An Acceptable Time (24 page)

She lay back on the pallet, her hands behind her head, looking up at the leather roof of the lean-to. In the bright sunlight, patterns of oak branches moved across it in gentle rhythm. Hsh. Breathe softly, Polly. Do not panic. The sap moving like blood in the veins of the oak followed the rhythm of the words.

Would Bishop Colubra call it a rune? A rune used for succor, for help, and she was calling on Christ for help.

Danger. She knew that she was in danger. From all sides. The healer needed more power for Zachary’s heart. Tynak needed power for rain.

Christ in hearts of all that love me.

Right now she was more aware of her grandparents, of the bishop and Dr. Louise, than she was of her parents and brothers and sisters, who knew nothing of what was going on. The bishop, Karralys, Annie, Cub, Tav. They were across the lake, waiting. They loved her. They held her in their hearts. What would they think when Og came? They would know that she had sent him. What would they do?

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

Karralys and Anaral were no longer strangers. They were friends. Cub was like a little brother. Tav. She was in Tav’s heart. Klep had talked of the lines between himself and Anaral, between Tav and Polly. Love.

Stranger.

Tynak was still a stranger. There was no line between Polly and Tynak. But there was between Polly and the healer. Surely the loving power of Christ had been in those delicate hands as they explored Zachary’s pulse, breath, heartbeat.

And was there a line between Polly and Zachary? Did one choose where the lines were going to go? If Zachary was truly willing to attempt to save his own life by urging that Polly be sacrificed, what happened to the line? Where was Christ?

She was sure that the bishop would say that there was no place where Christ could not be.

Where was Christ in her own heart? She felt nothing but rebellion, and rejection of the clearing in the woods with the terrible stone.

She thought of Dr. Louise’s words about a blood transfusion. If she could save one of her brothers or sisters by offering all of her blood, would she do it? She did not know. A thousand years away, that blood had been freely given. That was enough. She did not have to understand.

A light breeze, warm, not cold, slipped under the lean-to and touched her cheeks. Little waves lapped quietly against the shore. The oak tree spread its powerful branches above her. Beneath the ground where she lay, the tree’s roots were spread from the trunk in all directions. Lines of power. Tree roots reaching down to the center of the earth, to the deep fires that kept the heart of the planet alive. The branches reached toward the lake, pointed across the lake to where people who loved her were waiting. The highest branches stretched up to the stars, completing the pattern of lines of love.

The breeze moved in the oak tree. A leaf drifted down to the roof of the lean-to and she could see its shadow. She listened, and a calm strength slowly began to move through her.

Her peace was broken by the two guards summoning her. The one with the spear banged it on the ground. The one with the bow and arrow reached down to pull her up. She shook him off and stood, putting her anorak on over the sheepskin tunic, though the day was warm. The two men looked in awe as she pulled up the zipper. Here was a showing of power she hadn’t even thought about. She reached her hand into the pocket to make sure the icon was there.

If she knew their names, they would have less power over her. “I am Polly.” Not goddess: Polly. “You are?” She looked questioningly at the man with the bow and arrow. “Polly. You?”

“Winter Frost,” he said reluctantly.

“And you?” She looked at the man with the spear. “Polly. You?”

“Dark Swallow.”

“Thank you, Winter Frost, Dark Swallow. You have beautiful names.” Even if they did not understand her words, she could convey something with her voice.

Dark Swallow led the way. Polly followed behind him, wishing that Og were trotting along beside her, at the same time that she was visualizing Og swimming ashore, letting the People of the Wind know that she was in trouble. But what could they do? They were a small tribe, less than half the size of the People Across the Lake.

Her steps lagged and Winter Frost prodded her with his bow.

They were taking her to the clearing in the forest, the clearing where the surrounding trees had lost all their leaves, where the great bloodied rock waited. But it was daylight, full daylight. They would do nothing until night and moonrise. Even so, she hung back, and Winter Frost prodded her again.

