'Indeed it is. Since I've risked death venturing here, shouldn't I, ah, now enjoy the sweetest fruits of life?'
He smiled at the pretty woman across from him, whose name proved to be Kielii. Then he added, 'I'd like to see Lord Harsha interrupt this feast.'
Just then Aunai joined us with a muscular young man he presented as Taije, who turned out to be Kielii's husband. When Maram learned this, he seemed crestfallen. But only for a moment. Upon looking about the woods at all the women kneeling around their mats, he said, 'Ah, well, a bee doesn't forego flowers just because all the nectar has been gathered from the first one he sees.'
I looked about us, too, trying to descry any sign of the Lokilani's village. Through the spreading astors and out between the great columnar trunks of the oaks beyond, I saw nothing that looked like a human habitation. When I asked Ninana where her people's houses were, she looked at me in puzzlement.
'And what is house?' she asked me.
I tried to explain the kinds of structures in which all people everywhere lived at least part of their lives. 'Even your cousins in Alonia make houses,' I said.
'Is that true?' Ninana said. 'It has been long — long past long — since any of us has journeyed there.'
'But where do you take shelter when winter comes?'
'Here there is no winter.'
'But what about when it rains and falls cold?'
'Here it rains only when we wish it to rain — and then we bathe or wait beneath the tallest trees to keep dry.'
'But where do you sleep, then?'
Ninana waved her hand toward the mosses blanketing the ground. 'We sleep wherever we fall tired.'
Maram, growing irritable at the sight of all the delicacies spread out before him that he hadn't yet been able to sample, growled out, 'But what of the beaife then? Don't you wish for a good fire at night and a stout wall to keep them away?'
But his words only mystified Ninana and the others. This necessitated another long round of explanations that delayed our meal even further. I tried to tell Ninana how other peoples made fire, which she had seen kindled only by lightning. And Maram tried to describe the eating habits of his huge, hairy friends.
'The beare here,' Ninana said at last, 'eat as we do. Do your bears really kill animals to eat them?'
'Sometimes,' Maram said.
'Do they eat people?'
'Not if we can help it,' he said with a nervous smile.
Ninana bent over to confer with Kielii; their soft, lilting words flowed back and forth between them like the music of a brook. And then Ninana asked us, 'Do your people eat people?'
'No!' Maram and I said upon the same breath. But then, upon recalling the horrors of Argattha, I added, 'Only in the house of the Red Dragon. Your cousins call him the Earthkiller.'
Ninana's face fell grave as she said, 'The Mora'ajin — yes, we know this one. He lives inside a mountain like a worm. He would eat up the very earth, itself, if he could.'
As Atara's hands clutched at the leaves beneath us, I traded quick looks with Master Juwain. It was astonishing that the Lokilani could know so little — and so much.
'But come!' Ninana said, gazing at Atara. 'Our talk has turned sad, too sad, and now it is time to eat and be happy. Later we will speak of these dark things, if we must.'
All around the grove, the hundreds of Lokilani at their little leaf tables had already begun their meal. So then did we. We feasted on foods so sweet and full of life it was as if an elixir filled our bellies and hot spring sap coursed through our veins. Maram drank many bowls of elderberry wine but strangely seemed to fall only a little drunk. We talked of many things: of the ways of their cousins' Vild and the towers of Tria and the dolphins that swam in the sea and sang songs to those who would listen. At last it came time to pass around a bowl laden with ripe timanas. Estrella was not of age to partake in this part of the feast, but the rest of us were ready to eat this sacred, if dangerous, fruit. Once, its sweet, numinous taste had nearly killed Atara. But now that she and all of us had survived this initiatory vision, we had nothing to fear.
And so we feasted on the flesh of the angels, as the Lokilani called the golden fruit. And our vision was renewed. The Timpum appeared to us with even greater brightness and presence than before. Atara was the first to notice a new thing about Flick. To his usual swirls of silver, scarlet and blue had been added a brilliant tinge that we had tirst beheld deep within the crystal faces of Alumit, the Mountain ot the Morning Star. We called this color glorre. It was as distinct from all other colors as blue was from red. It was as if the resplendent steps of the rainbow led to this numinous hue, a secret color that contained the essence of all others and was somehow both their source and culmination. Most men and women could not see it. Certainly none of the Lokilani ever had.
