Earthborn (Homecoming) (10 page)

“Go, at once. You are free men. If you want to punish us for imprisoning you, you have only to leave and we will make no effort to stop you. But if you have mercy on us, come back with the rest of your companions and let us counsel together on what we can do to win free of the Elemaki.”

Chebeya worked in silence, trying not to watch as two of Pabulog’s sons kept knocking Luet down. It made her want to scream, and yet she knew that any protest would only make things worse for everyone. Yet what kind of woman can bear to let her little child be mistreated by thugs and do nothing, say nothing, simply continue to work as if she didn’t care?

Luet began to cry.

Chebeya stood upright. Immediately two of the diggers started toward her with their heavy whips. Of course they were watching her, every move she made, because she was Luet’s mother. So she stopped, she said nothing, just stood there.

“Back to work!” said the digger.

Chebeya looked at him defiantly for a moment, then bowed down again to hoe the maize.

Where was the Keeper of Earth? In the days since Akma had his dream that the rescuers weren’t coming, Chebeya had asked the same question over and over. If the Keeper cares enough about us to send Akma a dream, why doesn’t she
do
something? Akmaro said that the Keeper is testing us, but what is the test and how do we pass it? Does the Keeper want us to turn into a nation of cowards? Or does she want us to revolt against Pabulog’s hideous children and so die? We must each think of a way, Akmaro had said. We must find a way out of this dilemma ourselves, that is the test that the Keeper has set for us. And once we find that way, the Keeper will help us.

Well, if the Keeper was so smart, why didn’t she come up with a few suggestions herself?

No one knew better than Chebeya how their slavery was destroying them. Few knew of her gift, and those only women, except of course for her husband; but where once she had been able to alert Akmaro to small rifts in the community before they could become open quarrels, now all she could do was watch in despair as the bonds connecting friend to friend, parent to child, brother to sister all weakened, thinned to almost nothingness. They are making us into animals, depriving us of our human affections. All we care about now is survival, avoiding the whip. Each time we cower and let our children be mistreated, we love those children a little less, because it is only by not loving them as much that we can bear it to see them suffer.

Not Akmaro, though. He loved his children more and more; in the night he whispered to her how proud he was of their strength, their courage, their understanding. But perhaps this was because Akmaro had a seemingly limitless tolerance for emotional pain. He could suffer for his children—no one knew better than Chebeya how much he suffered—and yet he clung all the tighter to them because of it. He is not
afraid of his own love for them, the way so many other parents are. Am I like him? Or like them?

What worried Chebeya most in her own family was the way young Akma seemed to be growing more and more distant from his father. Could the boy be blaming Akmaro for not saving him from the persecution of the sons of Pabulog? It couldn’t be that—if Luet could understand, Akma could also. So what was it that made Akma flee from what had once been a tight connection between him and his father?

Chebeya mocked herself silently. Why am I worrying about tension between father and son? In a week or a month or a year we’ll all be dead—murdered or dead of hunger or disease. Then what will it matter why Akma didn’t have the same loyalty to his father that he used to have?

I wish I could talk to Hushidh or Chveya, one of the ancient ravelers. They must have understood better than I do the things that I see. Does Akma hate his father? Is it anger? Fear? I watch the loyalties shift and change, and sometimes it’s obvious why the changes come, and sometimes I have almost no idea. Hushidh and Chveya were never uncertain. They always knew what to do, they were always wise.

But I am not wise. I only know that my husband is losing our son’s love. And what will I be in Luet’s eyes, her own mother, when I stand by in silence and let these bullies mistreat her?

Chebeya felt herself filled with a sudden and irresistible resolve. They mean to kill us eventually. Better to die with Luet certain that her mother loves her.

Chebeya stood upright again.

The diggers had already looked away from her, but they noticed soon enough that she had stopped her work. They moved toward her.

Chebeya pitched her voice to be heard clearly by the sons of Pabulog. “Why are you so frightened of me?” she said.

It worked—one of the boys answered her. The third
son, the one called Didul. “I’m not frightened of you!”

