Damon Knight: Orbit 16

—Oh. She brushed my cheek with her fingers, to show her sorrow. —When did it happen?

—At the end of winter, while they were hunting.

She leaned back on her elbows and glanced up into the dull blue sky, where the Sun, the Mother’s consort, was strug­gling to free his shining robes once more from the Cyclops. The Cyclops’ rolling bloodshot Eye looked down on us ma­levolently, out of the wide greenness of her face. —If was the doing of the Cyclops, probably.

Etaa sighed. —Her strength is always greatest at the Dark Noons, big Uglyface; she always brings pain with the cold! But the Mother sees all—

—The Mother didn’t see the kharks. She didn’t save my parents; She could have. She gives us pain too, the Great Bitch!

Etaa’s hands covered her eyes; then slowly they slid down again. —Hywel, that’s blasphemy! Don’t say that or She will punish you. If She let your parents die, they must have offended Her, She lifted her head with childish self-righteous­ness.

—My parents never did anything wrong! Never! My mind saw them as they always were, bickering constantly…They stayed together because they had managed to have one child, and though they’d lost two others, they were fertile together and might someday have had a fourth. But they didn’t like each other anyway, and maybe their resentment was an offense. I hit Etaa hard on the arm and leaped up. —The Mother is a bitch and you are a brat! May you be sterile!

She gasped and made the warding sign. Then she stood up and kicked me in the shins with her rough sandals, her face flushed with anger, before she ran off again across the pasture.

After she was gone I stood throwing rocks furiously at the shenn, watching them run in stupid terror around and around the field.

And because of it, when I had worn out my rage, I discovered one of my shenn had disappeared. Searching and cursing, I finally found the stubborn old ewe up on the scarp at the field’s end. She was scrabbling clumsily over the ragged black boulders, cutting her tender feet and leaving tufts of her silky wool on every rock and thorn bush. I caught her with my crook at last and dragged her back down by her flopping ears, while she butted at me and stepped on my bare feet with her claws out. I cursed her mentally now, not having a hand to spare, and cursed my own idiocy, but mostly I cursed the Mother Herself, because all my troubles seemed to come from Her.

Scratched and aching all over, I got the ewe down the crumbling hill to the field at last, whacked her with my crook, and watched her trot indignantly away to rejoin the flock. I started toward the stream to wash my smarting body, but Etaa was ahead of me, going down to drink. Afraid that she would see me for the fool I was, I threw myself down in the shade of the hillside instead and pretended to be resting. I couldn’t tell if she was even looking at me, though I squinted and stretched my eyes with my fingers.

But then suddenly she was on her feet running toward me, waving her arms. I got up on my knees, wondering what crazy thing—

And then a piece of the hill gave way above me and buried me in blackness.

I woke spitting, with black dirt in my eyes, my nose, my mouth, to see Etaa at my side still clawing frantically at the earth and rubble that had buried my legs. All through her life, though she wasn’t large even among women, she had strength to match that of many men. And all through my life I remembered the wild, burning look on her face, as she turned to see me alive. But she didn’t make a sign, only kept at her digging until I was free.

She helped me stand, and as I looked up at the slumped hillside the full realization of what had been done came to me. I dropped to my knees again and rubbed fistfuls of the tumbled earth into my hair, praising Her Body and begging Her forgiveness. Never again did I question the Mother’s wisdom or doubt Her strength. I saw Etaa kneel beside me and do the same.

As we shared supper by my tent, I asked Etaa how she’d known when she tried to warn me. —Did you see it happening?

She shook her head. —I felt it, first ... but the Mother didn’t give me enough time to warn you.

—Because She was punishing me. She should have killed me for the things I thought today!

—But it was me who made her angry. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have said that about your parents. It was awful, it was—cruel.

I looked at her mournful face, shadowed by the greening twilight. —But it was true. I sighed. —And it wasn’t just today that I have cursed the Mother. But I’ll never do it again. She must have been right, to let my parents die. They hated staying together; they didn’t appreciate the blessing of their fertility, when others pray for children but can’t make any.

—Hywel…maybe they’re happier now, did you ever think? She looked down self-consciously. —To return to the Mother’s Womb is to find peace, my mother says. Maybe She knew they were unhappy in life, so She let them come back, to be born again.

—Do you really think so? I leaned forward, not knowing why this strange girl’s words should touch me so.

She wrinkled her face with thought. —I really think so.

And I felt the passing of the second shadow that had darkened my mind for so long, as though for me it was finally Midsummer’s Day and I stood in the light again.

Etaa insisted on staying with me that night; her mother was a healer, and she informed me that I might have “hidden injuries,” so gravely that I laughed. I lay awake a long time, aching but at peace, looking up past the leather roof into the green-lit night. I could see pallid Laa Merth, the Earth’s Grieving Sister, fleeing wraithlike into the outer darkness in her endless effort to escape her mother, the Cyclops, who always drew her back. The Cyclops had turned her lurid Eye away from us, and the shining bands of her robe made me think for once of good things, like the banded melons ripen­ing in the village fields below.

I looked back at Etaa, her short dark curls falling across her cheek and her bare chest showing only the softest hint of curves under her fortune-seed necklace. I found myself wish­ing that she would somehow magically become a woman, because I was just old enough to be interested; and then suddenly I wished that then she would have me for her man, something I’d never thought about anyone else before. But if she were a woman, she would become our priestess and have her pick of men and not want one without the second sight…I remembered the look she’d given me as she dug me out of the landslide, and felt my face redden, thinking that maybe I might have a chance, after all.

Through the summer and the seasons that followed I spent much time with Etaa and slowly got used to her strange skills. I had never known what it was like to feel the Mother’s touch, or even another human’s, on my own soul; and since I had few close friends, I didn’t know the ways of those who had the second sight. To be with Etaa was to be with some­one who saw into other worlds. Often she started at nothing, or told me what we’d find around the next turn of the path; she even knew my feelings sometimes, when she couldn’t see my face. She felt what the Earth feels, the touch of every creature on Her skin.

Etaa’s second sight made her like a creature of the forest (for all animals know the will of the Mother), and, solitary like me, she spent much time with only the wild things for company. Often she tried to take me to see them, but they always bolted at my coming. Etaa would wince and tell me to move more slowly, step more softly, breaking branches offends the Earth…but I could never really tell what I was doing wrong.

The next year on Midsummer’s Eve I was initiated into manhood. During the feast that followed, while I sat dripping and content after my ducking in the sacred spring, Etaa sat proudly at my side. But when midnight came I left the celebration to walk in the fields with Hegga, because for that one could only ask a woman, and Etaa was still a child. Which she proved, by sticking her tongue out at Hegga as we passed. But it made me smile, since it meant she was closer to being a woman, too.