Polgara the Sorceress Page 4

  That got my immediate attention.

  The Tree’s trunk was much larger than uncle Beldin’s tower, its branches reached hundreds of feet into the air, and its lateral limbs shaded whole acres. I stared at it in amazement for a long time, and then I very clearly heard – or felt – it calling to me.

  I somewhat hesitantly descended the hill in response. I was wary about that strange summons. The bushes didn’t talk to me, and neither did the grass. My as yet unformed mind automatically suspected anything out of the ordinary.

  When at last I entered the shade of those wide-spread branches, a strange sort of warm glowing peace came over me and erased my trepidation. Somehow I knew that the Tree meant me no harm. I walked quite resolutely toward that vast, gnarled trunk.

  And then I put forth my hand and touched it.

  And that was my second awakening. The first had come when father had laid his hand upon my head in benediction, but in some ways this awakening was more profound.

  The Tree told me – although ‘told’ is not precisely accurate, since the Tree does not exactly speak – that it was – is, I suppose – the oldest living thing in the entire world. Ages unnumbered have nourished it, and it stands in absolute serenity in the center of the Vale, shedding years like drops of rain from its wide-spread leaves. Since it pre-dates the rest of us, and it’s alive, we’re all in some peculiar way its children. The first lesson it taught me – the first lesson it teaches everyone who touches it – was about the nature of time. Time, the slow, measured passage of years, is not exactly what we think it is. Humans tend to break time up into manageable pieces – night and day, the turning of the seasons, the passage of years, centuries, eons – but in actuality time is all one piece, a river flowing endlessly from the beginning toward some incomprehensible goal. The Tree gently guided my infant understanding through that extremely difficult concept.

  I think that had I not encountered the Tree exactly when I did, I should never have grasped the meaning of my unusual life-span. Slowly, with my hands still on the Tree’s rough bark, I came to understand that I would live for as long as necessary. The Tree was not very specific about the nature of the tasks which lay before me, but it did suggest that those tasks would take me a very long time.

  And then I did hear a voice – several, actually. The meaning of what they were saying was totally clear to me, but I somehow knew that these were not human voices. It took me quite some time to identify their source, and then a rather cheeky sparrow flittered down through those huge branches, hooked his tiny claws into the rough bark of the Tree a few feet from my face, and regarded me with his glittering little eyes.

  ‘Welcome, Polgara,’ he chirped. ‘What took you so long to find us?’

  The mind of a child is frequently willing to accept the unusual or even the bizarre, but this went a little far. I stared at that talkative little bird in absolute astonishment.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he demanded.

  ‘You’re talking!’ I blurted.

  ‘Of course I am. We all talk. You just haven’t been listening. You should really pay closer attention to what’s going on around you. You aren’t going to hurt me, are you? I’ll fly away if you try, you know.’

  ‘N-no,’ I stammered. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

  ‘Good. Then we can talk. Did you happen to see any seeds on your way here?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I wasn’t really looking for seeds, though.’

  ‘You should learn to watch for them. My mate has three babies back at the nest, and I’m supposed to be out looking for seeds to feed them. What’s that on your sleeve?’

  I looked at the sleeve of my smock. ‘It seems to be a seed of some kind – grass, probably.’

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Give it to me.’

  I picked the seed off my sleeve and held it out to him. He hopped off the side of the Tree and perched on my finger, his head cocked and his bright little eye closely examining my offering. ‘It’s grass, all right,’ he agreed. Then he actually seemed to sigh. ‘I hate it when all there is to eat is immature grass-seed. It’s early in the season, and those seeds are so tiny right now.’ He took the seed in his beak. ‘Don’t go away. I’ll be right back.’ Then he flew off.

  For a few moments I actually thought I’d been dreaming. Then my sparrow came back, and there was another one with him. This is my mate,’ he introduced her to me.

  ‘Hello, Polgara,’ she said. ‘Where did you find that seed? My babies are very hungry.’

  ‘It must have caught on my sleeve up near the top of that hill,’ I ventured.

