A hot wet wind blew over the plain, rocking the coils, loosening their roots. One stretch had lifted free, and its great weight heaved back and forth like a snake’s locomotion, but it was trapped both ends by the roots still bedded deep and held by tough filaments which penetrated tiny fissures in the rocks below the red soil.
The moving stretch, though dangerous, was the best hunting ground. There were parallel drip lines under the coil’s scaly sides, where rainwater ran down between the bulges which had been human habitation. Below the drip lines the weed grew tall and thick. When the coil came loose, its roots were dragged backwards and forwards across the weed and hooked whole swathes out of the soil, and tossed them away for the wind to spin into great green balls by tumbling them over the ground. But to catch one was not easy.
The sisters joined hands to form an arc to trap a careering ball. The first to enter bounced out again, and in ducking to avoid being knocked down, one of the women let go and broke the chain. She lost balance and the wind tipped her over, so the others edged backwards to join up with her again. The whistling air slapped their long damp hair around their faces, blinding them and catching in their mouths as they gasped with the effort to repair the human net.
Over and over again they tried to catch one of their prey. Over and over a ball would come near or inside, but with seeming wiliness, escape and bounce away. They knew they had to keep edging sideways to avoid the path of the loose loop, where a sudden whip of the massive coil could crush them to death. But this meant that, without realising it, they were slipping backwards with-wind, and away from the sorory.
Suddenly, with the bizarre predictability of chaos, a ball came which seemed to wish to be caught. It rolled gently inside the arc and traced a slow spiral to the centre and spun quietly around until they closed in around it. The ball was half as high again as they were: a really good catch. Laughing they grabbed the spongy tangle of weed, and collapsed against it to rest. They nibbled a few of the tiny white flowers, deliciously sweet and fresh.
The brother saw the sisters from his perch atop a coil in the sorory. He clung to the green fins and gazed in their direction across the vastness of the plain with his blinking eyes, in order to focus with his evereye. He smiled at their girlish pleasure, a rare respite from their grim existence. In ages gone by they might have been still girls, absorbed in irresponsible fun and playing at love. Boys would have found them desirable, with their full breasts, strong slim limbs, golden brown skin. Their faces, all so alike, had the caste of some ancient race, with broad cheekbones, narrow black eyes, finely chiselled slightly beaked noses and perfectly formed lips. As he watched them, he saw their rush of excited pleasure fade.
They looked around for the nearest refuge from the full force of the wind, and realised how badly positioned they now were. They had to get the ball back to the sorory, in the main local cluster of rooted coil, half daylight into-wind away, but they could not go into-wind with the huge ball. To the east was the path of the loose section. Far over to the west was a rooted section, but an isolated strand, which would hardly soften the wind at all. There was a rooted cluster to the south, with-wind and so easy to get to, but this was far from where they wanted to be.
The brother could hear the sisters with his evereye, as well as see them, over the great distance, half daylight into-wind, and over the cacophony of moving air. He knew what they would decide, but not because his evereye could see the future, eversight probably had never included that gift, but because he could feel the flow of the pattern of their deciding.
‘We’ll never get it home from here,’ a sister said.
‘We’ll have to plait it up then,’ said another.
‘That’d take too long, it’s such a big one,’ said another, ‘so there’d be no fresh weed for supper.’
‘And we would not be back this day.’
‘What do we do then? Let it go and get nearer home and try to catch another one?’
‘We could plait up some of it, let the rest go and then see if we can catch a little one nearer home.’ And that is what was decided.
The brother nodded to himself. He looked down with his blinking eyes to where the other brother and some sisters were chewing weed, and several little girls, just tottering on their feet, tumbled together in the red mud and occasionally snuggled up to suckle at the women’s damply gleaming golden breasts. The clay basin was full of chewed weed pulp and the over-mound was forming. The weed from the last hunt was nearly used up. The rain had filled the basin. Soon they would cover the basin with more clay and leave the pulp for a quarter moon to brew. The water would drain away into the ground, leaving a big round biscuit of nutritious curd. Tomorrow, they would begin again with an empty basin and the new weed pile. At supper there would be plenty of fresh weed to eat.
The brother looked back with his evereye at the hunting party.
Half the group of sisters was holding the ball steady, while the rest plaited, and they would continue until their fingers were tired, and then change over. Each plait was made by forming three continuous hanks by easing in strand after strand. When the three hanks were long enough they were plaited together, and the hanks extended further. When the plait was long enough, it was wound around the waist by turning. The plait was tucked into itself to secure it, and a new plait begun. The sisters ate as they worked, the sweet flowers, the hot little leaves and the crunchy stems.
