Sister Emily's Lightship

by Jane Yolen

  The goat path had not been used for years, not by goats or by humans either. Briars tangled across it. Little rock slides blocked many turnings, and in others the pebbly surface slid away beneath her feet. Time and again she slipped and fell; her knees and palms bruised, and all the power in her Shaping Hands seemed to do no good. She could not call on it. Once when she fell she bit her underlip so hard it bled. And always, like some spirit guide, the little gray-green butterfly fluttered ahead, its wings glowing with five spots as round and marked as fingerprints.

  Still Flower followed, unable to call out or cry out because a new woman on her quest for her Power must not speak until she has found her word. She still hoped, a doomed and forlorn hope, that once she had caught the sa-hawa she might also catch her Power or at least be allowed to continue on her quest. And she would take the butterfly with her and find at least enough of the Shaping Hands to turn him back into his own tattered, laughing, dismal self.

  She went on. The only light now came from the five spots on the butterfly’s wings and the pale moon rising over the jagged crest of First Mother, the left-most mountain. The goat track had disappeared entirely. It was then the butterfly began to rise straight up, as if climbing the cliff face.

  Out of breath, Flower stopped and listened, first to her own ragged breathing, then to the pounding of her heart. At last she was able to be quiet enough to hear the sounds of the night. The butterfly stopped, too, as if it was listening as well.

  From far down the valley she heard the rise and fall of the running dogs, howling at the moon. Little chirrups of frogs, the pick-buzz of insect wings, and then the coughing of a night-bird’s wings. She turned her head for a moment, fearful that it might be an eater-of-bugs. When she looked back, the sa-hawa was almost gone, edging up the great towering mountain that loomed over her.

  Flower almost cried out then, in frustration and anger and fear, but she held her tongue and looked for a place to start the climb. She had to use hands and feet instead of eyes, for the moonlight made this a place of shadows—shadows within shadows—and only her hands and feet could see between the dark and dark.

  She felt as if she had been climbing for hours, though the moon above her spoke of a shorter time, when the butterfly suddenly disappeared. Without the lure of its phosphorescent wings, Flower was too exhausted to continue. All the tears she had held back for so long suddenly rose to swamp her eyes. She snuffled loudly and crouched uncertainly on a ledge. Then, huddling against the rockface, she tried to stay awake, to draw warmth and courage from the mountain. But without wanting to, she fell asleep.

  In the dream she spiraled up and up and up into the sky without ladder or rope to pull her, and she felt the words of a high scream fall from her lips, a yelping kya. She awoke terrified and shaking in the morning light, sitting on a thin ledge nearly a hundred feet up the mountainside. She had no memory of the climb and certainly no way to get down.

  And then she saw the sa-hawa next to her and memory flooded back. She cupped her hand, ready to pounce on the butterfly, when it fluttered its wings in the sunlight and moved from its perch. Desperate to catch it, she leaned out, lost her balance, and began to fall.

  “Oh, Mother,” she screamed in her mind, and a single word came back to her. Aki-la. Eagle. She screamed it aloud.

  As she fell, the bones of her arms lengthened and flattened, cracking sinew and marrow. Her small, sharp nose bone arched outward and she watched it slowly form into a black beak with a dull yellow membrane at the base. Her body, twisting, seemed to stretch, catching the wind, first beneath, then above; she could feel the swift air through her feathers and the high, sweet whistling of it rushing past her head. Spiraling up, she pumped her powerful wings once. Then, holding them flat, she soared.

  Aki-la. Golden eagle, she thought. It was her Word of Power, the Word That Changes, hers and no one else’s. And then all words left her and she knew only wind and sky and the land spread out far below.

  How long she coursed the sky in her flat-winged glide she did not know. For her there was no time, no ticking off of moment after moment, only the long sweet soaring. But at last her stomach marked the time for her and, without realizing it, she was scanning the ground for prey. It was as if she had two sights now, one the sweeping farsight that showed her the land as a series of patterns and the other that closed up the space whenever she saw movement or heat in the grass that meant some small creature was moving below.

