An Acceptable Time (4 page)

Polly slid down in the bed to a more comfortable position. Suddenly she felt drowsy. Hadron, who had taken to sleeping with Polly, curled in the curve between shoulder and neck, began to purr.

“Women have come a long way,” her grandmother said, “but there will always be problems—and glories—that are unique to women.” The cat’s purr rose contentedly. “Hadron certainly seems to have taken to you.”

“A hadron,” Polly murmured sleepily, “belongs to a class of particles that interact strongly. Nucleons are hadrons, and so are pions and strange particles.”

“Good girl,” Mrs. Murry said. “You’re a quick learner.”

“Strange particles…” Polly’s eyes closed.—You’d think human beings would be full of strange particles. Maybe we are. Hadrons are—I think—formed of quarks, so the degree of strangeness in a hadron is calculated by the number of quarks.

“Were druids strange?” She was more than half asleep. “I don’t know much about druids.” Polly’s breathing slowed as she pushed her face into the pillow, close to Hadron’s warm fur. Mrs. Murry rose, stood for a moment looking at her granddaughter, then slipped out of the room.

In the morning Polly woke early, dressed, and went downstairs. No one was stirring. The ground was white with mist which drifted across the lawn. The mountains were slowly emerging on the horizon, and above them the sky shimmered between the soft grey of dawn and the blue which would clarify as the sun rose.

She headed outdoors, across the field, which was as wet with dew as though it had rained during the night. At the stone wall she paused, but it was probably too early for Louise the Larger. Polly continued along the path toward the star-watching rock. She had pulled on the old red anorak, and she wore lined jeans, so she was warm enough. She looked up at the sky in surprise as there was a sudden strange shimmering in the air. Then there was a flash as though from lightning, but no thunder. The ground quivered slightly under her feet, then settled. Was it an earthquake? She looked around. The trees were different. Larger. There were many more oaks, towering even higher than the Grandfather Oak. As she neared the star-watching rock she saw light flashing on water, and where the fertile valley had been there was now a large lake.

A lake? She reeled in surprise. Where had a lake come from? And the hills were no longer the gentle hills worn down by wind and rain and erosion, but jagged mountains, their peaks capped with snow. She turned, her flesh prickling, and looked at the rock, and it was the same star-watching rock she had always loved, and yet it was not the same.

“What’s going on?” she asked aloud. Wreaths of mist were dissipating to reveal a dozen or more tents made of stretched and cured animal skins. Beyond them was an enormous vegetable garden, and a field of corn, the stalks recently cut and gathered into bunches. Beyond the cornfield, cows and sheep were grazing. On lines strung between poles, fish were hanging. Between stronger poles, beaver skins were being dried and stretched. In front of one of the tents a woman was sitting, pounding something with mortar and pestle. She had black hair worn in a braid, and she was singing as she worked, paying no attention to Polly or anything going on around her, absorbed in the rhythm of the pestle and her song. She looked like a much older version of the girl who had come to the pool.

In the distance Polly heard the sound of a drum, and then singing, a beautiful melody with rich native harmony. The rising sun seemed to be pulled up out of the sky by the beauty of the song. When the music ended, there was a brief silence, and then the noises of the day resumed.

What on earth was happening? Where was she? How could she get home?

She turned in the direction where the Murry house should have been, and coming toward her was a group of young men carrying spears. Instinctively, Polly ran behind one of the great oak trees and peered out from behind the wide trunk.

Two of the men had a young deer slung onto their spears. They continued past her, beyond the tents and the garden and the cornfield and pasture. They wore soft leather leggings and tunics, similar to the clothes worn by the girl who had come to Polly at the pool.

After they were out of sight on the path she leaned against the tree because her legs felt like water. What was happening? Where had the huge forest behind her come from? What about the lake which took up the entire valley? Who were the young men?

Her mind was racing, reaching out in every direction, trying to make some kind of sense out of this total dislocation. Certainly life had proven to her more than once that the world is not a reasonable place, but this was unreason beyond unreason.

Up the path came a young man with hair bleached almost white. He carried a spear, far larger than those of the hunters. At the haft it was balanced by what looked like a copper ball about the size of an apple or an orange, and just below this was a circle of feathers. She hid behind the tree so that he would not see her, dressed in jeans and a red anorak.

