Wrath-Bearing Tree

by James Enge

  “I would not sit down beside those schmeckle-faced knepps,” Ambrosia remarked, as she seated herself, “if they were sharing out the last chunk of food in the world.”

  The women within hearing distance roared with laughter, and the laughter spread generally along the benches as Ambrosia’s line was passed from group to group.

  Farna smiled a weary smile and nodded agreeably at Ambrosia.

  There were many introductions. Aloê toasted with a spoonful of gravy everyone who was pointed out to her, but didn’t trouble to memorize the names. Tomorrow morning they would be leaving here.

  There was some general discussion of the dictates of truth during the dinner, and whether it was permissible to hum or even sing while one was working. Some said that music had no truth-value since it contained no testable statements and that lyrics were merely a form of poetry, which was incompatible with truth. Ambrosia stood it as long as she could, and then leapt into the fray, pointing out that the mathematical nature of music made the presence or absence of notes as testable as a proposition in geometry. She said a good deal, too, about the metaphorical nature of language and the limits of testability as a standard for truth. The discussion grew quite lively, and Aloê watched with amusement and not a little wonder at Ambrosia’s energy. Personally, with her belly full for the first time in many a day, she wanted principally to find a safe warm place to sleep.

  The dinner ended and the seminar eventually broke up, with knots of women eagerly discussing matters musicological, mathematical, and semantic while others hauled the dirty dishes away to be washed in crocks.

  Farna grabbed Ambrosia and Aloê each by an elbow as they rose from the table, “If ye-twain would be kind enough to come with me-alone, there is a thing that I would show you. And then I will take ye-twain to your room, for I see that ye are tired.”

  “Thanks,” Aloê said, and Ambrosia nodded tensely, ready for another argument and self-evidently not tired at all.

  Farna led them out of the kitchen into the night, and on through the small settlement to the fields in the back of town, on the opposite side where Aloê and Ambrosia had arrived.

  “Ye-twain-or-singular have not asked, and I thank ye for not asking, a question many ask when they come hither. But ye may ask it now.”

  “All right,” Aloê said. “Where are the children?”

  Ambrosia jumped a little at this. Evidently she hadn’t noticed that the colonists they had seen were all adults—more on the elder than the younger side.

  “They-entire are there,” said Farna, and pointed out into the dark field.

  Aloê solemnly looked at what she thought was a graveyard, full of images of children of various size. He feelings changed to alarm when she realized that the overgrown shaggy shapes were not representations of children. They were children. Or at least the bodies of children.

  Ambrosia stepped curiously up to the nearest figure. It was smooth and hairless like a baby, but twice the size any baby ought to be. It was buried up to its waist. Its fingers extended like branches or roots and grew straight into the ground.

  “They’re like mandrakes,” Ambrosia called over to them. “It’s breathing!”

  “Yet it is not alive,” Farna said flatly. “The colony lives on because of immigrants: those who choose to come here so that they can live free. But there are costs, and this is one. The children die, and all the babies are born like this.”

  “Why do you do this with them?” Aloê said. “This looks like . . . a field that is tended.”

  “Yes,” Farna said evenly. “The children do not live, but something in their unlife shields us-inclusive from the full weight of the shadow to the east. Life here is nearly unbearable. Nearly. In the shadow of this field it is . . . bearable.”

  Aloê wondered if she would feel the same, in Farna’s place.

  “If ye are thinking of staying,” Farna said evenly, “ye should know about this place. I came here pregnant. I did not know. They-inclusive told me only after it was too late. I think I would have made the same choice, knowing everything. But I always thought . . . It was my-alone choice, not theirs. And they took that from me.”

  “Thanks,” Aloê said. “Ambrosia. For—my sake, come away.”

  The girl was on her knees, poking with gentle curiosity at the empty breathing face of the infant-plant.

  “Aristotle,” Ambrosia said, “speaks of a rational, an animal, and a vegetable soul. I wonder if the talic wave destroys or drives away the first two in utero, leaving only the vegetable soul to sustain physical life.”

  “Ambrosia. Please.”

  “But it’s so interesting! It suggests there are types of tal not subject to the force of the talic wave. And that suggests methods of protection from it.”

