Child of Grass: Sea of Grass, Book Two Read online

  “I dunno.”

  “Mm, me neither.”

  “So I can’t be special—?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said I didn’t know how. It’s going to be up to you, Kaer. But, see—you just figured out the hardest part of the problem. The rest is going to be easy.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s what happens after you get born that counts, because that’s when you decide what kind of special you want to be. What can you do that nobody else can?

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Well, that’s what school is for—so you can learn how to learn. Then you can go out and learn stuff that nobody else knows. Or make stuff that nobody else knows how to make. That’s where you go to learn how to make your own kind of special. Do you understand?”

  “I think so,” I said, even though I really didn’t. Not yet, anyway. But if I didn’t say I understood, he’d keep talking—and then I’d get even more confused. So I just nodded and agreed, already knowing that I’d either forget about this whole conversation in a day, or it would wake me up in the middle of the night and bite me on the ass. Da’s little talks were good at that. I told him so once, and he grinned in agreement. He said that what he was really doing was shoving time-bombs down my throat—just to wake me up in the middle of the night when they went off, so I would think about this stuff for real.

  And just like he promised, this one did too. One night, I was alone in my bed in the middle of the night, which is the loneliest time there is, and I wasn’t really thinking about anything except how lonely I was. I was wishing for a twin, except I knew that couldn’t happen either, and there wasn’t anyone else in the world enough like me to be my friend—and that’s when it hit me what unique really meant. I was even more alone than I’d thought.

  I almost started crying. And then I almost got out of bed to go wake up da. Except that I already knew what he’d do, and after I had a good cry, I’d still end up back in bed. Still alone. So I stayed in bed and cried by myself, because no matter what I did, I was still alone in the one way nobody could make better.

  Yes, I was a winner—but what had I won? I didn’t have to wake da up. I could already hear him saying it. “You’ve won the chance to be special.” But so what? There were so many different ways to be special, so many different meanings of the word. Da had said to me, “You can’t think of it as a race against anyone else, Kaer. That’s the point. It’s a one-person race, and you’re the only one in it.”

  “So how do I know if I’ve won? Or lost?”

  “It’s what you choose to race for. What do you want to accomplish? As long as you’re still working for it, you’re still in the race. You only lose the race if you quit. If you finish, you win—no matter how long it takes.”

  But that was still only half the question, because I didn’t know what I was racing for, and when I did ask da what to race for, his answer wasn’t any answer at all. He always said something like, “Race to make a difference.”

  And that’s where I always came to a stop. What did that mean, anyway?

  A few days later, I was playing with the little-uns in the park, and Shona said, “Let’s race—all the way to the trees and back!” And suddenly, all the little-uns were yelling about racing and lining up against me. I knew I could win, but somehow I knew that it was more important not to. So I hollered “On your mark, get set, Go!” as loud as I could—and we all started running madly across the grass. Except, I slowed down . . . so the little-uns could charge across the finish line first. And as they were all jumping up and down and screaming that they beat me, I looked across the lawn and saw da smiling in my direction. He nodded once and winked at me. Then he went over to congratulate the little-uns for their victory. But I was the real winner of that race. Because now I knew what he meant.

  Thinking about it now, at the bottom of the meteor crater, I realized something else—that this was what da meant by empowerment.

  Da interrupted my thoughts. “Kaer—?”

  “Huh?”

  “Dinner?”

  “Um, yeah. All right.”

  “Still thinking about it?”

  I nodded. “We don’t race to win, do we? We race to make a difference.”

  He looked surprised. And then he got it. He put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Sometimes, you make me very proud of you.”

  The Old Woman and the Boffili

  A very long time ago, in the time before time, an old woman lived in the grass. She lived in a house of grass, she slept on a bed of grass, and she wore a dress of grass. She sang of the sun and the rain and the good dark earth and the grass grew tall and strong around her.

  Often, the grass sang with her. The wind would blow and the grass would rustle, adding its own happy sound to her song and the song of the wind. And this made the old woman very happy.