'Look!' Aunai cried out jumping to his feet. 'Look at the Timpirum that the Big People brought!'
Bright bursts of glorre now rippled through Flick's being like waves of water catching the light of the sun. He whirled about beneath the astors as if drawing their unearthly beauty into him.
'The colors!' Aunai cried out. 'The colors!'
All at once, the Lokilani at the other tables rose to their feet to catch sight of the wonder that Aunai pointed out to them. Flick now hovered ten feet above my head, and so the hundreds of men and women in the grove were able to look in amazement upon his vivid swirls of glorre.
'A new color!' Aunai cried out. 'How is this possible?'
I, myself, wondered this, too. Had our eating of the timana made clear to us what had so far remained invisible? Or had the Vild so strengthened the flames of Flick's being that he was now able to bring forth this brightest and loveliest of colors?
Even as I sat motionless gazing at Flick, many of the Lokilani came over to our table to get a better look at him. In the light of their wondering eyes, the bits of glorre sparkling within him blazed ever more brilliantly.
'You bring miracles here,' Aunai said again. He turned to look at Ninana. 'As you said it would be.'
Ninana used a leaf to wipe a bit of timana juice from her lips. Then she looked me and explained, 'Some of us knew of one of these miracles. It was why we allowed you to come here.'
'Knew how?' I asked her. 'Are you scryers, then?'
'And what are scryers?'
I stole a quick glance at Atara, then turned back to Ninana. 'Can you see the future?'
'No, no — we see only what is. The Timpirum, sometimes, if we look very; very hard, show us what we need to see.'
'Show you. . how?'
'Even as your Timpirum has shown us all the color you call glorre.' Ninana paused to moisten her lips with a sip of elderberry wine. Then she said to me, 'Won't you show us this other miracle you keep hidden, Vala'ashu Elahad? The jewel that gives the golden light?'
I looked into Ninana's wise old eyes, amazed yet again by what she knew. Then, with hundreds of the Lokilani crowding about our table, I reached inside my armor where I had tucked the small cup that I had brought out of Argattha. I stood up and held the Lightstone high for all to see. It flared in my hand. At first its radiance was golden, even as Ninana had said, but soon the light grew more intense, deepening to a brilliant white.
'Too bright! Too bright!' Aunai said, shielding his eyes with his hands. 'The jewel is too bright!'
As night had fallen several hours before, the world about us should have been dark. But the Timpum lit up the woods like countless candles, and the astors' canopies were like great, glowing domes above us. And in my hand I held a blazing star. At first its light dazzled almost everyone. But soon its brilliance deepened even more so that it fell perfectly clear — as clear as the air on a crisp winter day. One by one, the Lokilani were able to look upon the Lightstone without taking hurt through their eyes. But their hearts ached with the sweet strife of wonder, as did Estrella's, Atara's and mine. For just then Flick soared into this clear light, and the flames of his entire being blazed deep with a singular color, and that
was glorre. Other Timpum, drawn to him like bright-hued moths, danced about with him in the vast silence that fell over the woods. Some of Flick's fire passed into them. Sprays of glorre brightened their forms, too. And then these Timpum spun off to rejoin their brethren deeper in the woods, passing on the flame from one to another like a fire spreading outward through dry grass. It took only moments, it seemed, for all the millions of Timpum in the Forest to come alive with this lovely angel fire.
After a while the Lightstone quiesced, and the Lokilani could see that it was just a plain golden bowl, and not a jewel as Ninana had said. Flick quiesced as well. He returned to a bright whirling of silver and scarlet sparks. But within his little form remained many brilliant bands of glorre. So it was with the other Timpum illumining the silent woods.
'A very great miracle,' Ninana said, gazing at the Lightstone as I sat down again. 'May I hold this jewel, Vala'ashu?'
