And All Between (6 page)

All these things Teera had learned, not by direct experience, but by word of mouth. Since her arrival at the nid-place of the D’ok family, she had not been allowed travel of any sort. She had, in fact, been carefully kept within the walls of the dwelling place. Most of what she had learned concerning shubas and gliding, and songs and dances, as well as a great deal of other information about Kindar life, she had learned from Pomma, the daughter of the D’ok family and the sister of the Ol-zhaan who was known as Raamo.

Pausing in her dance, Teera looked through the open doorway into the nid-chamber, where at this moment Pomma lay asleep. Teera sighed and then returned to sit beside the plate of pan-fruit at the edge of the balcony. For many days now—Teera had lost track of the exact number—she had lived here, in the nid-chamber of Pomma D’ok, and had spent every waking moment in her company. At first, the waking moments had not been many, as Pomma seemed to require a great deal of sleep. This, Teera was told, was due to illness.

Pomma had, indeed, looked ill when Teera had first seen her. Teera remembered that first meeting vividly and in great detail. She remembered that when the young Ol-zhaan, D’ol Raamo, led her into the chamber, she had not, at first, realized that anyone else was there. Looking around, she had seen only that the room was large and airy, its wall panels woven in intricate patterns of gray-green frond and ivory tendril. Tapestries, heavy panels of richly embroidered cloth, were looped up with silken cords to permit the gentle warmth and soft green light of the forest to breathe through the chamber. Tables and chairs of woven tendril sat here and there about the room, seeming, to one accustomed to furnishings of brass or stone, to be almost too delicately beautiful to be of any practical use. Teera had remained silently staring, transfixed with wonder, until Raamo spoke to her softly.

“You will stay here,” he said. “With my sister.”

“Your sister?” Teera had asked.

“There, in the nid,” Raamo said, leading Teera towards a small alcove. There, hanging from the ceiling was a large hammock, a real Kindar nid, woven of living tendril. It was the first real nid that Teera had ever seen. Although the word “nid” had been retained in Erda—and was used to mean any resting place—it was only in the high forest of Green-sky that a true nid was possible—a living, growing cradle of pliable tendril.

As Teera came closer, she could see that the nid was lined and padded with silken comforters, and that among them, lying so lightly that she almost appeared to float, was a tiny figure. As Teera and D’ol Raamo approached, the figure stirred slightly, and suddenly two enormous blue-green eyes were staring into Teera’s face.

She had been beautiful even then, when the wasting had stolen the color from her face and had left her skin as thin and transparent as the wing of a moth. The hands she lifted to Teera’s in greeting were tiny and so delicate as to seem almost without substance. In a faint breathy voice she spoke to Teera, giving the Kindar greeting for a stranger, “Greetings, friend, and welcome.” But as Raamo bent to lift her from the nid, Teera pensed grief so strongly that tears came to her own eyes in response. Although the faces of the brother and sister were bright with smiles, Teera knew that Raamo’s smile concealed fear and grief.

But that had been days ago. Soon after, the two Ol-zhaan had gone away leaving Teera there with Pomma in the D’ok nid-place, and the memory of Raamo’s grief along with griefs and painful memories of her own had begun to fade from Teera’s mind. There was so much to see and learn—and so very much to eat.

Everything was full of wonder. Teera had often dreamed of being a Kindar, but her dreams had been earthbound Erdling dreams, shadowed and enclosed by narrow horizons of earth and stone. And now, suddenly, there was endless light and space, dazzling colors and an endless progression of new experiences.

“Everything is so bright and clean,” she told Pomma many times. “Everything shines with cleanness, even the people.” Taking Pomma’s thin hand with its pale translucent skin in her own sturdy brown fingers, Teera interlaced their fingers and smiled into the huge blue-green eyes.

And even on that first day, when she had been so near to dreaming the final dream, Pomma had smiled back at Teera. Even though she was weak with pain and the drowsy comfort of the Berry, her smile had echoed Teera’s. And as the days passed, they had begun to echo each other in other ways.

