?”
What did it mean, to face one or the other? How could he pass a test if he didn't know what the question meant?
So he hesitated.
The men murmured.
Lared tried to imagine what they meant to do. Fire was Clany, dying in agony; ice was the snow outside, and no track to guide him home. Give me ice over fire anytime. But then he thought again: if I have to face two dangers, which would I rather have before me, and which behind? I will face what I fear most— perhaps that is the test.
“Fire,” he said.
Many hands took him and faced him toward the tire. The bellows coughed. The cinders flew upward. The many hands took the clothing from him, until the fire seared his skin in front, and the wind from the door froze him behind.
“In the beginning,” recited Father, “was the age of sleep, when all men and women longed for night and hated all the days of waking. There was among them one with power, who hated sleep, and all his ways were destruction. His name was Doon, and no one knew him until the Day of Waking, when there came a shout from the world of steel: Look at the man who has stolen sleep! Then the name of Doon was known everywhere, for the sleepers belonged to him, and there was none left who was not forced awake.”
What would this have meant to me, wondered Lared, if I hadn't had Doon's face in my memory? All a mystery, all a myth if I hadn't known, but I know the truth behind it, I have spoken with Doon face to face, and I can tell you the way his eyes look when he knows you are afraid. I have also been Doon, and evil as he was, somec was worse.
“Then,” said Father, “the worlds were lost in the light. They could not find the stars in the sky anymore. For five thousand years they were lost, until men learned to travel against the light, to travel so quickly they could do it without the sleep that Doon had stolen. Then they found each other again, found all the worlds but one, the world known by the holy name.”
“Ice and fire,” murmured the other men.
“Only here, between the fire and ice, may the name be spoken.” Father reached out and put his thumbs on Lared's eyes.
“Worthing,” he said. Then he whispered, “Say it.”
“Worthing,” Lared said.
“It was the farthest world, the deepest world, and it was the place where God had gone to sleep when men awoke. The name of God is Jason.”
“Jason,” said the men.
“And the world was full of the sons of God. They saw the pain throughout the worlds, the pain of waking, the pain of tire and light, and they said, 'We will have compassion on the woken, and ease their pain. We are not Jason, so we cannot give them sleep, but we are the children of Jason, so we can keep them from the fire. We are Ice, and we will stand at your back, and hold the light at bay.'”
They know the end of the story, Lared realized. They know what became of Jason's world when he was done.
“Now,” said Father, “they have given ice to us. But we remember pain! Here between the ice and fire, we remember.”
He stopped. The men murmured. “Remember,” someone said. “Pain,” someone whispered.
“It has changed,” Father said. He wasn't reciting anymore.
“It isn't the Day of Waking anymore, and it isn't the Day of Ice. It's the Day of Pain, and I won't let it go the old way.”
The men were silent.
“We saw it coming down the river, what happens when you do the ice and fire now! And I said that day, we will not do it here!”
Lared remembered the man burning alive on the raft. From upriver, where there is still ice in the mountains. “What is supposed to happen now?” asked Lared.
Father looked sick. “We throw you in the fire. In the old days, we were stopped. Our arms would not do it, though we threw with all our might. We did it so we would remember the pain. And to test W-Worthing.”
The men were still wordless.
“We saw what happened to Clany! We know that Worthing is asleep again! The Ice has no power anymore!”
“Then,” said Clany's father, “give him ice.”
“He chose the fire,” said another man.
“Neither one,” said Father. “We did it before because we knew there'd be no pain. Now we know pain and death.”
“Give him ice,” said Clany's father. “We did not make you speaker so that you could save your son.”
“If we keep this alive then all our sons will die!”
Clany's father was on the edge of weeping—or was it the edge of rage? “We must call them back to us! We must wake them up!”
“We do not kill our children, even to waken a sleeping god!”
Lared understood it now. Naked, the boy-who-was-to-be-a-man was cast into the fire or out the window into the snow. He could see in the faces of the other men that they weren't sure what they wanted. There were many generations in this ritual. All the uncertainty since the Day of Pain was in their faces. And Lared knew his own value in their eyes. A bookish boy and so not trusted; not strong for his age and so not valued; the son of the most prosperous man in the village, and so not liked. They do not long for my death, but if someone is to die and wake the children of Jason they are willing for it to be me. And Father is shaming himself to save my life. If they consent to let me live, it will be because my Father begged, and he will never have his pride again in the village.
The fire is too much for me, thought Lared. But I can face the snow.
“Are the children of Jason in the fire or in the ice?” he asked.
He was not supposed to speak, but then nothing was supposed to happen as it had.
