Sunday 26 January 2014

Thrice Advent by Adam Parry Chapters 27 and 28


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Chapter 27
The Search

In the rain she lost sight of Shriven.  She had panicked for a moment. Shaneal flying on remembered that moment in Demorel when she had sacrificed the Crow and knew for the first time of flying, her wings that had taught her to fly.  She wondered how long it was that the kingfisher had last flown.
Schriven waited for her upon the honey coloured wall above the gates of Paternor.  The sun shone down, high and huge, at the midday moment.
‘I left Dalrosse on the edge of the moor, sleeping.’  She led Schriven to the place where she was certain Dalrosse lay. ‘Here,’ she insisted, ‘this is where I left him,’ yet there was no sight of the Shouel. Together they searched along the verge of the marsh, but before Schriven said anything she set off back along the verge, distress growing as she scanned the emptiness. The Kingfisher alighted beside Shaneal at the spot where she was convinced Dalrosse had been.
‘I left him.  Crow told me never to leave and I couldn’t even do that right.’
Schriven didn’t know what to say to her, to reassure her.
‘What are we going to do?’  Her eyes looked at him for the first time with suspicion.
‘Obviously, Lady, if he is not here than he must be somewhere else.  What we must do is search for him.  I have never seen a Shouel, but as soon as I spot him I’m sure I’ll know Dalrosse.’
He flew beside her as they turned back to Paternor. There the Kingfisher lifted high over the buildings of the city.  While he searched the warren of roads as far as the Fordeni Sea.  Shaneal looked into every window and open doorways of the buildings.  Night began to fall and in distress she realised there were so many other places to look; despite that she would not give up until she had searched them all. At last the Kingfisher returned.
‘Have you found him?
‘Yes. I’m sure I have, unless one of the children of Paternor has grown a beard and shrunk to half his size,’
‘Where is he?’
‘In the woodcarver’s boat.’
‘A boat.  Did he look alright?’
‘I think he was asleep, unless Shouels dream with eyes open and see the world with them closed.’
‘Who is the woodcarver? Where is he taking Dalrosse?’
‘He carves wood and plays with the children.  I never did know his name, but if there was ever the sound of children laughing anyone who wanted a piece of wood carved knew where to find him.’  Schriven laughed. ‘He’s taking Dalrosse to exactly the same place I was going to take him.’
‘So, that’s good?
‘Yes. Oh yes. Right then,’ he said. ‘Off we go. I hope we get there before it’s too late.’
‘Too late for what?’
‘Probably a good thing.  I’ve always been too late for good things. Sometime I turn up just in time for not so good things to happen, but I’m usually too late for them too.’
So the kingfisher led her to the Fordeni Sea and they flew low over the still water.  In the bright moonlight Shaneal saw ahead the outline of an island. She sped as swift as a Shouels arrow and left the kingfisher behind.  Long before he reached it Shaneal was perched on the jetty of the Isle of Surcease, where Dalrosse stood with the man she presumed was the woodcarver.  Glad with glee she lifted to the shoulder of her brother who was startled by her informality, though despite that, the singing blackbird on his shoulder seemed to have been the thing that he had lost and her slight weight upon him made him complete.
‘Who are you?’ The Shouel asked.
She twittered and sang with excitement. ‘I? Shaneal, silly.’ Dalrosse laughed and needed a lot of persuasion to believe who she was.
The kingfisher landed on the jetty.
Dalrosse wondered how many more surprises in the world waiting for him.
‘So this must be Aflarien. Are the mushrooms in this part of the world any good?’
Shriven looked at the Shouel completely confused. He had no idea what the little figure was talking about. Yet, Schriven couldn’t keep his eyes off Dalrosse’s own.  They’re purple, Schriven thought, his eyes are actually purple. I will follow anyone with purple eyes to the ends of the world, but somehow he knew by the mere fact that Dalrosse’s eyes were purple the world would never end.
Dalrosse was a bit disappointed that the kingfisher wasn’t Aflarien. ‘So, he asked the bird. ‘Can you talk too?’
Usually, Schriven was going to say.  Most of the time, he almost whispered. But not right now, he thought as he stared intently at Dalrosse just in case he would vanish if he took his eyes from him.
Dalrosse introduced Merve to his sister and told her how Merve had saved him twice and told her a little of what Verlover had said to him. At last he said:
‘Let’s get on the boat and head off.’
‘Where are we going? Shaneal asked
‘To the Waste of Strainval.  On the far shore of the Fordeni Sea.  The Orange Rose is there.’
‘The Wastes of Strainval? Sounds like a terrible place.’
‘We’ll soon find out.’ He stepped lightly into Merve’s boat, followed by the woodcarver who untied the boat from the Isle of Surcease.  The kingfisher perched on the prow of the boat and Shaneal fell asleep on Dalrosse’s shoulder.  It didn’t surprise him that birds could snore as well as speak.
A new day began as they sailed over the Fordeni Sea. A new day that would take them to the Waste of Strainval and the penultimate rose.  Dalrosse’s first sight of Strainval didn’t look dead or devastated, no; the new land was carpeted with flowers all the way to the edge of the horizon. And all the flowers were orange.

Chapter 28
The Endlessness of the War.

The Shouels, the sublimated Psybots and the men of The Legein made camp beside a fast flowing stream in the heart of the Meringal. Nen-Resul judged that they would reach Delgdreth and the shores of Lake Leme in less than two days.  The swift victory on the plains about Tasen had surprised him as much as it had done Aflarien. Nen-Resul came to the conclusion that The Legein must capture Aflarien before he came to the sanctuary of R’thera. Kren did not agree and said the wings and chariots should set forth at once and told his commander that they should have captured Aflarien before he fled the battle. Now it is too late, Kren said, the wings and the chariots could not reach the vicinity of R’thera in time. He insisted, we cannot let him re-gather his forces, he said almost with a shout.  Nen-Resul retorted. If we go now and push the wings and the chariots to their limits, the Legein would have no choice but to advance on foot.  Kren’s face grimaced ugily what he has done in Ket makes me ashamed to be human.  If we let him go I cannot imagine what he will do next.
Marriamme appeared at the doorway of The Legein House. ‘It is too late, Chamberlain, Aflarien sent a raven to me – it told me that before the year is out every Shouel in Soen every Shouel this side of the Sunbourne Sea will be butchered as soon as he reaches R’thera.  He has sent immense rats to feed on Shouel flesh to Ashenmoire. It is not called Ashenmoire anymore it is called The Lonely Island now.
Nen-Resul exclaimed.’ Don’t you want to stop him, you’re their Princess.’
‘Why? Nothing can stop him, the raven has shown me, and I have seen our forest burnt to the roots of the earth. I went to Thet- it was silent, empty.’
‘How have you seen it? Aflarien is barely day’s away from Tasen, if that.  So now Shouel witch you see the future.’ He laughed but it was devoid of mirth. ‘What are you going to do? Kill yourself so Aflarien doesn’t have to come all the way back to Tasen as you wait for him to kill you.’
‘We are dead now, my arrowmen have broken their bows, snapped their arrows.  All that has happened in Ket has happened in all the worlds of the tidalverse.  Men will kill everything that is different, that are not them, they deem it fit to exterminate, all that Men are not are filled with weakness, cowards, cowards before they were born. Those that do not lift their hand in defense of themselves deserve extinction.  Men know in their hearts that they are cleansing the tidalverse; purifying it- Men do it adoration of the Creator who made men in his image.’
‘Not all men are like that.’ Nen-Resul said.
‘Then those men are not men and they are dead already. Real men have exterminated most of them, a few like you perhaps are scattered here and there like pointless parasites diluting the purity that the tidalverse craves.’
‘So, Lady what do you think is the solution?’ She laughed at him, had he not heard what she’d said.
‘Solution? There is only one solution. The Last Solution and such things are men’s. It is over, done, it is over. And yes I will kill myself and so should you. Why wait any longer.  You are not men- you deserve to die.’
Marriamme took a knife from her belt. She had used the knife to peel potatoes and other vegetables, whittle wood, cut cloth, now she sliced open her wrist, deeply, cutting a gash up to her forearm almost to the cleft of her elbow.
They- Nen-Resul and Kren watched her purple blood spurt from the cut the blood raining on their aghast faces.
Let them have their last solution, she seemed to whisper. Real men deserve what they desire the most. Follow me, come with me, they seemed to hear her last thoughts, but by then the princess of Thet was dead.
The two men saw before them the tidalverse opening to claim her. Her purple blood wept down their faces and they knew they were dead, dead when their birth wails issued them into the world. Finally, futilely and accepting before the tidalverse closed they followed Marriamme as she had silently pleaded and behind them the tidalverse closed.

