Annah and the Children of Evohe

by Clay Gilbert

  Annah fell silent. They were all silent for several long moments that felt, to Annah, like whole cycles stretching end-to-end. After one more such moment, Llew and Danae drew away together into the woods, and Annah and Holder were alone.

  “Thank youbeloved,” Holder said. Annah’s face brightened with surprise, and she smiled. “You are welcome, dearest. I do not know how much difference it will make, but whatever happens, I love you. That will never change.”

  She watched Holder begin to speak; saw the doubt in his eyes. “Have I lied to you, Holder? Have I said anything to you that I have unsaid later?”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “And I will not. No matter what they say.” “Annah,” Holder said. “Beloved. They’re your parents. You’re their only child. If they don’t approve, if they won’t let us be together-I’m not going to just tear your family apart.”

  “No,”Annah said. “They will have done it.”

  Danae and Llew stepped back into the clearing. “Annah, Holder,” Llew said. “I have heard what you both have said, and I have thought upon it. Holder, your words have set you above what I know of your race. They mark you as one worthy of honor. But still, I do not know you, and there may be things about you that even Annah does not know. You have not known each other long, and she gives her love and trust too quickly. I have seen her hurt in this way before. I will not consent to give her to a stranger. I will not condone this.”

  “Mother?” asked Annah, panic in her voice. “What do you say?”

  “Your father speaks for me as well,” Danae said, a hint of sadness in her voice. “So, I’m a stranger!” Holder exclaimed. “I understand you don’t know me. So, get to know me. There’s still time enough to change all that.”

  “Jonan’s is the prior claim,” Llew said. “And the more reasonable.” “Father. Mother,” Annah said, her blue eyes bright with anger. “I love you. I honor you. But I will not give myself to Jonan. I will finish out my time in the Temple, and if you force me, I will go through with the Ritual of Promise. But on the day when I reach the Age of Choosing, if you still insist I choose Jonan, Holder and I will take his ship, and we will leave this world. And neither of you will ever see me again. That is my promise to you.”

  “I should send you away from this world now, or kill you where you stand, foreigner,” Danae said, “for causing my only child to say such things to me. But I will show this much kindness, for her sake: get out of my sight, and you may go where you will.”

  Annah did not let herself cry until she and Holder were beyond the boundary of the Elder Grove. He wrapped his arms around her and held her. As she so often had before, she put her head against his chest. She wept for a long time, and Holder shed silent tears of his own. “This won’t end this way, Annah.”

  “It might,” she said. “You do not know. Can they not see you as I do?”

  “I’m pretty sure parents can be blind sometimes, when their children are involved.”

  “Do you have your own bloomlings, Holder?”

  “No. I have been-mated-twice, but no children. Lucky break, really.”

  “You are happy your mating was not fruitful?”

  “Yeah. I hear it’s hard on the children, when things don’t work out. Don’t families ever split up, here?” “No,” Annah said. “Or if it happens, I have never heard of it. A Choosing is forever, and it is not done lightly. It would be an unthinkable dishonor to break such a thing.”

  “People say that on my world,” Holder said, “but most don’t mean it.” Annah was silent for a time. “Holder,” she asked finally, “is it wrong of me to be very glad that your mating was not fruitful?”

  Holder laughed. “No, I think that’s just fine. Annah, you have to get back to the Temple.”

  “I know,” she said. “But let me lie here with you, just a few moments more.”

  “I am sorry, Holder,” Ardan said, stoking the campfire, which had begun to burn low. “I hoped perhaps this would go in your favor.”

  “Who was I kidding?” Holder asked. He slammed his fist against the ground, and the shock sent sparks flying. “Why the hell did I do this to her?”

  “You have done nothing to Annah, my friend. Except, perhaps, to make her the happiest I think I have ever seen her. Until today. And none of that was your fault.”

  “I feel sick,” Holder said. When they’d left her behind, Annah had tried to hold onto his arm, to keep him there. If the ship was fixed right now-no. He couldn’t take the chance that Annah might come to regret leaving that way; come to resent him for letting her do it. “I feel so damn helpless, Ardan. I’ve never felt helpless. Ever.”