Tynak and the healer were there. Tynak nodded at the guards, who retreated well out of the open circle, waiting. Tynak and the healer both spoke at once, then Tynak, then the healer, a scrambling of staccato words which Polly found it impossible to understand.

“Slow,” she urged them. “Please speak more slowly.”

They tried, but still she caught only words and phrases. They kept repeating until she understood that they were asking her if she, a goddess, was immortal. If she was placed on the sacrificial rock, and if her blood was taken so that the healer’s power was augmented, would she be dead, really dead, or would she, as a goddess, rise up?

She held out her hands, palms up. “I am mortal, like you. When I die, I am dead, like anybody else.” Did he understand? They looked at her, frowning, so she tried again. “This body—it is mortal. If you take my blood from me, this body will die.”

The healer took her hands in his, which trembled slightly. When he had held them over Zachary, they had moved like a butterfly, but they had not trembled. He looked carefully at the palms of her hands, then the back, then the palms again.

“Do you really believe,” she asked, “that my blood will give you enough strength so that you can cure Zachary’s heart? You are a healer. Do you really believe that you need my blood?”

There was no way he could understand her, but she asked anyhow. He shook his head and his eyes were sad.

Suddenly she had an idea. She took Anaral’s little gold knife out of her anorak pocket and opened it. Quickly she made a small cut in her forearm, held it out to the healer so that he could see the blood which welled out of the cut. “Will that do?”

With one finger he touched a drop of blood, held his finger to his nose, to his mouth.

“Not enough!” Tynak shouted. “Not enough!”

Polly continued to hold her arm out, but the healer shook his head. She remembered that Anaral had given her a Band-Aid as well as the little knife. She felt for it in her pockets, opened it, and put it over the small cut. Both the healer andTynak stared, wide-eyed, at the Band-Aid.

But the Band-Aid was not particularly impressive power. If they cut her throat—was that how they did it? or would they go for her heart itself?—there was no Band-Aid powerful enough to stanch the blood, stop it from draining her life away.

She said, “I want to speak to Zachary.”

“Zak wants not,” Tynak said. “Not to talk with you.”

She spoke with all the hauteur she could summon. “It makes no difference whether Zachary wants to talk to me or not. I wish to talk with him.” She turned away from the two men to the path which led away from the clearing.

There were the two guards barring her way.

She turned imperiously. “Tynak.”

Tynak looked at the healer.

The healer nodded. “Take to Zak.”

Zachary was sitting in the shadows within Tynak’s tent. The flap was open, and light hit the whiteness of skulls on poles, emphasized the whiteness of Zachary’s face.

“I told you not to bring her here,” he said to Tynak.

Tynak and the healer simply squatted at the entrance to the tent. Polly stood in front of Zachary.

“Go away.” He looked down at the packed earth.

“Zachary. Why don’t you want to see me?”

“What’s the point?”

“Tonight is full moon.”

“So?”

“Zachary. I need to know. Do you want them to put me on the rock and sacrifice me so that the healer can get the power of my blood?”

“Of course I don’t want that! But they won’t do it. You’re a goddess.”

“Zach, you must know they’re planning to sacrifice me for my blood.”

He shrugged. Looked away.

“Look at me.”

He shook his head.

“How do you feel about this?”

He raised dark, terrified eyes. “I don’t go in for all that guilt stuff.”

“But you’ll let them take my blood?”

“How can I stop them?”

“You really think my blood will give the healer power to help your heart?”

“Don’t be silly. It’s for rain.”

“But you think the healer will use the power to make you well?”

“Who knows?”

“Zachary, you’re willing to let me die?”

He shouted, “Shut up! I don’t have anything to do with it! Go away!”

She turned away from him so abruptly that she faced one of the skulls, almost bumping into it. There had once been flesh on those white bones, eyes in the sockets, lips to smile. But whoever had once fleshed the skull was three thousand years gone, as was Tynak, as was the healer.

If Zachary stayed there at her expense, if she died, and if Zachary lived, he, too, was three thousand years gone.

It did not ease the pain of knowing that he was willing to let her be sacrificed.

