Chapter 6

Perhaps I'd expected him to follow me. Perhaps I'd wanted him to. Certainly I hadn't gone out of my way to truly escape him. I could have kept on running. I could have hidden. Instead, I threw myself down in the field and howled.

It might seem unexpected, that the deaf would howl and cry, but that's just what I did and what I had always done. I shed tears like everyone else, and as for the sobs, they come instinctively. I beat at the ground as it tore through me, feelings of rage and frustration. I had been such a fool!

Still, I was not surprised when, looking up through bleary eyes, I saw Thiede ascending the hill, pen and paper in hand. Actually as he came closer, I saw he had two pads of paper and two pens. He wanted to talk -- a serious one.

I don't know if it was a sense of futility or something else that kept me from jumping up and running again, but I didn't. I looked him straight in the eyes as I held out my hand for the tools of communication.

"I do not want to be a woman!" I wrote.

Thiede squatted down to read my words. He shook his head sadly and took out his pen. "No, you simply do not want to be raped."

I was confused. I had thought Thiede and the others to be monsters like the others. "You are not going to rape me?"

"No, I want to make you Wraeththu."

I didn't understand. "What does that mean?" I asked.

"Let me tell you a story," he began. "It is the story of another boy -- myself." He eyed me speculatively, apparently wondering if he was going to go through with telling me. He must have trusted me very much to tell me what he did.

"I was born to normal human parents but like you, I was different."

"How different?"

"Actually in some ways ordinary, but very different in important ways. I was both a boy and a girl."

He had alluded to something similar before. This time, I was more willing to listen -- and to ask questions. "You look like a man to me. You are not?"

"I am a man," he wrote, "but I am also a woman. Completely. Both. Do you understand?"

Remarkably, looking at Thiede and somehow feeling a little more open, I did understand, or at least I began to. Some of what I imagined turned out to be wrong, but I was beginning to see that Thiede had not meant to frighten me earlier. He simply had not been able to explain things.

I nodded. Yes, I understood. I had more questions, however. "Can you have children?" I asked.

Thiede appeared slightly affronted but managed to reply thoughtfully. "I expect yes. I could be a mother or a father. We are still a young race and it is not known exactly how it will work."

This was a lot for me to take in and my head was a whirlwind of thoughts and questions. I was believing him more and more. "That is extraordinary!" I wrote excitedly. "I cannot imagine you as a mother, having children! It is like if I were a mother! Impossible!"

We were sitting in the grass by then. Thiede was grinning as he scribbled out his reply. "It's not impossible. It's very possible. You could become like me."

This was the moment everything else had been leading to. "How?" I asked.

That is how I got the story, the Aghama's very own. At the time, I didn't know it was a secret. I didn't know he had just come back from some time alone, that he was beginning anew, hiding his roots. I didn't know anything. Once he was through, however, I knew quite a lot.

It took him a while to write it out for me. He kept it short but there was a story to tell, a story of a boy who was born different, a family and doctors that did not understand. A story of a runaway into the city -- not the city I lived in, but one very much like it. Then there was the story of how he had discovered himself, not only secret powers within himself, but the ability to create others. An act of violence had been transformed to a miracle and instead of being the only one, he had created a whole new species. It had taken him time to adjust to it and after some years he had needed to go off on his own. Now, however, he was back, and understanding more than ever before, he was ready to begin a new quest. He lead Wraeththu to the next level, ushering in a new era of the world.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Because I want you to become Wraeththu."

That's when he told me the rest of it. He'd explained some of it, that being Wraeththu was more than being a hermaphrodite, but now he told me something in some ways even more extraordinary. Wraeththu were able to access powers that few among mankind had been able to reach. One of them could change my life, Thiede explained. Totally deaf, I could survive, but my life would never be easy. I would never be able to properly communicate. I would probably be alone and very likely, I would be attacked or, with the wars on the rise, find myself killed. If I were Wraeththu I could live with the group and find safety in numbers -- and speak mind to mind.

It was difficult to believe him. How could I possibly imagine such a miracle? Thiede, sensing this, decided to show me. As a human, he explained, it would be difficult for me to truly experience the mindtouch, but in meditation I might be able to catch a hint of what could come later.

Together we sat facing one another, holding hands, forming a circle of two. Eyes closed as the sun went down, we relaxed, slowing our breath and calming our thoughts. It was then that I felt it: Another's thoughts, there in my mind.

It was only a faint feeling at first, a tingling in my hands and then my head. It grew into something I still can't really describe. To me it was like I was hearing a sound, only of course I wasn't. I want to say it was like a song but at that time didn't know what it was. I still had much to learn. Feelings seeped into me and then other things I didn't know how to process. Looking back on it now, I think it must have been Thiede trying to speak into my mind, only I wasn't ready. I also didn't have any way to make any sense of it. To me it was sensation.

What happened next is what finally convinced me. My eyes were still closed when I began to see something. It was a picture of myself, or at least an idea of myself. It was not coming from me. This was a thought. Thiede was thinking of me. He was talking without speaking.

I opened my eyes. They were edged with tears. Thiede reached out and wiped them with the cuff of his sleeve. He was smiling at me good-humoredly. Out came the pen. "So, do you want to be Wraeththu?"

I could have just nodded, but instead I wrote it out with my pen. "YES."