A Choice of Gods

16

Evening Star was sitting on the patio when the young man with the binoculars and the bear-claw necklace showed up, coming up the path from the monastery.

He stopped in front of her. "You are here to read the books," he said. "That is the correct word, is it not? To read?"

He wore a white bandage on his cheek. "You have the word," she said. "Won't you please sit down. How are you feeling?"

"Very well," he said. "The robots took good care of me."

"Well, then, sit down," she said. "Or are you going somewhere?"

"I have nowhere to go," he said. "I may go no farther." He sat down in a chair beside her and laid the bow upon the flagstones. "I had wanted to ask you about the trees that make the music. You know about the trees. Yesterday you spoke with the ancient oak…"

"You told me," she said, somewhat angrily, "that you'd never mention that again. You spied upon me and you promised."

"I am sorry, but I must," he told her. "I have never met a person who could talk with trees. I have never heard before a tree that could make music."

"What have the two to do with one another?"

"There was something wrong with the trees last night. I thought perhaps you noticed. I think I did something to them."

"You must be joking. Who could do anything with the trees? And there was nothing wrong with them. They played beautifully."

"There was a sickness in them, or in some of them. They played not as well as they could play. And I did something with the bears as well. Especially that last bear. Maybe with all of them."

"You told me that you killed them. And took one claw from each to put into the necklace. A way of keeping count, you said. And, if you ask me, a way of bragging, too."

She thought he might get angry, but he only looked a little puzzled. "I had thought all the time," he said, "that it was the bow. That I killed them because I could shoot the bow so well and the arrows were so finely fashioned. What if it were not the bow at all, or the arrows or my shooting of them, but something else entirely?"

"What difference does it make? You killed them, didn't you?"

"Yes, of course I killed them, but…"

"My name is Evening Star," she said, "and you've never told me yours."

"I am David Hunt."

"And so, David Hunt, tell me about yourself."

"There is not much to tell."

"But there must be something. You have people and a home. You surely came from somewhere."

"A home. Yes, I suppose so. Although we moved around a lot. We were always fleeing and the people leaving…"

"Fleeing? What was there to flee from?"

"The Dark Walker. I see you do not know of it. You have not heard of it?" She shook her head.

"A shape," he said. "Like a man and yet not like a man. Two-legged. Maybe that is the only way it is like a man. Never seen in daytime. Always seen at night. Always on a ridgetop, black against the sky. It was first seen on the night everyone was taken— that is, everyone but us, and I suppose, to say it right, everyone but us and the people here and those out on the plains. I am the first of our people to know there are other people."

"You seem to think there is only one Dark Walker. Are you sure of that? Are you sure there really is a Dark Walker, or do you just imagine it? My people at one time imagined so many things that we now know were never true. Has it ever hurt any of your people?"

He frowned, trying to think. "No, not that I know of. It hurt no one; it is only seen. It is horrible to see. We watch for it all the time and when we see it, we flee to somewhere else."

"You never tried to track it down?"

"No," he said.

"I thought perhaps that was what you were doing now. Trying to track it down and kill it. A great bowman such as you, who can kill the bears.."

"You make fun of me," he said, but without a show of anger,

"Perhaps," she said. "You are so proud of the killing of the bears. No one of my people have killed so many bears."

"I doubt," he said, "that the Walker could be killed with arrows. Maybe it can not be killed at all."

"There may be no Walker," said the girl. "Have you ever thought of that? Surely, if there were, we would have seen or heard of it. My people range far west to the mountains and there'd have been some word of it. And so far as that goes, how is it that all these years there has been no word of your people? For centuries the people in this house hunted other people, running down all sorts of rumors."

"So did my people, I am told, in the early years. I have only heard of it, of course. Things that people talked about. I have, myself, only twenty summers."

"We are the same age," said Evening Star. "I am just nineteen."

"There are few young people among us," said David Hunt. "There are not many of us, all of us together, and we move around so much…"

"It puzzles me," she said, "that there are only a few of you. If you are like the rest of us, you live for a long, long time and there is no sickness. From one small tribe, my people number many thousands. From a few people in this house there are thousands in the stars. There should be thousands of you. You should be strong and many…"

"We could be many," he said, "but we go away."

"I thought you told me…"

"Not to the stars, like these others. But across the water. There is a madness that sends many of us across the water. They build rafts and they set out across the water, toward the setting sun. It has been done for many years. I don't know why. I never have been told."

"Perhaps fleeing from the Walker."

"I don't think so," he said. "I don't think those who go know why they are going or even that they're going until the madness seizes them."

"Lemmings," said Evening Star.

"What are lemmings?"

"Small animals. Rodents. I read about them once."

"What have lemmings to do with us?"

"I am not sure," she said.

"I ran away," he said. "Myself and Old Jose. We both feared the bigness of the water. We did not want to go if the few remaining people went. If we ran away, we said, the madness might not touch us. Jose saw the Walker, twice, after we had run away, and we ran again, from the Walker, very far and fast."

