Roy could hardly believe how dreadful life in the village had become since the night he had done the wrong thing. Less than a moon cycle earlier, when he had come down from the big house to the village to live, he had been welcomed like everybody’s long lost brother, or lover. He had been hugged and kissed, fondled and fussed, fed delicacies, had flowers put in his hair, and everyone wanted to sleep with him. Now he had to sleep alone; and in spite of having slept alone for as long as he could remember, he now hated it, because it meant he was shunned.

   On the night it happened he had been thrown down the ladder of the sleeping hut he had been in, and discovered that, by the strange collective sense they all possessed, everyone knew about it, and he was pushed out of every hut he tried to climb into. At last, exhausted from emotional trauma, rejected in all his approaches, bruised from being repeatedly thrown down ladders, he had stumbled around in the dark and had come upon an abandoned sleeping hut. Climbing its ladder and crawling in he found some mouldy-smelling bedding: a rotting quilt, its filling flattened and leaking out, and a fur blanket split down the middle. After tossing about for what seemed like half the night, no sooner had he fallen asleep than he plummeted down through a hole which had opened in the webbing of the chamber floor. He fell into the storeroom beneath and smashed through the spikes of broken baskets to the earth floor and the stench of rotten nuts and vermin droppings. He was too wretched to do more than push baskets aside to make a space on the earth floor and wrap the bedding that had fallen with him around his trembling body and wait for the dawn.

   In the morning his punishment continued. The boys ridiculed him by turning their backs, bending over, pulling up their tunics to display their bare bottoms and making suggestive wiggles at him. The girls shrieked and ran for protection, dodging behind another person, a tree or a hut. Everyone else, children and older people, ignored him. He begged and pleaded for them to explain what he had done to deserve this treatment, but they would not talk to him in his language. A few boys responded in mime-song jingles whose crude meaning was obvious enough.

   In a way, he knew what his offence had been. He had tried to copulate with another boy who had enthusiastically engaged with him in mutual fondling, and who seemed to be offering his responsive arsehole to provide for Roy’s aroused sexual interest. What he did not understand was why, when every other sensual stimulation was indulged in with ecstatic abandon, what he had tried to do was bad enough to cause the whole community to subject him to this cruel rejection.

   The shunning went on day after day, although the mockery diminished as the boys apparently lost interest in it. Roy began to feel invisible, and more lonely in the densely populated village than he had felt when he was alone in the big house. He helped himself to food and ate apart from the rest of them. He cleaned out the hut he had found and took a good fur blanket and a new quilt from one of the other huts. It was uncomfortable on the bare earth, but the webbing of the upper chamber floor was rotten and beyond repair, even if he had had the skill to mend it. Before that awful night he had been interested in learning all he could about village life and finding a useful role for himself. Now that did not seem possible, and he wandered around purposelessly.

   When it first happened Roy had been deeply emotionally upset by the incident and its outcome, but a few days later he told himself that he was just shocked at the sudden change of treatment. He had been raised as a thinking creature rather than a feeling one, and as an independent person rather than part of a community. He told himself that he had not felt altogether comfortable with all the cuddling and contact, so perhaps what had happened was not so very terrible. He was certainly aggrieved at their behaviour: after all, he was perfectly willing to accept any rules and taboos there might be; there was no need for the exaggerated reaction to what he had done simply from ignorance of their ways.

   The best thing to do would be to remove himself from the situation for a while and to think out what to do next. No one paid any attention when he took two large gathering baskets and collected some provisions from the storerooms which were being stuffed full ready for winter hibernation. He tied up his bedding into a roll and slung it over his back. Thus provided for he walked back up the hill to the big house.

   Roy made himself comfortable in his old room, rather than in the sleeping hut around the back. He felt quite relieved to be back in familiar surroundings. He told himself he had plenty to occupy himself with because he had to think through what he knew of the village way of life before he attempted to try it out again, as he supposed he would have to do. He was sure there would be some useful information in Mother Sage’s writings, particular amongst the papers on how the firesoul boys were to be brought up.

   The first thing he had to know was why his sexual needs were incompatible with the village practices. This was not difficult to discover. There was a paper in the upbringing folder on that very subject, headed ‘Pleasure and Sex’. What it told him was that in ancient times, in necrotech, the awarding or denying of pleasure was an important part of wielding power, which was a major factor in firesoul culture. Sensual pleasure was regarded as a preliminary to sexual mating, which was a form of possession, and resulted in children, who were a form of property and the inheritors of property. So sensual pleasure and copulation was restricted to the courtship and marriage situation, and strictly limited or disapproved of towards children and old people, and forbidden between close relatives and between people of the same gender. This had the effect of rendering the males either dominant, competitive and aggressive, or resigned to such attitudes and behaviours in other men, as required by the economic relations of the necrotech culture.

   The firesoul sexual behaviour could be traced back to human evolutionary origins. Humans are unusual in the animal kingdom in that they do not have a mating season, but are sexually active throughout every year of adult life. Presumably this gave them a survival advantage by helping to create social bonding, but it meant that their population could, and often did, soar up to and beyond the limits of natural resources. Watersoul had continued human evolution and removed the earlier weakness by separating the lifelong human and animal need for affection and sensual pleasure from the occasional necessity for mating and reproduction.

   Watersoul people indulge in ‘pleasure rubbing’, which includes all forms of gentle, affectionate, mutually acceptable, sensual play (except actual copulation), very freely, night and day, and all through their lives. Since pleasure is not restricted in their childhood, the urgent and aggressive desire for it suffered particularly by the males of the ancient culture is never seen amongst watersoul people.

   The sensual preferences of the two human types are quite different. Watersoul like to prolong feelings of ecstasy indefinitely, whereas the firesoul pattern was to seek an intense climax, like the fatal blow of a conquest. It is as if watersoul and firesoul are contrasting patterns of nature: water cascading endlessly over the rocks; fire burning itself out in a devastating roar.

   Copulation between watersoul is reserved for the young couples who are responsible for breeding. They engage in a preliminary selection ritual consisting of coy, flirtatious games. Sexual intercourse is carried out very hurriedly in the middle of winter, and regarded as a duty, not a pleasure.

   Penetration of the vagina by the penis is not otherwise practised because it can cause pain and damage to small girls. Similarly, there is no anal penetration by the penis, because that can be painful, and damage the sphincter muscle. The vagina and the anus are, nevertheless, enjoyed as pleasure centres, and are fondled, nibbled and licked without restraint. The main reason for this otherwise free and easy culture having a strict rule is to avoid the firesoul pattern whereby inflicting, or even suffering, pain was enjoyed, and for some was essential to sexual arousal. It is easy for the watersoul to follow a pattern of no penetration by the penis for pleasure for anyone, and every other pleasure permitted for everyone. They are too lazy to keep to a more complex set of rules for particular groups.

   That explained the incident in the village. Roy would have picked up the firesoul pattern of pleasure involving thrusting in his penis, so when he was sensually stimulated by that boy in the intense fashion which watersoul enjoyed, he sought a sexual climax by penetrating the orifice which seemed to be offered. He had no idea he was offending against the one watersoul rule that ensured the greatest heights of sensual delight for every pleasure partner and never any risk of pain or discomfort.

   There had been an incident on his very first night which could have ended similarly badly, Roy thought. During the day a little girl had attached herself to him, and it was she who led him to a sleeping hut when it got dark. It was strange after having slept alone for as long as he could remember to be surrounded by other bodies. And the stroking he had been greeted with on his arrival continued and intensified. He was unsure whether he liked being with bodies which seemed to be trying to merge with his. His clothes were taken off. He was kissed and nibbled and licked. The little girl clung on to him with her arms and legs. She was a lovely creature, so smooth, warm and lithe. He was disturbed that his contact with her made his penis stiffen, and even more bothered when she discovered this and began to play with it, sucking the tip, caressing it all the way down to his testicles, and then squeezing its length between her thighs. At last he gently prised her off and went out through the curtain, down the ladder and then into the gardens to finish off his aroused desire in private. He climbed back in and the child found him again, cuddled up to him contentedly and went to sleep, as he did too very soon afterwards. Suppose he had been carried away then, and had hurt the little girl?

   Roy still did not understand the incident that occurred just before Mother Sage died, when his embrace was rejected so emphatically by Fey. He read on, and that too was explained.

   The Mother Sages had to raise their charges to pick up the ancient firesoul patterns. They decided that, for a firesoul boy to grow up to be a firesoul man, with a strong sex and power drive, he had to be deprived of affection and sensual contact in childhood. Accordingly each Mother Sage was careful to maintain a stiffly deferential distance from her ‘young lord’. In addition, the ‘slaves’ had to be prevented from indulging in pleasure rubbing with the firesoul boy, or with each other when he was around. This was a rule which the Mother Sages had applied most strictly; anyone who broke it would be guilty of hindering their charges’ development, and the firesoul completion. Being strict with the villagers was difficult since the very idea of discipline was so foreign to their nature, so the Mother Sages would have to break into storms of rage if anyone so much as touched the boys. That was why Fey shrieked and ran off when Roy tried to embrace her.

   On reading this, Roy was somewhat reassured about his own feelings and needs, but he was, if anything, even more angry. The Mother Sages’ stratagem had worked well on him. He had scarcely realised this before, because he was unused to introspection about personal matters, but he had developed into a typical firesoul man: frustrated and lustful, with an urgent need for sexual intercourse with a woman of child-bearing age. He had also probably picked up the associated firesoul pattern of falling in love, which was supposed to lead to wooing and winning and mating for life. But the woman he had begun to love and desire, had already been pregnant. In firesoul terms this meant she was unsuitable as a wife since she ‘belonged’ to someone else, and was spoilt or soiled as far as any other man was concerned.

