A Choice of Gods

21

He felt the crying need of the creature in the glen, the lack of something that it sought and the damnation of that lack. He stopped so quickly that Evening Star, walking close behind, bumped into him.

"What is it?" she whispered.

He stood rigid, feeling the lack and need, and he did not answer. The wash of feeling from the glen came pouring over him and into him—the hopelessness, the doubt, the longing and the need. The trees stood straight and silent in the breathless afternoon and for a moment everything in the forest—the birds, the little animals, the insects—fell into a silence. Nothing stirring, nothing making any noise, as if all of nature held its breath to listen to the creature in the glen.

"What's wrong?" asked Evening Star.

"There is something suffering," he said. "Can't you feel the suffering? It's just there ahead of us."

"You can't feel suffering," she said.

He moved ahead slowly and the silence held and there the creature was—a terrible can of worms crouched against the nest of boulders that lay beneath the arching birch. But he did not see- the can of worms, he only heard the cry of need and something turned over in his mind and for a moment he held the need within his mental grip.

Evening Star recoiled and came up against the tough bark of an oak that stood beside the path. The can of worms kept changing, exactly as a can of worms would change, all the worms crawling over one another in the seething ferment of some nameless, senseless urge. And out of that seething mass came a cry of gladness and relief—a cry of gladness and relief that had no sound at all, and a cry that somehow was intertwined with a sense of compassion and of power that had nothing to do with the can of worms. And over all of this was spread, like a mantle of hope and understanding, what the great white oak had said, or tried to say, or failed to say, and within her mind the universe opened up like a flower awakened by the rising sun. For an instant she sensed and knew (not saw or heard or understood, for it all was beyond simple sight or understanding) the universe to its very core and out to its farthest edges—the mechanism of it and the purpose of its existence and the place that was held in it by everything that held the touch of life.

Only for an instant, a fractional second of realizing, of knowing, and then unknowing, then she was back again within herself, an incomplete, insignificant life form that crouched against the tree, feeling the rough bark of the massive oak against her shoulders and her back, with David Hunt standing in the path beside her and in the glen a squirming can of worms that seemed to shine with a holy light, so bright and glittering that it was beautiful as no can of worms could ever be, and crying over and over inside her brain, with a meaning in the cry she could not comprehend.

"David," she cried, "what have we done? What happened?"

For there had been a great happening, she knew, or perhaps great happenings and she was confused, although in the confusion there was something that was at once a happiness and wonder. She crouched against the tree and the universe seemed to lean down above her and she felt hands fastening upon her and lifting her and she was in David's arms, clinging to him as she had never clung to anyone before, glad that he was there in what she sensed must be the great moment of her life, secure within the strength of his lean, hard body.

"You and I," he was saying. "You and I together. Between the two of us…"

His voice faltered and she knew that he was frightened and she put her arms about him and held him with ail the comfort that she had.