Visions (21 page)

Pete felt out of place. Awkwardly, he said, “Do you still hurt?”

Bernie took his hand in hers. “The contractions are regular, now, but my side doesn’t hurt so much when I lie still. And Pete, the most wonderful thing, a little while ago Diana was examining me, putting her hands over my stomach to see how the baby was positioned, pushing back and forth a little and Peter, the baby moved! I felt it move! Then as soon as Diana took her hands off me it was quiet again. She says the head is placed right; everything’s ready to go. Our first child will be born right in this bed. Oh, it feels tight down there!”

She was babbling, euphoric. Pete sat down on the edge of the bed. “Can I touch?” he asked, and she nodded. He put both palms gently on her abdomen and immediately felt movement as if the child had been startled. He closed his eyes and let the love feeling well up in him, imagining it flowing through his hands to child and mother. A tiny heel moved slowly past his hand once, twice, then pushing outwards sleepily. He opened his eyes, and found Bernie crying.

“He knows his daddy’s there,” she said.

He sat with her until after darkness as the contractions grew stronger, coming at shorter and shorter intervals. People came and went, including Baela, who wanted to feel the baby and laughed when it moved for her. Diana and two other Tenanken women were a constant presence, waiting patiently for the moment. Pete looked at their calm expressions.
The memories of tens of thousands of birthing years are with you. Please use them to help the ones I love.

Well after dark, Bernie yelled, then grunted and arched her back with terrible force. Diana pushed Pete out of the room, explaining, “room too small. No space enough.” Steaming water was brought in, along with all the linens in the house. The door slammed shut.

Pete was jittery, standing in a front room filled with nervous men. When Diana came out briefly he followed her to the kitchen. “I should be in there to help,” he pleaded.

Diana looked at him sharply. “Woman know what to do. No time to talk—work!” She bustled past him with a boiled knife in her hand, and slammed the door behind her.

“Aren’t you supposed to start pacing, now?” asked Jake, and some of the men laughed uneasily.

“I’m gonna take a walk,” said Pete. “It’s getting too close for me in here.” Nobody followed him when he left the house to sit on the edge of the porch and look out at the silhouettes of trees. Darkness hid the bodies piled to his left where they had been dragged. One of them was Maki, Anka’s last son, unceremoniously dumped with a pile of Tenanken outcasts, perhaps the last of their kind.

The change was not coming; it was here—now. Tenanken and Hinchai as one people. It was right; again, he felt it, and now, very soon, the first child of their joining. What kind of child? The question chilled him. His own features were heavy, but not Tahehto like those of his father. Would the child be brutish? Would Bernie scream at the sight of her newborn, wondering how such a thing could come from her, what monster had entered her to conceive it? Sweat beaded on his forehead as he thought about it, but then his reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Zeke in his wagon, carrying shovels and a passenger. Audrey Miflin, red-faced and heavy-busted, waddled past him into the house.

“Calm down, poppa. We’ll have that baby of yours born in no time.”

But in a few minutes she peeked out the front door. “Hell, they don’t need me in there; everything’s goin’ fine. Old country medicine. Better stick close, though. It’s gonna be pretty soon.” Audrey grinned happily, and ducked back inside.

Pete directed Zeke to a spot at the mouth of the canyon and walked back to sit on the porch while ten men went to work with the shovels. Ned came out of the house, and sat with him for a while.

“We’ve been talkin’,” said Ned, “and I hope you’ll go along with this, even though it’s against the law. It’s just that we’ve got ourselves a nice, quiet town up here, and what would it accomplish if what happened today ever got out?”

“All those dead. How can we not talk about it?”

“Well, we’re sure as hell gonna try not to. All of us came up here for the peace and quiet, and we’re gonna keep it that way. The vote was unanimous, Pete. We’re not sayin’ anything to anybody about today. It never happened, just like Tom bein’ killed. Tom had nobody but us, and we got the guys who killed him. That’s fair enough, and nobody will mourn the critters we’re buryin’ out there.”

I can think of a couple
, thought Pete, remembering the feelings he’d had in the cave that day.
If they are still alive.

“We got them all, Pete, every one. A couple of our own got banged up pretty good: Bernie, one of the other women, and then the guy we found in the barn, the little girl’s father.”

