Shadow's End

by Sheri S. Tepper

  "They'll want to leave soon," I said.

  "It will be good to be at home," said Lutha. It was it sounded like a question.

  "I have no home," said Snark.

  "Nor I," I said, as softly. "In any case, that is not allowed to come. It did not come merely to take us home. Remember what Behemoth said when it spoke to us first."

  "What did it say?" asked the ex-king. "I don't remember."

  "You wouldn't remember," said Lutha in an expressionless voice. "You were … dead. It was after it tore … tore Leely to bits. It asked if we would live by truth. It told us to reflect."

  "Such violence," he said distastefully, as though it had happened to someone else.

  I broke the long silence that followed. "The violence wasn't arbitrary. The question wasn't rhetorical."

  Lutha did not look at me. I knew she had heard me, but she didn't meet my eyes. She was watching Leelson, who had broken away from a small group near the ship and was striding up the slope toward us.

  He put his arms around Lutha, hugging her joyously.

  "We can go home," he said. "We can take … our son and go home."

  She turned toward me, her eyes spilling tears. I knew what she was thinking. She had wanted him to say that, something like that.

  "He'll be of great value in Fastiga," Leelson assured her, stroking her hair. "For his healing power alone."

  My throat was dry. I cleared it, painfully. "Yes, he'd be of great value. For his healing power alone."

  The ex-king looked off toward the horizon. "Fastigats should be able to live almost forever, with all the Leelies around."

  Leelson frowned, shook his head, stepped away from Lutha. "But … I hadn't … I thought we'd only take … just the one, Lutha."

  "But they're all … " she cried, her hand to her mouth, finishing the sentence. She was right, however. They were all.

  "As you say, they'll be enormously valued," repeated the ex-king, "for their healing power alone. Not to speak of raising the recently dead. Extending human life spans for how long? Increasing human population by how much? All Firsters will be delighted, of course. It shouldn't take long for there to be a profitable market in Leelies."

  Leelson recoiled as though he'd been slapped.

  "Later," Lutha said in a voice that was almost a scream. "We'll discuss it later."

  "But the ship's leaving … "

  "They've sent men to get the Procurator's body. The ship won't leave until they return. Leelson! If you love me, let me be. Give me a moment!"

  He backed away, uncertainly. Poracious called his name, and he went off toward her, glancing at us doubtfully over his shoulder, unable to decide whether to be hurt or angry. Poor Fastigat. Even he could not read this tangle!

  Lutha turned away from us, her shoulders shaking, wiping her face with the backs of her hands. She shuddered, drew a deep breath, then wept again. In a moment she stopped trying to control herself and simply walked away toward the sea.

  Snark said to me, "Go after her, Saluez. She talks to you."

  The ex-king nodded, nudging me, so I went after her. By now it was starlit evening, with just enough light to see by. She wound her way among glistening pools with me trailing after, and when we came to the beach, I wasn't surprised to find Leely already there, perched on a rock. He was her destination, after all.

  "Lutha mother love," he called in his small voice, sliding off the rock to hug her leg and look happily up at us. "Saluez of the shadow."

  She lifted him, hugged him gently, then sat on the rock where he'd been perched.

  He settled into her lap. I leaned against a boulder, being invisible, watching the stars come out.

  "Tell me about home," he said.

  I saw her throat tighten, as though she choked. She swallowed deeply. "Isn't this home, Leely?"

  "No. Home home I remember. Alliance Central home."

  Who would have thought he would remember Alliance Central? And yet, why would he have forgotten.

  "What do you remember?" Lutha asked, looking helplessly at me.

  "Everything! My room. My paints. All the nice places you put on my window scene."

  "Do you miss those things?"

  He leaned back against her with a little squirm of pleasure and comfort. "I like it here. Window scenes are nice, but you can't touch them. You can't be in them. I like real fish. But you want to go back and I want to be with you."

  There were tears in my throat. Stars fragmented in my sight. I blinked my eyes clear.

  She asked, "How do the other Leelies feel?"

  "Most of us don't remember. I'm the only one who really remembers. You know."

  "I don't know. You tell me."

  His little voice was matter-of-fact as he said, "It depends on how big a piece we got made from or maybe which piece we got made from. I got made from Leely head. That's why I remember. The other ones, they were made from Leely legs or Leely blood or Leely guts. They've got good brains, but they don't remember some old things like I do."

