An Acceptable Time

by Madeleine L'engle

  Tav stood. "Karralys, you fought well."

  "I did not want to fight," Karralys said. "What I wanted to do was stop the fighting."

  "They would have taken Anaral and Poll-ee, and the Heron, too."

  "And so I fought. Yes, we fought well. But they were more than we, many more, and if the snake had not come--"

  "Bless Louise the Larger," the bishop said.

  Karralys's blue eyes brightened. "Is that not enough for you, Tav? That Polly was sent to us by the goddess for this?"

  "I was so certain," Tav murmured. "But perhaps he--" He looked at Zachary.

  "Hey!" Zachary's voice was urgent. "Slow down! I'm not quick with languages like Polly. What are they talking about?"

  "Well--" Polly prevaricated. "We were outnumbered by the raiders--"

  "We? Are you part of this 'we'?"

  She looked around the circle of stone chairs protected by the great standing stones. "Yes." She was one with Anaral and Karralys and Tav and Cub and the others. And so was the bishop. He had proven that.

  Tav looked at her hopefully, and the paleness of his eyes was not hard or metallic, like a sky whitened and glaring from too much sun, but tender and cool, like the lake. "You were right when you told me the snake was your friend. Perhaps I have been wrong about the Mother's needs."

  "You are wrong, indeed." Karralys stood. "Bishop Heron. Polly, Zak. You must go. Now, while there is still time."

  The bishop looked around. "I don't think we can."

  "Why not?" Cub asked.

  "I may be wrong, but I do not think the time gate is open."

  Karralys looked startled. He went to the central flat altar stone and climbed up on it, then lay down on his back, arms outstretched, eyes closed. Motionless. Time seemed to hang suspended. No one spoke. The People of the Wind seemed to have moved into another dimension where it was possible for them to wait infinitely. The bishop sighed. Zachary restlessly shifted position. Polly tried not to move, but began to be afraid that her legs would cramp.

  At last Karralys sat up, slowly shaking his head. "The threshold is closed."

  Chapter Nine

  It was getting dark. The sun slid down behind the standing stones. A northwest wind blew cuttingly.

  "Perhaps we should go someplace warm and make our plans?" the bishop suggested.

  Karralys raised a hand for attention. "There is a fire and a feast being prepared. We need to celebrate our victory--and then be sure that we have people keeping watch all through the night."

  "And collect all our weapons." Tav moved away from his chair. "The feast, and our thanks to Poll-ee."

  "It was only Louise the Larger," Polly insisted. "It had nothing to do with me."

  "We will talk later about the time gate." Karralys started toward the lake and the tents.

  Zachary shouted after him, "Wait!"

  Karralys paused.

  "I don't understand your time gates," Zachary said, "or how I could possibly be here, but I saw that kid in the wolf skin--"

  "Cub. Our young Grey Wolf."

  "I saw him calm the old man's heart."

  "The bishop," Polly amended.

  "Please. I don't want him to forget me."

  Karralys looked at Zachary compassionately. "He will not forget you. Now. Come with me."

  At the lake a great bonfire was blazing, so bright it almost dimmed the stars, which were coming out as night deepened. The wounded men and women were attended by other members of the tribe so that they would not be left out of the celebration, and the two raiders were there, too. The man with the concussion had regained consciousness, and Eagle Woman had been placed next to him. Despite her arm and shoulder held in the sling, and the fact that her lips were white with pain, she was watching him with care.

  "The dark of his eyes is back to normal," she said. "He will be all right."

  Polly, the bishop, and Zachary were given seats on skins piled near the star-watching rock. Near them was the young raider with the broken femur, and Anaral sat by him, helping him to eat and drink. Behind them, the oaks rose darkly and majestically, their great branches spreading across the sky, with stars twinkling through the branches as an occasional bronze leaf drifted down. Across the lake, the mountains loomed darkly, their snow-covered peaks just beginning to gleam as the moon prepared to rise. The shore where the People of the Wind had their tents was invisible in the distance.

  Karralys stood at the water's edge and raised his arms to the sky. "Bless the sky that holds the light and life of the sun and the promise of rain," he chanted, and one by one the other council members joined him, echoing his song.

