Jez looked at the healer. Dulma shrugged lightly. Then with another kiss to Dicken's cheek and a handclasp with Dulma, Jez stole softly from the room.
In the front area of the house, a company of women and children stood and sat in various poses of unease, talking with each other or holding and caressing Taína, Jida and Luisa. Breden, another child with white hair, was sitting on the lap of a young woman whom Jez took to be her older sister.
As she met the eyes of those gathered there, Jez’s heart sank, and for a fleeting moment she feared that they expected her to repair this awful damage, to turn back the clock somehow to weeks in days past when Chimney Corner had been normal, when the youngs still had their lives in front of them, when an awful announcement had not yet been made.
Ola, bearing a steaming kettle and mugs, came to her rescue. "If you will, Jezebel, sit with all of us for a bit before you speak with the youngs." She set her burden on a low teapoy while an older man slid behind her to deposit bread and cakes on another table, returning immediately to an out-of-sight kitchen for more food.
Jez looked at Jid, who nodded vigorously, and then caught smiles from Taína and Luisa. "Of course," she sighed, releasing breath she had not been aware of holding back.
There was a stir as the group settled around the tables, on the floor and on stools, falling to the feast of soups and spreads and fresh fruit. The tea, Jez discovered, was almost a broth of sweetness cut with a perfect burst of bitterness that left her palate fresh and eager for more. The woman who sat beside her chewed on an unlit briar pipe, sucking and blowing upon it as if it were burning a delicious aromatic tobacco. She explained between sterile puffs that the tea was made from the bark of a highland fir — and that in the privacy of her own nest, her pipe would fill the room with a smoke that could bring visions.
In the midst of the sharing of food and without any ceremony, one of the women addressed her. "Jezebel, we are desperate people here, puzzled and angry, too. We know you're a witch of great power, and we respect that."
The room had become very still. The woman looked around almost nervously and then, realizing she had begun a little speech, she turned back to Jez. "My name is Nancy Fairwitness. We are glad you have come, but distressed that Dicken had to risk her life for us."
There were nods from others.
"And we're grateful to Donal, too, for bringing you here." Nancy abruptly threw up her hands. "Oh, by all that's holy, I'm just trying to say that you shouldn't feel like you have to save us. I don't think anyone can save us."
"Calica Nancy, you mustn't say that! Save?" Taína was speaking. She was not shrill, but earnest. "We are not bad, we aren't!"
Her mother's hand touched her shoulder. "Shhh, Ta."
"Mada, we love you!" Taína flung her arms around the woman, saying again and again, "Love you, love you!"
Just then, Donal Jain emerged from the kitchen. He moved into the group and knelt by Taína and her mother, his hand on Taína's arm, his eyes in conversation with the woman’s.
Then he addressed Jez. "We have found it easier sometimes to talk together when the girls and Elan are not here. But only if they don't feel left out."
He leaned back in order to search Taína's face. "Your mada and the other calicas need to explain to Jezebel how they feel. It's important for them to do that, even if they are sad. Then later you can talk with her, too." He shifted as if to rise. "I'm going to the long meadow to transplant aspen sprouts. Who wants to join me?" He turned to the other three white-haired children. "Luisa? Bredan? Jida?"
They were with him in an instant, offering quick kisses or hugs to the adults near them and heading boisterously for the door. All but Taína. She pulled away from her mother reluctantly. As she stood, she looked at the people in the room.
"Why do you cry, all of you?" she asked, her lower lip trembling. "You always told us we would be with each other after we die. And we will." She was a small brave figure, carrying burdens that youngs rarely bear. Then she clamped her lips together and ran out.
Ola ended the short silence that followed. "Taína feels it most, the saying goodbye. The rest. . ." She turned to the others, then back to Jez. "The rest seem more willing."
"Not just willing," said the young woman who had held Bredan on her lap. "Eager." She shook her head.
