The Fifth Sacred Thing

by Starhawk

  “May we never hunger!” the people cried again.

  Offerings of fruit and grain and cooked foods were piled in the central circle. A young child was blessing the food and drink, while others thanked the ancestors and spirits and the Four Sacred Things to end the formal part of the ritual. But the feasting would go on for a long time.

  “Are you staying?” Sam asked Madrone, coming over to them. “I can walk Maya home.” In his voice was a hopeful note.

  Maya could feel the spark stretching like a thread between her and Sam. He was hoping for something, an invitation, a sign from her. She could feel his loneliness as she could feel her own. It was too much. She was too old, too tired, to take on the burden of it.

  “I’ve got to get some sleep,” Madrone said. “I was up all night.”

  “Good night, Sam,” Maya said firmly, taking Madrone’s arm. “It was good seeing you. Que nunca tengas and all that.”

  “Kay noonka,” Sam said. “Get some rest, Madrone.”

  In the dark, spirits fluttered like memories, like birds. Fog lay on the city like the silver fingers of a gloved hand, as the moon lit their way down the hill.

  2

  When Bird awoke there was a boy in bed with him. They cuddled together with the ease of long-time lovers. Bird’s knees curved into the back of the boy’s knees, his arms were clasped across the boy’s smooth chest, and his cock nestled limp and damp between the boy’s buttocks. Tom? he thought sleepily. Sandino? He had been dreaming about Madrone, and for one moment he curled deeper into the sweetness of the dream. Her eyes met his. She forgave. What? He couldn’t quite remember, and in trying to track the memory he came up from sleep to an awareness of the stink of piss and metal.

  He opened his eyes to find his lips pressed against the nape of a neck he did not recognize. The room was dark but slowly it began to lighten, as if somewhere an unseen sun were rising. He heard a creak above him; he was in a metal bunk with somebody asleep on the tier above. A plastic mattress bulged down against metal springs. Now he could see tier upon tier of bunks. It was a big room, big enough to hold maybe sixty bunks, with metal tables down the center. The light came from a grid of bars that blocked the window.

  He didn’t know where he was or how he’d gotten there.

  The boy stirred in his arms. “Charlie,” he murmured. “You awake?”

  “Charlie?”

  “Your name is Charlie.” The boy’s voice was patient, as if he’d explained this many times before.

  “Uh … I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You just don’t remember.”

  He was pretty sure his name wasn’t Charlie, but for a long moment he couldn’t remember what it was and that scared him. Then it came back to him: Bird. It sounded right, it fit him, but he didn’t say it out loud because he had been raised to know that names had power.

  “Who are you?” he asked the boy.

  “I’m Littlejohn. I’m your girl.”

  He was sure the boy wasn’t a girl because he could feel his cock when he ran his hand down the smooth body, and the cock was beginning to stiffen, as was his own, as if his body remembered something his mind did not. He felt sick, confused.

  “It’s okay,” Littlejohn said. “You don’t remember so good. The bigsticks did something to your mind. But it’s cool.”

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  “I know. Don’t worry about it. Fuck me.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  The boy smiled. “Charlie, you been fuckin’ me every day for the last year. You just don’t remember.”

  “For a year? What year is this?”

  “The Forty-eighth Year of the New Millennium.”

  “Fortieth?”

  “No, Forty-eighth.”

  “That’s ten years from now!”

  “No, Charlie, that is now.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  “Want me to flip on the vidnews and prove it to you? All I need’s a screen.”

  “I’ve lost ten years?”

  “Why not? If you can lose one, why not two? Two, why not five? Five, why not ten? Believe me, one thing we got plenty of around here is time. You could lose twenty and barely notice them.”

  “Shit.”

  “Fuck shit,” Littlejohn said. “Or better yet, let’s just fuck.”

  But Bird had rolled over on his back. He felt a sense of vertigo, as if everything around him were spinning and tumbling.

  “Where are we?”

  “Terminal Island. Angel City, heart of the Southlands. They call this the Pit.”