“They are Ice,” said Hakkel the butcher.
“Then I will go into the ice,” said Lared.
“No,” said Father.
As if in answer, the wind howled outside. The lull in the storm was over.
“Tell me what to do, once I'm outside,” said Lared.
No one was sure. The children of Jason had always stopped them before the end. “The words we say,” said Father, “are 'Till you sleep in ice.'”
“In the fire,” said Clany's father, “we s
ay, 'Till you wake in flame.'”
“Then I will go until I sleep.”
Father put his hand on Lared's shoulder. “No. I won't allow it.” But his eyes said, I see your courage.
“I will go,” Lared said, “until I sleep.”
No, said a voice in his mind. I will not save you.
I'm not asking you to, Lared answered silently, knowing he was heard.
Do not choose to die, said Justice.
“I will go until I die!” Lared shouted.
Their hands reached out to him like dozens of little animals, set to devour him. The hands lifted him, rushed him toward the window, and cast him out into the wind and snow.
The snow stung him, and as he struggled to right himself it got in his nose and mouth. He came up gasping and trembling, his legs weak under him from the shock of the cold. What am I doing? Oh, yes. Going until I sleep. There was enough light from the window to cast his shadow a short way into the snow he stepped forward into his shadow. The wind caught him and he fell again, but he got up again and staggered forward.
“Enough!” cried his father, but it was not enough.
Until sleep. Sleep was ice to them, in their story. There would be ice along the edges of the river. Not that far. I can run it in three minutes in summer. I must bring them ice from the river, I must take the cold and bring it back to them, the way Jason took the twick into his body and brought it out, and lived. From this night, if I live, Jason's memories won't steal me from myself.
No one will save you, said a voice in his mind. But he wasn't sure if it was Justice or his own fear speaking.
It wasn't far, but the wind was cruel, and it whipped along the river worse than anywhere in the village. Lared dug numbly in the snow until he uncovered stones that until yesterday had been half-buried in mud. Today it was already freezing, and he cut his clumsy fingers before he could persuade a sharp stone to rise into his hands. Then he knelt at the water's edge, where snow spilled out onto the new ice, and the ice reached arms out into the river. A few blows with the stone and the ice at the edge broke up; the water splashed and felt warm on his arms. He fumbled in the water to get hold of a large fragment of the ice, and then half crawled back up the slope of the bank.
He had the ice from the river, it was enough that he could go back and no one could say he failed, but the wind blew the snow into his face now, and as he staggered forward the world was nothing but dots of white coming toward him. He could not see the village, saw nothing but the snow around him, forgot where the river even was. A moment ago he could hardly hold the ice for shivering; now his body had forgotten it was cold.
Then, out of the endless points of snow, there came two shadows. Father, and Jason. It was Jason who led the way, but it was Father who put a blanket around him.
“I got to the river,” Lared said, “and I got this ice.”
“It doesn't even melt in his hands,” Father said.
Together they lifted Lared and carried him through the snow. They shouted, and someone answered; someone also answered, faintly, farther on. It was a chain of men through the snow. Lared did not see the end of the chain. He slept in his father's arms.
He awoke trembling violently in a tub. Mother was pouring hot water on him. He screamed from the pain.
Seeing he was awake, she gave him the sort of sympathy he was used to. “Fool!” she shouted. “Naked in the snow! All men are fools!” She returned to the fire to heat more water.
She's right, said the voice in his mind.
“But so were you,” whispered Jason.
The other men were there, their faces shifting in the firelight. The room was hot and it hurt to breathe, and Lared didn't want them to watch him that way. He ducked his head, turned to the side, turned back again, shaking his head back and forth slowly.
“Leave him,” Jason said. “He got the ice for you, he came home asleep, he did all you said for him to do.”
The men pulled on their heavy coats and capes, began to glove themselves.
“They say your name is Jason,” said Hakkel the butcher.
“My name is Jason Worthing?” Jason said. “Did you think Lared's father lied to you?”
“Are you,” whispered Clany's father, “God?”
“I'm not,” said Jason. “I'm just a man, getting old, wishing he had a family, and wondering why you are all such fools as to have gone from yours on a night like this.”
They left through the kitchen window, guiding each other home through the darkness.
7. Winter Tales
It was not the worst storm they had ever had; the snow had been deeper in many a winter; but there had never been so bad a beginning to the winter. Everyone in the house kept saying it, over and over: “And this is only the first real storm.” For three days the wind kept up, though after that first night the snow was only a few inches at a time, and they could get around enough in daylight to make sure the animals were fed and watered.
