starcrosser.”
“You couldn’t have gone back in it anyway,” Sandwalker said. He was thinking of going upstream on a river.
“We know. We’ve changed too much. Do you think we look like you, Sandwalker?”
“Not very much. You’re too small and you don’t look healthy, and your ears are too round and you don’t have enough hair.”
“True,” said the Old Wise One, and fell silent. In the quiet that followed, Sandwalker could hear softly a sound he had never heard before, a sound rising and falling: it was Ocean smoothing the beach a quarter-mile away with his wet hands, but Sandwalker did not know this.
“I didn’t mean to be insulting,” Sandwalker said at last. “I was just pointing these things out.”
“It is thought,” the Old Wise One said, “that makes things so. We do not conceive of ourselves as you have described us, and so we are not actually that way. However, it’s sobering to hear how another thinks of us.”
“I’m sorry.”
“In any event, we once looked just as you do now.”
“Ah,” said Sandwalker. When he was younger, Cedar Branches Waving had often told him stories with names like “How the Mule-Cat Got His Tail” (stole it from the lack-lizard, who had it for a tongue) and “Why the Neagle Never Flies’ (doesn’t want the other animals to see his ugly feet, so he hides them in the grass unless he’s using them to kill something). He thought the Old Wise One’s story was going to be something like these, and since he hadn’t heard it before he was quite willing to listen.
“We came either recently or a long, long time ago, as I said. Sometimes we try to recall the name of our home as we sit staring at each other’s faces in the dawn, before we raise the Day-sleep Song. But we hear also the mind-singing of our brothers—who do not sing—as they pass up and down between the stars; we bend their thinking then, making them go back, but these thoughts come into our songs. It is possible that our home was named Atlantis or Mu—Gondwanaland, Africa, Poictesme, or The Country Of Friends. I, for five, remember all these names.”
“Yes,” said Sandwalker. He had enjoyed the names, but the Old Wise One’s referring to himself as five had reminded him of the other Shadow children. They all seemed to be awake and listening, but sitting far off in various places around the pit. Two, so it appeared, had attempted to climb the shifting walls, and now waited where they had abandoned the effort—one a quarter way, one almost halfway up. All the humans except himself slept. The blue radiance of sisterworld was sifting over the rim.
“When we came we looked as you do now—” began the Old Wise One.
“But you took off your appearance to bathe,” Sandwalker continued for him, thinking of the feathers and flowers his own people sometimes thrust into their hair, “and we stole it from you and have worn it ever since.” Cedar Branches Waving had once told him some similar story.
“No. It was not necessary for us to lose our appearance for you to gain it. You come of a race of shape- changers—like those we called werewolves in our old home. When we came some of you looked like every beast, and some were of fantastic forms inspired by the clouds—or by lava flows, or water. But we walked among you in power and majesty and might, hissing like a thousand serpents as we splashed down in your sea, stepping like conquerors when we strode ashore with burning lights in our fists, and flame.”
“Ah!” said Sandwalker, who was enjoying the story.
“Of flame and light,” repeated the Old Wise One, rocking back and forth. His eyes were half-shut, and his jaws moved vigorously as though he were eating.
“Then what happened?” asked Sandwalker.
“That is the end. We so impressed your kind that you became like us, and have so remained ever since. That is, as we were.”
“That can’t be the end,” said Sandwalker. “You told how we becam›e the same, but you haven’t told yet how we became different. I am taller already than any of you, and my legs are straight.”
“We are taller than you, and stronger,” said the Old Wise One. “And wrapped in terrible glory. It is true that we no longer have the things of flame and light, but our glance withers, and we sing death to our enemies. Yes, and the bushes drop fruit into our hands, and the earth yields the sons of flying mothers do we but turn a stone.”
“Ah,” said Sandwalker again. He wanted to say, Your bones are bent and weak and your faces ill; you run from men and the light, but he did not. He had called himself a shadowfriend—besides, there was no point in quarreling now. So he said, “But we’re still not the same, since my own people do not have those powers; neither do our songs come on the night wind to disturb sleep.”
The Old Wise One nodded and said, “I will show you.” Then looking down he coughed into his hands and held them out to Sandwalker.
Sandwalker tried to see what it was he held, but sisterworld was shining brightly now and the Old Wise One’s hands were cobweb. There was something—a dark mass—but though he bent close Sandwalker could see nothing more, and when he tried to touch what the Old Wise One held, his fingers passed through the hands as well as what they contained, making him feel suddenly foolish and alone, a boy who sat muttering to empty air when he might have slept.
“Here,” the Old Wise One said, and motioned. A second Shadow child came and squatted beside him, solid and real. “Is it you I’m talking to, really?” Sandwalker asked, but the other did not answer or meet his eyes. After a moment he coughed into his hands as the Old Wise One had done and held them out.
“You talk to all of us when you talk to me,” the Old Wise One said. “Mostly to us five here; but also to all Shadow children. Though weak, their songs come from far away to help shape what I am. But look at what this one is showing you.”
For a moment Sandwalker looked instead at the Shadow child. He might have been young, but the dark face was silent and closed. The eyes were nearly shut, yet through the lids Sandwalker sensed his stare, friendly, embarrassed, and afraid.
“Take some,” invited the Old Wise One. Sandwalker prodded the chewed stuff with a finger and sniffed— vile.
“For this we have given up everything, because this is more than anything, though it is only a herb of this world. The leaves are wide, warty, and gray; the flowers yellow, the seed pink prickled eggs.”
“I have seen it,” Sandwalker said. “Leaves-you-can-eat warned me of it when I was young. It is poisoned.”
“So your kind believes, and so it is if swallowed—though to die in that way might be better than lifd But once, between the full face of sisterworld and her next, a man may take the fresh leaves, and folding them tightly carry them in his cheek. Then there is no woman for him, nor any meat; he is sacred then, for God walks in him.”
“I met such a one,” Sandwalker said softly. “I would have killed him save that I pitied him.”
He had not meant to speak aloud and he expected the Old Wise One to be angry, but he only nodded. “We too pity such a one,” he said, “and envy him. He is God. Understand that he pitied you as well.”
“He would have killed me.”
“Because he saw you for what you are, and seeing felt your shame. But only once, until sisterworld appears again as she did, may a man search out the plant and pluck new leaves, spitting away then that which he has carried and chewed until it comforts him no longer. If he takes the fresh leaves more often, he will die.”
“But the plant is harmless as you use it?”
“All of us have been warmed by it since we were very young, and we are healthy as you see us. Didn’t we fight well? We live to a great age.”
“How long?” Sandwalker was curious.
“What does it matter? It is great in terms of experience—we feel many things. When we die at last we have been greater than God and less than the beasts. But when we are not great, that which we carry in our mouths comforts us. It is flesh when we hunger and there is no fish, milk when we thirst and there is no water. A young man seeks a woman and finds her and is great and dies to the world. Afterward he is never as great again, but the woman is a comfort to him, reminding him of the time that was, and he is a little again with her what once he was wholly. Just so with us until our wives that were are white when we spit them into our palms, and without comfort. Then we watch sister-world’s face to see how great the time has been, and when the phase comes again we find new wives, and are young, and God.”
Sandwalker said, “But you no longer look as we look now.”
