Northshore (6 page)

In the bedroom, Peasimy sprawled in moist, infant sleep
as he always did daytimes, unaware of the catastrophe that had narrowly missed him, dreaming of a time when all the darkness should be driven away and the light made whole. There were no words in these dreams, only visions in which winged figures moved through radiant space. Dreams, not unlike those dreamed by many, except that Peasimy remembered them when he woke. When he rose, walked, prowled through the dark, splashing light where he could, he always remembered them and longed to be deep in that dream again.

Days and nights go by. Moons swing up from the east in round, ripe glory and fade to mere slivers of rind on the western sky as time passes. Conjunctions come and go.

Comes a night. Dusk in Thou-ne, a misty dusk in which all is veiled, mystery made manifest, ghost faces in the wisps of fog that waft in from the River, ghost voices, too, which become, on long listening, the sounds of song-fish, wooden bells, the tinkle of glass chimes, the crier’s call. Only the Tower has a brazen bell, metal being too scarce to waste on anything except coin and holy purposes, but it is silent tonight, its voice withheld. Tower bell only rings when something is wrong. There is seldom anything wrong in Thou-ne, edged as it is on the east with the scarps and valleys of the Talons. No workers come to Thou-ne from the east. Potipur knows what the Awakeners beyond the Talons do with their dead, though Peasimy supposes a workers’ pit somewhere. Peasimy has it all figured out. Lies, all lies what they say. It was lies what they said about his father being Sorted Out. It was lies what the body fixer said about his arm, that time it broke. There hadn’t been any Sorters, and the arm had hurt, terribly. Peasimy no longer listens to what they say. Only what they do is true, so he watches but does not hear. He has turned his ears off, long and long ago, to most words. Sounds, now, those he will condescend to hear, and tonight he listens from his post beside the warehouse wall. Chimes and woodbells and the crier’s call.

Night along the River in Thou-ne. Mist, tonight,
blowing in from the slupping surface, softly suffused globes of it gathered around each of the lanterns, holding the light in glowing spheres that hang along the jetties like a string of ghosdy balloons. Song-fish making a chorus under the shore reeds, harummm, rumm, lummm, rumm. Three of them. One soprano-fish and two deep-voiced droners. Harumm, sloo, harumm.

Light cannot get far enough from the lanterns to make puddles on the cobbles. Lanterns are scarcely bright enough to see by. Jetties lying in shadow. He stands, Peasimy, head cocked, listening to the song-fish. Something there, disturbing them. Most nights they’ve finished up by now, danced on their tails, done all their calling and telling, but tonight there’s something keeping them awake. So Peasimy listens, almost understanding what it is the song-fish sing, as much in tune with them as with the dark and the fog.

‘Oh,’ he whispers to himself, ‘don’t I hear you, don’t I? Somethin’ comin’. Somethin’ wonderful comin’. Don’t I know that? Haven’t I been told? No need to keep say in’ it, over and over. No matter was it tomorrow or forever, I’d still be here, waitin’ for it.’ He rocks to and fro on his heels, thinking they may stop now, now that he’s told them, but the song-fish go on, harummm, harummm. No, whatever they’re telling him, it’s something different from the ordinary.

Peasimy tiptoes along to the Riverbank, out onto the jetty, down to the place the reed bed thins out and the fish sing, flings himself down with his head snaking out over the slosh and slurp of the black water.

Harumm, lumm, sloon, rumm. Fish playing with something, pushing it back and forth. They do that. Push an old barrel back and forth. Push a log, a stump. Chunk, chunk on the jetty, far down. Chunk, chunk, coming closer. And he can see it! Even in the dark, down there under the water, glowing, shining, a greeny glow, like new leaves in the sun, like moon on grass, light!

He stares and stares as the fish bring her up, up to the surface, she glowing ever more brightly, until at last he
looks directly into her face. All around her the fishes, singing, the glowing fishes spread either side of her like wings. Bump, bumping her against the stones, looking up at Peasimy as though to say, ‘Here she is!’ He knows her at once, one of the creatures from his dreams, one of those who bring the light.

Oh, but she has changed since Thrasne carved her and put her into the River. All the features are the same, and the hard fragwood has not softened, but the little creatures of the depths have been at her, smoothing her all over with their phosphorescent slime so she gleams, shines, beams up from the waves like a beacon of greeny light, smiling, one hand held out as though for Peasimy to take it and welcome her ashore.

