The Ships of Earth: Homecoming: Volume 3 (23 page)

It was sundown when he realized that he had no idea of where he was, or how far he had wandered. He only knew that he was sitting on a rock on the crest of a hill—in plain sight, if there were some bandit looking for someone to rob, or a hunter looking for prey. And even though he had his head in his hands and was looking at the ground, he was aware that someone was sitting across from him. Someone who had not yet said anything, but who was watching him intently.

Say something, said Nafai silently. Or kill me and get it over with.

“Oo. Oo-oo,” said the stranger.

Nafai looked up then, for he knew the voice. “Yobar,” he said.

Yobar wiggled a little and hooted a few more times, in delight, apparently, at having been recognized.

“I don’t have anything for you to eat,” said Nafai.

“Oo,” said Yobar cheerfully. He was probably just grateful for someone to notice him, since he had been ostracized by the troop.

Nafai reached out a hand to him, and Yobar strode boldly forward and laid his forehand in Nafai’s.

And in that moment, Yobar was not a baboon at all. Instead,
Nafai saw him as a winged animal, with a face at once more fierce and more intelligent than a baboon’s. The one wing flexed and stretched, but the other wing did not, for it was the hand that Nafai held in his own. The winged creature who had taken Yobar’s place spoke to him, but Nafai couldn’t understand his language. The creature—the angel, Nafai knew that’s what it was—spoke again, only now Nafai understood, vaguely, that it was warning him of danger.

“What should I do?” asked Nafai.

But the angel looked around and became more agitated and then, seeming to be quite frightened, it let go of his hand and leapt skyward and flew, circling overhead.

Nafai heard a sound of something hard scraping over rock. He looked back down at the rocks around him and saw what had made the noise. A half dozen of a larger, fiercer creature. The rats from the dreams the others had had. They were heavier and stronger-looking than the baboons had been, and Nafai well knew from the stories of other desert travelers that baboons were far stronger than a full-sized man. The teeth were fierce, but the hands—for they were hands, not claws—looked terrible indeed, especially because many of them held stones and seemed prepared to throw them.

Nafai thought of his pulse. How many of them can I kill before they hit me with a stone and knock me down? Two of them? Three? Better to die fighting than to let them take me without any cost at all.

Better? Why would it be better? Bad enough that one should die. What’s to be gained by killing more, except that they’d feel more justified in having slain me.

So he set down his pulse on the ground in front of him, and clasped his hands across his knees, and waited.

They waited also. Their arms were still poised to throw. The angel still circled overhead, a silent witness except for occasional high-pitched squeals.

Then suddenly, Nafai realized he had something in his hand. He opened his hands and saw that he was holding a fruit. He recognized it immediately as one of the fruits
of the tree of life. He lifted it to his lips and tasted it, and ah! It was as Father had said, as Nafai had tasted for just a moment before, the most exquisite sensation he could imagine feeling. Only this time there was no distraction, no confusion, no disharmony; he was at peace inside himself, and healed.

Without thinking, he took the fruit from his lips and offered it to the rat directly in front of him.

The rat looked down at his hand, then up at Nafai’s face again, then down at the fruit.

Nafai thought of laying the fruit down and letting the rat pick it up himself, but then he realized that no, it would be wrong to let the fruit touch the ground, to let it be picked up like a rotting windfall. It should be taken from a hand. This fruit should always be taken from the tree itself, or from someone’s hand.

The rat sniffed, moved forward, sniffed again. And then it took the fruit out of Nafai’s hand and took it to its lips and bit down. The fruit squirted, and some of the juice of it struck Nafai in the face, but he hardly noticed, except to lick his lip where it ran. For he couldn’t take his eyes off the rat. It was frozen in place, unmoving, the juice of the fruit dribbling from the sides of its mouth. Have I poisoned it? thought Nafai. Have I killed it somehow with this fruit? I didn’t mean to.

