by Tad Williams
They had traveled, but it seemed they had also passed from one kind of day to another, as though they somehow walked at right angles to the normal world, moving unrestrainedly as the angels that Simon had been told flew here and there at God’s bidding. How could that be?
Staring up past the trees into the featureless gray sky, Aditu’s hand clutched in his, Simon wondered if he might indeed have died. Might this solemn creature beside him—whose eyes seemed fixed on things he could not see—be escorting his soul to some final destination, while his lifeless body lay somewhere in the forest, slowly vanishing beneath a blanket of drifting snow?
Is it warm in Heaven? he wondered absently.
He rubbed at his face with his free hand and felt the reassuring pain of his chapped skin. In any case, it mattered little: he was going where this one led him. His contented helplessness was such that he felt he could no more remove his hand from hers than remove his head from his body.
“... Cloud-song waves a scarlet torch:
A ruby beneath a gray sea.
She smells of cedar bark,
And wears ivory at her breast ...”
Aditu’s voice rose and fell, her song’s slow, thoughtful cadence blending with the birdsong as the waters of one river would meld indistinguishably into the flow of another. Each verse in the endless stream, each cycle of names and colors, was a jeweled puzzle whose solution always seemed to be at Simon’s fingertips but never revealed itself. By the time he thought he might be making sense of something, it was gone, and something new was dancing on the forest air.
The two travelers passed from the bank of stones into deep shade, entering a thicket of dark green hedges pearled with tiny white flowers. The foliage was damp, the snow underfoot soggy and unstable. Simon clasped Aditu’s hand more firmly. He tried to wipe his eyes, which had blurred again. The little white flowers smelled of wax and cinnamon.
“... The Otter’s eye is pebble-brown.
He slides beneath ten wet leaves;
When he dances in diamond streams,
The Lantern-bearer laughs ...”
And now, joining with the rising and falling melody of Aditu’s song and the delicate trill of birds, came the sound of water splashing in shallow pools, tuneful as a musical instrument made of fragile glass. Shimmering light sparkled on melting snowdrops; as he listened in wonderment, Simon looked all around at the starry gleam of sun through water. The tree branches seemed to be dripping light.
They walked beside a small but active stream whose joyful voice reverberated through the tree-pillared forest halls. Melting snow lay atop the stones and rich black earth lay beneath the damp leaves. Simon’s head was whirling. Aditu’s melody ran through all his thoughts, just as the stream slid around and over the polished stones that made its bed. How long had they been walking? It had seemed only a few steps at first, but now it suddenly seemed they had marched for hours—days! And why was the snow vanishing away? Just moments ago it had covered everything!
Spring! he thought, and felt a nervous but exultant laughter bubbling inside him I think we’re walking into Spring!
They strode on beside the stream. Aditu’s music chimed on and on like the water. The sun had vanished. Sunset was blooming in the sky like a rose, singeing all of Aldheorte’s leaves and branches and trunks with fiery light, touching the stones with crimson. As Simon watched, the blaze flared and died in the sky, then was swiftly supplanted by spreading purple, which itself was devoured in turn by sable darkness. The world seemed to be spinning faster beneath him, but he still felt firmly grounded: one foot followed the other, and Aditu’s hand was firm in his.
“... Stone-listener’s mantle is black as jet,
His rings shine like stars,
As she sang these words, a scattering of white stars indeed appeared against the vault of the heavens. They blossomed and faded in a succession of shifting patterns. Half-realized faces and forms coalesced, pricked in starlight against the blackness, then dissolved again just as rapidly.
Nine he wears; but his naked finger
Lifts and tastes the southerly breeze ...”
As he walked beneath the velvet-black sky and wheeling stars, Simon felt as if an entire lifetime might be passing with incredible swiftness; simultaneously, the night journey seemed but a single moment of near-infinite duration. Time itself seemed to sweep through him, leaving behind a wild mixture of scents and sounds. Aldheorte had become a single living thing that changed all around him as the deathly chill melted away and the warmth came pushing through. Even in darkness he could sense the immense, almost convulsive alterations.
