by Tanith Lee
I’d risked the water, but this I truly didn’t trust. (Didn’t trust any of it.)
So I wouldn’t pick the tempting fruits, and when Thu began long running bounces at the lowest ones, trying to reach and knock them off, I called him so sternly to heel he obeyed.
Dejectedly, he and I shared a small piece of stale pie.
Mirreen I’d been able to bring nothing for. I’d just have to hope there was some grass soon. I mean real grass, not something made of metal or stone or other ungrasslike material.
We did rest for a while in the welcome shade. I sat on the paving, and the cooling sunshades fluttered a little, like soft wings fanning us. A while later I saw the ripe fruit we hadn’t taken was shrinking away again into the marble boughs. After a few minutes it was quite gone, just the hunger-making scent left behind.
Before we left, I did think to fill up the water flask I’d stolen from Old Mother Shark. The moment I got near the Tree trunk, the fountain helpfully spouted out again. Then we went on, over the paved table-top.
Afternoon was hot and heavy. The sky grew pale at its centre, and there was a heat haze smoking at each of the four ends of the never-ending plateau. By now the wall was long out of sight. Any way you looked was only paving, and sky.
When the sun went down in a few hours, I decided, we would ‘make camp’ as best we could, here in the middle of – literally – nowhere. I didn’t want to travel in the dark, afraid I might lose our direction if the moon was late.
Nothing else happened, except we passed another Tree (more an oak than a cedar) and had a brief rest there and drink of water. It too put out (honey and purple tone) sunshades, had a fountain, and grew us some irresistible (red) fruit I wouldn’t let any of us go near. We didn’t stay long.
The sunset, when it came, was vivid, like the colours of all the sunshades and fruits. And when it was over, the night dropped cool as rain, then cold as sleet, as I’d guessed it might.
So we stopped, and here we are by the small leer of a fire I’ve managed to make on the paving. No magic ring to give light, but I’ve written by firelight before.
To every side of us stretches this threatening emptiness, ghostly in starlight, and overhead a black, so far moonless sheet of sky.
The stars look strange. Not the stars I remember, but so they did too above the jungles of the Rise.
How is Venn coping with this? What is Dengwi doing – does she – or Winter, come to that – even know how to light a fire? Perhaps they’ve come across marble Trees too, and eaten the fruit, and are lying dead – No. I will NOT think of that. Anyway, I don’t believe that is why She brought us here, I mean, just to bump us off. In a disgusting way, we’re being cared for. So probably I could have stuffed myself with fruit and—
Oh!!!!!
I leapt up staring as a great bird wheeled over. It came from nothing – or from the dark horizon. Its wings gave a weird dull flash as they caught the eerie starshine. Then it turned and soared away again – inwards, southwards, the way I am trying to go.
So something is there, proper bird-and-animal-supporting landscape, perhaps sanity and some answers. It’s just a matter of keeping on.
But for how long?
I dreamed that night about Argul. He was riding fast on his horse which has the same colour scheme as he does, the horse he bought at Peshamba and still hasn’t named. In the dream, everything was dark, and I couldn’t see what he was riding across or through, but I called to him and never thought he’d hear. Yet he reined in at once, and looked around him. But he didn’t see me, and really, I wasn’t there—
This dream made me feel bad. I shook it off with difficulty as we set out again over the paving, the sun once more to the left.
Before midday we’d passed six Trees, I counted them. A ‘beech’ a ‘willow’ (sunshades trailing to the ground) three ‘palm trees’ and another ‘oak’. We had some water at the beech and the oak, and also at the oak, I thought, Why not? And I ate a fruit. It was apple-green and tasted of apple and greengage, also grapes, I think. Thu watched me, trying to understand my sudden evil selfishness in not sharing the fruit with him. At midday, about two hours later, feeling fine and no hint of having been poisoned, I let him have the one I picked for him, and gave Mirreen another. There are still no ill-effects, so unless it’s unbelievably slow-acting poison, it isn’t poison at all. The fruit is also more strengthening than just fruit usually is. We have a lot of energy.
