"Where is the light?" 'Tell me," cried Veti. "Oh, tell me!" Dobi sat in the
dust, his big hands marking it on either side of him.
"They truly have wonders. They would give us many strange things for our
devi." His fingers tinkled the fringing of his jacket. "Fabrics beyond our
dreams. Tools we could use. Weapons that could free the land of every
flesh-hungry kutu."
"And Deci? And Deci?" Veti voiced her fear again.
"Deci saw all and desired all. His devi were ripped off before the sun slid
an arm's reach. He was like a child in a meadow of flowers, clutching,
grabbing, crumpling and finding always the next flower fairer."
Wind came in the silence and poured itself around bare shoulders.
"Then he will return," said Veti, loosening her clenched hand. "When the
wonder is gone."
"As Viat returned?" Tefu's voice rumbled. "As I have returned?" He held his
hand before his eyes and dropped his fingers one by one. "How many fingers
before you? Six? Four? Two?"
"You saw the Strangers, before we withdrew the coveti. You saw the strange
garments they wore, the shining roundness, the heavy glitter and thickness.
Our air is not air for them. Without the garments, they would die."
"If they are so well wrapped against the world, how could they hurt?" cried
Veti. 'They cannot hurt Devi. He will return."
"I returned," murmured Tefu. "I did but walk among them and the misting of
their finished breath has done this to me. Only time and the Hidden Ones know
if sight is through for me.
"One was concerned for me. One peered at me when first my steps began to
waver. He hurried me away from the others and sat away from me and watched
with me as the lights went out. He was concerned for me—or was studying me.
But I am blind."
"And you?" asked Veti of Dobi. "It harmed you not?"
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"I took care," said Dobi. "I came not close after the first meeting. And
yet . . ." he turned the length of his thigh. From hip to knee the split flesh
glinted like the raking of a mighty claw. "I was among the trees when a kutu
screamed on the hill above me. Fire lashed out from the Strangers and it
screamed no more. Startled, I moved the branches about me and—s-s-s-s-st!" His
finger streaked beside his thigh.
"But Deci—"
Dobi scattered his dust handprint with a swirl of his fingers. "Deci is
like a scavenging mayu. He follows, hand outstretched. 'Wait, wait,' he cried
when we turned to go. 'We can lead the world with these wonders.'"
"Why should we lead the world? Now there is no first and no last. Why
should we reach beyond our brothers to grasp things that dust will claim?"
"Wail him dead, Veti," rumbled Tefu. "Death a thousand ways surrounds him
now. And if his body comes again, his heart is no longer with us. Wail him
dead."
"Yes," nodded Dobi. "Wail him dead and give thanks that our coveti is so
securely hidden that the Strangers can never come to sow among us the seeds of
more Viats and Tefus."
"The Strangers are taboo! The coveti path is closed." So Veti wailed him
dead, crouching in the dust of the coveti path, clutching in her hands the
kiom Deci had given her with his heart. Viat's mother sat with her an
hour—until Veti broke her wail and cried, "Your grief is not mine. You pinned
Viat's kiom. You folded his hands to rest. You gave him back to earth. Wail
not with me. I wail for an emptiness— for an unknowledge. For a wondering and
a fearing. You know Viat is on the trail to the Hidden Ones. But I know not of
Deci. Is he alive? Is he dying in the wilderness with no pelu to light him
into the darkness? Is he crawling now, blind and maimed up the coveti trail? I
wail a death with no hope. A hopelessness with no death. I wail alone."
And so she wailed past the point of tears, into the aching dryness of
grief. The coveti went about its doing, knowing she would live again when
grief was spent.
Then came the day when all faces swung to the head of the coveti trail. All
ears flared to the sound of Veti's scream and all eyes rounded to see Deci
stagger into the coveti.
Veti flew to him, her arms outstretched, her heart believing before her
mind could confirm. But Deci winced away from her touch and his face half
snarled as his hand, shorn of three fingers and barely beginning to
regenerate, motioned her away.
"Deci!" cried Veti, "Deci?"
"Let—let—me breathe." Deci leaned against the rocks. Deci who could outrun
a kutu, whose feet had lightness and swiftness beyond all others in the
coveti. "The trail takes the breath."
"Deci!" Veti's hands still reached, one all unknowingly proffering the
kiom. Seeing it, she laughed and cast it aside. The death mark with Deci alive
before her? "Oh, Deci!" And then she fell silent as she saw his maimed hand,
his ragged crest, his ravaged jacket, his seared legs —his eyes— His eyes!
They were not the eyes of the Deci who had gone with eagerness to see the
Strangers. He had brought the Strangers back in his eyes.
His breath at last came smoothly and he leaned to Veti, reaching as he did
so, into the bundle by his side.
"I promised," he said, seeing Veti only. "I have come again to fill your
hands with wonder and delight."
But Veti's hands were hidden behind her. Gifts from strangers are suspect.
"Here," said Deci, laying an ugly angled thing down in the dust before
Veti. "Here is death to all kutus, be they six-legged or two. Let the Durlo
coveti say again the Klori stream is theirs for fishing," he muttered.
