This was a word she understood. Spared. It had been explained to her when she learned the dancing song.
“Shai-hulud spare us!
“Take Shaitan away . . .”
Slowly, not wanting to arouse the prostrate priests, Sheeana began the shuffling, unrhythmic movements of the dance. As the remembered music grew within her, she unclasped her hands and swung her arms wide. Her feet lifted high in the stately movements. Her body turned, slowly at first and then more swiftly as the dance ecstasy increased. Her long brown hair whipped around her face.
The two priests dared to lift their heads. The strange child was performing The Dance! They recognized the movements: The Dance of Propitiation. She asked Shai-hulud to forgive his people. She asked God to forgive them!
They turned their heads to look at each other and, together, rocked back onto their knees. There, they began clapping in the time-honored effort to distract the dancer. Their hands clapped rhythmically as they chanted the ancient words:
“Our fathers ate manna in the desert,
“In the burning places where whirlwinds came!”
The priests excluded from their attention all except the child. She was a slender thing, they saw, with stringy muscles, thin arms and legs. Her robe and stillsuit were worn and patched like those of the poorest. Her cheekbones had high planes that drew shadows across her olive skin. Brown eyes, they noted. Reddish sun streaks drew their lines in her hair. There was a water-spare sharpness about her features — the narrow nose and chin, the wide forehead, the wide thin mouth, the long neck. She looked like the Fremen portraits in the holy of holies at Dar-es-Balat. Of course! The child of Shai-hulud would look thus.
She danced well, too. Not the slightest quickly repeatable rhythm entered her movements. There was rhythm but it was an admirably long beat, at least a hundred steps apart. She kept it up while the sun lifted higher and higher. It was almost noon before she fell exhausted to the sand.
The priests stood and looked out into the desert where Shai-hulud had gone. The stampings of the dance had not summoned Him back. They were forgiven.
That was how Sheeana’s new life began.
Loudly in their own quarters and for many days, the senior priests engaged in arguments about her. At last, they brought their disputations and reports to the High Priest, Hedley Tuek. They met in the afternoon within the Hall of Small Convocations, Tuek and six priestly councillors. Murals of Leto II, a human face on the great wormshape, looked down upon them with benevolence.
Tuek seated himself on a stone bench that had been recovered from Windgap Sietch. Muad’dib himself was reputed to have sat on this bench. One of the legs still bore the carvings of an Atreides hawk.
His councillors took lesser modern benches facing him.
The High Priest was an imposing figure; silky gray hair combed smoothly to his shoulders. It was a suitable frame for the square face with its wide, thick mouth and heavy chin. Tuek’s eyes retained their original clear whites surrounding dark blue pupils. Bushy, untrimmed gray eyebrows shaded his eyes.
The councillors were a motley lot. Scions of old priestly families each carried in his heart the belief that matters would move better if he were sitting on Tuek’s bench.
The scrawny, pinch-faced Stiros put himself forward as opposition spokesman: “She is nothing but a poor desert waif and she rode Shai-hulud. That is forbidden and the punishment is mandatory.”
Others spoke up immediately. “No! No Stiros. You have it wrong! She did not stand on Shai-hulud’s back as the Fremen did. She had no maker hooks or . . .”
Stiros tried to shout them down.
It was deadlocked, Tuek saw: three and three with Umphrud, a fat hedonist, as advocate for “cautious acceptance.”
“She had no way to guide Shai-hulud’s course,” Umphrud argued. “We all saw how she came down to the sand unafraid and talked to Him.”
Yes, they all had seen that, either at the moment or in the holophoto that a thoughtful observer had recorded. Desert waif or not, she had confronted Shai-hulud and conversed with Him. And Shai-hulud had not engulfed her. No, indeed. The Worm-of-God had drawn back at the child’s command and had returned to the desert.