Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

He found himself growing angry at her. What right had she to change in this way! And for what? Some Treeci who had died. Some dream she had had. When compared with his hopes, what was that? Nothing!

Nothing, he assured himself, going to the room he had given her and entering it without asking her leave. He took hold of her before she quite knew he was there, his arms tight around her, his lips on hers, forcing her lips apart, tasting her mouth, pressing her beneath him onto the bed. And she did not move, did not seem to breathe. When he drew back to look into her face, it was like looking into the face of an image he might have carved from pale wood, then smoothed until its reality was blurred into mere shape. So she was mere shape, eyes wide and unseeing, not Suspirra, not Pamra even, not anything.

“Pamra!” He shook her, slapped her. She fell against the bed, slumped, limp.

Slowly her eyes focused, saw him. “But you must help me, Thrasne. Don’t you see? You were meant to help me. That’s why you came for me. Mother sent you, don’t you see? To help me?” Her eyes filled with hurt tears, and his heart churned within him, creating a vertigo, a sick dizziness. “Help me, Thrasne.”

Her face cleared then. The tears dried. The rapture came into her eyes once more, and she nodded, hearing something he could not hear.

He stood up unsteadily and left her, feeling a deeper loneliness than he had felt since long, long ago in Xoxxy-Do.

Medoor Babji saw him leave the cabin, saw the unsteady walk, the drunken demeanor. He leaned over the rail as though he might be sick or readying himself to leap into the water, and she moved up beside him to lay a hard, small hand upon his back.

“Thrasne owner,” she said, risking everything for his pain. “It doesn’t take a Jarb Mendicant to tell us the woman is mad.” Jarb Mendicants had a reputation, not often undeserved, for treating mental troubles of one kind or another, and it was in the Jarb Houses that the truly mad found refuge.

For a time he seemed not to have heard her. “Mad?” he asked at last, as though he did not know the meaning of the word.

“Mad, Thrasne. Though she has not tasted jarb to see visions, still she has visions of her own. She is not your Suspirra because the Suspirra you dreamed of was not mad and this woman is. Your Suspirra is an ideal, Thrasne owner. Not a real creature of this world. This woman, Pamra, she is only a semblance of your ideal, and she is real. Of this world. Therefore, imperfect.”

“No, not of this world,” he disagreed simply. “But I love her with all my heart.”

She shook her head, tears forming at the comers of her eyes. She, Babji, hardened by the marketplaces of a half hundred towns, to cry so for his man. She shook her head angrily, letting the tears fly away. “Then love her if you must, Thrasne. But you must look somewhere else for the things you dream of.” She left him and went to her bedding where it lay upon the deck. Long into the night she lay there, alternately angry and sorrowful, picturing herself and Thrasne, together, without realizing she was doing it. He was not Moor. Given only that, he was not her equal, for the Noor were what they were only to others of their kind. To mate with one outside the Noor was to diminish oneself. She had no right to consider him at all, but consider him she did. Finally, just before dawn, she said to herself in an ironic voice, “Well, love him if you must, Babji; but look elsewhere for the things you dream of.”

The morning brought them to a mountainous region, a place of towering peaks and precipitous cliffs; a Talons. Upon the stony peaks they could see the clustered forms of fliers, and high above were their spread wings, floating in great circles. Thrasne kept the Gift well offshore, away from the cliffs and the treacherous currents that swirled around the tumbled stone at their feet. Pamra stood at the rail, peering forward, shifting from foot to foot, speaking aloud, as though to a company of friends, pointing to the fliers far above in increasing agitation. Thrasne watched her, telling himself he did not care what she was doing. He had not spoken to her since the night before except in passing, as he might speak to any member of the crew. Now she acted as though she had been told to go or do something she was uncertain of, for she asked something again and again, almost plaintively. Whatever answer she received was eventually enough, for when night came she went to her bed with a calm face. They would come into Thou-ne on the morning tide. When they tied up at the jetty and edged out the plank, he was not really surprised to see her leaving the boat. He wrestled with himself for a moment, deciding not to follow her, then deciding that he must. He had promised to keep her safe. He had made no conditions then; it would not be fair or proper to set conditions now. Still, he was hard put to it to follow her as she went through the town, one foot in front of the other, as sure as the wind. She had a cloak drawn over her head, but when she reached the public square she drew it back, hair floating wildly free as the drowned Suspirra’s had used to do. She mounted to the steps of the public fountain and turned, arm outstretched, face glowing like a little moon. “People,” she cried in a voice like a flute, softly insinuating. “Is it not better when the people know?” Those in the marketplace turned to see her, astonished, drawing close and staring as she stood there, gathering them in with her hands. And from some little fellow at the edge of the square came a scream, almost hysterical, a treble cry as from a child but with the force of a trumpet blown, announcing war. “She has come, in flesh, the Bearer of Truth!” It was Peasimy Plot, alert to the coming of light as he had always been, always remembering the dark, the lies.