by Clay Gilbert
“My mother is a Shaper,” Chelries said, “although she has had to be secretive about it. My father has helped with that. She taught me from the time I was a small bloomling, along with my two brothers. My life has been full of Shaping. But it is good not to have to hide as much. And to have good friends now, like Annah and Liara.” She looked at her two friends and smiled. “Yes, I am learning a lot.”
Asharp tone pierced the momentary silence.
“Swiftwind here,” Goodman said into the voceiver he’d pulled from his belt.
“Blackhand here,” replied another voice from the voceiver, just loud enough for Annah, Chelries, and Liara to be able to hear, too. “Just a sitrep, Swiftwind. We’ve had word that Homesec is sending—-or wants to send—-their man Sewell here on what they’re calling an ‘errand of diplomacy.’”
“‘Error of diplomacy’ is more like it,” Goodman said, and the three girls grinned at each other, but managed not to laugh. “What the hell are they thinking?”
“Don’t know,” Bey replied. “Maybe this guy’s more expendable than we think. Maybe they’re just trying to see if we’ll blow him away and start another war. Maybe he’s just a decoy.”
“You really gonna let him come up there?” Goodman asked.
“You know that saying about keeping your friends close?”
Goodman chuckled. “Heard it once or twice.”
“There’s your answer. Stay where you are. But stay on standby.”
“Will do,” Goodman said. “Swiftwind out.” He looked at Annah. “This doesn’t sound good.” “No, it does not,” she agreed. “This man sounds dangerous. In our Circle, we have seen a shadow falling across whole worlds. We are trying to do what we can to lift it from this one. I know that you doubt the effectiveness of Shaping-“
I wish I’d never made that hocus-pocus comment, Goodman thought. She’s never going to forget about it. “Annah, you know I told you I don’t know everything. I know that Homesec and the HPF were once pretty afraid of it. If you think you can help-“
“Shaping can do many things,” Chelries said. Goodman remembered Annah’s Shaping-song, and what had happened between them, and how different he’d felt; how changed for the better, despite the awkwardness the moment had left in its wake. “I know it can,” he said.
“Let us show you,” Chelries said. “We have been working on a Memory-Shaping, to remind our people what Evohe was like before. There are those of us who cannot remember—and those who are afraid to.” She smiled. “Please. Let us show you.”
“Yes, Goodman,” Liara added. “Please.” Annah looked at Goodman, tenderness in her eyes; knowing what he was feeling, what he was thinking even without the Shaper-bond. She touched his hand for a moment. “This will be all right, Kale. Everything will be all right.”
“Ready?” Chelries asked Annah and Liara.
“Yes,” the other two seed-maidens answered as one. * * * Sewell watched the docking-bay of Holdfast Station growing larger in his viewscreen; a great ice-reef of glass and steel rising out of the Sea of Stars. As he watched, he was shocked by the sense of familiarity he felt. It was right, though, that he should recognize this place. He’d done some important things here—or so he’d been told. Heroic things. Things he had no recollection of doing. But even though he couldn’t remember, he knew they’d been important. They’d planted seeds, he knew. And now there was work to finish, to help save the Earth-even the universe-for humankind. That was important, too. And that was the work he’d come here to finish—-whether the outlaws who now held Holdfast knew it or not.
Kale Goodman had imagined many things in his life-even more in the nearly two years since he’d first heard Gary Holder’s voice on that ship ‘com-but if someone had told him, back then, that he’d be sitting on this backwater planet, out on the Edge, watching three Offworlder girls performing some kind of ritual using song, dance, and poetry to try to heal a world-hell, to heal the whole galaxyhe’d have said that person was full of shit. I can understand why Homesec was afraid of Shaping, he thought. And why they still would be, if they knew Evohe had survived.