"Nothing is theirs now save by our sufferance. I give you power, Veti."
Veti moved back a pace.
"And here," he laid a flask of glass beside the weapon. "This is for dreams
and laughter. This is what Viat drank of—but too much. They call it water. It
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is a drink the Hidden Ones could envy. One mouthful and all memory of pain andgrief, loss and unreachable dreams is gone.
"I give you forgetfulness, Veti." Veti's head moved denyingly from side toside. "And here." He pulled forth, carelessly, arms-lengths of shining fabricthat rippled and clung and caught the sun. His eyes were almost Deci's eyesagain.
Veti's heart was moved, womanwise, to the fabric and her hands reached forit, since no woman can truly see a fabric unless her fingers taste its body,flow, and texture.
"For you, for beauty. And this, that you might behold yourself untwisted bymoving waters." He laid beside the weapon and the water a square of reflectingbrightness. "For you to see yourself as Lady over the world as I see myselfLord."
Veti's hands dropped again, the fabric almost untasted. Deci's eyes againwere the eyes of a stranger.
"Deci, I waited not for things, these long days." Veti's hands cleansedthemselves together from the cling of the fabric. Her eyes failed before Deciand sought the ground, jerking away from the strange things in the dust."Come, let us attend to your hurts."
"Why?"
"Why?" echoed Deci. 'To take all we want. To labor no more save t
o ask andreceive. To have power…"
"Why?" Veti's eyes still questioned. "We have enough. We are not hungry. Weare clothed against the changing seasons. We work when work is needed. We playwhen work is done. Why do we need more?"
"Deci finds quiet ways binding," said Dobi. "Rather would he have shoutingand far, swift going. And sweat and effort and delicious fear pushing him intoaction. Soon come the kutu hunting days, Deci. Save your thirst for excitementuntil then."
"Sweat and effort and fear!" snarled Deci. "Why should I endure that whenwith this . . ." He snatched up the weapon and with one wave of his handsheared off the top of Tefu's house. He spoke into the dying thunder of thedischarge. "No kutu alive could unsheath its fangs after that, except as deathdraws back the sheath to mock its finished strength.
"And if so against a kutu," he muttered. "How much more so against theDurlo coveti?"
"Come, Deci," cried Veti. "Let us bind your wounds. As time will heal them,so time will heal your mind of these Strangers."
"I want no healing," shouted Deci, anger twisting his haggard face. "Norwill you after the Strangers have been here and proffered you their wonders inexchange for this foolish fringing devi." Contempt tossed his head. "For thedevi in our coveti, we could buy their sky craft, I doubt not."
'They will not come," said Dobi. "The way is hidden. No Stranger can everfind our coveti. We have but to wait until—"
"Until tomorrow!" Deci's crest tossed rebelliously, his voice louder thanneed be. Or perhaps it seemed so from the echoes it raised in every heart. "Itold—"
"You told?" Stupidly, the echo took words.
"You told?" Disbelief sharpened the cry.
"You told!" Anger spurted into the words.
"I told!" cried Deci. "How else reap the benefits that the Strangers—"
"Benefits!" spat Dobi, "Death!" His foot spurned the weapon in the dust."Madness!" The flask gurgled as it moved. "Vanity!" Dust clouded across themirror and streaked the shining fabric. "For such you have betrayed us todeath."
"But no!" cried Deci. "I lived. Death does not always come with theStrangers." Sudden anger roughened his voice. "It's the old ways! You want nochange! But all things change. It is the way of living things. Progress—"
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"All change is not progress," rumbled Tefu, his hands hiding his blindness.
"Like it or not," shouted Deci. 'Tomorrow the Strangers come! You have yourchoice, all of you!" His arm circled the crowd. "Keep to your homes like Peguor come forward with your devi and find with me a power, a richness—"
"Or move the coveti again," said Dobi. "Away from betrayal and foolishgreed. We have a third choice."
Deci caught his breath.
"Veti?" his whisper pleaded. "Veti? We do not need the rest of the coveti.You and I together. We can wait for the Strangers. Together we can have theworld. With this weapon not one person in this coveti or any other canwithstand us. We can be the new people. We can have our own coveti, and takewhat we want—anything, anywhere. Come to me, Veti."
Veti looked long into his eyes. "Why did you come back?" she whispered withtears in her voice. Then anger leaped into her eyes. "Why did you come back!"There was the force of a scream in her harsh words. She darted suddenly to therocks. She snatched the kiom from the dust where it had fallen. Before Devi knew what was happening, she whirled on him and pinned death upon his raggedjacket. Then with a swift, decisive twist, she tore away the pelu and droppedit to the dust.
Deci's eyes widened in terror, his hand clutched at the kiom but dared nottouch it.
"No!" he screamed. "No!"
Then Veti's eyes widened and her hands reached also for the kiom, but nopower she possessed could undo what she had done and her scream rose withDeci's.
