Ingathering

by Zenna Henderson

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “Bendo was our God Bless for a long time when I was little.”

  “Thank you.” He straightened briskly and grinned. “How about a race to the twenty-third despised tree, just to work off a little steam!”

  And the two of us lifted and streaked away, a yard above the careful gravel of the lane, but I got the giggles so badly I that I blundered into the top of the twenty-first tree and had to be extricated gingerly from its limbs. Together we guiltily buried at its foot the precious tiny branch I had broken off in my blundering, and then, with muffled laughter and guilty back-glances, we went our separate ways.

  That night I lay and waited for the pale blue moon of The Home to vault into the sky, and thought about Earth and the Other Home.

  The other Home was first, of course—the beautiful prototype of this Home. But it had weeds! And all the tangled splendor of wooded hillsides and all the soaring upreach of naked peaks and the sweet uncaring, uncountable profusion of life, the same as Earth. But The Home died—blasted out of the heavens by a cosmic Something that shattered it and scattered the People like birds from a falling tree. Part of them found this Home—or the bare bones of it—and started to remake it into The Home. Others found refuge on Earth. We had it rough for a long time because we were separated from each other. Besides, we were Different, with a capital D, and some of us didn’t survive the adjustment period. Slowly, though, we were Gathered In until there were two main Groups—Cougar Canyon and Bendo. Bendo lived in a hell of concealment and fear long after Cougar Canyon had managed to adjust to an Outsider’s world.

  Then that day—even now my breath caught at the wonder of that day when the huge ship from the New Home drifted down out of the skies and came to rest on the flat beyond the schoolhouse!

  And everyone had to choose. Stay or go. My family chose to go. More stayed. But the Oldest, Cougar Canyon’s leader, blind, crippled, dying from what the Crossing had done to him, he went. But you should see him now! You should see him see! And Obla came too. Sometimes I went to her house just to touch her hands. She had none, you know, on Earth. Nor legs nor eyes, and hardly a face. An explosion had stripped her of all of them. But now, because of transgraph and regeneration, she is becoming whole again—except perhaps her heart—but that’s another story.

  Once the wonder of the trip and the excitement of living without concealment, without having to watch every movement so’s not to shock Outsiders, had died a little, I got homesicker and homesicker. At first I fought it as a silly thing, a product of letdown, or idleness. But a dozen new interests, frenzied activities that consumed every waking moment, did nothing to assuage the aching need in me. I always thought homesickness was a childish, transitory thing. Well, most of it, but occasionally there is a person who actually sickens of it and does not recover, short of Return. And I guess I was one of those. It was as though I were breathing with one lung or trying to see with one eye. Sometimes the growing pain became an anguish so physical that I’d crouch in misery, hugging my hurt to me, trying to contain it between my knees and my chest—trying to ease it. Sometimes I could manage a tear or two that relieved a little—such as that day in the lane with Thann.

  “Thann!” I turned from the port. “Isn’t it about time—”

  “One up on you, Debbie-my-dear,” Thann called from the Motive room. “I’m just settling into the old groove. Got to get us slowed down before we scorch our little bottoms and maybe even singe Child Within.”

  “Don’t joke about it!” I said. “Remember, the first time, the atmosphere gave us too warm a welcome to Earth. Ask the Oldest.”

  “The Power be with us,” came Thann’s quick answering thought.

  “And the Name and the Presence,” I echoed, bowing my head as my fingers moved to the Sign and then clasped above Child Within. I moved over to the couch and lay down, feeling the almost imperceptible slowing of our little craft.

  Thann and I started two-ing not long after we met and, at flahmen Gathering time, we Bespoke one another and, just before Festival time, we were married.

  Perhaps all this time I was hoping that starting a home of my own would erase my longing for Earth, and perhaps Thann hoped the same thing. The Home offered him almost all he wanted and he had a job he loved. He felt the pioneering thrill of making a new world and was contented. But my need didn’t evaporate. Instead, it intensified. I talked it over with the Sorter for our Group (a Sorter cares for our emotional and mental problems) because I was beginning to hate—oh, not hate! That’s such a poisonous thing to have festering in your mind. But my perspective was getting so twisted that I was making both myself and Thann unhappy. She Sorted me deftly and thoroughly—and I went home to Thann and he started training to develop his latent Motive ability. We both knew we could well lose our lives trying to return to Earth, but we had to try. Anyway, I had to try, especially after I found out about Child Within. I told Thann and his face lighted up as I knew it would, but—“This ought to make a bond between you and The Home,” he said. “Now you’ll find unsuspected virtues in this land you’ve been spurning.”