“Then why don’t you push
me
down, instead of a little girl half your size?” Chebeya let her voice fill with scorn, and saw with pleasure how Didul’s face flushed.

Around her, other adults were muttering. “Hush. Enough. Quiet now. They’ll beat us all.”

Chebeya ignored them. She also ignored the digger guards with their upraised whips, who were already almost upon her. “Didul, if you aren’t a coward, take a whip and beat me yourself!”

One of the diggers’ whips landed on her back. She winced and staggered under the weight of the blow.

“You’re just like your father!” she cried out to him. “Afraid to do anything yourself!”

Another blow fell. But then Didul called out. “Stop!”

The diggers each let one more blow fall before they obeyed him. It brought Chebeya to her knees, and she could feel the blood flowing down her back. But Didul was coming to her, and so she used the precious moments before he arrived. Rising slowly to her feet, she looked him in the eye and spoke to him. “So, the boy Didul has some pride. How could that happen? The children of Akmaro have courage—no matter how you torment them, have you ever heard them beg for mercy? Do you think that if your father were beaten the way you beat these little children,
he
would be as brave?”

“Don’t speak of my father, blasphemer!” shouted Didul.

But Chebeya could see what Didul could not—that she had troubled him. The connection between him and his brothers was just a little weaker because of her words.

“See what your father teaches you? To bully little children. But
you
have pride. It makes you ashamed to do what your father tells you to do.”

Didul took the whip from the hands of one of the diggers. “I’ll show you my pride, blasphemer!”

“Is it your
pride
that lets you raise a whip against an unarmed woman?”

Ah, the words stung, she could see it.

“No, a true son of Pabulog can only strike out at people who are helpless. Have you ever seen your father stand in battle like a
man
?”

“He would if he had any real men to fight!” shouted Didul.

Chebeya searched her mind for the retort that would work the best. “I think that in your heart, Didul, you understand what your father is doing to you. Why do you think he sent you here to torment us? Why do you think he told you to mistreat the little children? Because he
knew
that you would be ashamed of yourself for doing it. Because he knew that once you had made little children cry, you would know that you were as low and cowardly as he is, so that he would never have to hear his children taunt him, for he will always be able to answer you, ‘Yes, but who was it who beat up on little girls?’”

Infuriated, Didul lashed out. The whip caught her across the shoulder and the end of it wrapped around her and caught her on the cheek. Blood splashed into her eyes and she was blinded for a moment.

“Don’t call my father a coward!” cried Didul.

“Even at this very moment,” she said, “you hate him for making you the kind of coward who answers a woman’s
words with
a whip. If the things I said were not the truth, Didul, they wouldn’t make you so angry.”

“Nothing that you said is true!”

“Everything I said is true, and the proof of it is that when you walk away from here, these guards will beat me to death, just so you never have to listen to me again.” Chebeya spoke with conviction; she feared that what she was saying just might be the truth.

“If they beat you it will be to punish you for lying.”

“If you didn’t believe me, Didul, you would just laugh at what I said.”

Now she had him. She could see the new thread that bound him to
her.
She was winning him away, tearing at his loyalty to his father.

“I
don’t
believe you,” he said.

“You believe me, Didul, because every time you hit one of these little children you’re ashamed. I can see it in your eyes. You laugh, just like your brothers, but you hate yourself for it. You’re afraid that you’re just like your father.”

“I
want
to be just like my father.”

“Really? Then why are you here? Your
father
doesn’t dirty himself by beating up on children with his
own
hands.
He
always sends thugs and bullies to do it for him. No, you can’t be like your father, because there’s still a
man
inside you. But don’t worry—a few more years of beating up on babies and there’ll be no trace of manhood left in your heart.”

As she talked, Udad, Didul’s next older brother, had come up behind him. “Why are you listening to this witch?” Udad demanded. “Have them kill her.”

“That’s the voice of your father,” said Chebeya. “Kill anyone who dares to tell you the truth. Only don’t do it yourself. Have someone else do it for you.”