Nen-Resul drank from the stream.  He had a moment of déjà-vu.  He looked over at the Shouels, encircled by the Psybots, in the centre Marriamme spoke in the way of the Shouels as she told with no words a story Jon Esierk had told her before they were married.
Once I had three brothers, now there are only two- Araden and Rabranath.  I have not seen them for so long, my third brother who died before he had a name. He left his mother’s womb twisted and deformed. I watched the nurse take a pillow and she smothered him. That was the time the three of us decided together that we would create a story. Though young we were blessed with wisdom and imagination. We guided the Gods of our Universe. These Gods would ask us to solve problems that they had pondered and could conceive no answers on their own. With little thought we would easily give answers to the quandaries.
Our story branches and twists about a new thing that we called the tidalverse. The tidalverse connected the themes of the story, the many characters and lasted through many ages of the story without end. We did all this for our smothered brother and he was the inspiration of the story and the first character we incorporated into our tale and was the skin of the tidalverse.  All the other characters of the story we created for him. We did not know how the story would end, whether indeed it would come to a conclusion. Yet something was created not by us, but by the interaction of the characters.  We did not know what to call this thing, this side effect of the tale. Our own Universe had nothing like it, but the eldest brother Araden gave it a name – Love. Such a thing was so alien to us because it could not be measured, or even truly defined, it was something subtle and could not be controlled. Araden though realised there was one simple truth of Love. It could not be demanded, it had to be given.
Our brother lived thousands of different lives in the end with each of these lives we found the Love grow, in strength and with the power of the word. We realised even the thought of it let alone the  entire thing that we had accidently fabricated in the tidalverse there was no greater gift anyone could give.
Then one day a God started to read the story and when he asked what this new thing was we were unable to answer. Araden tried his best and said that you had to feel it to know what it was. This confused the God even more.
‘I want to feel it.’ he demanded. Sighing Araden said it doesn’t exist anywhere else but in the story.
‘I am a God,’ he raged. ‘There is nothing I am incapable of, for me nothing is impossible. I will go into the Story and find out what this love feels like.’  We brothers could not forbid it, we had no words to stop him, for he was a God and why would we.
So this God, who had set the stars in the night, stepped into our little story. As is the way of gods they are everywhere at once, and he searched and looked and could feel no love. He saw how Love affected people, saw how it transformed them and he asked them what it felt like, but all he met were incapable  of expressing it in words, for all creatures love can be many things..
‘Then love me,’ the God demanded, ‘I want to know what it feels like.’ They smiled at him and walked away from him and the God screamed at them. ‘Give me your love. Now. Come back here and love me.’ The God raged out to us beyond the story; write down that someone will love me. We tried to explain that this Love was beyond our control.
‘Love is mine. If they do not give it to me I will take it from them. They will never feel Love again. I will keep all of it and they will love none but me’

The God, she said aloud as she neared the finish of the tale, has been known by many names.   His first name was hate and when it seems there is no love in the hearts of the Peoples it is so because Hate is in a different guise, or a different form. Now we call him Aflarien.  Hate has tried to destroy love from the first moment that he demanded it and felt nothing He will try to destroy The Author’s story, rip apart the tidalverse thinking once the story is ripped apart the tidalverse will cease to exist. But, he is wrong. The Author’s gift to our deformed brother, the brother so soon dead was the life that created the tidalverse, this gift, unasked, is set free to wander the plethora of time, and will be finally reaching beyond the tidalverse at last be set free out into the unnumbered Universes and all there that dwell beyond. Araden’s Story will give the gift of love and all will feel the love it created in an act of freewill. Love seeps always from the tidalverse and all the Universes will feel the love that Araden had found in The Story.

Saturday 25 January 2014

Thrice Advent chapters 25 and 26


                                                           Chapter Twenty-five
A Stranger in the Unwritten Land

The Author, Araden, and Jon Esierk stood together, silent in the pondering place and stared at the painterly beauty of The Unwritten Land.  Jon led his brother forward out from the shade of the portal into the birdsong.
‘I’d forgotten this place; I have been to long upon Esplomeoir. Jon it is time-I will lose myself in The Unwritten Land. Lose myself so well that the portal will also be lost’
Jon laughed. ‘Just like you. If things ever got too tough you were around one minute, then the next leaving us to pick up all the pieces.  Lose yourself! Don’t treat me like a fool. For you that is impossible.  When the storm passes you will find yourself, all smiles, on Esplomeoir snapping at everyone if you don’t get on with it you never will.’
‘Don’t laugh at me.  I loved Lebin more than the Story.  Lebin was my only friend – you Crow. Where were you? Always flitting about hither and thither. A visit once in a while…but, oh no.’ The Author tried to raise his voice, but his anger faltered and he walked to a crimson flecked slope of a hill.  He sat and removed his boots and let the flock of flowers about him tickle at his pale feet. Jon watched- he seemed a child at play- until Araden lay back, grey hair spread about on the pillow of the hill and his pale face lined with hieroglyphs of age and troubled thoughts.
‘I’m sorry about Lebin.  How did Aflarien kill him? How did he even get to Esplomeoir?’
This time it was The Author’s turn to laugh.
‘How do you think?’
‘Our little brother?’ The Author nodded. ‘I suppose he allowed Aflarien into the Temple.’
‘No Aflarien possessed him- he was nowhere near Esplomeoir, but on Ashenmoire.  Too quickly has Aflarien learnt to harness the power of the Rose Oil. With it he cracked an opening into the tidalverse. Aflarien swam into Rabranath’s confused head and through him strangled Lebin.’
Jon was worried that The Author was going to start crying. Anything but tears.  The memory of Araden’s last tantrum was so fresh in his mind it might have occurred only a moment ago.
‘I will go somewhere else, somewhere thought has not touched, or empty eyes seen.  I have done enough.  I should have died with Lebin.’
‘So you’ve done enough,’ Jon was exasperated, ‘and you’re off on a little holiday.’
‘Yes. So listen to me.  You can treat me like a child as you usually do, but it won’t work. I’m not going to change my mind. I’m not going back there.’
Jon decided to try persuasion. ‘Brother, without you there steering our Story the Menerth will fall into countless years of tragedy, without you there to protect the Omelyns they will finally die.  Is that what you want? You want Aflarien and the unAuthor to destroy them, those you have protected and nurtured through all their lives, is that it? Without you the golden web of the Omelyns will be torn away from the Universe. The Story, the real story will end, it would have been better that it had not been brought from the imagination. The Story needs you my Lord. Aflarien will pollute it; destroy it, even if it means his own destruction. He will turn the Story into an empty tale, so soon forgotten, and the tidalverse and worlds within will not hear of the glory of the Omelyns. Is that what you want?’
‘I don’t care.  Without Lebin what reason is there continue? I remember before he became my Scribe.  Those times were endless, my existence was the Story and my life was barren of joy. He was the greatest of companions; he made me real, not just the Author, but a man again. Lebin reminded me how to laugh. If he had not been with me I would have forsaken the Omelyns long ago. Now Jon, leave me alone, or at least stop going on. It’s over. That’s that.’  Araden closed his eyes.  The air of The Unwritten Lands bristled with Jon Esierk’s anger.  He could not bring himself to speak, to yell, to scream. He wanted so much to grab his brother by the ear, as if he were a naughty schoolboy and drag him back through the portal to Esplomeoir where he belonged. He wanted to say, the Story is not just yours, but ours, all three of us.  Rabranath and I have helped and hindered you right from the beginning.  You do not have the right to give up. The words hovered behind Jon’s lip. Yet he bit them back as he looked at Araden. Jon wondered how old his brother was. The Story was begun when they had been children. Now Araden looked ill with age.  The Story had driven their brother, the unAuthor, mad, and himself…? Yes, Araden had been right, he was always here and there in the Story, unraveling one knot of the plot then off in another direction, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. Yet he had always felt happiest as part of the Story, not one of its architects. If there were to be no more Story, where would he belong? Definitely not here in the beautiful emptiness of The Unwritten Lands at Araden’s side. Jon tried to remember his life before the Story, surely he had friends then or other interests, but he could not recall them. Jon wanted to tell his brother that without the Story he was nothing, but there was something in the colour and slackness of the Author’s face that stopped him. Jon was then startled by a thought that was almost intuitive.
Is he dying?
Araden had nurtured the Story, sacrificed all his energy and imagination to it.  He made beauty with his words, he had created the long destiny and fate of the Omelyns and cradled it in a world he alone had imagined, surely Araden should be prized above all beings, yet there at the dark smudges at the corners of his eyes pain lingered.  It seemed for a moment as Jon stared at Araden that his brother was already dead. Jon saw the emptiness unfold before him.  He could never take the Author’s place, he had neither the right nor the ability and all that he had predicted earlier would become true, not because Araden had given up, but because he had given all he could to the Story and it had killed him. Jon cried his brother’s name.
The Author was startled from half-sleep and he smiled foolishly at Jon, he face glowing with embarrassment as it once done eons ago when at a birthday party he taken a piece of Jon’s chocolate cake without asking.
‘So. You’re still here. You really don’t know how to give up nagging at me, do you?’
Jon tried to laugh. ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘I don’t know, well you can keep me company, I suppose, quietly though. I’m sick of arguing.’ He patted the grass beside him; Jon walked over and sat beside him on the hillock. For a long time there was a silence between them, except for the occasional snore from the Author while Jon, as if for the first time surveyed the quiet countryside about them. The marble portal gleamed like bleached bones in the verdant grasslands, a few miles away a lone tree stood, half dead, yet its ancient branches still covered with remnants of summer green. Further away he could just discern what seemed to be a tower. It seemed long unused and covered with green growth from the land. And as he squinted his eyes he saw… what was it? There was something else, there and not there, as if he was seeing beyond the horizon. Then, Jon saw what was there- a figure, perhaps a man, walking towards them. Despite knowing that it was completely impossible, after minutes of watching the figure come closer, Jon realized there was an imposter, a stranger in The Unwritten Lands.

