The Child Goddess Page 27

  Po asked Oa if the flyer was the transport, and she tried to explain to him how much larger a space-going vessel was. She reminded him of the stories of the ancestors, but he shook his head in confusion.

  Bibi asked why Isabel had no hair. Oa tried to explain, pointing to the Magdalene cross on Isabel’s breast. Isabel, sitting on the bent strut of the flyer, watched and listened. She kept her empty hands open on her knees, palms turned up. Jin-Li leaned against the hull of the flyer, arms folded, submitting to the searching gazes of the anchens.

  When a little silence fell, Isabel asked quietly, “Oa, are they all here? All safe?”

  “No, Isabel,” Oa said sadly. “Kikya is not safe.”

  “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

  “Kikya does not eat. Kikya stops—stopped—eating.”

  Isabel’s eyes darkened, and she touched her cross.

  “Kikya is in kburi. With Raimu-ke.” Oa pointed up the hill. The others, Po and Ette and Bibi and Toki and Malo, stiffened. Oa hastened to repeat to them, waving her hands for emphasis, that Isabel would never hurt Raimu-ke, that she would never hurt anyone or anything. She had said it all before, but she said it again, forcefully, as persuasively as she could.

  She had not slept at all. None of the anchens had. When at last they believed she was really Oa, really alive, they had touched her, had sniffed her, and then they had all clung together, laughing and crying at once. But it was so hard to make them understand where she had been, what she had learned. Even now she was not sure they understood, and she had found herself lapsing into English over and over again, winning blank and suspicious looks. They had little news to tell her. There had been no smoke from the three islands, no new anchens, in all the time she had been gone. She explained that the scanners could not find the people, and together, they tried to think how long it had been since there had been a white pillar of smoke marking the tatwaj. The tatwaj had been their only marker, the only way they could measure the passing of years.

  It was Ette who told the story of Kikya’s death. Kikya, the oldest surviving anchen, had simply stopped wishing to live. It was Kikya who had claimed he remembered Raimu-ke, and the anchens allowed Kikya to tell all the Raimu-ke stories. And now he lay with Raimu-ke in the kburi. Kikya would tell no more stories, and that saddened Oa. But finally, she could show Isabel the kburi. Now Isabel could know Raimu-ke.

  *

  THE MORNING LIGHT was brilliant, gilding everything, grass, treetops, green water, the polished black stones of the kburi. It imbued the scene, at the top of the island’s gentle cone, with a sense of theatrical presentation that was intensified by the silence of the anchens. Their bare feet rustled the grass as they climbed the hill. Once or twice they murmured to each other in treble voices.

  Isabel gazed at them in wonder. Like Oa, they appeared to be children. Their dark, smooth faces wore no sign of age, but many smudges of dirt. Some were bruised. One or two were taller than Oa, appearing to be twelve, perhaps thirteen years old. Several were smaller. One had a misshapen arm, as if it had been broken and never set. Another’s cheek was marked with a ridged scar, a jagged pale line against the dark skin. All were bone-thin, hollow-eyed, their curling black hair hanging about their shoulders. They wore ragged bits of clothing, little more than loincloths, all of some rude material Isabel suspected was pounded bark. The girls’ chests were flat. The boys had no hair on their bodies, only the slender, slightly swaybacked physique of prepubescent children. She counted fourteen of them, besides Oa.

  The kburi was a mound of rocks, a sort of cairn of volcanic stones. Each had been placed with care, the largest at the bottom, diminishing in size toward the top, about five feet from the ground. It sprawled to the sides, a hillock of ancient stones, worn in places as if stroked by a thousand reverent touches. She thought of the statue of the Virgin in the cathedral in Seattle, its gilded toes worn completely away by the hands of the faithful. And she saw the faces of the anchens around her, their dark eyes solemn, their lips moving in some litany as they approached the kburi. They stretched out their hands in a gesture that was clearly ritual, but their eyes shifted to Isabel and to Jin-Li even as they circled the little monument.

  Oa put one hand out in the ritual gesture and touched the stones. “Isabel,” she said softly. “This is the kburi of Raimu-ke.”

  The anchens stroked the piled stones, murmuring. One of them laid a small, closed shell and a few morsels of some white fruit into a hollow depression in the center of the kburi. It was, Isabel understood, an offering. A votive sacrifice.

  Jin-Li stood outside the circle, watching. Isabel noticed with gratitude that Jin-Li had not produced a wavephone, or in any way interfered with the moment.

