The Other Eye
by Phyllis Gotlieb
 

I am writing on this worn-down piece of vellum that the priests threw away. I scrubbed it with pumice and water, and stole the inkstick. If you find me and betray me be damned to you. No more waste space. This began one turn and forty stands ago, when my eye began to go blind. It is my other eye, you see, the one that turns out, and does not work too well either, showing me two of everything and different colors at that. I used to bring the priests their water from the sluices a clockstroke away, and hard going on the rough tailings, but good and honest work for all that as my hairy-white dam used to say. All of us do work: dig out the tunnels to reach the Great Kingdom; put up stone shorings to prop the tunnels, pick out the jewels to put on the breastplates of the priests, grow the airweed and farm the moss and whitefern for us and the beasts, tend the beasts and slaughter them. My old sire was a tender of beasts and stank of them, and my dam filled the sconces that give our light, and smelled of oil. They would drink the grind-brew and fight over who smelled the worse, and beat each other and knock me arse over crockpot. So I lived with the priests in their tunnel and carried water. They wanted to pogue me and I said--"What will you give me if let you?"--I saw them getting water carried to them, and eating the best parts of meat, sitting soft on weavings stuffed with fernstraw, and all they did was make black marks on vellum like this. They laughed and said --"Look at you, Mem, with your fur smelling of oil and your fingers leaving black soot marks, making us a price! Do you think you are worth anything?" It is true that I could not afford much water to wash in, but they are not supposed to have women either. I only said--"Your Holinesses want us to be worthy of the Great Kingdom, and claim that we are wise trusting you to lead us there. Let me learn a little of what you know so that I will be even wiser and worthier."--How can you be wiser than sitting on your backside making black marks on vellum while others do your work for you? They laughed and said--"Vellum and inksticks are too valuable to give you, but take this tablet of tallow wax and this stylus and make all the marks you like."--I did not care that they laughed. I did not tell them I knew that the marks meant things and I learned what. I let them do what they wanted and brought them their water too. I even picked the lice out of their fur. Then my eye began to go blind. At first I thought: this scribe work is too hard on my eyes. But I never saw a blind priest. And then that I had a sickness of the eye because it did not move right. But it never pained me. Two stands and three sleeps it was going dark and I was afraid to tell because you know what happens to the blind who cannot work, so I worked harder though I stumbled, drew water and stored food. Then it was blind. I said to myself, well I will get used to this. That went on for a round of sleeps by the priestbook. And the first stand after that I woke up with my eye full of light. It was like if you put together all of the lamps and fires you ever saw, and more. It was like that and full of heat too. I thought, this is some brain injury or I have gone mad. I had fallen, you know, nine stands ago and struck my head. But it did not hurt then or now. But the light, the light was like pain. I thought I was injured or gone mad --no, I have said that--but it was like that, all confusion. All that stand I could not see for the light. Even when I shut my eye or held my hand against it it was light. I thought it was burning through my head and that everyone must see it. I stumbled all day and bruised myself and cut my skin and when I slept with my eyes full of tears I had the light in it. For those two stands and sleeps it was so, I could not bear it, but when I

woke--

*

--I have used up half my space and this is the other side of my vellum--when I woke my eye was not so much full of light but it had colors. I mean the light was filled with colors. All the colors of the jewels in the breast-plates filled the light. All that stand I had the blazing colors in that eye and I picked my way over the stones to the sluices with my straight eye and spilt half the water and the priests cursed me. But when I went to sleep my eye went dark and slept too, except for a few little lights. It woke up with me again half green and half blue, and the light I could not stand in the middle of the blue. It was all lights and colors. It kept like that for two stands. On the third everything was clear and had edges. The green part is some kind of plants you can stand on. There are stones here too, but they are flat enough to walk on without falling. The blue is the roof and the light in it lets you see everything. And warms the people--people? what am I saying? But there are moving figures, with pink and brown skins, not fur. I asked myself if this place was the Great Kingdom and my eye was its opening. I saw myself standing on the green and people would look at me or through me and not notice. I did not want them to notice me, not when I was in bed with one of those on top of me, snorting foul breath in my face and hands going everywhere. Around that time I got pregnant, but I took the pinch-herb and it bled away, it only made me sick one stand and I spent that half-asleep and being with those people in the light. I had not realized that I lived in darkness. But half darkness and half light is full of fear. I had not told anyone at all. Sometimes I could not eat or sleep for fear. But I was sure that no one would like this vision of mine. If they did believe me they would be fearful or jealous, and if not, they would say I was out of my mind. And I thought so too. I cried so much with fear it was a wonder I could see even a vision. But I went on working and saving my food when I could not eat it. And the people in my eye began to smile at me. That frightened me even more. I had to talk to someone. I told Eb, my friend who waters the beasts, whom I meet at the sluices. She said--"Mem, I do not believe you."--and I said--"Whether or not you do I cannot help, but it is so." I had to tell. She went back and told the priests. They came and took hold of me when I was drawing water. They took me to their chamber and said--"What is this?"--and I told them. They talked among themselves a great while, holding me with eight hands and not let-ting go, as if I would fly through my eye into the light. Then they began to argue and scream, and in that time the people in my eye came and said--"Mem? We have been expecting you, Mem."--I do not know whether I heard it in my ear or in my mind, whether these people really spoke or I wanted so much for them to speak. They took my hand, and that hand of mine that I gave them had a brown skin. The priests and the men and women who had gathered round them said--"That is an evil and accursed vision! We must pluck out that eye!" Both my eyes burst into tears for pity, and I cried--"No! No! Not my eye!" And they said--"Yes, it must be so!"--and the head priest fetched tongs. It seemed to me that they were all joyful to think of taking this eye. They were so full of rage at me, and all because of a sick eye! My eyes were weeping and I stared at those other people on the green grass, they gave me a flower and said--"What is troubling you, Mem? What do you see?"--and then my fear gave me strength. I broke their grasp of me, baring my teeth and making the noise of a beast, I seized hold of the tongs, it was heavy, and swung out around me and the people fell away as if I was a demon. I would have hurt them, to save myself. I ran to my chamber and piled stones in the entrance. They howled around me for some time, but the priests knew I was trapped, and the people are fickle, their passions blow away. After a while I heard the picks and axes of their digging. My fear did not blow away. My eyes were swollen with crying over it, both the dark and the light. I do not know how long it was before I heard the whisper:--"Mem!" That was Eb. I said--"Go away, Eb. How could you do such a thing?" She was whimpering--"I was afraid." Then she said--"Forgive me"--but I told her to go away. She whimpered again and said--"Let me help you find a hiding place"--and I laughed bitterly. She said--"Please, Mem, it is where I used to go with Aff the herdsman, and if his woman knew of it she would kill me. I have candles there, and food I kept." I had no choice but to trust her. I am waiting here, in her meeting-place. I hear the endless sounds of the picks, and the wafts of the airweed carry the smells of beasts and fuel oil. Ten sleeps ago my straight eye began to go blind. My tears have run dry. There is nothing to do and nowhere to go. My sight becomes dimmer every clockstroke. The people in my lighted eye are holding my brown hands, but my other eye is gathering darkness. Will the light pierce it too, while my hands are cut on the stones I cannot see? I have reached the end of my space and my good eye cannot see any m