Chapter Twenty-six
Friend or Foe?

‘Ah, my Lady,’ Schriven mellowly greeted her as Shaneal landed on his broad shoulder, about both of them there was a peaceful vacuum while beyond the storm she had raised blew thunderously through Paternor, The flames of the bonfire had been extinguished as easily as a match being blown out. Schriven’s voice purred. ‘My Lady, you have arrived at last.’
Shaneal was a bit unsure what to say, but she thought Schriven was definitely unnerving.  His eyes seemed to pierce through her blackbird’s form and saw her – Shaneal, the woman. Not slave or psybot, but that strong person who had listened to the Storytellers on that night long ago in Delgdreth.
‘Em,’ she started.  ‘So what are we going to do now? Escape?’
‘Escape?’ Schriven pondered. ‘Yes, that would be wise.  If we linger here too long the throng will come to its senses and I imagine there’ll be some restlessness.’ He paused for a long time still staring at Shaneal intensely.  She felt naked.
‘So, well, em, I mean what is it you want me to do?’
‘Do, my Lady?’  He sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Nothing of course, you have done enough. You have done everything.’
Above Paternor there was a blinding slash of lightening. The last thing she noticed before she fell away from her perch on his shoulder was his broad grin and a wink in his eye, made starkly bright as they reflected the pure whiteness of the lightening. Startled back into flight Shaneal circled the sodden bonfire looking for him. Instead she saw a beautiful turquoise and golden kingfisher.
‘Schriven?’ She asked the bird.
‘Of course my lady. Who else would I be?’ The Kingfisher said.
‘So we can go now?’
‘Why not? Whenever you’re ready.’   The Kingfisher flew out from the vacuum and into the rain. She flew after him more slowly, as if she were stumbling up a slope of loose rocks and shaking with nervousness. She felt pale and nondescript in comparison to the hot crystal colours of the kingfisher. He shone and burnt away the rain ahead of them.

An old woman, her back bent so far down that her head was parallel to the half-rotted timbers of the jetty, met Merve and Dalrosse as the stepped onto The Isle of Surcease.  From head to toe she was dressed in a shapeless black cloth that trailed raggedly on the jetty. A black cowl was stretched tight about her head.  Her nose was incredibly long, pockmarked and pale as a corpse.
Merve greeted her and she seemed to be communicating with sharp grunts from her nostrils.  Then her nose sniffed at Dalrosse and as if in surprise her nose seemed to stiffen and grow even longer. Difficulty she raised her head slightly up, her brown lips opened wide, wider still. Dalrosse saw she had no teeth. He shuddered almost taking a step backwards. Then the woman inhaled so deeply the Shouel felt that she is eating his scent.
Quickly, as if she were ashamed of herself she lowered her head, turned about and led the two of them to the derelict, eerily silent Palace. The Palace was the only building on the island. It lay, or huddled like a sick dog in a natural amphitheatre of three steeply sloping barren hills. Beyond the Palace and the hills was a blunt summit of a coal dark mountain. The mountain seemed to admonish the vain beauty of the Fordeni Sea’s tranquility. The unseen side of the mountain, Merve knew, sheared almost vertically, as if sliced by a keenly sharp blade, downwards to the salty waters on the far side of the island.
She locked the Palace doors behind Merve and the Shouel and pocketed the key.  The hallway ahead of them was almost completely abandoned to the dark. Dalrosse’s sharp ears could hear the sound of movement in the unknown length of the hallway. The sound was not the movement of human feet, nor even of scurrying rats, but of tiny, invisible insects: sighing spiders waiting impatiently on their webs: the stamp, stamping of cockroaches; the incessant buzzing of wings issued from what seemed a hundred thousand flies and the panicking wings of lost moths.
Merve and the woman moved on ahead – dark, hulking shapes that seemed like shadows of Dalrosse’s doubt.  Before following after them he hesitated, said:
‘Where are we going?’
Merve replied, his voice hinged with excitement. ‘To see Verlover.  The widowed Queen of Hazeldreame. Hurry up now.’
A hand at his back, boney and sharp with nails seemed to push the Shouel forwards, he turned there was no-one or if there was, cloaked in the dark shrouds of Hazeldreame, he had not such keen eyes to see them. Dalrosse knew that he had no choice but to following Merve and hesitantly he walked deeper into the shadow void palace.

