The Worthing Saga (33 page)

If it is me, I wish to stop. If I have caused it, let it end. But no matter how often he said it, or even shouted it aloud, the drought only deepened, the heat grew worse, and now in distant comers of the forest men and women patrolled to kill anyone who lit a fire; even cookfires were forbidden, because the slightest spark could burn the Forest of Waters from end to end. And wagons rolled over the Heaven Mountains or upriver from the sea or down from the Top of the World, filled with water jars and water barrels, to buy a farm for a barrel, a house for a jar, a child for a cup, and a woman's virtue for a swallow of it. But water was life, so worth the price.

The cousins and uncles came to Arr and said, Use the gate and let us go. We must go where the water is being sold. Even if we must sell Worthing Farm, we'll do it to save our lives.

But Elijah raged at them. What were their lives, compared to Worthing Farm?

And in return they threatened him with death, until one of them said that whatever Elijah had done to the world, he must be left alive to undo it.

What are you waiting for?
they finally said. Kill us now or let us go—or does it please you to watch us die?

As for Elijah's wife, Arr, and their sons John and Adam, they had no more to drink than anyone else. But it was as if they sucked moisture from the air, or perhaps sank taproots deep into the earth, for their breath did not rattle in their throats and their lips and noses did not bleed and they did not scream for water in the night before they died. Even those who lived over-the-wall did not suffer so badly, for they could sell their souls for water, and survive. Nothing, however, passed the wall of Worthing Farm.

One day Elijah heard Arr planning to use the gate and let the water sellers in. But Elijah knew the hearts of all the cousins and the uncles, and he knew that if the wall were opened they would all leave, all do as Matthew had done, and Worthing Farm would die.

It's dead anyway, they answered him. Look at the desolation. You have killed it.

But he did not open the gate, and he could not wish away the drought.

So on a day of maddening grief, those who survived began to carry all the corpses and lay them on the ground in front of Elijah's door. The babies and the children, the mothers and the wives, the old men and the young men: their parched corpses were a monument in the yard before Elijah's house. He heard them planning it and forbade them. He screamed at them but still they went on. And finally his rage at them was murder, and they died, adding their own fresh bodies to the pile they had made, and there were none left alive within the walls but Elijah's own family.

In an agony of hatred Elijah cursed them for having provoked him. I never wanted you to die! If you had stood beside me and kept my brother here.

And as he railed at the dead, they began to smolder, they began to burn; flames erupted from their abdomens, their limbs were crisp as tinder, and the smoke leapt up into the sky. When the flames were at their brightest, Arr ran from the house and flung the gate into the fire, where it exploded almost at once, the fire was so hot. And then she threw herself among the bodies of her friends and neighbors, whom her husband had made her kill: she blamed him for it with the passion in her heart, because he had not let her use the gate to set them free.

It was only then, in utter anguish, that Elijah wept. Only then that he himself gave water to the world. And as he cried, while his sons watched the awful fire, there came a cloud in the west, so small at first that a man's hand held out from his body could cover it. But Matthew Worthing saw, it from the tower of his inn, the tower that he had built to rise above the treetops so he could see Worthing Farm. Matthew saw the cloud and shouted to the people of his new village, Look, water!

And their hope for rain came into Elijah's mind like an earthquake, and he gasped with the power of it, and he too longed for water with all their longing, and his own besides; and with all the force of his anger and his guilt and his grief at what he had done, all that together in him called for the rain. The cloud grew, and the wind came up, and the brittle branches of the trees began to shatter in the wind; thunder pealed out and lightning raced across the blackened sky, and the rain began to fall like seas upon the forest. The rivers filled almost at once, the ground was torn and stripped, the trees caught fire from lightning but the rain soon put the fires out.

Then through the eyes of the villagers, Elijah saw the one fire he was glad of. The tower of Matthew's inn began to burn, with him in it; but Matthew raised his hand and the fire went out, vanished as if it had never been. I was right, thought Elijah. I was right, he lied to us, he had more power than to shut us out, I was right, I was right.

