by Clay Gilbert
“Yes. It was,” Serra said. “But Holder’s people,” Annah said. “It is true that they did not bring the wrongness here? The disharmony?” It was a difficult idea for her to express; it was nearly impossible to find the right tones; the right notes to sing the brokenness that she knew had existed in that long-ago moment; the brokenness that still stretched like a shadow over the way things should be.
“That is the first of the Patterns,” Serra said.
Annah tilted her head and looked at the elder Shaper with confusion in her eyes. “What is?” she asked. “Knowing,” replied Serra, and the music of the word made Annah feel the way the cool, fresh stream-water did when she took it in through her skin, or sipped it from cupped hands as she knelt by the bank.
“Oh,”Annah breathed. “I see.” “In order to Shape things, we first must Know them, and recognize their true form. A big part of that is learning to Know ourselves. Our people, our world; we have had much trouble Knowing ourselves, now, for a long time.”
“Is that because there aren’t as many Shapers anymore?” Serra smiled. “You tell me. Look in your Memories. You have a good grasp on the First Pattern already. I think you know a lot about Knowing.”
Annah felt embarrassed, and wanted to hide her face, but she made herself keep looking at Serra. Then, all at once, a wave of Memory rushed over her. “Oh.”
“What is it?” “It wasn’t because there weren’t as many Shapers anymore that the Knowing began to fade. The Shapers began to fade away when the Knowing itself did.”
Serra nodded. “I think you are right. But, just as the seasons in the world around us do, the Patterns have a way of reasserting themselves.”
Annah closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked into Vision once again. This time, it felt to her like being bathed in liquid light, as if the sun were not only a radiance she might drink in through her skin like stream-water, but bathe in, too. It enveloped her, and along with it, filling all of her senses, there was music.
In that moment, she felt all of life as a symphony of light and song. It flowed through everything, and everyone. It hummed in the planet’s heart; in the dark soil, in the rocks, the trees, in the rivers and the streams. It sang in the veins of all the children of Evohe, whether they walked or crawled or flew or grew from the ground, their only motion in the cycles’turns.
Once, every breath of life here was music, Annah’s Memories whispered to her. The Patterns had been clear to all; a language even bloomlings newly brought from seedpods knew, with the Knowing its translator, in the hearts of all that lived. Then, as first measures, then half- cycles and then cycles passed, fewer listened to the song; fewer saw the Patterns, until there came a time when the Great Melody was nearly gone.
When Holder’s people came with their guns and deathmachines, our world was nearly silent. They did not see it this way, but they could not have known what it had been. We blamed the humans, but the Shadow was here before they came, and we had welcomed it.
“They will remember, Serra,” Annah said. “I will show them.” “I believe you will, child. You have done very well. But it is not enough for you to grasp the Knowing, or to look into Vision or Memory and be able to see the things that have happened to our world and our people, as well as the things that have happened on other worlds. There is the Tuning as well, for a Shaper must bring his or her own pain into harmony with that of others, in order to have a chance to bring wholeness.
“Our forgetting did not happen on its own. There are reasons why people choose to forget. Reasons why people let themselves fall away not only from what they have been, but from what they most want to be. Remember.”
Her eyes closed, Annah let herself be led by Vision back along the path into Memory; watched Evohe’s indigo skies darken with the great ships from a distant world. Holder’s world, she thought, shocked anew at the thought that he could have come from a race that would do such a thing. She felt the relief of all those left behind, seemingly doomed, on the ground, when with no warning, all the invading ships pulled away, vanishing back into space like stars disappearing from sight in the wake of sunrise. Then she felt their sudden terror, and her own, a pain in her gut as sharp as if someone had hit her, as the bright star appeared on the horizon: the star that was not a star, for it divided and scattered, raining a white blaze of death down on the planet below. There, mercifully, Annah’s Memories themselves went dark. She said nothing for a long while, and would likely have gone on saying nothing, were it not for the soft, sudden touch of Serra’s hand on her shoulder. Annah flinched; tensed for a moment, and then there was the calm comfort of the elder Shaper’s voice.
