Stel ducked, and as he did, the whole scaffold tilted, swayed, and cracked. He rushed to grab it as Elseth climbed down, stepping on his head and shoulders on the way.
She stamped. “Look what you did. Now you’ll have to fix it.” She strode off in the direction of a rough brush hut. Stel was charmed by her. Even her motions seemed like Ahroe’s. Now he’d have to fix the scaffold. Isn’t that what he had suggested in the first place?
Finding proper material was not easy, but Stel set to work on the scaffold, adding supports, repairing bindings, providing a series of racks for moving the cross seat when necessary. It took him the rest of the day. Then he dressed Elseth’s chisel, which was worn and dull. She had not reappeared. He was reluctant to leave without talking to her. He had had no truly good talk since leaving Ozar. Besides, she looked like Ahroe. Finally he went to the brush hut.
“Elseth,” he called. “It is fixed.”
“Now I have lost the light. It is your fault,” came a voice from inside.
“All right. Since you have lost the light, then you can come out and talk to me. You haven’t anything to do, do you?”
“I am an artist and I must think. I must think quietly.” “Oh.” Stel sat down in the dust. He cleaned his nails with his shortknife. After a time, he said, “Well, I dressed your chisel, too, and if you have any more, I will do them as well and save you time to think.”
“What? Are you still here? You ruined my chisel?” She rushed out past him, running to the scaffold. Stel followed, coming up as she examined the tool. She stamped again. “I spent so much time getting this right, and you have ruined it on me.”
“Ruined it?”
“Ruined it. I have done nothing to you. Now why don’t you go and let me alone?”
Stel sat down again. “I will go if I have to, but look, Elseth, I have traveled a long way, almost all of it alone, and I am weary of it. I have been chased, attacked, imprisoned, threatened by those idiotic goatherds, those raise-a-finger-and-you-die people, and I have been far more alone than I care to be. Here you are the first normal human being I have seen in far too long, with something interesting that you are doing, and you tell me to go instantly. I suppose I will, but it is awfully hard.” He looked up and laughed. “In fact, I don’t know that I.can stand it.”
“Normal! You call me normal?”
“Is that an insult, too? Maybe you aren’t. But rock-cutting seems normal to me. And not wanting to exploit me seems normal, too. You are intelligent and speak well. Now come on. At least you can spare a few minutes of talk.”
“I came here to be alone. And to do this work.”
“I won’t stop you. I will help you if I can stay awhile and talk.”
“I don’t need help. I need to be alone.”
Stel sighed. He felt both frustrated and whimsical. “Suppose I just stay and watch awhile. I won’t even say anything.”
“How can I work with somebody watching? And there will be the inevitable suggestions and interferences—such as my scaffold and chisel.”
“If you want, I will temper it for you. And make you some more if you have any metal anywhere. What do you use—pieces from old ruins? That looks like a rod from the artificial stone.”
“Temper it?”
“Make it harder so it doesn’t dull and bend so quickly.” “You can do that?”
“Yes, of course. I am not a metalworker, but I have seen it done enough, and even practiced. I will even show you how. Please?”
“You can make me some chisels if you will go after that.”
Stel laughed. “All right. I promise. I have a couple of long-eared rabbits if you would like to share them with me for supper. They are stringy, but they taste all right.” Elseth paused. “I will get some potatoes to put with them.” She started, then turned. “You mustn’t be here when my brothers come. They would not like it.”
“More goatherders—do-this-and-you-die people?”
“No. We are Commuters. You met the goatherders? Had trouble and came away unscathed? You must have more to you than it looks for such a short man. No whip scars?”
Stel briefly told her the story of his encounter with Catal and Blomi. As he talked, she sat in the dust and drew figures with a twig.
“Well, you were harmless with them. Perhaps you will be harmless with me, too. But you mustn’t be here when my brothers come. And you will have to sleep somewhere else.”
“Being harmless is what I am best at,” said Stel. “I will sleep across the river.”