And Peasimy reaches down, stronger than he could possibly be, tugging and lifting, pulling like a boatman at the capstan, hauling with an excess of power he has never had and will never have again, until she stands there, dripping on the jetty, peering at the town of Thou-ne. Only then does he go screaming off after the crier and the watch, hallooing for the lantern man, for the people to come see, and such is his fervor and volume of voice it is not long before there is a crowd gathered, full of muttering as the reed beds, staring at the woman from the River, who smiles back at them, shining, shining, shining in the dark.

‘There,’ Peasimy cries, over and over, in a voice totally unlike his own. ‘There in the River. The Truth Bearer. The Light Bearer. She shines, oh, she shines!’

‘What’s he saying?’

‘Says she’s the Truth Bearer.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Somebody who brings the truth, I guess. Look at her. Ain’t she lovely.’

‘What’d they say?’

‘Said the lovely Truth Carrier was come, I think. That’s her. Up there.’

‘What’s a Truth Carrier?’

‘Oh, that’s religion, that is. Foretold to happen.’ This
from one of the standabouts, a know-it-all who makes up half of what he says and switches the other half around to suit himself. No one believes a thing he says in daylight, but the dark and mist make him an anonymous voice, speaking with the authority of conviction. ‘Foretold to happen,’ he says again, pleased with the way this is received.

And the circumstances of it all, the mist, the dark, the voice saying things that seem authoritative, Peasimy’s transfigured face, the beauty of the carved woman, all that reaches them so they go away from the place nodding their heads, believing she is whatever Peasimy calls her. Believing they had heard of the Truth Bearer all their lives, pleased and delighted, though mystified, that she has come.

The day after goes on with saying and saying until what is said by one is said by everyone and believed by everyone. Someone – years later the distinction is claimed by half the families in Thou-ne – someone says the glowing image belongs in the Temple. By evening she is there, in the Temple of the Moons, there at the top of the sanctuary steps in front of the carved visages of the gods, looking down at the people in kindness and wonder. By evening the ritual surrounding her has begun. From the balcony high above, a novice ladles water from buckets, an endless line of buckets carried from the River itself, and in this dank sprinkle the image of Suspirra stands, shining wetly and smiling, as though forever. Peasimy kneels at the altar rail, his face glowing like the moon.

Behind him in the sanctuary, Widow Flot stares at his back, not knowing whether she is thankful for this or not. Peasimy hasn’t been up in the daytime for a dozen years or more, and this could mean he will start sleeping at night, like most people. Which means he’ll be underfoot, during the day, most likely.

‘Flot-wife,’ says a voice behind her in gloomy tones, and she turns to confront Haranjus Pandel.

‘Superior,’ she says formally in her most discouraging tone. What is he going to make of this, now? Some new thing to bother honest people with?

Instead he asks in gloomy tones, ‘What is all this? You can tell me, Widow Flot. Haven’t I the right to know? All the responsibility, and no one tells me? Did he carve the thing? Did he?’

She stares, laughs, stares again. He doesn’t expect an answer. He doesn’t even believe it himself. He sits there on the hard, uncomfortable bench, head propped on one hand, his long, lugubrious face attentive to the glowing woman behind the rail. Is he thinking, too, that it may really be a miracle? Behind the shining woman are the faces of Potipur, Abricor, and Viranel, so familiar the worshipers do not even see them. Now, for the first time, Widow Flot sees these carved faces of the gods contrasted with a human face, the shining woman’s face, and knows them for what they are.

‘Haranjus,’ she breathes in the grip of discovery. ‘Potipur’s face! That’s a flier’s face!’

And he, casting his eyes upward, sees the faces of the gods for the first time. Really seeing. Peering down at him with a hooded-eyed cynicism, beaks gaped a little as though hungry. Fliers’ faces. He has never questioned them before, never before even noticed the expressions they wear. How long, he wondered in sudden panic, how long had he been worshiping the fliers without even knowing it?

In the Awakeners’ Tower in Baris, Pamra Don lay sleeping.