“Perhaps, now, you understand why so many of us lost ourselves in the days after the Breaking; why many of us thought it better to go to our rest than to deal with a world under the shadow of what we had endured. Those of us who chose to remain found our hearts burdened with a doubled darkness: not only the temptation toward fear and hatred for the ones who had done this, but guilt over our own survival when so many had lost their lives in our place.”
Annah had never seen a sadness as deep as that in Serra’s eyes at that moment. It would have been frightening, had she not already known, down to her very core, that there was Balance in all things. That was part of the Knowing. It had to be possible to see how things could be, in order to shape them into that new form.
“And then,” Serra continued, as if to confirm Annah’s thoughts, “our people began to lose the Knowing, because we could not see beyond our own grief and anger. We began to lose the ability to conceive that there could be anything other than brokenness, in the wake of what had been done to us. And we began to lose ourselves in fearfear of those others we blamed, and fear of our own best selves; selves some among us called weak.”
“But there were a few who believed,” Annah said, and then the authority of Memory gave way to the voice of a young seed-maiden still struggling for the right road to her own Becoming. “There were, were there not?” she asked, momentarily unsure.
“If there had not been,” Serra said, “you and I would not be here now. I was one of their number—but I was not alone.” “The strength of Shaping multiples as the number of those who believe it is possible multiplies,” Annah said, remembering the principles she had been taught by Serra, but also the teachings of the sleeping Old Ones in the Elder Grove, long before.
“Yes, Annah, yes.” Serra smiled. “There is something else, though,” Annah said, looking as though she had been handed a rare treasure, and was afraid she might drop or break it. “Shaping is like a seed. It does not matter whether it is planted in a cupful of soil, or in a great grove. Sooner or later, it will grow. You are good at planting, Serra.”
The Elder Shaper looked away from Annah for a moment, composed herself, and smiled. “Thank you. Now, you have touched the first of the Patterns. Now, I will show you some of what may be done with it.”
* * * Holder couldn’t believe what was happening, and he could see from the look in Goodman’s eyes that he felt the same way. When the Ghost Knives had first begun bringing their ships through the Portal, even the small fleet of ten cruisers had seemed imposing. Now, as he and Goodman watched from the observation deck, he counted twenty more.
“I promised you there would be more,” said the tall, muscular man with short, dark curls, blue-steel eyes, and a general demeanor that had, on first sight, given Holder the impression of a wolf that had found a way to disguise itself in human skin. He had a closely cropped black beard, and a full, ruddy face—not the face of a glutton, but of a skilled and successful hunter. He was the leader of the Ghost Knives, though clan chief might be a more appropriate term, from what Holder and Goodman had gleaned so far. So far, he seemed trustworthy. More than Homesec, anyway. “Yes, you did,” Holder said. “But we don’t even know, really, why you’re here.”
“Who knows anyone’s real name, for certain? It’s all a matter of trust, isn’t it? I’ve given you one token of good faith a
lready.” Jamin Bey said, gesturing to the fleet of ships massed outside the window. “Every man has his own reasons for the life he leads. Some he keeps, some he shares. I’ll share this one. I’m from Earth, like you. I didn’t abandon it by choice, but after a while, I began to agree with Fate’s decision on my behalf.”
Holder smiled. “Turner, the Maestro, and a few others, you and your friend Goodman among them, make me think there might be hope for achieving more than just vengeance. So, I’ll stand with you, as I stood with him. And I’ll make a gamble of faith on my own freedom, and that of my clansmen. Might seem a little strange for a pirate to be sentimental, but somebody’s got to care. Don’t think there’s many left on Earth who do.”
“Agreed,” Holder said. “If Earth gets control of the Portal here, they’ll be able to take the war to the systems that are still free. We can’t let that happen. That’s why my clansmen and I are here.”
