The Awakeners - Northshore & Southshore

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Pamra shrugged. "Nobody could be any worse than my father's family was. I just ignore them."

  "Well, you can't ignore them on recruitment duty. You're expected to be reasonably diplomatic, and that's what pisses me off most about it." He flushed, abruptly aware of his manner, not the appropriate one for a mentor to a junior, certainly. "Why were you so late?" Now he was her mentor once more, demanding an accounting.

  "I shouldn't have been. Except Delia was after me, Senior Ilze. May I not be judged harshly if I ask a question which may be... not in accord with doctrine?"

  He gave her a dramatically astonished look, lifting one eyebrow. "A question, Pamra? From you? Are the final days upon us?"

  She flushed. "I know I don't ask many. I wouldn't ask this one, either, except for old Delia. She came from the next town east, Wilforn, many years ago. She has a sister there, or thinks she does. She'd be a very old woman... "

  "And Delia wants to go east to see her sister?"

  Pamra nodded, relieved not to have had to say it. "She says some do."

  Ilze nodded. "It's quite true. If you asked an occasional question, you'd have known it. It's common talk."

  "Where? How? There are guards! There's a fence!"

  "Through the workers' pit at night. They go in there and sneak up the other side of the pit where there's no fence."

  Pamra's face wrinkled in concentration. At the other side of the pit, marked by a burning lantern, was the Sorting place. Surely... "But they might encounter the Sorters on the Sorting ground! That's sacrilege!"

  He paused, eyebrows drawn together almost as though she had angered him. He seemed about to say something, and then changed his mind. "I've answered your question, Pamra."

  "That's the only way?" She was disappointed. "Isn't there some way to send a message?"

  "That's much easier. You go to the east gate and pay one of the gate guards on the Wilforn side of the fence to take the message into his town, and you tell him you'll pay him that much again to bring you an answer. That's not really licit, but it's not heretical, either. It's quite common. Even if it's reported, it would only count a day's duty against you. The gate guards might abuse an old woman, but they will not trouble an Awakener. You can tell your old nursemaid that after recruitment tomorrow."

  But she could not wait until then. She went early in the morning, moved by an urgency she did not try to identify, to explain how a message could be sent.

  To which Delia nodded, frowning a little vacant frown, as though this was not what she had wanted at all, as though this new suggestion had come between her and the comfort of some long decided action with which she had reassured herself in time of pain.

  "Just get the message written, Delia. Exactly what you want to say, just as you'd like to say it to your sister - Miri, wasn't i? - and I'll take it to the border either tonight or tomorrow. Tonight, if I can. Much better to do that than go sneaking off through the worker pits in the dead of night. That's not something I want you to do. I'll be back as soon as I can, and you have it ready." And she went off, late already, looking over her shoulder to catch that same expression of stubborn puzzlement, which she saw with a catch in her throat, wondering if she could not somehow have been more convincing and more hopeful.

  But then it was all driven from her mind by the day's work, so different a day from the one before. As she went toward the plaza she passed the merchants' hall and the gardeners' mart and the guildhalls and artists' council houses, and from each of them representatives were coming out in the customary garb of their professions and guilds, all wandering in the same direction. They took no notice of her, or she of them, but each one of them had to give way when she came by, and she knew it ate into them like acid. "Scoff and sneer," she murmured to herself, "but stand aside when I come by, other-caste."

  At the plaza each representative went off to his own booth, there to spend the day in earnest conversation with the casteless youths who were not yet fastened into any way of life. For her there would be the usual curiosity seekers and those who came on a dare. And among them might be the one or two she would recruit, though they had often not intended it when they came. It was true that Pamra could recruit better than any of the senior grade. Perhaps because she was not much older than the young people she talked to. Perhaps because she cared more about it. Though Ilze was a stickler for duty, sometimes he seemed almost to mock the Tower and the law. Almost as though it were no better than law mongering, or body fixing, or garbage shifting, some low-caste activity that no one would bother with if they could do something better. Occasionally Pamra wondered if any of the high-grade Awakeners took it seriously, though of course they must! The religious glory, the ecstasy, would only come if one were serious. How could they remain in the work otherwise?

