Seeker

by William Nicholson

He caught a flicker of uncertainty on the spikers' faces as they exchanged looks.

  "Strike me dead?" said the spiker leader in an awed voice. "Whoa! You hear, bravas? These chickens gonna strike me dead!"

  He approached nearer to the path.

  "Right here?"

  "All along the path," said the priest.

  "Whoa!" The Wildman made as if to touch the spirit fence, and pulled back his hand in mockery fear. He did a little dance, stepping close to the imaginary barrier and bounding away again.

  "Heya, bravas!" cried the Wildman to his men. "Strike me dead!"

  At this moment, a stranger stepped out of the trees that ran close by the riverbank. He had the appearance of a poor man. He carried no pack and no weapon. He stood looking down. He wore a long gray tunic, with a pale gray scarf over his head like a hood, and he was barefoot. He was tall and had white hair, cut very short. There was something about him that was hard to grasp, as if the more the Wildman looked at him, the more his attention slipped away.

  "Noble Warrior!" cried the priest. "Help us!"

  So this was one of the Nomana, one of the famous Noble Warriors. The Wildman had never met one face-to-face. He was disappointed. People said the Nomana had magic powers. But what did it come down to? A man alone, with no weapon. The Nomana had no army. They had no treasure. They ruled no country. Just a band of fools lost on a rock in the sea. Not much opposition there.

  The stranger now looked up, to reveal pale blue eyes.

  "Leave these people in peace," he said.

  "You want peace," said the Wildman, "you come and fight for it!"

  He spun his curved knife in the air so that it turned on itself once, twice, three times, and the hilt thocked into his palm. The stranger made no move.

  "Chuck-chuck-chickens!" The Wildman cried, turning away, and lofted the blade high over his head, ready now to sever these little people's foolish faith. Down he swung—

  "Heya!"

  His arm went limp. His fingers parted. The knife flew from his hand.

  To the priest, it seemed that the spirit fence had repulsed the blade. He cried aloud, "Praise Shorn!"

  The Wildman snatched up his knife, smarting with shame, and hissed at the priest like a fighting cat.

  "Blubber-piss! I'm gonna slit your neck!"

  He saw the priest's terrified eyes reach past him. He saw how all the villagers were looking past him. Turning, he too fixed his dark eyes on the stranger, who was standing very still, his eyes cast down once more, in the shadow of the trees, melting into the stripes and dapples of light. Was it him? Had he somehow made him drop his blade?

  "Heya, brava!" the Wildman whispered. "You want to dance with me?"

  His men grinned when they heard that. Oh, the Wildman knew how to dance.

  The beautiful youth tossed back his golden hair, and reaching out his arms on either side, he jangled the silver bracelets on his wrists. Rising on tiptoe like a dancer, he stalked towards the stranger, his knife sweeping softly before him.

  The stranger made no move as he approached. His face showed nothing. How could a living being communicate so little? Surely this was a hollow man, his sliced veins would hiss stale air, he would fold like a paper bag—

  The Wildman smiled and struck, so fast, the blade seemed not to move, so precisely that the fine-honed edge would draw blood but not kill, the blood of the tall white-haired stranger, who was—

  Gone.

  No effort in it: a sigh of motion, high into the air, down again, and there he was, elsewhere, motionless once more. Not a flutter of his tunic, not a flurry of his head-scarf From stillness to stillness, through a perfect parabola of motion that was already fading from the memory, that was forgotten, that was impossible and therefore could not have happened.

  The Wildman released a howl of rage.

  "Kill, bravas! Kill!"

  The spikers closed in on the stranger with swinging knives, and the stranger made no move, but the knives never touched him. The falling blades skidded on empty air. The Wildman saw this and began to experience a new emotion that he could not name. He feared it and courted it, knew it to be dangerous, knew he would go towards this danger.

  What sort of man was this?

  He heard a deep humming in his ears, and there was a mist before his eyes. These signs he knew. He sought a death. No more games now. He slid out his throwing spike, slender as a reed, and fixed his dark eyes on the tall stranger, on his chest, on the drab gray fabric of his tunic, on the patch of fabric over his heart, on the warp and woof of interwoven threads, on the space between the threads. He released the coiled spring of his arm, and the spike screamed through the air, true as lightning from cloud to cloud.

