And yet she thought, pausing with her trembling fingers locked in an embrace upon brass. And she thought of her life, looked back suddenly, and saw in retrospect something akin to a flower that had developed from a seed, and had grown along a fine stem of experience, and had been cut promptly upon maturation, and now awaited its next stage. The hand that held the flower was now poised on the brink of a decision. That decision could return the flower back to a familiar place where it could be pollinated and harvested of its seed. Or else the hand could take it far, into a place dark and unsure, into a place without fertile soil, without bottom, or end, outside the world. . . .
The choice was before her, in the form of desire.
Learra looked at the inscription on the coffin of brass, at the ancient coffin itself that lay before her like a lover.
She knew the words that were inscribed there without having to read that ancient tongue. She had known for the greater part of her life, and the words had become a part of her. The words, whispering within her. The words, shimmering like mother-of-pearl in her inner vision, every night before sleep would take her by the lashes. . . .
And the woman let go of the brass, told her fingers to let go, to unclench from their passionate embrace with the possibility of death before her.
While she did so, the moon continued to spill itself softly through the sky window into the sepulcher, over the black ruins, over the island that was half-real, half-desire, over the whole world. And because she had let go, and stepped away, the wind sighed softly, and died in a final echo of a whisper.
Learra never remembered walking outside, nor climbing through the desolate ruins of something precious that had long gone. She only remembered the living darkness of the forest, the tenebrous foliage, and the everpresent moonlight, streaking her path, spilling before her like thick silver honey.
Learra came out of the forest onto the shore just as dawn began to discolor the rim of the horizon over the ocean. Off the shore floated the black silhouette of the anchored ship, a great palm ready to sweep her away, to carry her back to the familiar world. She paused, stepping into the cold running foam that exuded phosphorescence, that licked the ebony sand. She looked down, seeing again the pattern of her footsteps imprinted in the black sands of this dream shore, a pattern that would fill with eddies of water as soon as the next wave hit, that would soon be dissolved into a furrow, then nothing.
No traces of her would remain here, in this other place. . . .
With the dawn, a wind was rising from the sea. Learra turned around, placing her back to it, and facing for the last time the blackness, then the indigo, then the violet of the quickly lightening land. As she stood thus, buffeted by the gusts, she looked far into the shore line, deep into the forest, where she could see with her mind’s eye that which had called her here. She was leaving it now.
Tears stood for a moment in her eyes, but were soon to be dried by the wind. But then—
how to distinguish the wetness of tears from the moisture of sea spray on one’s face, from the very mist?
Learra turned away then, and, without looking back, waded into the cold water, black as ink, and swam toward the ship.
On the shore, the light was solidifying, falling all around from the brightening sky. And a form took shape, pale and indescribable in human words. The form moved like a ghost, stood looking out toward the sea’s expanse, leaving its own pattern of footprints. It was growing still and somnolent and alone once again. Its task was accomplished. And so, the beast without a name lay down to sleep, and in its dreams to guard, lulled once again by the silence, lulled by the ocean and the drifting soft black sand of Amarantea. In radiant glory, bright like the oldest wisdom, exists Amarantea. . . . It is a dream only, a living memory in the collective consciousness, and yet it beckons the wanderer, always, from its unknown shore. . . .
“Tell the story, please, Grandmother!” the little girl cried, tugging at the old woman’s sleeve.
“Yes, please, tell us again of the king and his blind wife!” echoed the little boy. The old woman, who had once had a sharp seeking gaze but now was almost blind, drew her wizened head closer to the two children.
“Now, now, children,” Grandmother said with a smile. “What is there to tell? Why do you pester me so, my little Rinne?”
“I want to hear about the island kingdom!” said the little girl. “And I’m not pestering, please. You didn’t finish the story last night, Grandmother.”
“Yes, I want to hear about the beast!” Mavion said.
“My, aren’t you brave today, Mavi.” Grandmother chuckled and continued, “Why, only yesterday, you started to cry when I spoke of the beast. And so I had to stop.”