  And it was the ecstasy she talked about with the recruits. By midmorning she had collected a small group of two gigglers and one swaggering boy with a perpetual sneer. There was also a narrow cheeked, fire-eyed youth who glared at her as though she guarded the gate to a treasure he sought. She could almost feel the spear of his glance skewering her, as though he feared she might oppose him rather than help him!

  "Do you remember when you were children," she began, "at the time of Conjunction, at festival time, when the Candy Tree grew in your bedrooms at night?" She smiled at them, and they back, unable not to smile, even the gigglers and the swaggering one, though he covered the smile with a sneer pretending mockery. "When you awakened in the morning, the evidence of the tree was there, on your bedcovers, sweet and marvelous.

  "Later, of course, you learned that it was your kin who put the candy there, and you believed the story of the Candy Tree must be false, a simple myth for little children. You did not realize that there was a greater truth that the Candy Tree did indeed grow on the night of festival, not in your bedroom alone, but over all the land of Baris, to drop its festival spirit into the hearts of everyone. If you looked into their faces, your mothers and fathers, you would have seen that festival spirit blooming." Her voice began to sing, she herself began to sway. Her exhilaration in what she said began to catch them, and herself. She felt the blood rising into her face and knew she was beautiful to them.

  "There is indeed a Candy Tree., though it is a more complicated concept than children know. And just as the sweetness spread upon your bedcovers is the physical evidence of the spiritual tree, so the existence of the Awakeners is the Northshorely evidence of a greater mystery, the love of Potipur. It is true that we Awakeners raise up those who come to us from the east to provide a service they failed to provide in life. It is equally true that we carry the dead of Baristown to the place of Sorting, west of here. There the good and righteous, their faces shining with the radiance of a life well spent, are Sorted Out by the Holy Sorters to be dressed in silk and placed in the arms of Potipur. We know this. We can testify to it. We are the evidence of it, the evidence of the love of Potipur, and Abricor, and Viranel.

  "Because we know this wonderful thing of our own experience, we believe we are more likely to live in accordance with Potipur's will, more likely to be Sorted Out at the end." Pamra swept over this point quickly. She was sure. She wouldn't lie, not to recruits. It wouldn't be fair. But she didn't really know whether all Awakeners had the radiance in their faces. All Baris's dead were collected at the Tower for transport to the place of Sorting, and though Pamra had been on duty in the death room several times, there had never been the body of an Awakener there.

  She took a deep breath and went on, "Other castes denigrate us, it is true, calling us names and making jokes about our caste. When I was a child I thought this was because of something atrocious or dirty about Awakeners. I came to know that it is simple fear. The other castes know they will come into our hands, and they are afraid. That is all."

  She looked firmly into the eyes of the gigglers, of the sneerer, and found there the fear she sought. "Just as you are fearful now. Perhaps you worry that the Awakeners somehow can decide whether one is
Sorted Out or not. I tell you we cannot control it, but without us it would not happen. Your fear, however, is a key which may open the door of our Tower. If you fear us, join us and conquer your fear. Learn the truth of what we say." The rapture was seething within her now, as it did on the steps of the Tower at morning dedication, or sometimes during prayer, or when she had gone long without food, or during these sessions of preaching to the youth of Baris.

  She felt herself smiling, felt the radiance of it, knew that her face was glowing as she did it. This was her heritage from pretty Mama, this smile, and her gift from Potipur. The gigglers had stopped their fidgeting, the sneerer his facial contortions. She might not have them as applicants, but they would not mock for a time. The other one, the pale-faced youth who had fastened himself upon her words as a baby upon the breast - him she had.

  "Will you show me?" he begged. "Show me the Tower?"

  She took his hand, letting the others go with an expression of tender regret. They would remember what she had said. "Remember the Tower with your gifts," she whispered to them as she turned away. They would make gifts in the future, certainly they would when they were old. None of her effort was wasted. She sighed, feeling the rapture fade. Until next time.