"Well, some of them, Kaluntala," another woman added. "I'm Ester Heartseeker, Jezebel. One of the youngs who intends to die is my daughter, Chassel." She straightened on her stool. "I can't speak for the other mothers. Or fathers," she added, nodding to the older man who had helped to serve the food and who had now taken a seat among them. "And I can't speak for the youngs. But Chassel and I have had long conversations. She knows what she is doing. And she rejoices. Who am I to hold her back, even if I could? She might have been drowned, or brought down by some fatal virus, or struck by a boulder. We might have lost her to a thousand accidents. What better way for her to go than by her own heart's bidding? Yes, I was shocked and stricken at first and yes, yes, yes, I will miss her. But I have another daughter. In fact, all of us who will lose a young have another child or children. And we will love them all the better for the loss of the one."
Heartseeker turned to address the whole group. "What Taína said calls us all to practice what we preach. Do we really think that this life is all we have? That we won't be reunited in spirit after all? What does it matter when we die since we all will do so? We should be rejoicing with the youngs that they see so clearly, understand so much, that they leave us now only for something more important to their own souls!"
Across the room, a loud cry drowned out these last words. A small woman in heavy skirts was on her feet, flailing her arms at Ester. Jez remembered her name: Bita Yorn. Her voice filled the room with its anguish.
"Spare me, Heartseeker! You can kiss your daughter goodbye on Monday and joydance on Tuesday if you like. But others of us will mourn our loss! Elan, my son, will be dying with Taína and her minions. He's bought the whole bill of goods, and he's just a little boy who does not know what he's doing!" She fumed as she looked around the room.
"And did you hear me?" she continued. "He's a little boy. We don't have many little boys! He is that much more special because he's rare. But his hair is turning white with the rest of them, and nobody, nobody in this whole covenant is doing anything! We just wail and talk about how we'll all meet again in the Great Somewhere!"
Kaluntala spoke softly. "Bita, the covenant has been over all this time and again. But we are only a community, not a superhuman power. What would you have us do?"
"Keep them apart," Bita almost shrieked. "Don't let them congregate and go off into the woods together like they do. They're probably planning how to help each other die!"
Ola's voice topped the other woman's. "Bita, have you tried to keep Elan away from the others?"
"Yes, yes I have!"
"And what happens?"
Bita blinked. "He runs away. To them. Or. . ."
"Or," bit off the older man. "Or he goes into a trance that is so like death that we awaken him and let him go where he pleases." Heads were nodding in understanding. The man stood up.
"Jezebel," he said, "with this talk you are glimpsing the texture of our days. I am Kirk, Elan's father." He moved a few feet across the room to stand by Bita. "We can do nothing. You know it," he said firmly, placing his arm around her shoulders.
Bita glared at him but did not shake off his touch. Then a well of tears sprang from her eyes. "We have to keep them!" she urged, her voice rising in pitch. "We have to separate them from each other so they don't get contaminated — so all our other children, in fact, don't get contaminated by this crazy idea! And that's all it is, you know! An idea, a notion. Probably Taína's notion, and she has infected all the rest. If we don't stop them they will die, just from believing it!"
She collapsed into her partner's arms, shaking uncontrollably.
There was a silence in the room that Jez felt as a vast pain. She lingered in it, tes
ting its depths and seeking its boundaries. These people, the already bereaved, conducted their daily activities in a state of astonished grief. Yet thankfully, there was an element missing: In all the agony and incredulity, even within the aura of the sobbing Bita Yorn, Jez could not discover a single ounce of despair. They were a strong people, dedicated to life and living even in the face of their great impending loss.
A woman was speaking, the one whom Jez had taken to be Taína's mother. She held up her hands in the ageless manner of one telling a tale, and she looked toward Bita as she spoke.
"Two years ago Taína came to me with a story," she recalled. "She and her sister Metl and Elan had been playing near the great rock chimneys. They had made a giant wheel in the dust. Elan was still clearing away the circle and the two girls were searching the surrounding area for rocks that could be used for cairns to mark each of the spokes. When they got back, loaded with stones, Elan was on his back in the middle of the wheel — asleep, they thought.
