The Ghosts of Heaven Read online

  He is old. Almost the oldest of them all.

  So it will be his last time in the caves,

  and he must take another,

  who will become

  what he has been.

  It is his choice. The one who goes to the cave.

  It is his choice to choose the new, and she,

  She wants it to be her.

  She thinks she knows what he does.

  She knows why he does it,

  that is something they all know;

  the magic made as the hunt begins.

  From the high cave mouth,

  the plains are across the great lake,

  From the high cave mouth,

  the beasts can be seen.

  And as the hunt begins,

  the one who goes to the cave

  must enter the dark, and make the magic on the walls.

  The magic that makes the arrow fly farther,

  the spear thrust deeper.

  and the beasts die, quicker.

  And she wants it to be her,

  she knows it should be her, so she waits

  while she should be working, and

  watching him, watching him,

  hoping he will turn to her.

  Come to her and say,

  You! Girl!

  Come!

  Come with me to the high, dark cave,

  and I will show you how to make the magic.

  She waits, the stick in her hand,

  the small dry stick, and now she makes another mark in the dust.

  A hump, a long curve, a flick at the front for antlers.

  A beast, a deer: a stag.

  In three lines.

  She has seen what he does,

  how he draws the shapes in the sand,

  when no one is looking, how he does it

  again and again, till the line is good and the beast is real.

  There is a sound behind her and the one who will lead the hunt is there.

  He sees what she’s done, and kicks at the sand.

  He lifts his fist and she hides her head,

  but he does not strike.

  He does not need to, for she knows it is wrong.

  The marks are not for the sand,

  the marks are for the dark,

  and only he who goes to the cave should make magic.

  The one who will lead the hunt is angry,

  but he has more to do than punish girls

  who are not yet giving children.

  He leaves, and in his place comes the one who does the telling.

  The one who does the telling points at the dust,

  where her lines lay.

  He nods.

  She smiles.

  He sits beside her.

  He tells her a tell,

  a strong old tell,

  about the making of magic and how it is done,

  and must be done well, up there, high up there in the hanging dark.

  How the magic is made to make them fall when the arrow strikes.

  For now it’s the time for hunting.

  At dawn, on the plain.

  She listens.

  She listens and she understands.

  She understands the tell, but she knows

  why the one who does the telling has that name,

  and that his name means weaver of words;

  weaver of words,

  sentinel of speech,

  retreating in awe at the world,

  speaking with the divine.

  Speaking with the blinding saving light-divine-magic in the dark.

  That is what his name means.

  He puts the stick back in her hands,

  pushes the end onto the dust by the firelight.

  Make, he says.

  So, with one eye on he who leads the hunt,

  she makes.

  V

  It is time to go.

  The leaf-fall night is nearly done,

  and the lake must be crossed,

  and the cliffs must be climbed, before the dawn of the sun.

  He who leads the hunt points at he who goes to the cave.

  Choose, he says.

  So she stands with the others

  as the one who goes to the cave looks

  from face to face, trying to see, trying to find something.

  He walks slowly round the fire, almost gone now,

  and he stops by a boy, then moves on.

  He stops and looks hard into the eyes of a girl,

  a girl who is not her …

  moves on and he is in front of her.

  He looks into her eyes.

  Her heart beats hard.

  She opens her mouth.

  She wants to say,

  “Take me with you …

  take me to the high, dark caves

  and I will make magic like you.”

  He takes one last look,

  then turns away, and goes back to the boy.

  His hand touches his shoulder,

  and the one who goes to the cave has made his choice.

  Her head hangs, and her heart is angry, and then,

  the one who goes to the cave comes back,

  shoves her shoulder so she stoops before him.

  He reaches to the fire’s edge and takes burned wood.

  Puts it in her hand.

  Carry, he says, and she knows she has been chosen.

  Chosen, not to make magic, not to go into the caves,

  not to go into the dark and make magic.

  She has been chosen to carry.

  There will be paint. And reeds.

  And torches for fire. And a bow for protection from beasts.

  And she will carry, while they climb free.

  VI

  Those who will cross the water have left,

  leaving her, the boy, and the one who goes to the cave.

  They don’t seem to notice her.

  They have forgotten she exists,

  now that she is ready, with a basket.

  And in the basket:

  reeds, hollow,

  the rock that burns to red,

  charcoal from the fire ash,

  the things to make fire.

