The Dying Light

DEBORAH BIANCOTTI

Deborah Biancotti’s first published story won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short. She’s also a Ditmar Award-winner and a previous attendee in both the Year’s Best Australian SF & Fantasy and Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror. Her work has appeared in Eidolon 1, Ideomancer, Orb, Borderlands, Shadowed Realms, infinity plus, and publications from Ticonderoga and Agog! Deborah lives and works in Sydney. She can be found online at http: //deborahbiancotti.net and http://deborahb.Iivejournal, com.

“I’ve been looking for a new mythology of mortality. I didn’t know that then, though. All I knew was that there was a blind man pointing at the stars and a young girl beside him. Both were looking for something. I started to wonder about the different kinds of blindness and, in particular, the idea of willing blindness. It’s something I’m still exploring, in other stories.”

* * * *

A

nu fell, twisted his ankle, fell again and kept falling. He rolled, grabbed at the ground and came away with handfuls of dirt. The mountain known as Old Man was steepest here. His face slammed against rocks and he swallowed gravel trying to scream. Earth and sky were both black and impossible to keep apart in his mind.

His ankle snagged a sapling and he roared, spinning so that he fell head-first over a precipice into deeper night. One hand shot out for the sapling and found it in the dark, gripped it hard so that he swung in space.

The grit in his mouth tasted of blood. He tried to spit it out, dribbling it onto his chin instead. Carefully he took a breath, afraid the air in his lungs would make him too heavy for the sapling. His heart beat in his ears, and his face was hot and numb though the air on his bare skin was cold. His arms had hollowed out from shoulder to fingertip and his fingers had grown fat. Too fat, he was sure, to hold on.

His mother would be angry. She would say he was careless, that just because he hadn’t found the story of his dying in the stars yet, still it didn’t mean his dying couldn’t find him. She would call him foolhardy.

“Until you have the foretelling,” she would say, “and can see what is held for you by the constellations above your foolish head, you should be careful.”

What would she know? Anu had grown old enough for doubts but not for certainties. Just old enough to distrust his mother’s advice. Not old enough, so he’d thought, for death.

“Help me! Please. Please.”

He was crying, and embarrassed by it. The emptiness in his limbs had been replaced by an ache. Above him, the constellation known as the Sickle gleamed, its five points as familiar to him as his own skin. He counted its stars over and over, trying to ignore the trembling in his elbows, trying to hold on until help arrived.

“Onetwothreefourfive, onetwo…”

Something had changed. There was a sixth star now, its light strengthening as he watched. And then he realized something. His entire life, he’d been looking at the Sickle wrong, because surely that sixth star told a different story. He knew what it was. He knew what he had found.

The foretelling.

This was it, this was the thing he’d searched for before he’d even known to search. Everything in the sky and under it began to make a new sense.

The Sickle blurred and danced and between it and him appeared the face of the Messenger. Just like his mother had promised. He almost laughed in recognition. He let this new knowledge fill him up and it was like he took those stars and put them inside himself and he was warm. He was whole. He had found it. He had found his dying.

He let go of the branch and fell.

Do you think that Father’s really blind?

I heard he went blind from grief.

I heard he’s faking.

* * * *

“Today in class, Nisi found her dying at last. Everyone was pleased for her because her foretelling showed that she would have a long life. Time enough for children and for grandchildren, they said. Maybe even great-grandchildren.”

“Her family must be pleased.” The old man beat out a soft rhythm on the ground with his palm, his sightless eyes fixed on the empty air.

They sat in the shade of an outcrop in front of a cave, on the side of the Old Man. He was sprawled so his feet alone were in the sun, and now and then he’d rub his toes against each other, or along his insteps. He was bare except for a cloth wrapped around the tops of his legs. The girl was bare too, since she was young, and she sat beside his knee with her legs drawn up beneath her, careful not to touch him.

“Yes, everyone is happy,” she said. “Nisi says it makes her very marriageable.”

The old man laughed deep in his throat. He rubbed brown dirt across his shinbone and nodded, his toothless smile swinging this way and that.

“Very marriageable, yes. Nisi must be eight now, yes? Time enough for marriage and children, I should think.”

His cackle turned to silence and after a while Shobe asked, “Did you ever find your dying, Father?”

