Ingathering - The Complete People Stories

by Zenna Henderson

  We all sat around on the flat. I sat on an anthill first and moved in a hurry. We ate and feasted our eyes on the ship. Remy had come out the other side of ecstasy and was serenely happy. Father and Ron were more visibly excited than he. But then they hadn’t lived with the ship and the idea as long as Remy had.

  Finally a silence fell and we just sat and watched the night come in from the east, fold by fold of deepening darkness. In the half light came Ron’s astonished voice.

  “Why, that’s what it is! That’s what it is!”

  “That’s what what is?” came Father’s voice, dreamily from where he lay looking up at the darkening sky.

  “The ship,” said Ron. “I’ve been trying all afternoon to remember what it reminds me of. Now I know. It’s almost the same pattern as our life-slips.”

  “Our life-slips?” Father sat up slowly. “You mean the ones the People escaped in when their ships were disabled entering Earth’s atmosphere?”

  “Exactly!” Ron’s voice quickened. “It’s bigger and it’s cluttered with a lot of gadgets we didn’t have, but basically, it’s almost identical! Where did those fellows get the design of our life-slips? We didn’t keep any. We don’t need to with our Group memory—”

  “And its motive power.” Father’s voice was thoughtful. “It’s the power the People use. And Tom’s son was supposed to know how to make it go. Do you suppose Tom—”

  “No.” Mother’s voice came softly in the darkness. “I Sorted him after we took him to the house. He’s not one of Us.”

  “His wife then, maybe,” I said. “So many of us were scattered after the Crossing. And their son could have inherited—” My voice trailed off as I remembered what his son had inherited—the darkness, the heap of stones, and no chance ever for the stars, not even a reflection of them.

  “We could rouse Tom and ask?” offered Remy questioningly.

  “Tom is past remembering,” said Mother. “He’s long since been Called, and as soon as we waken him, he will be gone.”

  “Well,” Ron sighed, “we don’t need to know.”

  “No,” I admitted. “But it would be fun to know if Our Own built the ship.”

  “Whoever did,” said Father, “is Our Own whether he ever knew the Home or not.”

  ~ * ~

  So we went, the next day.

  But first, Ron and Father spent a quiet hour or so in the drift and emerged bearing between them a slender pine box with a small flag fluttering atop it. By now the ship was upright again and Remy, Mother, and I had provisioned it. When we were ready to go, we all went back to the house and got Tom, still and lifeless except for the flutter of a pulse faintly in his throat and a breathing that seemed to stop forever after each outflowing sigh. We brought him, cot and all, and put him in the ship.

  And then, our Voyage Prayer and the lift-off—not blast-off. No noise pushed us on our way nor stayed behind to shout of our going.

  Slowly, at first, the Earth dropped behind us, alternately convex and concave, changing sometimes from one to the other at a blink of the eyes. I won’t tell you in detail how it all looked. I’ll let you find it all new when you make your first trip. But I will say my breath caught in a sob and I almost wept when first the whole of Earth outlined itself against the star-blazing blackness of space. At that point, Ron and Father put the ship on maintain while they came and looked. We had very little to say. There are no word patterns yet for such an experience. We just stood and worshiped. I could feel unsaid words crowding up against my wonder-filled heart.

  But even a wonder like that can’t hold the restlessness of a boy for long, and Remy soon was drifting to all parts of the ship, clucking along with the different machines that were now clucking back at him as they activated to keep the ship habitable for us. He was loving every bolt and rivet, every revolution and flutter of dial, because they were his, at least by right of operation.

  Mother and I lasted longer at the windows than Remy. We were still there when Ron and Father finally could leave the ship on maintain and rejoin us.

  I’m the wrong one to be telling this story if you want technical data. I’m an illiterate for anything like that. I can’t even give you the time it took. Time is the turning of the Earth and we were free of that tyranny for the first time in our lives.

  I know that finally Father and Ron took the ship off maintain and swung it around to the growing lunar wonder in our windows and I watched again that odd curve and collapse sequence as we plunged downward.

  ~ * ~

  Then we were there, poised above the stripped unmovingness of the lunar landscape. We landed with barely a thud and Father was out, testing his personal shield to see if that would be sufficient protection for the time needed to do what we had to do. It was. We all activated our shields and stepped out, closing the door carefully behind us to safeguard the spaced gasping of Tom.

  We stood there looking up at the full Earth, losing ourselves in its flooding light, and I found myself wondering if perhaps it wasn’t only the reflection of the sun, if Earth had its own luminousness.

  After a while we went back in and warmed ourselves a little, and then the men brought out the slender pine box and laid it on the pumicey crunch of the ground. I stirred the little flag with my fingers so that it might flutter its last flutter.

  Then inside the ship they lifted Tom to a window. Mother Went-in to him before she woke him completely and told him where we were and where his son was. Then she awakened him gently. For a moment his eyes were clouded. His lips trembled and he blinked slowly—or closed his eyes, waiting for strength. He opened them again and looked for a long moment at the bright curve of the plain and the spangled darkness of the sky.