As they walked in bright starlight beside the chattering, laughing river, Simon thought he could sense green leaves springing from bare boughs and vibrant flowers forcing their way out of the frozen ground, fragile petals unfurling like the wings of butterflies. The forest seemed to be shaking off winter like a snake shrugging its old, useless skin.
Aditu’s song wound through everything like a single golden thread in a tapestry woven of muted colors.
“... Violet are the shadows in Lynx’s ears.
He hears the sun rising;
His tread sends the cricket to sleep,
And wakes the white rose ...”
Morning light began to permeate Aldheorte, spreading evenly, as though it had no single source. The forest seemed alive, every leaf and branch poised, waiting. The air was filled with a thousand sounds and numberless scents, with birdsong and bee-drone, the musk of living earth, the sweet rot of toadstools, the dry charm of pollen. Unmuffled by clouds, the sun climbed into a sky that showed purest pale blue between the towering treetops.
“... Sky-singer’s cape is buckled in gold,”
Aditu sang triumphantly, and the forest seemed to throb around them as though it had one vast and indivisible pulse.
“His hair is full of nightingale feathers.
Every three paces he casts pearls behind,
And saffron flowers before him ...”
She stopped in her tracks and released Simon’s hand; his arm fell to his side, limp as a boned fish. Aditu stood on her toes and stretched, lifting her upraised palms to the sun. Her waist was very slender.
It took a long time before Simon could speak. “Are we ...” he tried at last, “are we... ?”
“No, but we have traveled the most difficult part,” she said, then turned on him with a droll look. “I thought you would break my hand, you clutched so hard.”
Simon remembered her calm, strong grip and thought how unlikely that was. He smiled dazedly, shaking his head. “I have never ...” He couldn’t make the words come. “How far have we come?”
She seemed to find this a surprising question and thought hard for a moment. “Quite far into the forest,” she said at last. “Quite far in.”
“Did you make the winter go away by magic?” he asked, turning in a stumbling circle. On all sides the snow was gone. The morning light knifed down through the trees and splashed on the crush of damp leaves underfoot. A spider web quivered, afire in a column of sunlight.
“The winter has not gone away,” she said. “We have gone away from the winter.”
“What?”
“The winter you speak of is false—as you know. Here, in the forest’s true heart is a place the storm and cold have not penetrated.”
Simon thought he understood what she was saying. “So you are keeping the winter away by magic.”
Aditu frowned. “That word again. Here the world dances its true dance. That which would change such a truth is ‘magic’—dangerous magic—or so it seems to me.” She turned away, obviously tiring of the subject. There was little of imposture in Aditu’s character, at least when it was a matter of her time being wasted in niceties. “We are almost there now, so there is no need to rest. Are you hungry or thirsty?”
Simon realized that he was ravenous, as if he had not eaten for days. “Yes! Both.”
Without another word, Aditu slipped between the
trees and vanished, leaving Simon standing alone by the stream. “Stay,” she called, her voice echoing so that it seemed to come from every side at once. A few moments later she reappeared with a reddish sphere held delicately in each hand. “Kraile,” she said. “Sunfruits. Eat them.”
The first sunfruit proved sweet and full of yellowy juice, with a spicy aftertaste that made him quickly bite into the second. By the time he had finished both, his hunger was pleasantly blunted.
“Now, come,” she said. “I would like to reach Shao Irigú by noon today.”
“What’s ‘Shao Irigú’—and what day is it today, anyway?”
Aditu looked annoyed, if such a mundane expression could be said to exist on so exotic a face. “Shao Irigú is the Summer Gate, of course. As for the other, I cannot do all the measurements. That is for those like First Grandmother. I think you have a moon-span you call ‘Ahn-ee-tool’?”
“Anitul is a month, yes.”
“That is as much as I can say. It is that ‘month,’ by your reckoning.”