No, the rat had not been poisoned, merely stunned by it. Now it began making urgent sounds in its throat, and it scurried to its nearest companion, who took the fruit from its mouth with its own teeth. And so that one fruit passed around the circle, each one taking it into its mouth directly from the mouth of the one before, all the way around the circle until it came back to the first one. And that one came forward and offered its mouth to Nafai, the remnant of the fruit still there, still visible.

Nafai’s face was not built to a point the way the rats’ faces were, and so he had to reach out and take the fruit with his hand. But he put it at once in his own mouth, dreading what it would taste like now, but knowing he must do it. To his relief, the flavor of the fruit was unchanged.
If anything, it was sweeter now, for having been shared by these others.

He chewed, he swallowed. Only then did they also swallow whatever juice and bits of fruit remained in their mouths.

They came forward and laid at his feet the stones they had been holding to use as weapons. The pile was a pyramid in front of him. Fourteen stones. Then they filed away among the rocks.

At once the angel swooped back down, circled around him, chirping madly, flapping and flapping, until it landed heavily on his shoulders and enfolded him in its wings.

“I hope this means you’re happy,” said Nafai.

In answer the angel said nothing, but flew away itself.

Then Nafai stood and saw that he was not on the crest of a rocky peak at all, but was in a field, beside a tree, and near him was a river, and beside the river a path with an iron railing. He saw all that his father had seen, including the building on the other side.

And then, when he expected the dream to end—for he knew it was a dream—it changed. He saw himself, standing in the midst of a huge multitude of people and angels and rats, and they were all watching a bright light coming down out of the sky. They had been waiting, he understood. They had all been waiting, and now it was here. The Keeper of Earth.

Nafai wanted to get nearer, to see the face of the Keeper of Earth. But the light was too dazzling. He could see that it had four limbs, just from the shape of it, four limbs and a head, but beyond that the light simply blinded him as if the Keeper were a small star, a sun too bright to look into without burning your eyes.

Finally Nafai had to close his eyes, squint them shut to relieve them from the pain of staring into the sun. When he opened them, though, he knew he would be close enough, he knew he would see the face of the Keeper.

“Oo.”

It was Yobar’s face he was staring into.

“Oo yourself,” whispered Nafai.

“Oo-oo.”

“It’s almost dark,” said Nafai. “But you’re pretty hungry, aren’t you?”

Yobar sat back on his haunches expectantly.

“Let’s see if I can find anything for you.”

It wasn’t hard, even in the dusky light, because the hares on this side of the valley hadn’t grown scarce yet. When full night came, Yobar was still tearing at the corpse, devouring every scrap of it, breaking open the skull with a rock to get at the soft brains. Yobar’s hands and face were covered with blood.

“If you have any wit at all,” said Nafai, “you’ll get home fast with what’s left of this meat and all the blood on you so some female will make friends with you and let you play with her baby so you can make friends with
it
and become a full-fledged member of the troop.”

It was unlikely that Yobar understood him, but then he didn’t have to. He was already trying to hide the body of the hare from Nafai, preparatory to stealing it and running away. Nafai made his life easier by turning a little bit away so that Yobar would seize the opportunity and rim. He heard the scampering of Yobar’s feet and said silently to him, Buy what you can with this hare’s blood, my friend. I’ve seen the face of the Keeper of Earth, and it is you.

Then, regretting at once the disrespectful thought, Nafai spoke silently to the Keeper of Earth—or to the Oversoul, or to nobody, he didn’t know. Thank you for showing me, he said. Thank you for letting me see what Father saw. What all the others saw. Thank you for letting me be one of those who know.

Now, if someone could help me find my way home.

Whether it was the Oversoul helping him or simply his own memory and tracking ability, he found his way home by moonlight. Luet had been worried—so had Mother and Father, and others too. They had put off Shedemei’s and Zdorab’s wedding, because it would be wrong to do that on a night when Nafai might be in danger. Now that he was back, though, the wedding could go on, and nobody asked him where he had gone or what he had been
doing, as if they knew it was something too strange or wonderful or awful to be discussed.

Only later that night, in bed with Luet, did he speak of it. First of feeding Yobar, and then of the dream.

“It sounds like everyone was satisfied tonight,” said Luet.

