Sheri Tepper - Grass

There was something else to find as well. The girl. Stella. He had set her name beside the other names in his litany. She was to belong to him, to Rillibee Chime. Though her family was wealthy and important, still she would belong to him. Though she herself would disdain him, still…

“Heaven,” whispered the parrot above him.

So he climbed in the night hours. At dawn he found the voices when the sun slanted into their city through leaves of heartbreak gold.

Marjorie woke to birdsong and the music of water. It took her a few moments to remember where she was and a little longer to remember the interruption in the night. When she did, she looked about for Brother Lourai. not finding him but meeting Mainoa’s eyes.

“He hasn’t come back,” the old man said.

“You knew he’d gone off…”

“I knew he woke you and you both went off. But you came back.”

“He went up there.” She gestured at the high spangle of sun among the boughs. “He told me they call him Willy Climb and that he’d be all right.”

Mainoa nodded. “Yes. He will be all right. He’s like you. When things get very difficult, he thinks of dying from time to time, but he’s too curious about what may happen next.”

She flushed, wondering how he knew so much about her. It was true. She was curious about what would happen next. As though something awaited her, personally. Some opportunity…

Father James returned from the nearest pool with a full bucket of water, looking alert and rested. “I haven’t slept that well in weeks,” he said. “I had the oddest dreams.”

“Yes,” said Brother Mainoa again. “I think we all did. Something here invaded our dreams.”

Marjorie stood up and looked about her, suddenly concerned.

“No, no.” The old man rose in slow motion, grasping knobby ex-cresences on the nearest tree to lift himself up. “Nothing inimical, Marjorie. They, too, are curious.”

“They?”

“Those I think we will meet today, later. After Brother Lourai returns.”

“Hasn’t he some other name?” Tony asked.

“Brother Lourai? Oh, yes. As a boy he was Rillibee. Rillibee Chime. You think he doesn’t look like a brother?”

“Tony is thinking that he doesn’t look like the Sanctified we know,” Marjorie offered. “His eyes are too big. His face too lean and intelligent. His mouth too sensitive. I always think of the Sanctified as thick, enthusiastic people with simple thoughts and a great need for answers. Old Catholics are supposed to be slender and ascetic-looking, with huge, philosophical eyes. These are stereotypes, and I’m sometimes ashamed of my thoughts, but they persist, even when I look into a mirror. You don’t look like a Sanctified either, Brother. But I suppose you’ve used the name Mainoa for too long to give it up.” She turned away in order not to see Father James’ amused and evaluating gaze.

“Far too long,” Mainoa said in agreement, laughing. “But do use Rillibee’s own name, it means much to him. He will appreciate that.”

“We’ll go out and try to pick up the trail today,” Marjorie said. Mainoa amended her statement. “It may not be possible to do so for a day or two.”

She turned on him, exasperated and frustrated, ready to scream at the delay. Father James laid a hand on her arm.

“Patience, Marjorie. Don’t be obsessive. Let it go a little.”

“I know, Father But I keep thinking what may be happening to her.”

Father James had been thinking of that, too. His mind dwelt all too frequently on certain monstrousnesses he had heard of in the confessional, on certain perversions and horrors he had read of that he could never have imagined for himself. Why these memories were associated in his mind with the Hippae he did not know, but they were. He set the evil thoughts aside. “We will find her, Marjorie. Trust Brother Mainoa.”

She desisted, willing herself to trust Brother Mainoa, since there was no one else to trust.

They ate cold rations. They washed themselves in a placid pond, one of those which encircled the island. Marjorie and Tony examined the horses, looking closely at their hooves, their legs. Despite the wild run of yesterday, the animals seemed to be uninjured. Though she did her best to remain calm, Marjorie felt herself ready to explode from impatience before they heard the call from above.

Rillibee swarmed down a great vine-draped tree like an ape. “I got turned around,” he said. “The trees look different in the light, and it took me a while to find my way back.”

“Did you find them?” she asked. “The voices?”

“I found their city,” Rillibee answered. “You have to come see it.”

“We have to go the other way" — she pointed — “to find the trail…”

“Up,” he insisted. “I think we should.”

“Up,” agreed Brother Mainoa. “If we can.”

“One of the things that took me so long was finding a trail the horses can follow,” Rillibee said. “That way.” He pointed deeper into the swamp. “Then we’ll climb.”

“Why?” Marjorie cried. “Stella isn’t in there…”

“The trail is out there among the grasses, Marjorie,” Brother Mainoa said. “But that’s not necessarily the way. While you were still asleep, Tony and I went to the edge of the forest. The Hippae are still there. There is no way we can go out that way just now.”

“But why?” she gestured upward, fighting tears. “I don’t want to go sightseeing, for the love of God.”

“Perhaps it is for the love of God we should go,” Father James said. “Do you know what’s up there, Brother Mainoa?”

“I suspect.” he replied. “I suspect what is up there. I have suspected since the report came from Semling.”

“What is it?”

“I think it is the last Arbai city,” he said. “The very last.”

He would tell them nothing more. He said he didn’t know. When they asked Rillibee, he said only that they would see for themselves. He led them as they rode across shallow pools, down aisles of trees. Sometimes he stopped and simply looked at the trees while they waited. Once he dismounted and put his hands on a tree, leaning against it as though it had been a friend. Sylvan started to say something during one of these pauses, but Brother Mainoa laid a hand on his shoulder to silence him. They crossed small islands, coming at last to a very large one with a hill at its center.

On a flat pedestal of stone stood a twisted monument much like that in the plaza of the Arbai city.

“Arbai?” Marjorie whispered, staring at it, unbelieving. Despite what Brother Mainoa had said, she had not let herself believe him.

Rillibee pointed upward along a flank of the hill where a trail wound toward a precipitous cliff edge.

“That’s how I came down,” he said. “Leave the horses. They’ll be all right here.”

They dismounted, trying to do it quietly so they would not interrupt the voices above them. People were talking. Singing. Telling stories to the accompaniment of muted laughter. Rillibee led them up the trail. At the cliff edge a bridge led between fantastically carved posts across a gulf of air into the trees — a bridge made of grass and vines and splits of wood, intricate and closely woven as an ornamental basket. The railings were laced into designs of leaves and fruit. The floor was plaited in swirls of color, solid as pavement. Two hundred feet in the air they walked behind Rillibee into the shadow of the trees.

There were dwellings — gazebos and cupolas, tented roofs and conical spires, woven walls and latticed windows — hung like fruit in the branches of the trees, opening upon wicker-work alleys and suspended lattice streets. Aloft were sun-dappled pergolas, shaded kiosks, intricate cages, all joined to those below by spider stairs. Lacework houses hung in the high branches like oriole’s nests.