Ahead, as the slope of corridor beneath his feet sipped shallowly down toward some new clittering, wheeze whistling and silent singing of the tiny creatures that were oblivious of Hazeldreame’s perpetual night, Dalrosse heard the grating of stiff hinged door opening. A blue, veiny light emerged from the room within, the pale, sea like light uncovered Merve’s face from the gloom. The light spread about him and Dalrosse thought that he was clothed in the wisps of a revenant. Merve’s eyes shone, his grey green eyes bright as a diamond, a smile of unhindered glee contorted his face. Merve walked into the room and the awful blood blue, the sudden panic of loneliness seemed to elongate the seconds turning time into a pit of blindness, pushed Dalrosse forward and walked into Verlover’s Hall.
In the less harsh light, the blue of Verlover’s now simple waiting now  fragile as an egg,  light of Verlover last of the Sucubiles rose from a couch by the blazing fireplace.
‘So Merve you bring me this…this?’
‘Shouel.’ Merve said, and then added. ‘Great Lady of the Ailves.’ he lowered head into a humble stoop, his back twisted like a hunchman. Dalrosse thought he might fall to his knees in supplication, pray to Verlover as to a god of The Meringal, praying for her love sick with longing.
‘Shouel,’ she said. ‘What are you? Where are you from?’
‘From far away,’ Dalrosse replied. ‘’What am I? I do not know. Orphaned and abandoned, seeking my way home. No, these things perhaps, but mainly I am lost and the voice in my heart that goaded me on is silent.’ Dalrosse felt the raw truth of his word and he almost wept. Homesick, yearning for that beach on the edge of Lake Leme, searching for Ashenmoire before the first true light of the sun dusted the Island, knowing it was too far away behind him, only a memory eroded as the past diminished with each step he took away from Ashenmoire. The truthfulness of his words surprised him; he had thought such words were unutterable, fearing them for they exposed the ash of his dreams, still ashes lying cold at the pit of his gut.
Verlover seemed to have loosened the grip on his stunted emotions and allowed to set them free. Or perhaps Verlover so resembled Marayela he felt a familiarity that allowed him to say what he wished. Dalrosse smiled as he remembered their flight together upon the back of Xhanu, smiled as he recalled looking down upon Menerth and seeing that it was a place he could easily forget and never return too. He had not laughed as loud, as he had up there, so free as if freedom was an old friend that he had always known see again. Xhanu had flown to the highest of the clouds, below lay the hard white contours of the geography of storm clouds, while above and all around was the bruised black star field. He wanted tell to Xhanu ‘go higher, fly deeper into the horizon less light of the stars and never stop.  He had lessened his grip from about Marayela waist.  Her hair mad in the wind, lashing softly his face. Even though grief tinged her voice, she had tried to sooth the pain Xhanu felt, she urged her on and extolled the High Wasp’s beauty and strength as she had performed for the Bede. Those mock truths she nibbled into his ear, seemed in comparison as she whispered to Xhanu, the most obvious of lies. Slowly as they descended, he tightened his grip about her waist not from fear of falling, but to imbue within her his own strength as she cajoled Xhanu onward.
Now she stood before him-though she was this queen, this Ailve, not the rose maiden who had unshackled him or healed his injuries, not Marayela, Verlover.
Verlover beckoned Dalrosse to her couch by the fire. ‘I see now why Merve has brought you.  He is sometimes presumptuous and brings gaggles of sprogs to tell them the histories of Hazeldreame of its glory days when Sucubiles mended the dreams of the mad, brought comfort to the lonely ones, how we healed hearts, now we are so few. The dreams of men have made us their enemies and without purpose we are nothing so most have faded and our power waned.’  Verlover smiled as if by smiling all the dark things of the world were banished. ‘But, little thing, you have come to break my solitude and remind me that I can still hearts.’
Dalrosse sat beside her, the cushions of her couch yielding as he sat and he felt he was floating, his thin body leant back and yielding softness melted away nagging pains, eviscerated his endless indecisions, so comfortable seeming to massage away knots in his muscles that had always been with him yet he had not realised.  Perhaps he slept, or perhaps the comfort of Verlover’s couch sent him see-sawing in and out of the dreams of those who slept upon the world, at last propelling him to the summer warm shallows of Lake Leme, floating there, his face to the sky, burden less and free of thought.
Verlover’s voice called him. Opening his eyes she caught his gaze. Dalrosse smiled.  This made her laugh.
‘With just a smile your face has realised how long you have grimaced at the world.  All those little lines that self-pity has cut into your face have been healed by your smile.’ She laughed again and infected Dalrosse laughed too, he could not help himself and he did not want to stop. As she watched him age melted from not just his face, but his body.  Time seemed to reshape itself around him as if at once he was unburdened by memory, yet innately wise. Slowly the laughter subsided, yet did not leave their eyes or smiles like a silent friend waiting to serve them.
‘You look like her.’ Dalrosse said.
‘Who?’
‘A  friend.  She’s dead now.’
‘Shh. Death. Do not speak of death in Hazeldreame. There is no death, Dalrosse, did you not know that? This friend this…’
‘Marayela.’
‘Marayela is everywhere now, the patina of her spirit overlays every particle of creation.  She is within in me as she is lodged in your heart.  You should not hold her within you with such hurt. For is not the pain yours, the lose yours.  Marayela now would wait forever in your heart if you could feel the loving instead of what you have lost.’
Dalrosse mumbled quietly.
‘What did you say?’ She asked.
‘It wasn’t until I realised she was gone did I know that I loved her so much.  I don’t want it to hurt, I don’t want to think of her and hurt. Is that what love is? If it is it doesn’t deserve the word love.’
She put an arm about his shoulder and he crushed into her like an infant to a mother. ‘No, that is not love, but it is what the worlds and humans have made of it, called love and in doing so blinded themselves to what it really is. Love isn’t difficult to understand, it isn’t hiding, and it wants to give when worlds reach out for it. Love serves yet yearns to be accepted. Love is in every moment but is left unseen, ignored forgotten, its gifts thrown away and stamped upon. Yet if even for a brief moment it is felt that moment would offer everything – true insight into a world disguised by greed and warring, unending needs. That moment would reveal such pain as unnecessary. That brief moment of love is like a flower left to grow in the long grass, a flower to be found, to kneel beside as the grass is parted. To see that is the flower’s gift, to witness the tiniest touch of love is the gift. All grief is gone and the pain of endings, the fear of being no more is revealed as the oldest lie.  That is the gift love gives if it is accepted, the gift of knowing that where there is a moment of love if looked for then the ageless roads of time are imbued with it and where no time exist there is only it.’
Then in the hall of Verlover a deep silence fell. Dalrosse noticed that Merve and the old woman had left sometime while they were talking.  The fire crackled and settled, the flames slowly fading as red embers glazed their faces with an orange glow. His head was filled with a tapestry of thought. In the silence beside her he remembered how alone he’d felt all his life and the moments of joy that had touched him seemed so brief, that it seemed they belonged to some others life.  His nagging mind had so often dwelt on the dark days of his life. Those days so real in memory he felt he had been forged by them. The hatred that folk felt for him seemed to have created who he was and forced him to hate them in return.  Was that all he was? Created by lies, mired and lost in a world that expected, demanded something from him. To fight back, to hate like them, knowing no forgiveness.
Perhaps there lied his indecision.  If he had been with Shaneal and Aflarien, if he had found them and brought them home, he could have fitted his family back together and not left them on their own paths of fear and unknowing, Dalrosse felt he had abandoned them and selfishly followed his own path.  A path that had no firm purpose in the end what would it bring? Would he have the power to hold Shaneal and Aflarien again? If it did not what was the point, he might heal the Black Rose; remove the blind sickness that blighted Menerth and return Men and Shouels to a land of peace. But if they were gone, if Shaneal was gone and Aflarien lost and he was still alive his eyes would strain to the horizon, watching for them.
Without them the earth would be ugly and the golden beaches where he had danced with Shaneal would be grey ashes and all beauty leeched from them.  He remembered he used to laugh when Aflarien would tell them of his dreams, Dalrosse would pretend to be a dreamsayer revealing the meaning of his dreams. Sometimes he would go collecting in the fields and woods with his brother, Aflarien knew the ways of the weather and Dalrosse had even seen him speak with squirrels and the occasional bird. Surprisingly they occasionally talked back. Aflarien was such a gentle person, a solid anchor of trust.  Many times he would pull the bullies off of him, they always came back, but if Aflarien was around Dalrosse was left in peace. Aflarien had taught him how to climb trees, which were fun and also a good way of avoiding the bullies. Unlike Shaneal he did not often come to the lake and in the last few years he had seldom seen him. When they’d been younger it had been just the three of them swimming in the sweet lake water. Aflarien would tell them the properties of the different mushrooms until they were bored. One time they had buried him in the sand as a punishment for going on so much.  They tried to show Shaneal how to climb trees, but weren’t very successful.  She tried to teach them new songs she’d made up, but Aflarien’s memory was terrible and he rather stuttered the songs than sang them. Dalrosse knew his brother’s head was teeming with dreams, crammed with stories and imaginings that it had no room for too many real things like eating and wearing clothes.
As these thoughts and memories tumbled through his mind, Verlover saw as she watched his face, at first she seemed  to see sadness, longing and regret filling his listless eyes, but by increments she saw that his face lifted into smile of knowing. Once she thought that is lips almost lift, broadly in a breath of a smile, once she thought he would laugh aloud.  She imagined what he witnessed from such a crimson light, so bright, perfected shine out like a comfort of a lighthouse `illuminating a sea wracked with dark, lit only by the roar of lightening. To Verlover, which each brief blink of his eyes a deluge of memory flashed past his mind’s eye. Watching she saw his she smile broadened at one of the youthful Aflarien rude jokes. Dalrosse giggled. In a so short time she saw that the memories dissipated.  . The Shouel clenched his eyes shut as if futility tried to clench the memories within him.  However, lacking choice, he reluctantly opened his eyes again, the bright purple of his eyes washed with a grey pallor of something lost. yet in those eyes there was a grim hope, those brief moments that she had spoke of, those flowers hidden but for the keenest to witnesses hidden in the long glass
As these thoughts and memories tumbled through his mind Verlover saw as she watched his face that he was at first sad, longing and regret filling his eyes, but by increments she saw that his lips striving toward a smile.  Once she thought that he would laugh out loud.  She imagined what he witnessed in his mind as the purple brightness of his eyes shone out like a harbor tower illuminating rough seas.  To Verlover it seemed memory after memory flashed passed his mind’s eye. At one his smile unconsciously broadened, at another – recalling one of Aflarien’s rude jokes – he giggled. She saw though that the memories were fading.  The Shouel clenched his eyes shut as if he was trying to seal the memories within him, but he opened them again. Those brief moments, those flowers in the long grass were hidden. However the smile on his face remained and she felt a new knowledge dawn upon him.
‘I am not made of hate,’ he said.
Verlover kissed his brow. ‘You are not. Hate tries to lodge within us, attracting more pain, more loathing, disfiguring all that is lovely and all that is possible. None, Dalrosse, are made of hate, but so many, too many yield to it, accept it and live by it. I see you understand this and you realise now that the love you’ve received has the power to turn you away from a future of revenge, an uncertain future, and one without meaning.  For here in this hallowed place where hearts are healed you are set on a path where all things are possible and while love remains with you there is no room for hate.  The heart knows.  Knowledge is just one of the gifts love gives.’