  "Bless the moon with her calm and her dreams. Bless the waters of the lake, and the earth that is strong under our feet. Bless those who have come to us from a far-off time. Bless the one who summoned the snake, and bless the snake who came to our aid. Bless the east where the sun rises and the west where it goes to rest. Bless the north from where the snows come, and the south that brings the spring. Bless the wind who gives us our name. O Blesser of all blessings, we thank you."

  He turned from the lake and smiled at the people gathered around skins spread out on the ground. A deer was being roasted on a spit, and a group of young warriors danced around it, chanting.

  "What're they singing about?" Zachary asked Polly.

  "I think they're thanking it for giving them--us--its life."

  "It didn't have much choice," Zachary pointed out.

  Perhaps it didn't, but Polly felt a graciousness in the dance and in the singing.

  "When's that kid going to feel my heart?"

  "Soon," Polly assured him. "At the right time, Zachary, please trust him."

  Bowls of vegetables were spread out, with fragrant breads, wooden and clay dishes of butter and cheese. Half a dozen girls and boys, long of limb and slim of body, nearing puberty, began passing food around. Two young warriors carved the deer, and an old woman, wearing a crown of feathers with an owl's head, poured some kind of pale liquid into small wooden bowls; she had been one of those in the stone circle.

  Anaral brought bowls to Polly, Zachary, and Bishop Colubra. As he accepted his, Zachary tentatively touched Anaral's fingers, looking at her with eyes which seemed unusually dark in his pale face. Anaral withdrew her hand and returned to the young raider, holding his head so that he could drink. Polly noticed that on the stone altar there was a great bouquet of autumn flowers, set amidst squash, zucchini, eggplant, all the autumn colors arranged so that each seemed to brighten the others.

  "It's crazy," Zachary muttered to Polly. "Here we're sitting and stuffing our faces as though we'd won some kind of great battle, and those goons who rowed off across the lake could come back any minute and slaughter us all."

  The bishop replied, "I think Karralys is aware of their intentions, but he also knows that the human creature needs special celebrations. The rites themselves cannot give life. Indeed, they can be hollow and meaningless. The heart of the people is what gives them life or death."

  "Is this all in honor of some god?" Zachary asked.

  "It is a form of thanks to the Presence."

  "What presence?"

  The bishop spoke softly. "The Maker of the Universe."

  "Oh, zug," Zachary grunted.

  "Not necessarily." The bishop smiled slightly. "Sacred rites become zug, as you so graphically put it, only when they become ends in themselves, or divisive, or self-aggrandizing."

  Polly saw a young man with a spear standing at the head of the star-watching rock, looking across the lake. A woman with a bow and arrow stood at the path which led to the standing stones. There were probably others on guard where they were not visible to her. Karralys was not leaving his people unprotected. He moved about, from group to group, greeting, praising, and wherever he went, Og went with him.

  After the young people had cleared the food away, there was singing and dancing, and the moon rose high and clear, casting a path of light across the lake.

  Karralys an
d Anaral led the dancing, at first moving in a stately and gracious circle, then dancing more and more swiftly.

  "You know, that girl is beautiful," Zachary remarked. "Things haven't improved in three thousand years. By the way, I think that Neanderthal is interested in you."

  "Who?" Polly asked blankly.

  "That tow-headed guy with bow legs and monkey arms."

  He meant Tav. Perhaps Tav's legs were not quite straight. Perhaps his strong arms were long. But he was no Neanderthal. Polly prickled with indignation but held her tongue. She was uncomfortable both with Zachary's obvious fascination with Anaral and with his jealousy of Tav's interest in her. She kept her voice quiet. "I don't think it's a very good idea for either of us to get involved with someone who's been dead for three thousand years."

  "They're not dead tonight," Zachary said, "and neither are we. And if I can lengthen my life expectancy by staying here, then I'll stay. Anyhow, didn't the bishop say the time gate was closed? We're stuck here, so we might as well make the best of it."

  Cub approached them, spoke to Zachary. "I would feel your heart. There is, I think, trouble there."