Now it was Simon’s turn to be annoyed: he could have told her that much himself—although months did tend to sneak past when one was on the road. What he had been hoping to discover, in a roundabout way, was how long it had taken them to get here. It would have been easy to ask straight out, of course, but somehow he knew that the answer Aditu gave him would not be very satisfying.
The Sitha-woman moved forward. Simon scrambled after her. Despite his irritation, he more than half-hoped she would ask for his hand again, but that part of the journey seemed to be over. Aditu picked her way down the slope beside the stream without looking back to see if he was following.
Nearly deafened by the cheerful cacophony of birds in the trees overhead, bewildered by all that had happened, Simon opened his mouth to complain about her evasions, then stopped suddenly in his tracks, shamed by his own short-sightedness. His weariness and crossness abruptly fell away, as though he had sloughed off a heavy blanket of snow dragged with him out of winter. This was a wild sort of magic, whatever Aditu said! To have been in a deadly storm—a storm that covered all the northern world, as far as he could tell—and then to follow a song into sunlight and clear skies! This was as good as anything Simon had ever heard in one of Shem Horsegroom’s stories. This was an adventure even Jack Mundwode never had. Simon the scullion was going to the Kingdom of the Fair Folk!
He hastened after her, chortling. Aditu looked back at him curiously.
As the weather had changed during their strange journey, so, too, had the vegetation: the evergreens and low shrubs in which Simon had been snowbound and lost had given way to oak and birch and white ash, their interlaced branches bound with flowering creepers, making an overhead canopy colorful as a stained glass ceiling but far more delicate. Ferns and wood sorrel blanketed the stones and fallen trees, covering Aldheorte’s floor with a bumpy counterpane of green. Mushrooms crouched hiding in pools of shadow like deserting soldiers, while other pale but oddly beautiful fungi clung to the trunks of trees like the steps of spiraling stair-cases. The morning sun sprinkled all with a light like fine silver and gold dust.
The stream had cut a gentle gorge in its passage, winding down into a valley whose bottom was obscured by close-leaning trees. As Simon and Aditu picked their way carefully over the slippery rocks that lined the gorge, the stream filled the air around them with fine spray. The watercourse splashed into a series of narrow ponds that grew successively larger down the hillside, each one spilling over into the one below. The ponds were overhung by aspen and drooping willows, the surrounding stones slickly furred in rich green moss.
Simon sat down on one to rest his ankles and catch his breath.
“We will be there before too much longer,” Aditu said, almost kindly.
“I’m fine.” He stretched out his legs before him, staring critically at his cracked boots. Too much snow had ruined the leather—but why should he worry about that now? “I’m fine,” he repeated.
Aditu sat down on the stone beside him and looked up to the skies. There was something quite marvelous about her face, something that he had never seen in her brother, despite the distinct familial resemblance: Jiriki had been very interesting to look at, but Simon thought that Aditu was lovely.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
“What?” Aditu turned to look at him questioningly, as though she did not know the word.
“Beautiful,” Simon repeated. “Everything is very beautiful here.” He cursed himself for a coward and took a deep breath. “You are beautiful, too, Lady,” he finally added.
Aditu stared at him for a moment, her golden eyes puzzled, her mouth creased in what seemed a tiny frown. Then she abruptly burst into a peal of hissing laughter. Simon felt himself redden.
“Don’t look so angry.” She laughed again. “You are a very beautiful Snowlock, Seoman. I am glad you are happy.” Her swift touch on his hand was like ice on a hot forehead. “Come,” Aditu said, “we will go on now.
The water, uninterested in their doings, continued on its own way, belling and splashing beside them as they made their way down toward the valley. Scrambling over the rocks as he struggled to keep up with light-stepping Aditu, Simon wondered if just this once he might actually have said the right thing. She certainly didn’t seem angry at his forwardness. Still, he resolved to continue thinking carefully before he spoke. These Sithi were damnably unpredictable!
