Earthborn

"So you came here."

"Came here! Came here and begged Shedemei to take me on, even though I was forbidden to read anything. She let me attend only one class. Voozhum's class, because the old lady is so blind she can't assign readings anyway, she just talks and the students listen and then talk back. But she was a digger! Do you have any idea how hard that was for me? How humiliating? I laugh now to think of it-this woman is a treasure! She has written nothing and if I had continued to live in books I would never have heard her voice, but I'll tell you, Akma, there is no moral philosopher in all the king's library who is as subtle and... humane as she is."

Akma laughed and embraced the little man. In all the years they had spent as student and master, there had been no such embrace; the books were always between them. But now it felt right to have the brush of the man's wings against his thighs as the long arms nearly double-wrapped him at the waist. "Bego, how glad I am that we both found our own route to healing."

Bego nodded, drew away from him. "Healing what can be healed. Undoing what can be undone. I couldn't have repaired the damage I did to you-I could only hope that you and the Keeper would work it out between you. And my own life-I've come too late to the things I've learned. I've never had a wife, never taken part in the great passage of blossom, seed, and sapling. Now I'm just an old stump and there's no more bloom in me. But that doesn't mean I'm sad or sorry for myself, don't misunderstand me, boy! I'm happier than I've ever been."

"Surely now the king will release you from your punishment."

"I haven't asked. I don't need to. I know everything that the library can teach me anyway. I'm busy discovering that all these children aren't just a single mass of a

They laughed together. Only then, in the laughter, did Akma lift his gaze enough to see that they were no longer alone. Edhadeya stood there in the corridor, not five paces off, a look of uncertainty and shyness on her face. The moment she saw that he had noticed her, she looked down at the old digger woman whose hand she held. Then she stepped toward him, slowly, leading the halting old woman. "Akma," said Edhadeya. "This is Voozhum. She was once my... slave. She's also the greatest teacher in a school of great teachers."

The old woman looked at him through rheumy eyes; the lack of focus in her gaze told him that she was nearly blind. Withered and bent, she was still a digger, still had the massive haunches and the probing snout. In spite of himself, he saw for a fleeting moment the image of a giant digger, towering over him with a whip in his hand, laying on with the lash because he dared to rest a moment in the hot sunlight. He felt the sting across his back; and then, worse yet, saw the same lash come down on his mother's bacjc and he was powerless to stop it. Rage flashed through him.

And then was gone. For now he saw that this old woman was not the same as the guard who had beaten him with such obvious pleasure in his cruelty and authority. How could he have ever hated all diggers for the actions of a few? And now he knew that he had been no better than they were: When the path of his life gave him a bit of power and influence, what had he done with it, that differed in any important way from what they did, except that his crimes were on a larger scale and he did a better job of lying to himself about what he was doing? I have been a digger a thousand times over; I have seen their suffering with the knowledge that I caused it. I forgive the digger guards who mistreated us. I value even their miserable lives; the harm they did to us cost us only pain, while it cost them the love of the Keeper-a far more terrible price, even if they didn't understand the reason for the emptiness and agony in their hearts.

Akma knelt before the old woman, so her bent-over head and his were at the same level. She leaned close to him, her nose almost touching him; was she sniffing at him? No, merely trying to see his face. "This is the one I saw in my dream," she said. "The Keeper thinks you're worth a lot of trouble."

"Voozhum," he said, "I harmed you and all your people. I told terrible lies about you. I stirred up hatred and fear, and your people hungered and hurt because of me."

"Oh, that wasn't you," said Voozhum. "That boy died. It seems to me that you spent all those years just trying to find a way to kill that boy, and finally you did, and now you're a new man. Tall for a newborn and more eloquent than most. But the new Akma doesn't hate me."

Impulsively he said the thought that had only just occurred to him. "I think I have never seen a woman so beautiful."

"Well, now, you must be looking over my shoulder at Edhadeya," Voozhum said.

"Edhadeya and I have years ahead of us to watch her become as beautiful as you," said Akma. "I think she will, don't you, Voozhum?"

"Definitely. It's the hump of my back that I think is especially fetching." Voozhum cackled with laughter at her own jest.

"Will you teach me how to undo my past life?" asked Akma.

"No," she said. "Not the whole thing. Only the bad bits."

"Yes, that's right, the bad bits."

"Don't want you to undo the part where you were brave. Or that clever scholar. Or the boy who had sense enough to fall in love with Edhadeya." Voozhum took Akma's hand and carefully, clumsily, put Edhadeya's fingers on his. "Now Edhadeya, let's not have any nonsense about pretending not to know what you want, all right?" said Voozhum. "You loved him right through the whole time he was unbelievably stupid, and now he's found his wits and become his true self, which is what you saw and loved in him all along. So you just tell him that you know the two of you can work everything out. Tell him!"

Akma felt Edhadeya's fingers close on his. "I know the two of us can work everything out, Akma," she said. "If you want to."

He squeezed her hand. "I've been alone," he said, unable to explain more of his experience in solitude than that. "I'm done with that." There would be time later to speak of the family they would create together, the life they both would share. He knew she would be with him; he knew he would be with her. That was enough for now.

"Give me your hand again," said Voozhum. "And hold the hand of that miserable bookworm on the other side. There was an ancient dream from the Keeper and I had an echo of it this morning, so let's follow the script she's given us and show ourselves to the crowd outside."

"Crowd?"

"Won't do any good to put on the show without an audience," said Voozhum. "The bigots need to see you holding the hands of an angel and a digger. And my people need to see that this old woman, at least, has forgiven you and that I accept you as a new man. All that information, and we can do it just by walking through that door."

Shedemei opened the door for them. The curious crowd had gathered in the streets, filling the intersection, watching for Akma, the son of the high priest who had been struck down by the Keeper and then arose again. Now as the door opened and first Voozhum, then Akma, then Bego emerged, a tumult arose from many throats. They could see that the three of them were holding hands. They watched as Akma knelt, so that his head was of a height with the bent old philosopher and the frail scholar. He took their hands and kissed them. "My brother and my sister have forgiven me," he said loudly to the crowd.

"I beg the forgiveness of all good men and women. All that I taught was a lie. The Keeper lives, and the Kept will show us all the way to happiness. If there is anyone here who approved of my words and works for the past few years, then I beg you, learn from my mistakes and change your heart."