The Nothing Within Read online

  I knew Shepherd Gabriel almost never visited, but that was all I knew about him. Nope—I knew one other thing. I knew that even though shepherds always traveled in pairs, Shepherd Gabriel always traveled alone. I didn’t know why.

  Our village shepherds, Rachel and Lydia, visited once or twice every year. Mostly they visited because we asked them to. We’d send runners to fetch them because poultry or livestock or folks were being murdered by one kind of beast or another. Rachel and Lydia would go out in the woods for a spell, then they’d come back and the murdering would stop. So when our shepherds showed up I got awful excited, even though everybody else wasn’t excited so much as they were terrified and hiding in their homes.

  Shepherd Gabriel, though, seemed to come only when it pleased him, and to hear my ma tell it, he mainly asked a whole pile of questions and then shared much less than he knew. Folks found his visits comforting and wished he would stop by more often, since his were shepherd visits that didn’t involve the chasing of hungry, murderous beasts. But his visits sounded awful dull to me. To hear all the other children chitter like squirrels, though, it seemed a Festival was much better than a regular visit by Shepherd Gabriel. Which I supposed it would have to be since his regular visits were a miserly gruel.

  Festival came once every thirteen years—thirteen being Grandmother Root’s holy number. Leeleh was only two years older than me, so like me, she wasn’t even born by the last Festival. But her brothers, Honeydipper Bekk and Apprentice Honeydipper Sett, they were old enough to remember his last visit, and they’d told her all about it.

  So Leeleh did her best to explain it to me. Leeleh had always been sickly, her hands weak and cold, but when she talked about Festival she held my hand so hard it very nearly hurt. “It’s as if…well, there’s so much food you can hardly imagine, and then, it’s…it’s like when Learner Ned leads us in good-old stories, but there are so many of them, all right in a row, and well…then things go flying through the air, and…”

  Young Aizik was listening in on Leeleh. Aizik wasn’t even born for the last Festival neither, but he felt wiser since he’d missed it by less. So he stepped in on Leeleh’s words with a loud sigh and said, “Bless it, Leeleh. It’s like listening to Little Weaver describe a sunset.”

  Leeleh got real quiet.

  That made me mad. I didn’t care about the sunset thing, but this swelled-up sow’s butt was teasing my gentle friend. Too many children teased Leeleh, shy and sickly and too kind to tease back. Some called her “Honey,” which to grown-ups might have sounded kind. But the children meant she was a honeydipper’s daughter, her family cleaning our privies and modesty pits, with the unfortunate smells that can bring.

  Aizik even called her “Twitch” once or twice, since she sometimes got twitches in her arms or legs. Once she had a fit of the Shakes right in the middle of Learning, drooling and jolting on the floor, bleeding from her mouth where she bit her tongue. But Ma caught wind of Aizik’s teasing and spoke with him about it, all alone. So Aizik didn’t say that no more. Some things are not good ground for teasing.

  I started to stand up to discuss Aizik’s unkindness with him, but Leeleh’s damp, thin hand squeezed at mine, and she whispered, “Root, not with Festival coming.” Because she knew if I finished standing up, it would end with Aizik sitting down real hard. Then I might get punished, or we all might, and none of us wanted to risk being stuck at home when Festival happened.

  So instead of teaching Aizik a lesson about kindness to others, I started a clapping game to cheer Leeleh, and she joined in, though she was quiet at first. It’s a good-old rhyme. You must know it here in Humblewash, too. The children among you can clap it with me if you care to. Goes like this…

  Little Lillit liked to ponder,

  What she’d find out there beyond her

  Pretty village. “Why,” she’d wonder,

  “If I want to, can’t I wander?”

  So she did, she went off yonder,

  Til she came upon the Somber.

  Smiling sweetly, in she wandered,

  Then in dusk-light looked around her,

  Saw that something Fell had found her,

  Tried to flee but it was stronger.

  To its chamber it did bring her.

  On her fate we will not linger,

  All they found was one small finger.

