“Maybe he’s just gathering his strength,” mused his father, “and in a month or two he’ll put on a great burst and pass them all.”
But he didn’t. He stayed small. Sometimes, too, he had trouble breathing. His chest would tie itself in knots, and he would have to sit down, wheezing and croaking until his chest loosened again.
The other boys no longer let Milovasu play games with them. When he insisted on running among them, anyhow, they snatched him up off the ground and began passing him back and forth like a ball.
“I won’t allow this!” howled Milovasu. As he was passed through the air, he made a hammer with his fist, and the boy who reached up to catch him received such a blow on the nose that he staggered around like a drunk and was laughed at. Milovasu strode off in triumph, trying to hide the fact that he couldn’t get his breath. He was hoping to get out of sight around a tree before he passed out.
Before he got far, four boys overtook him and knocked him to the ground, and the boy he had hit filled his mouth with dirt.
The next day, however, he was back. Again, he ran among the boys. This time, when they grabbed him, he took hold of the largest boy, Sanjeev, by the wrist and gave his arm an expert twist. This was something he had learned from watching his father and the other men wrestle. Sanjeev cried out in pain at first, but then stifled himself. Pain, the elders taught, was transitory. Like most things outside a person’s boa, it came and went.
“Let me go,” he said to Milovasu, “and no one will lay hands on you again.”
Milo let him go.
Standing, Sanjeev said, “It was childish of us to treat you that way.”
Milovasu shrugged and answered, “Well, we are children.”
“Nevertheless. But let me say this: It is a fact that you are smaller than all the rest, and you do make an excellent ball. An ordinary ball doesn’t turn and thrash in the air and make itself difficult to handle. May we use you as a ball, Milovasu?”
Milovasu appreciated the respect shown by Sanjeev. And his father had taught him not to be overly proud. He agreed.
His father, when he first witnessed this new game the boys played, was puzzled and angry. But when he watched awhile and saw how it was, he was even more proud of his son.
“Milovasu will be the smallest leader this village, and maybe the world beyond, has ever known,” he said.
But that wasn’t to be. This is what happened instead:
One day, as the children were playing and their parents worked in the fields, a general commotion arose in the center of the village. Voices called out, sounding surprised and upset. Neighbors hurried between houses, trading cloudy looks.
Milovasu left the children’s games and met his father and mother at their front door.
“Let’s go see,” said his father, and the three of them joined the rest of the village at the well, where the elders were just arriving.
The focus of the uproar was a man who looked as if he should be dead; his whole left side was covered in blood. He spoke briefly to the elders, then fell over and died.
The leader of the village raised his hands and made everyone be quiet and told them some terrible news.
The dead man, he said, had been a farmer down in the valley, on the lower part of the river. Three days ago, their village had been threatened by barbarian raiders, so he and his fellow farmers had armed themselves the best they could. They fought bravely and were slaughtered. The village had been burned and the survivors dragged away to be slaves. Only this one man had escaped to warn them.
The raiders were coming their way now.
In the wake of this news, silence.
Barbarian raiders were not a new thing. You heard about them, from time to time, in the stories of traders. They were the stuff of nightmares and worry, certainly, but they had not actually shown up within the lifetime of any of these particular villagers.
Except one.
Old Vashti, the most aged among them by thirty years. She might have been a hundred. Even Old Vashti didn’t know. She looked like an old stick that had begun to melt.
But she appeared strangely bright-eyed and clearheaded now, as she stepped up to speak. She also looked troubled.
“These raiders came when I was a child,” she croaked. “They’re bad people. They peel children like grapes and let the ants have them. They like to rape people for days on end, before and after they’re dead. The only reason I survived was because I reminded the chief of his mother, except that she wore a mustache. You can’t fight them, and there’s nowhere to run. My advice is to get a knife and stab yourselves to death.”
And Old Vashti took out a knife and did just that, right there in front of everyone.
A cry went up. It went on for some time and got louder and was about to become panic when a ringing sound, not unlike a bell, cut through the noise, subdued the cries, and got their puzzled attention. Looking around, frightened and annoyed, the villagers discovered that the source of the ringing was not a bell but little Milovasu at the nearby blacksmith’s forge, banging a hammer as hard as he could on the great anvil.
Several adults, including the village leader and his own parents, moved to snatch him up and put an end to this childishness. Really, at a time like this!
“Please,” Milo said. “I offer a suggestion. Something other than stabbing ourselves.”
Silence. They were ready, all of them, to hear options.
“Since I was even smaller than I am now,” said Milo, “the goat herders have talked about building a rope bridge across the gorge, so that the goats can easily graze the pastureland on the far side. It has never been done; I don’t know why—”
“Because we’re lazy,” offered Drupada, one of the herders.
“—but I don’t see why we couldn’t do this now and escape across the gorge, gathering the bridge up behind us.”
“That,” said Drupada, “is what inspires the laziness. In order to build a rope bridge, someone—not me—has to climb down into the gorge, down a half mile of slippery rocks, and risk his neck, taking with him one end of a very long rope, and then climb a half mile of slippery rocks up the other side.”
