Akma was born in a rich man’s house. He remembered little from that time. One memory was of his father, Akmaro, carrying him up a high tower, and then handing him to another man there, who dangled him over the parapet until he screamed in fear. The man who held him laughed until Father reached out and took Akma from him and held him close. Later Mother told Akma that the man who tormented him on the tower was the king in the land of Nafai, a man named Nuak. “He was a very bad man,” said Mother, “but the people didn’t seem to mind as long as he was a good king. But when the Elemaki came and conquered the land of Nafai, the people of Nuak hated him so much they burned him to death.” Ever after she told him that story, Akma’s memory changed, and when he dreamed of the laughing man holding him over the edge of the tower, he pictured the man covered with flames until the whole tower was burning, and instead of Father reaching out to rescue his little boy, Akmaro jumped down, falling and falling and falling, and Akma didn’t know what to do, to stay on the tower and burn, or jump into the abyss after his father. From that dream he awoke screaming in terror.
Another memory was of his Father rushing into the house in the middle of the day, as Mother supervised two digger women in preparing a feast for that night. The look on Akmaro’s face was terrible, and though he whispered to her and Akma had no idea what he was saying, he knew that it was very bad and it made Akma afraid. Father rushed from the house right away, and Mother at once had the diggers stop their work on the feast and start gathering supplies for a journey. Only a few minutes later, four human men with swords came to the door and demanded to see the traitor Akmaro. Mother pretended that Father was in the back of the house and tried to block them from coming in. The biggest man knocked her down and held a sword across her throat while the others ran to search the house for Akmaro. Little Akma was outraged and ran at the man who was threatening Mother. The man laughed at him when Akma cut himself on one of the stones of his sword, but Mother didn’t laugh. She said, “Why are you laughing? This little boy had the courage to attack a man with a sword, while you only have enough courage to attack an unarmed woman.” The man was angry then, but when the others returned without finding Father, they all went away.
There was food, too. Akma was sure there had once been plenty of food, well-prepared by digger slaves. But now, in his hunger, he couldn’t remember it. He couldn’t remember ever being full. Here in the maize fields under the hot sun he couldn’t remember a time without thirst, without a weary ache in his arms, in his back, in his legs, and throbbing behind his eyes. He wanted to cry, but he knew that this would shame his family. He wanted to scream at the digger taskmaster that he needed to drink and rest and eat and it was stupid for him to keep them working without food because it would wear out more people like old Tiwiak who dropped dead yesterday, dead just like that, keeled over into the maize and never so much as breathed out a good-bye to his wife and even then she kept still, said nothing as she knelt weeping silently over his body, but the taskmaster beat her anyway for stopping work, and it was her own husband.
Akma hated nothing in the world the way he hated diggers. His parents had been wrong to keep diggers as servants back in the land of Nafai. The diggers should all have been killed before they ever came near to a real person. Father could talk all he wanted about how the diggers were only getting even for the long, cruel overlordship of Nuak. He could whisper late in the night about how the Keeper of Earth didn’t want earth people and sky people and middle people to be enemies. Akma knew the truth. There would be no safety in the world until all the diggers were dead.
When the diggers came, Father refused to let any of his people fight. “You didn’t follow me into the wilderness in order to become killers, did you?” he asked them. “The Keeper wants no killing of his children.”
The only protest that Akma heard was Mother’s whisper: “Her children.” As if it mattered whether the Keeper had a plow or a pot between its legs. All that Akma knew was that the Keeper was a poor excuse for a god if it couldn’t keep its worshippers from being enslaved by filthy bestial stupid cruel diggers.
But Akma said nothing about these thoughts, because the one time he did, Father grew silent and wouldn’t speak to him for the rest of the night. That was unbearable. The silence during the days was bad enough. To have Father shut him out at night was the worst thing in the world. So Akma kept his hate for the diggers to himself, as well as his contempt for the Keeper, and at night he spoke in the barest whisper to his mother and father, and drank in their whispered words as if they were pure cold water from a mountain stream.
And then one day a new boy appeared in the village. He wasn’t thin and sunbrowned like all the others, and his clothing was fine, bright-colored, and unpatched. His hair was clean and long, and the wind caught and tossed it when he stood on the brow of the low hill in the midst of the commons. After all that Father and Mother had said about the Keeper of Earth, Akma was still unprepared for this vision of a god, and he stopped working just to behold the sight.
The taskmaster shouted at Akma, but he didn’t hear. All sound had been swallowed up in this vision, all sensation except sight. Only when the shadow of the taskmaster loomed over him, his arm upraised to strike him with the length of the prod, did Akma notice, and then he flinched and cowered and, almost by reflex, cried out to the boy who had the image of god on his face, “Don’t let him hit me!”
“Hold!” cried the boy. His voice rang out confident and strong as he strode down the hill, and, incredibly, the taskmaster immediately obeyed him.
Father was far from Akma, but Mother was near enough to whisper to Akma’s little sister Luet, and Luet took a few steps closer to Akma so she could call softly to him. “He’s the son of Father’s enemy,” she said.
Akma heard her, and immediately became wary. But the beauty of the older boy did not diminish as he approached.
“What did she say to you?” asked the boy, his voice kind, his face smiling.
“That your father is my father’s enemy.”
“Ah, yes. But not by my father’s choice,” he said.
That gave Akma pause. No one had ever bothered to explain to the seven-year-old boy how his father had come to have so many enemies. It had never occurred to Akma that it might be his father’s fault. But he was suspicious: How could he believe the son of his father’s enemy? And yet. . . . “You stopped the taskmaster from hitting me,” said Akma.
The boy looked at the taskmaster, whose face was inscrutable. “From now on,” he said, “you are not to punish this one or his sister without my consent. My father says.”
The taskmaster bowed his head. But Akma thought he didn’t look happy about taking orders like this from a human boy.
“My father is Pabulog,” said the boy, “and my name is Didul.”
“I’m Akma. My father is Akmaro.”
“.Ro-Akma? Akma the teacher?” Didul smiled. “What does ro have to teach, that he didn’t learn from og?”
Akma wasn’t sure what og meant.
Didul seemed to know why he was confused. “Og is the daykeeper, the chief of the priests. After the dk, the king, no one is wiser than <#-”
“King just means you have the power to kill anybody you don’t like, unless they have an army, like the Elemaki.” Akma had heard his father say this many times.
“And yet now my father rules over the Elemaki of this land,” said Didul. “While Nuak is dead. They burned him up, you know.”
“Did you see it?” asked Akma.
“Walk with me. You’re done with work for today.” Didul looked at the taskmaster. The digger, drawn up to his full height, was barely the same size as Didul; when Didul grew to manhood, he would tower over the digger like a mountain over a hill. But in the case of Didul and the taskmaster, height had nothing to do with their silent confrontation. The digger wilted under his gaze.
Akma was in awe. As Didul took his hand and led him away, Akma asked him, “How do you do it?”
“Do what?” asked Didul.
“Make the taskmaster look so. . . .”
“So useless?” asked Didul. “So helpless and stupid and low?”
Did the humans who were friends of the diggers hate them, too?
“It’s simple,” said Didul. “He knows that if he doesn’t obey me, I’ll tell my father and he’ll lose his easy job here and go back to working on fortifications and tunnels, or going out on raids. And if he ever raised a hand against me, then of course my father would have him torn apart.”
It gave Akma great satisfaction to imagine the taskmaster-all the taskmasters-being torn apart.
“I saw them burn Nuak, yes. He was king, of course, so he led our soldiers in war. But he’d gotten old and soft and stupid and fearful. Everybody knew it. Father tried to compensate for it, but og can only do so much when ak is weak. One of the great soldiers, Teonig, vowed to kill him so a real king could be put in his place-probably his second son, Ilihi-but you don’t know any of these people, do you? You must have been-what, three years old? How old are you now?”
“Seven.”
“Three, then, when your father committed treason and ran away like a coward into the wilderness and started plotting and conspiring against the pure human Nafari, trying to get humans and diggers and skymeat to live together as equals.”
Akma said nothing. That was what his father taught. But he had never thought of it as treason against the purely human kingdom where Akma had been born.
“So what did you know? I bet you don’t even remember being in court, do you? But you were there. I saw you, holding your father’s hand. He presented you to the king.”
Akma shook his head. “I don’t remember.”
“It was family day. We were all there. But you were just little. I remember you, though, because you weren’t shy or scared or anything. Bold as you please. The king commented on it. ‘This one’s going to be a great man, if he’s already so brave.’ My father remembered. That’s whv he sent me to look for you.”
Akma felt a thrill of pleasure flutter inside his chest. Pabulog had sent his son to seek him out, because he had been brave as a baby. He remembered attacking the soldier who was threatening his mother. Until this moment, he had never thought of himself as brave, but now he saw that it was true.