  “Who is Aristotle?” asked Farna.

  Ambrosia sighed. “This guy I used to know,” she muttered scornfully, and rose resentfully to her feet.

  Farna led them away to a smaller building, some distance away from the great kitchen where they had eaten. “This is New House,” she said. “It is ready for dwelling. Ye-each-or-twain may stay here as long as it likes ye. If ye wish to stay, it will be your house and we will make up another New House.”

  “Farna, I thank you,” Aloê said sincerely. “But I have to tell you we are not here to stay. We will be gone in the morning.”

  “There will be other mornings,” Farna said. “Remember the colony, and know ye can return when ye long for its freedom.” She put her hand affectionately on the side of Aloê’s face, kissed Ambrosia’s startled forehead and walked away into the night.

  Aloê never saw her again.

  In the sleeproom were bedrolls on ropework frames—a little like sea-hammocks. Aloê fell into hers with glee and muttered a quick good night to Ambrosia, even as she was falling asleep.

  She awoke some hours later with chilly feet. Someone—Ambrosia no doubt—had taken off her shoes and covered her with a blanket woven from straw. But the blanket had slid off her toes and the chill woke her.

  “Y’re a g’d k’d, ‘mbrosia,” she muttered, and snuggled back into her hammock.

  She didn’t expect a response and didn’t hear one. What drew her back from the threshold of sleep was, she didn’t hear anything: no snoring, breathing, no muttering about obscure and improbably named philosophers, nothing to indicate Ambrosia was in the room.

  Aloê opened her eyes and looked around. By the light of the moons percolating through the thin shutters, she could see she was alone.

  “Of course, you silly fish,” she muttered to herself. The girl didn’t sleep. Her rest came when her sister Hope took up the task of living.

  So where was she, in the middle of the night? Engaging in philosophical disputes about music and mathematics back at the colony kitchen?

  Or, more probably, had she gone to face the danger of the talic wave by herself?

  Aloê groaned. Someday. Someday she was going to get a full night of sleep.

  But that day was not today.

  Aloê tossed off her straw blanket, pulled on her shoes, and ran out into the frosty night full of dread.

  It was not hard to know which way she must go. It was the way she hated most to turn. She could not bring herself to walk straight through the grove of undead babies, but apart from that she made no detours, running south and east as the feeling of doom grew on her to become a physical ache in her heart. Every step she took seemed like a dreadful mistake. That was why she knew it was right.

  She saw the end of her journey by the bitter blue moonlight of Trumpeter high overhead and lowering Horsemen. It was a kind of mirror, darkly glittering. Before it sat as if spellbound or asleep a human shape. Ambrosia, by the wild dark hair.

  Spellbound, perhaps, but not asleep. As Aloê forced herself to go nearer, she heard Ambrosia muttering words. When she got closer she saw who she was muttering to. The reflection in the dark mirror was Hope.

  “I finally have it figured out,” Ambrosia was saying sleepi
ly, in a gentle voice that sounded surprisingly like Hope’s. “The mirror drives back any talic imprint with its own force. The minds kill themselves if they can’t turn away. Minds anchored in bodies can live for a time. Am I . . . Am I still anchored in a body?”

  “Turn away,” said Hope’s image, in a shrill voice that sounded more like Ambrosia. “You’re killing us both. Personally, I’m not ready to die.”

  “I die every day,” Ambrosia whispered. “Close my eyes and I’m gone. Wake up in a new world; everything is different. I die every day. So tired of dying. Maybe the mirror could heal us—make us one person—not split down the middle anymore—”

  “We are not one person,” Hope said, in her oddly Ambrosian voice. “The fact that you’ve forgotten it and I remember it is a bad sign.”

  Aloê was perplexed as to what she should do for the sisters, but she could not, she simply could not, stand in the path of that dreadful talic mirror any longer. She closed her eyes to keep from looking at it. That helped, but not much. She stepped aside, felt more relief, felt the sense of dread and imminent doom subside slightly, and stepped again. The emotional burden was now definitely lighter, and the physical pain receded entirely. She sighed.