He wasn’t her father, but the term was one of respect and he nodded acceptance. Shobe edged closer in return, and looked to where his fingers folded over one knee. Father was very old, and his skin was soft and thin. Even his hands were soft. Blindness had saved him from hard work. The rest of the tribe didn’t particularly resent him for that, but nor did they love him, and perhaps it was this that had driven him to move to the far side of the mountain and out of their sight.

“Never did, no, never saw it. Not even when I had eyes that worked. But,” he sighed, scratched at his neck, leaving ochre streaks, “I was young when I was blinded. Same sickness that took my sight took my mother’s life, did you know? They say when she saw her dying at last - because she was very old, and already with another child in her womb - that she went to the valley and wept tears enough for a lake, and her tears were pure, not made of salt. That valley is where Lake Begoan sits now.” He nodded, his head loose on his neck. “Imagine their surprise, when they went to look for her and found an entire lake! Now the lake has fish. Animals come to drink. Her grief feeds the whole tribe.”

Shobe hesitated. This story opened many questions in her mind, but she was careful not to irritate the Father, so she tried to ask just one.

“Do you remember what it’s like? I mean, to see? To see anything; not just your death, but anything. Do you…”

Her voice dried up. She wanted to ask if he remembered colours and trees and whether he knew the kinds of animals that came to the lake. She wanted to know whether he understood any of these things himself, or whether all his knowledge had become only words given him by others. She imagined him asking ‘what is a devil?’ and someone explaining it, describing the thick neck and heavy teeth, and describing the colour grey. Recounting how it would slurp water under its whiskers. She wondered how the devil would look when the storyteller was done, whether it held together in the Father’s mind. Or whether there would always be gaps when he thought about a devil, like gaps between symbols marked on the walls of a cave, the devil no weightier than the marking that meant it.

But she resisted asking, because this Father was called Frail, and his bones were thin like reeds beneath skin that sagged and hung loose. His belly protruded like a fat thumb, and his chest, almost concave, rested on top.

His hands lay at his groin like abandoned cups now, the skin partly translucent as if he were made of muddy water. She almost wanted to check his neck for a pulse, but couldn’t bring herself to touch him. She feared the coolness of his skin and the sourness of his old man’s breath. He stirred then, straightening his back and sighing.

“I remember…” he began, as if no time had passed at all. “I remember the moon and my mother. I remember someone - her, perhaps - teaching me the constellations that lie in the darkness over our heads.” He raised his hand and made the shape of an arrow with his fingers, pointing to the sky. “She taught me the Sickle and the Horned Bull. She taught me winged Oberon and the Nascent Triplets, their hands reaching across the horizon. She tried to help me find my foretelling, but I never saw my dying, not once. It wasn’t my time, and then the virus caught me up. No one could see that coming for me. My mother saw her dying and she understood how the loss of a mother would affect a child. In the end, I’m not sure which loss she felt worse, hers or mine.”

His hand fell back to the ground, slack skin by his armpit trembling. “I kept my blindness from her. I was young, but already I knew that without the use of my eyes I could never follow the lessons. Still she asked whether I’d found my foretelling. And because she wanted that so much, I told her yes, I’d seen my dying. She asked me to tell her the story of it and I lied and said I would have a long life. Or, I thought I lied. In the end it has turned out to be true.”

Shobe was still, because it seemed there was more to be told.

“In the mind’s eye she is no more than a shadow,” he said. “But bright like light. I try to catch her face and there is only white. Like the moon.”

Shobe watched the afternoon light stretch the shadows of Father’s feet. Soon it was evening. Father couldn’t see the world with his eyes, but he must have sensed it with his skin. When the time was right he said, “Off you go to class,” and she went.

I guess the telling helps.

I guess. Maybe it helps you feel like you own it.

Why would you want to own it?

* * * *

Nisi was there, and Teka, Gef, all the others. Mama Teacher had already started the lesson and didn’t acknowledge Shobe’s tardiness, not with a glance or a movement. She did the same when Fe arrived even later. Fe made a point of going to the front and sitting at Mama’s feet, staring up at her, almost daring Mama to say something. Fe’s long hair (nut brown by daylight, but now dark like deep waters) hung to her waist, and when she bent herself almost into a ball her hair brushed the ground.

Shobe sat at the back. She was restless, like always, and couldn’t focus on the lessons.

