Thrice Advent by Adam Parry chapters 29 and 30

Chapter 29

The Song of Shaneal

King Loor watched Shaneal all evening wondering if she would betray him – or rather when she would betray him. Shaneal would reveal herself, it would be an accident, the woman, King Loor knew would never betray him intentionally, but there would be something and Aflarien would realize, know, and when he knew…King Loor wouldn’t know what to do. Of course I will feign innocence, say that I had too had been fooled.

AS he watched Shaneal deep in conversation with her husband Loor fidgeted ion his chair, stifled a yawn and knew he should have brought a book with him and wondered if there was a library in Helvearn.

Aflarien’s sister laughed at something her brother had said. Perhaps her laughter reminded her husband of something.  He turned his head to the King. A bead of sweat dripped down Loor’s forehead and landed on his eyelashes, he closed his eye for a moment, when he opened it again hot salty water stung it, his vision for a moment seemed like he was looking out through a crystal glass. Aflarien said;

‘I forgot to ask you. Where is the unAuthor? I presume you brought him with you?’

‘He’s on the ship. I didn’t bring him up what with the wedding. The lady of Demorel has never met him and today of all days I thought it wise to leave on the ship until you can spend time with him alone.’

‘Yes. Wise,’  he turned back his head and looked at Shaneal, his lips neither smiled or slipped into a frown , they lay over his face, his lips resting on the other as if relaxed, patient, waiting for the long kiss Shaneal would share with him.

She was telling him about Demorel and the creatures that lived in the forest about the tower. Fangers and sawtooths hunted for their prides that slept in the low branches. Herds of slowdeers raced from the slungtree’s tendrils. There were also the tusklumberers, she told him.  He tried to imagine the enormous beasts that she described with their two tusks curving down to the forest floor then reaching up to a prick pointed semi-circle. She said that the tusks were two or three time longer the than the Tusklumber’s bodies.  Her voice brightened when she said she would sing the Song Beetle’s love song. Often she would awaken early listening to him sing from the far side of Island from the tower of Demorel his beauteous but vain call for a mate.

‘I am so sad when he stops singing; Demorol seems so silent as if the whole Island hopes that she would sing back to him.’ Shaneal cold not look at her husband. Exasperated she wondered when her father was going to leave them alone. She smiled down at the white lacing in the marble floor.

‘Once I tried to sing back to the Song Beetle , pretending to be his mate singing to him at last, but he mustn’t have her heard or understood but I hoped that it might have made him happier.  Demorel was silent for a long time and I was afraid that I’d gone deaf, and then the chimpering apes woke with the sun through the green canopy of trees.’ She laughs as she recalled the squeals and the chirps of they as the danced over the tops of the trees.

Graheal, Loot thought, you’re a wonder. He wanted to clap his hands in applause. A diddikum, a Phytomonger, yes, of course, but Graheal you’re an Artist. He wanted to stand up and do a little jig. Graheal It’s worked.

The King coughed and said politely to Lord Aflarien.  ‘I heard Helvearn had a library, could you direct me to it?’

‘Certainly your majesty, but I burnt all the Shouel books once my rats killed all of them on the island. Luckily Helvearn has lots of windows so the smoke cleared quickly. King Loor, I’m sorry you must be bored.’ He turned to his new wife. ‘Forgive me, but your father has told me often how beautiful your singing is. Perhaps- will you?’

Shaneal looked over to her father, his face beamed with pride. So Shaneal stood between her two men, her face hidden by her hair as she stared at the floor unable to decide which of them to look at. She knew though which song to sing, daddy always fell asleep when she sang it.  She turned her head to the anti-Author, as if her body had required it of her. She looked into his eyes, into his stare. Lord Aflarien Ashenmoire could not look away. She would not let him. Snared, Aflarien’s body jumped in surprise, or fear, when out of the silence of Helvearn Shaneal began to sing:

There was a girl

from the Sunbourne Sea

she grew so tall

her hair danced with each strand of wind.

This girl from the

Sunbourne Sea

looked all about but saw only the sea

She only saw only the Sea

No birds flew over the Sunbourne Sea,

 she thought she’d

 weep, so she asked a question of the sun

‘What do you see?

