Being a Green Mother (33 page)

Lou-Mae looked at the drummer. “Oh, Danny-Boy!” she exclaimed. “If she could do that—”

The pretty oriental girl, Clotho, appeared. “And you,” she said, looking at Jezebel. “As Nature, she could abate your curse permanently and give you control over your form by day and night.”

The succubus reeled as if struck. “I would sell my soul, if I had one, for that!”

Niobe, the Lachesis Aspect, returned. “And you, dear,” she said to Betsy, “could have ideal weather at your farm, permanently, if she chose it—as well as a man free of addiction.”

“But I have not been able to do these things!” Orb said. “Anything I do is only temporary.”

“The fact that you can do them even on a temporary basis is indicative,” Niobe said. “As Nature, your powers would be enormously increased. You could restore sight to the blind, mortality to those cursed with immortality, and youth to an old tree. Anything within the scope of your office—and that is a great deal indeed. It is no minor position you contemplate.”

Orb sat back, her thoughts whirling. Such power!

“Consider well, my child,” Niobe said. Then she became the spider, and the spider climbed up the thread and disappeared.

“I guess it
is
our business!” Lou-Mae said. “All those dreams, for all of us! We thought the Llano, but it’s you who can do it.”

“I’ve got to think!” Orb exclaimed, tormented. “It’s so easy to misuse power, and I know so little about it! I never realized when I sought the Llano—!” She sang the travel theme, and in a moment was on the far, deserted island where she had encountered the traveling sponge.

But in another moment Natasha was there. She flung herself into his embrace. “Oh, Nat, suddenly it’s so complicated!” she exclaimed. “I thought the world was mine, when I loved you, but now—”

“I sensed your disquiet,” he said. “That’s why I came.”

“I am to be an Incarnation, like my mother—if I choose. But then I could not have a family and would not age.”

“Would not age?” he asked, hardly displeased. “You would always be as you are now?”

Orb had to flush. He was of course a man, much concerned with a woman’s form. “But I could not have another baby,” she reminded him.

He frowned. “Could you perhaps have the baby, then assume the office?”

“No!” Orb cried in sudden anguish, remembering how she had to give away Orlene. “I want a real family! I want to devote myself to my baby, to raise it to maturity, as my mother raised me!”

“Of course,” he said, chastened.

“But oh, there is so much good I might do, if I assume the office!”

“I will love you as a mortal or as an Incarnation,” Nat said. “I can not make this choice for you. But I wonder—”

“Yes? You have a notion?”

“It seems to me that you already can do a great deal. Perhaps you can accomplish much of the good you wish, without giving up your mortality.”

Orb thought about that. “I suppose I could try. But you know, the Llano gives you similar powers. I wonder—”

“I am not destined for the office of Nature!” he exclaimed, laughing. “I have quested for the Llano since childhood and rehearsed every fragment of it I have found, over and over. I have done all I can with it; progress is always slower than before. I am at my limit. But you—you hear a theme once, and it works for you as well as it ever has for me! Your potential is much greater than mine. I would be jealous, if you weren’t so beautiful.” Then he sobered. “Or are you saying that you have outgrown me already? I would not try to hold you, if—”

“Oh, no, Nat, no!” she cried, kissing him.

“Then you might try the things you wish to, and that will
give you a clearer notion of your choices. I will abide your decision, whatever it may be.”

“You are most kind, Nat,” she said. “I will try.”

She returned to Jonah. “My powers have been increasing,” she announced. “Now I know what they are leading toward. I was not able to do some things before, but maybe now I can. Are you willing to experiment?”

The drummer stepped forward. “You know what I want,” he said. “If you want to try, I sure do.”

Lou-Mae glanced sidelong at him. “You
are
talking about H?” she inquired archly, and the others laughed.

Jonah swam to ground, and they debarked. The experiment had to be conducted outside of Jonah, to ensure that it was not the big fish’s magic operating.

Orb tried the Song of Evening, that she had just learned. The sound of it had confirmed her burgeoning love for Natasha; could it abate the dread addiction, for the sake of love? She willed the craving for H to be banished from her subject, the drummer.

