Beneath Ceaseless Skies #183

by Richard Parks

  And then there was sobbing.

  He perked up his ears and ran in its direction, crunch-crunching past black trunks until he found her at the base of a steep rock slope, sitting on a stone with bloody hands, scraped knees, and torn gloves.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked.

  She recognized him. “I just wanted you to try again. I don’t want to be a farmer. I don’t want to be a farmer.”

  “So you’re running away?”

  Her lips trembled.

  “You know what the penalty is for deserting your duty, don’t you?” He crouched low so as to look her in the eye. “They lock you up to make an example. Being a prisoner is much worse than being a farmer.”

  “Living in the woods is better than both!”

  Arzey wiped the ice-flecked tears from her face before they could freeze flush against her cheeks. He gulped hard, silently promised to meditate a full two weeks after this day, and produced a small steel flask from a hidden pocket.

  “There is one escape that is both easy and painless,” he said. “You are decreed to till soil for the state until the day you die. That day,” he said, brandishing the flask, “can be today.”

  She stopped sobbing for a moment. “What do you mean?” she asked, though Arzey was certain she already knew.

  “One sip from this flask will drop you into a deep sleep, and you won’t wake up the next morning.” He passed her the poison and she held it as if it might explode in her hands.

  “But this, this—”

  “Self-harm can blacken your soul, yes. But what is the cost, truly? The remembering will visit you a little late. Perhaps at fifteen years instead of thirteen.” He put on a smile, and it pained him. “That is no cost at all.”

  She uncapped the flask and swirled it around, sniffing at its contents.

  “It smells better than I thought it would.”

  “And it tastes like honeyed wine. As I said, this is a very pleasant escape.”

  She stared inside for a long time. Then she shook her head, “Why couldn’t you just tell me this was tea?” Her shoulders slumped. “I would’ve drank it without even thinking. I’d be gone and back by now!”

  Arzey squinted suspiciously. “That would have been murder,” he said, enunciating every syllable. “I don’t wish to break from the wheel of rebirth any more than you do. I will not murder.”

  She sniffed at it again.

  “What about my parents, won’t they be sad? I haven’t even seen my father since the drawing. He’ll miss me.”

  “Once you remember them in your next life,” he lied, “you can travel to them to say sorry. Many make this kind of pilgrimage, I’ve seen it.”

  The poison sloshed as she absently shook the flask about.

  “Will it hurt?”

  “No,” a second lie. Perhaps three weeks of meditation would be in order instead of two. “Just a very deep sleep.”

  “Will you tell my parents I love them? And my sisters too? And, my friends in the city?”

  Arzey nodded. That he could do. Nurya frowned and looked up, beseeching.

  “Is there really no other way?”

  Snow fell in the silence, and Arzey had to close his eyes and obliterate his mind for a moment to keep from feeling sad. Two heartbeats passed and his eyelids flashed open.

  “None.”

  She wiped her nose and sniffed away snot. Her eyes were ringed red, and her hair fell in tangles. Her body was heaped like a puppet with the strings cut.

  The two waited there in the snow for a long while, in silence.

  And then Nurya emptied the poison into her mouth, swallowed hard, and began to convulse upon the spotless forest floor. She gurgled foam, soiled herself within minutes, and by the time Arzey knelt down to check for a heartbeat, she was dead and quickly growing cold.

  He stood, readjusted his shawl, and began to make his way home.

  * * *

  Arzey spent the full three-week voyage back to Diligence in a state of meditative trance, drinking only water and eating only thick ginger-and-potato paste. The overseas route was but an empty blot in the flow of time. Apparently, there had been quite the nasty storm.

  He arrived at the peninsula’s eastward port by noon and delivered his journal to the scholars of the Task for recordkeeping. He managed to retire to his home by evening.

  For the following few weeks he gardened and tended bees, fed the countless animals in the forest meadows, and taught classes to young students from all over the Field. Nurturing life was the best way to purify the soul and earn an early remembering in the next life. This was necessary if a monk intended to realize his Task and find his target in time.