  The stranger raised one hand, opening the fingers as he did so. His hand closed. When it opened again, there was the spike, caught in flight, and now dropping harmless to the ground.

  The stranger's eyes looked up, and the Wildman saw an emptiness there that he could not escape. The stranger's hand turned again. Two fingers, close together, extended towards him. The Wildman felt the weight of those far fingers on his head, on his shoulders, on his chest: a weight he was powerless to resist.

  He sank to his knees.

  For a fragment of a second, gazing up at the stranger, he saw a giant before him, a sky man, his head haloed by the sun: so near that he was close enough for him to reach out and touch, and so far that he filled the world. Then the moment passed, and the Wildman could hear the priest mumbling, "Shorn be praised!" and could smell the fear on his men's skin and see how they shrank from the stranger. But he cared nothing for that. He was breathing cool air. He was drinking cool water. He was flooded with a new sensation—no, he had entered the flood, which was so much greater than him, he had dropped into it as he was accustomed to dive into the slow-flowing channels of the river, down to the cold depths—and now, in the heat of the day, his body was bathed in coolness and he was washed clean of all his anger and all his pride. He was experiencing awe.

  There came a high, far-off sound, like the cry of a bird. The stranger raised both arms above his head, pointing the forefingers of each hand skyward, and touched the fingertips together. As he did so, the wide sleeves of his tunic fell back to expose his bare forearms. There he stood, for a few short moments, his bare feet planted apart on the ground, making an arrow of his body, as if in answer to the cry. This was a signal, but saying what? To whom?

  Then out of the trees there came two more strangers, similarly hooded and barefoot. Had they been there all the time, content to let their companion fight his battle alone? Or had they just arrived, making no sound, drawing no attention to their coming?

  The first stranger lowered his arms, and his eyes met the Wildman's.

  "Leave these people in peace," he said. "Seek your own peace."

  The beautiful youth was silent with amazement. He understood nothing of what was happening to him except that this stranger possessed a greater power than he had ever known, and that this power gave him a giant stillness that must be this thing called peace. For all his beauty and his laughter, the Wildman had never known peace.

  "Where?" he said. "Where is peace?"

  The tall white-haired stranger gazed at him with his pale blue eyes, and the youth saw that they were not empty after all. They were brimming, overflowing, as immense as the sea.

  "You will find peace," came the answer, "when you live in the Garden."

  The strangers left as noiselessly as they had come. The Wildman watched them until they were lost in the dappled shadows of the trees. Then he raised one arm, and his bracelets flashing in the sun, he signalled to his men to return to the boat.

  The Lazy Lady slipped out once more into the river currents. The Wildman stood once more on the prow, but he did not dance. His men watched him, filled with unease. They saw how his gaze reached far ahead, to some unknown adventure where they could not follow him.

  For the Wildman, everything had changed. He had met the Noble Warriors. He
wanted their power. He wanted their peace.

  8. Morning Star

  THE NIGHT BEFORE HER SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY, MORNing Star stayed with her father on the hillside, and together, long before dawn, they watched for the rising of her namesake, the true morning star. Her father's brindle sheepdog, Amik, lying curled up by his feet, snuffled softly in her sleep. Her one remaining puppy from a litter born eight weeks ago, a little bundle of white fur called Lamb, was asleep in Morning Star's lap. Round them the sheep lay still and quiet, on patches of earth made warm by their own bodies. The night was clear, the air cold. Then low on the dark horizon, the small sure light for which they waited appeared and began its steady climb, that would in turn be overtaken by the greater light of the new day.

  "There you are," said her father in his slow voice. "Come to tell me the night won't last forever."

  "I wish it would."

  "No, you don't. You don't wish any such thing."

  The puppy woke at the sound of their voices, and stretched, and poked his head out from under the rug. Seeing his mother, he went to her and nuzzled eagerly for a teat. Amik growled and rolled away. The puppy was supposed to be weaned. Morning Star felt for her father's hand under the rug that covered them both. She was thinking: I can't tell him. How can I tell him? It will break his heart.

