Noman

by William Nicholson

  "It's to remind me of home."

  "And do you remember," said Seeker, "when we were on the road to Radiance, how we slept out in the open one night, and we both prayed, and the Wildman couldn't believe we meant it?"

  "Dazzle me and flood me," said Morning Star, remembering his words then.

  He nodded, pleased.

  "No more memories, Seeker. They make me want to cry."

  "Why, Star?"

  "Because—because I wish I believed now what I believed then."

  "Just because the Nom was destroyed," he said, "it doesn't mean there can't be another Nom, somewhere else."

  "That's what makes me so sad. There can be as many as you want."

  After that she knew she had to tell him, and she found that she wanted to make her confession.

  "There is another Nom, right now, in Radiance. I told them to build it, and now everyone believes the Lost Child has returned." She spoke quickly, wanting to get her shameful tale over with. "But I just made it all up, so they'd stop fighting each other."

  He was smiling at her as he heard her.

  "And they believed you?"

  "Yes."

  "You must have done a good job."

  "But Seeker, don't you see? It's all fake. There's nothing there. Just the mystery, and the promises, and the wanting to believe. There's nothing in the Garden. Not just there. In our old Nom, too. In any Nom anywhere."

  He didn't seem shocked. She herself was shocked to hear her new convictions spoken aloud, and also relieved.

  "So there's no Lost Child anywhere? No All and Only?" he said.

  "No," she said. "Nothing."

  "Nothing is dependable," said Seeker. "Nothing lasts."

  "I don't know what that means."

  "Does it make you angry, Star? To have been so deceived?"

  "Not angry, no. I don't think I've been deceived. I think I've deceived myself."

  "Because you wanted so much to believe in the All and Only?"

  "Yes."

  "So did I," said Seeker. "Strange to feel so much longing for something that doesn't exist."

  "That's because even though it doesn't exist, we can imagine what it would be if it did."

  "That's true," said Seeker. "And that's strange, too. We can imagine something that we've never known. What can the imagining consist of?"

  "It's what you said. A longing."

  "Like wanting love?"

  "Very like wanting love," said Morning Star. "Oh, Seeker, it's so good talking with you again. No one else understands the way you do."

  "So imagining god is like wanting love." Seeker was following his own train of thought, his eyes lingering on the blue cornflower. "But love does exist, even if we don't have it. We were loved when we were children. We know what it would feel like to be loved again. Maybe it's like that with god. We believed in god when we were children, didn't we?"

  "But now we've grown older we know the Garden is empty. It was all a lie."

  "And love is a lie?"

  "No, no. That's different. At least, I hope it's different."

  "You're willing to go on looking for love?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "Then why not go on looking for god, too?"

  Morning Star realized then that these questions he kept putting to her were tugging her in a particular direction. There was something he knew that he wanted her to discover, too.

  "Just tell me, Seeker. If you've got a way to make me believe again, just do it."

  He was silent for a few moments. Then speaking slowly, frowning as he spoke, he began to tell her.

  "Strange things have been happening to me," he said. "Not everything has come clear yet. But I'm perfectly sure that the All and Only is real."

  "Even though the Garden is empty?"

  "The Garden is not empty. The All and Only is there, in the Garden. And here, in this house. And outside, in the wide world. The All and Only is always and everywhere. Why do we have so many names for our god? Because our god is not limited to one place, or one person, or one nature. How could god be limited? It's not our god, it's ourselves that are limited. Our minds can't contain the immensity of god. So we build a Nom, we fence a Garden, we say the god is in there, and we're comforted. That's not a lie, Star. It's just a very small part of the truth. And when we discover that there's no radiant being in the Garden, that's not the end of god. It's the end of our little idea of a little god. It's the beginning of the discovery of the true infinite and eternal god."

  As Morning Star listened to Seeker she felt the stirring within herself of a new and fragile hope. She half understood him and half felt him—felt that intense conviction that charged every word he spoke.

  "Do you think it's so, Seeker?"

  "I know it's so."

  "How do you know?"

  "I went in search of the True Nom. I found it, and I didn't know it. I know it now. It's all round us, Star. The whole world is our True Nom. We pass through the Shadow Court every evening at twilight. We enter the Night Court as darkness falls and we look up at the stars. We find our way every new day through the columned cloisters of our lives. And there waiting for us, whenever we choose to see it, is the Garden."

  "But where? What Garden?"

  "Come. Let me show you."

  He got up, taking the cornflower from the glass as he rose. He opened the door and went outside into the long grass. He led her into the waving sea, and there they stood in the afternoon sunlight looking round them at the shimmer of fronds, and the trees beyond, and the distant heathazed hills. He gave her the blue flower.

  "Look at it as if you've never seen it before."

  She looked.

  "It's beautiful. Such a perfect blue."

  Seeker then broke off a stalk of grass and held it out to her.

  "Look at this, then. No blue here."

  She looked at the stalk, and the feathery fronds that grew from its top.

  "See how it's made? See how every part comes out of another part. See how the branches grow from the stalk, the spikes from the branches, the fine hairs from the spikes. It hasn't been built. It's unfolded from itself. Do you see?"