When they had nearly reached level ground, they stopped before a pair of towering hemlocks whose trunks seemed vast enough to be the columns upholding Heaven. Where these mighty trees thrust up between their smaller neighbors into unshadowed sunshine, tangled nets of flowering creepers grew like an arbor between the two trunks, trailing blossom-laden vines that hung almost to the ground and quivered in the wind. The grumble of bees was loudest from the flowers, but they swarmed everywhere among the creepers, stolid laborers in gold and black, wings glistening.
“Stop,” Aditu said. “Do not so lightly pass through the Summer Gate. ”
Despite the power and beauty of the great hemlocks, Simon was surprised. “This is the gate? Two trees?”
Aditu looked very serious. “We left all monuments of stone behind when we fled Asu’a the Eastward-Looking, Seoman. Now, Jiriki bade me tell you something before you entered Shao Irigú. My brother said that no matter what may occur later, you have been given the rarest of all honors. You have been brought to a place in which no mortal has ever set foot. Do you understand that? No mortal has ever walked in beneath this gate.”
“Oh?” Simon was startled by her words. He looked around quickly, fearing he might see some disapproving audience. “But ... but I just wanted someone to help me. I was starving ...”
“Come,” she said, “Jiriki will be waiting.” Aditu took a step forward, then turned. “And do not look so worried,” she smiled. “It is a great honor, it is true, but you are Hikka Staja—an Arrow-Bearer. Jiriki does not break the oldest rules for just anyone.”
Simon was passing beneath the great trees before he understood what Aditu had said. “Break the rules?”
Aditu was moving quickly now, almost skipping, swift and sure-footed as a deer as she made her way along the path that stretched downhill from the Summer Gate. The forest here seemed just as wild but more accommodating. Trees as old and grand as these could never have known the touch of an axe, yet they stopped just short of the path; their hanging branches would not brush the head of any but the tallest traveler.
They followed this winding path for no little way, traveling on a rise just a short distance above the floor of the valley. The forest was so thick-shrouded with trees on either side of the path that Simon could never see more than a stone’s throw before him, and began to feel as though he stood in one place while an endless succession of mossy trunks marched past him. The air had become positively warm. The wild river—which, judging from its noisy voice, snaked a parallel course along the valley floor not a hundred cubits away—filled the
forest air with delicate mist. The sleepy hum of bees and other insects washed over Simon like a healthy swallow of Binabik’s hunt-liquor.
He had almost forgotten himself entirely, and was dreamily following Aditu by sheer repetition of left foot, right foot, left foot, when the Sitha-woman drew him to a halt. To their left the curtain of trees fell away, revealing the valley floor.
“Turn,” she said, suddenly whispering. “Remember, Seoman, you are the first of your kind to see Jao é-Tinukai’i—the Boat on the Ocean of Trees. ”
It was nothing like a boat, of course, but Simon understood the name in an instant. Stretched between treetop and ground, and from trunk to trunk and bough to bough, the billowing sheets of cloth in a thousand diverse colors resembled at first sight nothing so much as exquisite sails—indeed, for that first moment the entire valley floor seemed in truth a vast and incredible ship.
Some of these expanses of brilliantly gleaming cloth had been stretched and tented to make roofs. Others twined about the trunks of trees, or spanned from bough to ground to form translucent walls. Some simply heaved and snapped in the wind, bound to the highest branches with shiny cords and allowed to wave. The whole city undulated with every shift of the wind, like a seaweed forest on the ocean floor bowing gracefully with the tide.
The cloth and binding cords mirrored with subtle differences the hues of the forest all around, so that in places the additions were barely discernible from that which had grown naturally. In fact, as Simon peered closer, overwhelmed with Jao é-Tinukai’i’s subtle and fragile beauty, he saw that in many places the forest and city appeared to have truly been shaped as one, so that they blended together with unearthly harmony. The river which meandered along the center of the valley floor was more subdued here, but still full of relentless, ringing music; the rippling light it reflected onto the city’s shifting facades added to the illusion of watery depth. Simon thought he could also see the silvery tracks of other streams weaving in and out through the trees.