The Worthing Saga (21 page)

“They say your name is Jason,” said Hakkel the butcher.

“My name is Jason Worthing?” Jason said. “Did you think Lared's father lied to you?”

“Are you,” whispered Clany's father, “God?”

“I'm not,” said Jason. “I'm just a man, getting old, wishing he had a family, and wondering why you are all such fools as to have gone from yours on a night like this.”

They left through the kitchen window, guiding each other home through the darkness.

It was not the worst storm they had ever had; the snow had been deeper in many a winter; but there had never been so bad a beginning to the winter. Everyone in the house kept saying it, over and over: “And this is only the first real storm.” For three days the wind kept up, though after that first night the snow was only a few inches at a time, and they could get around enough in daylight to make sure the animals were fed and watered.

Lared did not get around, however. He lay in Father's own bed during the day, while the life of the house went on around him. The women of the village gathered on the third day, to resume the work of weaving. Though Lared was in the room with them, they did not much converse with him. He was feverish and didn't feel like speaking, and the others had such awe of him that they had little to say to him. After all, they had taken the storm without loss, and many suspected that it was because Lared had offered himself to the storm that it had been no worse than it was.

During the work, the tinker sang his songs and told his tales. He was good for several hours' entertainment, but then there came a lull in the conversation, just the sound of the shuttlecock Hitting back and forth in the loom. Then Sala got up from her needlework and walked into the middle of the room. She turned around twice, looking at no one, and then turned to face Lared, though he was not sure if she looked at him or not.

“I have a story of a snowstorm like this one. And a tinker.”

“I like that,” said the tinker, laughing. But no one else laughed. Sala's face was too serious. The tale she meant to tell came from someone else. Lared knew it was Justice. So did the others—they kept sneaking looks at Justice, who was doing coarse weaving with horsehair strands. She paid no attention to them.

“The tinker's name was John, and he came to a certain village every winter, to stay at a certain inn. The village was in the middle of a deep forest called the Forest of Waters. The name of the village was Worthing, because the name of the inn was Worthing. John Tinker stayed at the inn because it was his brother's. He lived in a room in a tall tower in the inn, with windows on every side. His brother was Martin Keeper, and he had a son named Amos. Amos loved his uncle John, and looked forward to winter, as because the birds came to John Tinker. It was as if they knew him, and all the winter they were in and out of his windows; during the storms they huddled together on the sills.”

Lared looked at the women in the room. They showed no reaction to the name, but there was a set to their lips and a steely look in their eyes that made Lared wonder if they too held that name as sacred.

“The birds came to him because he knew them. When they flew he saw through their eyes and felt the air rush by their feathers. When the birds were ill or broken, he could find the hurt place in them and make it well again. He could do this with people, too.”

A healer. The name of Worthing. They knew then that Sala's story was somehow a story of the Day of Pain.

But Lared heard it a differences way. This tale was from the story of Jason's world, but it came after everything that he had written in his book so far. Justice had given a tale to Sala that Lared had never heard before. Were they forsaking him?

“When he came to the village, they brought their sick to him, their lame, and he made them well again. But to do it he had to dwell inside them for a time, and become them, and when he left he took the memories with him, until the memories of a thousand pains and fears dwelt in him. Always the memory of pain and fear, never the memory of healing. So that more and more he was afraid to heal others, and more and more he wanted to stay with the birds. All they remembered was flight and food, mates and nestlings.”

“And the more he withdrew from the people of the village, the more they feared and were afraid of him because of his power, until at last they didn't think of him as a man at all, even though he had been born among them, and he did not think of himself as one of them either, though he remembered almost all their agonies.”

“Then came a winter like this one, and the snow was so deep in one terrible storm that it cracked the roof beams of some houses, and killed and crippled people in their sleep, and froze others so the sickness crept up their dead legs and arms. The people cried out to John Tinker, Heal us, make us whole. He tried, but there were too, many of them all at once. He couldn't work fast enough, and even though he saved some, more died.”

“Why didn't you save my son!” shouted one. Why didn't you save my daughter, my wife, my husband, father, mother, sister, brother— and they began to punish him. They punished him by killing birds and heaping them up at the door of the inn.

“When he saw the broken birds he got angry. He had taken all the years of their pain, and now they killed the birds because he could not do enough of a miracle to please them. He was so angry that he said, You all can die, I'm through with you. He bundled himself in his warmest clothes and left.”

“When he was gone, the storm came again, and pressed on every house, and tore at every shutter until the only house left unbroken by the wind and snow was Worthing Inn. To the inn the survivors came, then sent out parties to search for others who might be trapped in broken houses. But the storm went on, and some of the searching parties disappeared, and the snow was so deep that only the second-story windows could be used as doors, and many of the low houses were covered over and they couldn't find them.”

“The fourth day after John Tinker left was the bottom of despair. Not a soul left alive that had not lost kin to the storm, saving only Martin Keeper, who had but the one son, Amos, who was alive. Amos wanted to tell the people, Fools, if you had only been grateful for what Uncle John could do he would not have left, and he would be here to heal the ones with frozen legs and the ones with broken backs; But his father caught the thought before Amos could speak, and bade him be silent. Our house stands, said Martin Keeper, and my son lives, and our eyes are as blue as John Tinker's eyes. Do we want their rage to fall on us?”

No one looked at Justice's blue, blue eyes, but everyone saw them.

“So they held their peace, and on the fourth night John Tinker came back, frozen from wandering in the storm, weary and silent. He came in and said nothing to them. And they said nothing to him. They just beat him until he fell, and then kicked him until he died, because they had no use for a god who couldn't save them from everything. Little ”Amos watched John Tinker die, and as he grew up and found strange powers within himself, like the power to heal and the power to hear and see through other people's ears and eyes and the power to remember things that had never happened in his life, Amos kept these powers to himself, and did not use them to help others, even when he knew he could. But he also did not use his powers to get revenge for John Tinker's death. He had seen the villagers' memory of John Tinker's death, and he did not know which was worse, their fear before they killed him, or their shame when he was dead. He did not want to remember either of those feelings as his own, and so he went away to another city, and never saw Worthing again. The end.

