Annah and the Children of Evohe

by Clay Gilbert

  Once the gate was open, though, Annah fell back beside Chelries and Liara, while the Elder Shaper stepped to the circle’s center. “One of our mutual joys as Shapers is the sharing of one another’s thoughts,” Serra said, “but tonight, I know that we have all shared the same ill dream, as well.”

  “What is it, Elder Serra?” the seed-youth named Keleth asked. “It is happening again,” Serra said. “As it did in Selya’s time. Our sight isolates us. Our gifts isolate us. And the others—those who do not have those gifts—their blindness, their barrenness isolate them. We cannot let what happened to the Shapers of Selya’s day happen again now. We cannot let them kill us and silence us. Not this time.”

  Annah felt ripples of emotion shimmer through the small group: pride, happiness, and joy, yes, but anger, fear, and confusion as well. “That is not the only thing the Vision could mean,” she said in a quiet but firm voice. The eyes that had been fixed on Serra turned to her instead. “The shadow-the darkness—-it does not have to be them. I have no doubt, from what I have glimpsed in Vision up til now, that in Selya’s day, they thought we were the darkness.”

  “In her day, and after,” Serra said. “They did not always think it,” Annah said. “I know they did not. They trusted us, once. We helped them, with our Talents. They showed us that we belonged. Serra, you have told me—and even my own parents have told me-that once Shapers were a welcome part of our people’s lives.”

  “That is so, Annah,” Serra said. “But it was rarely so, here. Laughing Waters Grove is small, and it is old. And often, small places of the world survive by resisting change. By resisting that which is different. Selya was different. What she brought to our people, to our world, was born from that difference. And if there were some here, as in the larger Groves of the world, who saw that Shaping could be a benefit, there were many more who feared it. There are those who still do.”

  “And we feared them, as well,” Annah said. The other members of the circle had fallen silent, she noticed, and there was something like fear in their eyes, too.

  Serra nodded. “Yes, but they killed us. And females-seedmaidens like you, Liara and Chelries-in the darkest of the old times, you would have been killed as soon as it was clear you carried Shaper blood. Oh, it was not so when Selya was bloomed and born, but the fear began in her lifetime. I, myself, was lucky to enjoy a brief part of our history when Shapers did have a place among our people. But there were not many of us, then. I might have been put to death, myself, in the days after the Breaking, had I and most of the other Elders not chosen to go to our rest. Did you really think it was an accident that there were no female Shapers for such a long time before you?”

  “I do not think anything is an accident, Serra,” Annah said, neither her voice nor her body faltering. “There are simply patterns we can see, and patterns we cannot.”

  “Yes,” Chelries and Liara echoed. “Elder Serra,” Chelries added, “she is right.” “Do you not know,” Serra asked Annah, “that it was your own Shaper blood that caused your own Grove to ostracize you?”

  “That may be so. But those who did it may not have known why. It is more likely they only thought I looked strange, which is true. Chelries and Liara are seed-maidens and Shapers, just as I am. Yet they look as any other seedmaiden their age should. Perhaps the strangeness of my hair, my eyes, my shape-perhaps that is all they are, and nothing to do with Shaping.”

  “You were the first of the new generation, Annah. Perhaps the Shaper-blood had to remember how to blend itself with the rest of our race once again.”

  Liara leaned close to Annah. “I have heard,” she said in a soft voice, “that Selya was thought strange-looking by some.”

  “You are beautiful, Annah,” Chelries said. You say you do not believe in accidents. You were not an accident, either; no more than any of us.”

  “Oh, I do not care what people think of me. Not anymore. What I want is for my people not to fear others—those of their own kind, or those of other worlds.”

  “Fear is a natural instinct,” Serra said. “And a useful one— when kept in Balance.” “It got so many of us killed, once,” Annah said. “Almost none of us were left.” Annah found her Memories of Shaper history awakening within her, opening one after the other in succession.

  “And after that, it kept us hidden,” Serra said, her voice again a teacher’s quiet tone. “It kept us safe. Like this place has.”