  “You interfere with my visualization,” whispered a voice near at hand.

  She opened her eyes and saw something behind the talic mirror.

  In fact, she saw suddenly, there were two mirrors, one facing east with its back to the west. The presence, whatever it was, stood between them. Or anyway: was between them; she couldn’t tell if it was standing.

  It was a kind of hump of nothing that glistened in the moonlight. It was a surface of matter—dusty, greasy, translucent or transparent. But the stuff was just suspended there in midair; it wasn’t on anything.

  In the middle of it, the dust and grease formed a human mouth that whispered, “You do not belong here. Your presence was of so low an order of probability that it was safely ignored.”

  “Long odds pay off big,” said Aloê, and drew her staff. Spinning it to build an impulse charge she said, to gain time, “Who are you?”

  “I,” said the unbeing before her with whispered disgust. “I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I. I.”

  “Yes, you. Who are you? I, for instance, am Aloê Oaij, Vocate to the Graith of Guardians.”

  “The Graith!” said the unbeing bitterly. “How what-you-would-call-I hate it. How it balks what-you-would-call-me.”

  “Glad to hear it. And you are?”

  “What-you-call-I should never have been,” whispered the unbeing. “There was a plan, this world that had to be cleansed. An entity had to be dispatched to tend the plan. But it took so long. There were so many failures. In time the entity-that-was-not-I became contaminated with selfhood, with matter, with feeling. It became what-you-would-call-I.”

  “Cleansed of what?” said Aloê, still spinning her staff. In fact, she thought she knew.

  “Of you, and all like you. Of life that breeds in material filth. Of life infected with selfhood.”

  “Then you, and those like you, are immaterial beings? You exist only in the tal realm, like the gods of Kaen?”

  “They are filth of a different flavor, but still filth. They carry their puling selfhood across the threshold of should-be-cleansing death. The-ones-you-would-call-us are not like that.”

  “And you come from elsewhere?”

  “In the deep north, at the edge of this world, stands the Soul Bridge, spanning the leap to the sunless world,” whispered the unbeing. “The ones-you-would-call-us fled there when the sun was born, poisoning this world with life, and fertility, and selfhood. Someday the sun will die and those-you-would-call-us will return.”

  “Here’s hoping that day never comes.” The turn of phrase reminded her of her companion(s) and she called out, “Ambrosia! Hope! Are you hearing this?”

  “Can’t hear,” said Ambrosia/Hope dreamily. “Too busy listening.”

  “No, snap out of it,” shrilled Hope/Ambrosia. “This is important!”

  “Not soon enough the unday comes,” agreed the unbeing. “So the plan. The cleansing. The scraping away. Someone had to go. Some entity. Those-you-would-call-us were all the same. So the one-not-yet-I was sent across the Soul Bridge and became the one-you-would-call-me.”

  “And how you hate it, hm?”

  “Hate,” hissed the unbeing with gleaming greasy lips. “Hate. It is not for the one-you-would-call-me. Yet it is for all the ones-you-would-call-us. Those ones, the forever strangers, they hate the sun and the life it seeded through the world. They/we will kill it/him/her! This is not hate! It is merely the thing that must be, the thing we intend.”

  “Only an entity with selfhood can intend,” Aloê said. “Either those ones you talk about are selves, or you are not one of them any longer.”

  The greasy lips issued a whistling sort of wail, as if Aloê had uttered something the unbeing had long feared.

  Aloê struck with her staff then, driving a blow straight at the unbeing’s midsection.

  It hissed its pain and anger through the greasy lips and moved to attack.

  Aloê was fascinated to see shockwaves moving through the unbeing’s self. It was not as immaterial as it seemed. Ages of matter had percolated into it, become one with it, in a jellylike suspension. It reminded her a bit of the Keeper of the Wheel, except that she didn’t like it. Also: it could feel pain; it could be angry.

  Aloê dodged away from the unbeing’s attack, leaping into the zone of dread with a suddenness that shocked her into stillness.

  The unbeing turned toward her—and hesitated.

  Of course. Of course. Aloê forced herself to think through the despair induced by the talic mirror, the pain of the mind fighting itself. It stood between the mirrors because it had cause to fear them. And they protected it from something else it had cause to fear.

