laughed at my brother, the doors of the ash house flew open wide and all the priests hurried out, not in procession with music, but in a crowd, wild, disordered, crying out aloud- “The house burns and falls!”
“The world dies!”
“God is blind!”
There was a moment of terrible silence in the city and then people began to wail and call out in the streets and from the balconies.
God came out of the ash house, Herself first, leading Himself, who walked as if drunk and sun-dazzled, as people walk after drinking smoke. God came among the staggering, crying priests and silenced them.
Then she said, “Hear what I have seen coming behind me, my people!”
In the silence he began speaking in a weak voice. We could not hear all his words, but she said them again in a clear voice after he said them: “God’s house falls down to the ground burning, but is not consumed. It stands by the river. God is white as snow. God’s face has one eye in the center. The great stone roads are broken. War is in the east and north. Famine is in the west and south. The world dies.”
He put his face in his hands and wept aloud. She said to the priests, “Say what God has seen!”
They repeated the words God had said.
She said, “Go tell these words in the quarters of the city and to God’s angels, and let the angels go out into all the country to tell the people what God has seen.”
The priests put their foreheads to their thumbs and obeyed.
When Lord Idiot saw God weeping, he became so distressed and frightened that he pissed, making a pool on the balcony. Haghag, terribly upset, scolded and slapped him. He roared and sobbed. Omimo shouted that a foul woman who struck God’s son should be put to death. Haghag fell on her face in Lord Idiot’s pool of urine to beg for mercy. I told her to get up and be forgiven. I said, “I am God’s daughter and I forgive you,” and I looked at Omimo with eyes that told him he could not speak. He did not speak.
When I think of that day, the day the world began dying, I think of the trembling old woman standing there sodden with urine, while the people down in the square looked up at us.
Lady Clouds sent Lord Idiot off with Haghag to be bathed, and some of the lords took Tazu and Arzi off to lead the feasting in the city streets. Arzi was crying and Tazu was keeping from crying. Omimo and I stayed among the holy people on the balcony, watching what happened down in Glittering Square. God had gone back into the ash house, and the angels had gathered to repeat together their message, which they would carry word for word, relay by relay, to every town and village and farm of God’s country, running day and night on the great stone roads.
All that was as it should be; but the message the angels carried was not as it should be.
Sometimes when the smoke is thick and strong the priests also see things over their shoulder as God does. These are lesser oracles. But never before had they all seen the same thing God saw, speaking the same words God spoke.
And they had not interpreted or explained the words. There was no guidance in them. They brought no understanding, only fear.
But Omimo was excited: “War in the east and north,” he said. “My war!” He looked at me, no longer sneering or sullen, but right at me, eye in eye, the way Ruaway looked at me. He smiled. “Maybe the idiots and crybabies will die,” he said. “Maybe you and I will be God.” He spoke low, standing close to me, so no one else heard. My heart gave a great leap. I said nothing.
Soon after that birthday, Omimo went back to lead the army on the eastern border.
All year long people waited for our house, God’s house in the center of the city, to be struck by lightning, though not destroyed, since that is how the priests interpreted the oracle once they had time to talk and think about it. When the seasons went on and there was no lightning or fire, they said the oracle meant that the sun shining on the gold and copper roof-gutters was the unconsuming fire, and that if there was an earthquake the house would stand.
The words about God being white and having one eye they interpreted as meaning that God was the sun and was to be worshipped as the all-seeing giver of light and life. This had always been so.
There was war in the east, indeed. There had always been war in the east, where people coming out of the wilderness tried to steal our grain, and we conquered them and taught them how to grow it. General Lord Drowning sent angels back with news of his conquests all the way to the Fifth River.
There was no famine in the west. There had never been famine in God’s country. God’s children saw to it that crops were properly sown and grown and saved and shared. If the ze failed in the western lands, our carters pulled two-wheeled carts laden with grain on the great stone roads over the mountains from the central lands. If crops failed in the north, the carts went north from the Four Rivers land. From west to east carts came laden with smoked fish, from the Sunrise peninsula they came west with fruit and seaweed. The granaries and storehouses of God were always stocked and open to people in need. They had only to ask the administrators of the stores; what was needed was given. No one went hungry.
Famine was a word that belonged to those we had brought into our land, people like the Tegh, the Chasi, the North Hills people. The hungry people, we called them.
The birthday of the world came again, and the most fearful words of the oracle-the world dies-were remembered. In public the priests rejoiced and comforted the common people, saying that God’s mercy had spared the world. In our house there was little comfort. We all knew that God Himself was ill. He had hidden himself away more and more throughout the year, and many of the ceremonies took place without the divine presence, or only Herself was there. She seemed always quiet and untroubled. My lessons were mostly with her now, and with her I always felt that nothing had changed or could change and all would be well.
God danced the Dance that Turns as the sun stood still above the shoulder of the sacred mountain. He danced slowly, missing many steps. He went into the ash house. We waited, everybody waited, all over the city, all over the country. The sun went down behind Kanaghadwa. All the snow peaks of the mountains from north to south, Kayewa, burning Korosi, Aghet, Enni, Aziza, Kanaghadwa, burned gold, then fiery red, then purple. The light went up them and went out, leaving them white as ashes. The stars came out above them. Then at last the drums beat and the music sounded down in the Glittering Square, and torches made the pavement sparkle and gleam. The priests came out of the narrow doors of the ash house in order, in procession. They stopped. In the silence the oldest dream priest said in her thin, clear voice, “Nothing was seen over the shoulder of God.”
Onto the silence ran a buzzing and whispering of people’s voices, like little insects running over sand.
That died out.
The priests turned and went back into the ash house in procession, in due order, in silence.
The ranks of angels waiting to carry the words of the oracle to the countryside stood still while their captains spoke in a group. Then the angels all moved away in groups by the five streets that start at the Glittering Square and lead to the five great stone roads that go out from the city across the lands. As always before, when the angels entered the streets they began to run, to carry God’s word swiftly to the people. But they had no word to carry.
Tazu came to stand beside me on the balcony. He was twelve years old that day. I was fifteen.
He said, “Ze, may I touch you?”
I looked yes, and he put his hand in mine. That was comforting. Tazu was a serious, silent person. He tired easily, and often his head and eyes hurt so badly he could hardly see, but he did all the ceremonies and sacred acts faithfully, and studied with our teachers of history and geography and archery and dancing and writing, and with our mother studied the sacred knowledge, learning to be God. Some of our lessons he and I did together, helping each other. He was a kind brother and we were in each other’s heart.
As he held my hand he said, “Ze, I think we’ll be married soon.”
I knew what his thoughts were. God our father had missed many steps of the dance that turns the world.
He had seen nothing over his shoulder, looking into the time to come.
But what I thought in that moment was how strange it was that in the same place on the same day one year it was Omimo who said we should be married, and the next year it was Tazu.
“Maybe,” I said. I held his hand tight, knowing he was frightened at being God. So was I. But there was no use being afraid. When the time came, we would be God.
If the time came. Maybe the sun had not stopped and turned back above the peak of Kanaghadwa.
Maybe God had not turned the year.
Maybe there would be no more time-no time coming behind our backs, only what lay before us, only what we
