Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“But it’s only to Wilforn,” Delia whispered forlornly. “Not more than a day or so walk east from here, even for an old woman like me. If I go west, love, I won’t live to get there. How long do they figure H takes to come all the way around? Twelve years if you walk, isn’t it? Six or seven years on a Riverboat. Something like that? I don’t have twelve years, Pammy. Not even six.”

Pamra shook her head angrily. This wasn’t fair. Not when she was so tired. Oh, Delia. What could she do? Travelers did go all the way around the world, traveling west, some on boats on the River tide. Some afoot. Pilgrims did it afoot, making Potipur’s Round. They carried messages and told kin of kin, and walking it did take about twelve years, more or less, and Delia was right. She couldn’t survive such a trip. She fought to be calm, forced herself into quiet.

“Now, let’s talk it over. If it’s so important you go back, how come you ever left there? You never told me you had a sister there.”

“I came from there when I was about your age, following my curiosity. Oh, Pamra, truth to tell I was following a man. He wanted to see somewhere else. So we came here, and he wanted just to go on and on, but I didn’t. I’d had enough of him by then, and your grandma gave me a job doing the garden in this place, and time went by. Your papa was only a child then, and he needed me.

“When he was grown, I could have gone on around west until I had come home again, but I delayed and dillied, and by the time I thought of it again, there was you. You, with your mama gone and that family of yours gnawing at you because you looked like her … “ She fell silent, stroking the little blue birthmark at her jawline. Then she shook herself and went on. “It’s just that lately I’ve been thinking of my sister. Wanting to see her. Wanting to say, ‘Well, Miri, how has it been with you?’ She stood up, clapped her hands as she tried to smile.

“It’s not important. Not at all. Not important enough to worry my girl. Now, have another cake. After all, I baked them for my own Pammy.”

She did not speak of it again while Pamra sat in the garden in the glow of evening, smelling the kindly smells of the growing things, hearing the cries of the fishermen on their way home from the long jetties, sitting quiet as the sun fell lower to touch the horizon in blazes of crimson and orange and streaks of crushed berry color, bright and bruised at once. It should have been a time of contentment, of quiet, but too many memories had been jostled awake in Pamra. She kept the calm smile on her face, kept her voice low and peaceful not to distress old Delia, but it was a quiet surface over a turmoil of remembering.

Mama. Lovely as a dream and as fragile. Pretty as a soap bubble, and as useless. What did one remember about her? Softness and singing, sadness and tears, and at last-at last the unforgivable thing.

And Papa. Winning that second mention when he was young, very young, enough to set Grandma talking of his great future as though it were real. But there was no future. No other awards. No other mentions at all for Fulder Don. Not a second, not a fifth. And even that fact was blamed on Mama, somehow made out to be Mama’s fault-in turn to become Pamra’s fault, who so resembled lovely Mama.

And saintly Delia had been there through it all, the substitute mother, the kindly one, the only one who did not turn away when Pamra made her choice and went to the Awakeners’ Tower. She squeezed Delia’s hand now in remembrance of that. If it hadn’t been for Delia … Well, there must be a way to repay her now, a way to solve this problem.

“Delia, I’m not promising anything, but I’ll ask around. Honestly I will. I’ll have to sound out a few people, find out who to ask, but maybe there’ll be a way we can send a message or something.” She surprised in the old woman’s face an expression of longing-no, more passionate than mere longing, a fanatic desire, an impassioned pleading with fear in it. “Delia, why does it matter so?”