The Fifth Sacred Thing

by Starhawk

  “Fire!” the General repeated, louder.

  Bee venom trickled through his veins, dissolving the drugs, dissolving the haze of pain. Suddenly everything became very clear. Each separate face in the crowd seemed to have a firm outline drawn around it. Maya’s eyes glowed, big as moons. He would not put out their light. No, what happened to Maya, to Rosa, was not under his control, never had been. He could not save them. He could not redeem the choices he had made before, he could not guarantee that he’d have the strength to resist again. But none of that mattered. What mattered was only to gather the courage for this one moment, to step off the road.

  Slowly, as if he were laying a child down to sleep, Bird lowered the rifle and placed it on the platform.

  “I won’t kill for you,” he said to the General.

  “Then you’ll die.”

  “It’s a better choice,” Bird said. “There’s more hope in it.” He raised his hands above his head and waited for the noise and the blast of pain. But he wasn’t afraid. He could feel the ground under him again.

  The song he had made for Madrone echoed in his ears. He’d thought he’d lost the music that was in him, but now it worked his lips and pried his mouth open and forced its way out of him in croaks and gasps. He tried to sing for the people as he had sung for the bees, hoarsely at first, but gradually his voice strengthened, and the sound rose and swelled above the crowd. His upraised arms became a gesture not of surrender but invoking, for he had never loved his life more than at this moment, loved his own breath and the movement of blood in his veins and the touch of air on his skin and his own voice reverberating.

  That was all he had to do, to sing—to his grandmother and his lover and his enemies and his executioners. He had found his ground to stand on, and, yes, there was a bottom place, a place where who he was and what he could not do was stronger than fear and stronger even than hope. He understood now that he could never lose the music. It grew in him as the silence grew around him. They had broken his hands, but they had not broken his voice, they had broken his will but they had not broken his ears, and if they took his ears they could never take the inner ear, the inner voice. And even when his voice was silenced, some voice would still continue to sing. For he realized now that he was wrong in thinking the music was in him.

  He was in the music, and it would always find an instrument.

  “Unit Five, fire!” the General ordered. “Kill him.”

  Ghosts wheeled and circled like gulls.

  Now, Bird thought. Now I will die and join you.

  He looked out at the men who had their guns trained on him. It was his own unit, and that seemed comforting, somehow, to die at the hands of friends, not strangers. For they were his friends. He had grown into them, become one of them, as they now shared some part of him. He smiled and sang louder.

  But he did not die. One by one, the soldiers lowered their guns.

  “Fire!” the General ordered again. They remained standing, silent, impassive, disobedient.

  Go ahead, Bird almost wanted to shout at them. Get it over with, do it, I cannot maintain this tension any longer.

  He stopped singing. Complete and utter silence gripped the square. He could hear only ghost wings in the air and a drumbeat, like a heart, pulsing.

  “He’s in our unit, man,” Threetwo said. “We don’t kill our own.”

  “Fire!” the General roared a third time. “Fire, you slimecrawlers, or I’ll have every soulless one of you taken out and shot!”

  River sprang up onto the platform. “Unit Five,” he cried out, and everyone in the Plaza could hear him. “We in the wrong army! Follow me, and fight for ourselves! The Witches, they can fix us so we don’t need the boosters. They our true people. Stand with them—we got nothing to fear. Come on!”

  “Shoot to kill!” the General ordered his Private Guard.

  River knocked Bird down and grabbed his discarded rifle as gunfire rang out. The soldiers of Unit Five returned fire, leaping off the platform and into the panicked crowd. Lasers flared, shots rang out, and people began screaming and desperately trying to push through the press of bodies. The squadron around Maya melted away to join the scattered soldiers of River’s unit.

  “Get down!” Madrone screamed, pushing Nita to the ground, for they were caught between Unit Five and the General’s Guards. Shots were flying around her. Up on the platform, Maya was still tied to the pole, exposed, lasers streaking by her calm eyes.

