Donal drew and released a big breath.
"A group of my students, the most articulate of them a young named Taína Renananda Ko, have agreed, at my suggestion, to talk with you. They are planning to die in less than two weeks, just after our Festival of the Returning Sun."
The room went absolutely still except for the smooth trickling of water over rocks. Beabenet found her voice first.
"Say that again, Donal."
"They are planning to die."
* * * * * * *
The flight bubble was warm and comfortable, a tight fast-moving powerpod encasing three prone bodies: Jezebel and Dicken, with Donal Jain suspended between them. As they sailed into midafternoon, the altitude kept them breathing lightly and talking little — a blessing for Jez, who was indulging in a luxurious reverie that her mind entitled Forests.
No doubt about it: The forests were back. The hills and valleys that flew below her bore woodlands in every stage of returning growth.
Some difference of opinion existed as to why the great greening was taking place so spectacularly. The loss of the animals, insisted some, allowed an over-burgeoning of leaves and blossoms that under natural circumstances would have been devoured by woods-dwellers. Others minimized that cause, arguing that the loss of so much carbon dioxide would have had, in fact, a countereffect on growth; further, they contended, the disappearance of earthworms, beetles, millipedes and maggots would have retarded the functions of decay, thus contributing to the stultification of the wilderness.
Nonsense, would come the rejoinder, it was the fungi and bacteria that took care of the decay and, thankfully, the Exodus had spared the mushrooms and microbes.
Jez smiled. Not only were there nearly five billion fewer people to use the land and the lumber and to pollute the air, but the billion who were left held a near-worshipful attitude toward trees. Sylvan Renewal, with its centers in Belém and in the rejuvenating Black Forest, oversaw cutting, processing, planting and preservation through its growing network of woods stewards. With its rituals conducted around every tree about to be cut, its tithings, its crusades and its hymnody, Sylvan Renewal constituted the closest thing to a global religion that Little Blue had seen since the decline of consumerism.
A voice broke into her reverie. "Are you comfortable?" Dicken was asking their passenger.
Donal Jain loosened the collar of his thermal jumpsuit.
"Very. How do you keep it so warm?"
"It's part of the spoon energy," Dicken answered, "a function of the lonth and not of the focus." Donal nodded.
They were still chasing the sun, about two hours from their destination, when Jez suggested a rest.
"Can we wait until we reach the Black Hills?" Donal asked. "We'll be seeing them near sunset, their most magical time."
"Fine," agreed Jez.
Donal flashed her his boyish smile.
"My people have always called the hills shapeshifters," he said, "because, according to some, in a certain light they take the forms of animals. And of humans."
"One of those mountains has an amazing carving in the granite," Dicken interjected. "Two mothers and a babe."
Donal turned appreciative eyes on her.
"Mount Moraga. It's on the route of our monthly cushcar to Farmingdale, though it's best seen from below."
"Then we'll hold off resting until we get there," Jez decided. "Can we still reach Chimney Corner by dark?"
"Or shortly after," Donal nodded.
"Those children. . ." Dicken said. "Shouldn't we hurry?"
Donal shook his head. "We probably won't see them until tomorrow in any case." His face became a mask as he stared rigidly into the distance.
The sun was still bright over the western peaks when Dicken pointed to an approaching hilltop. "Look!" Below them the face of a butte broke the pattern of brown hills. A tall figure carved from the stone seemed to hail them.
"That's Morning Star Woman," Donal explained. "And wait. There, there on the north side, too, do you see?" Another figure, smaller and kneeling, pressed against a large animal. "Bear Woman. Our healers now say that the Stone Spirits grow angry if they are brought from the rock by force. They say that the figures are there without the carving if one has eyes to see."
"Of course," whispered Jez, because at that moment her astonished eyes were beholding a veritable menagerie below her. One ridge was clearly a snake. A high plateau became a turtle. As she watched, the timberline dropped from one mountain's back to reveal a beaver. No, it wasn't a beaver. A rabbit. Not a rabbit, for now it undulated with their flight above it and became a slow-moving porcupine. She sought the lower peaks and valleys to her right. Coyote, deer, buffalo, mountain lion, hawk. Her head was swimming with the movement, the changes.
