Chapter 18
She reached the end of her strength, stumbling into a bowl between the hills, the last watered valley of the world caught between the frozen dark and the flaming desolation to the east. This valley was rimmed with pink and gold, balmy in the glow of the westbound winds. The thin grass was long and purple in the dusklight and sweet, cold water tumbled over smooth old stone and ran away through the hills toward the sea. She had reached the end, the lonely place that knew no creature's step except her own, the lovely wilderness hidden even from Arvakir. Ethon had not expected to reach it, not even when she had felt herself a strong, young mare. She ate the sparse long grass and soaked her chipped cracked hooves in the cool stream. How changed she was from the mighty beast she had been. Her bright copper hide darkened, oozing midnight blood in her exertions. She was rickety, an old barrel that was all ribs, her legs like brittle driftwood. Yet she had stumbled on, the first to reach the empty grove, the first to earn her rest. "To what end?" She thought, "Why do I linger? When all is finished, when even my beloved sons have no need of me longer, why should I remain?"
Enik had turned on her, scorned her aid against the human woman, the Grower. But Ethon knew her sons would perish because of Brone. She had smelled it, rich and thick on Brone, as if their deaths hung as a ripening fruit from her hands. "But she will come here," thought Ethon, "they must all end up in this place or perish on the way. And I will be ready."
So Ethon, with despair and vengeance in her heart, waited and grew strong and perilous in that quiet green valley.
Chapter 19
They say, when Brone saw the dead seed she had carried so far, her grief was so deep her heart split. And so also, the child beneath it divided as well into brother and sister, each as unlike the other as the seasons of our year. Yet they cleaved each to the other their whole life long, as if they would rejoin if they could. They brought us forth, many years later, trying to beget their perfect self again. Yet that which is so wholly broken as Brone's child, as her heart, shall never again be as one piece. So we have faces and hearts that are but shards, foreign to one another, each finding a missing part of ourselves in our mates.
It was the pain of the torn child that roused Brone from her swoon. With deep sorrow Brone found herself still in the cold, midnight world, her children stretching, stretching inside her. She had wished not to wake again and now she would not rise, though her skin ached with chill and her breath was sharp and heavy in her lungs. Her hand still clasped the seed, hidden in side her fingers, as a dead sparrow lying forgotten in a cage. Yet her children still moved beneath her heart, fluttering behind her ribs. She looked toward the terrible blank of the sky and cried out, though her eyes remained dry.
"Have You turned Your sight from us at last? I have gone so far, so far from where I ought, carrying this heavy, heavy news to the world. This tiny seed has carried me so many miles from home, so many miles from Ganit and yet I fail. I carried it thus far, this cold jade star that burns a hollow of despair into my heart, I who had so much brightness, became a dark and breathless, endless night because You sent me. Yet I did not question or plead. All around me became savage, fell and froze. And though it seemed You bent Your gaze elsewhere as the Ghost Horse ate up the world and darkest night made it blank and lifeless, still my heart knew hope, for I had Ganit. How it broke me to leave him! But still I went on, for my task was unfinished. And here, at last, overburdened with life, here I thought to finish it, to lay aside the long cares and rest with the seed safely planted, the world a cold, moveless night. And though I kept it safe, kept it warmed and slowly sprouting through all this, here it lies, cold and dark as dust." She raised the seed, still lightly enclosed in her frozen hand. "All is lost. All is lost. Why do I remain?"
And now she did weep, and her tears were thick and slow. Her children beat against her flesh and she felt her breath, an insistent dull knife, a broken film on her frozen lips. "How well I know the terrible wrong it would be, in light of the dread miracles and wonders I have myself seen, for me to lose faith in You, but what choice is left to me? Why may I not lay this life aside in peace? Why do You curse me above all that have ever lived? Why do I remain? My journey is finished."
Brone opened her hand to fling away the seed she had so long protected. One last time she gazed down at it as she drew back her hand to throw it far, far in to the dark. She stopped and gasped a deep, searing breath. The seed was glowing, its tiny fronds filling again with dim violet light.
