Tepper,Sheri - Six Moon Dance

by Six Moon Dance(Lit)

  And then ... then they sang a song he knew. He knew it! He had heard it, not like this, with many singers and drums and wood blocks and bells, but still, he knew it. Someone had sung it to him, in this same language, and then later in his own ...

  Now, as that voice rose from below, he remembered the words in his own language:

  Quaggima she calls:

  Out of starfield coming, fire womb seeking.

  Fire it finds, rock wallowing, fume reeking.

  Oh, Corojumi, openers of space;

  Bojusdiaga, burrower of walls;

  She has need of birthing place.

  Wheeooo, she falls

  Quaggima she cries ...

  Something, something ...

  Bojusdiaga, singer of the sun;

  Oh, Corojumi, dancers of bright skies;

  He has done and I have done.

  I cannot rise.

  His Timmy had sung it to him when he was a tiny boy. His Timmy, the one who had cuddled him and fed him. The song trailed away, unfinished. The singers moved from the fire, leaving it to burn itself out. They left Mouche, bewitched, his mind full of the song he knew and the shapes he knew. Timmys.

  Curving one hand protectively around the flame of his candle, he returned the way he had come, losing himself more than once and finding his way by trial and error. At the entrance to his own room he found a peek hole that allowed him to see if anyone had come to visit while he had gone. They had not. Mouche let himself into his suite and closed the passage behind him.

  He threw himself into bed still enchanted, wakened by sensation into a troubling apprehension. Probably no one now in House Genevois had ever seen the Timmys dancing. Would Madame have watched, ever? Would Simon? Only he, Mouche, knew what they did there, and he admitted to himself with a return of his earlier dread that those he had seen were indeed the beings who did not exist, the ones no one ever ... ever let themselves see, the ones never mentioned.

  And yet, one of them had sung to him a long time ago. His own Timmy had sung the song of Quaggima, the interloper, the song of Niasa, Summer Snake. His own Timmy had told him stories of the great four-eyed Eiger, the bird who sees and knows all. He remembered Joggiwagga, the moon dragons, the setters up of stones.

  And it wasn't just him! The revelation came in an instant! Virtually every mankind baby on Newholme had been sung to sleep with "Niasa's Lullaby"—the song of the Summer Snake to its baby in the egg; every child had heard the stories of great Bofusdiaga and the many Corojumi. As adults, though they had been forced to forget the singers, surely they could not forget the songs.

  They had been taught to forget, just as Mouche had. They had gone to school in order to learn to forget. It was permitted for babies to believe in Timmys, but essential that adults should not. For adults, it was forbidden for Timmys to exist. They were a figment. Imaginary playmates. Hallucinatory nursemaids. Though every child in the classroom had been reared by Timmys, when one reached age seven, Timmys no longer were.

  The teachers had explained, so patiently. There were no Timmys when the people had first moved onto Newholme. Then, some time later, suddenly people had started seeing Timmys. There they were, everywhere, like mice, or bunchbeetles, listening under windows, camping outside people's houses, gathering at various seasons beside the river where the hills resounded to the sound of their music and the scrape of their dancing feet. It was inexplicable, but there they were, able to speak a few words of the people's language, calling to one another, tim-tim, tim-tim, able to explain that they were here in the kwi, the outside, and eager to be tim-timidi, useful.

  Where had they come from?

  "Dosha. Lau."

  Who had sent them?

  "Dosha-lauhazhala-baimoi."

  No matter how they tried to explain, no one could understand what they meant. A few linguistically talented persons who struggled to understand them, believed they were saying they had been sent by something or someone, but that they had never seen whatever or whoever it was that had sent them. Some people of a scientific bent believed they were animals, and they took some of the tim-tim apart to find, in their amazement, that the tim-tim had no brains! Creatures without brains were obviously not real, intelligent creatures. No creature could be considered real if it did not have a brain. They were, therefore, hallucinatory.