  At the base of the mountain she spied a large mouse and her wings knew even before her mind, even before her stomach. They cleaved to her side and she dove down in one long, perilous stoop toward the brown creature that was suddenly still in the short grass.

  The wind rushed by her as she dove, and a high singing filled her head, wordless visions of meat and blood.

  Kya, she called, and followed it with a whistle. Kya, her hunting song.

  Right before reaching the mouse, she threw out her wings and backwinged, extending her great claws as brakes. But her final sight of the mouse, larger than she had guessed, standing upright in the grass as if it had expected her, its black eyes meeting her own and the white stripe across its head gleaming in the early sun, stayed her. Some memory, some old human thought teased at her. Instead of striking the mouse, she landed gracefully by its side, her great claws gripping the earth, remembering ground, surrendering to it.

  Aki-la. She thought the word again, opened her mouth, and spoke it to the quiet air. She could feel the change begin again. Marrow and sinew and muscle and bone responded, reversing themselves, growing and shrinking, molding and forming. It hurt, yet it did not hurt; the pain was delicious.

  And still the mouse sat, its bright little eyes watching her until the transformation was complete. Then it squeaked a word, shook itself all over, as if trying to slough off its own skin and bones, and grew, filling earth and sky, resolving itself into a familiar figure with the fierce stare of an eagle and the soft voice of the mouse.

  “Late Blossoming Flower,” her mother said, and opened welcoming arms to her.

  “I have found my word,” Flower said as she ran into them. Then, unaccountably, she put her head on her mother’s breast and began to sob.

  “You have found much more,” said her mother. “For see—I have tested you, tempted you to let your animal nature overcome your human nature. And see—you stopped before the hunger for meat, the thirst for blood, mastered you and left you forever in your eagle form.”

  “But I might have killed you,” Flower gasped. “I might have eaten you. I was an eagle and you were my natural prey.”

  “But you did not,” her mother said firmly. “Now I must go home.”

  “Wait,” Flower said. “There is something…something I have to tell you.”

  Her mother turned and looked at Flower over her shoulder. “About the old man?”

  Flower looked down.

  “I know it already. There he is.” She pointed to a gray-green butterfly hovering over a blossom. “He is the same undisciplined creature he always was.”

  “I must change him back. I must learn how, quickly, before he leaves.”

  “He will not leave,” said her mother. “Not that one. Or he would have left our village long ago. No, he will wait until you learn your other powers and change him back so that he might sit on the edge of power and laugh at it as he has always done, as he did to me so long ago. And now, my little one who is my little one no longer, use your eagle wings to fly. I will be waiting at our home for your return.”

  Flower nodded, and then she moved away from her mother and held out her arms. She stretched them as far apart as she could. Even so—even farther—would her wings stretch. She looked up into the sky, now blue and cloudless and beckoning.

  “Aki-la!” she cried, but her mouth was not as stern as her mother’s or as any of the other women of power, for she knew how to laugh. She opened her laughing mouth again. “Aki-la.”

  She felt the change come on her, more easily thi
s time, and she threw herself into the air. The morning sun caught the wash of gold at her beak, like a necklace of power. Kya, she screamed into the waiting wind, kya, and, for the moment, forgot mother and butterfly and all the land below.

  Great Gray

  THE COLD SPIKE OF WINTER wind struck Donnal full in the face as he pedaled down River Road toward the marsh. He reveled in the cold just as he reveled in the ache of his hands in the wool gloves and the pull of muscle along the inside of his right thigh.

  At the edge of the marsh, he got off the bike, tucking it against the sumac, and crossed the road to the big field. He was lucky this time. One of the Great Grays, the larger of the two, was perched on a tree. Donnal lifted the field glasses to his eyes and watched as the bird, undisturbed by his movement, regarded the field with its big yellow eyes.