“Now,” said Mama Teacher. “There are two ways to eat. The found way, like ours: what is hunted, what is discovered on land, in water or air, that is ours to eat. But there is also the made way: what is grown and kept and built and counted. Those that follow this way say it is earned or owned.”

“Kept on purpose?” asked Gef.

Mama nodded. She was sitting in what they called the beehive, though it had never held bees. It was a dirty brown bubble big enough for half a dozen grown-ups to climb inside. It had twin holes like staring eyes, and Mama was sitting in the one on the right, her feet dangling just above the ground. The eyes went all the way through the beehive and out the other side, and inside were soft, rotten shapes that looked almost a little human. Mama called these ‘seats’, but she didn’t sit on them because sharp coils stood out like twisted teeth.

“But how can both those ways be equal?” Nisi asked. She leant back on her hands and stuck her feet out in front of her, crossing her ankles and rolling them from side to side. She tossed her hair off her shoulders - though it was nowhere near as beautiful as Fe’s - and smiled conspiratorially around her, meeting the gaze of no one in particular. She at once commanded attention and despised it.

Yesterday, Nisi had been merely vain. But now she’d found her foretelling, she was also smug. Shobe wrapped her arms around her knees and hid her sneer behind her legs. She felt bad for her negative thoughts, but also right. She tried to tell herself that Nisi deserved to know her story, that perhaps she’d been studying the stars for hours every night, but she didn’t believe it. Nisi wasn’t patient and meditative the way the children were schooled to be when searching the constellations. The foretelling had come to her unearned.

“Why must they be equal?” Mama asked.

This was her way of teaching, this questioning and reflecting. It was said that when Mama Teacher was little, her parents had called her a nag. She had found her place, though. Surely everyone did eventually.

Nisi had shrugged as if the question were beneath her and trained her gaze on her toes, ignoring Mama.

Fe said, “Because both are ownership. Finding and making.”

Mama Teacher nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps, yes,” she said, still not looking at Fe. “Our way is to exist side by side with things. The plant or animal gives what it is able, and so we have. We take what is available. The animal or plant is not beneath us.” (Here Shobe noticed a meaningful glance at Nisi.) “But to some people and in some ages, things had to bend to your will. They had to be controllable. A thing was made to give. That is what ownership meant. In some ages, even people could be owned.”

“By who?” This from Gef.

“Other people.”

Mama Teacher didn’t correct him and tell him to say ‘by whom’, but Shobe was sure she thought it, just as Shobe herself did. Gef would learn in time, if he listened hard enough to what others said, and no doubt Mama Teacher trusted this tradition of learning to correct him on such a minor point.

Still, Shobe was pleased she knew better. At the same time, she wondered what worlds of knowledge were still out there for her, what she didn’t know and hadn’t thought to guess. Sometimes this way of learning frightened her for all it must be leaving out. It made her afraid to open her mouth, in case others found what she didn’t yet hold in her mind.

“Why would people want to own people?” Gef again. In the moonlight his skin was oil-blue and he sat on ground only a little darker than himself. He had a body wrap that went from his neck to the tops of his thighs and seemed almost fluid. Only the outline of his arm beside his waist gave him shape.

Fe turned to Gef and said, “So you can make other people do your work, so you can rest and they can bring you food as if you were a baby and they were your mother.”

“Very good, Fe,” Mama Teacher said, and smiled, the blue-whites of her eyes squeezing up.

Shobe couldn’t see Fe’s face, but no doubt she smiled, too, at this blessing from Mama.

Teka, who was the youngest though not the smallest, said then, “The days and nights when they owned people, were they the same as the age of machinery?”

“They overlap, yes, and perhaps one fed the other,” said Mama. “Once the idea of owning machinery was born, perhaps they concluded plants, animals and also people could be owned. Or perhaps it was their attempts at owning people that made them build machinery.”

“Perhaps people can’t be owned very well, and so machines were made because they could be better owned,” Gef offered.

“Machines would be more compliant,” Nisi said.

The others looked about in confusion, and waited for Mama to add to this.

“Yes, machines were probably more compliant than people. If machines worked now, perhaps we would know this, but as we see…”

Here, Mama gestured around her at the beehive.

“The car,” said Teka.

