The Space Between (21 page)

14: New Paths

Tuki's knee was swollen badly and throbbed
in time with his heart. He had fallen two days after leaving Danyon
Ford and run almost nonstop in the five days since. The knee hadn't
had a chance to recover and was not likely to get the chance
anytime soon.

He crouched in the shade at the edge of the
village. It was the sixth in line from Danyon Ford. It was the one
to which Keala, taking instructions from the 'book', had directed
him.

After running so far, Tuki
was surprised to find that his resolve was not as strong as he had
previously thought. Keala said that the mo'min was the rightful
holder of a skyglass. Did
finding
a skyglass make you the rightful
holder?

He didn't know. And until he found one, it
didn't really matter. He wore two cloth bags tied to his belt. One
held his tattooing inks and needles in case he thought of something
to put on the back of his hand, and the other was for carrying the
'glass back to Keala.

"What chance that I will find one anyway?"
he said quietly.

It was unlikely any mo'min
would have forgotten something as important as a skyglass when
abandoning the village centuries earlier. He didn't think it was
even worth the effort of looking.
But what
will happen if I return to Danyon Ford empty handed? It will take a
month of extra duties for the mo'shi to be happy with my state of
mind.
But would his mind ever be tuned in
to the well being of the village when all he could think of was
Keala?

While he had crouched, the night had
gathered like a wolf pack, silent but palpably watching. Tuki
looked up at the sky, catching glimpses of stars and moons through
the branches. He offered a silent prayer to the Mother Blower.

When the stillness
continued undisturbed, Tuki shook his head and rose painfully to
his feet. The memory of Keala's smile, the
taste
of her smile, pushed him
forward. He moved as stealthily as his knee allowed, from one
shadow to another, as if the creatures of the night might run back
to Danyon Ford and report on his activities. As if he could hide
from those creatures at all.

He skirted the main plaza and paused for a
moment before the line of rubble that had once been the wall
keeping the single moai from those that were married. His heart
beat loudly in his chest, and he turned to look skywards again. The
moons and stars continued their stately dance across the
heavens.

With a deep, calming breath, he stepped into
the northern half of the village, circled around the tumbled down
remains of a building, and followed a wide, bare path towards the
house where the mo'min had once lived.

Hardly any of the buildings were standing.
Most were nothing more than a patch of broken stone flooring amidst
the tangle of weeds. Even the glassblowing workshop, sturdiest of
all buildings, had been reduced to a low-walled pool of
wildflowers. Further back, separated from the rest of the village
by a line of eight tall, straight trees, was the home of the
mo'min.

"Under the floor, to the left of the fire,"
Tuki said softly as he crept through the remains of the doorway,
stealthy as a thief.

I am not stealing
anything. Nobody lives here. Nobody owns the skyglass.
He didn't think he'd convince himself.

At the rear of the main room was a low hump,
now covered with moss and lichen, that might have once been the
fireplace. But the pavers to the left had been well laid, as was to
be expected, and time had taken away any edges he might grip. Grass
had locked silky tendrils into tiny cracks, but that was all. On
the other side of the fire, a small tree had sent questing roots to
crack apart the cobbles.

Tuki started there, levering up the first
paver, digging his fingers down into the dirt and prizing it free.
That allowed him to work the next one loose, and the one after
that, until he had sixteen of them leading from one side of the
room to the other.

He found nothing.

She said it was to the
left of the fire.
Tuki had no reason to
disbelieve Keala. Why would she lie? So he lifted five pavers in
another row, bloodying the tips of his fingers as he fought against
the stones and the clinging grip of the earth. Then he disinterred
another row, becoming more feverish with each fruitless
effort.

After the fourth row, he sat back on his
heels, sweat coating his brow, soil and blood turning to clay on
his hands. He would have stopped there, but the thought of Keala's
kiss set him to work again, tearing row after row of pavers from
the ground.

Finally, as the third moon dipped out of
sight to the west and darkness was almost complete, he pulled up a
paver and revealed the edge of another flat stone beneath. He had
another three pavers out in a moment to reveal the entire hidden
stone. It was old and cracked, with a ring in the center like a
handle.

"Oh." He wasn't sure that he wanted to go
any further. For a while he stayed where he was, on his hands and
knees, as if praying to Poti. The night drifted on around him.

"Keala."

With her in his thoughts, warm to the touch,
Tuki reached out gingerly and lifted the stone clear. A small box
was revealed with a skyglass within.

He had seen a skyglass previously, when he
had attended the Mid-Summer Festival many years earlier, but to be
so close, to see the stars reflected in the surface, was another
thing entirely. It was about the size of a child's head, smooth and
clear and gleaming. He reached forth and touched a shaking finger
to the polished surface.

With that slight touch the glass started to
change. Darkening, warming. Tuki recoiled in surprise, and in
moments the skyglass was nothing more than a perfect glass
ball.

Rising to his feet Tuki paced away from the
hole. He turned at the remains of the fireplace and strode back
again. "I should not be here," he said, looking down at the 'glass.
He was prying into women's business, thinking that he could touch
the very object that let the mo'min speak with the Mother Blower.
"But Keala."

Tuki stooped down and, closing his eyes,
took the skyglass in his hands, determined to hold on to it no
matter what. When he was standing at his full height, he dared to
open his eyes. The 'glass had come to life again, and it was as if
he held the night sky in his hands. He had thought that words were
needed, but apparently not.

In the center of the globe was a tiny blue
dot with a square floating beside it. In the square was a line of
numbers and another array of tiny symbols that surely meant
something. Were they secret numbers that only the mo'min could
know?

Around those were a multitude of stars. Tuki
examined the patterns that he knew so well. "The Skeleton
constellation," he said out loud, when the six familiar stars
caught his eye.