  “I have,” Ardan said. “The day that Annah told me she did not love me; that she could never love me the way I wanted her to. But I learned to align my sight with that of the First Ones; to see things more as they see them, and to find my place in the pattern. My place is here, for now: to help you, and to help her. Oh, I meant to tell you. I dreamt, last night, of the one I am meant to love. Her name is Kyrin. Fittingly enough, in our language, it means “Promised One.”

  “I hope you find her soon,” Holder said. “As do I. As far as I know, there is no seed-maiden in our Grove by that name.”

  “Then you’ll just have to keep your eyes open, won’t you?”

  Ardan laughed. “I suppose so. What will you do, my friend?” Holder closed his eyes for a moment, thinking of Annah; remembering the first time she’d smiled at him; the first time he’d held her. The first time he’d heard her sing. “She was wrong, you know, Ardan.”

  “What?” “The time she sang for me, up on the hill beyond the Grove. She’d said it was the first time, but it wasn’t; not really. She sang for me before, a long time before that; when I asked what she was called. She sang me her name.”

  Ardan smiled. “But even that wasn’t the first time,” Holder said. “I didn’t remember it at first; thought I’d dreamed it or something. But after the crash, when I was all busted up, halfway between here and deadthat was the first time she sang to me. She probably didn’t think I could hear. But I remember it now. She was trying to heal me. She’s always trying to heal me; help me-help other people make things better. It’s just who she is. What the hell have I ever done to help her?” Holder’s voice broke, and he drew in a breath that was more like a sob, but no tears came.

  “I think she told you that, today in the Grove,”Ardan said.

  “I just hurt so damn much,” said Holder. “I probably sound like an idiot. Her parents probably think I am; probably think I’m crazy. She’s so full of light, and she’s got so much promise. Me, if I had any promise, the last of it left with her.”

  “Stop talking like that,” Ardan said. “She did not leave you. She is trapped, Holder. She cannot see any other way.” “There have to be other ways,” Holder said, determination on his face. “We just have to find them. I don’t know what they are, but they have to be there. Don’t they?”

  Ardan didn’t answer.

  “Ardan, do you think the First Ones ever start to do something, and then change their mind

  “No, I do not.”

  “Neither do I.”

  * * * Annah lay on her side in the bedchamber of the Temple of Promise, in the bed she shared with Jonan, although she tried to forget that. They hardly ever slept at the same times, in any case, and sleep was all they did. She would not let him touch her now-or ever again. I hate myself for letting him touch me, letting him hold me even once. If I’d known they would take Holder from me, I would never have let Jonan do it. There is only one man’s touch I want to remember-even if I never feel it again.

  She curled her body tightly, turned her face away from the light of the bedchamber window, as if she were a not-bird bloomling curled in its change-sac, waiting to grow wings so it could fly away. I wish that could happen, Annah thought. I have never wanted something so much in all my life. I would give up the chance to learn what still remains of my heart-song, Holder, if I could be
with you again, if we could forget all this trouble had ever happened. But I do not suppose that that can be.

  She felt numb again, as she had when she’d first been taken from their camp and brought here to the Temple. A whole cycle more. Until I am nineteen. Holder will never wait that long. He will leave this world; leave me behind. He will tell stories of us to people he meets out in the Sea of Stars, where I will never go, now. He will remember that I sang to him; that I healed him, or tried to, and that, for a time, we loved each other. And he will speak of it as a distant dream that has passed. Holder, Annah thought, it will never pass, for me.

  * * *

  “Goodman, things are going to hell down here,” the Maestro was saying over Goodman’s ‘com. Might as well wake up to someone who’ll tell it to me straight, Goodman thought. The more time Goodman had spent on Erewhon, walking around in Piscene’s skin, so to speak, the more his old life, that of the company man, had begun to fall away, and to Goodman, it seemed a transformation timed to the rhythm of Commander Reynolds’ failing heart.