  Arzey knew that Garza had found the skin of a newborn somewhere out there, and at sixty-three there was no guarantee that he could find him and solve him in this body. He was becoming old, and much frailer than his prime.

  At the end of the month under the morning sun, he walked into a den of slavering wolves. There he held his hands high, folded away his mind, and gave up his flesh as food.

  * * *

  II.

  On her ninth turnday, Megha remembered the Field. This first memory was common to every soul in the world: standing in a vastness of silver wheat under a harsh, white sun. In the memory there was a spear in her hands. Others said they held wicker shields, or nothing at all. But for her there was a spear.

  Then she remembered the name that had travelled with her across death’s gateways for twenty-one lives: Arzey. In her seventh life she had taken up her Task, this dancing game of predator and prey with Garza the Provoker. Her soul, she knew, was that of a monk’s.

  “Megha,” said her mother. “Have you remembered?”

  Arzey nodded, her expression disturbingly grave for a child so young.

  Her papa came from the fireplace and knelt in front of her. Usually he would have put his hands on her shoulder, but a remembering almost makes it as if a stranger has filled your child.

  He said, “Will you stay with us a while, or do you have to leave now?”

  “I have a Task,” she said, in a sweet voice like wine not yet matured. “I need to go to Diligence.”

  Mama smiled sadly. Her little girl was a monk of the old order. It was unlikely she’d ever see her again, even across all the lives on the spinning wheel. Arzey hugged her tightly and allowed some tears to fall down her face. Life was eternal but hollow unless you savored every moment. Every bitter sadness, every sweet joy. Nine good years were a droplet in a sea made of twenty-one lives, but she cried for them still.

  Papa stood, “We’ll arrange for your food and voyage. Before you leave, is there any wisdom you might give us from the past life?”

  She looked up at them with a sigh, sorry for their sake that she hadn’t been a seeker or an engineer. They looked at her expectantly, and she prepared the only answer she could think of:

  “Don’t ever become a monk!”

  * * *

  She shaved her head with a knife bought from a peddler at the rear of the caravan. Captain Uday allowed her a place on top of his leading wagon, and there she began training her body.

  Memories were a given, but the body you were born with had to be adapted to and built up strong. Luckily this wasn’t the first time Arzey had been a little girl. She knew the quirks of motion and stance in this kind of skin.

  Days began balanced on one leg, first on the flat of the foot and later on the tips of her toes. As her legs grew stronger she crouched deep into a lake bird’s pose for as long as she could hold, shaking atop the jostling wagon’s roof.

  Rest lasted until the sun was not quite overhead and passed by with good food and lovely views. This part of Theid was a network of sand, duning in canyons cut from rich, layered rock. With the sun at this angle she could see the colors brightly: red lines with yellow-gold lamina beneath, interspersed at times with rosy stone and walls of chalky white.

  “How long d’you have left, of wheeling and adventuring?” A
horseman rode close to a coach-driver, speaking in easy west-Theid tones. A childhood of speech could accustom a mouth to the phonetic flavor of a place, regardless of how many languages were locked in the soul’s memory. This man had been born in the region, like Arzey herself.

  The coach-driver replied with a heavier north-Theid gravity, “Just the one year.”

  “And then it’s off to the old man’s rotation, eh?”

  “These bones’ve had enough wear and tear. Travel is a young man’s labor—I’ll take no issue with minding a garden or keeping the books.” The driver cracked his neck almost as if to emphasize.

  “Hah, you’ll get bored within a day! There’s no doubt. None.”

  The driver laughed. “Always the same story with you young people. No matter how many lives you live, you still forget how it feels to get old.” Arzey caught the driver’s eye, “Isn’t that right, monk?” She perked up. “You must be close enough to your remembering to know how it feels, yeah?”

  Arzey smiled and nodded placidly.

  “See? The girl knows,” said the driver, his seat gently rocking with the gait of his horses. “She’s young enough to know, now, isn’t she?”