Anyway, during the afternoon, a big flock of birds came dazzling over, high up, black on blue.
And after we’d seen these, we began to see lots of birds all the time. They whirled over our heads, going seawards where we’d come from, then coiled back and returned away into the south.
There was the scent, by then. It was glorious. Imagine every sort of perfumed flower you can think of, all the favourites, and every tastiest fruit, and mixed together, but nothing not going with anything else. Then add the freshest fragrance of earliest morning, with dew down, young green leaves on every tree – and more. Things I couldn’t be sure of – but one like an actual perfume, but so subtle it was just right – oh, and that exciting, glittery smell of rain at the end of a hot day—
All that.
It came in soft waves along the paving. It made you – happy. Thu was ecstatic, jumping and playing. Mirreen tossed her head and wanted to go more quickly. I held her back in case – because I knew that soon the table-top must finally reach its end, and despite the scents, we didn’t know in what.
The sun was well over and low, on the right. The sky was growing rose-like there, and enormous tides of birds now, uncountable numbers of them, swarmed above.
And then I saw that what was coming up from the horizon now was, of all things, this ornamental marble railing, like the balustrade of some terraced garden.
Beyond, smouldering arriving sunset stretched, and I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed all open sky—
I still, though, let Mirreen go faster. Very quickly we were there.
The balustrade came up breast-high on her. I sat on her back, and looked across.
And I wanted to cry.
Because, even in the ending of full daylight, I could see enough. And Ustareth made this. Ustareth.
AS SUN IS TO THE CANDLEFLAME
The Hulta have a saying, that something that is a million times better than all other versions of it – for example an especially brilliant horse – is ‘as sun is to the candleflame’. In other words, ordinary horses are useful glowing candleflames, but this one horse is like the blazing sun.
When I looked over the railing, into the country Ustareth created, I knew that everywhere else – everywhere – is only a candleflame.
Is this why she called it Summer?
From up there, I could see a long way. The plateau table-top is very high. (And the way down was really unnerving, a sort of ramp which seemed to go on for many tilting, almost-vertical miles. But right then I didn’t even notice.)
I’ve said, the sun was getting ready to leave. It was forming a lake of crimson over there, and the sky above faded up through degrees of crimson to a final delicate blossom-pink.
Everything below was softening into shadow. But before the evening claimed it, in the last light I saw this sweep of shadowed green grasslands, zebra-striped across and across by its bands of wild flowers, powderings all the colours of the sky. And this was like Peshamba, those meadows as you get near, but here on such a colossal scale, vast, going on and on, and curving off into the distance on either side.
It was all in a just-visible curve, the landscape, winding in slightly, like a plate-rim, as the shore-line had – But I was seeing it from so far up. Down there the curve wouldn’t be noticeable.
Still enough light, the rest of the sky so clear – I could make out woodlands massed like clouds lying on the land. And they were green and coppery even as they darkened – and some were damson-colour, and some were royal blue, so I blinked, but they were still royal blue, like flowers.
&nbs
p; I could see waters and rivers glimmering through. I could see a lake like a diamond that the sky made into a ruby.
As the land rolled on towards the south, far away I noted another boundary. It was a forest, I thought, gigantic, running off and along, going to blackness now, so the curving circle it formed was made more obvious. And, then, beyond the circling forest which lay inside the circling meadows, was something else I couldn’t make out. But all these circles, that from up here looked mathematically perfect. (As the table-terrace is, I think. And the wall, and even the coast.) Summer must be then exactly round. Like – an enormous coin resting on the ocean.
At the inmost centre – hundreds of miles off it looked – and if it is the centre – could I just make out the shape of a circle of mountains? I’m not sure. If they are, they seem very high, higher than any mountain I’ve ever heard of.
Then all the west became so red it was as if a new colour had been invented, too.
The landscape soaked up crimson from the sky.