"Jez!" Dicken's voice called her back. "Your lonth! We're losing altitude!"
Jez blinked, and then with effort captured her straying softself and dragged it away from the spectacle below her. She refitted it to Dicken's softself, then called up the spooning incantation for a swift recitation.
Dicken's eyes were closed and she had her hand on her belly. "Fine, now," she said. "Back to lonth." She put one arm around Donal's shoulders and gave him a quick hug. "Relax. She wigs out like that now and then. It's one of the prerogatives of witch-hood."
Donal gave her a grateful smile. Then he looked at Jez.
"You saw them, didn't you?"
Jez nodded. Donal nodded, too. They flew on in silence.
* * * * * * *
"That baby's eyes. They follow you," insisted Dicken, craning her neck and leaning dangerously toward the escarpment. "Like a hologram."
"Now who's wigging out?" Jez called back. She tied the drawstring of her trews and studied the stone portrait above her. "That baby's eyes are hardly open, sisterlove," she teased. "You can barely see them."
"Mothers' Martyrs, Jezebel! I can see them here," Dicken retorted. "And over there, too." Dicken, her fists on her hips, peered at the carving while standing on tiptoe and then from other angles.
Jez stood wide and leaned toward the ground, stretching her legs. She saw the upside-down figure of Donal Jain moving toward her through the horseweed.
"Donal!" Dicken called. "Come help me set her straight. Keep looking at the baby and move this way."
Donal obliged, zipping his jumpsuit against the late afternoon chill.
"Beware, Donal Jain," Jez warned him as he passed her. She swung her chest right and left in spine-loosening torques. "She's not above bribery."
"I heard that!" Dicken shouted. "I ought to — whoa, hey, ooh!"
Jez saw the ground giving way beneath Dicken's feet, and Dicken herself tottering against the sky. "Dicken!" she shrieked, watching her lover's outspread arms pump the air.
Donal hurled himself toward the precipice, grabbing for some part of Dicken's flailing body. He clutched one pant leg, but it twisted from his grasp as Dicken, with an ever-distancing yell, disappeared completely over the edge of the cliff. Jez heard loud thrashing sounds underriding Dicken's cries. But as she reached Donal's side she heard only silence.
"Dicken!" Flat on the cliff's edge, she searched that first steep drop of at least ten meters. It ended in the layers of firebroom and berry fronds that hugged the side of the precipitous chasm below them. "Dicken!" Nowhere could she see any evidence of her lover's fall. Unwitting stalks of scrub brush and chaparral stared back at her, unmoving in the shadows.
"Dicken!" she shrieked.
Behind her, Donal was stepping out of his jumpsuit. "She fell outward. Maybe over there." He was nodding to a section of the thicket beyond the berry creepers.
Jez knelt to look at the broken rock that had given way under Dicken, then to the spot Donal had indicated. She nodded. "But that brush drops off, too. I can't see. . ."
"Here, hold on to this." Donal was reshouldering his backpack and pushing a leg of the jumpsuit toward her. "I can swing down to the brush." He sat at the edge of the scarp with the opposite arm of the jumpsuit i
n his hand.
"Good. I'll join you."
Donal almost let go. "You can't. . ."
"I can," she assured him, urging him past his astonishment. She sat bracing a foot against a small pine tree until she felt the lurch that meant Donal was hanging at the far end of the jumpsuit. "Are you okay?" she shouted.
Her answer was the release of the tension on their makeshift rope, a quick silence, then a loud thrash. "Donal?" She scrambled to the edge of the precipice.
"I'm fine." His voice was far away.
Through growing shadows she saw him, more than thirty feet below, sprawled on briars and firebroom boughs. She threw the jumpsuit after him and retrieved her backpack.
"I'm coming, Big Dicken," she murmured, slipping into the straps.
She closed her eyes, sank into her inside vastness, and swam there a second to recover all her balances. Then she exhaled and waited a very long moment, breathing slowly, shallowly. There it came, the image she sought, wafting toward her on pillows of air. In an instant she was the butterfly, not yet soaring, but hovering above the ground. She felt her feet leave the earth, and an intoxicating lightness infuse her body. She opened her eyes and with slow intent moved over the edge of the precipice. Lightly, like the creature she imitated, she floated downward.