‘That’s enough,’ thought the brother and, sure enough, the sisters stopped the work, somewhat regretfully, because the big ball was scarcely reduced. But any more and the bulk of the plaits would encumber them too much for another hunt. Pushing into-wind, and keeping clear of the lashing coil, they tramped slowly towards the sorory. They formed their net again when they saw a few balls bouncing their way. They were lucky and caught one small enough to roll into-wind. At last they reached the shelter of the northern cluster of rooted coils. Tired but triumphant they reached the sorory.
The brother got down from his perch, sliding over the side of the coil and down its root, and went to meet them, so that they could share their excitement without disturbing the healing vigil. The little girls left the curd-making group and toddled after him, and were swept up and cuddled by the women. The children wriggled and giggled as their tender skin was rubbed against the weed plaits wound below the women’s breasts, pushed high and unusually accessible for suckling and fondling. The squirming little bodies clung on with arms, legs and mouths, resisting being put down. Then the brother helped, and the children hindered, while the sisters unwound the plaits, joined them together, and lashed the ball to the coil root nearest the next empty basin. Then the sisters went to take their turn at the vigil. With solemn, knowing acceptance, the little girls trooped back to the curd-making party.
The sisters who had been on vigil were exhausted, much more tired than the sisters of the hunting party, for all their physical efforts over all daylight. Each sister leaving vigil shared with the sister entering vigil what progress she had made. As her sister sat down beside her at her vigil root, she told of each strand of the severed net that she had touched with her evereye.
The brother listened, knowing he should not, but boys were known to be bad so they could do bad things, and were not told every time.
‘There were children putting small trees in holes in the earth,’ the sister whispered to her sister. Her voice trembled with the pain of the vision. ‘Girls not half way to bleeding, and boys, and elders were present to instruct them. They did these deeds for love and healing because they knew nothing of pattern and the ways of trees. Their elders had told the children of the death of forests far away. They grieved for the animals and painted people who were there. They called their actions for healing “planting trees”, not understanding that the way of trees is to make seeds, and for the wind, or climbing or flying animals, to spread the seeds to far enough ground.’
‘You know the ways of the trees, my sister,’ said the other in ritual reply, ‘You are the healing. Share with me the pain.’
‘The little trees were hurt; their roots broken and dried up, the patterns of their growing and their place of growing torn apart and lost. Great pits had been torn out of the new place of growing. The patterns of trees in that place were from long ages past and could not be knit.’ The sister’s voice was scarcely audible. Her eyes poured with tears and her mouth was dry. The other sister wiped her eyes with her hair and moistened her lips with the tear drenched strands.
‘You know the ways of the trees, my sister,’ the other sister said again, ‘You are the healing. Share with me the pain.’
‘Those pits dug out for the planting —’ she shuddered. ‘In them was put dried up residue from the slaughter of slave beasts, and the pain of the beasts’ lives and deaths joined with the pain of the soil and the young trees. Stakes made of slaughtered trees were hammered in the pits. The frail little trees were held in the pits, against the stakes, with no care for the lie of the roots or the direction of the sun. Black fibrous stuff was mixed in with the soil from the pits, and the broken mixture piled back in around the poor dried bent roots and the whole mess trodden roughly down. The black stuff had no relation to the soil there and did not know the place of the planting. It came from a distant land where the destruction of forests long before had left a wetness so that plants died and could not be not fully decomposed. The place of the black stuff had made new patterns over the ages, and a new beauty and wholeness had come from its pain. But the new beauty was destroyed for the black stuff for planting. Pain on pain on pain, and those people caused it for love. Such is the pity of the ignorance of pattern.’ The sister wept bitterly. The other sister held her close for a long while.
‘You know the ways of the trees, my sister,’ said the other sister, easing away and then kissing each of her eyes and her forehead. ‘You are the healing. Go and rest now, and I will grieve and nurse the hurts in your stead.’
The leaving sister untied the rope of weed by which she was secured to the root against sudden gusts of wind, and the other took her place. The entering sister sat down with legs crossed, put her hands palms upwards on her spread knees, and prepared herself to reach backwards in time with her evereye, back to the times when men blind to the ways of the trees had destroyed the patterns of the earth.
The leaving sister noticed the brother and knew he had been listening. She frowned and waved him away. He watched her squat to urinate, then climb the root which led inside the coil. She and the others from vigil would sleep until supper.
