by Maurice Gee
His bed rustled as he moved.
‘One day it happened. Soona was ten. It was the time when the priest came to heal my leg. He laid his hands on me and sang a chant. When it was over he talked with my parents. He told them he had chosen Soona to train for the priesthood. You must understand, that is a great honour in our land. Families dream of a son or daughter chosen. But my family – we are different. For one thing, we are small. Most parents have many children. But my parents have only Soona and me. And my father had come – he had come not to believe.’ Limpy moved convulsively, as though what he had said frightened him. ‘In our house we did not practise the rites. No one knew of it. The priest did not know. We did not thank Susan for our food. We did not pray at dawn and at dusk, unless someone was with us. Then we prayed. We went to the Temple, we had to do that. But at home we were unbelievers. We did not speak of it, we kept very quiet. If he had known the priest would have sent us for trial. And my sister Soona, she hated Susan most of all. She hated the priests. She knew they hunted Woodlanders with their dogs, and hunted unbelievers, and threw them down Sheercliff from Deven’s Leap. So when the priest told us she was chosen, she said no, and my parents said no.’ Limpy shivered. ‘One does not say no to a priest.’ He was quiet for a long time.
‘What happened, Limpy?’
‘My parents told him they had only two children. They must keep Soona at home to work. But the priest would not listen. He told her to be ready to leave for the Temple in the morning. Then Soona told him she had seen Susan in a dream, and Susan had told her she must stay with her parents, she was not meant for the priesthood, there were other things she must do. The priest was angry. But no one, not even he, can argue with Susan. He tested Soona, of course, but she was clever, he could not shake her. So he punished us in the way I have told you. He kept me from the sea. He ruined my father. But Soona was saved from the priesthood, that was the most important thing.
‘After that we pretended to be more pious. We gave the priest no excuse to examine us. And the village looked on Soona as a saint. People told how she had seen Susan in a dream. We thought their talk would make the priest angry. But he encouraged it. Ah, he was clever. One night he sent his dogs to sleep outside our door. And through the days that followed they lay there in the street and would not move.’
‘Why did he send them?’ Susan said.
‘It was a sign. So he said.’
‘A sign of what?’
‘We were in the time of the hundredth turn. All through the land priests from the Temple were searching for a girl … ’
‘What for?’
‘To go to the Temple. To take part in the Miracle. Our village is small, and far away. When we heard of it we never thought they would come so far.’
‘What sort of miracle? Please, Limpy. Tell me.’
‘It is said – the High Priest has said – that in the hundredth turn Susan may perform the Miracle as a sign of favour to Humankind. But if she is angry the girl will fall.’
‘Fall?’
‘They will throw the Chosen One from Deven’s Leap. Susan will save her – or she will not.’
‘That’s – terrible.’
‘It is terrible. Yes.’
‘And Soona? Soona was chosen?’
‘Our priest sent a message to the Temple. He told them of the girl who had seen Susan in a dream. So they came. He showed them his dogs at our door, guarding her. He brought Soona out. She was the right age. She was beautiful. And pious. And clever. In all the land there was no girl so perfect for the part. So they took her. They put her in a cart and wheeled her away. My father could do nothing. They would have set their dogs on him. And my mother – she sits by the ashes at the fire and will not speak. But it was a great day for Stonehaven. And our priest. He had found the Chosen One. It is said he will be called soon to a high place at the Temple.’
They lay still in the cave for a long time. There was no rustle of ferns. No one spoke. Nick could think of nothing to say. Susan was too full of wild emotions to trust her tongue. But at last she said, ‘When did you think of looking for me?’
‘Soona thought of it. We talked while the dogs lay at our door. She knew what was going to happen. She told me it was true what people said, she had talked with the Woodlanders. They had told her all they knew about Susan, all the stories handed down to them. Susan was a human girl, they said. She was not holy. Earth was another world, like O. Soona told me I must go deep into Wildwood. The Woodlanders would come for me, she said. They would tell me how to find Susan and bring her back to O. She told me she had dreamed of Susan truly, not the Susan of the priests, the real one. She would come, it was in her dream. She would face the High Priest and show him the Lie. I could not believe. It was too much. But Soona made me promise to do as she said.’
