I echoed the words. “Take habitation among us … ” What did the words mean to me? That she would come home, come back, be there as she had been before. But that wasn’t what Chahdzi meant, or songfather. For seven nights we uttered our petition. For seven nights we stood behind a window of the chamber, which, alone of all the windows in the hive, has no shutter. It is glazed with heavy glass so that petitioners may look out upon the beautiful people, the dancers, the Kachis.
Oh, beautiful upon wings, the Kachis. As I child I learned the hymns to the Kachis. Oh, beautiful upon wings, gift of glory, loveliest of beings, those for whom the night was made!
The seventh night my father’s hand tightened upon my shoulder as he pointed with the other, saying excitedly, “There, there, see, Saluez. See, there’s Mother, with the cleft in her chin, just like always. Here’s Mother come home again, Saluez!”
He pointed and pointed and I looked and looked, until eventually I saw what he was pointing at. A Kachis with a deep hollow in her chin like the one my mother had had. Though at the time I thought it was only rather like, as I remembered the event over the years it grew more and more like until I was sure it was utterly like. Of course. When the spirits of our loved ones return as Kachis, they always let us know who they are by some little trait. The shape of a nose. The shape of an ear. The way they move. A birthmark. So this was my mother, come back to be with us again.
Why didn’t she come in?
Songfather shook his head. Because the spirits of our beloved dead are holy, sacred, taboo. They couldn’t mix with ordinary people.
Then why did she come at all?
To see her girl Saluez grow, so Chahdzi said. To see her grandchildren born and watch them grow. To take delight from seeing us, to live among us until that time she would go on, sometime in the far future, to a blessed life that awaited her elsewhere.
I said I would go out and kiss her.
No.
I said I just wanted to hug her.
No, no forbidden. We must not touch the Kachis, even though they are people we love. But we can still care for them—her: feed her, love her, watch her dancing with the other spirits …
“Doesn’t she know who I am?” I cried. “Doesn’t she want to kiss me?”
Of course she did, but that, too, was taboo. Forbidden. We Dinadhi had been given this great gift, the gift of continued life, continued embodiment, the ability to live on with our families and those we loved. We must keep our part of the bargain. Our part of the choice.
Had I doubted then? Did it seem to me then that this pale winged form was a poor substitute for a warm and living mother? Then, when I was only what? Six or seven? Before I knew the whole story? Before I knew the other reasons it was taboo, or what the other side of the choice had been? Before I knew that songfathers had done the choosing but women had paid the price?
Possibly, without even knowing it, I was an apostate even then. Possibly my mother, even then, looking in through the window at me, saw my thoughts and knew I was unworthy. Perhaps then is when she started hating me for being so ungrateful. How else explain?
How else explain why it was she who led the pack that ate my face away?
CHAPTER 7
I woke first in the morning, and my rising brought Trompe and Leelson from under their blankets. Lutha was a knobby lump beneath hers, and we were quiet, not to disturb her. I knew she must have been wakened during the night, probably more than once, for I had heard the boy moving around. He was sometimes a restless sleeper, a murmurer, given to odd little cries that seemed more curious than restless.
The two men and I had no sooner started to take the shelter apart, removing the pins from the fasteners, than Trompe said in surprise: “This one is open.”