Annah, Liara and Chelries had begun the ceremony nearly an hour before, and what had started as something that might have been mistaken for a game, filled as it was with dance and song, had risen in pitch and rhythm until now the campsite was caught up in a storm of music and movement. When the Shaping had begun, each of the seed-maidens had been an island isolated in her own Talent:
Ai shaleya en mara ka,” Liara spoke. “The Way lies in shadow.” Behind Liara’s lines of spoken Evoetian and translated Standard, Annah and Chelries raised their voices in harmony-Annah’s stronger, more trained melodic lines providing the foundation, while the younger seed-maiden strengthened the focus of the song and the Shaping, as they had practiced. That was one thing the Circle had taught Annah about Shaping: it was one force, one energy, and if a Shaper’s individual Talent lay in one direction, still, he or she could use the other Paths as well. And in a group, it was easier for the Paths to blend.
“Ai shaleya im oro nai. The Way must be open; it must be our sanctuary.” Liara’s words opened the doors of Memory inside Annah’s mind, and she sang a counterpoint; a message of Balance. “We are opening the Way,” she sang. Let the Way be open within us all.” All around them, the woods and ground began to glow with Shaping-fire, the same blue radiance they had all seen dancing along the altar-stone in the heart-place. The branches of the trees and the blades of lush grass in the wood all began to blaze as brightly as the song itself.
Goodman felt a momentary flush of fear as the strange fire began to drink in the trees and ground around them, but the panic passed as quickly as it had come. They aren’t afraid. And no one, and nothing, is being harmed. But changed?
Oh, yes. Annah could feel the changing deep within herself, like the sunlight spreading through the branches of a tree and down into its trunk and roots, and, looking at Chelries and Liara, caught up, as she was, in the Shaping, she knew they could feel it, too. This was what was needed; for their people, for their world—for themselves. But there was something else, another ripple in the Shaping-current, like a dissonant strain of melody tainting what might have been harmony. Annah knew they could all feel it, as well. It was what needed changing; needed tuning-needed to be brought back into balance. And that dissonance, Annah knew, did not want to be balanced. It had come to be comforted by the way things were. It was everywhere, this darkness; and where once it had found its own rhythm in its counterpoint with the light, now it sought a wider domain, its dark seeds taking root in the dissent it sensed already rising amongst this race so divided against itself. It had nearly destroyed them once before already-now it would try again.
Sing louder, Annah spoke to the other seed-maidens with her thoughts. Sing to still the shadows. Sing to wake the light. And sing they did, until the great rush of melody and movement came to a crescendo. As the wave of music and Vision rose, there was a moment that made Annah feel the way she did when the Gate to the heart-place opened, like a great door opening in space itself, and as it opened inside her mind, she saw a shadowed face, like the night she had seen Goodman standing by the campfire, and had mistaken him for Holder. But this was no mistake, and no dream. It was Holder. He was alive, and for some reason, he was in the human-built place Kale had said was called Holdfast. She reached forward with her mind; touched Holder’s, but barely-and felt there the coldness and distance she had felt before. But that did not matter now. She could not abandon him. She had almost abandoned him already; had allowed her doubt that he was alive to cast distance between them. But not now.
She felt the song and the Shaping-fire growing stronger and brighter even as her Vision of Holder, having done its work, receded. Then, Annah, moved by Memory and all at once knowing what was done at such a time, lifted her hand , looked to the others, and said, “It is done.”
An act of Shaping could go on forever, she knew, but the energy stirred that way had a peak that was
part of Balance, and once the peak was reached, prolonging the work would not add to its effects. Looking around her now, the Shaper’s-trance receding, she wondered what those effects would be. Balance, she hoped. But she knew that Balance did not always wear the face of beauty or of comfort. She looked to the other two seed-maidens, now standing , silent and still, next to her. “It was good work,” she told them.
“Yes, it was!” Chelries exclaimed. Annah and Liara looked at each other and grinned. Although Chelries was not the youngest of them, her exuberance often made her seem so. Annah knew, though, that Chelries was capable of great seriousness when the time came, and she trusted Chelries’ skills with Vision as surely as she trusted her own. “What do you think will happen now?” Annah asked Chelries. “Can you see anything new?”
“No,” Chelries said. “I feel as though we have changed something, but I cannot say how or what it is.”
