Overheard in a Dream (20 page)

“Then I happened upon a picture of Brigitte Bardot from the film
And God Created Woman
. The odd thing is, Torgon didn’t actually look like Brigitte Bardot at all – she wasn’t blonde or drop-dead gorgeous nor did she have that come-hither sensuality that Bardot was so famous for. But in this picture Bardot was standing in a field of crops, the wind pulling at her hair, which was rumpled and unbound, and her expression was pure Torgon – intense, knowing, very guarded. When I saw it, Bardot’s physical differences just vanished for me. I was looking right into Torgon’s face.

“I cut the picture out and stuck it on the wall of my room, so that I could look at it all the time.”

“In October my stepsister was born. They named her Tiffany Amber, which is just the sort of trendy, girlie-pink name you’d expect Marilyn to choose. Tiffie was the best thing, though. I adored her from the moment she popped out, in spite of her stupid name.

“Then came summer again. And my fifteenth birthday in June. Two nights before, Marilyn came down to my room in the basement and sat down on my bed. I was at my desk.

“‘Laurie, I’ve had something very strange happen to me today,’ she said. I could tell by her tone of voice that whatever it was, I wasn’t going to want to hear it.

“‘Your father and I thought we’d do something special for your birthday. We thought a little party at the Bear Butte Inn might be nice,’ she said and looked pointedly at me. ‘A little
surprise
party.’

“She gave me credit for smarts I didn’t have, because I still couldn’t figure out what this was about. The atmosphere, however, was definitely growing overripe. Something awful was going to drop.

“‘I phoned your
friends
, Laurie, to see if they might like to come to the party. And do you realize,’ Marilyn said pointedly, ‘that none of your friends
knows
you?’

“
Arrrggghhhh
! I wanted to drop off my chair in sheer mortification. Having to face Marilyn and my dad over this was nothing compared with what it was going to be like at school after Marilyn had phoned up all these kids I’d been using in my fake-friends scenarios. Most of them didn’t know me enough to even speak to me, much less want to come to my birthday party.

“She wasn’t going to leave it at that, of course. So when I didn’t give her an answer, she shouted for my dad. There was no point trying to lie my way out of it; so, I owned up to what I’d done and made a desperate effort to get my parents to understand just how cornered I’d felt by Marilyn’s demands. No one paid the least bit of attention to my explanation. Marilyn just wanted to know what I’d been doing with myself all those hours I was supposedly with friends. When I told her nothing, that I’d just been on my own, she turned to my dad and said, ‘The way this girl acts is
not
normal, Ron.’ That was the first time anyone had voiced it, although I suspect Marilyn, at least, had been thinking it for some time.

“I got grounded for two full months. Since it was summer, this meant I was stuck hopelessly at home all day with Marilyn and the baby. There was nothing I could do to escape her. All I did was play with Tiffie for hours on end, but there’s only so much you can do with an eight-month-old baby.

“In the end, I was so restless it began to bother Marilyn as much as it did me. Finally, one afternoon, I asked if I could go to the library to get something to read. She said I could. She drove me downtown, told me to stay right there at the library while she did the shopping and then she’d come back to pick me up. Still chastened, I did exactly as I was told. Marilyn was happy with that. She was pleased to see me so obedient, and I’m sure she appreciated the break from me as much as I did from her. So a few days later when I asked to go again, again she said I could. Even though I was still grounded, the library became an acceptable compromise. She liked it because it was wholesome and supervised; I liked it because it was away from her.

“For the first week or two, I happily engrossed myself in the books and magazines. Then the novelty began to wear off and I grew horribly restless.

“In the reference room, there was this enormous oak table about fifteen feet long, maybe five feet wide, and a warm honey colour that had become glossy at the edges by years of shifting readers. I went in there and sat down. The room was virtually empty. It was a hot July day, the perfect sort for picnics or swimming, so most people were outside. This was back before most places had air conditioning, and inside the library the heat was stifling. The sun was streaming down through these high, old-fashioned windows and I remember sitting there, watching the dust motes drifting through the
sunbeams. The room smelled of dust. Dust and wax polish and that strange acidic odor of aging books.

“As I sat, I grew aware of my body calming down. It was a soft, peaceful sensation, almost a sinking, as if all the tension was oozing downwards to my feet and running out across the floor. I sat for several minutes just feeling it.

“There were these small containers of stubby little pencils dotted down the centre of the table and next to them, piles of scratch paper so that people could make reference notes. I reached over and took one of the pencils and half a dozen small sheets of paper and I began to write …”

Laura paused. The room became very quiet.

“I began to write Torgon’s name over and over again on the little pieces of paper. And then … I just started to write. It was the first time …

“As I wrote, the walls of the library vanished, the table dissolved, the barrier between us disappeared. I wasn’t me anymore. I was able to be in her world, to see it, to hear it, to feel it in a way that was as immediate and awesome as that first experience I’d had of her in childhood. And just as that first moment on the path through the vacant lot when I was seven had changed everything, so too now, my picking up that pencil in the library, again changed everything.”

“I’
ve brought in the story I started that day in the library,” Laura said. “I thought maybe you’d like to read it. ‘In context’, I suppose you could say.”

“Yes, I’m appreciating these stories,” James replied. “They add an extra dimension to what you’ve been telling me.”

“This was a turning point, starting to write,” Laura said. “Not just in regards to what was to become my future career but … the whole experience went to another level in a way that I didn’t appreciate at the time. I’m not sure I still quite understand it, but that was the point at which things started to change.”

As Torgon approached the hut, she saw the Seer standing in the doorway. He wore his long, formal gown, so she knew he’d come to perform the usual rites for a newborn child. The father, Donar, too, was there. It would have been his first glimpse of his newborn daughter after his wife Anil’s three-day lying in. When Torgon reached him, Donar went fully down to prostrate himself in the dust at Torgon’s feet, as a worker should
.