Elseth went for the potatoes, which they cut up together, in their skins, and boiled with the rabbits. As they ate, Stel looked carefully at the young woman, drinking in her resemblance to Ahroe. But she was different. Somewhat short, she was a bit gaunt from self-neglect, but her dark hair, which hung freely past her shoulders, was clean and shiny, her nose finely molded and slightly square at the end. She had large, lustrous eyes and a full shapely mouth. Her cheeks plumped slightly, but her cheekbones rose above them, high but not really prominent. When she smiled, she almost always tossed her head, but a mist of melancholy hung over her. Her shoulders were not wide, and she probably would have had a full figure if she ate well. Her small, strong hands flitted rapidly with fine fingers, but they were netted with cuts and abrasions. Her legs were strong, with small ankles, and fine, high-arched feet. Stel thought she should not be here alone. She was someone who ought to be in a society, and cared for. She was no Catal.
Finally, she said, “You mustn’t keep looking at me. It frightens me.”
“I’m sorry. You look like Ahroe, my wife, whom I haven’t seen for well over a year. It raises all sorts of feelings.”
“I trust you will control them.”
“Of course I will. She is still my wife. And as I said, I am very good at being harmless.”
“I don’t understand. Why are you here?”
Stel told her, in summary, the whole story of his exile and journey westward. As he talked, she stared at him more and more thoughtfully. “You must go to the Center of Knowledge and tell them all this—if it is true. Is it, surely? You haven’t added anything?”
“No. It is as true as I can render it. What is the Center of Knowledge?”
“To the west—it is a large canyon with overhanging walls, in which the Commuters have gathered all the information they could about history, the time of fire, the small groups of wandering people who survived. As much as possible is chiseled in the rock.”
“Chiseled in the rock? Why not simply write it down? On paper?”
“Paper? We have heard of paper. What is it? It is like leaves, isn’t it? We never have found how to make it.”
“I will show you. Here.” Stel rummaged in his backsack and came out with the small compilation of the words of Aven. He handed it to Elseth.
She took it and began turning over the pages, slowly. “This is hard to read. But I can make it out. So this is paper?”
“Yes, it is . . But Elseth held up her hand, and soon was lost in the small book, completely absorbed so she didn’t notice the sunset, wild with orange cirrus clouds. Shortly after, the moon rose. Stel simply fed the fire, as she sprawled by it, oblivious to all but the small book, her eyes flicking across its pages, then going back. Slight frowns formed and vanished. Stel watched her in fascination, then cleaned up the supper pot, scrubbing it with sand at the river. When he returned and sat down, Elseth suddenly jerked up and saw it was dark.
“Is it night? You must not be here. Take my log and cross the river. You may come back tomorrow.” She returned the small book. “All this is bewildering. These are things more strange than dreams.” She sighed and looked in the direction of her sculpture. “I don’t know if you have ruined it or not.”
“Ruined it? I?”
“You have changed the world.”
“No. You are showing the world I know. Good night, Elseth. I will come back tomorrow.”
As Stel crossed the river, using the log and pole he found on the b
ank, his emotions were too complex to fathom. A strange sadness fell over him as he found a place among the rocks to sleep. He unrolled his sleepsack and slid into it, but for much of the night simply watched the moon moving slowly across the clear black of the desert night.
He knew he had had enough of being alone. “Ahroe,” he said aloud to the rocks. “I think I should have tried to be what the Dahmens wanted. Ah, Ahroe, I am sorry.” But even as he said it, he knew he couldn’t have. No. He had gone because he had to, and Scule’s experience confirmed his understanding of the extent of the family’s subterranean side.
Stel didn’t cross the river again until well into the morning. He tried to bring his thoughts into focus, calming himself by playing the flute. He knew he could not stay with Elseth very long. He would be in love with her, or her resemblance to Ahroe. And then there were the brothers she referred to. Why had they left her out there all alone anyhow?