‘How am I going to save her?’
‘The dream did not show.’
‘And how will I end the religion?’
‘She saw you face the High Priest, that is all.’
‘Was Jimmy in the dream?’
‘Only you and the Priest. So … when they had taken her, I ran away to Wildwood. I slipped out in the night. I did not tell my parents, they would stop me. But I know it must grieve them terribly. They have lost their children.’
Nick and Susan thought of their own parents. But they could not turn back now. They could not leave O until Soona was safe. And Susan believed in Soona’s dream. She must go to the Temple and face the High Priest. It seemed to her as frightening as facing Otis Claw.
‘I travelled for a night and a day,’ Limpy said. ‘On the second morning when I woke I heard the dogs. The priest of Stonehaven was hunting me. I could not escape him, but I ran. Then I heard a voice telling me to stop, and I found someone running at my side. It was a Woodlander. I had never seen one, except when hunting parties of priests brought a body back and fed it to their dogs. He was small, and beautiful. He had fur on his face, brown and silver. He could run as swiftly as a deer.’
‘We know the Woodlanders. We have seen them.’
‘He asked me who I was and why they chased me. I told him I was Soona’s brother. Then he showed me how to use grub-weed, and we escaped from the dogs. He took me to Shady Home and I met Verna and told my tale. I told her I must go to Earth and bring Susan back. And she said yes, it was time. She said the real Susan must come to O and destroy the false one. So they taught me all the ways of living in the woods – how to travel quickly, how to climb, how to find food and cure my ills. And they told me all the old tales – different from the ones in the holy book. How Susan flew with wings made in Shady Home – ’
‘I made them,’ Nick said.
‘Wings Nick made. How Susan joined the Halves and made Humankind whole. And how you went back home to Earth. I tried to believe. I think that I believe Verna now. And I know the priests are evil men who lie. I should have known sooner, like my sister.’ He brooded a while in the dark, then shook himself. ‘When I had learned her lessons, Verna sent a woman out to pick the Shy. She was gone many days. The Shy is rare. But she came back and Verna gave me the flower and told me how to use it. I set out on my journey. Woodlanders came with me on the way. Then I went on alone, and found the cave, and came to Earth. To Earth!’ His voice had a wondering note. Again he shook himself, rustling the ferns. ‘I came out by your stream and smelled the Shy. I found the plant and knelt by it, and soon Susan came. The rest you know.’
‘But I don’t know how I’m going to destroy the Temple. And save Soona.’
‘Verna said to bring you to Shady Home. She has something to give you from long ago. Perhaps you will find the answer there.’
‘Maybe,’ Susan said. She was afraid, but angry too. When she thought of people using her name to terrorize a world, and Soona wheeled away in a cart and her mother grieving by the cold fire, she felt an anger that made her want to rush to the Temple and break it down with her hands. ‘How far are we from Shady Home?’
‘Three or four days.
It’s south, that’s all I know. When I came I didn’t come this way.’
‘I think I can find it,’ Nick said.
‘It is not the Shady Home you knew. The Woodlander villages move about because the priests come hunting with their dogs. We must go south and hope Woodlanders find us. They told me they would wait in the forest.’
They slept, and rose at dawn, and went on south along the foot of the hills. In the afternoon the sun grew red, shining through a haze of smoke far off towards Sheercliff.
‘The priests are burning forest where they have found the Shy,’ Limpy said.
They found another cave in the evening, and cooked more fish and ate fruit and sat by the fire talking. Limpy was worried that Woodlanders had not found them. Susan told him stories to cheer him up. She told him about the Birdfolk and how she had flown to Mount Morningstar. She told him how Jimmy Jaspers had chopped down the bridge and saved them from the Bloodcat, and how she had met Seeker and Finder and climbed down the Throat of the Underworld. She described the Shady Home she had known, and her friendship with Brand and Breeze. Nick chipped in, telling how he had made the gliders, and how Jimmy had killed Odo Cling, and how they had flown to Darkland. They told the whole tale, until the Halves were joined and Otis Claw dead. Limpy listened without saying a word. They could not tell whether he believed them or not.
