A Choice of Gods

4

Evening Star walked through the morning and talked with the friends she met. Be careful, rabbit, nibbling at your clover; a red fox has his den just across the hill. And why do you chatter, little bushy-tail, and stamp your feet at me: it is your friend who is walking past. You took all the hickory nuts from the three big trees at the hollow's mouth before I could get to them and have them stored away. You should be happy, for you're the most fortunate of squirrels. You have a deep den in a hollow oak where you'll be snug and happy when the winter comes and you have food hidden everywhere. Chickadee, you are out of place and time, swinging on the thistle stalk. You should not be here so soon. You come only when there are snowflakes in the air. Did you steal a march upon your fellows; you'll be lonesome here until the others come. Or are you like myself, cherishing the last few golden days before the chill moves down?

She walked through the sun of morning, with the colored pageant of the open woods burst into flame and gold about her. She saw the burnished metal of the goldenrod, the sky-blue of the asters. She walked upon the grass that once had been lush and green and now was turning tawny and was slippery beneath her moccasins. She knelt to brush her hand against the green and scarlet carpet of the lichen patches growing on an old, gray boulder and she sang within herself because she was a part of it—yes, even of the lichens, even of the boulder.

She came to the top of the ridge that she was climbing and below her lay the denser forest that cloaked the river hills. A hollow dipped down between the slopes rising on each side and she followed it. A spring flowed out of a limestone outcrop and she went on down the hollow, walking to the music of hidden, singing water flowing from the spring. Her memory winged back to that other day. It had been summer then, with the hills a froth of green and birds still singing in the trees. She clasped the doll she carried close against her breast and again she heard the words the tree had spoken to her. It all was wrong, of course, for no woman should make a compact with a thing so strong and lordly as a tree. A birch, perhaps, or a poplar, or one of the lesser, more feminine of trees—that, while it would be frowned upon still might be understandable. But the tree that had spoken to her had been an ancient white oak—a hunter's tree.

It stood just ahead of her, old and gnarled and strong, but despite all its girth and strength seeming to crouch against the ground, as if it were a thing embattled. Its leaves were brown and had begun to wither, but it had not lost them yet. It still clung to its warrior's cloak while some of the other trees nearby stood in nakedness.

She clambered down to reach it and, having reached it, found the rotted, flaking hollow that gouged into its massive trunk. Standing on tiptoe, she saw that the secret hollow place still held and guarded the doll she'd placed there all those years before—a little corncob doll dressed in scraps of woolen cloth. It had weathered and been darkened by the rain that had seeped into the hollow and soaked it time and time again, but it held its shape, it still clung against the tree.

Still standing on tiptoe, she placed the doll she carried into the hollow, settling it carefully beside the first doll. Then she stepped away.

"Old Grandfather," she said, her eyes looking at the ground as a matter of respect, "I went away, but I did not forget you. In the long nights and the bright noons I remembered you. Now I have come back again to tell you that I may go away again, although in a different way. But I'll never leave completely, because I love this world too much. And I shall always reach out to you, knowing you will know when I hold out my arms and I shall know that upon this land stands one I can believe and depend upon. I am truly grateful to you, Old Grandfather, for the strength you give me and for your understanding."

She stopped and waited for an answer and there was no answer. The tree did not talk to her as it had that first lime.

"I do not know where I'll be going," she told the tree, "or when I'll go or even if I'll go at all, but I came to tell you. To share with you a feeling I can share with no one else."

She waited once again for the tree to answer and there were no words, but it seemed to her that the great oak stirred, as if arousing from a sleep, and she had the sense of great arms lifted and held above her head and there was something—benediction? — that came out from the tree and settled over her.

She backed away slowly, step by step, her eyes still upon the ground, then she turned and fled, running wildly up the hill, filled with that sense of something that had come forth from the tree and touched her.

She tripped on a surface root that looped out of the forest floor, caught herself against a huge fallen tree trunk, and sat down on it. Looking back, she saw that the ancient oak was no longer in sight. There were too many intervening trees.

The woods were quiet. Nothing stirred in the underbrush and there were no birds. In the spring and summer this place was filled with birds, but now there was none. They either had gone south or were elsewhere, flocking up, ready for the move. Down in the river bottoms vast flocks of ducks quarreled and chortled in the sloughs and the reed patches were filled with great flocks of blackbirds that went storming up into the sky like hurtling sleet. But here the gentler birds were gone and the woods were quiet, a solemn quietness that held a touch of loneliness.

She had told the tree that she might be going elsewhere and she wondered if she had said what she really meant or if she knew as much as she should know about this going elsewhere. It sometimes seemed that she might be going to another place— and it might not be that at all. There was in her a feeling of unease, of expectation, the prickling sensation that something most momentous was about to happen, but she could not define it. It was an unfamiliar thing, a rather frightening thing to someone who had lived all her life in a world she knew so ultimately. The world was full of friends—not only human friends, but many other friends, the little scurriers of the woods and brush, the shy flowers hidden in their woodland nooks, the graceful trees that stood against the sky, the very wind and weather.

