Virginia Hamilton by The Gathering: The Justice Cycle (Book Three) Read Free Book Online Page B

forward. Glass regarded the wim. She was quite elderly, not strong. Glass took up her bled pouch and held it to the wim’s lips. There was blood left, and the wim drank. This caused a commotion among other grims who had seen. Glass unsheathed a weapon and toned a warning.
    Grims were gluttons, she observed. Yet she had no anger toward them. And for the first time she was curious about how they lived.
    Duster had been watching her. “You be well, O smooth Glass?” he sang to her.
    “Be well, O Leader,” lightly she sang back.
    How he pondered over Glass! Duster wished one day to call her his smooth. Watching her with the old wim, he saw the soft look in her eyes. Duster let it go. The power of the four enveloped him.
    The unit soothed the beings of Dustland.
    i am the Watcher.
    The unit hummed through their minds. Duster, Siv and Glass.
    Siv and Glass touched Duster’s arms for comfort.
    Think of a flat plain. A flat, dry land, think of that.
    So strong was this suggestion that the image of it spread to everyone. Grims could picture a no-dust land.
    Slakers saw the flat plain, empty of dust, through symbols of Slaker language.
    This is your frame, spoke the unit through mindsong. You will fill the empty frame with all you hold in mind, with all your pictures. Gradually, inch by inch, the frame filled.
    By looking into the frame, they changed what was there. The empty plain changed. They saw a child running there. A boy, Duster. A new frame. An earlier time. There was the Bambnua, a downy egg in a dark place, ready to hatch. More images and the Bambnua was a young Slaker, unable to fly. There came an older Duster, leaving the protection of grims. There came Miacis. Although Duster grew to a youngen and the Bambnua grew, Miacis was shown through all changing times exactly as she was now.
    Carefully the unit followed these time lines. It traced the small Duster back along places that appeared to be underground, until it could go back no farther. Poor Duster crying. Such a small one, alone and lost.
    The unit trailed time to the place where the downy Slaker egg rested in a dark chamber. Only one way out of the chamber. The tunnels led on and on until they opened in the land of dust.
    i see, traced the unit in itself.
    There came the time line of Miacis’ first instant in Dustland. There she had been set free, but she remembered nothing of it. She was content in her new land, unknowing. She was a sun-worshipper who did not know the sun as such. A violent roller storm had transported her on high soon after she entered Dustland. She had stared too long at the glowing sun and been blinded. And out of submerged knowledge she called the blinding sun Star. Miacis believed that Star watched over her, but it gave no sign.
    The unit understood much. Tunnels lead into Dustland, it informed all Dustlanders. But from what place do they lead?
    Dustlanders were silent, unknowing.
    i am the Watcher, spoke the unit of itself. Yet, even with its power, it encountered a mental barrier and it could not divine beyond Dustland.
    i know this, said the unit in itself. The Mal left an aura of sickness near the ways out of Dustland. Because every time Duster ran close to one, he became sick. He had to stop and turn back.
    i am the Watcher.
    The unit probed for the will of Dustlanders to be gone or to stay.
    The unit informed the Dustlanders, If you wish to find your way out of Dustland, you must set out into the most remote places where you do not often venture. In the farthest places you will run into sickness. You will become ill, for you will be near a tunnel. You, like Duster, have been conditioned through sickness of Mal to stay away from tunnels. You must bear the sickness, for getting through it is the only way out.
    All this time Duster stood at attention. He was alert to First Unit. He understood what First Unit had revealed.
    Duster sang out, “Sickness be nothing.” He held tightly to Siv and Glass’s hands. In every trip, leaders