Read Online Northshore by Sheri S. Tepper - Free Book Online Page B

morning’s resentments all mixed together. Skittering sparks of light fled from her mirrored staff to scramble across the path and the stones. The lights attracted Delia’s attention, and she came to the gate of her garden, waving her cane as though it were a wand held by some good witch to make a welcoming enchantment.
    ‘Pamra! Something told me you would come, so I baked spice cakes …’ No reproach for all the days she had been forgotten. Reproach was not Delia’s way, and Pamra warmed to Delia’s way, as she always had.
    ‘I haven’t had a spice cake in … oh, a thousand years.’ She could not help smiling. This was good Saint Delia, who always remembered things, all of them warm and happy, even when there were few enough of those to choose among. ‘Not since I was a child. A long time ago, Delia.’
    ‘Not all that long. No. Scarcely yesterday. Only aconjunction of the moons or two, nothing to mention.’ Delia laughed, but the cough turned into a hacking convulsion that left her weak, wiping her eyes and shaking her head. ‘Oh, me, me. My days are surely few before I am carried to the west and put into the Sorters’ hands. Tsk.’
    Pamra made a gesture, her revulsion scarcely concealed. ‘You mustn’t say things like that.’
    ‘Oh, Pamra, child! All us ordinary people talk like that. You know it. Only you Awakeners never talk of going into the west. Do you worry so that we have no faith? That we will not be taken into Potipur’s arms?’
    ‘It isn’t … it isn’t that, Delia. I have no doubt about your being Sorted Out and received by Potipur. Among us it’s just accounted bad manners to talk of it with … people close to us.’
    ‘But, child, we’re not among you Awakeners. There’s just you and me, and haven’t we always said honest things to one another?’
    ‘Of course we have,’ Pamra took the old woman’s hand in her own, feeling the fragile flesh give way between the slender bones. Delia’s wrists were like a flame-bird’s legs, like a reed stem. ‘And when all the family turned away from me because I decided to be an Awakener, only Delia stayed my friend.’
    She smiled into the old face, reaching out to touch the tiny, leaf-shaped blue birthmark on Delia’s chin as she had when she was a little one. ‘Wiggle the leaf, Deely. Make it move!’ She had been only two or three, but she could remember saying that.
    ‘Well, I hope more than any friend, child. You were more like my own child, and you stayed my child, stubborn though you were. And
angry,
sometimes. I remember how excited you were about the Candy Tree. And how furious you got when Prender told you it didn’t really exist. You were seven. Lots older than the others were when they found out. Ah, you flew at her with your little fists, hitting and screaming at her that she lied, she lied. You cried for hours.’
    Pamra protested. ‘But it w
as you
told me about the CandyTree, Delia. Of course I believed you. You made such a story of it. And sure enough, in the morning the seeds were always there. So good. I can taste them yet. And how hard it was to save even one as “seed” for the next year’s tree! I tried so hard to stay awake and see the tree grow, even though you said it wouldn’t grow at all if I did. And then Prender … well, I didn’t like her much anyhow, and she was calling you a liar.’
    ‘Oh, child. Now, you know that isn’t true. It wasn’t a lie. It was just a kind of story. A pious myth. To make children behave well. And they get such fun out of it.’
    ‘Well, I got more fun out of the myth than I ever did eating the candy after I knew you had put it there. Especially since it was Prender who told me.’
    ‘Prender wasn’t supposed to tell you. She was supposed to let you believe as long as you could. We always let the little ones believe as long as they can; they get such pleasure out of it. She probably wouldn’t have told you if it hadn’t been for jealousy in the family. You two