The twilight came, and the beauty of the nocturnal vision. Clouds became orange. She remembered Nat’s comment about the facility with which she picked up the new themes. She had not considered this before, but it was true that she had always learned music at a rate others could not match. Certainly the parts of the Llano worked for her as they had for him, and she had not rehearsed them.

The drummer screamed.

Startled, Orb cut short her song.

“No, go on!” he gasped. “It’s working!”

She resumed the song. Now she saw that the drummer was gyrating in an unnatural way, as if opposing forces were drawing at him. He screamed again, but this time she did not pause. It seemed that a temporary nullification of the craving was painless, but that a complete cure was another matter.

From him something came. It looked like a ghostly snake, its head rocking back and forth as if seeking something to strike at. But the melody hauled it forth, drawing it on out of the body. It was the H addiction, struggling all the way, inflicting the punishment of its withdrawal. It glared balefully around, remaining hooked in by its tail, like a moray eel.
Then the theme became too much for it, and it let go and puffed into smoke. The drummer fell to the ground.

Lou-Mae ran to him, cradling his head in her arms, as Orb’s song ended. “Is it—?”

“It’s gone!” he panted. “It was hell letting go, but it’s gone!”

“We can’t be sure of that,” Orb warned him. “Only time will tell—time away from Jonah.”

“I tell you, I
know
!” he said. “H has let go!”

“I hope so,” Lou-Mae said. “Why don’t you and I stay out here, and if you can go the day and night without H …”

He brightened. “Yeh! No more unicorns!”

“Shut your mouth!” But she was smiling.

Orb and the others retreated to the big fish. “If it really is so—” she began.

“You can do me next!” the guitarist and the organist said together.

“And me,” Jezebel said.

“Meanwhile, I believe I’ll rest,” Orb said. She went to her room and lay down. But she found she could not truly relax; she was too excited.

“Nat, where are you?” she whispered.

He coalesced beside her bed. “Did you speak my name?”

She sat up and wrapped her arms around his waist. “How did you hear me?”

“Once I knew that I loved you, I invoked that aspect of the Llano that attunes to your speaking my name. It is akin to Jonah’s relaying of talking to the object of the discussion. Thus I heard you immediately.”

“You know about Jonah? How is that?”

“He is one of the special creatures of this world. I discovered his nature on one of the bypaths of my search for the Llano. But he would not help me on my quest; he knew that I was not destined to complete it.”

“But he’s helping me!” Orb said.

“Because you have the potential I lack.”

“Or because I danced the
tanana
for him.”

Nat pursed his lips. “Yes, I had forgotten you know that dance! Some time you must dance it with me! But beware; it—”

“Drives men mad with desire,” she concluded, laughing. “I will save it for some suitable occasion.” One of the things
she liked about Nat was his conduct; he never tried to take advantage of her, either by the straying of his hands or by suggestion. She knew he desired her, but he was too disciplined to allow it to show aggressively. He reminded her of Mym in that respect; that seemed to make Mym’s endorsement more significant.

“I should not remain here,” he said, confirming her assessment.

“I thought I was tired, but I can’t rest,” she said. “Is there somewhere we can go?”

“There is all the world. Perhaps you should visit your friends.”

“I’d like that,” she agreed. “But it gets so complicated, expanding to the size of the globe, then orienting on the tiny mote that is my destination. I don’t know where all my friends are and wouldn’t want to intrude uninvited.”

“But you don’t need to expand, or to intrude,” he said. “The Llano provides many ways to locate folk and to travel.”

“It does? All I know is the expansion and the tear-sheet settings that occurred when I misused it.”

“I’m sorry, I thought you knew, and traveled as you did from preference. I will show you the other mechanisms.”

“Oh, will you?” Orb clapped her hands in little-girl style, thrilled.

“For example, the theme I just used to hear you speak my name. You must think of the person to whom you wish to attune, then sing this melody.” He sang a brief, strange, evocative tune. “Thereafter you will hear if that person speaks your name or even thinks of you with more than passing interest. Then—”

“Wait, let me master that first!” Orb exclaimed. “Let me see—on whom shall I orient? I know—my Gypsy friend Tinka!” She focused on the lovely blind girl and sang the melody. She felt the peculiar action of it reaching out, attuning, linking the two of them in a passive bond.

