She wandered about for a while, among the small bushes and ferns of the plain’s edge, and Yori did, too, and now she was consciously waiting for her long-forgotten self to come back and re-establish itself. She wanted the heavy anguishing woman of Zone Four to vanish and be forgotten. But it seemed that what was happening was something different. Soon she was regarding her stay in Zone Four quite equably and calmly, but from a distance: she was able in her mind to move all over that land, as if it lay open before her. She knew everything about it, she understood it — and the Al·Ith of that place was there, too, visible to her, and she could look at her without repugnance or regret.
She jumped back on Yori, and rode slowly on, waiting gently to be at home with herself and her land again. She was remote from it. An onlooker. One who rode through it but did not belong in it.
Al·Ith was beginning to feel a little frightened. Never mind, soon she would meet some people, and their reactions to her would tell her … and soon she did. A group came riding towards her from the mountains, and they lifted their hands to her and called out a greeting. And rode on. They had not called her name. So she was visible to them now. Yet she was not Al·Ith to them either.
She rode up through the pass, she met many different people, and no one called out to Al·Ith, though all offered her the usual courtesies, which she returned.
Al·Ith was riding through this beautiful land of hers recognizing every turn in the road, every new glimpse of the peaks, feeling as dry and light as a leaf. There was a part of her that knew what was happening, and understood it, and was feeding into her a resignation that was like a contained grief.
She was not going to be accepted back into her old self, or into her land. She was separated from everything she saw. The joyous oneness with soil, and tree and air, the being part of her people so that she knew instantly all there was to know about them, since she was them, as well as being herself, this had drained away. And she was not part of Zone Four either, and would never be again — to visit there for six months knowing she must come away again — and to visit a son who was its child — and a husband married to that strange woman whom she had yet to meet — no, even as she thought of it all, of how her life was going to be, it was as if she was being made distant from everything she had been — lighter, drier, more herself in a way she had never imagined. But doomed always and from henceforward to be a stranger everywhere she went.
When she arrived at the palace, she took her horse around to the stables, and the men and girls working there at first stared, doubtful, then whispered, and then stared again. She had changed a great deal, and they could not accept her. They were glad when she left the horse to them, took herself away.
Up into her palace she went, along the great stairway, past the rooms where her people were living their lives so comfortably without her, and into her own quarters. But there she saw at once that this, her place, was not hers any longer. The low couch she slept on was in use. The great cupboards had clothes in them not hers.
She sat herself in the window enclosure and waited for her sister, who of course now had taken her place. And did not need her.
When Murti· came, she was not surprised — for this whole affair, dictated as it was by the Providers — was not one for surprise, but Al·Ith could see from the change of the set of the muscles of her sister’s face that her being there meant something that Murti· had to deal with, to make allowances for.
The sisters sat together in the window and watched the sky darken towards evening, and tried to come close again. But there was nothing in Al·Ith’s experience of Zone Four which she could communicate to Murti·.
And she belonged there now. So Al·Ith understood when she saw her sister’s reception of the news that for six months she would be away down there, with her family … who were not her family! And so it was with everyone in the next few days. They knew this was Al·Ith. She was, or had been, their queen — for Murti· was in that place now. She had been gone from them, sent away by the invisible rulers of all their lives, and would go again. She was a stranger to them. And the way they looked at her, spoke to her, drove this home in Al·Ith. She went to stand in front of a mirror, and remained there, for hours — she wanted to catch that thing in her which told everyone she was no longer a citizen of this, her own land. But it seemed to her she was the same. No, not entirely … there was an animal gleam there, was that it? No, that was not the right word: when she had travelled through her husband’s land it was the word earthy that she had been whispering to herself: a heavy, lightless people — clods. With nothing of the easy warm quickness of her own people. Had she then become earth? A clod? She turned herself around, looking at her body. She bent into the mirror, trying to see herself as it were unobserved … her eyes, what did they say when not on guard, or observant? No, she did not seem to herself cloddish. But there was some kind of leanness there, an angularity. Where was the smilingness and quick response of these her people who were no longer her people? Not now. Not any longer. Murti·, finding her there, and knowing at once what she was doing, came to her and stood by her. The two women looked together into the glass.
‘What is it?’ whispered Al·Ith to Murti·, her eyes at last filling with tears.
‘Oh, Al·Ith, you are a long way from us now … a long way.’ And that was all it seemed she could say. The two women did cry for a while, together, in their window seat, but it was not as it had been. And soon Murti· had to leave for her duties — Al·Ith’s old duties. And Al·Ith knew she was not going to be asked to take them over again, nor even share them.
And her ‘husbands’? Her other selves? Wandering about her rooms, her palace, her old riding places, the streets of her town, she met them, she was greeted, news was given to her — but what news could she give to them?
If she were to tell them of her marriage to the warrior king, they would not believe it.
