Annah and the Children of Evohe

by Clay Gilbert

  “What about you?” Holder asked. “I’m thinking about the same thing, myself. I used to be a company man, Holder. But I don’t like what the company stands for, anymore, and the new management really sucks.”

  “Like I said, if you need a place-”

  “We might be meeting face-to-face real soon,” Goodman said.

  “All right. If you need me, I’m here.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence after the ‘com went dead. “This is a grave thing, Holder,” Danae said. “We want you to understand that you have a home here; a sanctuary, should you need it. If you feel you need to return-”

  “It’s not a matter of my need,” Holder said. “I’ve still got family back on Earth, but they wouldn’t want me flying into a war zone. And after what happened to my ship, they might think I’m dead anyway. But Homesec—that’s what they call the Earth’s government these days-has ways of finding out I’m not.”

  “They will make you go back and fight in their war?” Annah asked, looking up at him.

  “They’ll sure as hell try.”

  “If you must go, dearest,” Annah said, “I will go with you.”

  He stroked her cheek; ran fingers through her hair. “That can’t happen, beloved.”

  “Why?”Annah’s voice was pained; desperate. “Because they would kill you on sight, daughter,” Llew said. “He only thinks to protect you. They might even kill him, for being with you.”

  “First Ones, Holder,”Annah said. “I am sorry.” Holder kissed Annah’s hand. “I’m not. I will never be sorry about you.” He looked to Annah’s parents, then to Ardan and Kyrin. “Any of you. And anyway, I’m not going anywhere right now. You and I,” he said, smiling at Annah, “have a Promising coming up. And I have cataloging and writing to do. If they want me to even think about fighting in their war, they’re going to have to ask me first.”

  “What about-the other?” Annah asked. “On the speakbox?” She thought for a moment. “Good-man?” “I was thinking about that, too,” Holder said. “He seems like a good guy. I think he’s caught in the middle of this thing, too, in different ways than me. Could he come here?”

  “I would not have allowed this, even half a cycle ago,” Llew said. “And there are those among the Elders who still would object. But I no longer believe that the face of destruction or wrong can be the face of an entire species. There are choices to be made, by each of us. This is mine. Yes, he can come, if he wishes.”

  “It might not have to happen, Llew. But thanks.”

  “We will have to tell the Elder Council about this war,” Danae said. “We must prevent another Breaking, if we can.” “Many of the Elders will say that this war does not concern us,” said Llew, “that as long as the conflict remains in a distant part of the Sea of Stars, we should let the flame rage where it will.”

  “It does concern us,” Danae said. “It should concern all of us, when one small faction wages war against all those who do not agree with its particular idea of that which is right.” She paused for a moment, looking at Annah and Holder, standing together. Holder’s hand was in Annah’s, his arm cradling her against him. Her head lay against his chest.

  “This war concerns me,” Danae said. “It concerns my child, and her mate. They are my world, and you, my mate. It is that Breaking, as well as that of this planet, that I am concerned with preventing.”

  “The sleepers will have to be awakened,” Llew said, “and that is not among my skills.”

  “Nor mine,” Danae said. “I will awaken them,” said Annah. “You, my child?” Llew asked Annah. “But you are barely more than a bloomling.”

  “I am not.” Annah said. “I am a seed-maiden nearly of the Age of Choosing, and I have been told I was born with the memories of a Shaper.”

  “Who told you this, Annah?”

  “One of those who slept beside you and Mother before I awakened you.”

  “You did do that,” Llew admitted. “I suppose I thought it possible only because you are our daughter.” “I thought of that too. But that one did speak as I have said, and I have received teachings in the ways of a Shaper from other Elders as well. I hope you are not angry, father,” Annah added, her voice sounding frightened.

  “I am not,” Llew said. “I have always believed you were special, my Annah. Even as you began your Becoming, and there were those who told me you would never find a mate, or a proper place in the grove, I believed it.”

  “They said those things to me, too,” Annah said, tears glistening in her eyes.