For awhile Dalrosse’s eyes held Verlover’s in his gaze.  As she had spoken old memories resurfaced- yet they were not true memories, perhaps instead a premonition of his road ahead, he seemed to be convinced that these memories were not of youth but a trail to premonition, something good, fixed in a time that snuggled in a new now, a undeniable future. Yes, as the Sucubiles words of healing chiming in his thoughts, at last he was Aflarien and Shaneal.  They had built a fiver on the sands of lake Leme.  Shaneal was in a new read dress; turning beneath the stars ass she danced. There two was Aflarien for a moment pretending to be stern and staid, until he leapt from a dune of sand and he stepped his feet, pounding and pummeling about the fire on glowed golden sand, in an ecstasy of dance. He grabbed his sisters by her arms, slow spinning around as their eyes looked up to the starlight. Dalrosse sang for them added to the whirling dervish of the dance. Shaneal and Aflarien.  From the Hall of Verlover he realized that the three of them were not children yet possessed the virginities of age. No, they had grown, seemingly years had passed, and maybe twenty maybe more years had aged them- yet still reenacting the unfettered youth and energy.  There song and dance echoed over the waters.  Dalrosse consumed in the Imaging that searched for its time, Dalrosse was filled again with a happy joy, a premonition of a future from which hopelessness had been erased.
Dalrosse seemed to sleep again. When he opened his eye he was alone on the couch, the heat from the fire barely perceptible.  He looked about him and saw Verlover standing in a shadow. In her hand she heard something He squinted, the sat up to try and get a better look.
‘Dalrosse, she said. ‘This is the Blue rose.  Once it blossomed in the Temple Lands of the Ailves hidden in the Mountains of Drendunde. In those days the Sucubiles were the friends of dreamers, of the mad and the lifelong lonely.  Long, long ago my folk left the Mountains and took with them the blue rose and brought it here to the Isle of Surcease. Now, only I and my two sisters are all that remain of the Sucubiles.  ‘Ahh,’ she smiled. ‘Little Shouel, we are so old, ancient as the walls of Hazeldreame’
Dalrosse allowed himself a smile of understanding, a smile so knowing, a crux of past and present, a link of hidden flowers lost in the fallow ground of unkempt grasses and by knowledge of love’s gift. Verlover gave him his last gift, the last healing and enwreathed herself from the glamour of Marayela.
Bent, and pale, dressed in a dusty ripped robe, her bald head, blotched bathed  in the blood red of the fire’s embers, Verlover walked slowly to Dalrosse and lay the blue Rose at his feet.
‘This is for you, and for all those whose hearts have no home for hate.’
Tentatively Dalrosse reached out a hand to the Sucubiles, a woman as ugly and diseased as Marayela was  beautiful, brimmed with health and energy.  His finger touched her dry face. Gently he lifted her face until their eyes met once more. Her eyes immense in her sockets, the pupils grey as if it had seen the moon full a million times, yet in the pinprick a bright light shone rayed from them and he saw she was neither crone or young woman.  She was the blue light, and that light had been in the world before the mountains of Menerth had been raised.
Dalrosse laughed and a part of him heard her also laughing, the amalgam of the enjoined joy. Their laughter sang of the creation of the world, their enjoined heart’s melodies.  His heart was caressed and tickled by her long, low laughter.  He laughed for so long and hers remained with him all his long, long lonely days ahead, bursting in his heart that heart Verlover had healed. She stood stock still, blue hued and diminished and with grief and hope he realized the Lady of the Isle of Surcease she was lost from the world.
 The Blue rose sat lightly at his feet, he touched the petals.  A blue dust wiped onto his fingertips and he put the blue stain fingers to his lips.  Though it lasted but for a moment, he found himself, twisted out of time and he found himself in rock strewn devastation.  Up ahead there was a figure, Dalrosse knew it was the lonely god, Drendunde, the banished, who had lost his way, unpraised, forgotten by the High Gods, long thrilled by exile. Drendunde had so loved the old world Rex Mundi had destroyed that they shunned him and abandoned him to his grief.  Yes Dalrosse knew this Drendunde who had founded the beginnings of Menerth. How, he had, loved those of the old lands in the endless space of the sky, but they were gone and he bereft escaped the ruined world and travelled to a new constellation and was drawn to Menerth.  Only Drendunde, a God spurned by other gods, the great coward of the Universe. In his lonely land disdained the ancient gods.  Drendunde had so long forsaken the Old world and Drendunde looked upon the ravaged Menerth, void of life, a rocky desert, vicious with molten seas and fiery river beds.  The seas were devoid of life, the towering mountains, bleak and empty of fauna and flowers. It reminded the Lonely God of the forsaken of Old Worlds that, yet, with a word he had created and made live.  He took his  first step upon the Menerth and there he tarried unwilling to leave it recalling millions years of the Old world where his green touch had filled his heart with green sap and the laughter of children.  For an age of a thousand days of searching upon Menerth he now had claimed, Drendunde tarried. Though he searched, and hoped for new life, green shoots of the first forests, recalling the laughter of the lost dead of the Old World.
Drendunde strode from one end of Menerth travelling as the revolutions of the world ran round him he remained the lonely God and a great despair overcame him. He had been defeated by Rex Mundi and all the goodness of the universes had been ruined. Here in his chosen world there was a mere paucity of life.  He was cursed, it seemed then by the high gods, that knew no empathy, new nothing of love and his grief, unshared, his own grief alone.  Tears fell from Drendunde’s eyes, one by one and at Drendunde’s feet the barren, rocky land dampened by his rush of tears until a curved pool formed. So blinded by his tears Drendunde did not notice the pool of water and a nudge of green growth rising into the air of Menerth.
Finally the tears of Drendunde ceased and he spied the green about the pool of his tears.
As Dalrosse watched the green life rose, green trees myriad of blossom.  From the pool of sunlight, a thorny, many branched rose lifted from the Isle set in the water of Drendunde’s tears. Sunlight gleamed from its leaves, the first rose and the final rose, black flowered, unfurling it’s petals to the Lonely Gods eyes. Seeing what he had made he grasped handful of water from the pool of tears, that in time would be named Lake Leme and scattered the waters upon the dusty lifeless lands of Menerth.  Dalrosse watched Drendunde cultivate and bring life overall the world of Menerth.  Then there were no men, or Shouels or any of the other races of Menerth.
Drendunde came back to Ashenmoire where the Black Rose grew, that had grown into a good green place. Deftly he plucked a petal from the Black Rose and put it in his in his mouth and gently chewed it. Without swallowing he spat the bits of the Black rose over the green vales and plains of burgeoning forests.  As Dalrosse witnessed time, eons, times stretched for a year of years and from the places the Black Rose petal pieces fell the sounds of laughter issued up from the world, a sound of laughter like a happy song issued, a sound of a newborn would make when he saw his Father’s face for the first time, recognizing that face and knowing only happiness.
With the laughter there too was song that rose louder and as Dalrosse watched Drendunde seeking out his children, the kin of the lonely god.  They were fair and loud with song, like those who had lingered long on The Old world before their destruction.  Drendunde spoke with them, aided them nurtured the growth of Menerth that his tears had conjured.  He taught them, helped them grow, multiply, he told them of love, as he had loved the Old World, at their destruction he felt no grief now. For they were corrupted, but that corruption had sent him here to new life, to Menerth and from it a new, bright place came from his loss.  Love was a river sent forth from a mountain brook.  Love ran with the river; touched each bank spinning toward the sea leaving behind fertile lands about. Though his children knew no knowledge of the Old World Drendunde had been left bereft, yet unforgotten in the mind of Drendunde.  He had coveted the innocence of the people of Menerth for these folk were new with no knowledge of fear and murder, war a meaningless word.  Yet Drendunde knew men’s hearts, how fickle and fey they were how thoughtless they could be. In his heart he knew that the people could be dazzled and transformed by powerful greed, a lust to control, and keep the lowly ones in servile.
He realized that he should birth on Menerth a new race of beings, a persistent people whom he would tell of the Rex Mundi’s destruction of The Lonely God’s old Demense, the world of war, of hate, of empathy’s lack. His world became their teacher so that in ever new generation of  Shouel  that  lived with men and men would be reminded them of their peaceful hearts before all hurt came upon them. They taught peace to the men and every generation they lived with men in peace, they were to quell their anger and unease, bring laughter to the hardiest warriors, tell of their blessed conception, and to banish destruction to a time before Drendunde’s tears.
Drendunde took a handful a handful of fertile earth from Ashenmoire and molded the first of the Shouels; he washed the earth beings in the water’s on the pool of his tears and fed them the promise of the Black Rose petals.
Dalrosse smiled as he saw the first few Shouels walk and talk, they were glad of this life that was bestowed upon them.  He heard Drendunde tutor them, warned them how men, the first folk could destroy worlds to get what they wanted, gold, power and the subjugation of the weak.
As Dalrosse watched the numbers of the two folks grew and, by the world nurtured by the world wide grace of the Black Rose.
Then the lonely God, Drendunde the first hid himself from his children and dwelt upon Ashenmoire tending the Black Rose and the gardens of the Island. On Menerth, for many a decade of decades the Shouels were always known as the friends of humans. The Shouels were their friends, a wide world family; those wise people taught them to see the senselessness of greed when the whole vastness of Menerth was them to share. Though alas conflict came and was nurtured by jealous Gods great beings besotted by the beautiful world where they watched beyond the realms of the Menerth. In time they would subdue it, and rule over it and they had no thought for the peoples of Menerth.  They demanded praise needed blood sacrifice to abate their cruelty and the denizens of the Menerth only hope was to submit to their commands.  Yet, when their hearts recalled Drendunde they told themselves he must think much of us to give Menerth to share and the peoples of that world were grateful.
As the taste of the blue powder of the Blue rose dissipated from Dalrosse’s tongue the long creation of Menerth slowly unfolded and he was allowed one last look at the new life’s on Menerth, where life was not locked in memorylessness where there were no locks and walls of defense constructed. Here there were no locks, there were no slaves and an equality between human and Shouel, man and woman. If there anger. If the were disagreements, or anger, the teaching of the Shouels helped the other races with discussion and persuasion.  No cities were built in those early days before the jealous Gods came, here in the forest about Ashenmoire, a time would come when a king with no power was foretold.  With the last moment of his long observation, time twisting, Dalrosse was filled with envy at all that he had witnessed.
Merve stood by him now looking at the still standing corpse of Verlover.
‘Help me lay her down,’ Merve said. Together Dalrosse helped him carry her to her couch, the fire beside it almost dark and cold. The Shouel heard the sound of sobbing, a stifled crying.  He thought it may have come from some other part of Hazeldreame, then as Merve lifted his face Dalrosse saw that Merve’s face was wet with tears. He wanted to comfort the man as Verlover had comforted with him.  He spoke although he was unsure of himself.
‘I don’t think she would want you to be sad.’
Merve sniffed away the last of his tears. ‘I am not crying because I am sad. I cry only when I am happy. I am happy because I brought you here. Verlover knew she would be no longer and that all her memories and all she had done for others would whisper, unheard throughout the Hall of Verlover.  But because you came here my friend Dalrosse, she too was healed and able in the end to forsake her life that she knows she lingers in the sap and green rush of the Blue Rose.
The Shouels held a hand of her to his his heart.  Here, also.’  Dalrosse felt as tall as Merve as he spoke, brimming with energy, stamping a dance on the dusty floor of Verlover’s hall hearing the Sucubiles laughter in his heart.