I gave the Lightstone into her little hands, and she squeezed it a moment before passing it to Aunai. I told her something of the tale of how we had fought our way into Argattha to wrest the Lightstone from Morjin's throne room.
'You've given much, so very, very much, to find this Jewel of Light,' she said to me. She studied Atara's blindfold for a moment before turning her gaze on me as if looking deep into my heart. 'But why, why?'
I tried to tell her of the Star People's purpose in sending the Lightstone to earth. I told her of the battles that had been fought over the ages to claim it. I said that the golden cup held inside it the fate of Ea and all her peoples, even the Lokilani.
'Tonight,' I said, 'we've all beheld what you call a miracle. The Lightstone works many such. But there is one miracle, the only true one, for which it was meant.'
Ninana waited for me to continue and then said, 'Please, tell us.'
I traded glances with Master Juwain and said, 'That we have not been able to discover. It remains one of the Lightstone's secrets. But we do know that there is one, and one only, who was meant to work this miracle.'
'And who is that?'
'We call him the Maitreya.'
At the mention of this name, Ninana drew in a deep breath, and Aunai nodded at Taije. Then a murmur of recognition rippled outward through the men and women gathered around us.
'We know this one, too,' Ninana said to me. 'We call him the Matri'aya, the Lightning. He is the one who opens the sky. The way to the worlds where the Forest covers all the earth. But we have never known that the Matri'aya would use a Jewel of Light to make this opening.'
Although I tried to keep my face calm, her words disturbed me deeply. I said nothing of how Morjin would use the Lightstone to open ways of his own: to the Dark Worlds and wastelands where the trees had been cut long ago and now not even a bird remained to sing a bright song.
'I think you have come to the Forest to look for the Matri'aya,' Ninana said to me suddenly. 'But the Matri'aya is not of the Forest, as are the nightingales and the fritillaries and the deer — and the Lokilani. This we know. The Matri'aya is the one who will come to the Forest from another place and take its most precious seed back to this place so that the trees will grow again in all lands.'
I looked off at Flick, who was now hovering beneath an astor tree. Weren't the Timpum, I wondered, in some sense the vital seeds from which the Forest's great trees germinated and took their deeper life? And wasn't Flick, this bright being of flame and glorre, the most precious of all these seeds?
'We have come here to seek the Maitreya,' I admitted. 'Though as you have said, we did not think to find him among the Lokilani.'
At this Master Juwain nodded his head and added, 'You see, we hope to recover the knowledge of who the Maitreya is and how he might be recognized.'
Ninana's eyes lingered on the lightning bolt scar cut into my forehead. Then she asked me, 'Are you the Matri'aya?'
My breath caught in my throat, and I took a quick drink of the Lokilani's cool sweet wine. And I said, 'That must be tested. That must be known.'
'Then did you come here hoping that the Timpirum would make this known to you?'
'Not exactly,' I told her. 'But it's said that they guard a crystal that might tell us the secrets of the Lightstone — and the Maitreya.'
'In the Forest as you have seen,' Ninana said, touching her emerald earrings, 'there are many crystals.'
'This one is called an akashic crystal.'
'I don't know that name.'
'It is a kind of thought stone. It holds memories of the Elder Ages.'
Ninana looked knowingly at Aunai just then, and my heart began beating faster. She nodded her head and said to me, 'The Jewel of Memory. Yes, we know this crystal. It was brought here long ago.'
Now Master Juwain rubbed his hands together and leaned forward toward Ninana. 'But how long ago, then? Three hundred years? Three thousand?'
The lines of Ninana's face drew up into a puzzled frown. 'And what is year?'
I smiled at Master Juwain's consternation. What, indeed, was a year to a people who had no winter, but only eternal spring?
'A year is twelve months,' he said to her. 'When the moon waxes full twelve times, that is a year.'
Now he smiled, too, very pleased to have found so easy a measure to match the time of the outside world with that of the Vild. But his satisfaction melted away a moment later as Ninana said, 'The moons come and go like the fruit on the trees, and who counts them? And why, why?'
