Tuesday, July 21, 2708, continued

          We go out into the last dim light of the setting sun, up onto the slope into which the Don had built his school.  “See?  I respect your privacy,” the Don says.  “No one will see you up here.  No one will know where to look.”  He gives me a hand up the rough landscape, as though I were the frail one, and his eyes twinkle.  “If you choose imprisonment in secrets, of your own free will, far be it from me to argue.”  Then he steps back to make room for me.  “But the first step towards freedom is loving who God made you to be.”  He turns to gaze across the landscape behind us, the final colors in the sky, solemn for a moment, maybe even sad.  And then suddenly he turns to me, impish again.  “Did you think that we met by just a stroke of luck?”

          (Yes luck...it’s all just luck, after all, for the Gates of Knowledge neither help nor hinder, just compel us to face the truth, the uncompromising truth of...

          ...of this empty theater?

          “You didn’t bring me here to watch a play,” I say, staring into the glimmer of Merrill’s eyes, flashes of faint green in the dark.  “There is no play.”
          “I thought we had rather enough drama of our own to get by on,” he answers.  How much did it cost him, to reserve a theater just for us, one with stupid lucky seats?

          I stand up.  “You superstitious idiot!  And you have the nerve to call me a savage!”  The empty building echoes slightly with my shout.

          He stands up, too, as I storm down the aisle.  “Zanne, I haven’t called you that in years!”

          I stop, and turn to him, with about a dozen seats between us.  “No, that’s right.  You haven’t.  These days you fancy me superior to you.”

          “Have you ever doubted it, yourself?”

          “You don’t understand!  I’ve never wanted to be better than you, only to be equal to you.”  I storm away again, and hear his footsteps follow me down the corridor, so I keep talking.  “You despise everything about yourself.  Others see genius, but all you can see is a long-past sin in how you got your brains.”
          “But it’s never long-p...”

          “Others see an exquisitely handsome man, but all you see is short.  Others see well-educated, but you act like everything you know you stole!”

          “I did, Zanne!”

          “Others see a strong man who works hard for every muscle, and all you see is asthma and allergies.  Others see your sensitivity and you just feel ashamed of how easily you cry.   Others see energy, where you see a biochemical imbalance.  Others see a hero, but you see a murderer!”  I swirl to face him, shouting with all the agony in me, “How can I love you when you won’t love yourself?”

          He stops, standing there, small and forlorn, in the dim hallway.  “But Zanne, every negative thing you said is true.”

          I can’t hold back the tears any longer.  “But they’re not the only truths!  Every good thing I said is just as true.”

          He walks towards me, his arms outstretched, but I shriek out, “Don’t you dare comfort me!  I have a right to mourn everything that you reject!”  And I run.  I run away from my husband, sobbing, out into the sunlight.  And he stops in his tracks and lets me.  I hate him for letting me.)

          I step up onto a boulder and suddenly stop.  “Why do I think of Zanne right now?  So powerfully of Zanne?”  I feel my eyes water and I don’t know why.

          (Jake lays down a book, staring into space.  I see a fly land on his face and he doesn’t bat it away.

          “Jake?  Are you okay?”

          “Why does she we you she I tune in to Zanne?  Over such a great distance?”  He turns to me, unblinking.  “Randy, do you remember when Alroy braided our minds together, so many minds?”

          “I wasn’t actually part of that tangle, but yes, I remember the incident.”  So why do I feel a wee bit tangled now?  I stand and walk slowly to him, taking him by the hand, tugging gently till he rises to his feet.

          “It’s happening again—or about to happen, only with missions.  All missions shall merge.”  I lead him to the console, and sit him down before it.  “And we shall meet with Zanne on the Unexpected Path.”

          “That’s nice, Jake.  Type it all down.  Go on, Archives is waiting.”

          And he fits his fingers to the keys and types.)

          (I run through the streets, blinded by tears, stumbling on curbs and keeping on anyway, past honking horns and through watery illusions, my feet following memory to more familiar places, where arms suddenly grab me and a deeper voice than Merrill’s cries, “Whoa!  Whoa!  Zanne, what’s up?”

          I stop, blinking up at Don, Merrill’s best friend and my friendclan brother.  The blonde hair looks disheveled, the sweet, homely face concerned.  I feel a rush of embarrassment heat my face as I wipe my eyes and rearrange my own hair.

          “Nothing.  Just a marital spat.”  Yes, nothing—for that is exactly how Merrill sees himself—no matter what he does to make something of himself.  Rather like Deirdre, come to think of it.  Maybe those two should have married—if Deirdre could ever figure out what to do with a man.  And a sudden rush of warmth, affection for this whole nutty, imperfect friendclan, eases the clench of heartache, here in Don’s long arms.)

          “And who is Zanne?” the Don asks.

          “My friendclan sister,” I say.  “A little thing, and yet a lioness—beautiful, witty, glamorous, everything I’m not.  Why do I feel such sadness in her?  And yet the feeling fades a bit...”  I feel my brow knit, pondering.

          “Perhaps God lets you feel her sadness so that you will cease to envy her,” the old man tells me kindly.  “Don’t worry about everything you’re not, but rejoice in everything you are.”  He smiles suddenly, almost slyly.  “Can she fly?” he asks.