Thursday 16 January 2014

thrice advent chapters 23 and 24


Chapter Twenty-three
The Isle of Surcease

Caked in mud and weary Dalrosse lay by the gate of Paternor and rested his head on the cool sandstone wall. He watched the people passing.  All the men were tall and black skinned the women in their finest clothes and with flowers in their hair, while mingling and playing among them the children singing nursery rhymes and the more precocious children recited the epic poem of the founding of Paternor. Carts trundled in and out of the gates. His eyes ate in the vibrancy of the people, even he sang along to some of the nursery rhymes. Yet, whether they sauntered by or rushed away to the burning- no-one noticed Dalrosse.

He felt as if he were under a weightless cape of invisibility. He rested back on the cool stone, feeling so comfortable and watched the people going by hour after hour. He watched as the stream of people slowly became a trickle of latecomers, then the street about him was silent and empty and slowly the darkening of the day began. Softly, at first, blessedly the rain began to fall, and then there was nothing but a flood from cracked sea of the sky. The rain washed off the dirt from the Marshes, then traced back into slow heavy pelts of water, then finally the remnants of a fine drizzle. He was cleaned and aware of himself as if the haunted memories of the White Cottage were washed away and resolved into forgetfulness. Those memories of when he had devoured the last of Xhanu, The High Wasp; the memory of the Janitor who had brought a final plate, he ordered Marayela to lay the plate before the Shouel, Xhanu’s little, dead, curled yellow and black daughter, yet as large as Dalrosse, but looking so fragile.  The High Queen of the parasites precious daughter dead upon the Janitor’s table. First he began to eat her eyes… but that memory was gone. Gone now as the rain.
A voice spoke from the starless dark of the city.
‘Is it you?’ The voice asks. ‘Is it really you?’  The figure stepped into a faltering torchlight. ‘It is. How could I forget you, Dalrosse, you gave me my voice after thirty years.  You sent me into the rain, away from the coldness and cowardice of my silent days. Yes it is you, who offered me freedom and I ran laughing into the rain all those years ago.’
Dalrosse felt bewildered, he had no recollection of the man.
‘Do you not know me?’ Oh so much time has passed and I see weariness has taken the place of your urge to live your quest.  Age has shown me how timeless the word is, but you brave Dalrosse youth has lingered upon you as if all the days and nights since last we met for you have run backward, or that merely a single day has gone since then.’
Tears came to Dalrosse’s eyes, for still he did not know who this man was.
‘Do you not know me.?’ He asked again. ‘I see your broken heart and death’s dart in your breast. Was she lovely?’
Dalrosse saw Marayela’s face in his head and dawn like light shone bright in his purple eyes and a smile came to his face.
‘I had never seen beauty, not even the sight of Ashenmoire on Summers Day was ever as beautiful she.’ He spoke the words so slowly, each tentatively passing his lips and with the words the blindness fell from eyes.
‘Yes, yes’ Dalrosse said. ‘You helped me escape from Eaun.  Your name...I know it…but, no. Tell me.’
‘I was Merve then, since then I have many names, but yes to you I am Merve.  The people here in Paternor call me the lonely wanderer and laugh at my pink skin, but some would pay with their lives for my carvings should I ask it of them. Though the children know me as the hairy clown and their laughter makes everyday a blessing. You can call me Merve.’  He stood beside the Shouel and lifted him up. With Dalrosse on his back Merve walked to a cove at an edge of The Fordeni Sea where his boat was berthed.
He cast off the line, then said, before Dalrosse slept under the unfurled sails. ‘I have my home at times on the Isle of Surcease, where the Ailves, healing women, live.  They heal hearts.’
Dalrosse slept and there were no dreams and there were no nightmares.







                                                                 

Chapter 24
The Marriage of Shaneal and Aflarien

‘They despise me and call me death. Yet I am life immortal. They are but fools and do not tax themselves.’ Aflarien stormed at Liala his wife who seemed to shrink at the scorn in his voice. Inside she wept at that test the witches of Opaydaemia had set her. I love him now, Aflarien, the anti-Author. I love him so, but his death will be on his own hand. Not as the Witches had said because of his actions and not because of the sloth and slowness that they said he had brought to the lands. For more the Witches spoke:
‘He has despoiled thought – treats thought as if it were a game or an empty play.’ However Liala knew the Witches were stuck in their Ivory dreams – the gateway they barred themselves behind, while with the remnants of Aflarien broken heart he sees that only he can change the Menerth and offers truths from the gates of Horn. He offers a new truth, a new turn for all and a time for new stars. I have seen them wheeling across the sky, she recalled.
Liala was locked in the pact she had made with the Witches and still locked within the gates of Ivory with them as if she were a specter in the real world. Behind the Gates there were no courts and kingships-there was only room to dance, a longing to play and vibrant tousled dreams.
‘They say I am the despiser of the dawn.’ Aflarien’s voice seemed to smash her backways to childhood innocence with the force of his words. ‘Yet, I am the fresh dawn, the light dispersing the dark, the heat that folds and clothes the Menerth, touching beauty with these dew diamante fingers that glorify all.’
They said, those Opaydeamian Witches on the edge of morning that Aflarien deconstructed the day.  Yet, Liala knew he was the lonely star. ‘Lord of Ashenmoire-my lonely star’ she whispered to herself, while they whispered he had infected the Menerth with a new poison, cureless. That he was the storm, the sudden death, the empty beat of the weeping heart. The Witches though had brought Liala to Aflarien and together they had a single heart and she knew she would never be alone in her mortal life, now. And only he had taught her how to love the Menerth.
The pact though remained. Not today, but when the moon was banished from the sky she would kill him. The Menerth then would lose the anti-author. His heart would cease, but her pact would be fulfilled. The thought of it had already cracked her heart and ripped the need to exist from her. Lost and simple Liala. A smashed ruby on the gates of Ivory.
‘Shh my darling,’ she says and kisses his ear. ‘My darlings do not fret. Those Witches conjure with words and even they do not know if their words are truth or lies.’
Aflarien’s lips lifted into a smile and he guided her to sit upon his knee and sang to her a song he had learnt long ago in Delgdreth and as he sang those songs endless memories of youth no longer his own  flitted through his mind as if, in the song was a sudden memory of a dream. A surprise broadening his smile, his beautiful smile.  
Liala lay beneath his long, long smile and his song lulled her into a tenderness of sleep.  Aflarien rose with his wife cradled in his arms. He looked at the two silver cups upon the table beside them. Hers was empty. His untouched. He knew that by the time he took her through to their silk draped bedroom she would no longer be alive.  He lay her down on the bed. No more breath, no more thought, but lighter as if the tautness of gravity had slackened. At last death, he saw the thought in her eyes that had not closed. Before he left the bedroom he bestowed the gratitude of his smile upon her until there was nothing but a smile scarred upon his face.
When he turned away the smile melted away like a cauldron of bubbling wax. He strode to the wide staircase. Heavy boots echoing as he walked to the lowest level of Helvearn and out into the dawn of Ashenmoire. Before the anti-Author knew it he was walking down into the Hollow of Armoroth. He sat upon his rock and remained sitting until midday looking at the dying Black Rose, and to an observer it would seem they were in silent communication. With the sun in the zenith he climbed up from The Hollow and looked out onto Lake Leme.
Fine Misgivings had almost reached the island’s harbor.  King Loor would attend to him shortly. Aflarien stood and watched until the ship was secured and the masts furled. He saw King Loor take his first steps upon Ashenmoire.
Aflarien had attained the top most level of Helvearn long before Loor and his entourage was permitted into his presence. He knew, of course, that the King would not bow, but the Lady of Demorol curtsied and never once looked at him.  Aflarien tried to be attentive as the King spoke of his long journey, but also there was a recounting of his last conversation with the unAuthor.
‘Of course I didn’t understand hardly a word of what he was saying, he scribes stood staring at him in confusion as if they’d run out of ink.’
‘And the Author?’ Aflarien wondered.
‘Gone. Lost. The Never Ghosts searched the whole of Esplomeoir and none found him.’
Aflarien laughed. ‘Not gone. Not lost. I guess where he has gone. Enough now.  Bring forward the Lady of Demorol.’
Shaneal rose from the sparkling floor of Helvearn and approached Aflarien. Oh, she was sweet, she smelt of sweetness, of nectar. The air about him was abundant with her fragrance. Finally their eyes touched Aflarien showed no recollection of Shaneal, or Shaneal any for Aflarien. She was such a glorious stranger. He beckoned to her and offered her the seat beside him. Once more King Loor spoke.
‘Shall I join you together now, Lord?’
‘What does the Lady say?’
Shaneal smiled and Aflarien laughed. And so at the pinnacle of Helvearn as the gloaming was ushered onto Ashenmoire Shaneal and Aflarien, brother to sister were wed by Loor of Tasen. He put her left hand into his right and bestowed the greatest of blessings.






