The Jade Seed
Copyright © 2013 by Deirdre Gould
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Chapter 1
It begins before the Beginning, in the twilight of all things. The wilds of the world were pushed back into its far corners, curling inwards, brittle like the autumn leaves ready to blow into dust forever. Men were men no more but buried, caged creatures encased in glass and stone. Loud they spoke each to the other, but heard nothing. Blind to their fellows, each man saw only his own feet plodding one after another. So great became the dullness of the world that all dreams died save one, of fire and sorrow. Men walked in this dream even while waking, yet only the mad ever spoke of it. On the darkest day, the neap tide of the year, came Brone, the Grower. Born in one of the last wild places, where green things still thrived, without the constricting hand of men. She grew in peaceful days like leaves slipping down a spring stream. But the grasp of the world grew ever tighter, and at twenty Brone gave her parents into the world's jaw. Swallowed whole, they left only two stone teeth behind them. Here in the field of the world's crumbling teeth, here the Broken Messenger waited. Long and long it endured, so even its stone wings melted in the rain. So long, its face cracked in the sun and green moss spread in the shards of its feet. Still, it slept. Until a gray afternoon when Brone sat beneath the Messenger's pedestal and counted her memories on the crooked teeth of the earth. She was quiet, her thought bent upon the stones that bore the names of her parents.
Slow and spreading came life to the Broken Messenger, as dusk comes over a field. Gold and rose crawling from its crown to its feet, shedding the damp smell of dust for the warmth of skin and hair. Where the ages had crumbled the stone, there it bled. Shattered wings dropped feathers, and its face, though beautiful still, was a crackle maze of blood and flesh. Brone knew it not, sitting as she was, in dream, her back to the Messenger's base. But then the Broken Messenger, at last fully flesh, at last its waiting through, opened its mouth. And it screamed in agony. Brone, silent with shock, scrambled up to look at the Broken Messenger. The dust of centuries poured from its lips. Old and black, like soot from the birth of the burning earth itself, the damp,deep soil scent of a thousand old leaves in the rain. But in this dust and in the long, guttural scream was the jewel that carried Brone to the end of the world. The soil fell upon the pedestal in a cloud and settled on Brone's skin and lashes, clung to her hair, made her holy with the great age of the world. They each shuddered, the living stone and the woman of dust as they stared at each other.
At last the Messenger was silent again, and Brone had not yet found her voice. Great is the terror that makes woman or beast forget their feet and watch as death approaches. Only when the Messenger reached the bloody stump of a hand toward her did Brone remember to flee. As she sprang away the Messenger roared, "Fear Not!" with a mouth still bleeding black earth, and stayed her flight with fresh terror. "Fear not" it said again, "I am not come to harm you." Brone turned and saw it crouching, savage in its pain. It trembled against the evening sky, as if it had been leaf instead of solid stone. Knowing herself mad, Brone approached the Broken Messenger. If her mind saw her death in that shattered face, her heart heeded it not and saw only suffering.
"Let me help," she said, but was bewildered and knew not what could be done. For who knows the medicines of angels? Still, she extended her palm to the Broken Messenger though terror made her breath a jagged shard against her breast.
The Messenger sifted the pile of rotten dust through the bent fingers of its better hand, and finding the jade seed, placed it in Brone's outstretched hand.
"Here is the soul of the thing," The Messenger withdrew its fingers which, though flesh, were cold as frost, "You cannot help me, my time here is at an end."
"What then, do you want of me?" Brone pulled the seed to her chest where it sat dull and dirty in her hand.
"You must go to the end of the world. When you have reached the end, plant this in the center of the grove you find there."
"How will I know when I have reached the end of the world?"
"It is dying, this world and will come crashing down around you. When all is silent again, when nothing breathes, then you will know you are at the end. But you must hurry." The Broken Messenger began to crumble, toes and hair turning to pebble and dust as they fell.
Brone looked at the small, dusty speck in her warm palm. "This will stop the world from ending?" cried Brone.
