by Starhawk
“I mean that’s where the battle is coming down right now—around survival. Basic biological survival. And we’re losing. I’m telling you, this last one scared me. Things aren’t right. They seem all right on the surface, but they aren’t right.”
“No, they aren’t,” Manzanita said. “We went up the Delta and over to the North Bay, did some sampling. It’s not good. And there was another mass of sea lion deaths up past Mendocino. I’m scared to eat fish anymore.”
“But this has been happening for fifty years or more,” Maya said.
“And what if it’s reaching the critical point?” Madrone said. “When did they ban chlorofluorocarbons? Back in the mid-nineties? How many more years before we can hope to restore the ozone?”
“Twenty, maybe thirty,” Holybear said.
“And who knows how much of the forests are left, or what the Stewardships are dumping into the sea?”
“When I was young,” Maya said, “each spring brought back songbirds that nested in the rain forests of the Amazon.”
“You should have made videos,” Nita said.
Holybear turned to Bird. “But what you’re talking about is something else, right? Something undeniably warlike—guns and bombs and soldiers?”
“I came back up the coast,” Bird said. “The whole valley, down past the ruins of Slotown, is one big militarized zone. Troops everywhere. They’re being trained to march on the North. On us.”
“How do you know that?” Holybear asked.
“I met some deserters, back in the hills. With the Monsters.”
“Monsters?”
“That’s what they call themselves. They helped us.”
“Who’s us?” Nita asked.
“Me and my—friend. It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got all night,” Maya said.
“You won’t like it.”
“Nobody’s forcing you to tell it,” she said. “If you want to keep it bottled up and stay shielded, shut down, and miserable, like you’ve been the last two weeks, you’ve got a right to do that. Just don’t expect us not to notice.”
“And comment on it,” Holybear added.
“And bitch about it,” Sage said.
Bird almost started to smile, but his mouth fell back into its set line. “I don’t know why this is so hard for me to talk about. I haven’t wanted to shut people out. I guess I’ve gotten used to keeping secrets.”
“Keep all the secrets you want,” Maya said.
“As long as you don’t mind her divining what they are,” Sage said.
“You mean you don’t know it all already?” Bird said. “I’m disappointed in you.”
“I don’t know everything. I write stories, but that doesn’t make me the Omniscient Narrator of life.”
“What happened?” Sage asked softly.
He told them, beginning with the dreams that had led him and the others down to the Southlands.
“It started with Cleis, really, or with my infatuation with her. I was obsessed—even though I knew I was hurting you.” He turned to Madrone and pressed her hand. “Even though I knew she really wanted Zorah more than me, and Zorah wanted Tom—so naturally we all four started to sleep together. And we kept on having the same dreams—all of them about the South. It was the height of the big epidemic, everyone was dying all around us, and we weren’t the only ones that had the idea that it might be a good time for a scouting trip. You know their nuclear capacity had always given Defense Council nightmares. If the Stewards were as weak as we were, maybe we could do something about it. And we did, although this part is where the details start to get a bit fuzzy in my mind.”
He described the attack on the nuclear reactor, as clearly as he could remember. The others interrupted often with questions, so it took a long time to tell.
Madrone cradled his hands between her hands, as if she could heal them, make them new. His face was turned away from hers, but when he described the deaths of Cleis and Zorah and Tom, he looked up and met her eyes, letting a barrier between them drop.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He shrugged, reluctant to go on, to take himself back into the pain and share it here. For a moment, the others, with their straight limbs and strong bodies, seemed like plants grown under glass, sheltered. For just a moment, he hated their unbroken hands.
“Well,” he said finally in a flat voice, looking down at the rug, “a lot of the next part I don’t remember too clearly. Pain, but I survived that. They worked me over pretty good, a couple of times. Asked a lot of questions, about magic. How did we get into the plant? Was I a Witch? Where from? I got scared that I wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer, especially if they used drugs. So I did something. I kind of … rolled my mind up into a ball and hid it away.”
“How’d you do that?” Nita asked.
