by Anissa Gray
Nafai thought of his pulse. How many of them can I kill before they hit me with a stone and knock me down? Two of them? Three? Better to die fighting than to let them take me without any cost at all.
Better? Why would it be better? Bad enough that one should die. What’s to be gained by killing more, except that they’d feel more justified in having slain me.
So he set down his pulse on the ground in front of him, and clasped his hands across his knees, and waited.
They waited also. Their arms were still poised to throw. The angel still circled overhead, a silent witness except for occasional high-pitched squeals.
Then suddenly, Nafai realized he had something in his hand. He opened his hands and saw that he was holding a fruit. He recognized it immediately as one of the fruits of the tree of life. He lifted it to his lips and tasted it, and ah! It was as Father had said, as Nafai had tasted for just a moment before, the most exquisite sensation he could imagine feeling. Only this time there was no distraction, no confusion, no disharmony; he was at peace inside himself, and healed.
Without thinking, he took the fruit from his lips and offered it to the rat directly in front of him.
The rat looked down at his hand, then up at Nafai’s face again, then down at the fruit.
Nafai thought of laying the fruit down and letting the rat pick it up himself, but then he realized that no, it would be wrong to let the fruit touch the ground, to let it be picked up like a rotting windfall. It should be taken from a hand. This fruit should always be taken from the tree itself, or from someone’s hand.
The rat sniffed, moved forward, sniffed again. And then it took the fruit out of Nafai’s hand and took it to its lips and bit down. The fruit squirted, and some of the juice of it struck Nafai in the face, but he hardly noticed, except to lick his lip where it ran. For he couldn’t take his eyes off the rat. It was frozen in place, unmoving, the juice of the fruit dribbling from the sides of its mouth. Have I poisoned it? thought Nafai. Have I killed it somehow with this fruit? I didn’t mean to.
No, the rat had not been poisoned, merely stunned by it. Now it began making urgent sounds in its throat, and it scurried to its nearest companion, who took the fruit from its mouth with its own teeth. And so that one fruit passed around the circle, each one taking it into its mouth directly from the mouth of the one before, all the way around the circle until it came back to the first one. And that one came forward and offered its mouth to Nafai, the remnant of the fruit still there, still visible.
Nafai’s face was not built to a point the way the rats’ faces were, and so he had to reach out and take the fruit with his hand. But he put it at once in his own mouth, dreading what it would taste like now, but knowing he must do it. To his relief, the flavor of the fruit was unchanged. If anything, it was sweeter now, for having been shared by these others.
He chewed, he swallowed. Only then did they also swallow whatever juice and bits of fruit remained in their mouths.
They came forward and laid at his feet the stones they had been holding to use as weapons. The pile was a pyramid in front of him. Fourteen stones. Then they filed away among the rocks.
At once the angel swooped back down, circled around him, chirping madly, flapping and flapping, until it landed heavily on his shoulders and enfolded him in its wings.
“I hope this means you’re happy,” said Nafai.
In answer the angel said nothing, but flew away itself.
Then Nafai stood and saw that he was not on the crest of a rocky peak at all, but was in a field, beside a tree, and near him was a river, and beside the river a path with an iron railing. He saw all that his father had seen, including the building on the other side.
And then, when he expected the dream to end—for he knew it was a dream—it changed. He saw himself, standing in the midst of a huge multitude of people and angels and rats, and they were all watching a bright light coming down out of the sky. They had been waiting, he understood. They had all been waiting, and now it was here. The Keeper of Earth.
Nafai wanted to get nearer, to see the face of the Keeper of Earth. But the light was too dazzling. He could see that it had four limbs, just from the shape of it, four limbs and a head, but beyond that the light simply blinded him as if the Keeper were a small star, a sun too bright to look into without burning your eyes.
Finally Nafai had to close his eyes, squint them shut to relieve them from the pain of staring into the sun. When he opened them, though, he knew he would be close enough, he knew he would see the face of the Keeper.
“Oo.”
It was Yobar’s face he was staring into.
“Oo yourself,” whispered Nafai.
