Otherwise (38 page)

THE FIRST CRYSTAL

MANY LIVES

FIRST FACET

A
sleep?

No. Awake. I was told to close my eyes. And wait, he said, till you’re asked to open them.

Oh. You can open them now … What do you see?

You.

Am I …

You’re like … a girl I know. Taller. Are all the angels tall?

What else do you see?

This grass we sit on. Is it grass?

Like grass.

I see the sky, Through your roof of glass, oh, angel, can it be?

It is.

I’m here, then. Here. He was right, that I could come here … Angel! I see the clouds below us!

Yes.

I’ve found you, then. I’ve found the greatest thing that was lost.

Yes. We were lost and you found us. We were blind, and you made us see. Now. You can only
—
stay
?a short
time, so …

What is it you want from me?

Your story.

That’s all I am, now, isn’t it: my story. Well, I’ll tell it. But it’s long. How can I tell it all?

Begin
at the
beginning;
go on till you reach the end. Then stop.

The beginning…. If I am only a story now, I must have a beginning. Shall I begin by being born? Is that a beginning? I could begin with that silver glove you wear; that silver glove, and the ball … Yes, I will start with Little Belaire, and how I first heard of the glove and ball; and that way the beginning will be the ending too. I would have to start with Little Belaire anyway, because I started with Little Belaire, and I hope I end there. I am in Little Belaire somehow always. I was created there, its center is my center; when I say “me” I mean Little Belaire mostly. I can’t describe it to you, because it changed, as I changed; changed with me as I changed. But you’ll see Little Belaire if I tell you about me—or at least some of the ways it can be.

I was born in my Mbaba’s room. My Mbaba is my mother’s mother, and it was with her mostly that I spent my baby years, as the custom is. I remember Mbaba’s room better than any other of Little Belaire’s thousand places; it was one that never changed, whose boundaries stayed the same, though it seemed to move from place to place as I grew up, because the walls and rooms around it were always being changed. It wasn’t one of the oldest rooms, the old warren built by St. Andy that is the center of Little Belaire (tiny rooms of porous-looking square-cut gray angelstone, the old rooms where all secrets are kept); nor yet was it one of the airy, nonexistent rooms of the outside, with light translucent walls that change every day and fade into the woods till Little Belaire ends without a sign and the world begins. Mbaba’s was on the Morning side, not far from Path, with walls of wood and a dirt floor covered with rugs, and many beetles and once a blacksnake that stayed nine days. And skylights that made it gleam in the mornings as though moist and fade slowly in the evening before the lamps were lit. You can see Mbaba’s room from the outside, because it has a little dome, and on its sides red-painted vents that wave in the wind.

It was afternoon, in late November, when I was born. Already nearly everyone had revolved back into the close warm insides of Little Belaire, and went out rarely; smoke and food had been laid up for the winter season. In my Mbaba’s room my mother sat with my Mbaba and Laugh Aloud, a gossip and a famous doctor too. They were eating walnuts and drinking red raspberry soda when I started to be born. That’s the story I have been told.

The gossip named me Rush that Speaks. I was named for the rush that grows in water, that on winter days like the day I was born seems to speak when the wind goes through its dead hollow stem.

My cord is Palm cord, the cord of St. Roy and St. Dean. A lot of Palm cord people have names about words and speaking. My mother’s name was Speak a Word; my Mbaba’s name was So Spoken. There are hand names too—the cord is Palm, after all—like Seven Hands and Thumb. Since I have always been Palm, the Little Belaire I can tell you of is Palm’s and is like my cord. But ask someone of Leaf cord or Bone cord and he’d tell you about a different place.

The silver ball and glove. I was seven, and it was a day in November; I remember, because this was also the first day I was taken to see a gossip, as that happens in the time of year when you were born, when you’re seven.

Inside Mbaba’s room, the vents in the little dome made a soft clack-clack-clack above my head. I watched Mbaba climb down the rope ladder that hung from a door set in the dome; she was coming back from feeding the birds. A sparrow flew in with her, fluttering noisily against the skylights and dropping white droppings on the rug below. It was cold this day I am telling you of, and Mbaba looked out from a thick shaggy shawl that ended in clicking tassels, though her feet wore only rings.

My mother had told me that Mbaba was growing solitary, the way old people do; and it was true that as I grew up, Mbaba came to spend most of her time in this room. But she wasn’t ever really alone. Because around the walls were Palm cord’s carved chests, of which Mbaba was the keeper. The carved chests are like—like honeycombs. What they are most like is Little Belaire itself: interrelated, full of secrets, full of stories. Each of the hundred drawers is marked with signs and carved in a different shape, depending on what’s in it: each drawer was designed to hold just what it holds in the chest and to tell things about it: how it came here, what it has done, and what stories it can tell. Mbaba was never alone, because of all the souvenirs in the drawers of Palm cord’s carved chests.

I lay naked under the thick rugs on Mbaba’s bed, watching and listening. Mbaba, talking to herself, went around the room; she pressed one long finger to her collapsed toothless mouth, as though trying to remember something. She gave it up and came to busy herself about the pipe. The pipe in Mbaba’s room is old and very beautiful, made of green glass, shaped like an onion, and hung on chains from the dome above. There are four stems hung around it in loops, woven in bright colors like snakes; and there is a metal bowl at the top in the shape of St. Bea’s head, her mouth wide open to accept the chips of St. Bea’s-bread.