“But I’m not afraid, ever!” Rinne exclaimed. “You can go on, Grandmother, finish the story.”
And the old woman proceeded to weave her tale, bright as her own long forgotten dreams. The children listened, while the fire at the hearth burned warm and persimmon gold, long into the deep violet night.
Eventually she was done with the words, and the children were all put to bed, rubbing their eyes and groggy with the sweet perfume of imagination. And Grandmother found herself alone before the fire.
She sat, rocking to herself. And soon, within her mind came the old whispers of intimacy, words familiar and as fine as vapor from that faraway sea. . . .
The soul is a flower, severed from its stem, bearing seed, planted at birth, reaped in death, but never discarded in the bottomless well.
The elusive meaning of it was almost there, just hovering at the edges of her comprehension
—as it always must. Just enough to be aware of wonder. But not enough to fathom it to its end. For, such fulfillment would mean the bottomless well, an endless ultimate night outside the universe, otherwise called the unknown. And who would pay such a price?
Once again from a great distance of memory it came, the voice of the beast without a name. And this time in the twilight of her life she recognized its nature. It was too late for her. But not for them.
Yes, maybe she would speak these words tomorrow, repeat them out loud before the little ones, so they would know.
The choice must be given, always.
For, one way or another, eventually, all come face to face with it, all hear the music that is Amarantea.
DREAM TWO
THE MIRACLES OF RIS
When sweat, tears, and blood are drawn, truth breaks forth upon the shore. In the desert, the only god is a well.
—old proverbs in the lands of the Compass Rose.
There are fables, and then there are histories, passed from old to young, that take on the pungent flavor of fable, of the many-hued rainbow, after being re-shaped so many times. Such is the story of Ris, the Bringer of Stillness and Water, the Bright-Eyed Liberator, the Mad Sovereign of Wisdom.
Incidentally, it is unknown whether Ris is god or demon, messiah or trickster, man or woman or child. . . .
* * *
I f you were to follow the Compass Rose directly East, across grand stretches of the whiteness that is sun upon sand, you would come upon a place that was once Golden Livais—a town sprawled like a gods’ mistake in the middle of the desolation.
No rivers flowed for a hundred miles around, no rain had spilled from the incandescent skies, not in a hundred years. And yet the original settlers had seen scorpions burrow deep, and fat snakes slither, skim the surface of the dunes. And this told them there was to be found a source of water.
When struck eventually, the well pumped cool black water like blood upon the sands, permanently discoloring them with life. The town germinated from this oasis, and after several generations affluent trade routes were established through the desert to the far outlying cities of the South and West of the Compass Rose.
Down one such route, in the wake of a caravan bearing salt and sandalwood, came an old woman and her two children. After an absence of forty years, she was coming home.
“How much longer this desert, Grandmother?”
a girl complained. She was slender, with radiant hair the very shade of persimmon in the sun, and with pale freckled skin that was peeling from sunburn. She huddled in the swaying wagon, leaning wearily against the cotton-draped knees of an old woman with nearly black parchment skin.
“Stupid Caelqua,” a young voice said. “You know this desert will be all around us forever. It is called Hell.”
On the other side of Grandmother, the speaker, Nadir, had attached himself with a grip of misery to the old one’s elbow. Nadir was a dark precocious boy-child no older than seven, while Caelqua was possibly fourteen, and they were unrelated, children of two different races. Grandmother had rescued Caelqua, who had been drudging in a work-board house within one of the distant great cities.
“I take you because of your pretty bright hair, and nothing else,” the old woman had said to her, while the smile of her eyes denied the harshness of her words. This implied smile had pierced Caelqua and bound her with ties greater than blood.