Donal Jain barely believed his eyes. He ceased his attempts to escape the nest of thorns and underbrush that supported him and watched with careful attention as Jezebel bent her legs and landed beside him, balancing half on the brambles and half on the near vertical slope out of which they grew.
"Do you often do that?" he asked.
"Only when I have to," she answered, silently thanking her butterfly guide. "No, I know what you're thinking. I can't lift her out of here."
She began searching the sea of brush that tumbled downward beyond them. There were no trees for hundreds of feet.
"Di-i-cken!" she called. An echo answered.
Donal clambered up beside her. "We are in trouble, Jezebel," he said, looking around. "This brush is supple. It would snap back and cover any place she fell. And it will be dark in less than fifteen minutes."
Jez's heart sank. "Then we have to find her before then. I can float and scud enough to take a look around," she mused, "but I'm afraid you'll have to do it the hard way. You don't happen to carry a machete?"
Donal began struggling back into the protection of the jumpsuit. "No. And I wouldn't want to use it even if I had it. The bushes will let me through. And they will hold me up."
"Here," Jez said suddenly, reaching to take his chin in her hands. Donal started. "Relax, I'm putting a vapor greave over your face so those briars don't get to you. You'll have to crawl." As her fingers made light passes over his head and neck, droplets formed. "Now your hands."
He hesitated. "Wait. We'll need light." Before Jez could respond, Donal had closed his eyes and cupped his hands in front of his mouth.
With growing astonishment, Jezebel watched the man do what she had seen only women do before: He conjured a glolobe, spinning plenum from vacuum, twining the errant spectra spline by spline with such dexterity that she could hardly see them take shape. He worked quickly, finally moving his hands apart to reveal a network of tiny velocities that fluoresced at last into a bright healthy light.
With a smile of satisfaction, Donal held the light out to Jez. "You'll need it sooner than I."
Jez took the glolobe. "You are a man of many parts, Donal Jain," she said.
"I have sat at the feet of many wise women," he responded.
She cast the vapor protection over his hands and then stood, closed her eyes and lifted again, this time scudding slowly over the expanse of underbrush that clung to the steepening decline. The air was chill now, and in the gathering night she could barely see Donal as he crawled about the area at the base of the cliff.
Methodically she hovered in a steady suspension above the brambles and chaparral, moving her light in regular sweeps below her. As she searched the blanket of darkening sameness beneath her, she reached out toward Dicken, toward the source of deep laughter and blessed comfort, toward memories of work, of. . .
Jez brought herself up short in midair, dipping almost uncontrolled into the underbrush. Something shiny. Now it was gone. No, there, to her left! She drew herself back and duplicated her last series of moves, waving the light slowly. Yes! Something dangled there in the ranks of bigger firebroom brush. She dove toward it.
"Donal, here! There's. . ." The object was at her fingertips: Dicken's dankee necklace, its tiny silver plates hanging in a broken strand from the branch. Jez pocketed the necklace and swung the glolobe frantically about her. She forced it deep into the tops of the tree-like brush beneath her, trying to discover where Dicken had disappeared. Her eyes fell on a broken branch.
"I'm going down!" she called to Donal.
Activating a vapor greave about her own body, she collected all that she could of strength and drove herself feet first down into the growth beneath her. She plunged twice her height through a shaft of tangled limbs, one that she prayed had been hollowed out by Dicken's body. Suddenly her feet swung in a huge nothingness and then crashed onto solid earth.
She opened her eyes to a different world. And to the body of Dicken.
Jez sat stunned in the silence. Bare ground made a plateau of the slopes around her, almost level for several yards in all directions. Dicken lay just beyond her, sprawled wide on the earth in a pocket of space between the trunks of the immature trees.
Surrounding the small haven, soundless and dark even in the harsh light of the glolobe, was the microcosm of a forest whose floor in another time could have been the wanderground for all manner of small animals up and down the entire slope. For an instant, Jez saw in her mind the warrens and burrows that once had been a part of this firebroom grove. Then the foxes, the marmots, the woodchucks and the rabbits invaded her mind, and as she crawled toward her lover, her mind caught the creatures’ ebullient bustle in the flourishing miniature forest.