  “Your mother and I both believed in you.” Llew said. “But we thought little of it. It is natural for a parent to wish a special destiny for their child.” Annah wrapped her arms around her father’s waist. “I do not know if my destiny is special. But I know that this is something I can do.”

  “Very well, then,” said Llew. “I will gather those others who are not sleeping, and we will come to you in the Elder Grove.”

  * * * “I don’t know if I should be here, Annah,” Holder said. They stood together in the Elder Grove, and now, Holder found himself overwhelmed by the age of the place as well as by its purpose.

  “Why?” she asked, looking up into his eyes.

  “I am not of your kind, beloved, and I know nothing of Shaping.” “You are part of my”-she sang a melody that was a single note held low, then modulated high, and brought back down, just higher than the note with which she had begun.

  “Family,” she translated. “I wish I could speak your language,” he told her. “I like to think about what this world must have been like before any of us knew where or what it was. All that music. It must have been like a temple built of song.”

  “That is how it seems, in my Memories. But in the time of your war, when your people first came here, some of us began to learn the way you speak. It is why it was easy— well, mostly—for me to learn from your ship. Your ship is also a good teacher.” Annah laughed.

  That didn’t surprise Holder. Any ship with a hyperlight drive, basically any craft designed for long-range travel, had cryosleep chambers and edudiscs designed to teach the crew, both during cryosleep and outside it. They were simply done, but they did their job. Clearly, he thought, watchingAnnah.

  “Why did you want to learn our language?” he asked her.

  “Well, those of you that were here, then.” “The Memories do not all make sense to me,” Annah said. “There is a lot of pain in them. Some of us wanted to learn so we could trick you. Trick them,” she corrected, a flush of shame crossing her face.

  Holder touched her arm. “It’s all right. I knew what you meant.” He knew Annah rarely showed shame over anything. It was something about her that he envied. Although, she also rarely does anything that a sane person should be ashamed of.

  “Some of us thought that, if we learned how to talk like you, you could understand us better, and not be afraid. That did not work at all.”

  “Don’t look so sad,” Holder said. “It wasn’t your fault. You weren’t even born.”

  “Neither were you. But my parents still blamed you, when you came here.” “Well, I’d blame me too. But you and I don’t have to make their mistakes.” He gave her a gentle kiss. “Will you teach me some of your language, sometime? It’d be good for what I’m writing. Plus, it’d make me happy.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “You ready to wake some Old Ones up?” “Why?” Annah raised her head from Holder’s chest. Llew and Danae were coming down the path to the Grove, with nearly a dozen other Elders behind them.

  “Oh.”

  “You’ll be fine, beloved,” Holder told her. “This is what you were born for.” “It is one thing, yes.” She rubbed her face against his beard, and stood up. When she was almost to them, he fell into place, just behind her.

  * * *

  Gary Holder’s Journal, June 22, Year 250, Homesec Reckoning. I wish there was a sound recorder on this journal. If there were, though, I’m not sure it’d be right to record this.
I feel like I’m in church. And I feel like I’m seeing Annah for the first time, again. She looked so small up there at first, with all of them-all of us, I guess-gathered around her, like pale stars circling an impossibly bright sun. And she did-she doesshine. She raised her arms as she sang the first notes; soft at first, letting the others get the pitch, and it was a rich range of tones, all of them lower than hers, transposed, but in her key, as though she were the channel, and they the river, flowing with the pull of her gravity, just as I do, so often.

  God, it almost turns me on to write that. That’d make Annah laugh, but she wouldn’t be surprised. She’d say that both of these things, sex and sacredness, are part of Balance. As she’s been singing, and as we’ve all been singing with her, the craziest thing has been happening. The trees have been melting. Well, not all of them, and not really melting; it’s more like the Elders have been wearing tree-skins while they’ve been sleeping, and as Annah singsas we all sing, like I said before, because I’ve been trying to join in as best I can, the tree-skins slip away, and leave that white-rainbow-silvery iridescence of Evoetian skin underneath.

