Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  She lifted carefully above the table, overarching so high that the crisp girl-frill around the waist of her close-fitting briefs brushed the ceiling. Then she was safe in my arms.

  “That’s better than I did,” called Simon through the laughter that followed. “I landed right in the flahmen jam!”

  “So you did, son,” laughed David, ruffling Simon’s coppery-red hair. “A full dish of it.”

  “Now that that’s taken care of, let’s get organized. Are you all Gathering together—”

  “No.” Lytha, our teener, flushed faintly. “I—we—our party will be mostly—well—” She paused and checked her blush, shaking her dark hair back from her face. “Timmy and I are going with Beckie and Andy. We’re going to the Mountain.”

  “Well!” David’s brow lifted in mock consternation. “Mother, did you know our daughter was two-ing?”

  “Not really, Father!” cried Lytha hastily, unable to resist the bait though she knew he was teasing. “Four-ing, it is, really.”

  “Adonday veeah!” he sighed in gigantic relief. “Only half the worry it might be!” He smiled at her. “Enjoy,” he said, “but it ages me so much so fast that a daughter of mine is two—oh, pardon, four-ing already.”

  “The rest of us are going together,” said Davie. “We’re going to the Tangle-meadows. The failova were thick there last year. Bet we three get more than Lytha and her two-ing foursome! They’ll be looking mostly for flahmen anyway!” with the enormous scorn of the almost-teen for the activities of the teens.

  “Could be,” said David. “But after all, your sole purpose this Gathering Day is merely to Gather.”

  “I notice you don’t turn up your nose at the flahmen after they’re made into jam,” said Lytha. “And you just wait, smarty, until the time comes—and it will,” her cheeks pinked up a little, “when you find yourself wanting to share a flahmen with some gaggly giggle of a girl!”

  “Flahmen!” muttered Davie. “Girls!”

  “They’re both mighty sweet, Son,” laughed David. “You wait and see.”

  Ten minutes later, ’Chell and David and I stood at the window watching the children leave. Lytha, after nervously putting on and taking off, arranging and rearranging her Gathering Day garlands at least a dozen times, was swept up by a giggling group that zoomed in a trio and went out a quartet and disappeared in long, low lifts across the pastureland toward the heavily wooded Mountain.

  Davie tried to gather Eve up as in the past, but she stubbornly refused to be trailed, and kept insisting, “I can lift now! Let me do it. I’m big!”

  Davie rolled exasperated eyes and then grinned and the three started off for Tangle-meadows in short hopping little lifts, with Eve always just beginning to lift as they landed or just landing as they lifted, her small Gathering basket bobbing along with her. Before they disappeared, however, she was trailing from Davie’s free hand and the lifts were smoothing out long and longer. My thoughts went with them as I remembered the years I had Gathered the lovely luminous flowers that popped into existence in a single night, leafless, almost stemless, as though formed like dew, or falling like concentrated moonlight. No one knows now how the custom of loves sharing a flahmen came into being, but it’s firmly entrenched in the traditions of the People. To share that luminous loveliness, petal by petal, one for me and one for you and all for us—

  “How pleasant that Gathering Day brings back our loves,” I sighed dreamily as I stood in the kitchen and snapped my fingers for the breakfast dishes to come to me. “People that might otherwise be completely forgotten come back so vividly every year—”

  “Yes,” said ’Chell, watching the tablecloth swish out the window, huddling the crumbs together to dump them in the feather-pen in back of the house. “And it’s a good anniversary-marker. Most of us meet our loves at the Gathering Festival—or discover them there.” She took the returning doth and folded it away. “I never dreamed when I used to fuss with David over mud pies and playhouses that one Gathering Day he’d blossom into my love.”

  “Me blossom?” David peered around the doorjamb. “Have you forgotten how you looked, preblossom? Knobby knees, straggly hair, toothless grin—!”

  “David, put me down!” ’Chell struggled as she felt herself being lifted to press against the ceiling. “We’re too old for such nonsense!”

  “Get yourself down, then, Old One,” he said from the other room. “If I’m too old for nonsense, I’m too old to ‘platt’ you.”