The sun burned like a bronze shield. A strange heat reflected from its fires, touching the water with a phosphorescence. It was hotter than it had been when she swam across the lake. The guards kept glancing in her direction. Now that Og had escaped, the guards would be even more careful with Polly.

This was the Indian summer she had been told about, Indian summer that came in November with a last reminder of summer before the long cold of winter. But this was hotter than she had expected Indian summer to be. Hotter than it should be? Perhaps weather patterns were different three thousand years ago. Across the lake, lightning played, and thunder was always in the background, an accompaniment to the steady beating of the drums, Tynak’s people drumming for rain, the sound intensified hour by hour. For rain, or for sacrifice?

The pallet of ferns was soggy with heat and humidity. She pulled it to the entrance of the lean-to, hoping for a breath of air. Lay back with her eyes closed. A warm breeze touched her gently. In her mind’s eye she saw her room which had once been Charles Wallace’s room. Looked out the window to the view of field and woods and the low, ancient hills that gave her a sense of assurance that the jagged mountains did not. She moved her imaging to her grandmother’s lab, where she was always cold; tried to feel her feet on the great stone slabs that formed the floor, chilling her toes. Then in her mind’s eye she looked out the kitchen window to see her grandfather on his tractor. Saw Bishop Colubra at the stone wall, Louise the Larger coiled up in the warm sunlight. Saw Dr. Louise in her daffodil-colored sweater walking across the field toward her brother.

In this manner she moved through three thousand years. In eternity, her own time and this time in which she was now held, waiting, were simultaneous. If she died in this strange time, would she be born in her own time? Did the fact that she had been born mean that she might escape death here? No, that didn’t work out. Everybody in this time died sooner or later. But if she was to be born in her own time, wouldn’t she have to live long enough to have children, so that she would at least be a descendant of herself? Karralys understood riddles such as this one. Polly shook her head to try to clear it.

Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. What did Einstein’s equation really mean? Did her grandfather understand it? Her grandfather, at home in her own time—her grandmother, Dr. Louise, they must all be frantic with anxiety. Dr. Louise would not know what had happened to her brother, who had gone off in hiking shoes.

And on this side of time, across the lake, the bishop, Karralys, Tav, Cub, Anaral, what were they doing? If Og had reached them, they would be asking each other how they could help; they would be trying to make plans.

Leaves drifted down onto the skins of the lean-to. The air was so heavy with humidity that she felt she could reach out and squeeze it.

She looked up as she heard a strange, dragging sound, and coming toward her was Klep, supported on one side by the old healer, on the other by a young warrior; Klep, hopping on his good leg.

“Klep!” she cried out. “You’ll hurt your leg!”

The healer and the warrior gently placed him down next to Polly. His face was ashen, and beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Klep! What have you done? You shouldn’t have come!” Polly knelt by him.

“I have spoken with Tynak,” Klep whispered.

The healer gestured at the warriors, who glanced wonderingly at Klep, then drew back several paces. Then the healer knelt on Klep’s other side and examined the broken leg, lifting the compress of mosses on the wound where the skin was cleanly healing but was still pink and new-looking. He held his hands over it, shaking his head and mumbling. “There is fever again. He should not be upset,” Polly understood him to say. “In his tent he did fret, fret…” He held his hands over the leg, glanced at Polly, nodded. She held her hands out, too, just over his. The healer withdrew his right hand to place it over Polly’s, not touching, hovering delicately. Again she felt the tingling warmth, and then a strange heat, as though they were drawing the fever out of Klep’s inflamed skin. Then the heat was gone and there was a sense of color, of gold, gold of sky in early morning, gold of butterfly wings, gold of finch in flight.

The pinched look left Klep’s face, and his whole body released its tension. He looked gratefully at the healer and Polly. “Thank you. I am sorry to have caused trouble. I had to come.” He looked pleadingly at the healer, who squatted back on his heels. “I have spoken with Tynak,” Klep said again. “He has said that you have caused the rain across the lake with the angel you took from him.”