“Anyway, Nuak was at the point of being murdered by Teonig. They say that Teonig kept demanding that Nuak fight him. But Nuak kept answering, ‘I’m the king! I don’t have to fight you!’ And Teonig kept shouting, ‘Don’t make me shame you by killing you like a dog.’ Nuak fled up to the top of the tower and Teonig was on the point of killing him when the king looked out to the border of the Elemaki country and saw the hugest army of diggers you ever saw, flooding like a storm onto the land. So Teonig let him live, so the king could lead the defense. But instead of a defense, Nuak ordered his army to run so they wouldn’t be destroyed. It was cowardly and shameful, and men like Teonig didn’t obey him.”
“But your father did,” said Akma.
“My father had to follow the king. It’s what the priests do,” said Didul. “The king commanded the soldiers to leave their wives and children behind, but Father wouldn’t do it, or at least anyway he took me. Carried me on his back and kept up with the others, even though I wasn’t all that little and he isn’t all that young. So that’s why I was there when the soldiers realized that their wives and children were probably being slaughtered back in the city. So they stripped old Nuak and staked him down and held burning sticks against his skin so he screamed and screamed.” Didul smiled. “You wouldn’t believe how he screamed, the old sausage.”
It sounded awful even to imagine it. It was frightening that Didul, who could remember having actually seen it, could be so complacent about it.
“Of course, along about then Father realized that the talk was turning to who else they ought to burn, and the priests would be an obvious target, so Father said a few quiet words in the priest-language and he led us to safety.”
“Why didn’t you go back to the city? Was it destroyed?”
“No, but Father says the people there weren’t worthy to have true priests who knew the secret language and the calendar and everything. You know. Reading and writing.”
Akma was puzzled. “Doesn’t everybody learn how to read and write?”
Didul suddenly looked angry. “That’s the most terrible thing your father did. Teaching everybody to read and write. All the people who believed his lies and sneaked out of the city to join him, even if they were just peasants which they mostly were, even if they were turkey-herds. Everybody. He took solemn vows, you know. When he was made a priest. Your father took those vows, never to reveal the secrets of the priesthood to anybody. And then he taught everybody”
“Father says all the people should be priests.”
“People? Is that what he says?” Didul laughed. “Not just people, Akma. It isn’t just people that he was going to teach to read.”
Akma imagined his father trying to teach the taskmaster to read. He tried to picture one of the diggers bowed over a book, trying to hold a stylus and make the marks in the wax of the tablets. It made him shudder.
“Hungry?” asked Didul. Akma nodded.
“Come eat with me and my brothers.” Didul led him into the shade of a copse behind the hill of the commons.
Akma knew the place-until the diggers came and enslaved them, it was the place where Mother used to gather the children to teach them and play quiet games with them while Father taught the adults at the hill. It gave him a strange feeling to see a large basket of fruit and cakes and a cask of wine there, with diggers serving the food to three humans. Diggers didn’t belong in that place where his mother had led the children in play.
But the humans did. Or rather, they would belong wherever they were. One was little, barely as old as Akma. The other two were both older and larger than Didul-men, really, not boys. One of the older ones looked much like Didul, only not as beautiful. The eyes were perhaps too close together, the chin just a bit too pronounced. Didul’s image, but distorted, inferior, unfinished.
The other man-sized boy was as unlike Didul as could be imagined. Where Didul was graceful, this boy was strong; where Didul’s face looked open and light, this one looked brooding and private and dark. His body was so powerful-looking that Akma marveled that he could pick up any of the fruit without crushing it.
Didul obviously saw which of his brothers it was that had drawn Akma’s attention. “Oh, yes. Everybody looks at him like that. Pabul, my brother. He leads armies of diggers. He’s killed with his bare hands.”
Hearing his words, Pabul looked up and glowered at Didul.
“Pabul doesn’t like it when I tell about that. But I saw him once take a full-grown digger soldier and break his neck, just like a rotten dry branch. Snap. The beast peed all over everything.”
Pabul shook his head and went back to eating.
“Have some food,” said Didul. “Sit down, join us. Brothers, this is Akma, the son of the traitor.”
The older brother who looked like Didul spat.
“Don’t be rude, Udad,” said Didul. “Tell him not to be rude, Pabul.”
“Tell him yourself,” said Pabul quietly. But Udad reacted as if Pabul had threatened to kill him-he immediately fell silent and began concentrating on his eating.
The younger brother gazed steadily at Akma, as if evaluating him. “I could beat you up,” he said finally.
“Shut up and eat, Monkey,” said Didul. “This is the youngest, Muwu, and we’re not sure he’s human.”
“Shut up, Didul,” said the little one, suddenly furious, as if he knew what was coming.
“We think Father got drunk and mated with a she-digger to spawn him. See his little rat-nose?”
Muwu screamed in fury and launched himself at Didul, who easily fended him off. “Stop it, Muwu, you’ll get mud in the food! Stop it!”
“Stop it,” said Pabul quietly, and Muwu immediately left off his assault on Didul.
“Eat,” said Didul. “You must be hungry.”
Akma was hungry, and the food looked good. He was seating himself when Didul said, “Our enemies go hungry, but our friends eat.”
That reminded Akma that his mother and father were also hungry, as was his sister Luet. “Let me take some back to my sister and my parents,” he said. “Or let them all come and eat with us.”
Udad hooted. “Stupid,” murmured Pabul.
“You’re the one I invited,” said Didul quietly. “Don’t embarrass me by trying to trick me into feeding my father’s enemies.”
Only then did Akma understand what was happening here. Didul might be beautiful and fascinating, full of stories and friendliness and wit-but he didn’t actually care about Akma. He was only trying to get Akma to betray his family. That was why he kept saying those things about Father, about how he was a traitor and all. So that Akma would turn against his own family.
That would be like . . . like becoming a friend to a digger. It was unnatural and wrong and Akma understood now that Didul was like the jaguar, cunning and cruel. He was sleek and beautiful, but if you let him come near enough, he would leap and kill. “I’m not hungry,” said Akma. “He’s lying,” said Muwu. “No I’m not,” said Akma.
Pabul turned to face him for the first time. “Don’t contradict my brother,” he said. His voice sounded dead, but the menace was clear. “I was just saying that I wasn’t lying,” said Akma. “But you are lying,” said Didul cheerfully. “You’re starving to death. Your ribs are sticking out of your chest so sharp you could cut yourself on them.” He laughed in delight and held out a maizecake. “Aren’t you my friend, Akma?”
“No,” said Akma. “You’re not my friend, either. You only came to me because your father sent you.”
Udad laughed at his brother. “Well aren’t you the clever one, Didul. tom could make friends with him, said you. You could win him over the first day. Well, he saw right through you.”
Didul glared at him. “He might not have till you spoke up.” Akma stood up, furious now. “You mean this was a game?”
“Sit down,” said Pabul. “No,” said Akma.
Muwu giggled. “Break his leg, Pabul, like you did that other one.” Pabul looked at Akma as if considering it.
Akma wanted to plead with him, to say, Please don’t hurt me. But he knew instinctively that the one thing he couldn’t do with someone like this was to act weak. Hadn’t he seen his father stand before Pabulog himself and face him down, never showing a moment’s fear? “Break my leg if you want,” said Akma. “I can’t stop you, because I’m half your size. But if you were in my place, Pabul, would you sit down and eat with your father’s enemy?”
Pabul cocked his head, then beckoned with a lazy hand. “Come here,” he said.
Akma felt the threat receding as Pabul calmly awaited his approach. But the moment Akma came within reach, Pabul’s once-lazy hand snaked out and took him by the throat and dragged him down to the ground, choking. Struggling for breath, Akma found himself staring into the hooded eyes of his enemy. “Why don’t I kill you now, and toss your body at your father’s feet?” said Pabul mildly. “Or maybe just toss little bits of your body. Just one little bit each day. A toe here, a finger there, a nose, an ear, and then chunks of leg and arm. He could build you back together and when he got all the parts, everybody’d be happy again, right?”
Akma was almost sick with fear, believing Pabul perfectly capable of such a monstrous act. Thinking of the grief that his parents would feel when they saw his bloody body parts took his mind off the great hand that still gripped his throat, loosely enough now that he could breathe.
Udad laughed. “Akmaro’s supposed to be so thick with the Keeper of Earth, maybe he can get the old invisible dreamsender to work a miracle and turn all those body parts back into a real boy. Other gods do miracles all the time, why not the Keeper?”
Pabul didn’t even look up when Udad spoke. It was as if his brother didn’t exist.
“Aren’t you going to plead for your life?” asked Pabul softly. “Or at least for your toes?”