  All this, Mouche learned in infant school, as all small children learned. Though he had been tended by a Timmy since birth, cuddled and fed and sung to by that swaddled form, closer to him than his mother or father, kinder to him than either, he could not acknowledge that fact for grown up people did not see them.

  Mouche had been quite willing. He had learned not to see them, not to believe in them. Until now.

  20—The Dutter Boys

  At House Genevois, there were always departures and new arrivals. A notable arrival occurred about half a year after Mouche began watching the dancers. His friend Fentrys had been downstairs in the sewing room, having his new doublet fitted, when two new boys had been escorted past on their way to the welcome rooms. Fentrys, glancing at them, could see they were unlike the usual new boys, and when he left the sewing room, he'd let his curiosity pull him into a closet near the parlor where he could overhear what went on.

  "Big," he said to Mouche minutes later, eyes wide. "By the Hagions, Mouche, one of them is as big as Wander!" Wander was the largest of the present Consorts-in-Training; he stood a head taller than any other student and several hands breadths wider, though he was not yet of an age to be sold. "The other one is not as large, but they are both evil as snakes in their words. Madame had one of them stripped and striped!"

  This was astonishing, for the boys were seldom beaten. Madame didn't believe in such punishment, except as a last resort. That it should have been imposed at first opportunity did not bode well for the peace of the House.

  "What did he do?" asked Mouche.

  "The one called Dyre said that Madame was a withered hag who had outlived her usefulness and should be retired to the stitchery. The fencing master and two of the cleaners had to hold the other one, Bane, while Dyre was beaten, and since they had him down, they beat him too, for interfering."

  "She didn't throw them out?" Students were expelled, from time to time, their bodies and faces dyed blue, to show the world they were worthless and incorrigible. Other Houses did the same, as did the Army school and the apprentice programs. Blue-bodies usually didn't last long in the outside world, and it was said of recalcitrants that they were "independent as a blue-body."

  Fentrys said, "I heard Madame talking to Simon. She sent word to someone, some large personage or other. She awaits that personage now, in the parlor."

  "Let's listen," suggested Tyle. "Can we?"

  It wasn't consortly behavior, certainly, since it reflected an unhealthy interest in other people's business, but neither was it disobedient, strictly speaking, since they had never been forbidden to hide in closets and eavesdrop. They found room in the same closet Fentrys had hidden in before, one that backed on the parlor, though once hidden in it they had a stuffy time before Madame's summoned guest arrived. They could not see him. They could only hear his words, uttered in a deep, flat voice with no resonance at all, though, Mouche thought to himself, that might be because they heard him from a closet.

  "Madame Genevois."

  Madame's voice came not only flat but curiously muffled, as though through a handkerchief. "Sir. I have today received the two boys you paid me some time ago to take and train. They are a good deal older than my usual students, and they seem to be of the opinion that they need no training and that they are in charge of House Genevois. If this is your intent, you have misjudged me. I have not spent my life acquiring a reputation so meaningless that I would cast it away for so little. I can and will refund your money, sponsors be hanged."

  A long silence. Then, "I'll see to the boys."

  "Indeed," said Madame with a gasp.

  There was the sound of the parlor door opening and closing,
and Madame's footsteps going away toward the welcome suite, breathing deeply. There were then other doors opening and shutting, mutters in the hallway, an uncouth clattering and chatter, then the parlor door opened and closed once more.

  "Oh," said a young voice. "It's you."

  "I thought you'd got it in your head about this," replied the deep voice. "And here you go, startin' off just like usual."

  "That old bitch ... " said another voice, deeper, almost adult. Mouche shivered inside. He knew that voice.

  Then there was a sound, not a sound the listeners could identify. It might have been a burning sound, a kind of sizzle and pop. Again, it might have been something else. It was followed by a gasp and a whimper. It came again and was followed by a moan, almost a scream.

  "If I've got to come down here another time, it'll be the last time," said the deep voice. "And you won't like it, I can guarantee."