"No. No you cannot stop it Brone, nobody can. This seed will only sprout after all is through." It's smile was gentle and sad and the left wing sloughed off in a clattering pile of gray rubble.
"Then why must I do this? If it is hopeless why go?"
The Messenger lost its right leg and a piece of its chest in a cloud of acrid dust and chunks of rock. "Have faith" it said, still smiling, "There is purpose in everything Brone. Centuries I have waited to give you this small message. My being is not pointless. Tell me your answer before I go."
"Why wait for an answer?" She cried, "What choice have I in this thing? You say I must go, then I must."
"Oh, Brone, we each have a choice, even I, though as stone I appear, though as stone I have crumbled away, even I have had a choice all these ages. Just as I, each day of these long, long years must choose to stay for you, for you Brone, so you will have a choice each day to continue or turn aside."
"What made you stay, all this time? Why stay to see this world fall down around us?"
The Messenger wept. "Ever have I loved this world best of all. I have stayed to love it as long as it should last. But nothing, not even stone endures forever Brone. Long have I marked the homes of the dead. Now perhaps the seed you bear will mark the grave of all the world. You have been asked to do this for the love of all that your world was, for the love of your fellows who otherwise will die unmourned, unremembered. Please, give me your answer before I must go."
Shattering with a roar, only the cracked face remained sitting on a mound of rubble, already becoming gray.
"Yes, of course I'll go," cried Brone,"but where do I start? What if I can't finish?" And she picked up the bleeding stone, but its eyes already stiffened, cold granite fixed on the end of the world. Brone alone, of all the world, wept for its departing.
Even before the Messenger, Brone was a Grower. From tiny, glinting shards of the world she could make the mightiest tree unfold. They say, where Brone walked the stars fell and bloomed behind her. Where you see the flowers bow and dip today, there Brone once stepped. And where the fruit of the land glows like burst hearts, there Brone once bled. It was Brone that spread the wild places over the world again, For this she was sent from her home to wander the dying earth, unceasing to the uttermost end. And though she did not know it for many days, the dust that the Messenger blew upon her made the world grow green where she touched it, without the passage of time, without water, at times without even the light of the sun. But the seed that began it all was small and unremarkable, dusty green, hard and cold. It inspired nothing, taught nothing, betrayed nothing. The world works best this way. In its quietest, dullest forms work the true secret magic of living. The universe does not hide its agents, practices no deceit or plots. The real work of becoming and growing simply slips our notice and continues without our knowledge. The stars shift around us, children grow old, mountains shrink. So w
ith Brone's seed. Of all the sorrow and terrors Brone endured, none of them were to keep that tiny seed safe or to hide it from enemies. Brone never moved it and the seed never slipped out or rolled away, was never stolen or even discovered. She sewed it in a square of linen and wore it on a string around her neck. Even Ethon never knew it existed. Ganit only, of all the world knew of the seed and why Brone carried it. For these three alone of the elder world, Brone, Ganit and Ethon reached the end. For days though, Brone did nothing, believing herself mad, lost in dream. But each morning, the tiny linen bundle was there when she woke, solid and warmed by her skin. She began to wonder if this were not something more than madness. It was the horse though, that convinced her.
Chapter 2
The horse had traveled through many years of the world, sometimes free, sometimes carrying the leaders of men, but always outliving her masters. Long she hunted the Messenger, covering the face of the earth in her search, at times shipped by traders over the wide waters, at others trampling the wilds with heavy, relentless hooves. All the pathways of the world knew her hoof prints. The jungles swallowed her and spewed her forth onto the spine of the mountains, the empty winds of the desert. Nowhere went unhaunted by the ancient battle mare. Many, many times had Ethon been to war. With men or with other horses, Ethon had fought bitterly for eons. Her copper hide was crossed with the scars of battle, an armor hard earned of raised, twisted jags that could turn steel or teeth. A map of her battles, ever carried with her, a shining, brutal patchwork of old pain. Always she sought the Messenger, on the battlefield and in the cities, in the empty, shrinking wilds. The Messenger would try to stop the end of this world. Ethon carried the souls of her sons in her deepest belly for centuries, but now, near the end, she knew they would free themselves if they must. But Ethon's sons were not of the ancient world, they belonged to our Beginning alone. They could not survive when man went unchecked, his plans unthwarted, conquest unchallenged, rampant and wasting. So Ethon sought war with the Messenger, for the breath of her four sons, to begin the change that would end the history of man. But the Messenger had remained hidden, still and silent even as the rain chewed its body away, even as the world rotted with illness around it.