   But now he knew why he was so different from them, would he be sure to behave in an acceptable way when he went back? The fact that he had not hurt the little girl was surely encouraging, and it had been quite some time before he had done anything to hurt or abuse anyone else. Would they give him another chance: welcome him, or shun him still? He had no way of knowing how long it would be that he had to depend on the village; how long before he could join the other firesoul boys who would, presumably, be like himself. If only Mother Sage had not died before that time came. Could he even be sure that it would come? If only there was someone he could talk to, but even in the happy days he had enjoyed before he did wrong, no one would talk to him in his language. He had found he could follow the mime-song, but it seemed only to be suitable for immediate practical communication, not for sharing your thoughts with. But of course watersoul shared thoughts – if they could be described as having thoughts – through eversight, and they did not need language for that. And their thoughts were not like his, inward and self-aware, but were shared soul resonating through the patterns of the past.

   Then a wave of satisfaction suddenly came over Roy: was it not wonderful that he had acquired some inkling of this other way of being? His words might be inadequate to describe it, but he had some sense of what watersoul was. He had respected village people and their ways all his life, in spite of Mother Sage discouraging his interest. He may have gone along with the ‘slaves and servants’ charade, but he had known deep down that the people were different, rather than inferior. He had begun his own book to set down what he found out about them. He had made a detailed study of the baskets with Fey.

   Fey! She could be the answer to his immediate problem. He had seen her around the village, but she had not approached him and he was a little shy of her. She was very big with child, which was no surprise. Perhaps he could persuade her to talk to him, and she might be willing to plead with the others that he be given another chance, tell them how he regretted his mistake and would not repeat it.

   Roy slept well that night. In the morning he went to the basket he stored his own writing in and read it through again. It was good enough, he thought, to explain the crafts to someone who knew nothing of them. So, when he joined the other firesouls, if he discovered they lacked respect for the villagers’ skills, he could show them this writing. He also had the material on pattern mathematics, which helped to explain what watersoul was in theoretical terms. But he had little besides the upbringing folders to describe what watersoul people were like and how they lived. He had decided to stay for a while in the house, so this would be a potentially useful occupation. He got out paper, pens and ink and began. As the words flowed from his mind onto the paper he was surprised at how much he knew about these mysterious people.

   ‘The first thing to understand and accept is that watersoul people do not think. They use their brains to see, not to reason. They know but they do not comprehend. This only makes sense by contrast with ourselves. We have a limited vision of the world: we perceive through our senses only our immediate surroundings and the present moment. We use our brains to store impressions, and to relate those impressions to each other in order to anticipate what is likely to occur in the future and hence make decisions. We retain in our minds selected patterns and regularities which fit in with a culturally agreed conceptual model of what the world is like which has been put there by early socialisation and teaching. We externalise our inner world through technology, thus validating the model, but disrupting the patterns we have overlooked.

   ‘The watersoul, on the other hand, use their brains as receivers, capable of seeing, but not usually storing, any part of the pattern universe in time and space. Their actions are not determined by choice and free will but by resonance with those past patterns which constitute their extended self, or shared soul. Because their brains are open receivers they cannot simultaneously be closed receptacles for self-consciousness. The watersoul, in particular those of a particular village, are one collective being, not many individuals. And they are one in conjunction with their gardens. Their gardens are part of their shared soul.’

‘That’s good,’ Fey said. ‘You could call us the fey, instead of putting “watersoul” all the time.’

   ‘I thought “fey” was a word for the women.’

   ‘Well it shouldn’t be, whatever Mother Sage may have meant by it. We’re genderless in the villages. Anyone who behaves in an obviously male or female way would be driven out.’

   ‘I thought you were gentle people.’

   ‘They weren’t gentle with you, were they?’

   ‘Well they were nasty, but they didn’t exactly drive me out.’

   ‘Oh, I think they did. Anyway, let’s get on with this. You haven’t included the forests; after “their gardens” you should put “and local forests”.’

   ‘And they are one in conjunction with their gardens and local forests. Their gardens and forests are part of the fey shared soul.’ Roy read out. ‘Is that right?’ She nodded and smiled. ‘I don’t really see why, though,’ he said. ‘You create the gardens, so I can see them as part of your collective extended self. But the forests are just there, part of nature but not part of you, surely?’

   Roy’s life had changed again, this time very much for the better. Two days after he had retreated back to the big house, Fey had turned up, with more baskets of provisions and a roll of bedding over her back; clearly having come to stay.

   ‘Can I come in?’ she said in mime-song.

   He replied with gestures he hoped would convey something like, ‘Of course. I’m delighted to see you,’ which he was, although he found her huge belly disconcerting, so that he had to fix his eyes on her face.

   ‘You need someone to talk to,’ she said in the ancient language.

   ‘Oh, yes!’ Roy replied feelingly.

   ‘Dialogue. Firesoul minds need it, isn’t that so?’

   ‘Well, yes, I suppose we do – sharing ideas and so on. But just to talk and not be alone —’

   ‘I’ll talk with you – you can have some dialogue – for three days.’

   ‘Why just three days?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘And what happens after that?’

   ‘Too much firesoul talking is disagreeable for us. But you can have three days. Then maybe you can come out of your head just a little way. It would be a lovely change for you to get out of that prison, and all the words buzzing around in there.’

   ‘Are you going to stay with me then, up here? Longer than three days?’ he asked eagerly.

   ‘Only until the courtship and feasting is over. After that the people will begin to get sleepy for the winter, so they won’t mind if you are there. It is too cold in the winter for only two bodies to keep each other warm.’

   ‘Mother Sage and I slept alone in the winter, and we didn’t hibernate,’ Roy remarked.

   ‘That was part of your regime, but I expect a couple of the “servants” got into Mother Sage’s bed, poor old thing. And some of us used to warm your bed up before you got into it.’

   ‘You used to warm my bed? And you’re going to sleep with me here?’

   ‘If you don’t try to put your penis inside me.’

   Roy looked away from her, embarrassed. ‘I understand: only cuddles – pleasure rubbing.’ He looked back at her. ‘And then we both go to hibernate in the village?’ She nodded. ‘But what will happen afterwards? Will they shun me again when spring comes? And how long will it be before I can join the other firesouls?’

   ‘You really are a proper firesoul, aren’t you? So bothered about the future, and you have to have plans all worked out in your head. I think three days of this may be too much for me.’

   Roy looked at her perfect face distorted in a scowl, and could not help bursting into laughter.

   ‘Oh, sorry,’ he managed to say. ‘You just look so funny all screwed up and cross.’

   Her scowl turned to a smile and then giggles. She reached out to him, and they clung together, laughing uncontrollably.

   At last Roy pushed her away. The contact had reinforced his awareness of her pregnancy. ‘What about the child?’ he blurted out. ‘Surely it’s coming soon. Will it be born here or down there? Won’t you need help?’

   She shrugged. ‘Oh, never mind about that. This baby is not coming to stay. It will go back to the patterns.’

   ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

   ‘That’s because you don’t understand our ways,’ she said.

   ‘I am trying to. I’ve been writing down what I know about you. Would you like to see? You could help me get it right. It could be our project for these three days. I want to be sure that the firesouls respect you. I want to be sure the New Beginning doesn’t interfere with the watersoul villages. I think that might be my special role and purpose.’ She scowled again, this time in fun, and they both burst out laughing again.

   So that was how Roy came to be reading his account of watersoul ways to Fey. She explained to him about the fey relationship with forests, and he was amazed at how fluent she was in a language she had hardly used before. If he asked how she did it, probably she would say, ‘By following the patterns of speaking the ancient language.’ He listened carefully, and recorded her words in the shorthand Mother Sage had taught him.

   ‘Necrotech people did not understand life,’ Fey said. ‘They did not know themselves as engaged in the flow of life, but as individual flames of self-consciousness. They consumed what nature provided as if feeding their fires with dead fuel. In the beginning there were primitive peoples who necessarily had some understanding of interacting with nature, but their cultures were all destroyed by those who had compounded their isolation by enclosing themselves in buildings inside cities.

   ‘By the end of necrotech all the wild forests had been cut down because the people did not know that wild forests are the source of the life patterns of the land. They saw them only as places to take wood from. During the period of breakdown which led to bionecrotech, they began to see the forests as an important source of what they called “genetic resources” from which they could extract codes that enabled them to manipulate living creatures. So they sent experts to collect the genetic material to store it away so that it could be used to make monstrous distorted plants and animals for their machines to make into fuel for human bodies. From those monsters came the green dragon which saved the people from their own folly, and kept the records of their history so they could re-live their past for entertainment and not die from boredom. A few of the people came to understand what necrotech had done because so much knowledge of the past gave them eversight, and they knew the patterns of the past directly, and they were ashamed.

   ‘After the green dragon, the women made a pledge that they would not use fire, and they vowed they would not destroy the natural patterns when they returned. There were many pledges which followed: not to dig the earth or tear out rocks, not to hunt or enslave animals. When the wild forests came back, the people respected them, and knew they were the source of the patterns of life, and that the plants we select for our gardens are only borrowed from the forests, and that we ourselves are borrowed from the forests, to which we will return.’

   ‘How did the forests come back?’ asked Roy.

