They nodded at one another, agreeing. I thought we wouldn’t have any chance unless the Nodders let the gaufers and the wagon through. But then, before we left Cochim-Mahn, I was fairly sure we’d be eaten the first night or so. And before I first met Leelson, I thought outlanders would be strange and exotic instead of just ordinary people. And at one time I’d thought the Kachis were invulnerable and all-seeing, but some of them had died and thousands of others had sat like stones around the Burning Springs. And at one time I’d thought Leely was helpless, but he wasn’t. He sneaked around like a clever little corn-rat. Leelson was wrong about him. He was smarter than a chicken. Of course, I’d never seen a chicken.
Just because Leelson might be wrong didn’t mean Lutha was right about him, though she was about some things. She was probably right about the Kachis we’d seen at Burning Springs. If the songfathers couldn’t get to the omphalos, the omphalos wouldn’t be opened. If the omphalos wasn’t opened, the Kachis couldn’t go through it to heaven. It made sense that all the Kachis would find nice warm places and meditate there, awaiting their time of transfiguration.
While I was puzzling over this Leelson had wandered off to the edge of the small stream that we had traveled along since we had left the Burning Springs. He plucked a few lengths of dried grass and came striding back to Trompe, holding out a fist with two straws protruding. Trompe drew one.
Leelson opened his hand to show that the one he retained was the shorter one, and then, without so much as blinking or saying goodbye, he turned and walked rapidly toward the Nodders, leaving Trompe and me with our mouths full of unspoken advice. Leely poked his head out of the wagon and stared at Leelson’s retreating back. Only Lutha, still angrily facing back the way we had come, did not see him go.
When he came beneath the first of the Nodders, I forgot to breathe. The Nodder began to sway again, very gently, side to side, like someone saying no, no, don’t do that. Leelson looked up, hesitated only a fraction of an instant, then went on. The Nodder went on swaying: no, no, no, and it didn’t stop swaying when Leelson went past it, out of its shadow, and strode toward the gap between the two other outliers. Both of them began to sway also, saying no, no, no. This time Leelson didn’t look up. He just went on, arms swinging, eyes on his feet.
The great heads were horning the heavens, right, left, right. Lutha had been right. They resembled a herd of … what? “They look like animal heads,” I whispered. “What is that Old-earthian animal, Trompe? Men fought it ritually, risking their lives. Was it a cattle?”
“Bull,” he said.
Of course. Bull. Virile and puissant. Mighty bull. I remembered now.
From behind me I heard an indrawn breath. Lutha came running. Trompe caught her as she was about to pass us.
“Hush,” he said as she began to babble. “Don’t do anything to foul up the findings. Or to risk his life more than it already is.”
She paused, frozen, one foot still raised, watching as intently as we. A few moments before, she had hated him. A few hours before, when we had stopped to rest, I had seen her in his arms again, the two of them holding one another as though they would never let go. It would be nice, I thought wistfully, if they could sort it out. Whenever I saw them at it, loving or hating, it was hurtful to me.
Leelson went between the sentinel pair, then into a veritable forest of pillars. The great horned heads bobbed restlessly above him, moved by something. Not wind. It was, for the moment, utterly calm and very cold.
When Leelson moved out of sight among the stones, we all looked upward, readying ourselves, I suppose, for one or more of the great heads to fall. Nothing happened but that slight motion, that measured horning. Jab, jab, jab, they said. No, no, no.