“Good, the car. It’s said it moved, though it has no legs with which to do so. See?” Mama leaned forward and looked between her feet, brushing the long grass aside so the children could see there were indeed no legs.

Under the eyes of the car were two long shapes, hard, like pared branches. The branches were dark red-brown in the daylight, and left flakes and smears of colour on the children’s hands if they touched them. They rested on square piles of sand-coloured blocks, which crumbled and left no colour. They had discussed the possibilities of the car many times, and none had come up with an answer as to how the car could move on those branches and blocks. Perhaps one day someone would be born with sight enough to discover the secrets of the car.

Shobe leant back and rested on her straight arms. She looked up at the stars, at their blinking, shrugging indifference, and wanted, almost, to plead with them to show her what kind of dying to expect so she could begin to prepare herself. It was said by some that when the stars told stories it was like music, sweet sounds like streams made of amber, and some stars had voices like birds, except richer. Shobe wasn’t sure she believed these stories, though Nisi tried to make out that she’d heard every one herself. For Shobe, as always, the stars were silent.

Teka broke the quiet when she said, “What’s ‘compliant’?”

What do yon see?

Nothing. Darkness.

Darkness isn’t nothing.

* * * *

The discussion wound through many subjects that night. Mama told them about agriculture, and how it was possible to own water. (Though how could you control water? Shobe couldn’t understand that; water would go where it wanted.) She talked about art that was made and kept and some people said what could be art and what couldn’t, and where it could be kept and who could keep it. Shobe grew bored of such fanciful stuff and anyway, why was it important? What did those ages have to do with anything now? When finally Mama called for quiet time a few hours before dawn, all the children were grateful to lie back and study the constellations. Shobe focussed on Wind Caller, which seemed to hang over just her, accusing her with its long pointed beak. She glared back, almost daring it to come down and take her. Frail Father had told her one day a particular constellation might call to her, and that it might be this very one that would eventually reveal the secrets of her dying, but the sky was so busy with constellations that all any of it did was confuse her.

Closer to dawn, Mama said, “Perhaps we have time for one story. Who would like to tell?”

Nisi was cross-legged and leaning forward, but when Mama finished speaking, she straightened up with a sly smile and said, “I could tell you about the night I found my dying.”

Some of Shobe’s classmates rolled their eyes, the whites flashing like falling stars. Mama laughed. They were all good-humoured though, and Shobe had to hide her face so they wouldn’t see the scowl there.

“Nisi,” said Mama. “That was only yesterday. Are you sure it is a story worth telling already?”

But Nisi nodded and got to her knees. “It is a story now, and my mother says it will be a better story with each telling.”

Mama Teacher grinned and nodded. “She’s very smart, your mother. Perhaps it is never too soon to tell your story.”

“It would be better with fire,” said Teka.

“Next time, when we have a fire, Nisi will tell it then, too, and it will be better,” Mama agreed. “But tonight we will also listen to the story as it is. Begin when you’re ready, Nisi.”

Nisi cleared her throat, the way a real grown-up might, and began.

They say knowing your death means you can quit worrying

and settle into having a good life.

But what if it’s not a good death?

* * * *

NISI’S STORY

It was a day and a night like any other. My mother, Mama Home, had been gathering corn and wildseeds. We were coming along the track that goes to and from the river and, as we came along the top of the mountain, I saw Frail Father’s feet sticking out into the sun. His feet are darker than the rest of him, so I always know it’s him when I see his dark feet and his paler legs. And also he is the only one to ever sit there, of course.

Seeing Frail Father, so old, always makes me wonder at his dying. So I asked Mama to tell the story of the first time she’d found her dying. So she told me again, though I’ve heard it many times. And though I was behind her and the wind whipped away some of her words and left gaps in her telling, I knew the story well enough that I could fit the gaps with words from my own memory.

She said it was a day and night like any other for her, too, and she was a young woman, older than me, when she first saw it. She looked to the constellation of Small Bears like she did each night, and there it was: a new star between the paws of the third and fifth bears, paler than all the rest. And above the ears of the fourth bear was a star that had been there forever, but had always seemed wrong. Like it was lost. Suddenly it made sense.

Mama Home said, “I realized why it had felt wrong, why I had wanted to erase it from the sky for messing up the Small Bears. It was because that pattern was my dying, and it told me my death would be painful and long. I didn’t like the message. Perhaps that’s why it took so many years to see it.”