‘The priests tell these stories, but they tell them differently.’
‘Then they tell lies,’ said a voice. A Woodlander woman stepped into the light. Susan thought she was Breeze and almost cried out the name, then saw this girl was younger and her fur more golden. She came forward quickly and touched Susan on the shoulder. ‘Welcome to Wildwood again. My name is Dawn. Welcome Nick. I have been listening to your stories.’ She knelt and looked at Susan, then she smiled. ‘Yes, you are the way I thought you would be. My mother’s grandmother was your friend.’
‘Was she Breeze? You look like her.’
‘I am descended from Breeze and Brand. My mother knew them when she was a girl. They never forgot you, Susan. It grieved them terribly to see this evil cult grow up among Humankind.’
‘How can I destroy it? What do I do?’
‘I don’t know. There will be a way. Tomorrow we will start for Shady Home. When you have talked with Verna you will know. But Limpy, you must put this fire out. The glow from the cave shows in the forest. If I can find you, priests can.’ They threw dust on the fire and lay down on their beds in the gathering dark. Dawn slept at the mouth of the cave. Her quiet breathing came to Susan as she went to sleep. She seemed to lie between them and the danger outside, and it comforted Susan so that she slept all through the night without dreaming.
For the next three days the Woodlander girl led them south. They travelled in the forest at the foot of the Shining Cliffs, and once saw a band of priests filing along the Lizard Path. They hid in the bush and watched them cross the bridge over Mountain’s Grief – a stone bridge now. Had Jimmy built it? He had said he was going to rebuild the bridge. Somewhere near them in the forest the old wooden one must have rotted away. The bones of the Bloodcat must lie near.
They struck away from the cliffs, deeper into Wildwood, passed through the Sink Holes, and then went further south, climbing into uplands where the trees grew smaller and herds of deer grazed on the downs. From the bare top of a hill they saw how the land was narrowing. The mountains stood close by and over beyond the forest the sea stretched out and merged its blue with the blue of the sky.
On the fourth day they reached Shady Home. The mountain range had flattened into hills and the Woodlander village was by a creek that tumbled from a hidden valley filled with giant trees. It was built on levels up the hillside. The Woodlanders crossed on rope walkways from houses in the trees to others on the ground higher up. Nick saw how the site gave them protection. No one could attack from behind, while look-outs had a clear view over the downs and forest. But in one way it was the Shady Home they had known. Children still played by the stream and their shouts rang in the trees.
Dawn led them through the village. They gathered a train of Woodlanders, who touched Nick and Susan and called out their names wonderingly. Verna’s house was on the hill, where the creek broke from the valley. She waited by her door: an ancient Woodlander woman in the cloak of age and honour. She touched them with her dry hands, and led them into her house. She gave them food and drink and told them to rest before they talked. But they were too excited for that.
Susan said, ‘I knew another Verna once.’
The old Woodlander smiled. ‘She was my mother. She told me many tales of you.’
‘And your father …?’
‘He was Walt.’
‘Ah,’ Susan said. This world was the O she knew at last.
She told Verna how she had planted the seed and how the Shy had grown on Earth, and about their journey, how Limpy had led them down from the cave, and how the Stoneman Seeker had saved them. Then Verna told the lives of Brand and Breeze and Walt and Verna. And she told them how the Temple had begun. It was as Nick had guessed. There was a time of lawlessness after the Halves were in balance. Men seemed lost, they seemed to be waiting for someone to rule them. But some left the lowlands and settled in the forest, and others travelled north and south and set up villages on the coast and lived from fishing. They were the lucky ones. In the cities people starved and preyed on one another, and everywhere cults and superstitions grew up. Then one grew stronger than the others – the cult of Susan. It made a holy book, it set up rites and doctrines and invented enemies, and people flocked to it, and soon it ruled.