She patted the old decaying trunk as if it might be a friend as well and saw how the briars and high-growing forest plants had gathered all around it, rallying to its defense, hiding it in its hour of indignity and need.

She rose from the trunk and went on up the hill, going slowly now, no longer running. She had left the doll and the tree had not spoken as it had before, but it had done something else, performed some other act and everything was well.

She reached the crest of the steep river slope and started down the reverse side, heading for the camp, and as she started to angle down the hill realized, suddenly, without actually seeing, that she was not alone. She turned swiftly and there he stood, clad only in a breech clout, his bronzed body smooth and hard and shining in the sun, his pack beside him and the bow leaned against the pack. A pair of binoculars hung from their strap about his neck, half hiding the necklace that he wore.

"Do I intrude upon your land?" he asked, politely.

"The land is free," she said

She was fascinated by the necklace. She kept staring at it.

He touched it with his ringer. "Vanity," he said.

• "You killed the great white bear," she said. "More than one, from all the claws there are."

"Also," he said, "a way to keep the count. One claw, one bear. A claw from each."

She drew in her breath. "Your medicine is strong."

He slapped the bow. "My bow is strong. My arrows true and tipped with flint. Flint is better than anything except the finest steel and where now do you find the finest steel."

"You came from the West," she said. She knew that the great white bears lived only in the West. One of her kinspeople, Running Elk, had been killed by one just a year or so ago.

He nodded. "Far from the West. From the place where there is big water. From the ocean,"

"How far is that?"

"Far? I cannot tell. Many moons upon the road."

"You count by moons. Are you of my people?"

"No, I don't think so. Were it not for the sun, my skin is white. I met some of your people, hunting buffalo. They were the first people other than my own I had ever seen. I had not known there were other people. There were only robots, running wild."

She made a motion of disdain. "We have no traffic with the robots."

"So I understand."

"How much farther do you intend to go? To the east the prairie ends. It is only woods. Finally there is another ocean. I have seen the maps."

He pointed at the house that stood on top of the great headland. "Maybe only that far. The people on the plains told me of a big house of stone with people living in it. I have seen many houses of stone, but with no one living in them. There are people living in it?"

"Two people."

"That is all?"

"The others," she said, "have gone to the stars."

"They told me that, too," he said, "and I have wondered of it. I could not believe. Who would want to go to the stars?"

"They find other worlds and live on them."

"The stars are only bright lights shining in the sky."

"They are other suns," she said. "Have you read no books?"

He shook his head. "I saw one once. I was told it was a book. It was said to me that it would speak to me if one knew the way. But the person who showed it to me had lost the way."

"You cannot read?"

"This reading is the way? The way a book will talk?"

"Yes, that's it," she said. "There are little marks. You read the marks."

"Have you got a book?" he asked.

"A big box of books. I have read them all. But up there," she gestured at the house, "there are rooms filled with nothing but books. My grandfather-many-tulles-removed will ask today if I may read those books."

"It is strange," he said. "You read the book. I kill the bear. I do not like the idea of a book. I was told the book would speak, but in olden magic, better left alone."

"That is not true," she said. "You are a funny kind of man."

"I came from far," he said, as if that might explain it. "Across high mountains, across great rivers, across places where there is only sand and too much sun."

"Why did you do it? Why did you come so far?"

"Something in me said go and find. It did not say what I should find. Only go and find. No other of my people have ever gone to find. I feel something driving me, as if I cannot stay. When the people on the plains tell me of this great high house of stone, I think perhaps this is what I go to find."

"You are going up there?"

"Yes, of course," he said.

"And if it is what you set out to find, you will stay awhile?"

"Perhaps. I do not know. The thing inside me that drives me on will tell me. I thought awhile ago perhaps I had found what J came to find without going to the house. The great oak changed. You made the oak to change."

She flared in anger. "You spied on me. You sat there, spying."

"I did not mean to spy," he said. "I was coming up the hill as you were coming down and I saw you at the tree. I hid so you wouldn't see me. I thought you would not want anyone to know. So I was quiet. I kept out of sight. I moved away, quietly, so you wouldn't know."

"Yet you tell me."

"Yes, I tell you. The oak was changed. It was a wondrous thing."

"How did you know the oak had changed?"

He wrinkled his brow. "I do not know. There was the bear as well. The bear that my arrow did not kill and yet it dropped dead at my feet. I am puzzled by all this. I do not know these things."

"Tell me, how did the oak change?"

He shook his head. "I only sensed it change."

"You should not have spied."

"I am ashamed I did. I will not speak of it."

"Thank you," she said, turning to go down the hill.

"Can I walk a way with you?"

"I go this way," she said. "You go to the house."

"I'll see you again," he said.

She went on down the hill. When finally she looked back, he still was standing there. The bear-claw necklace glittered in the sun.