“Turner would have had a plan right about now, I think,” Holder said. “I’m guessing you’ve got one, too.”
“I do,” Bey said. At that moment, Goodman came up from the lower observation deck, where he had been monitoring the incoming green-band transmissions.
“We’d better hear that plan,” Goodman said. “Homesec’s sending some people to join the party.”
“We can’t let this spread any further,” Bey told them. “Here’s where it has to stop. Holdfast has been the biggest freeport on the spacing lanes since the Portals were invented. It’s too dangerous to let Homesec even get near it.”
“Well, the sand’s running out of the glass, Bey,” Holder said. “What are we gonna do about this?” “Exactly what they think we’d never do—blow up the Portal. And if we can take some of their warships down too, so much the better.”
“What the hell?” Goodman asked. “Bey, all due respect to you, but that’s insane. If we could defend the Portal, we’d strengthen our position.”
“It’s not insane,” Holder said, causing Goodman to whip around and look at him as though he’d just manifested a particularly virulent case of leprosy on the spot. “Don’t think like a military man, Goodman. Think like a pirate.”
“Exactly,” Bey said. “Don’t fool yourself, Goodman. The Ghost Knives have had run-ins with Homesec before. We saw the blood-rage in them when it was just a glimmer in a few mad gazes; when we hoped it was something that could be contained. There were times they tried to capture our ships; to use what we know against us and other free peoples. We destroyed our own ships rather than have them boarded. I wish it could say it had been enough.” “The ghost-suits,” Goodman said.
“Yes,” Bey said. “We invented them, and now Homesec is using our own technology against us. They’ve done it other places, too. They’re pirates, just as much as we are. But they’re making the rules, so they think they get to say what’s right.”
Goodman snorted. “Ain’t that the truth.” “This is how it is,” Bey said. “Holdfast is the passage point to and from the largest sector of charted space. They used to call it the Bridge of Stars—I guess some of us still do. They’ve taken enough worlds. This is a gain we can’t allow them to make.”
“All right,” Bey said. “What can we do to help?” * * *
Annah felt the still point within her, opening out like a newborn star unfolding its light in the darkness of space. This is me, she thought. I have a place in the pattern of all things. Knowing. A Shaper must know, must see all things in their proper alignment, in herself or himself, as well as in the world. It is getting easier. It is finally getting easier. She saw herself at different moments in her own history; saw those moments not as isolated islands of time, but as strands, or threads, like the Weavers who spun their webs in the branches of trees. She knew, now, that not only was she connected to every moment of her own life, but to every life, of every kind, on her world and beyond, in the Sea of Stars. Is this how every Shaper sees? Annah wondered.
She felt the mingled joy and pain of all the worlds at once, its threads settling on her with a touch both tender and terrifying. I am me, and this is me, myself-and yet there is life beyond me, that I am part of. I am not the others here, and not the All merely in myself-and yet I, and all others— we are all part of that greater whole, and part of each other. When we have conflicts; when there are wars, it is because we have forgotten this truth: we cannot destroy another without destroying ourselves.
“Good,” Annah heard Serra whispering to her, although even the whisper against her ear felt as distant as the Sea of Stars, caught as she was in the embrace of the Shaper’s trance. “That Knowing—and the ability not merely to know, but to feel it, deep within ourselves—that was what was lost when our world was Broken. And no, this is not how every Shaper sees, dear child.”
“It wasn’t lost, Serra,” Annah said, feeling a rising wave of excitement within her. “Not completely. Distorted, perhaps. Disharmonious, like a note sung off-key. It’s just that-” Annah searched for the right tone, the best and clearest evocation of what she knew inside herself.
“It’s just that, without the Knowing, and without Shapers who were at their full strength, the people here had no examples. And they were so broken that they could not see for themselves. In order to sing in key, or to play an instrument in tune-” she found her mind wandering a bit, thinking of Holder’s git-arr, and how he would always tune it before he played, so that the melody would be true—
“We first must have a pitch to match,” Serra finished, and saw Annah beaming at her. “Yes. As the right pitch is to singing or playing, so the Knowing is to Shaping. In truth, even we Shapers who were left had lost the true tone within ourselves, and it took a long time to recover. Some of us never did. Can you sense this-this relationship between the Knowing and our Shaping, now, within yourself?”