  “Madrina,” Madrone screamed, but her words were lost in the chaos. A wild laser struck something electrical under the platform, and black smoke began to rise.

  “Come on,” Isis called to her, and began crawling toward the west side of the platform. Madrone followed, wriggling on her belly through the chaos of shots and smoke and stampeding feet. Nita was lost behind them.

  Bird lay on the platform in shock, trying to decide if he were alive or dead. War had erupted around him. The General’s army was fighting itself. He knew he should move, but his body wouldn’t seem to obey his mind. Clouds of smoke billowed around him, full of ghosts. Cleis and Zorah and Tom passed by; his brother Marley played a drumbeat that brought clouds gathering and drops of rain down from the sky; Rio stood over him; there were warriors and ancestors and flocks of extinct birds. Every battered child, every bruised slave, every starved peasant, every woman raped and murdered, every soldier who’d died for somebody else’s ends, legions and legions of the dead came marching, howling, screaming, whipping cold wind fingers across the nape of his neck, ruffling his hair so it stood on end. He opened his mouth and tried to sing to them, but the acrid smoke choked him. Still he thought the dead took up the chorus, whining and whistling and shrieking until he had to move, crawling down the length of the platform while the spot he’d been lying on burst into flame.

  Air. He could breathe again. The wind whipped the smoke aside and he caught a glimpse of Maya, still tied to the pole. He had to reach her. Bent over, crouching, he ran.

  Isis and Madrone reached the edge of the platform near Maya just in time to see Bird dive at her feet as a sheet of laser fire went streaking above his head. Maya’s dress was singed, but she looked unharmed.

  “Are you okay?” Bird had to shout to be heard. She nodded. He fumbled with the ropes that held her, but the knots were so tight he wondered how he would ever get her loose. Suddenly he felt someone tugging at his leg, reaching up from the side of the platform to place a pocketknife in his hand. He opened the blade and cut the cords that bound Maya to the pole.

  Released, she slumped forward but he caught her and eased her down.

  “Give her here,” a voice called from below. He handed her down to the strong pair of arms that reached up for her. Isis picked Maya up, slung her over her shoulder, and ran. Amidst the bullets and the streaks of laser fire, he half jumped, half fell, off the platform to the ground. Familiar arms enfolded him; he remembered them from somewhere as he recognized the body that pressed close to his. He blinked his eyes to clear his vision and saw Madrone.

  “You’re alive!” he said.

  “So are you!” For one long moment they clung together, while fire engulfed the platform and the crowd fled. Wrapped in her arms, he felt whole again, redeemed, forgiven. Holding his miraculously still-living body, she was finally home.

  He pulled back, although he still held tight to her hands.

  “Rosa,” he said.

  “Are you okay? Can you walk?”

  “Rosa, now, while the power is here.”

  She nodded, and they made their way through the thinning crowd, calling out to people as they ran.

  “The prisoners! We’ve got to free the prisoners!”

  The crowd surged behind them, as they ran out the north side of the Plaza, down the street that faced the Old Library. Their following grew as they continued down the block, rising like a tide that broke on the glass doors of the old Federal building, where five armed soldiers stood guard.

  “Who goes first?” Madrone as
ked, looking warily at the soldiers.

  “The dead,” Bird said, and sang again. Gray wraiths swirled up from the crowd and bore down on the waiting soldiers. Madrone closed her eyes, sent out a call. Within moments, they were surrounded by a cloud of bees, humming and buzzing and making forays at the soldiers, flying into their eyes. The soldiers dropped their guns and fled.

  They found Rosa locked in a room in the basement. Her eyes were closed, her head thrown back at an odd angle, and for one terrible moment Madrone was sure she was dead.

  Another one, Madrone thought. Mama, I have tried so hard to stop all this, and failed and failed.

  Bird went to her and picked her up in his arms. Her skin was cold but she stirred, as he touched her, and flinched.

