And when I've learned them all, grandmother?
He remembered for she had laughed at that, then leaned toward him. There's never an end to learning, Atrus. There are more things in this universe, yes, and more universes, than we could ever hope to know.
And though he did not quite understand what she had meant by that, simply staring at the vastneww of the night sky gave him some tiny inkling of the problem. Yet he was curious to know all he could---as curious as the sleeping kitten beside him was indolent.
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"Good," she said, resting her hands on her knees. "It seems like you've considered everything, Atrus. You've tried to see the Whole." Atrus had looked down, gazing at the sleeping kitten. Now he looked up again. "The Whole?" She laughed softly. "It's something my father used to say to me. What I mean by it, is that you've looked at the problem from many angles and considered how the pieces fit together. You've asked all the questions that needed to be asked and come up with the answers. And now you have an understanding of it." She smiled and reached out again, letting her hand rest lightly on his shoulder. "It may seem a small thing, Atrus---after all, a dune is but a dune---but the principle's a sound one and will stand you in good stead whatever you do, and however complex the system is you're looking at. Always consider the Whole, Atrus. Always look at the interrelatedneww of things, and remember that the 'whole' of one thing is always just a part of something else, something larger."
Atrus stared at her, slowly nodding, the seriousness of his gaze belying his seven years. Seeing it, Anna sighed inwardly. Somethings he made her feel so proud. Such fine, clear eyes he had. Eyes that had been so encouraged to see---that yearned to observe and question the world around him.
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It was set in the land of the D'ni, dating back, so it was said, to the time, thousands of years ago, when their homeland had suffered the first of the great earthquakes that, ultimately, had caused them to flee and come here.
Kerath had been the last of the great kinds; last not because he was deposed but because, when he had achieved all he had set out to achieve, he had stepped down and appointed a council of elders to run the D'ni lands. But the 'tale of Kerath" was the story of the young prince's teenage years and how he had spent them in the great underground desert of Tre'Merktee, the Place of Poisoned Waters.
And when Atrus heard the tale, what did he think? Did he imagine himself a younge prince, like Kerath, banished into exile by his dead father's brother? Or was it something else in the tale that attracted him, for there was no doubting that this was his favorite story.
As she came to a close, narrating the final part, of how Kerathtamed the great lizard and rode it back into the D'ni capitol, she could sense how Atrus clung to her every word, following each phrase, eash twist in the story.
In her mind she closed the book silently and set it aside, as she had once done for another little boy in another time, in a place very different from this. Opening her eyes, she found Atrus staring up at her.
"Are there many tales grandmother?" She laughed. "Oh, thousands..." "And do you know them all?"
She shook her head. "No. Why, it would be impossible, Atrus. D'ni was a great empire, and it's libraries were small cities in themselves. If I were to try to memorize all the tales of the D'ni it would take me several lifetimes, and even then I would have learned but a handful of them."
"And are the tales true?" Atrus asked, yawning and turning to face the wall. "Do you believe them?"
He was silent, then, with a sleepy sigh. "I guess so."
The face that stared back at her was pale and tautly fleshed, almost austere; the deeply green eyes were intelligent, the mouth sensitive; yet it was in those few small, surrounding touches---the beeds, the band---that her true nature was revealed: that part, at least, that loved embellishment. From childhood on, she had always bee the same. Giver a blank page and she would fill it with a poem or a story or a picture. Give her a blank wall and she would always---alwaysdecorate it.
Give me a child...
She snapped the tiny case shut and slipped it back onto the shelf.
Give her a child and she would fill its head with marvels. With tales and thoughts and facts beyond imagining.
What do you see Anna?
Yawning she reached across to douse the light, then answered the silent query.
"I see a tired old woman who needs her sleep."
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Whatever it was, it now filled a third of the horizon, a great black weil that linked the heavens and the earth. From where he stood it seemed like a fragment of the night ripped from its appointed time.
"What is it?" he asked. In all his ten years he had not seen its like.
"It's a storm, Atrus," she said, turning to him with a wide smile. "That blackness is a huge rain cloud. And if we're lucky---if we're very, very lucky---then that rain will fall on us."
"Rain?"
"Water,' she said, her smile broadening. "Water falling from the sky."
He looked from her to the great patch of darkness, his mouth open in astonishment. "From the sky?"
"Yes," she answered, raising her arms, as if to embrace the approaching darkness. "I've dreamed of this, Atrus. So many nights I've dreamed."
It was the first time she had said anything of her dreams, and again he stared at her as if she'd been transformed. Water from the sky. Dreams. Day turned to night. Putting his right hand against his upper arm he pinched himsleff hard.
"Oh, you're awake, Atrus," Anna said, amused by his reaction. "And you must stay awake and watch, my boy. Just watch!"
Slowly, very slowly it came closer, and as it apporached the air seemed to grow cooler and cooler. There was the faintest breeze now, like an outrider moving ahead of the growing darkness.
..........
Trembling, he closed his eyes, his teeth clenched right, his body crouched against the onslaught, and them the rain burst over him, soaking him in an instant, drumming against his head and shoulders and arms with suck fierceness that for a moment he thought it would beat him to the ground. He gasped with shock, then staggered around, surprised to hear, over the rain's fierce thrundering, Anna's laughter.
"No Atrus," she said finally. You haven't let me down. You'll learn from this."
But Atrus seemed unconvinced. "I nearly killed us," he repeated, shaking his head. "I nearly..."
She reached out and held him to her, hugging him until he grew still, relaxed. Then, helping him get up, she took him over to the pool and, kneeling him beside it, scooped up water in her hands and washed his face and neck. "There," she said finally, smiling at him. "That's better."
Slowly, wearily, he got to his feet. "I guess I'd better dig it all up. I..."
He turned, staring. "Flame?"
Anna stepped past him, then crouched beside the tiny orange bundle. For a moment she was still, her ear pressed angainst its side, then, with a slowness that confirmed what Atrus had most feared, she straightened up.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I..."
Atrus stepped across and knelt beside her. For a moment he was very still, looking down at the tiny animal. then, carefully, as if it only slept, he picked it up and, cuddling it against him, took it across to where a tiny patch of blue flowers bordered the cleft's side.
Anna turned, watching him, seeing how dignified he was at that moment; how grown up; how he kept in all he was feeling. And she knee, unmistakably, what in that instant he had shed something of his childishness and had taken a further step out into the adult world. Out, away from her.