“I don’t know, exactly. The next thing I knew, ten years had gone by. I don’t remember any of it.”
Well, that was out now, Maya thought, as they sat in silence, and maybe that was the worst of it.
“That must have been hard,” Holybear said.
“It’s just … gone,” Bird said. “Sometimes a piece will come back, a scene or a phrase or a feeling in my body, but disconnected. Out of context. It makes me kind of crazy to think about it. I don’t know where I was or what I did.”
“Then what happened?” Nita asked.
“I woke up. It was like—like going to sleep at night and waking up the next day and finding out it was ten years later. Only it was night when I woke up, and I was in bed with this kid and it seemed like we’d been lovers for a long time, but I couldn’t remember who he was, and I wasn’t too sure who I was either. I was locked up in this horrible place, and I thought I was going to be trapped there for the rest of my life. That was pretty bad.”
“You have a gift for understatement,” Sage said.
“It was worse, in a way, than being beat up, because it just seemed so normal, like it could go on forever. Like it had gone on forever. There didn’t seem to be any reason why it should change. And—it was strange. When I first woke up, I did a healing.” He told them about Hijohn. “But after that, I couldn’t seem to get hold of any power. Couldn’t trance much, couldn’t shift anything. I finally did a real simple spell. Actually, I didn’t think it would work, but I guess it did.”
He described the escape and the journey north, the meeting with the Monsters, the troops he had seen massing in Slo Valley, what the deserters had told him about the diseases.
“So they are weapons,” Madrone said. “I thought so, but I still find it hard to believe.”
“Some of them are, at least,” Bird said.
“And they have antidotes?” Sage asked.
“Antidotes for some things, and general immunoboosters,” Bird said. “You get them if you’re in the army, or if you’re in good with the Millennialists. Otherwise, you take your chances. A lot of people die. That’s why they need a healer.”
“What they need is mass rebellion,” Holybear said.
“They’re working on it,” Bird said. “In the meantime, staying alive is a pretty big challenge.”
“Healers’ Council will want to hear this,” Madrone said. “Will you come talk to us?”
Bird nodded.
“I want to hear the rest of your story,” Maya said. “How’d you get back here from—where’d you say? Slotown? Is that what they’re calling San Luis Obispo these days?”
“Right, like Los Angeles,” Bird gave the word its Spanish pronunciation, “turned into Angel City.” He told them the rest of it, then, about the long hike back up the coast. What he didn’t say was how hard that walk had been, how his body had screamed its protest at every step, how very close he had come to lying down and giving up. But they could hear what he edited out echoing in the pauses and hesitations between his words. Madrone worked pain from the knots in his fingers. She knew.
“And?” Maya said when he finished.
“And what?”
&nbs
p; “And whatever it is that’s still sticking in the back of your throat.”
Bird swallowed. Yes, she was right, it was sitting there, the thing he was reluctant to admit, even to himself.
“Well, it’s this,” he said finally. “What I told you is what I remember. But how do I know for sure that it’s really what happened? Maybe it wasn’t me that did something to my mind; maybe they did. Maybe I really broke and told them everything.”
“No one would blame you,” Maya said.
“I know,” Bird said. “I wouldn’t even blame myself. But I feel responsible. Did I let them know that the city has nothing they would call defenses? Is that why they’re invading now?”
“But whatever you might have told them,” Holybear said, “you would have told them ten years ago. They would have invaded then, not now.”
“I guess you’re right. I keep getting time mixed up in my mind. It all seems compressed and scrambled.”
“You did good, Bird,” Sage said. “As good as you could. As good as anyone could.”
“It’s just not knowing. Not trusting my own memory.”
Oddly, once it was out he felt relieved. The others regarded him steadily. What had he feared? Their judgment, their condemnation? But that made no sense. Madrone pressed his hand. No one spoke, because there was nothing to say, and yet slowly Bird felt comforted.
“So what are you going to do?” Manzanita asked at last.
“Go back. I said I would.”
“How?” Sage asked.