  Under his eager pressing she did begin to see.

  "Every part of the grass is right and inevitable. Do you see? And every part of the flower. Don't you think that's beautiful?"

  "Yes," said Morning Star. "That is beautiful."

  "Now look up. Look over all the grass growing round us. We're in a sea of beauty."

  "Yes, we are."

  "Now look wider. Look as far as your eyes can see. We're in a universe of beauty."

  "Yes," said Morning Star, catching his excitement. "Yes."

  "I don't know how to say it better than that. Beauty isn't pretty shapes, or pretty colors. It's the life in all things, being rightly lived. Our whole world is the Garden, if we can only see it."

  "I do see it, Seeker. A little."

  "Remember the Nomana Catechism?" He spoke the familiar words. "So will the All and Only never come?"

  She replied with the response from the Catechism.

  "The All and Only is with you now."

  "Will I ever see the All and Only face-to-face?"

  "You will," she responded, smiling.

  "When?"

  "When you are a god."

  "That's it, Star!" He clapped his hands, laughing aloud in his delight. "All the time I've lived with so much power, and people have wanted to treat me like a god, and I've driven them away, I've told them, No, I'm not a god. Of course I'm a god! And you, too! We call our god the All and Only, don't we? And aren't we too part of the All? The world is our Garden, and we're the gods!"

  She smiled to see him. He made her so happy, he was so true and good and bursting with the excitement of his thoughts.

  "You make a better god than me, Seeker."

  "No, but you do see it, don't you, Star?"

  "I see it. But it's hard. It's like finding that your father and mother don't know any more than you do. I thi
nk I liked it better when I believed there was something beyond anything I knew, living in secret in the Garden. Even though it terrified me."

  She remembered then how she had been unable to go close to the silver fence in the Nom, how she had felt the power streaming towards her and had known it would overwhelm her.

  "It did terrify me," she said. "I did feel something."

  "You felt the power," said Seeker. "Each of us feels it in our own way. I saw a figure of a man rimmed in dazzling light."

  "And there was nothing there?"

  "I was there. I saw what I put there. I saw myself. Just as you felt yourself. The terror you felt was real terror, but it was the terror that was already in you."

  "It's gone now. Gone with my colors."

  "Do you miss your colors?"

  "I thought I didn't, but I do. I keep looking at people, expecting to know what they're feeling, and I don't. It's like being blind."

  "So you don't know what I'm feeling?"

  "Only from what you tell me."

  "Well, then. I'll tell you. I've seen my whole life from beginning to end. How would you feel if that was you?"

  "I'd hate it. It would feel like my life was over."

  "I do hate it. I've done all that I was asked to do. Now I want to go back. I want to be surprised by my own life again."

  "Is there a way?"

  "Just the one way." He looked up at the cloudless sky. "I'm going to make it rain."

  "Rain! But it hasn't rained for months."

  "This will be my own rain."

  She guessed then what he meant to do.

  "No, Seeker! Not that!"

  "Just enough to be young again."

  "I don't want to have anything to do with it. I won't come with you. I won't watch."

  "I'm not going anywhere, Star. It's going to happen right here."

  He reached his hands over his head in the Nomana fashion, touching together his two forefingers and pointing them high into the cloudless sky. He looked up between his arms to his touching fingers and beyond. He drew a deep breath, and Morning Star saw his entire body start to tremble. Then he gave a low groan, and every muscle rippled upwards, and out from the tips of his fingers shot a stream of pure energy. It poured out of him up into the high blue sky, and as it streamed, it formed a turbulence in the air that thickened into mist, and then into racing clouds. The strands of cloud spiralled in the sky, and swelled and darkened, and built pile on pile into great towering thunderheads, rolling one above the other. A shadow like twilight fell over the land.

  A violent flash split the gloom, followed by a crack of thunder so loud it shook the land beneath their feet. For one long heart-stopping moment all was still. Then the rain fell.

  It came down in sheets, as if an ocean had spilled its shores among the clouds. Hard and heavy, hissing through the air, rain hammered the dry summer grass flat to the ground all round where they stood. The rain drenched them to the skin within seconds of beginning to fall.

  The lightning flashed again and again, and the thunder boomed, and the rain poured relentlessly from the darkened sky. Seeker spread his arms wide and turned his face to the downpour and began to hum a low steady note. Morning Star found she was humming too, and she too exposed herself to the warm rain. It stung her skin and drove all thoughts from her mind. She began to turn slowly round and round with her arms extended, as they had danced in the Joyous. She saw Seeker spinning in the same way and heard him humming that low sound. The rain slicked her hair to her head and her clothes to her body so that she felt stripped bare, but she didn't care. The storm embraced her; she had no choice but to be drenched and deafened and blinded, and as the rain stripped her, so she let go of the little she had left and felt her hopes and fears stream away into the seething ground.

  Seeker was crying out now in pain, his eyes closed, his mouth gaping. He was spinning in the rain, tormented by the storm. His cries were drowned by the downpour, his pain blanketed by rain. He had made the storm and now it was unmaking him.

