“Peace,” Torlyri whispered. “Come close to me, Minbain. Let me ease your soul.”
But there was little repose for her own. Though she strived to hide it, she was as fearful as Minbain. There was no assurance that this was the true Time of Coming Forth. Torlyri believed that the gods did mean them well; but there was no comprehending the workings of the gods, who might in their great wisdom have led the tribe into fatal error. How could anyone know what was to come? Why, tomorrow or the next day or the day after that the terrible fire of a death-star’s tail might be seen streaming across the heavens, and then the whole world would shake with the force of the collision, and the sky would grow black and the sun would be hidden and all warmth would flee and all warmth-loving creatures that were unable to find shelter in time would perish. That had happened so often before, in the seven hundred thousand years of the Long Winter: how could they be certain it would not happen again? The tribe owed it to humanity to preserve itself until the world’s long nightmare was finally over.
It is possible that we are the only ones left anywhere, Torlyri thought.
The idea was frightening. Just one fragile little band of some sixty men and women and children standing between humankind and extinction! Can we dare take any risk of destruction, she wondered, if we are the sole remnant of our kind? It was as though they bore the burden of all the millions of years of humanity’s stay upon the earth: everything coming down to this one little band, these few frail stragglers wandering the bleak plains. And that was terrifying.
Still, the days were growing warmer.
It would have been folly for the People to huddle in their cocoon until the end of time, waiting for absolute knowledge that it was finally safe to emerge. The gods never gave you absolute knowledge of anything. You had to take your chances, and have faith. Koshmar believed it was safe to have come forth. The omens told her so. And Koshmar was the chieftain. Torlyri knew she could never see things with the clear, bold sight of Koshmar. That was why Koshmar was chieftain, and she a mere priestess.
She busied herself now with the sunrise-offering. Gradually she began to feel better. Yissou did protect and nourish. The gods had not betrayed them by allowing Koshmar to bring the People forth. All would be well. They had passed through great danger, and dangers aplenty still waited for them ahead: but all would be well. They dwelled in the protection of Yissou.
The Time of Going Forth had made the invention of a new sunrise rite necessary. No more the daily interchange of things from within the cocoon and things from without. Instead, now, Torlyri filled a bowl every evening with bits of grass and soil from whatever place they happened to have been spending the night at, and in the morning she waved it toward the four corners of the sky and invoked the protection of the gods, and then she carried that bowl’s contents onward to empty it that evening at the next campsite. That way Torlyri constructed a continuity of sacredness as the People made their way across the face of this unfamiliar world.
Creating that continuity seemed vital to her. With Thaggoran dead, it was as though the whole past had been lopped away, and the tribe orphaned, left now without ancestors or heritage. They were stumbling forward in the dark, guessing at all they must do. With their yesterdays so cruelly severed from them by the death of their chronicler, they must build a new skein of history stretching into the years to come.
When Torlyri was done with that morning’s rite she rose to return to camp. Unexpectedly something moved beneath her feet, in the earth. She looked down, scuffed at the sandy ground, felt it quiver in response to her probing. Putting down her bowl, she brushed away the surface soil and exposed what looked like a thick glossy pink cord buried a short distance underneath. It wriggled in a convulsive way as if annoyed. Gingerly she touched a fingertip to it, and it wriggled again, so vigorously that two arm’s lengths of it burst free of the ground and arched into the air like a straining cable. The head and the tail of the thing remained hidden.
“What a nasty worm!” came a voice from above. “Kill it, Torlyri! Kill it!”
She looked up. Koshmar stood at the top of the slope.
“Why are you here?” Torlyri asked.
“Because I didn’t want to be there,” Koshmar said, smiling in an oddly self-conscious way.
Torlyri understood. There was no mistaking that smile. Koshmar must want to twine, something that they had not done since leaving the cocoon.
In the cocoon there had been twining-chambers for such intimacies; here no privacy was to be found under the great open bowl of the sky. And in the tensions and strangeness of the trek twining somehow had seemed inappropriate. Still, twining was essential to the welfare of one’s soul. For Koshmar, apparently, it could be put off no longer. So she had followed Torlyri to the offering-place; and Torlyri was glad of it. Warmly she extended a hand to her twining-partner. Koshmar scrambled down the slope beside her.
The cable-creature in the ground was still writhing. Koshmar drew her knife. “If you won’t kill it, I will.”
“No,” Torlyri said.
“No? Why not?”
“It hasn’t harmed us. We don’t know what it is. Why don’t we just let it be, Koshmar, and go somewhere else?”
“Because I hate it. It’s a hideous thing.”
Torlyri stared strangely at her. “I’ve never heard you talk that way before. Killing for the mere sake of killing, Koshmar? That isn’t like you. Let it be. All right? To kill without need is a sin against the Provider. Let the creature be.” Something was troubling Koshmar deeply, that was clear. Torlyri sought to divert her. “Look over here, at the castle these insects have built.”
Indifferently Koshmar said, “How amazing.”
“It is! Look, they’ve made a little gate, and windows and passageways, and down here—”
“Yes, it’s wonderful,” said Koshmar without looking. She put her knife away; evidently she had lost interest in the cable-creature also. “Twine with me, Torlyri,” she said.
“Of course. Right here, do you think?”
“Right here. Now. It’s been a million years.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
Torlyri nodded. Tenderly she brushed her hand against her partner’s cheek and they lay down together. Their sensing-organs touched, withdrew, touched again. Then gently they wound their sensing-organs one about the other in the delicate and intricate movements of the twining, and they entered into the first stages of their joining.
One by one they achieved the levels of linkage, easily, readily, with the skill born of long knowledge of each other. They had been twining-partners since they were girls; they had never wanted anyone else, as though they had been born as the two halves of a single whole. For some it was difficult to attain twining, but never for Koshmar and Torlyri.
Still, there were little hesitations and missed connections this time that Torlyri did not expect. Koshmar was unusually tense and taut; her whole soul seemed rigid, like a bar of some pliant metal that has been left in a cold place. Perhaps it is simply that we have not twined for a long time, Torlyri thought. But more likely the problem was something more complex than mere abstinence. She opened herself to Koshmar and as their souls merged she strove to take from Koshmar whatever dark troublesome thing had invaded her soul.
It was a communion far more intimate than mere coupling, which was an act that Koshmar had always scorned and which Torlyri had tried two or three times over the years without finding much reward in it. Most members of the tribe coupled rarely, for coupling often led to breeding, and breeding was necessarily a rare event, since the need for replacement of tribesfolk was so infrequent in the cocoon. But twining — ah, twining, that was something else! Twining was a way of love, yes, and a way of healing, and in some instances a way also of attaining knowledge that could not be had by any other means; and it was much more besides.