“Baela?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Her daddy, she said. Bad bang on the head, shoulder busted, a couple of dead critters by him, one pierced clean through with a stone-headed spear. Hell of a fight that must have been. Bad concussion, and we’ve got him upstairs. He’s been babbling all evenin’ in a weird language, sort of speakin’ in tongues. Touch and go for now, but we’ll ride it out with him.”

“Where’s Baela?”

“She’s with him, now, and her mother.”

There was a shout from inside the house.

“What do you say, Pete. We keep quiet about all this? Bury the dead, and get on with it?”

Pete thought for a minute, but it was hard to concentrate. What was all the yelling about? A new beginning for the Tenanken, safe in a quiet place, and time to learn the Hinchai ways. Their own settlement, and friends. Future lovers. Children. Quiet time was needed—not invasion by outsiders.

Now men were talking by the open door of the house, and from somewhere deep inside came an agonized cry.

“Yeah, that’s fine, Ned. We keep quiet about all of it.”

“Good,” said Ned, slapping him on the back.

Jake stuck his head out of the doorway. “Better get in here, Pete. Things is happenin’ fast, now; women runnin’ all over the place.”

Pete and Ned both scrambled to their feet, Pete beating him to the door by a step. Inside was chaos, men packed together, pushing up towards the bedroom door, falling back when Audrey rolled out of the kitchen with a pot of something steaming and threatened them with it before the door slammed behind her. Over the din in the front room Pete could hear women’s voices beyond the door, and then Bernie grunting, crying out, grunting again. Suddenly there was another cry, but this one higher pitched and coming in bursts.

A baby’s cry.

It got very quiet in the front room, everyone listening. Finally, Jake sidled up to Pete and put an arm around his shoulders. “From what I hear, you have just become a poppa,” he said. “Congratulations.”

The door opened, and Audrey bustled out.

“Can I?—” Pete began.

“Not now. Mister Pelegeropoulis is not yet presentable to his public.” She held up something long and bloody. “I’ll wrap up the cord for you to keep.” She busied herself in the kitchen, then pushed past Pete and into the bedroom, but women were in the way so he couldn’t see Bernie.

A boy. He had a son. The firstborn was a son, and in the Tenanken traditions it was a most favorable sign.

At last the door opened to him, the women stepping aside from the bed and he saw Bernie lying there, battered looking but smiling serenely, and cuddled tightly next to her a tiny human being wrapped in a blanket. For Pete, there was no sound or sight other than those two before him in the bed; he stepped forward, sat down next to them, touched Bernie’s face, then pulled aside the blanket to look at the face of his son.

He was beautiful.

A well-shaped head was covered with blond fuzz. Tiny mouth, but generous nose in a square face with well-defined cheekbones, and when Pete’s face drew near, the baby opened coal-black eyes, squinted at him, then turned his head and made sucking sounds.

“He’s a big baby,” said Bernie softly. “Maybe twelve pounds.”

Pete leaned over and kissed her, first the cheek, then the mouth. Control failed him for the first time in his life; tears welled up in his eyes, and streamed down his cheeks. “Are you okay?” he asked, voice quavering.

“I am now,” she said, then pulled his head down and kissed him firmly while the baby squirmed against her, mouth searching for a breast and finding it.

They watched the baby suckle for a moment while the other women left the room, closing the door behind them. “Do you have a name for the baby?” asked Bernie, then quickly added, “I think he should be named for his father.”

Pete thought. The baby suckled, and hiccupped.

“How about Peter Savas? The father and his father.”

Bernie smiled. “That’s nice, and very Greek.” She looked down at their son, his mouth clamped on a nipple, a tiny hand massaging the breast. “That’s your name, little guy. Peter Savas Pelegeropoulis. Quite a mouthful.” She jiggled the nipple in the baby’s mouth, and laughed.

They sat alone with their son for several minutes, and then Pete opened the door so the neighbors and Tenanken relatives could see the new addition to planet earth. One by one they smiled, made funny sounds and strange faces at the child. Jake seemed wistful when the baby clamped onto his index finger and held fast; he looked up, caught Diana smiling sweetly at him, and blushed a deep red. For those moments, the room was filled with both friendship and love, between two peoples.

Outside, under the cover of darkness, ten men worked on—burying the past.