“Get him to plead for his little waterspout,” suggested Muwu.
Akma didn’t answer. He kept thinking of how his parents would grieve-how they must even now be filled with terror for him, wondering where this boy had led him. Mother had tried to warn him, sending Luet. But Didul had been so beautiful, and then so friendly and charming and . . . and now the price of it was this hand at his throat. Well, Akma would bear it in silence as long as he could. Even the king finally screamed when they tortured him, but Akma would last as long as he could.
“I think you need to accept my brother’s invitation now,” said Pabul. “Eat.”
“Not with you,” whispered Akma.
“He’s a stupid one,” said Pabul. “We’ll have to help him. Bring me food, boys. Lots of food. He’s very, very hungry.”
In moments, Pabul had forced open his mouth and the others were jamming food into it, far faster than Akma could chew it or swallow it. When they saw that he was breathing through his nose, they began to jam crumbs into his nostrils, so that he had to gasp for breath and then choked on the crumbs that got down his windpipe. Pabul let go of his throat and jaw at last, but only because, coughing, Akma was now so helpless that they could do whatever they wanted to him, which involved tearing open his clothing and smearing fruit and crumbs all over his body.
Finally the ordeal was over. Pabul delegated Didul, and Didul in turn assigned his older brother Udad to take the ungrateful, traitorous, and ill-mannered Akma back to his work. Udad seized Akma’s wrists and yanked so harshly that Akma couldn’t walk, but ended up being dragged stumbling over the grassy ground to the top of the hill. Udad then threw him down the hill, and Akma tumbled head over heels as Udad’s laughter echoed behind him.
The taskmaster refused to let any of the humans stop their work to help him. Shamed and hurt and humiliated and furious, Akma rose to his feet and tried to clean off the worst of the food mess, at least from his nostrils and around his eyes.
“Get to work,” demanded the taskmaster.
Udad shouted from the top of the hill. “Next time maybe we’ll bring your sister along for a meal!”
The threat made Akma’s skin crawl, but he showed no sign of having heard. That was the only resistance left to him, stubborn silence, just like the adults.
Akma took his place and worked the rest of the daylight hours. It wasn’t until the sky was darkening and the taskmaster finally let them go that he was finally able to go to his mother and father tell them what happened.
They spoke in the darkness, their voices mere whispers, for the diggers patrolled the village at night, listening to hear any kind of meeting or plot-or even prayer to the Keeper of Earth, for Pabulog had declared that it was treason, punishable by death, since any prayer by a follower of the renegade priest Akmaro was an affront to all the gods.
So as Mother scrubbed the dried-on fruit from his body, weeping softly, Akma told Father all that was said and all that was done.
“So that’s how Nuak died,” said Father. “He was once a good king. But he was never a good man. And when I served him, I wasn’t a good man either.”
“You were never really one of them,” said Mother.
Akma wanted to ask his father if everything else Pabulog’s sons said was true, too, but he dared not, for he wouldn’t know what to do with the answer. If they were right, then his father was an oathbreaker and so how could Akma trust anything he said?
“You can’t leave Akma like this,” said Mother softly. “Don’t you know how far they’ve torn him from you?”
“I think Akma is old enough to know you can’t believe a liar.”
“But they told him you were a liar, Kmaro,” she said. “So how can he believe you?”
It amazed Akma how his mother could see things in his mind that even he himself had barely grasped. Yet he also knew it was shameful to doubt your own father, and he shuddered at the look on his father’s face.
“So they did steal your heart from me, is that it, Kmadis?” He called him dis, which meant beloved child; not ha-, which meant honored heir, the name he used when he was especially proud of Akma. Kmaha-that was the name he wanted to hear from his father’s lips, and it remained unspoken. Ha-Akma. Honor, not pity.
“He stood against them,” Mother reminded him. “And suffered for it, and he was brave.”
“But they sowed the seed of doubt in your heart, didn’t they, Kmadis?”
Akma couldn’t help it. It was too much for him. He cried at last.
“Set his mind at rest, Kmaro,” said Mother.
“And how will I do that, Chebeya?” asked Father. “I never broke my oath to the king, but when they drove me out and tried to have me killed, then yes, I realized that Binaro was right, the only reason to keep the common people from learning to read and write and speak the ancient language was to preserve the priests’ monopoly on power. If everyone could read the calendar, if everyone could read the ancient records and the laws for themselves, then why would they need to submit to the power of the priests? So I broke the covenant and taught reading and writing to everyone who came to me. I revealed the calendar to them. But it isn’t evil to break an evil covenant.” Father turned to Mother. “He isn’t understanding this, Chebeya.”
“Sh,” she said.
They fell silent, only the sound of their breathing filling their hut. They could hear the pattering feet of a digger running through the village.
“What do you suppose his errand is?” Mother whispered.
Father pressed a finger to her lips. “Sleep,” he said softly. “All of us, sleep now.”
Mother lay down on the mat beside Luet, who had long since dropped off to sleep. Father lay down beside Mother and Akma settled in on the other side of him. But he didn’t want Father’s arm cast over him. He wanted to sleep alone, to absorb his shame. The worst of his humiliations wasn’t the gagging and choking, it wasn’t the smearing with fruit, it wasn’t tumbling down the hill, it wasn’t facing all the people in tattered clothing, covered with filth. The worst humiliation was that his father was an oathbreaker, and that he had had to learn it from Pabulog’s sons.
Everyone knew that an oathbreaker was the worst kind of person. He would say one thing, but no one could count on him to do it. So you could do nothing with him. You could never trust him when you weren’t there to watch. Hadn’t Mother and Father taught him from earliest infancy that when he said he would do a thing, he had to do it, or he had no honor and could not be trusted?
Akma tried to think about what Father said, that to break an evil covenant was good. But if it was an evil oath, why would you swear to it in the first place? Akma didn’t understand. Was Father evil once, when he took the evil oath, and then he stopped being evil? How did someone stop being evil once he started? And who decided what evil was, anyway?
That soldier Didul told him about-Teonig?-he had the right idea. You kill your enemy. You don’t sneak around behind his back, breaking promises. None of the children would ever tolerate a sneak. If you had a quarrel, you stood up and yelled at each other, or wrestled in order to bend the other to your will. You could argue with a friend that way, and still be a friend. But to go behind his back, then you weren’t a friend at all. You were a traitor.
No wonder Pabulog was angry at Father. That’s what brought all this suffering down on us. Father was a sneak, hiding in the wilderness and breaking promises.
Akma started to cry. These were terrible thoughts, and he hated them. Father was good and kind, and all the people loved him. How could he be an evil sneak? Everything the sons of Pabulog said had to be lies, had to be. They were the evil ones, they were the ones who had tormented him and humiliated him. They were the liars.
Except that Father admitted that what they said was true. How could bad people tell the truth, and good people break oaths? The thought still spun crazily in Akma’s head when he finally drifted off to sleep.
Mon climbed to the roof of the king’s house to watch the setting of the dry sun, as it tunneled down between the mountains at the northern end of the valley. Bego, the royal librarian, told him once that when the humans first arrived on Earth, they believed that the sun set in the west and rose in the east. “This is because they came from a place with few mountains,” said Bego. “So they couldn’t tell north from west.”
“Or up from down?” Aronha had asked snidely. “Were humans completely stupid before they had angels to teach them?”
Well, that was Aronha, always resentful of Bego’s great learning. Why shouldn’t Bego be proud of being a skyman, of the wisdom the sky people had accumulated? All through their hours at school, Aronha was always pointing out that the humans had brought this or that bit of wisdom to the sky people. Why, to hear Aronha go on about it, you’d think the sky people would still be sleeping upside down in the trees if it weren’t for the humans!
As for Mon, he never ceased envying the wings of the sky people. Even old Bego, who was so stout he could hardly glide down from an upper story to the ground-Mon yearned for even those old leathery wings. His greatest disappointment of childhood was when he learned that humans never grew up to be angels, that if wings weren’t there, furry and useless, pressed against your body when you were born, they would never grow later. You would be cursed forever with naked useless arms.
At nine years old, all Mon could do was climb to the roof at sunset and watch the young sky people-the ones his own age or even younger, but so much more free-as they frolicked over the trees by the river, over the fields, over the roofs of the houses, soaring, dipping, rising, madly tussling in the air and dropping like stones until perilously near the earth, then spreading their wings and swooping out of the fall, hurtling down the streets between the houses like arrows as earthbound humans raised their fists and hollered about young hooligans being a menace to hardworking people just minding their own business. Oh, that I were an angel! cried Mon within his heart. Oh, that I could fly and look down on trees and mountains, rivers and fields! Oh, that I could spy out my father’s enemies from far away and fly to him to give warning!