  Zachary turned toward Polly. She explained. Zachary looked at her with anxious eyes. "Please, tell him to go ahead."

  Cub slid his hand under Zachary's shirt, closed his eyes, breathed slowly, slowly.

  "Well?" Zachary asked impatiently.

  Cub raised his hand for silence. He kept his hand on Zachary's chest for a long time, feeling, listening. Then he raised his eyes to Polly's. "There is bad damage there. The Ancient Wolf might have been able to repair the hurt. I will do what I can, but it will not be enough."

  "But the bishop's heart--"

  "Bishop's heart is only old, and he is not used to being in the middle of a battle. But this--" Slowly he removed his hand from Zachary's chest. "This demands skills I do not yet have. But perhaps we should not take hope away from him."

  "What's he saying?" Zachary demanded. "I wish he'd slow down."

  Polly replied carefully, "He says that your heart has damage, as you know, and that it will not be easy to fix."

  "Can he fix it?"

  "He will do his best."

  Zachary moaned. Put his face in his hands. When he looked at Polly, his eyes were wet. "I want him to be able to fix--"

  "He will do his best." Polly tried to sound reassuring, but she was getting impatient.

  Cub said, "Each day I will work on the strangeness I feel within his heart. The rhythms are playing against each other. There is no harmony."

  "What?" Zachary demanded.

  "He will work with you every day," Polly said. "He really is a healer, Zachary. He will do everything he can."

  Cub frowned with worry. "Perhaps if Karralys--" He looked at his hands, flexing the fingers. "Now I must go see to the others who have been hurt."

  "What do you think?" There was renewed eagerness in Zachary's voice. "I'd be glad to stay in this place even with no showers or TV or sports cars or all the stuff I thought I was hooked on. I guess I'm more hooked on life."

  "He's a healer," Polly repeated.

  The drums were increasing their rhythms, and the dancers followed the beat. Tav came and took Polly's hands and drew her into the circle of dancers, and the touch of his strong hands did something to her that Zachary's did not, and she did not understand her reaction to this strange young man who thought she had been sent by the goddess as a sacrifice to the Mother.

  Dr. Louise's words about sacrifice flicked across her mind and were wiped away as Tav took her hands and swept her into the circle of the dance.

  When she was panting and almost out of breath, he took her to the edge of the lake, his arm tightly about her. "I cannot let you go."

  Still caught up in the exhilaration of the dance, she asked, "What?"

  "It is very strange, Poll-ee. The Mother is usually clear in her demands. But now I am confused. The drought across the lake is bad. If they do not get rain, not just a little rain, but much rain for those who have taken our cattle--if there is no rain, they will come again, and they are many, and we are few, and we will not be able to defend ourselves."

  "But you were marvelous," Polly exclaimed. "You dashed in single-handed and you fought like--" If she likened him to one of the heroes of King Arthur's court, it would have no meaning for him. So she just repeated, "You were marvelous. Brave."

  He shrugged. "I am a warrior. At least I was, at home. There had to be warriors. Here we have been so away from other tribes that only the drought has brought back an understanding that land must be protected. Land, and those we love." He reached out his hand and gently touched hers, then withdrew.

  Polly sighed. "I wish people could live together in peace. There's so much land here. Why do they want yours?"

  "Our land is green and beautiful. We have had more rain than across the lake. We use the water of our river to--" As he tried to explain, she understood that the People of the Wind used some form of irrigation which the People Across the Lake did not. Even so, there had not been enough rainfall. If the winter snows did not come, everybody would suffer. "When you came, it seemed clear to me that the goddess had sent you. But now there is not only the old Heron who came before you but this strange young man who is as white of skin as I am white of hair."

  "Do you pray for rain?" Polly asked.

  Tav laughed. "What else have we been dancing and singing about?"

  Of course, she realized. All ritual for the People of the Wind was religious.

  "To dance and sing is not enough," Tav continued. "We must give."

  "Isn't your love enough?" The question sounded sentimental as she asked it, but as she looked at the moon sparkling off the lake, she understood dimly that the love she was thinking about was not sentimental at all but firm and hard as the star-watching rock.

