The Seventh Day

by Joy Dettman

  Then Jonjan gave to him my light-gun so he might make it again shoot its purple fire!

  I was much unsettled by this. Was Sern not a searcher? Did the gun not come from one such as he? My voice rose high and fast when talk came to that gun and to that searcher, and my words were harsh.

  ‘It is very well and fine to name him the frekin searcher, Honoria, to treat him with distrust and allow the gun to gather dust and rust – if you wish us to sit with bowed head and in silence when the evil ones return and find our valley. Or will you wish to protect our daughter, Honoria, to use what means we have to protect our golden one?’ Jonjan had asked me.

  What use is a gun not loaded with fire? Mrs Logan had made such a gun fire and she had saved her daughter, Dallas. Though memory of the grey men will not fade, though my eyes can not yet be stopped from scanning the sky for that silver glint of the searcher’s craft, though I will never, not ever forget, I can strive to forgive. And certainly I can feel compassion.

  It is our habit at the meetings in the Great Hall to first speak our given names when we are called on, or wish to speak. Nate will always be Nate of the city garden. Pieta will always be Pieta, who flew with Moni. And how proudly they speak these names and how much respect they are shown. Jonjan will always be Jonjan, man of the city, as Sern was always Sern, the searcher.

  Never had I heard him speak at the meetings. Never had he raised his hand to ask a question. I had not previously noticed this until the evening Jonjan and I walked to the ravine and sat together in the place of the shell-like overhang where that nameless one had set his leg, had fed and cared for him.

  Our talk had turned to names.

  ‘Perhaps to wear forever a cruel name, Honoria, is worse than to wear no name at all,’ Jonjan said to me.

  So we began to make a play, Jonjan and I, as we watched that light-gun become the many pieces, then watched it again become one, and I think we were like the Shakespeare of Granny’s old stories.

  At the next meeting, Jonjan stood and spoke with great haughtiness. ‘Sern, the searcher, for the benefit of those who are here tonight, will you make report on your reconstruction of the city gun?’

  Sern offered the gun to Jonjan then bowed his head, his large eyes closed.

  And it was my turn. I stood and spoke my name proudly. ‘I am Honoria, she who will not be silenced, and I ask the respected assembly, does Sern still fly the silver flying craft? I have not seen it here.’

  ‘It has long been put to better use,’ Jonjan replied. ‘Its metal is now used for mending.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘So if he does not fly, but mends for us, is it not time he were given his rightful name amongst us?’

  Our play raised much talk and discussion, and surely it sounded like the cackle of the hen yard. Then Pieta stood. ‘Will we wait all night for your report on this evil city weapon, Sern, the mender?’

  He rose and stood small on his poor thin legs as he spoke his name. And he made his report, which was well spoken and of great interest to the group.

  I believe I may grow to like Sern, the mender – in time. I like his clever hands and his direct manner of speaking. I like his dark-eyed sons and partner, Jemma, who is the daughter of Dan, the harmless book trader, who had brought my brown cloak to the house in his trading basket, who was full brother of Rowan and thus my uncle.

  Lord! The complexity of family connections here! How much there is to record. And it must be done while the old ones live strong so they may tell us of all the past.

  I have learned so much. I can spin a continuous thread from the wool of a sheep and I can weave the fabric of our brown cloaks, which we must wear when we are from the valley. I have watched spotted fishes swimming in a pool, heard the frogs’ night song, seen a kangaroo – and certainly, as Pa had said, it appeared to have a spring in his tail. I have placed into my mouth the taste of nectar.

  Ah, my greed for summer’s golden apricot is near lust, and such an abundance of them there is. And the sweet fat green grape. And the tart red apple. And always the honeydew. Winter has its own abundance. There are the oranges and the lemons, their hard rind saved to flavour our biscuits. We have the old potato and orange carrots, small and sweet, and onions, milky white. And so much more. So much more.

  Little was lost in this garden valley when for years the rains forgot to come. There is good water here which bubbles up from many springs, such as the one in my cave. We bathe in water, wash our garments in water, with a pure washing soap, made as Granny had made her washing soap from animal fat and ash from our fires.

  Granny’s tapestry now hangs in the Great Hall and it is highly valued. Many stories, woven around its creation, are told and retold at the meetings. It is said that Moni knew of this valley from her childhood, when for two years she, and the last of those from the house, had lived in the hills and caves. It is said that she led her people to this place without deviation, that she walked ahead of the group, walking with impunity through fields of blacrap, that the poisonous weeds parted allowing her to pass, then closed behind when the last of the group was through. It is said that she led her people through the old diggings of the ancient ones, as if a pathway were marked for her by God’s own hand.

  There is much belief in myth here. Perhaps it holds a seed of truth.

  With the good, there is always the bad to record. My dogs did not like my new world so well as the old. They aged rapidly and left the earth in the year of my Aaron’s first toddling steps. I think they were not so sad to leave this place behind; still, I have many paintings to remember them by, and also to remember my gallant knight, Sir Sowman.

  During my first years here, I saw him often on sunless days when we walked together to steal the hens’ eggs. How well he liked those eggs. Then one day I found him huddled in the cave.

