Until the Celebration (5 page)

He had been very frightened, so when some of the others passed him on their way back to the opening in the Root, he followed them, and returned to Erda.

And two days later, when Raula had talked him into returning and taking her, they found that a new and very large party of guards had been posted and everyone was being turned away.

But new things continued to happen. There soon began to be more food on the table-stones of Erda. Only a little more at first, and at times, strange things that Charn had never before tasted and wouldn’t have liked at all except that he was so hungry. And then, before long, there was talk of moving above the Root.

Charn wasn’t at all sure he wanted to, at first. It seemed to him that if you went to live above the Root, it would be very tiring to have to come so far every time you wanted to visit the people and places you knew best. But the grown-ups of the clan talked constantly of moving, although some of them were against it because it was still forbidden by the Council.

The guards had been removed, however, since most of them seemed to have been encouraging instead of preventing the traffic to the forest floor. And there were many in Erda who took the rulings of the Council as a child takes the advice of parents—as well meant, but not necessarily binding.

The first surface cities were already springing up on the forest floor. Built for the most part in makeshift fashion and of odd combinations of materials, they were inhabited, some said, by light-headed young people who cared little for Council law and less for responsibility to their clans and places of service. But although Charn’s father sometimes agreed with those who spoke against the first surface dwellers, he still talked constantly about moving above the Root—and soon, very soon.

“We’ll wait for the Council to lift the forbiddance,” he said, “if the wait is not too much longer. But they should understand that we have had too much of waiting and of patience—generations too much.”

“Who are they, father?” Charn asked.

“The Ol-zhaan,” Prelf said.

“They are saying that there are no more Ol-zhaan,” Charn’s mother said. “They say there is no difference now between Ol-zhaan and Kindar.”

“We’ll see. Perhaps they have changed. But it seems to me that they could not have changed so quickly. Can an Ol-zhaan become a Kindar simply by changing the color of his shuba?”

Nevertheless, they remained in the cavern until they heard about the Root. They thought at first it was only a rumor—there had been so many rumors—but it soon became apparent that it was really true. The Root was truly withering! After being invulnerable for hundreds of years, the Root appeared to be quite suddenly losing its resistance to fire and steel, and new openings were being made in many places. Soon after the rumors began, Charn’s father went out to see for himself; and when he came back to the cavern, he began to make preparations to leave the clan and move to the forest floor.

“But why?” Charn asked. “If we’re going to leave Erda, why can’t we move up into the grunds? Why can’t we go to live in Orbora, like Teera, and wear shubas and glide and weave our nids from tendril like the Kindar do?”

“We will, we will,” Prelf said, grabbing Charn and hugging him tightly. “We will someday. But it may be a long time from now. In the meantime, we can at least live in freedom—above the Root.”

“But why will it be a long time before we can live high up like the Kindar?”

“Because there are no nid-places for us yet or shubas for us to wear. And it would be dangerous to try to live in the heights before we have all learned to glide. There are your little brothers to think about, Charn. They are too young to realize the danger, and they would have to be watched constantly until they learned to glide.”

“But what about the Kindar children?”

“They are watched very carefully until they are two years old and can be sent to the Gardens to learn to glide. And even so, some of them fall, as you know. The Councilors have said that there are nid-places being built for Erdling families as well as special Gardens for our children, but it will take a great deal of time before they are ready. In the meantime we can at least live in light and freedom.”

So Charn went to live in the surface city called Upper Erda, and he soon grew used to the bright days of endless openness, and the close confinement of a tiny crowded nid-place during the long rain-wet nights. But sometimes he was lonely for the cavern and his old playmates. It was Teera he missed most. He longed to see her, but he knew he would probably never play with her again.

Something very strange had happened to Teera, something that Charn found hard to understand. People spoke of Teera now in solemn voices, like the voice of old Vatar when he was telling all the people about the Spirit. Charn knew all the stories by heart—all the things they were saying about Teera. About how Teera and a Kindar girl called Pomma had learned to do uniforce just as it had been done in the early days, and how it was because of what Teera had done that the Ol-zhaan had agreed to the freeing of the Erdlings.