Beyond your sea?’

The Sun laughed loud

the Sun laughed long

 at the girl from the Sunbourne Sea.

‘Beyond the sea

I see the things

that you long to see.’

‘Please take me away beyond the Sea’.

The Sun said ‘Aye’

She left that girl  

from Sunbourne Sea as darkness watched her

 leave hand and hand with the suns last light.

He let her fall upon the land and she saw at once all she longed to see.

 The Gardener of Land lay there.

So her tears flowed long as still she looked at him,

always he who she longed to see

She weeps there still so long ago

 they named that place The Falls of Shaneal.’

Her ploy worked and Daddy was deep in snores.

‘Will you show me around Ashenmoire?’  He stood up as if she wanted to go right now. Then Shaneal knew he would do all that she asked. She laughed.

‘Not until later In the morning perhaps. I like it here. Did you like my song?’

‘I...I….’ y, y, yes.’ He stuttered as if his words were held back tears. ‘I loved it.’ Aflarien’s words smiled. Both of them smiled. There was no room in Helvearn for the words that they needed to say to each other.

They held hands. Aflarien led her to the silk-draped bedroom where Liala lay on the bed.  The kiss they shared seemed to last as long as the long first morning of the World. The anti-Author lay his sister upon the bed and with Liala the only witness Shaneal and Aflarien crushed into each other all through the night, neither of them would release the grip on their bodies both within and without each other

The next morning King Loor resigned himself to the fact that he would be alone when he toured Ashenmoire. He whistled happily to himself as he went back to Fine Misgivings to get the book he’d been reading on the voyage to Ashenmoire.

Chapter 30

Misha’s Last Tale

 ‘And with the light that remained I walked over the orange flamed desert. I saw the TetherShip that had long fallen from Earth.  The theem still stole through my blood vessels. The theem pulsed through me. One, two, three, four. The pulsing beat stopped and the theem whispered in my cells that this was the craft I long ago left hidden on my lengthy sojourn on Menerth. The Ship rested on the cliffs of the Sea Road. I struggled up the bank and saw the Ship resting on the highest point, a mere finger of rock. I looked down the sheer wall of dirty rock. I dizzily watched the water below. I heard no sound the water turgid and slow flowing, dumbed by the darkness. Yet, I could smell such a stink as if the air was gangrenous. The Sea Road seemed paused, dead,  a flood of ice,  a black ice clothed with dirt and with the Meringal’s rubbish I almost wretched with vomit from every and pore  of my body.

‘Quickly I turned away and stared at the ThetherShip, lit by the first firm flame of dawn and the Ship bathed in light diminished my feeling of sickness. As if a thousand years of years had never passed I opened the portal into the TetherShip. Then as if it sensed my presence lights and controls filled The Ship with a rainbow of light, such a welcoming light as if the Ship had missed me, as welcoming as the illumination from the doorway my Mother had opened when she heard my feet on the path home. The smell as I entered the TetherShip was of burnt toast. My Mother always forgot about the toast as she rushed for the door, and conjured in me now a Kaleidoscope of my memories of Earth. The portal closed behind me and I felt The Ship rise up from the pinnacle of stone. At last the tether lanes led me back to Earth and The Red Road. My journey was long. I could, though, not lose myself in that world, a green, deserted place, as if forgotten by thought, and I knew I couldn’t stay there alone and though I left a whisper of a song there I returned to my place in the TetherShip thinking of my love, Elan, and of when my song  was silent that day she died . I left the TetherShip what seemed a few tiaga away and even so my journey home seemed a brief whisper compared to the time I have taken to walk from that tree when I first saw you sitting there.  It’s so good to see you Jon.’ Misha moved forward to embrace the storyteller, but Jon stepped back.

‘Who are you? What are you doing here? Don’t you know none but the Esierk’s can come to The Unwritten Lands?’ Jon demanded angrily, in a flurry of words like a strengthening breeze.

