112 - The last thing I am

I woke to a hand turning my head and poking in my ear; for a moment I did not understand, until the earplug was gone and a burst of morning birdsong filled my head. The touch I knew as that of the leader of the three monks. “Take your time getting up, semanakraseye,” he said. They left the blindfold on, wanting me never to know where this place was, apparently; but I knew by the warmth on my skin that the sun was well-risen.

They helped me to my feet and handed me my clothes, I dressed and unclasped the brass chain by feel, and we walked to Terera, where they freed me of the blindfold, then back up to the shrine, in total silence. There was no awkwardness or discomfort or imitation of them in my silence; I was just too full of the night before to speak, and they honoured it, seeming to have expected it. In our shared wordlessness there was harmony.

The esegradaiseye was in her office. I sat, and we looked at each other, and next thing I knew there were tears running down my cheeks; I wasn’t even sure why. She neither comforted nor chided me, but only waited for my emotion to run its course. When that was done I felt empty and light and full of calm.

I thought she would ask me what I had experienced, but she said only, “Do you have any questions?”

I had only one. “A… creature… came to me. Was it... a real creature?”

“What do you mean? How could you know it came to you, if it was not real?”

“I could be deluded, it could have been a hallucination.”

“And hallucinations have no reality?”

“In the mind of the sufferer, yes, but beyond that...”

“Do we know reality, except through our minds?”

I could see how this was going to go. “Maybe I should rephrase my question. Did it have... material reality? Substance?”

“Semanakraseye, you speak as if material reality, substance, is important. Why is it?”

I took a deep breath. “Long-held habits of thinking, I guess. Yet… it is important, if it means the difference between sharing bodily warmth, and dying of cold, when left naked at night.”

“You didn’t die of cold, semanakraseye, did you?” she said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Does that not answer your question?”

I sat, struck silent. The esegradaiseye drew from behind her desk a scarlet packet that looked like a folded monk’s robe, and held up in her two hands a crystal circle pendant on a leathern thong, the mark of a senaheraseye. “I hope you will forgive us for doing this with less pomp than usual, here and unannounced instead of in the great hall before all the monks,” she said. “Blame me for the decision. I have an idea how many people would come tromping through our peaceful grove to see it done, just because it’s you.”

I stared at her. “See what done?”

“You wanted to know why you came here.” She spread her hands, opening the thong, and hung it around my neck while I sat too stunned even to twitch. She slid the robe towards me, too. “You came here to become senahera.”

†

“A monk! That’s the last thing I am! Where am I to find the time? Aren’t monks supposed to do… monkish things? Sit and meditate half the day, learn harmonic singing, rake the paths? My life’s already full, and that’s without being semanakraseye, which I’m back to in five moons or so.”

It was Komona I said this to. I didn’t have the nerve to say it to the esegradaiseye. I had just quietly made obeisance, slunk out of her office, and walked the paths until I found my old love.

“Oh, shush, and put on the robe,” she said, laughing. “I want to see how you look in it. You’re worrying about nothing.”

“I want an explanation of why I’m worrying about nothing. Only if it’s sufficient will I put on the robe. It seemed too… easy, as well… aren’t you supposed to be an acolyte for ten years first?”

“Not necessarily. The esegradaiseye can see; some people she tells, ‘You have to be an acolyte for ten years,’ some she just hands a robe without them doing anything. You were somewhere in between. And you’re senahera whether you put on the robe or not. It’s a choice, Virani-e.” Like a slight, soft lightning bolt inside, the name jolted me again.

The robe felt a little hot in my hands, and weighty. “Then why don’t I recall choosing it?”

“That’s because it was the deeper you that chose, not the shallow you, the part that thinks in words. You only don’t remember—or don’t know you remember—choosing it because you didn’t choose it in words.”

It came to me how, in the woods, I hadn’t been pushed over the brink, but leaped of my own accord. That had been it. Putting it into words in my mind now made me know I remembered.

“Fair and true enough. But I just don’t see myself spending all my life in the shrine, doing the work monks do. I have the feeling the esegradaiseye wouldn’t be too keen on that either.”

“Virani-e, the work of senahera moves within us, whatever else we are doing, so long as we make sufficient contact with that which is outside of us that draws us that way, which we won’t, unless we’re drawn from within. Your healer is doing plenty enough for you that way. The esegradaiseye saw both.”

“Komona, you’ve lost me. Both of what?”

“Both the spiritual yearning in you, and the spiritual inspiration from outside of you that you access to satisfy it. The latter is your healer and what he does. Would you not say he does enough?”

“Oh, All-Spirit, yes. He does as much as I can take. Sometimes more.”

“So you don’t have to meditate or sing or rake the paths all day. You are already doing the work of senahera.”

“Well, why are you raking the paths, then—because you don’t have a healer?”

“Because, silly, I like doing it. Your work of senahera needn’t look the slightest bit like mine. Someone has to rake the paths, someone has to tell the Servants in Assembly to shut up; it’s all the work of senahera, if it’s undertaken in the senaherani state of mind. Telling the Servants in Assembly to shut up is sacred to you, is it not?”

“Absolutely,” I said, signing chalk as well for emphasis.

“See, you’ve already been doing it. Is that sufficient? You are handsome in red.”