  ‘Why don’t we go up there and have a look,’ she suggested, brazenly settling on my shoulder. The first sparrow followed his mate’s lead and perched on my other shoulder. All bemused by this miracle, I turned and started back up the grassy hill.

  ‘You don’t move very fast, do you?’ The first sparrow noted critically.

  ‘I don’t have wings,’ I replied.

  ‘That must be awfully tedious.’

  ‘It gets me to where I’m going.’

  ‘As soon as we find those seeds, I’ll introduce you to some of the others,’ he offered. ‘My mate and I’ll be busy feeding the babies for a while.’

  ‘Can you actually talk to other kinds of birds?’ That was a startling idea.

  ‘Well,’ he said deprecatingly, ‘sort of. The larks always try to be poetic, and the robins talk too much, and they’re always trying to shoulder their way in whenever I find food. I really don’t care that much for robins. They’re such bullies.’

  And then a meadowlark swooped in and hovered over my head. ‘Whither goest thou?’ he demanded of my sparrow.

  ‘Up there,’ the sparrow replied, cocking his head toward the hilltop. ‘Polgara found some seeds up there, and my mate and I have babies to feed. Why don’t you talk with her while we tend to business?’

  ‘All right,’ the lark agreed. ‘My mate doth still sit upon our eggs, warming them with her substance, so I have ample time to guide our sister here.’

  ‘There’s a seed!’ the female sparrow chirped excitedly. And she swooped down off my shoulder to seize it. Her mate soon saw another, and the two of them flew off.

  ‘Sparrows are, methinks, somewhat overly excitable,’ the lark noted. ‘Whither wouldst thou go, sister?’

  ‘I’ll leave that up to you,’ I replied. ‘I’d sort of like to get to know more birds, though.’

  And that began my education in ornithology. I met all manner of birds that morning. The helpful lark took me around and introduced me. His rather lyrical assessments of the varied species were surprisingly acute. As I’ve already mentioned, he told me that sparrows are excitable and talky. He characterized robins as oddly aggressive, and then added that they tended to say the same things over and over. Jays scream a lot. Swallows show off. Crows are thieves. Vultures stink. Hummingbirds aren’t really very intelligent. If he’s forced to think about it, the average hummingbird gets so confused that he forgets exactly how to hover in mid-air. Owls aren’t really as wise as they’re reputed to be, and my guide referred to them rather deprecatingly as ‘flying mouse-traps’. Seagulls have a grossly exaggerated notion of their own place in the overall scheme of things. Your average seagull spends a lot of his time pretending to be an eagle. I normally wouldn’t have seen any seagulls in the Vale, but the blustery wind had driven them inland. The assorted waterfowl spent almost as much time swimming as they did flying, and they were very clannish. I didn’t really care that much for ducks and geese. They’re pretty, I suppose, but their voices set my teeth on edge.

  The aristocrats of birds are the raptors. The various hawks, depending on their size, have a complicated hierarchy, and standing at the very pinnacle of bird-dom is the eagle.

  I communed with the various birds for the rest of the day, and by evening they had grown so accustomed to me that some of them, like my cheeky little sparrow and his mate, actually perched on me. As evening set
tled over the Vale I promised to return the next day, and my lyric lark accompanied me back to uncle Beldin’s tower.

  ‘What have you been doing, Pol?’ Beldaran asked curiously after I’d mounted the stairs and rejoined her. As was usual when we were talking to each other privately, Beldaran spoke to me in ‘twin’.

  ‘I met some birds,’ I replied.

  ‘ “Met”? How do you meet a bird?’

  ‘You talk to them, Beldaran.’

  ‘And do they talk back?’ Her look was amused.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered in an off-hand manner, ‘as a matter of fact, they do.’ If she wanted to be snippy and superior, I could play that game, too.

  ‘What do they talk about?’ Her curiosity subdued her irritation at my superior reply.

  ‘Oh, seeds and the like. Birds take a lot of interest in food. They talk about flying, too. They can’t really understand why I can’t fly. Then they talk about their nests. A bird doesn’t really live in his nest, you know. It’s just a place to lay eggs and raise babies.’