Mama Home cautioned me that I may take a long time to find my own dying, too, and that I mustn’t fret that the constellations were not always compliant.

“Is it better not to know, Mama?” I asked her.

“No, it is always better to know, because then you don’t waste time trying to find out. You don’t bother trying to rush your death, or to avoid it. You’re able to move towards acceptance. It’s just that sometimes knowing isn’t good, either, and acceptance is difficult.”

I asked if her death was at least a long way off, and though she always said yes, this time the wind pulled her answer away from me, and I saw her how her head towards the wildseeds in her hands. Her shoulders slumped and I didn’t ask again.

That very night we had fresh water and corn cooked on coals in the ground and while we ate I looked up at the Silver Gryphon and saw it. I understood that pattern was just for me and I had found my story at last, as it appears in the stars. It was my foretelling. It said my death was many, many years away and it was a good death and perhaps it was so far away that my children and children’s children would live long enough to see it.

I rushed to tell my parents. Papa Home was pleased for me and told me I could choose any husband I wanted with a story like that, it was such a happy future. Mama hugged me and when she thought I wasn’t looking, she wiped away tears.

My home parents are very happy to be bonded, though I wonder sometimes what it took for my father to choose my mother when her death is known to be such a difficult one.

So, when you’re older, do you become more afraid of death, or less?

* * * *

“Did you see the Messenger?” Teka asked.

“Stupid,” said Gef. “You only see the Messenger when you’re really dying.”

Mama Teacher broke in, “Thank-you, Nisi. That is an accomplished story.”

“Mama,” said Fe. “Has anyone ever lied about their death?”

“Of course some have tried. One, Falla, tried to conceal her early death and choose a man with a good foretelling, but in the end her guilt drove her to grief and she drowned herself in Lake Begoan rather than face him again.”

“Did she see her drowning in the stars? Why couldn’t she avoid it?”

“Avoidance won’t take it away,” Mama said quietly. “When she was ready, Falla followed her constellation to the lake. No one thought to go after her, because they believed her death was a long way off. It was only when she didn’t return that night they realized her falsity and they were very angry she’d lied.”

The children were quiet.

“So you see,” said Mama. “No matter what choices you make or what plans you think you can control, there is one story in the sky for each of us. It is why we use the found way. Because we accept we can’t control what’s most important in life. We can’t control our dying.”

Shobe pressed her lips together and rocked on her heels, avoiding Mama’s eye. She hated this passivity. She wanted to know why nobody raged against their deaths, why they didn’t fight and scream out at the inevitability, hanging like a precipice in front of each one of them. But she said nothing. Once before she’d asked Mama Teacher these questions, but Mama had merely replied that it was only those who had not yet found their dying who could feel such fear and make such arguments.

“Once recognition is reached, acceptance is the only possible course,” Mama had said then. Just like she was saying now. “It is the found way.”

Nisi was asking, “What do you think will happen to Father Frail?”

Mama paused. Nobody had said it out loud, but Shobe knew they were all wondering if, being sightless, somehow he would avoid death altogether. He had lived a long time, longer than anyone else in the tribe. Perhaps it was possible that he would go on living, forgotten by the stars, his death lying unseen and unused somewhere in the sky.

“Some say,” Mama began carefully, “that the real story of dying lies not in the constellations, but in our selves, and it is just that the stars release this inner sight. If this is the case, then perhaps Father Frail knows more than we realize.”

Some of the children sniggered at this, since many people believed that if Father Frail was a burden, he must also be a fool. Mama cut them off, saying, “If you can’t see the purpose in another, it may be because you lack purpose yourself. Each of us has the power to help others. But I think that’s a story for another time. Good night, children.”

Shobe ran from the class back towards the mountain. On the way, she realized what it was that had been nagging at her during the entire lesson.

Anu.

He hadn’t been in class for two nights.

Why lies’ Everyone will know eventually. There is nothing

more honest than death.

Desperation. Arrogance, maybe.

Don’t those words both mean ‘fear’?

* * * *

The next day, Frail Father was in his place, his toes curled around each other in the sun. He seemed to be staring out at where the boys were playing catch at the foot of the mountain, but of course he couldn’t see that far, and it was only because Shobe’s eyesight was so young that she could make out the children with any level of detail. She looked back at the father and wondered what went on behind the grey-whites of his eyes.