  And it was a moment, Isabel thought. It was a moment of revelation, like the one her patroness had experienced so long ago. Mary of Magdala had raised her eyes from the ground to see that He who was dead had risen from the tomb, that hope was restored. Isabel Burke looked upon the kburi of Raimu-ke, and understood, in a way that was soul-deep and inexplicable, that it represented hope to the anchens. Their only hope.

  Isabel knelt before the kburi. Oa’s hand slipped into hers. Isabel closed her eyes, and let sensation flood her, not only through Oa’s fingers, but from this place that was sanctified by the prayers of the anchens. She felt love, and longing, and respect, and trust. She felt a powerful and desperate hope. And she felt, in a blinding rush like the moment she had first heard the call, faith.

  Time slipped away from her. She knelt on rocky ground before a crude tomb erected by a community of impossibly old children, and her heart swelled with gratitude. She felt the hand of God in hers, touching her through Oa’s slender fingers. She didn’t realize until she opened her eyes that tears were streaming down her face. The anchens gazed at her with wide eyes. Only Oa seemed to understand, to share the emotion that filled her whole being. Oa leaned close, touched her shoulder with her cheek, smiled with tremulous lips.

  When Isabel stood up at last, she found Jin-Li close behind her. “What is it, Isabel?” Jin-Li asked quietly. “What is the kburi?”

  Without hesitation, Isabel answered. “It’s a reliquary.”

  28

  “HOW DID YOU know?” Jin-Li asked.

  “It was a hunch.” Isabel’s smile was peaceful. Her eyes glowed crystal-bright in the morning light. “Or a leap of faith.”

  The anchens had led them down from the kburi by a winding path that followed the jagged rim of the lava field, skirted the woods, and ran along a low sandy ridge above the beach. Oa walked with Isabel, chattering occasionally with one of the anchens who looked back at her. She had named them for Isabel and Jin-Li, Po and Ette and Bibi and Likaki and Usa and others Jin-Li couldn’t remember. It was a much easier walk than the tortured one they had taken through the forest the night before. Jin-Li saw how deeply rutted the way was, and marveled at how many feet, for how long, had worn away the ground. The beauty of the morning was stunning, the sky clear and blue, the air sparkling, the moving water glistening as if strewn with emeralds. Sea birds cried their morning calls, dipping and soaring overhead.

  They sat now on the southern shore of the island, in the shade of a nuchi tree that tilted to the west, slanted by decades of eastern winds, its wide, horizontal roots making perfect benches. Oa sat with them, watching her old companions dig in the sand with their rusted knives. They brought out shellfish—pishi, Oa said—and dropped them into woven baskets.

  Jin-Li flicked on her portable, and gazed at the screen again. The stereotaxic image was fuzzy, but the outline was clear. At the base of the kburi, in a sepulcher of stone, was a small, perfect skeleton. Raimu-ke.

  “But why would they pray to her?” Jin-Li asked. “The offerings . . . the ceremony?”

  “The Sikassa practiced ancestor worship. Raimu-ke was the first anchen—the ancestor to the anchens.” Isabel lifted her face into the morning sunshine. “Most religions, Jin-Li, have a central, sacrificial figure. Raimu-ke is that for
the anchens.”

  Oa, crouching beside them with her arms around her knees, stared out at the anchens on the beach. She said quietly, “Anchens are asking Raimu-ke to become persons. To become like the people.”

  “But, Oa,” Jin-Li said. “How is an anchen different from a person?” Isabel turned, a look of surprise on her face. Jin-Li wondered if the question was somehow offensive. But before the words could be retracted, Oa responded, still gazing out over the peaceful scene on the beach. “Persons,” she said gravely, slowly, “have soul. Because persons—people—” Her hand grasped air as she searched for words. “Because babies are coming to the people. In the birth time. But babies are not coming to anchens.”

  Isabel put a hand to her forehead as if something had struck her there. “Oh, my lord,” she breathed. “Of course—oh, Jin-Li! You asked the right question. You’ve asked the question I should have asked.” She ran the hand over her bare scalp, and her eyes darkened to the color of stone. “I was stupid—too close, I suppose . . . emotionally involved. Not very scientific of me.”

  Jin-Li closed the portable. “Dumb luck, Isabel. I’m not an anthropologist.”