Hearba D’ok, the mother, said that before Teera came, Pomma had for many days been unable to eat any solid food—except for the soothing Berry, which she craved almost constantly. But watching Teera eat, watching her gobble her first whole pan-fruit in months and months, watching her learn with delight the taste of honey and egg and tree mushrooms, watching her revel and glory in every food-taking, Pomma began to feel a faint echo of appreciation of the act of eating. She began to taste Teera’s food in order to share her pleasure, and, very slowly, the pleasure began to be her own.

There had been many other things to share as well. While Pomma was yet too weak to leave her nid, she began to share with Teera the songs of Kindar children and, in return, Teera taught her the songs sung by the children of Erda. Many of the songs were similar, passed down from the days before the Root when all the people of Green-sky were Kindar together. But others, like the Answer Song, were new to Teera, just as the sadly throbbing chants of Erda were new and fascinating to Pomma.

Pomma loved the singing. Weak and sickly though she was, her fine, sweet voice rose and fell tirelessly, her face flushed and glowing, as if the music itself offered comfort and sustenance. Teera, too, enjoyed the singing, but she liked it just as much when they only talked together. For hours and hours she questioned Pomma, satisfying at last her avid curiosity about the Kindar and life in the forests of Green-sky. They talked endlessly about everything and anything, but eventually every conversation returned to two favorite subjects—gliding and the Garden.

Teera had already known a little about the Gardens, where Kindar children spent their days, between the ages of two and thirteen years. Accustomed to the Academies of Erda, where one was taught a great deal about numbers and mathematics and a little about reading and writing, the curriculum of the Gardens seemed intriguingly exotic. Rather than classes in numbers and letter-carving, Kindar children attended Song and Story, and took courses in Love and Joy, and in the skills of the Spirit, such as grunspreking, pensing and kiniporting. It seemed to Teera that she would much prefer a Garden to an Academy—in spite of the fact that Kindar children were apparently required to spend a great deal more time at their place of learning than were the children of Erda.

Teera, like all Erdlings, knew of the Spirit skills, both from the Verban and from the old tales that their ancestors had brought to Erda at the time of the exile. She knew that at one time nearly all the people of Green-sky could pense, sending and receiving exact words and phrases by means of Spirit-force. She had heard also of grunspreking, the art of influencing and controlling plant life, and she knew that it had been by means of this skill, magnified to the level of enchantment, that D’ol Wissener had transformed the Root from a normal growth into a barrier of supernatural strength and power. She knew vaguely, too, of kiniporting, although she had heard but little concerning its history and the great significance it once had had in Green-sky.

“Why do they bother to teach it?” she asked Pomma. “Why is being able to make a leaf float through the air, or a cylinder roll towards you across a table, so important?”

“I guess it’s not very important anymore,” Pomma said. “No one can do it anymore except very young children, and they can only move things of very little weight. But it was very important once, because of uniforce. Do you know about uniforce?”

Teera had nodded uncertainly. “I think so,” she had said. “I think in Erda it means great power—something like magic.”

Pomma nodded. “It’s like that. In the early days, before the waning of the Spirit, there were people who were able to combine their powers with those of other people, so that they were much stronger—hundreds of times stronger. It was by uniforce that groups of healers were able to end almost all sickness and the grunsprekers started the orchards. And uniforce worked with kiniporting, too. Most of the great temples and assembly halls were built by teams of kiniporters who were able to use uniforce to lift huge tree limbs and even the trunks of rooftrees and hold them in place for the builders. There are pictures of them, of the uniforce builders of Orbora, on tapestries all over Green-sky. And there are many songs and chants about them.” Pomma sighed. “It would have been wonderful to have lived in the early days,” she said.

“But people can still pense in Green-sky, can’t they?” Teera asked.

“Well, the Ol-zhaan can, of course. And all little children still play Five-Pense. But most of them never reach the fifth level. When I was very small, I could do Signals and Choices, and then when I was five, for just a little while, I could do Images. But I haven’t been able to pense at all for a long time now.”

“Let’s try it,” Teera had said. “Show me how to play Five-Pense, Pomma.”

“I can show you how it’s done,” Pomma had said. “But we won’t be able to do it.” And so, sitting cross-legged, facing one another, with palms joined, looking into each other’s eyes, Teera and Pomma had pretended to play the sacred game of childhood. The game played by all children young enough to retain their inborn Spirit-gifts, and reverenced by Kindar of all ages as symbolic of the sacred nature of childhood, and as a vestige of the time when the gifts of the Spirit were common to all those who were born beneath the green sky.