  But this did not make the wind happy, for it did not like to hear any song but its own. So it crept around the edges of the sea, whistling at the grass, “You must feel all alone in the world. How terrible to have no friends. What a cruel trick the old woman has played on you. You have no one to share with.”

  Mostly the grass felt too happy to listen to the cruel song of the wind, but sometimes it would happen that the clouds would cover the sky and the day would turn dark and gloomy—but no rain would fall, and the grass would wait thirstily. On those days, the grass turned restless and an edge of unhappiness crept into its song.

  One such day, the old woman heard the sad note in the song of the grass, so she sang out. “Grass, why do you weep?”

  And the grass sang back, “We weep because sometimes we feel sad.”

  The old woman sang, “If you did not have sadness, you would not know how to recognize joy.”

  “But we don’t like feeling sad.”

  “Sadness comes as one of the many parts of life. Just as you have days of life-giving sun, so will you have nights of stars. One follows the other, and you learn to celebrate both as part of the great circle.”

  The grass knew that the old woman sang the truth, they had exchanged these words many times before, but this time the grass sang back softly, “We have another reason for weeping, old woman.”

  This surprised the old woman. “Why do you weep?” she asked.

  “We weep because sometimes we feel so all alone in the world,” sang the grass.

  The old woman knew that these words had come not from the grass, but from the wind, so she answered, “But you have the sun and the rain and the good dark earth. You have the sky and the clouds that sail in the sea of air. You have my song and the song of the wind. You have all the beauty of the world and you grow as the joyous celebration of those things.”

  But the grass sang back, “Yes, we have your song, and it makes us grow tall and strong. And we have the song of the wind and it sends waves of ecstasy across the surface of the sea. We have the sky and the clouds and the rain and the earth, and we grow tall and strong in celebration. But we have no one to share our happiness with. Happiness by itself turns into sadness, happiness shared turns into greater happiness.”

  The old woman laughed to hear such wisdom from the sea of grass. She sang, “Who taught you such a wise lesson?”

  And the grass sang back, “You did, beautiful mother. We love to share our happiness with you. But we wish to share it with even more than you. We wish for friends.”

  The old woman thought about that. She thought for three days, and then she thought for three days more, and then just to make certain, she thought for another three days. Finally, she sang to the grass, “You may have friends. You may have all the friends you wish—and you can share as much happiness as you can create. But you must understand this. You will also have to share everything else as well. You will have to share the sun and the rain and the good dark earth. You will have to share the sky and the clouds that sail in the sea of air. You may have friends, but you will have to share everything you have—even and especially your own selves, your own
flesh. Will you make that bargain?”

  And the grass was silent for three days. And then it was silent for three days more. And finally, it was silent for three more days just to make sure. But at last, the grass sang back, “Yes, we will make that bargain happily. For we do not seek happiness as much as we seek sharing. Sharing will give us great joy—even and especially if we have to share our own selves, our own flesh. We will make that bargain.”

  “Hear me well,” said the old woman. “Once you make this bargain, you cannot go back. Do you still seek to end your loneliness?”

  And the grass sang back, “Yes, we do.”

  So the old woman walked out into the grass and lifted up her dress of grass. She squatted in the earth and left her stool in the soil. She did that every day for nine hundred days. And at the end of that time, the earth began to teem with life. First came the insects and the worms, small crawling things that churned through the soil, tickling the roots of the grass. Then came the larger burrowing things, lizards and birds and rodents. They slithered and flapped and crept through the stalks. And finally came the larger beasts—the emmos, the boffili, and the kallikacks.

  The boffili grew larger than houses, and they moved in herds of thousands and thousands. The emmos followed behind, plucking the fat morsels their hooves turned up. The packs of kallikacks crept through the grass, bringing down the unwary boffili that strayed too close to the edge. And for the first time, the grass knew blood.