  “I built this place to be a sanctuary to the First Ones and a place to learn. Not a wall to keep out the world.” “Is that why there’s a Gate around this place that keeps it from being seen?” The question came from Tenar, a fifteencycle-old seed-youth with green eyes and dark brown hair. Tenar was one of the newer members of the Shaper-circle, and his Talent, like Annah’s own, lay in song. When he was not singing, he kept mostly quiet, but there were times when Annah felt his silence masked a kind of storm, as if Tenar were a mirror-image of Charan—one who relished, rather than feared, the mark of Shaping in his life.

  Annah shot a disapproving look at Tenar. “How very funny you are. I do not want us to be in danger from those who do not understand. But the best way for us to stay safe is knowledge, not fear.”

  “This might be exactly what the Vision we all experienced last night meant,” Liara said. “In Selya’s time, from what my parents have said, and what I have seen in Memory, we became divided against ourselves—not merely those among us without the gift of Shaping. We must not let that happen again.”

  “You are right, Liara,” Annah said, looking at Serra. “I am sorry, Serra. You are my elder, and my teacher, and I was disrespectful.”

  Serra smiled, her face softening into the peaceful expression Annah was used to seeing there. It is all right, child. I know that you care for our people—all of them. It is right that you do. Besides me, you are the eldest here. You may one day stand where I am, and it may be your decisions which must keep us safe. This place was built by your hand; its gate woven by your skill. I do not doubt that you will be ready when the time comes.”

  Serra’s words struck Annah with the force of truth, and she felt deeply troubled. “But I do not want you to-”

  “And I do not want to, child.” Serra fell silent.

  * * * Sewell was alone again in the room—his room, he supposed, although nothing felt like his anymore. He was both grateful for the darkness around him and unsettled by it. His mind was stuffed with all the details of the mission these strangers had in mind for him, and scattered snapshots of a life he was still struggling to remember. His wife, his love-Shannon. Such bright blue eyes. That E.T. bitch had had blue eyes too, and hair that looked strawberry-blonde, odd against her sickly-white skin and weird-looking head. The news reporters had called her ‘Annah.’

  I want to kill her-and everyone who looks like her. Her whole family—so she’ll know how I feel. A small part of him wondered if that would make anything better, but he silenced it, like the voice of a child too naïve to know how the world really worked.

  There’d been something else blue, too, shining between Starger’s fingers-something oddly familiar, though there was no way he could have seen it before. He knew that this was the “smart poison” that Dr. Reid had invented, rendered compact and weaponized. “As far as we know,” Starger had said, “this is the only one of these in existence. There was a prototype, but it was lost with Gary Holder in the battle at Holdfast Portal. It was imperfect and unstable, at any rate-and we’ve made improvements. We have the blueprint. We will make more. But first, a test of the improvements. Captain Sewell, that’s your job.”

  * * * This is what belonging feels like, Annah thought, standing in the circle with the others gathered around the heart-stone table at the sanctuary’s center. But it is not just for us-it cannot be. This is what our people have forgotten; what we must show them. She looked at the others, hands joined, some eyes closed, others open. She felt Chelries’ hand gripping hers on one side; Liara’s on the other. A warm shock of energy rippl
ed through her fingers; through the connection between them—a warm heat both calming and exciting.

  “Can you see the shape of the darkness beyond us?” Annah asked the others, feeling the words carried to her from somewhere outside herself.

  “Yes,” she heard the seed-youth named Keleth answer, although Annah’s eyes were closed, and she could not see his face. “It is the shape of fear; of the absence of belonging. It is the darkness of feeling that there is nowhere to belong.”

  “Yes,” Annah said. She, too, had felt that way. “But we do belong. We belong to each other-those of us here, and those beyond us.”

  “Yes,” Keleth echoed.

  “Who else can see the Shadow’s shape?” asked Annah, completely caught up now in the Shaper’s trance. “I can,” Tenar said. “It is the shape of sadness; the sense of pain and anger that comes when we do not see that suffering and loss are a part of Balance.”

  “Yes,” Chelries said. She had felt that way when Jonan died; had even resented Annah, although she had not known her then.