  “The moon,” he murmured, his thin hand clenching on the rim of the window. “We made it, Son, we made it! Let me out. Let me touch it.”

  Father’s eyebrows questioned Mother and her eyes answered him. We lifted him from the cot and, enveloping him in our own shields, moved him out the door. We sustained him for the few staggering steps he took. He half fell across the box, one hand trailing on the ground. He took up a handful of the rough gravel and let it funnel from his hand to the top of the box.

  “Son,” he said, his voice surprisingly strong. “Son, dust thou art, go back to dust. Look out of wherever you are up there and see where your body is. We’re close enough that you ought to be able to see real good.” He slid to his knees, his face resting against the undressed pine. “I told you I’d do it for you, Son.”

  We straightened him and covered him with Mother’s double wedding ring patchwork quilt, tucking him gently in against the long, long night. And I know at least four spots on the moon where water has fallen in historical time—four salty, wet drops, my own tears. Then we said the Parting Prayers and returned to the ship.

  We went looking for the littering that had annoyed Tom’s son so much. I found it, Sensing its metal from miles farther than I could have among the distractions of Earth. Remy wanted to lift it right back out into Space, but Father wouldn’t let him. “It wouldn’t change things,” he said. “It did get here first. Let it stay.”

  “Okay, then,” said Remy, “but with this on it.” He pulled a flag out of his pocket and unfolded it. He spread it carefully as far as it would go over the metal and laid a chunk of stone on each corner. “To keep the wind from blowing it away,” he grinned, stepping back to look it over. “There, that takes the cuss off it!”

  So we took off again. We made a swoop around behind the moon, just to see what it was like, and we were well on our way home before it dawned on me that I hadn’t even got one pebble for a souvenir.

  “Don’t mind,” said Mother, smiling as she remembered other rock-collecting trips of mine. “You know they never look as pretty when you get them home.”

  Now we’re back. The ship is stashed away in the shaft. We may never use it again. The fire of Remy’s enthusiasm has turned to plans and blueprints and all things pertaining to his Gift, his own persona
l Gift, apparently the first evidence of a new Gift developing among us. He’s gone in so much for signs and symbols and schematic diagrams that he’d talk in them if he could. Personally I think he went a trifle too far when he drew a schematic diagram of me and called it a portrait. After all! Mother and Father laughed at the resultant horror, but Remy thinks if he keyed colors in he might have a new art form. Talk about things changing!

  But what will never, never change is the wonder, the indescribable wonder to me of seeing Earth lying in space in the hollow of God’s hand. Every time I return to it, I return to the words of the Psalmist—the words that welled up in me unspoken out there half way to the moon.

  ~ * ~

  When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; What is man that thou art mindful of him—

  <>

  ~ * ~

  Tell Us a Story

  “Tell us a story, Nathan.” Lucas’ voice was hardly more than a whisper at Nathan’s elbow in the darkness of the loft. “Tell about the plow again.”

  “Oh, yes!” Adina’s voice came on a long, indrawn breath from the far corner. “And the cradle. The cradle in the tree.”

  The loft wasn’t very big and it was crowded with things waiting for use again when the seasons swung. So there was hardly room on the floor for the quilts laid over heaps of straw that had long ago lost their crinkle and resilience. Lucas and Nathan were side by side, and Adina, behind bundles, was out of sight against the far wall where she had to roll off the bed before she tried to sit up—because of the pitch of the roof.

  “Again?” Nathan mock-protested, pleased. “I’ve already told it a dozen times.”

  “It’s better’n a story,” said Adina. “ ‘Cause it’s true, isn’t it, Nathan?”

  “Sometimes I get to thinking and I kinda wonder.” Lucas’ voice came, hoarsely cautious. He coughed tentatively a couple of times, but it wasn’t very winter yet and a couple of times was enough.

  “Wonder!” Adina’s voice came indignantly, followed by a whack as she forgot to roll before sitting up.

  “Shhh! Shhhh!” The cabin was so quiet that breathing was too loud, but there was no sound of grown-ups turning to wake, and so the children breathed again.

  “Oh,” Lucas’ voice came a little louder. “They don’t ever wake up. They’re too tired.”

  “No matter,” Adina’s voice snapped. “You don’t believe—”

  “I didn’t say that!” protested Lucas. “I only wonder sometimes!” There was a scrabble as Lucas sat up and leaned forward in the darkness. “Don’t you?”

  “But it’s true, isn’t it, Nathan?” Adina’s half-whispering voice wanted comfort.

  “It’s true,” said Nathan. “But sometimes I wonder, too—”

  “Yeah!” said Lucas. “What if he told Father—”

  “I had to go after Kelly Cow.” Nathan’s voice slid smoothly into the silence, into the well-worn grooves of the story. “Now we know where she goes when she runs away, but last spring I had to hunt for her and got all tore up in the thicket by the river. Course, I know now to go around the thicket instead of through. I found her footprints in the mud on our side of the thicket and followed them through. And Kelly Cow was browsing right along the edge of the field.”