“I didn’t take the angel from him,” Polly pointed out. “He tried to take it from me.”

“He is angry and he is fearful. He says that you are withholding rain from us, and the people are angry.”

With Klep, Polly could not understand every word, but enough to get the gist of what he was saying.

“I don’t control the rain,” she said. “I want it to rain here as much as you do.”

The healer murmured, but Polly guessed that he was saying that a broken leg was easier to heal than anger.

Briefly Polly closed her eyes. Her voice shook. “I thought when Zach kidnapped me it was for me to be the sacrifice so the healer would fix his heart.”

The healer shook his head. “No, no.” And from his mumblings she guessed that it was Tynak who had prevented the healer from working with Zachary until Polly came. A healer heals.

Klep said, “That is what Zak thought, what Tynak wanted him to think, maybe what he still thinks. But the people do not care one way or the other about Zak. They are tired of raiding to get food. They want the sacrifice so there will be rain.”

Polly thought of Anaral singing her hymn of joy to the Mother after she had placed the flowers on the altar, of the People of the Wind greeting morning and evening with harmony. “Your god demands sacrifice and blood or the rain will be withheld?”

Klep said what she took to mean “For each person the god is different.”

“There is a different god?”

“No. Each person sees differently.”

“Klep, what do you believe?”

“That you are good. That you have nothing to do with rain or drought. That your blood is your life and, while it is in you, you will use it for good. But the power is when you are alive, not when you are dead and the blood has spilled on the ground.” He added, “Anaral says I am a druid,” and smiled.

Polly was listening intently, translating Klep’s words as he spoke into words she could comprehend.

“The healer has much power,” Klep continued. “I have seen him bring back life where I thought there was none. But even he cannot bring your blood back into you if it is spilled out of your body.”

The healer spoke. His vocabulary was far more in his hands than in his mumbling and this time she could not understand what he was saying.

Klep translated, “Go back to your own place.”

“I wish I could.”

Klep turned to the old healer. They spoke together for a long time, and Polly could not understand what they were saying. Finally Klep nodded at the healer and turned to Polly. “Tonight, when the moon rises, there will be much noise, many people. We will help you get to the lake, stop the arrows and spears, so you can swim.”

“You can do this?”

Klep was fierce. “There will be no sacrifice. The healer has great power. No one would dare throw a spear at him, no one would dare try to stop him in any way. He will protect you as you run to the water.”

It was a slim hope, but it was a hope. She did not think she could make the swim again, but better to drown than be put on that terrible altar rock. “Thank you. I am grateful.”

“You were good to me,” Klep said. “Your People of the Wind were good to me. I would become one with Anaral. From you I have learned much. I have learned that I love.
Love
. That is a good word.”

“Yes. It is a good word.”

“What I do, I do not do just for you, though I hope I would do what I do even if it were not for Anaral. But if you are sacrificed, do you think the People of the Wind would let me see Anaral, to love? Do I learn
love
and then let
love
be sacrificed along with you?” Again his brow beaded with sweat. “You will swim?”

“I will swim.” She tried to sound certain, for Klep’s sake.

The healer spoke again.

Klep said, “You have the gift. The healer says you must serve it.”

“Tell the healer I will try to serve the gift.” As surely as Dr. Louise had done, all her life, so would Polly try to do.

Klep nodded. Looked out at the village, where people talked in small groups, the sound ugly, menacing. “I will stay with you. I cannot do much, but my presence will help.”

The healer looked at Polly. “Will stay.”

Surely the healer’s presence would keep the people from coming to the lean-to and dragging her out, at least until the full moon rose. And the very fact that these two men, the young and the old, were with her, cared enough to stay with her, filled her with warmth.

She asked, “Klep, what about Zachary? I came back across the lake with you because of Zachary.”

“Zak? Oh, he is of no importance.”

She did not understand. She repeated, “But I thought I was to be sacrificed so that his heart could be mended.”

“That is—” Klep searched for words. “That is not in the middle. Not in the center.”