But he would never fly. He would only sit on the roof and brood while others danced in the air.
“You know, it could be worse.”
He turned and grimaced at his sister. Edhadeya was the only one he had ever told about his yearning for wings. To her credit, she had never told anyone else; but when they were alone together, she teased him mercilessly.
“There are those who envy you, Mon. The king’s son, tall and strong, a mighty warrior is what they say you’ll be.”
“Nobody knows from the height of the boy how tall the man will be,” said Mon. “And I’m the king’s second son. Anybody who envies me is a fool.”
“It could be worse,” said Edhadeya.
“So you said.”
“You could be the king’s daughter.” There was a note of wistfulness in Edhadeya’s voice.
“Oh, well, if you have to be a girl at all, you might as well be the daughter of the queen,” said Mon.
“Our mother is dead, you might remember. The queen today is Dudagu poopwad, and don’t you dare forget it for a moment.” The childish term poopwad was translated as the much harsher dermo in the ancient language of the kings, so that the children got a great deal of pleasure from calling their stepmother Dudagu Dermo.
“Oh, that doesn’t mean anything,” said Mon, “except that poor little Khimin is hopelessly ugly compared to all the rest of Father’s children.” The five-year-old was Dudagu’s eldest and, so far, only child, and though she was constantly wangling to have him named Ha-Khimin in place of Ha-Aron, there was no chance that either Father or the people would stand for replacing Aronha. Mon’s and Edhadeya’s older brother was twelve years old and already had enough of his manheight for people to see he would be a mighty soldier in battle. And he was a natural leader, everyone saw it. Even now, if there was a call to war there was no doubt that Father would put a company of soldiers under Aronha’s command, and those soldiers would proudly serve under the boy who would be king. Mon saw the way others looked at his brother, heard how they spoke of him, and he burned inside. Why did Father continue having sons after Mother gave him the perfect one first?
The problem was that it was impossible to hate Aronha. The very qualities that made him such a good leader at age twelve also made his brothers and sister love him, too. He never bullied. He rarely teased. He always helped and encouraged them. He was patient with Mon’s moodiness and Edhadeya’s temper and Ominer’s snottiness. He was even kind to Khimin, even though he had to be aware of Dudagu’s schemes to put her son in Aronha’s place. The result, of course, was that Khimin worshipped Aronha. Edhadeya speculated once that perhaps that was Aronha’s plan-to make all his siblings love him desperately so they wouldn’t be plotting against him. “Then the moment he succeeds to the throne-snip, snap, our throats are cut or our necks are broken.”
Edhadeya only said that because she had been reading family history. It wasn’t always nice. In fact, the first nice king in many generations had been Father’s grandfather, the first Motiak, the one who left the land of Nafai to join with the people of Darakemba. The earlier ones were all bloody-handed tyrants. But maybe that was how it had to be back then, when the Nafai lived in constant warfare. For their survival they couldn’t afford to let there be any disputed successions, any civil wars. So new kings more than once put their siblings to death, along with nieces and nephews and, once, one of them killed his own mother because . . . well, it was impossible to guess why those ancient people did all those terrible things. But old Bego loved telling those stories, and he always ended them with some reference to the fact that the sky people never did such things when they ruled themselves. “The coming of humans was the beginning of evil among the sky people,” he said once.
To which Aronha had replied, “Ah, so you called the earth people devils as a little jest? Teasing them, I suppose?”
Bego, as always, took Aronha’s impertinence calmly. “We didn’t let the earth people dwell among us, and set them up as our kings. So their evil could never infect us. It remained outside us, because sky people and devils never dwelt together.”
If we had never dwelt together, thought Mon, perhaps I wouldn’t spend my days wishing I could fly. Perhaps I would be content to walk along the surface of the earth like a lizard or a snake.
“Don’t get so serious about it,” said Edhadeya. “Aronha won’t cut anybody’s throat.”
“I know,” said Mon. “I know you were just teasing.”
Edhadeya sat beside him. “Mon, do you believe those old stories about our ancestors? About Nafai and Luet? How they could talk to the Oversoul? How Hushidh could look at people and see how they connected together?”
Mon shrugged. “Maybe it’s true.”
“Issib and his flying chair, and how he could sometimes fly, too, as long as he was in the land of Pristan.”
“I wish it were true.”
“And the magic ball, that you could hold in your hands and ask it questions and it would answer you.”
Edhadeya was clearly caught up in her own reverie. Mon didn’t look at her, just watched the last of the sun disappear above the distant river. The sparkling of the river also ended when the sun was gone.
“Mon, do you think Father has that ball? The Index?”
“I don’t know,” said Mon.
“Do you think when Aronha turns thirteen and he gets brought into the secrets, Father will show him the Index? And maybe Issib’s chair?”
“Where would he hide something like that?”
Edhadeya shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m just wondering why, if they had those wonderful things, we don’t have them, anymore.”
“Maybe we do.”
“Do you think?” Edhadeya suddenly grew animated. “Mon, do you think that sometimes dreams are true? Because I keep dreaming the same dream. Every night, sometimes twice a night, three times. It feels so real, not like my other dreams. But I’m not a priest or anything. They don’t talk to women anyway. If Mother were alive I could ask her, but I’m not going to Dudagu Dermo.”
“I know less than anybody,” said Mon.
“I know,” said Edhadeya.
“Thanks.”
“You know less, so you listen more.”
Mon blushed.
“Can I tell you my dream?”
He nodded.
“I saw a little boy. Ominer’s age. And he had a sister the same age as Khimin.”
“You find out people’s ages in your dreams?” asked Mon.
“Hush, woodenhead. They were working in the fields. And they were being beaten. Their parents and all the other people. Starved and beaten. They were so hungry. And the people who were whipping them were diggers. Earth people, I mean.”
Mon thought about this. “Father would never let diggers rule over us.”
“But it wasn’t us, don’t you see? They were so real. I saw the boy getting beaten once. But not by diggers, it was by human boys who ruled over the diggers.”
“Elemaki,” murmured Mon. The evil humans who had joined with the diggers and lived in their dank caves and ate the sky people they kidnapped and murdered.
“The boys were bigger than him. He was hungry and so they tormented him by shoving more food than he could swallow into his mouth until he choked and gagged, and then they rubbed fruit and crumbs all over him and rolled him in the mud and grass so nobody could eat it. It was horrible, and he was so brave and never cried out against them, he just took it with such dignity and I cried for him.”
“In the dream?”
“No, when I woke up. I wake up crying. I wake up saying, ‘We’ve got to help them. We’ve got to find them and bring them home.’ “
“We?”
“Father, I suppose. Us. The Nafari. Because I think those pedple are Nafari.”
“So why don’t they send sky people to find us and ask us for help? That’s what people do, when the Elemaki are attacking them.”
Edhadeya thought about this. “You know something, Mon? There wasn’t a single angel among them.”
Mon turned to her then. “No sky people at all?”
“Maybe the diggers killed them all.”
“Don’t you remember?” he asked. “The people who left back in the days of Father’s grandfather? The ones who hated Darakemba and wanted to go back and possess the land of Nafai again?”
“Zef. . . .”
“Zenif,” said Mon. “They said it was wrong for humans and sky people to live together. They didn’t take a single angel with them. It’s them. They’re the ones you dreamed of.”
“But they were all killed.”
“We don’t know that. We just know that we never heard from them again.” Mon nodded. “They must still be alive.”
“So you think it’s a real dream?” asked Edhadeya. “Like the ones Luet had?”
Mon shrugged. Something bothered him. “Your dream,” he said. “I don’t think it’s exactly about the Zenifi. I mean ... it just doesn’t feel complete. I think it’s someone else.”
“Well, how can you know that?” she said. “You’re the one who thought it was the Zenifi.”
“And it felt right when I said it. But now . . . now there’s just something wrong with it. But you’ve got to tell Father.”
“You tell him,” she said. “You’ll see him at dinner.”
“And you when he comes to say goodnight.”
Edhadeya grimaced. “Dudagu Dermo is always there. I never see Father alone.”
Mon blushed. “That isn’t right of Father.”
“Yes, well, you’re the one who always knows what’s right.” She punched him in the arm.
“I’ll tell him your dream at dinner.”
“Tell him it was your dream.”
Mon shook his head. “I don’t lie.”
“He won’t listen if he thinks it’s a woman’s dream. All the other men at dinner will laugh.”
“I won’t tell him whose dream it is until I’m done. How’s that?”
“Tell him this, too. In the last few dreams, the boy and his sister and his mother and father, they lie there in silence looking at me, saying nothing, just lie there in the darkness and without their saying a word I know they’re pleading with me to come and save them.”
“You?”
