Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“Your mother died, Thrasne, and you could not bear that she was gone. So you created her again, as Suspirra, a carving, which was safe because it could not die. And then you found the drowned woman, and she was safe, too, because she was already dead. Then, when she fell into dust—I know; I was there—when she fell into dust you chose Pamra to continue to be Suspirra. You told yourself you wanted her to love, to bear your children. In truth you only wanted her never to change. You wanted her to be Suspirra.

“It is easier to honor the dead than it is to love the living.”

“That’s crazy,” he said in his dream, but weakly.

“Oh, but men are crazy,” Lila said in her bubbling voice.

“Only crazy people would have had things like Awakeners and workers. Only crazy people would dream of an eternal life in Potipur’s arms.” She laughed. “A baby, held in arms, rocked to and fro, unchanging. Ah, ah, that is not eternal life, Thrasne. That is eternal death. Only a crazy man would have loved Pamra. . . .”

“But I did love her,” he argued, angry even in his dream, knowing he did not quite believe it.

“Only because she was Suspirra. What was she otherwise? A narrow, ignorant woman. Maddened by death into rejecting life. Holding fast to a childish naivete which protected her from seeing reality. A believer in impossible futures. A simple, totally selfish woman who saw no one’s need but her own, who invented a doctrine to meet that need and voices to validate it, who walked a way upon the world convincing others her myth was better than their myths, letting others suffer and die in the service of her madness, starving herself into spasms of self-generated rapture, not seeing, not hearing, only to be burned at last by that which she would not hear or see.”

“She wanted to free the slaves. She wanted to stop the workers. She was a saint,” he muttered.

“There are those who say so now. There are those who will say so,” Lila whispered. “What is a saint? Delia was a saint.”

“You’re saying she never could have loved me!” he cried, angry at this in the dream, though he knew it was true,

“I’m saying you never should have loved her,” Lila said, her voice somehow changed into something remote and terrible. “For she was like the blight, a terrible thing that kills. …”

“And preserves,” whispered Thrasne in his dream. “And preserves,” whispered Lila as the dream whirled about him, giving way to the sounds of the River, the soft, eternal sluff of water.

He woke then, the dream at first clear, then fading from his mind. Medoor Babji lay heavily beside him, her cheek flushed and warm where it had rested against his own. He rose without waking her and went out of the owner-house onto the deck. In the dawn light the Island of the Dead loomed to the south, mist and tree behind mist and tree and yet again, mist and tree to the limit of sight, with the blessed ones—for so he now called them in his mind—the blessed ones moving slowly in the mists, like swimmers. There on the water the strangeys danced, calling to one another in their terrible voices, and among them their young sported themselves, standing winged upon the waves.

One of these came very close to the ship and looked up at Thrasne with eyes that seemed somehow familiar.

“Thrasne,” it said to him in a bubbling voice. “Kesseret is here, Thrasne. And Tharius Don. They have been given the time we created for them. They live. You live, too, Thrasne. And come to us.” It sank beneath the flowing surface, its eyes still fixed on Thrasne’s face.

There was a hand on his shoulder.

“Come,” said Medoor Babji, her dry and watchful eyes on the waves where the strangeys danced. “Let us go on to Southshore, Thrasne. This is not the place for us.”

He heard the rattle of the anchor tackle, the call of the sailors as the sails were raised. On the shore of the island, one of the blessed raised its hand to wave. Tharius Don? Too soon for Tharius Don. Someone else. Bending across the rail, Thrasne let a few tears come and fall and wash away the last of whatever thing there had been tight inside himself.