by Andy Giesler
Gabriel started walking back to Greencreek, and I started walking with him, but he stopped. “Root,” he said, “it might be best if I meet Weaver Millie without you.”
“That makes no more sense than a ram’s teats,” I said. “I’ve done some of the things she needs to hear. She ought to hear them direct.”
He paused a moment. “Root,” he said, “I don’t know you, really. I can see you’re something like Aura Lee, but you’re your own person. When she and I needed to do something…gently, persuading someone or learning what they might not want to share, Aura Lee stayed back. She was never one to lead another softly to her way of seeing. She was so quick to see the truth of things, yet so annoyed when others didn’t, and so stubborn that she’d push and push, no matter how it twisted at those who were listening and turned them against her. I’ve never met someone who was able to make friendly folks unfriendly so quickly. But maybe you’re different. You’re your own person. Maybe you should come with me.”
“Gabriel,” I said, “it might be best if you meet her without me.”
He went to Greencreek for an early morning chat while I did what was needed with Michael’s body. Which was to put it under the dirt. We meant no disrespect by that. We needed no fire, since Gabriel had made real sure Shepherd Michael’s body wouldn’t get back up again. Mindful of the little ones, I’ll not say more about what he did. Also, we wanted no fire, since it would make a smoke sign to follow. Gabriel figured it might be harder to speak good sense to Millie of Greencreek if their watchers caught me burning a shepherd’s body.
So I put him under the dirt.
It was mid-morning before Gabriel came back out to find me. “Did she believe you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I hope so. As a rule, the People don’t like change, and this change is about as big as one can be. She was upset. But weavers are more likely to see the truth of things, and she’s a steady weaver. I hope she heard me.”
We had some lunch, then we started for Overlook. We could move no quicker than Gabriel, which was no quicker than most folks, and we stayed well off anything like a road, so we didn’t reach Overlook ’til the end of the third day. I figured he’d march right up to the gate, but when we were a short walk away, Gabriel led us off to the side, skirting Overlook by a good throw. Then we watched. Because, he said, you never know when a shepherd might be about. We’d wait for a day and see.
We took turns watching and napping, sharing meals between. My sight was too poor at that distance to make things out clear, so Gabriel told me to wake him if anything came up the road to Overlook or came across the fields faster than a person ought to move. On my early morning watch I saw enough folks leave the gates, drovers and farmers and woodsmen I supposed, but I saw nothing go in.
While we ate a cold, dry breakfast, I asked, “Gabriel, why did you let folks die in the Pit for no needful reason?”
When he finished chewing his biscuit, he said, “The Weaver’s Burden.”
“A shepherd might watch the flock, but only a weaver may cull it.”
“Weavers believe many things that came down from Grandmother Root, and most of them are not one bit true. But that one, that rule came right from her. I was with her the first time she said it. I offered to help her with the Pit, thinking she wasn’t up to it. I might as well have offered to serve her daughters up as stew. She answered me with that rule, and she passed it to others. She welcomed our help, but I don’t think she ever really trusted me or the shepherds.”
“She was a wise woman.”
“One of the wisest I’ve known. And she passed along good wisdom for the Pit to her daughters. She knew the signs. Only the shepherds had more dealings with chimeras than she did. Even the Alters followed her rules, despite the bad feelings between them.
“But over so many years, wisdom shifts. Rules change. Folks die in the Pit who have no need to. It distressed me. It sickened Aura Lee. But whenever we tried to guide weavers back to Grandmother Root’s path, they saw it as dangerous meddling that went against the Weaver’s Burden. This was not our business. This was Grandmother Root’s will. So when folks ran off to escape the Pit, sometimes that worried us, but usually we were just relieved.”
I slept while Gabriel took the watch after breakfast. When I stirred awake, he called me over. Twice while I rested, he said, both watchers on the wall had turned their backs to the road for a moment and spoken to somebody inside Overlook, before turning back out to watch again. Which was maybe nothing to fret over.
Or it was maybe something.
Since I couldn’t see clear enough to make such things out, Gabriel stayed up the next watch with me. And you know what? Twice during their watch, the next set of watchers did just the same thing. Which put us to wondering.
Maybe Weaver Millie of Greencreek didn’t believe Gabriel after all.
Maybe she’d sent runners to find shepherds.
Maybe they’d found some.
And if they did, as slow as we were traveling? Why, it would have been no trouble at all for them to reach Overlook, and maybe Nyehoff, too, ahead of us. Because, fools that we were, we went direct to the nearest village, riding on the hope that things had gone well in Greencreek.
And maybe those shepherds were waiting for us, wandering up to the wall now and again to ask the watchers for their report.
Or maybe not.
But as night drew down, and Gabriel sat up through his third watch, he saw the same thing happen once more. We decided that even if we were foolish enough to go straight to the nearest village after Greencreek, we weren’t so foolish as to go into it.
Which left us with something of a knot in our desperate and unlikely plan.
