The Dome in the Forest
Page 25
“The boat was speared by a gang of wild Shumai, all dressed in skins. They didn’t know about the peace.”
“What? Be serious, Stel. We were really worried.”
“I am.” He laughed. “They are with Tor now. They say they are going to come here, and I have promised to take them all up on one of the towers. You’ll see. Here. Presents from Tor and Tristal.”
“Were you scared, Father?” Garet asked. Stel put his arms around the two. “Gar, I was so scared, I—I—”
“Never mind,” said Ahroe. “You’re here. Put the boat back. Know what? A secret. Ruthan is going to have a baby.”
XIV
NOT long afterward, Disdan’s running band did come to Pelbarigan, trotting down the frozen river edge like shaggy beasts. They stayed through the winter festival, hanging about, staring at everything, becoming a nuisance. Blu finally told them it was time to work and suggested returning to help Tor, or else cutting wood at Pelbarigan. They decided instead to go to south Shumai country to find relatives.
Using a telescope from Celeste’s optics shop, Eolyn watched them leave from the tower. She shuddered.
“Cold?” Dailith asked, putting his arm around her.
“No. Look at them. Their ancestors might have been accountants, or computer experts, or federal bureaucrats. There they go running like beasts in the snow.”
“We have the accountants, computer experts, and federal bureaucrats to thank for that. They made the mess.”
“It was a failure in the system somewhere.”
“Was it? Tor says the failure lay in the human heart.”
“Tor. He is another wild beast. Why do you always bring him up?”
“I don’t know. He haunts me. He isn’t stupid. He is extremely effective, as you ought to know. I know he feels that the deepest human problems are solved inside, and the solutions don’t lie in technology.”
“He doesn’t have to avoid it so completely, out there chopping with his axe instead of devising some simple machine to do the work. What solutions will he find in his endless ‘words of Aven’ or Shumai songs? I understand that now he wants to read about the Sentani god, Atou.”
“It is all the same, Eo. It is one God by different names.”
“In the dome I always thought God was only an expletive.”
“I wonder. Are we turning our backs on where our study should really lie? Are we starting down a long road to technological wealth again, and leaving the search for religious insight, or what the Haframa calls spiritual perception, behind?”
“Religious insight won’t feed you and keep you warm and free from disease, Dai. Be serious.”
“I wish I could be as sure as you are.”
On a misty morning early in Windmonth, the great log raft drifted slowly downriver, bearing the entire work crew. In its center, mounted on a bound square of rock, the stewpot of Souf, the Sentani woman, still cooked. It seemed never empty, only taken from and added to.
Tor and Tristal came ashore, walking up to Ahroe’s house. They moved briskly, refreshed and contented. Talking that evening, Tor asked about his boat. Had Stel stored it anywhere? Was it in good shape?
“Yes,” Stel returned. “We caulked it well and put it in the storage caves. Are you going so soon? You just got here.”
“We are going to Disdan’s ice country, Stel. We are going to cross the mountains where no one has been.”
“Tor,” Ahroe said. “With Tristal? When are you coming back?”
“Back? I hadn’t thought. Perhaps never. It depends what is on the other side.”
Talk turned to other things, but Ahroe said little. Finally, she went to the back rooms and would not come out.
“What did I do?” Tor asked.
“You said you were going away and maybe not coming back,” Stel said. “And taking Tris.”
“It is a good thing to do, Stel. You will see it is, maybe.”
“I hope so. I really hope so. Tris, will you come home?”
“Home?” His face lit up. “I don’t know, either. Someday, maybe. Home is with Tor, though.”
A little later, Tristal took Stel’s pellute and sung them a song, his own song. He had been practicing at the logging camp, and sung in the Pelbar manner, in his new deep voice:
Good-bye, my favored stranger.
Now I let you go.
Some tangled strands of you are caught
in memory’s branches, though.
Forgetfulness is like a blade
We sharpen on a stone,
But when we test it with a thumb,
we cut it to the bone.
Dark blood wells out along the cut.
Eventually it seals.
Wrapped up in distance, thought, and time,
the deepest wound still heals.
The sun will rise across the plains.
Its light will flood the soul.
And floating down its brilliant stream,
our spirit’s strength grows whole.
Stel was touched by the song, and got Tristal to sing it again so he could learn it. On the third time, Ahroe appeared in the doorway. She was near her term, leaning back to balance her swelled womb. Her eyes were red. “Can’t you be quiet?” she said. “Garet is trying to sleep.”
A voice came from inside. “No, I’m not, Mother. I’m listening.”
“Be quiet. Lie down and be quiet.”
Soon after, they all went to bed.
Morning came foggy. At dawn, Tor and Stel got out the boat and stocked it with provisions. Blu came down to the bank with Ruthan, both looking happy. He and four of his men were laying out garden shops and what Ruthan called “an experimental plot for agricultural research.”
