Virginia Hamilton
Authors: The Gathering: The Justice Cycle (Book Three)
Tags: #Science Fiction, #Juvenile Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
Virginia Hamilton
To my mother
A Biography of Virginia Hamilton
L
EONA
J
EFFERSON DID HER
job, always. She was the Sensitive. Now she murmured incantations and placed spells in the long grass and snakebeds of the Quinella Trace lands. She followed the bank of the Quinella River to a great shade tree that grew thick with dark as the sun set.
“We waited for you,” came the dreamy voice of Justice Douglass from under the tree.
The voice vibrated as the Sensitive knelt under branches. There were the four children of power seated around the shade buckeye. They had joined hands and were now the unit, ready to leave for the future.
“Wait!” cried the Sensitive, trying to hold them back.
Power filled the eyes of the four. i am leaving, the unit conveyed. i will be back.
The Sensitive sensed a calm farewell and a feeling of adventure as the unit went on its way.
i am the Watcher. The sounding rhythm of the unit vibrated.
An amazing light spread from the four. It tangled in piercing rays from the evening sun. Then the children were gone. However, their physical selves remained, hands joined around the tree.
The Sensitive waited out the lonely night. Softly she crooned to the empty-headed ones. She slept finally, sitting up. But her seer’s insight stayed wide awake. Leona Jefferson missed nothing that was going on.
T
HE UNIT WAS POWER
. It had the force of four who were time-travelers. Now it was between its present and that future it knew as Dustland. It was in the Crossover between times. The Crossover echoed with sighs and whispers of mind-travelers trapped in it for eternity. Those travelers had failed to hold their concentration while mind-jumping from one time to another. They were trapped forever in the nowhere between times—unless, as swarming multi-beings, they grew powerful enough to will their way out. They attempted to capture new time-travelers, such as the unit on its way to Dustland.
The unit dared not lose concentration. It whirled, dodging t’being swarms. It massed its energy on the future and on a future animal it called Miacis. Its light was the Watcher, which surrounded the unit with clear purpose.
i am the Watcher, willed the unit.
The Watcher lit the way through the awful confusion the swarm placed in its way. At all cost, the unit must hold to its place and instant in the future.
It outmaneuvered vicious t’beings until it reached the final seam on the far side of the Crossover.
i am the Watcher, willed the unit. It rolled and plunged.
Future time started. The unit was there. At first it could not tell where it was. But gradually it divined that it had somehow entered the future within a dream that a being of Dustland had been having again and again. At once the unit lowered the level of its force so it might stay within the being’s mind after the being awoke and the dream ended. For the unit was curious, interested in how swiftly the being had been learning since the coming of the dream.
This being was of innocent and simple mentality. It was not one of the three-legged Slaker humans, whom the unit had encountered before. It was two-legged, like the four of the unit. The unit would help the being. He was a youth, stunted in growth but skilled in survival. His name was Duster. The unit would give Duster all the help it could. And it stayed hidden in the unconscious Duster while an entity known as Mal came and went and the boy slept.
Duster wiggled in the five-foot-long hole that was his
dark,
the den he had made for himself before Graylight’s end. He did not awaken. Dead tired from the Graylight’s roam, his weary muscles finally relaxed their tension.
A youth known as Siv, the leggens, was asleep in his own
dark
to one side of Duster. Nearer Duster on his left side in another
dark
was one called Glass, the smooth-keep. Glass was lovely, the color of honey. She was tiny, barely four feet tall; yet she had superior skill, and Duster admired her greatly.
Duster was the leader. He was the leader for a packen of fifteen youngens. The youngens were divided into five trips of three youngens each. The best was that Duster was Siv and Glass’s leader. The three of them were the most skilled trip in all of the roamer packens. This was the reason Duster could sleep soundly and why he could dream without fear. Old Siv on his right would never allow anything to harm him. And the smooth, gentle Glass was as swift and soundless as any fighter and thrower in the packens. The best.
Neither Siv nor Glass appeared in the dream Duster had over and over again. On the edges of the dream moved something golden, traveling swiftly. But when the dream began, there was the tone of Siv’s voice being playful, also commanding. The sound of it was loud and magnified. Duster never could hear clearly enough to understand what Siv was singing. There was just the teasing, commanding tone. A strange, out-of-place tone, since Siv never commanded. Then Duster heard a crowd responding, humming their understanding. Once or twice the crowd cried out in fear.
Slowly the dream made Duster uneasy. He had the notion that he must find old Siv and silence him forever. And in the dream his view was from behind his own back, just as if he were smooth Glass at his elbow. Glass stayed at his elbow when they roamed, keeping their arsenal of weapons at the ready. At Duster’s left arm, she could easily slip a
pound
into his hand.
In an attack they never stopped moving. Only when Graylight ended, at the time of Nolight, did they stop to dig their
dark
dens for a few hours’ rest and sleeping. When it was Graylight, they stayed in one place long enough to kill and to eat.
