The Fifth Sacred Thing

by Starhawk

  Katy slid her arm around Madrone’s shoulder. “How old were you?”

  “I’d just turned seven.”

  “God! What happened then?”

  “It was so silent. After a long time, I became more frightened of staying hidden in the dark than of coming out, so I crept out into the main room. My mother was lying very still. For a moment, I was mad and hurt. I thought she’d gone to sleep and forgotten me. So I went to her to wake her up and touched her hand. Her hand was so cold. Then I saw the blood.”

  Madrone was crying. At last I can cry, she told herself, safe here in the Sisters’ garden, a few warm tears for you, Mama, my first love, my first loss.

  Katy was stroking Madrone’s shoulder and harboring the baby with her other arm. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “I knew about death. I just couldn’t believe it had happened to my mother. She was always so confident; she knew so much. I just sat there with her until I fell asleep, hoping when I woke up everything would be all right again. In the morning, the neighbors came and got me. Then my grandfather flew down and brought me up here.”

  “She was a good woman, your mother. It will be a good name for the child.”

  “Thanks, Katy. I needed to tell that story to someone.” Madrone squeezed Katy’s hand and released it so Katy could shift the baby to her other breast.

  “I’m glad you told me,” Katy said, looking down into Lucia’s murky blue eyes. “I feel a kinship with your mother. I’ve been sitting here wondering if I should go back to the Southlands. And if I do, what will happen to her?” She looked down at the baby, who was waving her small foot as she nursed.

  “Give yourself some time before you try to answer that,” Madrone said. “That’s medical advice. It’s too big a question to tackle now.” She shifted the subject. “You like the name?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Lucia Rachel she is, then. Maybe in a few days we’ll have time for a naming ceremony.”

  “Is there something I could be doing to help you?” Katy asked. “You do look tired, and I know there’s so much for you to do here.”

  “Just make sure Angela gets her medication on schedule. And rest.”

  “It seems so self-indulgent.”

  “Katy, you just gave birth less than a week ago, and it wasn’t an easy birth. And you had a horrible time before that. You need to rest. Take this time to be with Lucia, to bond with her, give her a good start. She deserves it.”

  “I guess you’re right. How’re the others?”

  Madrone smiled. “Poor Sara. The worm has turned. Mary Ellen orders her about, keeps her waiting on all of us, bringing us food and tea, tells her what to do continually, day and night. No more ‘Miss Sara’ now.”

  “I admire her. She gave up a lot. I’m not sure I would, if I’d ever had anything to lose.”

  “You would, if you felt it was right. You’re that sort of person.”

  “I don’t know. If I had a garden like this, a life where I felt it was my right beyond question to sit in the sun with my baby and watch these beautiful flowers grow, I’m not sure you could dislodge me.”

  “If you had it, you’d be used to it, like I was. And willing to leave it all for some dashing adventure.”

  “Regret it? Your trip into our world, I mean.”

  “I can’t regret it, no. It’s taught me to appreciate all this. But I regret what we all have to do to defend this, to try to create it out of that ugliness down there. I regret that we don’t have peace. I’m tired, Katy, tired of fighting and struggling.”

  “You ought to sit out here with the flowers for a while yourself, you know.”

  “You’re probably right.” Madrone sighed and fell silent, looking at the bees in the borage plant. “There is something else you can do for me.”

  “What?”

  “Come with me to see Bird. I’m afraid to go alone.”

  “Bird has disappeared,” Nita said. “Nobody’s seen him in the Plaza for two days.”

  Gone. Madrone stared bleakly at Nita. To think that she could have seen him, touched him, maybe, known for herself how he was. And now he was gone.

  They were huddled around the kitchen table, drinking herb teal It was late, and the patients were bedded down for the night. Sam lay on the couch, with his feet propped up. Mary Ellen sat in a corner, her head tipped back, snoring. Sara was washing the last load of dishes and cleaning the counters, while Maya rolled out a piecrust.

  “Sara, sit down,” Madrone said. Suddenly the cozy kitchen scene irritated her. What was Bird suffering while they were drinking tea? “You’ll give yourself dishpan hands. We’ll clean up when we’re done.”

  “I don’t mind. I’m trying to redeem my previously idle existence.” Sara smiled. Tired as she was, her hair plastered by sweat to her forehead in strands, her hands reddened and chapped, when she favored the room with that long, seductive glance she still seemed mistress of treasures and secret pleasures. Nita’s answering smile in return lasted just a beat or two longer than necessary, Madrone noted. Oh, well, she thought. Either I’ll have to ship Sara back down south or let Isis fight off all my old girlfriends.

  Isis, wandering in from the back door, intercepted the same look. She went over to Sara, slid her hand down her back and over her ass in a gesture of seduction and possession, leaned over, and kissed her on the mouth.

  “How ya doin’, honey?”

  “Doin’ dishes.” Sara pulled her head away, slightly embarrassed.

  “Leave off that, come sit with me.”

  “In a minute.”

  “Tell me how he was arrested,” Madrone asked.