  “They caught the guy who set off the Embassy bomb. Well, somebody caught him. He got arrested, but it was just a front. They threw the case out on a technicality. Jury was a bunch of HPF people anyway. Guy got his, though. Mixed gang of Venusians, Jupiterians and even a couple tough guys from out near the Outer Edge jumped him in an alley. Cut him a second smile, right from ear to ear; fed his blood to the pavement. I don’t mind sayin’ I think he had it comin’. But the HPF is stirred up bad. And there’s a whole lot of ‘em here, Goodman. Alot more than we thought.”

  “You heard anything from Homesec?” Goodman asked the Maestro.

  “Nope. Thought you would’ve. Your boss don’t seem too worried about who’s running poison planetside anymore.”

  “No, he sure doesn’t,” Goodman said. Especially not when the people he’s backing are doing the running.

  “You keep yourself safe up there, man,” the Maestro said.

  “Somehow, I think I’m a whole lot safer up here than you are down there, so same advice to you.”

  “Will do,” the Maestro said. “I’m out.” Nothing makes sense anymore, Goodman thought. My job’s turned inside out; the Earth’s a hair’s breadth from war with a third of the galaxy, and I’m out here in borderspace, wearing the skin of one dead man and tracing the footsteps of another one who’s probably dead-and sending signals to a ship that probably blew up when he did.

  Evohe had started to mean more than just a mystery to Goodman. What it meant was the dividing line between what he had been and what he could be. He punched down the ‘com button again; tuned to the frequency that would be Holder’s ship, if it were still there to send or receive signals at all. “Holder? Gary Holder, come in. It’s Kale Goodman, from Homesec. I need to talk to you, man. Oh, hell. I don’t even know if you’re there. There’s some shit goin’ down, though, and I don’t know why, but I sure wish I could talk to you.”

  * * *

  “...talk to you.” That couldn’t be the radio, Holder thought, sitting bolt upright in the ship. He’d taken to sleeping there instead of by the fire sinceAnnah had gone back to the Temple. Ardan was back at the grove now, too, for the first time in a week. Holder had covered himself in the same synthwool blanket that Annah had wrapped him in when she’d brought him from the ship after the crash. They’d slept in it together, many nights. He lifted the blanket; inhaled its smellAnnah’s scent and his, mingled together. They’d never made love, but he could imagine it, and had, many times. One more thing we’ll probably never do, now.

  “Hello?” Holder pressed down the ‘com button, but whoever had been there was gone now, if they’d ever been there to begin with.

  * * *

  Annah opened her eyes, and the light through the domed glass ceiling of the Temple of Promise was an unwelcome reminder that the descent of days had ended. Today would bring the Promising. Her parents would not reverse the decision they had made in the Elder Grove, and Holder would be allowed to be at the ceremony, although he could not stop it. Do not even come, dearest, she thought. It will be hard enough already, for us both. And yet she wished he would come, even though his presence would neither delay nor stop a thing.

  A young female whom Annah didn’t recognize immediately, although that was nothing completely unusual, in and of itself, came into the room. She was much more typical, Annah thought, of the ideal of beauty for a girl of her kind: she was shorter than Annah herself was, with full, rounded breasts and hips, and hair and eyes as brown as the earth. But the seed-maiden had a kind face, and it gave Annah hope that the First Ones might hear her, even if no one else would listen. The girl smiled, looking as though she was not entirely sure why she was there. “You areAnnah?” she asked.

  “That is my name, although, this day, I wish it were not,” Annah said. The girl looked shocked. “You are not pleased that your Day of Promise is here?” she drew further into the room, as though she were afraid she might be seen or heard.

  “Indeed, I am not.” Annah didn’t think there was any need to conceal her feelings. What was going to be was going to be, regardless of how she felt about it.

  “But why?” the girl asked. “Jonan is well-thought-of, I hear-although, to be honest, I am new to this Grove. I came here with my parents from the Flatlands only a short time ago.”

  That is why I did not know her. And why I must remember, she knows little of Jonan. “If another seed-maiden would be honored by him, let her come and take him,” Annah said. “For my own part, I would care neither one way nor the other for his reputation, were he the one I love. But he is not.”