  The door opened and closed once more. Heavy feet went to the foyer. The front door opened, letting in street noises, and closed. Then a long silence. When it had gone on for a very long time, Fentrys opened the closet door, and they slipped out into the corridor, stopping there with wrinkled noses, for the air smelt foul. When they peeked into the room where the interview had been held, they saw two boys on the floor, one very large, one smaller, both slumped against a huge, carved sofa, eyes half open, mouths fully open, drool at the corners. The smell of the corridor was far worse in the room, and it was a smell that Mouche remembered all too well.

  He was staring around the corner at the larger of the boys when the boy's eyes came fully opened and looked at Mouche with total recognition. Mouche drew back, breathless. It was the larger of the intruder boys, from that time long ago, the boy who had poisoned Duster. Older, he was, and strong looking, like an ox, but it was he, nonetheless, and the boy beside him was the other one from that day.

  Mouche's immediate reaction was fury. If he had been home, in his own place, and if there had been a weapon at hand, or even a rock to crush a skull, he would have moved to violence. Since coming to House Genevois, he had been drilled in the avoidance of violence, however, and the more recent lessons held him wavering, readying himself, taking a moment to decide.

  It was Tyle who broke his indecision, tugging Mouche by the arm, muttering at him. "Let's get out of here."

  They got out, though Mouche felt someone listening, someone following his footsteps. If he had recognized that smell, those faces, the two new boys had also recognized him.

  They made it as far as the landing before people came into the hall below, and when Simon and others came past the foot of the stairs, the three friends were occupied with an ostentatious concentration on the notice board. Mouche turned to look after the people below. The two new boys were being assisted, almost carried, and he met the gaze of the larger boy, his face quite empty but his eyes blazing as his mouth formed the soundless words: "Farm-boy, I'll get you."

  Behind them, in the hallway, the strange smell still lingered.

  "We don't say anything about this," whispered Fentrys. "Not a word!"

  The other two nodded. Though an account of this happening would be very interesting to all their mates in Consort Country, they knew instinctively that Fentrys was right. The smell in the room and the hallway was of a particularly unpleasant kind. It was not to be talked of. Not with anyone; not even among themselves lest they be overheard. So, Mouche had no one to share his gratitude that the new boys would not be coming upstairs to Consort Country, not for some little time yet.

  21—Among the Indigenes

  That one whom Mouche adored, the Timmy who was called by other Timmys, Fauxis-looz, which meant something like "Flowing Green" stood in one of the small painted houses in the rear courtyard, staring through the open door at the strange little tower gracelessly perched at the corner of the thick wall, built long and long ago by the first settlers as part of their riverside fortress. It was what the Timmys called a pretend wall: one that the humans pretended kept the Timmys in; one the Timmys pretended to be imprisoned by. The truth was there was no manmade enclosure that did not have doors in its walls and floors, no cellar without tunnels along its foundations, no loft without sneakways between the rafters. No place had ever been built that tim-timkwi could not get into or out of whenever tim-timkwi wished.

  Nonetheless, for now, these tim-timkwi, those called by infant mankind "Timmys," remained in the courtyard while Flowing Green kept her eyes on the tower window, which until some days ago had been almost closed but now was quite widely ajar.

  "Tim saw his light again tonight," the green-haired one said. "Tim saw it, when tim-tim were come inside."

  "Yes," the speaker was answered by another who stood beside tim. "He comes every night."

  "This is the one Corojum spoke of," said Flowing Green.

  An older voice spoke from shadows. "Who knows what is to come? Not even Corojumi, dance weavers; Bofusdiaga, sun singer; Joggiwagga, moon watchers, setters up of stones."

  Silence. Then the whisper from another, "Niasa is restless and She is awakening. We cannot settle Her."

  "I have seen what I have seen in the dreaming time," sang Flowing Green in a long, sustained flow of notes, a minor strain as plaintive as a nightbird.

  "And who is tim to dream?" asked another, almost angrily. "Who is tim to say T, T, as though tim were a mankind? Is this one standing here a many-times-rejoined one? Is tim Bofusdiaga? Is tim Kaorugi Itself! Who is Flowing Green to know of dreaming?"

