Later after the children had left, Greer told Hannah about the confrontation with Abel over Asherah’s dream designs. “This disturbs me, Hannah,” she said. “And it disturbed me even more when Zak dismissed that ‘weed,’ as he called it.”
Hannah agreed, but only conditionally. “I see how it would bother you, but we are all human, Greer. We are all imperfect, no matter how closely we attend the Goddess.”
“Yes, we are imperfect,” Greer conceded, “but must we pass our imperfections on to our children? Wasn’t it just such closed mindedness that led our ancestors to push our planet into convulsions? There is no room for such narrowness now, not if we want to build a better world this time.” She paced to the window and stood brooding there. “How can we teach our children to be open to the forces of the Goddess and the universe when we ourselves do not know how to be? How can we teach them to be limitless in their thinking when we are not?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah said, “for it seems that children do not learn so much from listening to what we say as by watching what we do. We can tell them over and over not to handle sharp knives but if we take up a knife at every opportunity, eventually our children will, too.” Hannah thought it through in her mind. “I think what you said to Abel about the sanctuary applies here, also. The end and the means are not two separate things but one thing, undividable. The only way we can teach openness to our children is by being open. The only way we can teach them limitlessness is by being limitless ourselves. We cannot tell them yes with our words and model no to them with our actions.”
“You are right,” Greer agreed. “If Abel had been open enough to Asherah’s request to say, ‘Let’s see what we can work out,’ instead of just no; if Nidia had said to Zak, ‘I don’t know any uses for that plant, why don’t you see if you can find some,’ instead of no. We must be able to say yes to our children, yes to possibilities, instead of no.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to say yes,” Hannah mused. “We are a vulnerable species and we are so afraid of failing or of appearing foolish. I think we say no to protect ourselves, to keep from being vulnerable.”
Greer frowned at Hannah’s theory but had to agree. “Yes, we do try to protect ourselves that way. But,” and she turned to face Hannah, “I see that like a single person alone in an open land. In order to protect herself from the sun and rain, she will build a roof over her head; in order to protect herself from the wind and cold, she will build walls; in order to protect herself from the rocks and dirt, she will lay a floor down. Soon she is totally protected but she has closed herself into a tiny prison of her own making.” Greer shook her head. “I want no more of our people to be prisoners; it is my aim to see them all free.”
“How will you do it?” Hannah asked. “Even Abel and Nidia, two of your most devoted followers, have shown the presence of such walls around them.”
Greer paced again. “And I do not flatter myself by thinking I can provide such a model,” she said. “I, the great Sibling, am more moody and impatient than some—at least more than you. But you—” Greer stopped and stared at Hannah. “You are the most open, accepting person I know. You, Hannah, have said yes to everything I have ever asked of you. You could teach that to our children. You love them; you could teach them love. You could open them to all the possibilities of life, as you are open.” Greer came and stood before Hannah. “Will you, Hannah? Will you teach our children to say yes to all the Goddess offers? Will you teach them about love?”
Hannah’s stunned look slowly changed into a smile, the smile into a grin. “Yes!” she laughed, recognizing in her answer both means and end. “Yes, I will, Greer. What a gift for me, to have all the children I could want.”
“And you will be the Goddess’ gift to them, also,” Greer said. “And to us, to the colony. For only through such teaching can we be assured our world will go on.” She kneeled before Hannah and gripped her friend’s hands. “We begin our world’s future now, Hannah. Thanks to you.”
Of the almost five score residents of the colony, twenty-three were children under fifteen. Greer and Hannah determined that their school would focus on children of young ages, although those older would be encouraged to attend or even assist, work needs permitting. Rather than declare an edict to an assembled group, Greer went herself from family to family and explained patiently to each what the school was and what it hoped to accomplish. Although Greer’s proposal could hardly be faulted—who would comfortably say no to a plan to teach their children’s spirits to soar, to give their children limitless potential?—still she saw shadowy hesitation in some parents’ eyes and she knew again the look of walls going up. Sighing, she knew some of these adults would still die within those walls, never knowing the freedom their children would know. But she pressed on and no parents would say no to the Sibling. If they felt uncomfortably vulnerable in the face of the new order, it was for them to resolve. Greer had more far-reaching concerns.