I put on the robe, over what I was already wearing. Its linen newness tickled my skin, on arms and legs. Looking down and seeing red to the ground made me feel like an actor, playing a part that was not me. I pulled everything I wore around my neck—my crystal, my father’s wisdom tooth, the circle—up through the collar to hang outside the robe. “How beautiful that is to me,” she said, “I can’t describe.”

“Fighting the war was sacred to me too,” I said, resisting the urge to take it right off again. “And yet now I must quit. Is quitting doing something sacred the work of senahera?”

“Chevenga, when you come up with a battle-plan, do you make it more complicated than it has to be?”

“Absolutely not. I have no desire to kill my army.”

“Then why are you making this more complicated than it has to be?”

“Umm… because when I come up with a battle-plan, I know what I’m doing?” Despite those words, though, I felt the seeking feeling come over me, the sense of having caught something in the wind, like a wolf faintly smelling deer. “Or maybe it’s the death-in-me, confusing things. It does that.”

Komona put her arms around me, and kissed me on the lips. Under the red robe, my insides turned to sweet roaring flame. “Just a reminder. There is no death-in-you, really.” She added: “Doing what All-Spirit wants means being fully alive. Nothing more.”

†

I went back to the Hearthstone Independent wearing it. Every Yeoli passing saw just a senaheraseye at first, then popped eyes or mouth or both when they saw my face.

“Dad, is that you?” Tawaen, who was just back from visiting Tanasha for a moon, said. Those of my other children who were lurking around our living-chambers of the Independent followed suit.

“A monk?” said Shaina. “I never know what’s going to be next with you.”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

“More than two,” said Etana.

“You have to admit he looks good in red, though,” said Skorsas. “I got him in it in the Mezem as much as I could without going too far. And that round glass thing strung on leather—yes. Pure Yeoli ascetic.”

“Don’t you have to… withdraw from the world?” said Etana, who knew little of the senaheral. “That doesn’t really suit a semanakraseye.”

“No,” I said. The robe itched around my legs, where I was used to having nothing. I hoped I wasn’t expected to wear it other than during ceremonies. “During the war the shadow-sibs had many monks.”

“Don’t you have to go celibate?” said Etana. There was a kind of a wurgh sound from Skorsas’s throat.

“No, that’s foreign monks. I’d never do that to my loves… or myself.” I wondered what Niku would think. I couldn’t begin to predict. Of course it might never matter.

“But I heard you have an ex-girlfriend from your youth who…” Skorsas delicately trailed off.

“Some senaheraseyel do it, yes, if it’s needful in their spiritual journey, and therefore they choose. It was in hers; it isn’t in mine. It’s all choice with Yeoli monks, like everything Yeoli. Your hands look cold, Skorsas… maybe you’ll choose to come and warm them under my robe?”

†

Surya alone was not surprised to see the glass circle, when I went to him for a visit the next day. (Even if you don’t wear the robe all the time, the circle you leave on, like a crystal.) “So, was I right, that if I’d told you your other calling, you’d have laughed?”

“Yes. Definitely. You were right. Oh, and I had call to wear that brass chain, the weapon-sense-blinding one.” I gave him the full account.

I think I could count on the fingers of one hand, the number of times anything I said gave him pause. Now was one; he sat thinking for a while, gazing at me, then stood up sharply and said, “Come with me.”

He took me a little downslope from the Independent, to where there are trees, and had me sit with him in a clearing. “Close your eyes, breathe, put your hands on the earth.” I did for a little while, until I was in a light trance. “What do you feel, that isn’t an emotion and that you are not touching?”

I should have put on my robe, I thought. I tried for a while; but it all felt as if it were in my imagination. “Nothing,” I said, “or at best nothing much.”

“Put on the chain, and try again.”

I did. It took a little time to come up, but it was the night of the animal again. The roots beneath the ground, their essences, the bonds between the trees and me, it was all there again, albeit faint. I stared at him. “Here, give it to me.” He took the chain, the stone centered in his palm, and put his hands together and his head down. Whatever’s in it, I thought, perhaps got used up or worn down or whatever it gets, last night; he’s upping it. He held it out to me, and I put it back on. I barely had to close my eyes this time; it all came blazing, and clearer than before, like when tears dry from your eyes. “All-Spirit!” I gasped. “One gift in exchange for another?”

He signed charcoal. “It shouldn’t be that way. The chain isn’t giving you the other gift. All it does is counter your weapon-sense. The truth is, you have both. It’s only the beliefs that come with them that keep you from doing both at the same time, or as you choose. Tell me, do you think you could go a day wearing that chain?”

I took a deep breath. It wasn’t as if I was in a war-camp; the only people around armed anyway were the darya. It still scared me enough to give me the urge to kyash. “I think I could.”

“Do it. Not yet, it’s too soon after last night… do it the day after tomorrow. All day; in the evening we’ll talk. You might feel you can’t stand it, but you can; trust me.”

“A-e kras,” I said sickly.

“Two reasons,” he said. “One is practice; living with it will get you accepting it, until you get to the point where you accept both, enough to do one or the other or both at will, without the chain. The other reason…” He grinned wryly. “After all these years, it seems the time has come for you to learn how the other half lives.”

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