  Young ones, young ones, if you ponder,

  What’s out there beyond the yonder,

  Mind your business lest you squander

  All you have, to vainly wander.

  Little Lillit was my favorite good-old rhyme. Still is. I always thought she had the right idea, even if she did get eaten by a chimera.

  By the time we finished the clapping game, all the other children had joined in, and by then I think Leeleh felt a bit better, too. Well, all the other children joined in except for Aizik. But then, Aizik always had been a swelled-up sow’s butt.

  Not to speak unkind of the dead.

  6

  Festival

  The first two days of Shepherd Gabriel’s visit were just as exciting as his other visits, which is to say he might as well not have been there for all I could tell, but that didn’t keep the other children from talking of nothing else. I kept trying to knot myself up about it like everybody else, tried trusting that it would be as wonderful as they said, but it didn’t work.

  Of all my failings, which I confess I have a prodigious number, one of them is greater than all the others. Come to think of it, it’s the source of a great many lesser failings, too. It’s my reluctance to accept something’s true just because somebody says it’s true. So if you won’t pardon me for it, at least you might understand why I was unimpressed with all the Willim-what about some visiting shepherd who seemed not quite as interesting as bread mold.

  As for whether Shepherd Gabriel’s visit was, in the end, worth all the Willim-what?

  Well, I will say that I had no idea there was so much food in Surecreek, nor so rich nor tart, nor spiced nor gentle, nor waftingly scentful.

  And I will say I would never have guessed my village’s voice could be so beautiful and interwoven when folks rose together singing beloved songs, climbing from Woodsmith Abram’s shuddering bass all the way up to Honeydipper Sadie’s lilting descant, and with nearly two hundred weaving, lifting, winding voices wrapped between them.

  And I will say that I wept to hear those voices, not only for their heart-aching music but also in anger, to think they’d been hid in our village all the short years of my life. That nobody had made the effort to set those beautiful things free except for two-by-two and three-by-three.

  I will also say that once Shepherd Gabriel took the center in a clearing with folks on all sides around him? Well. I had no idea there were so many good-old rhymes and stories, stories that warned of the evils of roving and remaking, whether they warned us with laughter or fear; nor that there could be jokes so funny they’d leave you aching in the sides and gasping for air; nor that such an ordinary voice could be so interesting that you’d happily listen if it were just reciting sheep’s names. He was at center for so long, it must have been ’til near midnight, and had it been ’til midnight tomorrow, we’d have still thought it too brief by half.

  Then something wondrous happened, though I couldn’t tell just what.

  All of a sudden, the whole gathering went quiet as wool, then there was this whhhishhh going up into the air so soft I could hardly hear it, but every soul in that gathering gasped in quiet wonder, except for me. I sorely wished Leeleh was with me so she could’ve told me what was happening. But folks sat with families for Festival, and my family was just the village weaver. She was up front at the edge of the clearing near Shepherd Gabriel, presiding over such an important affair. Woodsmith Abram, having no family, was kind enough to sit with me. But I didn’t care to interrupt his quiet joy by asking questions. And what with him being a dry, old bachelor woodsmith, though a kindly one, he didn’t think to offer.

  So I
listened with everybody else for five or six heartbeats, with the howl and yip of a wolf lonely in the quiet distance, ’til there was the fip! of what sounded like Shepherd Gabriel catching something that had gone into the air quite some remarkable distance. There followed the roaring shush as the whole village tapped its feet in appreciation, a tapping like none I’d heard in Surecreek, during which time that sweet nubbin Josiah, not far behind me, sounding afraid, whispered, “What is it mama?” To which his mother, Butcher Abbie, answered real soft, “Just a ball, lamb, a wooden ball like yours.” So then I knew, too, same as everybody else.

  Then the low roar of tapping feet cut short with another whhhishhh and another and another and another and another, and what followed was a sound so crisp and rhythmic that I felt I’d never hear its like again, which I’m not sure I have yet. From all I could tell he was throwing those balls in the air—so high I couldn’t imagine—and catching and re-throwing them in wondrous patterns.