When the storm died away Worthing Farm was desolate; even the corpses had been swept into the torrent of the river. The gate was gone, which meant the wall was also gone; Elijah had nowhere else to go now, but to take his sons, leave Worthing Farm, and go west ten miles to his brother's inn, and beg forgiveness from him for the great harm he had done the world. But I was right, he said to himself, even as his brother galled him with his kindness and cruelly named him half owner of Worthing Inn. I was right, and Mother should have kept you in.

But he never said it aloud. Said, in fact, almost nothing for the rest of his life. He even held his tongue when Matthew took Elijah's sons into the street and said to them, “See that sign? That says Worthing Inn. That's all that's left of Worthing now, you and your father, and me and my wife and our children yet to come. We're all that's left of Worthing now, thank God. It was a prison, but at last we're free.”

Lared woke in darkness, to find Jason kneeling beside his bed. “Justice told me the dream was over,” he said. “Your father calls to you.”

Lared got up and went down the stairs. Mother was bending over Father, holding a cup to his lips. Lared wanted water too but didn't ask. Father's eyes had caught him.

“Lared,” Father said. “I had a dream.”

“So did I,” said Lared.

“In my dream, I saw that you blamed yourself for this.” He raised his stump. “I dreamed that you thought I hated you. By Worthing I swear it isn't so. There is no fault to this, I hold you blameless, you are still my son, you saved my life, forgive me if I said a thing to make you take the blame upon yourself.”

“Thank you,” Lared said. He went to his father and embraced him, and his father kissed him.

“Now sleep,” said Father. “I'm sorry that I had them wake you, but I couldn't bear it if you went another hour with such feelings in your heart. By Jason, you're the finest son a man could have.”

“Thank you,” Lared said. Then he started for his truckle bed, but Jason led him up the stairs instead. “Tonight you've earned a better bed than that miserable straw bed by the fire.”

“Have I?”

“You had the memory of Elijah Worthing in you, Lared. It's not a pleasant dream to have.”

“Was it true? There was a drought like that in Stipock's colony, and it ended with the sort of storm, and no one made it happen.”

“Does it matter? Elijah believed that he caused the drought and caused the storm. The rest of his life was shaped as if it were true—”

“But
was
it true?”

Jason pushed him gently down onto the bed and covered him with blankets. “Lared, I don't know. It's the memory of memory. Did all the people of Worthing die that way? Certainly there were no others in the world with my blue eyes, except those they could trace to Matthew and Elijah, but perhaps all the rest were hunted down and killed. As to the storm, there's no one now who can control the weather. But Justice can do other things, things with fire and water, earth and air. Who is to say that once there might not have been one man of all my children who could cause a drought like hell itself, and a storm like the end of the world. Certainly, there's never been such hate as his. Never in all the memories I've see has there been such hate.”

“Compared to him,” Lared whispered, “my hate for you is love.”

“And so it is,” said Jason. “Go to sleep.”

Father was out of bed now, but no one was rejoicing about it. He was foul to be with, stamping around the house with his crutch under his one arm, leaning like a tree in a hard wind, snapping at everyone when the spoke at all. Lared understood why he was so short-tempered, but it didn't make it any easier. Gradually Lared found himself more interested in being upstairs in Jason's room, working on the book, while others found their own strategies for avoiding him. The women stopped coming to the inn for their work; the tinker started visiting from house to house; soon only Mother and Sala and Justice were left in the empty downstairs of the inn. And even Mother avoided him, forcing him to be alone more and more, and his rage and shame grew, for he blamed it on his mutilation that no one came near him if they could help it.

Except Sala. She haunted him. If Mother made her sweep, Sala would soon be sweeping near Father's bed, where he lay brooding; if she played with her mannikins, they danced the May at Father's feet, where he rested by the fire. At such times Father would watch her, and it would keep him quiet for a time. But then he would try to do something—put a log on the tire, grind the pease for the week's porridge—and she would be there also, taking the other end of the log as he struggled with it, brushing back the hard pease that he spilled; and then he would grow savage, railing at her for a clumsy fool and ordering her away. She went, and in a moment returned, quietly, and stayed always within reach of him. “If you don't want trouble,” Mother whispered to her once, “stay away from him.”