Then knowing himself surely dead and dead unbeloved, already entering theeternity of darkness of the unlighted kiom, Deci crumpled to the ground. Underhis cheek was the hardness of the weapon, under his outflung hand, the beautyof the fabric, and the sunlight, bending through the water, giggled crazily onhis chin.
One dead unbeloved is not as much as a crushed flower by the path. For theflower at least there is regret for its ended beauty.
So knowing Deci dead, the coveti turned from him. There was for memory ofhim only an uncertainty to Veti's feet and a wondering shock in Veti's eyes asshe turned with the others to prepare to move the coveti.
The wind came and poured over the dust and the things and Deci.
And Deci lay waiting for his own breath to stop.
Turn the Page
When I was in the first grade, my teacher was magic. Oh, I know! Everyonethinks that his first teacher is something special. It's practically aconvention that all little boys fall in love with her and that all littlegirls imitate her and that both believe her the Alpha and Omega of wisdom—butmy teacher was really magic.
We all felt it the first day when finally the last anxious parent wasshooed reluctantly out the door and we sat stiff and uneasy in our hard,unfriendly chairs and stared across our tightly clasped hands at Miss Ebo,feeling truly that we were on the edge of something strange and wonderful, butmore wonderful than strange. Tears dried on the face of our weeper as wewaited in that moment that trembled like a raindrop before it splinters intorainbows.
"Let's be something!" Miss Ebo whispered. "Let's be birds."
And we were! We were! Real birds! We fluttered and sang and flitted fromchair to chair all around the room. We prinked and preened and smoothed ourheads along the brightness of feathers and learned in those moments the fiercethrobbing restlessness of birds, the feathery hushing quietness of sleepingwings. And there was one of us that beat endlessly at the closed windows,scattering feathers, shaking the glass, straining for the open sky.
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Then we were children again, wiggling with remembered delight, exchanging
pleased smiles, feeling that maybe school wasn't all fright and strangeness
after all. And with a precocious sort of knowledge, we wordlessly pledged our
mutual silence about our miracle.
This first day set the pace for us. We were, at different times, almost
every creature imaginable, learning of them and how they fitted into the world
and how they touched onto our segment of the world, until we saw fellow
creatures wherever we looked. But there was one of us who set himself against
the lessons and ground his heel viciously down on the iridescence of a green
June-bug that blundered into our room one afternoon. The rest of us looked at
eyes were big and knowing—and a little sad. We turned back to our work,
tasting for the first time a little of the sorrow for those who stubbornly
shut their eyes against the sun and still curse the darkness.
And soon the stories started. Other children heard about Red Riding Hood
and the Wolf and maybe played the parts, but we took turns at being Red Riding
Hood and the Wolf. Individually we tasted the terror of the pursued—the
sometimes delightfully delicious terror of the pursued—and we knew the blood
lust and endless drive of the pursuer—the hot pulses leaping in our veins, the
irresistible compulsion of hunger-never-satiated that pulled us along the
shadowy forest trails.
And when we were Red Riding Hood, we knew under our terror and despair that
help would come—had to come when we turned the page, because it was written
that way. If we were the Wolf, we knew that death waited at the end of our
hunger; we leaped as compulsively to that death as we did to our feeding. As
the mother and grandmother, we knew the sorrow of letting our children go, and
t
he helpless waiting for them to find the dangers and die of them or live
through them, but always, always, were we the pursuer or the pursued, the
waiter or the active one, we knew we had only to turn the page and finally
live happily ever after, because it was written that way! And we found out
that after you have once been the pursuer, the pursued and the watcher, you
can never again be only the pursuer or the pursued or the watcher. Ever after
you are a little of each of them.
We learned and learned in our first grade, but sometimes we had to stop our
real learning and learn what was expected of us. Those were the shallow days.
We knew the shallow days when they arrived because Miss Ebo met us at the
door, brightly smiling, cheerily speaking, but with her lovely dark eyes quiet
and uncommunicative. We left the door ajar and set ourselves to routine tasks.
We read and wrote and worked with our numbers, covering all we had slighted in
the magic days before—a model class, learning neat little lessons, carefully
catching up with the other first grades. Sometimes we even had visitors to
smile at our industry, or the supervisor to come in and sharply twitch a
picture to more exact line on the bulletin board, fold her lips in frustration
and make some short-tempered note in her little green book before she left us,
turning her stiff white smile on briefly for our benefit. And, at day's end,
we sighed with weariness of soul and burst out of class with all the unused
enthusiasm of the day, hoping that tomorrow would be magic again. And it
usually was.
The door would swing shut with a pleased little chuckling cluck and we
would lift our questioning faces to Miss Ebo—or the Witch or the Princess or
the Fairy Godmother—and plunge into another story as into a sparkling sea.
As Cinderella, we labored in the ashes of the fireplace and of lonely
isolation and of labor without love. We wept tears of hopeless longing as we
watched the semblance of joy and happiness leave us behind, weeping for it
even though we knew too well the ugliness straining under it —the sharp bones
of hatefulness jabbing at scarlet satin and misty tulle. Cinderella's miracle