Golden Daughter

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  All was quiet. Not silent, for the mountain night was alive with sounds beyond the infirmary walls. Within, however, there was only Jovann’s deep, sleep-filled breathing, contrasting with her own light breaths. The flame of her lamp burned straight, scarcely daring to flicker.

  Nothing changed. No creak, no cry, not even a wind in the door. But suddenly Sairu’s eyes flew open, and she gazed down at the back of Jovann’s sleeping head. Other than that swift movement of her eyelids she held perfectly still for some minutes, staring at what she could not yet see.

  Then, slowly, she bent over and looked more closely at the black hair she had tied back with a length of leather cord earlier that day.

  “What’s wrong?”

  The cat’s voice startled her, but she betrayed none of her surprise. Very coldly she lifted her chin. A feline face watched her from the other side of Jovann’s sleeping mat. His whiskers were ridiculously long and curled at the ends, and she had to fight the urge to reach out and pluck one from his arrogant white muzzle.

  “What are you looking at?” the cat persisted, making no effort to keep his voice down.

  “Can you not see it?” Sairu replied, her own voice scarcely above a whisper.

  The cat twitched an ear irritably. Then he put his nose to the back of Jovann’s head and sniffed. The other ear twitched as well. “I smell a stranger on him. And . . . and smoke.”

  Sairu inclined her chin in acknowledgement. And she replied, “A length of his hair is gone.”

  At first the roar of water was so enormous that it overwhelmed all else, and Jovann wondered if he and his beautiful lady would drown in the very sound.

  Then the roar retreated, dying back to a gentle murmur. They sat where they had fallen through the gate, holding each other, her arms tight around his neck, his arms tight around her waist, their eyes squeezed shut.

  And their ears were filled with a song which in turn filled their hearts with visions.

  Jovann could never say afterwards if he opened his eyes. It did not matter one way or the other. His mortal body was far from here, and this phantom existence did not need eyes to see that which was sung straight into his spirit. But perhaps out of pure force of habit he blinked and raised his head, tried to look around.

  The light, which had been unbearably blinding as he’d plunged through the gate, was now remote and yet simultaneously all-consuming. He saw the vast world around him, every inch of it, illuminated in that glow. Yet it was too far, too distant for comprehension, and the song too passionate for understanding.

  He did not need to understand.

  His mind, ready to burst with the inconceivable, forced the song and the vastness into images he recognized. He found that he and Lady Hariawan knelt on the shore of an ocean. Or perhaps not an ocean. Maybe a river, but so huge, so far-stretching, so full of Forever that it could hold all the oceans of all the worlds in its heart and cradle them there.

  White surf broke just at his knees and pulled at the edges of Lady Hariawan’s robes. Where it broke, it shattered into a hundred thousand colored hues, most of which Jovann could not see, so his mind interpreted them merely as brilliant, sparkling crystals of water. But the waves pulled those crystals back, and they dissolved into the deep black of the endless water, glimmering beneath the surface in reflection of . . .

  Oh! in reflection of the Garden!

  Jovann felt his heart thundering in his phantom breast as he tilted his gaze up and up and upward still. It was just as well that heartbeats did not matter here, or he would have died trying to take in that which spread before his vision.

  The Moon’s Garden was full of flowers: enormous, spreading, clustering flowers of light, of night, of half-light. They shimmered, they spread, they twined through the sky, brilliant tendrils of living, glowing beauty, and a single petal would have been enough to cover all of Daramuti and the Khir Mountains. A blossom would encompass a kingdom.

  They spread across the eternal sky. And they bloomed before Jovann’s desperate gaze, then faded, then bloomed again.

  At first the flowers were all he could see. He might have sat for an age or two of mortal worlds, just trying to look with all the fullness of his heart, trying to see them as he knew they must be seen, but as he could not see. The enormous Song rained down upon him, and he wept without knowing that he did so.

  Then he realized that the Song did not come from the blossoms themselves. His vision cleared a little more, and suddenly he saw the Dara.