  "I am who I am," said Flowing Green. "I was made to watch these mankinds. I have the juice of one of them within me. I was created for this purpose. I have watched, I have learned. When I have been remade, what I had learned was not taken from me. I say this Mouche is the needful one."

  "Already lost are the gemmed gardens under Mistmount," sang the old voice from the corner shadows. "Fallen are the stone skies of Great Gaman and all the living stars that shone within them. If we do not find the dance, all will be lost."

  "Tim-tim still have some of it," mused Flowing Green.

  "In fragments," said the voice from the corner, with only a hint of resentment. "What tim-tim have is thin, too thin, like gauze, like mist, like the wandering sound of little winds, unsure and unsettled. The power of it has leaked away. And now the gathering approaches, the Joggiwagga are setting up the stones, the tide comes with the moons; Niasa turns in sleep and She dreams restless dreams. The world trembles. Already the waking has begun."

  The corner tim spoke the truth. Even mankind had heard the word being called in the wilderness and had seen the pillars erected on the shores. Mankind did not know it was the Great Eiger who called or Joggiwagga who read the moon shadows. Mankind spoke of volcanoes and earthquakes, but mankind knew it was happening. Destruction threatened. Not at this moment, no. Nor tomorrow. But soon.

  "I say once more, this one who watches us is the key," said Flowing Green in a firm voice that said tim did not care whether they believed or not. "A Corojum spoke to me saying: This one, Mouchidi, is not jong. He may not go gau when the waters close over him. These were the words of the Corojum, and when I had heard the words of the Corojum, I dreamed of myself in the Fauxi-dizalonz, and this Mouchidi, he was with me."

  Only shamed silence greeted this. Such a thing was an abomination. Bofusdiaga had tried it with the jong long ago, and it had been a disaster. Surely Bofusdiaga would not allow it again! The tim-timkwi began to murmur, but the voice from the corner came again, admonishing.

  "Bofusdiaga made strangely this one called Flowing Green, this one who says, 'I,' like mankind. Perhaps Flowing Green is a new thing in an old form."

  "Or perhaps Flowing Green is timself gau, bent, a monster," said another-tim.

  "Tim-tim will know soon enough," murmured the corner voice ironically.

  There was a wave of bitter laughter, a sound that overflowed the one little house to run among the other little houses in a freshet of real mirth as tim-tim repeated what tim had said. "Soon enough,
too soon, enough."

  "Tim-tim will know," said Flowing Green in her dreaming voice. "And I will know. And I will remember my dreaming and the words of the Corojum and this watcher from the wall."

  The Timmys were not the only thinking beings who remembered old times in the evening. Aloft on her balcony, D'Jevier remembered, not what she herself had seen, but what she had read in the secret journals of the Hags.

  When the second settlement arrived, there were no Timmys. Years went by, and suddenly, there were Timmys, intelligent seeming beings. Speaking beings. And if they belonged here, mankind did not, according to Haraldson, so mankind had tried to drive them away.

  The Timmys stayed. The Timmys gathered in great mobs to dance. There, on their dancing grounds, mankind had killed them, piling their corpses in stacks to be burned.

  It hadn't worked. For every Timmy killed, another arrived, and they still danced. They also started doing things for people: washing clothes, weeding gardens, cleaning dwellings.

  Meantime, the mankind population grew slowly, and since the people were too few to do everything that needed doing, they began to depend upon the labor of the Timmys. In no time at all, the Timmys became the cleaners and cultivators and carriers. The Timmys became the miners and millers and child-minders. They were ubiquitous and industrious about mankind's business, but they still danced. When they danced, they did not work.

  Now their dancing was regarded as a dereliction of duty rather than an opportunity for slaughter, and once again mankind had interfered. Though the Timmys were never mentioned in either written or spoken edicts, "the sound of drums" had been forbidden, as had the "unprofitable shuffling of feet." "Coordinated and frivolous movement" had been tabooed, as well, and there had been more than a few cases of maiming and murdering of Timmys in an effort to enforce the rule.