Shadow's End

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "What the hell is 'its maker' playing at!" demanded Leelson, outraged.

  We felt the earth shake, just a little, like a heavy footstep nearby. Poracious put her head on her knees and shuddered. Leelson pointed out into the sea, far, far, where the sky came down on the horizon. An island there, which had not been there before. It became larger while we watched.

  "What's it doing?" demanded Mitigan in a tone almost as furious as Leelson's had been.

  Lutha remarked. "Why so offended, Mitigan? You weren't this offended by the shaggies or by the Rottens."

  "Animals," he said. "Why bother being offended at animals?"

  "So what's coming out there isn't an animal?"

  He scalded her with a look, before turning back to watch the blob grow larger. It had horns on top. Even at this great distance it was ineluctable, numinous, but familiar!

  Lutha had the same idea. "Did you see Nodders on your way to Tahs-uppi?" she asked Mitigan.

  "We climbed around them," he grated. "Such things have no right to be."

  The ex-king smiled. In some terrible, fatalistic way, he was enjoying himself. "Perhaps this creature feels it has every right to be alive and moving. Perhaps it has judged our storage vaults and found them wanting. Perhaps it has some more immediate destiny to attend to."

  "We will soon know," said I, from my position atop a boulder. "It's coming nearer."

  It was very tall. The head was massive. The horns on top showed clearly. This was the reality of which the Nodders were only a symbol. This, whatever this was—had the same proportion of height to horned top, to the great bulk of the nodding head. I had no time to consider the effect, for sound changed, the world shuddered, a peculiarly dreamy sensation overtook me, as though all happenings were inevitable and I did not greatly care.

  Leely pushed past me and went out of the cavern. He plopped down on a shelf of wave-rounded pebbles and stared outward, his lips making silent words.

  "By all that's holy," breathed Poracious. "Look, low down, against the water."

  We saw. Light. Shadow on one side, shadow on the other, shadow above, and light under, between.

  "Legs," I told them in my dreamy, languorous voice. "We only saw its upper part before. Now we are seeing between its legs."

  The Nodders had been only busts, then? Only heads and necks of Behemoth? There was more to the creature than that? Well, yes, my dreaming mind assented. Well, yes. Time went on. Eventually we saw its wings, which had until then been folded along its back. Eventually we saw its marvelous face, its wondrous eyes, its great adamantine teeth.

  It stopped when the ocean was no deeper than its knees. Whales leapt around its legs. Gyring eagles made its aureole, and the wind of its breath pushed us to and fro, like little flags.

  "I've seen it before," whispered Poracious. "Somewhere."

  "Ancient earth," Lutha replied. "Was it Babylon? Was it Ur? Mighty winged creatures were carved upon its walls."

  "Winged cattle," said Poracious. "But that is mythology."

  "This is not myth." The ex-king smiled. "And this is no kind of cattle."

  Lutha clung to Poracious as she backed into the cave, they two pulling me with them. Anything else was past doing. Past believing. Past thinking on. We were ants, crawlers between the hairs of immensity.

  Leelson dragged Lutha into his arms and held her close. I saw sweat on his face. I saw fear.

  "Come forth," said a voice out of the whirlwind.

  There was no place to hide. Stones shattered into powder. The cliff danced. Great boulders skittered through the cavern roof and bounced between us, close as a hair!

  Lutha grabbed me by the arm and dragged me back against the wall, but it did no good. Dust rose from the floor in clouds, boiling upward, threatening to smother us in stone ash.

  "We must go out," I cried at them. "We can't stay under here." I broke away from them and ran. Lutha came after me. We stopped in the entrance. Leely and the ex-king hadn't moved when the rest of us had retreated. Leely lay where he'd been before. The ex-king clung to a stony pillar, his back to us, staring up at the great face that floated above us like a thundercloud.

  The head bent; a mighty hooved forefoot withdrew from the sea, rivers running from its fetlock, alive with silver fishes. The foot stamped down.

  The world shook to its roots.

  "Come forth," said the voice once more.

  There was no denying that voice. There was no hiding from it. All of us shambled out into the open air, where we stood like drunken, tethered creatures, unable to move unless the voice commanded us.