‘Who were the enemies?’
‘The Woodlanders. The Birdfolk. The Seafolk. All who were not human. It was never a religion of love. Hatred and power were its attractions. That way the people were kept in order. The Temple ruled.’
‘In my name,’ Susan whispered.
‘In your name.’
‘I must stop it. Soona dreamed I would face the High Priest.’
‘Yes. But listen. Once, long ago, Jimmy Jaspers came to Shady Home. I was a child, not five turns old. I remember him. An old man with a strange weapon, an axe. And he travelled with a Varg, the great blue bear that lives in the south.’
‘Blue?’
‘Sometimes he is blue and sometimes white, as the sun shines on his fur when he moves. Jimmy Jaspers stayed with Brand and Breeze, and the Varg lay sleeping at the door. They stayed one night. When morning came Jimmy Jaspers lifted me up and sat me on the bear’s back for a moment. I have never forgotten. Then he said goodbye and went away south, and he was never seen in Wildwood again. But Susan, he left something for you.’
‘He knew I would come?’
‘He must have known.’ She went to a little alcove by her bed and felt in it and came back with a small wooden box. ‘I have never opened this. Brand and Breeze left it with my mother and she with me.’ She put the box on the table. ‘Now it is yours.’
Susan looked at it. There was no ornamentation. It was the size of a lunch box, with a hasp of twig. She shifted it into a patch of sun. Nick came to her side.
‘Open it.’
The hinges creaked a little. When the sunlight reached inside they saw a roll of parchment in the box. It was mottled grey and brown and tied with plaited flax. Susan lifted it out. ‘Nick, this is nearly a hundred years old.’ The flax broke in her fingers and the parchment crackled as she opened it. They held it flat on the table and looked at the pale marks on it.
‘A letter, Nick. It’s a letter from Jimmy.’
Chapter Five
The Blue Bears
Deer Susan and deer Nick,
I’m not much good at letters but heer goes. I just cum up from Darkland by the citty theer and sum funny things is hapnin I can tell you. Theers sum geezers cashin in on what you dun yung Susie. They reckin your pritty speshul well you are but not that way. Bad times is cummin thats for sure. Odo Cling was a boy scowt compeered with sum of these blokes.
I d
ont go much on dreems but I had wun the uther nite. I reckin its becorse Im frends with Ben. We got a way of talkin him and me. Anyway I dreemed that you was cummin back to O. And I seen that youd be needin me and Ben. So wen you get heer cum and get me. It dont matter how much times gone by. Ill be down south at Mount Nickolis. Wen you get theer arsk the Vargs weer to go. Dont let them sceer you theyr not as bad as they look. Tell them who you are. Just sort of make a pickture in your hed.
Thats enuff. This writins bloddy hard werk.
Love. Jimmy.
P.S. Dont go tryin to do nuthin without me. I saw in me dreem that Id be theer. Wissel me fayvrit tune wen you cum.
‘He named a mountain after me,’ Nick said.
‘Ben must be the bear. Was that his name, Verna?’
‘That was it.’
‘Read the letter out,’ Limpy said.
Susan read, and when it was finished he said, ‘It was a hundred turns ago. I don’t see what good it does us now.’
‘We’ve got to trust Jimmy. He says it doesn’t matter how much time’s gone by.’
‘He’s dead,’ Limpy said. ‘Unless he went to Earth, like you.’
‘We’ve got to go and find out,’ Nick said. ‘And I want to see Mount Nicholas.’
‘My sister will be dead by the time you get back.’
‘How many days have we got?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘We can do it. If there’s a chance of finding Jimmy we’ve got to take it.’
‘What chance is there?’
‘Verna …?’
‘You must trust him. If he dreamed he would be there then he’ll be there. He dreamed you would be coming back, remember.’
‘Yes. Limpy, will you come? Please. We need you. We’ll save your sister, I promise you.’
‘You must travel into the land of the Birdfolk,’ Verna said. ‘If I send a messenger they will be ready to help you. You will be at Mount Nicholas in five days.’