‘Misha, Jon, your chelah, yet Misha saw no recognition in Jon’s face.  From the mound where he lay the  Author called:

‘Misha come over here. I’m glad to see you.’  He could see that Jon was about start more protests at the trespass. ‘Jon, stop badgering the boy and me too for that matter.’  Misha went to Araden who said quietly. ‘He does not remember you, he belongs to Menerth, has become a part of the story such a long time ago, he is an old wanderer who sometimes does not remember yesterday let alone a chelah who died more than a few bottles of Erafian Omelyn’s wine ago.  Now sit here beside me.’

Then the Author told Misha a tale.

‘Once there was a city eternally wreathed in smoke and fog and there dwelt a vampire called Dalrosse who lived alone in a piano shop…’

Under the hidden sun of The Unwritten Lands Araden told one story after another. Beginnings and Endings and notions of new stories all he foresaw within the twines of the long tale’s separate possibilities. He even saw routes stretched far beyond like deep thoughts difficult to grasp, or understand, yet always evoking possibilities yearning for a reality.

Jon was silent, barely noticeable as he stared off into the distances of The Unwritten Lands, daring some other to trespass. At times he would fidget into a swoon of sleep, while all the time Araden spoke and Misha listened. In the timelessness of The Unwritten Lands the Author wove as he spoke a new heart and built new senses into Misha.

Misha did not know how long the silence lasted.  He stared at Araden for the last time. With the new feelings, this generator of imagination his new heart beat into existence. With it came the knowledge that Araden was dead. Long ago Misha had thought pride and swollen headedness something to avoid, he found them distasteful in other people. He imagined he could easily despise himself if he lived like them, yet the realization that he was The Author sent through him a surge of giddy power.

Even now, mere moments after Araden’s death he was aware of the entire scope of the story within the tidalverse.  Each place.  Each person. The full spread of time since the story began. Focusing he saw in Meringal a huge tsunami of dark intent that threatened to swamp Menerth. The Author saw landscapes and scrolls of maps, heard voices in languages he understood innately. But the landscapes were drowning in a murky grey flood from Ashenmoire, the maps were crinkling with fire, turning to smoke and black ash. And now the voices sounded subdued, sobs of pain and cowering voices tethered by the grip of Aflarien. Yet they called in all their own different tongues.

‘Gardener, Gardener. Hear us, heal the land, and oh heal us.’ As he listened to their calls they grew quieter. Some stubborn voices resisted, called louder for a few moments then they whimpered into bare whispers. Then none called and beyond The Unwritten Lands the story was silent, stilted and whipped into submission.

The AntiAuthor stood at the tip of Helvearn-his eyes grinned out over the world, and beyond. Misha’s and Aflarien’s eyes met for a time of a thought unblinking at each other through the cracks of light from the Story.

But, the Author knew also of a storm in the North, this storm was returning, it had always ranged across the surface of Menerth. The storm had no intent, it was only immensely powerful. In the Storm, almost even shrouded to him he discerned a pure light and a hooded star.

Misha closed his eyes holding inside him all of Araden’s knowledge and thanked him for such a precious gift.  He knew here in The Unwritten lands he could not affect the story, or truly see through the storm, nor could he hide from Aflarien. He stood and walked toward the portal.  He stood by the sleeping Jon and shook his shoulder. Jon smiled into wakefulness, recognizing something in the double blue irises of Misha’s eyes.

‘So are you going back to Esplomeoir or not?’ He asked as he yawned.

‘Of course. Will you come with me?

‘Don’t doubt on it.  You know me though. I won’t be hanging around for long.  I haven’t seen Marriamme for years, you got me thinking.  I miss her. I’ll go and look for her.’

Misha let Jon lead the way through the portal, before entering he took a last look at The Unwritten Lands.  Ahead on top of a high hill a figure similarly shaped as Araden’s stood beside a tree that was laden with crows. The figure stepped into the tree then all there was the tree full of crows and a voice saying:

‘You are the mythmaker and the overlaying universes have been beguiled by your words.’

On the hill top he saw the tree trembling as if with laughter and the crows, all and one, alighted to a high, unblemished blue sky of The Unwritten Lands.