“Oo-oo.”
“It’s almost dark,” said Nafai. “But you’re pretty hungry, aren’t you?”
Yobar sat back on his haunches expectantly.
“Let’s see if I can find anything for you.”
It wasn’t hard, even in the dusky light, because the hares on this side of the valley hadn’t grown scarce yet. When full night came, Yobar was still tearing at the corpse, devouring every scrap of it, breaking open the skull with a rock to get at the soft brains. Yobar’s hands and face were covered with blood.
“If you have any wit at all,” said Nafai, “you’ll get home fast with what’s left of this meat and all the blood on you so some female will make friends with you and let you play with her baby so you can make friends with it and become a full-fledged member of the troop.”
It was unlikely that Yobar understood him, but then he didn’t have to. He was already trying to hide the body of the hare from Nafai, preparatory to stealing it and running away. Nafai made his life easier by turning a little bit away so that Yobar would seize the opportunity and run. He heard the scampering of Yobar’s feet and said silently to him, Buy what you can with this hare’s blood, my friend. I’ve seen the face of the Keeper of Earth, and it is you.
Then, regretting at once the disrespectful thought, Nafai spoke silently to the Keeper of Earth—or to the Oversoul, or to nobody, he didn’t know. Thank you for showing me, he said. Thank you for letting me see what Father saw. What all the others saw. Thank you for letting me be one of those who know.
Now, if someone could help me find my way home.
Whether it was the Oversoul helping him or simply his own memory and tracking ability, he found his way home by moonlight. Luet had been worried—so had Mother and Father, and others too. They had put off Shedemei’s and Zdorab’s wedding, because it would be wrong to do that on a night when Nafai might be in danger. Now that he was back, though, the wedding could go on, and nobody asked him where he had gone or what he had been doing, as if they knew it was something too strange or wonderful or awful to be discussed.
Only later that night, in bed with Luet, did he speak of it. First of feeding Yobar, and then of the dream.
“It sounds like everyone was satisfied tonight,” said Luet.
“Even you?” he asked.
“You’re home,” she said, “and I’m content.”
SIX
PULSES
They stayed in their camp in the Valley of Mebbekew, by the River of Elemak, longer than they intended. First they had to wait for the harvest. Then, despite the antivomiting herbs that Shedemei learned about from the Index, Luet was so weakened from pregnancy that Rasa refused to let them begin the journey and risk her life. By the time Luet’s morning sickness had ended and she had regained some strength, all three pregnant women—Hushidh, Kokor, and Luet—were large enough in the belly that traveling would have been uncomfortable. Besides, they had been joined in their pregnancy by Sevet, Eiadh, Dol, and Lady Rasa herself. None of them were as sick as Luet had been, but neither were any of them much disposed to mount camels and ride all day and then pitch tents at night and strike them in the morning while subsisting on hard biscuit and jerky and dried melon.
So they ended up staying in their camp for more than a year, till all seven babies were born. Only two of
them had sons. Volemak and Rasa named their boy Oykib, after Rasa’s father, and Elemak and Eiadh named their firstborn son Protchnu, which meant endurance. Eiadh made mention of the fact that only her husband, Elemak, was as manly as Volemak, to put a son in her as Volemak had sired nothing but sons. By and large the others ignored her boasting and enjoyed their daughters.
Luet and Nafai named their little girl Chveya, because she had sewn them together into one soul. Hushidh’s and Issib’s daughter was the first birth of the new generation, and they named her simply Dza, because she was the answer to all the questions of their life. Kokor and Obring named their daughter Krasata, a name meaning beauty that had been rather in fashion in Basilica. Vas and Sevet named their daughter Vasnaminanya, partly because the name meant memory, but also because it was related to Vas’s name; they called her Vasnya. And Mebbekew and Dol named their daughter Basilikya, after the city which they both still loved and dreamed of. Everyone knew that Meb meant his daughter’s name to be a constant reproach to those who had dragged him from his proper home, so everyone picked up on the nickname Volemak thought of for her, and so called her Syelsika, meaning country girl. Of course this annoyed Meb, but he learned to stop protesting since it only caused the others to laugh at him.