  In the first year, the herds of boffili trampled great swaths of churned black earth into the sea of grass, the grass lay flat and died. And everywhere, the kacks killed daily—emmos and boffili mostly—and the shrieks of the dying animals troubled the song of the grass. Instead of singing joyously under the sun, the grass wept. Instead of waving happily in the wind, the grass wept. And when the rain came pouring down, the grass cried aloud with it.

  The old woman wept too, for she had granted the wish. And now she wished she never had. So she reached up into the sky and began calling down the water—not as rain, but as snow. And she called it down in a great storm that swept across the plains for a hundred days. And even then, after the snow had piled up taller than twice the height of a man, she still kept calling it down, for another hundred days.

  And finally, when the last song of the grass had finally fallen silent, she stopped singing. The entire world had turned silent. After a while, the old woman heard the distant voice of the wind, very faint and faraway and just below the edge of the horizon. The wind mocked her. It sang, “At last, your grass has fallen silent. At last, your song is ended.”

  But the old woman just smiled and shook her head. For she knew she had stopped only to catch her breath for the song to come.

  Soon she began to sing again, the same song she always sang, the song of the sun and the rain and the good dark earth. And soon, the snow began to melt and the grass began to grow—tall and strong until it stretched twice as tall as a man.

  And as the grass grew, it sang back to the old woman. “We grow again. The hooves of the boffili have churned the soil. The droppings of the boffili have spread our seeds. The blood of the boffili has nourished the earth. All of the creatures big and little have shared their gifts with us. We have shared our land, our selves, and even our own flesh—and they have enriched us by sharing their selves equally. We celebrate our relationship as part of the great circle. We go around and around. We thank you, beautiful mother.”

  And the old woman laughed in delight and clapped her hands. And she sang to the wind, “You have had your victory, and I have had mine—and we all live as part of the great circle of the world.”

  Then she bent to her kettle and made herself a hot bowl of tea as salty as tears, for even as the great circle turns, we must all take a moment to sit and have a bowl of tea.

  What We Didn't Have

  At the bottom of “the hole” there was no wind. Everything was still. If the top of the rock had felt strange and unworldly, then the bottom of the hole felt even stranger. It was like we were in a place that wasn’t part of any world at all. The dark sky above brooded like evening, even though orange sunlight still flooded half the crater, angling down to paint the curves of the far wall in soft shades of gold and red. The heat of the day still glistened around the lip of the crater, making it shimmer in the distance.

  Despite the high walls, I felt naked and vulnerable, as if anyone could just peek over the lip and fire down on us.

  Da said, “Don’t worry about it. You can’t imagine all the sensors and monitors they’ve installed upstairs. We’ll know if anyone approaches, long before they get over the horizon.” He pointed toward the sky. “Satellites and spybirds watch this station twenty-seven and a half hours a day.” I didn’t feel reassured. The closer we got to the target zone, the more uneasy I became.

  Maybe it was the effect of all the traveling. I didn’t know how far we’d traveled, I wasn’t even sure how long. After two days and two gates and countless hours of eastward flight, all I knew was that we’d been traveling forever and we still had forever go. I felt as if my whole life was the inside of the chopper and everything else was just a hallucinatory memory. I just wanted to go somewhere and curl up and hide for a while—but not here. Anywhere but here.

  The bottom of the hole scared me. Maybe because I couldn’t see the horizon. Maybe because I couldn’t see the grass or feel the Mother’s presence. I didn’t know, but whatever it was, I just didn’t like it here and couldn’t wait to get away.

  Dinner was held in a covered dining area, so much like the one at Surprise Rock that it gave me an eerie sense of having been here before. I half-expected Popo to wheel out that frightening head-cart of his again. He wasn’t here, but Varro and Kzam showed up, grinning at our table, asking if they could join us. “We go to help too,” Kzam said proudly. “You people need real Linneans who show you how to kiss boffili.”

  “Kiss a boffili—? Yichh.”

