One or two, in the time you were growing up, the kind lady told her. No more.
Finister's heart twisted with the need to know if she were one of those two—but she knew ways to find out now.
Why did they do it? she cried. Why couldn't they have at least told us we were orphans?
Because they wanted you to be loyal only to them, the kind lady explained. They did not want you thinking that you had family somewhere to whom you could go, or to whom you might owe love or allegiance — and they did not want you becoming fond of the village, beginning to think of it as home or learning to love its people.
You cannot mean it! They reared us to work for the good of the people!
All the people, yes, the kind lady said, but not those closest to home. They want you to work for the people only through SPITE. They want you for themselves.
Finister groaned, sinking in on herself. She searched for an argument but found none—other than to question the kind lady's motives, and with them, her whole argument. When she woke from this dream, she would seek evidence—but she suspected it would only prove the kind lady's tale. There were too many little questions she had ignored as she grew up, too many answers not given.
Then a glaring, horrid memory—the slaughter of a sheep, and herself wielding the knife. The others congratulated her on her courage, though quietly, and when they were alone, Mama gathered Finny's head onto her breast to let the teenager weep. "I know it's hard, Finny, but the world is grim. It's a cruel place, and the only way to live in it is to become capable of cruelty yourself, and to harden your heart to others' pain."
Then she was outside the event again, watching herself weep, and the kind lady was saying, / disagree. The world can be cruel yes, but it can also be kind and loving. You must protect yourself against others ' pain that you cannot avoid, but if you shut out all feeling, if you truly harden your heart, you shall close yourself off from all that is tender and affectionate.
Finister frowned, uncertain. If that were true, why would Mama have said such things?
The better to make you able to kill human beings, the kind lady said. That is why they insisted that each of you help in the slaughtering. You were trained to kill; you began with chickens, progressed through sheep and pigs, and ended with men.
Finister said nothing, only watched her younger self sob in Mama's arms and brooded. It would explain why Mama had given her so much attention on her first slaughtering—to make her wish to please Mama by killing again. It certainly was training for assassination, especially if you learned to block out all the victim's pain and anguish and to ignore your own qualms, the suspicion that killing might be wrong.
Then, suddenly, she saw a succession of all the men and women she had murdered, thirteen deaths by the power of her own mind, by the silent explosion in the brain or the stopping of the heart—deaths that were quick and merciful, but murders nonetheless.
It was not my fault! Finister cried. You have seen even now how they made me do it!
That explains your deeds but does not excuse them, the kind lady said. You might as easily try to excuse your foster parents' actions by saying that they did it for the Cause.
They did!
Did they hurt you any the less thereby? Is your soul any the less corrupted thereby?
She waited for Finister to answer, but she only stood mute, her mind churning, trying to find some concept that was secure, to rebuild a new understanding of her world.
The damage they did you is still done, no matter what the reasons were, the kind lady said. Only by acknowledging their responsibility, by telling you that what they did was wrong, could they begin to heal the wounds they made.
They do not see that they have done anything wrong, Finister said in sullen tones, nor do I!
I think that you do, the kind lady contradicted. If you wish to regain control of your own life, to win back your soul, you must accept the blame you have earned and the damage it has done. They may have reared you to it, but it was nonetheless your mind that struck the fatal blow.
The world whirled again, making Finister dizzy, but before she could cry out in protest it steadied again and the words froze on her tongue, for she was looking at the hayloft of her parents' barn with a sixteen-year-old Finny coming up the ladder to make sure the barn cat had not yet started to labor. She went over to Puss's corner and parted the hay to look down at the swollen-tummied feline, who lifted her head and parted her eyelids to purr at Finny—but behind her, Orly's head appeared on the ladder, then all of him, and he swung off, grinning.
"Why, Finny! Have the kittens come, then?"
"Oh! You startled me!" Finny leaped up, then saw it was Orly and couldn't help letting out some of that special feeling as she gave him a sleepy-eyed smile. "No, they haven't come yet, Orly. But it's late enough that we need to watch her closely. Why are you here?"
"Papa sent me to knock down the old hornets' nests so the bee-sties wouldn't come back," Orly said, then looked at Puss. "Watch her closely now? We should have been watching her closely two months ago!" Orly grinned as he came nearer. "It's a little late."
He was standing a little too close, and Finny felt a strange new presence about him, something like her own special feeling, and wondered if Orly were a projective, too. They talked, some inane chatter about Puss, when all the while they only wanted to talk about one another. Then Orly stepped a little closer, reached out to touch her waist, to almost touch her waist, and his face hovered near, so very near, and the adult Finister watching remembered how his breath had smelled sweet and musky, remembered how she had felt her special feeling growing as she looked deeply into his eyes, the delightful shivering sensation all through her body as their thoughts mingled and she swayed just a little forward and their lips brushed, brushed again, and stayed. She watched her younger self melt against Orly, pressing and grinding against him. She remembered that she hadn't known she was doing that while it happened, had only been aware of her whole body melting against his as that fatal first real kiss had deepened into sensations that set her whole body on fire.
For a moment, adult Finister longed to be back in Orly's arms, longed for that sweetness, that yearning again. Then the kind lady's face appeared beside the young lovers, smiling fondly at them and saying, How fortunate that you both came to this loft at the same moment, or this adventure would never have begun.
Even now, Finister's face grew hot with embarrassment, and she protested, It must have been an accident. Surely Mama would never have sent me to the hayloft if she had known Papa had just sent Orly up.
Would she not? the kind lady asked. You learned later that all the other graduates of the farm had encounters that began as secret assignations like this — that led to sexual initiation and this same early bliss. Could they really have all been accidental?
She had put Finister's own covert suspicions into words. Afraid to confront them, Finister lashed out. You re saying they arranged that private meeting, that they wanted me to have that first tryst with Orly. Impossible! They told us it was wrong! Why would they have maneuvered us into doing something that disgusted them?
Because they did not really think it wrong, the kind lady said, only useful. Remember!
A haze seemed to spread over the hayloft. When it cleared, the hay was lit only by moonbeams that managed to find a way through the chinks in the wall, to illuminate cast-aside clothing, and two young lovers separating to stare into one another's eyes, panting and both alarmed yet exalted by the emotional and sensational explosion they had just experienced. Then they rolled back together, kissing fervently, deeply, trying to raise that ecstasy again. The haze rose over them, and Finister was aware of her own pulse hammering. She started to protest, but the haze cleared, showing her younger self just climbing down to the barn floor, with Orly a step behind her. Laughing, they ran lightly out the door . . . . . . and froze to see Mama and Papa striding toward them, their faces red with wrath.