"It was a cool day, so they were surprised to see that he was covered with sweat. As they watched him, he began to sing in a strange language. He sang very loudly, enthusiastically. Ta and Metl thought he was teasing them, and after a bit they decided to sing back to him. Before they could do so, his eyes popped open and he smiled. He began wiping off his perspiration, saying, 'That is a song of the Lumari. Someday soon I will go to live with them.' I mentioned this to no one and thought no more of it until Taína told me a few days ago that she now hears in her head that same song that Elan sang, and that the friends who will welcome her on the other side of death will be those same people, the Lumari."
She lowered her hands.
"I tell you this, Bita," she ended, "to suggest that no one of the youngs is a leader. Not my Taína, not your Elan. The voices that call to each of them may be the same voices, but the path that each follows is her or his own path, chosen by each without influence from the others."
Bita listened to the story but gave no acknowledgement of its meaning to her. Kirk held her as she stared at the floor.
"Jezebel Stronglaces," he said, "we are grateful that you will speak with the youngs. And perhaps you do hold some magical power that could convince them not to leave us." He looked at his pledgemate. "But also important to me is why this is happening. If, in talking with them, you can help us to that greater understanding, that would be gift enough for me."
Nancy Fairwitness added her voice again. "I agree," she said. "And furthermore we could use some information from the world beyond these mountains." She looked at Jez. "We live in deliberate isolation here, concentrating on our tomato beds, our seedlings, our mica nexuses. We have little contact with the outside world. We don't even watch flatcasts. Are we the only ones? Are our youngs unique among the societies on Little Blue? Or are there others like them?"
Jez had known that the question must come. As pairs of eyes turned to her, she touched once more the uneasiness that she and Dicken had shared the last few weeks, and the memory of the flatfilm that Beabenet had showed them — was it only yesterday? She tried to make her long deep breath a calm one. Then very carefully she spoke.
"Chimney Corner is not alone in this matter."
In the silence, brows furrowed in puzzlement. Then, as the eyes all around her slowly became aware, several voices began to speak at the same moment: "You mean. . .Other children. . .No! . . .How do you. . .?"
"Wait! All of us, wait!" Nancy Fairwitness held up her hands until silence came. She stared at Jez. "Please, tell us more."
Jez set her teacup on the low table. As she spoke she searched the faces surrounding her. "Some people who have watched the daily figures on Size Central's calculations have discovered a barely significant rise in the death rate, particularly among youngs. Even taking into account the ups and downs of such statistics and the traditional reluctance of Size Bureau analysts to talk about statistical tendencies, growing numbers of ordinary citizens are convinced that very soon the trend will be undeniable."
The expected questions came thick and fast. Jez answered them all, even the one she had hoped they would not ask.
"The birth rate. With so many dying, isn't it increasing?"
"No," she answered, wishing with all her heart that Dicken were beside her to hold her in her big arms. "In fact, some of us — again, ordinary citizens, not statisticians — have been following a trend that in a few weeks, perhaps even a few days, will be obvious to the world. In every tri-satrapy, the birth rate is actually declining."
The eyes before her widened and deepened into full realization. From a corner of the group, the voice of the pipe-smoking woman rose up loud and clear. "It is the Endtimes," she announced.
When all heads turned to her, the woman pulled a long toke on her empty pipe. Then she recited: "In the Endtimes the hair of the children will turn gray."
Ola’s voice rang above the tension, "Who says that, Germaine? Where does that come from?"
The woman blew invisible smoke toward the ceiling. "Comes from the Koran, that's where."
* * * * * * *
It was late afternoon when Jez found Taína and four other youngs at the edge of the long meadow. They were covered with dirt, proof of their enthusiasm for the transplanting of small trees. As he greeted her, Donal Jain shouldered a mattock, a shovel, and a small clump of fatigue that turned out to be Luisa Maniboz.
"Jezebel, this is Chassel Heartseeker. And I don't think you met Breden Santir." Jez knelt to speak to the two girls, at the same time smiling up at Luisa. Taína had come immediately to Jez’s side and taken her hand.
"Jida and Luisa both want to go back with me, correct?"