  ‘I’d never thought of that,’ my sister admitted.

  ‘Neither had I – until they told me about it. A bird doesn’t really need a home, I guess. They also have opinions.’

  ‘Opinions?’

  ‘One kind of bird doesn’t really have much use for other kinds of birds. Sparrows don’t like robins, and seagulls don’t like ducks.’

  ‘How curious,’ Beldaran commented.

  ‘What are you two babbling about now?’ uncle Beldin demanded, looking up from the scroll he’d been studying.

  ‘Birds,’ I told him.

  He muttered something I won’t repeat here and went back to his study of that scroll.

  ‘Why don’t you take a bath and change clothes, Pol,’ Beldaran suggested a bit acidly. ‘You’ve got bird-droppings all over you.’

  I shrugged. ‘They’ll brush off as soon as they dry.’

  She rolled her eyes upward.

  I left the tower early the next morning and went to the small storehouse where the twins kept their supplies. The twins are Alorns, and they do love their beer. One of the major ingredients in beer is wheat, and I was fairly sure they wouldn’t miss a small bag or two. I opened the bin where they kept the wheat and scooped a fair amount into a couple of canvas bags I’d found hanging on a hook on the back wall of the shed. Then, carrying the fruits of my pilferage, I started back for the Tree.

  ‘Whither goest thou, sister?’ It was my poetic lark again. It occurs to me that my affinity for the studied formality of Wacite Arendish speech may very well have been born in my conversations with that lark.

  ‘I’m going back to the Tree,’ I told him.

  ‘What are those?’ he demanded, stabbing his beak at the two bags I carried.

  ‘A gift for my new-found friends,’ I said.

  ‘What is a gift?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Birds are sometimes as curious as cats, and my lark badgered me about what was in my bags all the way back to the Tree.

  My birds were ecstatic when I opened the bags and spread the wheat around under the Tree, and they came in from miles around to feast. I watched them fondly for a time, and then I climbed up into the Tree and sprawled out on one huge limb to watch my new friends. I got the distinct impression that the Tree approved of what I had done.

  I thought about that for quite a long time that morning, but I was still baffled about just exactly how I’d come by this unusual talent.

  ‘It’s the Tree’s gift to you, Polgara.’ It was mother’s voice, and suddenly everything became clear to me. Of course! Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  ‘Probably because you weren’t paying attention,’ mother observed.

  In the years that followed, the Tree became like a second home to me. I spent my days on my favorite perch with my skinny legs stretched out on the huge limb and my back against the massive trunk. I fed my birds and we talked. We came to know each other better and better, and they brought me information about the weather, forest fires, and occasional travelers passing through the Vale. My family was always carping about my shabby appearance, but my birds didn’t seem to mind.

  As those of you who know me can attest, I have an occasionally sharp tongue. My family was spared all sorts of affronts because of my fondness for the Tree and its feathered inhabitants.

  The seasons rolled by, and Beldaran and I grew into an awkward coltishness – all legs and elbows. And then one morning we discovered that we had become women during the night. There was some fairly visible evidence of the fact on our bed-clothing.

  ‘Are we dying?’ Beldaran asked me in a trembling voice.

  ‘Tell her to stop that, Polgara!’ mother’s voice came to me sharply. That was something I could never understand. Mother talked to me directly, but she never intruded into Beldaran’s mind. I’m sure there was a reason for it, but mother never got around to explaining.

  ‘What’s happening, mother?’ I demanded. To be honest about it, I was quite nearly as frightened as my sister was.

  ‘It’s a natural process, Polgara. It happens to all women.’

  ‘Make it stop!’

  ‘No. It has to happen. Tell Beldaran that it’s nothing to get excited about.’

  ‘Mother says that it’s all right,’ I told my sister.

  ‘How can it be all right?’

  ‘Shush. I’m trying to listen to mother.’

  ‘Don’t you shush me, Polgara!’

