Jezebel blinked. Then she leaned toward the slender stick, enfolding it, extending to it, determined to hold it in the center of her perception. It did not move. Her eyes had fooled her, then. All was right with the world, after all.
But a blue stick? She had no sooner formed the thought than the object in question floated upward once more and disappeared, only to appear again instantly, this time perched on her extended elbow. It balanced on legs cornered at precise right angles, and for her fascination it twitched a double pair of delicately veined diaphanous wings. Jez stared into enormous eyes and felt her heart quicken when the insect drew the distal end of its blue-stemmed self into a rounded arch and began poking at its blue-tinged wings as if to separate them or perhaps clean them of some drifting debris.
Tears sprang to her eyes. As if in response to those tears, the frail figure pounded its wings into a lift, sailed to within a few inches of her nose and hovered there at the edge of her astonishment, daring her to see what she could not be seeing.
"Shut your mouth or it will fly in."
The words snapped her head toward Becky. The movement banished the dragonfly. But Becky was nowhere to be seen.
"Get shy, girl. You gotta see this," the voice came again. A mindreach at last from the old woman!
Jez wasted not a moment, but breathed deep and found her inner place of stillness. She shifted to focus upon the image of her double-winged little visitor, praising its lightness, its iridescence, its mobility. She felt her vibrations rise. Still she focused and appreciated. As she began shaking from head to toe, she acknowledged that she was about to enter another world.
It was the sounds that struck her first, sounds her ears had never heard but had only heard about. The forest, this quiescent winter forest, was ablast with them: the crackles and the croaks, the slaps, the pecks, the rasps and the buzzes, the swishes and the cheeps; the susurrus of an established tonic of life; sounds made by things that lope and jump and dart and swing and hop and crawl, by things that climb and slither and fly and pad and swirl, that sniff and suck, chew and ooze, that snap and hiss and claw and sting; sounds that had once told of interwoven strands of life, folding over and around each other, leaning upon and into each other; sounds testifying that here in this dimension such embedded concourse thrived again.
Jezebel sat immobile in a sound-drenched forest, bathed in tears. Beyond her, Becky stood by a spruce tree immersed in a world gone shy. She had taken off her flowered hat and was now holding it over her heart. Jez followed her gaze, expecting to see the Goddess Herself. She saw instead the grubby white suspended body of a young 'possum, probably snoring, its bare rattail coiled around the substantial horizontal branch of a persimmon tree.
For a long time in the chill afternoon, Jez moved her eyes around slowly, letting them rest on sights that no one of her generation had ever seen. Birdflight. Fishglide. Chipmunkscamper. Tadpoletwirl. Snailcreep. Moleburrow. Tickbloat. Spiderweave.
The forest's canopy faded, and a flock of geese covered the sky. A herd of buffalo thunder-trod a canyon. A school of minnows flipped on a lake's surface. Walruses basked, oysters rocked, crayfish crawled, penguins plunged. Visitors came to Jezebel: A nail-tailed wallaby laid its head in her lap, received her affection, sprang away; a Barbary ape investigated her ear; a black-bellied pangolin swept its long tongue down her ankle; and a giant tortoise let her touch two huge eggs buried deep in white sand.
Dusk came and went. They stayed there, the two celebrants, into a foggy night, both of them oblivious to the chill. They listened to the dark sounds of a living forest and watched the prowl of beings that Jez had loved only through the words of Afortunadas or the charity of flatfilms and pictures.
Becky was hugging a pine tree some distance from her, silently searching for the moon, when Jez first heard the singing. Heart pounding, Jez turned uphill, toward the music that was all too familiar to her by now. She had last heard that haunting tune from the little ones in Lavona's house just after she had tucked them into bed.
A band of children was winding down the mountainside, following a deer path and calling out parts of their song to specific animals, to a squirrel here, a rabbit there, their voices light with laughter, their hair almost indistinguishable from the mists rolling about them. Jez could make out at least eight small figures, one of them with her arm raised in greeting.