“The way I came, I guess. Walk.”
They were silent again. He looked out at five pairs of eyes that stripped away his outer coverings and saw the energy lines in his body. Pain stood out on him like a tracery of red veins.
“I can walk,” Bird said. His voice sounded defensive. “I walked here, didn’t I?”
Maya looked intently at her embroidery. Madrone closed her eyes. On the inside of her lids, she saw herself walking in the canyons of the coastal hills, alone. From her belt hung a sheathed knife. She blinked to make the vision go away.
“They want a healer,” she said. “You’re not a healer.”
“I’ll do in a pinch.”
“Somebody should go. Sam’s already making noises to that effect, in the Healers’ Council. But not you, Bird. You’ve been through enough.”
“Who can say what’s enough? Who can say what it’s going to take to survive, if they really bring war here?”
“Let the Healers’ Council decide who goes,” Madrone said.
“Why should I? You yourself just said I’m not a healer.”
“She’s right, Bird,” Holybear said. “You’re back home now, where we do things collectively, remember? This isn’t your battle alone.”
His words echoed Sam’s. Madrone shifted her weight and looked up to find Nita staring at her.
“Don’t you get funny ideas, either,” Nita said. “You don’t look fit enough to fry rice, let alone invade the Southlands. What the hell happened to you, girl?”
“You work too hard, epidemic or no epidemic,” Sage said.
Maya snorted. “She did more than that. Go ahead, tell them.”
“Explain, please,” Holybear said.
“All right.” Madrone withdrew her hand from Bird’s and faced the others. I have nothing to be ashamed of, she told herself. “We weren’t having any luck getting at the virus, either with magic or with lab work. So I went after the aumakua.”
“The what?” Bird asked.
“The oversoul, or the morphogenetic field, if you want to get technical. You studied morphic field theory, didn’t you?”
“Mostly as it relates to music,” Bird said.
“In the ch’i worlds, something like a virus is a collective entity. What we see of it is a symbolic representation of actual form-generating forces,” Holybear explained. “So what happens to its ch’i image reverberates in the physical world.”
“And?” Sage asked Madrone.
“I absorbed it,” Madrone admitted.
“Are you kidding?” Holybear looked at her, shocked. “Madrone, are you sane? Don’t you realize how dangerous that is? Diosa, if that’s true I’m surprised the Healers’ Council left you running loose.”
“I knew it was dangerous,” Madrone said. “But it felt right. And it worked.”
“You nearly died,” Maya said. “You’re still not well.”
“But I don’t understand,” Nita said. “Who was in your circle? Wasn’t your backup strong enough?”
“I didn’t call a circle together,” Madrone admitted. “I just … it just came to me to do it, one morning—there was a possibility I could grasp if I acted that moment. So I did.”
“That goes beyond stupid,” Sage said. “That’s suicidal.”
“It worked,” Madrone repeated.
“Luck doesn’t justify recklessness,” Holybear said.
“You understand, don’t you?” Madrone turned to Bird. “It was like a geis. It was laid on me.”
“I understand, cariño, what it is to do what you have to do and wonder afterward if you were brave or dumb.” He slid his arm around her shoulder. “And to pay for it. And frankly, to me it seems you’ve paid a pretty heavy price. You need a good long rest.”
“Healers’ Council agrees. They wouldn’t let me start back to work yet.”
“I’m glad they have some sense, at least,” Maya said.
“I have sense. I’m sure a nice long rest would be good for me, in some other world. But we live in this one, and who among us gets what’s good for us? Did Sandy? Did you? And will any of us, if what Bird says is true?”
In the quiet, Maya’s knitting needles clicked together in a rhythm like a slow drumroll.
“So what do we do here, when the troops come marching up the highway?” Holybear broke the silence.
“I don’t know,” Bird said.
“We’ve never known,” Maya said. She stabbed at the yarn with her needle. “We’ve been afraid of an invasion ever since Lily and Alice had their great moment of drama with the pickaxes and the pavement, but we’ve never known what to do if it happened.”