“I cannot, either,” Liara said. “Can you, Annah?” Annah closed her eyes again, found her still point, and looked once more into Vision. “The Shadow is still thereand there are people it is speaking to. Not only our kind, but others as well. It is the ones who are here that concern me, though-and I cannot see their faces, nor what they will do.”
“Well, I am very tired,” Liara said, “but before I sleep, I need to go deeper into the woods for a time. We did eat and drink rather a lot before the Shaping.”
“I have the same need,” Annah said. “And tonight, for some reason, I had rather not go alone.”
“I have always thought such things best before sleep, anyway,” Chelries said, and the three of them made their way into a more shaded place in the green.
Goodman saw the three seed-maidens disappear together into the woods. Is that something girls do together on every world? he wondered with amusement. His mind was still spinning from the effects of the Shaping-ritual, which had affected him even from where he had sat watching. I’m not going to be able to call it ‘hocus-pocus’ anymore, not even if I wanted to. I saw that light; that blue fire. That wasn’t my imagination. And I felt it too—something’s different here. Something’s different in me, and maybe that change has been happening for a while. I don’t want to leave here; don’t want to leave her, even though she loves someone else. But there’s something going on here-as well as out there, back on Holdfast-that’s bigger than any of us.
“So,” Chelries said, standing up now beside the other two seed-maidens as they prepared to go back to the camp, “I think Liara and I both want to know-have you Joined with Goodman?”
Annah was glad for the shadows that hid the reddening of her face. “Yes,” she said. “It was a mistake; a great failing of mine. I am afraid there still may be consequences. And now it must be over.”
“I know that you still love Holder,” Liara said. “But I can see that Goodman cares for you very much. And I do not need Vision to see it.”
“I care for him too, Liara. But Holder is my kiri-nai,” she said, watching the surprise in Liara’s eyes. Annah smiled. “Yes, I have been studying. He is my sanctuary, my place of last resting. And wherever he has gone, I will find him. To you, to the First Ones, and to him-I promise. The First Ones will forgive me my mistakes. In time, I will forgive myself. And I will put an end to this, no matter how much Kale cares for me, or I for him.”
Standing just outside the wood, Goodman heard the sound of Annah’s voice coming closer, and he had drawn just close enough to hear the last words she spoke. Time for me to go, he thought. I’m only in the way here. But there’s one thing I can do, before I leave.
A moment later, Annah, Liara and Chelries emerged from the woods. Catching sight of Goodman, Annah smiled, almost in spite of the regretful thoughts she had had only a little while before. “You see, Kale,” she said, “Nothing was harmed by the ritual. And perhaps some things have even been made right again.”
“I hope so, Annah,” Goodman replied. “Are you three going to get any sleep tonight?” He smiled. “Yes,” Annah said. “In fact, we are headed back to do that now. There are only a few hours left before first-light, and the others of our Circle will be waiting for us in the Elder Grove at that time. Will you walk with us? You look tired, too.”
“You certainly do,” Liara said.
Goodman laughed. “I’ll be all right. But yeah, I’ll walk back with you.” It seemed only a few paces back to the camp, and Chelries and Liara had already curled up by the fire and were halfasleep as Annah and Goodman sat watching the flames together. “I can still feel it,” Annah said. She grinned, and Goodman couldn’t help smiling back. “I felt-connected to everything. To Chelries and Liara, to the woods, to those of my people who are sleeping still, and those in the Groveand to you.” She looked away for a moment, and then met his eyes again. “And yet, there was calm. There was control.” Annah realized she was still a bit surprised at that. But she was glad, too.
“Did you feel connected to Holder, too?” Goodman asked. “Did you see him?” “I felt him,” Annah said. “I felt our connection, as I—-as I used to—-as I have not in some time. So many people have told me he was dead, and I even came to believe that if he was not dead, he was lost to me. But it is not so, Kale. I know it is not.”
Goodman slipped his fingers through hers. “I never wanted to make things so complicated.” He drew his hand away again, as if its ever having been there had been only an illusion.