He turned at the sound of her light steps on the path.

“Did your mother give you any food to bring?” he asked.

Shobe shook her head. “Sorry.”

“Ah, it’s you. Never mind,” his eyes crinkled good-naturedly, but Shobe was ashamed. It was true, she never brought anything with her.

She took a seat silently at his knees and watched the children’s game. Some of the girls had joined in now, and they were all intent on throwing a small, white object to each other. From this distance it was difficult to make out what the object was, but its size and colour suggested the skull of a small animal. They were covered in dirt and scratches, but they had broad grins across their faces and each one of them squealed in terror and delight when the skull was nearly dropped.

Beside her, Father Frail appeared to be dozing, listing sideways on one arm, mouth slack against his shoulder. She wasn’t sure why she chose to be here instead of with the other children, except that she felt sorry for him. No one else was interested in his stories any more and he received little company.

When he stirred at last, bending his elbow as if in pain and shaking the sleep from his opaque eyes, Shobe asked, “Do you stay awake nights and sleep days, like the rest of us?”

Father chuckled. “I wake and sleep when I want,” he said. “Night, day is nothing to me. Hardly any difference, except night is cooler. But what I see and think is the same at any time.”

It was a strange idea, that night and day could be so similar, when at night all the world of stories lay in the sky above their heads, to be blotted out by the dawn. Father rubbed at his elbow, wincing. His breath rattled while he did it and he sought to correct it by coughing. He wiped his mouth and sighed, leaning back against the rock of the Old Man.

Shobe found herself wondering again whether he really had outlived his death. She didn’t like to watch his labour with life. She wanted to pass on Mama Teacher’s lesson, that he could look inside himself for the sight denied him in life, but somehow it seemed disrespectful to play teacher to a man so old.

She’d grown protective of him. The other children mocked him and called him a skinny good-for-nothing. He was only skinny because he couldn’t fetch for himself. They should see it as a sign of their own shame that they didn’t feed and keep him better. But many adults said this was not the found way, to fetch and carry for someone else. You were meant to rely on yourself, what you could find and bring.

Shobe’s thoughts went around and around in her head. Father startled her when he asked, “How are your lessons?”

“Last night,” she began, speaking quickly to cover her embarrassment, “we discussed ownership and agriculture, and Nisi told the story of her foretelling.”

Father cackled. “Already? She’s keen. She’ll be a good story-teller.”

“Why did you never become a teacher, Father? You know many stories, and then people…”

She trailed off. She’d been about to say people wouldn’t dislike him so much if he could give something back, but she knew there was something wrong with the thought.

“People…?” Father asked, but didn’t press her for an answer. “People learn when they are ready, and it is easier to be ready when you find a teacher you respect. Many people are not ready to respect a blind man. Which is your teacher now, Mother or Father?”

“Mama. Mother, I mean.”

Father Frail nodded. “That’s fine.” He was silent again, his dry feet rasping against each other.

The children playing catch had wandered close to the precipice and were looking down. Shobe knew they felt safe, because these ones had all already found their foretellings. They thought they were invincible.

“Their parents should teach them about injury,” Shobe murmured, not meaning to say it out loud.

“I’m sure they do,” Father said, though he couldn’t know what she meant. “And about responsibility. To the group, to the families. They should know not to cause grief, and that grief can come from hurt as well as death.”

Father Frail must be speaking generally, she decided, but her attention was on the children below. They were pointing down the mountain, and a nervous energy worked through them. She wished they would move back from the edge, but the biggest boy leaned out even further. He rested on a bent sapling, tipping over the precipice until a friend grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. One of the girls raced away toward the gathering plain, leaving the others holding onto each other and staring down the mountain.

“Not long now, then,” Father Frail said.

Shobe tensed. “For what?”

“For Weki,” Father said, and was silent again. Eventually he began to snore.

Shobe didn’t ask who Weki was.

The girl had brought Papa Gorge back with her. He looked over the edge just once, then he too turned and ran, seeking more help. Anxiety prickled Shobe’s skin, pulling her ribs in tight. She stayed in the cave, waiting for Papa Gorge, waiting out the sun.

