Ben Soul
Page 136
her mug.
“I must leave you this burden. Where one who intends good may fail, the many who stand against evil shall, in the end, prevail. Stand together, my friends.” She bowed her head on her chest. Several present wondered if she had fallen asleep. She looked up at them and spoke.
“I must rest, now, rest up for my eternal rest. Go in peace, dear Villagers, and live. Elke, please?” Elke released the brakes on La Señora’s wheeled chair and pushed her away. The gathered villagers murmured among themselves, and one by one or two by two, left for their own cottages. The night’s fog began to gather on the hill, where the unicorn with the unique horn lay, breathing heavily, surrounded by the guarding llama herd.
Passages
When Elke ushered Dickon into the room, La Señora smiled weakly at him from her bed. Elke had established a hospital bed in the library, one of La Señora’s favorite rooms. On bright days, La Señora could look out the windows over the cove to watch the gulls wheeling in the sky above the wavelets.
“Come, sit beside me,” La Señora said to Dickon. “Elke,” she went on, “give us a little time, say a half hour, and then bring us some tea. Green jasmine will do very nicely, I think.”
“Yes, Señora,” Elke said. “We’ve a few almond macaroons. Shall I bring those, as well?”
“Yes. That will be nice.” La Señora coughed into a handkerchief she held. Her breath rasped in her throat several times before she could breathe easily again. Dickon waited; she had summoned him.
“Dickon,” she said, when she had recovered, “I wish to make a confession. It is a custom of my childhood religion. Will you hear my confession?”
“I will listen, Señora, but remember I’m an ex-clergyman of the Protestant variety.”
“I was taught, as a girl, that any good person may hear another’s dying confession, if no priest is available. I have not followed my childhood religion since I was a schoolgirl, anyway. It was always more burdened with ritual and tradition than my spirit could manage.” She had to stop to catch her breath again. Dickon took her free hand and held it loosely in his.
“May whatever God there is forgive me,” she began in a formal voice, “for I have sinned. I have often been short of temper when I should have been patient. I have neglected formal religion all my adult life. I acknowledge I still see no point to bowing and scraping on hard pews and floors to flatter any god into doing things my way.” She stopped, gathered her breath, and rested. Dickon waited; he guessed she had more to say.
“I have carried bitterness in my soul against an innocent man. I have poisoned my spirit in this, making my work less effective. I have carried adulation for an unworthy man in my heart, and, when I discovered his betrayal after decades, converted my adulation to bitter hatred, of which I did not divest myself.” She began coughing again. She took her hand from Dickon’s and gestured toward a glass of water with a bent straw in it. Dickon held the glass so she could sip from the straw. When she had taken a little, she pushed the glass away and lay back with her eyes closed.
Dickon was about to get up and tiptoe from the room when she opened her eyes again.
“I have more,” she said. “I confess to whatever powers may be that I have tyrannized my associates, bidding them do this or do that as though I owned them. I have expected perfection from them, and I have ignored the flaws in my own character and performance. I have avoided the usual sins of gluttony, fornication, theft, and murder mostly because I’ve had so few opportunities to commit them. That’s all, Dickon, except for one thing more. I bound Vanna Dee in a hell of unknowing. It will not last forever. Any clever hedge witch might remove it. I ought to have bound her with restraint, and instead I let my inner fury scorch her spiritual channels. I have left her to be a potential problem for you all.”
“May this God, whatever that is, forgive you what you repent,” Dickon said as solemnly as he could. He wondered what further trouble Vanna could bring, then set the thought aside. Some tomorrow would be better for considering threats. Elke coughed discreetly from the library door. Dickon looked at La Señora. “Have you more to say?” he asked her.
“No,” she said, “I have no more to confess. Come in, Elke.”
Elke arranged the tea things on a teacart near La Señora’s bed. “Will you take tea, Señora?”
“No, not just now. A bit more water will do for me.” Elke held the glass with the straw to La Señora’s lips.
“One thing more to say,” La Señora said to Dickon. “Please tell Ben that strength lies in joining bamboo with clay.” She wheezed a moment, and went on. “I don’t know what it means. It is the message that was in my mind for him when I woke this morning.”