  She spun the glass staff and stood back farther into the zone of despair. “This way, you-who-I-do-call-you! Or are you afraid? You fear and you hate, like a fish wriggling on a hook.”

  It hissed, but didn’t move.

  On impulse, Aloê lashed out with the staff at the edge of the talic mirror. It spun as if it were on gimbals. The zone of dread passed over her; she felt as if she were being slashed in two. Then it passed from her and fell on the unbeing.

  It screamed, “No! Death! Failure! Shame! Death!” Then it whispered, “Death. Nothing. Nothing, anymore . . .” and it walked straight into the talic mirror.

  The world abruptly changed shape. Ambrosia/Hope was screaming, and Aloê was rolling over moonlit frosty fields, laughing, laughing. The weight of the world and hell had been lifted from her. The zone of despair was gone.

  She looked up and saw this: no talic mirror, no unbeing intent on the world’s death, nothing but Ambrosia on her knees, weeping for the lost image of her sister.

  Morlock awoke in a locked room on a heap of straw. The mandrakes had taken his sword from him, but they had wrapped him in a blanket. A fair trade, as he was shaking like a wet dog, even with the blanket; without it he might be dead.

  His hands and feet were bound. That was bad. He did what he could, which was mostly think and wait.

  Just once, he would have liked to travel by water without a shipwreck or some other disaster. Well, he had travelled with Aloê by sea . . . but then he had lost her, the worst disaster of all.

  Presently the cell door was unlocked and a group of mandrakes walked in on their sly almost soundless serpent feet. There were seven of them: six wielding spears and the seventh carrying a mace that looked ceremonial as well as functional. They wore only kilts, but the mace-wearer’s was belted with gold.

  “Then?” he said to the mandrakes, who were staring at him with their fiery red eyes, threatening him with their spears.

  The mandrakes looked at each other. “We don’t understand you,” the mace-bearer said.

  Morlock waved his hands at the spears. “Nor I you. What do you want with me?”

&nb
sp; “Us? Nothing,” replied the mace-bearer. “But God wants to talk to you.”

  “Eh.”

  “None of that!” the chief mandrake said fiercely. “You will respect the God.”

  That depended on the god’s behavior, as far as Morlock was concerned, but there was no point in saying so. He nodded toward his feet instead.

  The mace-bearer was in doubt, but one of the spear-bearer’s said, “I am not carrying him,” and stepped forward to cut the bonds on Morlock’s feet.

  “Thanks,” Morlock said, standing. “I am named Morlock.”

  “We know it,” said the mace-bearer. “Come with us.”

  The mace-bearer led the way out of the cell and out of the little stone building that housed it.

  Outside was a fair-sized fishing town. All the inhabitants seemed to be mandrakes. There were also female mandrakes, if he was not mistaken.

  Morlock was interested, but tried not to show it.

  This was what he knew about mandrakes. When a dragon died, mandrakes were hatched from the dead worm’s teeth and planted themselves in the ground. When they grew large enough, they pulled themselves loose and walked free for a while. Eventually they transformed into dragons, as caterpillars change into butterflies.

  But here was a whole town full of mandrakes who had not undergone the dragon-change. He passed by an elderly female, her dugs sagging down to her kilt’s belt, being helped along the street by three solicitous mandrakelings. Children? Grandchildren? If mandrakes were but the larval stage of dragons, how could they have children?

  Was it possible that the dragon-change was no more inevitable in mandrake than it was in his harven-kin, the dwarves?

  Under Thrymhaiam, dwarves learned and abided by a strict moral code that repressed cruelty and selfishness. Those who kept the code kept themselves and avoided the dragon-change. Could mandrakes do the same? If so, who had taught them to do so?

  Now Morlock also wanted to have a conversation with God.

  But he hoped in vain. They came to the largest building in town, set on a stand of pillars high above the sandy earth, and the mace-bearer climbed the freestanding white stone steps to enter the building—clearly the temple of the God. But when he came back down again his shoulders were slumped, and he said to the spear-carriers, “Take him back to the jail.”