  “She’s alive,” he whispered. “Thank the Goddess.”

  She opened her eyes, and looked up at him, and then shrank away.

  “It’s okay, querida. I’m okay now,” he murmured. He didn’t want to think about how she had last seen him and what she might be remembering. “You’re safe now. Look, Madrone is here.”

  “Madrone?”

  Bird transferred Rosa into Madrone’s arms. She held the girl tight, crooning to her, stroking her tangled hair. “It’s okay, baby. It’s going to be all right. Diosa, I am so very glad to find you alive.”

  Bird sank back against the gray stucco wall. His energy was leaking away, tears streamed down his face, the ghosts were leaving him now. It was dark here and his eyes were at ease, his whole body felt oddly comfortable, like an animal returned to a familiar cage. In a moment he was going to be sick on the floor.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  They carried Rosa up into the open air and sat next to her, keeping vigil on the steps. The crowd had moved off, they were marching to the hospital, someone said, and the soldiers were battling one another. River had led a squadron to take the armory. Many were fleeing back down the highway to the South or turning over their guns and asking for asylum. The Plaza and the surrounding streets were littered with the dead. Groups of volunteers were searching the building, battering down doors to free the prisoners they found within.

  The steps were cold and cement and solid under Bird. The sun was warm, and Madrone’s hand that clung to his was warm too. Rosa nestled into Madrone’s shoulder, unable to speak. People passed them by, waving banners and singing songs of victory.

  “I guess we’re winning,” Madrone said. “I can hardly believe it. We should feel happy.”

  “In a moment I will,” Bird said. “It’s got to run a long way to catch up with me.”

  Inside he felt cold as the vacuum of space. The light hurt his eyes so badly. He wanted to hold Madrone, but he couldn’t even turn to her.

  “I was giving her piano lessons,” Bird said. “Do you remember, Rosa? Maybe now you’ll learn to play that Mozart piece.”

  Then he was crying and Madrone slipped an arm around his shoulders.

  “You’ll heal,” she said. “You’ll both heal. We all will.”

  He looked up at her, wiping his eyes on the back of his sleeve. “I’ll probably have to go live with the Wild Boar People. Does the whole city think I’m a traitor?”

  “After today, they’ll think you’re a hero.”

  “No. I don’t want to be a hero.”

  “What do you want to be, querido? This is victory; you can be anything you want.”

  “A piano teacher,” he said, and laughed. Suddenly happiness hit him. He was alive, and Rosa had survived, and Madrone too, and before them a boy hoisted a banner on the flagpole, the double spiral in the quartered circle on a rainbow ground. “Even if I’m a very bad one.”

  Madrone laughed. Rosa looked up and smiled.

  “How am I going to get you two home?” Madrone asked. “Goddess knows if there’s any transport going. I don’t think I can carry Rosa so far, and Bird, you look like hell.”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “But we’re out, now, aren’t we?” Rosa said.

  “Yes,” Madrone said. “Out of hell, and free, and safe as anybody can be in this world. That’s real. We’ve made it back into El Mundo Bueno.”

  “Hold me, and I’ll try to remember that,” Bird said.

  She wrapped her arms around him, hugging Rosa between them. He was warm and alive, as was she, against all odds, and they had come back to each other from terrible places. Pain and joy wrapped around them. Bird’s eyes still hurt, but when he closed them suddenly his ears were filled with music. In time, he knew, he would sing it and struggle to play it and write it down. Well or badly, it didn’t matter, only that he sang what was in him. Songs for the living, songs for the dead. He began to hum. Madrone felt the music through his skin, humming like the bees, ringing like the voice for which she too was an instrument. A victory song. Today, she remembered suddenly, was the first of August, or Third Foggy Moon, the Day of the Reaper, the twenty-first anniversary of the Uprising. Soon they could climb the hill, make the offerings, say to the Reaper, “See, Goddess, this is what we have made of our city. This is how we have preserved it, defended it, saved our own lives.” The streams would soon flow again. And this winter, the rains would come.

