“Get yourself down, then, Old One,” he said from the other room. “If I’m too old for nonsense, I’m too old to ‘platt’ you.”
“Never mind, funny fellow,” she said, “I’ll do it myself.” Her down-reaching hand strained toward the window and she managed to gather a handful of the early morning sun. Quickly she platted herself to the floor and tiptoed off into the other room, eyes aglint with mischief, finger hushing to her lips.
I smiled as I heard David’s outcry and ‘Chell’s delighted laugh, but I felt my smile slant down into sadness. I leaned my arms on the windowsill and looked lovingly at all the dear familiarity around me. Before Thann’s Calling, we had known so many happy hours in the meadows and skies and waters of this loved part of the Home.
“And he is still here,” I thought comfortably. “The grass still bends to his feet, the leaves still part to his passing, the waters still ripple to his touch, and my heart still cradles his name.
“Oh, Thann, Thann!” I wouldn’t let tears form in my eyes. I smiled. “I wonder what kind of a grampa you’d have made!” I leaned my forehead on my folded arms briefly, then turned to busy myself with straightening the rooms for the day. I was somewhat diverted from routine by finding six mismated sandals stacked, for some unfathomable reason, above the middle of Simon’s bed, the top one, inches above the rest, bobbing in the breeze from the open window.
The oddness we had felt about the day turned out to be more than a passing uneasiness and we adults were hardly surprised when the children came straggling back hours before they usually did.
We hailed them from afar, lifting out to them expecting to help with their burdens of brightness, but the children didn’t answer our hails. They plodded on toward the house, dragging slow feet in the abundant grass.
“What do you suppose has happened?” breathed ‘Chell.
“Surely not Eve-“
“Adonday veeah!” murmured David, his eyes intent on the children. “Something’s wrong, but I see Eve.”
“Hi, young ones,” he called cheerfully. “How’s the crop this year?”
The children stopped, huddled together, almost fearfully.
“Look.” Davie pushed his basket at them. Four misshapen failova glowed dully in the basket. No flickering, glittering brightness. No flushing and paling of petals. No crisp, edible sweetness of blossom. Only a dull glow, a sullen winking, an unappetizing crumbling.
“That’s all,” said Davie, his voice choking. “That’s all we could find!” He was scared and outraged-outraged that his world dared to be different from what he had expected-had counted on.
Eve cried, “No, no! I have one. Look!” Her single flower was a hard-clenched flahmen bud with only a smudge of light at the tip.
“No failova?” ‘Chell took Davie’s proffered basket. “No flahmen? But they always bloom on Gathering Day. Maybe the buds-“
“No buds,” said Simon, his face painfully white under the brightness of his hair. I glanced at him quickly. He seldom ever got upset over anything. What was there about this puzzling development that was stirring him?
“David!” ‘Chell’s face turned worriedly to him. “What’s wrong? There have always been failova!”
“I know,” said David, fingering Eve’s bud and watching it crumble in his lingers. “Maybe it’s only in the meadows. Maybe there’s plenty in the hills.”
“No,” I said. “Look.”
Far off toward the bills we could see the teeners coming, slowly, clustered together, panthus baskets trailing.
“No failova,” said Lytha as they neared us. She turned her basket up, her face troubled. “No failova and no flahmen. Not a flicker on all the hills where they were so thick last year. Oh, Father, why not? It’s as if the sun hadn’t come up! Something’s wrong.”
“Nothing catastrophic, Lytha.” David comforted her with a smile. “We’ll bring up the matter at the next meeting of the Old Ones. Someone will have the answer. It is unusual, you know.” (Unheard of, he should have said.) “We’ll find out then.” He boosted Eve to his shoulder. “Come oh, young ones, the world hasn’t ended. It’s still Gathering Day! I’ll race you to the house. First one there gets six koomatka to eat all by himself! One, two, three-“
Off shot the shrieking, shouting children, Eve’s little heels pummeling David’s chest in her excitement. The teeners followed for a short way and then slanted off on some project of their own, waving good-by to ‘Chell and me. We women followed slowly to the house, neither speaking.
I wasn’t surprised to find Simon waiting for me in my room. He sat huddled on my bed, his hands clasping and unclasping and trembling, a fine, quick trembling deeper than muscles and tendons. His face was so white it was almost luminous and the skiff of golden freckles across the bridge of his nose looked metallic.
“Simon?” I touched him briefly on his hair that was so like Thann’s had been.
“Gramma.” His breath caught in a half hiccough. He cleared his throat carefully as though any sudden movement would break something fragile. “Gramma,” he whispered. “I can See!”
“See!” I sat down beside him because my knees suddenly evaporated. “Oh, Simon! You don’t mean-“
“Yes, I do, Gramma.” He rubbed his hands across his eyes. “We had just found the first failova and wondering what was wrong with it when everything kinda went away and I was-somewhere-Seeing!” He looked up, terrified.
“It’s my Gift!”
I gathered the suddenly wildly sobbing child into my arms and held him tightly until his terror spent itself and I felt his withdrawal. I let him go and watched his wet, flushed face dry and peal back to normal.
“Oh, Gramma,” he said, “I don’t want a Gift yet. I’m only ten. David hasn’t found his Gift and he’s twelve already. I don’t want a Gift-especially this one ” He closed his eyes and shuddered. “Oh, Gramma, what I’ve seen already! Even the Happy scares me because it’s still in the Presence!”
“It’s not given to many,” I said, at a loss how to comfort him. “Why, Simon, it would take a long journey back to