"But I saw it," she whispered, "Dark and withered, a cold dead stone in my palm. Dead enough to kill my heart." She felt a gentle warmth on her cheek, so subtle she thought it was her own tears. But she looked up from the seed and far, far to the west came a faint glimmer, as if a single star had stopped to rest among the treetops miles away.
Weeping still, to see her long labors yet undone, Brone gathered herself, replacing the seed in its tiny packet at her breast, she lumbered on frozen toes with a feebly lit torch to light her path, she headed west.
It took many hours for Brone's blood to heat, though she walked as quickly as she could. She picked her way through the sharp icicles of undergrowth, though some shattered with heavy, toneless clicks as Brone brushed through them. She hesitated not, but was drawn ever on by that still, distant light. The pain of returning life in her frozen limbs slowed her, sparking over her deadened flesh in terrible searing blotches as if she burned alive by inches. Her feet awoke last, two brands that pierced the dust where she trod. Their pain was so great that Brone stopped often to soothe them with her hands. When she looked up from this task the last time, the tiny ray of daylight she had followed had disappeared. Brone's breath stalled, choked with despair. A moment only, then she caught the small light scattering itself among the trees, far to the west and moving south.
Hour upon hour she sped towards it, her breathing labored with the aching stone of her belly, her legs trembled, but she felt them no longer. Her sweat froze in a sparkling sheen of salt and ice upon her skin, stiffened her clothing to crackling slabs. But Brone's blood was fire. Consumed, without and within, Brone stumbled often, but still she endured. At last, the star seemed closer, larger and warmer. When it rose again, high, high above her in a dense gathering of leaf and vine and branch, its light surrounded her, pooled about her and brought the warmth of day to her skin. A few steps more, and Brone fell on the hard, thawing ground and slept. Alas, that Ganit never thought to look behind him, where his path had already crossed.
Brone dreamed of her mother's fields in midsummer. She touched the tops of the long golden straw and watched star bursts of yellow and white dipping and rising between the stalks. So warm, she smelled the sweet green of grass drying in the even sun and heard the soothing rasp of heat bugs that hid in the cool shade of long leaves and the heavy heads of goldenrod and milk thistle. Fire weed down floated over all, a warm silken snow that brushed Brone's cheeks and twined itself in her dark hair, as a scattering of fragile stars in the net of the sky. Her dream was untroubled by worry, there was neither Ganit, nor children, nor wasteland. The feeling of the whip and rustle of a soft humid wind encompassed her and threw the fitful shadow of clouds across the field in gold and gray and green. Brone was alone between the savage blue sky and the ripe, moving ocean of land.
As she dreamed, the earth around her warmed. Clover grew in the warm shade of her breast and beneath the heels of her worn aching feet. One hand, out flung in ease, drew forth the long golden grass as if it had thrown seed in a great arcing fan about her as she fell into sleep. And about the quiet face of Brone, in a halo of white, sweetened stars, mayflowers bounded up in a soft cloud. Swift in those few hours, did Brone's quiet field spring up, even to ripening seeds which fell into the soft, thawed earth and waited for the true rising of the sun. For the great golden fields of the east now grow where they ought not, but for her hand, a brilliant blanket of grass where all the rest of that land crawls with deep vine and tall trees, with the languid scarlet blooms of the
southern jungles.
When Brone woke, she knew not where she lay, for a brief breeze, brought by Ganit's warmth across the land, swished the tall grass around her. She thought herself still in her mother's field amid the dark of summer night, but rolling onto her back, she faced the empty sky where the moon and stars should hang. Her chest heaved with the weight of her unborn children as if she could drown in the heaviness of their need. Brone felt suddenly, frigidly cold and she recalled at once who she was and what she did there. She rose, a silent statue while the ocean of grass moved around her in the remnant of the breeze. Her eye sought the faithful star that had led her and she found at, a bright ball that pushed against the dark slipping ever farther south and west.
Hunger speared her, and though Brone yearned after that warm heart of day, she must stop to eat or else collapse. She found that she had only enough bread for this last meal. A moment only she worried, and then she remembered how empty was the world already and that it could feel no emptier if she were suddenly not in it.