  “Oh,” said the girl. Annah found herself wondering if this girl knew anything of loss; of being set apart from root and grove. I doubt she does. But it is not her fault. “What is your name?”

  “I am called Kyrin,” the girl said. Kyrin. Annah remembered the conversation she had had with Ardan. So, she found her way here, to where he is. Perhaps, then, the First Ones can find a way for Holder and me, through all this darkness.

  “I am pleased to meet you, Kyrin, despite the circumstances.” “As am I, Annah. For though it saddens me to say it, I have been sent here to make you ready for the ritual, and to bring you to the Place of Promising.”

  “We all must do what is required of us.” said Annah. “I do not resent you.” Annah let the other seed-maiden bring the vial of perfumed oils she carried, and did not flinch as Kyrin drew the sacred symbols one by one on her forehead, on her breasts, and then on her lower belly, above the opening of her sex.

  “This one whom you love, Annah,” Kyrin asked as she worked, “who is he? Is he from this Grove, or another?” “His Grove is in a distant place,” Annah said. “I have never seen it, although he says he will show me, one day. I doubt, now, that that day will ever come.”

  “That would be frightening, at least for me-even our old Grove, in the Flatlands, is hardly distant from here. But I hope that day does come, for your sake, Annah. What is his name, this one whom you love?”

  “I am sure you have heard talk of him. He is Holder.”

  “The Offworlder?”

  Annah nodded. “His Grove is far from here, yes.” Kyrin recovered herself a little; reached for the woven bracelets of bright red flowers, and placed them on each of Annah’s wrists in turn. “I am sure there are many things in this world I do not understand,” she said, “and this is only one.” She smiled at Annah.

  Annah took Kyrin’s hand and squeezed it, smiling at her. “You are kind.”

  “I do not feel so, today,” the other seed-maiden said. “But, if there is a way it may come to pass, I hope that you will find joy.”

  “It has found me,” Annah said. “And I hope that it will find me again. But if it does not, I will live in the memory of its light, until I sleep.”

  Kyrin lifted a circlet of the same red flowers and set it gently on Annah’s head. “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “No,”Annah said. “But I will go.�
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  * * * Jonan has certainly been preparing, Annah thought as she and Kyrin arrived at the Place of Promising. And it does look beautiful. Or it would, if it were intended for someone else’s Promising. There were four poles that had been set up to mark the perimeter of the clearing, and on each, an object of a color meant to represent one of the four stages of a seed-maiden’s Becoming: the soft white petals of the whisper-tree, which kept its blooms from First-Fruit through Evenfall; the red flower called by what Annah had always thought of as the too-obvious name of Maiden’s Blood; green shoots of spice-grass, and the black strands of the night-staff, the flower that was often fastened to the beds of bloomlings to ward off bad dreams, or of the aged or the ill, to ease them to their rest.

  Petals of each of the same four colors had been strewn over the floor of the Promising grounds. That part alone must have taken a day, Annah thought.

  There were not as many people there yet as Annah had expected, but it seemed to her that nearly every elder of her Grove who was not at their rest had assembled for the occasion. “So many elders,” she whispered to Kyrin. “Perhaps it is only because there has not been a Promising in some time. Although, I do not usually pay attention to such things.”

  The crowd had gotten larger in just the short time Annah and Kyrin had stood there. Annah looked through the crowd. There are Mother and Father. Jonan will arrive nearly last. That was one of the few Promising customs she actually remembered. But where is Holder? Perhaps he decided not to come, after all.

  “Come with me, Annah,” Kyrin said. “It is almost time. I have been chosen to give you to your Promised One. Unless you would rather another seed-maiden do it.”

  I would rather no one do it. “No, Kyrin. It will be all right.” All at once, a familiar shape and motion caught her eye, before anything physical registered in her mind beyond a sensation of sudden joy.

  “Annah, are you all right?” Kyrin asked. “Yes-nowait.” She could see Holder clearly now, waiting for her down by the platform that had been set up in the space marked off by the poles. “It is all right, Kyrin. I will be there. But I must see him.”