  Bird had one moment of sheer panic again. He had been fucking a stranger, a boy who could have anything in the way of disease, even the old immune disorders or the archaic blood cancers. He felt his body and the boy’s; they seemed clean. And going into his body seemed to ground him a bit; the dizziness subsided, and a few memories swam into focus.

  “I remember a prison doctor coming at me with a needle,” he said.

  “You remember that? Hey, you never remembered nothing like that before.” The boy rolled over to look at him. Littlejohn had close-cropped straight brown hair, a dark face with delicately molded bones, and bright blue eyes. The effect was startling. “Maybe your mind can come back.”

  “Don’t I remember anything?”

  “You remember for about five minutes. Then I have to tell you all over again: who you are, who I am.”

  The vertigo was back, and the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. What if it all went away again in five minutes? What if he had lost his mind and could never find it again?

  “That must be hard for you,” Bird said.

  “I don’t mind. There’s worse things. Anyway, you always remember how to fuck. Sometimes when you fuck me once you forget that you already done it and you do it again. And you always remember how to fight. Around here that’s about all you really need to know.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Got caught stealing water one too many times. Hell, I practically grew up in here. My whole family was Witches. They got rounded up in ’43, and I landed out on the streets, right?”

  “What do you mean, stealing water?”

  “You know, water.”

  Bird was silent. There was something here he clearly didn’t understand, something so obvious to Littlejohn that he couldn’t seem to explain it. Was it one of the things Bird had forgotten? How could he know what he didn’t know? He let the matter drop for now.

  “How old are you?” Bird asked.

  “Nineteen.”

  The boy seemed younger than that. Fourteen, fifteen maybe. Bird was nineteen himself, or he had been once, but if that was ten years ago, where had he been? He wanted to grab hold of something, quick, before he sank into an endless well of lost years, spinning his mind like a wheel, trying to remember, not being able to remember. Are five minutes up yet? he wanted to ask. Am I still here? Am I still me?

  Something else was bothering him. It was like a faint voice in the back of his head, calling. When he followed it he dropped into a well of pain. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “You okay?” Littlejohn asked.

  “I don’t know.” He was caught somewhere between memory, reality, and something else. He couldn’t tell who the pain he felt belonged to. “Can you ground me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Speaking was becoming a greater and greater effort. “I thought you were a Witch.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know any magic. My folks all died before they could teach me anything.”

  Bird was trying to ground himself, trying to make contact with the earth, but she seemed miles away, imprisoned under concrete and steel. He bit his own lip hard, trying to breathe, trying to remember an image or a word that could anchor him. “Grab my hands,” he whispered.

  Littlejohn obeyed. The pressure on his hands was solid, was real. He could feel his hands and know they were his own and, from that knowledge, follow a tra
il of sensation slowly up through his body. His own body. His own dull pain of old injuries, which was different, he now knew, from the pain he heard inside him rather than felt. Someone was in pain. Someone was calling for help.

  “Thanks.” Bird withdrew his hands. “Somebody’s hurt. But it’s not me.”

  “Maybe it’s the new guy they brought in yesterday,” Littlejohn said. “They beat him pretty bad.”

  “Where is he?”

  “The last bunk, over by the door.”

  Bird shifted his weight and sat up. The bed creaked.

  “Be careful!” Littlejohn whispered. Bird nodded and got up slowly. His body felt odd, both uncomfortable and familiar. He moved slowly, for the sake of silence and because there seemed to be a time lag between each impulse of his brain and each movement of his muscles. At last he reached the bunk nearest the door. A still figure lay there, and Bird could feel pain radiate out from him. He knelt down and placed a hand on the man’s abdomen. The breathing was shallow, and the life force waning quickly. He was dying.

  Bird took a deep breath. He wished for Madrone, or Sandy, or somebody else who was talented at healing. Then his mind clutched at the names in a sudden attack of panic. Who was Madrone? Who was Sandy? He thought he remembered them as long as he didn’t think too hard about them. But when he tried to focus on the memory he was swimming in doubt. Was he remembering or inventing? How could he know for sure?