So it seemed as if the links with them were broken too. And those with ‘her’ children. And Al·Ith took to wondering what those links and bonds could ever have meant, if now someone else could stand where she had, and she was not missed at all. They greeted her, her children: ‘Al·Ith, Al·Ith, where have you been all this time?’ And they came crowding around. But as she stood silent, unable to respond, for she was thinking of that dark painful bond with Ben Ata, and the son who would grow up to — presumably — general the armies of Zone Four, they soon lost their smiles, and their interest in her, who stood so silent and apart from them, and ran off back to the other women, their other mothers, and to the delightful, the lovely Murti·.
‘I do not belong here, I do not belong anywhere, where do I belong,’ Al·Ith was whispering to herself as she strayed among her old memories.
She was repeating to herself Murti·’s ‘You are a long way from us now …’ and one day she climbed up to the flat roofs, and from there up the little winding stairs and stood high in the tower, turning herself around to see her mountains, her snows, and then — the faint blue distances of Zone Two.
There she went now, day after day, filling her eyes with that blue. And soon she went to fetch her Yori from his place with the other beasts, and telling Murti· only that she was restless and wished to wander by herself for a while, she set off towards the northwest. Along roads and paths which of course she had often ridden before. Passing people whose faces she knew if they did not — it seemed — know her. Passing villages and farms and towns which she was contrasting with the meagre poverty of her husband’s country, and wishing he could see them. What plenty there was here! What safety! What healthy peaceful faces … and Al·Ith saw in her mind’s eye the pale unfed faces of the poor of Zone Four and … suddenly found these she was looking at fat and mindless.
This shocked her, brought her back into herself. No, it was not that she wished for this land anything of the deprivations of that war-country. Not that she wished these faces any less rosy and warm and quick to smile. Not that she wished to see roofs where gaps showed in the
reed-thatch, or holes in the slate, or rutted or mired roads instead of these paved and well-kept ones. Not any of that … but, as she hungered and craved herself— though she did not know for what, she wondered how it could be that these people here, her people, could live all their lives through without ever wanting anything more.
She was leaving behind the parts that she knew, and her horse was labouring under her, as he climbed a steep and little used road to a crest that was cut, once, by a pass. By the pass that led, she knew, to the gap in the blue mountains … hearing her Yori’s breath come harsh and slow, she remembered he was old now, he was an old horse, and she slipped off him and walked beside him, her hand on his neck. He turned his loving eyes towards her and asked why she was so restless, always moving, never at rest. He seemed to ask if he might not be allowed to live at peace, with his friends, in his own quarters … Al·Ith stroked him, and praised him, and called him her only friend, and they went on together, up and up …
What she had seen was blue, always blue, distances speaking in colour, but now she expected to see closeness dissolve the blue. And yet it did not. There was a soft blueness about everything — ahead of them, where the road turned around a clump of rocks, a bluish air seemed to beckon them on. The hills here were purple, and the vegetation had a blue tinge. Above the turn of the road ahead the sky was blue not only with distance, but because the air everywhere was blue in essence. And small purple mists lay among the trees.
The air seemed different from what she had ever known. She knew that she, like her poor horse, was breathing harshly. And her mind was not as clear as it could be, and as she relied on it to be. It seemed almost as if a blue falseness was claiming her mind. What falseness?
Looking around, carefully, holding tight to her consciousness of how things should be, she thought the blueness was only the underground of something different, as yellow flames have a blue base to them. The blue was only what she could see — was able to see. Probably, with different eyes, the eyes of someone set much finer than Al·Ith’s, this world she was walking through would show itself as one of springing flames. An iridescence of flames over this dull blue base … Yori came to a stop, hung down his head, and trembled. Al·Ith told him to go back along the road until he felt comfortable with his surroundings, and there wait for her. She would not be long … she watched him turn and go walking slowly and uncomfortably back, grateful to her for releasing him, but not able to show it in a thankful gallop, or a canter, and when he was out of sight, she turned and went on into Zone Two. Though of course she did not know when it would start. She thought that coming and going from Zone Four had needed shields and adjusters and here she was venturing on without any sort of protection. She thought that no one had told her to come here … and yet, it seemed a natural thing to do. Why did not people venture here occasionally, or even make it part of their lives? Why did Zone Three live without ever thinking of this neighbour of theirs, separated from them by nothing, not even a frontier …
She really was feeling very … ill? No. But she was not at all herself.
She was stumbling through a thick blue air which her lungs were labouring to use. It was like milk dyed with blue, or like … at any rate, more a liquid than air … air was not far off a liquid … air had its own heaviness, its moments of lightness … it rolled and it gambolled … made visible as cloud air had a thousand freaks and movements … air was …
Al·Ith went on stubbornly.
She lost her senses. Coming back into herself a long time later, she was alone on a vast plain, whose air was the same blue, but light and sparkling. Nothing here was familiar to her. She did not know this earth — if it was earth, this crystalline yet liquid substance that held her on its surface, while it was able to move and slide and resist. She did not know these trees or plants, which seemed more like flames or fires. The skies were not hers, being a wild flowing pink. Yet the strongest feeling in her was that she did know this place, it was familiar to her — she was at home, even while she recognized nothing at all.