“Well, me in the dream. I don’t think that the real people - if there are any real people - would be sitting there hoping for a ten-year-old girl to come and deliver them.”
“I wonder if Father will let Aronha go.”
“Do you think he’ll really send somebody?”
Mon shrugged. “It’s dark. It’s time for dinner soon. Listen.”
From the trees near the river, from the high, narrow houses of the sky people, the evening song arose, a few voices at first, then joined by more and more. Their high, lilting melodies intertwined, played with each other, madly inventing, challenging, resolving dissonance and then subverting expected harmonies, a haunting sound that recalled an earlier time when life for the sky people was a short span of years that had to be enjoyed in the moment, for death was always near. The children stopped their playing and began drifting downward from the sky, going home to supper, to their singing mothers and fathers, to homes filled with music as once the thatched shelters of the angels had filled with song in the high reaches of the trees.
Tears came unbidden to Mon’s eyes. This was why he spent the moment of evening song alone, for he would be teased about the tears if others saw them. Not Edhadeya, though.
Edhadeya kissed Mon’s cheek. “Thank you for believing me, Mon. Sometimes I think I might as well be a stump, for all that anybody listens to me.”
Mon blushed again. When he turned around, she was already going down the ladder to the ground. He should go with her, of course, but now the human voices were beginning to join in the song, and so he could not go. From the windows of the great houses, the human servants and, in the streets, the fieldworkers and the great men of the city sang, each voice with as much right to be heard in the evening song as any other. In some cities, human kings decreed that their human subjects must sing a certain song, usually with words that spoke of patriotism or dutiful worship of the king or the official gods. But in Darakemba the old ways of the Nafari were kept, and the humans made up their own melodies as freely as the angels did. The voices of the middle people were lower, slower, less deft in making rapid changes. But they did their best, and the sky people accepted their song and played with it, danced around it, decorated and subverted and fulfilled it, so that middle people and sky people together were a choir in a continuous astonishing cantata with ten thousand composers and no soloists.
Mon raised his own voice, high and sweet-so high that he did not have to sing among the low human voices, he could take a place in the bottom reaches of the sky people’s song. From the street, a woman of the fields looked up at him and smiled. Mon answered her, not with a smile, but with a rapid run, his best. And when she laughed and nodded and walked on, he felt good. Then he raised his eyes and saw, on the roof of a house two streets over, two young sky people who had perched there for a moment on their way home. They watched him, and Mon defiantly sang louder, though he knew his voice, high and quick as it was, was no match for the singing of the sky people. Still, they heard him, they sang with him for a moment, and then they raised their left wings in salute to him. They must be twins, thought Mon, self and oth-erself, yet they took a moment to open their duet to include me. He raised his own left hand in answer, and they dropped down from the roof into the courtyard of their own house.
Mon got up and, still singing, walked to the ladder. If he were an angel, he wouldn’t have to use a ladder to climb down from the roof of the king’s house. He could swoop down and come to rest before the door, and when dinner was over he could fly up into the night sky and go hunting by moonlight.
His bare feet slapped against the rungs as he skimmed down the ladder. Keeper of Earth, why did you make me human? He sang as he walked through the courtyard of the king’s house, heading for the raucous brotherhood of the king’s table, but there was pain and loneliness in his song.
Shedemei woke up in her chamber in the starship Basilica, and saw at once that it wasn’t one of her scheduled wakings. The calendar was all wrong, and to confirm it, she heard at once the voice of the Over-soul in her mind. “The Keeper is sending dreams again.”
She felt a thrill of excitement run through her. For all these centuries, dipping into and out of life, kept young by the cloak of the starmaster but long since old and weary in her heart, she had waited to see what the Keeper’s next move would be. She brought us here, thought Shedemei, brought us here and kept us alive and sent us dreams, and then suddenly she fell silent and we were left to our own devices for so long.
“It was an old man first, among the Zenifi,” said the Oversoul. Shedemei padded naked along the corridors of the ship and then up the central shaft to the library. “They murdered him. But a priest named Akmaro believed him. I think he also had some dreams, but I’m not sure. With the old man dead and the ex-priest living in slavery, I wouldn’t have woken you. But then the daughter of Motiak dreamed. Like Luet. I haven’t seen a dreamer like this since Luet.”
“What’s her name? She was just a newborn when I. . . .”
“Edhadeya. The women call her Deya. They know she’s something but the men don’t listen, of course.”
“I really don’t like the way things have developed between men and women among the Nafari, you know. My great-great-granddaughters shouldn’t have to put up with such nonsense.”
“I’ve seen worse,” said the Oversoul.
“I have no doubt of that. But, forgive me for asking: So what?”
“It will change,” the Oversoul said. “It always does.”
“How old is she now? Deya?”
“Ten.”
“I sleep ten years and I still don’t feel rested.” She sat down at one of the library computers. “All right, show me what I need to see.”
The Oversoul showed her Edhadeya’s dream and told her about Mon and his truthsense.
“Well,” said Shedemei, “the powers of the parents are undimin-ished in the children.”
“Shedemei, does any of this make sense to you?”
Shedemei almost laughed aloud. “Do you hear yourself, my friend? You are the program that posed as a god back on the planet Harmony.
You planned your plans, you plotted your plots, and you never asked humans for advice. Instead you roped us in and dragged us to Earth transformed our lives forever and now you ask me if any of this makes sense? What happened to the master plan?”
“My plan was simple,” said the Oversoul. “Get back to Earth and ask the Keeper what I should do about the weakening power of the Oversoul of Harmony. I fulfilled that plan as far as I could. Here I am.”
“And here I am.”
“Don’t you see, Shedemei? Your being here wasn’t my plan. I needed human help to assemble one workable starship, but I didn’t need to take any humans with me. I brought you because the Keeper of Earth was somehow sending you dreams-and sending them faster than light, I might add. The Keeper seemed to want you humans here. So I brought you. And I came, expecting to find technological marvels waiting for me. Machines that could repair me, replenish me, send me back to Harmony able to restore the power of the Oversoul. Instead I wait here, I’ve waited nearly five hundred years-”
“As have I,” added Shedemei.
“You’ve slept through most of them,” said the Oversoul. “And you don’t have responsibility for a planet a hundred lightyears distant where technology is beginning to blossom and devastating wars are only a few generations away. I don’t have time for this. Except that if the Keeper thinks I have time for it, I probably do. Why doesn’t the Keeper talk to me? When no one was hearing anything for all these years, I could be patient. But now humans are dreaming again, the Keeper is on the move again, and yet still it says nothing to me.”
“And you ask me?” said Shedemei. “You’re the one who should have memories dating back to the time when you were created. The Keeper sent you, right? Where was it then? What was it then?”
“I don’t know.” If a computer could shrug, Shedemei imagined the Oversoul would do it now. “Do you think I haven’t searched my memory? Before your husband died, he helped me search, and we found nothing. I remember the Keeper always being present, I remember knowing that certain vital instructions had been programmed into me by the Keeper-but as to who or what the Keeper is or was or even might have been, I know as little as you.”
“Fascinating,” said Shedemei. “Let’s see if we can think of a way to get the Keeper to talk to you. Or at least to show her hand.”
Mon was seated, as usual, down at the stewards’ end of the table. His father told him that the king’s second son was placed there in order to show respect for the record-keepers and message-bearers and treasurers and provisioners, for, as Father said, “If it weren’t for them, there’d be no kingdom for the soldiers to protect.”
When Father said that, Mon had answered, in his most neutral voice, “But if you really want to show your respect for them, you’d place Ha-Aron among them.”
To which Father mildly replied, “If it weren’t for the army, all the stewards would be dead.”
So Mon, the second son, was all that the second rank of leaders in the kingdom merited; the first son was the honor of the first rank, the military men, the people who really mattered.
And that was how the business of dinner was conducted, too. The King’s Supper had begun many generations ago as a council of war- that was when women began to be excluded. In those days it was only once a week that the council ate together, but for generations now it had been every night, and human men of wealth and standing imitated the king in their own homes, dining separately from their wives and daughters. It wasn’t that way among the sky people, though. Even those who shared the king’s table went home and sat with their wives and children for another meal.
Which was why, sitting at Mon’s left hand, the chief clerk, the old angel named bGo, was barely picking at his food. It was well known that bGo’s wife became quite miffed if he showed no appetite at her table, and Father had always refused to be offended that bGo apparently feared his wife more than he feared the king. bGo was senior among the clerks, though as head of the census he was certainly not as powerful as the treasuremaster and the provisioner. He was also a surly conversationalist and Mon hated having to sit with him.