   ‘Their patterns had only been interrupted. No patterns are ever destroyed. They are present in the past where all the patterns are, almost in their entirety; only at the surface of change and evolution do slight differences emerge. The patterns of the forests are very strong, so they found their way over the hacking and burning and back to the surface of evolution.’

   ‘But how could that be, when the species had become extinct, and their genetic codes gone?’

   ‘The genetic codes are merely echoes of the patterns of the past. Bionecrotech technologists thought the codes determined living form because they found that by manipulating the codes they could make new forms. But this is because pattern influence can pass either way, so fragile new patterns of distorted life echo the manipulated codes by resonance. But it is the patterns of the past which bring about the on-going forms of life, not the codes. So what was extinct can come back, as used to occur occasionally even in necrotech when the destructive forces left nature alone for a while.’

   ‘If I were describing the village way of life to firesoul people, could I explain it as a system consisting of people within garden within forest? The village people’s needs for food, clothing and sHines, 1993). The idea being that world-wide competition forces each region/country to concentrate production on whatever they do better and cheaper than anybody else. Increased international trade is advocated by many as a solution to socio-economic and environmental problems. It will, it is argued, generate wealth through economic growth, without which we cannot afford to deal with the problems. As the free flow of capital has been a reality since the 1980s following financial deregulation, and unrestricted movement of people is no longer important (lack of workers has ceased to be a limiting factor), recent free trade arrangements concentrate mainly on the movement of products and intellectual property rights. \par }{\fs20 Lang T and Hines C (1993) The new protectionism - protecting the future against free trade. London, UK, Earthscan. 184 pp\par }{\b\scaps\fs28 \par }\pard \qj\widctlpar\tx1008\tx8522\adjustright {\b The enforcing bodies: EU/NAFTA/APEC, WTO, MAI\par }{A number of regional free trade blocks - European Union (EU), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Asian-Pacific Economic Community (APEC) -exist, however, the most important free trade body is the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the successor of GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. WTO officially came into existence the 1st of January \'a7995. Agreements are binding for the 127 member countries (}{\i Dec, 1996 - check number of member countries today}{).\par The overall aims of WTO are:\par {\pntext\pard\plain\f3\lang2057 \loch\af3\dbch\af0\hich\f3 \'b7\tab}}\pard \qj\fi-360\li360\widctlpar\tx1008\tx8522{\*\pn \pnlvlblt\ilvl0\ls3\pnrnot0\pnf3\pnstart1\pnindent360\pnhang{\pntxtb \'b7}}\ls3\adjustright {reduction/removal of import barriers\par {\pntext\pard\plain\f3\lang2057 \loch\af3\dbch\af0\hich\f3 \'b7\tab}world-wide investment without restrictions\par {\pntext\pard\plain\f3\lang2057 \loch\af3\dbch\af0\hich\f3 \'b7\tab}expansion of intellectual ownership rights\par {\pntext\pard\plain\f3\lang2057 \loch\af3\dbch\af0\hich\f3 \'b7\tab}harmonisation of environmental, social and safety standards to facilitate trade\par }\pard \qj\widctlpar\tx1008\tx8522\adjustright {The Agreement of Agriculture (AOA) can additionally be said to aim at:\par {\pntext\pard\plain\f3\lang2057 \loch\af3\dbch\af0\hich\f3 \'b7\tab}}\pard \qj\fi-360\li360\widctlpar\tx1008\tx8522{\*\pn \pnlvlblt\ilvl0\ls3\pnrnot0\pnf3\pnstart1\pnindent360\pnhang{\pntxtb \'b7}}\ls3\adjustright {reducing domestic and export agricultural subsidies\par {\necrotech someone with such powers would be revered as a wizard or high priest.’

   ‘Or burned as a witch.’

   He stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. She has a witchy look, he thought. It’s those black eyes. And her fine-boned face and sharply-bowed sensual mouth, and her floating mess of purple hair: the fascinating kind of witch, rather than the crone. How did he know how a witch might look? It no longer surprised him to have knowledge he had never been taught. He knew and accepted the process whereby he had been given enough of the firesoul pattern to connect him to all the rest. He liked to think of it as the unconscious eversight Mother Sage had told him he had: a shared firesoul eversight.

   ‘Is it possible for someone to be both watersoul and firesoul?’ he found himself asking.

   ‘No more possible than someone being both a frog and a tree; they’re different patterns.’

   ‘Couldn’t they change though? Mother Sage had a firesoul life after her watersoul one.’

   ‘No, Mother Sage was always watersoul.’

   ‘But she told me she had caught a little firesoul from my flame.’

   Fey visibly shuddered. ‘I don’t like the idea of a pattern emerging whereby watersoul and firesoul are mixed.’

   ‘Wouldn’t it be more confusion?’ Roy teased.

   ‘No. Patterns – like fire and water – that are incompatible can’t flow together. But firesoul has a long history, and it was the first human pattern, and it’s still there in the past. We all fear its return; you know what pain and destruction it caused.’

   ‘Why did you agree to the firesoul boys being raised, then?’

   ‘We thought that the firesoul pattern kept trying to come back because it needed completion, and if we helped the completion – whatever that might be – come about, firesoul would go away and leave us alone.’

   ‘Perhaps the completion is a synthesis between us,’ Roy persisted.

   ‘No, it can’t be that.’

   ‘Why not?’

   ‘How could firesoul need a synthesis with something it didn’t even know was possible?’

   ‘But Mother Sage told me that everything in the universe has eversight, even us, though we don’t know it consciously.’

   ‘Yes. So?’

   ‘Isn’t having eversight the same as being watersoul?’

   ‘No, not really. Eversight is a way of knowing, like a universal science. But every creature has to have a way of doing – a technology, if you like – as well as a way of knowing. The firesoul way of doing was necrotech.’

   ‘And the watersoul way of doing is gardening?’

   ‘Yes.’

   ‘Well then, perhaps the completion is about firesoul learning how to be gardeners. Perhaps if we become gardeners our eversight would become conscious, and we’d become watersoul.’

   ‘Well one thing I am sure of is you won’t get to be watersoul by trying to think it out. We’ll do an experiment if you like, to see if you can get out of your head.’

   ‘You said that before: getting out of my head.’

   ‘Well that’s where you think your “self” is, isn’t it?’

   ‘And you don’t.’

   ‘You know we don’t: you’ve written about that. Although speaking firesoul language brings that sense with it. Language is a very powerful pattern.’

   ‘Is that why they wouldn’t talk to me in my language in the village?’

   She nodded and frowned, putting her hand to her forehead. ‘We are always fearful about firesoul coming back in here. We’d all get trapped in our heads, not knowing the patterns of the past and afraid of not having a future. That would be terrible.’

   Terrible to be the way I am! Roy thought. And I can’t be any other way. He felt a pain somewhere in his chest, and said huskily, ‘All right, I understand: you getting like me would be terrible; me getting like you is impossible. I don’t mind going along with that.’

   Fey looked at him apologetic and sympathetic. ‘You are quite a sweet boy really,’ she said and stroked his face. ‘I don’t know about impossible – we can try.’

   He smiled wanly. ‘You mean that experiment to get me out of my head,’ he said. ‘Can you explain?’

   ‘Er, let me see, you’ll want to know: the axioms, the hypothesis, the empirical approach, the recording of data and calculations, and all that. But I can keep to myself how I’ll make sure I get to be proved right.’

   ‘You’re a cruel tease! You know I think all that’s rubbish.’ She opened her mouth to interrupt, he reached out to cover her lips. ‘No, please, Fey, just tell me what I have to do.’

   ‘You go outside and look around, and come back and tell me what you’ve seen.’

   ‘Is that all?’

   ‘Yes! Go on, do as you’re told.’

   ‘It’s getting dark.’

   ‘Well be quick then.’

   ‘Can’t I just look out of the window?’

   Roy went down the winding stairs and out through the door of the house. He looked around at the gloom. He saw tree silhouettes against the greenish-blue luminosity of the sky. Below the sky line he could see suspended circular spots of the same shade of blue, shining with reflected light against the dark vanishing shapes of bare branches. Fruits, left on the trees unharvested while he was wrestling with ideas and then absent in the village. What a waste! But he had been too preoccupied to think of saving any produce for the winter.

   He went back inside and upstairs and told Fey what he had seen.

   She smiled and nodded. ‘What sort of fruits?’

   He looked at her puzzled. ‘I thought watersoul didn’t use names?’

   ‘We don’t. But you do. You have to build your bridge with the material you have. What kind of fruit?’

   ‘Apples,’ he said.

   She smiled and nodded.

   ‘Is that it?’

   ‘For now. Let’s go to bed.’

   The ‘experiment’ continued the following day, in intervals between the work with the account of the watersoul and village ways. At dawn the next morning she sent him out.

   There was more to hear than to see. There was a strong wind moving the trees, and the sound was as if all their branches were rubbing and grinding together, and crying out hoarsely in complaint. On top of that was the rustling of dry leaves still attached to young trees lower down, and above all the eerie hoot as of a horn, its impure note emerging from the roar of the air. A few birds tweeted nervously. Even the light seemed reluctant to come, and brought no shadows. Roy saw a few tiny white daisy flowers, incongruous in the damp deadness on the ground.

   He went back to bed and told Fey and she smiled and nodded. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought up some food for breakfast, then we’ll get on with the project.’ They ate, snuggled under the covers, and then dashed out for a quick bathe in the chilly stream and rubbed each other dry. Roy had never been so happy.