Udad turned to the diggers. “Why are you standing there, letting her do this? She’s got some kind of magic control of my stupid brother—”

With a cry of rage, Didul turned around and made as if to lash his brother with the whip. Udad cringed and covered his face with his hands and screeched, “Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me!”

“There you see it,” said Chebeya. “That’s what you’ll become, when your father is through with you.”

She could see the last threads binding Didul to Udad turn to rage and shame—a negative connection.

“But are you already like him, Didul? Or is there a man inside you?”

Udad, shamed now, backed away. “I’m going to tell
Pabul that you’re letting Akmaro’s wife turn you against us all!”

“Does that frighten you, Didul?” asked Chebeya. “He’s going to tell on you. Does that frighten you?”

“I’m leaving,” said Didul. “I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.”

“Yes, leaving me so the guards can kill me,” said Chebeya. “But I promise you that if I die here today, you’ll hear my voice inside your heart forever.”

Defiant anger sparking in his eyes, Didul turned to the diggers. “I want to see her alive tomorrow, with no more lashes on her than she already has.”

“That’s not what your father said,” one of them retorted.

Didul grinned savagely at him. “He said to obey his sons. If this woman is harmed, I’ll have you skinned alive. Do you doubt me?”

Ah, the fire in his eyes! Chebeya could see that he had the gift of command. She had kindled his pride and now it was burning, burning in his heart.

The diggers backed off.

Didul tossed the whip back to the one who had lent it to him. Then he spoke one more time to Chebeya. “Get back to work, woman.”

She looked him in the eye. “I obey the lash. But someday, wouldn’t you like to see someone obey you out of true respect?” Despite the pain of the wounds on her back and the blood in her eye, she bent over and picked up her hoe. She scratched ineffectually at the soil. She could hear him walk away.

“I’ll kill her,” said one of the diggers. “What can
he
do about it? His father would never approve of him listening to her.”

“Fool,” said the other. “If he wants his father to kill us, do you think he’ll tell him the
truth
?”

“So let’s
us
tell him first.”

“Oh, great idea. Go to Pabulog and tell him that his son let this woman talk him down? How long do you think we’d live if we were going around telling
that
story?”

Chebeya listened to them with amusement. Her words had had their effect on these diggers, too. It wasn’t much of a plan, to stir up trouble among Pabulog’s sons and soldiers. And they might kill her yet. As it was, she’d be paying for this day’s work in pain for many days to come.

“That was a stupid thing to do,” someone muttered. “You could have got us all killed.”

“Who cares?” someone else whispered. “Didn’t Akmaro spread the word for us to think of how we might deliver ourselves? At least she thought of
something.”

Didul and Udad were back where Luet and Akma worked. Luet flinched from them, but Akma stood his ground. How much of what she said had he heard? Perhaps all of it; perhaps little. But he stood his ground.

Udad reached out and pushed at Akma, who staggered backward but did not fall. There was no surprise in
that.
No, the surprise came when Didul lunged at Udad and sent him sprawling in the dirt. Udad immediately sprang up, ready to fight his younger brother. “What was that! Do you want me to beat you up?”

Didul stood and looked him in the eye. “Is that all you can do? Beat up on people who are smaller than you? If you touch me, then you prove that everything she said about us is true.”

Udad stood there, flustered, confused. Chebeya could see the ties of loyalty shifting even as she watched. Udad, uncertain now, suddenly wanted Didul’s good opinion more than anything, for he was ashamed not to have it; just as Didul, in turn, wanted Chebeya’s good opinion. That was the beginning of loyalty. Wouldn’t that be the perfect vengeance, to turn Pabulog’s own sons against him?

No, not vengeance. Deliverance. That’s what we’re trying for, to save ourselves, since the Keeper seems unwilling to do it.

* * *

“I can’t tell,” said the Oversoul. “Is our plan working or not?”

Shedemei chuckled wryly. “Well, at least the Keeper noticed us. That dream she sent to Akma. And Chebeya’s sudden impulse to defy Pabulog’s sons. If that
was
the Keeper.”