When Grandmother had come upon him, Nadir had no name. She had leaned down to pick up a fallen purse from the filth of a city gutter, and had noticed him there, black-skinned as a little demon, crouching against the brick alley wall. The boy had made no attempt to take her possession, and instead watched her with a remarkably clear and wise pair of young eyes. The old woman left the purse lying, and stared back at the young swarthy thing. Eyes had met eyes. And after a rich moment of silence, the old woman merely said, pointing to the purse, “Come with me, and bring that with you.”
And he followed her like a shadow.
“I take you because you need something,” Grandmother had told him as they walked. “And my curiosity will be the end of me if I don’t find out what it is. I’ll call you Nadir, because we first met at the very bottom—unless you have a better name?”
But the boy didn’t.
He thought only for a moment, then shook his head, and followed her from that day on. For the first time acknowledged as an entity, he had been led by this vertigo-filled instant to his first real stab of self-awareness. . . .
And now, here they were. Their wagon jostled over the sands, the last one behind the protection of the caravan. Scalding dry wind came inside through the torn flaps of the canvas, scraped their faces, and took away the precious moisture that endlessly beaded their skin.
“Not much longer now . . .” Grandmother said to her two charges. “Soon, when the sun starts sinking, you’ll see the dark shadow of Livais—directly there, on the opposite horizon.”
“And then we’ll have enough water, Grandmother?” Caelqua said, staring at her with dull ever-parched eyes.
“As I remember, the well is great, and has enough for everyone, child.”
“I can wait for my turn after all the caravan drinks,” Nadir said proudly, disengaging his grip on Grandmother’s elbow. “I don’t need water.”
“Everyone needs water, even the sand beetle,” Grandmother said. “But you are brave and stoic, my Nadir, and I know you will indeed wait for as long as you must.”
And thus it was. When evening began to fall, the shape of Livais imprinted upon the dark Eastern horizon, and the caravan moved with the fading sun at its back. Eventually, in the indigo dusk, the many fireflies of gold and amber that were the lights of the town grew into shape. Soon they were at the gates, were being allowed within, past bored sentries, into a well lit thoroughfare. At the center of Livais was that famous well.
Grandmother stood next to Nadir and Caelqua, among the last in line. When their turn came, surrounded by the loud animated voices of the dispersing caravan folk, orange flames of torches, and vaporous twilight, the old woman stepped forward. With reverence she glanced past the stone rim into the abyss of the well.
She stared, noting the coarse rope of the water bucket. She dipped a pail in the bucket and first lifted it before the muzzle of the animal that had pulled their wagon. Then, smiling, she offered the life-liquid to Caelqua. For the first time in weeks across the desert, the girl was allowed to drink to her content.
When she was done, the water pail was passed on to Grandmother. The old woman took several sips, made a show of having satiated herself, and then deposited the pail into the small hands of Nadir, saying, “And here it is, Nadir, your turn, for you are truly the last.”
“Thank you, Grandmother,” the boy said with dignity, and then slowly lifted the water to himself and drank in moderate proud swallows.
“Good,” Grandmother said. “And now we shall find a place to sleep. Let us go, my children, and find the old house that might still stand, and that was once the place of my birth.”
The town was small. After wandering through a dozen streets, turning here and there, they stopped the wagon before a prominent unlit structure. Apparently the old woman’s memory or instinct was still intact, for she had found her home.
Grandmother promptly knocked upon the gates, and after several minutes a moving candle shone through the windows.
“Who is it?” came a groggy voice. “Who disturbs the Temple of Ris at this ungodly hour?
Begone! Or, if you must, return in the morning.”
“What’s this?” the old woman said. “Since when have the doors of this house become the doors of a temple? Open up, for it is Ris. I have returned home at last!”
In the ensuing silence, they could hear the night cicadas, and the sharp drawing of breath on the other side of the gates. And then, with a scraping, the gates opened. Nadir and Caelqua saw shadows and a cowled form of a creature, who stared back at them with shocked eyes glittering in the dark.
The old woman stepped forward, saying, “I am Ris. Daughter of Kharaan. Daughter of this house. After traveling the world, I have returned to spend my last days here. Allow us in, for the children and I are weary, and we have come far.”