  I felt my heart grow cold. “Oh, no, Thann!” I said. “Now more than ever we must go. Our child can’t be born here. He must be of Earth. And I want to be able to enjoy this Child Within—”

  “This is quite a Child Without,” said Thann, tempering the annoyance in his voice by touching my cheek softly, “crying for a lollipop, Earth flavored. Ah, well!” He gathered me into his arms. “Hippity-hop to the candy shop!”

  A high thin whistle signaled the first brush of Earth’s atmosphere against our craft—as though Earth were reaching up to scrape tenuous incandescent fingers against our underside. I cleared my mind and concentrated on the effort ahead. I’m no Motiver, but Thann might need my strength before we landed.

  Before we landed! Setting down on the flat again, under Old Baldy! And seeing them all again! Valancy and Karen and the Francher Kid. Oh, the song the Kid would be singing would be nothing to the song my heart would be singing! Home! Child Within! Home again! I pressed my hands against the swell of Child Within. Pay attention, I admonished. Be ready for your first consciousness of Earth. “I won’t look,” I told myself “Until we touch down on the flat. I’ll keep my eyes shut!” And I did.

  So when the first splashing crash came, I couldn’t believe it. My eyes opened to the sudden inrush of water and I was gasping and groping in complete bewilderment trying to find air. “Thann! Thann!” I was paddling awkwardly, trying to keep my head above water. What had happened? How could we have so missed the Canyon—even as inexperienced a Motiver as Thann was? Water? Water to drown in, anywhere near the Canyon?

  There was a gulp and the last bubble of air belched out of our turning craft. I was belched out through a jagged hole along with the air.

  Thann! Thann! I abandoned vocal calling and spread my cry dear across the band of subspeech. No reply—no reply! I bobbed on the surface of the water, gasping. Oh, Child, stay Within. Be Careful Be Careful! It isn’t time yet. It isn’t time!

  I shook my dripping hair out of my eyes and felt a nudge against my knees. Down I went into darkness, groping, groping—and found him! Inert, unresponsive, a dead weight in my arms. The breathless agony of struggle ended in the slippery mud of a rocky shore. I dragged him up far enough that his head was out of the water, listened breathlessly for a heartbeat, then, mouth to mouth, I breathed life back into him and lay gasping beside him in the mud, one hand feeling the struggle as his lungs labored to get back into rhythm. The other hand was soothing Child Within. Not now, not now! Wait—wait!

  When my own breathing steadied, I tore strips off my tattered travel suit and bound up his head, staunching the blood that persistently threaded down from the gash above his left ear. Endlessly, endlessly, I lay there listening to his heart—to my heart—too weak to move him, too weak to move myself. Then the rhythm of his breathing changed and I felt his uncertain thoughts, questioning, asking. My thoughts answered his unt
il he knew all I knew about what had happened. He laughed a ghost of a laugh.

  “Is this untidy enough for you?” And I broke down and cried.

  We lay there in mud and misery, gathering our strength. I started once to a slithering splash across the water from us and felt a lapping of water over my feet. I pulled myself up on one elbow and peered across at the barren hillside. A huge chunk of it had broken off and slithered down into the water. The scar was raw and ragged in the late evening sunshine.

  “Where did it come from?” I asked, wonderingly. “All this water! And there is Baldy, with his feet all awash. What happened?”

  “The rain is raining,” said Thann, his voice choked with laughter, his head rolling on the sharp shale of the bank. “The rain is raining—and don’t go near the water!” His nonsense ended with a small moan that tore my heart.

  “Thann! Thann! Let’s get out of this mess. Come on. Can you lift? Help me—”

  He lifted his head and let it fall back with a thunk against the rocks. His utter stillness panicked me. I sobbed as I reached into my memory for the inanimate lift. It seemed a lifetime before I finally got him up out of the mud and hovered him hand high above the bank. Cautiously I pushed him along, carefully guiding him between the bushes and trees until I found a flat place that crunched with fallen oak leaves. I “platted” him softly to the ground and for a long time I lay there by him, my hand on his sleeve, not even able to think coherently about what had happened.