In one of the great oaks a cardinal was singing sweetly, a familiar sound. A small breeze blew through the bleached autumn grasses, ruffled the waters of the lake. The air was clear and pure. The mountains hunched great rugged shoulders into the blue of sky, and early sunlight sparkled off the white peaks.

She drew in her breath. Coming along the path toward her was the girl she had seen at the pool, her black braid swinging. She carried an armful of autumn flowers, deep-blue Michaelmas daisies, white Queen Anne’s lace, yellow golden glow. She walked to a rock Polly had not noticed before, a flat grey rock resting on two smaller rocks, somewhat like a pi sign in stone.

The girl placed her flowers on the rock, looked up at the sky, and lifted her voice in song. Her voice was clear and sweet and she sang as simply and spontaneously as a bird. When she was through, she raised her arms heavenward, a radiance illuminating her face. Then she turned, as though sensing Polly’s presence behind the tree.

Polly came out. “Hi!”

The girl’s face drained of color, and she swirled as though to run off.

“Hey, wait!” Polly called.

Slowly the girl walked toward the star-watching rock.

“Who are you?” Polly asked.

“Anaral.” The girl pointed to herself as she said her name. She had on the same soft leather tunic and leggings she had worn the night before, and at her throat was the silver band with the pale stone in the center. The forefinger of her right hand was held out a little stiffly, and on it was a Band-Aid, somehow utterly incongruous.

“What were you singing? It was beautiful. You have an absolutely gorgeous voice.” With each word, Polly was urging the girl not to run away again.

A faint touch of peach colored Anaral’s cheeks, and she bowed her head.

“What is it? Can you tell me the words?”

The color deepened slightly. Anaral for the first time looked directly at Polly. “The good-morning song to our Mother, who gives us the earth on which we live”—she paused, as though seeking for words—“teaches us to listen to the wind, to care for all that she gives us, food to grow”—another, thinking pause—“the animals to nurture, and ourselves. We ask her to help us to know ourselves, that we may know each other, and to forgive”—she rubbed her forehead—“to forgive ourselves when we do wrong, so that we may forgive others. To help us walk the path of love, and to protect us from all that would hurt us.” As Anaral spoke, putting her words slowly into English, her voice automatically moved into singing.

“Thank you,” Polly said. “We sing a lot in my family. They’d love that. I’d like to learn it.”

“I will teach you.” Anaral smiled shyly.

“Why did you run off last night?” Polly asked.

“I was confused. It is not often that circles of time overlap. That you should be here—oh, it is strange.”

“What is?”

“That we should be able to see each other, to speak.”

Yes, Polly thought. Strange, indeed. Was it possible that she and Anaral were speaking across three thousand years?

“You do not belong to my people,” Anaral said. “You are in a different spiral.”

“Who are your people?”

Anaral stood proudly. “We are the People of the Wind.”

“Are you Indians?” Polly asked. It seemed a rude question, but she wanted to know the answer.

Anaral looked baffled. “I do not know that word. We have always been on this land. I was born to be trained as—you might understand if I said I was a druid.”

A native American who was a druid? But druids came from Britain.

Anaral smiled. “Druid is not a word of the People of the Wind. Karralys—you saw him yesterday by the great oak—Karralys brought the word with him from across the great water. You understand?”

“Well—I’m not sure.”

“That is all right. I have told you my name, my druid name that Karralys gave me. Anaral. And you are?”

“Polly O’Keefe. How do you know my language?”

“Bishop.”

“Bishop Colubra?”

Anaral nodded.

“He taught you?” Now Polly understood why the bishop had been concerned when she talked to him about Anaral and Karralys. And it was apparent that he had not told her grandparents or his sister everything he knew about the Ogam stones and the people who walked the land three thousand years ago.

“Yes. Bishop taught me.”

“How do you know him?”

Anaral held out her hands. “He came to us.”

“How?”

“Sometimes”—Anaral swung her black braid over her shoulder—“it is possible to move from one ring to another.”

