“You’ve not changed,” he said at last.
“You have.”
“Most things have changed, but you haven’t. That’s good.”
“Oh, I’ve changed. Didn’t you know? The King was so pleased with Curil that he gave him all sorts of rights and titles and a gold necklace, just for looking after you, and then Curil was so pleased with me that he gave me nine sheep of my own, so now I only need twenty-two more and I can marry anybody I like and not just who Curil tells me!”
She pointed out her possessions, grazing among the flock and indistinguishable to Tron’s eye from all the others. She told him their names and pedigrees and asked him to bless them for her.
“Not yet,” he said. “I want to tell you something—it’s a story about the Gods.”
“Like the one you told me about the jackal who can never die?”
“It’s not that kind of story, really. I don’t even know if it’s true. I’ve pieced it together out of some dreams I had, but they may only have been poppy-cake dreams; and a few things that Odah said; and everything that’s happened; and what I found inside my soul. But I don’t think there’s any point in telling the King, or one of the priests, or Curil, because their minds are all fixed and busy with what’s happening on the surface of things … you remember the Wise, who come in so many of the hymns and stories?”
She nodded.
“Well, suppose they were ordinary men and women, just like us. They weren’t any wiser than we are, but they were cleverer. I mean they had found out how to do extraordinary things, like building an enormous dam across the Jaws of Alaan, to … I don’t know why they did it … it doesn’t matter. I used to think that the hymns contained all the knowledge there was, but now I think it’s only a tiny amount compared with what the Wise might have known. And suppose even then they were always looking for new knowledge, that’s how they might have found the Gods.”
Taleel’s bobbin stopped as if stuck in the instant.
“But the Gods were there before the Wise,” she said.
“That doesn’t mean that men always knew about Them. Taleel, this is only a story. It’s a might-have-been. It’s a way of explaining to myself what’s happened to me, and a feeling about what I’ve got to do next. But suppose … Yes, the Gods were always there. They have no beginning and They don’t die. But They don’t belong in this world. The Wise found Them somewhere else, outside, among the stars somehow. And because there was so much power in the Gods, the Wise thought they could use it, so somehow they managed to trap Them down into this world.…”
“That wasn’t right,” said Taleel, frowning. It was hard for her to understand—Tron wasn’t sure how much he understood himself and how much was only the aftereffects of poppy dreams, but he was glad that she grasped what mattered to him.
“No,” he said. “And it wasn’t wise either, but it was clever. Suppose the Gods aren’t clever, not even as clever as you and me. But They’re strong, stronger even than the Wise understood. So just by being here, and living for ever, slowly They would make the world quite different. Listen, when I trained the Blue Hawk I was much cleverer than it was, but even so it made me different. It didn’t plan to change me, but I was changed. The way I lived, the way I thought, the kind of person I was—all different. It might have been the same when the Wise captured the Gods. You see, the Gods would have been like the hawk, and the Wise like me, and so the world became different. The Wise slowly became less clever, became like we are now, and when they remembered the things that had happened in the old days they talked about them like something in a dream, and in the end they turned them into hymns.…”
“But the hymns are true! They’ve got to be!”
“Perhaps they’re as true as we can understand now. I mean when the hymn says that Saba murdered his father and the Lord Gdu made him alive again perhaps that’s just a sort of picture of what really happened, something that won’t go into pictures, but something with the same sort of Tightness and wrongness in it. I don’t know.… But listen. I think the Gods have been working for ages to escape from the trap—which is what our world is for Them. I can’t explain how except by making a picture. It’s like a great weight of water held up behind an irrigation dam. If there’s a small hole in the dam, the water can burst out and smash the dam down and roar away down the valley, but it can’t make the hole by itself. It needs something—oh, a little burrowing rat, or something like that. Compared with the water the rat is completely feeble, and of course it isn’t burrowing on purpose to let the water out—it’s making a nest-hole, or digging for worms or something, but then … Do you understand?”