  He turned to hug her, then went on. "I remember lots of things, Lutha Lutha Tallstaff sister mother love. I remember Trompe. I remember when we met Saluez of the shadow, and how we got here. I remember Behemoth."

  She took a deep breath. "You'd probably be fine here, all you Leelies, whether I was here or not."

  His face clouded. I had never seen him wear that expression before, though it was one common to other children. The look of a child fearing loneliness. The look of a child afraid.

  He put his hands to her face, whispering, "I'd be lonesome. I need somebody to talk to. I want to be with you."

  After a time she rose and walked back to the camp, Leely riding on her shoulders, his arms wrapped around her head. Snark and the ex-king were standing outside the dormitory, waiting for us. Lutha took no notice of them. She went on by, as though she would go on walking forever, the child smiling and kicking his heels, his tiny hands clasped around her brow.

  The journey from Perdur Alas to Dinadh was not a long one. It brought me, Saluez, almost full circle in my journey. I arrived as outlanders do, through Simidi-ala.

  So much had changed.

  So little had changed.

  Poracious asked the people at the port about the Kachis. The people at the port furrowed their brows and asked in return: What about the Kachis? Had something changed about the Kachis?

  What about Tahs-uppi? Poracious asked.

  It had been successful, they told her. Additional days had been drawn from the omphalos and time ran once more in its accustomed course. I heard all this, though the people of Simidi-ala were talking to Poracious, not to me. I was veiled and silent before them. They did not even see me.

  "What are you going to do?" Poracious asked me when we were alone once more.

  "I'm going to make my way to the nearest hive," I told her. "Where I will talk with the sisterhood."

  "And what good will that do?" she asked.

  I grimaced behind my veil. "Perhaps none. Perhaps a good deal. A few years will tell. What are you going to do?"

  "I will do as Snark and Jiacare have said I must. Return to the Alliance and become a preacher. A prophet. A doom crier."

  "What good will that do?" I mocked.

  She shrugged. "Perhaps none. Perhaps a great deal. I may be of some help on Prime. If things are going to change, it will have to start there. I will do what I can."

  "Did you learn what happened to Chur Durwen?"

  "He made his way here, to Simidi-ala, and from here went back to Collis." She smiled a strange, harsh smile. "Have you heard of the recent occurrence on Asenagi?"

  I raised an eyebrow and waited.

  "Asenagi has had a visit from the Gracious One. It—he has spoken to their tribal leaders. They have been promised immortality … "

  I took a deep breath. "In return for?"

  "In return for mounting a holy war against nonbelievers, which they readily agreed to do."

  "War!"

  "The Gracious On
e has promised them a very fierce, unstoppable animal to assist them in their battles. This animal will be born from the women of Asenagi and nurtured by the Asenagi themselves. The animal will fight beside the warriors and will carry the souls of warriors killed in battle directly to … well, one assumes Valhalla." She stared out again at the sea. I saw her eyes were wet. "A tempting tale, tailor-made for the Asenagi culture."

  "As Lutha once said, it is disgusted with us. I wonder if any of us will manage to choose aright."

  "We will try," she replied. "We will do our best."

  She kissed me and left me then, alone as I had been before the outlanders came. Later, I saw both her and Leelson being lifted up into the ship that would take them back to Central. He was very pale and focused looking, very set upon his task, his duty, his enormous and quite terrible responsibility. Being a Fastigat, he assumed it was not beyond his capabilities.

  And I? I gritted my teeth and set my feet upon the path of righteousness.

  Thus was the loom rethreaded.

  Thus was the pattern determined.

  Thus the shuttle wove.

  Dawn on Dinadh.

  Deep in the canyonlands shadow lies thickly layered as fruit-tree leaves in autumn. High on the walls the sun paints stripes of copper and gold, ruby and amber, the stones glowing as though from a forge, hammered here and there into mighty arches above our caves. Beneath those arches, the hives spread fragrant smoke, speak a tumult of little drums, breathe the sound of bone flutes. Above all, well schooled, the voice of Shalumn, songmother, soars like a crying bird:

  "The Daylight Woman, see how she advances, she of the flowing garments, she of the golden skin and shining eye … "

  Years have come and gone since Perdur Alas. I speak often now with Daylight Woman, the Revealer, and with her companion, Behemoth, guardian of all-living. I revere them as I do Weaving Woman and Brother and Sister Rain and the Sisters of Soil. Each morning as my friend Shalumn sings the welcome to day, I pray: Oh, Great and Gracious Ones, see the choice we have made; do not destroy us but keep us in righteousness. Dinadh shall become as a paradise; and we will share it and treasure it as is your will.