  Don’t think, he told himself. Let your hands do it. His mind still felt dull, cloudy, and he couldn’t feel any power moving through him. The pain was a sound in his head. If he could make sound, maybe he could change it, but that wasn’t possible. Could he change the sound in his mind? He thought he remembered an old chant:

  If we have courage

  We can be healers;

  Like the sun,

  We shall rise.

  The note of “rise” reverberated in his mind, and he held it, strengthened it, imagined it passing through the broken body on the bed. The pain drained away, and the man’s breath became slower, deeper, more substantial. Bird’s inner hearing grew keen. The broken ribs, the injured kidneys, were discordant sounds, a rupturing of the body’s harmonics, but he could find a note to repair the worst of the damage. The man would live.

  Eyelids fluttered on the man’s face, their movement barely visible in the dark. His eyes opened. Bird could not see their color, only the brightness and intensity that flashed out. His lips moved as if he were whispering. Bird leaned close.

  “The earth is our mother,” the man said.

  It was the beginning of a chant. Bird caught a sense of expectancy from the man, as if he waited for a reply.

  “We must take care of her.” Bird finished the line.

  A faint smile moved over the man’s lips. “Thanks, brother,” he whispered, and then slept.

  Bird crept back to his bunk and lay back down beside Littlejohn. His head hurt. He wanted to sleep but he was afraid to lose consciousness, afraid he might not find it again.

  “What’d you do?” Littlejohn asked.

  “He’ll be okay,” Bird whispered.

  “Man, you better watch it. They catch you Witching somebody, they’ll kill you. If you take my advice, I’d be cool if I was you. I mean, play like you’re still crazy until you catch on to the scene. Right?”

  “Comprendo.”

  “Shhh. Talk English.”

  “Com … right. Got it. Goddess, do I have a headache!”

  “You been under a powerful enchantment, maybe. Or maybe you done it to yourself. Where are you from?”

  He didn’t know how to answer. Images flashed out at him: faces, gardens, the gingerbread façade of a house with a peaked roof. His head wanted to split open, and he couldn’t tell which of them were real.

  “Far away,” he said. That, at least, he was sure was true enough. “Far, far away.”

  A bell clanged harshly. Littlejohn jumped out of bed, pulled on gray pants and a sweatshirt, and handed a pile of the same clothes to Bird with an automatic gesture, as if it were something he was used to doing. “Put these on,” he said. “Get up quick. It’s count.”

  Bird just had time to slip his clothes on and lurch to his feet when the heavy metal door grated open. Five big guards walked in and surveyed the scene. “Everybody up for count!” one bellowed.

  The room was filled with shuffling and grumbling as sixty men struggled to their feet. The man in the bed by the door still lay semiconscious. One of the guards jerked him roughly up to his feet, and he leaned against the metal rail of the bunk as the guards walked around, counting once, counting twice, counting again.

  “Line up for breakfast.”

  Bird stood behind Littlejohn and followed what he did. He looked for the man he had healed. In the light, he could see that the man was slightly built, skinny, the brown skin on his face crisscrossed with lines that made him appear, somehow, not old but wizened, dried up like an apple left too long in the sun. But Bird didn’t dare stare too hard or try to catch his eye.

  The prisoners filed in a line through a long gray concrete corridor to a dining hall, where they stood in line to receive trays of food delivered by disembodied hands from behind a metal screen. They sat on benches and ate in silence. Bird found the routine strangely familiar, as if some part of him had done it a thousand times even though his mind did not remember. Or maybe it was just that he was surprised by nothing, not the orders barked out to them, not the taste of the glutinous starch that passed for breakfast. He was grateful for the enforced silence. It gave him time to observe the other prisoners and read the expectations in other minds.

  They didn’t expect much of him, Bird discovered. When they got back to the barracks someone handed him a broom, shoved him into another corridor, and locked the door. Automatically, he began to sweep.