Beyond bGo, though, his otherself, Bego, was far more talkative- and had a much sturdier appetite, mostly because he had never married. Bego, the recordkeeper, was only a minute and a half less senior than bGo, but one would hardly imagine they were the same age, Bego had so much energy, so much vigor, so much ... so much anger, Mon thought sometimes. Mon loved school whenever Bego was their tutor, but he sometimes wondered if Father really knew how much rage seethed under the surface of his recordkeeper. Not disloyalty-Mon would report that at once. Just a sort of general anger at life. Aronha said it was because he had never once mated with a female in his life, but then Aronha had sex on the brain these days and thought that lust explained everything-which, in the case of Aronha and all his friends, was no doubt true. Mon didn’t know why Bego was so angry. He just knew that it put a delicious skeptical edge on all of Bego’s lessons. And even on his eating. A sort of savagery in the way he lifted the panbread rolled up with bean paste to his lips and bit down on it. The way he ground the food in his jaws when he chewed, slowly, methodically, glaring out at the rest of the court.
On Mon’s right, the treasuremaster and the provisioner were caught up in their own business conversation-quietly, of course, so as not to distract from the real meeting going on at the king’s end of the table, where the soldiers were regaling each other with anecdotes from recent raids and skirmishes. Being adult humans, the treasuremaster and provisioner were much taller than Mon and generally ignored him after the initial courtesies. Mon was more the height of the sky people to his left, and besides, he knew Bego better, and so when he talked at all, it was to them.
“I have something I want to tell Father,” said Mon to Bego.
Bego chewed twice more and swallowed, fixing Mon with his weary gaze all the while. “Then tell him,” he said.
“Exactly,” murmured bGo.
“It’s a dream,” said Mon.
“Then tell your mother,” said Bego. “Middle women still pay attention to such things.”
“Right,” murmured bGo.
“But it’s a true dream,” said Mon. bGo sat up straight. “And how would you know that.”
Mon shrugged. “I know it.” bGo turned to Bego, who turned to him. They gazed at each other, as if some silent communication were passing between them. Then Bego turned back to Mon. “Be careful about making claims like that.”
“I am,” said Mon. “Only when I’m sure. Only when it matters.”
That was something Bego had taught them in school, about making judgments. “Whenever you can get away with making no decision at all, then that’s what you should do. Make decisions only when you’re sure, and only when it matters.” Bego nodded now, to hear Mon repeat his precept back to him.
“If he believes me, then it’s a matter for the war council,” said Mon.
Bego studied him. bGo did, too, for a moment, but then rolled his eyes and slumped back in his chair. “I feel an embarrassing scene coming on,” he murmured.
“Embarrassing only if the prince is a fool,” said Bego. “Are you?”
“No,” said Mon. “Not about this, anyway.” Even as he said it, though, Mon wondered if in fact he was a fool. After all, it was Ed-hadeya’s dream, not his own. And there was something about his interpretation of it that made him uneasy. Yet one thing was certain: It was a true dream, and it meant that somewhere humans-Nafari humans-lived in painful bondage under the whips of Elemaki diggers.
Bego waited for another moment, as if to be sure that Mon wasn’t going to back down. Then he raised his left wing. “Father Motiak,” he said loudly.
His abrasive voice cut through the noisy conversation at the military end of the table. Monush, for many years the mightiest warrior in the kingdom, the man for whom Mon had been named, was interrupted in the middle of a story. Mon winced. Couldn’t Bego have waited for a natural lull in the conversation?
Father’s normally benign expression did not change. “Bego, the memory of my people, what do you have to say during the war council?” His words held a bit of menace, but his voice was calm and kind, as always.
“While the soldiers are still at table,” said Bego, “one of the worthies of your kingdom has information that, if you choose to heed it, will be a matter for a council of war.”
“And who is this worthy? What is his information?” asked Father.
“He sits beside my otherself,” said Bego, “and he can give you his information for himself.”
All eyes turned to Mon, and for a moment he wanted to turn and flee from the room. Had Edhadeya realized how awful this moment would be, when she asked him to do this? But Mon knew he could not shrink from this now-to back down would humiliate Bego and shame himself. Even if his message was disbelieved, he had to give it-and boldly, too.
Mon rose to his feet, and, as he had seen his father do before speaking, he looked each of the leading men of the kingdom in the eyes. In their faces he saw surprise, amusement, deliberate patience. Last of all he looked at Aronha, and to his relief, he saw that Aronha looked serious and interested, not teasing or embarrassed. Aronha, thank you for giving me respect.
“My information comes from a true dream,” Mon said at last.
There was a murmur around the table. Who had dared to claim a true dream in many generations? And at the king’s table?
“How do you know it’s a true dream?” asked Father.
It was something Mon had never been able to explain to anyone or even to himself. He didn’t try now. “It’s a true dream,” he said.
Again there was a whisper around the table, and while some of the impatient faces changed to amusement, some that had been amused now looked serious.
“At least they’re paying attention,” murmured bGo.
Father spoke again, a hint of consternation in his voice. “Tell us the dream, then, and why it’s a matter for the council of war.”
“The same dream over and over for many nights,” said Mon. He was careful to give no hint of who the dreamer was. He knew they would assume that it was him, but no one would be able to call him a liar. “A little boy and his sister, the ages of Ominer and Khimin. They were working in the fields, as slaves, faint with hunger, and the taskmasters who whipped them at their work were earth people.”
He had their attention now, all of them. Diggers with humans as slaves-it made all of them angry, though they all knew that it must happen from time to time.
“One time in the dream the boy was beaten by human boys. Humans who ruled over the diggers. The boy was brave and never cried out as they . . . humiliated him. He was worthy.”
The soldiers all nodded. They understood what he was saying.
“At night the boy and his sister and his father and mother lay in silence. I think ... I think they were forbidden to speak aloud. But they asked for help. They asked for someone to come and deliver them from bondage.”
Mon paused for a moment, and into the silence came Monush’s voice. “I have no doubt that this dream is true enough, because we know that many humans and angels are kept as slaves among the Elemaki. But what can we do? It takes all our strength to keep our own people free.”
“But Monush,” said Mon, “these are our people.”
Now the whispers were filled with excitement and outrage.
“Let me hear my son speak,” said Father. The whispers ceased.
Mon blushed. Father had admitted him to be his son, yes, that was good; but he had not used the formal locution, “Let me hear my counselor,” which would have meant that he absolutely accepted what Mon was saying. He was still on trial here. Thanks Edhadeya. This could shame me for my whole life, if it goes badly. I would always be known as the second son who spoke foolishness out of turn in a war council.
“They have no sky people among them,” said Mon. “Who has ever heard of such a kingdom? They are the Zenifi, and they call to us for help.”
Husu, the angel who served the king as his chief spy, leading hundreds of strong, brave skypeople who kept constant watch on the borders of the kingdom, raised his right wing, and Mon nodded to give him the king’s ear. He had seen this done before at council, but since he had never had the king’s ear himself, this was the first time he had ever been able to take part in the niceties of formal discussion.
“Even if the dream is true and the Zenifi are calling out to us in dreams,” said Husu, “what claim do they have upon us? They rejected the decision of the first King Motiak and refused to live in a place where sky people outnumbered middle people five to one. They left Darakemba of their own free will, to return to the land of Nafai. We thought they must have been destroyed. If we learn now that they are alive, we’re glad, but it means nothing more than that to us. If we learn now that they’re in bondage, we’re sad, but again, it means nothing more than that.”
When his speech was finished, Mon looked to the king for permission to speak again.
“How do you know they’re the Zenifi?” asked Father.
Again, Mon could say nothing more than to repeat what he knew was true. Only this was exactly the point that he wasn’t sure of. They were the Zenifi, but they were not the Zenifi. Or something. Something else. They used to be Zenifi, was that it? Or are they simply a pan of the Zenifi?
“They are Zenifi,” said Mon, and as he said it he knew that it was right, or right enough. They may not be the Zenifi, the whole people; but they are Zenifi, even if somewhere else there might be others.
But Mon’s answer gave Father little to go on. “A dream?” he said. “The first king of the Nafari had true dreams.”
“As did his wife,” said Bego.
“The great queen Luet,” said Father, nodding. “Bego is wise to remind us of history. Both were true dreamers. And there were other true dreamers among them. And among the sky people, and among the earth people too, in those days. But that was the age of heroes.”
Mon wanted to insist: It is a true dream. But he had seen at council before how Father resisted when men tried to press their case by saying the same thing again and again. If they had new evidence, fine, let them speak and Father would hear; but if they were merely insisting on the same old story, Father merely believed them less and less the more they pushed. So Mon held his tongue and merely continued to look his father in the eye, unabashed.
He heard bGo’s soft murmur as he spoke to his otherself: “I know what the gossips will be chatting about for the next week.”
“The boy has courage,” Bego answered softly.