Tuesday 7 January 2014

Thrice Advent Chapters 21 and 22


Chapter Twenty-one
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE BLACKBIRD

With the blood of the Crow still upon Shaneal, slowly at first, but soon getting the hang of it with soaring flight she crossed the river. On and on she went and didn’t seem to tire and gained to high mountain fringes of The Bede’s Demense. She fed and rested simply and briefly and for days she followed the undulations of the River Grule as Peth. To the surprise of a small urchin boy she asked him if he knew the direction to The Cottage of the White Rose.  For a moment the boy stared dumbfounded by the blackbird but blurted out.
‘You don’t want to go there- The Caretaker’ll have you in his pot before you know it.’
Shaneal laughed. ‘He’d have to catch me first. So please tell me if you know, my brother is held prisoner there and he has no-one to help him but this little Blackbird.’
The child told her the little he knew, which wasn’t much, as had hardly ventured from Peth.  In thanks and as he finished his instructions Shaneal sang a song for him and flew away.  He watched her go and whistled to himself her tune.
Peth was a long way from the Cottage but she was anxious with haste and did not allow herself to rest. The Cottage was in darkness when she finally arrived, dark all except for a dim light from the kitchen window. Looking in through the window, hunched over and ragged, old beyond his years Dalrosse sat at the kitchen table.
Beside him on the floor a beautiful woman with long blonde hair was asleep, her thick lips white with froth and spittle. With her bill she tapped futilely on the closed window. Dalrosse and the woman did not stir. She wondered what she could to rouse them, tap, tapping on the window. She hopped off the window sill and flew about the cottage looking for a way in. Ashe thankfully found a window barely open, yet wide enough for her to get in.
At first she did not notice The Caretaker on his rocking chair, but the creak of the wood tipping back and forth as he breathed, snored and snorted alerted Shaneal to his presence. Hastily, her heartbeat fluttering with anxiety she found her way to the kitchen, to her dear Dalrosse and perched on his shoulder. How was she going to wake him without making a noise that would awaken The Caretaker?
Shaneal suddenly had an idea.  Gently at first for fear of hurting Dalrosse she started pecking his cheek.  He mumbled muffled words in his sleep but didn’t awaken.  She pecked a bit harder, yet still he slept. Finally, in frustration, she pecked his cheek until she drew blood. His eyes opened in shock.  She thought he was going to scream.
‘Shh. Dalrosse it’s me. You’re with me. Shaneal. Just shh or you’ll wake him.’ His once bright purple eyes were misted over like low clouds over a lovely lake.  Irritated he wiped the blood away she had drawn from his face, then turned and focused on the blackbird.
‘Shaneal? You’re not Shaneal.’
‘I might not look like her, but a lots been going on since we last saw each other. Crow sent me to help you.’
The half-devoured head of Xhanu was still on the kitchen table and Dalrosse with his dirty ragged fingers tore some flesh from it and urgently stuffed it into his mouth.
‘Dalrosse, stop it,’ she said quietly.
He wasn’t listening, still chewing the first mouthful he grabbed another fistful of Xhanu’s flesh and stuffed it into his mouth.  Angrily Shaneal stabbed him with her beak, his arm rose up to strike her away, but she flew deftly to the ceiling of the kitchen.  Half-heartedly Dalrosse took another handful of the dead High wasp, chewed and swallowed his face yellow with nausea and sunk back into his chair and sleep.
Fluttering about the room she remembered the woman and wondered who she was. She landed beside Marayela who was softly snoring almost soundlessly, her chest barely lifting with breaths, perhaps Shaneal half thought she was dead.
Unexpectedly the woman lying in a feotal position started to convulse spasmodically then her body became rigid as if her spine had become a steel pole.  She began to retch and vomit Xhanu’s undigested flesh projecting from her lips and cascading down upon her body. Marayela then lurched back into stillness.  Her green eyes opened wide only the blinking of her eyes movement coming from her.  The balls of her eyes turned to the Blackbird. Whispering, she asked:
‘What new torture are you?’
Instead of trying to explain Shaneal sang a soft sweet song, one of calmness, full of melodious peace, compassionate and healing.
A smile, as if Marayela had never smiled before, slipped onto her lips.  Slowly she sat up, held out her hand and Shaneal landed upon it.
‘Who are you?’ Marayela asked.  When Shaneal spoke she wasn’t surprised. If crows can talk why not blackbirds?
‘I’m Dalrosse’s sister. Can you help me wake him up?’
Marayela stopped smiling. ‘He’s been like that for days. The Caretaker has filled him with his sickness, Dalrosse’s remembers nothing about himself.  He just does what he’s told- I’m much the same.’ Each word she spoke was punctuated by heavy breaths. ‘The Caretaker will wake soon and find new fun in us.  You should leave before he wakes.’
‘I won’t leave without Dalrosse.’ She twittered. ‘Nor you.’ Shaneal flew back to the kitchen table while the Bede’s maid slowly got to her feet and walked to where Dalrosse lolled in the chair unconscious.
‘Can you sing to him? Wake him?’
Shaneal tried but seeing her brother in such a dreadful state and the hideous head of the Wasp made her song a cacophony of grief. Marayela tried shaking his shoulders, but he just sat unable to be roused.  His tight lips smiling as if he was held in a dreamstate.Perhaps enthralled by one of Jon Esierk’s stories.
Then from the other room there was a loud coughing and the sound of The Caretaker spitting out his phlegm. They heard him stand and start walking toward the kitchen. Marayela told the Blackbird to hide while she resumed her place on the floor. Shaneal didn’t know where to hide, but an opened cupboard door seemed better than anywhere.  There was plenty of room within since besides a few candles and some flints there was little else.
Shaneal felt an age of forgotten fire, she felt within her the pent up anger of the days in her father’s Inn, each day a chore.  In her too was the thought of her little brother and all the fun they had on the beaches of Leme, but the fire was stronger.  Yet, as she dwelt in the Blackbird form, a cool wind swept over her, like a memory of the first time as a little one that ventures into the blast of a gale. A sweet cloud of song spoke sweetly in her mind.
You are the fire it sang.  You are fire, a gift from the Crow.  Unleash the fire and stop the torments of whom you Love, he is precious to us, and in his despair he waits for your hope unleash the fire in and raze to the ground this accursed place.
But, how?  She wondered, then she felt a spasm of hurt at one moment wrenching inside her then a second later returning within her, filling her womb, soaring through her blood vessels. The spasms subsided and she seemed to grow larger, filling the kitchen cupboard, and growing more until she seemed to fill the whole cottage, her blackbird eyes shone with the fire that was growing within her.  At once her attention was fixed upon The Caretaker.
Shaneal emerged from the cupboard and flew in circles about the abhorrent man, at first he tried to catch her but she was too swift and the faster she danced about him smoke issued from his nose and ears, from his fingertips and then from each pore of his skin.  Then he erupted into a statue of flame, flailing his arms about trying to batter out the flames.  He fell upon the table, setting alight the carcass of Xhanu.  Shaneal called to Marayela to help Dalrosse up and to get him out of the cottage.  At first the Bede’s maid stumbled to her feet in surprise unable to look away from the fire eaten man.  Yet she, despite her sickness and weariness of heart, she rushed to the Shouel’s side and lifted him from his chair and half carried him out of the cottage, Dalrosse numb legs dragging behind him as if he were unwilling to depart the white cottage.
Now Shaneal was not a blackbird, but a firebird and the air about her was filled with flame.  The kitchen was an inferno of intense heat and blinding orange.  The Caretaker had ceased thrashing the flames from his body and lay prone, dead on the kitchen table.
It is enough, the sweet cloud of song melodious in her head and Shaneal diminished once more into the form of a blackbird.  She flew from the cottage and went to Dalrosse lying in the unkempt garden.  Marayela stood over him.  She saw there was a look of indecision on the face of the woman from the Demense. Shaneal asked her what was wrong.
‘The Roses.  We cannot let the Roses burn.’  Leaving Dalrosse and the Blackbird she ran back into the cottage. Moments passed then minutes.  Dalrosse was beginning to come round to consciousness when Marayela appeared from the cottage the glass box with the red and white rose in her hands while the rest of her was on fire.  With her last few steps she placed the glass box beside the Shouels body, stumbled fell back as the fire completely consumed her body.  She emitted a scream as if all the beauty and energy of her life was leaving her body.  Then she was silent and was no more.




                                                                               



                                                                        Chapter 22
                                                                   The Forgotten Way.

Dalrosse was cold.  He knew cold: it seemed to remain with him even though he couldn’t remember the word. Yet, upon the Shouel the sunlight shattered down through the red drenched upper branches of the trees that bordered the marshes of Muem.  The heat too beat down without care, hot air flowed over him in waves, but within him Dalrosse knew only cold, though he was incapable of remembering the word only the meaning of it raged in him.
Above flew Shaneal, a little ahead.  She felt she was leading Dalrosse along on a taut rope. At first as they left the environs of the burning cottage she was unsure where to take her brother.  He looked so ill like a cobwebbed shadow; she could hardly look at him. Cold, stinking sweat poured from him and he stumbled after her, clutched within him, shaking. Perhaps with terror, as if he were in a place so far removed from Shaneal that she could not bear even to imagine it.
The pain within had long since driven him mad, yet he had no words pain, nor could he cry out for help, or find the necessity to scream.  All there was the cold, wrapped about him like a deceptive blanket, each step he carried on he carried the pain with him.
The angel, who had sparked the fire within Shaneal, had whispered that she should head for Paternor and find a healer there called Schriven. As the trees diminished the nearer they came to the marsh Shaneal flew higher and saw how desolate and mud-blackened Muem marshes were.  She wondered how far it was to Paternor. The marsh went on to the horizon, its stink was overpowering as if it were sweating mud.
Shaneal flew into the encroaching night that seemed to reflect the desolation and still emptiness of Muem, Dalrosse followed behind. Almost as soon as he stepped into the marsh he was covered in mud, sometimes he floundered, became a being made of mud, his hardly conscious eyes blank, yet he struggled on after the blackbird while within there was only the cold, a wind shrieking through him, twisting and ripping any thought of emotion.  Yet he continued
Through the night they slowly went forward to Paternor. By morning it seemed they had barely advanced a few miles, the woods still visible behind them while Muem stretched on, an endless sea of dirt. Dalrosse fell to the soft ground exhausted and was taken by a deep sleep, curled up; sleep the only cure for the madness that had taken him.
As Dalrosse slept Shaneal flew on ahead.  Soon there was a sharp tang of salt in the air,
she flew higher, exhilarated by her own swiftness as she sped over the bog, and then,
there just on the edge of sight a blue diamond of water. There was still a long way to
travel.  She flew back to Dalrosse.  His breathing was slow, sometimes she thought she
could hear his voice muttering, yet couldn’t hear what he was saying. He would grab a
handful of mud as if it were clay and in his dream-locked mind his hands were kneading
and sculpting an image from the edge of his soul.