"When Jose saw the Walker, did you…"

"No. I've never seen it."

"Do you think the other people went? Out across the water, after you and Jose left?"

"I do not know," he said. "Jose died. He was an old, old man. He remembered when the People disappeared. He was an old man even then. There came a day when his life ran out. I think that he was glad. It is not always good to live too long. When you live too long you too often are alone."

"But he had you with him."

"Yes, but there were too many years between us. We got along all right and we talked a lot, but he missed the people like himself. He would play the fiddle and I would listen and the coyotes would sit up on the hills and sing with the fiddle. Have you ever heard a coyote sing?"

"I've heard them bark and howl," she said. "I never heard one sing."

"They sang every night when Old Jose would play. He'd play only in the evening. There were a lot of coyotes and I think they came to listen and to sing along. There were times when there'd be a dozen of them, sitting on the hilltops, singing. Jose said he couldn't play as well as he should. His fingers were no longer limber and his arm was heavy with the bow. I felt the death that was in him, death sitting on the hilltop and listening with the wolves. When he died I dug a deep hole and buried him, with the fiddle beside him, for it was no use to me and I thought he'd like it that way. Then I worked for days, carrying rocks, as big as I could pack, to pile upon the grave against the wolves. All the time I did this I was not lonesome, for somehow it seemed that I was still with Jose. Working for him was like being with him. But once I finished, I was lonely."

"You could have gone back to find your people."

"I thought of it," he said, "but T had no idea where they were and I still was afraid of the madness that might send me out with them upon the water. I had a feeling that the madness would not strike me if I were alone. It is—what would you call it? — a group madness. And, besides, there was something inside of me that kept telling me to go toward the rising sun. I have wondered many times what it was that made me go. There seemed no reason that I should. It was as if I were hunting for something, although I did not know what it is I am supposed to hunt. I found your people out on the plains and I wanted to stay with them. They would have let me stay. But I couldn't. The call of the rising sun still was in me and I had to leave them. They told me of this great stone house and I wondered if that was what I had set out to find. There were many houses of stone that I found along the way, but I was afraid of them. My people never lived in houses. We were afraid of them. They made noises in the night and they were so empty and we thought that there were ghosts in them, maybe the ghosts of the people who had been taken when everyone disappeared."

"You're here now," said the girl. "I hope you stay awhile. You'll find nothing to the east. It is only empty forest. A few of my people live there, but even so, it all is empty forest. And this house is not like the houses that you saw. It is not empty; it is lived in. It has the feel of people."

"The robots would let me stay with them," he said. "They are kindly folks."

"But," she said, "they aren't human. You'll want to be with humans. Uncle Jason and Aunt Martha, I am sure, would be glad to have you. Or, if you'd rather, there always would be a place for you in my people's camp."

"Uncle Jason and Aunt Martha live in this house?"

"Yes, but they really aren't aunt and uncle to me. I call them that, but only to myself. They do not know I call them that. Uncle Jason and my grandfather-many-times-removed have been lifelong friends. They were young men at the Disappearance.»

"I may have to go on," he said. "The call of the rising sun may not have left me yet. But I'd be glad of a little time to rest. I came to ask you about your talking with the trees. You have not told me of it. Do you talk with all the trees, or just a certain tree?"

"You may not understand," she said. "We live close to the trees, the streams, the flowers, the animals and birds. We are one with them. Any one of us can talk with them."

"And you the best of all."

"I would not know. Among ourselves we do not discuss it. I can speak only for myself. I can go for a walk, into the woods or along a stream, and I am never lonely or alone, for I meet so many friends and I always talk with them."

"And they talk back to you."

"Sometimes they do," she said.

"You talk with the trees and the others go out to the stars."

"You still don't believe about the stars."

"I am beginning to," he said; "Although it is hard to believe it. I asked the robots about it and they explained it to me, although I do not think I understood entirely. They said that of all the people once in this house, only two remain. The rest are out among the stars. They said that at times they come back from the stars for a visit. Is that so?"

"Yes, it is. There is one of them now back from the stars. Uncle Jason's brother. He brought disturbing word. He and Uncle Jason went down to the camp this morning to talk with my many-times-grand-father about the word he brought."

She was running on too much, she thought. Perhaps Uncle Jason would not like her telling this to a perfect stranger, a man who had stumbled out of nowhere. Ithad just slipped out, as if he were a friend. And she did not really know him. She had met him only yesterday after he had spied on her and again this morning when he'd come up the road from the monastery. But it was, she thought, as if she'd known him for years. He was just a boy. What was it he had said about the many years that lay between himself and his old friend? Maybe that was it. There were no years to lie between the two of them.

"You think," he asked, "that your aunt and uncle would not mind my staying here? You could ask your aunt, perhaps."

"Not now," said Evening Star. "She is talking with the stars. She has been talking all the morning. But we can ask her later—or my uncle when he returns from camp."