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Atal willingly let her run her fingers around the wheel holes again, and watched curiously as Mary coated one of the pieces with a film of the clear, sweet substance.
Then she pressed the plates together and moved them around to spread the oil evenly, and held them a hand span apart once more.
And when she looked through, everything was changed. She could see Shadows. If she’d been in the Jordan College Retiring Room when Lord Asriel had projected the photograms he’d made with the special emulsion, she would have recognized the effect. Everywhere she looked she could see gold, just as Atal had described it: sparkles of light, floating and drifting and sometimes moving in a current of purpose. Among it all was the world she could see with the naked eye, the grass, the river, the trees; but wherever she saw a conscious being, one of the mulefa, the light was thicker and more full of movement. It didn’t obscure their shapes in any way; if anything it made them clearer.
I didn’t know it was beautiful, Mary said to Atal.
Why, of course it is, her friend replied. It is strange to think that you couldn’t see it. Look at the little one . . .
She indicated one of the small children playing in the long grass, leaping clumsily after grasshoppers, suddenly stopping to examine a leaf, falling over, scrambling up again to rush and tell his mother something, being distracted again by a piece of stick, trying to pick it up, finding ants on his trunk and hooting with agitation. There was a golden haze around him, as there was around the shelters, the fishing nets, the evening fire: stronger than theirs, though not by much. But unlike theirs it was full of little swirling currents of intention that eddied and broke off and drifted about, to disappear as new ones were born.
Around his mother, on the other hand, the golden sparkles were much stronger, and the currents they moved in were more settled and powerful. She was preparing food, spreading flour on a flat stone, making the thin bread like chapatis or tortillas, watching her child at the same time; and the Shadows, or the sraf, or the Dust, that bathed her looked like the very image of responsibility and wise care.
So at last you can see, said Atal. Well, now you must come with me.
Mary looked at her friend in puzzlement. Atal’s tone was strange: it was as if she were saying, Finally you’re ready; we’ve been waiting; now things must change.
And others were appearing, from over the brow of the hill, from out of their shelters, from along the river: members of the group, but strangers, too, mulefa who were new to her, and who looked curiously toward where she was standing. The sound of their wheels on the hard-packed earth was low and steady.
Where must I go? Mary said. Why are they all coming here?
Don’t worry, said Atal, come with me, we shall not hurt you.
It seemed to have been long planned, this meeting, for they all knew where to go and what to expect. There was a low mound at the edge of the village that was regular in shape and packed with hard earth, with ramps at each end, and the crowd—fifty or so at least, Mary estimated—was moving toward it. The smoke of the cooking fires hung in the evening air, and the setting sun spread its own kind of hazy gold over everything. Mary was aware of the smell of roasting corn, and the warm smell of the mulefa themselves—part oil, part warm flesh, a sweet horselike smell.
Atal urged her toward the mound.
Mary said, What is happening? Tell me!
No, no . . . Not me. Sattamax will speak . . .
Mary didn’t know the name Sattamax, and the zalif whom Atal indicated was a stranger to her. He was older than anyone she’d seen so far: at the base of his trunk was a scatter of white hairs, and he moved stiffly, as if he had arthritis. The others all moved with care around him, and when Mary stole a glance through the lacquer glass, she saw why: the old zalif’s Shadow cloud was so rich and complex that Mary herself felt respect, even though she knew so little of what it meant.
When Sattamax was ready to speak, the rest of the crowd fell silent. Mary stood close to the mound, with Atal nearby for reassurance; but she sensed all their eyes on her and felt as if she were a new girl at school.
Sattamax began to speak. His voice was deep, the tones rich and varied, the gestures of his trunk low and graceful.
We have all come together to greet the stranger Mary. Those of us who know her have reason to be grateful for her activities since she arrived among us. We have waited until she had some command of our language. With the help of many of us, but especially the zalif Atal, the stranger Mary can now understand us.
But there was another thing she had to understand, and that was sraf. She knew about it, but she could not see it as we can, until she made an instrument to look through.
And now she has succeeded, she is ready to learn more about what she must do to help us.
Mary, come here and join me.
She felt dizzy, self-conscious, bemused, but she did as she had to and stepped up beside the old zalif. She thought she had better speak, so she began:
You have all made me feel I am a friend. You are kind and hospitable. I came from a world where life is very different, but some of us are aware of sraf, as you are, and I’m grateful for your help in making this glass, through which I can see it. If there is any way in which I can help you, I will be glad to do it.
She spoke more awkwardly than she did with Atal, and she was afraid she hadn’t made her meaning clear. It was hard to know where to face when you had to gesture as well as speak, but they seemed to understand.
Sattamax said, It is good to hear you speak. We hope you will be able to help us. If not, I cannot see how we will survive. The tualapi will kill us all. There are more of them than there ever were, and their numbers are increasing every year. Something has gone wrong with the world. For most of the thirty-three thousand years that there have been mulefa, we have taken care of the earth. Everything balanced. The trees prospered, the grazers were healthy, and even if once in a while the tualapi came, our numbers and theirs remained constant.
But three hundred years ago the trees began to sicken. We watched them anxiously and tended them with care and still we found them producing fewer seedpods, and dropping their leaves out of season, and some of them died outright, which had never been known. All our memory could not find a cause for this.
To be sure, the process was slow, but so is the rhythm of our lives. We did not know that until you came. We have seen butterflies and birds, but they have no sraf. You do, strange as you seem; but you are swift and immediate, like birds, like butterflies. You realize there is a need for something to help you see sraf and instantly, out of the materials we have known for thousands of years, you put together an instrument to do so. Beside us, you think and act with the speed of a bird. That is how it seems, which is how we know that our rhythm seems slow to you.
But that fact is our hope. You can see things that we cannot, you can see connections and possibilities and alternatives that are invisible to us, just as sraf was invisible to you. And while we cannot see a way to survive, we hope that you may. We hope that you will go swiftly to the cause of the trees’ sickness and find a cure; we hope you will invent a means of dealing with the tualapi, who are so numerous and so powerful.
And we hope you can do so soon, or we shall all die.
There was a murmur of agreement and approval from the crowd. They were all looking at Mary, and she felt more than ever like the new pupil at a school where they had high expectations of her. She also felt a strange flattery: the idea of herself as swift and darting and birdlike was new and pleasant, because she had always thought of herself as dogged and plodding. But along with that came the feeling that they’d got it terribly wrong, if they saw her like that; they didn’t understand at all; she couldn’t possibly fulfill this desperate hope of theirs.
But equally, she must. They were waiting.
Sattamax, she said, mulefa, you put your trust in me and I shall do my best. You have been kind and your life is good and beautiful and I will try very hard to help you, and now I have seen sraf, I know what it is that I am doing. Thank you for trusting me.
They nodded and murmured and stroked her with their trunks as she stepped down. She was daunted by what she had agreed to do.
At that very moment in the world of Cittàgazze, the assassin-priest Father Gomez was making his way up a rough track in the mountains between the twisted trunks of olive trees. The evening light slanted through the silvery leaves and the air was full of the noise of crickets and cicadas.
