The Gathering Hour

Ben was set loose in the mischus, free to eat or snooze in the shadows of the garden's walls, but Taylor's day was still going. He yawned as he followed a parade of children to the compost fields. The bigger ones, mostly boys, pushed carts of refuse along the well-worn tracks. Some carts were loaded with green material like leaves and peelings. Others were full of woody stuff like discarded bark, husks, shells, and sticks. The compost parade was an almost daily chore, rotated among all the younger workers and watched over by adult gardeners. Ten carts came out of Dagono that morning, which seemed a small amount for a thousand people. Most brown matter came directly from the garden, while much of the green came from town cooks.

The last carts in line, directly in front of Taylor, were all night soil. It didn't smell nice but it wasn't the choking stench he had expected. Calique lined their chamber pots with coir or similar material and covered their waste after each use. When the pots were collected and emptied, the result was a billet of matter covered in brown fiber that didn't emit much odor.

The procession led him on in the early light, eager to be done with this chore before the ground became too hot. The children wore the clothes he now associated with calique labor: protective and compostable garments, quick-made in every household by weaving fronds of date or coconut palm. As Taylor walked alongside Milo and Mila, Ben caught sight of him from the mischus field and followed. The children laughed to see the appalon so attached to his rider.

J'anan walked on the opposite side of the road, helping supervise the day's turning. Two other gardener women walked near her, speaking secretly with their hands and giggling. Ben shouldered Taylor hard enough to push him to the center of the cart track, and Taylor pushed the beast back and gave him a good rubbing of the face while they walked. Mila and Milo passed a look between themselves and dropped back several steps. What were they on about?

J'anan crossed to the middle of the road. "They want to know why you're in armor. Do you expect us to be attacked? Our hunters keep the beasts at bay."

Taylor looked down at his white enameled breastplate, with matching armguards and greaves, newly scarred from his raid on the Satomen. "These are my clothes. If I didn't wear them, I'd be naked."

"Hmmm." J'anan looked him up and down as if imagining what he looked like without clothes on. Taylor knew better than to take her seriously. He was thin from his ongoing growth spurt, and probably not to most girls' liking. That, and teasing boys his age was like a sport for Lavradian girls so why not for Calique girls too? He chose to ignore her with a vague smile.

"You were looked for last night during the gathering hour. People were curious about the outsider Wise Uzan let into the garden, but you were nowhere to be found. Your followers were there, but all they would say is you were busy. Are you shy around Calique girls, Phillip? There's nothing to be afraid of, you know. Most of the rumors about us are exaggerated."

More giggles from across the street.

"There was too much going on last night, and I couldn't get away. I'll be there tonight if nothing unusual happens."

"Duties, at night? Were you fighting monsters in your room, alone in the dark?"

Taylor felt pricked by her words, hard enough to be difficult to set aside. Hot replies filled his mouth, but their heat died when he felt the cousins behind him bristle. Angry answers were fine among hunters who could cool their tempers with mock battles. Around women and children, a little more care was needed.

"Actually I was, if chaos counts as a monster. Don't doyennes ever have to work late to keep their records straight or manage problems that crop up late in the day?"

"The first hour of darkness is for gathering," J'anan said as if quoting a book, "so a garden may know itself. You should make attendance a habit or else people will think you despise us."

"I chose that same hour to gather with my own people, mind-to-mind across the wind. It sounds like I should move the hour, so it doesn't conflict with the Calique gathering."

"You can't do that," she laughed, but a look at his face stopped her. "Can you?"

"You've never heard of the prayer Speak on the Wind?" Of course she had heard about it, given the Book of Prayers was public knowledge, but her look told him she didn't know what it was for. "Disciples can talk to each other over long distances. Few in Enclave can use it, but it's widespread in Nexus. Yesterday was one of those days when everyone needed attention. It isn't usually so busy."

He didn't tell her he had disciples in five different countries, or that they were hunted by Enclave. Nonetheless, the reminder he held the fate of a hundred people in his hands put her mind on a different track. After a few minutes of thought, she asked, "How does this work, making a new prayer? You write it in a book somewhere, and all the disciples in the world can use it?"

"In a way, yes."

"It sounds suspicious to me."