When Stel did cross, and walk up to the wall of carvings, Elseth was already on the scaffold chiseling and brushing. Stel didn’t disturb her. He found the small supply of steel rod she had, some with the artificial stone still clinging to it, and set to work preparing a crude forge to make and temper chisels for her. He was nearly done by noon when the high sun and driving heat brought her down from the scaffold. She had on a large, floppy, loosely woven hat that shed squares of light across her face.
She looked at Stel and said, “I have some cold potatoes.” Smiling slightly, he watched her walking toward her shelter. She even held her shoulders like Ahroe.
As they sat eating in the shade of the cliff, Stel asked, “When will you be done?”
“Done?”
“With your work? You aren’t going to cover the whole cliff, are you?”
“Why not? There is much to represent.”
“It will take a lifetime.”
“Many years. Better to spend them here than chasing cows. This will last.”
“But the rock will slough away. It all comes to the same in the end. It is the truth of the doing that counts.”
“Perhaps, but it will last a millennium or two anyway, here in the desert.”
“A millennium?”
“A thousand years. Don’t you know that? We have decades, centuries, and millennia. Tens, hundreds, thousands. One thing the Commuters have is words.”
“Where are they from? They make a peculiar combination, herding cattle and gathering knowledge.”
“The Commuters were from the far west, by the Pacific Ocean. They were in the mountains at the time of fire, as you called it last night. They were in a town not really devastated, though somewhat burned. They made sure they taught their children these things.”
“What were they doing in the mountains?”
“Getting away from the heat of summer. The legend goes that the ancients took time off from work in the summer and went where it was cool.”
“What happened? Why didn’t they go home?”
“That is one of the ironies. They were people who knew many things, but they didn’t know how to do anything much. They could not live in the mountains, so they came west to the desert edge. So today we have fragments of knowledge of the ancients, like you, but we still herd cows. We know there was something called electricity, but we don’t know what it was, except that it went through wires to make light and turn motors.”
“Motors?”
“I have seen a ruined one. From the time of the burning of everything, a thousand and eighty years ago, by our measure. It simply turned, but with it you could make other things turn. They say you could do all kinds of things with it. But the Commuters had been people who used these things. Other people knew how to make them, and they all died.”
“What a great death it must have been.”
They fell silent for a time. “I wonder,” Stel mused, “if the Commuters were up near the town I saw, below where Scule lived.” He elaborated on his visit to the ruined town. “I don’t know. It was many miles to the east.”
“Miles?”
Elseth laughed. “Yes. Inches, feet, yards, miles. And centimeters, meters, and kilometers.”
“The Ozar have kiloms. In the Heart River country we have fingers, hands, arms, and ayas.”
“What a shattering of knowledge. If we could only put it all together.”
“There are so few people, and they all scattered, and formed into societies with hostilities and strange attitudes. Why do they call you Crazy Elseth? You are anything but that.”
“Because I do this.”
“Why do you?”
“It is a long story I don’t want to tell.”
“When will you finish?”
“Never, I hope. When I am carving, the rock sings, the shapes move, and all things seem in place.”
“But all art has an ultimate shape. It fits in some frame, just as when you make a city wall. It goes and turns, proceeds farther, turns again, until it comes back on itself and makes a whole.”
“Where is the, frame of the sky? And where is the frame of your life? You are simply wandering westward. You may have had a reason to leave, but you have never found another motive.”
Stel picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them one by one at a stone. None of them hit. “You are right. I am between lives now. But every song has phrases. Some of them are starting ones, then these develop, and others finish the song. So do poems. So do lives. One proceeds from babyhood to age, rounding oneself out. You will never fill the cliff. You will just have to stop sometime.” Elseth stood up. “I have to go back to work. You didn’t ruin the chisel. It is much better. I suppose the shape of my carving will be the length of my life.” She looked at him through narrowed eyes, and a sense of hurt crossed both their faces like the shadow of a summer cloud. “You will have to go soon,” she added. “My two brothers will be here in a day or two to see how I am surviving, and to bring me some food. I know you mean no harm, but they will not, and they will be furious.”
