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The words about God being white and having one eye they interpreted as meaning
that God was the sun and was to be worshipped as the all-seeing giver of light
and life. This had always been so.
There was war in the east, indeed. There had always been war in the east, where
people coming out of the wilderness tried to steal our grain, and we conquered
them and taught them how to grow it. General Lord Drowning sent angels back with
news of his conquests all the way to the Fifth River.
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There was no famine in the west. There had never been famine in God's country.
God's children saw to it that crops were properly sown and grown and saved and
shared. If the ze failed in the western lands, our carters pulled two-wheeled
carts laden with grain on the great stone roads over the mountains from the
central lands. If crops failed in the north, the carts went north from the Four
Rivers land. From west to east carts came laden with smoked fish, from the
Sunrise peninsula they came west with fruit and seaweed. The granaries and
storehouses of God were always stocked and open to people in need. They had only
to ask the administrators of the stores; what was needed was given. No one went
hungry. Famine was a word that belonged to those we had brought into our land,
people like the Tegh, the Chasi, the North Hills people. The hungry people, we
called them.
The birthday of the world came again, and the most fearful words of the oracle
-- the world came again -- were remembered. In public the priests rejoiced and
comforted the common people, saying the God's mercy had spared the world. In our
house there was little comfort. We all knew that God Himself was ill. He had
hidden himself away more and more throughout the year, and many of the
ceremonies took place without the divine presence, or only Herself was there.
She seemed always quiet and untroubled. My lessons were mostly with her now, and
with her I always felt that nothing had changed or could change and all would be
well.
God danced the Dance that Turns as the sun stood still above the shoulder of the
sacred mountain. He danced slowly, missing many steps. He went into the ash
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house. We waited, everybody waited, all over the city, all over the country. The
sun went down behind Kanaghadwa. All the snow peaks of the mountains from the
north to south, Kayewa, burning Korosi, Aghet, Enni, Aziza, Kanaghadwa, burned
gold, then fiery red, then purple. The light went up them and went out, leaving
them white as ashes. The stars came out above them. Then at last the drums beat
and the music sounded down in the Glittering Square, and torches made the
pavement sparkle and gleam. The priests came out of the narrow doors of the ash
house in order, in procession. They stopped. In the silence the oldest dream
priest said in her thin, clear voice, "Nothing was seen over the shoulder of
God."
Onto the silence ran a buzzing and whispering of people's voices, like little
insects running over sand. That died out.
The priests turned and went back into the ash house in procession, in due order,
in silence.
The ranks of angels waiting to carry the words of the oracle to the countryside
stood still while their captains spoke in a group. Then the angels moved away in
groups by the five streets that start at the Glittering Square and lead to the
five great stone roads that go out from the city across the lands. As always
before, when the angels entered the streets they began to run, to carry God's
word swiftly to the people. But they had no word to carry.
Tazu came to stand behind me on the balcony. He was twelve years old that day. I
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was fifteen.
He said, "Ze, may I touch you?"
I looked yes, and he put his hand in mine. That was comforting. Tazu was a
serious, silent person. He tired easily, and often his head and eyes hurt so
badly he could hardly see, but he did all the ceremonies and sacred acts
faithfully, and studied with our teachers of history and geography and archery
and dancing and writing, and with our mother studied the sacred knowledge,
learning to be God. Some of our lessons he and I did together, helping each
other. He was a kind brother and we were in each other's heart.
As he held my hand he said, "Ze, I think we'll be married soon."
I knew what his thoughts were. God our father had missed many steps of the dance
that turns the world. He had seen nothing over his shoulder, looking into the
time to come.
But what I thought in that moment was how strange it was that in the same place
on the same day one year it was Omimo who said we should be married, and the
next year it was Tazu.
"Maybe," I said. I held his hand tight, knowing he was frightened at being God.
So was I. But there was no use being afraid. When the time came, we would be
God.
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If the time came. Maybe the sun had not stopped and turned back above the peak
of Kanaghadwa. Maybe God had not turned the year.
Maybe there would be no more time -- no time coming behind our backs, only what
lay before us, only what we could see with mortal eyes. Only our own lives and
nothing else.
That was so terrible a thought that my breath stopped and I shut my eyes,
squeezing Tazu's thin hand, holding on to him, till I could steady my mind with
the thought that there was still no use being afraid.
This year past, Lord Idiot's testicles had ripened at last, and he had begun
trying to rape women. After he hurt a young holy girl and attacked others, God
had him castrated. Since then he had been quiet again, though he often looked
sad and lonely. Seeing Tazu and me holding hands, he seized Arzi's hand and
stood beside him as Tazu and I were standing. "God, God!" he said, smiling with
pride. But Arzi, who was nine, pulled his hand away and said, "You won't ever be
God, you can't be, you're an idiot, you don't know anything!" Old Haghag scolded
Arzi wearily and bitterly. Arzi did not cry, but Lord Idiot did, and Haghag had
tears in her eyes.
The sun went north as in any year, as if God had danced the steps of the dance
rightly. And on the dark day of the year, it turned back southward behind the
peak of great Enni, as in any year. On that day, God Himself was dying, and Tazu
and I were taken in to see him and be blessed. He lay all gone to bone in a
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smell of rot and sweet herbs burning. God my mother lifted his hand and put it
on my head, then on Tazu's, while we knelt by the great bed of leather and
bronze with our thumbs to our foreheads. She said the words of blessing. God my
father said nothing, until he whispered, "Ze, Ze!" He was not calling to me. The
name of God Herself is always Ze. He was calling to his sister and wife while he
died.
Two nights later I woke in darkness. The deep drums were beating all through the
house. I heard other drums begin to beat in the temples of worship and the
squares farther away in the city, and then others yet farther away. In the
countryside under the stars they would hear those drums and begin to beat their
own drums, up in the hills, in the mountain passes and over the mountains to the
western sea, across the fields eastward, across the four great rivers, from town
to town clear to the wilderness. That same night, I thought, my brother Omimo in
his camp under the North Hills would hear the drums saying God is dead.
A SON AND DAUGHTER OF GOD, marrying, became God. This marriage could not take
place till God's death, but always it took place within a few hours, so that the
world would not be long bereft. I knew this from all we had been taught. It was
ill fate that my mother delayed my marriage to Tazu. If we had been married at
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