  37

  They lit bonfires on the tops of all the hills in the city. All night, drummers pounded out rhythms and people cried and danced. The army was gone. Some had fled down the old highway, others had died in the crossfire of mutinies, many had simply laid down their guns and asked to be taken in. The streets were thronged with people, the streams flowed again, and lights moved on the bay as boats sailed home.

  The General lay in a hospital room, and Maya sat beside him, still dressed in white. She had been fed some clear broth and a piece of toast; she felt more alive now, almost substantial, even though Sam had yelled at her and told her to stay home. But she was not tired, only a little light-headed from her long fast. When they heard that Alexander had been found wounded in the Central Plaza, a laser burn piercing his chest and lung, she had known she had to come and see him for herself.

  “So you’re dying and I’m not,” Maya said to him. The General’s eyes were closed; he did not respond. “How ironic. You get shot by your own men and I get carried off by a gorgeous Amazon pirate. Not bad for a woman of my mature years.”

  The General moaned.

  “You’re in pain. Maybe you should have let Madrone work on you. She pulls off miracles, from time to time.”

  They had offered him healing, but when Madrone came, her hands extended toward him, he shook his head and whispered with labored breath, “No Witchcraft!”

  “I’m offering you some healing,” Madrone had said. “Pure and simple, no ideology attached.” But he shook his head again, and she shrugged her shoulders and left, not reluctantly. For she was tired too. She’d managed to find a wagon to take Bird and Rosa home, but that was hours and hours ago, and since then she hadn’t sat down or stopped to eat a meal. There were so many wounded to tend, and too many dead. And this was the man responsible, the man who’d tortured Bird and Rosa and murdered Marie and so many more.

  But I would have healed him nevertheless, or tried, she thought, and so there is a loss here, loss of the possibility of some opening. Maybe I’ve had it backward all along. I thought healing was pouring energy out, but it’s not. It’s opening, refining each receptor to any possibility of hope and comfort and change, taking in and taking in until you overflow. She felt rich, even in her exhaustion. She would go home now to Bird, who had stripped off his uniform and bathed and put on his own clothes, and they would touch, his touch would sing to her, and she in her own way would sing to him.

  “I don’t mind dying,” the General whispered, his voice so low that Maya had to lean close to his mouth to hear. “Better than living in defeat.”

  “That happy philosophy, throughout history, has killed more men than gonorrhea,” Maya said. “Still, I have to admire your consistency, if not your ideals. In spite of all the suffering you’ve caused, I w
ould ease your pain if I could.”

  The General groaned. He was silent for a long time. Maya sat and waited. She didn’t mind waiting with the nearly dead, she was that way herself. Why am I here? she asked herself. Is this an act of compassion, or do I just need to see with my own eyes that the man is really dead?

  “You made your own defeat,” Maya went on, speaking as much to herself as to the limp form on the bed. “With your own fear, and with the hatred you yourselves have sown. So that even though you seemed so much more powerful than us, you could not win in the end. Although I have to admit there were more than a few moments when I doubted that.”

  The General gasped and strained and finally managed to spit out a few words. “Others will replace me.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps you have taught us the lessons we need to know to resist those others too.”

  A bright bubble of blood burst between the General’s lips. “War never ends,” he gasped, in a voice so low she had to lean down to hear it.

  She took his hand, cold even as she lifted it. “There was a place for you at our table, General, if only you could have believed us.” He closed his eyes and died.

  “Well, Lily, now what?” Sam asked. The kitchen was crowded and warm with the smell of simmering soup and noisy with five conversations going on at once.

  “Come to Council tomorrow,” she said. “It will all be debated. What to do with the deserters. How to rebuild. Whether or not we should anticipate further attacks.”

  “Tomorrow?” Madrone said. It already was tomorrow, wasn’t it? She had worked through the night and lost count of time. “Don’t we get a day off?”