The Magister (Earthkeep) (32 page)

A thousand pungent smells assailed her nostrils, sparking a sharp desire.  An array of colors rose from the rocky dust, colors with such rich deep textures that she hungered to touch them.  In her head were humming sounds, both distant and close.  They pounded a commotion of disparate rhythms in her head and, to her consternation, they enticed into bizarre actions some parts of her body that were ordinarily quite sedate.

It was the vicuña!  For sure, this tumult was springing from the animal beside her! 

Zude struggled not to cry aloud.  She closed her hands over her ears, clenching her eyes into sightlessness, trying to slow the rush of feelings, the attacking images.  One thing at a time!  She concentrated visually first, focusing on the orderly building of a scene.  She closed out the tumult, then selected and placed together two parts of it, attempting to arrange the disorder into a stable, comfortable picture.  Crawling tree under a pink sky.  Okay.  Now drape the caterpillar shawl over the square cloud by the river of watermelon heart.  Good.

It was working!  Doggedly she continued, choosing each single element from the chaos and adding it to her judiciously arranged milieu.  At her side, the vicuña lay in camel posture, eyes resting on a distant clump of grass. 

Without warning the chaos broke out again.  It cluttered Zude's sequences and razed to their quaking foundations all her careful architectures of reason.  Desperate, she summoned the Swallower.  Help!

"Align your energy!" 

Yes! thought Zude, of course!  She closed her eyes and slowly inhaled, mentally watching the rising of her abdominal muscles, then their falling with her exhalation.  Several breaths later she was shaking gently with relief as her mind calmed and began its clearing.  The craziness subsided.  She faced her internal depths where the spaciousness waited, and found at last her still-point of balance.  She sighed, and began her rubrics of gratitude.

This earth, this air. . .my nose, my mouth, my singing health, my strength, my loves, my sparkling days. . . . Her hand rested again on the vicuña.  This solid life. . .these ribs, this beating heart. . .this being!  The incantation hastened, broadening to include each part of the vicuña, the dirt, the grass, the plateau, the Incas, the prehistoric animals, the mountains, the seas, the world.

Zude's face glowed, her cheeks were wet, and now and then an easy laugh punctuated her deepening breaths.  With each acknowledgement of a precious gift, her flesh grew more buoyant.  Beside her, and with the same resonances, the vicuña's body quivered and matched each new level of Zude's vibration.  Both of them were light as air.

"
Here's the place
," Swallower whispered, "
here's where it can happen
!"  Yes! said Zude. 

"Open!
" said Swallower.  Zude unveiled her senses.  The turmoil rushed in, overwhelming her again. 

"Allow it!
" said Swallower.  Zude opened once more.  Sensations and feelings smothered her. 

"Invite it all!
" said Swallower.  "
With full appreciation
!"  Zude shook off the last of her resistance.  "I honor it all!" she articulated aloud.  "I welcome it all!"

Immediately the pandemonium ceased. 

Out of the haziness that replaced it, Zude observed the coming into being of what she could only call the vicuña's vibrational language.  It sprang from the animal's energetic vitality that was matching Zude's own, but it bore a cargo far more vast.  It was in fact the vibration of the Vicuña Matrix itself, the dwelling place of the experiences and knowings of all vicuñas who had ever lived.

The language, as it were, shaped itself into a boundless array of sense imagery and emotional dynamism, including the rosy sky and arctic air, the dancing drums, the passionate pebbles.  Zude existed within the images and emotions.  They did not come one by one; nor did any one of them compel or motivate another.  They were not a sequence, or a summation, or separate parts of any whole.  They arose together, simultaneously and synchronistically, as the melon comes into being in its altogetherness, its totality yearning toward substantiality.

The more Zude opened to it all, the more abundantly it arose.  The sharper her focus on any one part of it, the more intricate the internal order it revealed.  She watched sense impressions and effects solidify into existence, then fade back into billowing waves.  All the while, like a master of the bagpipes supports both drone and breath beneath a melody, Zude sustained the world around her with the constant alignment of her energy.  The vicuña vibrations entwined with her own.

She could not have imagined how it would proceed, that exchange of meanings, patterns and volitions.  Yet it was clear that transformations of intent were stirring, and that the vicuña's panoply of sensations and feelings was shimmering with a message for Zude.