  I gave him the sign of the fingers crossing the breasts, and he gave it to me, as with difficulty he stood. Like Pa in the last months of his life, my knight could not move well, but we touched hands, then he shook his great head and showed me empty palms. Always before he had given some small gift to me. A golden bird one day, small as a sparrow. Together we had set it free to fly. He had offered small red berries, sweet and sprinkled with seeds. He had given me a bouquet of bell flowers of the deepest blue. On that final day I gave to him seven eggs, placing them in the old saucepan which he still had at his side, and I had sat with him so he might have companionship while he ate. I believe his hunger was great.

  ‘You ache, my good friend,’ I said to him.

  ‘Aaaaah.’ He had nodded.

  ‘I see you have no fire.’

  We spoke a while, then I left the cave, choosing the western entrance to our valley, for I had promised my people that the one they named ‘the beast’ would not see me enter the hidden doors. Only a little later, I had returned to the cave with fire and meat from a sheep. My old knight was not there and since that day I have seen him no more. There is a great sadness in me when I think that he died alone.

  I am never alone, and how joyfully Jonjan and I live. He can make his vehicle fly, and I fly with him, for we have become the new searchers, and there is much to find. Each season we discover new growth in the Morgan garden, and far down the mountain we have found evidence of Pa’s town, which is rubble, with a chimney here and there, but many strange plants growing over them. Carefully we dig the immature plants from the earth and plant them in our valley or in the next.

  We have flown over land once claimed by blacrap. It only survives in small patches now, and in our own rock-walled enclosure; my people find it a useful thing when controlled. During harvesting, we spread a roof across the enclosure and, without light, the black weed’s hands fold over and wrap its head as if it sleeps. It does not spit. Many eat the fruit of it, which is removed by slashing the head of the weed, that to me is more like a fat belly, full of its young. I will not eat the black melon-shaped things, though it is said they are strangely sweet.

  The juice from the head and pulpy
hands is of immense value. When boiled it gives a thick scum of wax which we use for lights and other things; its long fibres we weave with flax or wool from the sheep. The residue from the boiling of the weed’s leaf is not wasted; it makes an adhesive, necessary in the construction of the large nets strung high from the trees. Many hands are working now on new nets; we hope to roof the valley of the sheep, then settle it – when the central trees grow tall enough. I had wondered at this practice until Jonjan and I flew over the woven sky and through it saw no sigh of habitation, no garden valley.

  My work here is with the children, with the teaching of reading and writing skills. There was much to be done before we could make a beginning to it, for we had little paper and no pens. There is much paper now, and pens, and we have fine ink made from soot and the blacrap weed, as with the ink for my printing machine.

  I read daily to the children, so they will come to understand the magic of words and thus want to make their own. I read from Aaron Morgan’s journal, from the Book of Moni and even from the ancients’ Bible. This morning I read the page which tells how God created woman from the rib of man. How the children laughed at these words.

  ‘So, tell me what is written on this subject in the Book of Moni?’ I asked.

  ‘That man tried to improve on nature and he failed.’ Such a chorus of voices. So many come now to learn, the small and the tall.

  ‘And in our valley, how do we create both man and woman?’

  ‘In love, and in equality,’ they chorused, then a lone voice added: ‘In the bed.’ It was one of Sern’s large-eyed boys, who are all full of talk.

  ‘Roden, imp of the long tongue, you may show us your skill and write your words for me,’ I said to him. And he did, with more ease than I may have written them at his age: In bed, in lov and in eek wallaty.

  What fine words are these. What a fine world is this, my home – and too long missed. What fine people are these, my people, and lost to me too long.

  Seated on Granny’s rocking chair at the mouth of my cave, my fingers content in mixing colours for my painting, I watch the late sun push aside a rain cloud.

  And Lord, how very pleased is God with our ways, for He has taken to His sky with His own paintbrush and made a great arc across it, in greens and pinks, in golds and violet hues.

  Such beauty!

  I call to my Honey Dew, who is playing with her brothers nearby, and she runs swiftly to tell the others of this sight. They come then, one by one, two by two, both adult and child, and they walk into the end of day to look with awe upon God’s art work.

  My brush catches them thus, sheltered beneath the work of His hand.

  I think this will be my finest painting when it is done.

  (Excerpt from the New World Bible)

  In the city there was much warring and great calamity and for seven years only the black weed in the fields and the rats in the cesspits thrived.

  Then it came to pass that the sun left the sky, and for forty days rain come forth from the black heavens and it flooded all of the earth and the fields and the cesspits and it washed them clean.

  And in the fields outside of the city the black Godsent weed rotted and its stench was vile.

  Then the great winds blew wild. And they swept in from the oceans and they cleansed the stench from all of the earth.

  And the sun returned and it warmed the earth. And over all of the graveyards of all of the known world the dandelion spread its golden carpet of life.

  And it came to pass that a strange cloud was seen in the northern sky. And it was such as man had not seen before, for it was neither black nor grey, nor white, but of the purest gold.

  And it moved slowly until it covered up the sun.

  And there were those who bowed down before it, and those who hid their faces from it. And there were those who wept, for there had been too much death and destruction in this place.

  Then a wide gash opened in the cloud and through it God’s face appeared. And he yawned widely. Then he said unto the gathering: ‘Ah. It is the eighth day. So, what have you learned while I have been resting, my children?

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  A freezing terror ran through me. It was not just that I had done the unforgivable. It was something far worse. Had not I just proved my grandmother right? She had told me I bore the blood of a cursed line, a line of sorcerers and outcasts. It seemed I could not fight that; it would manifest itself as it chose. Were not my steps set inevitably towards darkness? I turned and fled in silence.

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