IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume VI: The Rift
Chapter 17 A Christmas Birth
Friday, December 25, 2708,
continued (Ghosts, ghosts, the air chokes with so many of the dead! And I must dance for them, if I can, to point
them where to go. Old births and new
births and always birth today. The
shepherds know before the wise.) (We telepathically link, as we have done before, sisters in
Fireheart Friendclan, seeking now at last our oracle, witnessing his troubled
vision.) (Witnesses crowd the room.
The birth must take place. The
magentine dims, as though it holds its breath, until no light illuminates us
except for the single candle. I can feel
George’s will push my knife-hand towards my wrist. I push back.
“Not yet,” I say. And then, without a knife, I slash open the great, aching space
inside him, the yearning, aggravated by a madman’s inside-out oraclism, from a
whole nation’s wound, for a long-lost mother, in a way that I never could until
right this moment. He has stretched
himself wider than anyone should ask of a human being. And she steps through the rift, innocent of clothes, her belly
swollen, the past impregnated by the future.
I see the tide of water rush from between her legs as she groans,
falling back into the arms of Crespus.
Then she cries out, in the most ancient of tongues, the words that only
souls broken open can decipher: “New
life can only come through BLOOD!”) (Old birth and new birth and always birth today! I leap and duck and teeter swirling on a fang
of rock before I tumble down to land on tiptoes on the edge, and dance back up the
mountainside again. They have to
know! I have to dance it to them!) (Don and Randy have to know!
Jake’s vision burns, so many colors, louder than ever before, fueled on
drugs and magentine. But we warn our
friendclan brothers that red dominates over all.) (And now they don’t shoot anymore, even as the stars themselves
hold their breath at what I must illuminate, move by move, swirl and leap and
tremble. I hear the swearing and the
prayers. They witness something sacred
here; they all know it, and she can shout herself hoarse but they won’t obey
their general. They have to watch my
dance. For all of them. For the
dead and those not yet dead, and those not yet even born.) (I nod and slash my wrist.) (They have to KNOW!) Jake, no! Nonononono!
Not on this of all days, oh please no! (I scream! I fall against
Don, screaming, “No! No! That blood’s already been spilled, you idiot!” I don’t even know what I’m saying, it just
erupts from me. “Alroy has never, ever
given good advice, even when he says what’s true!”) (Kimba jolts straight up, screaming!) (She screams! Her knees
buckle as her belly contracts, pushing the baby forward. “What have I done?” I hear George gasp. “Jake, Jake, it’s wrong, it’s all gone
wrong! We’ve been tricked—you don’t have
to die! Oh please, please, don’t die
Jake, please don’t die—nobody has ever understood me like you do!” And I feel his tears fall upon my hand,
splashing me like diamond bursts of starlight.
Yes...) (I make the leap into the burst of starlight and the bullet takes
me, without anyone firing a shot—ecstasy explodes through me and beyond me, as
I fall into the arms of a brown-skinned woman in a mantle full of stars that
shivers back and forth between blue and green, a crown blinking in and out of
existence on her brow. “It is all right, my darling.
I know you want to die for my Son.
But my Son wants to die for you.) (And my spirit leaps, loosened from my body at the same time as
George’s, to encompass his in an embrace dearer than any lovemaking, pushing
him back, down, down into his body again. And I feel my soul tethered safely to my own flesh, by a shimmery,
coppery thread, frayed, yet one strand still intact.) “I can’t wake her,
Nishka!” I feel my body rocking this way
and that, across the crunchy leaves beneath the heath, but I can’t do anything
about it; I feel myself stretch between here and somewhere else. “I can’t wake her! Tell Damien we can’t go anywhere till I can
wake her!” (We see again the old hands offering the scarf to the young hand
with four magentine rings. We feel the
trance of interlocking oracles. Don’t
break the trance too soon! Our brothers
have to know!) (I growl at Amari, “Haven’t you had enough deaths already? Is blood the only thing you understand? But even one was a mistake—you could have
brought forth your child without any deaths from us.” I shake my gushing wrist at her. “Do you think I did this for you?” Stupid savage. I turn to Crespus. “Get her out of here—her time passed long
ago.” With one arm around her he helps Amari stand. With the other he picks up the baby
girl—Human Life on Novatierre, wholly naturalized now, birthed right here on
this planet, utterly suffused with this world’s essence by the magentine around
us and emanating from us, suckling on the power. “This will need cared for,” he says. “It isn’t over yet.” I nod—or something of me nods.
