A Swiftly Tilting Planet: Chapters 5–6

Gwydyr gestured behind him, and the drummers began to beat slowly on the taut skins.

“The People of the Wind are people of peace. Always we have lived in amity with those Across the Lake.”

“Madoc of Reschal. Ha! My laws are stronger than your laws.” Gwydyr gestured imperiously.

Gwydyr gave the old man a mighty shove, so that he fell sprawling on the beach, face down.

But his eyes followed the Old One’s to a small pool of water in a declivity in the sand, and his movements, like Zyll’s scream, were suspended.

Again the face grew larger and larger in the dark oval and was no longer the face of a baby, but a man with an arrogant and angry mien.

“We will destroy, then, Mother,” the man said, and the face rippled until it was a small, slightly pear-shaped sphere, and on the sphere were blotches of green and brown for land, and blue and grey for seas, and a soft darkness for clouds, and from the clouds came strange dark objects which fell upon the land and fell upon the sea, and where they fell, great clouds arose, umbrellaing over the earth and the sea; and beneath the bulbous clouds was fire, raging redly and driven wild by wind.

From the central dugout came one of the warriors, carrying a smoking brazier. Gwydyr took one of the spears and held the sharp end over the coals.

“You must make your own fire, Madoc!” He laughed derisively.

Madoc, moving as though in a dream, pushed his brother’s words aside, and focused the blue fire of his eyes on the great pyre of flowers.

“You will do good for your people, El Zarco, little Blue Eyes,” the mother crooned.

“You’re almost as veritable an encyclopedia as Charles Wallace.”

“I’m off hot chocolate.”
“Some consommé or bouillon?”

Gaudior rolled his lips, and took a deep draught of clear air.

“Unicorns find it embarrassing to be thanked. Please desist.”

Gaudior’s own impatience was manifested by prancing.

“Perhaps,” Gaudior granted grudgingly, “it wasn’t entirely your fault. But I think we should not try to control the Whens and the Wheres, but should go Where we’re sent. And what with all that contretemps with the Echthroi, you’re still in your own body, and you’re supposed to be Within.”

Then, while he gazed, the eyes changed in the child and turned sullen, and the face was no longer the face of a baby but the face of a man, and he could not see Zylle anywhere.

The man wore a strange-looking uniform with many medals, and his jowls were dark, jutting pridefully.

He was thinking to himself, and he was thinking cruel thoughts, vindictive thoughts, and then Brandon saw fire, raging fire.

She shook her head somberly. “I make nothing out of it. Certainly nothing good.”

Goody Adams, the midwife, was bustling about, exuding importance.

“Once an Indian, always an Indian, Goody Llawcae. Not forgetting that we’re all grateful that her presence among us causes us to live in peace with the savage heathen.”

He was afraid of the dark man with cruel thoughts, and he was afraid of the fire. Since he had tried to repress the pictures, they had become more and more frightening.

Ritchie flung out the door, not deigning to look at the midwife.

The baby began to cry, but the cry came not from the baby in the picture but from the cabin, a real cry, the healthy squall of an infant.

“You are my beloved daughter, Zylle. When Ritchie chose you for his betrothed, his mother and I were uncertain at first, as were your own people. But it seemed to your father, Zillo, and to me that two legends were coming together in this union. And time has taught us that it was a blessed inevitability.”

When Bran went to do his evening chores a shadow materialized from behind the great trunk of a pine tree.

Zillo took his grandson into his arms, and a shadow of tenderness moved across his impassive face.

Back in his room, Brandon tossed hotly on his straw pallet.

Richard asked for wisdom, for prudence, for rain.

“The Indians are pagans,” Duthbert said.
Zylle looked at the pasty young man over the baby’s head. “I do not know what pagan means. I only know that Jesus of Nazareth sings the true song. He knows the ancient harmonies.”

“Scripture says that God loves every man. That is in the Psalms. He loves my people as he loves you, or he is not God.”
Higgins warned, “You must not blaspheme, child.”

“How strange that you should say that, Pastor Mortmain. Scripture says that Jesus taught by telling stories. And he spake many things unto them in parables...and without a parable spake he not unto them. That is in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew.”

We were sustained and strengthened by Scripture then, as we are still.

Pastor Mortmain sent to the town for a man who was said to be an expert in the detection of witches. He had sent many people to the gallows.

Davey Higgins, tying the halter on the Higgins cow, said, “It is the Lord’s will that the witch should die.”

There were others more than willing to erect a crude gallows. A gallows is more easily built than a house, or a bed, or a table.

“He is too young to be weaned,” Goody Llawcae objected.

Brandon, standing between Maddok and Davey, watched as his mother and Zylle, his father and brother, turned their backs on the burning church and walked across the compound, past their chastened neighbors, past the watchful Indians, and went into their cabin.