  I love that color. Kissing Annah’s stomach, or her breasts, is like touching my lips to-being enveloped by--a field of fresh snow under the sun, when the light shatters on the white ground and breaks into every color conceivable. This whole grove is shining with that same light now, and if she looks the brightest to me, it is because I see her in the reflected light of her own potential. These people, her people, are awake now, because of her. And so am I. That’s what love does: it awakens you. Love is the light that contains all colors, and leaves nothing in shadow. * * *

  When the trance let Annah go, she felt the eyes on her as she sometimes felt the shock of cool stream-water when she first stepped in for a swim. Then she smiled. I did it, she thought. To her surprise, they all smiled back at her. One of the Elders, a male, slender and standing straight, his slow, deliberate movement the only sign of his age, came and stood before her.

  “I know you,” she said. His face was lined with the same grooves as the tree-skin he had worn, and his hair was long, and white as autumn frost.

  He smiled. “Yes, you do. I am Mergin, and I have taught you what I know of Shaping since you used to come and rest your tiny bottom on my roots as a small bloomling. I tried to tell you my name, many times, but you never quite heard me. I do know yours, though,Annah.”

  She laughed, and hugged him.

  “Your skills have grown strong, young one.”

  “I listen more now,” Annah said. “We have felt the chill in the wind,” Mergin said, “seen the distance between our people and the songs that were once as important to life here as soil and sunlight. And in the distance of Vision, we have seen the flames of war.”

  Annah shuddered. “Try not to fear,” Mergin told her, putting his hand lightly on her shoulder. “Think of the stillness of the Shaper’s trance: the stillness that calms all things, because it shows all things in motion. Remember the things I have told you. Do you fear the current of the stream?”

  She laughed. “No. I let it carry me.”

  “Do you fear the rhythm of a song?” She laughed again, shaking her head. “No. I dance with it.” This, too, was training, she knew. And the answers came easily, without force or thought. She had learned to listen.

  “Do you fear the strength of your own voice?” Mergin asked her.

  “No,”Annah said. “But I am still trying to find it.”

  “You will,” Mergin said. Annah’s parents came then, sweeping Mergin and the others away with them into a darker, farther part of the wood, and Annah was glad to have done her part, and not to have so many eyes on her. She ran to Holder and wrapped her arms around him.

  He closed his journal and embraced her in return. “Hey, you.” “Hello,” she said, smiling. Her formality amused Holder sometimes—-especially when it occasionally occurred in very informal moments—-but it was a part of who she was, inseparable from the rest.

  “You were great up there,” Holder said.

  “It felt great. I am starting to feel like there is really somewhere I fit, besides just with you. Although,” she added, “that is what I like best.”

  “Ditto,” he said. On impulse, he reached out and tickled her.

  Annah squeaked.

  “What was that?” Holder grinned.

  ‘I should ask you the same question,” she said, pretending to be annoyed.

  “It’s called tickling. I see you haven’t found all the fun things to do.” “ That is fun?” She tilted her head and looked at him as if he’d transformed into a six-foot-tall not-bird or some other crawling, flying thing.

  “What, you didn’t like it?”

  She burst out laughing. “No, I did. I just did not want to be—-obvious.”

  “You fail at not obvious.”

  “Oh, I do?” she asked. “Yes.” He tickled her again. She squeaked again. “Stop that.” Where are Ardan and Kyrin? She thought for another moment, then decided she did not care.

  In another moment, the Elders had returned from the deep of the woods. “It seems that little has changed since we went to our rest,” Mergin said. “Not in the world outside our world. But I do feel great change at work, though, here.”

  “Surely you knew there would be changes, Mergin,” said one of the other newly-awakened Elders, a tall female named Serra, with striking amber eyes. Her sense of calm authority awed Annah. Perhaps I will be like that one day, she thought.

  “Our world was only newly reborn when we went to our rest, a hundred cycles ago,” Serra said.

  “But it is so quiet here,” Mergin said.