We used the darkness to get ourselves some ways from Overlook, then we bedded down in the cool and the damp for an uncomfortable night. As we broke our fast the next morning, we spoke of all the things we might try, and all the reasons they were sure to fail. After a gloomy while, Gabriel said, “However we go at it, there’s a problem we can’t get around. The truth goes against what they’ve been taught. Much of what they’ve been taught is wrong, whether we shepherds hid the truth, or whether the People forgot it. But they see even the false things as wisdom from Grandmother Root. So here comes a shepherd, meddling in weavers’ affairs just as Grandmother Root warned. And what’s worse, I’d be trying to lead them against what they believe Grandmother Root said.”
“And we won’t win the People without their weavers.”
“We won’t.”
“I could pretend to be Grandmother Root and scare the truth into them.” It was just a joke. It was for true.
Yet to my surprise, Gabriel said, “Hm,” like I’d just somehow had a good idea.
“Gabriel, I am not pretending to be Grandmother Root.” I said. “But you’re welcome to.” That was a joke, too. He didn’t seem to notice.
“No,” he said. “Not what I’m thinking. Ruth kept a journal.”
“You keep using words I don’t know. Please stop it.”
“A journal is when you write down words to collect your thoughts on paper. It’s as though she were talking to herself, but saving her thoughts to look at later. Her daughters gave it to me when she died, to keep safe. I read it a few times, and I copied it onto strong paper, then I sealed it tight away. It might even still be in one piece.”
“Somehow you’ve made me understand ‘journal,’ yet I still have no idea what you mean.”
“It might not work,” he said. “Probably wouldn’t. I could read it in the old speech and speak it for them in the new. They might suspect me of making it up…but it doesn’t show me at all kindly, and she had a voice that was her own. It’s been so long, but I remember feeling her voice as she became more honest with herself through the years after the Reckoning. If I felt it, weavers might, too. Probably not. But I wonder.” And he sat a bit and wondered.
No matter how important Grandmother Root is to us, I couldn’t imagine how we might find hel
p from the written-down words of a woman who’d long since gone to dust. But we should be grateful, you and me and all of us, that Gabriel thought so. Otherwise, we’d not have her words. The same words I’ve been reading you these past two days. To hear Grandmother Root speak to herself, before the Reckoning and after it? Gracious. That’s a wondrous thing for true. I’m pleased that you in Humblewash have kept your copy of her journal so sound.
But back then, setting with Gabriel, I’d not heard her words yet, so I couldn’t at all see the point of it. “Gabriel,” I said after a bit, “let’s imagine for a moment that your idea has more sense than a cooper’s whiskers. Which it does not. Where might we find this thing that will in no way help us? Because you said there was one place in all the World That Is we must not go, and I have an awful feeling you’re going to say it’s there.”
“It’s there. In Haven.”
“In the Somber.”
“How do you know where Haven is?” he asked.
“From a terrible person who was a good guesser. But how do you plan to walk into the shepherds’ den and walk back out again?”
“For much of the year, it’s empty. There aren’t enough of us left that we can afford to waste anybody waiting at home. Four times a year most of us would gather, leaving one in Market, but that won’t happen soon. If we’re unlucky, a shepherd will be waiting for us.”
“What if we’re real unlucky? Because somehow, that seems our habit.”
“Two,” he said. “Maybe three. But probably no more than one. It would be dangerous, but I see no other choice. And if it makes you feel better, you’ll get your wish. My naughts will wake when we get there, for whatever little help I can be, because Haven is full of ancient tools. Every tool that might be of use, we’ve brought there so the People wouldn’t find them. Some that we truly need, some that just remind us of the past. More than enough to wake my Nothing a hundred times over.”
“Well, thank you, Gabriel,” I mumbled. “It’s a great comfort to know you’ll be a shepherd when we die together, as we most surely will.” I was about to mumble more things that was even less kind…
…when just then, it came over me. Like somebody shaking me awake. I knew it all in one wondrous rush, and it made me laugh to know it.
I knew just what was needed. I knew just what we must do.
5
The Somber
As I lowered Gabriel from Underhivvel’s wall and dropped into the open fields with him, I was pleased at how our secret meeting with their weaver had gone, and I was pleased at how I’d solved our problem.
How might two folks visit Haven without meeting shepherds? If the shepherds were someplace else, of course. Someplace like Holyhock, as far from Haven as could be.
Why might the shepherds go to Holyhock? If something they wanted was there, of course. Something like me and Gabriel.
And why might they think we were there? If somebody told them so, of course. Somebody like Weaver Gretta of Underhivvel.
When I explained it to Gabriel, he thought it a tolerably good plan. ’Specially when I told him Gretta of Underhivvel was closer to my ma than any weaver, and was like an auntie to me in my early years. That we could trust her with this.
I insisted we tell her the truth, lest she suss out our lie. So we told her. Not all of it, but all she needed to hear, and all of it true. That Gabriel had to visit Haven. That we needed the other shepherds to think we were in Holyhock. That we needed her to pass the word. That there was real good reasons for it, and we’d share the reasons with her after.
As we walked from Underhivvel, Gabriel asked, “Will she do what we asked? She seemed uncomfortable.”
“She was uncomfortable, but she’ll pass the word,” I said, hoping I was right.
“It’s hard to know when they’ll hear it,” he said, “but probably soon. Allow a day for them to hear it, another for them to gather at Holyhock. A few days waiting for us before they give up. Even so, we need to move quickly.”