“Rise.”

There were tears in his eyes as he came to his knees. “Forgive Anil,” he pleaded. “She has wanted a child for so long.”

They went into the hut, dark already with afternoon shadows. There was no lamp burning, only the fusty gloom of unaired rooms. Torgon could scent blood from the birthing.

The baby clutched to her, Anil sat huddled amid the birthing straw. The baby was alive. That’d been Torgon’s initial fear, that Anil was keeping a stillborn infant to her breast.

Tears ran over Anil’s cheeks. From her position she could not prostrate herself in obeisance, but she bent her head.

Torgon knelt beside her. “Here, let me see,” she said gently and held out her hands for the child
.

Slowly, sadly, Anil unwound the garments binding the child to her and put it into Torgon’s waiting hands
.

The baby’s lip was cleaved right up to the nose, leaving a spreading gap. “Ah,” Torgon said, rising with the child in her arms. “It has had a moon kiss.” Gently inserting her finger into the infant’s mouth, Torgon examined it. The parting went back into the soft palate of the mouth
.

“Please do not take her,” Anil whimpered. “She has survived to her three-day feeding. She is strong.”

“No,” Torgon said gently. “It cannot be.”

“Please
? I will feed her myself. With a small spoon and the milk from my breast,” Anil pleaded, the tears rolling down over her cheeks. “I will care for her. She will be no burden.”

“No,” Torgon said. “A moon-kissed baby never thrives.” And with that, she took the infant and left
.

Gently binding it close to her body, Torgon began the climb up the steep path to the high holy place. The path broke through the trees and Torgon could see the summit of the cliff, dazzlingly white in the setting sun. Steadying the baby against her, Torgon went down on one knee to show deference to Dwr and The One in this holy place. Then rising, she continued on up onto the precipice
.

When she reached the top, Torgon sat down cross-legged in the grass. The baby cried from hunger, a weak, ribbony sound. It made water as she undressed it, the urine hot across Torgon’s thigh. She smiled at it, feeling the softness of its skin with her fingertips. Then she unstrapped the small ceremonial dagger at her wrist
.

Lifting the child over her head, holding it face upward to the sky, she spoke the holy words before lowering it again into her lap. Bending forward, Torgon kissed the child on its mouth to acknowledge that she knew only its body was defective, and so, in honouring the soul with a holy kiss, its soul would be allowed to return freely to The One. Finally unsheathing the ornate dagger, she slit its throat and let the blood flow out over her hands and onto the soft white fabric of her clothes
.

The lake shimmered darkly in the starlight. Standing at the water’s edge, the Seer in his long white robes looked almost incandescent. Beyond him the shadowy water lapped restlessly at the shore. He knelt before Torgon, going down in full obeisance, his withered old body prostrate on the ground. Then soundlessly he rose and began to unfasten the front of her bloodied clothing. He undressed her entirely, laying each piece on a small wooden raft that rested on the shoreline, until at last she stood naked in the autumn darkness. Without hesitation, Torgon then walked into the icy water until she was neck-deep and remained there. The Seer set light to the small raft containing the blood-stained
clothing and pushed it out into the lake. Then he poured sacred oils into the water and they spread out under the flames in iridescent ripples. Like a fallen star, the raft burned brilliantly in the forest darkness
.

Torgon emerged wet and shivering to stand on the shoreline while the Seer clothed her in new vestments. These weren’t the benna’s clothes but the long, loose, coarsely-woven garments of the dead. He pulled them on roughly, as if he were dressing an inanimate object
.

Then he turned and began to walk through the forest. Torgon followed. No shoes were allowed her until she was reborn, nor any light, even in this darkest hour. She couldn’t re-enter the compound while she was still unclean, so he took her to the isolation hut. Once she was inside, he barred the small door, anointed the handle with holy oils and strewed the doorstep with the scented herbs used in preparation of the dead body. Then he began a high keening to mourn her death. Then silence. With inaudible footsteps, the Seer had slipped away into the forest
.

As Torgon’s eyes adjusted to the dark, she was able to pick out the small rectangular window on the eastern wall that would provide the only light in the small hut during daylight hours. It was too high to see out of, but while in isolation, one was not meant to be seeing out; and this late at night, so deep in the forest, that made little difference anyway. The window was only a small patch of lesser darkness
.

Miserably cold, Torgon clutched the robe tightly around her in a desperate effort to get warm again
. Why was this the way things are?
That thought came to her with unexpected brightness, like sunlight through the golden autumn leaves. She’d wondered this on other occasions, of course, but then only for herself. So many of the rites and rituals meant suffering that it
was hard not to question them, especially in the beginning when she was first learning to discipline her mind and body in the way of a benna
.

Now, however, it was the moon-kissed child’s face she saw and when this question came to her, it was with the flickering brilliance of insight
.

The Power?

Why should she feel the Power now? It was Dwr’s will that malformed babies should die. Why would Dwr’s holy Power make her question it?

It
was
the Power, bright and shining in the infrangible darkness of the hut. Resplendent luminosity suffused her mind
. Why are things as they are?
the Power whispered
. Why did she accept them?

Torgon sat back. Why should the Power ask this of her?

When Torgon awoke, it was Mogri’s face bent close. Taking a soft cloth, Mogri wiped away the perspiration from Torgon’s temples
.

Torgon turned her head to see the familiar white walls of her cell in the compound. “What are you doing here?” she whispered
.

“Shhh,” Mogri said. Leaning down, she dipped the cloth in warm water and brought it up again. With it came the green, piquant smell of water herbs.