  “It was a confrontation over water,” Sam said from the couch. “When the army first dammed the streams, a couple of weeks after they invaded, people tried to block them. They shot two of the Liaison Council; then Rosa and a gang of kids got between them and Bird and Sister Marie. One of their own soldiers shot the guy who was about to kill Rosa, but they arrested her along with Bird and Marie.”

  “Poor Marie,” Madrone said. “She was so sick. I can’t imagine she’s still alive. But what about Rosa? Has anyone seen her?”

  “Not since they captured her,” Aviva said.

  “Do we know where she’s being held?”

  “No. My fear is she’s been taken to what they so euphemistically call the Rec Center,” Sam said.

  “¡Mierda!”

  “They’re using her to pressure Bird,” Maya said. “I’m sure of it.” She turned her piecrust and thumped the rolling pin down on the board.

  “No doubt,” Isis said, as Sara put down her dishcloth and stood nestled against her chair. “They’re ruthless slime, the bigsticks.”

  “The what?” Nita asked.

  “You know. The highups in the army.”

  “Oh.” She let out an involuntary sigh as Isis’ hand slid down the outside of Sara’s thigh.

  “One of their favorite tactics is to find someone to turn traitor, to use as an example,” Isis went on. “And they always succeed.”

  “I didn’t think they would, with Bird,” Madrone said.

  “All it takes is the right leverage,” Sara said. “For most people, physical pain is enough. For others, they find something else.”

  “Like Rosa,” Maya said. “Goddess keep her.”

  “I’m tired, you know that?” Madrone said. “I’m just tired of this whole damn mess. Here and in the South and all over—it’s not like we wouldn’t have plenty of problems to solve just surviving even if we didn’t have war and torture and incredible cruelty to deal with.”

  “Wait until you’re as old as I am. Then you’ll really be tired of it,” Sam said.

  Maya snorted, folded her crust, and lifted it into its tin. “I’m not tired. I’m just mad. If I hadn’t made all those stirring speeches in Council about nonviolence, I’d go gunning for the General myself.”

  “You’re not the only one who feels that way,” Lou said. “I hear there’s plenty of de
bate about our strategy. I’m not sure how much longer we can hold the shoot-’em-up faction at bay.”

  “But that would be a tragic mistake,” Maya said in alarm. “To give up now!”

  “You were the one who mentioned guns,” Sam pointed out.

  “I said if I hadn’t made those speeches,” Maya countered. “But I made them because I believe them. I’d like to shoot the General, just on a personal level. But that wouldn’t end the violence. He’d only be replaced. We’ve got to go on struggling to find a different way, even if we lose.”

  “The problem is, losing in theory is a lot easier than losing in real life,” Lou said.

  “Who would know where Rosa’s being kept?” Madrone changed the subject.

  “One of Bird’s guards came over awhile back. He might know. But there’s a problem with him,” Aviva said.

  “What problem?”

  “Well, to begin with he didn’t just come over.” Sam told Madrone the story of the Johnson family.

  “You mean he shot them all?”

  “All except the youngest two. Then he sort of fell apart. We brought him back to Lily’s place, but he’s still not eating or speaking.”

  “Great.”

  Isis looked up. “Those guards, they’re the elite. Bred for it, not like your city rats and water thieves and roundups out of the unemployment lines. They’re soldiers first and last. You got one of them to come over, you doin’ good. Maybe the rest’ll follow.”

  “Not so far,” Nita said.

  “Give them time.”

  “Can’t anyone reach Bird, dream to him or to Rosa?” Madrone asked.

  “People have tried,” Sam said. “He’s closed off.”

  “Lily hasn’t reached him,” Maya said. “Even I can’t.”

  “I haven’t tried,” Madrone said. “But I will.”

  In her dream, she was falling, nothing below her, nothing around her, falling through a gray space tinged with dread. Then Bird was there, falling with her, and she kept reaching out to him, wanting to touch him, wanting someone to hold to, but he fell away, tumbling down and down.

  “There’s no ground,” he said. “There is nowhere to land.”

  “But what about your wings, Bird? Fly! Fly out of here!”

  But he did not fly. He continued to fall.

  34

  Madrone was squeezed into a corner in the back of the basement that served as Council Hall. The carved wooden salmon mask of the Speaker for the west periodically grazed the top of her head, and she hoped the Speaker would not be moved to nod vigorously at some particularly persuasive speech. The room smelled of sweat and sage. Isis and Sara crouched intertwined beside her.

  “How long do we keep on with this strategy?” Cress from Water Council was saying. “We’re losing people every day; the crop situation is critical. When do we admit that we need some stronger action?”

  “We keep on until the limitations of force become apparent to them,” Lily said.

  “They aren’t apparent to me!” someone called from across the room, and several people laughed.

  “Process!” reminded Joseph, who was facilitating.

  “Force always thinks itself indomitable,” Lily went on. “But in fact it is a very precarious sort of power, because to expend force requires the use of resources, energy, human lives. Force is extremely expensive to use.”

  “I don’t know, Lily,” said an older man. “With all due respect, it’s also extremely costly to resist.”

  “Force works ninety percent through intimidation,” Lily countered. “We obey not because of what they actually have done to us but because we fear what they will do and can do. But no system of domination can survive if it is actually required to use force every time it wants to be obeyed. If we refuse to obey, if we do no portion of their work for them, they must fall.”

