“What?” I demanded.
“When Leely was almost lost, back there in the Nodders …” She gulped, fell silent.
“You were frightened?” I suggested. “Panicky?”
She shook her head, a quick motion, a denial she could not admit even to herself. I read it.
“You thought he was gone. You felt … relief.”
“How could I!” She leaned upon her knees and wept, her shoulders heaving. “How could I?”
How could she not? How could she not feel as though a window in her soul had been cracked open upon joy. A gigantic relief, as though the solution to some painful problem had unexpectedly presented itself! As it had for me, to come on this journey.
“It was the shock,” she said firmly, raising her head and wiping at her eyes. “It was only the shock.”
So she slammed the door shut on her feelings, despite all Mama Jibia’s teachings. She would not allow herself to want him gone. No matter how she sagged beneath the burden of him, no matter how wearying his needs and demands, no matter the evenings like this when she wearied herself with minutiae so she could sleep, the deep heedless sleep of exhaustion, lying so drunken with sleep she could not worry over days to come; no matter all this, he was her son and she loved him!
So she said to herself as she rose to go within and be with him, leaving me at last in peace, now that I no longer wanted it.
The night was without incident. Trompe roused us at daybreak. By early afternoon we emerged from the last canyon onto the winding plain the map had shown as the site of the omphalos. Since leaving the Burning Springs, we had had on our left a small stream that occasionally surged over its banks in response to the rain that fell far away, upon the heights. I thought we would need to cross it between surges, but this proved to be unnecessary, for once out of the canyon, the stream relaxed into a gurgling, shallow brook that meandered in silken loops across the plain to join a considerable river flowing toward the south. According to the map, this river was the Tahs Ahlai, which is a Dinadhi way of saying, the future, or time to come. All waters, we say, run into the Tahs Ahlai. All lives run into the pattern.
We crossed the smaller stream with only minor difficulty. Gaufers do not like wet feet, and they had to be blindfolded to be led over. They could no doubt feel the wetness as well as see it, but evidently feeling it and seeing it were two different things. Lutha brought the last one across, pausing beside me to say, “It seems so natural to have them here.”
“Why wouldn’t they be here?” I asked, surprised.
“They are the first living animals I have ever seen, Saluez. The first I have ever touched!”
“There are no animals on Central?”
“None at all. No animals. No trees. No grassy meadows. No water running freely. It is a very different place from here.”
I gaped, unable to imagine it.
“Like one big building with many, many rooms,” she said softly. “Even the seas are covered over, for that is where our food is raised.”
I considered the gaufers, really seeing them for the first time. They smelled warm and earthy, their muzzles were soft and their bodies sleek. What would it be like never to see any living creature but one’s own kind?
“They think,” she said. “I was surprised at that.”
“Of course they think!”
“On a homo-normed world, we never consider that. We don’t consider animals at all, and certainly we don’t consider that they can think. But the gaufers … they have their own order of precedence, allowing them to interact without constant conflict. They have their own habits of alertness, one keeping watch while others eat, one standing apart, head high, while others drink. They have even a kind of sympathy, for when the lead left one injured his leg slightly, the others gave way and let him have the best spot to lie down.”
She had noticed more than I!
“They like to be scratched just behind the ears, for it’s an itchy place they have difficulty reaching for themselves. They do it for one another, turn about. They know each one of us. They don’t like Leelson and Trompe. Every time one of the men comes toward them, they make whuffing noises with their nostrils. They like you and me, Saluez, for they butt us with their heads as they do one another when they are content. Leely, they ignore. He climbs all over them and they seem not even to notice. Perhaps that’s the way they treat their own young.”
As we went on I thought about what she had said, for there had been something wondering in her voice, like a person under enchantment. Not that I have had much experience with enchantment, but our old stories are full of it.
We moved onto peaceful meadows where a soft wind tossed the grasses into long rollers of shaded silver, a placid, utterly beautiful landscape. This wide valley was green, all green, and I, too, began to feel enchanted at the wonder of it. I had never seen so much grass! It beckoned to be embraced, and I did so, pulling a plumy clump toward me, smelling the fragrance of it.
I turned to find Lutha beside me, holding out her hand. I took it. We stood so, smelling the grasses, while the wagon moved on. Her hand was warm in mine, and comforting. Finally we had to run, hand in hand, to catch up with the others.
We followed the river until it entered a steeply walled channel through a shallow rise, and there we turned a little eastward to climb the hill. Our view southward was blocked until we reached the top, but once there, a new world opened out. Canyon walls retreated on either side, leaving