   ‘Where did we get to?’ Roy asked.

   ‘The bit about us being different and interested in each others’ patterns.’

   He read, ‘But they do not evaluate these characteristics, nor do they have any preference or possessiveness for likeness, or dislike of unlikeness.’ He looked at her, ‘I don’t know why I wrote that. I just had a feeling it was true. But they didn’t like me, did they? I suppose because I am firesoul.’

   ‘It is true. We don’t like or dislike others. But we are wary of firesoul patterns emerging, which they do sometimes, not just in boys like you, but a less obvious version which doesn’t develop until adolescence. It could be called “father bent” in ancient language. Males who are father bent are inclined to take charge, to instruct, to impose their preferences, to protect and have favourites, and to be sexual rather than sensual in their physical contact with others – they want to put their penis inside.’ She looked at Roy and he grimaced. ‘Anyone who begins to show these characteristics is shunned by others; he might even be chased into the forest and not come back.’

   ‘I see. I suppose there isn’t a female equivalent – a “mother bent”, wouldn’t it be?’

   ‘Yes, there is mother bent. It’s a tendency in a woman to prefer, and be protective towards, infants born to herself over those born of other women.’

   ‘That’s a bit difficult to deal with. What do you do, take her baby away?’

   ‘Something like that. Go on, tell me the next part.’

   Roy could tell that ‘mother bent’ was not something Fey wanted to talk about, perhaps because of her baby that was coming. Probably he would find out then.

   ‘Well it’s all got a bit out of sequence, but I had a bit about death that linked up with the part about shared soul and extended self.’

   ‘Yes. What did you put?’

   ‘The shared soul or extended self extends to those whom we should regard as no longer living. The watersoul do not have any notion of death as oblivion. Because their seeing and knowing includes the past, no one can cease to be, or no longer be involved with the ongoing patterns. Watersoul have no fear of death, no reluctance to die, or any regret at any individual’s death. They are, if anything, least concerned about babies’ and young children’s deaths. This is due to their knowledge that there is no new pattern in a very young child: to the fey a child is a copy of earlier patterns.’

   Roy looked up. ‘I remembered Mother Sage saying something about you being careless about your children, and I worked out for myself why that might be from the pattern maths stuff.’

   ‘Clever,’ she said. ‘You’re allowing your pattern understanding to grow. But we would put it more strongly than you did: a baby is identical to earlier patterns.’

   ‘Yes, I know, I shouldn’t have said copy; I do understand that, it’s in the next bit.’ He continued reading, ‘In the child, earlier patterns shine through; there is nothing in the child’s present which was not there before in the past. So if it dies, nothing is lost. In any case, the fey do not have a sense of individual self awareness to lose: their minds are receptive and open, outward directed, not enclosed.’

   ‘Yes, that’s very good. Difficult for those firesouls to accept though. Don’t you have a problem with it?’

   He frowned as he considered. ‘Well, I don’t have any problem with it as just ideas. What actually happens could be more difficult.’

   ‘It might help if you made the firesouls look at their own attitudes to death. You could make some comment about how strange it was in necrotech the fuss they made about people’s dead bodies: funeral ceremonies, tombs and all that,’ said Fey. ‘It’s an important part of the pattern: firesoul don’t know they’ll always have their past so they’re afraid of having no future. Always have.’ She tutted with annoyance. “That’s got meaning in it I don’t want. The past is timeless, not eternal, and no one can possess it, even his own bit of past. That’s the trouble with firesoul language, it includes all the basic firesoul assumptions, and it’s hopeless using it for pattern ideas. Didn’t you find that with the mathematics?’

   But Roy was not paying attention. He was still thinking of what she had said just before. ‘What do you do with dead bodies?’ he asked, trying to make it sound like a casual question.

   She looked hard at him. ‘Why do you ask?’

   He blurted out, ‘When Mother Sage died, I had this feeling the servants cut her body up and gave me some to eat.’

   She laughed. ‘I doubt that, we don’t eat large creatures. It’s a consequence of the pledges: no domestic animals, no hunting with weapons, so we don’t have the tools to do butchering, and it would make a big mess. Usually people go to the forest and part of the body is eaten by wild creatures and the rest rots away. The servants would have taken Mother Sage’s body to the forest.’

   ‘Oh, thank you,’ Roy sighed with relief. ‘I didn’t like the idea of you being cannibals. I agree with you about funerals and tombs, but somehow cannibalism is too much the other way. And the thought of eating Mother Sage, even if her living pattern was over, and the body wasn’t her — It’s good to have you put me right on these things, even if it’s only for three days. The next section is where I tried to describe how you live. I expect it’s wrong and incomplete in places. But I’ve got you to tell me.’

   ‘I think we need a break,’ Fey said. ‘Why don’t you go and do some more of our experiment.’

   Roy went outside. The wind had dropped and it was raining. In the even light from the grey sky there were no shadows. It was quite still, except in the pond where raindrops caused circles to ripple outwards, one here, one there, spaced out when he first looked. A few moments later there were so many drops the circles were muddled up: confused, he thought with a smile. He preferred the clear patterns of the separate circles. A few brown leaves drifted down as if from the sky to join others lying delicately on the evergreen herbs, the newly fallen ones poised like boats with high prows, or the backs of brown creatures snuffling around; you could see all sorts of shapes in them. The leaves from previous days were sodden and flattened. A squirrel spiralled a tree, and spun back down with rippling tail, and sat attentive on the ground for a moment before bending down to make a hole for a nut and then leaping away on its powerful back legs.

   ‘Good,’ was all Fey said when he described it to her.

   They shared some food, then went to bed for a cuddle and a doze. Roy found himself resenting the waste of talking time, when the daylight was so short anyway, but it was she who decided how they spent the precious days, and she would not fill all the time with work on Roy’s project.

   But there was still light and time left for more work when she decided they should get up.

   ‘Now, tell me what you have put on how we live,’ Fey said. ‘That’s important if you want the firesoul boys to respect us.’

   Roy read out, ‘I shall now describe how the fey live. You may judge it primitive, but remember that they know all about firesoul and necrotech, and they have chosen their way of life in full knowledge of what is possible. The fey are gardeners. Perhaps the human animal is naturally a gardener, and if our species had not domesticated fire, enslaved certain plants and animals for farming, and developed in the necrotech direction, we would have been gardeners. So, when we had tried the necrotech route, and destroyed or disrupted all the necessary natural resources, and made ourselves wretchedly unhappy, and perhaps rather surprisingly survived to try again, we turned at last to gardening.

   ‘Mother Sage once told me that some firesoul people were gardeners, but that most of their gardening was directed at creating pleasant environments they could occasionally escape to from the stresses of necrotech. I should think the gardeners were probably the most contented of the firesoul, even if they could not avoid entirely the obligation to pay through their labour for anything they were allowed to enjoy.

   ‘Gardening for the fey is the primary occupation and the main source of pleasure as well as of bodily nourishment. Watching them garden has reminded me of ants or bees constantly engaged in the process of creating and tending their world. The fey garden is a work of art: intricately patterned, lovingly coaxed into conformity with the evolving design. Every fey knows without any instruction which tiny seedlings are desired in any little niche and which ones gently to tease out. I could not do such work because I have no eversight to show me the past pattern of a seedling which appears in its present exactly like another. I did learn the flavours and uses of a few herbs which I could recognise in their mature form. Even that was difficult for me since fey do not give names to species of plants. The little knowledge I had enabled me to do some gathering when I lived in the village. There is no other gardening work that I can do, since crude work that someone unskilled could have carried out, such as digging, is never done. Indeed, one can never see the soil in a fey garden, let alone disturb it, which they don’t do because it is one of the pledges.’

   Fey interrupted him. ‘Where did you get that part about seedlings from? Obviously not from your last visit.’

   ‘I went to the village many times with you, didn’t I? It was springtime then, and I watched people kneeling on mats picking out tiny seedlings, and I wondered how they knew which ones to take and which to leave. I worked out later how eversight would help.’

   ‘I shouldn’t really have done that you know: talk to you and take you to the village,’ Fey said. ‘It was against Mother Sage’s rules: we were supposed to keep a respectful distance. She used to be very strict with us, but she slackened off when she discovered her soul friend from necrotech. That shows she was still watersoul: she pleased herself rather than do her duty. Pleasure is what matters most to us. But she had worked very hard before that to keep you away from the village. Your house had been built too close to the village – Mother Sage knew that. It would have been better over the other side of the hill, out of sight, but the villagers wouldn’t do it – too much effort. And she’d have liked a more permanent staff of servants. Most of the other Mother Sages got their way, but not yours. So, with the house being so close, we kept swapping over, and wandering up and down. Poor Mother Sage, she did have such a struggle. And you, poor thing, now you don’t know what you are.’

   ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m working it out. I’m sure it was meant for me to be different.’

   ‘There’s no such thing as meant.’

   ‘There’s completion.’

   ‘That’s not the same as meant. That word suggests there’s some power, like a god, with a purpose we’re involved in. Completion’s not like that. Oh dear, you’ve almost got me arguing. If you’ve found purpose and meaning in your life, and I’m helping you, we’d better keep on with it. Go on, what’ve you got next?’