Dicken was unconscious, breathing shallowly, unresponsive to her touch. Looking up, Jez could see the opening in the firebroom that she, and Dicken before her, had dropped through. With deliberate caution she again protected her body and thrust her arms and the glolobe above her head. Lightly, she lifted herself upward through the passageway, swiveling back and forth where she needed to, until she felt the leafy top branches. Her head emerged into an almost completely black night. A light shone some yards away, toward the cliff. Donal had called up another glolobe.
"I'm coming," he shouted.
The darkness was heavy on them now, and his light was moving very slowly, revealing his wiry body as he crept like a high-wire walker from the top of one resilient little tree to another, calmly making his way toward her.
"I'll station my light right here where I've gone down!" she shouted to him.
"Good!"
"When you drop, shield your eyes!"
She stabilized her own glolobe in the topmost branches beside her suspended body and, without waiting for his response, plunged again beneath the canopy.
In the blackness she scrambled toward the heat of Dicken's body. Setting her own pack aside, she stretched out parallel to her lover, her arm around her, her temple next to Dicken's temple and her free hand on Dicken's abdomen. She began breathing in a measured tempo, diminishing her softself by slow decrements until she was a tiny presence hovering in the spinal cord at the base of Dicken's skull.
Merely a breeze of gentle inquiry now, she flowed with fluids and leapt with synapses up through Dicken's brain, down her back, out every spinal nerve, into every sensory track, from central source to every organ and every extremity. When at last she swam back into the consciousness of her own body, Jezebel encountered the waiting presence of Donal Jain. Both glolobes were re-energized and hung over Dicken's body.
"She has several cracked ribs, one of them splintered," she announced.
Donal was removing his jumpsuit again, spreading it ov
er Dicken as Jez continued to talk.
"Sprains and bruises almost everywhere, and a dislocated shoulder. She's hit her head, but not hard enough to put her out. Two cervical vertebrae are out of line, though I can't find any pressure there on the nerves. Right lobe of her liver is bleeding badly — probably punctured by the rib. I've relieved its distress and stabilized her systems." She looked with wide eyes at Donal. "But I don't know why she's unconscious."
The full recognition of their circumstances assailed her: Her lover might be close to death, in immediate need of healing that was beyond her ken, and they hung on a cold mountainside in a black night, miles from any help, with no transportation and no means of communication.
"How far are we," she made herself ask, "from Chimney Corner?"
Donal offered her his canteen. When she refused, he drank a cautious sip. "Another hour in the air. Two days overland. And if we carry her. . . . There is a village south of us, but almost as far."
Jez dabbed with a handkerchief at the scrapes and scratches on Dicken's face. "The cushcar?"
"It's not due for two weeks. And no other aircraft regularly come."
Jez stared at him, then began exploring the contents of Dicken's pack.
Donal pulled a glolobe to him and studied Dicken's dark brown face, almost ashen now.
"Jezebel," he said, his voice breaking the silence of their tiny shelter.
"What?" Jez hauled a sweater out of Dicken's pack.
"The flying spoon, how is that working done?"
Jez froze. She looked up to meet Donal's guileless eyes.
"No," she snapped, restuffing Dicken's pack with its assortment of food and woodsgear.
"No?"
"No!" Jez fairly shouted. She looked apologetically at Dicken and then, still clutching the pack, she swung around to face Donal. Her voice was dangerously steady.
"Listen to me, Citizen Jain! You know a great many things that are important to know. I respect your knowledge and the way you use it. But do not be fooled. All your knowledge ten thousandfold would not entitle you to a hint of women's mysteries! Women's mysteries cannot be told, not because we hoard the knowledge but because no language can capture it. The flying spoon is one such mystery, whose power lies in the sacred double vesseling of woman-love, a vesseling that men cannot imagine, much less imitate. You are a man. You cannot experience the flying spoon. Do not even think of trying!"
The Magister (Earthkeep) Page 2