  We didn't have to move. It came to us, jarring the world with every step. We fell and got up. It took another step. We fell again, and got up. We leaned together, like floppy dolls, holding each other erect. Leely lay on the ground where he had stayed all along, waving his hands, saying nothing, nothing at all, his eyes fastened on that which came.

  Beyond the hugeness was a sky full of birds, a million pairs of beating wings, a whirl of white terns, a swerve of black-backed puffins, a spiral of silver gulls rising on the wind. I knew their names. They all had names. Before each mighty foreleg, a bow wave of life rushed upon the shore to wriggle, to stride, to fly, to crawl. I tasted a sweetness of mown grass and a salt-clean tang of the ocean wind.

  In the end, we stayed on our knees, unable to get up again.

  "Is this your tempter?" Leelson asked me, through trembling lips.

  The stories had not said it was so huge. The stories had said it was male. This was not male. It smelled like flowers and spices and fragrant smoke. It tasted of … marvel. It wore a high crown. It spoke to us in thunder.

  "Will you go home again?" it asked. "Will you go to your proper place? To Dinadh, where I had placed you?"

  I saw Lutha's head move. Nod, nod. There was Leelson, nodding. Mitigan nodding. I felt what they felt. How tempting to go home once more. To Dinadh. To the winding canyons. To the sweet songs of the songfathers.

  "Will you go home again?"

  Would I go home again? To the lies the songfathers told? To the pain of the House Without a Name? To that terrible destiny for my daughters? To connivance at that evil by my sons? To sell truth and wisdom short in order to buy the false hope of immortality?

  Somehow I got to my feet.

  "No," I cried. My voice was the cry of a small bird against that mighty thunder. Still I cried, "No. I will not!"

  "Not me, neither!" trumpeted Snark, as though my words had wakened an echo in her.

  I felt Lutha's eyes, and Poracious's. They didn't understand. Ah, but they hadn't known the House Without a Name. Their wombs had not held what mine had held.

  The mighty head bent above us like a cloud descending.

  "You were given worlds to share," it whispered in a voice like an avalanche. "But you would not share. You were given life to treasure, but you did not treasure. You counted your own lives holy and all other lives expendable. All my creations you have subverted, all my wonders lost and slaughtered and betrayed. I made a garden to receive you. To make clear my intention, I set my creatures around you to be your companions; you have made of your habitation a termite mound, and of that garden a desolation!

  "So now I have made your world suitable, a place where you can serve my creation. What more do you deserve than that?"

  I couldn't answer. There was no answer.

  "Now I have drawn a bowstring around all mankind, and in the fullness of time, I shall leash him with it. He who will not share shall serve instead.

  "Will you go to the place I have allotted you?"

  Somehow I kept upright. "No," I cried, my voice breaking. "Mankind deserves no more, but this woman would rather die, knowing the truth, than go back to live that lie! I choose truth! We are not immortal. My mother wasn't immortal. She died. She did not eat my face; she died!"

  The face faded. For a moment it was not there. The place it had been was blank. Then the earth shook again mightily, tumbling us about, and a face returne
d, a lion's face, an eagle's face, a face of leaves, of fruits, of fishes, a woman's face, terrible and pitying. I knew that face. A mother's face!

  Leely was up, running toward the sea, the rocks, the tidal pools, the squirming eels, the tentacles, the quivering, hammered surface of the sea, toward the great creature as he made the same noise he had made that other time: the scream, the command, the roar, the whatever it was! And the ex-king went after him, calling out some wordless warning, trying to catch him, trying to get him back.

  Too late! Too slow! The great head bent down. It was coming at Leely, but the king got in the way so it caught him first. Oh, he never made a sound, not a sound. I heard him crush between those teeth and I heard the soft sound of his body hitting the stones. The huge head tossed, making a great gust of wind, a buffet that knocked us all away as it withdrew with the child!

  It crushed him. He screamed. It drew him up. Lutha went past me like a wind. She leapt. I ran, I jumped. Snark was beside me, even Poracious, all of us, jumping, trying to reach Leely where he hung between those mighty jaws, between those great teeth, screaming all the way.