  His mind had no possible foundation of understanding to encompass the living form of even a single star. But his upbringing, his childhood, stepped in where his reason could not and supplied him with a form he could comprehend, however unlikely and otherworldly that form might be.

  He saw the Dara as his mother had told them they were: Shining beings on four delicate legs ending in tiny cloven hooves that could, with a single stamp, crush the heads of tigers. Sweeping manes shining like waterfalls of starlight.

  And a coiled horn, sharp as life itself, protruding from each forehead.

  They sang not with their mouths but with their whole beings. A million songs and more, all unique, all joined together in one tremendous chorus. These linked like threads in a tapestry, individual and yet only complete when joined together.

  A single moment of that Song as sung by the Dara would have killed Jovann in his mortal body. But once more his heart took in only what it could, expressing it in forms just barely within the realm of imagining, and he survived. He survived and gloried in what he saw, what he heard, what he tasted.

  He realized—after what may have been a hundred years of frozen listening—that Lady Hariawan’s grip on his neck had not loosened. Though it caused him physical pain to avert his eyes from the splendor above, he looked down upon her. The lights of the Garden highlighted her black hair in many beautiful colors. But her face he could not see, for it was buried in his neck and shoulder like some terrified child’s.

  “My darling,” he said, for he could call her nothing else while under the Song of the Dara. “My darling, look. We are safe here. No evil shadows could pass through that Gate or dare to step foot in this place. We are safe. We are whole. Look and see!”

  She did not move. He feared she might be dead, and this fear brought such a surge of mortality coursing through his spirit that one of the Dara stopped singing and looked down upon him where he knelt on the shore.

  The star shook its mane and gazed with puzzled interest. Then it stepped from the sky, passing by the glorious blossoms without a glance, until it stood just above Jovann, its feet near, but not touching, the great water.

  Who are you? it asked.

  The voice flattened Jovann to his face. He clutched Lady Hariawan to his breast and lay gasping in agony, and the waves washed over his head.

  The star blinked slowly. Then it said, Forgive me. Of course, you are mortal.

  Then it shook itself with an effort, and light and glory fell from its being. Or rather it seemed to take on a covering, a shroud, blocking out the full truth of itself, containing it in a form no less beautiful but much less complex. When it spoke again, its voice no longer rang with the Song of its millions of brothers and sisters but was singular. It was a voice that could move to tears but not kill.

  “Who are you, mortal, to have entered my Mother’s realm?”

  Jovann shuddered. Then he propped himself up on one elbow and, summoning all the courage of his being, gazed at the Dara once more. To his surprise—and to his horror—he saw it clothed in a form of flesh. Skin encased its majesty, and softest fur of silvery blue. He thought if he reached out and touched that horn, it would prick his finger and draw blood.

  “Dara,” he gasped, “you should not look at me. I am unworthy.”

  The unicorn seemed to consider this. Then it tossed its head. “It does not matter. If you came through the Gate then there is reason for your coming, and worth has nothing to do with it.”

  It took another step, inclining it
s head so that its horn was now mere inches from Jovann’s face. It studied him with eyes of deep, midnight blue in which the light of its star-glory still shone.

  “What is your name?” the Dara asked again.

  “Juong-Khla Jovann,” Jovann replied at once.

  But the unicorn shook its head. “I asked your name, not what you are called. Never mind. It is difficult for me to see through these eyes, but I see enough. You are welcome, Juong-Khla Jovann. I have sung of your coming before now. And who is this with you?”

  “I . . . I do not know,” Jovann replied. He pushed himself upright again with some difficulty. Lady Hariawan, however, lay upon the shore, her hands clenched into such tight fists that had she been in her mortal body her nails would have cut her palms. She still did not move, did not raise her head. “She is dear to me,” Jovann said, putting out his hands to help her, and finding her whole body resistant to his touch. “She has long sought Hulan’s Garden. I helped her.”