  “I wonder how long it would have taken me?” Isabel mused. “It’s so obvious. There were only three hundred of them, of the original colonists.”

  “You’re thinking of the gene pool.”

  “Yes, of course. And I should have thought of it before.”

  Oa said, “Co-lo-niss?”

  Isabel repeated the word. “Colonists. Your ancestors.”

  “An-ces-tors.”

  “Ancestors. Your mamah and your papi, and their mamah and papi, on back to the beginning.”

  “Back to Raimu-ke?”

  Isabel smiled. “Yes, sweetheart. Back to Raimu-ke.” And to Jin-Li, “The gene pool was too small. They needed babies, and lots of them, for the colony to survive.”

  Jin-Li looked out at the anchens working on the beach. “Those poor creatures. Never reaching puberty, never becoming fertile.”

  Isabel took Oa’s hand. “Yes. The anchens were . . .” She hesitated, and when she finished her thought, her voice was full of pain. “The anchens were useless to the Sikassa.”

  Oa leaned her cheek against Isabel’s knee. “Anchens are not people,” she said sadly. “Now you are understanding.”

  “I understand a little better, Oa. Someday you will, too. Anchens are people to me, and to Jin-Li, and to Doctor Simon. Precious people.”

  *

  IT WAS NOT going to be easy, Isabel thought. The old children were distrustful. Po was especially vigilant, watching Isabel’s and Jin-Li’s every move. He was the tallest and seemed to be a sort of leader. Oa chattered with him, her eyes flashing, and then she turned to Isabel to translate. “Po sees the flyers. He is thinking more are coming. More . . .” She squinted and tipped her head to one side, searching for words. “More of the bad men.”

  “Oa, they weren’t bad men,” Isabel said. “Only frightened men. They didn’t know you anchens were here, and they didn’t understand about the kburi.”

  Oa chattered more, and Po answered her, avoiding Isabel’s eyes, staring at his long-toed bare feet. He, and all the anchens, were bone-thin, their ribs showing, their cheekbones sharp. Even the aboriginal children in the Victoria Desert had not been so thin. But if they didn’t trust her . . . they certainly wouldn’t trust a flood of people, Gretchen Boreson, Paolo Adetti, Jacob Boyer. Simon.

  “Oa,” Isabel said. “Doctor Simon wants to come to the island. Will that frighten Po, and the others? One flyer, with a pilot, and only Doctor Simon.”

  “Oa likes Doctor Simon.”

  “I know, sweetheart. Can you explain to Po?”

  Oa nodded and turned away, pulling Po’s arm to make him follow her. She led him down to the water’s edge, where the anchens were digging with their long black knives. Isabel knew that one of those knives had caused the death of a Port Forceman. She saw how deft the anchens were with them, and she shuddered at what might have happened to Gretchen.

  A child would thrust a knife beneath the surface of the sand, and then leap back while two or three others, waiting on their knees, scrabbled through the sand with their fingers. They came up with something small in their hands that they threw into a waiting basket, then poised themselves for another thrust of the knife. When Po and Oa reached them, they stood up, gathering in an uneven circle to listen to Oa.

  Isabel watched her talking to them, her little hands flashing in the air. She looked very different from Bibi and Ette and the others. She had grown plumper, her cheeks full, her skin glossy. Though her shirt and shorts were torn and dirty from her trek through the forest, her hair shone in the clear light. Good food, rest, and nurture, Isabel thought. These were the gifts she had to offer the other old children, if they would accept them.

  The rising midday heat seemed to mean nothing to the anchens, but Isabel was glad to be in the shade. Po and Oa left the circle and trudged back up the hot sand. The rest of them closed the lid to their basket, and two of them carried it between them, following Po. They squatted on the sand before Isabel and Jin-Li, Po and Oa in the forefront.

  “Isabel, anchens are liking Doctor Simon,” Oa said. “But anchens are not liking—” She made a shape with her finger and thumb.

  “Shock gun,” Isabel supplied. “You want Doctor Simon to come without weapons.”

  Oa nodded vigorously. “Wea-pons. Yes, Isabel. Doctor Simon is coming, only Doctor Simon. Not weapons are coming.”

  Jin-Li said, “I’ll call Doctor Simon on the wavephone. I’ll tell him.”