“I’ve seen sheep break out of a pen. Often it’s a stupid little lamb that finds the first hole, and then the mother gets frantic to follow it and barges a way through, and then suddenly they all come tumbling out.”
“Yes, that’s right. Now, suppose the Gods are a bit like that. Then They’d need two things. First They’d have to build up the pressure—like the weight of water, or your mother sheep becoming frantic. So They’d close off a bit of the world and concentrate all Their power there. They’d need a place that could be closed, with barriers all around it—deserts, marshes, mountains. The Kingdom’s like that. Even then it would take Them thousands of flood-times, but when it was done there’d come a special season when the trap was weakest at one particular place—the Pass of Gebindrath that night of Aa’s Most Brightness. Then They’d need men to make the first small break in the trap. I don’t know why, but I suppose if men made it in the first place … I sometimes think that even the rituals we used to perform at the Great Temple might have been part of the trap. We were always summoning the Gods down, binding Them into the lives of men, holding Them to us. I even felt, last time we were going to the Temple, that the Gods didn’t want to get too close. But suppose everything that’s happened—not just to me but to you and the King and Onu Ovalaku and the Mohirrim—was all brought about so that Odah and the One of Sinu and I should journey to the pass and there make a new ritual, doing exactly the opposite, asking a God to leave.…”
“How did you know what to do?”
“At first I thought it was simply that Aa came in the night and told Odah, and that everything we did was absolutely necessary, even our being a blind old man and a cripple and a boy. Now I don’t think it was like that. The Gods aren’t like that. They couldn’t tell Odah exactly what to do. But really it didn’t matter what we did—I mean it didn’t matter what words we chanted and what steps we danced. What mattered was that we three should believe with all our souls that what we were doing was what the Gods wanted, because then we would be putting all the strength that was in us into asking one of the Gods to leave that place. It had to be a great ritual, but only so that we could believe in it. What the Gods needed was the strength of our souls, all aimed at one point, at the full moon, in that narrow place, to cause the first minute crack in the trap. After that They could burst through. And we did it. We all three felt afterward … you know that sometimes a man can make his body find more strength than he knew was in it, and afterward the body will lie in a sort of coma for several days? It was like that with our souls. We gave the whole strength of them to the Gods. So the One of Sinu died next day, and Odah and I felt as though we had no life in us—he spoke as if he didn’t expect to live many more days.…”
“But you’re not going to die! I won’t let you! You’re much better.”
“Yes. But I would have died. Only when I felt the arrow I cried to my Lord Gdu. He made me live.”
“You mean He hadn’t gone yet?”
“He’d gone, but He came back.”
“He must love you very much.”
“Yes. No. The words are wrong. I think … Perhaps the Gods didn’t only change us, we changed Them. He’d lived so long among us, and we’d called Him Lord of Healing all that time, so perhaps … You’ve seen how wild my hawk is, but if it were flying overhead and I swung my lure, perhaps it would still come
down to it. Most of what I’ve been telling you is just guesses. Perhaps it isn’t any truer than the hymns. But I know my Lord Gdu, somehow, in some way, came back to heal me because I cried to Him.”
“Where is He now?”
“Here.”
“Oh!… Tron, you remember that day we first met, and I screamed because I was so frightened. I was frightened before you came. I felt there was someone watching me. Was He here then?”
“Yes.”
“But I can’t feel Him now.”
“He’s here and not here. He came back no more than He needed to, or He would have been trapped in the world for another age. Even now He is like … like a hawk, freed from its master but tangled into a bush by the leg thongs it still wears. Now we must free Him.”
“Now at once?”
“At the sun’s noon.”
“The sun? And just now you said ‘the full moon’! They really are gone—O and that kind woman and the rest?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been delirious, and eating poppy-cake. All the little hymns say that poppy-cake visions can’t be trusted.”
“But still you do think there aren’t any Gods any more,” she insisted, her voice hushed as she began to grasp the hugeness of the change.
