The People

"I have it," I said. "At least I have an idea. Go tell Carla I've gone for them. Tell her not to worry."
"Blessings," said Neil, his hands quick and heavy on my shoulders. "You and Thann have always been our cloak against the wind, our hand up the hill-" And he was gone toward Tangle-meadows and Carla.
You and Thann-you and Thann. I was lifting through the darkness, my personal shield activated against the acceleration of my going. Even Neil forgets sometimes that Thann is gone on ahead, I thought, my heart lifting to the memory of Thann's aliveness. And suddenly the night was full of Thann-of Thann and me-laughing in the skies, climbing the hills, dreaming in the moonlight. Four-ing with Carla and Neil. Two-ing after Gathering Day. The bittersweet memories came so fast that I almost crashed into the piny sighings of a hillside. I lifted above it barely in time. One treetop drew its uppermost twig across the curling of the bare sole of my foot.
Maybe Timmy's right! I thought suddenly. Maybe Simon and the Oldest are all wrong. How can I possibly leave the Home with Thann still here-waiting. Then I shook myself, quite literally, somersaulting briskly in mid-air. Foolish thoughts, trying to cram Thann back into the limitations of an existence he had outgrown!
I slanted down into the cup of the hills toward the tiny lake I had recognized from Lytha's thought. This troubled night it had no glitter or gleam. Its waves were much too turbulent for walking or dancing or even for daring. I landed on a pale strip of sand at its edge and shivered as a wave dissolved the sand under my feet into a shaken quiver and then withdrew to let it solidify again.
"Lytha!" I called softly, Questing ahead of my words.
"Lytha!" There was no response in the wind-filled darkness, I lifted to the next pale crescent of sand, feeling like a driven cloud myself. "Lytha! Lytha!" Calling on the family band so it would be perceptible to her alone and Timmy wouldn't have to know until she told him. "Lytha!"
"Gramma!" Astonishment had squeezed out the answer.
"Gramma!" The indignation was twice as heavy to make up for the first involuntary response.
"May I come to you?" I asked, taking refuge from my own emotion in ritual questions that would leave Lytha at least the shreds of her pride. There was no immediate reply.
"May I come to you? " I repeated.
"You may come." Her thoughts were remote and cold as she guided me in to the curve of hillside and beach.
She and Timmy were snug and secure and very unhappily restless in the small camp cubicle. They had even found some Glowers somewhere. Most of them had died of the lack of summer, but this small cluster clung with their fragile-looking legs to the roof of the cubicle and shed a warm golden light over the small area. My heart contracted with pity and my eyes stung a little as I saw how like a child's playhouse they had set up the cubicle, complete with the two sleeping mats carefully the cubicle's small width apart with a curtain hiding them from each other.
They had risen ceremoniously as I entered, their faces carefully respectful to an Old One-no Gramma-look in the face of either. I folded up on the floor and they sat again, their hands clasping each other for comfort.
"There is scarcely time left for an outing," I said casually, holding up one finger to the Glowers. One loosed itself and glided down to clasp its wiry
feet around my finger. Its glowing paled and flared and hid any of our betraying expressions. Under my idle talk I could feel the cry of the two youngsters-wanting some way in honor to get out of this impasse. Could I find the way or would they stubbornly have to
"We have our lives before us." Timmy's voice was carefully expressionless.
"A brief span if it's to be on the Home," I said. "We must be out before the week ends."
"We do not choose to believe that." Lytha's voice trembled a little.
"I respect your belief," I said formally, "but fear you have insufficient evidence to support it."
"Even so," her voice was just short of a sob. "Even so, however short, we will have it together-"
"Yes, without your mothers or fathers or any of us," I said placidly. "And then finally, soon, without the Home. Still it has its points. It isn't given to everyone to be-in-at the death of a world. It's a shame that you'll have no one to tell it to. That's the best part of anything, you know, telling it-sharing it."
Lytha's face crumpled and she turned it away from me.
"And if the Home doesn't die," I went on, "that will truly be a joke on us. We won't even get to laugh about it because we won't be able to come back, being so many days gone, not knowing. So you will have the whole Home to yourself. Just think! A whole Home! A new world to begin all over again-alone-" I saw the two kids' hands convulse together and Timmy's throat worked painfully. So did mine. I knew the aching of having to start a new world over-alone. After Thann was Called. "But such space! An emptiness from horizon to horizon-from pole to pole-for you two! Nobody else anywhere-anywhere. If the Home doesn't die-"
Lytha's slender shoulders were shaking now, and they both turned their so-young faces to me. I nearly staggered under the avalanche of their crying out-all without a word. They poured out all their longing and uncertainty and protest and rebellion. Only the young could build up such a burden and have the strength to bear it. Finally Timmy came to words.
"We only want a chance. Is that too much to ask? Why should this happen, now, to us?"
"Who are we," I asked sternly, "to presume to ask why of the Power? For all our lives we have been taking happiness and comfort and delight and never asking why, but now that sorrow and separation, pain and discomfort are coming to us from the same Power, we are crying why. We have taken unthinkingly all that has been given to us unasked, but now that we must take sorrow for a while, you want to refuse to take, like silly babies whose milk is cold!"
I caught a wave of desolation and lostness from the two and hurried on. "But don't think the Power has forgotten you. You are as completely enwrapped now as you ever were. Can't you trust your love-or your possible love to the Power that suggested love to you in the first place? I promise you, I promise you, that no matter where you go, together or apart if the Power leaves you life, you will find love. And even if it turns out that you do not find it together, you'll never forget these first magical steps you have taken together towards your own true loves."
I let laughter into my voice. "Things change! Remember, Lytha, it wasn't so long ago that Timmy was a-if you'll pardon the expression-'gangle-legged, clumsy poodah that I'd rather be caught dead than ganging with, let alone two-ing.'"
"And he was, too!" Lytha's voice had a hiccough in it, but a half smile, too.
"You were no vision of delight, yourself," said Timmy. "I never saw such stringy hair-" "I was supposed to look like that-"
Their wrangling was a breath of fresh air after the unnatural, uncomfortable emotional binge they had been on.
"It's quite possible that you two might change-" I stopped abruptly. "Wait!" I said. "Listen!"
"To what?" Lytha's face was puzzled. How could I tell her I heard Simon crying. "Gramma! Gramma!" Simon at home, in bed miles and miles
"Out, quick!" I scrambled up from the floor. "Oh, hurry!" Panic was welling up inside me. The two snatched up their small personal bundles as I pushed them, bewildered and protesting ahead of me out into the inky blackness of the violent night. For a long terrified moment I stood peering up into the darkness, trying to interpret! Then I screamed, "Lift! Lift!" and, snatching at them both, I launched us upward, away from the edge of the lake. The clouds snatched back from the moon and its light poured down onto the convulsed lake. There was a crack like the loudest of thunder-a grinding, twisting sound-the roar and surge of mighty waters, and the lake bed below us broke cleanly from one hill to another, pulling itself apart and tilting to pour all its moon-bright waters down into the darkness of the gigantic split in the earth. And the moon was glittering only on the shining mud left behind in the lake bottom. With a frantic speed that seemed so slow I enveloped the children and shot with them as far up and away as I could before the earsplitting roar of returning steam threw us even farther. We reeled drunkenly away, and away, until we stumbled across the top of a hill. We clung to each other in terror as the mighty plume of steam rose and rose and spilt the clouds and still rose, rolling white and awesome. Then, as casually as a shutting door, the lake bed tilted back and closed itself. In the silence that followed, I fancied I could hear the hot rain beginning to fall to fill the emptiness of the lake again-a pool of rain no larger than my hand in a lake bottom.