Sundrinker

the richness. It was loamy, enriched by season after season of growing grass. He wiggled, dug himself down until his knees were below the level of the earth, used his hand to tamp down the loose earth, leaned, looked up toward Du. He felt the somnolent peace of the goodness of the earth begin to seep into him, having that effect that is not unlike sleep, but more total, more possessing. He felt the tendrils extending downward and outward and he knew that he was committed. The earth was taking him, and it would hold him, in that state much like sleep, until it had done its work. In that time he would be helpless, as helpless as one of the fixed brothers who had not a brain to think nor sensitivity to feel anything beyond the sweet earth, the soft rains, or, perhaps, the sudden and searing pain of death. He could not let fear deter him, although it was not too late to jerk his feet free, ripping away the rooting tendrils.

Du would guard him. Du would restore.

Chapter Five

Soft rains came, and growling, fast-moving storms that flashed and crashed and sent torrents of wind-driven drops. Mostly, however, the sun burned the eastern hills golden red on rising and blessed all with warmth. Small animals darted among the rocks, sniffed at the tall, growing thing with twin trunks planted deeply into the fresh, sweet, grassy earth. A tawny-purple quadruped reared and braced short, padded front feet on one truck of the growing thing and nibbled with the large, blunt teeth of the grass eater at tattered clothing, spit out the substance from which all nutrition had been removed in processing it into weavable cloth, sniffed, looked around alertly, pointed ears twitching, and lay down in the growing thing's shade, almost hidden by the tall grass.

A pale blue bird alit on the fronds atop the growing thing, twittered, peered at the ruminant still resting peacefully in the shade, jeered, flew, the beat of its wings disturbing the fronds.

The frond-like hair had grown rapidly. Two sources of nourishment were at work, with the light of the sun being converted directly into energy and with the rooty tendrils seeking out the minerals and moisture from the loamy soil. As days passed, and the rains came and went and the sun reached its northernmost position, near the zenith, the hair covered the growing thing's face. It swayed with the summery breezes, bent with the soon-passed winds of the thunderstorms. And from the pointed stub of the severed arm there appeared small, thin protrusions that became perfectly formed, three fingers and two opposing thumbs, tiny, almost ludicrous, but growing, soaking up a good portion of the nutrition provided by sun and soil. Yellow-green skin darkened in the full heat of the sun to a sheeny, rich, forest green.

He dreamed. The dreams were disjointed and distant, as if being observed through the deepest winter haze of the valley. Alning was there, her black eyes the most visible aspect of her, a hint of her femaleness, long legs, coloring torso; and whispers, insensate, wordless whispers of peace and goodness—the song of the growing grass, the purely sensory reaction of the nearer tall brothers to rain and wind and sun. He dreamed, now and then, that he was not alone, but that dream, too, was vague, and that oneness with the earth, that somnolency, made him little more than the grass, the nameless small fixed brothers, the tall ones.

The arm grew, now as large as that of one of the fixed young on the verge of mobility. Of that he knew nothing, nor did he see, for his eyes were closed, and covered with the fronds of his hair, that he, truly, was not alone.

She came from a valley to the east, climbing a ridge wearily, a tall, tired, rag-dressed female with thin, undernourished arms and pinched, hollow-cheeked face. She came with scufflings of feet, the movements of one not accustomed to traveling in the wilderness, with mighty pantings as she achieved the top of the ridge, rested, and then, with a fearful look over her shoulder, moved more swiftly down the slope toward the grassy clearing. Blood spotted the ground where she stepped with her left foot, and she favored it, limping, halting, as she reached the rocks near the clearing to sit on the sun-warmed stone and examine the left foot with concerned, purple eyes. She had tried once before without success to remove the long splinter that had entered into a softer area between her toes, and she was no more successful now as she sat beside the clearing. With a sigh that was part sob she stood, gingerly put her weight on the foot, winced, and stepped onto the grass. The small ruminant that had been resting in Duwan's shade leaped, showing admirable ability to cover ground, and went flashing silently into the forest.

'Ahtol!' she gasped. Her eyes had been led to the growing thing in the center of the clearing. She turned to flee, ran a few steps with her left foot paining her, took a quick look backward, halted. Her initial panic gone, she realized that had he been a Devourer she could not have hoped to outdistance him on her painfully swollen foot.

Crouched and ready for flight, she crept back toward the clearing. He did not move, except to sway slightly in a gust of breeze. She came closer, closer, saw that his feet were buried in the earth to just above his knees.

'You,' she said, 'what are you doing?' A tinge of red had been burned into Duwan's hair by the sun. It was long, longer than that of the female, and it gleamed with health, moved in the light breeze. She could not see his eyes, for they were hidden. It came to her that this was some new form of torture invented by the Devourers. She twisted her mouth in sympathy and straightened to walk into the grass that came soothingly to the calves of her thin legs. Slowly, carefully, fearfully, she drew near. She saw that his chest was rising and falling, that he was breathing deeply, but oh, so slowly. He must be, she felt, near death. But she saw no blood, no great abrasions on his smooth, sheeny skin. Her eyes caught the growing arm, now only slightly smaller than the other, and they widened.

'What manner of thing are you?' she asked, and was rewarded only by the call of a bird from the nearby trees. She reached out a hand tentatively, drew it back with a gasp as the fronds of Duwan's hair moved in the breeze. Then, holding her breath, biting her lower lip, she lifted the hair to see a face in repose, in sweet sleep, a face of fullness and health and no little beauty, the face of a young du, so different from either pong or Devourer, and yet familiar, a pong face idealized, perhaps. She let the hair fall, examined him closely. His clothing was in tatters, had fallen away from his powerful chest.

It puzzled her. She knelt, examined the points where his legs disappeared into the moist earth, drew on her courage to put her hands on his small arm to feel warmth and smoothness, looked again at his face. A shocking thought came to her, a thought out of hopelessness, out of whispered tales in the stink and noise of the pongpens.

'Master?' she whispered.