'Why, do you ask? Why, to gauge time, my lady. To keep track of history and when events occurred.'
Ninana's face tightened as if she had chewed a bitter fruit. She said, 'You bring miracles into the Forest, but many distasteful words, too. The history that you have spoken of is nothing more than war and evil happenings. But here, there is only eating and singing, making babies and dying. Nothing ever happens that you would call an event.'
Master Juwain seemed inclined to want to argue with her. I could almost hear him lecturing her on the need to know the past so that its evils weren't visited upon the future. I reached over and squeezed his gnarly hand to silence him. And to Ninana I said, 'You've told us that the akashic crystal was brought here long ago, is that right?'
'Yes, before any of our grandmothers' great-grandmothers were born.'
'But you've also told us that none except the animals come from the outside. But it can't have been a bird or a butterfly who bore the akashic crystal to these woods.'
'No, indeed, it cannot,' Ninana said. 'I'm sorry that I didn't speak more clearly. I should have said that no man ever comes here.'
Maram patted his bulging belly as he stared across the table at a small, elegant woman standing in close with the other Lokilani. He said, 'You mean it was a woman you allowed past your damn mists?'
'No, indeed not,' Ninana said. 'No woman ever comes here, either.'
Maram held up his hands in helplessness as he looked at me. Then Atara, who had said very little during the feast showed a bright smile. She had almost as good a head for puzzles as Master Juwain, and she could often see more.
'The Timpum are called the children of the Galadin,' she said to Ninana. 'Your cousins believe that the Galadin walked their woods long before long ago, and left the Timpum to light the trees.'
'Yes, the Galad a'Din did walk the world when it was all the Forest,' Ninana said. 'But the one who brought the Jewel of Memory was not of them. Like, but not so bright. And he could die, even as we die and all things do except the Bright Ones.'
'One of the Elijin,' Atara said softly.
I thought of Kane, who was once called Kalkin and might some day be again. In Argattha, he had told me about a band of immortal brothers who had come to Ea with him from the stars. Their names had been written in my memory with fire and blood: Sarojin, Averin, Manjin, Balakin and Durrikin. And Iojin, Mayin, Baladin, Nurijin and Garain, In the savagery of the Age of Swords, all had been killed — all except Kane and Morjin.
'What was this Elijin's name?' I asked Ninana.
'That is not
remembered.'
'But you have preserved the story of his coming and the crystal that he brought. And you say that he could die — how do you know that?'
'Because he died here, in the Forest. We have set the Jewel of Memory above his grave.'
This news pleased Master Juwain even more than the sight of so many lovely Lokilani women enchanted Maram. Atara sat silent and still as if trying to behold this akashic crystal that we had come so many miles to find. Estrella nibbled on a pear, and gazed up at the aster's glowing leaves as if our stories and quests were not her concern. But Ninana's words cut me to my heart. That one of the great Elijin should have died here did not seem possible.
'Where is this grave, then?' I asked Ninana. 'May we see it?'
'Of course you may. But not tonight. Now it's time for singing and dancing, and sleeping. Tomorrow will come soon enough, soon, soon'
The ways of Ninana and her people were really not so different from the Lokilani we had known before. A hundred of them, or more, made circles inside circles and danced about to songs that might have been as old as the Forest itself. With their bright green eyes and their spin ning and whirling, they reminded me of the Timpum who spun with them. We all joined them and danced, too, even Estrella who could not add her voice to ours. But I gave her my flute, and with this little piece of woods she made a sweet music, to the Lokilani's delight. She danced about with a little boy who might have been her brother, all the while piping out perfect melodies. I had never seen her so happy, and this gladdened my heart.
At last, with the hundreds of Lokilani finding places to rest in the woods about us, we laid out our cloaks and made our beds on soft mosses. Atara cradled Estrella in her arms, and they soon fell asleep. And so did Master Juwain, for all the rowing earlier that day had exhausted him. As it had Maram and me. But I lay awake gazing at the new color that brightened Flick's form. It made me wonder what marvels might light up the akashic crystal that we would try to open on the morrow.
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