Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [78]
“What’s the bell?” she asked.
“For death,” Luciente said.
“But she isn’t dead yet!”
“But person soon will be.” Jackrabbit frowned. “Pepper and Salt, it’s not always bad to die, is it? Who’d want to be built of steel and go on living after all the people born in your brooder in your time, all your mems and mates and mothers, all your sweet friends, had long gone down?”
Connie snorted and turned away. The bell tolled through the damp air in waves of heavy sound. Slowly more people began to drift into the tent, keeping away from the side toward the floater pad. Finally she heard a high-pitched warning siren and a fast-moving vehicle flashing red lights came shrieking toward them about a foot off the ground. It came to an abrupt halt right outside the tent and settled with a hiss. White Oak hopped out and a person—the voice had been male, she thought—about five feet nine, compactly built, slid out of the other side and strode with quick, slithery grace toward the tent. Bolivar, she supposed, had kinky hair worn in braids fully as elaborate as Erzulia’s, but his skin was fair and heavily freckled with the sun. He wore a knee-length … she could not call it anything but a dress, with stripes on the bias.
Luciente nodded curtly as he swept by. “Erzulia has been holding Sappho for you.”
“Why not you? You could have!” he rapped out.
“Not with the person from the past in tow.”
“Ummmm.” Briefly he glanced at Connie, his skeptical eyes pale gray and cold as rock. Then he rushed to the cot, embraced Jackrabbit briefly and then put his hands on Sappho’s head beside Erzulia’s hands. After a moment Erzulia seemed to come to and slowly her grip loosened. She rolled off the cot onto the ground. As Aspen supported her, Bee came forward.
“I’ll take Zuli now. Person’s weary and must sleep.” Gently Bee rose with her slung over his shoulder and carried her off along the river path toward the bridge downstream, whistling softly as he padded off.
Everyone had drawn back to leave Bolivar with Sappho. He held her head with his fingers flexing, moving, and for the first time in a quarter of an hour, her lips groped to form words. “Good … Here! Good,” was all she said and then in a hoarse shudder she expelled her breath and was still.
Bolivar rose. “The person who was Sappho is dead.”
Jackrabbit spoke to his kenner, cermoniously repeating, “The person who was Sappho is dead.”
The bell tolled more slowly. Barbarossa dodged through the gathering people, carrying a plank. He laid it on the ground and Luciente moved forward to help Jackrabbit and Bolivar lift Sappho from the cot and place her on the plank. White Oak and Aspen, shaken with weeping, turned to each other to embrace. Bolivar’s knuckles were clenched white on Jackrabbit’s arm. The freckles on his hand stood out like the blotches on aged skin. White Oak steadily stroked Aspen’s cropped head.
Jackrabbit was one of the four people who lifted a corner of the plank and began to carry Sappho into the filmy strands of rain. Aspen’s thick grown hair lay like a bouquet of shiny grasses wedged under the small claw hands folded on Sappho’s narrow chest. Aspen, White Oak, and Bolivar stumbled along behind the body, White Oak walking with her arm around Aspen, Bolivar going along ahead of them in stiff dignity, as if the only joints in his body were in his bare knees. Luciente fell in behind them with Connie. “Where are we going? To the undertaker?”
“The family, the lovers, the closest friends sit with the body to loosen their grief. After supper everybody in the village will gather for a wake in the big meeting hall where we politic, watch holies, hold indoor rituals.”
“When is the funeral?”
“Funeral?” Luciente consulted the kenner. “We have no such. All night we stay up together speaking of Sappho. Then at dawn we dig a grave and lay the body in. Then we plant the mulberry tree Sappho wanted. Someone will go to