   ‘The fey only work during the daylight hours, and not for all that time if they do not wish to. There is other work besides gardening: making baskets and clothing, setting and collecting traps, gathering food from the gardens or from the forest, preparing food for the day or for storage (no cooking is done, of course, since fire is not used at all), keeping the firebreaks clear, repairing or occasionally constructing sleeping huts. The fey find all work enjoyable. The materials used grow in the gardens or in the forest or by the river. Fresh things are made for the pleasure of creating. Everything they make: the clothes, the baskets, the little thatched sleeping huts, is beautiful. Some artefacts are plain, others are elaborately decorated for no particular reason. Everything that is made is shared and passed around freely. Private possessions are unknown.

   ‘After dark the fey go to the sleeping huts, each of which has one sleeping chamber for several people, who all sleep cuddled up together. The groups often change about from one night to the next, and there is no regular pattern to who sleeps with whom, such as mating pairs, close relatives, or those of the same age or gender.

   ‘The group does more than just sleep during the hours of dark. The other activity is what is translated into the ancient language as “pleasure rubbing”. The same kind of activity goes on in the daytime too, but the sleeping arrangements lend themselves to plenty of this sensual contact during the night.’

   Roy looked up. ‘I’ve got a paper about pleasure that Mother Sage left; I can put that in there. Shall I read it to you?’

   ‘No, I know what it says. Go on with what you wrote.’

   ‘Depending on how you look and your expectations, you could see little variation in the villagers’ activities from day to day or else much change. For much of a season cycle, the daily routine only varies due to the weather and the days being long or short. On the other hand, the gardens follow cycles through the seasons, which are reflected in the gardening activities. There is one major seasonal change: the fey hibernate through the winter dormancy and, in the autumn, well before winter really sets in, there is what we could see as a festive period, in which there is feasting and particularly intense merriment. This is also the time for courtship, in which selection is made for the sexual coupling which takes place in a little interlude in the hibernation, the timing being chosen so that babies are born during the autumn, and taken into winter dormancy as tiny infants needing only breast milk. The close of the feasting is also the time older people “go to the forest”.’

   ‘That’s all fine. You’ve described our way of life well. But you can’t read any more, it’s too dark. Time for bed.’

   Roy went outside to urinate, and found himself continuing the experiment. It was indeed dark, and he could see very little on the ground. He looked up. The wind had returned and driven away the clouds, leaving the sky clear and thick with stars. He stared up at the stars. He had been taught that they were so far away that the light he was seeing had left them millions of years before. He was looking at the past. Was this like eversight? he wondered. No, he was still seeing only an instant, not timeless patterns. Suddenly he felt very small and mortal. His life was so brief compared to the lives of the stars up there. And then oblivion, forever. He all but fainted with the sheer awfulness of the realisation. He shuddered, and ran inside and up the twisting stairs, and into the bed which was already warm from Fey’s body. He wriggled out of his clothes and wrapped his naked body close around hers. Don’t ever leave me! he begged her silently.

   In the morning when he awoke Fey was not there. He waited for her to return, with some breakfast perhaps. But after quite a while she had not come, and there was no sound of her moving around.

   At last he got up, dressed quickly and went outside. There was no sign of her. Then he heard a muffled cry over in the direction of the stream. He went towards it.

   She was sitting on the bank of the stream, a shawl over her shoulders, but naked below. Her feet were in the water and she was bending over and moaning.

   Of course, he thought, the baby is coming, she’s in labour. He ran down the slope to her.

   ‘Fey, are you all right? Why didn’t you wake me? What can I do to help? Shall I fetch someone from the village?’

   She looked up at him, with a vague expression. He started to repeat what he had just said. She interrupted with a gesture and said something in mime-song. He could tell the general sense was, ‘Go away, leave me alone, I don’t want any help.’

   Reluctantly he left her. For most of the day her labour continued. He went part of the way to her several times, but she had not moved – nothing appeared to have changed. After a while he began to occupy himself copying out his shorthand notes of Fey’s contributions to his project. What a wise and clever women she is, he thought. What a good team we are. He allowed himself to imagine the two of them being a couple, a family with the coming child. He did not care that some other man had mated with her, so the child was not his own; he was not firesoul to that extent. He would not want to own Fey, or their children. He became more and more sure that a synthesis was possible between watersoul and firesoul, and that his, and Fey’s, role was to help bring that about.

   At midday, Roy went all the way down the path to the stream. She was just the same. He wondered why she had her feet in the cold water; perhaps it distracts her from the pain, he thought. He asked her again if she needed help, or if he could get her something to eat, or something warmer to put around her. Again she dismissed him. He was worried: how long would this go on? Were she and the baby going to be all right? Should he perhaps disobey her and fetch help? Was she in too much pain to tell what she needed?

   At dusk he decided he must do something, she couldn’t stay there all night. He got a basket and put in it her tunic, her boots and a fur cloak, and some food. The sky was streaked with red as he walked down the path again. Now she was standing on the bank, naked, spreading the shawl on the ground.

   At first he thought the red in the water was reflection from the sunset. Then he saw the child. It was lying in a pool of water, which was red with blood. The water was over its face and it was still. Something in his chest went into spasm. Oh, how dreadful! and it was all his fault, he should have fetched help.

   He knelt down. It was a perfect little boy, still attached to the afterbirth in the water beside it. Gently he lifted the baby up.

   He looked up at her. ‘Oh my poor Fey, I’m so sorry, I should have helped you, but you —’

   She said nothing and her face was expressionless. She bent down to take the child and afterbirth from him, and laid them on the shawl.

   Looking at her he suddenly realised his misunderstanding. He knew, without doubt. She had killed the baby; drowned it, or prevented it from starting to breathe.

   ‘Why?’ he cried. He stood up and grabbed hold of her as she was about to draw the shawl together. ‘Tell me why!’ he demanded. She looked at him with her deep black eyes, and shrugged.

   He snatched at an explanation. ‘To show you’re not mother bent, is that it?’ She shrugged again. He tried another possibility, ‘Is it because the child could be tainted by contact with me?’ No response. ‘Are there too many babies this time – the gardens haven’t the capacity for extra mouths to feed?’ She shrugged free of his hands on her arms. She saw the basket he had brought with her clothes in. She looked at him and nodded her thanks with a faint smile before putting them on. Then she finished drawing the shawl together, lifted it over her shoulder and started to walk down the hill towards the village.

   ‘What are you going to do with that?’ His earlier squeamish fear of cannibalism came back. It was only a dead body, a small tender animal, so why wouldn’t they? ‘Are you going to eat it?’ he called after her disappearing back.

   As Roy watched her go it occurred to him that this should have been their third day of talking. Fey had said they would be together in the house until the end of the feasting, and then go down for the hibernation. In the spring he would be accepted in the village and learn more about it. After some time the other firesouls would come, and Fey would have gone with him, wouldn’t she? But now?

   Roy cried himself to sleep that night. When he woke up he momentarily forgot what had happened. He reached out for Fey and remembered. He cried some more, then he felt angry, and kicked and screamed and thumped the pillows. But there was no one there to receive his feelings. He felt his rational self beginning to take charge.

   ‘What am I doing making judgements?’ he said to himself out loud. ‘I know perfectly well they’re different. Mother Sage said they don’t have any sense of right or wrong like firesoul do, because they don’t have social inequalities to maintain. I’ve got to work this thing out, and then we’ll see.’

   So he got up, went out for a wash, going some way upstream from the place where Fey had given birth. He had some breakfast and then set to to resume his writing. He’d start with looking at his own attitudes and firesoul patterns, especially the matter of making judgements. As he put pen to paper he felt better, and in control.

   ‘Much of the fey way of living and being I have found utterly delightful, which is not surprising because delight and pleasure are eagerly sought by them and readily available: to be fey is to please and be pleased. But because I am firesoul I judge and evaluate. I don’t approve of all their ways. For example, I didn’t think it was right to have what I think of as sexual intercourse – never mind whether or not it involves penetration – with a little girl, even if she likes it. So I ask myself: is this good pleasure or bad pleasure? I have learned to seek for answers to such questions in my own attitudes and the patterns I was brought up to resonate with.

   ‘The general reason for making judgements I understand well enough. Firesoul attitudes derive from necrotech, which was an exploitative society based on fire and destruction technology. Using destructive technology is wasteful, and its benefits transient and so necessarily restricted to a privileged few. Hence what is “good” is behaviour which is in the interests of those few; what is “bad” is what does not suit them.

   ‘If one is brought up as firesoul, one automatically makes judgements, and also one wants to interfere with and rectify what is found “not good”. But this can be a mistake. To illustrate the point, it would be consistent with firesoul thinking to admire the form and graceful movement of a wild animal, such as a lion, but judge its hunting and killing as cruel, and even to wish to “improve” the lion by making it a “compassionate” vegetarian, which might lie down peacefully beside its erstwhile prey. But then it would not be a lion. Alter any part of the creature’s nature and you have destroyed its nature. The pathetic monsters which resulted from the domestication of certain species of wild animals is evidence of that.

   ‘I have wondered what would happen to the watersoul people if firesoul men were to carry out an investigation of the watersoul way of living. The firesouls might approve of the watersouls’ skills at crafts and gardening, and perhaps their sense of fun and play, but they would want to “correct” what they perceived as unacceptable population control, in particular infanticide and carelessness towards young children. They would want to teach the watersoul “proper” sexual practices, improve their technological base by, for example, introducing lamps or materials produced by melting, smelting or firing, extend their life expectation, cure their illnesses, stop them “going to the forest”, and so on. If that were even attempted, the way of watersoul would be destroyed. I can see that. I fear that other firesoul men would not.’

