Earthborn (Homecoming) Read online

  Perhaps this is the price I pay for winning the Pabulogi: I take away Pabulog’s boys, and in return I must give up my own.

  A voice of anguish inside him cried out: No, it isn’t worth the price, I would trade all the Pabulogi, all the boys in the world, for one more day in which Akmadis looks in my face with the pride and love that he once had for me!

  But he didn’t mean that. It wasn’t a plea, he didn’t want the Keeper to think he was ungrateful. Yes, Keeper, I want my son back. But not at the price of anyone else’s goodness. Better to lose my son than for you to lose this people.

  If only he could believe that he meant that with his whole heart.

  “Akmaro.”

  Akmaro turned and saw Didul standing there. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

  “I ran, but in the breeze perhaps you didn’t hear my footfalls.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  Didul looked upset. “It was a dream I had last night.”

  “What was the dream?” asked Akmaro.

  “It was . . . perhaps nothing. That’s why I said nothing until now. But . . . I couldn’t get it off my mind. It kept coming back and back and back and so I came to tell you.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I saw Father arrive. With five hundred Elemaki warriors, some middle people, most of them earth people. He meant to . . . he meant to come upon you at dawn, to take you in your sleep, slaughter you all. Now that the fields are ready to harvest. He had a season of labor from you, and then he was going to slaughter your people before your eyes, and then your wife in front of your children, and then your children in front of you, and you last of all.”

  “And you waited to tell me this until now?”

  “Because even though I saw that this was his plan, even though I saw the scene as he imagined it, when he arrived here he found the place empty. All the potatoes still in the ground, and all of you gone. Not a trace. The guards were asleep, and he couldn’t waken them, so he killed them in their sleep and then raced off trying to find you in the forest but you were gone.”

  Akmaro thought about this for a moment. “And where were you?”

  “Me? What do you mean?”

  “In your dream. Where were you and your brothers?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see us.”

  “Then . . . don’t you think that makes it obvious where you were?”

  Didul looked away. “I’m not ashamed to face Father after what we’ve done here. This was the right way to use the authority he gave us.”

  “Why didn’t he find you here in your dream?”

  “Does a son betray his father?” asked Didul.

  “If a father commands a son to commit a crime so terrible that the son can’t do it and live with himself, then is it betrayal for the son to disobey the father?”

  “You always do that,” said Didul. “Make all the questions harder.”

  “I make them truer,” said Akmaro.

  “Is it a true dream?” asked Didul.

  “I think so,” said Akmaro.

  “How will you get away? The guards are still loyal to Father. They obey us, but they won’t let you escape.”

  “You saw it in the dream. The Keeper did it once before. When the Nafari escaped from the Elemaki, back at the beginning of our time on Earth, the Keeper caused a deep sleep to come upon all the enemies of the Nafari. They slept until the Nafari were safely away.”

  “You can’t be sure that will happen, not from my dream.”

  “Why not?” asked Akmaro. “We can learn from the dream that your father is coming, but we can’t learn from it how the Keeper means to save us?”

  Didul laughed nervously. “What if it isn’t a true dream?”

  “Then the guards will catch us as we leave,” said Akmaro. “How will that be worse than waiting for your father to arrive?”

  Didul grimaced. “I’m not Binaro. I’m not you. I’m not Chebeya. People don’t risk their lives because of a dream of mine.”

  “Don’t worry. They’ll be risking their lives because they believe in the Keeper.”

  Didul shook his head. “It’s too much. Too much to decide just on the basis of my dream.”

  Akmaro laughed. “If your dream came out of nowhere, Didul, then no one would care what you dreamed.” He touched Didul’s shoulder. “Go tell your brothers that I tell them to think about the fact that in your dream, your father doesn’t find you here. It’s your choice. But I tell you this: If the Keeper thinks you are the enemy of my people, then in the dark hours of morning you’ll be asleep when we leave. So if you awaken as we’re leaving, the Keeper is inviting you to come. The Keeper is telling you that you are trusted and you belong with us.”

