At about an hour after the noon, another Sandwalker appeared at the rim of the pit, and stood a long time looking down. Sandwalker, in the pit, stared up at himself. Then men, the big men of the meadowmeres with their scars, brought a long liana, and holding one end of this woody vine flung the other down. “That one,” said the Sandwalker who stood in the high place, and he pointed to the real Sandwalker.
Sandwalker shook his head. No.
“You are not to be sacrificed—not yet. Climb up.”
“Am I to be freed?”
The other laughed.
Then if you would speak to me, Brother, you must come down.”
Eastwind looked at the men holding the liana, shrugged in a way that was half a joke, and with his hands on the vine slid down. “I wish to see you better,” he said to Sandwalker. “You have my face.”
“You are my brother,” Sandwalker said. “I have dreamed of you, and my mother told me of you. Two of us were born, and at the washing she held me and her own mother you. The marshmen came and forced your name from her mother’s mouth that they might have power over you, then killed her.”
“I know all that,” Eastwind said. “Lastvoice, my teacher, has told me.”
Sandwalker hoped for some advantage by drawing their mother into the talk, so he said, “What was her name, mother? Your mother, whom they drowned? I have forgotten.” But Cedar Branches Waving was weeping and would not answer.
“You are to be killed,” said Eastwind, “that you may carry our messages to the river, who tells the stars, who tell God. Lastvoice has warned me that there may be some danger to me in your death. We are, perhaps, but one person.”
Sandwalker shook his head and spat.
“It is an honor for you. You are a hill-boy like ten others—but in the stars you will be greater than I, who learn to read the instructions the river writes God.”
“You are really not so much like me,” Sandwalker said, “and you have no beard.” He touched his lip where the bristles were beginning to sprout. Unexpectedly the girl Sweetmouth, who had been (with Leaves-you-can-eat and old Bloodyfinger) watching them silently, began to giggle. Sandwalker looked at her angrily and she pointed at Eastwind, unable to contain her laughter.
“When I was an infant,” Eastwind said. “We bind those things tightly with a woman’s hair, and they putrefy. It is not painful, and only a few of those who will be starwalkers die. I had wished to say that Lastvoice has warned me that we are one. You will die before I, and go to the river and the stars. I am not afraid of that. In my dreams I shall float with you in places of power; I came to tell you that in your dreams you may yet walk as a living man.”
A voice from the rim of the pit hailed Eastwind. “Scholar of the Sky, there are more. Do you wish to come up?”
Sandwalker looked up and saw the small forms of Shadow children, hemmed on three sides by the marshmen.
“No,” said Eastwind. “If I am not afraid of these—these are at least men—should I fear those?”
“Perhaps,” Sandwalker said.
The Shadow children came tumbling down the soft slope. In the bright sunlight they looked far smaller than they had by night, bloodless and crook-legged. Sandwalker thought real children looking so would soon die.
“We will soon die,” one of the Shadow children (Sandwalker was not certain which) said. “And be eaten by these. You too.”
Eastwind said: “The ritual eating of gifts given the river is very different from feasting, little mock-men. We shall feast on you.”
The marshman who had called to Eastwind, apparently a man of some importance among them, announced from his place at the rim, “Five, Scholar of the Sky.” He rubbed his hands. “And there’s no sweeter meat than Shadow child’s.”
“Six,” Eastwind corrected him.
“This pit was not dug by hands,” said one of the Shadow children. Several of them were by now poking about, sifting the fine sand through their fingers.
“These are your followers,” Eastwind said to Sandwalker. “Would you care to explain their new home to them?”
“I would if I could, but no one knows why the world is as it is, save that it conforms to the will of God.”
“Learn, then, where you stand. Here—a few hundred paces east—the river widens forever. It is as a stem widens to the flower, save that the flower of the river, which is called Ocean, widens without limit.”
“I don’t believe it,” Sandwalker said.
“Don’t you understand yet? Don’t you know why the river exceeds in holiness both God and the stars? Why children at the beginning of their lives must be washed by it, and its waters muddied with the blood of the very starwalkers should a star fall? The river is Time, and it ends at this sacred place in Ocean, which is the past and extends forever. On the east bank, where the ground is low and the water sometimes sweet and sometimes salt, is the Eye, the great circle from which the starwalkers go forth. On this west bank it has pleased Ocean to build this Other Eye to contain the gifts that will in time be his. Lastvoice, who has thought much on all things, says that the hands of Ocean, which strike the beaches forever, draw forth the sand on which we stand even as more slips down to replace it—having been returned by him to the beaches. Thus it is that The Other Eye is never empty and can never be filled.”
“We wash our children in the river,” Sandwalker said, “because it signifies the purity of God. The root-earth of the trees, their fathers is still upon them and should be washed away. As for the rest of your nonsense, I think it no better than that about our being the same person.”
“Lastvoice has opened the bodies of women…” Eastwind began, then seeing the disgust on Sandwaiker’s face he turned on his heel, grasped the liana, and signaled the men waiting to pull him up. At the rim he waved briefly and called, “Good-by, Mother. Good-by, Brother,” then was gone.
Old Bloodyfinger said in his snarling voice, “You might have got something from him—but he won’t be back.”
Sandwalker shrugged and said: “Do they let us go up to drink? I’m thirsty and there are no pools in this place.”
There was no shade either, but the Shadow children were lying down on the side of the pit which would be shaded first, curling into small, dark balls. Bloodyfinger said, “About sundown they’ll throw down stalks that don’t have much flavor but a lot of iuice. That’s all the drink you’ll get. All the food too.” He jerked a thumb at the Shadow children. “But butchering those vermin would give us food and juicy drink. Three of us, five of them, that’s not bad, and they won’t fight well while the sun is high.”
“Two of you, six of us. And Leaves-you-can-eat won’t fight if I fight him.”
For a moment Bloodyfingers looked angry, and Sandwalker remembering those big fists, readied himself to dodge and kick. Then Bloodyfinger grinned his gap-toothed grin—“Just you and I, huh, boy? Bruising each other while the rest watch and yell. If you win, your friends eat, and if I do—why they come for me after dark. No. In a few days you’ll be hungry—if any of us are alive. I’ll talk to you again then.”
Sandwalker shook his head, but smiled. He had been driven all night by his captors and had spent the morning struggling with the slipping walls, so when Bloodyfinger turned away he scooped a place in the sand near the Shadow children and lay down. After a time the girl Sweetmouth came and lay beside him.