The Magister (Earthkeep) (11 page)

Oh yes, she thought, I used to.  Forty years ago. 

Deliberately she concentrated on the wooden windchimes, bringing herself into their resonances. 
"Good,"
said her voice. 
"Now stay there.  Hold with the chimes."
  Then, unbidden and in spite of her focus, the old sweet taste came, cloying and insistent.
"Listen!"  
Heavily she shifted her attention back to the chimes, sucking in their sounds, willing them to fill her universe. 

But in the next instant she knew there was no escape.  Not when the head-to-toe blasts of sweat had begun, not when her body started its old familiar arching upward, navel to the sky, not when she moved like a dutiful slave into her curving backbone as it completed its inexorable rounding and stiffening.  Its arch fitted her like an old pair of shoes.  This daemon had slept for decades, dreaming of the time when it could again be the companion of her nights and days.  She was completely in the arch now, surrendered to its stasis, braced on her shoulders and heels, in full-body paralysis.  And there they went, her eyes, backward into her skull, back, back. . .

In her last moment before total darkness and the convulsions that were sure to come, she remembered to tuck her tongue behind her lower teeth.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

"She's eased," Dicken said.  "She'll be okay after some rest."

Oaliu, Trustholder of the Acuai tribespeople, took the damp cloth from Dicken.  "Last night, before we began the culture and language transfers, her sleep was very disturbed.  Why was that?"

Dicken sat at the end of the pallet, holding Jez's head.  "She calls it 'my childhood affliction.'  It's been on her for three nights now — just some symptoms.  But even our spooning got to be affected.  Nothing dangerous, but a little shaky."

"You have not seen such seizures before?"

"No.  She's described them, but this one here is the first I ever saw.  Wait, she's stirring."

Oaliu laid her lips close to Jez's ear.  "You do not have to move.  We have healers who will help.  I have sent for them."

The eyelids fluttered mightily with the effort to open.  Then Jez whispered the Acuai word of agreement. 

"Good." Oaliu nodded.  "We have gotten you cleaned up and in fresh beddings.  You will be able to understand all that the healers tell us."  She looked at Dicken.

"I am right here," Dicken told Jez.  She wiped the wet brow again with the cloth.

Jez's eyes flew open.  She sat bolt upright and tried to get to her feet. 

"Lavona," she croaked, "we've got to get to Lavona!"  She pushed Oaliu's arms away.

Dicken brought her partner gently down to the pallet again.  Oaliu helped her to soothe the wild-eyed Jez.  "Jezebel, sweet love," she whispered.

Jez still struggled.  "Now, Dicken!  We have to go now!"

Dicken held her down, effortlessly.  "Jezebel, we cannot be going right away.  We could not even raise the spoon, you in this shape.  So hush now."

Jez sank back, fighting nausea.  "An hour.  I'll rest an hour."  She was lost again in slumber.

"Lavona?" Oaliu asked.

"An old friend.  She's a weekday childkeeper, I think.  She lives up in the Alleghenies."
"Nueva Tierra Norte?"

Dicken grinned ruefully.  "Yes.  West Virginia."  She pulled a light blanket over Jez and spoke to the room at large.  "I got no notion why we got to go to West Virginia."

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Two days later, after long legs of hard flying over jungles and high plains, and a rocket hop across the Caribbean, Jez and Dicken spooned due north again.  The air whipped by their powerbubble at 100-plus miles per hour, disturbing not at all the two navigation and monitoring systems that were linked in perfect coordination.  But things were not peaceful inside the flightpod.

When Dicken suggested a layover in Atlanta, Jez took her hand out of a warm pocket and reached toward her lover.  "I'm not tired, Dicken. . ."

"Well I am!" Dicken exploded, flinging Jez's hand away from her.  She pushed more sustaining ki toward the edges of their bubble and rubbed her eyes with both hands. 

"God's Green Eyeballs, Bella," she said wearily.

"And I am not Bella!"  Jez's voice was tense.

In a swift shift, Dicken rolled onto her back, readjusting her monitors so that she flew supine just a few inches below her lover.  "Look at me," she challenged, shaking Jez's shoulders.  The eyes that stared back at Dicken were surrounded by gray circles.  "It's just that you will not lay down your head to rest," Dicken whispered.

"I can't rest!  Quit protecting me, Dicken!"

"I'm trying to keep you from killing yourself."

"Don't do me any favors!  Let me kill myself!"
"Fine!  Get to it!" 

Dicken flung herself back into the side-by-side prone position and steadied the staggering lonth maintenance.

