The Ring Оf Fire. The Wolf Bell

FOUR

Zephy didn’t know what was the matter, only that Meatha had appeared in the milk line pale as death, and when Zephy asked her in whispers what was wrong, she had burst into tears. Now they knelt at the base of the god-statue, having come for privacy so they could talk; but three older women had pushed through the hedge to kneel in prayer, and they could say nothing; nor could they leave until they had been there an appropriate time. The statue towered above them, the winged god rearing into the sky, his human torso above the horselike body catching the sun, his arms reaching as if, indeed, he lifted on the wind; and beside him the two winged Horses of Eresu thrust skyward; the shadows of their wings swept across the girls’ heads and out across the cobbles. Meatha was trying to hide her tears from the women who knelt so near them.

They could not talk until at last they made their way to the housegardens through Burgdeeth’s narrow streets, the smells of tannery and candlewax and of baking bread marking the little shops; and the small of cess from a row of outhouses. The gardens were blessedly empty.

At midday, most women and girls found chores to do in the scullers, coming out again as the hot summer sun lowered. Beside Zephy’s vetchpea rows, their two donkeys drowsed in the pen, their ears twitching at the garden flies. The vetchpeas were getting ripe, their long pods dragging the turned earth. The smell of a rotten charp fruit, missed in the last picking, came sickeningly on the breeze.

They sat on the edge of the irrigation ditch. Meatha had stopped crying, but she looked terrified. Her dark hair was dishevelled, and her lavender eyes seemed larger than ever and were bleary from the tears.

Zephy was strung tight with impatience “Tell me! Whatever is it? Did some boy . . . ?”

Meatha shook her head and swallowed. When she spoke at last, her voice was only a whisper. “Not a boy. It—I had a dream. No, it wasn’t a dream.” She stared at Zephy, shaken. “It was a vision, Zephy. I was awake. I was standing in the sculler. It was a seeing. Like Ynell.”

Zephy caught her breath, fear rising; fear, and excitement.

“A vision as real as if I were there; the wind was cold and I could smell the mountains. I was awake, Zephy. I didn’t see the sculler, I saw . . .” Meatha became silent Zephy stared at her, waiting, shocked with the sin of it—and with the wonder.

When a dream occurred due to illness, it was supposed to be a gray colorless affair soon wiped clean from the mind with herbs and with sacrificial penances. To have a dream was a sin that could be cured—though Zephy and Meatha had never told anyone of theirs. But to have a true waking vision could only be dealt with through the sacrifice of death.

“At first, before the cold wind came, I was standing by a wagon. The most wonderful wagon, painted with birds and flowers in bright colors. An old, tall man was driving. Lean and sunbrowned, with very white hair. I thought he was a man of great wonder. He didn’t say anything, but sat looking down at me while the horses churned and snorted. They were butternut color, not a stroke of white, and beautiful—like Carriol horses. He said—not in words, but in my thoughts and silently—that he must speak with me. There was something happening around us, some activity with many people. He spoke to me in silence, so they never knew. There was someone with him, a boy, but I could not tell who. Then the old man was gone and there was terror all around me, people were pulling at me and jerking at me and at someone else too. It was—they were pulling off our clothes . . .” Meatha caught her breath, her eyes full of such pain that Zephy’s own breathing was constricted. “Then it changed and I was alone in a place all barren, with white round boulders humping and a kind of white stone path that climbed the mountain. I was . . .” Meatha’s voice shook. “I was tied to the death stone, Zephy.”

They had seen children dressed in rags and smeared with dung and filth, strapped across the backs of donkeys like sacks of meal, and taken away to the death stone. Children from Burgdeeth and from Sibot Hill and Quaymus, for only this one road led upward. Always the donkeys were accompanied by red-robed Deacons, and often by the town’s Landmaster himself, mounted and austere.

They sat staring at the swirl of water in the ditch. Beyond the green rows of dill and tervil, the misty hills humped along the border between Cloffi and Kubal. To their left, the black towering mountains shadowed the town and fields. Up behind those peaks lay Eresu, where the gods dwelt. And those who defy the powers of the gods, those who sin as Ynell sinned, shall know death.