  I heard the soft pats of his feet touching the ground ever so lightly, back and forth, and somehow all those sounds, the whhhishhhes and the fips and the pats were not only so fast and tight together but also so loose and flowing that it was hard to understand how a mere fleshy human body could make them, so much like the Shepherd’s Dance but spread out wide, and they wove a pattern like some beautiful music nobody could ever hope to describe. Yet here I am trying.

  That’s how shepherds were, and that’s how shepherds moved. In years to come, I’d hear other shepherds move like that for far less joyful reasons. Shepherd Gabriel’s Festival was the only place I’d ever hear a shepherd move like that just purely for the delight of others.

  After some little while, he stopped still. Yet Surecreek didn’t praise him with joyous foot tapping as I’d expected. It sounded like folks were still waiting on something.

  Which they were.

  The next thing I heard was a rustling up front, and the older children murmuring, and the grown-ups clucking with knowing chuckles, and then there was a high, dry fluttering whistle and a tiny pip not far from me, and a young girl giggled. Then something whistled to another child elsewhere, and another, ’til it sounded like the air was full of dragonflies whizzing past our ears, and each one went to a child who gasped or giggled. I heard Tanner Serrie’s son, Mark, call out loud, losing sight of what was proper in his excitement, “Right in my lap! Did you see it?” followed by a motherly swat.

  Then there was a pip next to me, then one behind me, and sweet Josiah asked real soft what it was, and his mama said, “It’s to suck on, lamb, hard like a stone and sweet like honey,” and that was right about when I nearly jumped up off the ground in surprise because something landed in my lap. Two somethings, my fingers found. Two small hard somethings—wrapped in fine rag-paper no less, if you can imagine the extravagance.

  At that moment I was pretty sure, and I’m pretty sure to this day still, that the other children had gotten not two somethings, but only one.

  I closed my hand on them and wondered whether Shepherd Gabriel had made a mistake, if shepherds even could make mistakes, or whether he’d treated me special. Which should be an embarrassment, as it’s something polite folks don’t do to one another in public. But somehow this was private, so I wasn’t embarrassed.

  7

  Festival's End

  Afterward, Shepherd Gabriel moved through the crowd and spoke with the folks of Surecreek and its outlying farmsteads, graciously deflecting their lavishly understated praise. He made his rounds for a good while.

  I didn’t mind a whittle, because it let me hear what everybody else was talking about. When I heard Eldest Mason Johsif right next to me talk of Shepherd Gabriel as “grandfather Gabriel,” I almost laughed, but laughing might have told him I was listening, so I tamped it down real tight. It was still funny, though, because Johsif was just about the oldest person in Surecreek, very nearly sixty, while Shepherd Gabriel sounded not near so old. But then as I listened, Johsif seemed to be favorably comparing this Festival with one that Shepherd Gabriel gave when Johsif was just a little cricket like me. That puzzled me real deep.

  After a bit, Leeleh made her way to me, breathless from finding me in the crowd. Her cat, Hiccup, came with her, rowling and rubbing on my leg. Hiccup was older than I don’t know what and must have birthed half the cats in Surecreek. But she still got around, and she stuck to Leeleh like a fly on a sow. “Root!” Leeleh said. “Did you get one? Did you get a sweet?”

  Part of me wanted to tell her I’d gotten not just one, but two. But the rest of me didn’t want to sound proud, nor to make my gentle friend feel she’d been treated less than me. So I just said, “Yep.”

  We talked for a while about Festival, her telling me all the things I hadn’t seen. From what she said, it was a wonder. But it had sounded a wonder, too. Then her folks collected her, Hiccup trailing behind them. I lingered about, waiting for Ma to collect me.

  Whether Shepherd Gabriel spoke with every single person in Surecreek? Well, I just don’t know. But I do know this: Along the way he spoke with me.