Gorge returned with two others. Mama Temple had brought reeds tied into rope. They walked a way around the precipice, then tied the reeds to Gorge and lowered him slowly down the mountain. Papa Able and Mama Temple held the ropes and shouted at the children to stay away from the edge if they knew what was good for them.

When Gorge returned he had a long, dark bundle with him. Mama Temple reached out and, as they transferred the bundle between them, Shobe realized what it was.

Anu. His skin blackened, his head lolling. He looked as though he’d been burned. Dark sooty smudges covered his skin. Even from here she could see his mouth hung open and his eyes were closed. Mama Temple gathered his body to her, pulling his head against her neck as if comforting him.

Shobe leaned against the smooth wall of the cave, unable to look away from the small procession below. They walked slowly. Next they would have to return the boy to his family, and clearly they didn’t want to meet that moment. The tribe would be gathering for evening meal by now, but there would be little eating done that night. All deaths were determined, but not all deaths were easy to accept.

Papa Able ushered the children before him, allowing them to cling to his arms. They kept their eyes on Mama Temple, on Anu, his face buried against her neck. Mama kept one hand on the back of Anu’s head and she seemed to be consoling him.

Shobe watched the figures retreating, taking their time. When they were nearly out of sight, she stood and silently left the cave, following them. She didn’t want to be part of what would happen next, but to avoid it would be selfish. She should be there to bear witness with the others.

As she picked her way down the slope, she reflected that she’d known nothing much about Anu except his name. He was like many of the younger children, always throwing themselves at the edge of things, thinking their deaths were lifetimes away. She wondered if Anu had been lucky enough to find his dying before the end. She wondered if Father Frail had known about him, whether he’d been able to hear the boy cry out and if he had, whether he’d gone to help, or had wanted to help but hadn’t been able to reach over the edge of that precipice, being blind.

Just before she reached the gathering place she remembered who Weki was. Home Mother to Nisi. And Anu.

Do you really think that, for all their searching, some people

simply never find their stories?

No. No, I don’t think that. Do you?

* * * *

Weki was feeding kindling to the cooking fire when they reached her, but even the crackle of the flames seemed to dim when she looked up and saw what they carried.

“My son,” she said into the silence, and her voice held the kind of certainty that comes from waiting just one moment too long. “My son.”

The tinder fell from her lap as she rose and stepped forward. Straight into the fire.

Those gathered nearby were slow to react, their gazes fixed on the returning group. Possibly it was the smell of burning skin that woke them. Only Father Lakeside had presence of mind enough to turn to Weki and, seeing her already within the circle of fire, to reach for her arm. Weki twisted away from him and tipped forward, falling further into the flames. Kindling snapped beneath her as she hit the ground, but her eyes never left her son’s body.

At first she seemed to feel nothing. She got to her knees and the flames licked along her back to her hair, lifting and curling it as if she would be carried away on its fiery strands. She tried to shake the flames off, reaching a hand to her forehead absently. She seemed lost. Then her eyes locked with Shobe’s, standing apart from the rest of the group. Her vision cleared and she began to scream.

Shobe stepped back involuntarily, stuffing her hands against her own mouth to stifle a cry.

Weki strove to stand, but the logs beneath her rolled. She stumbled and this time when she fell she snapped her forearm on the rocks bordering the fire.

The others were immobile, even Father Lakeside. Fire was a power they had stolen from the sky. They were afraid and ashamed of it. The only one to move at last was Weki’s husband, Lito. He picked up a log and hit her so that she was pushed beyond the edge of the flames and as he did so, he shouted to match her screams, tears spilling from his eyes.

Weki rolled, clutching at her arm, screaming and burning still. No one helped her. No one knew how. When she stopped moving she was burned from head to toe and her long hair was ash around her. Her voice had fallen to a croak.

They took her home and lay her on a mat, where her skin swelled and oozed and stuck to the floor. She spoke no more words after that, and they weren’t sure whether it was the fire or grief that closed her throat.

Nisi crouched by, wrapped in her father’s arms, tears dripping from her chin. Her crying drowned out the condolences of the neighbours. Mama Teacher stood at the opening to the cave, some of the students pressed against her. No effort was made to protect them from the knowledge that this was one of Death’s many faces. It was believed that no child was too young for this lesson.

Weki hadn’t even died yet, but Shobe could hear people discussing the funeral. She didn’t like this too-public dying. She wanted to scream at everyone to get out of the way and leave the grief to the family, but she was always silent in crowds. The habit had become as strong as stone.