Meatha was a Child of Ynell, they could no longer escape it. If discovered, she would die. Meatha, whose beauty was like the mabin bird, her pale translucent skin and dark hair, her incredibly lavender eyes. If Zephy had ever been jealous of that beauty, she could not be now. How could the Luff’Eresi be so cruel? What harm could Meatha possibly do?

Meatha roused herself at last. “There’s bittleleaf to haul this afternoon; we won’t have time to hoe.”

“We’ll be questioned about why we’re out here then. I wish . . . if we’d only be assigned to take a load of bittleleaf to Dunoon . . .” Zephy said hopefully.

“The Deacons would never pick us again, not after last time. My mother said . . .”

“I know. Both our mothers. And the Deacons mad enough to . . .”

“To make a curse-penance on us at worship,” Meatha said with shame. But though they had been punished for swimming in the Owdneet, no one had discovered that the seats of their underpants were hairy from the donkey’s backs. For in a fit of boldness they had ridden the little beasts along the deserted shore of the Owdneet, galloping wild and crazy with delight, the word forbidden shrieking in their heads. No one had thought to look at their underpants, the wet condition of their hair being quite enough to send them, red-faced, to crouch on their knees for most of the seven days afterward, their hands and feet smeared with red clay to symbolize the destruction by fire that the anger of the Luff’Eresi could bring down upon all of Cloffi because of their sinning.

Shanner had shouted with laughter when he heard. “Next time,” he had chided, “get the boys to take you; dallying with boys isn’t half so bad a sin as girls going by themselves to defy the Covenants. You could always say you fell in the Owdneet by accident in a fit of desire,” he had roared.

But there would not be another time. Other girls, dutiful girls or girls clever in biding their activities, would be sent on the occasional hauling trip. Boys and men did not do such work. If the bittleleaf was delivered from Sibot Hill and there was no one from Dunoon to take its share up the mountain, then someone from Burgdeeth must. The bittleleaf, used for storing ice, did not keep well. Its replacement was needed often.

For a long time, the shame the village had made them feel about that forbidden swim had been almost more than they could bear.

“Even so, it was worth it,” Meatha said now, quietly and passionately. “It was the best day of my whole life. Swimming naked in the Owdneet and galloping in the wind was like—like being someone else, something . . . Oh, I don’t know exactly. Something wonderful.”

“Yes,” Zephy said softly. And she remembered seeing Thorn of Dunoon there, high on the mountain above them guarding the flocks, his red hair catching the sun. She remembered the feeling it had given her of freedom—that one lone figure—remembered all the pleasure of that day, then the sudden weight of hatefulness that had nearly wiped it out when, returning home, they had been confronted by the Deacons. “Why is it that everything that’s a pleasure is a sin? When I was little, Mama used to tell me stories to make me forget the Deacons and their horrible meanness. Now I’m too old, I guess.” She missed the closeness with Mama, missed Mama’s understanding. Was Mama different because of Kearb-Mattus? Or did things just change when you grew up—is it me who’s different? She wondered.

Now, the only time Zephy could touch that sense of joy that Mama’s stories had created for her was when she and Meatha went secretly to visit Burgdeeth’s teacher; and she said now, fearfully, “Are you going to tell Tra. Hoppa about the vision?”

Meatha stared at her. “I don’t know. No. It would only put her in more danger. It’s enough that she teaches us secretly, tells us more than she teaches the boys, and that she’s told us about the tunnel. No one else in Burgdeeth knows about that, not even the Landmaster, and we would all surely be killed if he found out. But now this—I can’t tell Tra. Hoppa this, I shouldn’t even have told you. Oh, Zephy . . .” Meatha dissolved into tears again, and Zephy, her brown eyes wide with compassion, held her and let her cry.

But Meatha did tell Tra. Hoppa. She had needed desperately to tell someone older, and the little schoolteacher, who shared so many secrets with them, was the only adult they could trust.