  Tav shook his head. His voice dropped so low that she could scarcely hear. "I do not know. I do not know anymore what is required." As his words fell into silence, the soft wind gently stirred the moonlit waters of the lake. He spoke again. "There are many women of the People of the Wind who are beautiful, who would like to please me, to be mine. But none has brought me that gift without which everything else is flat. That gift! Now I look at you and the mountains are higher, and the snow whiter on the peaks, the lake bluer and deeper, the stars more brilliant than I have ever seen them before."

  Polly tried to put what she wanted to say into Ogam. Tav reached out his hand and smoothed out her frown. "Tav, it is very strange. I don't understand anything that is happening. When you touch me, I feel--"

  "As I feel?"

  "I don't know. What I feel has nothing to do with--" She touched her forehead, trying to explain that her reaction had nothing to do with reason. "But"--she looked at his eyes, which were silver in the moonlight--"you still think the Mother wants blood, my blood?"

  Tav moaned. "Oh, my Poll-ee, I do not know."

  "I don't think the Mother--" She stopped, unable to think of a word for "demand" or "coerce."--Nearer our time, she thought,--one name for the goddess was Sophia, Wisdom. A divine mother who looks out for creation with intelligence and purpose.

  She shook her head, realizing that even if she could put what she was thinking into Ogam, it was not within Tav's frame of reference.

  Tav took both her hands. "We must go back to the others, or they will wonder--"

  She had hardly realized that the singing had changed. No longer were the drums sounding the beat of a dance. The song was similar to the one Polly had heard that first morning when she crossed the threshold to the People of the Wind, but now it was gentler, quieter, almost a lullaby.

  "We sing good night." His arm about her, Tav returned her to where Bishop Colubra and Zachary were sitting. Anaral was behind them, with the young raider. The singing drifted off as, one by one or in pairs, people went to their tents.

  Karralys came to the bishop, his long white robe pure as snow in the moonlight, the topaz in his torque gleaming. "It will
be my honor if you will share my tent. And, Zak--"

  "Zachary."

  "And you, too, Zachary."

  Anaral left her tending of the raider and took Polly's hand. "And you will come with me."

  Anaral's tent was a lean-to of young saplings covered with cured skins. It backed against a thick green wall of fir and pine and smelled fresh and fragrant. There were two pallets of ferns covered with soft skins. Anaral handed Polly a rolled-up blanket of delicate fur. Polly took off her red anorak and sat down on one of the fern beds.

  Anaral squatted beside her. "Tav is, well, Poll-ee, you must know he is drawn to you."

  Polly wrapped the fur blanket around her. "And I to him, and I don't understand how I could be."

  Anaral smiled. "Such things are not understood. They happen. Later, if two people are to be together for always, then understanding comes."

  "Is there going to be a later?" Polly asked. "I know the threshold is not open now, but I--I do need to get home to my own time. Before"--she could hardly bring herself to articulate it--"before I have to be sacrificed to the Mother."

  "That will not happen," Anaral protested. "There will be rain."

  "Across the lake?"

  "Across the lake."

  Polly said, "If it hadn't been for Tav this afternoon when the raiders came--"

  "And the others."

  "But Tav leapt in and fought when he didn't know if the others were coming. And it was, oh, in a strange way it was exciting."

  "You were a warrior, too," Anaral said.

  "I just wasn't going to let those strange men carry you off."

  Anaral sighed. "And I am grateful. To Tav. To you. And Karralys."

  "He tried to stop the fighting," Polly said. "But when he couldn't, he fought as well as Tav did."

  "We People of theWind"--Anaral sighed again--"we have always been what the bishop calls paci--paci--"

  "Pacifists," Polly supplied.

  Anaral nodded. "It is the drought that has changed things. If it would only rain! The Old Grey Wolf told us that there was drought many years ago and that we--my people--came here to this fertile place because our own grounds were parched, the grasses brown instead of green, the cattle with their bones showing, the corn not even making its tassels. We have been in this place since the Old Wolf was a baby. We cannot just leave and let the People Across the Lake take our home. Where would we go? Beyond the forest there are now other tribes. If only the goddess would send rain!"