  Annah saw Jonan in her mind; not just the angry, bitter seed-youth he had been in the end, but her bloomhood friend and playmate of the grove, whose thoughts and touch she had once trusted, whole cycles before his sister-and her friend-had even been born. She raised Chelries’ hand to her lips and gently kissed it. “Yes,” she told the younger seedmaiden, and the others gathered with them. “I have known loss and pain, too—but these emotions do not have to be the boundaries of darkness. They may also be the measures of love.”

  “Look,” Liara exclaimed, pointing at the heart-stone altar at the circle’s center. The stone table had begun to glow with a faint blue haze; faint enough that had Annah not seen the same effect before, when she had practiced her singing and Shaping here alone, she might have thought it a trick of the moonlight that shone down from above them. She passed her hand over the stone, watching the azure glow play against her skin. “Is it not beautiful?” Annah asked the others.

  “Did we come here to look at pretty lights?” Tenar asked her in response. “You know better,” Annah said. “Shaping is about Vision— the sight we all share, and how we awaken it in othersthrough song, words, dance—-even through the joining of our bodies in acts of love and joy.”

  Tenar looked at Annah, then back at the altar, as if it held the answer to the things she had said. “So what is so special about that?” he asked, gesturing again at the blue light still shimmering along the surface of the altar-stone.

  “Would you have seen it without a Shaper’s senses?” Serra asked, rising from where she had sat while the youths were speaking-on a large stone at the circle’s edge.

  Telen looked at Serra, startled, as if the Elder Shaper had been an ornamental statue that had unexpectedly sprung to life. “No, Elder Serra,” the seed-youth said in a hushed tone.

  “That is exactly the point,” Annah said. “I am sorry, Serra,” she added. “I did not mean to interrupt.”

  “No, no,” Serra said. “You were the one speaking first, and it was I who interrupted. Please, go on.” “That is the point,” Annah said again, locking eyes with each person in the Circle, one by one. “The ‘pretty lights’, as you said, Telen, are there whether we see them or not-as are so many other things we miss in the world around us.”

  Annah saw awareness begin to bloom in the eyes of the others. “The Shaper’s art-our craft, and the insight it brings—makes it possible for us to recognize their presence. Just as it makes it possible for us to recognize the unseen and unacknowledged in others-and in ourselves.”

  “Before the Breaking,” Serra said, “we had already begun to lose that ability. After the Breaking, even those who did not go to their rest gradually lost the will that brought the gift with it. That is something we cannot allow againAnnah, what is it?” Serra had seen the seed-maiden’s expression shift from calm to shock.

  “Something terrible,” Annah said. “They-the humans who want their kind to be alone in the Sea of Stars-are sending someone to make sure it happens. I know the thing he is carrying. I have seen it before. And that is not all.“

  “I know,” Serra said. “There is danger from our own kind as well. There has always been. But we must not let our fear rule us. We are meant to be better than that. That is what they cannot see.”

  “Then we must give them a chance to see,”Annah said. “They have been given chances,” Serra said. “In Selya’s time, in my time-“

  “Selya would never have stopped giving them chances,” Liara said, her eyes alive with Memory.

  “That is one thing that is wrong with us,” Annah said. “We have built walls on both sides; we have cut ourselves off from ourselves. Not just them-but we have done it too. It has to stop.”

  “Yes,” Chelries said, and Liara echoed her assent as well.

  “Annah is right,” Telen said. Annah looked at him in surprise. He had never really been adversarial with her, but she always had the feeling that he did not really like her. But I have felt that about many people, she thought. And I have not always been right. First Ones, I hope what I am doing right now is right. It does feel that way.

  “Very well,” Serra said. “What should we do,Annah?”

  “Tomorrow, we will meet again. We will not meet here, though, but in the Elder Grove.”

  A ripple of shocked murmuring ran through the group, but no one spoke.

  “Very well,” Serra said. “Until tomorrow, then.” Annah, Chelries and Liara made their way back from the heart-place together. Annah had not wanted to be alone. The silence that had followed her announcement about the next day’s meeting had discomforted her, but she had not changed her mind. It was a moment for the solace of friends-even if the other two seed-maidens were just as silent as the crowd on the hilltop had been.