Taylor grinned at her. "Your explanation is accurate, in the same way it's true Calique women get together and rattle beads to decide what to plant next season. It skips over all the difficult parts."

J'anan kept watching him, expectantly. With a sigh, he gave her his usual classroom explanation. "The spiritual arts, at their core, use will and spirit to change some aspect of the world. Smaller changes are easier to make than big ones. Changes you comprehend are easier than complete mysteries. You can think of spirit, skill, knowledge, and ingenuity as levers for moving the world. With me so far?

"Prayers are like paths practitioners follow on their way to a destination, a bit like this trail we're walking on. Practitioners who use the path need much less spirit and skill than they would without it. The path is worn deeper and smoother by constant use. If neglected, the path decays. Making a new prayer amounts to cutting a new road through the heavy substance of reality. It's hard work and you need to know where you're going and how to get there."

"And any skilled disciple can do this?"

"In theory. But, I'm the only living disciple I know of who can make new prayers. There were at least two in scriptural history. I'm sure there have been others."

They walked in silence as the compost bins came into view. They were long rectangular troughs two meters wide by a meter and a half tall, twenty meters long. Taylor could see five of them and a collection of smaller bins off to one side. They were all made of brick, baked by sunlight until they blended with the landscape.

Low stone arches over the troughs served a double duty: they suspended canvas tarps to keep out wind and the occasional rainfall, and provided a platform for the children to stand on. Taylor watched, amused, as the smaller children ran for a trough and pulled the tarp off one section. They clambered up onto the arches in pairs while other children handed up the aerating tools. They looked like screws on long poles, with handles radiating from the top. With the approval of one of the gardeners, they screwed the aerator deep into the pile and then lifted it up to disturb the compost. Their supervisor told them which sections to work, and when to stop working. In some places she told them to add water.

"How do you know which parts to turn," Taylor asked one of the gardeners, "and which parts need water, without touching the compost? Don't temperature and moisture need to be just right?"

"Practice," she said, "We can feel heat and moisture on our hands. We know by smell how well the heap is doing."

The carts found their way into a partially full bin through a gate at one end. The gardeners decided the order of the carts, and how each load was to be layered with the others. Excrement went into a special bin, mixed with generous layers of carbonous matter.

The troughs had gates at both ends, one side for putting in and the other for taking out. When the carts were all emptied and swept clean, even the night soil carts, they began loading finished product from a finished pile. The dirt was passed through a screen of woven reeds, and the chunks judged too large were chucked into another bin for further decay. Ten full carts went out to the heaps. Five and a half carts returned full of good dirt, while the remainder came home empty. Again the dirt sourced from night soil was kept separate, to be spread over the mischus that fed the animals.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The whole parade of carts, children, gardeners, Taylor, and his two followers marched through the city gates by mid-morning. Finally, Taylor could get some sleep.

❖ ❖ ❖

Anisca woke him up in time to do some work, mending more tools for the locals. Then she supervised his preparations for the gathering hour, insisting he put the Red Tower colors on his face and leave his armor behind. Calique did not gather in pubs when the sun went down. The men did not sneak off to drink while their women stayed at home with the children. When the day's heat eased away, all the families came out of their houses or wherever they had sheltered and gathered in the great square by the gate. Some Pashtuk refugees were there too, welcomed with caution but welcomed nonetheless, while the Satomen were conspicuously absent. People brought what drink they wanted and shared it around, while informal bands of musicians took turns playing.

There was dancing too, groups of women or girls spinning in their long colorful wraps, wrists and hair and ankles aglow with silver and semi-precious stones flashing in the torchlight. When they had shown themselves to such advantage, men of a similar age would group together and dance their turn. Their clothes were no less colorful but in a darker shade. They wore their hair up in turbans, danced shirtless in the dying light, hunters and builders and coir-handlers stomping and turning in synchronous time. The young adults were impressively energetic and aimed their dancing directly at groups of the opposite sex who talked to each other behind their hands.

The very youngest danced with their families, even if they could barely stand and bob in time with the music. Fathers and mothers held their hands to keep them up as the joys of music and movement overtook their little faces.