But at last, Ethon found the Messenger, there in the field of broken teeth. The great beast was late. The dry smell of ancient, dying stone told Ethon it had been there and was gone. The huge horse battered over standing stones in her need to reach the Broken Messenger but all she found was a pile of rotted black dust, the clotted blood of an angel that was no more. Ethon knew it had delivered its message in order to die. In her fury, Ethon shook the earth with heavy, smashing hooves, and her hide oozed dark blood. So many years flying over field and ocean, blistering in the sun and wind to reach the dying Messenger, to rob the message from its breath. Ever had this driven her, a bitter prod, a bloody pole star. Where now had the message gone?
So Brone found the enemy that would hunt her unto the ending of the world. This copper beast, its hide raised and twisted with old agony, its belly dragging now with new sorrow, this creature of pain Brone first saw in the field of her fallen mother. Brone, undecided, had wandered back to the beginning to look once more at where the Messenger had been, to prove to her mind what her eyes had seen and her ears had heard. There she found Ethon. Enraged, the horse beat the stones to dust or tore them from the earth with massive teeth, every pore sweating streams of blood. Her great eyes rolled and her ears flickered like two copper flames against her skull. Ethon screamed from her giant breast and the birds burst from bush and tree for miles. Brone turned to flee, but she was too late for Ethon marked her scent and the mingled scent of the Messenger that lingered on the seed. And Ethon knew where the message had gone. The sharp hooves of Ethon's sons saved Brone there, though she knew it not. For the rage of the mother caused the foals to bite and kick the inside of Ethon's belly in eagerness to be free. The great horse's hide tightened and bulged, it's scars moving like snakes maddened with heat. Ethon sank with pain and shuddering, waited for her sons to quiet. And Brone fled into the last of the wilds, starting her journey toward the end of the world. But Ethon would follow. Believing Brone to be the Messenger's savior, Ethon hunted her across wide waters, deep desert and stony mountain, all the while tearing the world apart beneath iron hooves, in an effort to take back the seed that could destroy all she had waited centuries for.
Brone did not begin her journeys as we do now. The villages did not move in the old world. Men lived in the bones of dead tree and stone and food came to them. Their hunters penned creatures grown dull and slow. The farmers tamed the earth, growing food in rows without rest while the land slowly died of exhaustion. The people and their homes stayed for lifetimes in one spot. The people forgot how to move, how to seek because all was within reach. So Brone did not know how to begin. At the start, Brone tried to carry all her home with her, not light and free as our hunters go, but burdened and slow. At first she traveled in the steel dragons that men were carried in. Before the paths of men shattered and washed away, Brone rode a steel dragon until she reached the wide waters of the world. There, at the edge of the land, she met Ganit. At the brink of the sea, where the sand drained ever away into the well of the world, Ganit sat watching the boats of man. Here Brone found him, the bright hunter, the laughing dawn. Brone sought a ship of men to carry her over the wide waters for she did not know the way to the end of the world. Brone sought only to wander, to lose herself until the end drew her to itself. Ganit found her already lost and burdened in the beginnings of her journey. Long had Ganit wished to sail over those cool wide, waters, to see the far reaches of the world. Ever had he yearned for newness, for sights undiscovered by man, for paths untrodden and unsought. Many times he watched the ships of men, waited for their return. Memories of other men clung to them, the smells of other spices, the colors of foreign cloths, he longed for all. All those long years Ganit had waited for Brone to drift to him, though he knew it not. Warm was the day that Brone met Ganit, and she carried with her the air of the wild lands, the last of the paths unwalked. She brought the wind of the trees with her, the clean of undrunk air and unfouled water. For Ganit's eyes alone was Brone ever beautiful. Gold and brown, cool and soft as long autumns was Brone to Ganit. Here, at the edge of the wide waters, before even their first words, Ganit knew he loved Brone, though he spoke it not. No, not for many days. But Brone, sad with old regret and heavy with sorrow for the dying world, for homesickness, noticed Ganit not, but sought only the ship that could bring her over the swallowing sea.