“Even you?” he asked.

“You’re home,” she said, “and I’m content.”

They stayed in their camp in the Valley of Mebbekew, by the River of Elemak, longer than they intended. First they had to wait for the harvest. Then, despite the antivomiting herbs that Shedemei learned about from the Index, Luet was so weakened from pregnancy that Rasa refused to let them begin the journey and risk her life. By the time Luet’s morning sickness had ended and she had regained some strength, all three pregnant women—Hushidh, Kokor, and Luet—were large enough in the belly that traveling would have been uncomfortable. Besides, they had been joined in their pregnancy by Sevet, Eiadh, Dol, and Lady Rasa herself. None of them were as sick as Luet had been, but neither were any of them much disposed to mount camels and ride all day and then pitch tents at night and strike them in the morning while subsisting on hard biscuit and jerky and dried melon.

So they ended up staying in their camp for more than a year, till all seven babies were born. Only two of them had sons. Volemak and Rasa named their boy Oykib, after Rasa’s father, and Elemak and Eiadh named their firstborn
son Protchnu, which meant
endurance
. Eiadh made mention of the fact that only her husband, Elemak, was as manly as Volemak, to put a son in her as Volemak had sired nothing but sons. By and large the others ignored her boasting and enjoyed their daughters.

Luet and Nafai named their little girl Chveya, because she had sewn them together into one soul. Hushidh’s and Issib’s daughter was the first birth of the new generation, and they named her simply Dza, because she was the answer to all the questions of their life. Kokor and Obring named their daughter Krasata, a name meaning
beauty
that had been rather in fashion in Basilica. Vas and Sevet named their daughter Vasnaminanya, partly because the name meant
memory
, but also because it was related to Vas’s name; they called her Vasnya. And Mebbekew and Dol named their daughter Basilikya, after the city which they both still loved and dreamed of. Everyone knew that Meb meant his daughter’s name to be a constant reproach to those who had dragged him from his proper home, so everyone picked up on the nickname Volemak thought of for her, and so called her Syelsika, meaning
country girl
. Of course this annoyed Meb, but he learned to stop protesting since it only caused the others to laugh at him.

Oykib and Protchnu, Chveya and Dza, Krasata, Vasnya, and Syelsika—on a cool morning more than a year after their parents had all come together in the Valley of Mebbekew, the babies were loosely wrapped in cool traveling clothes and laid in hammocks slung across their mothers’ shoulders, so the babes could nurse during the day when they grew hungry. The women, except childless Shedemei, did none of the work of striking tents, though as the children grew they would soon be expected to resume their duties. And the men, strong now, tanned and hardened from a year’s life and work in the desert, strutted a little before their wives, proud of what babies they had made together, full of their lofty responsibility to provide and care for wives and children.

All but Zdorab, of course, who was as quiet and unprepossessing as ever, with his wife still childless; the two
seemed almost to disappear sometimes. They were the only members of the company unconnected to Rasa and Volemak by blood or marriage; they were the only childless ones; they were considerably older than any of the others of their generation except Elemak; no one would have said that they were
not
fully the equals of the rest of the company, but then, no one actually believed that they
were
, either.

As the company gathered to go, Luet, with Chveya asleep in her sling, carried an overripe melon on her shoulder down to where the baboon troop was pursuing its normal business. The baboons seemed agitated and jumpy, which was hardly surprising, considering the tumult up at the human camp. As Luet passed the perimeter of their feeding area, they kept glancing up at her, to see what she was doing. Some of the females approached, to see her baby—she had let them touch Chveya before, though of course she could never let them play with her the way they played with their
own
children; Chveya was far too fragile for their rough fondling.

It was a male, not a female, that Luet was looking for, and as soon as she moved away from the curious females, there he was—Yobar, the one who had been an outcast less than a year ago, and who now was best friends with the oldest daughter of the matriarch of the tribe; he had as much prestige as a male could get in this city of women. Luet brought the melon to where Yobar could see what she had. Then, turning slightly away so he wouldn’t be too frightened, she cast it down on a rock and the melon burst open.