Taylor socialized by enduring the many introductions by his "doyenne" Anisca. But it was the music that enthralled him. For the first time in weeks, his fingers itched for an instrument. He wanted to try those complex percussive phrases and discover what notes would come out of them.

It was over far too soon. Young people paired off to go walking in the desert or find deep shadows in the buildings' eaves or in the garden's shade. Their dalliances were ephemeral, exploratory. Taylor wondered what it would be like to be one of them, kiss a barely-known girl in the dark, hold her lean and breathing form, then let her go and return to his bed. He turned to head back to his allotted house and found himself facing Amadis, Maul of Dagono. The furry beast had snuck up on him.

"Can I do something for you, Maul Amadis?"

"Heh, so formal. I'll call you Phillip if you call me Amadis, all right? Come to my house and drink. Bring your fighters, leave the doyenne."

Taylor spied Anisca in another section of the plaza practicing dance steps with women of her age. It pleased him to be included in something she was not, but she had to be guarded. "Alice, would you mind?"

"Naturally," she said, and floated off to join the practicing women.

"Lead the way, Amadis."

The huge man strode off, one hand on Taylor's shoulder to steer him through the dispersing crowd. His house was wider than most and near the plaza, a position of pride. On the inside, it was tiled in patterns evoking a river that flowed beneath palms bowed heavy with fruit. Fish jumped and splashed in the river, a sight Taylor doubted any calique could see without first leaving the desert. About a dozen men filled the ground floor, most of them older than Amadis and most of them scarred. There were no women in sight, but they had left their mark behind in carafes of fermented juice and appalon milk (alcohol was women's work). The table was laden with tinned platters of lentils and flatbread and tubers served with spicy sauces and fresh fruits.

"Sit. Sit there in the guest place." Taylor took the cushion that was offered.

"Tell me if I break any social rules, Amadis. I don't mean to give offense."

"But you've broken so many taboos already, who can tell if you mean offense or not! I've decided to ignore them all!"

Taylor's face flushed hot. A dozen worlds and he still couldn't find his way through a new culture without making a fool of himself. The men laughed at him.

"I'm joking, I'm joking," said Amadis. He sat next to Taylor and poured him a small cup of fermented milk, then himself, and then others near him. The jug got passed around until everyone had some. "First cup is drunk together, and all at once, all right? What shall we toast to? Some hero of yours, from a far country? A saint you prefer? Anything good is acceptable."

Taylor was caught off guard, but one name soon came to mind. "To the great monster hunter, and my teacher, Disciple Mobeen. The man himself is gone, but he lives on in his teachings and our students. Mobeen!"

"Mobeen!" they all said, and drank. The white stuff was thick and sweet and filled with enough cooling spices to cover the taste of poison. Taylor almost spit it out, but instead invoked a silent prayer. The drink was probably fine, but he didn't like to take chances.

"We know this name, Mobeen the Sacred Blade," said the oldest hunter, "he was a legend, one of the few men of Enclave we respect. But now you say he's gone to the next life. What happened to bring a hunter like him to his end?"

"It was a surprise attack on his carriage, with a ballista. They only hit him because they were lucky. Edos, his last student, was there too and he survived by only this much." Taylor held his palms a few centimeters apart. "He fought and killed the attackers."

"A ballista," wondered one of the old hunters, "a siege weapon?"

The men exclaimed in low tones. Of course it would take something ridiculous to kill Sacred Blade. At least it was an interesting way to die, and the man hadn't suffered.

Amadis decided to wrench the conversation to a less serious topic. "You do not dance, Brother Phillip. Are you club-footed? Do you keep poor time?" The men clicked their tongues in sympathy.

"I haven't learned your dances yet. I don't know when I'll have the time." Groans of mock impatience assaulted him.

"This will not do. You came here with great purpose. I felt it in your spear: you fight for more than your hundred souls in exile. You cannot hide such things from an old hunter."

Mila and Milo, his youngest bulwarks, smiled to themselves. Inez and Otavio nodded knowingly. The older generation was always claiming things like this, that people revealed themselves intimately in a fight.

Was that why Inez had pushed him to fight against Gustave? To reveal himself to the general? To what end?

