A Swiftly Tilting Planet (14 page)

“Is it going to rain soon?” Brandon asked.

“No. Not unless prayer changes things.”

“You pray every night. So do we.”

“Yes. We pray,” Maddok said, and slipped silently into the woods.

In the small hours of the morning, before dawn, when he was sure everybody in the settlement would be asleep, Brandon left the cabin and ran swiftly as a young deer into the protecting shadows of the woods.

Maddok was standing at the edge of the forest, waiting. “Come. I know the way in the dark more easily than you.”

“Zillo knows everything? You’ve told him?”

“Yes. But he wants to meet with you.”

“Why? I’m still only a child.”

“You have the gift of seeing.”

Brandon shivered.

“Come,” Maddok urged. “My father is waiting.”

They traveled swiftly, Brandon following Maddok as he led the way, over the brook, through the dark shadows of the forest.

At the edge of the Indian clearing, Zillo stood. Maddok nodded at his father, then vanished into the shadows.

“You won’t let it happen?” Brandon begged. “If Zylle is harmed, Ritchie will kill.”

“We will not let it happen.”

“The men of the settlement expect the Indians to
come. They have guns. They are out of their right minds, and they will not hesitate to shoot.”

“They must be prevented. Have you seen anything in a vision lately?”

“I have tried not to. I am afraid.”

“No one knows you are here?”

“Only Maddok.”

Zillo pulled a polished metal sphere from a small pouch and held it out to catch the light of the late moon. “What do you see?”

Brandon hesitantly looked into it. “This is right for me to do, when my father …?”

Zillo’s eyes were expressionless. “I have held this action in prayer all day. It is not your father’s wish to deny a gift of the gods, and at this time we have no one in the tribe with the gift of seeing.”

As Brandon looked, the light in the metal sphere shifted, and he saw clouds moving swiftly across the sky, clouds reflected in water. Not taking his eyes from the scrying metal he said, “I see a lake where the valley should be, a lake I have seen before in a picture. It is beautiful.”

Zillo nodded. “It is said there was a lake here in longgone days. In the valley people have found stones with the bones of fish in them.”

“The sky is clouding up,” Brandon reported. “Rain is starting to fall, spattering into the water of the lake.”

“You see no fire?”

“Before, I saw fire, and I was afraid. Now there is only rain.”

The severity of Zillo’s face lifted barely perceptibly.

“That is good, that picture. Now I will teach you some words. You must learn them very carefully, and you must make sure that you do not use them too soon. Only the blue-eyed children of the Wind People are taught these words, and never before have they been given to one not of the tribe. But I give them to you for Zylle’s saving.”

On the morning of the execution Zylle was returned to the settlement. Infant Brandon was taken from her and given to Goody Llawcae.

“He is too young to be weaned,” Goody Llawcae objected. “He will die of the summer sickness.”

“The witch will not harm her own child,” Pastor Mortmain said.

It took six of the strongest men in the settlement to restrain Ritchie and Richard.

“Tie the witch’s hands,” the man from the city ordered.

“I will do it,” Goodman Higgins said. “Hold out your hands, child.”

“Show her no gentleness, Higgins,” Pastor Mortmain warned, “unless you would have us think you tainted, too. After all, you have listened to their tales.”

Goody Llawcae, holding the crying baby, said, “Babies
have died of the summer sickness for years, long before Zylle came to dwell among us, and no one thought of witchcraft.”

Angry murmurs came from the gathered people. “The witch made another baby die. Let her brat die as well.”

Ritchie, struggling compulsively, nearly broke away.

Pastor Mortmain said, “When the witch is dead, you will come back to your senses. We are saving you from the evil.”

The people of the settlement crowded about the gallows in ugly anticipation of what was to come. Davey Higgins stayed in the doorway of his cabin.

Goodman Higgins and Pastor Mortmain led Zylle across the dusty compound and up the steps to the gallows.

Brandon thought his heart would beat its way out of his body. He felt a presence beside him, and there was Maddok, and he knew that the rest of the tribe was close by.

“Now,” Maddok whispered.

And then Brandon cried aloud the words which Zillo had taught him.