When they were ready, Tor asked, “Where is Ahroe?”
“She wouldn’t come. I suspect she is on one of the towers if the both of her could get up there.”
“Why? Won’t she even say good-bye?”
“No. She couldn’t, Tor. You are going away, that far, taking Tris, and maybe never coming back.”
“Oh. Well, tell her good-bye, then. I wanted to give her this from us.” He handed Stel a small disk, as big as two thumbnails, of silvery metal. The top read LIBERTY in an arc around the edge. Below, a woman’s face, in low relief, looking right, came faintly up from corrosion. “I thought it looked a little like her. Not so good-looking, of course. I found it in some rocks this winter.”
“It is a coin, an ancient coin,” said Stel, turning it over in his hand. “They used it for exchange. The Commuters had some.”
“Oh. Please ask her not to be angry. We have to go.”
“I know. She knows.”
They pushed the bow out into the water, then Tor embraced the men and kissed Ruthan. She set her jaw and said nothing. Pushing out farther, they got in, with Raran, and Blu shoved them out into the current.
Ahroe was on Gagen Tower, Celeste with her. Looking down, the girl asked, “Who is that? In the river. It isn’t Tor. Oh. There’s Tor in the bow. It looks like two of him.”
“It is Tristal, Celeste. They are going away.”
“Tristal? No. This one is too big. Away? For the summer?”
“They are going to the ice country. Farther than you dream of distance. They hope to cross some high mountains into unknown country.” Ahroe’s voice was tight.
“Why would they do that?”
Ahroe didn’t answer. Eolyn, who had also come, looked at her. “You will miss them, then? That much?”
“Miss them? Yes, of course. Look at them in that eggshell. Tris is a true poet. Did you know that? He is not really equipped for this. Damn them both. Look at Tor, with his one arm. Stel tells me he spent most of a day last winter chopping geese out of the ice and letting them go free. He fell in the river twice doing it. I know he has found mice in his food stores and carefully covered up their nests again, with their naked young. Look at them. They have no idea what they are in for. They find no dimension here for them. They are thinking to fi
nd freedom. Tor wants to be rid of you. . . .”
“Of me? Tor? Of me?”
“Of course. For yourself and for your power. He told me he can’t get that burst of fire out of his head. He says he thought he would never fear anything, but he wakes up sweating thinking of a whole valley of burning men.”
Eolyn snorted. “Butto did that. I would have tried to reason it out somehow.”
Ahroe stared at her. “Butto was a brave and good man. And Tristal. It is possible for someone so young to love, you know. Stel and I did. We had troubles, but we did. He found in Celeste somebody like himself, alone, walking in the mud and rain, without parents. He felt somehow—I know it is irrational—that they were meant to come together and heal each other’s loneliness. He is not going for Tor’s sake. He is going for himself. She never even saw him. Look at them, courage and ability aside. A couple of boys. They aren’t really tough like Stel and me. Or even like Blu or Dailith. They won’t measure out their happiness in human handfuls. They want something beyond that, and it doesn’t exist.”
“You make it sound dire,” Eolyn said. She took the long telescope and watched them in the morning mist, Tor standing, watching ahead for snags, Tristal in the stern, stroking, stroking, even and strong, Raran standing amidships, looking back at Stel, wagging her tail. She watched Tristal whack the dog gently on the shoulder with the paddle and saw Raran plump down and drop her prick ears. A bank of fog rolled downriver and the two headed into it. At last it seemed a solid wall, slowly taking the bow, then Tor standing erect, then Raran, then Tristal, and at last the flash of his paddle.
Celeste let out a murmur and reached for the telescope. It slipped, spun on the parapet, and fell to the stone pavement of the tower, the eyepiece shattering. The girl stooped, then knelt and took the pieces in her hands, cutting a finger. Eolyn looked down at her, shaking her head. Celeste looked up, her mouth open, trying to speak, trying, but again finding that no words would come.
From high overhead, perhaps above the mist, came the calling of geese, snows and blues, flying north, loosing their glad and desultory cries as geese have always done, raining them down on Pelbarigan, on the mist, somewhere out there on Tor and Tristal, flying their instinctive routes, high and free, migrating as they have since the Pleistocene, before and after America, and through all the times of the Heart River peoples.
IN THE BEYOND ARMAGEDDON SERIES
The Breaking of Northwall: The Pelbar Cycle, Book One
Paul O. Williams
With an introduction by the author
The Ends of the Circle: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Two
Paul O. Williams
The Dome in the Forest: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Three
Paul O. Williams
The Fall of the Shell: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Four
Paul O. Williams
An Ambush of Shadows: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Five
Paul O. Williams
The Song of the Axe: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Six
Paul O. Williams
The Sword of Forbearance: The Pelbar Cycle, Book Seven
Paul O. Williams