“What would happen to someone who never could look away?”
He became grim. “I have seen them. They were in many ways as you were when you came down the mountain, but we could never get them back. All of their reason, their memories, their very sense of being human, was drained, leaving them no more than mindless animals. Eventually, all were killed lest their souls, now in demon hands, be used against us. I am truly not sure if that is the case, but it was believed so, and it was probably the best for them, as they were truly lost.”
“I—there is a tiny part of me, particularly when I sleep, or when the storms rise in the early night, that is there as well as here. Is that an evil thing, Father? Am I cursed?”
“I—I don’t know, my son. I truly do not. I think you might have been, but for your lady here. Your love of her, and hers of you, has shut them out. They may call, but they cannot come to you so long as this blocks their way. This way—one man, one woman, in love and union—is God’s way. The way we are now is not. It is a plan devised by material humans. Survival!” He spat. “What good is survival if one is always to live like this?”
“I do not understand you when you speak like this,” Littlefeet responded, “but I know you are speaking wisdom from the words of God and so I listen.”
Father Alex smiled. “It is not necessary that you understand. It is only necessary that you let an old man, tired and aching and not much longer for this world, say old man things even if they mean nothing.”
How could Littlefeet, or Spotty, or most of the current generation know and understand? How much did he understand, he who was steps closer to when people had ruled and all the magic was theirs?
“You say they come to you in dreams,” he continued, shifting back to his original focus. “What sort of dreams? What happens? Are they the same dream or different dreams?”
“The same one, which is why I know it is not just a normal dream, Father. We are here. The Families are here. And we dance. We dance around in circles, round and round, round and round, then we dance up to another Family who dance in the other direction and we bump and then we dance back. I am dancing, too, but at some time I look up, and I see shining things above and they have vines made of lightning and they are spinning them and making us do the dances.”
The priest had heard all this before, he knew, yet he could not keep it in his head, not for long. Why couldn’t he? Why didn’t the Elders remember talking of this very thing the next time they met? And why did Littlefeet seem to be the only one who remembered for any longer?
The priest had the context, which might make sense of it if someone could find a prophet or seer, but he couldn’t keep the puzzle around, real, in his head. Littlefeet kept seeing the vision, but only from the point of view of one who knew only this life and could imagine little else. “Father?”
“Yes, my son?”
“Did they ever find out what killed that scouting party?”
“Not exactly. Their bodies looked as if all of them had, at one and the same time, been struck by lightning. We know, though, that this is highly unlikely, and that in any case there was no storm through there when they died. It was decided that, for whatever reason, the powers of the air do not wish us to enter the valley anymore, and we have changed our routing accordingly.”
“Father? Why do we not ever go as far as the great ocean? I saw it, I think, looking almost like sky in the distance, and it looked grand. It is something that I would like to see, if only to see that much water in one place. But we never go there.”
Father Alex considered his answer. “It is—forbidden to go to the coast. Not for the same reason as the valley or the stone mound are now forbidden, but for very real reasons. There is not a lot of cover near the coast, and roaming bands who follow neither God nor the rules of Families are there as well, like Hunters setting upon any who come and, like them, eating flesh, even human flesh. Many are said to be the children of Hunters gone wild, or escapees from the demon city who know nothing of what is true. We can take on small bands of Hunters because we are a group, organized together, scouting carefully, tight, close. They can get one or two of us, but they do so at the cost of their own lives in some cases. We make the risk too great. But out there, near the coast there those types would outnumber us.”
“And what of the pretty giant flowers I saw in the middle of the plain, covering it? I have been born and lived my life wandering here, yet I knew of it only by rumor and story.”
“Those are demon flowers! They could suck the blood and soul from anyone coming into their groves, and are tended by minor demons and demon slaves. For whatever evil reason they might have, they are what the demons do here. They plant and raise those huge flowers, and they tend them and they protect them. So long as we stay away from that area, they let us mostly alone.”
Littlefeet should have known a lot of this, but his mind was curiously divided, both clearer than he could ever remember it being and yet curiously empty, with snatches here and snatches there but not a complete picture of what he’d taken for granted growing up.
“How are you doing now?” Father Alex asked him. “I mean, what is healed and what is not?”
“Oh, I am better, much better, and I think clearly,” Littlefeet assured him. “But it is as if I see everything except Spotty for the first time. Like everything is new, and some of it does not come. All of the training I had growing up, which I know I had and can see being given to the others, it is not there. I do not seem to know how to do things. I go into the grass and I take scents and I cannot tell Family from others. Without the sun I cannot tell direction, and only from it when I see where it comes up or goes down. Everything looks and smells and tastes kinda the same. It makes me useless. The only one I can tell is Spotty. I can smell her, taste her, know where she is at any time. This is nice, but it does not let me give any work to the Family.”
“I make sure he knows where he is,” Spotty commented with a grin. “If he can always know where I am, then I can make sure he is where he should be!”
The old priest smiled. “Never in my lifetime has God so clearly made two for each other as the two of you. You are a mated pair. I know the others are calling names and making all sorts of jokes, but I tell you that they are the mistaken ones. You two are meant to be together. I shall try as hard as I can to keep you that way.”
“Mother Paulista has said I must return to her for the birth of the baby,” Spotty told him, sounding upset: “And that she believes Feetie is just pretending to still be sick to keep me here.”
Father Alex cocked an eyebrow and looked straight into Littlefeet’s eyes. “Is that so, my son? Do you have sins to confess to me, perhaps?”
He could see the turmoil in the young man’s mind as truth and confession to God warred against Spotty’s continued nursing. “I—I am still not right, Father. You know that. I have said it.”
“That’s not an answer. What about you, Spotty? Do you think he’s faking it?”
She didn’t sense any of the humor in his query that Littlefeet suspected was there. “I—I do not know, Father.” “And what is it that you want?”
She was taken aback by the question; she’d never been asked such a thing before nor expected to be asked. “I—I want to be with Feetie, and I want to bear the child with him here,” she answered truthfully, if hesitantly. “But I must bear many babies in my life. It is the—function—of the women, just as protecting is the function of the men. I—I don’t know what to think, Father. Honestly.”