“We’ll fight it,” Bird said. “Like we did before.” He slid his arm around Madrone’s shoulder and held her close.
“Of course we’ll fight it,” Holybear said. “I’d just feel a whole hell of a lot better if I thought we could win it.”
“We were damn lucky before,” Maya said. “We can’t count on the same constellation of circumstances again. We could just as easily all have ended up dead.”
“We were still right to resist,” Bird said. “Smartly or stupidly or even suicidally. Believe me, I’ve seen it down there. Even if we’d all died, it would have been a thousand thousand times better.”
“We did okay,” Nita said. “I have faith that we’ll do okay again.”
“But I’m not looking forward to it,” Sage said. “I’m afraid.”
Maya was suddenly very, very tired. “We have to think about this,” she said. “We have to take it to the full Council. We won’t figure it out tonight.”
“Have you taken it to Defense Council?” Nita asked Bird.
“Not yet.”
“Maybe it should go directly to the City Council,” Sage suggested.
Nita considered for a moment. “No. If he does that, Defense will get their backs up. Go to them first, and then go talk to Cress on the Water Council, just sort of off the record. Call him hermano, buddy up to him, and get him behind you. Then go to City Council, preferably on a day when Sal’s facilitating.”
“Listen to Nita,” Holybear said. “She’s Toxics’ prime strategist.”
Maya stood up. She wanted to be alone with her fears and her memories and her own rage. “I’m an old lady. I’m going to bed. You’re all very brave and I can’t say I’m not proud of you, even if I’d like to fold you up safe and keep you in my dresser drawers. It’s Rio coming out in you, Madrone. You can’t help it. And you, Bird. I should never,
never, never have let your grandfather knock me up just because I thought he was the bravest man I’d ever met. I knew at the time I’d regret it, and I do. I do.” She was standing there, crying down onto her knitting, and Bird stood up and hugged her.
“Don’t lie, abuelita,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “You know you don’t mean a word of that.”
“I do,” Maya said.
“Well, you’re doomed to pay for your sins, then, I guess,” Bird said. “Because here we are, the curse of your old age.”
“¡Que suerte!” Sage murmured. The word meant luck tinged with fate, and Maya didn’t argue.
When Maya was gone, they sat in silence for a moment, Bird with his head sunk down on his chest and his eyes closed, as if he had not yet fully emerged from his story. Nita yawned.
“It’s time for bed,” Sage said.
“The operative question here,” Holybear said, “is, who’s going to bed with whom?”
The question brought Bird out of his reverie. He looked up, slowly. There was a speculative light in Holybear’s eyes, but Bird wasn’t sure of his meaning. The others had all been lovers for a long time, but he hadn’t been part of their circle. He had been lovers with Sandy and with Madrone, but separately, and he had never tasted the others, or the whole they made together. Maybe they preferred to keep it that way.
“Don’t worry about me,” Bird said.
“Asshole,” Madrone whispered softly.
“Actually, he meant that as an invitation,” Sage said.
Bird looked from her to Holybear and around the room. What he saw sent a faint smile to his face. “Is there consensus on that?”
“I’m greedy. I want us all,” Nita said.
“We need to be together,” Sage said, and Madrone nodded her agreement.
They unrolled the soft rug in the ritual room and lit candles in the four directions. In three breaths, they grounded and quickly cast a circle.
“Madrone first,” Nita said.
She slid off her clothes and stood in the center of the circle. The others surrounded her and began to chant her name softly. She closed her eyes and let herself be stroked, by the sound of their voices, by the soft touch of their hands, until her skin became electric, charged with fire. She opened to them, feeling them catch and hold the pain that seemed to her bottomless: the sorrow that rose up because Sandy, who should have been there, was missing from the circle; the sorrow and the rage that went deeper, into the very core where her power to heal arose. Their hands seemed to move through her body, deep into her, down to that core, as they teased and roused her, sliding lightly over the nipples of her breasts, brushing gently the tips of her pubic hair. Lips lightly touched her breasts.