The Magister (Earthkeep)

by Sally Miller Gearhart

  12 - TUTEA - [2088 C.E.]

  Praise me with rainbows, sing to me in savors,

  touch and move me with your Presence,

  and I will know your mind

  by all its scented whispers.

  Song Of The Lumari

  Steward Zella Terremoto Adverb and her Swallower companion had been living for a week in a barren rockface cave. Here in her Andean sanctuary high above the jungles of Peru, Zude could see, hundreds of miles to the east, what she believed to be the joining of the mighty rivers Marañón and Ucayali.

  The bailiwicks were closed, the habitantes free, the Kanshoubu dismantled. In the months since the Heart's decision, Zude had lived almost constantly in a state of exhilaration. She awoke every morning to a world vastly changed from the day before. She entered her dreams each night, as did most citizens, with prayers for the return of the animals and the birth, again, of children. Waking or dreaming, Zude breathed in and out her profound knowledge that all was indeed well.

  Asleep on the wide ledge at the door of her cave, Zude was traveling inner roads with her Swallower. She was warm within her body-bubble and further protected from the cold by her tekla Magister cloak. Three Indios, two women and a man, sat beside her pallet. They wore ruanas, hard-worn straw hats, gloves and heavy foot-wrappings. Their singing was reminiscent of the Song of the Lumari.

  The taller woman removed one glove and laid her bare hand on Zude's head. A corridor opened, and Zude was filled with a flow of information and wisdom, not one bit of which she could remember upon awakening. Instead, she awoke alone, enveloped by a myriad of intriguing images and haunted by the feeling that she had traveled for years in the space of one short dawn. Puzzled and beguiled, she nevertheless gave thanks to the dream for its mystery and its still-pervading sense of well-being. She leaned against the face of her mountain and watched the sun, that star of life, as it mounted the low horizon.

  Minutes later she rose and stretched. As her fingers encircled her comunit for her daily check-in with the Stewardry, she was startled by an object on the floor of her cave, just by its door. Lying there, still curved with the form of the hand it had covered, was a gray glove. Zude knelt to pick it up, rubbing it gently against itself. Tekla. No doubt about it. The precious stuff of her cape and her cowl. Tekla.

  She scanned the mountain's rockface, then searched the canopy of the jungle below her. She flashed her lumestick within the cave itself. She came back to her ledge and searched the sky. With a slow smile, she folded the worn glove into a small flatness and tucked it into her belt.

  Later that day, she shouldered her pack and left her bleak aerie, picking her way cautiously down the rough rocks of the mountain. When, much later, she reached flatter terrain, she stretched her legs into long strides, heading for one of the upland basins and the timberline below it. Just before noon, she perched on a ruin at the edge of a grassy plateau and watched the back-sensed presence of a busy Inca village six centuries gone. Hundreds of gold- and silver-bedecked craftspeople executed their everyday tasks around these walls, over this gray dirt.

  When she hoisted her pack again, preparing to set out, Zude suddenly froze. A presence encompassed her that was without any reference in her experience. She sank to the ground, fighting off a mild dizziness. She felt herself being slowly embraced by swirls of warm, appreciative, chocolate air. Its strongest emanation came from behind her.

  Balancing on one knee, she made herself turn in a smooth motion until she faced the serene torrents of attention. "Mother's Magic!" she whispered.

  The vicuña stood there in broad daylight, less than the length of two bodies from her, the light chestnut of its flat dorsal wool barely a contrast to the reddish-yellow shag of its chest and underparts. Its total height, long graceful neck and all, was close to Zude’s, and its weight a little less than Zude's own. It was looking at her.

  Zude dared not move. Frantically, she searched for behavior appropriate to the meeting of a being the likes of which had not been seen on the planet for nearly three-quarters of a century. She swallowed. And smiled. Very tentatively, she tried out her new art of mindreaching.

  "You're beautiful," she sent.

  The animal's head shot upward, its body becoming rigid.

  "Wait!" sent Zude, "don't go away! Please, please don't go away!"

  The vicuña started, as if to run.