  The unicorn regarded her beneath its unfathomable gaze. It said, “She has never sought the Gardens.”

  It turned then and started walking through the air above the water. The waves lashed at its feet but did not quite reach. “Come,” it called back over its shoulder. “Walk with me.”

  For a moment Jovann could not make the words fit into his brain. After all, one does not expect to be invited to walk with a star. But when he understood, he leapt to his feet at once and, with renewed strength, hauled Lady Hariawan to her feet as well. She rose and swayed where she stood, her head bowed so that her hair covered her face. She would not look up at the sky.

  “My darling,” Jovann said, putting an arm around her shoulders to support her as they took the first steps, “please look around you. I would hate for you to miss what you have so long sought.”

  She said nothing. She kept pace with him, however, and she did not fall.

  For the first many steps Jovann did not stop to consider that there was only ocean before them. He simply followed the star as he was bidden. But he frowned suddenly and looked down at his feet, wondering if he walked on the surface of the water itself. Instead he found that just beneath the water a strand of silvery sand supported his feet. Whether that strand had always been there, disguised by the waves, or whether it had grown up suddenly in order to offer him safe passage, he could not say. It did not matter.

  The star did not walk on the water or the strand, but kept to the sky, pacing in the darkness beneath the Garden blooming above. Other Dara turned and watched their progress, singing as though to prophesy each step before it was taken. They were too much for Jovann, so he focused on the silvery-blue flanks of the incarnate unicorn, which, while not exactly comfortable, fit better into his reason.

  “Do you want to know what I am called?” the Dara asked as they progressed across the ocean, farther and farther from the gate.

  “Yes,” Jovann said. “I would like to know.”

  “I am called Cé Imral,” said the star. “I believe you would know me as Chiev. I shine in the northern sky.”

  “Chiev,” Jovann repeated. His feet faltered, and his heart beat a furious rhythm. “The North Star.”

  How many times in his life had he and all his father’s tribe turned their faces to the sky, seeking out Chiev to guide them straight and true to the summer hunting grounds. The star of the true north, the star with the blue aura.

  A thrill of pleasure passed through Jovann’s body from his heart to his head. He looked down at Lady Hariawan pressed close to his side. He wondered if she heard, if she saw, if she felt any of the things he now experienced. But how could she? If she did, she would not be hiding her face in her hands behind that curtain of hair. She would be looking up, looking around, drinking in all she could possibly contain.

  Perhaps she perceived everything differently, he thought. Perhaps there were no images in her head to contain these Gardens.

  Perhaps that which seemed to him the very perfection of heaven was to her the very depths of hell.

  He had no words to comfort her. He could do nothing but hold her close. She had wanted to come here, and he had brought her. He would see her safely out once more. But not yet. He must follow the star.

  The farther they went, the more thickly bloomed the flowers above them, the more thickly gathered the Dara. All Jovann’s vision was full of light, and even the shadows seemed to shine. The water, deep as endless night, filled with the glory above it and seemed to live and love in response, its waves echoing back songs. Jovann found that he himself was trying to sing.

  He quickly shut his mouth. What a gawping frog he must sound among the Moon’s own children! But somehow, he thought, he was meant to sing. Somehow he must try to learn.

  Then he forgot everything. For the Moon herself was above him.

  If the stars had been glorious, here was something beyond glory. Something so huge that mortal words could not encompass her nor mortal eyes perceive her. But he knew it was she. He felt her above him, tremendously beautiful. The Queen of the Sky.

  The goddess of his people.

  He felt the trueness of motherhood surrounding him. The reality of all things female, all things strong. The greatness of pain, of sacrifice, of joy. The Lady Moon existed in mighty contrast to the Lordly Sun, as harmony complementing his melody. But it was she, Jovann knew with a sudden clarity of vision, who was the greater strength.

  He could not put a shape to her; she dazzled him too much. He tried to see her as the shining moon he had watched wax and wane in the mortal world, but she would not be fitted into that image.