  In the first moment, I didn’t understand what was happening. I heard a voice, and the voice was not only pointed at me, but it was down at my level as though it were crouching there, and it was real quiet, just exactly loud enough for my sharp ears to catch it over everybody else’s murmuring, like it was meant only for me. Then there was a soft touch on my arm. I’m not sure what the first thing he said was, but the second thing was, “Are you able to hear?”

  “Yessir.”

  “You’re Weaver Root’s daughter.”

  “Yessir.”

  “I suppose that means you’re Root, too.”

  “Yessir.”

  “What’s it like for you?” he asked. “Not seeing?”

  And you know what? In my whole life nobody had ever asked me that.

  A child born without sight had her toes dangling over the edge of the Goodafter Pit, even if charity compelled folks to tolerate her. On the whole, her village would just as soon not acknowledge that she couldn’t see—’specially when she was the weaver’s child. As a rule, folks don’t cross the woman who can send them to the Goodafter Pit. Not that my ma would ever send somebody to the Pit out of spite. When she finally sent me to the Pit years later, there was no spite in that.

  So what it was like not to see? Well, that was exactly the sort of thing decent folks just did not discuss. But like I said, shepherds didn’t always act like decent folk.

  “I…I don’t guess I’d know, really. It’s just how it is. Seems like some things is easier for others than for me. But maybe some things is easier for me than for others, too.” Then I do not know what came over me, because I said something to him I never would have said to nobody else. I said, “But it sets me apart, and everybody knows it, and I wish they’d just come out and say it!”

  “A good friend of mine couldn’t see.”

  That had my attention for sure. Few folks were without sight, and I’d never imagined one could be friends to a shepherd. Then a thought surprised me, so I asked, “Was your friend a shepherd, too?”

  “She was,” he said. “Her name was Lee. I’m pretty sure she was the best of us.”

  “She died?”

  “She died.”

  “What was it like for her?” I asked.

  “She told me it set her apart,” he said. Then, after a brief pause, he went on with a smile in his voice, “And she told me it made her stubborn. And although I’m only mostly sure she was the best of us, I’m absolutely sure she was the most stubborn.”

  I giggled. He chuckled too, just a quiet whuff of air through his nose.

  “I suppose you’ll be Surecreek’s weaver one day?” he asked.

  I laughed again, this time a great round laugh. Couldn’t help it. “Hard to imagine that,” I said, but then I quieted and thought about it real serious for a moment. He seemed content to wait. Finally I said, “Maybe I could be the weaver. Or maybe I could be something different.” I
thought another moment, and again he waited patiently. Then I said, “Maybe I’ll be a shepherd.”

  I mostly expected him to laugh, but he just said, “Hm”—real short like that, like it surprised him a little and it was worth thinking on. After a pause he said, “Root, I can tell you like to say and hear things straight, just as they are without hints or fluff. Most folks don’t, and no doubt they scold you for it. Even so, saying things straight is important, so long as you mean well when you do it. So I’ll tell you how it is. Straight.

  “Shepherds are shepherds. Nobody else ever will be a shepherd. But it won’t surprise me if you end up being something different. And I look forward to seeing what that is.”

  I heard and felt him stand, and he moved as though to step away, but then he turned back and crouched again. “What’s the most wonderful place you know?” he asked.

  That didn’t take any thinking at all. “A little fall in the woods northwest of here. Half a morning’s walk, up by Dott, off Slowbird Creek. I love the rushy sound of it, and the feel of falling water.”

  “Oh sure. I know that waterfall. I’ll tell you a shepherd’s trick. It’s one I use myself. A wise person taught it to me so very long ago. The next time you start feeling apart from everyone, or angry, or just plain stubborn, sit down and take three slow, deep breaths, then ignore everything around you and just imagine yourself in that place for a while.”

  “That’s a shepherd’s trick?”

  “It is.” He patted my arm. “And you know what? Sometimes it even helps.” He snorted again. “Peace on you, Young Root, and Grandmother Root smile upon you.” Then he turned and left to speak with Tanner Serrie and her family. Louder this time, and not so private as he spoke with me.

  When we got home that night, I asked my ma, “Did you know Shepherd Lee?”