  She took the youth to the Tower, as she had taken others. So precious they were. Young, full of idealism and wonder. She could not resist them, nor they her. From a great distance, the lookout had seen her coming, and when the door opened the Superior stood there in all her robes with the entourage around her. "Come," said Pamra, giving the youth her hand once more. "Come into the Tower." Then he was welcomed with wine and praise and flattery and a very late night, as she had been in her time.

  She hadn't known what it really meant then, no more than he did now: the bloodletting, the endless hours in chapel without sleep during those first years, the constant repetition of litany. She had only seen the robes and the glittering staffs, the solemn figures at the forefront of any procession, only heard the whispers concerning the Payment of Life. The rest-, the rest hadn't been mentioned. She had been only twelve when she'd said, "I can be an Awakener... " Said it out of bravado and hurt and in ignorance, only to have the rapture become her reason for living.

  She woke late. An officious senior caught her lingering at her ceremony upon the steps and sent her with two or three others onto the wastelands north of the Tower to gather Tears of Viranel. So, she had lost the second day's recruiting by her own inattention to duty. "My own sin," she'd told the Three in a whisper. "My own sin. Forgive."

  The Tears were so small as to be almost invisible against the stones, transparent, drop-shaped, attached to the soil from which they grew by a glassy, hair like root. They grew thickly but in widely scattered patches, each patch marked by a tall, skull-topped pole. Impossible to transplant, fruiting only during second summer, Tears grew throughout the lands of Northshore, when and where they would, and the skull poles warned away the unwary. Of late, the patches of fungus had been even more scattered, more difficult to find, almost as though something had been rooting them out. This was an unholy thought, and Pamra made a religious gesture, ashamed of herself.

  Gathering was hard, back-bending work that made bones and muscles ache. The Tears had to be scooped into baskets without touching them. The sun was hot, the dust sticky, provoking an unending damp itch that distracted and annoyed. Attention could not be allowed to waver. There were many cautionary stories about those who had touched the Tears accidentally, only to feel the tiny fungi passing through the skin in an instant of fatal error for which there was no cure. Those who touched the Tears were possessed at once by Viranel. Those possessed by Viranel were living workers. Unlike the dead, they were able to speak, for a time. Like the newly dead, they knew what they were and felt the agony of possession.

  It was only as she returned to the Tower, her basket full, that she remembered what she had promised Delia. The sun bulged upon the horizon like a single oozing drop before she came to the garden and the little house to find both empty.

  The note was there on the table, half-written, scratched and erased, tried again and again. The words fumbled, crawled like crippled fliers on the page.

  "Miri, forgive.... I did not know.... Only now, in my age, Miri.... "

  Pamra heard her own words in the silent room as though someone had spoken. "Much better than to go sneaking off through the worker pits in the dead of night," she had said. "Sneaking off through the worker pits... "

  Cursing herself that she had not kept her word, that she had not even guarded her tongue.

  So. Delia had gone. There was not even a chance to say good-bye. The house did not feel of parting. It welcomed, even now, even empty. In the kitchen the pots shone in the level rays of the sun. Pamra ran her hand over them, smooth and cool, as she had used to do when drying them for the old woman. Spice cakes filled a covered jar. Dried fruit rested upon the sill. High in the rafters bunches of herbs hung like autumn brought home, smelling of the fields. In a cupboard her own child's apron was folded away where she had left it the day they took her to the Tower. She felt it now, shaking out the sweet-smelling buds that lay in its folds. "Delia, ah, Delia. Why didn't you wait?" knowing as she whined into the silence that it was her own fault, her own. And at the end, as the sun darkened in startled ambers and bruised purple and the kitchen room settled into a quiet she remembered from childhood, all she could say was what Delia had said to her then, time after time: "Rejoice. May the Sorters protect you and bring you to Potipur's arms."