Most people had left by the time Nisi’s sobs gave way and she whispered, “Mama never told me it was to happen already.”

Already.

Living with all this dying, thought Shobe, was like dying already.

And then she knew.

The knowledge drilled into her spine and into her knees. She ran all the way back to Father Frail’s place on the side of the Old Man and there was a hollowness in her ears and forehead. Frail’s blank eyes were focused keenly on the space by the front of the cave where she came to rest. He’d been waiting.

She was sobbing, furious, wiping fiercely at the tears on her face.

“I thought I couldn’t live with not knowing, but Father, I can’t live with knowing,” she shouted.

Father Frail said gently, “What is it you know, child?”

“I know why I have never found my dying in the stars, why the sky seemed so busy with so very many stories, and none of them made any sense. It is because my death is everywhere already. There is nothing in the world for me but my dying.”

With no death to find outside herself, Shobe had looked within and seen that this was the only answer, the only possible way forward.

Unthinkingly, she edged closer to Father Frail and put a hand to his arm. She was surprised to touch him at last. His skin was dry and cool and she could feel it just as if she were alive. Father patted her hand and smiled, his eyes not quite meeting hers.

“Father,” she said. “I have already started my dying.”

She glared, willing him to prove her wrong, to give her some other explanation for this, this thing, this terrible, awful injustice she’d found.

He was still stroking her hand, tracing patterns on the back of her palm.

“Give me your telling, child.”

Shobe was self-conscious. Her story was grotesque and unfair and speaking it would only confirm that. She wanted to resist, but the words came out of her like heat.

“It was a day and a night like any other. My own Mama Home said I was too young yet, much too young to find my dying in the stars. She said, when you’re ready, you’ll be able to see. She said there was no point staring, that the stars weren’t even out yet and if I stared too much in the sun I’d go blind like that boy with the virus. That boy…” here she paused and looked at Father Frail and saw, for the first time, something other than his age. Saw the story of his life in the pores of his skin.

Father Frail chuckled, a dry, rasping sound.

“Are you only as young as all that, child?”

Shobe continued. “Mama said it wasn’t a virus that blinded him - you, Father - it was all the searching he did, hunting for his foretelling amongst the constellations when he was much too young. This is the found way, she said, to learn patience and to wait until a thing is given. She said all that seeking and not finding had sent him mad, and all he could do was sit and talk to ghosts, and that’s why people were afraid of him. Why he spent much of his time alone on the far side of the Old Man.”

“Did you stop searching?”

“No.”

“Of course.”

“I didn’t stop; I wanted to know. Mama Teacher - I mean, the Mama Teacher I had before my dying, because it was a Mama Teacher then, too - said it is given to some to always seek. I was proud she thought that of me, that I had a place, and I wanted to prove I was ready, that I was grown-up enough. I was bored with children’s things. So I was staring at the sky as the evening star appeared. And I knew, that day, that this was my star. That my death was clean and immediate. Not even a pattern. Just one star. It was so bright and big I thought it would eat up the whole world. It seemed to explode and I thought at first the forest had turned to fire. I stood up so I could run and warn the others, because I was afraid the evening star would kill all of them that day, every one. But when I tried to take a step, my legs buckled and I realized that the fire was in my heart. I knew what the star was saying, that my heart had burst already.”

Shobe took a breath to steady herself, “Somehow it feels as though it was the very act of seeing my death that caused it, Father. It’s so strange, to see it and feel it at once.”

Tears were still rolling down her cheeks and she found that strange, too, that she could cry yet.

“Dying is hard work, child, but we all find our way eventually.”

Father Frail lay back against the rocks and rested his head, his chin pointing to the ceiling of the cave. He sighed.

“Father, if I’ve been passing through my dying all this time, does it mean that you are the Messenger? The one sent to guide us at the moment of death?”

Father’s voice was whisper-thin. “Have I been your guide, child? Strange to think that, when all this time you have been mine. I suppose…”

But he was silent. Shobe found the truth inside herself. She said to him, closing his lids against his bare eyes, “I suppose,” she continued, “we all guide each other, Father. The Messenger is not one of us; it is all of us.”

Do the stars ever lie?

Does it matter, once the story is told?