Pomma showed Teera how, at the first level, a small bowl was placed upside down beside the players; one player then covered his eyes, while the other lifted the bowl and placed something beneath—or, at times, only pretended to. By pensing, a signal was given, telling whether the bowl was full or empty. And then there would be smiles and sometimes laughter, when the sending was truly received, clear and strong and accompanied by the deep sharp thrill of Spirit-touch.

Pomma had said they would only pretend, since they were much too old to Five-Pense, but almost at once Teera found that she could receive Pomma’s signals, and it was not long before Pomma, too, was truly receiving. Teera had been delighted, but Pomma was almost beside herself with joyous excitement. It was not long before they had progressed to Choices and, very recently, they had begun to do Images; and there they had found a new fascination.

Through Teera’s mind, Pomma found that she was able to see the tunnels and caverns of Erda, and through Pomma, Teera saw all the beauties of Green-sky—and even experienced, almost as if she were doing it herself, the glorious freedom of the glide. Pomma had shared with her the thrill of the first swooping fall from the branchpath, the long clean sweep of the glide through green-lit corridors of space, and the feeling of power and control when the slightest motion of arms and legs initiated a bank or turn or a soft easy drop to a landing.

“I know I could do it now,” Teera told Pomma. “Now that I’ve imaged it. I know I wouldn’t be afraid anymore. At least, not if you were there with me.”

And Pomma’s enthusiasm had echoed Teera’s own. “I know you could,” she agreed. “And just as soon as I’m strong enough and you don’t have to be a secret anymore, we’ll glide all over Orbora. And you’ll glide just as well as if you learned at the Garden like everyone else.”

Getting to her feet, Teera moved to the doorway where she could see into the alcove, but Pomma was still sleeping peacefully. It was mostly because of Pomma that the days had passed so quickly. And with the passing days Teera had grown more content and the fears and sorrows that had come with her to Green-sky had faded and diminished. It was only at night with the coming of darkness and the soft whispering voices of the night rain that Teera still, sometimes, lay awake and cried softly, her tears running down into the silken comforters that lined her gently swaying nid. She cried most often for her parents.

Although she had run from them in anger, she had long since ceased to blame them for the edict that would have taken Haba from her. As her father would have said, she had behaved like a true Erdling— feeling and acting first, and thinking afterwards; and now that she had thought, it was too late. And so she cried, missing her mother and father and Raula and Charn and all the others she had loved and who surely mourned her now as dead.

But there were other times when she cried for fear. The Ol-zhaan D’ol Neric had come twice now alone, to do healing ceremonies for Pomma and to question Teera long and carefully. And although she knew, by pensing, that he still felt kindly towards her, she also knew that he still thought she was a Fallen. She knew also that he was still determined to find out more about her, and about all those who lived below the Root. Someday soon, Teera knew, he would find a way to discover her secret. Or, someday, he might take her away to see other, crueler Ol-zhaan, who could steal your thoughts from the very bottom of your mind. Till now, when he had questioned her, he had spoken mostly concerning things that she was able to discuss without betraying herself. She had answered carefully and slowly when his questions concerned such things as the food eaten in Erda, and the use of fire, and what smoke was and if it was dangerous. And so far, when he asked more threatening things, things about her family and about the appearance of those he called the Pash-shan, her tears had been enough to make him stop. But someday he might not stop. And then, too, there was always the possibility that Pomma might forget her promise and tell what she knew about Teera and the Pash-shan.

Of course Pomma knew. One cannot Five-Pense and keep secrets, and besides, through imaging, Pomma had seen the caverns and caves of Erda, as well as the people who lived there. She had, at first, been terribly surprised and excited. When she fully understood the import of what she had learned—that there were no long-clawed monsters below the Root, but only people who looked almost exactly like Kindar and who called themselves Erdlings—her first reaction was to share her amazing news. She wanted to tell her mother, her father, anyone and everyone. She became so excited that Teera could not make her listen to reason—until, at last, Teera began to cry. Not gentle Kindar crying either, with only big liquid eyes and quivering lips, but good, loud, Erdling wails and sobs and flooding tears.