“There’s no time,” added one of the elders. “That would take a couple of days. The gorge is difficult.”
“What,” said Milovasu, a curious look in his eye, “if you didn’t have to climb?”
The whole village stared at him.
“Go on,” said the village.
“What,” said Milovasu, “if there were someone small enough, yet strong enough, that he could be thrown across the gorge, holding one end of a rope? Once he was on the other side, other ropes could be tossed back and forth and quickly worked into a bridge.”
The village stared at him.
“We’d need an awful, awful, awful lot of rope,” said Drupada.
The village burst into action.
—
By early morning, they had strung together enough rope to make a sort of tightrope across the gorge. They had also contrived enough rope for a handrope, as it were, on either side, all strung together with twine. All that was needed was for someone to carry, one way or another, a single length of rope over to the far side and pull the rest up behind him.
It would take the raiders days to follow, if they chose to follow, and by then the villagers would be well hidden in the mountains.
They took everything they could easily carry, which amounted to very little, and made their way through the morning mist, toward the gorge. Up at the very front walked Milovasu, his bare head and shoulders draped in orange blossoms. Beside him walked his friend Sanjeev. Behind them walked the coppersmiths and their assistants from the forge, bearing great coils of rope around their shoulders.
As they neared the gorge, the village leader slipped his copper armband into place around Milo’s biceps.
“Just for today,” he said, “you are our leader.”
Milovasu tried not to be overly proud, just as he was trying not to be overly ter
rified.
“A practical consideration,” he said. “The armband is much wider than my arm. It will fall off and be lost.”
Sanjeev removed the armband, wrapped part of it in twine to make it thicker, and secured it once more on Milovasu’s arm.
Moments later, they stood at the lip of the gorge.
There was no ceremony. There wasn’t time. Already, if you listened hard against the booming of the water, you could hear rough voices far away.
Umang, the strongest of the coppersmiths, built as if a bull had mated with a stump, stepped forward and checked to make sure that Milovasu’s end of the rope was secured about his waist.
“Are you ready?” he asked the boy.
“I’m ready,” answered Milovasu, frightened out of his mind, breathless, using all his mental strength to keep from pissing himself. The far side of the gorge was fifty yards away. It seemed to grow farther as he looked at it, so he didn’t look at it.
Then Umang took him by the wrists, swung him around in a fast, tight circle, and hurled him with a mighty grunt across the abyss.
—
It didn’t work.
Milo rose into the air, spinning just a little, arms and legs spread like a flying squirrel. But a boy is not a flying squirrel, and before he could cross over the deep and the dark and the roaring water, he flew down and down, the rope following him like a graceful knotted tail.
He pissed himself, but he did not cry out.
The bad things he felt were too many and too much to be called one thing, like sadness or fear. There was the immediate knowledge and horror of his own life ending. There was also the horror of what, in all likelihood, would happen to his home and his family. The whole terrible thing gave one huge stomp inside his head, like an angry elephant, and then left him in silence as he passed out of the morning sunlight and fell and fell and fell through the dark.
—
The fall didn’t kill him.
He struck branches and the steep flank of a mossy cliff and plunged backward into churning water. The water flung him up on a rock, choking and paralyzed. In a little while, the voice and the light in his head would fall silent and go out. But for now his wide eyes and listening ears still looked and heard. Just for a moment. He fell asleep for a while.
—
When he awoke, a little girl sat on a nearby stone, staring at him with eyes nearly as big as his own. She stared as if she’d never seen a boy before, let alone a boy broken and dying at the bottom of a gorge. She was wrapped in something long and black—maybe a robe, or wings. Her long black hair lay drenched across her shoulders.
He knew who the girl was. What else could she be?
“I didn’t know Death was a girl,” he said, his voice no more than the sigh of a moth. “I didn’t know Death was so young.”
“I’m not young,” she answered. “I’m old enough to get tired just thinking about it. And I’m a girl because I want you to like me. You’re very brave and wise for your age.”
Milo felt himself getting dark and quiet inside.
“I don’t want to take you,” the girl whispered. “You were living your life so wonderfully. I’ve never seen anything like it. They must have accidentally packed an extra soul inside you.”
Milo wanted to say something, but his breath wouldn’t cooperate. His body jerked. He began to choke.
The girl leaned over him and kissed his forehead, and he felt himself go out like a—
—
He lay on a wooden bridge, over a slow blue river. The river flowed through a green meadow bright with wildflowers.
He was whole again. He was even a little taller.
His armband, he noticed, was gone. Too bad. He’d earned it, he felt.
The girl was gone, too. In her place was a woman.
A woman with pale skin and black, deep eyes. She wore something like a cape, or maybe it was wings.
She reached out and cupped his head in a long, willowy hand.
“Try and survive ’til you’re a grown-up next time,” she whispered.
“ ’Kay,” he said.
The woman and the little girl were the same. Milovasu understood this, without understanding quite how. But before he could ask, she straightened up and stepped back and was flanked by two other grown-ups. An enormous, planetary woman, and an old lady holding a cat.