  Hastily, Zude stilled her anxiety and made herself feel only calm. And admiration.

  The vicuña eased.

  Mindreaching was apparently an intrusion. Zude concentrated on simply appreciating the furred being before her. She paid close attention to its big unblinking eyes, praising them; she took in the detail of the thin pointed ears, cherishing them; she adored the dark brown nose. She did not let words in, but filled herself with warmth and gratitude.

  The vicuña turned toward her.

  Zude's heart beat faster. She focused on staying completely still, feeling nothing but her admiration, her affection. It's a mirage! she thought, and in that instant, the animal froze.

  Zude tensed.

  The vicuña stepped back.

  Zude reimmersed herself in wonder and fondness.

  The vicuña eased again and swung its head in agreeable arcs. Carefully, it took several long steps toward Zude, its big eyes looking down at her.

  Zude looked only at the shaggy fur, imagining its texture, almost reaching out her hands to touch it. The brown head was near, close above her and bending lower. Zude closed her eyes.

  Hot, cordial breath grazed her ear. A nose, cold and damp, nuzzled her chin. Hesitantly, Zude nuzzled back, her lips on that strange cheek suddenly lost in the gentlest home they had ever sought. She shifted her weight to both knees and steadied her hands. Carefully and incredulously she placed them on the length of the neck, and felt there. . .yes! the unmistakable pulse of solid, warm, vibrant life!

  Zude pressed her lips between her teeth, feeling a low moan climb to her throat. When she gave her cry its freedom, she sobbed aloud, releasing into the thick fur a burst of emptiness, hunger and disbelief.

  "You're here!" she announced in a hoarse whisper.

  When the vicuña did not move, Zude flung her arms over the sturdy back, around the big chest, pummeling, hugging, kneading, scratching. The animal endured it all with calm patience. It collapsed its callused knees into a camel-like resting posture so that Zude could press every possible part of her body against its every possible part.

  Moments later, Zude lay watching the vicuña. Its long eyelashes rarely blinked, but its jaws worked in a rhythmical chewing of a clump of grass; occasionally its short tail jerked back and forth. Zude could smell the animal's fetid breath, and with her every stroke of its broad shoulder she raised from its fur the taste of dust. She blessed it all.

  How do I reach it, Swallower? Thoughts seem to drive it away!

  "Enworded thoughts, yes," replied her guide. "Relax."

  Lazily, Zude began good-natured attempts at a nonverbal connection. Feeling her way into the vicuña's body, she tried seeing through the vicuña's eyes, experiencing the world from its point of view. The animal did not respond. Changing tactics, Zude drew a picture in her mind of ways the two of them might interact, charging it with intense desire and the conviction that the vicuña would surely understand her. Nothing. Then she tried opening her own mind to the animal, inviting it to come into her head, to exchange pictures with her, even to trade minds with her. To no avail. The vicuña responded only to Zude's physical attentions and, it seemed, to her feelings of pleasure or praise.

  Zude sighed. She had just resigned herself to a simple gratitude for the pleasure of the vicuña's company when she noticed the bright pink midday sky above them. She blinked. And the sky was its normal pale blue again. No, wait! Pink. Zude raised herself on one elbow. Crazy. It seemed pink, but. . .ah, there! Blue. She started to lie down again but felt her vision faltering in a peculiar way. Everything was in motion: The low wall of the ruin moved back and forth, the
scrub brush beyond the wall moved side to side, the far horizon beyond the plateau moved up and down. Zude shook her head. Things stabilized. And then began moving again.

  Zude sat up straight, willing the scene back to normal. Instantly she was blasted with a cold wind. She stiffened and looked up to confirm that the sun still shone brightly. It did, but in a pink sky, and over a plateau that swam in a jumble of movements. Fear touched her bones. And now the pebbles under her swayed in a tantalizing syncopation against her buttocks. The fear became pleasure.

  A thousand pungent smells assailed her nostrils, sparking a sharp desire. An array of colors rose from the rocky dust, colors with such rich deep textures that she hungered to touch them. In her head were humming sounds, both distant and close. They pounded a commotion of disparate rhythms in her head and, to her consternation, they enticed into bizarre actions some parts of her body that were ordinarily quite sedate.