Thunderstorms seldom came till late afternoon. But suddenly the sky was cleft by a fiery bolt, and the church bore the power of its might. The crash of thunder was almost simultaneous. The sky darkened from a humid blue to a sulfurous dimness. Flame flickered about the doorway of the church.

The Indians stepped forward until the entire settlement was aware of their presence, silent and menacing. Several men raised guns. As Duthbert fired, lightning flashed again and sent Duthbert sprawling, a long burn down his arm, his bullet going harmlessly into the air. Flames wreathed the belfry of the church.

Zillo sprang across the compound and up the steps to the gallows. “No guns,” he commanded, “or the lightning will strike again. And this time it will kill.”

Duthbert was moaning with pain. “Put down the guns—don’t shoot—”

Pastor Mortmain’s face was distorted. “You are witches, all of you, witches! The Llawcae boy has the Indian girl’s devil with him that he can call lightning! He must die!”

The Indians drew in closer. Maddok remained by Brandon. And then Davey Higgins came from the door of his cabin and stood on Brandon’s other side.

Ritchie broke away from the men who were holding him, and sprang up onto the gallows. “People of the settlement!” he cried. “Do you think all power is of the devil? What we have just seen is the wrath of God!”
He turned his back on the crowd and began to untie Zylle.

The mood of the people was changing. Richard was let loose and he crossed the dusty compound to Pastor Mortmain. “Your church is burning because you tried to kill an innocent woman. Our friends and neighbors would never have consented to this madness had you not terrified them with your fire and brimstone.”

Goodman Higgins moved away from Pastor Mortmain. “That is right. The Llawcaes have always been Godfearing people.”

The Indians drew closer.

Ritchie had one arm about Zylle. He called out again: “The Indians have always been our friends. Is this how we return their friendship?”

“Stop them—” Pastor Mortmain choked out. “Stop the Indians! They will massacre us—stop them—”

Ritchie shouted, “Why should we? Do you want us to show you more compassion than you have shown us?”

“Ritchie!” Zylle faced him. “You are not like Pastor Mortmain. You have a heart in you. Show them your compassion!”

Zillo raised a commanding hand. “This evil has been stopped. As long as nothing like this ever happens again, you need not fear us. But it must never happen again.”

Murmurs of “Never, never, we are sorry, never, never,” came from the crowd.

Pastor Mortmain moaned, “The fire, the fire, my God, the church, the church is burning.”

Ritchie led Zylle down the steps and to his mother, who put the baby into her daughter-in-law’s waiting arms. Brandon, standing between Maddok and Davey, watched as his mother and Zylle, his father and brother, turned their backs on the burning church and walked across the compound, past their chastened neighbors, past the watchful Indians, and went into their cabin. He stayed, his feet rooted to the ground as though he could not move, while the people of the settlement brought ineffectual buckets of water to try to control the flames and keep the fire from spreading to the cabins around the church. He watched the belfry collapse, a belfry erected more to the glory of Pastor Mortmain than to the glory of God.

And then he felt the rain, a gentle rain which would fall all day and sink into the thirsty ground, a rain which would continue until the deepest roots of plant and tree had their chance to drink. A rain which put out the fire before it spread to any of the dwellings.

Behind the three boys the People of the Wind stood silently, watching, as the people went slowly into their cabins. When there was no one left by the empty gallows except the three children, Zillo barked a sharp command and the Indians quickly dismantled the ill-built platform and gallows, threw the wood on the smoking remains of the church, and left, silently.

* * *

The horror was over, but nothing would ever be the same again.

When Brandon and Maddok went into the Llawcae cabin, Zillo was there, holding the baby. The kettle was simmering, and Goody Llawcae was serving herb tea, “to quieten us.”

“I am angry.” Ritchie looked past Brandon to his mother. “Your herbs will not stop my anger.”

“You have cause to be angry,” his father said. “Anger is not bitterness. Bitterness can go on eating at a man’s heart and mind forever. Anger spends itself in its own time. Small Brandon will help to ease the anger.”

Zillo handed the baby to Ritchie, who took his son and held him against his strong shoulder. Ritchie looked, then, at his brother. “Where did you get those words you called out just before the storm?”