A SPIRIT SOARS

They rested calmly in the inky darkness of the cavern, waiting for death to come. Anka’s head rested in Tel’s lap and he moaned in a deepening sleep that frightened her more with each passing moment, yet she did not try to wake him.

They had hidden in the tunnel above their sleeping quarters before Pegre and the Hinchai had come into the cavern, getting out of sight just in time because Anka’s movement was slowed by pain so severe he had fainted twice while trying to stand. In the end he had crawled to their grotto, where Tel had nearly burst her heart pushing him up into the tunnel. Now they sat an arm’s length from the exit hole, a pile of large, sharp-edged stones within reach so that any attacker would be assured of a rude, even fatal welcome. Tel had felt Pegre’s Touch, closing her mind in fear the other would sense her, and then they had gone away. There had been the odor of wood smoke, and still later the popping sounds she knew were made by Hinchai pointing weapons. She had expected Hidaig and his gang to return and search for her again, so hot had been his anger, but when he didn’t return she assumed he had gotten what he wanted or the battle had gone badly for him. Now she waited, feeling the life ebb from her mate, wondering about the fate of her last son. A traitor. But her son. The feeling that he was no longer alive tortured her in the darkness.

A sound.

Voices. Faint at first, and the crunch of a pebble grinding rock.

Tel closed her mind, and picked up an axe-shaped stone. Her heart thumped rapidly.

The voices were quickly louder, and she could hear words; suddenly The Touch was there, familiar and loving, and something even stronger, a vision that made her heart soar. Pegre was here again, and Baela with him.

“Pegre!” she shouted. “We’re here, above the grotto!”

“Tel?” The voice was male, and deep.

“Over here! I cannot move!” Anka’s head shifted in her lap, and he groaned. Now she could hear Baela chattering nearby, light flickering up from the exit hole. Tel tapped the floor with the rock in her hand until a bright glow flashed in her face.

“They’re up here!” cried Baela, scrambling up through the hole. Pegre was right behind her, grunting as he squeezed his bulk into the tunnel, and then the two of them were pressing warmly against Tel, looking down at Anka’s battered form.

“It’s bad,” said Tel. “Hidaig beat him, and left him to die. When he coughs, blood comes.”

“It’s cold here. We should make a fire and get him to a comfortable place. Baela, take these and light the torches in the cavern. I think there’s a fresh one by the grotto.” Pegre handed Baela a small box of wooden matches; the girl nodded, and dropped out of sight down the hole.

Pegre moved Anka out of the tunnel and into the cavern, carrying him like an infant. Anka’s head tilted back, mouth open.
He’s dying
, thought Tel.
I will lose him soon, now.
She followed them into the cavern, where Baela had lit a few torches that flickered dimly. “Most of the torches were burned out,” complained the girl.

Pegre made a hot fire that warmed them all, and Anka stirred, eyes opening to look at the faces above him. He smiled when he saw Pegre, and grasped a big hand in his. “How is it in the valley?” he asked.

Pegre was solemn. “There was a battle yesterday. It was bad, but Hidaig and his band are no more. Two of our band were injured, one seriously, but he will live.” Pegre put an arm around Baela, and pulled her close. “This little one killed a warrior.”

“And what of Maki?” asked Tel softly. “What has happened to our son?”

Pegre hesitated, and shook his head sadly. “He’s gone, killed by Hidaig after the battle was lost. In the end he saved Baela’s life. He was not evil, Tel, and died for what he believed in.” It was perhaps a lie, but Pegre hoped it would lessen the pain.

Tears welled up in Tel’s eyes, but she did not cry. There was only numbness at the verification of what she had felt earlier.

Anka closed his eyes, keeping his own grief private.

“In this bad time, there is happier news,” said Pegre. “My mate has given me a son; he is strong and beautiful, both Tenanken and Hinchai, the best of both. You must see him, and I want both of you to come and live with us.”

“Ba, too,” said Baela. “Where is she?”

“The old ones are resting,” said Tel.

Anka opened his eyes and gurgled a reply. “Perhaps Tel; it will not be for me. It is over for me, but I thank you.” He patted Pegre’s hand affectionately, and closed his eyes again.

Tel nudged her mate, fearful he would die any moment, now. “Anka, there is something you must yet see. Baela has a gift for you, if you can stay awake.”

Baela looked puzzled, but Pegre gave her shoulder a squeeze and said, “It’s a special gift, Anka.”