  It was the vicuña! For sure, this tumult was springing from the animal beside her!

  Zude struggled not to cry aloud. She closed her hands over her ears, clenching her eyes into sightlessness, trying to slow the rush of feelings, the attacking images. One thing at a time! She concentrated visually first, focusing on the orderly building of a scene. She closed out the tumult, then selected and placed together two parts of it, attempting to arrange the disorder into a stable, comfortable picture. Crawling tree under a pink sky. Okay. Now drape the caterpillar shawl over the square cloud by the river of watermelon heart. Good.

  It was working! Doggedly she continued, choosing each single element from the chaos and adding it to her judiciously arranged milieu. At her side, the vicuña lay in camel posture, eyes resting on a distant clump of grass.

  Without warning the chaos broke out again. It cluttered Zude's sequences and razed to their quaking foundations all her careful architectures of reason. Desperate, she summoned the Swallower. Help!

  "Align your energy!"

  Yes! thought Zude, of course! She closed her eyes and slowly inhaled, mentally watching the rising of her abdominal muscles, then their falling with her exhalation. Several breaths later she was shaking gently with relief as her mind calmed and began its clearing. The craziness subsided. She faced her internal depths where the spaciousness waited, and found at last her still-point of balance. She sighed, and began her rubrics of gratitude.

  This earth, this air. . .my nose, my mouth, my singing health, my strength, my loves, my sparkling days. . . . Her hand rested again on the vicuña. This solid life. . .these ribs, this beating heart. . .this being! The incantation hastened, broadening to include each part of the vicuña, the dirt, the grass, the plateau, the Incas, the prehistoric animals, the mountains, the seas, the world.

  Zude's face glowed, her cheeks were wet, and now and then an easy laugh punctuated her deepening breaths. With each acknowledgement of a precious gift, her flesh grew more buoyant. Beside her, and with the same resonances, the vicuña's body quivered and matched each new level of Zude's vibration. Both of them were light as air.

  "Here's the place," Swallower whispered, "here's where it can happen!" Yes! said Zude.

  "Open!" said Swallower. Zude unveiled her senses. The turmoil rushed in, overwhelming her again.

  "Allow it!" said Swallower. Zude opened once more. Sensations and feelings smothered her.

  "Invite it all!" said Swallower. "With full appreciation!" Zude shook off the last of her resistance. "I honor it all!" she articulated aloud. "I welcome it all!"

  Immediately the pandemonium ceased.

  Out of the haziness that replaced it, Zude observed the coming into being of what she could only call the vicuña's vibrational language. It sprang from the animal's energetic vitality that was matching Zude's own, but it bore a cargo far more vast. It was in fact the vibration of the Vicuña Matrix itself, the dwelling place of the experiences and knowings of all vicuñas who had ever lived.

  The language, as it were, shaped itself into a boundless array of sense imagery and emotional dynamism, including the rosy sky and arctic air, the dancing drums, the passionate pebbles. Zude existed within the images and emotions. They did not come one by one; nor did any one of them compel or motivate another. They were not a sequence, or a summation, or separate parts of any whole. They arose together, simultaneously and synchronistically, as the melon comes into being in its altogetherness, its totality yearning toward substantiality.

  The more Zude opened to it all, the more abundantly it arose. The sharper her focus on any one part of it, the more intricate the internal order it revealed. She watched sense impressions and effects solidify into existence, then fade back into billowing waves. All the while, like a master of the bagpipes supports both drone and breath beneath a melody, Zude sustained the world around her with the constant alignment of her energy. The vicuña vibrations entwined with her own.

  She could not have imagined how it would proceed, that exchange of meanings, patterns and volitions. Yet it was clear that transformations of intent were stirring, and that the vicuña's panoply of sensations and feelings was shimmering with a message for Zude.

  There was no explosion into symbols, no hint of the precision or subtlety of telepathically delivered words. The message now awaiting Zude dwelt in the vicuña's full perception of itself, including its desire to communicate. Zude invited that message.