Hannah began her school in the tiny hut, which Greer vacated good-naturedly, but it was not long that first morning before the class left the confines of the building and took the entire valley as its classroom. Hannah and her charges could be seen exploring all about the valley, skirting the orchards, climbing the escarpment, picnicking among the grasslands. The first day Hannah did not return to the hut until the evening stars were winking on, exhausted but jubilant.
“It’s wonderful,” she said to Greer’s questions. “They love it, Greer, absolutely love it. They were shy at first; you could see the older ones were wondering just how far this would go before I said no to them, but the more we went on, the more trusting they became. And the little ones are taking to it like fish to water. They are absolutely boundless.”
“What are you doing?” Greer asked, caught up in Hannah’s enthusiasm. “What are you saying?”
“I’m not, really,” Hannah said, then qualified that. “Oh, I do but I’m letting them choose the direction we take, the subjects we discuss. Little Anna wanted to know why the trees needed so much water, so we went to the orchards and examined the trees. Jonathon has a real feeling for the trees, you know. He told us all more than I could! And Kyra wanted to get as close to the mountains as we could, so we hiked along the escarpment to the first foothills where she could see how the mountains sprang up from the valley. Then Mitanni said she’d seen a pretty bird out near the fields, so we took our noonday food and sat in the grass and watched the birds teaching their young ones to fly. It was marvelous, Greer, just the way you wanted it to be. And I’m enjoying it more than the children, I think.”
“I’m so glad,” Greer smiled. “I would not have expected it to be so easily won, but that is my cynicism, not yours. I knew you would be perfect for this and you are. The school is yours to do as you will.”
“No, not mine, Greer. It’s the children’s. It belongs to them.”
“Yes,” Greer said, “you’re right. It belongs to them.”
Knowing that the school—and the colony’s future—was in the loving hands of Hannah, Greer was free to return to the issue that nagged at her: books. Now more than ever she was determined that education of all kinds was necessary to carry the new order beyond the old and she would not rest until she had explored every alternative.
And this time, since everyone else had their own duties to see to—and the fact that no one else had quite the conviction that she did—she set out to search alone. She could not believe all books were gone. But if they still existed, they could only be in one place.
She went to the Ruins.
Skirting Nidia’s questioning look, Greer went to the below-ground storage rooms beneath the great kitchen. In these cool, dark places the people had kept their pantry for as long as Greer could remember. She’d been afraid of the rooms when she was little; they were big and dark and crowded with all manner of foreign-looking things. She’d learned, finally, that some of the things were old, from before the Shift, things no one understood. They’d squatted on shelves or floors
and glowered at her as they’d gathered dust. Now she knew them to be harmless—or might they, too, become instruments for her peoples’ transcendence?
Carrying a simple oil lamp before her, Greer descended the cold, chipped stairway. Her light, no more than a lighted wick in a shallow crock of oil, fluttered and veered sharply at the cold air currents and threw grotesque shadows up behind her. The old familiar uneasiness patterned up her spine, but she went on regardless.
At the bottom of the stairwell she peered around and realized the rooms were not as large as she’d remembered. That was something, at least. She moved carefully past the colony’s stores, identifying them as she trailed fingertips over the sacks: corn, wheat, dried fruits, rock salt, potatoes, flour. The people tended to put all their excess close to the stairwell, leaving the rest of the dimness below to the old things. Greer moved past the last of the rough woven sacks, and began to examine the dust-laden relics.