So we set out due east on a warm, dimsy, late-summer’s day, toward the one place I never thought I’d visit. Toward the Somber.
As we walked, Gabriel asked me to let him know right away if the voice in my head warned me of something.
“What’ll it warn me of?”
“Radiation,” he said.
And I said, “Do you just plain enjoy saying words that mean not one whittle to me?”
“Just tell me if you get a warning, Root. I can’t explain it.”
“Try,” I said.
He moaned. Then he said, “Alright. Imagine the heat from a fire. Imagine you’re so close it can burn you.”
“I’m imagining.”
“Good. Now imagine it’s so hot it can make you sick, or even kill you.”
“Okay.”
“Now imagine a fire that makes no sound or heat or smell or light to warn you, but it’s still so fierce that it can make you sick or kill you.”
“That makes no sense.”
“That’s radiation.”
“Just to be sure I understand. There’s invisible things in the Somber that can kill us, and we’re walking toward them?”
“We’re going toward Haven, too, and you seem at peace with that. But yes. There are many pockets of radiation scattered around the Somber. Whoever found the Holy for the Hidden Folk was lucky not to die from radiation poisoning first. They must have died from it soon after. I know many of the spots, but the forest shifts. It’s hard to remember them all. Your naughts will heal you, and mine will, too, if I live long enough to see Haven. But let’s not risk it, if you don’t mind.”
“Well,” I said. “Guess we’ll avoid radiation.”
And though it might sound curious to say, this was real good news. It made one of my worries a good deal smaller.
Anyhow. After a quiet day’s march we entered a wide clearing, passed the great cairns of warning stones, and crossed into the Somber.
After two more days, we reached Haven.
Haven has a wall around it that’s like none you’ve seen, even in these modern days of fine village walls. The shepherds built it not long after the Reckoning, when they still had wondrous tools to serve them, the same tools that dug the Void.
Haven’s wall has a gate so heavy that no ordinary person can open it. Gabriel said even with his naughts awake, it was beyond him to do it. He wasn’t sure whether it was in me alone, either. Given a day or so, we might have piled things against it to get over, but we didn’t have such time. There was no need for that, though. After some good long while of struggling, and after digging footholds into the earth to help me, I opened it enough for us to slip through.
While I ate and drank to quiet my angry hunger, I asked Gabriel why his naughts were so much weaker than the other shepherds’. “Before the Reckoning,” he replied, “I didn’t need or want naughts made for war. When the Reckoning happened, there wasn’t time to grow new ones. Yours aren’t so different from mine, though. They’re just willing to do terrible things to your body and repair them afterward, at a far greater risk of killing you from heat or hunger when they repair you. But all our naughts sprang from Aura Lee’s imaginings.”
Once I’d finished eating, he led me along a winding path to what looked like a tiny house. “That’s Haven?” I asked. He didn’t answer.
Beside the tiny house there was something like a small chest. Gabriel took the Ender case from his pack and placed it in the chest. Then he pulled open the tiny house’s door.
I don’t know what I’d imagined Haven to be, but a hole in the ground wasn’t it. Inside the house were steps going deep into the earth, so deep I couldn’t see the end of them. Gabriel led the way.
That passage into the dirt and rocks was every pinch as tight and choking as you might imagine. I’d always preferred open spaces to closed ones. I’d never imagined a place could be as closed as this one. It made me think of the cave I’d visited not so long before. Along the way, my heart started kicking, and a sweat broke out o
n my back, but then it calmed real quick. My Nothing, maybe, helping me settle.
And that’s about when I noticed…something. A feeling that grew on me as we crept down, like something was moving right through my body without being there at all, like the feeling I had when I touched the Holy. Maybe it was that voice Gabriel spoke of, the secret voice of ancient tools that our ears can’t hear.
And there was something else, too. Something strange, besides that sick feeling of such a small place, and the whispering hum running through me. A smell. Something was very wrong with the smell of this place, if only I could puzzle it out.
At the bottom, those tight and muffling steps opened into a large and airy place with doors and passages around its edges. Just as we walked through that doorway, it washed over me, and I knew what was wrong with the place’s smell. But I didn’t have much time for pride at my cleverness.
Because just inside that great hall, a shepherd waited.
She said something to Gabriel in the Shepherds’ Speech, and Gabriel said something back real brief, then he said, “Root, this is Shepherd Livv, who leads the last of the shepherds.”
And I’ll say, that worried me a touch. But somehow I managed to say, “Ought I to end her now, or would you care to speak with her first?” Which sounded a good deal braver than I felt.
Ignoring my sass, Shepherd Livv said to Gabriel, “Michael’s gone missing. Do you know anything about that?”
“I might know something about it,” I said.
“I’m surprised you’re traveling with Gabriel,” she said to me, then to Gabriel, “Does she know who she is?”
“I’m the daughter of Shepherd Lee,” I answered. “Daughter of Aura Lee Rosada, and of Weaver Root of Surecreek.”
Still speaking to Gabriel, Shepherd Livv said, “Does she know the rest of it?”
Gabriel didn’t answer.