“From Zillo.”

“When?”

“Last night. He sent for me.”

Zillo looked at Richard and Ritchie, his eyes fathomless. “He is a good lad, your young one.”

Richard Llawcae returned Zillo’s gaze, and put his arm lightly around Brandon’s shoulders. “The ways of the Lord are mysterious, and we do not need to understand them. His ways are not our ways—though we would like them to be. We do not need to understand Brandon’s gifts, only
to know that they are given to him by God.” He turned to the Bible and leafed through the pages until he had found the passage he wanted. “The Lord is faithful, who shall establish you, and keep you from evil. And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God. Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means …”

Brandon, worn out by lack of sleep, by terror and tension, put his head down on his arms and slid into sleep, only half hearing as Ritchie said that he could not continue to live in the settlement. He would take Zylle and the baby and return to Wales, where they could start a new life …

The world was bleak for Brandon when Ritchie and Zylle and the baby left.

One day as he was doing his chores, Maddok appeared, helped him silently, and then together they went through the woods toward the Indian compound.

Under the great shadowing branches of an oak, Maddok paused. He looked long at Brandon. “It is right that Zylle should have gone with Ritchie.”

Brandon looked at Maddok, then at the ground.

“And it is right that you and I should become brothers. My father will perform the ceremony tonight, and you will be made one of the People of the Wind.”

A spark of the old light appeared in Brandon’s face. “Then no one can keep us apart.”

“No one. And perhaps you will marry one of the People of the Wind. And perhaps our children will marry, so that our families will be united until eternity.”

Brandon reached for Maddok’s hands. “Until eternity,” he said.

SEVEN

The winds with their swiftness

And Charles Wallace was on Gaudior’s back.

“I’ve read about the Salem trials, of course,” he mused aloud. “Is there—oh, Gaudior, do other planets have the same kind of horror as ours?”

“There are horrors wherever the Echthroi go.”

“Brandon: he’s younger than I. And yet—am I like Brandon? Or is he like me?”

“I do not think you would be accepted by a host who is alien to what you are—Gwydyr, for instance.”

“I hate to think I caused Brandon so much pain—”

“Do not take too much on yourself,” Gaudior warned. “We don’t know what would have happened had you not been Within Brandon.”

“What did we learn Within? It’s a strange triangle: Wales and here; Wales and Vespugia; Vespugia and here. It’s all interconnected, and we have to find the connections—
oh!” He stepped back from Gaudior with a startled flash of comprehension.

“What now?” Gaudior asked.

Charles Wallace’s voice rose with excitement. “When Madoc is spelled the Welsh way, it’s Madog! Get it?”

Gaudior blew a small bubble.

“Madog. Mad Dog. It’s a play on words. Mad Dog Branzillo may really be Madog. El Rabioso. Mad Dog. It’s a ghastly sort of pun. Madoc: Madog: Mad Dog.”

The unicorn looked down his long nose. “You may have something there.”

“So there’s another connection! Gaudior, we have to go to Patagonia, to Vespugia. I understand that it isn’t easy for unicorns to move in both time and space, but you’ve got to try.”

Gaudior raised his wings and stretched them up toward the sky. “The last time we gave explicit directions to the wind, look what happened.”

“We didn’t get to 1865. But we did learn important things about Madoc’s descendants.”

“Is that all you remember?” The unicorn folded his wings.

“It’s in the book, Matthew Maddox’s—”

“Somehow or other,” Gaudior said, “we are blundering closer and closer to the Might-Have-Been which the Echthroi don’t want us to get to, and the closer we get,
the more they will try to prevent us. Already you have changed small things, and they are angry.”

“What have I changed?”

“Don’t you know?”

Charles Wallace bowed his head. “I tried to stop Harcels from seeing the ways of other men.”

“And …”

“Zylle—I tried to stop them from hanging her. Would she have been hanged—without the rune?”

“There are many things unicorns do not feel they need to know.”

“And there are some things we do need to know if we’re to succeed in doing what Mrs. O’Keefe asked me to do.” For a moment he looked startled, remembering Calvin’s mother. “How strange that it should have come from Mrs. O’Keefe—the charge. And the rune.”