  * * *

  The Grand Harbor was still a feast for the eyes: tall-masted ships with sails of blue, yellow, and purple on white, dashed, checkered, dotted, striped; short men with braided beards and women with tattooed faces; pierced brows, wrapped foreheads, oiled leather belts, spotless white gowns—ah. The spices of the Field were as strong as Arzey had left them. But stronger still was the smell of salt.

  The great mass of the marina had moved further inland than she remembered, and great wooden logs that could’ve been cut from thousand-year old zam trunks kept the boat hulls from being dashed against the rocks.

  Sometimes it seemed as if a deep collective nostalgia kept these places embedded in their maps: it would take many generations for anyone to bother creating a new Theid pier elsewhere, far away from this eroding coast. Arzey wondered if that would ever happen at all; it was a project she’d be happy to spend many lives on.

  But always there was the Task.

  The simple square ferry to the peninsula of Diligence was quite close to where she’d said her goodbyes to the caravan, but she hesitated. This place was so lovely. Surely it was worth it to visit the stalls, drink some tea, and practice all the Field’s languages with her new, untested throat?

  Though much of the world spoke in a hybrid mishmash of every tongue from every life and region, there were many purists who preferred to throw themselves into each birth as if it were their first. It delighted her to hear them speak, and to try and follow along.

  Just one cup of tea.

  * * *

  The ferry set off with the push of a long pole at a heading for Diligence’s westward port. The journey wasn’t long, and the shore was within viewing distance for the entire duration.

  Playful dolphins came to dance on the bow-waves many times, and Arzey danced along on the rails beside them. “Hello dolphins!” she called. They squealed in joy, and perhaps, she hoped, in reply.

  At sunset she began the daily conditioning of her arms and torso. She hung from the stern and held on from a combination of pure will and fear: if she let go she’d fall into the water and be left behind at night. When it was time she’d pull herself up with little difficulty. Being a child had its advantages.

  She made herself into a bridge from one barrel to another and held there with a fire burning in the muscles of her abdomen. She closed her eyes, erased her mind, and remained for an hour and one half more.

  Arzey needed to rest a full day before she could sit up again, and by the time she had, the columns of Diligence were in sight. They were long, thin, striated things—like dowels drilled from a tree with all the rings still intact. They were symbols of the Monastery’s dedication: each crooked pillar was built up as tall as a monk’s oath was long. A new foot of stone was added for every life spent on a particular Task, and the subtle variegations in color whispered at the flow of time.

  She leapt off the boat as it made landfall and fondly regarded this forest of stones. They varied from gray to gray-green, some covered lightly in lichen and others clean and pristine. Together they gave the impression of a vast and ancient ruin sunk into the grass—which was, Arzey supposed, not entirely inaccurate.

  She brushed her hand along each pillar as she picked the path to the central grounds, sometimes closing her eyes and navigating by touch and memory alone.

  * * *

  Her liveslong family of scribes and teachers welcomed her with open arms and wide smiles.

  “It’s been far too long!” roared Pilae, picking her up in his arms and squeezing her into his big belly. “Nine years since I saw your ugly face walk off into those caves. And now a little Thediya girl? Hah!” His laughter was rumbly and as full as a heavy gong.

  He set her down. “Okay, come. Let’s make the librarians happy, shall we?”

  Over the course of an hour she sat to have her likeness drawn into a sheaf of records and her story written into the book of her lives. Time of death and rebirth: 1443 years After the Field. Birthname, Megha. Birthplace, Jugada in west Theid. Continued Task: the pursuit and sustained subdual of Garza the Provoker.

  * * *

  III.

  Arzey stroked his stubble and absently stoked the fireplace, thinking.

  He was in a cabin on the very fringes of Dumma province in the southern highlands, the home of a young mother named Laran. Her son Jameel had shown signs of improbable luck, and the monastery dispatched Arzey immediately. Luck was one of the more obvious powers possessed by the soul of Garza the Provoker.

  Laran set down a tray of spiced tea.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s never seemed very lucky to me.”

  Arzey sipped at a cup, “Perhaps so. But his birth coincides perfectly with the last subdual: 1549 years After the Field.” His voice was gruff and rubbed raw by Nai Zama accents. “Would it be possible for me to see him personally?”