“Come,” said the big woman. And they took him across the bridge to a town on the river’s far side, into a neighborhood of nice houses. They ushered him into a mansion with a fountain in the courtyard, and peacocks.
“Holy shit,” said Milo, after his father’s example. “Why? How can I possibly have earned this?”
“Beginner’s luck,” said the old woman with the cat. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”
“More than luck,” said the big woman, giving the cat lady a sour look. “You have had an exceptional first life. Who knows—you might reach Perfection very quickly.”
They turned to go.
“Wait!” Milo cried. Who were these people? What was happening?
“Are you goddesses?” he asked. “Or perhaps the souls of my ancestors?”
The big woman laid a warm, heavy hand atop his head.
“We’re a little bit of everything,” she said. “Think of us as slices of the universe.”
Which meant squat to young Milo.
“Do you have names?” he asked.
“Everything has a name,” answered the old woman, a little crossly. “My name is—”
The air exploded with a sound that was beyond words or music. As if the stars themselves were humming or the whole entire Earth were getting ready to sneeze. His ears would burst! His mind would tear—
It stopped.
“But you may call me Nan,” said the old woman.
“I am Mother,” said the big one. “Or Mama, or Ma, or—”
“Who are you?” Milo asked Death.
“She’s called Death—” Nan answered.
“I’m Suzie,” Death interrupted.
Milo liked this name. It sounded futuristic.
“Since when?” asked Mother, rolling her eyes.
“Since right now. Calling me ‘Death’ is like calling him ‘Boy-soul’ or a dog ‘Dog.’ Besides, how’d you like to be called ‘Death’?”
“ ‘Suzie’ is pretty,” offered Milo.
“We should go,” said Mother gently. “He’ll be needing his rest.”
“Rest from what?” Milo asked. “With respect, all I did was fall down and die. I just got out of bed, like, an hour ago.”
But Mother and Nan turned their backs and left the courtyard, arm in arm. Suzie vanished in a sudden gust of wind and blue clover. Milovasu let his head spin and his thoughts whirl while he had a long pee in the fountain, then he went into his house and found some fruit waiting for him and managed several hours of troubled sleep.
—
Later, the universe women came back and they had a sit-down.
The purpose of the sit-down was simple: They explained how the universe worked.
In Milo’s new kitchen, Mama waved her big arms, and a roaring fire appeared on the stone hearth.
“That fire,” she explained, “is the Great Reality. It represents the universe the way it really is: Raw and wordless. Alive and pure. You can’t really understand it, and if you got too close to it, you’d burn up. It has a lot of names. Sometimes we call it the Oversoul, because it’s like one giant perfect soul. Okay?”
Mama had made one hell of a fire. Milo shielded his eyes and backed up.
“Okay,” he said.
Mama turned away from the fire and pointed all around at the rest of the kitchen. “Notice how the farther you get from the fire, the cooler and darker everything gets? That’s because the Oversoul casts its heat and light—its reality—out into everywhere. But as the heat and light radiate out, they get thinner. They diffuse. I mean, look at the fire, there—”
Milo looked.
“—and you see bright,
perfect light. Look out here, and it’s bright in some places and dark in others, and the light flickers and changes. And this is like where we are now.”
“The afterlife,” said Milo, always an eager student.
“It’s not called ‘the afterlife,’ ” rasped Nan. “Because it’s the ‘before-life,’ too, isn’t it? It’s called Ortamidivalavalarezarationaptulsphere. Means ‘middle.’ ”
“ ‘Afterlife’ will do,” said Mama. “Don’t be difficult. Anyhow, things here are warmer and brighter, more real, than out there in the rest of the universe.”
“All right,” said Milo, “so if I see a bridge here, in the afterlife, it’s more real than if I see a bridge down on Earth.”
“Not bad,” said Nan.
“Exactly,” said Mama. “Here, it’s the idea of a bridge. Or a spoon. Or a fencepost. It’s a pure form.”
Nan and Mama, Milo now noticed, seemed to shimmer in a way that other things and people did not. As if they were wrapped in a wonderful second skin. Now that he glimpsed and considered this phenomenon, it did seem as if they were more there somehow. More real. Suzie—Death—had shimmered in this way, also. How curious.
“And those forms,” said Nan, waving her hand at the back of the kitchen, which was comparatively dark, “go out and diffuse even more, until they’re mostly shadows, with a few flickers and flares now and then. Harder to see the forms for what they are. Harder to tell what’s real.”
“And that’s Earth,” said Milo. “Where we go to live our lives.”
“Where you go,” said Nan, “to live your lives. We don’t have to go anywhere.”
Milo still didn’t understand what Mama and Nan were, exactly.
“We’re like tiny slivers of the fire,” said Mama, “come out into the dark to help you.”
“Help me what?” asked Milo.
At that moment, Mama waved her arms again, and the next thing Milo knew, they were outside, walking down the street. The street led straight downhill to a quiet little park.
“We’re here to help you become part of the fire,” said Mama, putting on a pair of sunglasses. Milo had never seen sunglasses before. Interesting! And cool. “We’re here to help you get through the illusions and into the real universe.”
Reincarnation Blues Page 3