She knew that the surging and churning emotions she felt were of no importance, only the reactions of an organism stretched or provoked by unwonted stimuli. She knew that the thoughts that fled through her mind like the wisps and shreds of — cloud? — that continually came into existence overhead and disappeared again, were not to be relied on because they were the creatures of this unfamiliar place. And yet she, Al·Ith, knew this place. And she was waiting for — who, or what? — to come to her. To explain? To warn? To give her advice?
Al·Ith stayed where she was. In this dream she was dreaming, or idea she had stumbled into, it did not matter if she sat still, or tried to press herself against barriers and boundaries she could not see, to make them give way … she had already gone beyond boundaries to be here at all.
Someone would come.
It seemed to her that all around her, above her, were people — no, beings, were something, then, or somebody, invisible but there. She was in the middle of a population that could see her, observe her, but whom she could not see. Yet they were there. Almost she could see them. Almost, in the thin blue of this high air it was as if flames trembled into being — flames big and small, frail and solid and wild and steady. One moment she could see them — almost. Then could not, and there was nothing there.
Voices. Could she hear voices? There was a whisper of sound, of voices, just under the silences of this realm, but as she strained her hearing, it kept snapping off and out, leaving her deaf for a while, to recover. And her eyes, straining, seemed to go dark. Al·Ith slept there, worn out with attempting what she was not fitted for, and when she woke, it was to exactly the same landscape, empty, and peopled with the invisible multitudes that seemed to press and
whisper about her. But now she knew more than she had when she had fallen asleep.
In her sleep she had been taught what she should know.
‘Al·Ith, Al·Ith, this is not how, this is not the way, go back, Al·Ith, you cannot come in here to us like this … go back, go down, go …’
Al·Ith pulled herself up, and staggered back off the crystal airs of that plain with its swirling pink skies, and into the thick blue mists that surrounded — or guarded — it, and down along the road she had come.
She knew that she must come back. But that she must come differently. Prepared. But how?
As she went on, and down, her mind seemed to clear, and she began to think of her friend Yori. For some reason the thought of him brought no consolation. On the contrary, she was wild with anxiety … she saw him in her mind’s eye dying, dead: he longed for her, was waiting for her so that he could take leave of her — and as she came around a bend of the road and out of the blue country into the ordinary light of her own realm, she saw Yori lying in the grasses by the road. She ran forward, and was in time to see him lift his head, with difficulty, and give her a friendly glance — goodbye, Al·Ith — as he died.
She sat there by him on the warm clean grass of that high pass, and feeling on her cheeks a sudden fanning wind, looked up knowing she would see an eagle fly past — but the great bird was settling himself on a tree almost overhead. And she looked about her and saw eagles and birds of prey perched on the rocks and the trees, and even on the ground.
She waited by her friend until he was quite cold, and she was sure his spirit had gone, and then she stood up and called to the birds: ‘Come, take him, take him back, return him to our earth’ — and she went on down the pass by herself, not looking back.
When she reached the easy flowing airs of her own country, Al·Ith found a little stream, and sat by it. She was thinking of how long before, or so it seemed to her now, she and her horse had waited by a stream, keeping each other company, and her heart ached. Her heart seemed all ache, for she could not stop thinking of Ben Ata who — presumably — was engaged in marrying this new woman of his.
She had no one.
She sat the night through there, wondering at the stars, and their bril
liances, and thinking of the skies of Zone Two, just there, so close, available beyond a few turns of the road, skies which did not know — or so she believed, from her short acquaintance with them — stars at all. Or at least, not these stars. Or not in this shape and guise. But stars of course there had to be, since stars are what we are made of, what we are subject to — stars there must be in Zone Two, though she had not seen them … and she had been there, she realized now, for a long time. She had gone up into the pass with Yori in early spring, with fresh green plants and grass everywhere, and the birds building, and now it was nearly winter, and the grasses were dead and broken and the water of the stream was thickened with cold.
Into that Zone she had taken the senses of Zone Three and, of course, of Zone Four, whose citizen she now was, but had tried to take in, to assess, that high delicate place but without what was needed to assess it. Who could tell her what in fact she could have seen there, if differently tuned, if more finely set? How would those raging pink skies look to someone else, a citizen of that realm? Perhaps not a swirling fleeing mass of magenta and pearl and flame at all. Perhaps what she had seen there were stars, through eyes not tuned to see them! The stars of Zone Two — well, one day she would see them, as she saw these here, now, tonight — the friendly, familiar stars of her own life, cold, frosty, enormous, the winter stars of Zone Three.
And those eyes would soon see the springing cold flames that fed on the blue base that was all she could take in … and she would see …
Al·Ith, sitting by her cold stream, under her brilliant stars, locking her arms around her knees in an attempt to hold in a little warmth, dozed off, or was tranced, and in front of her eyes on her lids danced shapes and figures she had never seen in life. Dreaming there, she believed them to be the invisible ones of Zone Two — and how many of them there were, and how different, and how fine, and how strange — and all of them, she knew, or seemed to know, and it was as if she stretched out her hands to them and pleaded: This is Al·Ith, Al·Ith, take me, let me come …