Duster could heave a pound force farther than most. But he was leader, his job was to command. He left all throwing to Glass. Siv, who was taller than Duster, could outrun most animals that trailed the packen by day. Siv could outrun every human of their land except good Glass. But Glass refused to be the leggens. Glass did what she wanted. She could kill close in, if she had to, swiftly with her deep-daggen. She could hurl a
sharp
or a
shot
seventy paces with no loss of accuracy, killing smoothly.
Glass despised killing of any kind, in defense of packen or trip, or for food. But she would do the deed if Duster commanded her to, and without an instant’s hesitation. She knew Duster would not give such a command unless it was necessary. Glass trusted his judgment, and that made him proud.
For some time Duster slept deeply. Then he surfaced to dream. He dreamed the presence of the smooth behind him on his left. Glass muttered a singsong under her breath, as she would do when there was danger.
Dreaming, he toned lightly over his shoulder, “Quiet, smooth Glass! In no time we be gone.”
Suddenly all notion of her, of having her skill at his back, left him. Glass no longer existed.
In his dreaming the playful, commanding voice of Siv ceased abruptly. All was silence. Duster felt Siv slip past him on his left. That would be something the leggens would never do, Duster dreamed, something Duster would never permit. For the left side of the leader belonged to the smooth-keep. Then Siv, too, was gone from the dream. Yet the mocking impression of him remained with Duster.
Dreaming, Duster followed a hard, sleek surface. Such a road was impossible in his land of shifting dust. But as soon as he felt it under his feet, he knew the name of it—triway. Duster was at home on the road of the triway. High above him, the way had two more levels, which disappeared at the limits of his eyesight. Supports like silver threads held the upper levels in place. The supports glowed in all-too-familiar dim light.
Dreaming, suddenly there was bright day. Fresh air. Duster was glad to be alive. Here was a land of beauty, with dwelling places arranged in patterns that were pleasing. One of them would be fine for him to live in. But Duster had no place to live—that was why he was on the low level of the triway, which was on the ground. The way moved along on its own, but Duster moved faster.
“Be running,” he toned, dreaming.
He heard a wim’s voice over a speaker. “Sun-time,” she trilled. “You have forty-five beats in your favor. Enjoy.”
Sunlight spilled over Duster. “Turn it down!” He shielded his eyes from the burning light and kept running.
“Be running,” Duster toned. “Catch me, nothing!”
Something startling occurred right before his eyes. It was the four with power out of the present materializing in Duster’s dream.
Four strangers came toward him along the way. They were one too many for a youngen trip and far too few for a packen. They hurried toward Duster. One of them, the wim with dark, curly hair, touched him and took hold of his hand.
“Be touching leader, wrong.” His toning lacked command. He knew it, but did nothing to make the wim take her hand from his.
“We must hide here,” she said in a grating voice. “Oh, Duster, please let us stay in your dream.”
Such bright light was in her eyes! Such strength in her soundings! She made no warring tones to trouble him. Duster found that he was delighted to have them with him.
“Stay here,” he told them. “Rest by the triway, but out of sight. I be on the run myself.”
“We know,” they said in one voice. “This is more than dream. It is also memory of what was. Don’t worry. We will protect your thoughts.”
All at once Duster awoke in his
dark.
Knowledge of the four talking to him in his dream was locked away before he was fully awake. What Duster knew was that he’d been dreaming for a long time; he had been caught in the dream, taken somewhere. By whom, he didn’t know. But he was filled with dread. The feeling didn’t go away when he realized that the smooth-keep leaned over him. Roughly she picked the dirt from his hair.
Duster saw that it was a new Graylight in his land where there was never much more than shade, except for dawn, when Graylight sparkled. Duster had always felt good about his land until the dreaming began coming to him. Now he who was leader felt saddened.
His lean, muscled shoulders sagged, causing him to seem smaller than his nearly five-foot height. This worry bothered the smooth, Glass, for it distracted her leader. It upset the leggens, Siv, who had now taken his position facing the leader on Duster’s right.
Siv didn’t move a muscle. He waited for the ritual between leader and smooth-keep to be completed.
“So the dawn be over?” Duster toned to the smooth. “Why you not be singing out the Graylight, then?”
Duster asked the same few questions every Graylight. Questions made Siv impatient. Yet, good leggens that he was, he stood his ground. He went into himself, which was the polite thing to do during the process of shaking dirt and dust out.
Glass pulled Duster from his
dark.
He stood with dirt and dust covering him.
“You look the fool,” Glass summed up.
“But will the dawn be gone?” Duster toned. He loved seeing the lights of dawn.
“Oh, certainly, you know,” she sang out. “What be in your brain—more dust?”
“Oh, rough Smooth!” Duster moaned. “Be so hard on my poor self.”
“Hahn!” sung impatiently, was all she felt like answering back.
Although smaller than Duster, Glass was nearly as muscled. And covered with dust the same as he, it would have been difficult for others to know which was which, Siv observed.
The leggens had already taken care of his first-light ritual. He had done his moves—soft art leverages, flips and presses, running in place, handstands—which shook loose most of the dirt from his
dark.
With leather mitts he had brushed off the remainder. He had fashioned mitts for the smooth and for the leader, too. Siv had no desire to be close-in the way leader and smooth were. He stood alone, needed no close-in. Leggens was what he was; he was content.