  “But can we really do that, Lily?” Lou said. “Even Bird could only resist up to a point, and now he’s working for them.”

  “He told them about the cisterns,” said the yellow-haired woman sitting next to Cress. “They’ve been breaking up cisterns for the last three days, and five people have died so far trying to block them.”

  “They discovered the cisterns themselves, the day they searched the Chen place!” Walker jumped to his feet. “You can’t blame everything that goes wrong on Bird!”

  “Well, he hasn’t been around the Plaza since they started in on the cisterns,” Cress said. “Don’t you think that means something?”

  “What? What’s it supposed to mean?” Walker countered.

  “Bird is not the issue here,” Lily insisted. “Why are we obsessed with Bird? Hero or traitor, he’s only one person.”

  “He’s a bellwether,” Lou said, his low voice calm and contained. “Bearing in mind that I basically agree with your position, Lily, we still can’t ignore Bird. He’s a living example of what happens when force meets resistance, a microcosm of the struggle we’re all facing. So we needed him to be a hero. Maybe that was naive, unrealistic. Unfair, even. But it’s true. His betrayal has disheartened us. I know damn well he’s braver and tougher than I am. If he can’t resist them, how can I? How can we?”

  “Don’t call it betrayal!” Nita protested.

  “That’s what everybody is calling it,” Cress said.

  “Then everybody is a fool,” Lily said.

  “Stick to the process, please!” Joseph cried. “Okay, Lou, your turn.”

  “Maybe we’re fools, Lily,” Lou said, “but that’s what we have to work with, a population of fools and ordinary folks of limited reserves, not a city of saints. There’s a limit to how much we can stand, and that limit is almost reached. So it’s touch and go who is going to break first. And it may be us.”

  “What do you suggest?” Lily asked wearily.

  “We need to escalate somehow. People need some way to express their rage. Not violence, just anger.”

  There was silence in the room. Isis nudged Madrone. “Am I allowed to speak here?”

  Madrone nodded. “Just raise your hand. And pause occasionally so the Signer can follow you.”

  Joseph acknowledged Isis, and she stood.

  “You people have a beautiful city here. I have walked all over it, looking for the poor sections, looking for the places where the houses are rotten and the gardens are dry, and at last I believe what Madrone here’s been telling me all along, that you have built a place where everybody has enough. This is different, this is not what we’re used to where I come from, and it’s not what the soldiers are used to either. Doesn’t surprise me that they’re starting to desert. Because most of them are just poor sticks that get picked up off the street, get to choose between the army and jail. They’re not your problem.

  “Your problem is the Elite Corps, the ones that are born and bred and raised for the army, that don’t know anything else. They’re going to be the last to turn, if you can turn them at all. And if you can’t turn them, you may have to kill them. I know that’s not your way, but it’s got to be faced. And they’re not easy to kill.”

  “Do you have any ideas about how to reach them?” Sachiko asked.

  “All I can say is this: they stick by their units. That’s who they’re loyal to, that’s who they believe in. So if you can turn one of them from any unit, there’s a good chance the others will follow. But getting that one—I don’t know how to tell you to do that. Maybe work on the one you’ve got, the one that shot all those people. Maybe you can change him.”

  “Maybe pigs can fly,” Cress called out. There was a ripple of laughter before the Speaker for the Voices motioned for silence.

  “Friend Coyote has a message for us.” The Speaker bent close to the muzzle of the Coyote mask in the south. “Coyote says, ‘Remember your forgotten powers. Hold to the trickster, not the warrior. Do not despair.’ ”

  “We won’t answer this question tonight,” Joseph said. “We’ve got to end now if we don’t want the evening patrols to catch us on our way h
ome. We will debate this again tomorrow night. Go safely. Que les vaya bien.”

  Lily approached Madrone as the meeting broke up.

  “Come home with me,” she said. “I have healing work for you.”

  Madrone let out a long breath. “Lily, I haven’t seen you in seven or eight months, I come back out of hell itself, and you can’t even say hi before you put me to work?”

  Lily’s brows arched high. “What do you mean, I haven’t seen you? I’ve dreamed you a dozen times.” Then she pushed her hair back from her forehead, a gesture of weariness. “Forgive me, child. I’m becoming obsessed. But you’re right, I should have greeted you. I greet you now. Welcome back.”

  She took hold of Madrone’s shoulders and kissed her.

  “And now I have work for you.”

  “Lily, Sam has a houseful of work for me. Is this really vital?”

  “This is the most important work you can do.”

  “And how the hell do I heal this?” Madrone asked. They stood in the living room of the small flat where Lily had moved for the duration of the crisis. In one corner of the room Ohnine squatted, his head in his hands. His eyes, when he looked up, were vacant. Quietly, Lily drew Madrone out of the room and sat her down at a table in the tiny kitchen.

  But Madrone stood up and paced the small room as she talked. She could not sit still. “Show me a virus, a nice wound, a broken leg, a kid stuck in the womb—but how the hell do I heal the mind of a man who shot down a whole family in cold blood?”