  “Never mind, funny fellow,” she said, “I’ll do it myself.” Her down-reaching hand strained toward the window and she managed to gather a handful of the early morning sun. Quickly she platted herself to the floor and tiptoed off into the other room, eyes aglint with mischief, finger hushing to her lips.

  I smiled as I heard David’s outcry and ’Chell’s delighted laugh, but I felt my smile slant down into sadness. I leaned my arms on the window-sill and looked lovingly at all the dear familiarity around me. Before Thann’s Calling, we had known so many happy hours in the meadows and skies and waters of this loved part of the Home.

  “And he is still here,” I thought comfortably. “The grass still bends to his feet, the leaves still part to his passing, the waters still ripple to his touch, and my heart still cradles his name.

  “Oh, Thann, Thann!” I wouldn’t let tears form in my eyes. I smiled. “I wonder what kind of a grampa you’d have made!” I leaned my forehead on my folded arms briefly, then turned to busy myself with straightening the rooms for the day. I was somewhat diverted from routine by finding six mismated sandals stacked, for some unfathomable reason, above the middle of Simon’s bed, the top one, inches above the rest, bobbing in the breeze from the open window.

  The oddness we had felt about the day turned out to be more than a passing uneasiness, and we adults were hardly surprised when the children came straggling back hours before they usually did.

  We hailed them from afar, lifting out to them expecting to help with their burdens of brightness, but the children didn’t answer our hails. They plodded on toward the house, dragging slow feet in the abundant grass.

  “What do you suppose has happened?” breathed ’Chell. “Surely not Eve—”

  “Adonday veedh!” murmured David, his eyes intent on the children. “Something’s wrong, but I see Eve.”

  “Hi, young ones,” he called cheerfully. “How’s the crop this year?”

  The children stopped, huddled together, almost fearfully.

  “Look.” Davie pushed his basket at them. Four misshapen failova glowed dully in the basket. No flickering, glittering brightness. No flushing and paling of petals. No crisp, edible sweetness of blossom. Only a dull glow, a sullen winking, an unappetizing crumbling.

  “That’s all,” said Davie, his voice choking. “That’s all we could find!” He was scared and outraged—outraged that his world dared to be different from what he had expected—had counted on.

  Eve cried, “No, no! I have one. Look!” Her single flower was a hard-clenched flahmen bud with only a smudge of light at the tip.

  “No failova?” Chell took Davie’s proffered basket. “No flahmen? But they always bloom on Gathering Day. Maybe the buds—”

  “No buds,” said Simon, his face painfully white under the brightness of his hair.

  I glanced at him quickly. He seldom ever got upset over anything. What was there about this puzzling development that was stirring him?

  “David!” ’Chell’s face turned worriedly to him. “What’s wrong? There have always been failova!”

  “I know,” said David, fingering Eve’s bud and watching it crumble in his fingers. “Maybe it’s only in the meadows. Maybe there’s plenty in the hills.”

  “No,” I said. “Look.”

  Far off toward the hills we could see the teeners coming, slowly, clustered together; panthus baskets trailing.

  “No failova,” said Lytha as they neared us. She turned her basket up, her face troubled. “No failova and no flahme
n. Not a flicker on all the hills where they were so thick last year. Oh, Father, why not? It’s as if the sun hadn’t come up! Something’s wrong.”

  “Nothing catastrophic, Lytha.” David comforted her with a smile. “We’ll bring up the matter at the next meeting of the Old Ones. Someone will have the answer. It is unusual, you know.” (Unheard of, he should have said.) “We’ll find out then.” He boosted Eve to his shoulder. “Come on, young ones, the world hasn’t ended. It’s still Gathering Day! I’ll race you to the house. First one there gets six koomatka to eat all by himself! One, two, three—”

  Off shot the shrieking, shouting children, Eve’s little heels pummeling David’s chest in her excitement. The teeners followed for a short way and then slanted off on some project of their own, waving good-by to ’Chell and me. We women followed slowly to the house, neither speaking.