“He lost his arm, Mama,” Sala answered, sounding for all the world as if she thought he had mislaid it somewhere.

One evening as the tinker returned to the inn for supper, and Lared came down from upstairs, Sala said to Father, loudly, “Papa, I dreamed of where your arm is!”

There was no talking then, as they waited for Father's rage. But he surprised them: he only looked calmly at her and said, “Where is it?”

“The trees have it,” she said. “So you must do as trees do, and when they lose the end of the branch, they grow it back.”

Father whispered, “Sarela, I'm not a tree.”

“Don't you know? My friend can tree you and wood you. And she looked at Justice.”

Justice looked wordlessly down at the table in front of her, for all the world as if she hadn't understood a word. For a long moment they all stood there, looking at Justice. Then Sala began to cry, “Why is it forbidden!” she said. “It's my papa!”

“Enough,” said Mama. “Sit to eat and stop your crying, Sala.”

Father sat gravely at the head of the table, laying down the crutch beside him. “Eat,” he said. And he began lifting the spoon to his mouth, again and again, to finish the meal as quickly as he could.

Jason had not been at table, but of course it was no accident that he came in now. He walked to Father carrying tongs from the forge and a bar of iron. “Somehow,” he said, “this is supposed to become a scythe.”

Mother took in her breath sharply, and the tinker looked at his plate. Father, however, merely studied the bar of iron. “It's too short for a scythe.”

“Then I need you to find me a bar that
will
do.”

Father smiled wryly. “Among all your talents, Jason, are you also a smith?” Father touched Jason's upper arm, which was strong as a man's arm should be, but slim as a child's compared to Father's.

Jason touched his own arm and laughed. “Well, we have a chance to see if a man gets an arm like yours from hammering, or hammers well because he has the arm.”

“You're not a smith,” said Father.

“Then perhaps I can, with both hands, serve as the left hand of a smith.”

It was a bargain, and Father was good at bargaining. “What's to gain for you?”

“Little to gain, except good company and something to do that's worth doing. Lared is writing things now that I never knew. He doesn't need me.”

Father smiled. “I know what you're doing, Jason. But let's see if it will work.” He turned to Sala. “Perhaps I can have two arms where I used to have one.”

He got up from the table and put on his layers of coats and scarves; Jason helped him, and did not get shouted at once, because he knew just when Father wanted help and when he didn't, and just how much to do.

Lared watched them leave, thinking: I should have been the one to stand beside him at the forge. But I must write Jason's book, and so he takes my place beside my father. Yet he could not convince himself Ito be angry, or jealous, or to grieve. He had never longed to be a smith. He was almost relieved that someone else would stand with Father before the tire.

In a half hour they all heard the welcome sound of the hammer ringing in the forge, and Father cursing at the top of his lungs. That night Father stormed through the house, raging about muddleheaded fools who can't handle anything right and a scythe that will never be good for harvesting anything but hay. Father was interested in something again, and life would be bearable for the family.

And in the night Lared dreamed an ancient memory of a boy who lay in bed discovering the hearts of men.

•    •    •

John snored softly beside him, his breath sour from the night's cheese, but Adam was content to let him sleep. As long as John had lain awake, Adam couldn't go exploring. Now he could send his mind away to wander with no fear of John distracting him.

Adam had found this power only a few weeks before. He had been stalking a squirrel, to kill it with a thrown rock, and as he crept slowly forward he kept saying silently to the animal, Hold still, hold still. Squirrels had always held still for him longer than for any of the others—he thought it was because he was so stealthy. But this time the squirrel did not so much as twitch, and when Adam threw the stone and it missed, the squirrel did not scurry up the tree. It still sat, still waited until Adam came right up to it and picked it up and beat it against the tree. It never moved at all.

He played with the boys at the swimming hole. They had always ducked each other in the water, played at drowned man; Adam could do it better now, and when Raggy swam under the water, he made him think that up was down until the air was a knife in his lungs. Then he let him up. Raggy came out of the water crying, terrified, and would not go in again whatever the boys said. But once Adam had done it to enough of the boys, they grew afraid and said there was a monster in the water, and they wouldn't swim anymore.