“You have not,” Annah said. “I made them so myself. I should have been stronger. It was not even fair to you, Kale. I cannot be-what you want me to be.” She looked at him, the short distance between them feeling like the gulf between a high mountain peak and a rushing stream whole measures below.
“I don’t want you to be anything, Annah, but what you are.” He got to his feet.
“Do not be angry with me,” she said, looking up at him.
“I’m not,” he said, although it wasn’t completely true. “I’m tired. I’m going back to the ship.”
“You do not have to,”Annah said.
“Yes, I do. Go to sleep.” She didn’t turn away from him, and the look in her eyes made him feel guilty, but not guilty enough to change his mind.
“Annah,” he said, his voice softer now. “Don’t worry. I’m not angry at you.” It’s mostly myself.
“You’ve got an early morning tomorrow. A pleasant rest to you, and may the dream-winds blow fairly upon you.”
It was an Evoetian good-night wish she had taught him.
She smiled. “Thank you, Kale. And also upon you.” She turned away from him, back toward the fire.
He waited until her breathing had slowed into slumber before he left.
* * * *
“Blackhand, come in. Swiftwind here.” Goodman thought that maybe if he could make contact with Bey-or anyone on Holdfast Station, for that matter— perhaps it’d keep him from feeling like steering the ship a thousand light-years from Evohe, as fast as he could. It was about the most appealing idea he could think of at the moment. An instant later, he heard Bey answer the ‘com.
“Blackhand here. When are you going to get your ass back here? You’ve been gone so long that I figured your ‘errand’ must be of the female variety.”
“Well, hello to you too,” Goodman said with a chuckle.
“And yeah, I don’t really want to talk about that. Not yet. What’s going on up there?” “I am sick to death of this Homesec spythat’s what he is, and make no mistake about it-this Sewell.” Jamin Bey spit the last words down the ‘com.
“Uh-oh,” Goodman said. “What’s he been doing?” “For one thing, he’s attempting to replace the station’s crew. He’s had four new officers sent up from planetside in as many days. HPF people, all of them. Right down to the little patch on their arm.”
“He can’t do that,” Goodman said. “Holdfast is sovereign territory now. It’s not an Earth colony anymore. He has no authority to-“
“Why don’t you come up here and tell him that. Oh-and that’s not all. When
he’s not ordering my officers off the bridge, he’s combing the whole station from stem to stern. He says he’s making sure the station is up to code, but it looks like something else to me.”
A chill ran through Goodman. “Like what?” he asked, although he already knew.
“Like he’s looking for something. With any luck, it won’t do him any good when he finds it—if he finds it. I have people working on something-We have a plan, but we need more time. Come back when you can. I could use someone I can trust, and with Holder gone—“
“Alright. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“All right,” Bey said. “Speaking of gone, I need to be. Blackhand out.”
* * * *
I was wondering when you were going to wake. Annah opened her eyes to find Chelries’ golden gaze fixed on her, a mischievous smile on her face. The younger seedmaiden lay still wrapped in her own beddings-Goodman had brought enough blankets from his ship for all of them before they went to sleep the night before-next to where Annah had been, until just that moment, sleeping. Liara was still asleep, a little further away.
“Could you not have waited a little longer?” Annah whispered, not wanting to disturb Liara, although she was fairly sure the third seed-maiden could not hear.
“Dreaming of Holder?” Chelries asked, her expression widening into a grin. Annah laughed. “Not just now. If I had been, I am strong enough in meditation that I would not have allowed myself to wake. Are you all right?”
“Not really,” Chelries said. “I feel sick. I do not know whyI do not think it was the food-and my blood-time will not return for another moon-round, yet.”
“I am sorry, Chelries. If I had known, I would have wanted you to wake me sooner. Let us go and awaken Liara,” Annah said, beginning to feel a little sick herself-whether in sympathy with Chelries or for some other reason, she could not yet tell.
“No need,” Liara called to them. “I feel the same way as both of you. But I know what is causing my discomfort. I very much fear what we will find waiting for us in the Elder Grove this morning.”