  ‘Then be still.’ I turned my attention inward. ‘You’d better explain this, mother,’ I said. ‘Beldaran’s about ready to fly apart.’ I didn’t really think it was necessary to admit that my seams were starting to come undone as well.

  Then mother gave us a somewhat clinical explanation for the bloodstains on our bedding, and I passed the information on to my distraught sister.

  ‘Is it going to go on forever now?’ Beldaran asked me in a trembling voice.

  ‘No, only for a few days. Mother says to get used to it, because it’ll happen every month.’

  ‘Every month?’ Beldaran sounded outraged.

  ‘So she says.’ I raised up in bed and looked across the room toward Uncle Beldin’s bed – the place where all the snoring was coming from. ‘Let’s get this cleaned up while he’s still asleep,’ I suggested.

  ‘Oh, dear Gods, yes!’ she agreed fervently. ‘I’d die if he found out about this.’

  I’m fairly sure that our misshapen uncle was aware of what was happening, but we never got around to discussing it, for some reason.

  Uncle Beldin has theorized about when the members of my extended family develop what father calls ‘talent’, and he’s concluded that it emerges with the onset of puberty. I may have had something to do with that conclusion. I think I was about twelve or so. It was ‘that time of the month’ for Beldaran and me, and my sister was feeling mopey. I, on the other hand, was irritable. It was all so inconvenient! Mother had mentioned the fact that ‘something might happen’ now that Beldaran and I had reached a certain level of maturity, but she was a little vague about it. Evidently, it’s sort of necessary that our first venture into the exercise of our ‘talent’ be spontaneous. Don’t ask me why, because I haven’t got the faintest notion of a reasonable explanation for the custom.

  As I remember the circumstances of that first incident, I was dragging a large bag of wheat down to the Tree to feed my birds. I was muttering to myself about that. Over the years my birds had come to depend on me, and they were not above taking advantage of my generosity. Given half a chance, birds, like all other creatures, can be lazy. I didn’t mind feeding them, but it seemed that I was spending more and more time hauling sacks of wheat from the twins’ tower to the Tree.

  When I reached the Tree, they were all clamoring to be fed, and that irritated me all the more. As far as I know, not one single bird has ever learned how to say ‘thank you’.

  There were whole flocks of them by now, and they cleaned up my daily offering in s
hort order. Then they started screeching for more.

  I was seated on my favorite perch, and the shrill importunings of the birds made me even more irritable. If there were only some way I could have an inexhaustible supply of seed on hand to keep them quiet.

  The jays were being particularly offensive. There’s something about a jay’s squawking that cuts directly into me. Finally, driven beyond my endurance, I burst out. ‘More seeds!’ I half-shouted.

  And suddenly, there they were – heaps and heaps of them! I was stunned. Even the birds seemed startled. I, on the other hand, felt absolutely exhausted.

  Father has always used the phrase ‘the Will and the Word’ to describe what we do, but I think that’s a little limited. My experience seems to indicate that ‘the Wish and the Word’ works just as well.

  Someday he and I’ll have to talk about that.

  As is usually the case, my first experiment in this field made a lot of noise. I hadn’t even finished my self-congratulation when a blue-banded hawk and two doves came swooping in. Now, hawks and doves don’t normally flock together – except when the hawk is hungry – so I immediately had some suspicions. The three of them settled on my limb, and then they blurred, changing form before my very eyes.

  ‘Seeds, Polgara?’ Beltira said mildly. ‘Seeds?’

  The birds were hungry,’ I said. What a silly excuse for a miracle that was!

  ‘Precocious, isn’t she?’ Belkira murmured to uncle Beldin.

  ‘We should probably have expected it,’ Beldin grunted. ‘Pol never does anything in the normal way.’

  ‘Will I be able to do that some day?’ I asked the twins.

  ‘Do what, Pol?’ Belkira asked gently.

  ‘What you just did – change myself into a bird and back?’

  ‘Probably, yes.’

  ‘Well now,’ I said as a whole new world of possibilities opened before my eyes. ‘Will Beldaran be able to do it too?’