The brother saw that the other brother had completed his work with the curd making. Their eyes met, and the other brother saw his need for comfort. They walked to the coil section they slept in, which was some distance from where the sisters slept. They climbed the root to the opening, walked some way inside to the dark nest they had made of dried weed and made love long and tenderly and then dozed for some while. Then they talked quietly together.
‘Yshi,’ said the other brother, ‘did the sisters scold you?’
‘I did wrong. We always do wrong, Han. It is our nature from of old.’
The brothers had secret names for each other. In their travels with their evereyes they had discovered that people of past ages had always had individual names. They had not found a time when this had not been so, even when cultures were close-bonded, and had more together-knowing than alone-knowing. The two boys had invented their names: names that no one they had met in the past had used, which made them feel especially wicked and egocursed. They did not use their names in front of the sisters. Of course, the sisters knew about the secret names, since they knew everything, but boys were expected to be bad.
‘I saw you watching the hunt, Yshi.’
‘They have not said I should not do that.’
‘I suppose you should have helped with the curd.’
‘If I do not look out at the plain, and see where loose strands need securing, there will be no more curd. The coils are slowly dying and do not re-root easily. If lengths of coil stay loose, no more weed can grow beneath. And with much coil loose, the wind may take hold and rip out everything. We could be swept to our death, and even if not, there would be no shelter for the sorory and we would all die anyway.’
‘The sisters expect that to happen. The coils and the weed were man’s evil doing, so the sisters have no concern for them.’
‘So I do the bad work that they have need of, and will not acknowledge. That is an old pattern, I think. But the coils bring rain. The dragon’s mind may have gone from its coils but the roots draw water and the fins transpire. Surely that makes it easier for the wilderness to come back.’
The brothers deliberately had this exchange often. They were making a pattern of the truth as they saw it. They believed that their pattern would persist and resonate with the becoming. This was their healing vigil, practical and immediate as males’ patterns had been in the past. They thought that perhaps men could be part of the healing and make amends. The sisters were fearful of men and men’s patterns. Like the other natal groups of sisters, they would kill the brothers as soon as enough girl children had been born. But they had too much humility to deny the boys’ truth, and permitted them to practise it.
Yshi went on, ‘Other brothers in other sorories are taking up our pattern too. I have met them evereyed and I know.’
Han said, ‘But there are so many more sisters than brothers.’
‘Pattern has never worked by quantities,’ Yshi reminded him. ‘Anyway, they cannot breed with fewer than two in each sorory. There will always be enough of us.’
‘They could have just one boy for breeding.’
‘One boy alone would go mad without love,’ said Yshi. ‘Come here, my brother, my precious lover and friend.’ They made love again slowly and tenderly, delighting in each others’ shameful maleness.
It was that night that Yshi had the first dream of the battle.
Yshi thrashed madly in his sleep, his arms rained blows, his legs pounded and kicked. Han woke up bruised and scared. He rolled aside. Blind in the darkness he felt his friend’s nightmare, heard his groans, but could not get near to wake him. He gathered a ball of weed to cushion the blows and moved towards Yshi hoping for an opportunity to grab hold and shake him to consciousness.
He tried to visualise Yshi’s position in order to edge behind, but it was as if the boy was bristling with limbs, all engaged in some desperate fight. Suddenly the struggle ceased, and with a groaning sigh Yshi lay still as death, no sound of breath, no movement against the dry weed.
Han waited a moment and then put out his hand. He encountered Yshi’s cheek which was damp and cold. His friend did not move as Han felt his face, discovering eyes and mouth wide open. Han felt for his shoulder and shook him roughly. ‘Yshi, Yshi, wake up!’ Han panicked. ‘Help! Help!’ he cried, and ran out of the coil, down the root, and across to the sisters’ sleeping place.
They dragged Yshi’s inert body out to the coil opening where they could see him by moonlight. The pale gleam was reflected in his unblinking eyes.
‘He is dead. My brother is dead,’ Han sobbed.
But he was not dead. In a little while he stirred, and moaned softly, shuddered and groaned loudly, and began again to lash about. Han and the sisters held him and shook him awake. They sat him up, then dragged him over to a hollow where rainwater lay and splashed him with cool water. A sister held him against her breast and rocked him gently calling, ‘Little brother, it’s all right now.’
‘Is that you, mother?’ were his first words.