Sala broke from her trance. “Did you like my story?” she asked.

“Yes,” said everyone, because she was a child, and people lie to children to make them feel better.

Except the tinker. “I don't like stories where tinkers die,” he said. “That was a joke,” he said. Still no one laughed.

That night, when everyone was asleep, Lared lay awake, bundled in blankets in his bed near the fire. He had rested so much these last few days that he could not sleep. He got up and climbed weakly up the stairs, and found Jason and Justice sitting awake in Jason's room, with a candle for light. He had thought to have to wake them. Why were they still up?

“Did you know I was coming?” Lared asked.

Jason shook his head.

“Why did you tell the tale to Sala?” asked Lared. “It's from after. It's from a time when Jason's descendants were getting much stronger than he was. It must have been hundreds of years.”

“Three thousand years,” said Jason.

“Which of you remembers it?” asked Lared. “Were you still there, Jason?”

“I was under somec, in my ship, at the bottom of the ocean.”

“So it was you,” Lared said to Justice. “You were there.”

“She wasn't born for thousands of years after John Tinker died,” said Jason. “But there's an unbroken chain. Every child at some point dares to penetrate his parents' memories. So generation after generation, some of the memories survive—the ones that each generation has found important enough to keep. It's not a purposeful choice—they just forgot what doesn't matter to them. I found the memory of John Tinker in Justice's mind. I've even looked back to try to find a memory of me.” Jason laughed. “I suppose it's because my children only knew me for a little while, and what they found in my memory made no sense to them, I guess. I'm not there. I search for the oldest memories, and— I'm forgotten. Just a name.”

It was not Jason's reverie that Lared had come for. “Why did you give it to Sala, and not to me?”

Justice looked away.

“We were just quarreling about that when you came in,” said Jason. “It seems that Sala
asked
her—why the Day of Pain had to happen.”

“And that was the answer? The story of John Tinker?”

“No,” said Jason. “It's the sort of answer you give to children. It doesn't explain the Day of Pain, it's part of another story. It belongs in another place in your book. The Day of Pain did not come because there was too much suffering for my children to handle all at once. My children did not run out of power to heal mankind's ills.”

Lared was determined to make Justice herself speak to him. “Then why did you stop?”

Justice still looked away.

“It is to tell that story,” said Jason, “that we're writing our book.”

Lared thought of how his book had been given to him, and remembered the tale that Sala told, and shuddered. “Did you give her that story as a dream? Did she see John Tinker die?”

That finally provoked Justice to speech. Into his mind she said, I gave it to her in words. What do you think I am?

“I think you are someone who sees pain and can heal it but walks away.”

Lared did not have to be able to see behind the eyes to know that his words stung her.

“What,” said Jason, “and if she walked in from the snow would you kick her to death? Wait until you understand before you judge. Now go to bed. You had your brush with death the other night, you've watched my survival in Doon's garden, that's what you wanted. No one helped you till you had accomplished what you set out to do. If I had found you and stopped you, or if Justice had warmed you on your way, so that you were never in any danger, what would it have meant, your hour naked in the snow?”

Lared did not say the answer, because it would have felt like surrender. Or apology. Did not say it, but of course they heard it anyway, and he went back down the stairs to sleep.

When he got, there, he found his mother awake and waiting for him. She did not say a word, just covered him up and went back to bed. I am watched, he thought. Even my mother watches. That was a better answer than the one that Jason and Justice had given him. With that answer, he could sleep.

And when he slept, he could dream.

It was morning, and Kapock got up early to raise the fire. There was a new smell in the air. The others joked that with sheep around him all the time Kapock couldn't smell anything, but it wasn't true. He could smell everything, but everything smelled just a little bit like sheep.

The new smell was snow, a mere thumb-thick blanket on the ground. It was early. Kapock wondered if that was a sign of a hard or easy winter. What weather would Jason send this year, he wondered, for this was the first winter that Jason was not with them, the first winter that Kapock was the Mayor. I wish you would not go, Kapock had said. And if you go, I wish you would make Sara be the Major. But Jason said, “Sara is best at naming and telling tales, and you are best at knowing what is right and wrong.”

It was true that Sara was good at naming. She made Jason tell her again about the Star Tower where the Ice People slept she was the one who named it Star Tower. From the stories she decided that the place where they all lived on the north side of the Star River was Heaven City, and the huge river an hour's walk to the north was Heaven River, because it was as wide as the sky. And when she and Kapock took all the sheep across the Star River and lived there with them, Sara said in surprise one day, “We don't live in Heaven City anymore. We have a new place.” And she promptly named it Sheepside.

Sara was good at naming, but Kapock wasn't very good at right and wrong. Jason could not be wrong, but Kapock was never sure what right and wrong
were.
Sometimes what he thought was right turned out to be right. Today everyone would know that he was right when he told them to make the thatch early, before it was even cold. Now every house was dry and warm inside, except the newest house, the one they were building for Wien and Vary. The early snow would make them all say, You were right.

But sometimes he was wrong. He was wrong when he tried to get Batta and Hux to marry. It seemed like the right thing. They were the last two of the first six Ice People—I had married Sara and Vary had chosen Wien, Hux thought it was a' good idea. But Batta got angry and said, “Jason never told you to marry, did he?” and Kapock admitted she was right and he was wrong. Jason was never wrong, and so they were all disappointed that he was not as wise as Jason. This snowfall would help them trust him again.