The priest continued gaping. But Grandmother took his silence for a yes, and walked past him into the gated courtyard, leading the pack beast by the ropes, the two children following.
“But—” he stuttered. “But you are—”
“I am a woman, yes. And an old one. But I am Ris, the one who everyone knows keeps the well filled and the waters flowing. Isn’t it true, monk, that most recently the water level in the well of Livais has dropped below the normal mark by about the height of a man? That is why I have returned.”
“How did you know?” the hooded man whispered. “No one knows this except for three men
—myself, Lord Rigaeh, and the old well-digger! Then you are Ris indeed, the Bringer of Water!”
Grandmother chuckled. “How gullible you are. That alone is not difficult to surmise for anyone with eyesight. Anyone who looks closely could see the fresh new length of rope added to the well-bucket. But only Ris the Wise would know that the very nature of the ground water source beneath the well has been compromised. At the rate of fading, there will be no more water left in Livais before two moons pass.”
The cowled one stared in the darkness, eyes glittering. “Gods protect us . . .” he whispered,
“If what you say is true, then we are doomed. You must speak to Lord Rigaeh immediately! You must tell him of this, if you really are Ris the Wise. . . .”
“You will direct me to this Lord tomorrow,” the old woman said. “But for now, allow us to rest in this house.”
“As you wish, Wise One. . . .”
The man made signs of obeisance and, bending his old back, preceded them into the shelter of the great dark house. Inside, he took the single thin candle from the shelf where he'd left it to light their way, first within a grand front hall, then up a wide staircase. The old woman, with candle-born shadows falling all about them, followed him, looking around her with what might have been a look of old wonder and yet a hint of a mischievous smile. Caelqua came immediately after, wary of the flickering shadow-shapes which at times looked like bird-beasts, at times like demons unfurling. And in back of them all came Nadir, seeing the same grotesque forms but somehow wanting to howl with joy at
their undulating free expression, sensing the same wildness of spirit unexpectedly within himself. They were home.
In the morning, the white sun arose with a fury, and began another desert inferno. When the shadows were shortest, and no one dared to linger in the open, the old woman who called herself Ris walked out to the center of town, and stood before the well, wrapped in white cotton to shield herself from the blaze.
She stood heedless of the sun, her exposed skin already blacker than black, her eyes an unusual shade for someone of her race—blue like the remote lapis-lazuli waters that reflected back at her from the long distance down in the stone well.
For over an hour she watched the waters. And exactly three times throughout that time, at even intervals, the mirror surface of the waters distorted, then bubbled, as though gases were rising from the bowels of the well.
And then, satisfied, she simply turned and walked away. She continued walking in the direction of the most affluent side of town. And possibly she didn’t even see the small shadow of a boy following her.
At the house of Lord Rigaeh she paused (and from his distance Nadir could see an inexplicable smile pass her wrinkled lips), then knocked, and was allowed within. It seemed word of her had spread—word that Ris had returned to right all wrongs in Livais.
“You claim, old woman,” Lord Rigaeh said, “that you are Ris, whose Temple stands within this town?”
Ris observed a man attired in fine silks and wearing wrist-and arm-bands of gold. She did not like his face, nor his unblinking eyes.
“I do not claim. I am Ris,” she replied in an overly soft voice, using the semblance of old age to her advantage.
Lord Rigaeh leaned forward in his elevated seat, and stared down at her. “Apparently you know more about the well than you should. Who are you really?”
The old one smiled. “Of course,” she said, after a slightest pause, “you of all people do not believe in Ris, at least not in the Ris that people savor like an amulet on their tongue.”
“Come, both of us know you are an impostor, and that Ris is a figment of my people’s imagination,” said the Lord. “Let’s not lie. Tell me rather, what do you want, now that you are here? What would it take to keep your old mouth properly sealed?”
Dreams of the Compass Rose Page 2