  “Or else I have a full bladder and have to get up early to relieve myself.”

  Akmaro laughed again, then turned away from him. The boy would tell his brothers. They would decide. It was between them and the Keeper.

  Almost at once, Akmaro saw his son Akma standing in the field, sweaty from harvesting the potatoes. The boy was looking at him. Looking at Didul as he walked away. What did it look like in Akma’s eyes? My touching Didul’s shoulder. My laughter. What did that look like? And when I tell the people tonight of Didul’s dream, tell them to prepare because the voice of the Keeper has come to us, telling us that tomorrow we will be delivered out of bondage—when I tell them that, the others will rejoice because the Keeper has not forsaken us. But my son will rage in his heart because the dream came to Didul, and not to him.

  The afternoon passed; the sun, long since hidden behind the mountains, now at last withdrew its light from the sky. Akmaro gathered the people and told them to prepare, for in the hours before dawn they would depart. He told them of the dream. He told them who dreamed it. And no one raised a doubt or a question. No one said, “Is it a trap? Is it a trick?” Because they all knew the Pabulogi, knew how they had changed.

  In the early morning, Akmaro and Chebeya awoke their children. Then Akmaro went out to make sure all the others were awake and preparing to go. They would send no one to spy on the guards. They knew they were either asleep—or not. There was no reason to check, nothing they could do if they had interpreted the dream wrongly.

  Inside the hut, as Akma helped fill their traveling bags with the food they would need to carry and the spare clothing and tools and ropes they’d need, Mother spoke to him. “It wasn’t Didul, you know. He didn’t choose to have the dream, and your father didn’t choose to hear it from him. It was the Keeper.”

  “I know,” said Akma.

  “It’s the Keeper trying to teach you to accept her gifts no matter whom she chooses to give them through. It’s the Keeper who wants you to forgive. They’re not the same boys they were when they tormented you. They’ve asked for your forgiveness.”

  Akma paused in his work and looked her in the eye. Without rancor—without any kind of readable expression—he said, “They’ve asked, but I refuse.”

  “I think it’s beneath you now, Akma. I could understand it at first. The hurt was still fresh.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Akma.

  “I know I don’t. That’s why I’m begging you to explain it to me.”

  “I didn’t forgive them. There was nothing to forgive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They were doing as their father taught them. I was doing as my father taught me. That’s all. Children are nothing but tools of their parents.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “It’s a terrible thing. But the day will come when I’m no longer a child, Mother. And on that day I’ll be no man’s tool.”

  “Akma, it poisons you to hold all this hatred in your heart. Your father teaches people to forgive and to abandon hate and—”

  “Hate kept me going when love failed me,” said Akma. “Do you think I’m going to give it up now?”

  “I think you’d better,” said Chebeya. “Before it destroys you.”

 
; “Is that a threat? Will the Keeper strike me down?”

  “I didn’t say before it kills you. You can be ruined as a person long before your body is ready to be put into the ground.”

  “You and Father can think of me however you like,” said Akma. “Ruined, destroyed, whatever. I don’t care.”

  “I don’t think you’re ruined,” said Chebeya.

  Luet piped up. “He’s not bad, Mother. You and Father shouldn’t talk about him as if he’s bad.”

  Chebeya was shocked. “We’ve never said he was bad, Luet! Why would you say such a thing?”

  Akma laughed lightly. “Luet doesn’t have to hear you use the word to know the truth. Don’t you understand her gifts yet? Or hasn’t the Keeper given you a dream about it?”

  “Akma, don’t you realize it isn’t your father or me that you’re fighting? It’s the Keeper!”

  “I don’t care if it’s the whole world and everything in it, on it, and above it. I . . . will . . . not . . . bend.” And, obviously aware that it was a very dramatic thing to say—and faintly ridiculous coming from one so young—Akma shouldered his burden and left the hut.

