Across the meadow one of Rillibee’s red and blue pet parrots called over and over to itself, “Songbird Chime. Joshua Chime. Miriam Chime. Stella …”
Marjorie turned back to the pages once more.
When mankind thought that his was the only intelligence and earth was his only place, it was perhaps fitting to believe that each man had individual importance. We were all there was. Like frogs, each thinking its own puddle was the center of the universe, we believed that God worried over us each of us. Strange that we should realize Pride is a sin yet still be willing prey to such arrogance.
We had only to look around us to know how foolish the idea was. Where was the farmer who knew each of his seeds by name? Where was the beekeeper who labled his bees? Where was the herdsman who distinguished among individual blades of grass? Compared to the size of creation, what were we but very small beings, as bees are small, as seeds of corn are small, as blades of grass are small?
And yet corn becomes bread; bees make honey; grass is turned into flesh, or into gardens. Very small beings are important, not individually but for what they become, if they become….
The Arbai failed because they did not become. Mankind almost failed. We squatted on Terra almost too long. We left only because we had ruined our planet and had to leave or die. Then, once we had swarmed far enough to find new homes, we let Sanctity stop us from going on. ‘Fill up the worlds,’ it said. ‘Go no farther. Take no risks.’ And we went no farther. We took no risks. We grew. We multiplied. We did not become….
A trill came from behind her. She did not need to turn to know who was there. He touched her neck as delicately as a leaf fall, a claw barely extended, the tiniest prick.
“Now?” she breathed.
He dropped her pack on the ground beside her.
She wavered. “I haven’t said goodbye to Tony, to Stella!”
Silence.
She had said goodbye. Every hour of the past season had been goodbye. Father James had given her his blessing only this morning. There was nothing left to say. He touched her once more.
“I must finish this,” she said, bending above her letter.
… We did not become. We did not change.
But change must come. Risk must come. God knows there are enough of us that we can afford some losses! Why else are we so many? And though the grass be numberless as stars, there must still be a first shoot set out to make a garden….
She had not said goodbye to Persun. Perhaps better that she not say goodbye. Considering everything….
One of the foxen and I are going on a journey. No one knows whether we will arrive anywhere or be able to return. If we do not, someone else will, eventually. There are enough of us that we may go on trying, as long as it takes.
His claw touched her again, teasingly.
She sorted through the pages, setting them in order, knowing they wouldn’t tell Rigo what he wanted to hear or even what she wanted to say. There was no time to write another letter, and what could she express otherwise? Perhaps, if things had been different along the way, Rigo would have been with her today. He had chosen to go back. She had chosen to go on. There was no blame in either choice.
She looked up at the city, seeing the wind-thrown shadows move among sun-dappled trees. The letter could be left here in the desk. Tony or Rillibee would find it and see that it was sent. She had never intended her departure to be ceremonial.
Now, He said like a trumpet. Now. There were others with Him, a great many others. Whether Marjorie had intended ceremony or not, the foxen had come to say farewell.
She wrote the last few words and signed her name, as she knew it, wondering whether Rigo would be relieved that she had gone or annoyed that she was past pursuit. What use would he make of these pages? She set the desk on Mainoa’s grave. Duty was done, but there were still promises to keep.
They were all around her. She mounted the familiar mirage and arranged herself. A hundred yards away, the Arbai transporter glowed with bubble light, nacreous glimmers, a veil of mystery within the loop. There was only one way to test it: by going through. Decorum, she told herself as they approached. One should go toward one’s destiny with decorum.
“Marjorie,” she said aloud, voicing the last words she had written so she could hear how they sounded. He did not know her as Marjorie. This might be the last time she heard her name.
Marjorie,
by the grace of God, grass.
Amen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sheri S. Tepper was born in 1929 in Denver, Colorado, and has lived in Colorado all her life. She worked in the administration of a multi-state non-profit organization until her retirement in 1986. Currently, she divides her time between writing and—in association with the American Minor Breeds of domestic livestock and poultry on a ranch in the foothills of the Rockies. She is married, has two adult children and one grandchild.
In the few short years Ms. Tepper has been publishing, she has written over a dozen novels which have garnered the respect and admiration of both readers and critics. In addition to After Long Silence, her works include The Gate to Women’s Country, Grass, The Awakeners (published in two volumes as Northshore and Southshore), Beauty, (winner of the Locus award for best fantasy novel), Sideshow, A Plague of Angels and Shadow’s End. Her latest novel is Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.
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