For a moment I stood petrified — had we gone too far? Was Elcin about to destroy this village too?
And then it was over, and silence reigned. Only the quiet spattering of raindrops.
“Well,” said Purple in the stillness. “I guess that’s how you deconsecrate a magician’s tree.”
When I awoke, the crimson sun was glaring.
Shoogar was standing above me, also glaring.
“Shoogar,” I said and groaned. The sound of my voice hurt my left eye.
“Lant,” he replied. His voice hurt my right eye.
“Shoogar,” I said.
“Lant,” he replied.
“Shoogar,” I said.
“I mean to know the meaning of your dancing this morning.”
“Not my dancing, not mine.” I lifted myself up on one arm. “It was Purple’s. He deconsecrated some housetrees so he could use their blood.”
“He what??!!”
“Shoogar,” I whispered. “Please don’t shout. He only did it for a little while. You can reconsecrate them again.”
“I can what?!!”
“You can reconsecrate them as soon as we tap their blood.
“When?!!” he screamed. I winced. “I have cloth to bless, airboat frames to bless, threads to bless, nets to bless, weaving to bless. When do I have the time to consecrate housetrees?”
“You’ll find time, Shoogar. We didn’t deconsecrate that many.”
“How many?”
“Um, not that many.”
“How many is ‘not that many’?”
“Um, let me figure it out. There was Ang’s and Hinc’s and Kifs and Totty’s and Goldin’s and … um… and…”
“Come on, clothead. Remember!”
“I will, I will, don’t rush me. I think we deconsecrated mine and maybe Purple’s — but I don’t think we have to worry about Purple’s. After we deconsecrated it, there was nothing left. And I think we did Snarg’s, but not … or maybe …”
“Lant, you’re such a bloody blithering bowl of bladderworts — if you don’t remember, I’ll have to reconsecrate every tree in the whole fang-sucking village!”
“Um, I’m sure I can remember, Shoogar. Just give me time.”
Shoogar was preparing to reconsecrate every tree in the village.
But we wouldn’t let him. To do that meant that all the other work would have to wait until he could bless it. We would just have to pass out spell tokens to the housetree owners until Shoogar could redeem them. Like Purple’s, they would be promises of future spells, and he could catch up later.
“Um,” said Shoogar, surveying the village. It was obvious he didn’t like the idea. “Well, I still need to know — would you mind telling me just how you and Purple did your spell?”
“It’s all every vague. I remember we sang and danced and had a lot of fun. Purple was singing something about ‘It’s raining, it’s pouring, all the Gods are roaring.’ ”
“I can imagine.”
“Oh yes, he also sang, ‘Here we go around the prickly plant, the prickly plant, the prickly plant —’ ”
“He turned the housetrees into prickly plants?”
“Only symbologically, Shoogar —”
“Only symbologically?” He groaned. “Of course, only symbologically. How else can you turn a housetree into a prickly plant?”
He turned and stared across the hillside, toward the village of prickly plants. “Well,” he sighed, “there goes the neighborhood.”
The sap-gathering was well under way. I headed down to the Lower Village. Bellis the Potter would have to supply us with everything he had that we could use to hold housetree blood — we weren’t going to run out again.
When I told him, he was delighted. It meant a great deal of work, he kept bouncing up and down and shouting, “Oh, goody, goody, goody — spell tokens, spell tokens!”
I shrugged and left him. My head still hurt. I went up the river to look for Purple. I couldn’t even find where he had been working. The surf was already crashing in around his blackened housetree stump.
Half the Lower Village was underwater, the Speakers’ clearing and the graves of the two boys as well. The river had long since seeped over its banks.
Lower Village families had been trickling up the hill to occupy the housetrees we had prepared for them for some time now, but I had not realized just how high the water had risen. It had been a while since I had been to this part of the village.
I found Purple with Trone the Coppersmith. The two of them were hard at work with wood and metal. I couldn’t fathom what they were doing, but it seemed odd that Trone, a layman, should be working on a magical device.
When I pointed this out, Trone only snarled at me. Purple said, “I need his skills, Lant. He’s the only man who can make what I need. We’ve got the copper wire — now, I need a way to
“
“It means trap the magic in the wire. That way it can’t take short cuts. I can make it go round and round in a spiral, but if the wire touches itself — I wonder, maybe if I coated the wires with sap …”
“We have more housetree blood, Purple. The gathering crews are busily working in the Upper Village right now. All those trees we deconsecrated —”
“I remember, I remember.” Purple clutched at his head.
“Ooh. I’ve got a head you wouldn’t believe …”
True enough. I hadn’t believed Purple’s head the first time I saw it. But I had come on weightier matters. I said:
“Your housetree was destroyed last night, Purple —”
“No matter. There are others —”
“But your battery —?”
He held it up. “Safe!” he said. “I have kept it with me always.”
“Have you worked out a way to restore its power?”
That’s what we’re working on now.” He indicated the device on Trone’s bench. “This one is only a model, but as soon as Trone gets more copper wire, we will be building larger ones. We still have to wind these two iron uprights with copper wire. Then, between them, we will mount a long cylinder of iron so that it can spin between the two uprights. We must wind
“Half a mile? That’s a tradesman’s ransom in metal!”
“In your old village it may have been,” snorted Trone. “Here metal is more plentiful.”
“Besides,” said Purple, “we dare not risk bringing the electrissy maker any closer. A stray spark from it might set off all the hydrogen bags.”
“Set off?”
“Explode,” said Purple. “Catch fire.”
