Firstborn

by Michelle West

  “Would he speak to me?”

  “You don’t want to speak to him. I told you—his sleeping is war and death and death and death. He says that is the future.”

  Carver didn’t want to speak to him, no. “Tell me, if I plant this leaf here, will you grow here?”

  She snorted, half in amusement and half in disgust. “I’m dreaming now,” she told him, “or I wouldn’t know the answers. You know how sometimes you know everything in dreams?”

  Carver nodded.

  “Master Carver—”

  Ellerson’s hands caught him as he stumbled again. He could still see the girl; her expression had become even clearer. “I’m talking—I’m talking to the leaf. Ugh. To one of the people connected to the leaf.”

  “Well, I know things in this dream.” Her expression became unusually grave, but there was, about it, the air of theatrics—as if she was about to utter something portentous and knew it. There was a delight to her gravity. “We are a Winter leaf, and we will be a Winter tree. You could plant us here—but it is not yet time. Not yet time.

  “He says that if you plant us, we will be lost with you. He is not happy.”

  “And you?”

  “I think we’ll be lost anyway,” she said, her voice dropping. “Lost, like you’re lost. Except she will be sad when you are lost. And she won’t even remember us.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Stacia. Stacy is what most call me.”

  “Is it all right if I remember you?”

  She smiled. “Yes. I think if you plant us here, you will never forget us. But we will be forgotten.” She frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense, does it?”

  “It’s a dream,” Carver said, almost gently. He wasn’t great with children, but he had learned how to handle the fearful or sad ones with some care because Ariel was in the West Wing. “Dreams often don’t make sense.”

  “If you ask me, neither does the waking world.”

  “Fair enough. Stacy, when should this tree be planted?”

  “I think—I think it has something to do with the Winter Queen. Before, during, after. Something. I’m sorry. We are all supposed to be awake right now. It is supposed to be Winter—the longest Winter, the darkest Winter. And we will all sleep at once, the last time. We will all sleep at once.”

  Something about those words made Carver freeze, as if Winter had entered his blood, had chilled him to the bone.

  “What will happen to your waking selves?”

  Silence.

  “Does it matter?” she finally asked. For the first time, she could not meet his gaze.

  “Yes. Yes, Stacy, it matters.”

  “It doesn’t feel real, you know? When we wake. We forget. He doesn’t forget, but I think that’s because he’s a soldier and this is the war he wants.”

  Carver, however, shook his head. “It’s not the war he wants,” he said softly. “It’s the war that no one wants, and it’s coming. What he wants is for those who can fight it to prepare themselves to fight it. Jewel can fight it.”

  “She can’t, he says.”

  “She will. She’s traveling to fight.”

  “But she left us with you.”

  He closed his eyes, which only meant he could see her more clearly.

  “Maybe,” she continued, when Carver did not reply, “she was afraid you’d be lonely. That’s what I think.” She hesitated again and then said, “That’s what he thinks, too. But he doesn’t like it. Sorry. Do you want to talk to him?”

  “No, definitely not—while I can avoid it.”

  “You can always avoid it—if I’m sleeping and dreaming. But—the others are starting to dream, so it could get crowded again.”

  “Stacy—is there any way to wake them up and keep them awake?”

  “Not where you are. Not now. I’ll try to keep them quiet—but we all have different dreams until you call us. We all see different things. It’s like we’re not really here at all.”

  Carver exhaled white mist, although he did not feel the cold. “Ask the old soldier. Ask him what happens to your waking selves when this leaf is planted.”

  “. . . but I know that.”

  “Yes, but—I don’t think he cares what the answer is.”

  “And I do.”

  Carver said, “And you should.”

  “He asks a question,” Stacy said, after a pause in which she glanced to the side, at someone Carver couldn’t see.

  Carver knew what this unseen person would say before she asked, but he didn’t stop her.

  “He says: Why are you asking when you already know the answer?”

  “Tell him thanks. I hadn’t. I hadn’t until now.”