"Taína!" Jez shouted.
"Calica Jezebel!"
Becky witnessed the conference from her vantage point by the pine tree: Jezebel Stronglaces and a girl-woman, standing transfixed and smiling at each other for a very long time in the heart of an oak and maple forest, while mists and moonlight wove wonder around their motionless bodies. At last the small figure moved out of sight behind the band of singing children, and Jezebel stood waving at shades and spirits in the trees.
In the dawn, with the awakening of the sunlight world, the old woman and her companion moved one nanosecond away from those who were shying, and from the magic of the night. In that second they returned to silence and emptiness.
* * * * * * *
Jez and Becky sat for the last time around glowing quartz filings in the old woman's cave room. They toasted each other with crystal-cooled root wine, drinking their farewell with appreciation and thanksgiving.
A long embrace.
Then Jezebel turned swiftly and ran down a labyrinth of tunnels to the bottom of the old elevator shaft. When she lifted and floated to its top, she held herself suspended there for fully a minute while she watched the shallow breathing of Dicken's sleeping form, sprawled on the cold black floor. She stretched out beside that body and received the flood of joy that threatened to consume her.
* * * * * * *
It was hours before Jezebel could make words work for her, and days before she could articulate the urgency that she carried from the bowels of the West Virginia mountain.
"I have to talk with Zude," finally she said to Dicken. "Very soon."
6 - BELO HORIZONTE - [2088] C. E.]
Listening is the highest expression of wisdom.
Vade Mecum For The Journey
H-e-e-e-e-e-ya!
The sands and shadows by the rivers!
Seh nuh w-a-a-a-n-yu! The ayllu and all its people!
E-e-e-e-yan-wu! Stones, hold me!
Stormclouds, shake the oleander blossoms!
I cover the fog with my hand!
My strong foot drags. My follow foot awakens.
I breathe the air of change.
I drink the water of silence.
Hey ya anah ah ah!
Thus sang Eti, Acuai tribeswoman, with her wide mouth and big throat. Similarly sang all of the tribespeakers of Nueva Tierra Sur's steaming green jungles. They sang in response to the tidings brought by footpaths and windstreams, by runnels and brooklets, by drumsong and dreamshare. From as far south as the waters of Rogagua, from as far north as the Guiana Highlands, across the broad continent from its mountainous western backbone to its eastern sea, came the news: The tribes, the People, die.
Whole villages in the selva realized simultaneously that few women were pregnant or that many who were, miscarried. Babies not stillborn often lived healthily for months only to refuse to awaken one morning from their apparently peaceful sleep. Increasingly, children below the age of puberty — some with white or gray hair, some balding, a few with unaltered brown or black or yellow locks — calmly announced their intention to die, then did so. Children who had achieved full puberty lived as adults, without incident or apparent threat.
Throughout the selva the outcries of grief throbbed long into the nights, long into the days. In every corner of the forest, learning centers closed, small fresh graves filled up the burying fields, and streets and pathways grew quiet. Parents and would-be parents encountered each other silently with hollow eyes, drawn cheeks.
And always, always among the women and men of the People, one heart would speak to another to say, "Your loss is my own."
As on other c
ontinents, sexual activity was at an all-time high as efforts at conception intensified. Both the hearths of midwives — who supervised ovular mergings — and the daily schedules of the men who could give seed were very busy. Amid ceremonies of grief and loss, tribes danced in ceaseless rituals for fertility and virility. Cults of child-worship emerged in some ayllus; sometimes a village's remaining children were lionized by the affection of stricken adults; sometimes adults would stay close to the children, insisting upon watching them even while they slept, until the children themselves had to hide in order to escape the obsessions of their elders. Madness and suicide among adults increased in direct ratio to the amount of a tribe's industrialization.