There was no explosion into symbols, no hint of the precision or subtlety of telepathically delivered words.  The message now awaiting Zude dwelt in the vicuña's full perception of itself, including its desire to communicate.  Zude invited that message. 

Had she been able to garb it in words, the words would have been:
"I am Tutea, She Who Is a Vicuña!
"

As if immediately fluent in a new language, Zude sent the meaning of, "I am Zella Terremoto Adverb, She Who Is a Human!"

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

In the shade of stunted bushes, on a plateau in the Eastern Andes, a vicuña and a woman sat silent in the just-past-noon sun.  Inside their motionless bodies, whole worlds of images, formations, effects and even complex ideas were being exchanged.

When Zude asked if other animals were returning, she was treated to the experience of thousands of members of thousands of species, all of them creating their bodies anew as they joyfully arose from a cosmic stream of energy to reinhabit the earth.  When she asked why the animals had left, Tutea's meaning clusters, if enworded, would have said,
"We left, among other reasons, so that you could understand.  You are understanding."

"No!" Zude sent.  "You left because we acted against your will!  Killing, trapping, abusing!"

"To eat, to drink, to breathe. . .to be enfleshed is to act against another's will."

Zude almost shouted, "But you suffered!  We did unspeakable things to you!"

"We felt pain, yes.  Suffering?  No.  Suffering is your human invention."

"What?"      

Tutea's intentions washed over her in waves.  "We left," the vicuña told her, "because you acted against the will of others without knowing what you were doing."

Zude sat stockstill, repeating, "Without. . .knowing. . ."

"You know now," said the vicuña, "And many more will know each day." 

Zude felt the deaths surrounding her — bears eating fish, hawks snapping the necks of hares, snakes striking mice.  Tutea's meanings mingled with the images. 
"We are always present to each other as we take each other's life.  Killer and killed.  We Ratify Each Devour.  And now, so will you."

"It is a New Covenant,"
Tutea continued.  A new understanding between humans and animals, she told Zude.  The eating of meat would be quite circumscribed, she explained to Zude, and any forced curtailment of an animal's freedom virtually impossible.  There followed examples of insects, hogs and crustaceans who remained happily enfleshed until a human intended them harm or imprisonment; then they simply vanished.

Zude's head swirled.  She hardly breathed.  "They'll disappear?" she croaked.

Did Tutea laugh?  Or was it simply a gentle humor stroking the underbelly of each intention? 
"Yes.  And so will you, if you wish
," she said.

"Of course," said Zude, nodding helplessly.

Thus it went, there on the plateau: the vicuña brushing the human ear with her lips, almost as if whispering, and Zude stroking the long neck, frustrated, exhausted, incredulous, ecstatic.  At last, woman drew herself tight against vicuña, and the two beings slept.  They clung together under a warm sun, in the company of the ghosts of an empire long since gone to dust.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

More than an hour later, the sun was losing heat to a cover of thin clouds.  Zude awoke scratching her neck.  Puzzled, she reached to scratch again, and saw a tiny culprit for just an instant before it leapt off her sleeve and into the paradise of the vicuña's shaggy coat.  "Tutea!  What was that?" she whispered aloud, her fingers searching the animal's flank.

"Flea."
  Tutea snatched some nearby grass with her tongue and lips. 
"They're back, too."
  She chewed.

Zude nodded wisely, as if she really understood what it meant, having the fleas back.

The vicuña shifted slightly.
"We have to go."
Zude's alarm was instantaneous.  "No!" she cried, holding her eyes shut and clasping the big body closer to her own.

"I have to lead you to a friend."  Tutea nuzzled Zude's hair.  "Someone who needs you to take her home."

"Hush!" commanded Zude aloud, gripping tighter and burying her face in dusty wool.  "We're staying right here, Tutea.  Our bones forever entwined, come hail or sleet or snow!"

"Zudie, you have to let her go, now."

"Forever!  Right here . . ."  Zude froze.

"Zudie."  Again!  The voice was not in her mind.  Or from Tutea.  The voice had form, and melody, and texture!  And it came from behind her, over by her backpack.  I'm still dreaming, Zude assured herself, holding Tutea tight again. 