  Donnal didn’t know a great deal about birds, but the newspapers had been full of the invasion, as it was called. Evidently Great Gray owls were Arctic birds that only every hundred years found their way in large numbers to towns as far south as Hatfield. As if a Massachusetts town on the edge of the Berkshires was south. The red-back vole population in the north had crashed and the young Great Grays had fled their own hunger and the talons of the older birds. And here they were, daytime owls, fattening themselves on the mice and voles common even in winter in Hatfield.

  Donnal smiled, and watched the bird as it took off, spreading its six-foot wings and sailing silently over the field. He knew there were other Great Grays in the Valley—two in Amherst, one in the Northampton Meadows, three reported in Holyoke, and some twenty others between Hatfield and Boston. But he felt that the two in Hatfield were his alone. So far no one else had discovered them. He had been biking out twice a day for over a week to watch them, a short three miles along the meandering road.

  A vegetarian himself, even before he’d joined the Metallica commune in Turner’s Falls, Donnal had developed an unnatural desire to watch animals feeding, as if that satisfied any of his dormant carnivorous instincts. He’d even owned a boa at one time, purchasing white mice for it at regular intervals. It was one of the reasons he’d been asked to leave the commune. The other, hardly worth mentioning, had more to do with a certain sexual ambivalence having to do with children. Donnal never thought about those things anymore. But watching the owls feeding made him aware of how much superior he was to the hunger of mere beasts.

  “It makes me understand what is meant by a little lower than the angels,” he’d remarked to his massage teacher that morning, thinking about angels with great gray wings.

  This time the owl suddenly plummeted down, pouncing on something which it carried in its talons as it flew back to the tree. Watching through the field glasses, Donnal saw it had a mouse. He shivered deliciously as the owl plucked at the mouse’s neck, snapping the tiny spinal column. Even though he was much too far away to hear anything, Donnal fancied a tiny dying shriek and the satisfying snick as the beak crunched through bone. He held his breath in three great gasps as the owl swallowed the mouse whole. The last thing Donnal saw was the mouse’s tail stuck for a moment out of the beak like a piece of gray velvet spaghetti.

  Afterward, when the owl flew off, Donnal left the edge of the field and picked his way across the crisp snow to the tree. Just as he hoped, the pellet was on the ground by the roots.

  Squatting, the back of his neck prickling with excitement, Donnal took off his gloves and picked up the pellet. For a minute he just held it in his right hand, wondering at how light and how dry the whole thing felt. Then he picked it apart. The mouse’s skull was still intact, surrounded by bits of fur. Reaching into the pocket of his parka, Donnal brought out the silk scarf he’d bought a week ago at the Mercantile just for this purpose. The scarf was blood red with little flecks of dark blue. He wrapped the skull carefully in the silk and slipped the packet into his pocket, then turned a moment to survey the field again. Neither of the owls was in sight.

  Patting the pocket thoughtfully, he drew his gloves back on and strode back toward his bike. The wind had risen and snow was beginning to fall. He let the wind push him along as he rode, almost effortlessly, back to the center of town.

  Donnal had a room in a converted barn about a quarter of a mile south of the center. The room was within easy walking to his massage classes and only about an hour’s bike ride into Northampton, even closer to the grocery store. His room was dark and low and had a damp, musty smell as if it still held the memory of cows and hay in its beams. Three other families shared the main part of the barn, ex-hippies like Donnal, but none of them from the commune. He had found the place by biking through each of the small Valley towns, their names like some sort of English poem: Hadley, Whately, Sunderland, Deer-field, Heath, Goshen, Rowe. Hatfield, on the flat, was outlined by the Connecticut River on its eastern flank. There had been acres of potatoes, their white flowers waving in the breeze, when he first cycled through. He took it as an omen and when he found that the center had everything he would need—a pizza parlor, a bank, a convenience store, and a video store—had made up his mind to stay. There was a notice about the room for rent tacked up in the convenience store. He went right over and was accepted at once.

  Stashing his bike in one of the old stalls, Donnal went up the rickety backstairs to his room. His boots lined up side by side by the door, he took the red scarf carefully out of his pocket. Cradling it in two hands, he walked over to the mantel which he’d built from a long piece of wood he’d found in the back, sanding and polishing the wood by hand all summer long.

