Astra (42 page)

‘We thought she should have them for today,’ Klor said from his seat beside Nimma. Astra waited for Nimma to reply too, but she didn’t.

‘Oh, I’m so glad.’ Freyja stroked one of the beads. ‘They’re such a wonderful gift from Elpis too, aren’t they, Astra?’

She couldn’t speak. The glass beads felt like lumps of cast iron on her head. Why had Nimma given them to her if she didn’t really want her to wear them? And why was Ahn here? The ceremony was for children and parents and teachers – Hokma hadn’t said anything about Ahn coming.

‘Everyone in?’ Pan called.

‘Everyone in!’ Klor reached over and rolled the passenger door shut, Pan started the engine and they were off.

* * *

They sang Gaia hymns on the way, and in between the adults reminisced about their own Blood & Seed Days. When Klor and Nimma were young there weren’t any bioregional ceremonies, or even petal-sewing tasks. The ceremonies were held within the community and were all slightly different. Sometimes there were only one or two children involved, though, and so neighbouring communities often joined forces and created local gatherings. Gradually, as people realised that it was important for Is-Land to have stable traditions, IMBOD had made Blood & Seed Day part of the national curriculum. The petal-sewing had been assigned, and the hymns and bead-strings standardised. Hokma, Ahn, Freyja and Pan all had memories of their schools being transformed on the day, and the older and younger children watching them weave about on the lawns or in the woodlands. Then, as the Boundary had grown more secure, IMBOD had established the five Congregation Sites and given the Bioregional Wheel Meets control over the ceremonies. It was also decided not to invite other children any more: until you had children of your own, Blood & Seed Day should be a unique event in your life. You weren’t allowed to talk about it with younger children, so Astra and Yoki had only a general idea of what to expect. They did know that the laser ritual had been added especially for the Sec Gens, bringing an extra dimension of importance to the night. Klor and Nimma had attended Peat’s ceremony last year, of course; they said that although he’d been nervous at first, he’d shone with excitement from beginning to end.

‘Will Blood & Seed Day ever evolve into a
national
ceremony?’ Yoki asked. ‘All the different Congregation Sites could take turns, and everyone could come from all over Is-Land.’

The van bumped over a rut in the road and Kali’s beads knocked against Astra’s temple. She wanted to undo the braid and take them off, but that was impossible –
unthinkable
– like putting Sheba’s photo into the manufacture-loop recycle bin.

‘It’s been talked about,’ Pan told Yoki. ‘But something similar was tried once and it was a logistical nightmare, so the idea was dropped.’

Freyja coughed.

‘What do you mean?’ Yoki asked. ‘When was it tried?’

Pan’s eyes were on the road and his shoulders were square at the wheel. After a second, Freyja replied, ‘During the Eastern infiltration, in the year of Klor and Nimma and Sheba’s great sacrifice, IMBOD decided that it was too dangerous to have the ceremony at the dry forest site. So the dry forest schools joined the ash fields ceremony. It was the year after my own ceremony, so I remember it well.’

Yoki, sitting beside Astra, gripped his staff tighter. Astra knew why. Apart from Hokma, she couldn’t remember another Or adult ever mentioning Sheba in front of Nimma. Neither she nor Yoki turned round. Behind her, Nimma’s grief was like a forest cobweb in the night: she couldn’t see it, but it was drifting over her, getting stuck in her hair, caught in her breath.

Suddenly she felt smothered in guilt. Of course Nimma would feel sad tonight.

‘It was a seven- or eight-hour journey, Yoki,’ Klor said into the silence. ‘People had to stay overnight, so their work and other Shelter children suffered. Some mothers with infants stayed behind and missed the ceremony altogether.’

‘A national ceremony would be far too long,’ Hokma said firmly. ‘I’ve never thought it was a good idea.’

‘Sec Gens would probably have the stamina for it,’ Ahn said from the back, ‘but having so many people drawn to one location could make Is-Land vulnerable, Yoki.’

Yoki swung around. ‘Could Non-Landers attack the
Blood & Seed ceremony
?’

‘Is-Land isn’t vulnerable, Yoki.’ Astra raised her voice but kept the tone level. She wasn’t contradicting Ahn, she hoped, but reassuring her Shelter sibling. That would show Nimma she was a good sister, worthy of the beads Sheba had loved. And it would also show Ahn that she could fit in with the Sec Gens. ‘The Boundary is well defended.’

‘Of course it is, Astra.’ From behind her, Nimma spoke crisply. ‘But we don’t want the roads blocked, causing chaos that Non-Landers could scheme to take advantage of.’

