“Yes, I see them,” she said. Now half the smoke was blue, like ghostly snakes that coiled and twined among the white. They bowed to each other, circled, and drifted away.
“Watch them dance,” Balat’s voice commanded softly. “See them coil and entwine themselves. See them lift and pull apart. Do you see them?”
“Yes.”
“They sway, don’t they? They move gracefully, like the gentlest of breezes. Do you see their eyes?”
“Yes.”
The serpents twined together like ethereal vines, twisting, swaying, moving together and apart. Their faces were small, shadowy, but their eyes shone like embers. Grace watched them, entranced. Her body swayed as theirs did.
“There are only a few white ones left; do you see? They are almost all blue now.”
Grace saw. The white serpents hung in the air, dimming, fading. Finally they disappeared completely and only the blue serpents remained. The blue ones continued to coil within the plume of smoke, but less independently. They merged now, one by one, into a writhing, twisting column of smoke, thick and scented. The column danced in the night air, furled and straightened, then thrust upward from the fire like a pillar of magical cloud. In the stillness of the night, the smoke roared softly.
“It is time,” Balat said. “Cleanse your crystal in the stream of the smoke.”
Grace rose, trancelike, and with both hands held her crystal gingerly in the path of the smoke. Disturbed by her intrusion, the smoke dipped and unraveled into vortices and small, curling serpents. They twined around her hands, eyes glinting darkly. Then they slithered in and out among her fingers and over all the facets of the crystal.
“Turn it. Let the smoke touch all the surfaces.”
Grace turned the stone slowly, watching as fingers of smoke stroked the crystalline surfaces. Tiny blue serpents and whirling vortices came together with the crystal and spun lazily away. Slowly Grace rotated the stone so that all the facets, all the nodes and convolutions were washed with smoke. Bit by bit, the blue haze sought out and purified every crevice, every wrinkle in the rock and then the rock began to hum.
Grace almost dropped it. The vibration played upon her fingertips, tickling with the gentlest of sensations. She would have liked to ask Balat about what was happening but she was too riveted to turn away, too entranced to speak. She felt the hum of the crystal oscillating through her fingertips, flowing up her fingers to her hands, and with it, a cool warmth, like the taste of tepid water on a hot day. The vibration filled her hands, then surged into her wrists and arms. Soon the current of the crystal flowed through her entire body, a tide of atoms that danced and sang and played.
“Does the crystal speak?” Balat asked.
Unaware that she was smiling, Grace kept her eyes fastened on the stone. The rose glow winked amid the smoke.
“It’s ... it’s laughing,” she said brokenly. Her own vocal cords seemed foreign, as if they were not controlled by her will. Her voice sounded strange in the still night air. She cleared her throat and tried again.
“Laughing. It’s laughing.”
Balat was silent.
Grace felt more impressions flow to her from the crystal, impressions she struggled to translate into words. “It’s ... happy. It ... it likes me—likes you. It wants to ... to help us ... be with us.”
“Does it have anything else to tell you?”
Grace held the crystal tightly as the vibrations surged through her. Feelings not her own flowed through her like a tide, an all-powerful, grand sweeping tide of oneness. For a moment the dark of night turned red to her eyes, and in that moment she saw the spirit of the crystal flow through her fingertips like molten fire, flow through her skin and into her veins, into her bones. The spirit river coursed up her arms and into her body, its light illuminating all the organs beneath the skin with a pulsing red glow. Grace watched in awe as all of her physical body was made visible to her; the spirit of the crystal illuminated every cell, every molecule. And when the river of fire had filled her body, it glowed fiercely, surging as if it were the blood of the Goddess. And Grace saw that she and the crystal were one; the spirit that coursed within it and within her was all one, all the same. She cried out at the shock of emotion that seeing produced in her.
Hands grasped her shoulders in alarm. Grace tried to shrug them off, to stay entranced within the spell of the crystal but the hands would not be denied. They gripped her thin shoulders and pulled her firmly away from the column of smoke. As if embers cooling rapidly, the red fire of her vision turned cold and dark and after a moment no trace of it remained. Her stone was only stone, shimmering dully in the dark of night. Her eyes saw no red, but only variations of gray.
Dismayed by the disappearance of the spirit river, Grace could have cried, but at the same time she felt elated by what had occurred. Gradually she slipped from the spell of the magical mood to the present and her elation found voice.
“Balat!” she said, as if seeing him for the first time. “It spoke to me! The crystal spoke! It told me wondrous things—miracles. It showed me how things are one, how ...”
Balat watched with thinly veiled concern as Grace’s voice dropped away. For a moment it seemed she would slip back into her reverie. He touched her hand. “What else did it tell you?” he prompted.
Grace’s eyes refocused on his face. “It told me,” she said with tear-filled eyes, “that it loved me.”
CHAPTER 8
That spring flowed into a summer more lovely and bountiful than anyone had ever seen. The sun shone warmly every day, and the colony’s crops grew as never before. There was little rain, yet the morning dew coated the plants and seemed to provide for them. The forest was fragrant with the smell of growing things.