   ‘I’m not so sure that I wouldn’t wish to reform them myself,’ Roy said to himself when he had finished. ‘Look at all that stuff I was dreaming about me, Fey and the baby. I think she’s right: trying to combine watersoul and firesoul would probably be disastrous for the watersoul. That’s an old pattern too: city cultures destroying rural ones to exploit their land and labour, and making out they were helping. “Development”, they called it. I suppose the New Beginning could be different. Mother Sage seemed to think so. Oh, I don’t know what I think any more!’

   After this there did not seem to be anything more to write about. Roy hung around outside the house much of the time for several days, hoping Fey would come back.

   One morning it was raining heavily so he did not venture out. He decided to tidy up his writing so that it was a proper book in a sensible sequence, with contents list, numbered pages and an index. He decided to incorporate some of Mother Sage’s writing, including the pattern mathematics. Some of it would have to be rewritten. He got absorbed in the task. Soon it was as if he had never left the house to go to the village. Fey and the baby were just two other ghosts besides Mother Sage and Bony, and he forgot about Fey’s experiment to see if he could get outside his head.

   Roy stayed enclosed in his head, within his cell, in the house and its grounds until the resources of his environment were obviously dwindling. The supplies he and Fey had brought from the village were soon used up and he lived off dried fruit and nuts from the basement stores. It was produce from the previous year’s harvest, but some was still edible.

   It was the depletion of paper Roy noticed first. The schoolroom cupboard was empty. A hunt in the basement stores found two baskets of new paper, but also a damaged basket, its contents a mess of paper ribbons where some animal had made a nest. Only then did he realise that he must have left the basement door ajar, and allowed in small animals which had raided the remaining supplies of dried fruits and nuts. He had not thought to set traps for the pests, although he knew that the servants used to do so in case any gnawed their way in.

   After that disaster, Roy had to gather food from outside, nipping out into the gardens for a few green herbs and withered apples. The need to provide for himself broke his inward concentration, and he began to take stock, not only of the food situation, but of how he was living, and how long he could continue that way.

   He was suddenly achingly lonely. The ghosts in his cell, whom he talked to when he was thinking out what to write, had seemed sufficient companionship when he was deep in his studies. He became aware of his body, hunched, thin, pale and grubby from its period of confinement. He went to the garden pond, knelt at its edge and peered at his reflection in the water.

   His cheeks and upper lip had fluffy tufts of beard hair interspersed with adolescent spottiness made worse from his recent lack of fresh food. His hair had grown over his ears and was dirty and matted. When was the last time someone had combed it? His body servant used to do that, and it had not occurred to him to do it himself. The villagers had groomed him until that awful night, and Fey had done so too.

   ‘What am I going to do?’ he said aloud to the reflection, to the image of the boy-man body containing his mind and his self, the eyes staring back at him. The sight and sound of his own person shook Roy’s self-pity and pitched him into the world.

   He stood up and turned slowly around, scanning the familiar but forgotten place he had lived in for as long as he could remember. The garden had a neglected look. It was still garden, but well on its way to merging with the neighbouring forest. How quickly that had happened! how powerful wild nature must be to have made its mark after less than one season cycle.

   ‘What am I going to do?’ he asked himself again, strangely scared but fascinated by the sound of his own voice breaking the hush. ‘I can’t stay here any more, I can’t go to the village, the other firesouls may never come, and I’m a mixed up firesoul anyway.’ It occurred to him to go and get some of his dirty linen tunics to wash in the stream, and a comb to see if he could sort out his hair, when the thought came to him, ‘Perhaps what I should do is go to the forest.’

   As soon as the thought had voiced itself, the idea became strangely attractive. He remembered Mother Sage saying the watersoul looked forward to it as an adventure. Well, he could treat it like that. And something might happen; he might even meet up with the firesoul men: if it was ‘meant’. And even oblivion was better than being thrown up and down by the cruel tricks life played.

   He sorted out a few things from the house to take with him: a water bottle which he filled from the stream, a shoulder basket with some extra clothing in it, his strongest boots, a fur cloak with a hood. He set off in the opposite direction from the village, up the hill on the path Mother Sage used to use. He reached her vigil place, where there was a rocky outcrop, and sat there for a while as nostalgic thoughts washed over him. He fancied he could feel Mother Sage still present through the years of drawing in the distant past from wherever it lay.

   He wandered on, making detours off the path to pick nuts and berries and mushrooms. He decided it did not matter whether what he ate was poisonous or not. It might be a better way to go than waiting for a wolf or a bear or some accident to get him. He found some little brown mushrooms and a bright red kind which he was sure he should not eat, but he did not care. He came across a stream and refilled his water bottle, then he spread his cloak, sat down and tucked into his wild feast sitting on the rocks with his feet dangling in a little waterfall.

Something strange is happening in my head. There is someone inside my skull walking about. Now I am in there too, also walking. My whole body is in the place where only my brain should be. The person walking beside me is Mother Sage, and we are discussing my book which she is carrying, tucked under her arm.

   ‘This is a good firesoul way to get outside your head,’ Mother Sage is saying approvingly, tapping the book. ‘Now anyone can tell what was in your mind, and they can build a world to match it, and then the world in your head is outside where you are. That’s the way to do it. And it’s a lovely index, so people can find each of your thoughts directly, and time isn’t a problem any more.

   ‘Fey’s experiment is not suitable for a firesoul,’ she says dismissively. ‘Much too difficult for you. You could try getting out of your head by getting inside it. According to the ancient mystics, the way to enlightenment is inwards. Of course, it is impossible to be sure what is in and what is out. It may be that the problem with firesoul is that they are turned inside out. So perhaps inwards is really outwards, if you see what I mean. The light inside could be the sun outside, which has to be the source of all light on earth. Or maybe what firesoul see as fire is really the reflection of the sun, which might bounce about in the inside of their skulls, like in a cave of shadows. It would do that, don’t you think. Have you considered that possibility at all?

   ‘But going inside must restrict the flow. So watersoul generally prefer the outwards perspective. The higher vantage point is advantageous, like my hill, you know. I could see everything from there. Then you don’t need all these books.’ And she drops the bundle under her arm, and a crowd of village youngsters run up and catch the pages as they fall, and eagerly show each other that the paper is blank on one side. As they run about I can feel their feet thundering in my head. I chase after then to retrieve my precious book, and my feet are so cold in the damp dark of the cave and I turn to ask Mother Sage the way to the hill, but she has turned into a blood-red stream and is flowing away.

   I wade into her stream. The water bubbles merrily over the rocks and makes room for my legs as I wade in. I sink down slowly into the chilliness and rub my belly and chest and my upper arms. Submerged up to my neck I float and can twist about. Taking a breath I roll over, duck my hair in the water to get it clean. My hair is long and green. I watch the green tendrils waving and little fish darting through them. There are curving channels in the muddy bottom, which part at each stone leaving it isolated and washed clean.

   I say to Mother Sage, who is the stream, ‘I am fire and molten rock which wants to be water and mud like you. The fire makes the stone; the water wears down the stone into mud. Then there is life in the earth. And fire destroys life, as firesoul had destroyed life before. So, what was the pattern that had to be completed?’

   ‘You can see it for yourself,’ says Mother Sage. ‘You don’t need me any more.’

   And I look up at the stars and I see they are the firesoul people, billions and billions of souls. I stare up and the lights go out one by one, each little pattern disappears, and at last the pattern of patterns is gone, so how can it be completed? And I see that they did it to themselves. Each of the patterns was incomplete because its entire being was annihilated by its own certainty that its own past pattern does not exist, so even what had been never was.

   To believe that the past only exists in memories stored in the cells of a brain which rots away at death means that death destroys everything. Their only hope of escape from oblivion was the belief, that some of the people clung to, that they have immortal souls separate from their bodies which would survive death and continue living in future lives, to be reborn on earth or to go to some other world. And they keep all the dead bodies safely in case they are needed again.

   But time ceases when a pattern ends; there is no future, only the timeless past, which firesoul does not know. So all the firesouls met oblivion at death, and ceased to know that they had ever been: a state of ultimate incompleteness, which would have to be resolved else the human pattern in its entirety would never reach completion. Is that what Mother Sage says I know?

   So maybe … just possibly … could it be that … my task is to make the transition from firesoul to watersoul so that all those uncompleted firesoul patterns would follow me and wake up to their immortality?

   But can it be done, changing one’s deepest nature like that? The village people are so strange. How can I become like them? Even for the high purpose I had been shown.

   But had I been shown any purpose? Maybe it was just a notion. It sounded too huge a purpose anyhow.

   But then, watersoul seem to have no purpose. They prefer nothing to change from the patterns of the village in the past. So for me to become watersoul I have to have no purpose. If this is the purpose, I have to forget it.

   So when I go to the village it is best to go for no reason, but just because it is there. Or because I need pleasure and company and something to do. If being part of the busyness down there takes the blinkers of my mind away and lets my watersoul free, perhaps that in itself will begin a pattern for the other firesoul boys to follow. That is the best I can hope to achieve. No, forget about achieving. I must get back to the village.

Roy woke up in the village. He was in a sleeping hut with the curtain drawn back to let in the light. Fey was leaning over him.

   ‘I got back to the village,’ he smiled.

   Fey turned to someone standing on the ladder looking in. ‘I think you could fetch him some food now,’ she said in mime-song.

   He felt his stomach heaving, and he leaned over the bowl she held and brought up a vile bitter taste and little else.

   Fey wiped his mouth and held a cup of water for him to sip.