When she started off again, the bright star was distant, climbing now against the western horizon, trembling like a heat picture on an empty plain. Brone hurried after it, afraid it would simply waver into darkness. Her children slept beneath her heart, lulled by the gentle roll of Brone's long walk. She wondered if they dreamed, what they could dream of if they did. Though her breath was short as the stumbled after the distant dawn, she sang ancient songs, simple and quiet. Brone thought she sang to the children, a little sweetening for their sleep, but the singing soothed Brone too. A bright blanket of harvest songs, of sleep songs and festival dances to wrap around her in that everlasting frost. She thought of midsummer in her mother's house, where she had sung, hanging damp clothes in the warm, breezy shade of the apple trees, as she had cut the sweet green grass and smelled it drying in the sun, humming and kneeling in the strawberry fields, the air heavy with the scent of ripe fruit.
The craving for strawberries hit her so hard that Brone stood still a moment in her want. She had had cravings before, but they had mostly been for simple things, salt, green leafed vegetables, even rice. But they had never been as strong. Her nose thought it caught an intoxicating phantom whiff of ripe, midsummer strawberries and Brone's mouth ached with want. She remembered the warmth of a green paper box, heavy with berries and blotched with dark juice. She thought if she had been hold a box at that moment, she could not have eaten the berries, but would simply smell them, drink in that deep sweetness mixed with the dry, light scent of gold hay where they had long sat, ripening in the sun.
The babies stirred at her longing, waking Brone from her walking dream into the frozen, scentless dark. She laughed. "That's going to be one hard request to fill," she said. For a moment it saddened her to think she would probably die without ever tasting another strawberry. Ganit came to her mind, his smiling face triumphant as he had shown her those shining silver wrapped chocolate bars so long ago. She smiled, but tears pricked at her eyelids. "He would have tried to find strawberries for me even now." At once, the loss of him overwhelmed her again, and Brone stood still in the dark, breaking.
Far to the west, the star stood still and clear on the mountaintop. Brone believed she dreamed it first, that tiny breath of a breeze that sounded so like a whisper of his. She waited for her madness to pass and wiped her tears away. Breathing deeply, she looked toward that constant star, hovering on the mountain. Again, she heard Ganit call her name, a faint ghost of his warm voice and Brone's eyes widened, became sparking mirrors of that bright distant sun. She gasped, as it plunged over the peak and out of sight, leaving her in darkness, only a feeble torch to guide her.
Stumbling, heavy and unbalanced as her children woke and pushed against her belly, Brone ran, calling Ganit in great, shaking heaves. She broke free of the tree line, up she scrambled, up the loose shards of stone toward the impossibly high peak. She felt a warm push of air, as if she swam from shade into sunny day. It enveloped her, caught her breath and made sweat stand cool upon her brow. And then it was gone again and the world was frozen again. She knew not what it meant, but climbed on, weeping at her heavy weakness, her slow gait.
It was many hours before Brone came to the peak of the mountain in the blackest dark. She had lost the torch in her first desperate clamber and had felt most of her way up. Her hands bled and her feet were pierced with needle stones, through even her thick shoes. But she had seen the glow as she neared the peak and forced herself on. She had called herself hoarse but heard no answering call from Ganit. As she pulled herself over the edge of the peak, her heart sank. There, in the small valley below, was a lone torch burning low, stuck in the ground alone. Wearily, Brone crawled slowly down the slope toward it. The air was thick with the smell of fur and droppings, feathers were trampled in the dust and empty, burnt beetle shells were scattered in an arc. Brone sat next to the wavering torch. She did not move for a long, long while. She simply stared at the guttering flame. At length she curled her feet beneath her and cradled her heavy belly with one dusty arm. Lying on her side, Brone slept and dreamed of picking strawberries with Ganit, who was laughing. His hair was flecked with gold specks of hay and his fingers were crimson with sweet juice. They were warm and laughing in the summer sun.
As she slept, the torch guttered and failed, smoking and cooling. The linen wrapper fell from her neck, but the jade seed remained, glowing brightly. Its roots clung to her skin, though Brone felt no pain from the plant, not then. It flung a slender vine around her shoulders, a glinting emerald necklace, like a gentle hand upon her flesh. It shimmered, a green star just over her heart.