  “The Elder Grove, Annah?” Chelries asked finally, when they were at least twenty paces down the hill. “Are you sure about this?”

  “I am not completely at peace with it, but it is right.”

  “But it is where the Elders sleep.”

  “That is why it is called the Elder Grove,” Annah said, grinning.

  Liara laughed. “Very true.”

  Chelries frowned at her. “You both know what I mean.” Annah nodded, putting her hand on her friend’s arm. “Yes, yes. But I have been going there since I was a bloomling. The sleeping ones know me. And they know I am doing nothing wrong.”

  Chelries sighed. “My Memories tell me that it was once a meeting-place for Shapers anyway, long ago. So perhaps you are right.”

  The camp was visible in the distance, and Annah could just make out the figure of Goodman tinkering with Holder’s ship, doing the last of the work he had said needed to be done. I am surprised he did not wait for me. He must be worried. He likes to work when something is bothering him.

  “Annah?” Chelries asked. “Did you hear me?” “I am sorry, Chelries. Yes. And my Memories tell me the same. My only worry is the others who do not have our Memories. But come. Let us, for now, think of other things.”

  * * * Why can’t things just be over? Goodman thought. Why does it seem like the same thing happens again and again? He had thought over and over again about ending things with Annah, and yet something kept him from doing it. He supposed he simply didn’t want to. If Holder were alive, it would be different. But he’s not. Maybe he would even want me to watch over her. For us to watch over each other.

  “I’m glad you’re home, Annah,” he said, as she and the two other girls with her crossed the threshold into the camp. “I missed you today.”

  Annah smiled. “And I you. These are my friends Chelries and Liara, from my Circle. This is my friend Kale Goodman,” she said to the other two seed-maidens. “He wasisHolder’s best friend.”

  Liara smiled at Goodman, and he smiled back. There was a quick intelligence in her eyes that he liked immediately; she reminded him of his younger sister, Stephanie, who’d died in a car accident while he was away on one of his first tri
ps offworld. She’d only been thirteen. “Pleased to meet you, Liara.”

  “ Hai ara ai mora jae, Goodman,” Liara said. Seeing his puzzled expression, she laughed. “It means, ‘it is my great pleasure as well.’”

  “Hmm,” Goodman mused. “I thought your people’s language was more like music.” Liara nodded. “Our ancestral language, yes. But many of us also speak as your people do, and there is our own spoken language that began to be used once we-began to sing less.”

  “I see,” Goodman said.

  Liara laughed. “Although our way of life is simple, Goodman, we are not.”

  Now it was Goodman’s turn to laugh. “I’ve figured that out from Annah.”

  “Hush,” Annah told him, making Chelries and Liara giggle. “So, are you ladies hungry?” Goodman asked. “I caught some fish down at the stream while you were gone today, Annah. They’re already cooked and ready.”

  “Mmm,” Annah said. “Yes, please. And thank you, Kale.” “This is wonderful, Goodman,” Chelries said a few moments later, her mouth still full of fish. She swallowed, and laughed. “Or should I call you Kale, as Annah does?” she asked, in a clearer voice.

  Goodman exchanged a quick glance with Annah. “I’ve been a military man most of my life, Chelries. Most everyone I know calls me by my last name—even my best friend does. Annah’s a special case.”

  “Oh, all right,” Chelries said, but she and Liara both gave Annah looks that said, We are going to want an explanation of this later.

  Annah watched Goodman’s face. I cannot read his thoughts, but I know something is wrong, anyway. We have to stop hiding from one another; all of us. That has to stop.

  “Annah said you were both in her Circle,” Goodman said to the two younger seed-maidens. “Do you like it? Learning a lot?”

  It was Chelries who looked back at Goodman first. She shifted in her seat; shot a look at Annah. I do not know what to say, Chelries sent in thought.

  It is all right, Annah replied, through the Shaper-bond all three of the girls shared. He is not a Shaper, but he can be trusted. I trust him.