  There was no light but moonlight as they left the land that, for this short time, they had made bountiful with good harvests. No one looked back. There was no sound of alarm behind them. Their flocks of turkeys and goats were not quiet; they talked sometimes among themselves; but no one heard.

  And when they crested the last hill before being truly out of the land they knew, there, waiting for them in the shadow of the pine forest, stood the Pabulogi. Akmaro embraced them; they laughed and cried and embraced others, men and women. Then Akmaro hurried them and they all moved out together.

  They camped in a side valley, and there they laughed and sang songs together and rejoiced because the Keeper had delivered them from bondage. But in the midst of their celebration, Akmaro made them break camp and flee again, up the valley into unknown paths, because Pabulog had arrived and found the guards asleep, and now an army was chasing them.

  Following uncharted paths was dangerous, especially this time of year. Who knew which valleys would be deep in snow, and which dry? The thousands of valleys all had different weathers and climates, it seemed, depending on the flow of winds moist and dry, cold and hot. But this path was warm enough, considering the elevation, and dry enough, but with water for their herds. And eleven days later they came down out of the mountains from a small valley that was not even guarded, because no Elemaki raiders ever came that way. The next afternoon they stood across the river, and despite the instructions of the priests Akmaro would not let his people enter the water.

  “They have already been made new men and women,” said Akmaro.

  “But not by the authority of the king,” said the priests who argued with him.

  “I know that,” said Akmaro. “It was by the authority of the Keeper of Earth, who is greater than any king.”

  “Then it will be an act of war if you cross this water,” said the priest.

  “Then we will never cross it, because we mean no harm to anyone.”

  Finally Motiak himself came out and crossed the bridge to speak to Akmaro. They stood face to face for a moment, and people on both sides of the water watched to see how the king would put this upstart stranger in his place. To their surprise, Motiak embraced Akmaro, and embraced his wife, and took his son and daughter by the hand, and led the children first, the adults following, across the bridge. None of them touched the water of the Tsidorek that day, and Motiak proclaimed that these were true citizens of Darakemba, for they had already been made new men and women by the Keeper of Earth.

  The sun had not yet set on that day when Ilihi came to greet Akmaro; it was a joyful reunion, and they told each other stories of their lives since parting until into the night. In later days many of the people of the land of Khideo made the journey to Darakemba to greet old friends and, sometimes, kinfolk who had left Zinom to follow Akmaro into the wilderness.

  Nor was this the last of the reconciliations. Motiak sent out a proclamation for the people of Darakemba to gather in the great open place beside the river. There he caused that his clerks read out to the people the story of the Zenifi, and then the story of the Akmari, and all the people were amazed at how the Keeper had intervened to preserve them. Then the sons of Pabulog came forth and asked for Akmaro to take them down into the water. This time when they emerged they explicitly rejected their old identities. “We are no longer Pabulogi,” said Pabul, and his brothers echoed him. “We are Nafari now, and our only father is the Keeper of the Earth. We will look to Akmaro and Motiak to be our ur-fathers; but we ask for no inheritance beyond that of the simplest citizen of Darakemba.”

  Now, when the people of Darakemba had gathered, they assembled themselves as they always had, the descendants of the original Darakembi on the king’s left, and the descendants of the original Nafari on the king’s right. And within those groups, they subdivided further, for the Nafari still remembered which of them, reckoning by the father’s line, were Issibi, and which Oykibi, and which Yasoi, and which Zdorabi. And in both groups, sky people and middle people gathered separately in their clans; and at the back, the few diggers who were free citizens.

  When the reading of the histories was finished, Motiak arose and said, “No one can doubt that the hand of the Keeper has been manifest in the things we have seen and heard. For the last few days I have spent every waking hour in the company of Akmaro and Chebeya, two great teachers that the Keeper has sent to us to help us learn how to be worthy guardians of the land the Keeper has given us. Now he will speak to you, with greater authority than any king.”