  Nathan drew a deep breath of mingled pleasure and wonder. “And the plow was plowing—straight as a string, all the length of the field and back again. With no horse pulling! And nobody following! I—I wondered what made it work. I was kinda scared, but I followed it clear down the field, and it just went along with a kind of crunching, sussing sound coming from it. I don’t mean it was making any noise by itself. The sound was just the furrow opening up as the plow cut through. I stood in front of it and watched it come. I was watching it so hard that I mighty near got Plowed my own self.”

  “Plowed your own self!” Lucas echoed, with a giggle.

  “And then the baby cried,” said Adina. The rustle of her pleased settling down under her covers filled the little pause.

  “Made me jump,” said Nathan. “To hear a baby crying out there. I hadn’t seen anyone around and I couldn’t figure where it was—the baby. I looked and looked along the field and under the trees—not moving much, just looking. I didn’t know—but I was looking too low. It was up in a tree! There was a cradle hanging from a limb by a couple of ropes. Just like Rockaby baby up in a tree top—and a baby was crying in it. It was clear across the field from me, but I could see its little fists waving while it cried. And then the cradle began to rock.”

  Adina sang softly, “When the wind blows, the cradle will rock— “

  “Only there wasn’t any wind,” said Nathan. “It just started to rock. And not a leaf moving except when the cradle touched it. But the baby kept crying. So—so a lady came out of another tree and went over and got the baby from the cradle, and then—and then she walked on the ground! She just slid through the air and stopped by the cradle to take the baby out—on her way down to the ground.”

  “And a father came,” Lucas prompted.

  “A father came and threw the baby up in the air and laughed. And the baby laughed, too, waving its hands and kind of bouncing around up there. And it didn’t come down! Its father went up and got it. Then he hugged the mother with one arm and carried the baby with the other. They went away through the trees. I waited to be sure they were gone. Then, all at once, a little brown basket came down out of the other tree and went away after them.”

  Nathan’s voice died; then he said, “It was a black walnut tree, and the basket was full of green leaves. That seemed crazy to me until Adina reminded me later.”

  “For the dye pot,” said Adina, complacently, in the dark. “To dye brown.”

  There was a sudden rustle as Nathan sat up on his pallet. “I just remembered,” he said. “The baby’s dress was pink—real pink—like—like the little wild roses on the edge of the thicket—when they’re only part open.”

  “Like a rose?” Adina was unbelieving. “Like a rose!” She was wistful. “I wish we could make pretty colors.”

  “Well,” said Nathan, “Kelly Cow was going back toward the river. So I went after her. The plow was still going back and forth and back and forth. A lot of birds would fly up from the furrows at the far end, when it came; then, after the plow turned back, they all settled down again. I watched the plow go down the last row and run off the field and make a kind of curlicue at the end of the field, as if—as if it’d been writing something all over the field and was just finishing it. Then it got up in the air and went off through the trees after the people.” Nathan sighed.

  “It was a good field. No stumps. No stones. There was a pile of stumps near the thicket. The roots were all long and spidery looking. None of them were cut off. They reminded me a little bit of a bunch of radishes pulled up and dropped in a pile.

  “And that’s all.” There was an empty feeling after Nathan’s voice stopped. There had to be more—

  “But you’ve gone back a lot of times,” said Lucas. “Kelly Cow keeps running away.”

  “Yes,” said Nathan. “They have a real good stand of corn. That’s all I ever see any more—the corn.”

  The silence lengthened and lengthened until it became slow breathing sleep.

  ~ * ~

  Nathan was hunting for Kelly Cow again. He shivered and groped in the ankle-deep snow for a more secure footing. No matter what they did to keep her home, short of locking her in the barn, she always managed to get away. And always headed for the farm beyond the thicket. Nathan started on, miserable with the cold and wanting supper. He bumped carelessly against a snow-laden bush, which immediately flipped and slapped him with a handful of snow. He sank down to sit on the ground—and sat where a hollow under the snow sprawled him sideways. He lay there, twisted, with difficult tears forcing themselves out of his eyes. Then he scrambled to his knees, alert and startled.

  Someone was standing, half-concealed, behi
nd a screen of bare bushes.

  “Oh, hello,” said Nathan, backhanding his eyes. “I didn’t hear you coming.”

  “Hello.” The voice was soft and friendly—with just a hint of accent about it. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” said Nathan, getting slowly to his feet, stiff with cold and shyness. “I’m just cold. That Kelly Cow—”

  “Here.” The figure moved into plain sight. “Here is warmness.” Ungloved girl hands offered something to Nathan.

  Automatically, he took the thing, his hand sagging a bit under the slight weight, and warmness flowed from it into his hands and began to creep slowly into his coldness.

  “What is it?” he asked, looking more closely at the dark, irregular chunk in his hands.