Suddenly the globe was filled with the
constellation. Beside each of the stars floated more boxes filled
with numbers and symbols. Mikusa, the brightest star in the
Skeleton constellation, was so close to Tuki's thumb that he almost
thought he could touch it.

On a hunch, Tuki spoke again. "Kiva." His
heart pounded.

The Skeleton constellation disappeared and
was replaced by a blue half globe that could only be his home
world. It took up only a small section on the side of the 'glass,
leaving room to show the three moons, brothers of the sky. They
were in exactly the right position. Mata and Ki'te were in
conjunction. The third, tiny Rangi, was out on his own, almost
touching the surface of the 'glass.

Tuki opened his mouth to speak the name of
another star when something new appeared on the globe. One moment
there was nothing, and the next a tiny point of yellow light
appeared and flashed close to the planet.

Looking up, Tuki saw a shooting star
staining the sky with its orange glow. His breath quickened. It was
the same one he had seen on his pilgrimage, he was sure. And this
time he knew it was true. The skyglass confirmed it.

The meteor passed across the night sky in
front of him. He watched as it turned, changed direction, and flew
away from him along the line of Dry River. Tuki gaped, watching the
darkness after the comet had disappeared over the horizon.

When he thought to look at the 'glass he
held in his hands, he discovered that the comet had stopped. He
checked the sky again, but it wasn't there. In the 'glass it was
accompanied by its own little square.

"What do I do?" Tuki asked, for obviously
the shooting star was a message from Poti. How could it be anything
but? Was he meant to follow it? Or was the message more cryptic
than that? Would he need the mo'min to interpret it? He shook his
head. If he needed the mo'min to tell him what it all meant, then
he would never know, for he would not ask and nobody would believe
him anyway. That just left his own interpretation, and Tuki was
sure he was supposed to follow. He was supposed to go beyond the
horizon, into the lands of man.

Tuki looked at the skyglass again, as if it
might change and let him return to Danyon Ford and be married to
Keala. But nothing changed. The yellow dot waited just around the
curve of the world, and the three brothers progressed
infinitesimally through their stately dance.

He rose to his feet and looked back along
the River towards his home. Sighing, he turned to limp in the other
direction, on the tail of the shooting star.

His hands were shaking, but the Mother
Blower was calling him, and he could do naught but follow.

* * *

Tuki followed Dry River as it curved north
into the hills. He woke with the sun each morning and walked or ran
until it had long since sunk into the west, collecting food and
water from between its banks as he went. He constantly glanced back
over his shoulder, watching the desert grow behind him as the
horizon retreated. It was a wonderful place, a universe all of its
own, beautiful and vast and unknowable. Golden sand stretched for
uncounted kilometers, broken by occasional islands of ancient
stone. Poti was letting him see it all, but only as She led him
away.

Dawn and noon and dusk he would stop to
stare to the south, bowing deeply and thanking the Mother Blower
for what She had given him, and for what She was about to give.
Then he would walk and look back as he went, making sure he did not
miss any detail as it materialized. It was his home, and each new
addition to the vista increased his longing. He thought his heart
would break when the time came to top the highest rise and the
dunes behind would be lost from sight.

That was until he reached the top of the
highest rise.

The day before, Dry River had spread out to
fill a wide shallow valley and gone no further. Tuki had searched
all morning but found only dry, rocky slopes beyond. With much
trepidation he had continued on with only the Poti to guide him.
All that afternoon and through the next day and the bulk of the
next, he had walked or run, all the while waiting for the cooling
trees of Dry River to come back to him.

The sun was leaning in over his shoulder as
he trudged up what he thought was just another hill in a long line
of hills. Each was rockier than the one before, each a little
higher, but that was all. The novelty had quickly worn off, and it
was just a slope he had to haul his aching legs up. The skyglass
was an annoying weight in the sack at his belt. It thumped against
his leg with every step until he thought he was ready to rip it
away and hurl it back toward the desert. And his mouth was dry, for
water had become hard to find.

When he truly thought he
could stand it no more, when he was telling himself that the
skyglass didn't
really
want to leave the desert, he topped that final hill that
marked the edge of the world, and stopped to stare. Just ahead, the
land dropped almost directly down, and a new world of color and
life called for his attention.

To the left, a golden crop of grain waved to
him, a million little hands moving in unison. To the right,
thousands of trees beckoned him forward with ancient, nodding
heads. He wanted to count them but, closer by, a field of wild
flowers danced for him in scattered groups. In another spot a
fallow field of rich brown waited to see if he might rather the
cool, clean earth beneath his feet.

Tuki didn't know what he wanted. He stood in
silence looking at it all. When the sun dipped its head below the
horizon and darkness claimed the world, Tuki was still standing at
the top of the hill, mouth open, eyes glazed and staring.

When he could move once more, Tuki reached
into the pouch on his belt and brought forth the skyglass with
shaking hands. Holding it up to the moonlight, he spoke the word
that brought it to life. He had accidentally snuffed the lights a
few days earlier and spent a day trying to find it again. Now, he
spoke to the 'glass often, wanting to learn all that Poti was
willing to teach, but he always returned to the same view in the
end. Kiva.

The world was in the middle. Two of the
brother moons were hanging close by, but Ki'te, which should have
been around the other side of the world, was not displayed, as if
the skyglass couldn't see it. Inside the orbit of the brothers was
the meteor. The fact that it was completely still worried Tuki. He
was not sure, but he felt that it should always be moving, like a
toddler who would stumble if momentum were lost. But there were no
women to tell him the ways of shooting stars, so all he could do
was follow as the Mother Blower decreed.

Marking the direction in his mind, Tuki
slipped the skyglass back into the pouch and started down the trail
that led across the face of the cliff to the valley below.