  He who leads the hunt

  has given her a bow,

  with more than one arrow,

  long feathered shafts,

  which she will use before the dark is done.

  VII

  At the water’s edge, the great lake waits,

  lapping lazily against the shore,

  against the shins of the people as they climb aboard the canoes.

  These boats are old,

  but they have made this journey many times,

  and the people believe in their boats.

  They push out.

  Climb aboard.

  Four to a canoe.

  One in front to see.

  Two in the middle to paddle,

  one to carry the weapons that they will need to kill the beasts.

  The half-moon light

  guides their way.

  The night air is wet and cool,

  and they shiver from the air on their skin.

  Their furs lie on the ground, far behind them;

  wet fur is heavy and colder than nothing at all,

  but they shiver as the air strokes their skin.

  Soon, the two who paddle will be warm

  from their work,

  while the others

  will feel the cold all the way to the far shore.

  The far shore; half a night away.

  Paddles dip, silently,

  unseen,

  each stroke leaves twin spirals

  spinning in the water behind.

  In, push, out.

  Twin spinning spirals in the night-dark water.

  VIII

  She watches.

  The one who goes to the cave pulls off his fur.

  He points at the boy, who does the same.

  They turn and look at her, just o
nce.

  He who goes to the caves gestures now,

  and her furs fall to the ground.

  He who goes to the caves nods, grunts, satisfied.

  He points to the things she will carry, turns,

  and walks into the night forest,

  under the cliffs, that hang high above them

  and the people,

  and the boats and the beasts,

  and the lake,

  and everything.

  He who goes to the cave leads the way,

  with the blue-gray light by which to see,

  but he knows the way because he has made it his own.

  It has become his.

  Till now, when he hands it on to the boy he has chosen.

  The boy’s mind is full of fear,

  the old man’s mind feels only the years.

  As she walks behind, the basket digs

  into her bare skin.

  The bow is slung across her shoulders,

  the arrows in her hand.

  The torches sit,

  unlit, in the basket on her back.

  Grasses whip against her legs, but her feet are tough.

  And in the unseen green by her feet,

  nesting and alarmed,

  a snake coils, ready to strike.

  Its body pulls in on itself, around and around,

  and it tenses, holds.

  But they pass and it uncoils,

  curling around its eggs once more.

  So she doesn’t see the snake,

  and yet, she’s thinking.

  She’s thinking about the mark she made

  in the fireside sand.

  Something is trying to speak to her.

  But it goes as soon as it tries to appear in her thoughts.

  Then she’s thinking about something else.

  Three things:

  the fronds of ferns,

  the shell of the snail, and then,

  a falcon.

  She saw the bird on the walk before the waterfall.

  Saw it stooping from the sky

  Saw how it dropped, not in a line,

  but in the shape of the shell,

  the form of the fern tip.

  Round and down,

  round and down, far below to the ground.

  The falcon, the ferns, the shell.

  They are all trying to tell her something,

  but she does not know what it is.

  She cannot know what it is. Not yet.

  IX

  The cave.

  The cave has waited for almost all of time,

  waited for the people to come and make their marks.

  The cave has waited since the rocks were young,

  just after the face of the world cooled,

  when the volcanoes grew still,

  when the cliffs were pushed up to the sky.

  It was a long wait,

  during which,

  nothing lived.

  Stars burned out in the heavens while it waited,

  until finally some tiny filament found a way to copy itself.

  Some long strand, of twisting complexity,

  which made itself anew, and then there were two.

  Ages ached through the heaving dark,

  and burning light, as the filaments grew,

  slowly organized, preparing for the invasion,

  the eruption, of life.

  And then the cave waited no more,

  as ferns grew at its feet, spread, and changed,

  and then there were plants, primal and bare

  the first flowers and brutal trees

  that reached into the air

  with the energy of the young,

  with the infectious power of the young information inside them,

  and the cave was no longer alone.

  Then came the beasts, the first small creatures,

  things that crawled without eyes,

  things that slithered,

  things that heard by smell

  and saw with sound,

  things with hard shells,

  things without bones.

  Next there were legs,

  fur and teeth, fangs

  and horns and now, at last,

  the people,

  come to the high hanging cave

  to make marks in the dark.

  For lifetimes of men,

  they have come to the cave,

  and as the hunters hurl their spears,

  they draw the beasts on the wall.

  But before they can draw the beasts,

  before they can draw a horse or deer or bull,

  they must announce themselves to the dark,

  with the print of their hand at the mouth of the cave.