          “No.”

          “Then fly!”  And he pushes me off the rock.

          (“I was looking for Merrill, Zanne.  I heard he’d be around here—well, of course he’d be around here, you said a marital spat, so he...I’m sorry, Zanne.  I’m so sorry.”  He quivers with what he tries to respectfully repress.

          “Why?” I ask, smiling up at the tall man.  “Because you’re happy?  I could use a little happiness.”  I give him a playful poke in the ribs.  “You’ve got good news!”

          “Now Zanne, remember, we’ve talked about Til’s laws on telepathy.”

          That makes me laugh, and he seems gratified to see me cheer up.  “I don’t need to read you to see that you’re obviously just about jumping out of your skin trying not to dance.  So what is it that you want so badly to tell Merrill?”

          “I can fly again, Zanne!  He clasps my hands and then he does dance me all up and down the street.  “I’ve been working on it in secret, you see, afraid to let anybody know in case it didn’t work.  But with hypnosis, meditation, and desensitization exercises I’ve conquered the phobia—I just got back from the airport.  I took a glider out, and Zanne, I flew!”

          “Oh that is wonderful news!  And I fling myself onto his chest in a great, big hug, both of us nearly losing our footing.)

          I tumble onto the breast of the air, and it lifts me up, my survival instinct kicking in before I even think about flying.  And oh, it feels so good, to soar up and dip among the mountain peaks, as the first stars twinkle in the sky around me and the first lamps light up golden on the slopes below!  I let the thin, icy wind whirl me about in a violent lover’s tango, and I feel so powerfully alive!  Sky and rock spin around me as I execute barrel-rolls.  And then I gyre like a hunting hawk.  And then I soar again, like a rocket, and plunge down till I can barely pull back my momentum to keep from shattering on the stones.  And then I drift, light and free, calmer now, just basking in my conquest of gravity.

          And I know that I am not Zanne, not Merrill, not Don, not Lisa, not any of the people that I might think surpass me.  I am Deirdre Evelynne Keller, and I can fly!

          (“I could fly you over to Novo Durango, if you’d like”, Don offers, walking hand in hand with me now.  “Just a quick hop, to get your mind off things.  Would that make you feel better?”

          “Thank you, Don, but...no.”  I suddenly feel a desire vividly flare up in me, as to where I really want to go.  “I just thought of what I need, and I have to go there alone.  You understand?”

          “Of course,” he says, wiping from my cheek a tear that I didn’t know I’d shed till he touched me.  He lets go my hand, and I walk away quickly.

          I have preparations to make, though it will take hours and hours before I can leave, late in the night when good people sleep.  I want to sneak back into the sanctuary of the True Tilián one last time.  Alroy said that my father died, but I want to see if he lied.  The Shaman of the True Tilián would know how to advise me.)

          I land, lightly, on the stone before the grinning old man.  I lay a hand on his shoulder and say, “Thank you.  Thank you so much for your wisdom.  You have advised me beyond my expectations.  You have healed so much in me.”

          Still grinning, he nods in acknowledgement.  “Just doing my job,” he says, and we go down from there.  “Don’t ever be ashamed of flying, Deirdre Keller.”

* * *

Cyran doesn’t care about the satisfying work-out that I had in the sky, after a long march and without the rest that others have enjoyed.  No, I must confer with hir about the distribution of our refugees among the shepherds, and after that nothing will do save to help hir sort them all out, each to their own new herds—heaven knows how late the hour, now!  They shall leave first thing in the morning, in all different directions.

The Don must really be an oracle.  He made the Hamallans delay the lowland herding clear into winter, till we could join them.  He even sent abroad for fodder, paid for from his foundation’s funds, to make it possible.  (I can’t help but wonder, with a weary smile, if his foresight includes reminding people when to clean their stormdrains?)

So now my entire body aches and my hair tangles on my shoulders (I lost the fasteners on the braids somewhere in my flight) as I stumble down the hard brick road to bed, desiring it with every muscle in my body.  Pomona's jam-sticky kiss still lingers sweet upon my mouth.  Mori hugged me and made me promise to look him up after the war; he'll find his way back to his old roadside stand someday, he said, and we'll raise a toast in Sharane's memory.  He memorized her recipes and hopes he gets it right, to brew chaummin maybe as good as hers.  I told him that I knew he could.

I must remember to leave every stitch I own outside the door tonight.  Certain women promise not only to wash them, but to dye all of the bright liturgical colors, by coffee grounds and teabags, nutshells and onion peels, down to a mottled, camouflaging dullness, and have them fire-dried by morning.  I glance down at my vestment-green skirt; it practically looks camouflaged already, between the stains of motor-oil, dirt and blood.

          The others have gone to bed already, but Damien sits out on a bench in the cold, already garbed in a borrowed robe, staring so glassy-eyed, so body-slack, that I think he must be drunk.  But I smell nothing about him except for the sharp, rancid scent of homemade soap.

"It's so hard to be good when you're a soldier," he murmurs as I pass.  "Hard for a bard, too."

"I know."  I shake my head and smile—he just now realizes this?  "You just do the best you can, kid, and hope that God covers the rest."

          He nods, gets up, and we both make our way to the sleeping-quarters.