‘You had a bad dream, little brother,’ the sister said, holding him close. ‘You will go quietly to sleep now, and tell us of your dream in the morning.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
But in the morning he remembered nothing of the dream. He laughed when the other brother told him of being kicked awake and fetching the sisters to rouse him from his death trance. He would not search for the dream evereyed as the sisters asked him to do. He insisted on going with the other brother to their task of replanting the loose coil.
It was dangerous work, but they had learned from many trials how best to do it. First they walked the length of the loose section, just out of reach of its rippling path, observing its pattern of strong or weak growth. They chose a vigorous green section as near as possible to half way along. They identified the longest root of that section, and stood just clear. They waited patiently for the wind to drop a little and for the root to catch in the lip of the hole it had been dragged out of. Then they both dashed in and threw their bodies around the root, moving with it, helping it to ease back into position instead of rising out again with its swing. With all their strength they resisted the outward tug, digging their feet into the glistening red clay of the root’s pit, but pulling them out before they were crushed by the root descending back where it belonged.
If they judged their moment well, the entire root cluster would engage with the set of pits. If not, the bending of some other root would spring the coil section free again. Then the boys would have to dash clear, and wait for an opportunity to try again.
On this occasion, they were successful first time. But the job was not completed then, only the initial stage. What they had to do now was to keep the root in place for some days; the time they had discovered that it took for root fibres to grow down far enough to grip the rock beneath. They had too little strength and weight to resist the full force of the loose coil’s former rippling motion, but they were helped. The lengths of coil either side continued to ripple, but with dampened force, as if they were happy to dance to a new tune. All the brothers had to do was to resist the occasional random movement whereby both sides tugged one way, which could happen at any time, and they had to be constantly on the alert.
They could not sleep, but they had brought fresh weed to sustain them. This was weed gathered in handfuls from the plain, which they had plaited as they walked from the sorory and wound around their waists.
Several times on the long wait, the other brother tried to persuade the brother to examine his nightmare. ‘The sisters want the knowledge your journey would bring to them,’ he said. ‘It is there waiting for you to read it.’
‘It was my experience, not theirs,’ the brother said.
‘Well won’t you just share it with me then?’
‘If I do they’ll see it anyway. And I don’t think I can get it back, and I don’t want to try. I have no feeling about it, but from what you told me of how I was, it was a bad experience. Why should I put myself through that again?’
But he did go through it again. Having been awake and alert for some days they were in need of sleep on their return. They curled up together in their nest of weed and were instantly deeply asleep. Han was rudely awakened by being flung onto his back by a thundering blow from Yshi’s fist straight into his chest. He had to wriggle aside to avoid Yshi’s thrashing limbs. Yshi was roaring loud and snarling low in a rhythmic beat, and Han felt, rather than heard, the drum which drove him on. Han focused on that drum, seeking to transport himself where Yshi was, and he got a whiff of a pungent odour of exploding chemicals and burning flesh.
Then he was lying in the sun and a sister was stooping over him. He sat up, and the brother was there too, sitting up and looking dazed.
‘You must tell us now,’ said the sister in a harsh and insistent voice. ‘Where have you been? We have to know.’
‘Thirsty,’ the brother said, and the sister scooped water from a puddle into her hands and brought it carefully to him to suck up.
‘I’ll try,’ he muttered. He rubbed his face and massaged his scalp, walking his fingers through his hair. He settled in vigil position and shut his eyes.
‘Too much for telling. Just one thought with so much being and knowing. Have to take fragments, interpret from myself, translate for you here listening. Empty shadow of the thought.’
The whole pattern of men’s killing and dying at once. The battle of all battles here and now. Moved by training, fear for, fear of, loyalty, heroism, payment, comradeship. Every blow with every weapon, every wound, every last breath.
Identified with each and all, through ages of men’s history. Stone-ager with club. Egyptian, Persian fighting man of infantry, cavalry, archers, charioteers. Greek hoplite in phalanx solid with spears on the plain, weakened on the wooded hill. Roman hastati, principes, triarii in companies disciplined and skilled. Barbarians in brutal hoards scattered, slaughtered, enslaved. Goth, Hun, Mongol, Saracen and Turk. Zulu warrior, Indian brave. Solid formations, lines and columns, sending death. Melee of stabbing and hacking, clash of weapon on armour, penetrating flesh and bone, howls, screams. Plumed warrior’s trained muscles so much meat. Frightened lad, malnourished, feeble in body and mind, neck hacked. Shrill whinny of crippled horse, hamstring slashed. Longbowmen, pikemen, arquebusiers, musketeers, horsemen with pistols, infantry, artillery, cannon, howitzers, machine guns. Tanks, trenches, bombs. Choking dust, stinking mud, rotting corpses, poison gas. Severed limbs, spilled guts, exploded flesh, grotesque bodies of friend and foe, discarded lives. Stench of blood and scorched fat. Piss and shit of fear.