“And the growing pains will wrench us all. But I will help her as I can.” And she peers from the arm of Crespus
Inglorius, her eyes twin stars, wise in her infancy with an antiquity inherited
from her mother. And she nods back. I feel a tug...) I sit up suddenly and
scream, my entire body arched. I grab
wildly at a thread that no one else can see. (Something happened. Something happened and I have to deal with
it. David’s at work. He can’t stop me now. I sit at the blue desk by the window, put on some writing-music,
turn on the typewriter, and insert paper—all the different colors of paper,
free handouts from science fiction conventions for events long past, rose and
blue and green and gold, but they all
have blank sides on which I can type, their colors mingling with the music,
helping to trigger it. For a dearth of dreams I enter the writing-trance. No, what am I saying, I’ve had too many dreams of late but I need more!
I need...or they need, or...or...music and color and the keys beneath my
fingers and...and...and I am Jake. I feel this immediately, powerfully, for he
and I enter trance simultaneously, synching, sinking, rooms spin into one room,
one... A dark room. Dark but for
the candle which gutters at my elbow, the elbow sleeved in chamois. I feel the soft, suede material, sensual,
admire its subtle golden color, smell the leather-scent beyond the tang of my
own adrenalin-drenched sweat. Miles away,
the adrenalin, old, stale. The sweat has
dried, no longer applies. I have
achieved calm, my heart beats evenly now, in time to the candle-flickers, my
breath comes deep and slow. All in
control. With serene fascination I watch
the blood trickle from my left wrist; my right, unconscious hand holds the
knife, a point of candlelight precisely balanced on the tip, only the faintest
stain of blood upon the beautiful blade. Something troubles my trance.
I’m left-handed; how did the knife wind up in my right hand? But it looks striking there. It is right, right in the right hand rites
that rewrite the Wright’s rights. Wright. The worker
of...of. Of the changes. Changewright we call him. Yes.
Very good. His rites. His choices.
He seizes his rights. Seizes... Sooo sleepy. The blood
flows into a pool, dark in dim light, browning around the edges. It builds up against the clot-dam wall,
spills over. Slow like breath, like wax,
thoughts, heartbeat. Rivulets make
patterns, how I love the patterns, how I read the patterns, but I sleep through
what I read; I can’t remember from moment to moment what they say. Clear cut, the demarcation between blood and
wood, clear the grain of the table’s wood, glossy the blood which soaks into it
in candlelight, fuzzy the thoughts. The
burning wax smells so pure! I nod. The snap of my head
back up nearly breaks the trance. Not
sleep–mustn’t. Not the same thing. Won’t do the job. Just the patternless patterns in brightdark
candleflicker, in generous bright red blood.
Slowest, slowest, oh so slowest way to do it. Ideally slow.
Delay the breath, the heart pumps laggardly through the vein not quite
quite quite enough to die. Not quite,
no. Mustn’t sleep. Deadly sleep, don’t go there. Watch the blood spread, trickle over the table’s edge. Red waterfall. Consciously I resist the urge to yawn. O/CO2 must remain unbalanced. Important, for some reason. Altered muzzy state of con...big
word...consciousssnesss. Stay conscious,
conscience. Something happened. I was not at first calm. No matter.
It’s slow enough. I hear the ruckus again. I
heard it a few minutes ago, but it didn’t really register. Getting too loud to tune out. Must con-cen-trate. Slow.
Keep it nice and slow. Heart
wants to speed–don’t let it. Bleed less
now, more for show than any...anything.
Hard to think. ‘Salright. Dream, then.
‘Salright; just keep the heart slow, thatsallat matters. Bleeding stops, but no, wake just a little,
let a trickle by, lest somebody suspect. Good. Better. Okay, hear the noise. Wake up just a tiny bit. Mustn’t sleep altogether. Fighting in the other room, by the sound of
it, bodies slam into wooden wainscoting, splintering sound of furniture, young
voices shout...sleepy, all that goes on in another world, far away, the other
side of the door...door...what is a something is a many things door. Beginningending transition door do enter don’t enter something happened. Watching the candle. I do
this. Feel chamois against my cheek,
soft leather smell with the iron tang of blood.
