The Ships of Earth: Homecoming: Volume 3 (50 page)

I did love him, he insisted silently. With all my heart I loved him. Didn’t I follow him wherever he decided? Didn’t I trust him with my life again and again? Didn’t I save him time after time, when his impetuosity brought him into peril? Didn’t I even urge him to turn back, a storm was coming, let’s find shelter, we have to find shelter, what does it matter if we find the devilpath on this flight or the next, turn back, turn back, and he wouldn’t, he ignored me as if I didn’t exist, as if I were
nothing,
as if I didn’t even get a vote on my own survival, let alone his.

The clay was growing moist, balling up and beginning to flow in his hands, but it was as much tears as saliva that moistened it. O Wind, thou tookest my otherself, and now I cannot find his face in the clay. Give me a shape, O Wind, if I am worthy! O Maize, if I am to bring you daughters to tend your fields, then give my fingers knowledge even if my mind is dull! O Rain, flow with my saliva
and my tears and make the clay live under my hands! O Earth, thou deep-burning mother, make my bones wise, for they will someday belong to you again. Let me bring other bones, young bones, child bones out of your clay, O Earth! Let me bring young wings into your hands, O Wind! Let me make new grains of life for thee, O Maize! Let me bring new waterdrinkers, new weepers, new sculptors for thee to taste, O Rain!

Yet despite his pleading, the gods put no shape under his hands.

His tears blinded him. Should he give up? Should he fly up into the sky of the dry season and search for some faraway village that might want a sturdy male and never see Da’aqebla again? Or should his despair go even farther? Should he put the clay out of his hands and yet remain there at the riverbank, exposed, for the watching devils to see that he had no sculpture in him? Then they would take him like an infant back to their caves, and devour him alive, so that in his dying moments he would see the devil queen eating his own heart. That was how his end should come. Carried down into hell, because he was not worthy to be taken by Wind up into heaven. kTi would have all the honor then, and not have to share it with his low unworthy otherself.

His fingers worked, though he could not see what they shaped.

And as they worked, he stopped mourning his own failure, for he realized that there
was
a shape now under his hands. It was being given to him, in a way that he had only heard about. As a child, playing at sculpture with the other boys, he had been the cleverest every time, but he had never felt the gods interceding with his hands. What he shaped was always from his own mind and memory.

Now, though, he didn’t even know what it was that was growing under his hands, not at first. But soon, no longer grieving, no longer fearful, his vision cleared and he saw. It was a head. A strange head, not of a person or a devil or any creature Kiti had ever seen before. It had a high forehead, and its nose was pointed, hairless, smooth, the nostrils
opening downward. Of what use was such a snout as this? The lips were thick and the jaw was incredibly strong, the chin jutting out as if it was competing with the nose to lead this creature forward into the world. The ears were rounded and stuck out from the middle of the sides of the head. What kind of creature is this that I am shaping? Why is something so ugly growing under my hands?

Then, suddenly, the answer came into his mind: This is an Old One.

His wings trembled even as his hands continued, sure and strong, to shape the details of the face. An Old One. How could he know this? No one had ever seen an Old One. Only here and there, in some sheltered cave, was there found some inexplicable relic of their time upon the earth. Da’aqebla had only three such relics, and Da’aqebla was one of the oldest villages. How could he dare to tell the ladies of the village that this grotesque, malformed head that he was shaping was an Old One? They would laugh at him. No, they would be outraged that he would think they were foolish enough to believe such a nonsensical claim. How can we judge your sculpture, if you insist on shaping something that has never been seen by any living soul? You might have done better to leave the clay in a shapeless ball and say that it was a sculpture of a river stone!

Despite his doubts, his hands and fingers moved. He knew, without knowing how he knew, that there must be hair on the bony ridge over the eyes, that the fur of the head must be long, that there must be a depression centered under the nose and leading down to the lip. And when he was through, he did not know how he knew that it was finished. He contemplated what he had made and was appalled by it. It was ugly, strange, and far too large. Yet this was how it had to be.

What have you done to me, O gods?

He still sat, contemplating the head of the Old One, when the ladies came soaring, swooping down to the riverbank. At the fringes were the men whose sculptures had already been seen. Kiti knew them all, of course, and could
easily guess at what their work was like. A couple of them were husbands, and because their lady was married to them for life, their sculptures were no longer in competition with the others. Some of them were young, like Kiti, offering sculptures for the first time—and from their slightly hangdog expressions, Kiti could tell that they hadn’t made the impression that they hoped for. Nevertheless, the clay fever was on all the males, and so they hardly looked at him or his sculpture; their eyes were on the ladies.