“From a special child,” added Tel, knowing Pegre’s mind.

“Eh,” said Anka, and opened his eyes curiously.

Tel leaned close to Baela, speaking to her in a whisper. “Do you remember the great hunting bird with the nest at the top of the cliff?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I want you to imagine you are that very bird, soaring high up in the sky, and totally free. There are no limits to how high you can go, or what you can see. Let your imagination soar with you.”

“I do that,” said Baela, still puzzled, “when it’s quiet, but how—”

“Just do it now, and we will try to imagine what you are seeing. It is a little game we play for Anka.”

Baela shrugged her shoulders. “All right.”

Tel turned to Anka. “Baela will imagine something, and we will try to guess what it is. Are you awake?”

Anka nodded sleepily.

“Go on, Baela,” said Tel.

So Baela closed her eyes. For a moment she was still in the cavern, warm by the fire, smelling torch fumes and wood smoke. But then she relaxed, looking out over the tops of trees on the opposite side of the canyon, her heart beating rapidly with the excitement of life. The chicks burrowed beneath her, hungry as always, demanding food. It was time to hunt again, and so she leapt from the nest with a thrust of talons and spread her giant wings to sail out over the canyon. Two wing beats later she caught an updraft, and began to climb.

“Ho,” said Anka, but his voice was faint.

Wind whipped her feathered face, and she felt the delicate tensions of wing tips spreading, bending to trim her flight; she thrust downward and rode the thermal in a slowly ascending spiral, the earth slowly spinning below her. She did not hunt yet, but flew for pure joy—for life. The sun was bright above her, below, the trees were green dots, but something compelled her to go on, to explore. Never before had she risen so high, so alone. Mountains appeared on one horizon, and on another a blue sea. Now the horizon was curved, the world below a giant, blue ball, the sky turning dark, and the sun a well-defined glowing disk. She was attracted to it, found herself tempted to fly towards its warmth, but holding back. It was not a place for her to go—not yet. Perhaps someday, when her spirit soared in death. In the meantime her hungry chicks were waiting, and she had responsibilities. Reluctantly, she made a final turn in a black sky, folded both wings half-closed and dropped like a stone towards the giant globe beneath her.

“Ahhhh,” said someone in another world, or did she imagine it?

Baela plummeted into blueness, then haze, trees and ground reappearing and then flying below her a huge, fat bird with a long neck, moving at great speed. A slight spread of wings to break her own velocity, a twisting turn, then dropping again, talons opening to hit the bird with terrible force, breaking its neck, and grabbing firmly, wings beating hard to hold up the new weight. She floated down in a glide, the family meal hanging beneath her like a rock, the chicks seeing her coming from afar, shrieking, flapping their stubby wings. When she landed they were tightly squeezed together in the nest. Lovingly, she tore off chunks of flesh from the long-necked bird and fed them individually to her impatient children.
Mother is home, and now we eat. Can there be any finer life than this?

She awoke, startled by Anka grasping her arm. Firelight flickered in the gloomy cavern, and The Keeper was looking up at her with great intensity. “You have the First Mother’s gift, Baela, and the golden hair. The Hanken Mother of us all has somehow returned in this terrible time. Such power! Can it be that our world is a round ball floating in blackness? I think you show me the beginning of my journey, to a place of new life better than the one I have endured for too long. I am old, far too old. My visions are old, and no longer important. I have worried about you and the other Hanken children; I have feared you were not Tenanken, that the Mind Touch was lost to you. But such power! Such things I could not imagine!”

Anka paused, exhausted by his outburst. Something gurgled deep inside him. He patted Baela’s arm, and again closed his eyes. “You haven’t shared your gift with us before.”

“But she has,” said Tel, “many times, without knowing it. Many of us have flown with the great bird, but to Baela it was a private thought she guarded as her own. She has resented the intrusion of The Mind Touch, but now I hope she sees it for what it can be: an intimate sharing of souls.”

Baela listened to their words, but did not understand their meaning, did not comprehend what was truly happening to her. For with the budding of breasts and flaring of hips had come the power of the first Hanken mother.

To a golden-haired Hanken child.

Once every hundred generations.