  Oa turned to chatter to the anchens. Isabel watched their faces, trying to remember the names she had learned. The small, quick one was Bibi. Ette was a girl with one blind eye, the pupil gray and blank. Simon might be able to repair it, if the child would allow him to treat her. Usa had use of only one hand. Likaki hung slightly back from the others, shy and quiet. All were marked with the rows and rows of tattoos.

  Jin-Li tucked the wavephone away. “Isabel. Simon found the vector.”

  Isabel caught her breath. “He did? Are you certain?”

  “Not positive. He sounded guarded. I’d guess Adetti was there, so he didn’t want to say too much. He said he could be here in a couple of hours. I don’t think he’d leave the work half-done.”

  “No. He’s very disciplined, our Simon. ”

  Isabel turned thoughtfully back to the anchens. The girl called Ette was kneeling beside a flat rock. She laid an ovoid, brown-shelled fruit on the rock and struck it with a triangular stone. Another of the anchens, a naked boy whose name Isabel had missed, squatted beside Ette with another of the fruit shells in his hand, apparently dried and hollowed. When a grayish juice spilled out of the fractured shell, he caught it deftly in the hollow one, and passed it to the others. They drank, one by one, handing it from one to the other. In the end, it came to Oa, and she took a sip, and turned with the shell in her hands.

  “Isabel. This is nuchi, very good. You are drinking?”

  Isabel accepted the shell. Jin-Li murmured, “This should be okay. They use it in the meal hall.”

  The juice of the nuchi had a mildly sweet taste, rather like watered milk. It dried Isabel’s tongue but was not hard to swallow. She smiled at Oa. “It’s good.”

  “Yes,” Oa said. “Is very good.”

  Jin-Li, too, drank, and passed the shell back to Oa with a nod of approval. Oa’s white smile flashed as she pointed to the lidded basket. “Now you are having pishi!”

  Jin-Li laughed aloud. “Who knows what this will to do us?”

  “Oh, well. I have to try it.”

  Ette was dicing the flesh of the nuchi with the triangular stone, and handing out bits of the white fruit to the anchens. Bibi lifted the lid of the woven basket, and Po bent to spill a dozen or so reddish shells out onto the sand. The anchens each took one, using stones to pry them open. With their thumbs and forefingers, they scooped out the meat inside, and dropped it into th
eir mouths. They chewed unself-consciously, mouths open, eyes on Isabel and Jin-Li.

  Po, all arms and legs and long, thin neck, opened a shell with one deft slice and held it out on his palm, offering it to Isabel.

  She glanced at Oa, and Oa grinned. “Is good, Isabel. Is pishi.” She took one for herself, popped open the shell, and slid the inner flesh into her mouth. She chewed, speaking around the mouthful, patting her stomach through her shorts. “Oa likes it.”

  Isabel smiled at Po, and accepted the offering. As Oa had, she slid her finger under the morsel inside the shell, and it popped out, quivering pinkly on her palm. Not giving herself time to reconsider, she put it in her mouth and bit down.

  The texture, she thought, would take some getting used to. But the flavor was salty and rich, almost buttery. She chewed, and swallowed, and then smiled at Po. “Thank you, Po,” she said. “I like it.”

  Oa chattered a translation. Po held out another pishi to Jin-Li. Jin-Li ate without hesitation, nodding appreciation. “Oysters,” she said to Isabel.

  “Sort of, I guess.” They both ate a little of the nuchi fruit as well, which had a bland, starchy taste. The anchens watched every movement.

  When one of them spoke, they fell silent, listening, and they gazed openmouthed at Oa when she spoke English.

  Isabel realized after a time that the anchens were inching closer to them, almost imperceptibly. They still squatted or knelt in the sand, but they fidgeted, moving their feet or their knees, and soon she found herself in a little knot of them, their nostrils flaring, their eyes sliding back and forth between herself and Jin-Li. Isabel smiled around at them, and Jin-Li squatted beside her.

  It was the sparrowlike Bibi, moving with darting, precise motions, who first touched Isabel. She put out a short-fingered hand, the nails chewed to stubs, and stroked Isabel’s bare calf. Isabel held very still, hardly breathing. Another of the anchens, Likaki, touched her arm. Po laid a hand on Jin-Li’s short hair. All the anchens were sniffing, heads turning this way and that like puppies, as if the scent of the two strangers was the most important element in understanding them. They crowded closer, tumbling gently over each other, stepping on each other’s bare feet, reaching to feel the strangers’ skins with their fingers, snuffling whatever scent it was that rose from them to inform the anchens of what they were.