It wasn’t that Charn couldn’t understand what people were saying. It was just that he couldn’t make his image of the holy child of the stories seem anything like his memories of his noisy, fun-loving clan-sibling. He thought about it often and wondered. If he ever saw Teera again, would he recognize her, or would she look entirely different? Would she still like to play—now that she was holy? And did she like gliding and being a Kindar as much as she had always thought she would?

Charn would have been very puzzled if he had known that Teera still had not learned to glide. And he would have been amazed if he had been told that Teera’s life in Green-sky had been, from the beginning, the life of a prisoner. Even now, when she was famous and holy and the object of boundless adoration, she still lived as a prisoner. Teera, herself, found it hard to understand.

At first, of course, she had been kept hidden in the D’ok nid-place because of the danger from the Geets-kel. Then there had been a real prison, while she and Pomma were held hostage by D’ol Regle. That much was easily understood. What was much harder to understand was why—now that there were no more Geets-kel, and she and Pomma were loved and honored by everyone—she was still kept prisoner.

The prison, of course, was large and beautiful. All the great halls and chambers, the latticed passageways and hanging rampways of the enormous palace were theirs to play in and explore. But there were some things that Teera wanted very much to do that could not be done inside the walls of a palace, no matter how large and beautiful.

She wanted to attend a Garden with other children. She wanted to explore the outer forest beyond the city. She wanted to return to Erda, at least briefly, to see old friends and cavern-kin. Most of all, she wanted to learn to glide. And there was one other very important thing that Teera wanted, a simple thing, that now seemed strangely impossible. That was the chance to be with Pomma again.

It was not that she didn’t see Pomma often. They were together daily, but seldom by themselves. The Vine Palace was usually full of people. And on the rare occasions when they were alone together, things were somehow not quite the same.

There were new games—fantasies of parades and processions and assemblies. The playing was grand and glorious and very exciting, but sometimes, afterwards, Teera felt tense and uneasy. Several times she and Pomma resolved not to play such games again. But their old games were not as they had been, and so they returned to the games of glory and honor. The glory and honor were hard to forget, and harder to understand.

Once, when they were alone in the hall of food-taking waiting for the others to arrive, they talked about it. A serving woman came into the room to leave a platter of pan-fruit; and when she saw that Pomma and Teera were there, she came up to them and held out her left hand in a gesture that signified a request for the blessing of Spirit-power. After she had gone, they had looked at each other strangely, and a part of the strangeness was shame.

“It’s like we were Ol-zhaan,” Pomma said. “Like all the people think we are wise and powerful.”

“And holy,” Teera said. “They call us holy.”

Pomma nodded, her lips tucked in a strange, unsteady smile. Curious, Teera tried to pense what lay behind the smile, but Pomma was mind-blocking. Teera sighed. They had seldom blocked with each other in the days before ...

“I wonder,” Pomma said. “I just wonder why?”

“Well, because of the uniforce, of course,” Teera said bluntly.

“I know!” Pomma sounded impatient. “But why is uniforce so—so important?”

Teera only shrugged. She was feeling oddly resentful without really knowing why, except that Pomma ought to know that all this talk was making her uncomfortable.

Then D’ol Falla entered and, in relief, Teera ran and threw her arms around the tiny old woman so hard she almost fell. Together they went back to Pomma, and then D’ol Falla hugged them both, and Teera was somewhat comforted by the strength of her love for them.

Cuddling against D’ol Falla, Pomma asked. “Why is uniforce so important, D’ol Falla? It’s only moving things. Why does it make so much difference?”

“It’s not the moving that is important,” D’ol Falla told them. “It’s the joining together of mind-force—the great growth of power that happens when Spirit-forces unite.

“In the early days, the power of uniforce was used in many ways. In healing, in grunspreking, in kiniporting. Seemingly impossible things were done with uniforce. For a time it seemed possible that it would provide solutions to many problems. There were even some who had begun attempts to store the energy of uniforce for later use, just as the Erdlings now use the stored energy of the black stone.