  “Ummm, he thinks you’re pretty stupid.”

  Carver smiled ruefully. “Be fair. So did you when you first started speaking to me.”

  “True. But—the old man tells you to try harder not to trust the weasel.” She frowned. “He is trying to wake up—sometimes he can.”

  “Oh?”

  “He is going to tell us—the awake us—that it’s real important not to sleep right now. I mean, if you plant us, we’ll have no choice—but until then. He’s trying to be helpful,” she added, almost doubtfully.

  “It’ll help.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “I’m certain.”

  • • •

  Ellerson watched Carver with concern, most of which he concealed. It was, however, difficult not to worry when Carver began his discussions with invisible people. A quick check was made to ascertain that Carver was not delirious with fever. He was not. But he was pale, and his breathing once again became belabored. Ellerson did not suggest that they stop. He was there to catch Carver before a stumble became an all-out collapse; there to take what weight he could, to spread the burden between the two of them over a longer distance.

  It was necessary because the terrain broke, and broke again; the earth did not open beneath their feet, but it did open at their backs, and it rose like a slow-moving tidal plain to their sides. This was the tree god’s work, but it was not only his work.

  Lightning—often red—illuminated the whole of the night sky; they could trace the source of the bursts to an area behind them, but they did not need to look often; they could hear the roar, as if of giants, recede slowly into the distance.

  “I’m sorry, Stacy,” Carver muttered. “But I can’t look back anymore, okay? If I’m in the middle of breaking earth and living fire, my eyeballs are going to be crushed or burned. Can you just dream about—I don’t know whatever it is young girls dream about. No—I don’t know. I barely remember my dreams.

  “Yeah, well. This isn’t exactly a dream, is it? I mean—not like the one you’re having.

  “Well, fine—you remember your dreams. But you were all trapped in the dreaming, right? For how long? It’s got to have some kind of aftereffect.”

  Silence, then. Carver struggled to open his eyes. He’d been walking with his eyes closed, as if that were easier.

  “Master Carver—”

  “I know. I know. I think we’re almost there.”

  “Almost where?”

  “Almost where Anakton wants us to be.”

  “It’s not so much what I want,” Anakton said. “You understand that? I sort of actually like you, and all. But you’re incredibly fragile as you are, and this is the safest place for you. You’re not quite trapped here like the memories—”

  “Or like you?” Carver shot back, his bloodshot eyes narrowing.

  Anakton’s gaze slid off Carver’s. “Maybe like me. If you die here, you will die. Nothing will remain of you. And that would be a tragic waste. I promise it won’t hurt.”

  Ellerson could think of very few positive activities that were prefaced with Anakton’s statement.

  They had come to an open clearing. Trees ringed it, but did so at a respectful distance, which is not what made the clearing so unusual. No, the clearing lacked snow. It lacked ice. It lacked the usual fol
iage one might see in a forest, but the lack of snow in such an open space was a clear sign of something.

  Nor did snow touch the branches of the single ring of trees that defined the boundaries of this clearing. The branches, however, were bare; no buds or leaves adorned them.

  Carver had not yet collapsed; his expression was grim, and his eyes, narrowed, were now focused on their erstwhile companion. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what you think won’t hurt?”

  “Being buried,” Anakton replied.

  “I assure you being buried does hurt.”

  “This is a little bit different,” Anakton said. “Because this is not dirt, it is earth, and the earth is alive. But if you don’t want to be buried, you might plant the leaf. I think the earth would accept that as a suitable compromise.”

  Carver said succinctly, “Compromise, my ass.”

  “Don’t speak like that to the earth,” Anakton warned, his voice growing deeper, the growl more pronounced. He began to grow in size as well, becoming, once again, the golden bear. He had very prominent fangs, and a much larger mouth.

  Carver, however, did not seem to be impressed by this shift in size. “You’re not going to hurt me,” he snapped. “So stow it, okay?”

  “I could kill your friend.”