But among the People, in every household and communal orb, there emerged as well another and more widespread response, for a radical understanding was settling upon their hearts. After a hundred tales of barren women, after a hundred anguishings of impotent men, after a hundred goodbyes to those who had lived among them for such sweet short seasons, they knew with unshakable certainty that the time had come for their forest home to say goodbye to the only animals left within its depths.
Many believed that the demise of the People was the natural extension of the exodus of non-human animals. They reminded each other that the People had become extinct many times before in the history of the forest, and that always they had respeciated and returned. Many more believed that the vanishing of the People would mean a return to the selva of the boar and the monkey, of the black warbler and the slow anaconda. All knew that, like the death of one woman or one man, the death of all women and men was but a sleep and a passing.
And so they attended to their daily tasks, reflecting upon the dust stirred by the broom or the sway of water in the gourd. Now and again they anticipated the changes to come and praised their gods and loved one another, especially their children. They cleansed themselves in the waterfalls in order to be worthy of the unfolding that was upon them. And they rested, as they always had, under giant ferns or babassu palms when they tired of their tasks.
* * * * * * *
On the central plateau of that same continent, in Nueva Tierra Sur, lay Belo Horizonte. It was near the Atlantic and more than a thousand miles east of the mighty Cordillera de los Andes. Partly because it had been a planned city from its birth in the late 19th century, and partly because the crash of the meat industry and epidemics had inflicted huge population losses, Belo Horizonte had yielded gracefully to its transformation into a bailiwick.
The city was surrounded by iron mines, returning forests, and plains once devoted to intensive livestock production. The containment fields that marked its outlying sectors accommodated 2,200 bailiwick habitantes and the free citizens who chose to live near them or, in the case of habitantes who were trusties, with them. Within the city, large buildings now housed modest bureaucracies.
Most of the city's pavements had long since been allowed to revert to dirt, historically a matter of hot contention in South Brazil's quarter-trapy web and in its demesne bar. On this day, the streets that had been mud the evening before were now puffing dust with each footfall. The air was sharp. Paraná pines swayed with quick alertness to every change in the breeze.
In the southeast sector of the bailiwick, a large dust dervish erupted and began collecting a crowd. At its center, two men rolled on the ground in a loud curse-filled contest. Each attempted to strangle the other while spectators shouted encouragements and criticisms.
In the adjacent square, from their cement bench and portable stools, four women left off their finger-weaving to watch.
"It's Diogo. Inés's husband," Camila Lins Gonzaga informed the others.
"Where's Inés?" asked Alfreda Gala do Rego.
"Who knows?" shrugged Tui Machado.
"The gringo is on the bottom," observed Camila.
"That's no surprise," commented Tui.
The fourth woman had divested her fingers of the brightly colored cloth threads. She brushed back a wisp of graying hair and looked for just a moment as if she'd join in the disruption. Then she stilled herself and leaned back on the bench, her legs wide under her faded green print skirt.
"What do they fight about, Ti Tui?" she asked.
"Who knows?" answered Tui. Then she turned to a young man who stood nearby. "Diniz," she beckoned, holding up bottled water.
Diniz moved closer and with a bow of thanks drank from the bottle. "Craziness," he muttered. "Pombal, there on the bottom, was delivering feijão to the food stalls." He addressed the oldest woman. "He said Diogo tripped him, Ti Camila."
"And that's all it took," nodded Camila. She moved her threads with tight jerks.
In the street the crowd was larger, the voices louder. The fight was escalating to brawl proportions.
The woman in the green skirt fingered her long braid. Then she took off her hemp sandal and deliberately dislodged a pebble from its thong. Her eyes casually searched the streets, the square, even the sky.
The young man wiped his cheek on his sleeve. "Pombal is dangerous," he said. "His daughter just died. Foot-Shrieves found him yesterday in the mercado with a knife. He was asking others to stab him. To kill him."
A shriek came from the crowd. One of the bystanders threw himself into the brawl, pulling Diogo off the other man. Diniz left the women and moved into the street. The green-skirted woman stood up.
