Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“I know. She went east. Crossed the line. I was going to help her, but I was late … “ The words came out without planning, naturally, even kindly. They might have been children again, before any terrible things had been said or done to be forever remembered.

“Delia. Oh.” Prender’s weeping went on. “She was always there. When Grandma was having those rages of hers, when Papa shut himself up and wouldn’t talk to anyone. I’d come here to Delia. It was Grandma’s house, you know. She didn’t like it, here so near the edge of town. She put Delia in it, just to keep it. It was all bare then. No garden. But Delia … Delia … “

Without knowing how she had come there, Pamra found herself at her sister’s side, stroking her hand as she had not done since they were children. “I know.”

“Delia said we treated you badly. We did, you know. It was Grandma. You looked too much like your mother, and she said we were Papa’s girls, but you-you were your mama’s girl. And then when your mama … when she did it, Grandma was just hateful about it. I know you became an Awakener just to make it up. Just to prove you had faith, even if your mama … I used to hate you, Pammy, for that. I don’t anymore. You need to know that. Papa’s gone. They’re all gone but me. I don’t want to be like Delia, unforgiven by my own kin. Forgive me, please. Please.”

Musley gone? Papa gone? Not to see her reach senior grade? Not to know what she had become. She choked with surprised tears. “I forgive you. Really. I do.” Saying it, astonished to find that it was true.

And was even more astonished afterward to find that nothing had changed. There had been an hour or so when they had been friends, a transient solidarity of grief that gave way almost at once to old habits. For a few days Pamra went to the house in the evenings to hear if there were any news of Delia, but other people began to frequent the place now that Prender was there, and the stiff discomfort of these encounters drove Pamra away. Even Prender could not keep herself from suggesting that Pamra leave the Tower, give up her life, return to them in some more acceptable form and manner.

“There’s no reason anymore, Pammy You could come live with me!”

As though Pamra’s oath were nothing!

Pamra could preach the rapture to strangers, but she could not bring herself to discuss it with Prender, to defile it by letting Prender mock at it as she would, setting it to nothing. She nodded, said nothing, went away as soon as she could, and did not return.

Nothing had changed except that for a time the rapture failed her. It seemed to fail others, also, and there was much use of the whipping post in the courtyard. More than once she looked down to see Ilze plying the long whip on some crouched, tortured junior and gave thanks through dry lips that she found compliance easy. He had never whipped her, though she had never doubted he would if she did not keep her oath. If it were not for that, perhaps she could have heard Prender’s words, but it was too late for such words bow.

The weather grew windy and harsh. Summer robes were laid away and the winter ones taken from the chests. The moons were moving toward a winter Conjunction-there had not been a winter Conjunction for twenty-two years, not since the year she was born and the festival season began to fizz on the horizon of her time like something boiling in an adjacent room, a small excitement, a new possibility, the end of another holy year.

“You’ve been selected,” Jelane announced at evening meal, grinning as the bearer of bad news. “Tomorrow you get to get the first load of wood for winter!”

“Oh, Jelane! No. Why me? I hate that trip. The forest is all dim and murky. It takes forever to get there with the wagon. The workers are no good with axes, half the time they cut themselves to pieces and the wagon comes back full of worker parts instead of wood … “