  At the end of the hall was the guard station, a square lighted room with heavy glass windows that allowed the guards to observe Bird and the doorway behind him. Windows on the other side of the station opened onto the dorm, which was empty at the moment. All the men must be at their work stations.

  When Bird stood close to the window, he could see the three guards and hear their conversation faintly through the glass.

  “So, Harris, you gonna be down here for good now? Guess A dorm decided to clean house.”

  “For better or worse. They thought you needed somebody with balls down here in the Pit. Shape you guys up.”

  “Yeah, we could use a little shape down here. Unfortunately, yours ain’t exactly it.”

  “Not your type, Coleman?”

  “King Cole likes the pretty boys. Sorry you don’t qualify.”

  “Who’s the pretty boy in the hall?”

  “Him? He’s the idiot. Don’t mess with him, he’s crazy. Anybody touches him, he’ll bust your teeth out. Never seen anybody move like that before. They say he’s a Witch—that’s why they done something to his mind. But you touch him or that scrawny girlfriend of his, you’ll believe he’s the Devil himself.”

  “Bust my teeth? I’ll bust his fucking balls for him.”

  “It don’t do any good. He don’t remember it. He don’t remember who he is or who you are. You bust his ass once and he don’t remember it the next time. He’s got no fear of you.”

  “Then he’s dangerous. Why the Jesus is he still alive?”

  “They want him kept alive for some reason. I don’t know. Maybe they think someday his mind’ll come back and they can find out something. Maybe they want to do some experiment on him. Maybe they forgot why they want him kept alive. But you just stay out of his way and he don’t cause no problems. He’s sure as hell no instigator. There’s others that’re worse problems.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like that new hillboy they brought in last night. Calls himself Hijohn.”

  “They all call themselves John. John something, something John. It’s one of their names for the Devil,” Coleman said.

  “What’s his problem?�
�

  “His problem is our little problem, and that is: he’s supposed to be dead. They worked him over good. Dropped him in on us as a little lesson to our boys, in case they got any funny ideas. So why is he up and walking today?”

  “He’s a tough little demonfucker. But we can fix that.”

  The first guard shook his head. “He’s a Witch. Got to be. It stands to reason.”

  “You got Witches on the brain, man. You want the guy dead, seems to me we just work him over again tonight.”

  “That’s easy enough to say.” Coleman pulled a smokestick out of a pack in his breast pocket and tapped it on his desk. “Wait till you see the paperwork afterwards.”

  They went on talking, but Bird decided it would be politic to move away for a while. He swept, stopped, and pondered, then swept again. So he had managed to fight well enough to stake out some small space around himself, even without quite knowing who he himself was. Diosa, what had happened to him?

  He was even more disturbed by the conversation about the man he had healed. There was too much he didn’t understand. He felt like he’d come into the middle of a story where everybody else knew the background and the plot. He wasn’t even too sure about who the main character was. One thing seemed clear: Hijohn’s life was in danger. He would have to warn him, although what good it might do he couldn’t say. But he owed him that. It seemed clear to Bird, now, that Hijohn’s need had somehow called him back from wherever he was lost. He could have stayed lost for more years yet, maybe forever; the thought was cold in the pit of his stomach.

  His body, he noticed, felt aching and clumsy, but the pain was dull and he seemed to be used to it. His left leg and hip hurt, and if he leaned too long on them, the muscles in his thigh began to shake. His hands on the broom handle seemed stiff and clumsy, the fingers somehow misshapen, as if they had been broken and not set right. That disturbed him in some way, almost more than anything else, as if it represented the loss of something so basic that he had to protect himself from the memory. It teased at the back of his mind, though, like liquid notes of music, like rippling melodies flowing off the strings of his guitar. And then it hit him, with a force almost physical that left him sweating and clutching the broom handle for balance. He could remember his fingers, deft and fluid, not so much making music as matching what existed already and poured through him, his hands one with his instrument and the great singing voice inside him.