The Fifth Sacred Thing (95 page)

“Well, Lily, now what?” Sam asked. The kitchen was crowded and warm with the smell of simmering soup and noisy with five conversations going on at once.

“Come to Council tomorrow,” she said. “It will all be debated. What to do with the deserters. How to rebuild. Whether or not we should anticipate further attacks.”

“Tomorrow?” Madrone said. It already was tomorrow, wasn’t it? She had worked through the night and lost count of time. “Don’t we get a day off?”

“You’re tired, I know. But these are pressing issues; we should at least
begin the discussions. Of course, nothing will be resolved immediately. But you will come, won’t you? All of you—you from the South too. We need the information you can give us.”

“I’ll be happy to come,” Katy said, shifting Lucia to her other breast. “I’ve been wishing I could see how one of your Councils functions.”

“I suppose I should go,” Maya said. She was ensconced in the big easy chair, tucked under an afghan that Johanna had crocheted long ago. She was still eating very little; really, it seemed a shame, now that she was halfway discarnate, to interrupt the process of dissolution. Everything she looked at wavered and shimmered. At the edge of her vision, ghost forms danced. Now, for instance, Johanna’s arms were wrapped around her. Rio sat at her feet, his hand resting lightly on her thigh.

“I suppose you should stay home in bed,” Sam said decisively.

“Is that a proposition?”

“It’s an order.”

“Then for sure I’ll go. I never obey orders.”

“Does Defense think there’s a chance of further attacks?” Nita asked.

“Nobody knows for sure,” Lily said. “We think not, not soon anyway. They’ll need some time to recover from this defeat and consider what they can learn from it. But as long as the Southlands continue in their present system, we can expect attacks. That’s why we especially want you who have been down there, Madrone and Bird too, to be part of this discussion. We need to consider more active aid for their Web.”

Bird sat silent on the couch, huddled in the corner. He was having a hard time shaking the ghosts; they seemed to follow him everywhere. From time to time he had to leave the room to check on Rosa, who was sleeping in Maya’s bed, and reassure himself that she was really alive. When he closed his eyes, Marie and Lan and Roberto stared at him. They vanished only when Madrone touched him or when he sat at the piano, as he had done for an hour that morning, picking out the music he heard in his ears, writing it down. Now he noticed that Lily’s eyes were fixed on him.

“No, Lily, I’m not going. Don’t look for me at Council. You all can condemn me better when I’m not there.”

“We aren’t going to condemn you, Bird. People understand a little better now. They think you’re very brave.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m no hero any more than I was a villain before. None of you understands the least thing about what happened to me!”

“We know you did the best you could, Bird,” Lily said softly.

“Of course I did the best I could. Maybe I did the best anybody could. That’s not the point. The problem is, it wasn’t good enough. Consider that before you go rushing off to liberate the Southlands.”

“Maybe it was, Bird. Maybe it was exactly what had to happen. Because if
you hadn’t worked for them, if you hadn’t in some way become part of them, there might have been no opening for your unit to become just the smallest bit more like us. Enough like us to shift the balance and change everything.”

“That’s a nice rationalization,” Bird said. “I wish I believed it. Do you, really?”

“I believe that you never stopped resisting them, in every way you could. Those ways were imperfect, true, but you can’t blame yourself for what you couldn’t do. Defense Council is planning to ask you to join us.”

“You’re crazy. Cress’ll have you drummed out of the city, unless he got shot yesterday.”

“He has a bad laser burn in his shoulder,” Madrone said, “but he’ll survive.”

“Besides, I’m not old, and I’m not a woman,” Bird said.

“Defense agrees that the time has come to change our policy. We’re the only Council restricted by gender, and that’s not right. It leaves us open to attacks by such as Cress. But you, Bird, know more than anyone here what we’re fighting against. We can learn so much from your experiences, even the worst of them. Especially the worst of them. We need you to help us plan how to deal with the Southlands.”

Bird wasn’t sure he believed her. Nevertheless, something gray and clinging lifted from his shoulders and partially dissolved. He looked up at Madrone, who sat across the room. She was worn and dry and wizened and aged. That was what the Southlands did to you. But she was beautiful to him, maybe more so than before, maybe because they were more alike now, both wounded, both survivors. Both strong, he realized. I am strong. Even if other forces are sometimes stronger.

“And how was it in the Southlands?” he asked Madrone.

“Hard,” Madrone said. Why, she realized, I have yet to tell my story to anyone back here. “Very hard. But I’m glad I went. I learned a lot. I don’t know how much good I did, or if I’d go back.”

“But you’d consider it?” Katy asked eagerly.

“You ask me that, after you’ve threatened never to move from the Sisters’ garden?”

“I will go back,” Katy said. “Maybe not right away, because of the baby. But it’s my home, it’s my struggle. Hers, too.”

Madrone looked at Bird. “Would you?”

He looked around the room. It was warm and bright and smelled of good food, filled with his family and friends. He was safe now; nobody would hurt him or face him with impossible choices. He had his music back, if not the skill of his hands, and Madrone, alive and soft-eyed. Would he risk all that again?

“After I rest up,” he said, “I’d consider it. With you.”

“Come back with the unit, man,” said River, looking up from the soup he was eagerly downing. “Raise an army down there, free from the boosters, and we could take over.”

“I can’t singlehandedly free every soldier in the Southlands from the need for the boosters,” Madrone said.

“We’ll have the labs back in service soon, though, and we’ll run them through a complete analysis,” Sam said. “I’m sure we can find a drug protocol that’ll be effective.”

“If so, you’ll shift the odds for the Web,” Katy said. “You may make our victory possible.”