Annah drew in a deep breath, feeling a strange tension run through her, as though she thought she might give the wrong answer, although she knew she would not. “I can.”
“Come back to the hill with me, then. I will remind you of another function of the heart-place.
“Remind me?” “Yes. For these lessons, these foundations-you will find that they are things you already have sleeping within yourself, like the Knowing thought lost at the Breaking of the World.”
Each time Annah came to the hill where the heart-place stood, she felt anew how right it was that Serra had chosen this place to begin training her in the art of Shaping. From what she knew of the way things had done in her people’s past, the building of a heart-place was the summation of a Shaper’s training, done in the presence and with the guidance of one’s mentor. Everything has been so backward for me. I had no teacher to watch over me; only my Memories, and the guidance of the sleeping ones in the Grove. I knew nothing but that these places had been forgotten by time, and I wanted to remember.
She walked with Serra to the edge of the circle of stones and grasses, feeling, somehow, that the distance between what her world had been, and what it could be, was closing more with every day that passed.
“When you built this place,” Serra said, “there was nothing in your Memories of how such a place could be used?” “Only very little,” Annah said. “I think that my Shapermemories are still only beginning to come to me, although you say I have had myAwakening.”
“And so you have. And the Memories will come, if you do not crowd them away with your doubts. You knew how to build a heart-place, and you know how to use one, as well. Think of the day when you first brought Holder here. Remember it clearly, and let your Memories lead you.”
Annah stood up from the stone where she and Serra had been sitting, and made her way toward the table of the heart-stone. Just as I have done before. And yet, so different. Yes, so different, she thought, her mind taking her down a path into Memory sparked by the word. I have always been different, although I have never wanted to be.
She drew closer to the great black slab that was the center of this place, both physically and in a deeper sense for w
hich she had no words. It had taken her a whole cycle to complete the basic work of assembling the heart-place, from the early part of her fifteenth cycle, when her Becoming had begun, to nearly the same point in her sixteenth. It had begun in Vision, Annah remembered, although at the time, fearful of the consequences such an act might have for her, she thought of it as merely an illogical dream. Bloomlings who were becoming seedyouths or seed-maidens often had strange notions occur to them, she had been told in the learning-circles. And so, the first night, she put the idea aside as the result of a body flooded with the chemicals and secretions that were the primal spark of the Becoming. It will pass, she told herself.
The second time the vision found her, it had been harder to put aside, but Annah had managed, somehow. Still, several nights later, like the perseverance-plant, so named because its long roots could take hold in any ground, no matter how inhospitable, and not be dislodged, the vision returned, waking Annah from her rest with a clear recollection—a vivid picture of precisely what it was that she must do. But it has not been done in many generations, she thought. She reached within herself, found the calm the Old Ones in the Elder Grove had whispered of to her when she sat in the shadows of the great trees in the cool of the evening, when all the other seed-maidens and seed-youths had long since sought the shelter of hearth-fire and home.
Annah had had no home; not anymore. No home but sheltering tree-branches; no night-songs to calm her fears, save for the whispers of the sleepers of the grove, among whose number Annah’s own parents rested. Sometimes she thought she heard them. But they were too soon gone to their rest; they had not yet found a place for their voices within the song of those who slept amidst the Green. Still, Annah knew, they would one day awaken. Then, she would no longer be alone. Tell me what the vision means, she thought, seeing in her mind the surface of a great, blackened stone. Annah had seen samples of such stones, much smaller in size. Would she even be able to move such a thing, if she had to? Yes, she thought. I believe I could. The only ones she had seen touch even a piece of that stone were the two Elders whom, it was said, were the oldest of those who were not at rest. Surely she should not touch such a thing?