“Oh, there are Gods,” he said. “There must be. Look, you’ve got hands—you wouldn’t have them if there were nothing to grasp. You’ve got eyes—you wouldn’t have them if there were nothing to see. Just like that I’ve got something in my soul which is there to love and serve the Gods. So even if all my supposings are right there must still be the true Gods of the world to love and serve.”
“But where are They?”
“I don’t know. Do you ever hear the noise from the falls?”
“Only sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night. We’re so used to it here.”
“Perhaps the true Gods are like that—inside us, all round us, like the air we breathe without noticing. The noise these other Gods made meant we could never hear Them.”
“What are you going to do, though?” said Taleel in a down-to-earth, almost nagging tone. “You can’t just build a shrine and see Who comes.”
“I could,” said Tron. “But first … you know, I’ve sometimes felt that I was becoming two different people. There’s a me to serve the Gods and do whatever They want without choice or question, and a me to choose and be free. But then I remember that I first really began to know the Gods when I was free, alone at the Temple of Tan, training my hawk. So there aren’t really two of me, only two halves which come together when I’m free to choose and then choose to serve.”
“What are you going to do, though?” she said again.
“Go with the King, if he’ll let me. He’s going to conquer the world with the help of the Mohirrim—though it won’t end like that—nothing ever does. He understands about choosing. He didn’t order me to help him—he asked me.”
“And you’ll find these new Gods of yours somewhere out there?” she said, waving her brown, square hand toward the mountains.
“I don’t think They’re like that,” said Tron. “If there’s an answer, part of it is deep inside me and part of it out among people. It’s two halves again, which only become true if you put them together.”
“Well, good luck,” she said. “I’m staying here. Kalakal’s a good place. Only …”
“Yes?”
“If you find a strong young man with brown eyes and twenty-two sheep, you’ll tell him about me, won’t you?”
Tron laughed. With great care he turned himself over and lay face down on the grass, silent, letting the energies above the gorge gather and tighten round him. Even the steady drumming of the falls seemed to be softened as if by an invisible barrier. He did not feel time passing but knew the moment without looking to see how the shadows of the grass blades had shortened. Using the crutch, he hauled himself to his feet and hobbled to the hawk. Hooded though it was, it fought against his touch.
“Come and help me,” he called. “Good. Now, I need both my hands to hold its wings. Can you untie the leg thongs—you’ll see the long bit beyond the knot slips through a slit and then … that’s right. No, go right round to the other side in case it strikes at you with its free foot. Good. Now the hood. Slip it off forward and down. Don’t snatch, but get your hand out of the way as quick as you can. Well done. Now I can’t use even one crutch like this, so you’ll have to help me down to the cliff edge. Put your arm round my waist. All right? Let’s try a few steps.… Yes, that’ll do. Stop. Now listen, Taleel. This is a ritual. All you need to do is to help me move slowly and evenly. Don’t say anything. We begin.”
The need to move in step turned their pace into an almost dancelike rhythm. Taleel’s arm, used to manhandling sheep, was tough and steady. Nothing else moved, and the hills waited in silence. Even the prisoned hawk stopped struggling as they came nearer and nearer to the green lip of the gorge. There Tron stopped and held the bird forward like an offering held up toward an altar. He shut his eyes and concentrated his soul into the ideas of release, of going, of freedom. He knew it did not matter what words he chanted, so he let them come to his lips without thought.
“Lord of healing
Lord of the air
Lord of my life
Be wounded no more.
Fly beyond air
Fly beyond my prison
Be free from my service
Free from my worship
Free from my love.”
His voice sounded weak and almost bloodless, but that didn’t matter. At the last quiet note he opened his eyes and with a smooth movement tossed the hawk outward and upward. The wings opened so swiftly that he felt the brush of the spread primaries against his palms, and then the bird was whirling away with swift, pulsing wingbeats, dwindling fast but clear against the white pillar of spray above the falls. Suddenly the pulse of wings stopped and it curved out of its path in a smooth glide, slowed, and hung hovering.