“Consider this, too,” Lily said. “We are no longer being held under radio silence. The jamming of the airwaves has stopped. We’ve got short-wave operators right now searching for others out there, trying to talk to other parts of the world. The time for isolation is over. There may be a lot of places to go.”

“What kind of places?” Isis asked, sitting up alert.

“All kinds of places. Over the mountains to the east, over the ocean to the western islands, maybe even Asia and Japan. It’s a big world. Once it was all connected, and still the tides and the currents and the air streams link us.”

“I’ll go west,” Isis said. “Sail off over the ocean, find those places. With you, baby.” She fondled Sara’s arm.

“I’m not going back to the Southlands,” Sara said. “But I’d go to Hawaii. Think you could find it?”

“Don’t mind looking. That appeals to me. Who else?” Isis winked at Maya. “How about you, Great-Grandmama? Maybe a beautiful pirate steal you away from that old hairy man?”

Maya smiled. Yes, everything was fading, dreamy. Already she could feel herself rocking aboard ship. She was tired, so tired, and yet the thought of that journey appealed to her. They would set sail over the steel-gray dying ocean, in zigzag courses against the prevailing winds. They would search out the old lands, the wild lands and the islands, and there she would do what she had always done: talk to anyone who would listen, tell stories, pull the tail of the beast and, when it growled, stand her ground. There she would serve what she had always served, what was truly sacred: air and fire, water and earth, and in that service she believed she would always find companions.

And maybe on the way they would find the old sea, the clean sea, where the dream poems of whales still resounded in the deep places, where dolphins arched and ran near the secret rendezvous grounds of the golden seal. Oh, the world was a very big place; she had traveled enough when she was young to know that anything might still hide in the vast spaces of the west. There might be islands of summer where she would find the disappearing songbirds, and schools of deep-sea salmon massing to return up great rivers and spawn in
mountain streams. Oh yes. Oh yes. She would believe, she had always needed to believe, that at daybreak in some warm ocean, seahorses still rose to greet their mates with a circular dance, their spiral tails twined around spires of sea grass. She had never seen them but she would go and find them, stranger than any mythical beast, the living creatures of the ancient, unwounded earth.

She would find them, going west, flanked by ghosts, accompanied by her beloved dead, by fallen heras and heros and villains and the ranks of the extinct, west against the wind to bring them home, west toward the moon and the evening star, west against the bright slanting rays of the sun and the turning clock of the earth, until west became east, until sunset became sunrise, until time swallowed its own tail and the day that was ending became a day that was just beginning to dawn.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

M
any people have lent me their help and support as I worked on this book. Isis Coble read draft after draft of original material, offering insightful criticism and heartening enthusiasm. Marie Cantlon, who edited my three previous books, was also invaluable to me in helping me conceive and structure this story. Linda Gross at Bantam was a delight to work with; her questions and suggestions helped refine and clarify the story. In fact, everyone at Bantam has been a joy to work with, and I deeply appreciate their support and professionalism.

My agent, Ken Sherman, also cheered me on through the early drafts. Wendy Williams thought up the title. Susan Sedon-Boulet created the beautiful cover art. David Abram went prowling about the Santa Monica Mountains with me and suggested I use bees in the story. Arisika Raszak, Marina Alzugaray, and Arachne helped with information about midwifery and suggestions in the birth scenes. Patricia Witt gave me background on biology and the workings of the immune system, and Rafael Jesús González deepened my understanding of Coatlicue. Charles Dabo spoke Spanish with me daily and was unfailingly willing to translate. Michael Shapiro of
Libros Sin Fronteras
also consulted on the Spanish. William Doub provided the Chinese phrases quoted here.

Many of the chants and songs quoted in this story are actually used in rituals. The chant “Free the heart, let it go” on
this page
was created in a ritual class I taught in a summer workshop in Creation Spirituality at Omega Institute, by a woman whose name I am sorry to say I’ve forgotten. “If we have courage” on
this page
was written by myself and Rose May Dance. The chant “The earth is our mother” used as a password by the Web is Native American. The chant “Silver Shining Wheel” on
this page
is by Sparky T. Rabbit. “Yemaya Asesu,” sung by Madrone on
this page
, is a traditional Yoruba chant taught to me by Luisah Teish. The invocation on
this page
that begins: “By the earth that is her body” comes from the Faery tradition of Witchcraft and was taught me by Victor Anderson. The song to Elijah sung on
this page
is from the Jewish Seder.

“I wish I was a tiny sparrow” on
this page
is an old English folk song. “My mama makes counterfeit whiskey,” on
this page
, is a variation of the old tune, “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” I have no idea where it comes from, but Rose May Dance taught it to me and it is excellent for calming fussy babies.

The quotation from Diane Di Prima on
this page
is from a poem I heard her read at An Evening of Music and Poetry for an End to Nuclear Testing, Dec. 5, 1990, at the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco. All other chant lyrics and poems are by me.

Ch’i
, the Chinese word for subtle energy, is more properly written
qi
in today’s revised phonetic spelling, but I have stayed with the older version as it is easier for the reader to hear correctly.

In inventing the future, I’ve drawn on many sources. Mark Shoenbeck offered me hospitality at the New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod, where much of the food-growing techniques in this book had their inspiration. The Voices in the Council were inspired by a practice begun at the Fifth North American Bioregional Congress in 1989. The permaculture movement has also been a rich source of ideas. Many of the rituals strongly resemble those created by Reclaiming, the collective I work and teach with, and especially the Celebrations for the Ancestors of Many Cultures we have begun to do every Halloween season. I thank the members of the planning group for bringing to life a multicultural vision like that expressed here. The phrase “May you never hunger; may you never thirst,” is part of our ritual blessing of food and drink. Many of the political and social structures were inspired by years of organizing and participating in nonviolent direct actions against various wars and weapons.