  For as long as she could remember, she had been waiting to be sixteen. Now she could join the Nomana, as her mother had done. But how would her father bear the loneliness without her?

  Goaded out of sleep by the puppy, Amik suddenly jumped up and shook her shaggy brown-and-white coat and trotted away over the wet grass. The puppy sat with his nose raised high, looking after her with a hurt expression on his fuzzy white face. The sheep began to wake. As the light of the unseen sun strengthened in the sky, the brightness of the morning star began to fade. They watched the dawn in silence, father and daughter, as they had done countless times in the sixteen years of her young life.

  "There you go," said her father at last.

  The morning star was no longer visible in the dawn sky. Usually when they watched the new day together, after he said, "There you go," he would look at her and smile and say, "Here you are," because it was her name, too. But today he said no more.

  He was one of the hill people who had long made their living grazing stock on the lower slopes of the mountains. They were a quiet-spoken breed. They rarely travelled far and kept themselves to themselves. His name was Arkaty. His wife, Morning Star's mother, had been a lowlander from the coast, where they named people differently. Her name was Mercy. They had named their child according to her custom, not his; and so she had become Morning Star.

  Morning Star, in her turn, had named all of Amik's five puppies; and now they were all gone to neighboring homes but Lamb, the smallest of them all. Lamb turned out to have a poor sense of direction and was constantly getting himself left behind and lost, and so, in this land of working dogs, he had not been picked. Morning Star loved him all the more for this and worried about what would become of him after she was gone.

  Right now, abandoned by Amik, Lamb turned about and trotted back to Morning Star. He scrambled onto her lap and set about licking her ear. She sat still and felt each nuzzle of his soft probing tongue and smelled his warm milky smell and worried about him.

  "What will happen to Lamb?" she said aloud.

  Her father glanced at her and then looked away.

  "He'll be found a home."

  "Can't he stay?"

  "That one'll never be a sheepdog. Any dog of mine must work for his keep."

  "So what's to happen to him?"

  "Someone'll take a liking to the pup. You don't get many come out all white like that."

  The sun was rising now. They got up and folded the rug and packed their night bag and set off down the steep-sloping pasture towards home. Arkaty whistled to Amik, who fell obediently into place at his heel, and Morning Star carried the puppy in her arms.

  As they reached the village track, they met Filka the goatboy, leading his goats out for the day. Filka greeted them, staring at Morning Star with his slow stare, and then came closer to examine the puppy.

  "Still got one left, then?" he said.

  "Just the one," said Morning Star, cradling the puppy close. She didn't like Filka: he was too long and thin, and he gawped too much, and she didn't like the way he smiled. Once, many years ago, she had come upon him catching earwigs and burning them in a candle flame. She didn't like earwigs, but she hated the look on his silent, staring face as he had watched them burn.

  "Dog or bitch?" he said.

  "Dog."

  "I could use a good dog."

  "You can't have him," she said at once, and covered the puppy's head with one hand.

  If she'd been thinking, she would have come up with an excuse. She would have said he was no good at herding, that he couldn't even find his own way home. But in her eagerness to make Filka go away, she spoke the simple truth; and Filka didn't like it.

  "Why not?" he said. "An't I good enough?"

  "We're keeping him."

  "No, you're not. You got a dog."

  "You can't have him," said Morning Star.

  "I've a right," said Filka stubbornly, turning to Arkaty. "An't that so?"

  Arkaty caught Morning Star's imploring look.

  "My girl's taken a liking to the puppy," he said, speaking gently, hoping to mollify the goatboy.

  "And so've I," said Filka. "She don't need a dog. I could use a dog. I can pay."

  He reached into his bag and drew out some coins.

  "See! What do you say to that?"

  He leered triumphantly at Morning Star, as if the coins presented an unanswerable argument.

  "We don't want your money," she said.

  The leer gave way to a scowl.

  "My money not good enough?"

  "Come on, Papa." She set off down the track. "We have to be getting home."

  "You think I'm not good enough for you!" shouted Filka after her. His face had gone red. "You don't know about me! You just don't know!"