All around him Tron sensed the world poised and still. He felt the forces of the God contract and contract, moving away from him, gathering into a cone of energies above the hovering bird, and at last in one clean instant withdraw from the world.
He looked up, almost expecting to see the sky open to let the traveler through and close again behind Him, but there was only the glaring disc of the sun, hazed with the mist from the falls but still too bright to stare at.
He looked back to the hawk. For a few heartbeats it hung, sharp-seen against the white spray. Then its wings swung back and it was hurtling in that familiar dive, down into the gulf, down out of sight, into the life it was made for.
A Biography of Peter Dickinson
Peter Dickinson is a tall, elderly, bony, beaky, wrinkled sort of fellow, with a lot of untidy gray hair and a weird, hooting voice—in fact, he looks and sounds a bit like Gandalf’s crazy twin, but he’s just rather absentminded, thinking about something else, or daydreaming.
He was born in the middle of Africa, within earshot of the Victoria Falls. Baboons sometimes came into the school playground. When people went swimming in the Zambezi they did it in a big wooden cage let down into the water so that the crocs couldn’t get at them. For the hot weather the family went south to his grandfather’s sheep and ostrich farm in South Africa.
When Peter was seven the family came back to England so that he and his brothers could go to English schools, where they taught him mostly Latin and Greek. He didn’t have an English lesson after he was twelve, and nobody ever told him to write a story. He was fairly good at games.
He’s led an ordinary kind of life—not much by way of adventures, but some silly things. Such as? Well, when he had to join the army just after World War II, they managed to turn him into two people, so he was bashing away at infantry training at a camp in Northern Ireland when two seasick military policemen showed up and tried to arrest him for being a deserter from a different camp in the South of England, where his other self was supposed to be bashing away.
He was tutoring a boy in a huge old castle in Scotland when the butler (it was that sort of household) said to him at breakfast one day, “Ah, sir, it’s a long time since we heard screams coming from the West Wing!” (Peter’s screams, not the boy’s.)
And he was knocked down by a tram on his way to the interview for his first job with the magazine Punch and arrived all covered with blood and dirt, but they gave him the job because he was the only candidate. He stayed there seventeen years.
He and his first wife had two daughters and two sons, and he now has six grandchildren. He and his second wife, the American writer Robin McKinley, live in an almost-too-pretty country town in the South of England.
Peter says he didn’t become a writer. He just is one and always has been, ever since he can remember, the way a goldfish is a goldfish and can’t be anything else. Go to a zoo and look at one of the big birds, a condor, say, a creature made to soar above the Andes. They’ve probably clipped one of its wings so that it can’t hurt itself trying to fly around its cage, but it’s still a creature made to soar above the Andes. If you somehow stopped Peter writing, he’d still be a writer.
But he was a poet and a journalist before he started on books. He tried a murder story first, but got stuck halfway through. Then he had a science fiction–y kind of nightmare and decided to turn it into a children’s story, mainly to see if writing it would unstick the other book. (It did. That book won a prize for the best murder story of the year, and the children’s book was made into a TV series.)
Since then Peter has written almost sixty books, most of them on a little old portable typewriter—one draft to see what he’s got and what else he needs to know and so on, then a bit of research, then a complete rewrite, beginning to end, and then, if all’s well, only a bit more tinkering. Sometimes it used to take a few months, sometimes a year or more. A few years back he moved over to a PC. It makes writing seem a very different kind of process—easier in some ways, harder in others.
The ideas come from all over the place—daydreams, sometimes, or a kid on a long car trip saying, “Tell us a new story, Dad.” Or something he’s heard or read—a voice on the radio saying, “Even a hardened government soldier may hesitate a fatal half second before he guns down a child.” For the best of them it feels as if the book had knocked on the door of Peter’s mind and said, “Write me.” Then he’ll spend half a year or more letting the stranger in and finding out who or what it is.
The Blue Hawk Page 21