  “That would not be your starting point in negotiations, if you were at all wise,” Ellerson said.

  The bear growled. “I was not known for my wisdom—and he started it!”

  “Started it?”

  “I brought him here because I found him, and he has what the earth requires. I could leave, and the earth would not be lonely.”

  “Meaning you could attempt to convince the earth to let you leave if the earth had a replacement?”

  “Yes!”

  “That’s not the way it works,” Carver replied. “It’s not like you find a random person and you drop them into a cage that gets lowered into the earth. You can’t offer someone else up as a—a sacrifice.”

  “Why not?”

  Carver appeared to be waiting for an answer, and judging from his expression, whatever answer he received from the invisible girl was not up to his standards. “The earth requires a vow, yes? An oath? I am unlikely to give it under the wrong circumstances. Which would be the ones in which you drop me in a cage—”

  “I don’t have a cage.”

  “It’s a metaphor. A figurative cage.”

  “And if I threaten to kill your friend—and injure him—and you agree to leave the leaf, we will all get out of this. In fact, I could just skip the part where I injure your friend. I understand that your choice would be made under duress, but the gods actually count those choices as choices. Never seemed fair to me,” he added, “but I’m not the one who makes the rules—I’m just the one who gets stuck with them.”

  “Is the earth a god?”

  “The earth is better than a god. Where do you think the gods came from?”

  The earth shifted beneath their feet in this open clearing. Carver looked over his shoulder toward the reddened sky. “I think we’re safe here.”

  “We’re safe,” Anakton said. “But only temporarily. More is needed because you are mortal.”

  “Yes, yes, we got all that. Oh, I think you’re going to like this part,” he added. He was clearly not speaking to the bear.

  • • •

  The earth trembled. This had become a constant in the flight across the snow and ice, but in this one clearing it was different. The earth did not break or separate; its movement did not uproot trees. Nor did it cause either Carver or Ellerson to stumble or fall.

  “I am trying to look, Stacy, but I’d like to avoid being crushed by random pillars.”

  Ellerson could not see the recipient of Carver’s mild frustration.

  He could, however, see the pillars. He thought random inaccurate; there seemed, to his eye, to be a pattern to the placement of these pillars as they rose from the earth.

  As Ellerson watched, he realized that even that verb was suspect. They did not rise from the earth as if previously buried beneath it; they rose, rather, as if they were being created, a foot at a time, from the gathered stone beneath the earth’s surface. It was astonishing to watch. The pillars were not crude pieces of stone placed somehow haphazardly upon one another; they were carved. Each pillar’s carved reliefs seemed to tell a story, although Ellerson was not certain whether the beginning of that story was emerging now, and would reach for the heights, or if the end was now receding as the pillars continued to be created.

  Even so, there were too many stories being depicted, for there were twelve in all, and the pillars themselves were as wide as two men—or three. He could not see a roof but was not surprised when floor emerged. This floor was not worked, pale stone, but a riot of color, a jumble of smaller pieces that fit together in a natural mosaic. There was a greater pattern in that riot of color, but it was slow to materialize, for the floor, like the pillars—and every other element of the building—was being created. With the floor, however, it was more obvious; the colors shifted; a wave of amethyst, cresting suddenly from one end of the rectangular base transcribed by these pillars to the other, followed in turn by topaz or emerald, turquoise or pale amber. Some remained when a wave of color once against swept off in a different direction.

  There were, by the end, arches that formed doorways although doors were not added; the height of the pillars suggested ceiling, and ceiling might have existed; Ellerson’s eyes could not detect one—but he could not immediately detect an end to the height of these colossal structures, either. Walls, however, grew next. Walls between the open arches.

  “Honestly, this is why I never wanted kids. This is exhausting.”

  Ellerson raised a brow. “You have been looking less peaked than one might have expected.”

  “Yeah, sorry. Stacy is dreaming. She says they were all dreaming before we set the blanket down—but they don’t dream in Summer.”