Dregs of anger settled within the quiet flightpod.  Dicken was breathing hard.  For the first time since discovering the power of womanlove and stepping up into the high reaches of paired flight, she considered calling for spoonbreak.

Jez was speaking softly.  "We can't do that anymore, Dicken.  That's poison."

"Spare me."

"Hear me.  It's fueling all the violence, everywhere."

Dicken raged.  "All the. . .our fighting?  Oh, come to mama, Jezebel!"

"I'm tired of doing it."  Jez stretched out her arms for a mile-high embrace.  Dicken hesitated, then let her tension dissolve.  With a grateful sigh she moved into the waiting arms.

They did rest in Atlanta, and from there they informed Lavona of their impending arrival.  They took off again with a refurbished intimacy and somewhat restored health.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Like their ancestors, those who still lived in the mountains of West Virginia died with the conviction that there was no such thing as flat.  Nowhere in these overlapping ranges were any two adjacent feet of terrain at the same natural altitude, and it was the forever up-and-down demands of those green-clad majesties that assured natives they were home.

It was no wonder, then, that in the heart of those mountains the abandoned Welchtown rocketport stood out to Jez and Dicken like a skeptic at a Goddess gathering.  Its hundreds of square acres of solar panels shone like a vast cold flat lake, reflecting a pale sun that was setting abruptly behind the higher mountains to the west.  April in West Virginia still felt like winter.

Almost hidden in the trees that climbed close to the port's edges were hillside homes, and a winding road that bound the houses into a visible unit probably called a town.  The rocket’s landing was hailed by the cheers and laughter of a welcoming group.  One woman stood out from the others. 

"Witchwoman!" she shouted.

"Hillbilly!"  Jez flung out her arms.  Their hug encompassed Dicken and set the tone for the lively evening of food and music.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Long after the cornbread and greens had disappeared, long after the women had sung and drummed themselves to satisfaction, and shortly after the goodnight voices had faded into the sky or down the hillside, Dicken and Jez stood together listening to the loud flow of the branchwater behind the house.  When they returned to the warmth of the kitchen, Lavona was emptying a coal scuttle into the cookstove's firebox.  She scraped the round cover back into place with the eye-grip and wiped her hands on her apron.

"Well.  Set."  She motioned toward the hefty straight-backed chairs in front of the stove and dumped cold tea from cups she identified as theirs.  She felt the belly of the teapot and,  satisfied it was warm enough, filled the cups. 

Dicken and Jez tilted their chairs, bracing their feet on the stove fender.  Lavona put the cups in their hands and drew up her own chair.  She chewed on a toothpick.  "So.  Jezebel, it’s time fer you t’do some tall talkin'." 

Jez looked briefly at Dicken before she spoke.

"Hillbilly, you tell me why in five hours' time, in the presence of thirteen women and children who are a part of a small town that is clearly in contact with the rest of the world, over a blessed meal and good conversation, why two outlanders like us haven't heard a word about a world disaster that's bigger than anything that has happened to any of us in our short lives."

Her words hung in the air.  Lavona scratched under her light brown hair.  "Y'mean. . ."

"I mean, hillbilly, why is nobody talking about the dying children?  Why did the little ones we put to bed two hours ago sing a strange song together before they went to sleep?  Why do they all three have gray hair?"

Lavona sucked on her toothpick and studied her guests.  Then she dropped her chair to all four legs and leaned on her knees, addressing the stove. 

"We done lost six.  An’ it looks like no more's a-comin’."  She looked back at them.  "Jezebel, we been a long time parted so maybe you forgot."  She shifted the toothpick to the other corner of her mouth.  "It's a fam’ly thing.  Fer us t’ take keer of, here in our slopes an’ hollers.  We got no need t’ tell the world about it."

She wiped her forefinger across her upper lip. 

"T’ boot, we don’t hold with weepin' an' wailin' more than's common.  We figure it'll either git better or 'twon't.  Th’ Goddess gives an' She takes away.  We come t’gether regular-like, fer as long’s we need to, t’ shake out our cryin' cloths fer th’ day.  An' we pray with each other till there's no prayers left in us." 

Lavona was blinking hard.  Her voice got louder. 

"Then we go home an’ fold up little dresses an' jeans an' sneakers an’ ribbons an' we put 'em all away in a trunk.  An’ then we git back t’ work.  Or we have a party.  An' we don't invite th’ wailin' an' th’ prayin' to th’ party.  Y’see?  They just ain't on th’ invite list." 

Neither of her guests moved.  Lavona stood up, wiped her palms on her apron.  Then she took the toothpick from her mouth and tossed it into the coal scuttle.  When she turned again to the visitors, her head was up, her eyes were bright, and her long face was creased in expectation. 