  "Lutha Lutha Tallstaff Lutha sister mother love!" he cried, a terrified voice, a voice like every child who ever was abused or frightened.

  "If you choose truth, will you live by it?" cried the Great Beast. "Reflect!"

  Blood rained around us. An arm. A leg. Oh, by all the gods of man, by all merciful deities, a baby, a child, falling around us, torn into bits …

  Lutha screamed as though rent apart, a sound of such pure and utter pain that it pierced us all. Leelson seized her and pressed her face against his chest so she wouldn't see, so she wouldn't hear! Oh, I wished I hadn't seen Leely's blood on its jaws, on the ringlets of its mane. Leely's blood on the stone. Leely's blood falling on the raised knee, the mighty foot that came down and down and down, to shake us like dice in a cup and cast us away into utter darkness. I wished I hadn't seen, but I could not do as it commanded.

  We came to ourselves after a time. A day. A moment. Who knows? We crawled into our cavern, dragging Lutha, who lived, and the king, who did not. Him we rolled in blankets against the back wall. Her we put near the warmth of the stove, and I held her head in my lap while I wiped bright blood from her forehead where she had fallen against the stone. Snark was beside me, her hand in her pocket. I knew she held a weapon. Like her, I watched Mitigan and Leelson where they raged in a corner, not at one another. Now they were allies in this matter. Now Snark was their enemy, I was their enemy. We had refused the bargain. We had denied the word of the tempter.

  Lutha moaned.

  "Don't leave him like that!" she whispered at me. "Oh, don't leave him like that. Leely-baby."

  I hushed her.

  "My baby."

  Oh, yes. Baby. All our babies. All our wealth of babies that we had worshiped more than life itself.

  "Nothing there," whispered Snark, shaking her gently. "Listen, Lutha. Maybe it wasn't real! We got Jiacare's body, but there was nothing there but him. I looked ever'where."

  I hadn't seen her go out, but she wouldn't lie. Not Snark.

  "But there was blood," Lutha cried. "Blood falling … "

  "Not even blood. Me and Poracious've looked real careful, over and over again. There's no blood."

  "Where did Behemoth go?"

  Snark shrugged, looking at me.

  "I don't know," I said. "I'm not sure. If I had to guess, I'd say it's still there. It hasn't gone anywhere."

  "I thought it went down into the waves," said Poracious in a little-girl voice. "I thought I saw it go there. We can't see under the water."

  "We couldn't see it now if it was right outside," Snark said. "It's getting dark."

  She was right. The day had gone as in an instant while we cowered.

  "Was it also the tempter?" Poracious whispered to me.

  "I believe it was," I told her.

  "Your ultimate Ularian," said Leelson, from the shadows.

  "That's not who it is," whispered Lutha. "Why can't you see who it really is?"

  "If it's Ularian, we'd taste it," Poracious objected.

  "No," Lutha whispered again. "That was for us. It is disgusted with us. It is simply disgusted!"

  Poracious stared at her as though she were crazy. "What are you saying?" she demanded querulously. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Lutha closed her eyes, refusing to answer. Her face was agonized. I remembered our talk, on that other world, the night before we came to the omphalos. She had spoken of the guilt she had felt when she thought Leely was lost among the Nodders, wondering if she would grieve. Now he was lost, utterly, and she grieved. I held her, rocking back and forth, unable to forget that dreadful rending.

  "Why?" cried Poracious. "Oh, why … ?"

  Yes. Why. I stopped listening to the others. They went on talking, mostly Leelson and Mitigan, asking each other questions that neither could answer: What might we do to help ourselves? Should we stay where we were or go elsewhere?

  After hacking each alternative to death, they decided to stay where we were, a simple decision considering that none of us was in any condition to do anything else.

  And Lutha lay in my lap, hurting. Grief is not only in the mind. A spirit does not agonize in separate space. It takes the body with it!

  "He called my name," she wept. "Oh, Saluez! He called my name!"