I dismounted from a crimson Mirreen, and sat by the railing, and a crimson Thu sat beside me. We watched the glory of the sun, that is like her land of Summer, swell and go out in long echoing chords.
And then the sky lifted even higher, and was crystal green, on which the stars appeared as the birds left it.
And then came the heavenly scents of night, flowing up from the valley below.
We had some fruits I’d brought from the last oak. I didn’t try the ramp in the dark. I didn’t light a fire. It was warm, just right, with a cool breeze smelling of jasmine.
Oh, I hate her more for this.
How could she? Make something so beautiful and – good – and meanwhile hurt the ones who loved her, so heartlessly. Did all the sensitivity and truth in her go into this, so nothing and no one else could matter?
Daylight, and it’s all even more beautiful, and I refuse to describe it any more. (But there were blue trees, and lavender ones and—)
‘We have to get down that ramp thing,’ I remarked, offhand, to Thu.
He looked unimpressed. The ramp seemed downright dangerous. This is where she’ll kill me?
I remembered in the north, the way I was shown down through the inside of a cliff. Was there anything like that here?
We tried for a time to find something. Couldn’t.
Where the ramp started, the balustrade had an inviting gap in it, but just looking down the ramp made me feel sick.
If the ring had worked, I could have got down with no trouble. I had a feeling I could have got Thu and Mirreen down with me, too. When we’d had hold of Dengwi, the ring and the sapphire had just lifted her too. Live things were obviously different to the books I’d tried with first.
Anyway, no point in thinking of the ring, it didn’t work any more.
And then—
Every time I reckon things can’t possibly become stranger or more alarming – they do.
They did.
‘Look at those birds, Thu, flying up, lucky things. They seem to appear out of nowhere, don’t they. Oh, they’re coming right towards us. Duck, Thu!’
We ducked, and behind us, with a clatter, the three birds that, even then I’d half seen were not birds, landed on the terrace just behind us.
Thu and I turned. Mirreen turned, and shied.
There they stood. In their robes of stone, their metal masks, one in a hat like a melon and one in a hat like an umbrella wrong way up, and one in a hat like a black enamel halo.
Before I could decide to throw myself straight off the high terrace, they had us. In their (unbelievably) strong long wide stone sleeves.
Up we went, Thu howling and kicking, Mirren neighing and kicking, me silent and unmoving from terror. Up and over and out, into blue morning space.
SUMMER
Down we blew.
Just air rushing.
Then the rush of the earth. (If it even is, here.)
One cloud I somehow saw unrolling – and then the tumbling green and amethyst and sky-blue trees and the every-colour flowers – and all of it flying up to meet us as we fell.
The landing was soft.
Hadn’t thought it would be. But it was.
And instantly the stone sleeve-arms let go, and I fell straight over, face down in some poppies, and lay there.
Then I jumped up.
I confronted – it – them. They’d alighted in a neat row. Mirreen, freed, was shaking her head, and then she did rear, and went racing off through the poppies and wild red lupins. But my legs were shaking too much to run after her. Thu slunk over to me, his belly to the ground. The grass came to the tops of his legs, he seemed to think he wanted to hide in it, but had the goodness of heart to come to me first.
I stroked the tense fur between his ears. I told him he was wonderful. Then I went right up to the stone statues from Peshamba, and confronted them.
Now they seemed to be only statues again. Three unmoving figures placed for some unknown reason in a meadow.
When I pushed one, I hurt my hand on its ungiving hardness, that was all. When I tried to pull at their mask-faces, they stayed put.
Then I tried walking away briskly through the flowers. Thu hurried after me. But the statues didn’t.
Then we ran. It helped us, as it had Mirreen – though I couldn’t see where she’d got to.
When I stopped and looked back, they were still there, the statues, stopped, now quite a long way off. The sun glinted smooth on their masks.
They’re Hers.
All this time they have, somehow, followed me. They’re what? Guards? They’ll let me do as I want providing that fits with what I’m meant to do. I had to reach these ringed valleys and hadn’t got down – so they brought me.