Camila pulled her down again. "Leave them be," she growled.
"The Vigilantes. Where are they?" whispered Gala.
"Who kn--"
Tui was interrupted by the arrival of Vigilantes, a gert of Flying Daggers who landed to flank the fight. With strong hands the two Kanshou separated and subdued the men, got them to their feet, and began breaking up the crowd. "Get along, now!" they urged. "Show's over!" As the crowd dispersed, the Vigilantes drew the three men aside, talking with them, listening and nodding.
The woman in the green skirt watched the interchange until it seemed that all was well. The two original assailants were grudgingly apologizing to each other. The taller Kanshou, still in conversation with one of the men, eventually walked off with him. Her partner, also still talking, went in the opposite direction with the other man and his friend.
A sigh or two, and the women resumed their mid-morning finger-weaving. "That is how it is these days," said Camila, pulling her strands tight.
"How is that?" asked the fourth woman.
"It is the pain," answered Gala. "The pain."
"Even here in the bailiwick," mused the inquirer, biting through a thin string.
"What do you think?" Camila exclaimed. "You think just because these men are habitantes that they have no pain? You think they do not mourn the loss of their children! You
think. . ."
Gala overspoke the older woman. "Roma visits us, Ti Camila, here in the bailiwick. She visits Braga and Carolina. In the trusties' sector. She--"
"She has no understanding. Or she would not ask such a question." Camila yanked a strand of red into place.
"A thousand pardons, senhora," said Roma. "I spoke not so much a question as a reminder to myself that the whole world shares a great grief."
Mollified skepticism passed over Camila's face. She grunted.
"I shall bind my tongue," Roma said.
"Never," Tui interceded, then addressed the older woman. "No one can be hushed in these days, Camila."
"Speak then," Camila grumbled, waving her hand.
Tui took up the turn. "I do not live with Basilio, my habitante," she explained to Roma, "for he is not a trusty. But I have lived here, near his barracks, for five years. This bailiwick has always been very orderly, maybe because so many free citizens choose to be here near their habitantes." She
paused. "Dying children have brought many responses. Particularly from the men."
She held up her hand with its web of covered fingers so that Gala could splice its threads into the strings on her own hand. Then she eased her hand out of the creation she had woven upon it
and handed the fabric to Gala. "Like this fighting," she finished.
"Some have tried to escape," said Gala, leaning forward on her knees as she integrated Tui's contribution into her own weaving. "Some try to kill others."
"Do many try to kill?" asked Roma.
"No. Only some. Three days ago a man set a fire in the hospital saying, 'What does it matter now, since we will all die?'"
"Baboseira!" snorted Camila. "Always we have known we will die."
Gala was patient. "Ti Camila, he meant the way it happens, the way we outlive the children. We die without the children."
Camila grumbled as she fished about in her string sack. A stout woman with a small child approached the group.
"Chia," Gala said. "And Fidela." She took the child's hand and kissed it. Fidela rewarded her with a smile. "This is Senhora Roma. And you know Ti Tui." The child ducked her head in acknowledgement.
Camila grunted and pointed with her chin to the stool at her side. She watched while the newcomer sat on it and withdrew a soft hairbrush from her bag.
Chia held the brush in front of Fidela's face and asked a question with her eyebrows.
Fidela smiled and nodded vigorously. She drew Chia's tote bag under her and settled herself between the woman's knees. Chia began brushing the child's long black hair. For a moment all the women ceased their activity and watched as the child closed her eyes to permit the gentle stroking.
Tui broke the silence, tightening a new row of orange strings around her fingers. "The world is changing," she said. "Every person has been touched by losing the children."
"First the animals," said Camila, "then the men." She pulled on a single thread. It responded by unraveling itself.
"Now the little ones," Gala nodded.
Tui added bright blue thread to her pattern. "But it is not all fighting or frustration."
The Magister (Earthkeep) Page 12