  I wasn’t surprised to find Simon waiting for me in my room. He sat huddled on my bed, his hands clasping and unclasping and trembling, a fine, quick trembling deeper than muscles and tendons. His face was so white it was almost luminous and the skiff of golden freckles across the bridge of his nose looked metallic.

  “Simon?” I touched him briefly on his hair that was so like Thann’s had been.

  “Gramma.” His breath caught in a half hiccough. He cleared his throat carefully as though any sudden movement would break something fragile. “Gramma,” he whispered. “I can See!”

  “See!” I sat down beside him because my knees suddenly evaporated. “Oh, Simon! You don’t mean—”

  “Yes, I do, Gramma.” He rubbed his hands across his eyes. “We had just found the first failova and were wondering what was wrong with it when everything kinda went away and I was—somewhere—Seeing!” He looked up, terrified. “It’s my Gift!”

  I gathered the suddenly wildly sobbing child into my arms and held him tightly until his terror spent itself and I felt his withdrawal. I let him go and watched his wet, flushed face dry and pale back to normal.

  “Oh, Gramma,” he said, “I don’t want a Gift yet. I’m only ten. David hasn’t found his Gift and he’s twelve already. I don’t want a Gift—especially this one—” He closed his eyes and shuddered. “Oh, Gramma, what I’ve seen already! Even the Happy scares me because it’s still in the Presence!”

  “It’s not given to many,” I said, at a loss how to comfort him. “Why, Simon, it would take a long journey back to our Befores to find one in our family who was permitted to See. It is an honor—to be able to put aside the curtain of time—”

  “I don’t want to!” Simon’s eyes brimmed again. “I don’t think it’s a bit of fun. Do I have to?”

  “Do you have to breathe?” I asked him. “You could stop if you wanted to, but your body would die. You can refuse your Gift, but part of you would die—the part of you the Power honors—your place in the Presence—your syllable of the Name.” All this he knew from first consciousness, but I could feel him taking comfort from my words. “Do you realize the People have had no one to See for them since—since—why, clear back to the Peace! And now you are it! Oh, Simon, I am so proud of you!” I laughed at my own upsurge of emotion. “Oh, Simon! May I touch my thrice-honored grandson?”

  With a wordless cry, he flung himself into my arms and we clung tightly, tightly, before his deep renouncing withdrawal. He looked at me then and slowly dropped his arms from around my neck, separation in every movement. I could see growing, in the topaz tawniness of his eyes, his new set-apartness. It made me realize anew how close the Presence is to us always and how much nearer Simon was than any of us. Also, naked and trembling in my heart was the recollection that never did the People have one to See for them unless there lay ahead portentous things to See.

  Both of us shuttered our eyes and looked away, Simon to veil the eyes that so nearly looked on the Presence, I, lest I be blinded by the Glory reflected in his face.

  “Which reminds me,” I said in a resolutely everyday voice, “I will now listen to explanations as to why those six sandals were left on, over, and among your bed this morning.”

  “Well,” he said with a tremulous grin, “the red ones are too short—” He turned stricken, realizing eyes to me. “I won’t ever be able to tell anyone anything any more unless the Power wills it!” he cried. Then he grinned again. “And the green ones need the latchets renewed—”

  A week later the usual meeting was called and David and I—we were among the Old Ones of our Group—slid into our robes. I felt a pang as I smoothed the shimmering fabric over my hips, pressing pleats in with my thumb and finger to adjust for lost weight. The last time I had worn it was the Festival the year Thann was Called. Since then I hadn’t wanted to attend the routine Group meetings—not without Thann. I hadn’t realized that I was losing weight.

  ’Chell dung to David. “I wish now that I were an Old One too,” she said. “I’ve got a nameless worry in the pit of my stomach heavy enough to anchor me for life. Hurry home, you two!”

  I looked back as we lifted just before the turnoff. I smiled to see the warm lights begin to well up in the windows. Then my smile died. I felt, too, across my heart the shadow that made ’Chell feel it was Lighting Time before the stars had broken through the last of the day.

  The blow—when it came—was almost physical, so much so that I pressed my hands to my chest, my breath coming hard, trying too late to brace against the shock. David’s sustaining hand was on my arm but I felt the tremor in it, too. Around me I felt my incredulity and disbelief shared by the other Old Ones of the Group.