“There were problems of control, but even so uniforce became a symbol of the future—of progress and hope and limitless possibilities. Then, gradually, it disappeared. So to see it return, as it did, and when it did—for the Rejoyning—was proof and vindication, and for all Green-sky it was the renewal of a legendary promise. There are some who think now that it is our only hope.”

Teera did not understand all that D’ol Falla said, but it was clear that uniforce was much more than they had thought.

Pomma was still asking questions. “Will we have to ...? Will they want us to do it again? To show them? To show all the people?” Her face was tight with anxiety, and Teera was quite certain that D’ol Falla would be able to guess what lay behind the question.

“There have been many requests,” she said. And then, very gently, “Do you want to? Do you want to show the people uniforce?”

“No,” they said, together.

“Then I think you will not have to. Unless—”

“Unless what?” Teera asked.

“I think you will not have to,” D’ol Falla repeated.

But Teera remembered that D’ol Falla had said “Unless.”

W
ITH A MORNING’S DUTIES
behind him and a free half-day ahead, Neric was on his way home to his nid-place in the Stargrund Youth Hall. The branchways were unusually crowded, and Neric pushed his way between silk-clad bodies with poorly concealed impatience. Near Broadtrunk, a passerby staggered as Neric brushed roughly against him, and then, noting the seal of office on Neric’s chest, stepped hastily aside.

“Your pardon, Councilor.”

“Your pardon,” Neric replied and hurried on. If he was impatient, it was not without reason. Four hours at a Citizen’s Senate in Freevald would undoubtedly have exhausted the patience of D’ol Nesh-om, himself. The Senates had been established to allow all the people of Green-sky, both Erdling and Kindar, to take part in solving the problems of the Rejoyning—to provide a place where suggestions could be made and progress reported. But the morning’s session in Freevald, the newest of the surface cities, had been no more than an outpouring of complaints. The report that Neric would take to the Council would be, once again, a dreary listing of grievances, dissatisfactions, and impatient requests.

Neric sighed. He had grown to dread assignment to the Senate meetings, but he supposed they were necessary. Hiro insisted that it was by constant coping with endless small dissatisfactions that disaster had been prevented time and time again in the six months that had passed since the Rejoyning began.

He looked up to see that he was approaching a large crowd, gathered around the platform of a newsinger, and just as he began to wonder why so many people were listening, a quavering gasp arose from the mass of people. The newsinger’s voice had just died away, but now it rose again, high-pitched and clearly agitated.

“Wassou was taken to the healing chambers in Grandgrund, and the Erdling—” Here the newsinger paused as if in search of a permissible word. “The Erdling injurers have not been seen since.”

Reaching the platform, Neric gained the newsinger’s attention by pulling sharply on the wing-panel of his shuba. “Tell me what has happened,” he said. “I am a Councilor. If this matter has not been taken to the Council, it should be, and quickly. Is it the old man who was called D’ol Wassou who was injured?”

“Yes, Councilor. It was the Wassou who was an Ol-zhaan and Geets-kel before the Rejoyning. If you will release my shuba, I was about to begin the singing of it again, from the beginning.”

So, shaking with impatience and anxiety, Neric was forced to listen to the lengthy and stylized account of the attack as it was slowly presented in the song-story of the newsinger. When the telling was finished, at last, Neric went immediately to the nid-place of Hiro D’anhk, the Chief Mediator of the Council, and soon afterwards he was again on his way to the Youth Hall. There, he would have time to eat and rest briefly, and then, having notified Genaa and Raamo, he would report back to the emergency meeting of the Council.

When he reached the Stargrund Youth Hall, Neric found that Raamo was not there. Genaa, however was in her chamber. Although it was midday, she was in her nid and apparently sound asleep. She awoke with obvious reluctance. As she listened to Neric’s news, she shook her head violently from time to time, as if to convince herself that she had indeed awakened, and that what she was hearing was not part of some frightful dream.