She thought that the old people must have used these rooms for a storehouse also, because she saw evidence of foodstuffs. In some places were no more than rings or square shapes of dust, dotted with mouse leavings or the small, dried kernels of something that had once been food.
She moved on. Strange metallic things sat on dust-covered shelves; tall, round things; short, squarish ones; things with all sorts of appendages sticking out. The dust was several fingers thick on them. None of them, she thought, looked like a storehouse for books.
She prowled the rooms for what seemed a long time. Being completely blocked away from the outside, she had no idea how late in the day it might be. She only knew when her stomach began to clamor for food and she gnawed on a heel of bread as she continued her explorations.
Finally she reached a back wall through which there was no door. She’d found nothing that was of any use to her. The various machines and contraptions that littered the rooms were fascinating but useless without knowledge of what they did. Laying a limp hand against the wall, she had to admit failure.
Threading her way cautiously back through the jungle of dust and silent machines, she wondered where else she might look. She felt certain Pat’s old room—was it Maren’s now?—would yield no books. Where else might she have put them? No answer whispered itself to her.
She reached the stairwell and put a hand on the rail, glancing around once more at the silence. Not even her determination could bring books forth out of that jumble. There was nothing here. She turned to go.
And saw the doorway beneath the stairs.
Straining through the dim grayness of the stair steps, she made sure it was really a doorway, that her eyes were not just seeing things. No, it was a door, closed tight. She stepped down and rounded the stairwell, lifting her lamp to illuminate the dark corner.
Was it only her imagination, or did it really seem that the dust was not quite so thick beneath her feet? She noticed that her mouth had gone dry. Swallowing, she put a hand to the door handle and pulled.
It was stuck. She gripped the handle more firmly, set one foot against the wall, and pulled again.
The door clicked loudly and came open.
Inside was almost a palpable black. She raised the lamp above her head but the blackness only seemed to push closer around the thin light. She stood a moment, letting her eyes adjust.
Shapes swam at the edge of grayness; more old, dust-shrouded, useless machines. This room would probably yield no more than the rest. Still ...
Again she was conscious of subtle differences: the cushion of dust beneath her feet seemed less thick; the air seemed less humid, dryer. This room was different somehow. She had no illusions about understanding why.
She moved forward slowly and scanned the room with her small lamp. More metal shelves; more decaying old things. Furniture—a table, chairs with wheels on their legs, a trunk.
A trunk. A box made of metal.
She went to it, her heart making small, butterfly tappings in her chest. She’d seen trunks before but not of metal, only wood. But wood decayed. Metal did not, or at least not near as quickly.
She set her crude lamp down on the floor and kneeled in the dust. The trunk had a hasp that she understood, a circlet of metal that fit over a medallion, a lock that slid through a ring. The lock was through the ring, but open.
She worked the lock backward out of the ring. Both pieces of metal were jagged with corrosion but manageable. She laid the lock on the dusty ground and opened the lid of the trunk. All she could see was blackness until she raised up her lamp.
Books. The trunk was full of books.
She felt weak. Her shallow breathing sounded ragged in the thick silence. She realized her hands were shaking and carefully set the lamp down before she dropped it.
Feeling cautiously in the darkened trunk, she freed one book from the many packed there and raised it close to her face. An elaborate design met her eyes, caught at her fingertips. She opened the book and fingered the thin, brittle pages.
Books.
Crying silently in the dark, she bowed her head and gave thanks.
CHAPTER 24
Pat’s old store of books was indeed a treasure chest, but to what purpose, no one but Greer was quite sure. All who cared to were free to pore over the books, albeit gingerly, but in fact few were interested. Some of the pictures were nice—some were not—but the tiny, spidery writing was an uninspiring mystery. What help would these things be to the people who planted corn or made bricks? What good were books to the people who baked bread? None that anyone could see.
