Woman on the Edge of Time

“Lest we forget we aren’t mothers anymore and person is an equal member. Threemonth usually gives anyone a solid footing and breaks down the old habits of depending,” Otter went on.

“Suppose she breaks a leg. Suppose she’s bitten by a snake. Suppose she gets appendicitis!”

Bee smiled at her almost sadly. “We take the chance. We have found no way to break dependencies without some risk. What we can’t risk is our people remaining stuck in old patterns—quarreling through what you called adolescence.”

“A rite of passage that doesn’t involve some danger is too much a gift to create confidence,” Luxembourg said in her soft, rather deep voice.

“I’m afraid to go … but I’m willing, fasure. How come you don’t talk to me? You only talk to them,” Innocente said to Connie.

“How can you know what you’re getting into? You’re only a child!” She turned to Bee. “It’s criminal dropping her with wild animals and poison ivy and who knows what? How is she supposed to eat and clean herself and take care?”

“I know what to eat in the woods! I’m twelve and a half, not four. I can fly a floater myself, you ask if I can’t! There’s only one other twelve-year-old who flies a floater alone in this whole township. You can’t expect me to go through life with an unearned name, stuck on me when I wasn’t conscious yet! How can I go deep into myself and develop my own strength if I don’t get to find out how I am alone as well as with others? … Zo?”

Luciente took Connie’s hand. “I see it’s strange to you. But your young remained economically dependent long after they were ready to work. We set our children free.”

Bee shook out the folds of his robe. “Come see us off. It’s time. Come with us in the floater if you like, or stay with Luciente and person can show you the children’s house. We have an hour’s flight. We want Innocente to have long hours of daylight to fix camp, scout food, and take stock of the area.”

Innocente strode off and they fell in behind. Soon they were ambling together, Innocente arm in arm with Luxembourg, who murmured in her ear soft cautions and advice, while Luciente and Otter walked linked, Luciente telling a broad story about Neruda’s naming.

“You’re just going to toss her out in a parachute into the woods and run away?” Connie asked Bee.

“Parachute? We lower per to the ground and mark the spot with a radio beacon and big red marker.”

Luciente leaned close, grinning. “We haven’t misplaced a child yet. You’re right, accidents happen … . But why try to control everything? Grasp, we think control interfers with pleasure and with communing—and we care about both.”

“I won’t go along. I don’t want to see a child abandoned!”

“Connie, can’t you see Innocente wants to go?”

“Kids can be brainwashed into wanting any piece of garbage. My … own child cried for a week once for a mechanical walking man she saw on the TV that cost so much I couldn’t believe it. Should I have let us go hungry two weeks to buy it to stop her tears?”

“We’ll see them away. They’ll be happier alone. It’s tender, end-of-mothering. Comprend, we sweat out our rituals together. We change them, we’re all the time changing them! But they body our sense of good.”

Gently Bee adjusted Innocente’s jacket. “Don’t slow or trance till you build your shelter, grasp?”

As they came over a small rise, they faced a bigger hill. Cut into its side was what appeared to be a hangar, its top standing open like a box with the lid up. Three grasshoppery machines the size of police helicopters stood inside. The hangar was built much larger than needed to accommodate them, as if sometimes it might hold more of them or something else besides.

A blond woman wearing overalls came toward them from the floater in front. She was tanned, her cropped hair was shoved up in a bandanna, her nose reddened by the sun, her eyes wide and blue, and her wiry arms were daubed with grease. “Zo, a good naming, Innocente. You’re off now?”

“You got the floater ready, Red Star?”

“Alt checked. You flying today?”

“Ha! They said no. What do you think?”

“You don’t even know where you’re going, or have you guessed?”

“If I did, they’d change it”