‘Oh, politics! Let’s not talk politics for once, my darling,’ Klor exclaimed beside her. ‘Look, Or-kids. A gap in the trees – there’s the steppes! Gaia’s stubbly cheeks!’

‘Klor!’ Nimma protested, and all the adults laughed. Yoki giggled too, and bounced in his seat, and Astra relaxed. The bead braid was heavy, yes,
but she didn’t mind. She wasn’t going to spoil tonight by being a selfish non-Sec Gen. Tonight was going to be perfect. Tonight she was going to belong.

They were leaving New Bangor, now, taking the road to Sippur. As twilight began to fall, the adults started singing ‘Gaia’s Endless Bounty’ and soon they were all harmonising. Then, suddenly, the glint of the Boundary was visible on the right. Instead of sailing past it, as she and Hokma had done in the bus so long ago, Pan turned up into the mountains and joined a stream of traffic flowing towards the Blood & Seed ceremony: buses, cars, minivans and horse-drawn carts full of children and their parents.

* * *

They drove into a big field filled with vehicles and people. Just inside the entrance a parking steward in a bright yellow tabard flashed a STOP sign at them. Pan unrolled the window.

‘Happy Blood & Seed Day,’ the steward greeted him. Pan told him which school they were from and the steward pointed at a tall blue flag in the corner of the field.

‘Golden Bough’s over there. Most of the schools are here now. When everyone’s gathered and ready, you’ll hear the signal to enter the site at the foot of the flag.’

The fourteen school flags were lined up along the edge of the wood that protected the Boundary. More parking stewards helped direct the van across the bumpy field, down a double row of vehicles parked in front of the blue flag and into a space beside a wooden cart and horse. It was Silvie’s Shelter mothers’ cart, Astra knew, the one they sometimes brought from Higgs to New Bangor laden with produce. Today it was decorated with bright green boughs and lengths of silver-and-red rope Silvie and her community siblings had knitted. Yoki slid out of the van and Astra joined him on the grass. Ahead of them, their friends from school were milling around on the verge of the field, examining each other’s hipbeads, necklaces and staffs. Their parents and some of the teachers were there too, chatting. Mr Ripenson had come earlier to help set up; he was standing next to Mrs Raintree at a folding table, pouring cups of tea from a flask. He noticed Astra and Yoki and waved.

‘Go on then,’ Nimma said, ‘join the others – but don’t wander off. We’ll be going in soon.’

Astra, shiny and strong in her hipbeads and brand-new boots, carrying her staff with its beautiful heart-shaped knob, with all her Shelter parents
beaming at her, strode with Yoki down the avenue of vehicles to join their classmates. The braid beads swung gently from her head and the hipbeads rolled over her skin and clicked lightly against each other.

As her friends parted to let her and Yoki join their Murmuration, Leaf reached out to finger Kali’s beads. ‘O Gaia, those are so gorgeous. I just want to suck them!’

Soon Astra was right in the middle of the crush, telling the story of Kali and Atlantis, and checking out everyone else’s hipbeads. All the strings had to be made of at least three IMBOD-recognised Blood & Seed beads, one brown, one red and one white, from a choice of wooden, nut, bone, glass, mother-of-pearl or ceramic beads and a range of semiprecious stones: garnets, dark carnelian, red jasper, rubies, moonstones, opals and pearls. No one in the Golden Bough Murmuration had a ruby – those were for wealthy urban children – but the school had decided that all the girls should have a garnet as a centre stone and the boys a moonstone, and Leaf one of each. Some of the larger beads were carved into lacy patterns, others were painted with tiny dotted or flowered patterns. Even the smaller beads were all different: translucent or opaque, flat discs or spheres, faceted or smooth. Tedis’ necklace alternated moonstone cubes with carved round oakwood beads. Leaf’s divider beads were white ceramic, hand-painted with red petals. Each bead string was a power cord that connected you with Gaia. You would keep it forever, and wear it in your Gaia-bonding ceremonies, when a loved one died and during the birth of your children. At the end, you would be burned or buried in it.

The sun was setting now. To the west the sky was flushed. The evening air was warm and supple. Rubbing everyone else’s beads between her fingertips, explaining over and over how Kali had worn a rubber wetsuit and iron lungs to buy her Murano beads in Neuropa’s famous underwater city, Astra almost forgot about Ahn. There was great excitement too over Silvie and Sultana, who were both wearing blood panties, Sultana having had her first bleed in sync with the ceremony. The school would score points for this. Tedis was wondering if they had time to send scouts to check out the other schools and see how many blood-panty girls they had when Baz pointed into the air and asked, ‘What’s that?’

A Kezcam was swivelling above them, a small black ball punctuating the deepening blue heavens.