Jez still looked at Lavona.  Then, deliberately, she lifted her cup and took a big sip of her tea.  Dicken followed suit.

"Okay," Jez said, setting down her cup. 

Dicken stepped in.  "First, you tell about this conjure woman."

"Mad Becky."  Lavona filled her own cup, settled into her chair again.  "She's one of th’ legends 'round here.  Only one, two people maybe, ever seen her.  Lives down in one of th’ mines.  Some say as her mouth is black from eatin' coal."

She took another sip of tea. 

"Dennis, th’ fella what come on her jist last fortnight, says she weren't never borned but got biled up outen a sulfer spring over near t’ Blue Stone Gap.  Got reared by church folks, then run off up north t’ be a actress.  Forty year later she come back crazy an’ they throwed her in a half-way house over in Princeton.  She excaped, an’ taken to th’ hills.  Nobody never found her, Dennis said." 

Lavona paused.  "Dennis is one of th’ old liners 'round here.  He up an’ told his story all over Matoaka an' at th’ Apple Harvesters Grange meetin' last week.”

She sighed, then spoke more briskly.  "Seems he had t’ go up t’ Powhatan Pass t’ scavenge some old iron pipe.  He was a-settin' by th’ creek early one mornin' jist tryin' t’ figure how he’d git downstream with his pipe, when th’ godawfullest screamin' he ever heerd come bustin' outen th’ draw.  Dennis, he hunkered down in th’ bushes so’s he could hide an' see.

"Well, th’ yellin' come closer, givin' our Dennis a purdy  good scare.  It were Mad Beck, tumblin' outen th’ woods an' pert near fallin' in th’ creek.  Dennis said she done stood there with'n her arms spread wide an' hollerin' out a name.  She jist kept a-callin' that name an’ screamin'.  When she looked like she was all wore out, she taken off back up th’ hill, still a-screamin' now an’ agin, jist to be sure Old Dennis was still shakin’ in his boots." 

Lavona looked from Dicken to Jez.  "He said near as he could make out, th’ name she kept a-callin' was Jezzybell." 

"My oh my!" said Dicken.  "We are talking a first-order crone!"

"Yep." Lavona reared back and pointed at Jez.  "Now, seein’ as how you are th’ only Jezebel I know, I tried t’ find you.  But with all yer gallivantin' I kept missin' you.  Then what?  You  call me on th’ company flatchannel an' tell me you been hearin' a voice callin' out to you an’ that you got t’ come see me.  Well now, reckon what I been a-thinkin'!" 

Jez smiled a little, her tiredness dissipated by the strong tea.  "Let me tell you my part," she said.  She grounded her own chair, closed her eyes in the time-honored preparation for a dreamtelling, and mustered her narrative mode. 

"I had one of my seizures.  And a dream.  In the dream, I am holding an old flatview screen, trying to get a picture to match the sound.  On every channel is a woman's voice shrieking my name. Jezzzeee-belll!"

"Cerridwen's Sweetcakes!" Lavona breathed, sinking back in her chair.  Jez went on. 

"I know she's trying to reach me, but all the rest of her message is garbled.  I can't get sound or picture except for her calling my name.  So I pray for a spirit guide.  And what appears as my spirit guide?"

"Don't say!" said Lavona.  "A animal, right?"

"Right," answered Dicken.  "Humans are hardly worthy."

"A bear," said Lavona.  Jez denied it.  Lavona tried again: "King snake!"  Jez shook her head.

"Think smaller," Dicken advised.

"It were a spider!"

"Closer," nodded Dicken.

"This spirit guide," Jez said, "turns out to be a slug."

"A what?"

"A slug.  A banana slug.  In fact a whole bunch of them."

"Slimy things.  Ugly."  Lavona shook her head in disgust.

"Slugs were amazing," Dicken pointed out.  "They could crawl over the upright blade of a sharp razor and get only a good tickle out of it."

Jez resumed.  "Well, slugs it is.  The flatview screen is real quick streaked with luminous lacy lines in fancy patterns.  I keep trying to figure out what the patterns are telling me since this is the answer to my prayer, right?  When the screen is totally covered with this slug slime, about twenty-five of them stand up on their tails and sing to me in eight-part harmony, telling me I got to take the aerial to higher ground.  It sounds like a Bach cantata, you know?"  She sang, "'You must take, you must take, you must take the aerial, you must, you must, you must take the aerial, the aerial, to higher ground, to higher ground, you must take the aerial to higher ground. . .'"