  Each morning before first light, songmother comes to the lip of our cave, raising her voice when the sun touches the rimrock above. Each morning I stand behind her among the sisterhood, they with their faces exposed that all may see the ugliness that comes from seeking more and longer human life at the expense of life itself. Behind us are the other inhabitants of the hive, all joining the song, all hearing the great warp and woof of sound that follows Daylight Woman's eternal march westward. Dawnsong still circles our world endlessly, like the belt that runs from the treadle to the wheel. So much is as before.

  Other things are changed. Both Mother Darkness and Father Endless are with us again. They are welcomed with dancing each evening when Daylight Woman departs. Though it is the nature of children to fear the darkness, adults know there can be no light without it. Hah-Hallach and his brethren have been deposed, not for listening to the tempter—for any creature might do that—but for lying to their people after they knew the truth. We have songparents now, mothers and fathers both, as we did on beloved Breadh.

  This morning, when the dawnsong is over, Shalumn and I will go to the House Without a Name. In our hive an old woman named H'Nhan died some time ago, leaving an empty place in the pattern. Now a new H'Nhan may be born, to fill that place, and a certain woman has been given the privilege of bearing that child. Today she will lie upon the table, imagining the terror of those who once lay there. There are no Kachis now. The songparents teach that the Kachis were our punishment, but thinking creatures may choose repentance and restitution instead. Now, instead of Kachis we have the reanimated ones from the files on Central: fish and otter; eagle and squirrel; fox and mouse; all manner of creatures to be woven together with us.

  We tell the story of Perdur Alas to our children when we teach them the commandments of Dinadh: "Do not wish to live forever. Do not believe that every man-shaped thing is holier than something else. Do not look into the mirror to see the face of God. Do not weave your life only in one color, for Behemoth will not bless you if you do."

  Now the morning song is almost over. One of the sisterhood offers the bell. Shalumn accepts it. She rings it, once, twice, three times. Quiet falls. Heads are bowed. All in Cochim-Mahn are saying a silent prayer for Lutha Tallstaff, and for all the Leelies, too. May their shuttles carry brightness; may they be comforted in their choice.

  Whenever I say the words, I remember our parting:

  The ship was slender and white and still, like a tower, all its crew aboard, all its people waiting. At the bottom of the ramp we few gathered in the light of the rising sun. From the bottom of the valley the sea threw the dawn into our eyes. There was not a sound except our voices, as though the world held its breath.

  I hear Lutha repeating what she had said over and over during the long night:

  "Leely can't go back, Leelson. He mustn't, not ever."

  I hear Leelson:

  "Then let the Leelies stay … "

  And Lutha again:

  "I will not leave my child."

  He reached for her then, and she backed away, blazing at him through her tears. "Don't tell me you'll stay, Leelson! The Fastigats will listen only to one of themselves. You have seen what happened in Hermes Sector! Do you want it to happen to all mankind?"

  She took one step, then another, her hand lifted in farewell. Yet still he reached for her, tears streaming down his face.

  Then Jiacare's voice:

  "Go, Leelson. She won't be alone. Snark and I are staying with her."

  And finally, Snark:

  "Kings and women, Leelson. Kings and women! We gotta do stuff like that!"

  Lutha and Leelson and Leely. They are with me always. Leelson left her once, because of Leely. He left her at last, because of Leely. If their love was not really love, their courage was surely courage. Heroes have been adored for less.

  The sun is upon Shalumn's ankles now, and her voice ascends the sky. She holds her arms wide, inviting us to enter into the pattern, to go forth into a world that was not made and is not kept for man alone.

  And we of Dinadh step into the light.

  About the Author

  Sheri S. Tepper is the highly acclaimed author of the novels A Plague of Angels, Sideshow, Beauty, Raising the Stones, Grass, The Gate to Women's Country, and After Long Silence. Grass was a New York Times Notable Book and Hugo Award nominee, and Beauty was voted Best Fantasy Novel by the readers of Locus magazine. Sheri Tepper lives in New Mexico, where she is at work on a new novel.