‘It’s the camera,’ Astra said. ‘We’re not supposed to look at it, remember.’

‘Yeah, Baz.’ Tedis punched his arm. ‘Was that you at rehearsal or did you send your Green Spoon Room clone?’

‘Ha ha. I didn’t think it would look like a burnt testicle.’

Everyone laughed. Carefully, Astra cast an eye out over the field. Ahn was standing by a horse and cart, the Kezcam bag on his hip and Tablette in hand. He was swiping the screen and scanning the air above the crowd in his practised way. Hokma and Mr Ripenson were in front of the tea table and they were watching Ahn too. Then Mr Ripenson raised his hand and as if jerking herself awake, Hokma stepped over to join Nimma and Klor.

The sun had set.
Whooo hooo. Whooo hooo
. Mr Ripenson made the call of an owl and the children rushed to line up behind him in order of height, shortest to tallest, alternating staff hands like rowers with their oars on a scull. The other teachers and parents following in single file, they entered the paperbark woods along the edge of the field and passed into the Congregation Site.

* * *

The Congregation Site was a clearing between the woods and the Boundary. From the road it was a golden wink, but here the Boundary was a towering screen, a gilded curtain of swooning light running between two dark mountains and disappearing at either end into the woods. The Boundary was imposing, impenetrable: two watchtowers jutted up either side of the clearing and IMBOD soldiers, Astra knew, were patrolling the parapets behind its fiery veil. But at the same time the Boundary was enchanting, intoxicating, exhilarating. Beneath the royal blue twilight sky its bright yellow and orange flames mingled and rippled to the ground like an endlessly falling bolt of sateen. Looking at it was like watching a cascade of golden salmon leaping down a waterfall. The Boundary was the Or Story Fountain, but ten times higher and infinitely longer. It was Tabby held under the covers at night when you were little, filling your vision with soothing colours and ushering your brainwaves into Beta-flow. It was the flare inside you when you peaked and remained peaking for an eternity – but it was there for everyone to see and share. The Boundary was Gaia’s sacred girdle, Her holy ring of fire.

Moving towards the Boundary, Astra felt her legs begin to drag, as if a magnet in the earth was pulling her to the ground to worship Gaia right here, right now. But she couldn’t stop: she had to keep walking, following
Leaf down the centre aisle between the site’s amphitheatre seating towards the Blood & Seed labyrinth.

The fourteen schools were to stand in rows, seven on the right side of the labyrinth entrance and seven on the left; their parents and teachers sat on the benches behind them. Mr Ripenson was ushering the children into their row, behind a school from Cedaria.

Peat had not been allowed to tell her and Yoki what the labyrinth looked like, only that it was awesome. All Astra knew was that it was set out in a Chakravyuha pattern, an ancient Hindu battle formation. The first time the children walked the labyrinth would be at the ceremony – in rehearsal they had simply walked around in a circle, chanting their hymns. Here, as she took her place in the row and peered between the heads of the students from Cedaria, she could see the pattern for the first time. The Bioregional Wheel Meet had paved it with red marble stones, bordered with beds of white irises and lilies. Solar garden lamps planted at regular intervals between the flowers lit the path, which doubled back on itself in wide circles until it reached a tight spiral at the centre. It was supposed to look like a blooming lotus or a spinning chakra. Warriors on the rim protected their leaders in the centre, and if the enemy somehow did manage to penetrate, they would find it impossible to escape.

Though the labyrinth looked like a maze, there was only the one path to the centre and back. If you met celebrants coming the other way, you were to step around them. The marble was glossy and the stones, though flat, might be uneven and slippery to walk on, so you had to walk slowly and use your staff for balance. Fundamentally, though, you didn’t have to worry about anything as you walked the labyrinth. It would pull you to the centre and then release you.

Everyone had entered the site now. The sky was darkening and the Boundary flames were shading from orange to crimson. Mr Ripenson had gone to join the Golden Bough parents and teachers in the seats. Four IMBOD officers, two men and two women, all tall and toned, processed down the centre aisle and took their places either side of the labyrinth entrance. Behind them, the Boundary imagery morphed from fire to liquid. Now it was as if waves of blood and milk were washing down the screen. Beneath it, the labyrinth shone with an eerie glimmer, the faint auras of the solar lamps almost absorbed by the Boundary’s deepening ambient light. Against the spectacle, the IMBOD officers were dark silhouettes, four black outlines against the pouring wall, the two men
facing the two women on either side of the entrance. Then, from the watchtowers, two spears of bright white light struck the two officers nearest the entrance. Bleached in the beams, they lifted their arms, each bearing aloft a chalice.