The ladies stared in silence at his sculpture. Some of them moved, to study it from another angle. Kiti knew that the workmanship of his sculpture was exceptionally good, and that the sheer size of it was audacious. He felt the clay fever stirring within him, and all the ladies looked beautiful to him. He saw their skeptical expressions with dread—he longed now for them to choose him.

Finally the silence was broken. “What is this supposed to be?” whispered a lady. Kiti looked for the voice. It was Upua, a lady who had never married and who, in some years, had not even mated. It gave her a reputation for being arrogant, the hardest of the ladies to please. Of course she would be the lady who would interrogate him in front of all the others.

“It grew under my hands,” he said, not daring to tell them what it really was.

“Everyone thought that you would do honor to your otherself,” said another lady, emboldened by Upua’s disdainful question.

The hardest question. He dared not dodge it. Did he dare to tell the truth? “I meant to, but it was also my own face, and I wasn’t worthy to have my face sculpted in the clay.”

There was a murmur at that. Some thought that was a stupid reason; some thought it was deceptive; some gave it thought.

Finally the ladies began deciding. “Not for me.” “Ugly.” “Very odd.” “Interesting.” Whatever their comment, they took flight, rising up and circling, drifting toward
the branches of the nearest trees. The men, no doubt feeling quite triumphant at the complete rejection of the supposedly talented Kiti, joined them there.

At last only Kiti and Upua remained upon the riverbank.

“I know what that is,” said Upua.

Kiti dared not answer.

“This is the head of an Old One,” she said.

Her voice carried to the ladies and men in the branches. They heard her, and many gasped or whisded their astonishment.

“Yes, Lady Upua,” said Kiti, ashamed at having his arrogance caught out. “But it was given to me under my hands. I never meant to sculpt such a thing.”

Upua said nothing for a long time, walking around the sculpture, circling it again and again.

“The day is short!” called one of the leading ladies from her perch in the trees.

Upua looked up at her, starded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wanted to see this and remember it, because we have been given a great gift by the gods, to see the face of the Old Ones.”

There was some laughter at this. Did she really think Kiti could somehow sculpt what no one had ever seen?

She turned to Kiti, who was so filled with clay fever now that he could only barely keep from throwing himself at her feet and begging her to let him mate with her.

“Marry me,” she said.

Surely he had misunderstood.

“Marry me,” she said again. “I want only your children from now on until I die.”

“Yes,” he said.

No other man had been so honored in a thousand years. On his first sculpting, to be offered marriage, and by a lady of such prestige? Many of the others, ladies and men alike, were outraged. “Nonsense, Lady Upua,” said another of the leading ladies. “You cheapen the institution of marriage by offering it to one so young, and for such a ridiculous sculpture.”

“He has been given the face of an Old One by the gods.
Let all of you come down here and study this sculpture again. We will not leave here for two songs, so that all of us will remember the face of the Old Ones and we can teach our children what we’ve see this day.”

And because she was the lady who had offered marriage and been accepted on this spot, the others had to do her will for the space of two songs. They studied the head of the Old One, and together Kiti and Upua entered into the legends of the village of Da’aqebla forever. They also entered into marriage, and Kiti, who would have trembled at the thought of being the husband of such a terrifying lady, would soon learn that she was a kind and loving wife, and that to be an attentive and protective husband to her would bring him only joy. He would still miss kTi from time to time after that, but never again would he think that Wind had punished him by not catching him up to heaven with kTi.

On this day, however, they did not know what the future would bring. They only knew that Kiti was the boldest sculptor who had ever lived, and because his boldness had won him a lady as his wife, it raised him at once in their estimation. He was truly kTi’s otherself, and though kTi was taken from them, in Kiti his courage and cleverness would live on until, with age, they would become strength and wisdom.

When the two songs had passed, when the flock of ladies and men arose and went on to the next man, dark shapes emerged from the shadows of the trees. They, too, circled the strange sculpture, and then finally picked it up and carried it away, though it was uncommonly large and heavy and they did not understand it.

Continued in
Earthfall
, the fourth volume of the Homecoming series, available now from Tor Books.