Nat shook his head. “You never cease to amaze me! It took me a year to perfect that application!”

“Does it work for nonhuman folk, too?”

“It works for anyone who cares for you. The bond is already there; the Llano merely activates it.”

“Then I could attune to Jonah, so that I could always return to him without having to search.”

“Indeed—if he cares for you. I’m sure he does, or he would not be serving you now.”

Orb sang the theme again, focusing on the big fish. She felt the reaching, and the body of Jonah shuddered. He was aware!

“Oh, this is fun!” Orb exclaimed. “I’d better attune to Lou-Mae, so I will know if they need me.” She did so.

Nat shook his head. “Three attunations in hardly as many minutes. One at a time is all I can manage!”

“Oh, I didn’t mean to embarrass you! I didn’t realize—”

“You did not embarrass me, you please me more than ever. I see how much greater your potential is than mine; I never before encountered such a woman. But perhaps you will tire of me.”

She turned and kissed him. “I doubt it, Nat. I do not sing better than you; it is merely the magic that is in my nature, no virtue in me. You have done what you have done the hard way, and I respect that.”

She continued attuning, reveling in this wonderful new power he had shown her. Then she paused, startled.

“Someone’s thinking of me!”

“Focus on it; you should be able to recognize the person.”

Orb concentrated. “It—it’s Tinka! She wants to see me!”

“Then I must show you the quick-travel theme,” Nat said. “Maintain your focus on her and sing this melody.” He sang another, similarly evocative.

Orb held her focus, and sang—and it was as if a page were turning, not tearing, but simply moving aside to reveal the new location. This was the true application of the mechanism she had misused before! She had used the Song of Morning, which was marvelous for its purpose, but ill-suited for travel. Now she had the correct application.

The new page was Tinka’s home. The blind girl stood there, gazing out the window though she could not see the view. Here it was dawn, the rays of the sun struggling to crest the high outline of the mountain range.

“Hello,” Orb said in Calo, the Gypsy language.

Tinka turned as if unsurprised. She was fuller in the body
than she had been, quite buxom. “I wanted to show you my baby.”

Her baby! Orb had forgotten. She had perhaps enabled the girl to become fertile; of course she should meet the baby!

Tinka showed her to the crib. There was a healthy baby boy, sleeping. Orb realized that the woman’s increase in bosom was because she was nursing.

“If you could tell me what he looks like—” Tinka said wistfully.

“He’s beautiful!” Orb exclaimed. But she felt a siege of her heart, abruptly reminded of her own baby, Orlene. To have been able to keep her, to raise her …

“I never really missed my sight, until …”

Orb banished her own discomfort. “You must have it!” she exclaimed. She took Tinka’s hands and sang the Song of Morning, willing the Gypsy to see what she was seeing.

The room grew dark. Then the dawn came, with its lovely colors and effects. Tinka shivered as the magic coursed through her. The morning clouds brightened, becoming gray and white and red and orange, their edges blazing. The beams of the sun spread out in a semicircular splay, illuminating the sky, then dropping down to touch the land, warming it.

Tinka made an exclamation of wonder. She was seeing it!

Orb held on to her and kept on singing. The plants sprouted, and grew, and budded, and flowered. Beauty surrounded them.

Then the song ended. Tinka was breathing hard. “I saw the dawn!” she whispered.

“What do you see now?”

“It is dark again. But for a while—”

“You have the magic,” Orb said. “Sing with me.” She held on to Tinka’s hands and began the Song of Morning again.

Tinka joined her, for she did have the magic and could pick up any melody immediately. The strength of the pulse going through them doubled, the magic reaching out and in, permeating their bodies. The sunrise manifested with greater intensity, and the flowers seemed real.

As the song ended, Orb let go of her friend and reached down to pluck one flower. She brought it up before Tinka’s face. “What do you see?”

Tinka blinked. Her eyes focused. “All pretty, with petals—” she said, reaching for it. “Fuzzy—”

“Sing again!” Orb said. She took hold of the girl’s wrist below the flower and sang the Song of Morning a third time. Tinka joined her, and the magic intensified even more than before.