  She sang. He knew she spoke to him. But her words were too enormous, and they washed over him like the whole of the ocean itself. He could do nothing, nothing but hold Lady Hariawan close and hope that she did not shatter in his arms.

  The blue star rested its horn upon Jovann’s shoulder. Suddenly he could hear the words in the Moon’s voice.

  I have sung of your coming in the great Harmony given me by He Who Names Them. I have sung of your coming from Beyond the Dream. And I sing your name—Dream Walker, Vision Speaker. Blessed forerunner to whom the Secret will be given.

  Jovann looked up. He saw a form like a woman’s, but more like the Truth of Womanhood. He saw his mother as he perceived her with his heart, sitting enthroned, beautiful beyond words. Full of light. Full of Song.

  The Moon smiled at him. And he went down upon one knee, Lady Hariawan forgotten as he sought to make reverence before her whom he had worshipped since childhood.

  “Get up,” said the star behind him. “Do not worship. For she did not compose the Song we sing.”

  Jovann could not obey. He remained kneeling, his face upraised, gazing upon that vision he could scarcely bear to see.

  The Moon smiled, but it was a sad smile.. Then she said:

  I have dreaded and longed for your coming. It is for me the foretelling of sorrow.

  He could not reply. There could be no reply. Of course she had known he would come. How could she not? She must know every secret of his heart.

  “Take care, mortal,” whispered the star at his back, and the horn pressed harder into his shoulder. “Do not worship.”

  The Moon leaned down from her great throne, scattering light and brilliance from her face. One hand stretched out, and Jovann saw her pluck a blossom growing near to her throne. Worlds trembled when she plucked it. Nations could be toppled in that single action.

  I will now speak the Secret, the Moon said, cupping the flower in her hand and turning once more to address Jovann. And you will carry it beyond to the mortal world to give them hope. To give them comfort. To remind them that they are not forgotten. Will you hear me, Dream Walker?

  Jovann could not speak with his mouth, but his heart shouted out in response, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

  And it was as though he shouted at the same time, “Mercy! Mercy! Mercy!”

  So the Moon spoke Mercy. And there was wonder in her words, as though she herself could scarcely believ
e them.

  My Lord, the Lumil Eliasul, the Giver of Songs will enter the mortal world. By the will of his Father, he will take upon himself the form of a man. Flesh. Blood. A body that decays with Time. But this body will not bind him, and he will wear it in perfection. He will slay at last his Great Enemy and . . .

  Here her voice faltered. And all the voices of the heavens stilled. The Song supporting everything in that world, the Song forming the foundations upon which the Gardens, the Dara, the Moon herself existed, froze, as every star in the sky held its breath.

  And Jovann too held his breath, knowing that he was about to hear something that would change everything. Everything. Not just for himself, but for his world. For all worlds. For all Times.

  The Moon said, He will win for himself a bride from among the mortals. And he will take her for his own, and prove for all eternity how great, how deep, how unknowable, how endless is his love.

  The stars breathed again. And they exploded suddenly in triumphant chorus, their language far beyond Jovann’s comprehension. But he found his own mouth moving, his own voice singing,

  Beyond the Final Water Falling,

  The Song forever Calling.

  The Sun, the Moon, the Stars proclaim it from on high!

  He will return for me.

  And the Song containing the Secret now spoken as Promise shot across the whole of the Heavens and rained down upon all the worlds. All heard it, though few understood its meaning. But understanding could not change the truth of it as it fell in splendor both seen and unseen. In a kingdom hidden inside a mountain, a queen stood at the mountain peak and received the Song in both upraised hands. In another kingdom made of stone and despair, a different queen heard it, and her beautiful face, swathed in veiling enchantments, trembled with fear. A lone knight in a far Haven, deep in the Wood Between, raised up her head from her labors, and her dark eyes filled with the Song she heard. Faerie kings and queens, lords and ladies across the nations and the worlds heard the strange sounds of the Stars’ Song, and they wondered at the marvel they heard spoken.