“There are people,” Balat told her one day, “who think your presence is to blame for this most bountiful season.”
“They may think what they may,” Grace said lightly. “I have lived more than this one year on this world, and at no other time did plants jump out of the ground at my feet.” She lifted her chin saucily at Balat, and all his carefully schooled features broke up. They both howled with laughter.
Balat thought it a good idea to introduce Grace more normally into the colony, just so the people wouldn’t weave such magic about her and he began to take her with him on healing visits. Summer was always a time of small, bothersome ills: insect bites and little accidents, children’s scrapes and summer sickness. Together they would pack up all Balat’s herbs and potions and visit those in need. Grace did not have the aptitude for herblore like Balat did, but she learned quickly and remembered well. Soon she was already digging a salve or potion out of the pack before Balat could ask her for it. In this way, she learned the healing arts—academically, at least—and also learned to mix with Balat’s people.
She had noticed over time how the colony seemed, for the most part, contented and centered. With the exception of a few like Hilar, the people did what was needed or what was enjoyable and the balance of the parts balanced the whole. Grace thought this a wonderful dynamism, although she was not quite sure what she had to compare it with. One day that unknowing comparison shocked her.
They’d gone to see a little girl who had the summer sickness. Although not extremely ill, the girl was still small and slight enough that her parents were concerned. Balat gave her a mint potion to settle her stomach and a bit of an analgesic to ease her body aches. He was not overly worried and even stayed to visit with the parents after the girl had nodded off to sleep.
Grace found it interesting to see other people’s homes, and as Balat and the parents talked, she looked about curiously. These people had a bright warm cabin, softened by the appearance of several beautiful patterned blankets. She found the subtle weavings entrancing and finally said so to the woman.
“I am glad you like them,” Beth said, “but it is my husband, Jeh, who weaves them.”
“This is so?” Grace asked, turning to Jeh in bewilderment. “Forgive me, I did n
ot mean to offend, but I do not think I have ever known a man who wove.”
Jeh laughed, not at all offended. “No, not many men are given the gift of weaving,” he acknowledged. “My mother was an artist at the loom and it fascinated me, so she taught me. Now I would rather weave than anything else.”
Grace was puzzled, but enthusiastic. Jeh explained his craft to her, how he dyed the wool on the night of the full moon so the colors would stay deep and true, then showing her his loom and his most recent work. Although she found herself without his desire, she could still appreciate the beauty he created. The discovery opened up new doors of thought for her, and on their walk home she spoke of it to Balat.
“This seems strange to me,” she said, piecing together her thoughts as they walked. “I thought men’s work was heavy work, where their strength could be put to best use. Does Jeh work the fields, also?”
Balat did not hide his amusement. “No, Beth does. She was always a physically strong, purposeful woman, and when Jeh wandered in among us, they were attracted to each other and seemed to balance well together. Now, years later, Beth spends her days working outside and he watches their daughter as he weaves.” Balat looked knowingly at Grace. “This surprises you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does,” Grace admitted.
“And what does that say about you?” he asked. “Beth and Jeh are quite content, so there is no more to say about them, but what does it say about you?”
Knowing her values were about to be tested again, Grace took the premise of Beth and Jeh and followed it carefully backward to her own astonishment. Bit by bit, it fell into place.
“It says,” she mused, “that I did not expect to see a man weave, so I must never have seen one before. Because of my expectations, my experience must be only that men do heavy, physical work and that women do the less strenuous and more creative.”
Balat was pleased with her reasoning. “So,” he continued, “that means that you were raised to accept an arbitrary division of labor among men and women; is that true?”
“It must be,” Grace agreed.
“But any arbitrary division is always and only that, and while it may be useful as a guideline, it must never be set down as a code because then it rules out the heart. How we choose to live our lives can be decided only by ourselves, individually as our hearts direct, and not by rigid, arbitrary rules. We cannot direct our hearts; they direct us. Any society that attempts to try is doomed to misery.”
That made sense to Grace. She knew from some deep place inside that she would never be happy if she were coerced into anything she did not truly desire—weaving, farming, even preparing herbs, of which Balat was so fond. And why, she reasoned to herself, would anyone want to try to make an owl act like a rabbit? Both the owl and the rabbit were quite content being what they were. That was pleasing to the Goddess, and so it was pleasing to Grace. Silently she asked the Goddess for the awareness to remember this lesson in the future.
Another shock awaited her that summer. She had come to know all of Balat’s people—for some reason she still could not think of them as her people—and several dozen of them, by summer’s end, she could call by name and ask about their personal concerns. One by one, they had learned that, even as Balat’s shakar, she was still quite human and her magic only sheathed her mortality but did not alter it. She was comfortable now meeting them in the forest or near the fields, with or without Balat.
One day when she was walking the forest, doing no more than enjoying the dappled sunlight through the green canopy of leaves, she became aware of another nearby. Freezing, she turned cautiously and found Tarr watching her from a distance.