  The people whispered to each other because the king had said such an astonishing thing. Then they listened as Akmaro spoke, moving from group to group among them; and other men and women from the Akmari went from group to group, each one teaching a part of the message that the Keeper had sent through Binaro so many years before, the message Binaro had died for. Not all believed in everything they were told, and some of the ideas were shocking, for Akmaro spoke of diggers and angels and humans being brothers and sisters. But no one dared speak in opposition to him, for he had the friendship of the king—and many of the people, perhaps most of them, especially among the poor, believed in what he said with their whole hearts.

  That day many went into the water, to become new under the hands of Akmaro and his followers. And as the day drew to a close, Motiak caused another proclamation to be read:

  “From now on, priests will no longer be servants of the king, appointed by the king, and staying with the king to perform the great public rituals. From now on, Akmaro will be the high priest, and he will have the power to appoint lesser priests in every city and town and village that is now under my rule. These priests of the Keeper will not be paid out of the public treasury, but will instead work with their hands like any other men and women; no labor is too humble for them, and no burden too great. As for the priests who have served me so faithfully up to now, they will not be forgotten. I will release them from their duties and grant them from my private treasury enough wealth to set them up in respectable businesses; those who want to teach may become teachers; and some few will have place with me as clerks and librarians. None are to think that I make this change because there has been any dishonor among them. But never again will a king be able to use his priests as Nuab used Pabulog and his other priests—as instruments of oppression and deception and cruelty. From now on the priests will have no political power, and in return no king or ruler will have authority to appoint or discharge a priest.

  “Furthermore,” said the proclamation, “when the people gather you will no longer divide yourselves into Nafari and Darakembi, or into different tribes or clans, nor shall there be separation between people of earth, of sky, and of the middle. When you obey me as your king, you are all Nafari, you are all Darakembi. And when you gather with the priest to learn the teachings of the Keeper of Earth, then you are the Ke
pt, and this is a matter between you and the Keeper of Earth—no mortal power, of king or governor, of soldier or teacher, may interfere in that. No person of any race may be kept beyond ten years in bondage, and all who have already served that time are now employees who must be paid a fair wage and may not be discharged, though they may freely leave. All children born in my lands are free from the moment of conception, even if the mother is a bondservant. It is a new order in my lands, and it is my plea that my people will obey.”

  The last sentence was the standard formulation—all the king’s edicts were listed as pleas rather than commands, for that was the way Nafai had established things back when Heroes ruled. This time, though, there were many who heard his words with quiet rage. How dare he say that there should be no difference between me and a digger, between me and a woman, between me and an angel, between me and a human, between me and a man, between me and the poor, between me and the ignorant, between me and my enemies. Whatever their treasured prejudice might be, they gave an outward show of accepting Akmaro’s teachings and Motiak’s edict, but in their hearts, in their homes, and, bit by bit over the coming years, in quiet conversations with friends and neighbors, they rejected the madness that Akmaro and Motiak had brought upon them.

  But at the time it seemed to most to be the dawning of a golden age, those glorious days when Akmaro was establishing Houses of the Kept, to be tended by priests in every city, town, and village; when Motiak celebrated the new equality of men and women, diggers, angels, and humans, and the promise of freedom for all slaves. It was a mark of their naiveté, to think that such a revolution could be accomplished so easily. But in their ignorance, they were happy, and it was recorded in the Annals of the Kings of the Nafari as the most harmonious time in all of human history on Earth. The exceptions were not deemed worthy of mention in the book.

  SIX

  DISILLUSION

  Twice each year, Akmaro went to visit each of the seven Houses of the Keeper. When he came, all the priests and teachers in that region of the empire of Darakemba would come to the House and there he would teach them, listen to their problems, and help them make their decisions. He was very careful not to allow the priests to treat him as priests of another kind had once treated kings. There was no bowing, no special notice; they touched each other’s forearms or wings in equal greeting. And when they sat, it was in a circle, and Akmaro would call upon any of them at random to lead the meeting and call on others to speak.