The Candy Tree filled all the space above her, glitter and shimmer of leaf behind leaf, blossoms squirming open in a sensuous dance of hue and scent, explosions of amber and gold, bursts of gemmy reds, all rustling, flushing, burgeoning into every empty space, thrusting its light and color upon her, drawing her up into itself, weightlessly … toward glory …

Something rasped, scraped. A hard sound. Nothing alive in it. Metal on stone. The Candy Tree shivered. Pamra ignored the sound, hating it, clinging to the tree …

‘The new drainage ditches along the Tower wall,’ a voice in her mind said clearly. ‘A worker crew digging drainage ditches.’

With that recognition the Candy Tree dream slipped away like smoke, and she woke thinking of Delia.

Tangled warmth of bedcovers; a ghostly reflection staring back at her from the glass across the cubicle. Last evening, the bleeding. This morning, heavy sleep and slow waking. A longing for comforting arms. That was why she was thinking of Delia today, when she had not thought of her for a season.

Groaning, Pamra rolled herself half upright, huddled at the edge of the bed, hugging herself as the weak tears runneled her face. Oh, it was hard enough to waken oneself after bleeding without thinking of Awakening the workers. She should have known better than to have angered Betchery with her comment about the woman’s appetite. Betchery was well known as a glutton, but she hated being
reminded of it. Bleeders had ways to retaliate; unconscionable, but predictable.

She mouthed the furred, foggy taste of sick depression; only the result of weakness, true, but enough to make one doubt one’s strength. For a moment, predictably, she regretted being an Awakener. Why keep on when it meant submitting to Betchery and all the other necessary unpleasantness?

She responded to both regret and question as she always had. ‘Because of what my mother did.’ Muttering, the words coming out in a single connected string, as though they were all one word, an incantation uttered from habit.

It was years since she had actually heard herself saying those words. At one time they had stirred her anger, renewed her resolution. Now they were only part of the morning litany, the childhood humiliation buried beneath ten years of ritual and acceptance. She slumped away from the bed, aching, sagging, knowing her face must be pale as ice. What a lot to go through. And yet she was so close to senior grade.

Senior grade. Senior retreat first, learning the mysteries that juniors were not privy to. Danger there, carefully avoided in thought. Not all those who went on senior retreat returned afterward. Skip over that. Senior retreat, then senior vows, then a luxurious room of her own on the upper floors. Meals cooked to order, not ladled out of the common pot. Respected by everyone, without exception. Even Papa wouldn’t be able to think of her as a failure when she was senior grade.

She leaned against the window, letting the glass cool her skin, remembering Grandma Don’s sarcastic voice: ‘Pamra’s mother was a coward and a heretic. Pamra herself shows no sign of expiating that sin. She will never make an artist.’

And her own words in response, unplanned, unintended, raggedly defiant in the subdued gathering. ‘I can be an Awakener. That’s better than artist anytime.’

Silence had opened to receive that statement, an embar
rassed silence that grew into coolness, into distaste, into disaffection. There had been no way to back down, no way to change her mind. They had rejected her when the words were said; she could only go on after that.

Once in the Tower, she had not seen Prender or Musley or Papa or Grandma again. Someday she would see her half sisters and Papa, perhaps. After she was senior, not before. And not Grandma Don, of course. Grandma would have been taken to the Holy Sorters long ago, though Pamra doubted she had been Sorted Out.

Disgusted at the memory, she pushed herself away from the window. Nothing was real this morning. Propelling her weakness through the day would be like swimming through mirage. Stripping off her gown, she began the morning ritual which got her dressed, her hair braided in the distinctive Awakeners pattern. Robed and sandaled at last, she left the cubicle to pause at the top of the women’s stairs for the Utterance.

‘Rejoice! I go to Awaken those whose labors sustain us. Thanks be to the Tears of Viranel, to the Servants of Abricor, to the Promise of Potipur, and amen.’
Though her shaking hand upon the banister belied her voice, the statement was made firmly aloud, requiring response.

‘Rejoice and amen!’
chanted a voice from down the corridor, echoing and anonymous.

So released, she stumbled down to the women’s refectory and a deserted table. The smell of the morning grain ration sickened her, but she held her breath and forced the porridge down. Her body would not make new blood if she didn’t eat, and no amount of religious posturing would get her through the day unless she felt stronger.