  Ellerson nodded, as if this made sense—and it did. “Only Stacy is dreaming?”

  “And one other.”

  They approached the building, climbing stairs that had not existed in the beginning. Ah. At the height of these stairs, doors. They were open. Ellerson paused before entering. He bowed. Carver hesitated a fraction of a second before following suit. Then, to Ellerson’s discomfort, he added, “No, bow. We don’t know that you can’t be seen.”

  “I can’t see whoever it is you’re talking to,” Anakton offered. Ellerson noted that he bowed, inasmuch as a bear could, and that his bow was deeper and longer than either of theirs had been. “But I can certainly hear her. And she’s not the only one talking.”

  Carver ignored this. Or rather, he prioritized the person Ellerson could neither see nor hear. “Look, I’m not leaving these steps until you bow. That’s not a bow, Stacy. No, it’s not. It’s a bob. Look—” He glanced at Ellerson and grimaced. “No, this is not about snobby, stuck-up patricians. I grew up in the twenty-fifth and thirty-fifth holdings. It’s about Winter and gods and powers that even the Kings couldn’t dream of being. And you treat those with respect.

  “No—I don’t know why bowing is supposed to be a gesture of respect. It wasn’t my idea. Stacy—” He turned to Ellerson. “Can you explain it?”

  Ellerson smiled. Demons and gods and ancient beasts could not, for the moment, dim a sense of nostalgia. It had not been Carver who had demanded an explanation for the gestures of respect used—and marked—by the patriciate; that had been Jester. But he had had this argument before, and he caught the echoes of it, and held onto them as if they were precious.

  “It is what they consider respectful,” Ellerson said, in the direction that Carver was glaring. “If you wish to speak to someone, you must speak in a language they understand. Gestures are some of the oldest ways of communicating, and they will serve when language is absent. Since you cannot speak directly to the ancient that created this cathedral, a bow is considered respectful.”

  C
arver then said, “What? Since when?”

  And Ellerson understood from his tone that Stacy had made clear that she could speak to that ancient.

  Carver paled. “Stacy—what did you promise? Did you agree to anything? No, you don’t look like an idiot—but you do look like a kid.”

  Since Ellerson could imagine what Stacy would have to say to that, he grimaced. “Master Carver, I believe it is time to enter. Can you not hear it?”

  Carver nodded, grim now. “Stacy says she can hear the demon as well. He’s not finished with the tree, but we need to be someplace safe when he is.” To the unseen Stacy, he added, “Fine, that’ll do.”

  • • •

  If the exterior of the building now resembled a cathedral, the interior did nothing to shift that impression; it was a place of worship. But to what god, or gods, was not immediately clear.

  There were windows, here, that would beggar the priesthood, should they have the maker-born on call, a privilege which was almost inconceivable. But those windows did not, to Ellerson’s eye, open into the Winter landscape in which the building was theoretically standing. Nor did they open into the same landscape, and the sun that entered the windows and passed through individual colored panes seemed to be at different levels in the sky.

  Anakton entered last, looking once over his shoulder. The doors slammed shut behind him; the reverberation seemed to shake the windows.

  Ellerson looked down the long nave; at its height was a shorter flight of wide steps that led to an altar. There was, about this place, a hush that spoke of the crypt. Although the Winter winds did not reach the interior, the chill of the air permeated it. It was cold.

  “Master Carver, come away from the door.”

  Carver did not wait to be told twice. He moved—but he moved slowly, each step once again heavy, weighted. Ellerson wrapped an arm around his back and beneath his arms, understanding that the weight that had caused his collapse had returned.

  Carver nodded, answering the question the domicis did not ask.

  “I really think,” Anakton said, “you should move.”

  Carver grimaced. “I’m moving as fast as I can.”

  “You might consider planting the leaf. Here, it will grow.” There was a wheedling tone to the voice that didn’t suit the bear’s form, but even as Ellerson thought this, the bear shrank.