“I will go in the morning.”
“Tonight. I will tell you how to find the Commuters.” “Tonight? So soon?” But Stel knew he had to go. And he knew that between them an awareness of why was growing. So he was to be chased off again, this time not by a screaming McCarty, but by someone who feared love. Well, she was right. He would go.
Stel spent the afternoon working on chisels, cutting off the heated steel, shaping it, and tempering the finished pieces. In the heat, he was streaked with trails of dusty sweat, even in the dry air. He had to work with rock hammers, holding the steel with bent-brush tongs. The wood smoked and burnt. It was hard work and the results were not at all pleasing. At one point he paused and called up to Elseth, “I wish your brothers were here so I could show them how to do this.”
Before his eyes, a bush seemed to sprout a man, who said, “We are. Who are you? Why are you here?” He had a whip. Stel stepped back and cast his eyes around for another man. There was one, but he stood a good way off, holding two horses. Elseth jumped down and ran between them.
“No, Shay. No. Don’t harm him. He hasn’t harmed me. No. He is going tonight. Please.” The other man rode toward them, leading Shay’s horse.
“Who is he? Get out of the way. We will deal with him.”
“No. You mustn’t. He has a weapon.” Shay thrust her aside and advanced on Stel, who stood still with his short bow strung and an arrow nocked. The man on the horse was shaking out a noose in a long rope as he cantered the horse in. Stel surprised him by suddenly running at him, cutting between the two horses, and slicing off the tether with his short-sword as he passed. Shay was after him, and the mounted man turning. Stel wheeled and stood. Shay slowed to swing his whip, and Elseth, who had leaped back up, hit him full force in the back, knocking him down. Stel snapped a quick arrow right between his outstretched hands. Shay looked up with sudden fear.
“Your brother gets the next. Right through the chest.” Stel said, nocking.
Shay made a quick decision, jumped up, shout
ing, “Whoa, Than, whoa. He has some weapon.” Than scooped up Elseth under his arm and cantered away. Shay turned and faced Stel.
“I am weary of this,” said Stel. “A country full of violent and irrational people. Now, you will go over by your brother while I gather my things, and if either one of you comes anywhere near me, I will at least wound you, at most kill you.”
“If you hurt my sister, I will—•”
“I didn’t. And you won’t do anything. You and your brother are like children. More goatherders. More drop-a-pebble-and-you-shall-die people. Now I will count to ten, and if you are not past that fire by then, this arrow will chase you. One, two, three, four . . Stel didn’t finish. Shay had sprinted off so fast he saw he wouldn’t have to. Too bad. Another encounter had turned out badly. After the pleasure of chatting with Elseth, the threatening men. Stel packed deliberately, taking one of the new chisels. He could see an animated discussion between Elseth and her brothers. Stel strung his longbow, and, as they watched, shot an arrow straight up, flashing high, higher, seeming to hang a moment, then turning and rushing downward toward the river. He felt silly, like.a child showing off. But it seemed a harmless way of insuring that they would leave him alone.
He walked slowly toward the arrow, picked it up and cleaned it, deliberately sharpened the point against a rock, and walked on down to Elseth’s log. He was tired of being victimized, misunderstood, attacked. At the log he stopped, sat down, and played his flute, three full songs. The three watched him across the flat valley. Then he poled the log across the river and beached it. On the shore sand, he wrote with a stick, “Good-bye, Elseth. You are not crazy, but your brothers are. I am sorry not to have finished the chisels. May you fill the whole cliff wall with figures until you are happy and satisfied. And since I have found that there is a shining sea, which you call the Pacific Ocean, I think I may go there. There is another ocean to the east—a thousand ayas east of the Heart. Jestak, a Pelbar of Northwall, has been there.”
Paul O Williams - [Pelbar Cycle 02] Page 18