   ‘Life’s thrown me up again,’ Roy joked. ‘I went to the forest, you know, to escape the ups and downs. How did I get back?’

   ‘You went to the forest and ate some poisonous mushrooms,’ she said. ‘You had such a dream we all heard it and knew where to find you. You’re lucky they only gave you bad dreams.’

   ‘I thought it was a lovely dream; perhaps I’ll go back to it,’ Roy said, feeling his mind drifting. ‘I’m going to save all the firesoul: billions and billions of them, like the stars in the sky,’ and he waved his arms about.

   ‘Silly firesoul boy, such big ideas!’ she said. ‘Now you must try to stay awake. You’ve been very sick.’

   ‘You’re speaking my language, is this our third day?’ Roy asked. ‘What happened to the baby? No, no, it’s all right, I’m not going to make judgements. I know about judgements. I finished my book, you know, with an index and everything. Where is my book? There was something in the dream. Oh, never mind. What’s going to happen now?’

   Someone came with a bowl of fruit puree. Fey fed it to him with a little bone spoon. He felt his stomach heave, but he kept the food down. After a while gurgling noises came from his insides.

   ‘That’s a good sign,’ said Fey.

   Roy’s dreams were soon to resume. The village was settling down for hibernation and Roy was to be included. He was sharing a sleeping hut with a lot of other people, including Fey. People changed huts and companions less frequently than he remembered from before, and there were about twice as many to each hut: twelve one time when he managed to count them.

   At first he was sure he would not be able to hibernate. He would be getting up and out while there was daylight. He did so for a few days, but it was very still and quiet and empty outside, with a haunted feel to it which reminded him of being in the old house and garden. So he went back inside, snuggled up for a bit of pleasure rubbing, and dozed.

‘What are you making?’ she asks. ‘It looks like a shoe. You’re making a shoe out of river mud.’

   I look up and smile. ‘You’ll see what it is when I’ve finished. Look, I’ve done all these different ones, to see which works best. Careful! they’re quite soft,’ I warn her, as she goes to pick one up. I was going to smooth out her finger prints, but I decide to leave them there.

   Carefully I carry the wicker tray the objects are standing on and I look around for the place where the sun shines hottest. A rock island in the river looks ideal. There is nothing to shade it and it will stay sunny all day. But how can I get there with my burden? I put the tray down on the grassy bank. Then I sit on the edge and swing my legs over until my feet are dangling in the water. How deep is it? I strip off my tunic. Edging myself further down I feel the side of the bank smooth against my heels. The water is waist high when I feel the stones of the river bed. I wade gingerly in the direction of the sunny island. Some boys have gathered to watch.

   ‘Don’t touch those things on the tray,’ I warn them.

   ‘What are they?’ one of them asks.

   ‘I think they’re clay shoes,’ Fey tells them, and they laugh. ‘What are you doing, Roy? Can’t you swim?’ she calls to me.

   ‘I want to put the tray on this island so the clay will bake in the sun.’

   ‘We’ll help,’ a boy says. He organises the others into a chain from the river’s edge to the island. Then they pass the tray from one hand to the next.

   All day long the objects stand in the hot summer sun. In the evening I gather the boys together again and we retrieve the tray. Gently I thread a piece of linen cord through the narrow hole in the ‘toe’ of one of the clay ‘shoes’, and carefully pour nut oil into the larger opening. I rub two sticks together under a pile of dry grass and strips of bark until I have a spark, and the grass catches fire. I wait for the ends of the bark to catch fire and I take a burning strip and put it to the wick. The oil burns with a bright steady flame. Success, first time. I hold up the lamp. ‘Look, boys, we have light!’

Roy was pleased with this dream and decided to record it. He crawled out of the sleeping huddle, slowly and carefully so as not to disturb anyone. He untied the rope to let down the basket with his clothes in and dressed. He drew aside the thick curtain and squeezed through, lifted the flap door and wriggled his legs out onto the ladder. The light was dazzling. When he emerged he saw that everywhere was brilliant white. It had snowed in the night.

   Coming down the ladder he found that the snow was not very deep, but it had drifted against the store door, so he cleared it away. He opened the door and helped himself to a handful of nuts and an apple, shut the door and secured the catch. He walked a few paces and then urinated, making a yellow stain in the whiteness.

   To record the dream he had to go up the hill to the house. It was not possible to keep any personal belongings in the village because anything could happen to them. Children might play with his papers and mess them up as happened in his dream. As he walked he composed what he would write.

   The dream was the latest in a series on the same theme. There had been a progression. In the earliest ones he had failed to make the lamps: he could not find suitable clay, could not get the shape right, the objects collapsed or crumbled to dust when they dried. Then he could not make fire: could not find suitable sticks, or dry grass, or get the bark taper to burn. Then the lamps did not work: the wick would not light, or it went out, or the oil burned too fast, or made dense choking smoke. So this last dream was a triumph. ‘Let there be light!’ he proclaimed out loud.

He hands the lamp to a boy, who looks at it in wonder. ‘What is it for?’ he asks.

   ‘To light the darkness,’ I tell him.

   ‘But why?’ says the boy.

   ‘So that you do not have to sleep as soon as night comes.’

   ‘We don’t have to sleep when night comes now. It is a time for pleasure.’

   ‘Yes, but now you can stay up and see to make things in the evenings and have more time in the daylight for gardening.’

   ‘But we have enough time now to make all we want.’

   ‘You could exchange mime-song with each other and tell stories.’

   ‘We don’t need stories, we have eversight. And it is too cold at night to sit up and talk; it is better to snuggle up together for pleasure rubbing.’

   ‘Now you have fire you can make stoves to keep warm. Perhaps I should make a stove next out of clay.’

   I struggle and struggle to make a stove. And last I succeed. I fetch dry wood from the forest and assemble it in the stove. I light the fire.

   Fey sees my fire. She rushes to it. She throws herself onto the stove and smashes it. The fire sets light to her clothes and she burns. I scream and scream.

‘Hush, hush, you’ll wake everyone,’ said Fey, putting her hand over Roy’s mouth.

I am in the between-forest: between the first and second firebreaks. I am hunting the flightless birds that live here. I have shot several with my catapult and put them in the bag over my shoulder. The last bird I shot at I lost. I was sure I had hit it, but it shuffled off into the undergrowth, and I am trying to follow it.

   I fancy there is a movement over there, but mouldy leaves muffle sound. The dappled shade makes ghostly patterns which could be anything or nothing. Even the bright red-brown of the bird is camouflaged here.

   I feel something behind me. I sense, but cannot see or hear, whatever it is skirting around me in a wide arc. It is ahead of me now. Is that it there? The grey shape. Some large animal. The tiny muscles on my skin tingle with fear.

   The grey shape approaches, a creeping forward and a crouching. I freeze. Closer and closer it comes. Suddenly it darts forward. Something drops at my feet. The grey shape leaps away in two twisted bounds. I look down. There is the red bird, still living but wounded. I despatch it with a sharp stone I carry with me for this purpose, and put the warm body in my bag.

   I look up to where my helper leapt away. I see it now, sitting, back legs crouched down, forelegs straight. It’s head is tilted to one side, mouth agape and panting. It regards me as if puzzled, as much with itself as at me. I sense it remembers a bond between us. I remember it too. I move towards it but it dashes away. ‘Goodbye, old friend,’ I call softly after it. See you again soon.

I have another friend now besides Fey. He is a boy, younger than I am. I call him Amadeus, after a famous musician, but only to myself. He is watersoul so he does not want an individual name. But he likes me and we spend much time together at the old house.

   I am teaching Amadeus mathematics. He is an able pupil, and is happy to use his mind this way, unlike Fey, who won’t talk to me in my language any more. Amadeus likes the books Mother Sage and I had bound in covers. He likes to turn the pages, and he will read aloud when I ask him to, and he listens when I explain the ideas, and he seems to grasp them straight away.

   In return, Amadeus is instructing me about music. The villagers do not have any music, unless you count their mime-song as music, but it is more like the tweeting of birds, as Mother Sage used to say. But Amadeus is using his eversight, like Mother Sage used to do, to shift to the lives of musicians in necrotech and tell me how they experienced music.

   I learned a little of the theory of harmony when I was a boy. Mother Sage and I used to sing together, sometimes exercises, but also lovely tunes she had experienced on her shifts. She had someone make a bamboo pipe for me, but I never learned to play it very well, so she allowed me to drop that part of my studies. I found the pipe and gave it to Amadeus to play, which he was able to do when he came back from the shifts. Now he is teaching me to play. I am struggling, but I am determined to master this art.

   I have plans to introduce firesoul music to the village. I believe they are too wary of anything firesoul, but music cannot be bad. Mother Sage used to say that music was the best part of firesoul culture. When I understand it well enough Amadeus and I will have more instruments made. With village materials various wind and string and percussion instruments can be made. We shall have an orchestra, and a choir. It will be wonderful!

When spring came and the village came out of hibernation, Roy was eager to tell Fey about his dreams. She was willing to listen, but she made it clear she did not intend to speak to him in his language; she would only respond in mime-song. She also conveyed the suggestion that Roy should resume the experiment.

   Roy related to Fey all his dreams, and his interpretation and elaboration of them, which consisted of various aspects of Roy’s two realisations: the synthesis between watersoul and firesoul; and the awakening of the firesoul to their immortality. She listened attentively, and made no attempt to criticise or argue.