Mbaba struck a match and held it lit in one hand while with the other she filled St. Bea’s mouth with blue-green chips of bread from her barrel. She touched the match to the bread, took down one of the long stems, and inhaled; a dark bubble ascended from the bottom of the pipe to the top above the liquid level, where it burst and let out its smoke. Above the metal mouth ropes of thick, rose-colored smoke twined up around the chains, ascending to the dome; all around Mbaba was a rosy mist, the smoke coming from her nostrils and mouth. The smell of St. Bea’s-bread is a good smell, dry and spicy, toasted, warm, a smell with a lot of insides. It doesn’t taste like it smells; it tastes … like everything. Like anything. All at once. It tastes like other things to eat: dried fruit sometimes, or sour grass, or hazelnuts. And charred wood too, and dandelions; grasshopper’s legs; earth, autumn mornings, snow. And thinking of it then and smelling it made me jump out of bed with the rug around me and run across the cold floor to where Mbaba motioned to me, grinning. I wriggled down next to her; she grunted as she took down a stem of the pipe for me. And so we two, me and my mother’s mother, sat and smoked and talked.

“When we wandered,” Mbaba said, and a bubble of laughter rose inside me because she was going to tell when-we-wandered. It could have been any story on this morning, because Mbaba knew as many stories as there were things in the carved chests, but this is the one she told:

“When we wandered, and this was a great long time ago, before any now alive were thought of or their cords thought of or even Little Belaire itself thought of, St. Andy got lost. St. Andy got lost seven times when we wandered, and this was one of the times. He got lost because he had to pull St. Roy’s wagon and the treasures of Big Belaire that were kept in it, and the whole of our fires burning where people sat to warm themselves. St. Andy’s wagon was a source of great amazement to them, even though they couldn’t figure out how to get a lot of the drawers open. St. Andy would have liked to sit down and warm himself too, and maybe have a bite to eat, but he was kept busy by the people of the place showing off the ingenious wagon. Finally he said, ’If you’ll let me sit down and thaw out a little, I can work a miracle or two and entertain you.’ Well, they let St. Andy sit, but didn’t offer him any food or drink. St. Andy got tired of waiting for them to offer and decided to put everybody in good spirits with a miracle.

“This was the first miracle he did. He took from a drawer of the wagon a silver glove that whistled when you wore it, and a ball that whistled the same note. St. Andy showed them both off, and the people were interested, I imagine. But then St. Andy threw the whistling silver ball as hard as he could off into the darkness. They could hear it clattering in the trees. St. Andy stood holding out his hand with the glove on it. And pretty soon back comes the ball and lands in St. Andy’s hand again, as gently as a bird. Everyone was astonished. St. Andy threw the ball again and again as the people whistled and clapped. But the ball took a long time to get back each time, and soon the whistling and clapping stopped, and finally people said, ‘Well, we’re very bored with this miracle, let’s have a different one.’ St. Andy thought there were a lot of tricks you could do with the silver ball and glove, but he didn’t know how any were done; the men were prodding him with sticks and making remarks, so St. Andy put aside the ball and glove and said, ‘I’ll show you another miracle. I’ll show you a man eat raw meat who has no teeth And he opened his mouth to show them he was toothless as a melon, just like me.

“They agreed that might be interesting, but said they had no raw meat, only cooked meat. St. Andy was very hungry and said that would be fine. They brought the meat and set it before him—and he suddenly threw open his mouth to show a full set of perfect luminous white teeth. He chomped and tore the meat with his mouth open, gnashing the amazing teeth so all could see and hear.

“After he had eaten his fill, he stood up to leave while everyone was still impressed. They weren’t too overcome not to take the silver ball and glove for themselves, so I can’t prove to you that part of the story is true. But for the rest, see here”:

And, as often at the end of a story, Mbaba got up and went to the carved chests, her eyes flitting over the drawers, touching the signs with her fingers till she found the right one. From it she drew out a wooden case carved in the shape of a mouth; and from the mouth case, her eyes sparkling, Mbaba drew out St. Andy’s perfect, luminous white teeth.

“False teeth,” she said. “Fits all.” And she popped them in her mouth, fit them in with her tongue, and opened wide for me to see. I was screaming with laughter. She looked like she had a huge mouthful of something, and when she opened her mouth it was—teeth! “That’s how he did it, that’s how,” she said, “with these very teeth, which are as old as anything and still good as new.”

That was at my birth-time, in my seventh year; almost ten years ago now.

What is it?

Nothing.
Go on now.

What was it I said that startled you?

Go on.

Well … Seventh years. Every seventh year, you visit a gossip who knows your cord well, to have the System looked at for you, and learn what state you’re in. I don’t know why it happens every seventh year, except that there are a lot of things we count off by sevens. And it seems—from the two sevens I’ve lived through—that seventh years are the ones where you are, somehow, most yourself. There are other times you could consult a gossip; for the untying of a knot, or anytime you don’t understand yourself. But everyone goes in their first seventh year, and every seventh year thereafter—fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight—and the first seventh year is a rose year as well.

But to explain about the rose year, I have to tell you about the Four Pots, and Dr. Boots’s List who makes them, and before that about the League, and the Storm which ended the angels’ world … maybe my story doesn’t really have any beginning after all.