  Eventually she wept herself into exhaustion. Despite everything, all our capacity for wonder or outrage or grief wore itself out. No one had the energy to weep another tear, to ask another unanswerable question. I made tea. Snark brought me some herbs to put in it, soothing things, she said. Her own face was wet and weary, but when I offered a cup, she would not take it. She would keep watch, she said, though what good watching could do she did not say.

  In the night I heard Lutha moving. I said her name. She mumbled something about a stone in her bed. In a moment she was quiet again.

  Gray light came and I woke. Around me on the sand the others lay in blanketed hummocks, Snark among them. Evidently she had decided it would do no good to keep watch. Against the far wall, another hummock showed where the ex-King of Kamir had been laid. Beside me, Lutha moved uncomfortably, whining again about the stone beneath her.

  Quietly, thinking to ease her, I reached under her covering to remove what troubled her, encountering instead a warm softness, not Lutha, something else alive.

  My first thought was the cats. I had never felt a cat, but presumably a cat would feel soft and warm and alive. Then I had a less pleasant thought, something to do with the serpents that had driven us from our rock pile.

  Shuddering, I drew it away from Lutha's side, waking her. Her eyes came open as I held the thing at arm's length, thrust it into the light …

  And dropped it as Lutha screamed, a sound that might have waked the bones in Snark's jar. It waked all those around us, who within moments were babbling as wildly as I.

  It was Leely! Leely, the size of my foot! Leely no bigger than a small cat, a whole Leely in miniature, exactly like himself but tiny, tiny.

  Mitigan cursed, brushing his hands across his blanket, bowling another Leely onto the sand. Two Leelies, three, four. A dozen Leelies from among our blankets, all piping in reedlike voices, "Dananana."

  Poracious held Lutha while she came apart. I, too, felt the seams between reality and madness fail, felt myself rip into pieces, then saw all the pieces, a row of them on the edge of a precipice, teetering into hysteria, ready to tumble!

  "Lutha!" Leelson, who had taken Poracious's place. "Lutha, Saluez, think! It's all right. It's all right!"

  There was Snark beside the stove, holding out crackers to the Leelies. There were dozens of them. Some no larger than my thumb.

  What was all right? This? This was all right?

  "It's the healing," Leelson shouted at us, slapping Lutha gently to get her attention. "It's regenerative, that's all. A whole organism from any fragment. Lutha. It's all right."

 
; "It's not," she howled. "It's not all right."

  Several of the Leelies came running across the sand to stand pulling at Lutha's trousers, caroling, "Dananana," over and over, then running back to the others to make a bird twitter of tiny voices, among which we heard, "Lutha Lutha mother love."

  I think perhaps Lutha fainted. Or perhaps she simply abdicated responsibility for living. She let go, fell down, and stopped, quit even being aware that life was going on around her, ignoring all our attempts to arouse her.

  Leelson said, "Let her alone."

  "Good. Let me alone," she agreed in a far-off voice.

  We did let her alone. The Leelies didn't. They liked her. She was their Lutha Lutha mother love. They liked me. I was their Saluez of the shadow. They wandered all over both of us, like tiny explorers setting out across a new land, while I sat there, my hands twitching as I tried to decide whether to pick them off or let them be. Hysterically, I told myself to await the jab of a flag driven into my thigh, a voice claiming this new continent!

  Under her breath, Lutha was counting. She stopped at the count of one hundred ten.

  "One hundred ten?" I asked.

  "That's how many of them I've counted," she said in a high, cracked voice. "One hundred ten."

  More had come in from among the stones. The smallest ones were half the size of my little finger. The largest was three times the size of the one I had found first. I found myself saying, that one is leg-sized. That one is arm-sized. That one grew out of a few drops of blood. They clustered around us like grapes, dangling from Lutha like pendant fruit, eager, joyous. They felt no pain. They knew no fear. They had no worry about what had happened to him, them. It didn't matter what had happened to him, them, or how they had come to be.

  Lutha said brokenly, "God, what kind of mind could have designed such a thing!"

  After a time they seemed to find new centers for their attention. A dozen broke away to cluster around a slightly larger one, and that group wandered off. Then, gradually, another dozen, or a score. The groups wavered across the floor, disappearing into holes, reappearing again, vanishing at last. Finally there was only one left. The largest one.