“So do you,” said bGo.
In the silence, Aronha stood from the table, but instead of asking Mon for the king’s ear, he walked around behind the chairs to stand behind his father. It was a privilege that only the king’s heir had, to speak to the king privately in front of his other counselors without giving offense-for it was not presumption for the heir to display a special privacy with the king.
Father listened to Aronha, then nodded. “This can be said aloud,” he said, granting permission.
Aronha returned to his seat. “I know my brother,” he said. “He does not lie.”
“Of course not,” said Monush, and Husu echoed him.
“More than that,” said Aronha. “Mon never claims to know what he doesn’t know. When he’s unsure, he says so. And when he’s sure, he’s always right.”
Mon felt a thrill run through him, to hear such words from his brother’s mouth. Aronha wasn’t just standing up for him-he was asserting something so outrageous that Mon was frightened for him. How could he make such a claim?
“Bego and I have noticed it,” said Aronha. “Why else do you suppose Bego risked his own place at the king’s table in order to introduce Mon’s words? I don’t think Mon realizes it himself. Most of the time he is uncertain of himself. He can be persuaded easily; he never argues. But when he truly knows a thing, he never backs down, never, no matter how much we argue. And when he digs in his heels like that, Bego and I both know well, he’s never been wrong. Not once. I would stake my honor and the lives of good men on the truth of what he says today. Even though I think the dream was not his own, if he says it’s a true dream and the people are the Zenifi, then I know that it’s the truth as surely as if I saw old Zenif with my own eyes.”
“Why do you think the dream is not his own?” asked Father, suddenly wary.
“Because he never said it was,” said Aronha. “If it was, he would have said it. He didn’t, so it wasn’t.”
“Whose dream was it?” demanded the king.
“The daughter of Toeledwa,” said Mon immediately.
There was an immediate uproar at the table, partly because Mon had dared to mention the name of the dead queen at a celebratory occasion, but mostly because he had brought the counsel of a woman to the king’s table.
“We would not have heard that voice here!” cried one of the old captains.
Father raised his hands and everyone fell silent. “You’re right, we would not have heard that voice here. But my son believes that the message of that voice needed to be heard, and so he dared to bring it; and Ha-Aron has declared his belief in it. So now the only question before this council is: What shall we do, now that we know the Zenifi are calling to us for help?”
The discussion immediately passed beyond any realm where Mon would be consulted, and he sat down, listening. He scarcely trusted himself to look at anyone, for fear he would break discipline and show a smile of such relief, such gratification that everyone would know that he was still only a child, the second son.
Husu opposed sending any sky people to, risk their lives rescuing the Zenifi; in vain did Monush argue that the first generation, the one that had rejected all human association with angels, was surely dead by now. As they discussed the issue, with other counselors chiming in with their own points, Mon risked a glance at his brother. To his chagrin, Aronha was looking right at him, grinning. Mon ducked his head to hide his own grin, but he was happier at this moment than he had ever been before in his life.
He turned then, to glance at Bego, but it was bGo who whispered to him. “What if a hundred die, for this dream of Edhadeya’s?”
The words struck Mon through the heart. He hadn’t thought of that. To send an army so far into Elemaki territory, up the endless narrow canyons where ambush was possible anywhere-it was dangerous, it was foolhardy, yet the war council was arguing, not about whether to risk it, but whom to take on the raid.
“Don’t ruin the boy’s triumph,” murmured Bego. “Nobody’s making the soldiers go. He told the truth and he did it boldly. Honor to him.” Bego raised his glass of mulled wine.
Mon knew to raise his own glass of twice-cut wine. “It was your voice opened the door, Ro-Bego.”
Bego sipped his wine, frowning. “None of your middlebeing titles for me, boy.” bGo grinned-a rare expression for him-and said, “My otherself is beside himself with pleasure; you must excuse him, it always makes him surly.”
Father proposed the compromise. “Let Husu’s spies guard Mon-ush’s human soldiers until they find a way past the outposts of the Elemaki. From what we understand, there’s chaos among the kingdoms in the land of Nafai these days, and it may be far safer than usual to get in. Then, when Monush passes within the guarded borders, the spies hold back and wait for them to emerge again.”
“How long?” asked Husu.
“Eighty days,” said Monush.
“It’s the wet season in high country,” said Husu. “Are we to freeze or starve? What is the plan?”
“Keep five men there for ten days,” said the king. “Then another five, and another, for ten days each.”
Monush raised his left hand in agreement. Husu raised his left wing, but muttered nonetheless, “To bring back worthless bigots, yes, I’m sure that’s worth the trouble.”
Mon was surprised that Husu was allowed to speak so boldly.
“I understand the anger the sky people feel toward the Zenifi,” said Father. “That’s why I take no offense at the mockery in your acceptance of my proposal.”
Husu bowed his head. “My king is kinder than his servant deserves.”
“That’s the truth,” muttered bGo. “Someday Husu will go too far and the rest of us will pay for it.”
The rest of “us”? He must mean the sky people as a whole, thought Mon. It was a disturbing thought, that somehow the sky people would all be held responsible for Husu’s audacity. “That wouldn’t be fair,” said Mon. bGo chuckled softly. “Listen to him, Bego. He says it isn’t fair- as if that means it couldn’t happen.”
“In the secret heart of every human man,” whispered Bego, “the sky people are nothing more than impertinent beasts.”
“That’s not true,” said Mon. “You’re wrong!”
Bego looked at him, bemused.
“I’m a human, aren’t I?” demanded Mon. “And in my heart the angels are the most beautiful and glorious people.”
Mon had not been shouting, but the intensity in his voice had stilled all other voices. In the sudden silence, he realized that everyone had heard him. He looked at his Father’s surprised expression and blushed.
“It seems to me,” said Father, “that some of the council have forgotten that only those with the king’s ear can speak here.”
Mon rose to his feet, hot with shame. “Forgive me, sir.”
Father smiled. “I believe it was Aronha who said that when you dug in your heels, you were always right.” He turned to Aronha. “Do you stand by that?”
A bit uncertain, Aronha looked his father in the eye and said, “Yes, sir.”
“Then I believe it is the opinion of this council that the angels are indeed the most beautiful and glorious people.” And Father raised his glass to Husu.
Husu stood, bowed, and lifted his glass in response. Both drank.
Then Father looked at Monush, who laughed, stood, and lifted his glass to drink as well.
“The words of my second son have brought peace to this table,” said Father. “That is always wisdom, to these ears, at least. Come, have done. The council is over and there is nothing more for us here except to eat-and ponder how the dreams of young girls, brought by young boys, have set in motion the feet and wings of warriors.”
Edhadeya waited for her father to come to her small room to talk with her as he did every night. Usually she was happy that he was coming, eager to tell him how she did in school, to show off a new word or phrase in the ancient language, to tell him of some adventure or gossip or achievement of the day. Tonight, though, she was afraid, and she wasn’t sure which she feared more-that Mon had told Father of her dream, or that he hadn’t. If he hadn’t, then she would have to tell him now herself, and then he might pat her shoulder and tell her that the dream was strange and wonderful and then he would just ignore it, not realizing that it was a true dream.
When he came to her doorway, though, Edhadeya knew that Mon had told him. His eyes were sharp and searching. He stood in silence, his arms bracing the doorframe. Finally he nodded. “So the spirit of Luet is awake in my daughter.”
She looked down at the floor, unsure whether he was angry or proud.
“And the spirit of Nafai in my second son.”
Ah. So he wasn’t angry.
“Don’t bother explaining why you couldn’t tell me this yourself,” said Father. “I know why, and I’m ashamed. Luet never had to use subterfuge to get her husband’s ear, nor did Chveya have to get her brother or her husband to speak for her when she had wisdom that others needed to know.”
In one motion he knelt before her and took her hands in his. “I looked around the king’s council tonight, as we finished our meal, thoughts of danger and war in our minds, of the Zenifi in bondage and needing to be saved, and all I could think of was-why have we forgotten what our first ancestors knew? That the Keeper of Earth cares not whether he speaks to a woman or a man?”
“What if it’s not so?” she whispered.
“What, you doubt it now?” asked Father.
“I dreamed the dream, and it was true-but it was Mon who said it was the Zenifi. I didn’t understand it at all till he said that.”
“Keep talking to Mon when you have true dreams,” said Father. “I know this: When Mon spoke, I felt a fire kindle in my heart and I thought-the words came into my mind as clearly as if someone had spoken them in my ear-I thought, A mighty man stands here in boyshape. And then I learned the dream was yours, and again the voice came into my mind: The man who listens to Edhadeya will be the true steward of the Keeper of Earth.”
“Was it-the Keeper who spoke to you?” asked Edhadeya.