Lared did not get around, however. He lay in Father's own bed during the day, while the life of the house went on around him. The women of the village gathered on the third day, to resume the work of weaving. Though Lared was in the room with them, they did not much converse with him. He was feverish and didn't feel like speaking, and the others had such awe of him that they had little to say to him. After all, they had taken the storm without loss, and many suspected that it was because Lared had offered himself to the storm that it had been no worse than it was.
During the work, the tinker sang his songs and told his tales. He was good for several hours' entertainment, but then there came a lull in the conversation, just the sound of the shuttlecock Hitting back and forth in the loom. Then Sala got up from her needlework and walked into the middle of the room. She turned around twice, looking at no one, and then turned to face Lared, though he was not sure if she looked at him or not.
“I have a story of a snowstorm like this one. And a tinker.”
“I like that,” said the tinker, laughing. But no one else laughed. Sala's face was too serious. The tale she meant to tell came from someone else. Lared knew it was Justice. So did the others—they kept sneaking looks at Justice, who was doing coarse weaving with horsehair strands. She paid no attention to them.
“The tinker's name was John, and he came to a certain village every winter, to stay at a certain inn. The village was in the middle of a deep forest called the Forest of Waters. The name of the village was Worthing, because the name of the inn was Worthing. John Tinker stayed at the inn because it was his brother's. He lived in a room in a tall tower in the inn, with windows on every side. His brother was Martin Keeper, and he had a son named Amos. Amos loved his uncle John, and looked forward to winter, as because the birds came to John Tinker. It was as if they knew him, and all the winter they were in and out of his windows; during the storms they huddled together on the sills.”
Lared looked at the women in the room. They showed no reaction to the name, but there was a set to their lips and a steely look in their eyes that made Lared wonder if they too held that name as sacred.
“The birds came to him because he knew them. When they flew he saw through their eyes and felt the air rush by their feathers. When the birds were ill or broken, he could find the hurt place in them and make it well again. He could do this with people, too.”
A healer. The name of Worthing. They knew then that Sala's story was somehow a story of the Day of Pain.
But Lared heard it a differences way. This tale was from the story of Jason's world, but it came after everything that he had written in his book so far. Justice had given a tale to Sala that Lared had never heard before. Were they forsaking him?
“When he came to the village, they brought their sick to him, their lame, and he made them well again. But to do it he had to dwell inside them for a time, and become them, and when he left he took the memories with him, until the memories of a thousand pains and fears dwelt in him. Always the memory of pain and fear, never the memory of
healing. So that more and more he was afraid to heal others, and more and more he wanted to stay with the birds. All they remembered was flight and food, mates and nestlings.”
“And the more he withdrew from the people of the village, the more they feared and were afraid of him because of his power, until at last they didn't think of him as a man at all, even though he had been born among them, and he did not think of himself as one of them either, though he remembered almost all their agonies.”
“Then came a winter like this one, and the snow was so deep in one terrible storm that it cracked the roof beams of some houses, and killed and crippled people in their sleep, and froze others so the sickness crept up their dead legs and arms. The people cried out to John Tinker, Heal us, make us whole. He tried, but there were too, many of them all at once. He couldn't work fast enough, and even though he saved some, more died.”
“Why didn't you save my son!” shouted one. Why didn't you save my daughter, my wife, my husband, father, mother, sister, brother— and they began to punish him. They punished him by killing birds and heaping them up at the door of the inn.
“When he saw the broken birds he got angry. He had taken all the years of their pain, and now they killed the birds because he could not do enough of a miracle to please them. He was so angry that he said, You all can die, I'm through with you. He bundled himself in his warmest clothes and left.”
“When he was gone, the storm came again, and pressed on every house, and tore at every shutter until the only house left unbroken by the wind and snow was Worthing Inn. To the inn the survivors came, then sent out parties to search for others who might be trapped in broken houses. But the storm went on, and some of the searching parties disappeared, and the snow was so deep that only the second-story windows could be used as doors, and many of the low houses were covered over and they couldn't find them.”
“The fourth day after John Tinker left was the bottom of despair. Not a soul left alive that had not lost kin to the storm, saving only Martin Keeper, who had but the one son, Amos, who was alive. Amos wanted to tell the people, Fools, if you had only been grateful for what Uncle John could do he would not have left, and he would be here to heal the ones with frozen legs and the ones with broken backs; But his father caught the thought before Amos could speak, and bade him be silent. Our house stands, said Martin Keeper, and my son lives, and our eyes are as blue as John Tinker's eyes. Do we want their rage to fall on us?”
The Worthing Saga Page 16