We found Mirreen behind a group of great golden-green trees (I don’t know what type, perhaps a new invented one), and by then the statues had gone from view over a shoulder of the meadow. Mirreen was eating grass. It looked nourishing. I was fairly sure there would soon be more fruit for Thu and me.
The crazy thing is – it’s very difficult to be depressed, here. I mean I’m anxious, and I wish Argul were with me. Or anyone. (Maybe not Winter. Or Venn, really …) But.
It’s so beautiful, and this air, and the sunlight and the scents. One can’t avoid looking at things and – liking them a lot.
And we’re not harmed, are we? And the direction is now crushingly obvious. Forward, to the centre of this massive little coin-shaped continent. While if we ‘go wrong’ I’m sure some helpful statue will suddenly appear and haul us back on the right path.
Everyone else, for all their different reasons, will be going that way. Except, maybe, Dengwi? Because what has any of this to do with her?
Thu and I saw some dapply deer not long ago. Thu cheered up, though I persuaded him (clutching his collar) not to give chase. But the deer anyway took no notice of us. And later I saw a fox curled up like a ginger cat in the sun, asleep.
We came to the Breakfast Wood – what else do I call it? – about an hour after we landed in the ring-valleys of Summer.
It seemed to be just one more stretch of perfect woodland, wending along the banks of a broad sparkly stream.
There were ferns and bell-flowers, and then we smelled another fragrance. Thu forgot all caution and dashed headfirst into the wood.
I was less keen. I thought the smell indicated someone, or several someones, were in it already, cooking a large meal. And that could mean anything. On the other hand, it might mean someone who’d give us food—?
The woodland was dense only with flowers, the trunks of the trees wide-spaced. Sunlight hung in golden chains.
At first there were just the green leaves growing lushly from the boughs, and here and there a climbing rose or vine. Then I came to a tree, and saw that the lowest branch, which was level with my shoulder, had put out leaves of – well, like green glass. And on these glass leaves were lying hot, smoking sausages, and thick slices of ham. It’s no use my apologizing for telling yo
u this. There they were.
Some of the sausages and ham had, actually, dropped down on the ground, still on their glass leaves, which hadn’t broken. Thu was busily eating.
‘Thu, I don’t know if—’
But now that tree over there, with coppery leaves, was putting out extra coppery leaves that were hardening even as I watched – to copper. And out of each leaf was appearing a small rounded thing, which then grew much larger, and golden, and filled the air with the non-resistible smell of exactly what they seemed to be, which was fresh-baked buttered bread. And there now, there were eggs coming out there, hot boiled eggs in brown shells. And there another sort of gold, an opened honeycomb spilling honey.
More than hunger now, fascination. I wandered forward, and soon reached a tree which had begun to form, not leaf-glass plates, but furled leaf-glass goblets, and in them stood pale amber tea or thick dark chocolate, and there was one, all ready to pour cream—
I just started laughing.
Thu glanced up, gave me a withering look, and buried his fangs in another kindly-just-fallen-Thuwards chunk of ham.
It was like the marble Trees up on the plateau. Only better. And so playful, generous. If this was hers, then it, like all the rest, was not at all like her. And yet – who else could have the scientific ability to create such absurd and annoyingly marvellous things? (Twilight was fairly clever, or seemed so. Think what she created. Richly jewelled hills, an unfriendly place in the sky, and more Rules.)
In the end, I didn’t resist. I don’t often eat meat now (got out of the way of it at the Rise, where even the cheese and butter were made from nuts or plants). The same is true here – must be – the trees themselves are producing everything, so the meat too – which looked and smelled and (Thu thought) tasted of meat – couldn’t be meat, could it? Anyway, I had hot bread and honey – and even picked a goblet of chocolate, which the royalty had been fond of at the House. It was all terrific. It was all totally real. Only it can’t have been, not in that way.
For one thing Thu ate so much – he was on to fish pancakes before I got him to stop – I thought he’d be sick. But he wasn’t. He was just bursting with energy.