Oykib and Protchnu, Chveya and Dza, Krasata, Vasnya, and Syelsika—on a cool morning more than a year after their parents had all come together in the Valley of Mebbekew, the babies were loosely wrapped in cool traveling clothes and laid in hammocks slung across their mothers’ shoulders, so the babes could nurse during the day when they grew hungry. The women, except childless Shedemei, did none of the work of striking tents, though as the children grew they would soon be expected to resume their duties. And the men, strong now, tanned and hardened from a year’s life and work in the desert, strutted a little before their wives, proud of what babies they had made together, full of their lofty responsibility to provide and care for wives and children.
All but Zdorab, of course, who was as quiet and unprepossessing as ever, with his wife still childless; the two seemed almost to disappear sometimes. They were the only members of the company unconnected to Rasa and Volemak by blood or marriage; they were the only childless ones; they were considerably older than any of the others of their generation except Elemak; no one would have said that they were not fully the equals of the rest of the company, but then, no one actually believed that they were, either.
As the company gathered to go, Luet, with Chveya asleep in her sling, carried an overripe melon on her shoulder down to where the baboon troop was pursuing its normal business. The baboons seemed agitated and jumpy, which was hardly surprising, considering the tumult up at the human camp. As Luet passed the perimeter of their feeding area, they kept glancing up at her, to see what she was doing. Some of the females approached, to see her baby—she had let them touch Chveya before, though of course she could never let them play with her the way they played with their own children; Chveya was far too fragile for their rough fondling.
It was a male, not a female, that Luet was looking for, and as soon as she moved away from the curious females, there he was—Yobar, the one who had been an outcast less than a year ago, and who now was best friends with the oldest daughter of the matriarch of the tribe; he had as much prestige as a male could get in this city of women. Luet brought the melon to where Yobar could see what she had. Then, turning slightly away so he wouldn’t be too frightened, she cast it down on a rock and the melon burst open.
As she expected, Yobar jumped back, startled. When he saw that Luet was not afraid, however, he soon came closer to investigate. Now she could show him what she wanted him to see—the secret that they had so carefully kept from all the baboons during their year in this place. She reached down, picked up a fragment of rind with plenty of the meat of the fruit still clinging to it, and ate noisily.
The sound of her eating drew the others, but it was Yobar—as she had expected—who followed her example and began to eat. He made no distinction between fruit and rind, of course, and seemed to enjoy both equally. When he was full, he jumped around, hooting and frolicking, until others—especially young males—began to venture forward to try the fruit.
Luet slowly stepped back, then turned and walked away
She heard footsteps padding behind her. She glanced back; Yobar was following her. She had not expected this, but then Yobar had always surprised her. He was intelligent and curious indeed, among animals whose intelligence was only a little short of the human mind, and whose curiosity and eagerness to learn were sometimes greater.
“Come if you will, then,” said Luet. She led him upstream to the garden, where the baboons had long been forbidden to go. The last of the third crop of melons was still on the vine, some ripe, some not yet. He hesitated at the edge of the garden, for the baboons had long since learned to respect that invisible boundary. She beckoned to him, though, and he carefully crossed the edge into the garden. She took him to a ripe melon. “Eat them when they look like this,” she said. “When they smell like this.” She held the melon out to him, still attached to the vine. He sniffed it, shook it, then thumped it on the ground. With enough thumping, he broke it. Then he took a bite and hooted happily at her.
“I’m not done yet,” said Luet. “You have to pay attention through the whole lesson.” She held out another melon, this one not ripe, and though she let Yobar sniff it, she wouldn’t let him hold it. “No,” she said. “Don’t eat these. The seeds aren’t mature, and if you eat them when they look like this, you won’t have a crop next year.” She set the unripe melon down behind her, and pointed to the broken ripe melon in pieces around Yobar’s feet. “Eat the ripe ones. Shedemei says the seeds will pass right through your digestive system unharmed, and they’ll sprout right in your turds and grow quiet nicely. You can have melons forever, if you teach the others to eat only the ripe ones. If you teach them to wait.”