"No girl will walk with you if you don't dance or have some kind of craft. The hand that only sheds blood is no better than a spear. The garden could learn to trust a foreign man, but they will never follow a simple spear."

"When am I going to find time for all of this? I have a church to build, a home to build for it, children and bulwarks to train, prayers to write, and a monster to kill that has been the death of many disciples before me. Amadis! Now I'm supposed to add worrying about what girls want from me? It's too much already!"

The maul clicked his tongue and refilled his little cup with the potent milk-wine. The hunters understood the worries of young men. They remembered.

"Listen to an older hunter, all right? At your age, the passions are very sweet and not so demanding. You have nothing to worry about. The girls want to hold hands with a boy they don't know too well, maybe kiss him a little, and be held by him. They want to know they are liked."

The other men at the table nodded at his sage advice.

"Is that true, Mila?" Taylor considered asking Inez, but she hadn't been his age in a long time. Mila was only several years older than him.

"Why are you asking me?" She asked him slyly. "I'm just another young hunter enjoying drinks. Maybe you should listen to these men who have daughters and granddaughters."

They knocked their knuckles against the table in approval. Inez and Mila had dressed themselves as men to stay near Taylor, and they would be accepted as such as long as they acted the part well.

"Yes! Listen to those of us with daughters! Keep your hands above the cloth! Do not touch the sacred parts unless you are invited, understand? If the girls are wary of you the circle will not listen to you. The fathers will not help you. All right? Good. Now," he raised his cup, "to youth!" This time the hunters sipped from their cups. A little drink with men was very fine, but drunkenness was frowned upon.

Then they ate. Spicy lizard on a skewer was Taylor's favorite dish of the night, with a dipping sauce of yogurt-like substance flavored with herbs. He accepted a second serving of lizard, and then a third.

The old men talked as they ate, about their days hunting in the desert, tracking strange animals into solitary places, how to detect the lairs of trapdoor spiders and poisonous snakes. Taylor listened, rapt, as the wealth of information flowed around him.

His contract with the garden said he couldn't interrogate the hunters until he fixed the garden's food shortage. But there was nothing that said he couldn't listen if they felt inclined to talk on their own. Darkmaw was conspicuous by its absence and the way they skirted around recent hunts. At least one man, younger than the others, was missing an arm. The skin on his stump was fresh and pink.

"I can have healers here the day after I've settled my end of the contract, if you want to regrow your arm," he told one man. "It takes time, but it should be possible."

"You can do that?" exclaimed Amadis. "Enclave healers said it was impossible."

"Impossible for healers, but not disciples. But their disciples wouldn't deign to treat a wounded Calique. Nexus sees things differently."

The talk, food, spice, and alcohol crept up on Taylor. He felt warm and companionable among these men, among these stories. He wanted to hunt the desert, put their lore to the test, suss out Darkmaw and its secrets. How big was it now, after gorging itself on so many men and appalons? How hard was its armor? Could he kill it with a blow, or would he have to get creative?

Amadis was asking him something, poking his shoulder with a thick finger. "What does the future hold for the young maul when the unkillable creature lies dead? Hmm? What then?" The table fell silent. This was the point of the evening. Anything he said now could be denied later as the excess braggings of milk-wine. In this company, he could "speculate". His words would be carried straight to the circle of women who governed Dagono, but they could not be taken as promises.

"Nexus is more than a church. It's a library. It's a school for disciples, bulwarks, and scholars. It's a place to pursue new knowledge, create new things, expand the reach of people. Nexus is a garden for civilization. But the desert can't house a place like Nexus when it gets too big, and that's good. When we outgrow our home here, we'll plant a new Nexus in another country. And then another, and another, until there are enough of us to protect the faithful everywhere in Tenobre. And one day we'll have enough knowledge to rival the ancients."

Taylor stopped spinning his future long enough to fill the maul's cup, and then the cups of the older hunters around him. "Before any of that can happen, we must deal with Kashmar. I have read they always invade when they think Calique are weak. After Darkmaw is dead, Kashmar will come. Do you agree?"

"It's all but certain," said Amadis. "Will you fight with us, when they come?"

"Nexus will fight," he said, raising his cup to the hunters, "to protect its home, its friends, and all the innocents who live in the desert. And we'll win, too."