  “Not real kiss. Just a way of speaking. Like you say, ‘Close enough to kiss.’ We show you how. You learn. We get one day closer to Oerth, yes?” He rapped his chest. “Kzam and Varro, we go see tall buildings, meet movie stars, soon-time now.”

  I had to smile at that. Kzam wasn’t stupid. He just didn’t understand how things worked on Earth. He’d probably have to learn the hard way. Just like we were learning the hard way how things worked on Linnea.

  “Is plan good, yes?”

  I answered in Linnean. “Kzam, when you and Varro get to Oerth, you will find that you still have many things to learn. Oerth will excite you and amaze you, but it will also frustrate you and puzzle you, because you will have to learn to think in a new way. It takes a lifetime to learn and I hope you won’t expect too much too fast.”

  His face fell and I suddenly felt bad. “We will not meet young lady who goes over rainbow then?” Kzam touched his heart. “I am fall very much in love with pretty girl. I would marry her, if her uncle approves”

  Oh dear. “Um, Kzam—they made that movie a long time ago. And . . . um. . . .”

  “She has grown to my age now? Is even better. Thank you, Kaer. No one told me that.”

  Oh, what the hell! Let him believe. Let them all believe if it makes them happier—

  Kzam looked at me, puzzled. “What you laugh at, Kaer?”

  I shook my head, unable to explain. “The joke is on me, Kzam. I have been walking around with a problem that isn’t mine. I am a big dummy. Um—” I switched back to Linnean. “Can we speak in your language now? I need the practice. I don’t want to speak in an accent.”

  Without hesitation, Kzam switched back to Linnean. “Yes, you do have a little accent. Not serious though. But you sound like a northern hick who hasn’t gotten off the farm very much. But you use a lot of big words, so that makes you sound like you want to impress everyone with how much you know.”

  It hurt to hear him say that, but listening to the way he phrased his sentences and the way he sang his words helped me understand
exactly what he meant. “Do I use the words correctly? Do I pick the right ones?”

  He nodded. “Mostly, you do. But sometimes you don’t. Sometimes, you use the animal word when you should use the person word. Some people will feel insulted if you use animal-based words. Especially priests. You must take care around the Servants of the Mother. Everybody should, not just you and your people. Sometimes the Servants forget themselves. They forget to Serve and Rule instead. Not everybody who lives in the sea of grass agrees with that, but . . .” Kzam shrugged, a fleshquake of his massive shoulders. He spread his hands wide. “Who wants to risk an argument with a Servant? If you—” He grinned impishly. “If you, um—piss them off—they’ll expel you from the city. So they really do hold the power of life and death over most people. If you can’t live under that kind of threat, then you do what we did. You pack your things and go as far west as you can, hunt jackalopes and badgerines and elf deer. You can ride emmos if you get foolish enough, and you can eat them too—if you get hungry enough. And if you get really stupid, you can try to kill a boffili too. When you have a big enough pile of skins, you head back east to the first trading post you find and barter for things you can’t get any other way. Knives, flints, metal pots, spices, things like that. The important thing—you have to have a place you can go where you can survive the winter. That means preparing a shelter with a lot of food and fuel before the first snows start falling. And you have to pick your site well, so you don’t get buried too deep, and so you don’t get flooded out in the spring thaw. But it gets you away from the Servants, and you can live a fine life that way. We did.”

  He glanced around to make sure that Varro was not in earshot. “Varro says he wants to go back to his wife and baby. And yes, he does—but if he really did, he could have done so many times already. He could have climbed down the rock. He could have disappeared into the sea of grass many times. Perhaps the little-looking-machines would have seen him. Perhaps not. Perhaps the Scouts would have chased him. Perhaps not. We all like each other very much. The Scouts know how much Varro talks of his family. And they know that Varro could sneak away any time. But Varro hasn’t done it. And he probably never will. He speaks the right reasons—that his time among the people of Oerth has changed him too much—but in truth, he just doesn’t want to run away from the most astonishing adventure any Linnean could ever have.