Driven by the compulsion of the revolving pattern of killing and dying all the times that are also now. Its function a culling, its hope to be few enough to be at home on earth.
Echoes of the battle. Rugby scrum, whack of racket and bat, bursting lung and straining sinew of athlete. Getting on, staying ahead, exploiting, abusing, discarding. Being the exploited, enslaved, abused, discarded. Succeeding, failing, envying, enduring, gloating, grovelling. The winning and the losing, the killing and the being killed, is the one battle of men.
The function of culling lost in the echoes. Too few die. Earth dies in their stead, guts spilled, skin scraped and burned. Patterns arrested in their becoming —
‘That is all I can tell you for now.’ He opened his eyes and looked at them.
The sisters leant their heads together and held a whispered sharing.
They looked back at the brother. One said, ‘It is as we have said, man is evil and has brought killing and destruction to the world.’
‘That is true and yet not true,’ said the brother. The other brother wondered at his boldness.
‘I need to explore the meaning of the dream with my brother,’ he went on. ‘We will share with you when we have understanding. Come Han.’
‘Han?’ exclaimed the sister.
‘Han is the name of my brother. My name is Yshi. Come Han.’ And he led Han to their sleeping place.
The dream of the battle of all battles came over and over again, not every night, and not regularly, but often. Both brothers experienced it now, usually together. Afterwards they talked of it and tried to work out what it meant, beyond the obvious truth of men’s history of violence in warfare, which had echoes in the competitiveness and ruthlessness of the culture which, in a later age, had been called necrotech.
One day, when the brothers were guarding a coil they had re-rooted, Yshi said, ‘There is a feeling I have that the dream is not condemning men for their violence. Its message seems to be that there is some validity in men killing men which has been denied, and the dream is reminding us, trying to remove a layer of unconsciousness.’
‘If that is so, why did the dragon send women only to the outside? The dragon knew all there was to know. If there is a purpose for men’s violence, it would have sent men out too, not given women the power of life and death.’
‘We do not know that it did that deliberately. Its mind was failing then.’
‘The sisters believe it was the dragon’s wisdom which gave them the power to keep a few boys only to young manhood for stud, because women are the healers and could bring the wilderness back, whereas men would exploit and so destroy any new life which came.’
The coil on both sides of the root they were guarding suddenly rocked the root one way, threatening to pull it out. They dug their feet in the clay and pushed against the movement with all their strength. It was just enough. They leant against the root breathless and wet with sweat which the damp wind neither washed off nor dried.
Some time later, Yshi picked up the discussion again.
‘What you were saying about the dragon’s wisdom — The dragon only knew what people knew. Its memory was colossal, but it was only human memory. It would have had the same prejudices as people did – from necrotech mostly, because that’s where it all came from.’
‘But necrotech was very male dominated. Surely it would have made men powerful again.’
‘I don’t know. There’s something in me trying to get out. Let me roll it around for a while.’
It was several hours later, when the sun had gone down and heavy cloud hid the moon and stars, that Yshi spoke again.
‘The dragon was a female.’
‘What!’ said Han.
‘The dragon was a world economy, a civilisation. The economy and city culture were built and run by men, but they were female ways made large.’
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘Well I think I’ve thought it out in relation to the battle dream. I think I know how to say it to the sisters. You can hear it first of course.’
It is the nature of man to fight. It is the nature of man to kill the beasts of the wilderness and to kill each other. It is the nature of woman to bear children in pain and raise them in gentleness. It is the nature of woman to suffer and to love, and not to hurt and to hate. Woman was stronger than man; out of love the ruin of wilderness began.
Woman raised the orphaned young of the wild beasts and so tamed them for milk and meat and hides, so man no longer needed to hunt. Woman discovered how to tame plants for humans and the tame beasts to eat. Woman loved her mate and her young and for them scratched and plucked and tortured the earth and was deaf to its cries. Woman taught her sons about love and kinship. So man became restrained in his killing. Man killed for land for the women’s cultivation, and loved woman and made many children. Man made fortifications to protect his children. Man took up the work of stripping the skin off the earth and was deaf to her agonised cries. Man hid from his own nature behind the walls of his pretended loving kindness, and made temples to worship love and keep it strong, and named the lie ‘God’ and ‘civilisation’ and was proud of what he had done. Man was obedient to woman’s will and denied his own nature and the culling of man by man was not enough. That is how the wilderness was ruined; by man’s power corrupted by woman’s love.