  It is their way; each and every one who has gone to the caves

  has left the outline of their hand on the wall.

  Ochre blown through a reed,

  red powder blown over the hand held against the rock,

  and the negative print of the hand is made.

  Then, each one who goes to the cave

  must make it his mark and his alone,

  with some sign inside the outline:

  two dots, perhaps; three lines.

  Crossed lines.

  Forking lines.

  Five dots.

  Each one different, and he who goes to the cave now

  has made his mark over forty times, so old is he.

  Forty times the same mark: two lines.

  Two lines.

  Two lines he will make again,

  on this, his final trip.

  It is two lines he has in his mind,

  as he walks with the boy,

  and the girl who bleeds but who does not give children.

  X

  Through the wet, dark forest

  she walks,

  behind the boy, behind the one who goes to the caves,

  who leads the way by owl light;

  that half shine of the moon, which will operate on them tonight.

  The basket is hurting her back.

  She stops for a moment

  while the ferns wind around her feet,

  and lifts the weight from her.

  Waits.

  Then walks on after the boy and the man

  while the ferns cry out after her

  saying, understand us! Know us! Be us!

  She doesn’t hear them,

  because her eyes are on the back of the boy

  who is to become what she wants to be.

  She sees

  his weak arms,

  his skinny legs,

  and knows his bad eyes need him to keep close to the old man ahead.

  She hurries, closes the gap

  and almost slams into the boy.

  The face of the cliff:

  the way leads up into the dark

  He who goes to the cave doesn’t stop,

  doesn’t look

  as he whispers one word: climb.

  So they climb.

  Through trailing plants, they make their way

  hand over hand, toehold by toehold.

  In the mind of he who goes to the cave

  is a single thought; dawn is close.

  As they reach the height of the tallest tree,

  a breeze hits them, fresh dawn air,

  and he doesn’t need to look over his shoulder,

  to see that the light is coming soon.

  They need to hurry.

  He increases the pace of his climb,

  and the boy is left behind,

  and behind him, lower down,

  she knows why she was brought to carry,

  because the boy is not strong enough to

  climb with the basket on his back.

  As she comes to the treetops,

  she can see handholds ahead of her,

  and yet the boy is holding her up.

  She calls to him, gently,

  worried he might fail and fall back to the forest fl
oor.

  He doesn’t reply, but he moves on,

  and so, slowly, they lift their way up the rock wall,

  which runs with water and young green moss.

  Her back is hurting, and her arms ache

  as she pulls herself higher,

  one reach at a time.

  She looks up.

  He who goes to the cave has gone from sight,

  and with relief she knows the climb is nearly done.

  Three more reaches and the boy goes, too,

  slips from sight onto the shelf.

  Three more reaches, and her hand waves into air,

  her wrist is grabbed by the old man,

  and he pulls her onto the shelf.

  Crawls to safety, next to the boy,

  who lies panting beside her.

  She rolls onto her back,

  sits up, and her eyes widen.

  There is the world before her,

  the whole world

  wide and far below her.

  The forest through which they walked,

  the lake, and the plains beyond.

  The far hills still too dim to see,

  but the lake sits like a slab of black.

  XI

  Hurry, says the old man, and they get to their feet.

  He leads the way along the shelf,

  wide enough not to fear falling,

  uneven enough to make the going slow,

  but he will not go slowly, because the sun won’t wait for them.

  The boy is lagging,

  and her feet are dragging;

  the way has been long and the man

  though old, is strong.

  He has surprised them both

  with this strength, and they hurry to keep up,

  through the skinny trees that dare to grow on the cliff side.

  Then, they are at the cave.

  He who makes the marks stops,

  and for the first time,

  he looks at her.

  Fire, he says, and with beautiful relief

  she slips the basket from her back.

  Fire.

  She has brought two torches,

  each a haft of good, strong wood,

  wound around at the end with

  resin-soaked hair.

  She bends to work fast,

  taking the fire-sticks;

  spinning one on the other

  by means of a bow,

  a miniature version of the thing on her back,

  but with a looser string.

  A string that winds around the stick,

  so that by working the bow the stick spins.

  She’s done it a thousand times before.

  Spinning the first stick

  in the hole she’s made on the flat of the second,

  till smoke comes, and then flame.

  A thousand times, and yet,

  it’s only now that she sees something.

  She sees how the string of the bow winds round the spinning stick,