  The rain that cleansed him and stripped him took away even the pain at last. He was turning more slowly now. The storm was passing. The cloud mountains were breaking up. A lone ray of sunlight fell across the land, striking a clump of trees on the far hills, and the water-charged leaves sparkled and shone in the distance.

  Morning Star lowered her arms and pushed the sodden hair from her eyes. The rain swept away like a curtain, and warm sunlight fell all round. The soaked land steamed. She looked at Seeker to see how he had changed, and cried out loud in her surprise.

  All round him shimmered a faint blue glow.

  Her colors had returned.

  He saw her gazing at him and smiled at her.

  "I'm not so different, am I?"

  "I'm not sure," she said.

  "It's done. It's over. I've no more power than you now."

  "But you've not forgotten everything you ever knew?"

  "No. I remember everything."

  "Who am I?"

  "You're Morning Star."

  "What do you know about me?"

  "You're my friend."

  "Of course I am."

  "And there's something else. But I seem to have forgotten what."

  He gazed at her, wrinkling his brow, puzzled by the fading memory. He saw the blue flower she still held in one hand, now drenched and drooping. He turned to look back at the white house, as if seeking the answer there. Then his features smoothed into one of his rueful smiles.

  "There. Whatever it was, it's gone."

  But his colors were changing as he looked at her. She could read every shade of his feelings. What had begun as the pale blue of youthful hope was turning a deep soft red. Morning Star saw it and knew what it meant.

  "One day I'd like to come back here," she said. "I'd like to live in this house."

  "Me, too."

  "We could live in it together."

  "We will," said Seeker. Then, wondering why he had said such a thing: "That is, I mean, I'd like to."

  "When we're older."

  "Yes. That's what I meant."

  He was looking at her so sweetly, his anxious eyes ready to turn away at the smallest rejection.

  "You think we'll be together when we're older?" he said.

  "Yes," said Morning Star. "I do think so."

  It was easy for her to speak this way, because she knew what Seeker was feeling.

  "I do love you, Seeker," she said.

  "Do you?"

  He sounded stupid with surprise.

  "Yes, I do."

  "But—that's all I want," he said.

  "I know."

  Morning Star bowed her head. A slow warmth was stealing through her body. This was more than joy. It was rightness. It was the life in all things being rightly lived.

  "You really truly mean it?" he asked her, still not daring to believe it could be so.

  "Yes. Really truly."

  "Then that's just—enough."

  She looked up. The happiness was growing with every passing moment. It dazzled her and flooded her.

  Seeker was beaming at her like a fool. He took her in his arms and held her close and still, cheek to rain-soaked cheek. Words formed in his mind, words from long ago or from some time yet to come; words that he did not speak aloud, because there was no longer any need.

  My one and only love.

  29 Farewell

  THE WILDMAN RODE DOWN THE RIVER PATH, HIS golden hair streaming, urging his Caspian to ever greater speed.

  "Go, Sky, go!"

  He was racing Caressa on Malook. He could hear her close behind him, but he did not look back. The Wildman had become a fine rider, but he knew Malook was the stronger horse.

  "Go, Sky! Don't let me lose!"

  "Hey, Malook! Hey, hey!" cried Caressa, almost in his ear.

  They reached the reed beds neck and neck. Lacking a clear finishing post both reached their hands in the air to claim victory.

  "Mine!"

  "Mine!"
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  "Not a fair start," complained Caressa, panting. "You took off first."

  "Never said it was fair," retorted the Wildman. "Just said I won."

  "Cheat!"

  "Loser!"

  The hard fast ride had done wonders for their spirits. Both were glowing with exhilaration. For all their insults they were grinning at each other like monkeys.

  "Good to get away," said the Wildman.

  "Heya!" cried Caressa, realizing for the first time that they were alone. "Let's never go back!"

  "Know where we are, Princess?"

  "Don't know. Don't need to know."

  "We're in the reeds."

  "What's in the reeds that I should care?"

  "Jump down. I'll show you."

  They dismounted, and leaving their Caspians to graze untethered, they pushed their way into the tall clicking reeds.

  "Water ahead," said the Wildman. "You mind getting your legs wet?"

  "You mind getting your face smacked?"

  Shortly they were wading through knee-deep river water. A shape loomed before them. The Wildman strode on between the reeds and struck the high timber sides softly with his hands.

  "She's still here," he said. "Waiting for me."

  It was the Lazy Lady, the riverboat that had carried him on so many raids in the old days.

  "I remember this!" exclaimed Caressa. "This is your pirate boat!"

  The Wildman hauled himself up onto the deck, and Caressa followed. A litter of dead leaves lay over the pale boards, and birds had nested in the rigging, but to the Wildman's eyes she was all she had ever been.

  "She's good," he said. "She'd slip away as sweetly as ever if I let her off the leash."

  Caressa stood in the prow and looked through the screen of reeds to the open river.

  "You getting itchy feet, Wildman?"

  "You know me, Princess."

  She returned to him and punched his right shoulder with the heel of one hand. Then she punched his left shoulder.

  "What's that for?"

  "So you don't forget. You don't go anywhere without me."

  "Maybe you don't want to go."

  "Maybe I do."

  They looked at each other and saw there the same sudden longing. Then, at the same time, they both burst into laughter.