                        
                                                              *************************
She perched upon him as he slept until he awoke with the darkness. He rose, as if bidden, hardly aware of the dried mud he was caked in. Once more she took flight and Dalrosse stumbled back into the marsh.

Four nights and days passed before they approached the edges of the marsh and the city beside the sea. Each day Shaneal perched upon him as he slept. Each night her heart seemed to break as she watched the nightmare creature of the mire he had become, struggling on without choice or reason. He would fall as the first light entered the morning and sleep until the darkness came. To comfort him, or perhaps herself, she sang sleeping songs and old songs that they’d sang when she was a child by the lake. Each night she saw how he seemed to grow sicker, floundering more in the sticky mud, he seemed so much more humbled by a great weight falling upon him, he never lifted his head as if he could force his feet on by looking at them.

On the fifth day Paternor on the eastern coast of Fordeni Sea hove into view. Dalrosse stared at the azure; diamond drenched sea and the white towers of Paternor as if they were not there, then once more fell into a torpor of sleep. Shaneal did not perch on him that day, but flew on weary wings to Paternor and thought about how she would find the healer. Schriven. She breasted over the gated walls of the city and sank into a slow dive landing on an upturned cart of fruit in a busy market.

After the quiet and loneliness she had felt the last few days, suddenly there were far too many people about.  She felt confused and completely unsure of what she should do. On the paved road between vast arrays of markets stalls hundreds of people were passing along. A river of bright colours and a festive air as they walked along talking or singing, some went to buy food, others led children along.  She wondered where they were going as she jumped from the cart and started pecking at a red apple.

Dalrosse startled awake hot with the slime and stench of Muem about him. Up ahead his bewildered eyes saw the city, the walls and towers blotched pink and violet as they were painted by the rising sun. It seemed to the Shouel that he had lost something, but a raincloud passed over the sun, leaving the world dull, a monochrome seemed to dust the city and the roar of the gale that had momentarily stilled in his mind returned and thought fell from him and he was alone in the cold. He tried to get up, but slipped, yet from some strength lost in his sub-consciousness he rose up again this time making a few steps before he slithered back into mud. He lay there then wrapped in ice, unmoving incapable of self pity.
Shaneal thought about approaching a few of the beautifully, tall, dark skinned folk who rushed excited down the round, but they seemed a world away and for a talking blackbird she felt somehow tongue tied. She almost flew to a shoulder of market man who was cutting meat for the customer who had been seduced by the smell. Yet, she didn’t.  In a way she was waiting.  The Angel who had raged the fire within her at The White Cottage she knew would help, though she heard no voice within her heart or mind. So alone and desperate she felt, for her only help and guide had abandoned her.   Shaneal envisioned her brother. Dalrosse was so ill.  If only the Angel would come and bring peace to her worries.
Perhaps there was a glimmer hope spreading through the fog that had fallen upon her as she remembered Crow’s words: that without her beside him he would always be in danger and with her tender care ail his song and bring hope and imagining to him. And she knew then that at all cost save find Schriven and get his help.

Now Dalrosse walked in another place.  Here there was warm and soft breath on the sea wind.  Here he was freshly clean and his eyes were drawn to the green waters. Here he was not alone, he laughed and tousled with a world of friends, but in his smile and song as he stood on a wide sea rippled beach Dalrosse kept thinking.  I’ve lost something. Over and over the words were repeated, hypnotic; like a tune played in his Father’s Inn he could not stop singing. But, he smiled and shrugged away the thought. ‘What have I lost, when here I have everything’ and he sang songs that raised to the blue lightening birds high overhead. Here too was a hand that held his and he turned, there beside him a Shouel woman, divinely beautiful, as familiar as an immortal thought. A broad smile was upon her face.  She kissed him, held his hand tighter and they ran to the edge of the sea. There, she and he seemed to stand in existence lifelong, diving and swimming splashing water and loving in the salty water.

At times Dalrosse would  look back up the beach saw Shouel children in the sand and he knew instantly they were his kin, as he watched even the littlest grew into maturity and disappeared over a bank of sand to follow the course of their lives. She stood with him once more at the edge of the sea, gripping his hand. She said.

‘What will we do now the children have gone?
He smiled and stared at the sky that rained beauty. ‘Everything’ He answered. Yes here there was warmth and a world enchanted, the future of a hand that held, a glory of future. Then out of a edge of a surprise, the suddenness of a grey, foreboding sky obscured the blue lightening birds and a storm crashed the water and from the despair of the sudden dark a claw of cloud reached down trying to wrench him from her soft hand. Pulling and pulling at him and a voice growing louder and louder than the sound of the storm and the wall of rain, it repeated and lisped  a dirge of words, dark as an evil litany of a Deathsayer the grip of the clouds grew  and wrestled him from his love upon the beach and he felt sick with loss. He took a final look at her face to remember ever detail and the sound of her voice, her thin song in his ear and the touch of her lips not enough for him to resist the giant fist of whirling cloud. And still the voice grew louder and the words blistered his thoughts, commanding, calling him up.

‘Dalrosse.  I can help you, only I. Dalrosse come to me now. I’ll always find you and you will love none but.  You will love none but me.’

Only the voice was Dalrosse’s world, his existence trembled in the pauses between the words.  He recognized the voice, but not the poison that filled it, an inhuman warp of the simple voice that he knew. Dalrosse knew fear. He needed to stand upon the beach again. He had become demented with loneliness without her soft face before him, her fingers grasping his hand.  Then need was gone and he awoke.

Dalrosse found himself once more on the verge of the marsh; ahead the Fordeni Sea lay placid to the horizon. He lay shivering alone beneath the sun, blackened by the days in Muem as if the marsh had created a being of mud and he had been spawned and spat out by the marsh. His only memory was her purple eyes and her hands that had lodged in his mind.  Her hand lifted him from the mud and led him to the gates of Paternor, brother of the sea.



Shaneal still sat upon the fruit cart, her mind full of conflicting thoughts, but then in an instance the air about her boiled with heat. Ripples of growing intensity ripped and wrenched apart the atmosphere, cracking the reality about her. She felt such a joy as it flowed over her as if there was an almighty change in the world almost as if the ground about her had sung out in exultation.

Now there was hope and clarity and she knew she would find the Healer. Flying to the butcher’s cart words stumbled from her beak asking him where she might find Schriven.

The butcher laughed. ‘Go follow the crowds. Soon, no doubt you will find him. The Necroman burns today, but you better rush there before it’s all over.’

‘The Necroman?’

‘Where have you been, Schriven of course, he set a palsy upon the Lay Lord.’ The butcher explained. ‘What do you want him for?’ He asked, but Shaneal had flown off on fast beating wings, over the heads of the stragglers hastening toward to the execution of the healer.

The road dipped and wound it’s was down to Paternor Square.  So many people were there. Ahead she saw in the midst of the circular throng of people a figure dressed in white.  He was tall, over seven feet, and with a lion’s mane of sun whitened hair.  As she watched two soldiers stood either side of him then led him to the dark pole of the stake. They hoisted him into position and tied him the wooden stake amidst the wood of the enkindled bonfire.

So, she presumed, this must be Schriven.  About the bonfire some of the folk cried:

‘No- Release him!’ While the rest, those more rowdy, drunk with screaming and laughter cried incessantly:

‘Kill the Necroman.’ A further ten soldiers appeared and ranged about the edge of the crowd in case the spectators got more unruly. Then three torchbearers approached the base of the bonfire, they plunged their flames into the dry wood as the Square vibrated with the ecstasy and the woe of the folk. Slowly the flames took hold and minute by minute the flames reached up, orange whips fatally tickling at Schriven’s feet. Schriven though did not struggle, or speak.  He looked up the rooftop where Shaneal had found a place to perch. For a moment, or even half a moment their eyes locked onto one another’s and a thin smile filled Schriven’s face.  Now, though, the fire was pure and unstoppable and he was hidden by the smoke.
She hesitated, yet when their eyes had touched she knew what it was that she should do.

Shaneal flew into the smoke and the lashing flames and there the Angel returned to her. She became an icy storm, raining down sleet and sending forth a blistering wind, she was the billowing gale that dissipated the flames.

When the smoke cleared and the flames had died there was silence in Paternor Square.