  He bowed his head a moment, remembering the owl flying on its silent wings over the field, pouncing on the mouse, picking at the animals’s neck until it died, then swallowing it whole. Then he smiled and unwrapped the skull.

  He placed it on the mantel and stepped back, silently counting. There were seventeen little skulls there now. Twelve were mice, four were voles. One, he was sure, was a weasel’s.

  Lost in contemplation, he didn’t hear the door open, the quick intake of breath. Only when he had finished his hundredth repetition of the mantra and turned did Donnal realize that little Jason was staring at the mantel.

  “You…” Donnal began, the old rhythm of his heart spreading a heat down his back. “You are not supposed to come in without knocking, Jay. Without being…” He took a deep breath and willed the heat away. “Invited.”

  Jason nodded silently, his eyes still on the skulls.

  “Did you hear me?” Donnal forced his voice to be soft but he couldn’t help noticing that Jason’s hair was as velvety as mouse skin. Donnal jammed his hands into his pockets. “Did you?”

  Jason looked at him then, his dark eyes wide, vaguely unfocused. He nodded but did not speak. He never spoke.

  “Go back to your apartment,” Donnal said, walking the boy to the door. He motioned with his head, not daring to remove his hands from his pockets. “Now.”

  Jason disappeared through the door and Donnal shut it carefully with one shoulder, then leaned against it. After a moment, he drew his hands out of his pockets. They were trembling and moist.

  He stared across the room at the skulls. They seemed to glow, but it was only a trick of the light, nothing more.

  Donnal lay down on his futon and thought about nothing but the owls until he fell asleep. It was dinnertime when he finally woke. As he ate he thought—and not for the first time—how hard winter was on vegetarians.

  “But owls don’t have that problem,” he whispered aloud.

  His teeth crunched through the celery with the same sort of snick-snack he thought he remembered hearing when the owl had bitten into the mouse’s neck.

  The next morning was one of those crisp, bright, clear winter mornings with the sun reflecting off the snowy fields with such an intensity that Donnal’s eyes watered as he rode along River Road. By the water treatment building, he stopped and watched a cardinal flicking through the bare ligaments of sumac. His disability check was due and he guessed he might have a client
or two as soon as he passed his exams at the Institute. He had good hands for massage and the extra money would come in handy. He giggled at the little joke: hands…handy. Extra money would mean he could buy the special tapes he’d been wanting. He’d use them for the accompaniment for massages and for his own meditations. Maybe even have cards made up: Donnal McIvery, Licensed Massage Therapist, the card would say. Professional Massage. By Appointment Only.

  He was so busy thinking about the card, he didn’t notice the car parked by the roadside until he was upon it. And it took him a minute before he realized there were three people—two men and a woman—standing on the other side of the car, staring at the far trees with binoculars.

  Donnal felt hot then cold with anger. They were looking at his birds, his owls. He could see that both of the Great Grays were sitting in the eastern field, one on a dead tree down in the swampy area of the marsh and one in its favorite perch on a swamp maple. He controlled his anger and cleared his throat. Only the woman turned.

  “Do you want a look?” she asked with a kind of quavering eagerness in her voice, starting to take the field glasses from around her neck.

  Unable to answer, his anger still too strong, Donnal shook his head and, reaching into his pocket, took his own field glasses out. The red scarf came with it and fell to the ground. His cheeks flushed as red as the scarf as he bent to retrieve it. He knew there was no way the woman could guess what he used the scarf for, but still he felt she knew. He crumpled it tightly into a little ball and stuffed it back in his pocket. It was useless now, desecrated. He would have to use some of his disability check to buy another. He might have to miss a lesson because of it; because of her. Hatred for the woman flared up and it was all he could do to breathe deeply enough to force the feeling down, to calm himself. But his hands were shaking too much to raise the glasses to his eyes. When at last he could, the owls had flown, the people had gotten back into the car and driven away. Since the scarf was useless to him, he didn’t even check for pellets, but got back on his bike and rode home.