Han listened and was amazed. ‘Will you tell them this?’ he asked.
‘I have to,’ Yshi said. ‘They say they want understanding.’
‘But this denies all they believe about the wickedness of men, and the hope for wilderness through women’s compassion and healing love.’
No, I don’t believe it does. It is mechanistic thinking which assumes that understanding what went wrong provides solutions. It is impossible to start again when this is what the earth is now.’ Yshi swung his arms all around at the bleak, wind-swept plain, now darkened in the night. ‘And we cannot retrace the way we have come and rediscover the beginning. The women’s healing may not close the wound between the patterns of wilderness present in the past and our hopes and needs for the future, but it is right to try that way. What else could we do? But men could make healing too, why not? And if we succeed, women and men together, there will be a new human culture to bring about. There may be a time when men’s nature to kill each other for culling may be needed; if too many infants have been reared for a viable balance with nature.’
‘It’s the women who do the culling now,’ Han observed.
‘During the long ages before civilisation, killing was surely known to be part of living. Women and men knew it. And then they would have done their own killing, not left it to others, denying their responsibility.’
‘You haven’t explained what you meant about the dragon being female,’ said Han.
‘Haven’t I? I thought I had. Don’t you see; the economy is when people farm and manufacture for exchange in the market. It sounds benign, a kind of sharing. It provides for the family, the tribe, the nation, or whatever – but it depends on exploitation, disregarding any hurt or damage suffered by any living being or process which is not counted in the economy. It provides an enclosing womb – the city – and an umbilical cord – the systems of provision and the infrastructure. The economy is mother. Do you see?’
‘Yes, in a way. But I don’t see how men killing each other can be better than that. And there were battles while that was going on. I really am confused now.’
Yshi laughed, ‘I know. I’m confusing myself too. But there’s important understanding here if we can tease it out.’
They were silent for some time, both minds buzzing with thought. Then Han said, ‘It makes sense if you try to imagine the time when people changed from living off the wilderness to taming animals and plants. Before the change, men hunted wild animals, and if there were too many people for the area they were living off, men killed each other until there was balance again. I’m sure it was more complicated than that, but that’s roughly it. After the change, more people could be supported on the same area of land, at the expense of the wilderness. If there got to be too many people for the land, the people would destroy more wilderness. It would only be when separate groups grew until the lands they had cleared bordered each other that the old pattern came into play and the men killed each other for each other’s land.’
‘Yes, that’s it!’ cried Yshi, relieved and excited. ‘Everything that followed is just a complexification of those patterns. If people depend on the wilderness, they love and worship the wilderness, they don’t destroy it, they destroy each other to have access to it. With farming, the only natural force which matters is the weather, so the worship of nature is focused on the sky. Love is directed at people and at the sky god. Love and creation, the realm of woman, is dominant. Killing to defend and extend that realm is approved, but is dressed up as heroism and noble sacrifice. Slaughter is hidden, death is denied, destruction is ignored. Evil is invented to justify the distortion.’
‘Can we explain all this to the sisters, do you think?’ asked Han.
The sisters made a semi-circle around the brothers and listened.
They said nothing for a long time after the brothers had finished.
Then a ripple of gathering attention passed around them and focused on one of the sisters. ‘You say that men hunting wild animals and killing other men is good,’ she said, ‘and women tilling the soil to grow food for the family is bad.’
‘Good/bad – that’s part of what went wrong,’ said Yshi. ‘Death, killing, destruction – they are part of life – not bad, but inevitable and necessary. Hiding them, hiding from them, was what was bad, if we have to use that word.’
‘So when violence broke out, as it did throughout history, and when men enjoyed violence as part of their entertainment, that was a necessary aspect of human nature trying to get out?’ said another sister.
‘Women sometimes enjoyed violence too,’ Han observed. ‘In late necrotech and biotech people seemed to need horror. They probably always have.’
‘I’m sure we don’t,’ a sister said insistently.
Yshi turned to that sister and locked eyes with her. ‘Don’t you?’ he said quietly. ‘I watched you when you strangled another sister’s male infant for her. I felt that you enjoyed it.’
There was a chorus of hissing in-breath at this.