  She skulked out late that night, a shadow in her robe, striding to the hill overlooking the pit where the little light burned to guide the Sorters, where all were forbidden to be after nightfall. She sat there, invisible. It was no good. Delia, if she had gone this way, had gone long since. It was too late to do anything about it. Against the stars she could see the wings of the great fliers, moving in and out of the bone pits, seeming to peer down into the worker pits. What was the sound she heard? A croaking murmur? As though someone had spoken? A chill went through her. If she sat here until the Holy Sorters came to bring those who had not been Sorted Out, they would turn her to stone for her presumption, and it would still be too late to do anything for Delia. Suddenly fearful for herself, she turned back, sneaking into the Tower as silently as she had left it.

  Each evening thereafter she took herself to the Tower by way of Delia's house, hoping the old woman had returned. On the third day she found her half sister, Prender, sitting in the silent room, dusty now and beginning to smell of disuse and damp, weeping over the scribbled note. Pamra had not seen her for years. The face raised to her was familiar and strange at once, familiar in its outline, in the well known quirk of the lips, the expression she had so often interpreted as a sneer, but strange in its softness, in the lines above the eyes, around the mouth, lines of pain. "Gone," her sister said. "Pammy. She's gone."

  "I know. She went east. Crossed the line. I was going to help her, but I was late... " The words came out without planning, naturally, even kindly. They might have been children again, before any terrible things had been said or done to be forever remembered.

  "Delia. Oh..." Prender's weeping went on.

  "She was always there. When Grandma was having those rages of hers, when Papa shut himself up and wouldn't talk to anyone. I'd come here to Delia. It was Grandma's house, you know. She didn't like it, here so near the edge of town. She put Delia in it, just to keep it. It was all bare then. No garden. But Delia... Delia... "

  Without knowing how she had come there, Pamra found herself at her sister's side, stroking her hand as she had not done since they were children. "I know."

  "Delia said we treated you badly. We did, you know. It was Grandma. You looked too much like your mother, and she said we were Papa's girls, but you-, you were your mama's girl. And then when your mama... when she did it, Grandma was just hateful about it. I know you became an Awakener just to make it up. Just to prove you had faith, even if your mama... I used to hate
you, Pammy, for that. I don't anymore. You need to know that. Papa's gone. They're all gone but me. I don't want to be like Delia, unforgiven by my own kin. Forgive me, please. Please."

  Musley gone? Papa gone? Not to see her reach senior grade? Not to know what she had become? She choked with surprised tears. "I forgive you. Really. I do." Saying it, astonished to find that it was true.

  And was even more astonished afterward to find that nothing had changed. There had been an hour or so when they had been friends, a transient solidarity of grief that gave way almost at once to old habits. For a few days Pamra went to the house in the evenings to hear if there was any news of Delia, but other people began to frequent the place now that Prender was there, and the stiff discomfort of these encounters drove Pamra away. Even Prender could not keep herself from suggesting that Pamra leave the Tower, give up her life, return to them in some more acceptable form and manner.

  "There's no reason anymore, Pammy You could come live with me!" As though Pamra's oath were nothing!

  Pamra could preach the rapture to strangers, but she could not bring herself to discuss it with Prender, to defile it by letting Prender mock at it as she would, setting it to nothing. She nodded, said nothing, went away as soon as she could, and did not return.

  Nothing had changed except that for a time the rapture failed her. It seemed to fail others, also, and there was much use of the whipping post in the courtyard. More than once she looked down to see Ilze plying the long whip on some crouched, tortured junior and gave thanks through dry lips that she found compliance easy. He had never whipped her, though she had never doubted he would if she did not keep her oath. If it were not for that, perhaps she could have heard Prender's words, but it was too late for such words now.

  The weather grew windy and harsh. Summer robes were laid away and the winter ones taken from the chests. The moons were moving toward a winter Conjunction - there had not been a winter Conjunction for twenty-two years, not since the year she was born and the festival season began to fizz on the horizon of her time like something boiling in an adjacent room, a small excitement, a new possibility, the end of another holy year.