  Morning Star went on down the path without looking back. Her father gave the goatboy an awkward nod, designed to be an apology, and followed after her.

  "Your mam ran away from you!" shouted Filka. "Your mam never loved you, and she ran away!"

  It was the worst thing he could think of to hurl at her departing back. She made no reply. He turned at last and walked on up the hillside after his goats, talking angrily to himself as he went.

  But Morning Star had heard him, and sharp tears pricked at her eyes. She shook her head to banish them and then bent down to kiss the puppy's wet nose.

  "He'd no call to say that," said her father, now by her side. "And you know it's not true."

  "Yes, Papa. I know."

  They reached their house, which stood on the edge of the village, with its back to the hill stream. The last embers of yesterday's fire were still glowing in the stove. Arkaty brought in wood from the pile under the back eaves, while Morning Star put the puppy in the basket under the table and set about cooking breakfast. Who would cook the porridge for her father after she was gone? She had been seeing to the household duties since she was five years old.

  As the oatmeal bubbled in the pan, her father laid out his writing implements on his work desk. Pens, ink, blotter, quire of paper, all ranged on the left side; and open on a sloping stand before the chair at which he sat, the day's text. Arkaty did two jobs: he was a shepherd and he was a book copier. The money he earned from this second job he put away for her. So all those hours bent over his desk tracing the letters with his neat and careful pen were for her; and she was planning to abandon him.

  She told herself she would raise the matter over breakfast. But Amik came into the house, and the puppy tried again to suckle her, and Amik kept shuffling about in the most comical way to make her teats inaccessible to the puppy, so that they started to laugh, and talked about the dogs instead.

  "Even so," sa
id her father, "we'll have to find a home for the pup somewhere."

  "I know. Just not Filka."

  "You know your mama loved you dearly. You've got the letter."

  "Yes, Papa. I've got the letter."

  Her mother had left them when Morning Star was just three years old, at the height of the summer rains. When she was old enough to understand, her father gave her a letter her mother had written for her, which he had been keeping. The letter said:

  My only beloved child. I weep as I write this. In leaving you I am leaving my best self. But I am called to another life, by a voice I must obey. I give you into the hands of the one Loving Mother of us all. May she watch over you and bring you joy. Forgive me if you can. If not, have mercy on me. My heart is breaking. I kiss you as you sleep. Good-bye, heart of my heart. Every day at sunrise I will send you my love, till the day I die. Good-bye, beautiful child of my youth. Until we meet again.

  She knew the letter by heart, every word of it. She had only the faintest memory of her mother, but in that memory, her mother was very beautiful, and her nearness flooded the child with sweet protective love. Her mother's name, Mercy, merging with the words in her letter—"Have mercy on me"—had always seemed to her to be beautiful, loving, and fragile.

  Of course she had asked her father why her mother had left them. He replied,

  "She left to serve the All and Only, who is greater than you or me."

  In time Morning Star had come to understand that her mother had joined a community of holy people called the Nomana.

  "It's the highest calling of all," said her father. "Many offer themselves, but few are chosen. We should be very proud that your mother is among their number."

  Morning Star was more than proud. Secretly she had vowed that as soon as she was old enough, she too would join the Nomana. She had two reasons for believing they would accept her. One was that her mother had been chosen before her. The other was that she could see the colors.

  Morning Star had been able to see the colors all her life. When she had been younger, she had tried to tell other people about them, but they never understood. Even her father didn't understand. They thought she was talking about feelings, using the names of colors, in the manner of people who say, "I'm in a black mood." But what she saw was real colors. She didn't see them all the time, and they were mostly very faint, but they were there, just like the red head-scarves of the hill women. The colors came from people, they came out of people, like a soft colored mist that clung round them. Over the years, she had learned the colors had meaning. Angry people were rimmed with red. Sad people, or sick people, gave off a color like straw yellow, or sometimes a dull blue. People who were cheating or telling lies glowed orange. Kind people had a red color, but a different red from the angry red, a soft, rose red. There were hundreds of colors, all with their shades of feelings, more than she could ever say; but then, there was no need to say. All she had to do was see and feel.