“I’ll tell him, Señora,” Dickon said. For a time they were all three silent. Elke and Dickon sipped their tea and nibbled macaroons. La Señora watched the golden afternoon light waltz on the waves. She closed her eyes and slept. Dickon murmured goodbyes to Elke and left. Elke closed the drapes against the encroaching night, gathered the tea things, and left the room.
She-Who-Shuns-Males woke in the night mist with a sense someone had called to her. Not sure quite why, she left her comfortable straw bed in the corner of the shelter and went to the unicorn with the unique horn, who lay on her side, not with her legs under her. She-Who-Shuns-Males, even now a little awkward with carrying her cría, lay down beside the unicorn. The unicorn was shivering with the cold. In her llama way, She-Who-Shuns-Males generated as much body heat as she could to warm the old one she so admired. The unicorn’s shivering lessened. She-Who-Shuns-Males felt the old one link mind to mind with her.
“My time is upon me,” the unicorn said. “I have had long days, and now they are over. That you bear in you will be my heir.”
She-Who-Shuns-Males emitted psychic puzzlement.
“You may have observed, I am not wholly like other llamas,” the unicorn said. “I have been able to shed my llama nature to take on another form. Your cría will be similarly gifted.”
“How shall I rear such a wonder?”
“With love and discipline, just as you would any cría.” The mind-link broke when they heard footsteps sliding through the grass. Willy Waugh came into the shelter. He saw at once that the unicorn’s hours were numbered. He hastened to her, and lay down beside her along with She-Who-Shuns-Males. He stroked the unicorn’s mane, slowly and steadily.
The night wore on to its middle. The mists hid the stars, and the windless sea was hushed. No sound came louder than the labored breathing of the unicorn. Then, with a jerk of its legs, the unicorn expelled a long sigh of breath, and was still. Willy bowed his head and wept.
She-Who-Shuns-Males felt a power enter her cría. Notta Freed Sharif felt her child move in her womb. In the library, a cry, neither joyous nor sad, awoke Elke. “Reggie, wait for me,” La Señora croaked out. Then Elke heard La Señora’s breath rattle in her throat as she died. Weeping, Elke lit a candle, and closed La Señora’s eyes.
The Funeral under the Sun
A soft wind blew in from the sea. The Villagers and other mourners stood around the two graves, one large, the other normal in size. They made great brown scars on the green hill. Over each, a simple pine casket was suspended. On the smaller casket lay a spray of yellow roses. On the larger casket lay a great sheaf of green cornstalks.
Today the winter rains had relinquished their claim on the coast. Ben was glad of it; funerals had been all too frequent in the past few years for him. He knew, in his heart, that frequency was a side effect of his age. So many had happened in the rain, or in snow covered cemeteries. A funeral under the sun was a pleasant change. Ben decided to read it as a tribute to those who had died.
When they all had gathered, a quiet hush fell over them. No one murmured or whispered, except the wind. It sang a sad little hymn among the grass blades. Dickon, garbed in a white pleated pulpit gown with black velvet bands on the front spoke to them.
“Salvación Mandor, or La Señora, as most of us knew her, has come to the end of her journey in this life. We who are left behind grieve her going. We grieve for ourselves, for the hole in our circle of important people. We are normal, to grieve, for we endure a great loss.” Dickon surveyed the crowd. Ben guessed he was momentarily overcome, himself, with his grieving.
“La Señora,” Dickon went on, after clearing his throat, “was a woman of great presence, and many gifts. She saw farther into things of the spirit than anyone else I knew. She guided so many of us away from our personal disasters and toward our personal triumphs. Her guidance was often very firm, and only the greatly foolish dared oppose it.” Several in the crowd smiled, and one or two chuckled softly. La Señora had indeed been an iron fist, when she felt the need. Many of them knew it first-hand.
“La Señora never had the comfort of spouse and family to sustain her. In her dark times, and she had them, as we all do, she turned to those of us who were privileged to live in her inner circle. We were her adopted family, and she was our fearless leader, our mother, and our goad to right action.” Dickon paused again, and looked down at a little book he had in his left hand. He had a finger stuck in it between two pages. Ben expected him to read from it. Dickon didn’t. He looked