A sister, grim faced, said, ‘You have given us much to think about, our brothers. We will assemble again when we have thoughts to share.’
A month passed, and no more was said about Yshi’s battle. Life went on as if the dream had not come, and neither of the brothers dreamt it again.
Then the sisters called a gathering.
One of the sisters spoke. ‘Will you tell us what difference this new understanding has made to you, our brothers.’
Yshi spoke: ‘Even before the dream we believed we had a role in the healing. We have been tending the little life there is on the plain: the coils and the weed, and the hidden life in the soil which is bound up with the life above. We know you have despised those life forms because they were man’s distorted slaves, from the times called bionecrotech and biotech. You seek the patterns destroyed during necrotech, which was wilderness from before there were men on earth. We believe that the life that is here should be nurtured, however it came.’
‘We do not hinder you from doing that,’ she said.
‘But you will kill us when you have had enough children, and our work would cease. Instead, we could leave you at that time, and join with other young men who have completed their fathering with their natal group, and make a new group with any women who may choose to join us.’
‘But if we allowed that, men would soon become dominant again.’
‘We have tried to tell you that it was not men who were dominant; it only seemed so. But whichever way it was, that is in the past. We understand the influence of pattern, and the tendency of patterns to continue. But we also know that, with understanding, patterns can be changed. Could you not trust us if we promise not to interfere with your way?’
‘The time you speak of may be years ahead. Not all our sisters have a girl child, and no boys have been kept as yet. We do not have to decide now. And you ask a great deal.’
Han blurted out, ‘You should at least recognise that what we do to save the coils is of value. We are not here just to give you babies.’
The sister responded, ‘We do appreciate what you do. But you must recognise our work too. Our sister has something to share with you.’ She nodded at another sister.
A smile lit the other sister’s face. ‘Something wonderful has happened. Come and see.’
She stood up and reached with both hands towards the brothers. They got to their feet, took her hands and allowed themselves to be led. The other sisters followed behind. She took them to one of the roots where the sisters sat at vigil. Standing with her back to the root, she pointed to another section of coil a short distance away, a section whose life had left it, its remaining fins grey and stiff. A year before, after a particularly strong wind, that section had begun to come loose and, because it was so near the sorory, the brothers had piled clay around the looseness to hold it steady. There was an opening in it, to a space where the children sometimes played.
‘Go and climb up there,’ she said. ‘Look at the edge of the opening, up near the top on that side.’
The boys climbed up and looked. They saw a silvery grey arc, like a new moon, both hands in length. Its surface was mottled and rough for the most part, with radiating lines towards the narrowly lobed edges which turned upwards at their tips. They stared at it in wonder.
‘Surely it is living. Have you seen it change and grow?’ Yshi asked the sister below.
‘Oh, it is living. I feel it is. I saw it only today, when I was on vigil. I eversaw something like this pattern, on a tree which was undergoing corruption. I felt its beauty in the present past, I opened my eyes and, wonder of wonders, the same pattern was there high above me, on the dead coil.’
‘Has it grown out of the coil?’ asked Han. ‘It could have been part of the dragon’s patterns, the patterns that were held within it to sustain human life; there were many such.’
‘We have not seen such a growth before, and we have seen much dead coil,’ Yshi said.
‘Does it matter how it came?’ asked the sister. ‘It is life reborn out of death. It is the herald of regeneration, moonlight gleaming in our darkness. The patterns of the past have heard our mourning cries. The wounds men made are healing over and reaching out to us and all will be well. Blessed sacred life!’ And she fell to her knees, and the other women with her, and the little girls copied them.
Yshi and Han climbed down and stood to one side. As the women bowed in their worship their breasts swayed, heavy with milk. Their wild wet hair blew in the gusts of warm wind, which whistled in and out of the holes in the dragon’s dying coils.
Yshi glanced again at the grey arc of new growth. Then he shook his head and marched away. ‘You coming, Han,’ he said gruffly.
He strode to the edge of the sorory and then stopped, looking into the far distance. Han followed.
Han tried to put his arms around him. ‘Yshi, what’s the matter? Aren’t you pleased about the new life?’
‘Yes, I’m pleased, in a way. But why is it taking so long?’
‘Why shouldn’t it take long? How can we know how long it will take to bring the patterns back?’
‘Some pattern has come back in human form. In only a few generations, we have developed the features of the race of people who lived in and revered the forests when necrotech was only cooking fires. The women are very proud of that success. They see it as proof of pattern itself. So why did the forests not come back too with the form of the forest people?’