  Had she been able to garb it in words, the words would have been: "I am Tutea, She Who Is a Vicuña!"

  As if immediately fluent in a new language, Zude sent the meaning of, "I am Zella Terremoto Adverb, She Who Is a Human!"

  * * * * * * *

  In the shade of stunted bushes, on a plateau in the Eastern Andes, a vicuña and a woman sat silent in the just-past-noon sun. Inside their motionless bodies, whole worlds of images, formations, effects and even complex ideas were being exchanged.

  When Zude asked if other animals were returning, she was treated to the experience of thousands of members of thousands of species, all of them creating their bodies anew as they joyfully arose from a cosmic stream of energy to reinhabit the earth. When she asked why the animals had left, Tutea's meaning clusters, if enworded, would have said, "We left, among other reasons, so that you could understand. You are understanding."

  "No!" Zude sent. "You left because we acted against your will! Killing, trapping, abusing!"

  "To eat, to drink, to breathe. . .to be enfleshed is to act against another's will."

  Zude almost shouted, "But you suffered! We did unspeakable things to you!"

  "We felt pain, yes. Suffering? No. Suffering is your human invention."

  "What?"

  Tutea's intentions washed over her in waves. "We left," the vicuña told her, "because you acted against the will of others without knowing what you were doing."

  Zude sat stockstill, repeating, "Without. . .knowing. . ."

  "You know now," said the vicuña, "And many more will know each day."

  Zude felt the deaths surrounding her — bears eating fish, hawks snapping the necks of hares, snakes striking mice. Tutea's meanings mingled with the images. "We are always present to each other as we take each other's life. Killer and killed. We Ratify Each Devour. And now, so will you."

  "It is a New Covenant," Tutea continued. A new understanding between humans and animals, she told Zude. The eating of meat would be quite circumscribed, she explained to Zude, and any forced curtailment of an animal's freedom virtually impossible. There followed examples of insects, hogs and crustaceans who remained happily enfleshed until a human intended them harm or imprisonment; then they simply vanished.

  Zude's head swirled. She hardly breathed. "They'll disappear?" she croaked.

  Did Tutea laugh? Or was it simply a gentle humor stroking the underbelly of each intention? "Yes. And so will you, if you wish," she said.

  "Of course," said Zude, nodding helplessly.

  Thus it went, there on the plateau: the vicuña brushing the human ear with her lips, almost as if whispering, and Zu
de stroking the long neck, frustrated, exhausted, incredulous, ecstatic. At last, woman drew herself tight against vicuña, and the two beings slept. They clung together under a warm sun, in the company of the ghosts of an empire long since gone to dust.

  * * * * * * *

  More than an hour later, the sun was losing heat to a cover of thin clouds. Zude awoke scratching her neck. Puzzled, she reached to scratch again, and saw a tiny culprit for just an instant before it leapt off her sleeve and into the paradise of the vicuña's shaggy coat. "Tutea! What was that?" she whispered aloud, her fingers searching the animal's flank.

  "Flea." Tutea snatched some nearby grass with her tongue and lips. "They're back, too." She chewed.

  Zude nodded wisely, as if she really understood what it meant, having the fleas back.

  The vicuña shifted slightly. "We have to go."

  Zude's alarm was instantaneous. "No!" she cried, holding her eyes shut and clasping the big body closer to her own.

  "I have to lead you to a friend." Tutea nuzzled Zude's hair. "Someone who needs you to take her home."

  "Hush!" commanded Zude aloud, gripping tighter and burying her face in dusty wool. "We're staying right here, Tutea. Our bones forever entwined, come hail or sleet or snow!"

  "Zudie, you have to let her go, now."

  "Forever! Right here . . ." Zude froze.

  "Zudie." Again! The voice was not in her mind. Or from Tutea. The voice had form, and melody, and texture! And it came from behind her, over by her backpack. I'm still dreaming, Zude assured herself, holding Tutea tight again.

  "Listen."

  Zude made her taut body relax. She held the big animal more lightly. Another breath, and more ease. She listened. A child’s voice sang:

  ¿Dónde estás pelícano?