  Laran nodded, “Yes. Of course.” She scratched at her mug. “Do you monks usually tell the mothers? That you might have to end their children?”

  “No.” He took a long draft of tea. It reminded him of a dessert he had enjoyed during his lives in Hadanna.

  “Then why did you tell me?”

  “Monks of the Task spend a long time observing. I’ve watched you for several months, and came to the conclusion that you are of unusually strong character. As is your son,” he added. “I hope you don’t mind that I’ve been watching.”

  “No more than I mind a lion hunting,” she said. Arzey didn’t know what to make of that; Jameel’s father had been killed by a lion while journeying with a caravan.

  “It’s not often I can simply tell the truth. And telling a parent, in all my lives, is unheard of.” He finished the tea with a gulp and set it down on the wooden table. “But I was I certain I could trust you to value the many over the one. I’d say I was correct.”

  “You were,” she replied. She had a supreme sense of calm about her, but Arzey could still sense her voice tremble.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Your son may not be the one I’m looking for. I’ll be sure the moment he wakes up.”

  * * *

  Jameel woke up at noon, munched on a bowl of fresh nuts and fruit, and went out to find Arzey sitting cross-legged on an old tree stump.

  “Hi,” he said with a wave. The boy’s shoulders were broad, but his arms and legs were still like saplings. He had short-cropped hair and a voice that hadn’t yet cracked.

  “Hello, Jameel. My name is Arzey.”

  “Nice to meet you, Arzey!” He smiled brightly, and the monk did the same.

  Arzey casually opened a bag and laid its contents out in front of him. A very old toy wagon, a fuzzy plush pillow in the shape of a blue whale, and a wooden figure of a woman mid-dance.

  Jameel’s face lit up with excitement.

  “
What’s happened?” Arzey asked.

  “I like that one!” He rushed at the whale and hugged it to his face. “Oh, it’s really dirty though.”

  “Indeed.” Arzey produced another pouch from a hidden pocket. He laid out the contents of this one as well: a cut blue gemstone that shone like a star, a thick bronze coin, and a small clear marble with a black swirl inside.

  Jameel opened his mouth wide and happy and swiped at the marble, rolling it between his fingers.

  “Hm.” One more set: a small spinning top, a whittling knife, and a paintbrush with ragged bristles.

  “Hey! How did this get ruined?” He picked up the brush with a frown. “It looks like it was nice.”

  Arzey sighed and sealed the rest of the items away while the boy happily balanced the marble on the blue whale’s head.

  He closed his eyes and silently waited for Laran to return.

  * * *

  “What did I do?” The child was understandably nervous. His mother was openly weeping and a very serious, very grim bearded man had set an unlabeled steel flask on the wooden table.

  “You didn’t do anything.” Arzey leaned back and crossed his arms. “Your soul did. In a past life, a long time ago.” He steepled his fingers. “You wouldn’t have known this until your remembering, but your soul’s name is Garza.”

  “If I wouldn’t have known, how do you?” Jameel periodically switched his gaze towards his crying mother, clearly wanting to go comfort her. “How could you know when I don’t?”

  “A test. You can’t truly recall yet, but beneath your awareness you are who you I say you are. You chose Garza’s childhood possessions from a set of useless junk.” Arzey emptied the old toys onto the table. “There are subtler memories than the remembering grants you. And that is how I know.”

  Laran’s sobbing had grown a little louder, but she turned away and hid her face with a hand. Jameel’s brow worried into a furrow, and he looked back at Arzey.

  “But what did I do?” He shook his head when he saw Arzey’s look, “Not me, I mean. My soul. What did I do?”

  “Garza was a Provoker.” Jameel’s face was blank. The boy had no idea what Arzey was talking about. “He would bring out the absolute worst in people. Worse than the worst. And when his victims were at the breaking point, they’d snap and kill him. Then Garza would be reborn, and do it again.” Arzey cocked his head. “Do you know what happens when someone commits murder?”