Anka fumbled at his throat with one hand, and gave instructions in a dying voice. “Tel will use the Mind Touch to help you recall those memories important in your new world. Pegre has also recorded them. Baela, never forget those who have come before, for their blood is in yours; your physical and spiritual strengths are from them. The Mind Touch is from your Hanken purity; encourage the other children to cultivate and use it. When they are saddened, give them a happy vision; when they are alone, let them soar with your spirit-bird. Take care of them. Tel will instruct you, and show you the ways.”

“Yes, my heart,” said Tel, her voice cracking.

Anka pulled a thong loop over his head, and held it up to Baela. Hanging on the loop was the clear, doubly terminated quartz crystal of meditation he had worn since youth. The crystal had become a symbol of his spiritual leadership. “Put down your head,” he said. “This is yours to wear until you are ancient like me, and choose to give it new life with someone else.”

He raised himself slightly, slipped the loop over Baela’s head, and fell back exhausted into Tel’s soft lap. “It is done,” he gasped. “Tel, will you come with me to the ledge where we watch the night lights?”

“You should rest, my heart, and it will be cold on the ledge.”

“Is it dark?”

“It is near dawn,” said Pegre solemnly. “If you wish, I will carry you to the place.”

“Please,” said Anka.

Pegre gently lifted him, Tel and Baela following with two torches as they climbed the spiral of shelves in the main cavern, and then up the long tunnel to the place where Tel had tried to build her signal fire.

“Wait for us here,” said Anka. “It will not be long.” And then he crawled painfully out onto the ledge, Tel right behind, finding the smoothed place where they had sat, and loved, so often.

They cuddled on the shelf, and watched the stars disappear as the sky turned orange. He took her hand, their heads touched. Tel closed her eyes as The Mind Touch wafted slowly, lovingly over her, and she knew it was for the last time.

She was running down a steep hill, afraid she would fall, but Anka, running beside her, held tightly to her hand, pulling her along and grinning in the bright sunlight. Several children cavorted ahead of them, heading for tall fir trees lining a creek cascading over polished rocks down the hill to meet a larger stream stretching out across the valley floor. When she reached the stream, out of breath, the children were splashing in it, trying to catch small fish with their bare hands, plunging their heads in to grab at the darting, silvery shapes and sputtering icy water when they came up for air. Their prey were too elusive, and so they tired of the sport, racing on to the trees and climbing into them, calling for Anka and Tel to follow.

It was somehow a familiar place; she had been here before. Anka pulled her to a large cottonwood forking into two trunks three meters above the ground. He released her hand, and began to climb.
Silly thing
, she thought,
you’re too old to climb
, but he ascended easily to the fork as the children yelled encouragement, then peered over the edge and beckoned for her to join him.

Tel scrambled upwards as the children squealed with delight, watching her progress from the branches of neighboring trees. She knew it was crazy, but not real, and pulled herself upwards in the vision, feeling the rough bark on her hands and feet until she reached the fork and a depression, and rolled into it on top of Anka, cuddling with him there. And then she remembered this special place, the place where her first-born had been conceived—before the Hinchai came.

For a moment the noise of the children ceased as Tel nestled in Anka’s arms, her head against his chest.
Is this goodbye? Is this goodbye, my heart?
Anka did not answer, but held her tightly, and then the vision changed.

From the ground below came sounds of the new language. Tel peered down and saw two adults with four children strolling up the hill among the trees. Hinchai. She felt fear, and then her precious children, the future of the Tenanken, were calling to the strangers. She wanted to scream a warning, but Anka put a hand on her shoulder, and she was silent. When she dared to look again her children were clambering down the trees, shouting to those on the ground. A moment before they had been naked, but now they were clothed, showing only bare arms and legs; they ran to the Hinchai, frolicking with their children while the adults looked on with amusement.

The happy group began moving down the hill, back towards the Hinchai village in the valley. Tel’s throat tightened, and she felt a horrible ache in her heart. The Hinchai were taking her little ones from her, while she hid fearfully in a tree, tears flooding her eyes. She looked again, vision a blur; the group had stopped, the Hinchai male turning towards her and suddenly she realized it was Pegre. Pegre! Like her own son, like Maki. Where was Maki? Oh yes, he was gone away—far away. But Pegre! Where was he taking the children? She must go with them wherever it was, otherwise who would teach them to remember all that had gone on before them? And now he was beckoning to her to come down and join them, the children jumping up and down excitedly. She turned to Anka, her face a pleading mask.