Part 17 (1/2)

After we arrived here, I saw Aria every so often across the fields, working in her own garden. She and the Traveler had settled fairly close to me and raised her boy. His name is Jarek, and sometimes in the afternoon, he ran across the fields and sneaked into my room and talked to me when I was trying to write. Eventually I had to get up and go for a walk with him in the woods or go fis.h.i.+ng down by the river.

He asked me all sorts of questions, and I did the same of him. Ea had taught him some of the ancient ways of the Beyond, and already he was well versed in the use of plants and trees to cure illness and induce visions. Ea had told him that I was a man of great learning, but I felt the most I could offer him was my silent rea.s.surance that he was a remarkable fellow. Though my paper supply-which I purchased from the Minister of the Treasury's wife in exchange for my old top coat-was quickly dwindling, the boy and I used it for drawing pictures of the frogs and rabbits and other denizens of the field.

Aria had nothing to do with me. I saw her pa.s.sing on the path, and I said h.e.l.lo, but her veil did not so much as stir. It was a great effort for me to prevent these moments from crippling the pleasure of my new life, but how, in good conscience, could I have expected more? Ea stopped and chatted sometimes, and I quizzed him about paradise. He laughed and told me about the time before his long sleep. His stories about the Beyond were always designed to show me that the real Wenau was, itself, less than perfect.

One day I asked him, ”Is there really a paradise on earth?”

”Oh, yes,” he said.

”Where is it?” I asked. ”What is it like?”

He rested his bow against the ground and put his hand on my shoulder. ”We are journeying toward it,” he said. ”It is everything you thought it would be.”

From then on, when I saw him across the field, he called to me, ”We are close, Cley. We are almost there.” That went on for years and finally became our joke. Many a morning, I came out onto the steps of my home and found an animal for cooking or an armload of fruit freshly gathered from the fields, and I knew he had been there.

Then one night, very late, about three years ago, the boy came to my house. It was raining and there was thunder and lightning. He pounded on my door and called, ”Cley, Cley.”

When I answered the door, he was standing there drenched. He looked scared and was shaking.

”What is it?” I asked.

”My father is away hunting, and the baby wants to come out,” he said. ”Mother is calling for help.”

We raced across the field. Inside their cottage, I found Aria lying in bed, writhing in pain. I still remembered my physiology and my anatomy from my days as a professional man. Childbirth was one of the things we studied at the academy, since it was at this point it was believed that your physiognomy was formed.