Greer refused to be daunted. Some writing—and therefore reading—had survived. She knew that occasionally a metal medallion, a name plate, was found amid the ruins and some of the knowing of those old runes had survived with them. One of the first things she did was ask Hannah and her pupils to scour the valley for such artifacts. The class spent a fitful, raucous day doing just that and returned to the great room of the Ruins that evening with twelve such articles. Greer laid them out on a table and she, Abel, Hannah, Ankutse and Nidia examined them.
“How do you even know which way is right side up?” Nidia asked. “Which way do you read the symbols?”
“This one is half-melted,” Abel said, holding up a corroded bit of flat metal. “But it looks like it used to have a picture or a face on it. See here, the nose, the chin?”
Greer reached far back into her memory and touched a still-shiny bit of something with the letter-symbols stamped into it. She’d found it as a child. What was it? And hadn’t Pat told her what the symbols meant? She wished she could remember!
“Ah ha!” Ankutse yelled and lunged across the table, grabbing up a disk with a mangled, broken-off rod welded to the back. He chipped away the dirt of untold years and held the disk up proudly.
“‘American Standard,’” he read.
The table erupted into bedlam.
“How do you know?”
“Which symbol goes with which sound?”
“What does it mean?”
“Wait,” Greer asked loudly. “Please, wait, all of you. Ankutse, how do you know it says that?”
Ankutse grinned happily. “Where I come from, there were many ruins, not a big one like here, but many, many small ones—houses. We used to find these often. My grandmother told me what the words said.”
“You’re sure?” Greer asked. “Are you sure these are the same words?”
“Oh, yes. Very sure. We found many round disks like this and some long, odd pieces, finger-sized, with the same words.”
“Like this?” Abel picked one of the irregular artifacts off the table and scratched at the grime covering it. When he had cleared off the flat of the pieces, he showed it to Greer.
“It is the same,” she said, awed by their luck.
Ankutse peered at it. “Yes. ‘American Standard.’”
“All right,” Greer breathed, “now, do you know what letter makes what sound? Do you understand how the symbols translate to voice?”
Ankutse rolled his eyes to t
he ceiling and thought back. “All I remember,” he said slowly, thinking it through, “is that some letters make ‘hard’ sounds and others make ‘soft’ sounds.” He shrugged. “But I don’t think I even understand that now.”
“Who are the oldest in the colony?” Greer asked Nidia. “Maybe one of them will know.”
Nidia was skeptical. “I don’t remember anyone ever saying they could read. But Hatti is old, and Jess. I think they are the oldest.”
“I will go talk to them tomorrow,” Greer said. “Ankutse, will you keep these things? They may provide us clues.”
That night, Greer sat up with a smoking lamp and pored over the books in the thin light. She handled them gingerly, mindful always of their age and fragility; she did not want them to fall into pieces now that she’d found them. She turned page after page, peering at pictures, squinting at words, wishing Pat could have taught her to read. She wasn’t at all sure Pat could read but she remembered Pat telling her stories and showing her pictures as if she could. Perhaps she was only making it all up. Greer didn’t know.
The third book she examined was a prize. It was full of pictures and from some of them leaped old memories that burst into her mind like sunspots. She turned a page and gasped at the old, yellowed picture of a castle—the one she used to imagine the Ruins were akin to, as a child. The square notches of the parapet were stamped indelibly in her mind and seeing the picture again made the hair on the back of her neck rise. She felt a chill run through her and the deep, steadying breaths she dragged in made the flame of the lamp flutter and sway. This was the storybook Pat had entertained her with. If she could remember the stories ... She stared hard at the picture, willing the context to come to her, evoking Pat’s words with a desperate plea. Nothing came. All she could see was the bold, geometric line of the parapet; no other images could get through. She strained to remember; prayed, enjoined, commanded. Her mind stayed dark. Frustrated, she closed the book. She knew she could not force remembrance if it would not come, no matter how much she may wish it. She had to leave it alone for now, get some sleep. If the Goddess wished it, they would find the key to decoding the old writing. If not ...
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