Damia (26 page)

The school was understaffed, the new teacher overworked, but Isthia worked as hard as he did. “And learned more,” she said. “I just wish I had had the opportunity I’m providing my grandchildren.”

Damia loved it because it meant that she and Larak could share classes. In fact, she
had
to teach him several subjects, including mathematics. She got to be quite good at mathematics herself from such exercise.

Larak was not her only pupil, nor were only Talented children entered in the school, but Isthia chose a careful mix from families whose views did not run to “freaks” or
fear of Talent. Children from Larak’s age to sixteen, who would be physically and mentally challenged by the opportunity of “unstructured” classes, were asked to enroll. So Damia found herself learning to control her temper at the difficulty some older students had in learning what she had to teach and her jealousy at younger students who stamped
their
feet at her “slow” pace.

It was the sort of school only a gifted computer could plan for: with students and classes to mix and match in such complex calculations that it yielded a doctorate for the T-4 in record time. Physical therapy and physical exercise, mental therapy and mental calisthenics all vied with the more regular curricula of other schools.

Damia learned quickly the fallacy of judging a person on the color of skin, the condition of body, or the attractiveness of face.

She also learned, just as quickly, the art of moving cargo containers, juggling bricks, and reading waybills, much to the amazement of her teachers.

Cooperation was a primary requirement for all Talented people: civil discord was something intolerable in one with Talent.

Damia’s favorite sport was team dodgeball. It was played both strictly with Talented children and with mixed groups of Talented and non-Talented children. The rules were simple: if you were tagged by the ball, you were out. The object of team dodgeball was to have at least one team member not tagged out at the end of the game. The Talented members of the team were permitted to 1) gain control of the ball by superior strength of mind; 2) pull themselves or pull their teammates out of the way of the ball. There were, however, limits to a ’port: a Talent was not allowed to lift a non-Talented teammate higher than three feet off the ground, or more than two feet laterally, or outside the playing field. Games with only Talented players were brilliant displays of unexpected lifts or the wild orbitings of the foam ball as players jockeyed for its possession. Games with mixed teams were perhaps less showy but more fun for the non-Talented and exceedingly
good exercise for the gifted. However, particularly in mixed dodgeball, score was kept with one point for each team member still left when the other teams were eliminated. The size of the teams was arbitrary: some very small teams won more regularly, even on points, than larger ones. There were two unbreakable rules in team dodgeball: no player should be injured, and teams had to be evenly mixed boy-girl, Talented-non-Talented.

Damia grew closer and closer to her little brother, always wanting but never quite achieving the amazing rapport which Jeran and Cera shared. She would brag immensely about their combined capabilities and Jeran, who had grown rather less tolerant of his youngest sister as he grew older, would always take special pains to prove to her just how wrong she was. By the time Damia was nine and Larak nearly seven, the rivalry had grown to full-scale war.

“My little brother’s better than
your
little sister!” Damia would taunt Jeran, who, being older, would invariably agree: “Yeah, Larak’s better than Damia any day!” to which Damia could only shriek with anger.

Jeran had just reached puberty and had started to notice girls in a different light, so having one so truculent was particularly annoying to him.

“Larak and I can beat any four of your friends!” Damia declared one day.

“Can not!” Cera rejoined, coming to the defense of her adored older brother.

“Can too!”

“Prove it!” Cousin Channa challenged.

Damia paused, not expecting this tactic. “All right, dodgeball. Who’s your fourth?”

Jeran’s mouth fell. He floundered for a suitable way out of the challenge, but Channa was Marci’s best friend and Jeran just
had
to make Marci notice him. The trouble was that Channa was not all that good in dodgeball, being only moderately Talented and massively clumsy. Worse, the obvious choice of partner for Channa was Teval, her current
male interest, and Teval was not only not Talented but an incredibly gawky adolescent.

“Fourth?” Jeran taunted. “You said you could beat us all!”

“We can!” Damia returned, chin jutting defiantly. “All the cousins!”

“How many teams?” Jeran demanded.

“
One
team!” Larak put in. And so the lines were drawn. The time was after school and the place was in the field beyond the river boundary of the Raven Compound.