"Listen."

Zude made her taut body relax.  She held the big animal more lightly.  Another breath, and more ease.  She listened.  A child’s voice sang:

¿Dónde estás pelícano?

¿Dónde estás cordero? 

¿Dónde estás elefante?

¿Dónde estás salmón?   

Zella Terremoto Adverb, lately the Commander-In-Chief of 180,000 courageous Vigilantes, began to tremble.  There, in bright sunlight and next to a warmth so deep she could not name it, Steward Adverb shook uncontrollably.  "T-Tutea!" she whispered, desperately, her eyes still closed, her face buried in sweet, strange wool.  "Wh. . .what's. . ."

"She's here."

Slowly Zude's arms released Tutea.  She rolled over onto her back.  She opened one eye and turned her head toward the voice.  Her other eye snapped open.

Regina sat astride Zude's backpack, bouncing up and down with her singing, her black hair swaying as her head tossed left and right.  She saw Zude staring.  "Zudie!" she shrieked, and flung herself across the grass to land on top of her madrina.

Zude could hardly bring herself to place her arms around the child.  When at last she did so, the substantiality of that body overwhelmed her.  She released a long cry and held the bundle of gladness tight in her arms.  She's here! Zude told herself, solid and here!They rolled together, the two of them, hugging and kissing. 

Zude was talking aloud, her words an incantation.  "I cannot bear this joy.  I shall become a puddle!  I shall discorporate, be no more! I cannot bear this joy.  I shall. . ."

"¿Dónde estás, Tutea Vicuña?" sang out Regina, scrambling atop the vicuña.

Tutea rolled Regina to the ground and then kicked two hooves in the air, the sounds from her throat clearly saying,
"¡Estoy aquí!"

Three bodies tumbled, holding and singing and crying and laughing.  Until each was assured that the others were really there, indisputably, authentically, enfleshedly
there.

Once Zude said in her mind to Regina, "How
can
you be here?  I saw your body slide into the ocean!"

A rain of sheer delight showered over her.  "They taught us," Regina sent to Zude.  "They taught us to make our bodies over again.  From the blueprint."

Zude frowned.

"Like tekla, Zudie!  Like tekla.  And like flying!"

"Who?" said Zude aloud.  "Who taught you, Reggie?" 

Child and vicuña looked into each other's eyes, then burst into throat noises that Zude could only call laughter.  Zude forsook her questions.  She rolled with the two of them, happily, in the dust.  "Estamos aquí," they all whispered in unison.  Then they held one another for a long time.

When Zude felt Regina squirming, she sighed.  The day's magic was coming to an end. 

"
It will never end,
" she heard deep in her heart.

"Let's go home, Zudie," Regina said, kneeling between her and the vicuña.   

"Yes," said Zude, "let's go home."

When Tutea offered to carry the child, Zude protested.  In her newly acquired language, she sent, "You are not a beast of burden, Tutea.  You are not here for our use!" 

Tutea closed her eyes and waited the length of a full breath.  Looking at Zude again, she sent, "I am here for the adventures of the body: the excitement, the learning, the love.  I choose to offer my back to Regina.  It is part of my adventure." 

Zude blinked and nodded.  As Regina climbed onto Tutea's shoulders, the animal lifted her head.  Zude basked in the grace of a vicuña smile.

Regina sang lustily all the way down the incline to the edge of the lush selva. 

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

They stood in the night-time forest. 
"I'll leave you now, my friends,"
said the vicuña as Regina reached up to hug the long neck. 

"You'll be all right when we go?" Zude asked.  "I mean, will you . . . be safe from . . . from other animals?"

"Never safe.  I'm too tasty, and they know it."

Zude was suddenly anxious.  "But if your predators are back . . . if they . . .  "

"I run."  The shaggy shoulders did not quite shrug.  "And if I'm caught, I drop my body and let the big cat feed."

Zude sought the soft eyes again. 

"One last thing, Tutea, She Who Is a Vicuña.  How may humans gift you, the animals, now that we are bodies together again on Little Blue?"

Tutea's meaning clusters were glazed with humor.  "You've answered your own question, Zella Terremoto Adverb.  And in front of many people."

Zude was puzzled.