For a brief moment that seemed to stretch surrealistically in time, Grace felt like a wild doe before the gaze of a hunter. She felt as though her skin were not her own, but was the skin of a graceful, instinctive animal that lived and died in unthinking wholeness with the forest and that Tarr was of an entirely separate race, a species not at one with the unity of the Goddess’ universe. She felt no kinship to the young man, no sense of bonding as one human to another, but only a strange discordance. Then he moved and a twig snapped and Grace returned to herself.
Regaining her presence of mind, Grace called to him. “You follow me, Tarr?”
The young man appeared embarrassed that he had been discovered but came forward openly. “Yes,” he said as he closed the space between them. “You walk the forest like a wild thing.”
So, Grace thought, he had felt that odd twist in the fabric of reality, also. “I am a creature of the Goddess, just as the deer are,” she told him, then added, “and just as you are.”
He agreed with expressionless silence. Falling in beside her, he began to walk along the path she was taking. “You are solitary, except with Balat.”
“Solitude pleases me,” she said. The strange interlude seemed to fade and she found him companionable enough. His body, taller and leaner than her own, matched its pace to hers and they walked together without touching. They had spoken little before and she had somehow thought him to be solitary as well, and said so.
He smiled grimly at that. “I am the second child of six,” he said. “If I enjoy solitude it is because I get very little of it. But my solitude and yours are different kinds, I think. I like it for the respite it gives; you live in it.”
Grace couldn’t argue that. She supposed even if she hadn’t found Balat and become a vessel of the Goddess, she would still be solitary. It seemed to be her internal nature.
“Why do you follow me without speaking?”
Tarr flushed. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have. I am curious about you. I would like to know more about you.”
His ready apology took some of the sting out of Grace’s challenge. So long as he was direct and honest with her, she would meet his curiosity, but not if it were hidden from her or disguised.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
“They say you are the most gifted, that you will surpass Balat in knowledge of the Goddess’ will.”
Grace laughed. “That may or may not be. Right now I don’t feel even the equal to Balat, much less his surpasser. The Goddess will decide what I will be.”
“But,” said Tarr, and it was obvious from the look in his eyes that he believed the prediction, “if it becomes true, what will you do? Will you teach? Travel? Will you stay among us like Balat? Will you remain solitary?”
“I don’t know,” said Grace. “I have not even thought about it. And there really is not much point in thinking about it until we see what occurs.” She glanced at him more seriously. “Why do you ask about my future when today is all I know?”
Tarr went red again. He hesitated and Grace saw that he did not want to answer her question, yet he did not have the courage to say so, or the confidence to lie.
“I ask because ... because I would like to ... to be part of your future. I would like to ... to be with you.”
“In what way?” Grace asked pointedly.
“Why,” stammered Tarr, flustered, “as a shakar, as a friend, as a ... mate.” He sounded fearful and hopeful at the same time.
“You would want to marry me?” she pursued. Her own voice was flat, calm.
“Yes, if you would,” he said quickly. “I am strong; I could protect you if you chose to travel. And I could learn ... some things from you. Not all that Balat teaches, perhaps, but some things.”
Grace listened to his voice and tried to sort out all the young, fanciful emotions she heard there. Suddenly she felt older than her sixteen years. Too old for this boy, who was years her senior.
She stopped and faced him. “We do not know for a fact that I will be this great shakar. What if I am not? What if I learn no more from Balat than I know today? Would you still want to marry your life to mine?”
The unthinkable crossed Tarr’s face briefly, the fear that the colony’s prediction might not come to pass; he cast it aside immediately. “Yes,” he said, and Grace knew he was lying alth
ough he barely knew it himself. She felt tired and drained.
“Regardless of that,” she said wearily, “we cannot act on the future until it happens. At this point in my life I want no companion but Balat. Beyond that, we will both have to wait and see what unfolds.”
Stung a little by her rejection yet hopeful for changes that he felt sure would come, Tarr nodded slowly. “I understand,” he said, yet Grace didn’t think so. “We both have to wait and see what the Goddess wills for us.”
“Yes,” Grace agreed. But she had her doubts that this young man would ever have a place in her life.
When she returned to the cabin, Balat was carving outside in the shade; slivers of wood littered the ground around his feet. Grace came and sat near him, watching his knife blade peel thin slices off the rough figure.
With detached observation, she noticed that the form was long and undulating. She supposed it must be a snake. Balat carved what appealed to him, what spoke to him from the raw wood. Only when he had made the healing owl charm, Dya, had he set out deliberately to create a specific animal.
“Do you want to talk about it or do you want to worry it in silence?”
Grace glanced up at him sheepishly, then sighed. “I guess I should talk about it, because I don’t know what it means.” She paused, searching for words. Few came. “Tarr said he wants to marry me.”
Not quite surprised, Balat nodded, yet kept on carving. “And you said... ?”
“I said I wanted no one in my life but you now, and I didn’t know what the future would bring.”
“A simple and honest answer. What don’t you understand?”
Again Grace had to hunt for words. “I don’t understand,” she began slowly, “how I felt after we spoke together. It was as if I were suddenly tired. As if he ... taxed me.” She mulled that over a bit. “It seems to me,” she said, “that when two people choose to marry, they do so to share their lives, to give each other what neither of them could create alone.”
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