  The Oldest spread his hands as he was deluged by a flood of half-formed questions. “It has been Seen. Already our Home has been altered so far that the failova and flahmen can’t come to blossom. As we accepted the fact that there were no failova and flahmen this year, so we must accept the fact that there will be no more Home for us.”

  In the silence that quivered after his words, I could feel the further stricken sag of heartbeats around me, and suddenly my own heart slowed until I wondered if the Power was stilling it now—now—in the midst of this confused fear and bewilderment.

  “Then we are all Called?” I couldn’t recognize the choked voice that put the question. “How long before the Power summons us?”

  “We are not Called,” said the Oldest. “Only the Home is Called. We—go.”

  “Go!” The thought careened from one to another.

  “Yes,” said the Oldest. “Away from the Home. Out.”

  Life apart from the Home? I slumped. It was too much to be taken in all at once. Then I remembered. Simon! Oh, poor Simon! If he were Seeing clearly already—but of course he was. He was the one who had told the Oldest! No wonder he was terrified! Simon, I said to the Oldest subvocally. Yes, answered the Oldest. Do not communicate to the others. He scarcely can bear the burden now. To have it known would multiply it past his bearing. Keep his secret—completely.

  I came back to the awkward whirlpool of thoughts around me.

  “But,” stammered someone, speaking what everyone was thinking, “can the People live away from the Home? Wouldn’t we die like uprooted plants?”

  “We can live,” said the Oldest. “This we know, as we know that the Home can no longer be our biding place.”

  “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” It was Neil—Timmy’s father.

  “We don’t know.” The Oldest was shamed. “We have forgotten too much since the Peace to be able to state the mechanics of what is happening, but one of us Sees us go and the Home destroyed, so soon that we have no time to go back to the reasons.”

  Since we were all joined in our conference mind, which is partially subvocal, all our protests and arguments and cries were quickly emitted and resolved, leaving us awkwardly trying to plan something of which we had no knowledge of our own.

  “If we are to go,” I said, feeling a small spurt of excitement Inside my shock, “we’ll have to make again. Make a tool. No, that’s not the word. We have tools still. Man does with tools. N
o, it’s a—a machine we’ll have to make. Machines do to man. We haven’t been possessed by machines—”

  “For generations,” said David. “Not since—” He paused to let our family’s stream of history pour through his mind. “Since Eva-lee’s thrice great-grandfather’s time.”

  “Nevertheless,” said the Oldest, “we must make ships.” His tongue was hesitant on the long unused word. “I have been in communication with the other Oldest Ones around the Home. Our Group must make six of them.”

  “How can we?” asked Neil. “We have no plans. We don’t know such things any more. We have forgotten almost all of it. But I do know that to break free from the Home would take a pushing something that all of us together couldn’t supply.”

  “We will have the—the fuel,” said the Oldest. “When the time comes. My Befores knew the fuel. We would not need it if only our motivers had developed their Gift fully, but as they did not—

  “We must each of us search the Before stream of our lives and find the details that we require in this hour of need. By the Presence, the Name, and the Power, let us remember.”

  The evening sped away almost in silence as each mind opened and became receptive to the flow of racial memory that lay within. All of us partook in a general way of that stream that stemmed almost from the dawn of the Home. In particular, each family had some specialized area of the memory in greater degree than the others. From time to time came a sigh or a cry prefacing, “My Befores knew of the metals,” or “Mine of the instruments”—the words were unfamiliar—“the instruments of pressure and temperature.”

  “Mine”—I discovered with a glow—and a sigh—“the final putting together of the shells of ships.”

  “Yes,” nodded David, “and also, from my father’s Befores, the settings of the—the—the settings that guide the ship.”

  “Navigation,” said Neil’s deep voice. “My Befores knew of the making of the navigation machine yours knew how to set.”

  “And all,” I said, “all of this going back to nursery school would have been unnecessary if we hadn’t rested so comfortably so long on the achievements of our Befores!” I felt the indignant withdrawal of some of those about me, but the acquiescence of most of them.