Chapter 20
Ganit woke in a small wooden house, his shattered leg was a searing ember consuming his thoughts. The silent young man was watching him wake, anxiously peering at Ganit, though his hands were busy ripping a white sheet into long strips and dropping them into a pot of water on the wood stove.
Ganit looked around him, desperate to dismiss the pain in his leg and the absence in his heart with some distraction. There were few furnishings, but Ganit could see that this little house was clean and well cared for. A few earthen pots near the stove for rice and root vegetables, a pair of wide rocking chairs gleaming in the golden light and a low table were all that occupied the room, apart from the narrow bed where Ganit lay. But drying spices that hung from the heavy ceiling sweetened the air and the walls were draped with colorful cloths and with paintings done by a powerful hand. But Ganit's eyes were still unfocused with pain and with fever and his mind did not catch all that he saw.
The room was hot and the silent man was dark with sweat but Ganit did not know if it were the stove or his own baking skin that warmed them. The windows hung open to release the heat and though the air about him whickered with the wings of thousands of insects, Ganit could see large beasts gathered outside, sleeping in the pooling light of the windows. He thought he was lost in a dream of illness and sank back into the bed and turned his eyes back to his young host. The man had boiled the strips of cloth and hung them to cool. Now he brought Ganit a dark, heavy bowl. It was filled with a black tea. Ganit thought it smelled cool and sweet, like a deep running stream among spring grasses. The silent man held it to Ganit's lips and he drank. When he had finished, the young man pushed him back to lie down on the bed. Ganit could feel his pain quickly sinking to a small buzzing numbness, as if he had touched the edge of lightning. He was ready again to sleep, but the man was showing him a short, stout stick and pointed to Ganit's leg. The man wanted to splint the shattered bone. Ganit almost laughed, but his mirth was sour. His leg felt like a collection of splinters, he could not hope that it would ever again be whole. Nor, he thought, would this silent man or Ganit himself, be around long enough to see. But Ganit was grateful to this silent stranger for aiding him, so he clenched his teeth in anticipation and nodded. But the man looked at Ganit solemnly. He put his finger to Ganit's lips. Ganit smiled. Why would this man who inhabited a noiseless world, care if Ganit cried out? Onl
y he, himself would hear it. But the man's face crinkled in displeasure at Ganit's smile and he pointed to the ceiling. Puzzled, Ganit looked up and recoiled, using his arms to shield his face. There, painted on the bare boards, leapt the silver hided horse of madness. So detailed was it, Ganit thought it was a breathing nightmare. Around the great, rearing beast, wasted shells of men coated in dark blood snarled each at the others. A few crawled on the foreground eating something torn and broken. Above all, the silver hide of Hadur gleamed, exhaled moonlight, cold and dry like bleached bone. Ganit looked at his host and saw the young man was trembling. "He's here?" Ganit whispered. The man nodded. Ganit put his own finger to his lips. "Shhh," he said.
Chapter 21
Brone woke as the cold coiled at last around her, the last shreds of Ganit's warmth fled away. Clustered around her face, five stunted strawberry plants grew, laden with ripe berries, but even these adorned themselves with silver tracings of frost. In quick delight she gathered and ate the few sweet fruits. Remembering the small, distant voice that had called her here, Brone lifted her eyes to search again for Ganit's light. She found the entirety of the western horizon filled with a deep orange light. Where the flitting star of the past days had been filled with the frosted youth of dawn, this light was instead, smooth and ancient, the weathered, sea worn glow of sunset. An instant only, she hesitated, thinking Ganit's light could not have been so much changed in those few fleeting hours while she had slept. But Brone knew her path lay always in twilight, that she, herself was already a dark relic unfit for the morning of the world. Now, without Ganit to speak hope into her ear, she knew morning would come at last. And when her children turned within her, dreaming of the unborn world, Brone did not feel the despair that had clenched around her for so many months. If the horizon did not bleed with Ganit's light, he would seek them there at last. There was no other place to go now, one glimmering island was all the world that remained, a single reprieve from the heavy dark. So, aching with hunger and long cold, Brone climbed out of the mountains, toward the cooling conflagration of the west.
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