  “That will change, once more new ones are bloomed and born,” Danae interjected. “It is not that kind of quiet,” said Mergin. “It is the absence of song, as though the notes of life itself have been muted in the air and in the soil—not stilled, but brought so low that many now forget.”

  “My daughter has not forgotten,” said Llew, smiling at Annah. Annah was feeling a little out of place, and had to fight the impulse to shrink away, but she straightened herself. “I certainly have not. Our music is in my memories, and I learn to sing it as best I can.”

  “Well spoken,” Mergin said.

  “I listened, when you spoke to me,” Annah told him. “It is the only way I could have learned.”

  “So, Annah,” Serra said, coming to stand beside her, “how do we reawaken the song of our world?” Why do you ask me? she wanted to ask, but she looked Serra in the eye, thought a moment, and said, “By teaching people to remember what stirs their own hearts; by teaching them to remember the soil their seeds sprang from; by teaching them to remember that song and spirit speak the same language.”

  Serra smiled, and nodded. “Well spoken, Annah. Did you and Danae teach her this, Llew?”

  Llew shook his head. “I taught her respect, and to listen, but these things are deeper wisdom.”

  “Was it you, Mergin?”

  “She was a good pupil. She still is. But these were not my words.” “They came to me from my Memories,” Annah said. “And from my own heart-song, much of which I still have to learn.”

  Very fitting.” Serra said. “You will make a fine Shaper.” “But I have heard it said,” Annah began, “that females rarely are Shapers anymore.”

  Serra looked disturbed. “Is that said? Hmm. Annah, females Shape life within their bodies. How should you and I be denied the Art of Shaping? I am a Shaper, and I was one, a hundred cycles ago. You may be anything Spirit compels you to be. Is this what moves your heart? To be a Shaper, and to sing?”

  Annah nodded. “It is part of what stirs me, yes.”

  “Then follow it. This is what our world must remember. I know that there is-a man-who stirs you as well.” Annah’s face reddened. “Yes, there is.” She motioned to Holder, who had been keeping in the back, not sure if all of this was his business or not. She took his hand.

  “This is Holder. He is my heart’s mate
, and my heart itself. And yes,” she added, “I know he is an Offworlder, and much older in cycles than I am.”

  Serra laughed. “Did I say that such things are wrong?”

  “Mmm-you did not,”Annah said.

  “Do you believe that we should do as Spirit compels?”

  Annah nodded.

  “And can you tell how old your spirit is, or his?” “Hers is older,” Holder said, grinning. “A lot older.”

  Annah gave him a light slap on the arm. “No, I cannot.”

  “Do you love each other?” Serra asked.

  We are always being tested, Annah thought, but she took a deep breath and answered. “We do.” “And was your love chosen, by you both?”

  Annah paused, thinking. Was this another test? “He did not force me, nor I him. But are such things ever a choice?”

  “Again, well spoken.” Serra turned to look at Holder. “I have heard much about you, Holder. I see how Annah loves you, and I have spoken with her parents about you. I know the two of you are to be Promised. In only two weeks, I believe?”

  “That’s right,” Holder said.

  “She has a purpose, Holder. Acalling.”

  “We all have a purpose,” Holder said. He hated that sort of messianic bullshit.

  “But surely you have already sought and found yours.”

  “Only recently. And I am still learning.”

  “I am helping him,” Annah said.

  “Yes,” Serra said. “But is he helping you?” “We help each other,”Annah said. “Listen,” Holder said. “I love Annah for herself. For all that she is, not what she could be. Not for her purpose, whatever that may be.”

  “Good,” Serra said. “That is what people must be reminded of, as well. Life is its own song. Its own purpose. And love needs no excuses. Annah,” she said, turning to the girl, “we want you to continue your training. But you will be working with me now. You must work on your Memory. This is something I can help you with. Come to me tomorrow, at first-light. Eventually, I will want you to bring your mate, as well. There are things he must learn, too. But come alone, tomorrow.”