   While Fey was busy with life in the village, Roy was engaged in his personal projects: getting out of his head through Fey’s experiment and what he thought of as Mother Sage’s alternatives of further writing and inward meditation; and finding himself ways of contributing to village life and learning some skills. He became fluent at mime-song, managed to make some functionally adequate gathering baskets and learned to recognise more herbs. What he enjoyed most was firebreak clearing work because it required little skill and plenty of hard work, and it meant going through the forest, which he loved.

   Following on from the music dream, Roy brought down from the house the bamboo pipe which he found still hanging by its decorative tassels on a peg on the schoolroom wall. He tried to interest the children in playing the pipe. They humoured him, but did not seem at all thrilled by being able to make tunes.

   After several attempts Roy became quite frustrated, and told Fey about it and asked for her help. When he had finished she sat in silence for a while. Then she indicated she had something important to tell him, that she would tell it in mime-song, and that they would work on this until he understood.

   The communication required them to invent gestures and sounds for some ideas not usually conveyed in this language. At first Roy was pleased with the task. But as he began to see what it was she had to tell him, he became overwhelmed with disappointment.

   Watersoul had nothing to gain from firesoul music. They were attuned to the experience and knowledge of the patterns, in which were melodies and harmonies more fascinating, delightful and wonderful than any music could be. Music had been the nearest firesoul could come to knowing the patterns, to transcending the handicap of being aware only of the present and losing the timeless past. Music allowed them to trap in their minds crude copies of partial patterns, and grasp faint echoes of the sonorous intricacies of the patterns, which are the essence and spirit of all that has ever been.

   ‘But Mother Sage said that everything has eversight,’ Roy said imploringly. She nodded, her black eyes glistening with sympathetic tears. He continued to the unavoidable conclusion, ‘So every creature, plant, animal, rock, water, air, star, everything knows the more-than-music of the patterns. Only firesoul has shut himself away with the less-than-pattern of music as consolation.’ She drew him close and he sobbed brokenly in her arms.

   He mumbled into her hair, ‘And I suppose it’s the same with art and poetry and dancing. All we can do is make echoes and shadows in our heads and tell ourselves we’re the most advanced creatures that ever evolved, and all the time we’re the lowest and deafest and blindest and stupidest.’

   At last he calmed down a little and pulled away from her.

   ‘Thank you for telling me,’ he said. ‘It’s always best to know. I knew before, but there’s knowing and really knowing. I’ll just have to work harder to get outside my head. I’ll go and write it all this down; that usually helps.’

   She smiled and nodded and gave him a squeeze, and gestured, ‘Go along then, I’ll see you later.’

   Roy trudged up the hill, deep in despair. ‘I was so happy,’ he moaned to himself, ‘I’d got everything worked out, and then: smash! life knocks me down again. That seems to be my pattern since Mother Sage died. They should have left me in the forest.’

   Part way up the hill Roy left the path to go to the place where Fey had given birth. He did his meditation there. The place humbled him. It helped to remind him of how much he did not understand about the fey and the village. In spite of all the ups and downs, he still had the habit of thinking of himself as the person he was brought up to be: the young lord, with a good mind, whose ideas mattered, with an important role in the New Beginning for civilisation. That self-confident personality bobbed up again whatever happened, and the lessons he had been learning about his own inadequacy never quite got home. So he came to the place where his fondest dreams had been shattered, to remind himself not to hope.

   He pulled off his boots and his tunic and sat where Fey had sat. He looked at the pool where her baby had died, now clear and clean. He had taught himself not to pity the baby. It was a small step now to pity himself. Even that baby knew the patterns, was part of the patterns still.

   ‘I’ve got to get out of my head!’ Roy cried out, and he thought he heard the sound reverberate somewhere in the hills above him, perhaps from Mother Sage’s vigil place, perhaps from where he had that dream after eating the mushrooms. But to hear himself in the huge space which was outside his head was frightening. He would be safer back inside himself.

   ‘I can’t get out,’ he moaned, ‘I won’t let myself.’

   He felt so wretched he was desperate. He threw himself off the bank into the stream and its jagged rocks. He banged his head down onto the rocks as if to smash a way out, and banged and banged again, and blood spurted out and dyed the pool red once more.

   He came to, and found himself cradled in Fey’s lap, with an excruciating pain on his forehead. He put a hand up to touch it and felt the cut ends of threads sticking up. Someone had put stitches in his head, which was swollen tight and hot.

   ‘Don’t touch. I’ve mended you,’ Fey said in his language. ‘You didn’t come back for supper, so I went to look for you.’

   ‘I wanted to get out of my head,’ Roy whispered.

   ‘You can’t do it like this, silly boy. The others wanted to take you to the forest. We don’t usually mend people.’

   ‘No, I suppose you wouldn’t,’ he almost nodded, but it hurt.

   ‘What are we going to do with you until the firesouls come?’

   ‘Are they coming?’

   ‘Oh yes, the trek has started.’

   ‘When will it get here?’

   ‘A little before next hibernation, I think.’

   ‘Why so long?’

   ‘Firesouls are joining the trek one each day from each village they pass. They are approaching a place on the second firebreak a moon cycle from here where several threads of the trek will join up, but each of the threads has a long way still to go before they get to the joining place.’

   ‘Will you come with me?’

   ‘Yes, I will come with you. But that is enough talking. Try to sleep now.’

   Roy had a quiet summer. Now he had something to look forward to he was more settled in his mind, although that event seemed far off, and full of its own uncertainties. He decided to enjoy the warm weather and the lovely village gardens, then it would be harvest and feasting time. After that his new life would begin.

   He was still hopeful that the two cultures would be able to coexist, and have gifts to offer each other. The mushroom dream of leading the firesoul to immortality was now an embarrassing memory. He knew he had been out of his mind with madness rather than with enlightened consciousness.

   At last summer was past, and the season came for the harvest and feasting which Roy had missed the previous year. Everyone ate as they picked and prepared food for storage. They stuffed themselves with fruit and nuts, which Roy enjoyed, and fresh-killed raw meat, which he left to them. There was much giggling and silly antics associated with baskets of fungus which were hallucinogenic, but mildly so, and not poisonous, so he had a little and felt and acted silly too. It was wonderful to let his mind have a holiday.

   There was even more pleasure rubbing than usual, but any girl around his own age whom he approached darted away giggling. He was not to be included in the courting going on between boys and girls, who were, he judged, barely past puberty. The boys wooed the girls by enticing them to places in the gardens and forest by leaving trails of presents, linked together by picture clues drawn on scraps of material. Roy remembered Mother Sage talking about these games, and how the youngsters had taken to using their leftover paper for this purpose. He picked up some of the scraps to study later.

   He followed one of the girls to see what the couple would do when she reached her wooer, but as he knew from the paper Mother Sage had written, they did not have sex together, did not even engage in the usual pleasure rubbing. They mime-sang and flirted. They returned to the village hand in hand. At night they went to separate sleeping houses and the next day had little to do with each other, their courtship apparently done. In the middle of winter they would emerge from hibernation, pair up as decided by the courtship and engage in hasty sexual intercourse. The courtship itself was a silly, apparently pointless performance. But it occurred to him that other animals had silly, apparently pointless mating rituals too.

   Roy looked at the bundle of love notes he had picked up.

   ‘That’s funny,’ he said to himself, ‘It looks as if they’ve still got some scrap paper left from when Mother Sage was alive. That’s her writing on the back.’

   He looked more closely and realised to his horror that the writing was part of the pattern mathematics. What had happened?

   There was only one way to find out. He went up the hill at a run. He reached the house panting with effort and anxiety. He dashed up to his old room.

   His writing basket was open, and empty, so the precious papers of his book of the watersoul village ways were destroyed too. There were signs that the youngsters had been writing their love notes and clues in his room, and had used his pens and ink. A snowy layer of scraps littered the floor.

   In a panic he dashed to Mother Sage’s room. Her basket was closed. He looked inside. At least the books of mathematics for the New Beginning were safe.

   He went back to his room and collected the scraps together and put them back in the baskets. They were quite full, so perhaps there was not much missing. ‘Perhaps I could find all the pieces and fit them together again. It’s not as if they’ve been burnt. Every piece is around somewhere. But what a task to fit it back together!’

   He ran back to the village. He found Fey and told her what had happened. She rounded up some of the courting boys and girls, and explained in mime-song that Roy wanted back the pieces of paper they had used. She showed no sign of being displeased with them, but he should not have expected her to.

   They engaged in this hunt as if it were another game, dashing around the favourite trysts, rummaging around in the scented ramblers trailing up the trellis walls of thatched bowers, peering under garden seats, poking under lavender bushes and sage plants in the herb spirals, seeking in every cosy nook and cranny and flowery bank in the orchards and the near forest.

   They brought back baskets full of scraps. Inwardly groaning, and full of frustrated anger, Roy had to smile his thanks. He packed all the pieces into one basket with an arching handle for easy carrying. He filled a similar basket with provisions. He heaved a bedding roll over his shoulder, picked up the baskets and made his way back up the hill. He collapsed exhausted on his bed.

   In the morning Fey arrived at the house with a someone Roy did not recognise. ‘This is the messenger,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to go now.

   ‘Go where?’

   ‘To join the trek.’ she said. ‘We’ll go from here.’

   ‘I’ll fetch the mathematics books. It’s a pity about the others – the ones which really mattered.’

   ‘Less for me to carry, though.’

   ‘We’ll only need one basket. Why should you carry it?’

   ‘They’ll expect that. I’m your slave wife, remember!’

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