  The sun was gone when I shivered and roused myself. I was cold and Thann was shaken at intervals by an icy shuddering. I scrambled around in the fading light and gathered wood together and laid a fire. I knelt by the neat stack and gathered myself together for the necessary concentration. Finally, after sweat had gathered on my forehead and trickled into my eyes, I managed to produce a tiny spark that sputtered and hesitated and then took a shining bite out of a dry leaf. I rubbed my hands above the tiny flame and waited for it to grow. Then I lifted Thann’s head to my lap and started the warmth circulating about us.

  When our shivering stopped, I suddenly caught my breath and grimaced wryly. How quickly we forget! I was getting as bad as an Outsider! And I clicked my personal shield on, extending it to include Thann. In the ensuing warmth, I looked down at Thann, touching his mud-stained cheek softly, letting my love flow to him like a river of strength. I heard his breathing change and he stirred under my hands.

  “Are we Home?” he asked.

  “We’re on Earth,” I said.

  “We left Earth years ago,” he chided. “Why do I hurt so much?”

  “We came back.” I kept my voice steady with an effort. “Because of me—and Child Within.”

  “Child Within—” His voice strengthened. “Hippity-hop to the candy shop,” he remembered. “What happened?”

  “The Canyon isn’t here any more,” I said, raising his shoulders carefully into my arms. “We crashed into water. Everything’s gone. We lost everything.” My heart squeezed for the tiny gowns Child Within would never wear.

  “Where are our People?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

  “When you find them, you’ll be all right,” he said drowsily. “We’ll be all right,” I said sharply, my arms tightening around him.

  “In the morning, we’ll find them and Bethie will find out what’s wrong with you and we’ll mend you.”

  He sat up slowly, haggard and dirty in the upflare of firelight, his hand going to his bandaged head. “I’m broken,” he said. “A lot of places. Bones have gone where bones should never go. I will be Called.”

  “Don’t say it!” I gathered him desperately into my arms. “Don’t say it, Thann! We’ll find the People!” He crumpled down against me, his cheek pressed to the curve of Child Within.

  I screamed then, partly because my heart was being torn shred by shred into an aching mass—partly because my neglected little fire was happily crackling away from me, munching the dry leaves, sampling the brush, roaring softly into the lower branches of the scrub oak. I had set the hillside afire! And the old terror was upon me, the remembered terror of a manzanita slope blazing on Baldy those many forgotten years ago.

  I cradled Thann to me. So far the fire was moving away from us, but soon, soon—

  “No! No!” I cried. “Let’s go home. Thann! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Let’s go home! I didn’t mean to bring you to death! I hate this world! I hate it! Thann, Thann!”

  I’ve tried to forget it. It comes back sometimes. Sometimes again I’m so shaken that I can’t even protect myself any more and I’m gulping smoke and screaming over Thann. Other times I hear again the rough, disgusted words, “Gol-dinged tenderfoots! Setting fire to the whole gol-dinged mountain. There’s a law!”

  Those were the first words I ever heard from Seth. My first sight of him was of a looming giant, twisted by flaring flames and drifting smoke and my own blurring tears.

  It was another day before I thought again. I woke to find myself on a camp cot, a rough khaki blanket itching my chin. My bare arms were clean but scratched. Child Within was rounding the blanket smoothly. I closed my eyes and lay lapped in peace for a moment. Then my eyes flew open and I called, “Thann! Thann!” and struggled with the blanket.

  “Take it easy! Take it easy!” Strong hands pushed me back against the thin musty pillow. “You’re stark, jay-nekkid under that blanket. You can’t go tearing around that way.” And those were the first words I heard from Glory.

  She brought me a faded, crumpled cotton robe and helped me into it. “Them outlandish duds you had on’ll take a fair-sized swatch of fixing ‘fore they’re fit t’ wear.” Her hands were clumsy but careful. She chuckled. “Not sure there’s room for both of yens in this here wrapper.”