Well, yes. She could understand that Zachary was peripheral. But did he know it?

“If rain comes, if the people are quiet, then the healer—” Klep glanced at the ancient man, who remained squatting back on his heels, as comfortable as though he were in a chair. “He will try to help Zak, because he is healer. Where there is brokenness, he must heal. Tynak wanted you to think that Zak was important because he thought the line was drawn close between you. That you—that you
loved
him.”

“No, Klep—”

“I know that the line is between you andTav, not Zak.”

Again she shook her head. “Where I came from, it is too soon. I may sense a line between Tav and me, but love—” She could not explain that not only was she not ready to give her heart to Tav or anyone else, that she had much schooling ahead of her, that in her time she was too young, but also that her time was three thousand years in the future. Perhaps in the vast scheme of things three thousand years wasn’t much, but set against the span of a single lifetime it was enormous.

Thunder rumbled. She looked across the lake and saw dark sheets of rain.

Klep looked at it. “Ah, Polly, if you could bring rain here!”

“Oh, Klep, would that I could!”

The healer remained squatting on the ground just inside the shadow of the lean-to. The strange light gave a greenish cast to his face and he looked like an incredibly ancient frog. His voice was almost a croak. “Healer will not let healer go.” His ancient eyes met Polly’s. Not only was he offering her his considerable protection, he was calling her a colleague.

Groups of villagers were muttering, hissing, sounding like a swarm of hornets, looking toward the lean-to but not coming close. Had it not been for Klep and the healer there, with her, for her, she was not sure what would have happened.

The storm across the lake moved away, farther away, and the brazen sun glowed through angry clouds. The heat was wilting the leaves which were left on the trees and they drifted down, sickly and pale.

Polly closed her eyes. Felt a hand touching hers, an old, dry hand. The healer. A cool wind began to blow, touching her cheeks, her eyelids. The waters of the lake rippled gently against the shore. The angry people fell silent.

Slowly the sky cleared. The thunderheads dissipated. But the sound of drums continued.

The day dragged on. Klep slept, lying on his side, breathing like a child, hand pillowing his head. The healer, too, lay down, and his eyes were closed, but Polly thought that he was not asleep, that he was holding her in a still center of quiet. She could feel her blood coursing through her veins, her living blood, keeping her mind, her thoughts, her very being held in life.

Would she give up that blood willingly?

Where was Zachary? Was he still greedily grasping at life, any kind of life, at any expense? There was no willingness in him, no concern, except for himself. Did he really understand what he was demanding?

There was no sunset. The daylight faded, but there was no touching of the clouds with color. It simply grew darker. Darker. Cook fires were lit. The muttering of the people began again. Here the full moon would not lift up above the great trees of the forest as it did for the People of the Wind, but would come from the lake, rising out of the water.

She heard with horror a hissing of expectation. Tynak strode into the center of the clearing, looking first across the lake, then turning around, looking beyond the compound to the heavy darkness of the forest and the clearing with the bloody stone.

A thin scream cut across the air. It was a scream of wild terror, so uncontrolled that it made Polly shudder. It was repeated. Was there already someone at the terrible altar stone, someone facing a sharp knife? She tried to find the source of the scream.

She saw Zachary struggling, screaming, held by two men of the tribe. He was trying to break away from them, but they had him firmly between them, taking him toward Tynak.

A faint light began to show at the far horizon of the lake.

“No!” Zachary screamed. “You can’t kill her! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t! You can’t do it, you can’t—” He was babbling with terror. “I’ll die, kill me, kill me, you can’t hurt her—” He saw Polly, and suddenly he was convulsed with sobs. “I didn’t mean it! I was wrong! Oh, stop them, somebody, stop them, let me die, don’t let them hurt Polly—”

Tynak came up to him and slapped him across the mouth. “Too late.”

Zachary was shocked into silence. He tried to pull one hand away to wipe his mouth, but the two men held his arms, and a trickle of blood slid down his chin.

“The sacrifice must be unblemished,” Tynak said. “You are not worthy.”