Yobar looked at her steadily.
“You don’t understand any of the words I’m saying,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t understand the lesson, does it? You’re a smart one. You’ll figure it out. You’ll teach the others before you move on to another troop, won’t you? It’s the only gift we can leave for you, our rent for using your valley this past year. Please take this from us, and use it well.”
He hooted once.
She got up and walked away from him. The riding camels were ready for mounting now; they had been waiting for her. “I was just showing the garden to Yobar,” she said. Of course Kokor rolled her eyes at that, but Luet hardly noticed—it was Nafai’s smile, and Hushidh’s nod, and Volemak’s “Well done” that mattered.
On command, the camels lurched to their feet, burdened with tents and supplies, dryboxes and coldboxes full of seeds and embryos, and—above all—with not sixteen but twenty-three human beings now. As Elemak said only last night, the Oversoul had better lead them to their destination before the children get too big to ride with their mothers, or else it had better find them more camels along the way.
The first two days’ travel took them northeast, along the same route they had taken from Basilica. It had been a year since they came that way, however, and almost nothing looked familiar—or at least nothing looked more familiar than anything else, since all grey-brown rocks and yellow-grey sand begin to look familiar after the first hour.
Mebbekew rode beside Elemak for a short way, late in the second afternoon. “We passed the place where you sentenced him to death, didn’t we?”
Elemak was silent for a moment. Then: “No, we won’t pass it at all.”
“I thought I saw it.”
“You didn’t.”
They rode in silence for a while more.
“Elemak,” said Mebbekew.
“Yes?” He didn’t sound as if he was enjoying the conversation.
“Who could stop us if we simply took our share of the tents, and three days’ supplies, and headed north to Basilica?”
Someti
mes it seemed to Elemak that Mebbekew’s shortsightedness bordered on stupidity. “Apparently you’ve forgotten that we have no money. I can assure you that being poor in Basilica is even worse than being poor out here, because in Basilica the Oversoul won’t give a lizard’s tit for your survival.”
“Oh, and we’ve been so well taken care of here!” said Meb scornfully.
“We were at a well-watered location for more than a year and not once did any travelers or bandits or eloping couples or families on holiday ever come near us.”
“I know, we might as well have been on another planet. An uninhabited one! I can tell you, when Dolya was too pregnant to move, the baboon females were starting to look good to me.”
Never had Mebbekew seemed more useless than now. “I’m not surprised,” said Elemak.
Meb glared at him. “I was joking, pizdook.”
“I wasn’t,” said Elemak.
“So you’ve sold your soul, is that it? You’re Daddy’s little boy now. Nafai senior.”
Mebbekew’s resentment of Nafai was only natural—since Nafai had shown him up so many times. But Elemak had long since decided to endure Nafai, at least as long as he stayed in his place, as long as he was useful. That’s all Elemak really cared about now—whether a person contributed to the survival of the group. Of Elemak’s wife and child. And it wouldn’t hurt for Mebbekew to recall exactly how much more useful Nafai was than Meb himself. “We’ve lived a year together,” said Elemak. “You’ve eaten meat that Nafai killed during every week of that year, and you still think he’s nothing more than Father’s favorite?”
“Oh, I know he’s more than just that,” said Mebbekew. “Everyone knows it. In fact, most of us realize that he’s worth more than you.”
Mebbekew must have seen something in Elemak’s face, then, for he dropped back and stayed in line directly behind Elemak for some time.
Elemak knew that Meb’s little insult was meant to enrage him—but Elemak was not going to play along. He understood what Mebbekew wanted: out of his marriage, away from the crying of his baby, and back to the city, with its baths and commodes, its cuisine and its art, and, above all, its endless supply of flatterable and uncomplicated women. And the truth was that if he went back, Mebbekew would probably do as well as ever in Basilica, with or without money; and Dol, too, would certainly find a good living there, being an almost-legendary child actress. For the two of them, Basilica would be a lot better than anything that lay ahead of them in the foreseeable future.