  I knelt by the cot in the other room. There were only three rooms in the house. Thann lay, thin and unmoving as paper, under the lumpy comforter.

  “He wants awful bad to go home.” Glory’s voice tried to moderate to a sickroom tone. “He won’t make it,” she said bluntly.

  “Yes, he will. Yes, he will! All we have to do is find The People—”

  “Which people?” asked Glory.

  “The People!” I cried. “The People who live in the Canyon.”

  “The Canyon? You mean Cougar Canyon? Been no people there for three-four years. Ever since the dam got finished and the lake started rising.”

  “Where—where did they go?” I whimpered, my hands tightening on the edge of the cot.

  “Dunno.” Glory snapped a match head with her thumbnail and lighted a makin’s cigarette.

  “But if we don’t find them, Thann will die!”

  “He will anyway less’n them folks is magic,” said Glory.

  “They are!” I cried. “They’re magic!”

  “Oh?” said Glory, squinting her eyes against the eddy of smoke. “Oh?”

  Thann’s head moved and his eyes opened. I bent my head to catch any whisper from him, but his voice came loud and clear.

  “All we have to do is fix the craft and we can go back Home.”

  “Yes, Thann.” I hid my eyes against my crossed wrists on the cot. “We’ll leave right away. Child Within will wait till we get Home.” I felt Child Within move to the sound of my words.

  “He shouldn’t oughta talk,” said Glory. “He’s all smashed inside. He’ll be bleeding again in a minute.”

  “Shut up!” I spun on my knees and flared at her. “You don’t know anything about it! You’re nothing but a stupid Outsider. He won’t die! He won’t!”

  Glory dragged on her cigarette. “I hollered some, too, when my son Davy got caught in a cave-in. He was smashed. He died.” She flicked ashes onto the bare plank floor. “God calls them. They go—”

  “I’m Called!” Thann caught the familiar word. “I’m Called! What will you do, Debbie-my-dear? What about Child—” A sudden bright froth touched the corner of his mouth and he clutched my wrist. “Home is so far away,” he sigh
ed. “Why did we have to leave? Why did we leave?”

  “Thann, Thann!” I buried my face against his quiet side. The pain in my chest got worse and worse and I wished someone would stop that awful babbling and screaming. How could I say good-by to my whole life with that ghastly noise going on? Then my fingers were pried open and I lost the touch of Thann. The black noisy chaos took me completely.

  “He’s dead.” I slumped in the creaky rocker. Where was I? How long had I been here? My words came so easily, so accustomedly, they must be a repetition of a repetition. “He’s dead and I hate you. I hate Seth. I hate Earth. You’re all Outsiders. I hate Child Within. I hate myself.”

  “There,” said Glory as she snipped a thread with her teeth and stuck the needle in the front of her plaid shirt. My words had no impact on her, though they almost shocked me as I listened to them. Why didn’t she notice what I said? Too familiar? “There’s at least one nightgown for Child Within.” She grinned. “When I was your age, folks woulda died of shock to think of calling a baby unborn a name like that. I thought maybe these sugar sacks might come in handy sometime. Didn’t know it’d be for baby clothes.”

  “I hate you,” I said, hurdling past any lingering shock. “No lady wears Levi’s and plaid shirts with buttons that don’t match. Nor cuts her hair like a man and lets her face go all wrinkledy. Oh, well, what does it matter? You’re only a stupid Outsider. You’re not of The People, that’s for sure. You’re not on our level.”

  “For that, thanks be to the Lord.” Glory smoothed the clumsy little gown across her knee. “I was taught people are people, no matter their clothes or hair. I don’t know nothing about your folks or what level they’re on, but I’m glad my arthritis won’t let me stoop as low as—” She shrugged and laid the gown aside. She reached over to the battered dresser and retrieved something she held out to me. “Speaking of looks, take a squint at what Child Inside’s got to put up with.”

  I slapped the mirror out of her hands—and the mad glimpse of rumpled hair, swollen eyes, raddled face, and a particularly horrible half sneer on lax lips—slapped it out of her hands, stopped its flight in mid-air, spun it up to the sagging plasterboard ceiling, swooped it out with a crash through one of the few remaining whole windowpanes, and let it smash against a pine tree outside the house.