Polly had a vision of a picture of an early model of a molecule, with the nucleus in the center and the atoms in shells or circles around it. Sometimes an electron jumped from one shell or circle to another. But this picture of the movement of electrons from circle to circle in a molecule didn’t help much, because Anaral’s circles were in time, rather than space. Except, Polly reminded herself, time and space are not separable. “You came to my time yesterday,” she said. “How did you do it?”

Anaral put slim hands to her face, then took them down and looked at Polly. “Karralys and I are druids. For us the edges of time are soft. Not hard. We can move through it like water. Are you a druid?”

“No.” Polly was definite. “But it seems that I am now in your time.”

“
I
am in my time,” Anaral said.

“But if you are, I must be?”

“Our circles are touching.”

“Druids know about astronomy. Do you know about time?”

Anaral laughed. “There are more circles of time than anyone can count, and we understand a few of them, but only a few. I have the old knowledge, the knowledge of the People of the Wind, and now Karralys is teaching me his new knowledge, the druidic knowledge.”

“Does the bishop know all of this?”

“Oh, yes. Do you belong to Bishop?”

“To friends of his.”

“You belong to the scientists?”

“I’m their granddaughter.”

“The one with the crooked fingers and lame knees—Bishop tells me he knows something about time.”

“Yes. More than most people. But not about—not about going back three thousand years, which is what I’ve done, isn’t it?”

Anaral shook her head. “Three thousand—I do not know what three thousand means. You have stepped across the threshold.”

“I don’t know how I did it,” Polly said. “I just set out to walk to the star-watching rock and suddenly I was here. Do you know how I can get back?”

Anaral smiled a little sadly. “I am not always sure myself how it happens. The circles overlap and a threshold opens and then we can cross over.”

As Anaral gestured with her hands, Polly noticed again the Band-Aid anachronistically on Anaral’s finger. “What did you do to your finger?”

“I cut myself with a hunting knife. I was skinning a deer and the knife slipped.”

“How did you get that Band-Aid? You don’t have Band-Aids in your own time, do you?”

Anaral shook her head. “Dr. Louise sewed my finger up for me, many stitches. That was more than a moon ago. It is nearly well now. When I could take off the big bandage, Bishop brought me this.” She held up the finger with the Band-Aid.

“How did you get to Dr. Louise?”

“Bishop brought me to her.”

“How?”

“Bishop saw me right after the knife slipped. The cut was deep, oh, very deep. I bled. Bled. I was scared. Crying. Bishop held my finger, pressing to stop the blood spurting. Then he said,‘Come,’ and we ran—Bishop can really run—and suddenly we were in Dr. Louise’s office.”

“You don’t have anybody in your own time who could have taken care of the cut for you?”

“The Ancient Grey Wolf could have. He was our healer for many years, but he died during the cold of last winter. And his son, who should have followed him, died when the winter fever swept through our people a few turns of the sun ago. Cub, the Young Wolf, who will become our healer, still has much to learn. Karralys of course could have helped me, but he was away that day, with the young men, hunting.”

“Karralys is a druid from Britain?”

“From far. Karralys is he who came in the strange boat, three turns of the sun back, blown across the lake by a hurricane of fierce winds. He came as we People of the Wind were mourning the death of our Great One, felled by an oak tree uprooted in the storm, picked up like a twig and flung down, the life crushed out of him. He was very old and had foretold that he would not live another sun turn. And out of the storm Karralys came, and with him another from the sea, Tav, who is almost white of hair and has skin that gets red if he stays out in the sun.”

Tav. That must be the young man with the spear.

“Where did they come from, Karralys and Tav?”

“From the great waters, beyond the rivers and the mountains. And lo, at the very moment that Karralys’s boat touched the shore, the wind dropped, and the storm ended, and a great rainbow arched across the lake and we knew that the Maker of the Stars had sent us a new Great One.”

“And Tav?” Polly asked.

Anaral continued, “Tav was in the canoe half dead with fever. Even with all their skill, Karralys and Grey Wolf had a hard time bringing the fever down. Night after night they stayed with Tav, praying. Cub, the Young Wolf, was beside them, watching, learning. The fever went down with the moon and Tav’s breathing was suddenly gentle as a child’s and he slept and he was well. They are a great gift to us, Karralys and Tav.”