Han started to respond, but Yshi put his hand up to stop him.
‘I know what you’ll say: the old human form returned because there are people here for those patterns to resonate with, whereas there is only old biotech coils and bionecrotech weed for the forests to connect to, and those patterns are too foreign and cursed. But I’ll tell you stronger reasons why. It’s because the women grieve for what they blame men for; they do not repent women’s part. But worse than that, they do not celebrate the patterns that are in the past, and so are here now, and which we know through eversight. Only the wound receives their attention, not the healthy body from which the healing would come.’
Han protested, ‘They are celebrating now, aren’t they? Look at them.’ And he gestured towards the sisters, now dancing joyously in front of the arc of new life.’
Yshi turned to look, but the sight seemed suddenly to enrage him.
‘Hah! another weird ritual,’ he snarled. ‘Women are all witches.’ Yshi shook his fists towards the sisters and howled aloud, ‘Witches!’, but the wind muffled his cry and they paid no attention.
Yshi turned back to Han. ‘These women – they hunt, they kill, they use us to make their brats. They have all the power. They always have. Mankind is woman. Men just skulk around for a chance to put a cock in. Sometimes they deign to give us some dirty work to do – let us pretend we’re top dogs, so we don’t even get any gratitude.’
‘You’ve changed since the battle dream, Yshi,’ Han said.
‘The battle! Yes, that’s it! That’s man’s pattern, man’s way of culling and keeping the race strong – not strangling infants, or biting off their balls – that’s what the women in some groups are starting to do, I eversaw it – same as domesticated animals in necrotech, bite our balls off. No!’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Be a man, instead of their little brother and sperm bank. Raise my sons to be the hunters and warriors of the new world.’
‘You can’t raise your sons. The sisters would have to bear and suckle them. They would not allow you to have charge of them for a purpose they did not support.’
‘Then I will take a wife – a young girl newly bleeding. I eversaw a natal group, not many days from here, with girls about to separate off from their mothers. I will go there, and take a woman to give me sons. Are you coming with me?’
Han felt a tug on his hand. Looking down he saw that one of the little girls had followed him. Out of habit he picked her up. She reached to hold on to his hair, her black eyes staring into his. Her healthy little animal body wriggled strongly against him. Her leg brushed against his cock as he shifted her to straddle his hip.
He looked back at Yshi. ‘No, my brother. This is my natal group – and yours. The children here are our children. I cannot leave them and be myself.’
‘They will kill you.’
‘So be it. That is our way.’
‘The women’s way, you mean. But not for much longer. The wild beasts will come again, and I shall hunt them with my sons. The battle of men will come again, and I shall fight it with my sons.’
The episode I have just shared
was about the very beginnings of the pattern age. There were great changes in between that time of grief and struggle and the virtually interminable main period of the pattern age.
The women who emerged from the green dragon blamed men for necrotech – with some justification – and they saw their own role as mourners for the earth, and as guides through the tunnel of bereavement to some kind of healing to come. They discovered that the first healing had to be between women and men. They learned that lesson in various ways, and we have seen in the last shift an instance of the painful process of realisation they went through. Their descendants became as completely gender unaware as it is possible to be.
The last episode gave you some idea of how the planet was still in ecological ruins, even after the entire biotech age during which human beings had no further effect on the world outside the green dragon city. The planet had suffered the total extinction of virtually all the natural populations of plants and animals which had evolved before and during humans’ time on earth. Although biotech was long in human terms, it was not long enough for evolution to repeat itself.
However, the natural wilderness did eventually return. It may be that during biotech some vital regeneration was taking place beneath the soil and in the oceans. The people of Yshi’s time began to see visible signs of the re-emergence of wild plants and animals. Gradually, all the species destroyed during necrotech came back, and their kind lived again. How? The way we understand it is this: although the genetic codes had ceased being passed on by biological reproduction, the patterns of the past had not disappeared; they were still present, and still influential. And the patterns were not completed. So they returned.
I do not expect you to understand and accept this now. I have a shift to recount which should help you. The subject is someone like yourself. He is a necrotech person born into the pattern age. You will understand how he thinks, whereas you would not understand if I took you into the experience of a pattern age person; indeed, I doubt if I could convey in words what it is like to be a person of that time: the kind of being we call ‘watersoul’, in contrast to your kind, whom we call ‘firesoul’.
This was a series of shifts. We are now close enough to my own age for me to travel back there with ease. The subject’s name is Roy. You will learn a great deal about the pattern age from his experiences.