"Where are you going?" Ganit asked. Starting as a bird of the field, Brone faced Ganit but did not see him with the eyes of her heart. "I don't know. The end of the world," she said and looked away, knowing herself mad. Love's ears hear truest. Of all the world, Ganit alone believed in Brone. But there, in the first moments, he thought she spoke from fancy or pain. Even on that early day, this still morning before the brink, Brone was heavy with dread knowing. Ganit saw it gathering in her neck, as if the earth would pull her in, open its jaws to her. He felt this unknown grief infecting him, a slow growth from this strange woman, as if she breathed midwinter frost into his mouth, into his chest. But Ganit shook himself, as the sun shatters a morning fog.
"What do you mean? Is it a place you seek or a time?" he asked her. He longed to touch her shoulder, to draw her eyes to his. Instead he was still and looked over the deep water of the ocean.
"I must go to the end of the world. Will it end on the edge of a dark, cold sea? Or will I wander through endless dark until all is silence? I know not, only that I must travel to the end of the world." Brone thought Ganit would walk away from her, thinking her lost in madness. For in these days, men believed only what they could see, what they could grasp and hold. Brone knew this, but in the beginning, she felt it a kindness to warn others of what was coming, to give man time to repair old hurts, to come to peace before the end. Ever they turned away from the truth tellers. But Ganit did not go.
; He only asked, "Why do you think you must go to the end of the world?"
And Brone's quiet heart woke, finding a friend in his voice. So she told him of the Broken Messenger in that chilled, withered field and of the bleeding copper horse, heavy with malice. For though the Messenger warned her that none could be spared, that she must come to the uttermost end, Brone wanted to warn him, this bright hunter, whose face was as the laughing dawn, who alone did not banish her as mad. We know not what Ganit first thought of Brone's words. There, on the sunlit edge of the sea, Ganit may have doubted her, though her lips spoke the threat of secret dreams that every man had in those times, though he held for a moment the jade star, the bright beginning in its warm linen wrapper. Perhaps even then Brone doubted her own tongue and eye. But then came the jagged drumming, the last battle song thrummed over all the dying land and it shuddered itself awake. Brone and Ganit heard the end begin and felt the heavy heartbeat of the earth. Three times the sharp, cracking rumble called every man and beast, three times the babble of the world ceased and blood throbbed hot in the hands of men. And this broke all doubt.
Ethon heard it too. The copper horse beat her heavy hooves into the earth as her first son bit and thrashed to be set free. At last, her swollen body could begin again, to be her own. Uninvaded, weightless again, as she had been so long ago, fleet and scarless, warm and shining, free in the youth of the world. But first, this long, bloody music, a brutal, tuneless call to the writhing growth that would be her child. And so, in agony she bore her eldest forth into the world while the other three lay silent in her womb. Ethon's son, the silver, shining foal breathed the aged air as the last guttural roar of rending rock shattered the air. It needed no rest, this sleepless horror that sprang sharp and biting from Ethon's belly, but leaped out into the crumbling villages of men. But Ethon slept in the cool shadows on the crushed, sweet scented grass, her massive belly a little lighter, waiting only for dawn to resume her search for Brone. Now that her eldest was free, Ethon believed Brone would try to halt the purging of the rotting world, would kill her sons and let man fester on the skin of the earth. For the first time in all her centuries of warfare and peril Ethon knew fear. It drove her on as nothing ever had before, growing into savage grief as her sons sprang away into the vast empty world one by one.
The Jade Seed Page 1