“It’ll be a slaughter!” Teval declared from the sidelines. Not being a member of the Raven clan, he was excluded from the tournament but invited by Channa, who hoped to impress him with her abilities.

“I hope no one gets hurt,” Marci Kelani, standing beside him, said nervously.

“No way. Just little Damia’s pride!” Teval chuckled. “The others are okay, but she’s a little busy britches.” She had tutored him in language class the year before and he had failed to respond to all her best efforts, refusing to learn from a “little girl.” From the corner of her eyes, Marci gave him an appraising look and, with a flick of her eyes heavenward, decided she did not like what she saw in the boy.

Out in the center of the field, Jeran looked around at his team of twenty-one cousins with concern. Some of them were a bit too happy to team up against Damia and Larak. He swallowed nervously. “Are you sure you still want to do this?”

Damia rose above the doubts she felt because, absolutely, there was no way that she could salvage any pride if she backed down in front of everyone. Steadfastly she nodded her head. “We’re sure. Why? Are you scared?”

Jeran licked his lips but shook his head. “You can call quits any time.” He pulled out the little foam ball. As usual it had a dye bag inside it so that anyone hit would be marked with a fluorescent orange dye that washed off. “Shall we flip for possession?”

“Smallest team
always
gets possession!” Damia declared
hotly and somewhat scornfully that her brother’s understanding of the rules was faulty. Jeran let the ball go, Damia “caught” it and let it hover between them. With a contemptuous mental “nudge,” Damia burst the dye bag. A splurt of dye filled the air.

“GET READY!” she yelled. “On three! One! Two! Three!”
Ready, Larak?
she shot at him.

If the answering thought wobbled a bit, the boy’s face was as determined as hers.
Ready, Damia.

The ball became a vibrating blur which flew in an intricate pattern at the waiting throng of cousins. Damia knocked out three with the first pitch, then lost control for a moment as the remainder reacted and wrested it from her grasp. The bag came back firmly at her, but she ’ported out of its way and shifted her power to Larak who, to the chagrin of the older players, looped it back around in a tight arc. Two more defenders were knocked out.

“She’s good,” Marci noted from the sidelines. Alla, Damia’s friend from pre-school, rode up on her brown pony. The moment she pulled him up, he dropped his head to graze. “Is she all right?” she asked Marci.

Teval snorted. “Little brat! They’ll show her, that’s for sure!”

But the cousins were faring badly: in two separate passes Damia and Larak had managed to knock out two more, leaving only fourteen on the opposite side. The cousins were forced to switch completely to the defensive, hoping to tire the two youngest. They didn’t attempt to “take” the ball, only to dodge it without being blopped. The tactic began to take its toll, for both Damia and Larak were soon panting and sweating profusely in their efforts to keep the dye ball both in the air and vibrating with the special effort that kept it out of the “reach” of the other cousins.

Three more cousins were knocked out in the five minutes it finally took for Larak and Damia to lose “control” of the ball. Heedless of the danger, Larak dropped to the ground, panting.

“Larak?” Damia called, turning to him. She started toward him.

“They’re finished!” Teval cheered triumphantly from the sidelines.

The ball, now in the hands of the remaining cousins, hurled unerringly toward the prone form of the panting boy. But the light ball was thrust upward and just over Larak.

“Oh, good Damia! Good!” Alla cried from the sidelines.

Damia took another step toward her little brother. “Come on, Larak,” she called encouragingly. The others scooped the ball back up from the dip it had taken after Damia had diverted it and brought it back around in a circle.

“I’m tired!” Larak gasped to his sister as she approached him.

“Perfect, two targets together!” Teval chortled.

Damia helped Larak up to his feet. “Should we quit?” she asked him. Larak shook his head feebly, drawing away from her to stand on his own feet. Damia looked about her, saw the incoming ball, and batted it aside with a mental “flick.”

“Give up?” one of the cousins called out hoarsely.

“No way!” Damia returned. She zoomed the ball at the speaker. Either he didn’t see it or he, too, was tired, but the ball caught him squarely in the chest.

“This is going to go on forever,” Marci moaned. “Why don’t they quit?” She waved a hand at the remaining cousins.

