“What? Oh … I, ah …” Goldman lapsed into silence, his eyes unfocused, then his mouth thinned and
his hands clenched on his knees.
“I loathe dead ends,” he said, and Faraday nodded. Goldman was ever the aggressive, determinedly
successful businessman.
“There is nothing worse,” Goldman said, and his eyes were now flinty and hard, “than walking
through the countryside and finding yourself in some dead end gully, and having to retrace your steps to
find another way forward. It’s so time wasting*. ”
“Non-productive,” Leagh said, understanding a little more the process they must all endure.
“Yes!” Goldman said, and he stood and paced about the dome. “Dead ends are so
frustrating! So pointless!”
Faraday watched him carefully. It seemed almost as if hate consumed Goldman, and she realised
that somewhere here was a deeper lesson they must all learn.
“So pointless,” Goldman said again, and then he vanished.
Goldman found himself standing before the infuriatingly calm — and very high and very steep —
rock wall of the canyon, and he raged.
He had walked hours to get to this point, put in effort and time that could have been spent
more profitably elsewhere.
He had walked and walked down this canyon, thinking it would lead him to a better life, more
money, and even, perhaps, a profounder understanding of life itself, and all it had presented him
with was a dead end, a rock wall, a point past which Goldman could not walk.
He raged. Was it possible to demolish the dead end? Perhaps a force of several hundred men
armed with pickaxes and shovels could clear it in a week or so. Perhaps a smaller force of men
armed with fire powder could destroy it in less time. Something had to be done to force this rock
wall to give way to Goldman’s needs and ambitions and …
… and Goldman quailed at the force of his rage. Why did he think such things? Why was he
so angry?
He was railing at a stand of rock, for the Field’s sake!
Goldman stared at the rock wall and wondered how best to combat his inner frustration and
anger.
You have walked to this rock wall, he thought, and thus there must needs be a purpose to this
dead end. What is it?
He sat down cross-legged on the ground and stared at the rock.
“What do you have to teach me?” he asked, and instantly all his frustration and hate fell
away and he felt a great joy fill him.
The rock absorbed the joy … and then it leaned forward and began to speak to Goldman in a
very earnest manner.
Goldman dusted off his tunic, and smiled at the four faces staring at him.
“Your turn,” he said to Gwendylyr.
She was in the garden, almost incandescent with fury.
How long had she tended that hedge? How many hours had she pruned and clipped? How
many days had she spent carefully digging in the soil about its roots to add light and air
and fertiliser?
And the hedge was so necessary! Its (once) neatly-clipped length had tidily divided field from
garden (and what a neat garden, with its carefully measured garden beds and precise rows of
stakes), providing the line that everyone needed between order and disorder.
But now disorder had invaded the garden.
Disorder in the form of a rigorous ivy. It had taken over the hedge, weaving and creeping its
way through the hedge’s dark interior spaces before bursting triumphantly through to wave long,
gleeful tendrils into the bright summer air down the length of the hedge.
The hedge was ruined! It was doubtless dying! How could it support the parasitic ivy and still
manage to keep —
Gwendylyr realised suddenly that she was very, very afraid. There was no dividing line
between order and disorder, was there? It was all a lie. Disorder would win every time. It could
never be kept at bay.
Gwendylyr backed slowly away, terrified that one of those tendrils would reach out and
snatch at her at any moment. Where could she hide? Was there anywhere to hide? Perhaps the
cellar … surely the dark would keep the ivy at bay … the dark would be safe… safe…
Gwendylyr stopped, appalled. She would hide herself in the dark the rest of her life to avoid
disorder?
Was that a life at all?
She swallowed, stepped forward, raised an arm, and took one of the waving tendrils gently in
her hand.
“Very pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said.
“Likewise, I am sure,” said the ivy, and the sun exploded and showered both hedge and ivy
and Gwendylyr in freedom.
“Leagh?” said Gwendylyr.
“No! No!” Leagh screamed, and grabbed at her belly.
It was completely flat. Barren.
As barren as the landscape about her. She ran, more than half-doubled over her empty belly,
through a plain of hot red pebbles. A dry wind blew in her face, whipping her hair about her eyes.
The sky was dull and grey, full of leaden dreams.
“No, no,” she whispered. She was trapped in a land that had stolen her child to feed its own
hopelessness. Both sky and ground were sterile, and both had trapped her.
“No.” Leagh sank to the ground, gasping in pain at the heat of the pebbles, and then
ignoring the burns to curl up in a ball.
Nothing was left. Best to just give up. Best to die.
Nothing worth living for.
She cried, her breath jerking up through her chest and throat in great gouts of misery. She
wanted to die. Why couldn’t she die? Wasn’t there anyone about who could help her to
die? Why couldn’t someone fust put a knife to her (hopelessly barren) belly and slide it in? The
pain would be nothing compared to this … this horror that surrounded her.
This desert. This barrenness.
Leagh cried harder, and grabbed at a handful of pebbles, loathing them with an intensity she
had never felt for anything or anyone before. She threw them viciously away from her, then
grabbed at another handful, throwing them away as well.
When she grabbed at her third handful she stopped, aghast at her actions.
Why blame the land for her misfortunes? If she had lost the child she carried, then how could
she blame this desert?
A cool breeze blew across and lifted the hair from her face.
A tiny rock squirrel inched across her hand, its tiny velvety nose investigating her palm for
food.
Leagh smiled, and then laughed as she felt a welcome heaviness in her belly. She
rested her hand over her stomach and felt the thudding of her child’s heart, then …
… then she gasped in wonder and scrabbled her other hand deep in among the pebbles about
her.
A heartbeat thudded out from the belly of the earth as well, and it matched —
beat for beat
— that of her child’s.
“What are you telling me?” she whispered, and then cried with utter rapture as the pebbles
explained it to her.
Leagh raised her head and stared at the others. A hand rested on her belly, and a strange, powerful light
shone from her eyes. “Faraday,” she said.
Faraday knew what it was she would confront, but her prior knowledge did not comfort her at all within
the reality of her vision.
She was trapped, as she had always been trapped (time after time after time). She had trusted
— the trees this time — and they had turned their backs on her and left her to this.
A thicket of thorns.
Bands of thornbush enveloped her, pressing into the white flesh of arm and breast and belly
and creeping between her legs and binding her to their own cruel purpose.
Thorns studded her throat and cheek so that whenever she breathed, blood spurted and the
thorns dug deeper.
Must I always bleed, she thought, and must I always suffer the despair of entrapment?
“It’s a bitch of a job,” muttered a thorn close to her ear, “but someone’s got to do it.”
Yes, yes, Faraday thought, someone has got to do it. She had been so sure that she’d not
succumb to the temptation of sacrifice any more, but here she was, embracing it again.
Someone would surely have to die if Tencendor was to be saved, and Faraday supposed she’d
have to do it all over again.
Painfully.
Trapped, trapped by the land. Trapped by its need to live at her expense.
The thorns twisted and roped, and Faraday screamed.
It seemed the right thing to do, somehow.
“You have a choice,” said the thorns. “You can succumb and the pain will end … reasonably
fast. Or you can fight and tear yourself apart in the effort to free yourself. Which will it be?”
“I. . . I . . . ”
“Quick! The decision cannot take forever, you know!”
“I. . . . ”
“Quick! Quick! Time is running out!”