“Who knows?” said Father. “Maybe it was fatherly pride. Maybe it was wishful thinking. Maybe it was the voice of the Keeper. Maybe it was the second glass of wine.” He laughed. “I miss your mother,” he said. “She would know better than I what to make of you.”
“I’m doing my best with her,” said Dudagu from the door.
Edhadeya gasped in surprise. Dudagu had a way of moving around silently so that no one knew where she might be eavesdropping.
Father rose to his feet. “But I have never charged you with my daughter’s education,” said Father gently. “So what in the world would you be doing your best at?” He grinned at Dudagu and then strode out of Edhadeya’s room.
Dudagu glared at Edhadeya. “Don’t think this dream business can get you anywhere, little girl,” she said. Then she smiled. “What you say to him in here, I can always unsay to him on his pillow.”
Edhadeya smiled her prettiest smile back at her stepmother. Then she opened her mouth and jammed her finger down her throat as if to make herself throw up. A moment later she was smiling prettily again.
Dudagu shrugged. “Four more years till I can have you married off,” she said. “Believe me, I already have my women looking for someone suitable. Someone far away from here.”
She glided silently away from the door and down the hall. Edhadeya threw herself back on her bed and murmured, “I would dearly love to have a true dream of Dudagu Dermo in a boating accident. If you arrange those things, dear Keeper of Earth, keep in mind that she doesn’t swim, but she’s very tall, so the water must be deep.”
The next day all the talk was of the expedition to find the Zenifi. And the morning after that, the lofty people and the officials of the city turned out to see the soldiers march away, the spies flying their daredevil maneuvers in the sky above them. Edhadeya thought, as she watched them go, So this is what a dream can do. And then she thought, I should have more such dreams.
At once she was ashamed of herself. If I ever lie about about my dreams and claim a true one when it isn’t so, then may the Keeper take all my dreams away from me.
Sixteen human soldiers, with a dozen spies shadowing them from the air, set out from Darakemba. It was not an army, was not even large enough to be a serious raiding party, and so their departure caused only a momentary stir in the city. Mon watched, though, with Aronha and Edhadeya standing beside him on the roof.
“They should have let me go with them,” said Aronha angrily.
“Are you that generous, that you want the kingdom to come to me?” asked Mon.
“Nobody’s going to be killed,” said Aronha.
Mon didn’t bother to answer. He was perfectly aware that Aronha knew Father was right-there was a touch of madness to this expedition. It was a search party trying to find the location of a dream. Father took only volunteers, and it was only with great reluctance that he let the great soldier Monush lead them. There was no chance that he would send his heir. “They’d spend all their time worrying about your safety instead of the mission I’m sending them on,” Father had said. “Don’t worry, Aronha. You’ll have your first sight of bloody battle far too soon, I’m sure. If I sent you out this time, though, your mother would rise up from the grave to scold me.” Mon had felt a thrill of fear when he heard this, until he saw that everyone else was taking it as a joke.
Everyone but Aronha, of course, who really was furious at not being included. “My sister can have the dream, my brother can tell you the dream-and what is for me? Tell me that, Father!”
“Why, Aronha, I have given you exactly as much involvement as I have given myself-to stand and watch them go.”
Well, now they were doing just that, standing and watching them go. Normally Aronha would have seen the soldiers off from the steps of the king’s house, but he claimed it would be too humiliating to stand beside the king when he had been declared too useless to go. Father didn’t argue with him, just let him go to the roof, and now here he stood, furious even though he had already admitted to Mon that if he were in Father’s place he’d make the same decision. “Just because Father’s right doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”
Edhadeya laughed. “By the Cottonmouth, Aronha, that’s when Father makes us the maddest!”
“Don’t swear by the Legless One,” said Aronha sharply.
“Father says it’s just a dangerous snake and not a real god so why not?” said Edhadeya defiantly.
“You’re not superstitious now, are you, Aronha?” asked Mon.
“Father says to have respect for the beliefs of others, and you know half the digger servants still hold the Legless One sacred,” said Aronha.
“Yes,” said Edhadeya, “and they’re always swearing by him.”
“They don’t say his name outright,” said Aronha.
“But Aronha, it’s just a snake.” Edhadeya wagged her head back and forth like a maize tassel. In spite of himself, Aronha laughed. Then his face got serious again, and he looked back at the sixteen soldiers, jogging out among the fields in single file, heading up the river to the souther border.
“Will they find my dream?” asked Edhadeya.
“If the Keeper sent you the dream,” said Aronha, “it must mean he wants the Zenifi found.”
“But that doesn’t mean that anybody in Monush’s party even knows how to hear the Keeper when she speaks,” said Edhadeya.
Aronha glared but didn’t look at her. “He decides whom he’s going to speak to. It’s not a matter of knowing how.”
“She can only speak to people who know how to listen, which is why our ancestor Luet was so famous as the waterseer, and her sister Hushidh and her niece Chveya as ravelers. They had great power in them, and-”
“The power wasn’t in them,” said Aronha. “It was in the Keeper. He chose them, his favorites-and I might point out that none of them was greater than Nafai himself, who had the cloak of the star-master and commanded the heavens with his-”
“Bego says it’s all silliness,” said Mon.
The others fell silent.
“He does?” said Aronha, after a while.
“You’ve heard him say so, haven’t you?” asked Mon.
“Never to me,” said Aronha. “What does he say is silliness? The Keeper?”
“The idea of our heroic ancestors,” said Mon. “Everybody claims to have heroic ancestors, he says. By the time enough generations have passed, they become gods. He says that’s where gods come from. Gods in human shape, anyway.”
“How interesting,” said Aronha. “He teaches the king’s son that the king’s ancestors are made up?”
Only now did Mon realize that he might be causing trouble for his tutor. “No,” he said. “Not in so many words. He just . . . raised the possibility.”
Aronha nodded. “So you don’t want me to turn him in.”
“He didn’t say it outright.”
“Just remember this, Mon,” said Aronha. “Bego might be right, and our stories of great human ancestors with extraordinary powers granted by the Keeper of Earth, those stories might all be exaggerated or even outright fantasies or whatever. But we middle people aren’t the only ones who might want to revise history to fit our present needs. Don’t you think a patriotic sky man might want to cast doubt on the stories of greatness among the ancestors of the middle people? Especially the ancestors of the king?”
“Bego’s not a liar,” said Mon. “He’s a scholar.”
“I didn’t say he was lying,” said Aronha. “He says we believe in these tales because it’s so useful and satisfying to us. Maybe he doubts the same tales because the doubt is useful and satisfying to him.”
Mon frowned. “Then how can we ever know what’s true?”
“We can’t,” said Aronha. “That’s what I figured out a long time ago.”
“So you don’t believe in anything?”
“I believe in everything that seems most true to me right now,” said Aronha. “I just refuse to be surprised when some of those things I believe now turn out to be false later. It helps keep me from being upset.”
Edhadeya laughed. “And where did you learn that idea?”
Aronha turned to her, mildly offended. “You don’t think I could think it up myself?”
“No,” she said.
“Monush taught me that,” said Aronha. “One day when I asked him if there really was a Keeper of Earth. After all, according to the old stories, there once was a god called the Oversoul, and that turned out to be a machine inside an ancient boat.”
“An ancient boat that flew through the air,” said Mon. “Bego says that only the sky people fly, and that our ancestors invented that flying boat story because middle people were so jealous of the fact that sky people could fly.”
“Some sky people can fly,” said Edhadeya. “I’ll bet old Bego is so old and fat and creaky he can’t even get off the ground anymore.”
“But he could when he was young,” said Mon. “He can remember.”
“And you can imagine,” said Aronha.
Mon shook his head. “To remember is real. To imagine is nothing.”
Edhadeya laughed. “That’s silly, Mon. Most of the things people say they remember they only imagine anyway.”
“And where did you learn tknt?” asked Aronha with a smirk.
Edhadeya rolled her eyes. “From Uss-Uss, and you can laugh if you want, but she’s-”
“She’s a glorified housemaid!” said Aronha.
“She’s the only friend I had after Mother died,” said Edhadeya firmly, “and she’s very wise.”
“She’s a digger,” said Mon softly.
“But not an Elemaku,” said Edhadeya. “Her family has served the kings of the Nafari for five generations.”
“As slaves,” said Mon.
Aronha laughed. “Mon listens to an old angel, Edhadeya to a fat old digger slave woman, and I listen to a soldier who is known for his courage and cleverness in war, and not for his scholarship. We all choose our own teachers, don’t we? I wonder if our choice of teacher shows anything about what our lives will be.”
They thought about that in silence as they watched the small swarm of spies that marked the location of Monush’s party as they continued their journey far up the valley of the Tsidorek.