The Crossing had become a new, engrossing game for the children. At night, shivering in the unseasonable weather, cool, but not cold enough to shield, they would sit looking up at the glory-frosted sky and pick out the star they wanted for a new Home, though they knew that none they could see would actually be it. Eve always chose the brightest pulsating one in the heavens and claimed it as hers. Davie chose one that burned steadily but faintly straight up above them. But when Lytha was asked, she turned the question aside and I knew that any star with Timmy would be Home to Lytha.
Simon usually sat by himself, a little withdrawn from the rest, his eyes quiet on the brightness overhead.
“What star is yours, Simon?” l asked one evening, feeling intrusive but knowing the guard he had for any words he should not speak.
“None,” he said, his voice heavy with maturity. “No star for me.”
“You mean you’ll wait and see?” I asked.
“No,” said Simon. “There won’t be one for me.”
My heart sank. “Simon, you haven’t been Called, have you?”
“No,” said Simon. “Not yet. I will see a new Home, but I will be Called from its sky.”
“Oh, Simon,” I cried softly, trying to find a comfort for him. “How wonderful to be able to See a new Home!”
“Not much else left to See,” said Simon. “Not that has words.” And I saw a flare of Otherside touch his eyes. “But Gramma, you should see the Home when the last moment comes! That’s one of the things I have no words for.”
“But we will have a new Home, then,” I said, going dizzily back to a subject I hoped I could comprehend. “You said-“
“I can’t See beyond my Calling,” said Simon. “I will see a new Home. I will be Called from its strange sky. I can’t See what is for the People there. Maybe they’ll all be Called with me. For me there’s flame and brightness and pain-then the Presence. That’s all I know.
“But, Gramma”-his voice had returned to that of a normal ten-year-old-“Lytha’s feeling awful bad. Help her.”
The children were laughing and frolicking in the thin blanket of snow that whitened the hills and meadows, their clear, untroubled laughter echoing through the windows to me and ‘Chell, who, with close-pressed lips, were opening the winter chests that had been closed so short a time ago. ‘Chell fingered the bead stitching on the toes of one little ankle-high boot.
“What will we need in the new Home, Eva-lee?” she asked despairingly.
“We have no way of knowing,” I said. “We have no idea of what kind of Home we’ll find.” If any, if any, if any, our unspoken thoughts throbbed together.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” said ‘Chell. “What will it be like? Will we be able to live as we do now or will we have to go back to machines and the kind of times that went with our machines? Will we still be one People or be separated mind and soul?” Her hands clenched on a bright sweater and a tear slid down her cheek. “Oh, Eva-lee, maybe we won’t even be able to feel the Presence there!”
“You know better than that!” I chided. “The Presence is with us always, even if we have to go to the ends of the Universe. Since we can’t know now what the new Home will be like, let’s not waste our tears on it.” I shook out a gaily patterned quilted skirt. “Who knows,” I laughed, “maybe it will be a water world and we’ll become fish. Or a fire world and we the flames!”
“We can’t adjust quite that much!” protested ‘Chell, smiling moistly as she dried her face on the sweater. “But it is a comfort to know we can change some to match our environment.”
I reached for another skirt and paused, hand outstretched.
” ‘Chell,” I said, taken by a sudden idea, “what if the new Home is already inhabited? What if life is already there?”
“Why then, so much the better,” said ‘Chell. “Friends, help, places to live-“
“They might not accept us,” I said.
“But refugees-homeless!” protested ‘Chell. “If any in need came to the Home-“
“Even if they were different?”
“In the Presence, all are the same,” said ‘Chell.
“But remember,” my knuckles whitened on the skirt. “Only remember far enough back and you will find the Days of Difference before the Peace.”
And ‘Chell remembered. She turned her stricken face to me. “You mean there might be no welcome for us if we do find a new Home?”
“If we could treat our own that way, how might others treat strangers?” I asked, shaking out the scarlet skirt. “But, please the Power, it will not be so. We can only pray.”
It turned out that we had little need to worry about what kind of clothing or anything else to take with us. We would have to go practically possessionless-there was room for only the irreducible minimum of personal effects. There was considerable of an uproar and many loud lamentations when Eve found out that she could not take all of her play-People with her, and, when confronted by the necessity of making a choice-one, single one of her play-People, she threw them all in a tumbled heap in the corner of her room, shrieking that she would take none at all. A sharp smack of David’s hand on her bare thighs for her tantrum, and a couple of enveloping hugs for her comfort, and she sniffed up her tears and straightened out her play-People into a staggering, tumbling row across the floor. It took her three days to make her final selection. She chose the one she had named the Listener.
“She’s not a him and he’s not a her,” she had explained.
“This play-People is to listen.”
“To what?” teased Davie.
“To anything I have to tell and can’t tell anyone,” said Eve with great dignity. “You don’t even have to verb’lize to Listener. All you have to do is to touch and Listener knows what you feel and it tells you why it doesn’t feel good and the bad goes away.”
“Well, ask the Listener how to make the bad grammar go away,” laughed Davie. “You’ve got your sentences all mixed lip.”
“Listener knows what I mean and so do you!” retorted Eve.
So when Eve made her choice and stood hugging Listener and looking with big solemn eyes at the rest of her play-People, Davie suggested casually, “Why don’t you go bury the rest of them? They’re the same as Called now and we don’t leave cast-asides around.”
And from then until the last day, Eve was happy burying and digging up her play-People, always finding better, more advantageous, or prettier places to make her miniature casting-place.
Lytha sought me out one evening as I leaned over the stone wall around the feather-pen, listening to the go-to-bed contented cluckings and cooings. She leaned with me on the rough gray stones and, snapping an iridescent feather to her hand, smoothed her fingers back and forth along it wordlessly. We both listened idly to Eve and Davie. We could hear them talking together somewhere in the depths of the koomatka bushes beyond the feather-pen.
“What’s going to happen to the Home after we’re gone?” asked Eve idly.
“Oh, it’s going to shake and crack wide open and fire and lava will come out and everything will fall apart and burn up,” said Davie, no more emotionally than Eve.
“Ooo!” said Eve, caught in the imagination. “Then what will happen to my play-People? Won’t they be all right under here? No one can see them.”
“Oh, they’ll be set on fire and go up in a blaze of glory,” said Davie.
“A blaze of glory!” Eve drew a long happy sigh. “In a blaze of glory! Inna blaza glory! Oh, Davie! I’d like to see it. Can I, Davie? Can I?”
“Silly toola!” said Davie. “If you were here to see it, you’d go up in a blaze of glory, too!” And he lifted up from the koomatka bushes, the time for his chores with the animals hot on his heels.
“Inna blaza glory! Inna blaza glory!” sang Eve happily.
“All the play-People inna blaza glory! Her voice faded to a tuneless hum as she left, too.