Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“In a minute. First, tell me about the-the male. Why don’t we talk to him? … “

“It isn’t done.” The old woman laid a trembling hand on Pamra’s own. “Werf is Neff’s mother. She talks to him, you see. And his own sisters do, of course. But no one else. It just isn’t done.”

“Cruel,” Pamra said, remembering herself as a child. “It’s cruel to treat people like that.”

“Ah, but child, they aren’t people, don’t you see.”

“They’re people, Joy. You wouldn’t sit here drinking tea with them unless they were.” She said this as she would have done to Delia, mistaking Joy. For Delia, perhaps, without realizing it.

“In that sense, yes, they’re people and my dearest friends, but you know what I meant.” She turned away toward her wash basin, holding out the empty pail. “They aren’t human people.”

Pamra forced her feelings off her face. She was living in the old woman’s house, a good old woman, not unlike-not unlike another good old woman whom she had failed in a time of trouble. Let her not trouble this one more. As a guest, she had no right.

But she felt a sympathetic rebellion for the lonely Treeci, even as she admitted to herself the loneliness might be more in her than in Neff. The rebellion in her was the same it had been when she was eleven or twelve, the same that had led her to say, “I can be an Awakener.” She did not think of this, but only of the sad Treeci. His separation spoke to her.

Among the Treeci, it seemed, hospitality must be returned. Two days later Joy dressed herself with unaccustomed attention digging through dusty boxes in search of old finery. She found a glittery scarf for Pamra, a shiny bit of ribbon for Lila’s blanket, and they set out along the shore.

“I suppose eventually you’ll tell me where we’re going?”

“Well, Werf and Binna will expect us. Among the Treeci it’s considered nice to drop by in a couple days so’s they can show hospitality. They call it returning the opportunity. Very set on it, they are.”

“Why all this sparkle?”

“Do them honor. You wouldn’t have noticed, not being island reared, but they were got up fine for us the other day. Talons painted; feathers around the eyes dyed. They were making an opportunity to honor us-so they call it. Curious, I expect. About you and the baby. Not been a human baby on Strinder’s for thirty years.”

Pamra found herself lost in wonder at this, not so much at the fact of it-another race of creatures upon the world with its own habits and customs, speaking not only its own language but a human language as well, curious about human babies-no, not so much at the fact as at her ignorance of it. How could she have grown to be adult without having heard of them? Why had no one spoken of them? And if no one had spoken of the Treeci, how may other wonders in the world might there be, unspoken of?

Joy had something to say upon that subject. “My brother used to say all the Northshore people were so stuffed full of Awakener shit they hadn’t room for anything else. Is it true they forbid books there?”

It was true. Or true enough. There had been books in the Tower. Homiletics. Hermeneutics. Scripture. Difficult books breathing an atmosphere of dusty mystery, unenlightening. There had been no others. Without books, without travel, Pamra could explain her own ignorance. She could not really forgive it.

The Treeci lived in houses, better kept and better made than those of the human occupants of the island, and there was a teahouse set in a grove where water burbled tranquil music into a stone basin. Young Treeci, half the size of the adults, gathered on the meadow in murmuring groups. Tea was served in ceremonial fashion. Pamra watched the others to see what was proper, getting through the formal bits with some degree of grace. When everyone had a cup, when every cup had been tasted and approved, when the nuts and cakes had been passed around and those had been complimented, then the group could sit back and indulge themselves in conversation. Joy had been right. It was curiosity. All the questions they had been too polite to ask on Strinder territory they felt empowered to ask on their own.