Candle rises or slants or no, it makes a horizontal right angle from the
vertical table as up and down and right and left make dizzy dances in the
pulsing flicker of the firelight, just the right angle–oh, right! Can’t see my blood any more, but the pulse, pulse, pulse of it
pumps through the artery of my ear as I listen, slumped upon my arm, hear the
beat...beat...stillness...beat...stillness...stillness...beat...beatbeat. I’ll die if they don’t break in soon. The thought swoops in and out of the
candlelight whirls and dances in the dark, as I spill into the dark, swirling
into patterns, in and out, up and down, all, all around the spinning door
suddenly burst open, a twirling rectangle of light which slows to stabilize for
Don to stagger through. No. My vision
staggers. He comes in a straight line. Around my arm he whips the tourniquet, held ready in his
hands. Behind him I hear Randy scream
out swearwords. I rouse to Randy’s
defense... “No!” Don hisses. “Stay out
of it! Discipline, Jake–you’ll die if
you lose your trance now.” “Stay...discip...” My mouthmindheart stumble over words. “But Randy...” “Can hold them off. Go
back. We’ll wake you soon.”) (All teachers must learn CPR, by Toulin law, and renew the
training annually. I have never felt
more thankful for Toulin’s insistence upon rules than now, as I fling myself
onto George Winsall’s body on the floor, breathing into him, pounding life into
him, breathing into him some more...) (Every detail of the room incandesces into clarity. Randy has ignited the door.) “Okay!” Don shouts. “Come
out of it, Jake! NOW! The tourniquet’s secure.” “Out of...” He slaps me. “Back to this
world, friend. Hurry–your brain’s missed
oxygen enough!”) (....breathing into him some more, until he sputters back to life
and I turn him just in time as he throws up the better part of the poison in
him.) (Sensations flood me like blood into a strangled member. I cry out in a choked voice–I can’t help
it! It hurts, so much light, heat,
throbbing cut, details! Where’s Randy? “‘Ere’s Randy?” I didn’t
mean to speak. “Right here, Weed.” Randy
grabs me, smelling of smoke. Soot
smudges cheeks under reddened eyes, beneath a char-frizzled forelock. “Let’s go, lover–to your feet! Come on!”
And the crystals start to fall.) (I pick myself up off the cold, rough flagstones, in a hail of
crystals falling from the roof and walls.
I shelter George with my body. It
hurts when they strike me, again and again, bruising and nicking me, but they
can never violate me again.) (“Hold on,” I find myself saying.
“I’m pretty weak.”
Understatement! My legs buckle
beneath me. “Damn you,” Don growls, “did you have to lose that much blood?” He shoves us
both out of there. He snatches up one
arm, Randy the other. I stumble between
them, fast as I can, giddy with anemia and shreds of mysticism. “I had a hard time,” I mumble, “transferring from his trance to
mine.” Or hers? Which hers? “How hard?” Randy asks. I ignore the question. I try to marshal
all my diminishing resources to run, not speak. Wrong. Self-truth saves
oracles from vision-death. I don’t want
to answer, don’t want to guess. My feet
slog through invisible sludge. My heart
speeds like I had never entranced it, tripping and stammering in manic
life-frenzy. Not enough blood, it
panics, demand everywhere, pump like hell or it won’t get where I need
it–wow! Do I feel it now!) (I gasp, struggling up the stairs with the unconscious boy draped
over my soldier, every step a heave of pain.
Toulin law does not require professors to stay in shape.) (I gasp as I run, but I haven’t enough red cells to
oxygenate. Not the first...wait, is the
first, not the last...vision...never mind!
Stay out of visions! Ignore
them! Concentrate on living! “This way!” Don jerks us
into a room. The direction change
sickens me with dizziness; I pass out.) I wake to myself, my hands
moving as though I reel something in, aiming at my navel. Tanjin and Damien stare at me in horror. “LUFTI!” I hear Kiril shout. I turn in time to see her run, clutching her
bleeding side, to embrace the boy who limps to us. “Oh, Lufti, Lufti, Lufti!” “Led...them...away,”
he gasps, slumping to the ground as Kiril folds around him, whimpering in his
hair, holding and holding and holding him.
I see his torn and bloody soles. “Old
births and new births and always births today.
It hurts but in the end feels glad.”
He smiles wanly at me. “Scream at
will—nobody can hear us, now.” (I switch off the typewriter and stare at my
intact, unstained wrist.) |
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