“Quit? Against a little girl?” Teval sneered. “They just need a hand.” He picked up a small rock.

“Teval, no!” Marci cried, but the rock was launched right at Larak’s unprotected head.

“Damia!” Alla screamed, throwing herself at Teval.

Turning at Alla’s shout, Damia saw the rock and flung herself at Larak, arms outstretched. She pushed him out of the way but the rock caught her squarely at the base of the skull. She fell silently to the ground. Spun about by the force of his sister’s arms, Larak whipped around and
screamed when he saw her lying there, her head bleeding profusely.
Damia!

Jeran was running as fast as he could toward her when the dye ball hit him. It flicked past him and hit all the remaining cousins with such blinding speed that no one was spared. Then it made a spiraling loop before it slammed into the vengeful smile on Teval’s face.

*   *   *

It was dark. The air was bad. Her head felt awful and
They
were trying to get her. Damia moaned silently as she struggled away from the dark and back toward the light. But
They
would not let her.
They
tried to keep her down.
They
chittered at her, not like Coonies, but like evil, scraping claws on harsh metal.
They
were after her.
They
wanted revenge.
They
tried to suck her out of her body, tried to eat her soul. Damia whimpered in fear, searching blindly for something, someone. There! Far away, far, far away, like a beacon! A blip of light. She lost sight of it, searched for it, drew it to her, crawled toward it. There!
They
were afraid of the light, it scared them. If she could just get to the light! The light! The soul-eaters would never get her if she could just get to the light. She cried to the lighthouse, cried to the keeper. The beacon flared, light streamed steadily toward her. She was getting nearer—or had the lighthouse moved to her? Damia did not know, did not care. The light bathed her, burnt the soul-eaters, and the lightkeeper soothed her with warm words and his warm light.

“Depressed skull fracture,” a voice mumbled in the distance. Damia ignored it, wanting to bat it away with her hands but she was so weak, so weak from crawling.

“Will she be all right?” a tenor voice asked worriedly. The lightkeeper! She heard his voice! She willed her lips to form a smile. See! I’ve found the light, see?

“Look!” It was another voice, one she felt she should know, a kind voice. “She’s smiling!” The voice approached, beams of kindliness washed over her. “Oh, Damia, you’re going to be all right! Sweetheart, you’ll be all right!”

The mumbler coughed. “We’d better let her rest. I’ll have the nurse look in on her later.”

“I’m staying here.” The lightkeeper responded sharply in tones that defied argument. A hand touched hers and she felt the warm yellow glow light its way up her arm, fill her body, and knew that the lightkeeper had found her, had driven away the soul-eaters. And she remembered that the lightkeeper had a name.
Afra?

I’m here
, the lightkeeper whispered.
Rest, Damia.

The hand let
go
and the darkness crept into the shadows of her sight.
Afra!

The hand grabbed her again, light flared and banished the darkness.
I’m here, love! Rest. I’m here, there’s nothing to worry about.

A smile formed on her lips and she rolled over, small, soft, tanned paw still in Afra’s warm, rough, green hand.

*   *   *

“Afra!” It was dark, Damia awoke with a start.

“Here.” Her hand was squeezed gently by his bigger one. “Rest. It’s night.”

Damia went to sleep, secure in the soft mental touch of the yellow-eyed Talent.

*   *   *

The bright sun of morning woke her. Damia turned in her bed, scanned the room, and was startled to find no one there. She double-checked frantically. When the door opened she nearly jumped with fright.

It was Isthia. “Ah, you’re awake!” She lay down the tray she was carrying on the cart beside Damia’s bed.

“Where’s Afra?”

“He went back.” Isthia caught her expression. “He was burnt out, sweetie, and desperate to give your mom the good news.”

Damia started at Isthia’s choice of words: burnt out.

“We’ve all been worried,” Isthia went on, not noticing her granddaughter’s reaction. She shook her head. “Your father and mother were frantic. They’ve been here but only Afra could stay. You seemed calmer when he was in the room.”

“He had the light,” Damia murmured, incredibly drowsy, but she forced herself to get the words out. “Can he come back? Would he come if you said I needed him? He hasn’t visited Deneb but half a dozen times in all the years we’ve been here.”