(Stories are the property of Kirsten Lincoln.
Please do not reprint without my permission)
Leaving Eden
@
The trembling man watched the pale smear of light flicker in and out of the trees
as it ascended the steep hill. It was his fox coming up to meet him. Another
wave of desperate hope washed over him. Maybe they werenft really leaving. In
the few minutes it took for the fox to navigate the last few meters, though,
Ben knew it was futile. He could tell by the way the fox danced and shimmered
in show for him, the gorgeous electric-hued tail losing itself in early morning
fog. The news would not be good.
-Well met, Ben.
gWell met, my friend. It has been a long time since you came to visit me.h
-Are you lonely here? The fox was still for a moment in contrition before its
energy bubbled over and it had to weave in and around the hybrid roses Ben had
planted during this yearfs early thaw.
gI have my garden and my studies. Living so far from the city it is very quiet.
There is lots of time for contemplation.h Ben berated himself silently for his
depressed tone. He did not want to show the fox the depth of his fear.
-You are lonely.
The velvet heat of the foxfs tail briefly caressed his bare ankles, sending rivulets
of electro-magnetic warmth up his legs and into his belly. Ben had to restrain
his sudden desire to touch the foxfs ivory pelt. Before the impulse reached his
fingers the fox pranced into the rows of cabbages and then back around the well.
Ben wondered again if the tales were true. There were other keepers who supposedly
had given in to the almost irresistible urge to touch the foxes, feel the translucent
beauty of this form they chose to take in the presence of humans. Ben curled
his hands into fists and stuck them into his pockets. None survived to describe
the sensation.
- Ben, we are leaving.
Breath caught and stilled inside traitor lungs. The dark molasses of loss and
grief welled up in bitter sweetness on his tongue. The unthinkable was true.
gIt is too soon!h The words escaped before Ben could contain them behind teeth
clenched in effort to still his whirling emotions. He knew that an emotional
outburst now would only drive the fox away. But unlike the other times, the fox
only laughed. It was sniffing the doorway to Benfs cabin, but the merriment echoed
through Benfs mind in a warm flash of gold.
-It has been almost a thousand years. It is time for us to leave you. It is time
for us to find a new distraction.
gBut this is your world. How can you leave? How can you just... give it up?h
The stark emotion of his own fears, combining with the fears of Keepers all over
the Southern Continent, invaded his voice and made it ragged and hoarse. Never
before had Ben dared to address his fox with such an open display of uncontrolled
emotion.
They came two or three times a year, always singly, and stayed a few days at
the most each time. His first visit came at age fifteen. A bare brush of the
foxfs pelt along his arms one night was enough to turn his hair startling white;
the mark of the Keeper. The proper authorities granted him a cabin in the Queeg
Foothills complete with a terminal linked to the central library of the Keeper
Brotherhood.
His art was music, rare among the painters, paper-makers, and sculptors of the
Keeping Brotherhood. Ben knew he was lucky. Most Keepers reported to Central
Authority that their foxes disappeared without a farewell. But Ben somehow felt
his fox had a special understanding of human affairs.
-Your people seduced us first with music.
Ben blinked. The fox never consented before to speak about the dark time when
humanity was rescued. Most foxes chose a Keeper to visit who was an artist. Ben
always suspected, as did many of the Keepers, that the foxes were drawn to the
pure expressions of human emotion and mortality found only in the arts because
they could not bear those emotions in raw form.
-We watched you for a long time before the decision was made to bring you here.
There were those of us who could not bear to see you all disappear into the ether.
The fox now stood still in the deepening shadows of the tall, spiky kaxis grass
next to the well. The frenetic swirling of its energy caught the light of the
setting sun in an iridescent pearl.
-But now, we are tired. You humans live so fiercely. You feel things so mortally,
it leaves us quite breathless.
The fox regained some of its usual sly mirth, tumbling through the grass and
circling Ben twice before posing artfully on the highest step.
-And you Keepers. You live alone because we will visit only one of you at a time.
It is ...easier for us. You have become dependent on us and our gifts. Things
have become - and the fox came so close to Ben he could see the dark mask of
his own face in the reflection of its eyes- static.
gWhat will we do without you?h
-You will do as humans did before we brought you here. You will live your lives
and die in your time. Maybe you will regain your ancestorsf fire when we are
no longer here to contain you.
So it was true. The foxes were leaving their adopted children alone on this planet.
After a thousand years of the foxesf patronage; humanity abandoned. Ben still
would not let the implications of that fact filter completely through his consciousness.
Yet...it was true what his fox said; things were static. In the past few hundred
years very little changed within the cities and the number of people chosen to
be Keepers dwindled. Benfs own music was just a rehashing of the motifs and harmonies
already fully explored in the time since fox and human began their cohabitation.
- I leave you now, Ben. Already the others scold me for this last meeting.
So this was it. He would never again see his fox dancing in the early morning
son, or feel its vast and ancient sentience touch his mind. The sole companion
of adult life would disappear just like the other slowly withdrawing foxes.
gI have something for you. A last song to take with you. Ifve been working on
it since your visit last fall.h
- I have little time.
The fox was taunting him as he had in years past when the time for a farewell
came. The sleek whiteness of its body appeared and disappeared behind rocks and
scrub brush. Ben thought he was already gone, the tears already beginning to
run from eyes blurred in silent grief when the fox appeared around the corner
of his cabin and leaped up the stairs.
gYou mentioned to me then how much you liked the madrigals of the old humans.h
Ben hurried past the uncharacteristically still fox and opened the wooden case
containing his precious synthesizer.
Ben briefly caressed the disk he had spent months on perfecting. He was blushing
from an intense emotion he could not acknowledge.
gItfs a religious madrigal, by a man named Tallis. I reconstructed it from a
paper score given to a Keeper in Vandasburgh
The sopranos -synthesized because no Keeper ever dared leave their cabin long
enough to return to the city and risk missing a visit from the foxes- began the
haunting melody.
If ye love me, keep my commandments
The fox remained utterly still. Even when the intricate play of soprano melody
on bass and alto counterpoint began, it did not even twitch.
And I will pray to the father,
and he will give you another comforter
Ben willed with his weak human mind that the fox would understand, that it would
somehow feel in the long drawn out sighs of the descending minor scale the depth
of human need expressed by a man thousands of year dead.
And he will abide with your forever
For the glorious, intricate harmonies of the pure soprano and earthy altos expressed
what Ben himself would never be able to truly communicate to this alien being
who was everything to him.
In the spirit of truth
Love. Companionship. An understanding beyond even language or brain chemistry.
- I understand. The fox sighed, rainbow tears of joy spilling from its liquid
eyes.
Will abide with you forever
- All these years we have been afraid. Afraid to be drawn into your grasping
and violent emotions. Ahh, now I find it does not use me up at all, it is sweet,
so sweet...
The fox trembled violently, once, and was gone.
Ben ran to the window, but could not even catch a glimpse of the white shadow
racing down the hill. His knees buckled beneath him and for a moment he could
not breathe. The madrigal came to its harmonic resolve and the echo drifted forlornly
over the hill.
- You will abide with us, as well Ben. Forever.
It was barely a whisper of his foxfs presence in Benfs mind, but it was enough.
gFarewell.h
THE END