Both children nodded at Donal’s words, and Jida added, "Can we come see Calica Bess tomorrow?"
"Indeed you can," Jez answered.
"The sun will be with you another hour if you're on this side of the hill," Donal told her. He stooped so Luisa could give Taína a wet kiss. "Come home when you're hungry. There are always cold snacks if you miss dinner." Donal set out down the path with Luisa on his shoulder and Jida clinging to his shirt, trailing two empty gunnysacks behind her.
Long after nightfall, Jez still huddled together with the three girls against a warm boulder by a cave mouth. She had discovered both a great joy and an accompanying sadness, for though she had indeed touched spirits that lived in dimensions she had only dreamed of, those spirits were unable, even with their mindreaching, to help her with the questions that haunted her. Taína, Breden and Chassel lent her their images, their stories and their sensations, but they could not tell her why they had to leave, where they would be when they left, or what solace Jez could give to their families.
They spoke of animals as if they touched them daily, they conversed among themselves in a language with no pattern or meaning that Jez could grasp, they bubbled with a boundless joy, and they unquestionably called the whole universe their home. But they were in a place that Jez could not reach. When, much later, after delivering them to their families, she sank gently onto the trundle bed beside the sleeping Dicken, she lay restless and puzzled.
Most inexplicable of all was a vision played out for her by a joint mindlink that Breden and Chassel had engineered with Taína's guidance. Through the children’s eyes, Jez saw Zella Terremoto Adverb.
Zude was on a vertical rockface of majestic Kachenjung. She was securely belayed 30 feet above, but she had slid one boot into a crevice. The leg was awkwardly crossed in front of the other, wedged at an off-side angle. Zude manipulated her rope and the mesh of harnesses that traversed her body, sweating in the heat of the freshly risen sun. She tried to shift her body back over the trapped leg as she called up to her belayer, "I'm fine, Flossie! Just give me a minute!"
Then Zude was gone, and the children beguiled Jez with another vision.
A gas-lit city street and the Cathedral of Basil the Beatified, its unmistakable dome and surrounding cupolas covered by inches of snow. The scene filled the large window of an unkempt studio whe
re a tousled-haired violinist attempted for the sixty-fifth time an unflawed rendition of the sixteen-bar climax of Ruboff's Tyrolean Concerto. Jez knew these particulars because the man's frenzy was evident, and because the words could be read from the sheet music on the stand.
"That's Mick," Taínahad ventured in voice-over captioning, "Vasily Mikhailovich Terenski. He's practicing to perform for the emperor. Emperor Nicholas II," she added, "the last emperor."
Then Zude was there again, able to shift her torso at last so as to move it back across her imprisoned foot. But as she did so, she twisted the ankle in the opposite bias. She screwed her eyes shut and howled with pain.
Mikhailovich stopped abruptly in midpassage and flung his arms upward with a loud cry. Bow and violin shook with frustration.
Zude made herself relax and lean on her rope.
Mick held his bow and violin in one hand and withdrew a large handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped his face.
Zude closed her eyes, then drew in and released a deep breath.
Mick closed his eyes and stood for several moments breathing softly.
Purposefully, with tiny movements, the climber began working her boot out of the grip of the crevice.
Deliberately, the violinist shouldered his instrument again. Eyes still closed, he calmly addressed the passage once more.
As Zude felt her boot begin to move about in the crevice, she smiled with relief.
As Mick played, his body eased and lifted, sustained now by a new composure, a sudden confidence.
As her boot worked free, Zude laughed and yelled, On belay! She then began a one-footed progress up the rockface, using the rope, her recuperating leg dangling limp and at rest. "I'm coming, Floss!" she shouted as she gathered speed, hastening exuberantly up the face.
Vasily Mikhailovich Terenski's notes flowed brightly into the accelerating tempo, rising in perfect precision to the finish of the passage and ending with the triumph of his signature flourish. He kissed the tingling soundbox of his precious instrument and whooped aloud to the snow-blanketed cupolas of Basil the Beatified.
The Magister (Earthkeep) Page 4
