by Robert Reed
They nodded and giggled.
Good and then Diamond entered the otherwise empty house, walking the hall by the long way around, passing rooms that the boy had never entered and slipping through a kitchen that desperately needed to be cleaned. The side hallway to his open door seemed far too short, and his room was too small for either of them. Diamond left the door open. The monkey casually shoved the papio books off their high shelf and started to build a nest with shredded pieces of an old blanket, looking nothing but happy.
Diamond left him to his work. Shoving Mister Mister under his arm, he crawled to the tiny chamber with its locked drawers and rounded walls. He didn’t expect to find a secret door waiting. But he was ready to find that door wherever he looked, and in the end that might be what his day meant.
Diamond was ready, and he always needed be.
END BOOK ONE
BOOK TWO
THE CORONA’S CHILDREN
PROLOGUE
Every soldier is born from wood—the finely grained wood of a tantalize tree carved and polished until the faces and strong arms and an array of dangerous weapons have been revealed. Every soldier wears paint and time. Each stands where he is set, a willing part of the colorful army that obeys every command. The soldiers never suffer fear, never know doubt, and despite similarities in appearance, each wears a unique name that serves as the trusted root from which one great life dangles.
The boy gave the wood their names and life stories. One glance, even a slow touch, is enough to recognize each good soldier.
The boy always knows where his army waits—on high shelves or inside their special box. Of course the soldiers aren’t waiting. Toys are objects, and objects are too simple to hold souls. But playing with the wooden men is more fun because it means nothing. Almost every day of his life holds games like these. His fierce legion battles bigger toys and pretend monsters. Each piece of painted wood is awarded its turn as hero. Then as the boy grows older and a little smarter about the world, he makes larger wars, and his voice is louder, filling his very big room with fury and brutality until sometimes the game goes too well and he makes himself afraid.
Like other children, he climbs to school to learn and tries to be normal, and then he climbs home again and plays games.
The warriors lie scattered across the floor, on their backs and bellies, yet they are beautifully unable to concede defeat.
Wood cannot breathe, cannot weep, cannot stand back from the carnage and wonder where the battle went wrong.
“It’s your game,” says Mother. “If you don’t like the results, pick up the pieces and start again.”
“But these are the dead.” He tries to be patient, except that he doesn’t sound patient. Pointing to the casualties, he explains, “They have to rest all night to be alive again. Those are the rules.”
Every game has rules. Life and the Creation have rules. Maybe there are agents somewhere that don’t obey the hard codes, but thinking that way invites a different kind of fear into the mind.
“It’s time for your early dinner,” his mother says, trying to make him stop.
Dinner isn’t ready. But he sets the dead inside their anglewood box, waiting to live, and the survivors stand on the shelves with a view of the green outdoors, helping watch for Father. The boy moves to the kitchen, sitting on the counter while his mother cooks and cools the various parts of the meal. Eating is a great pleasure. Nobody in their household eats like him. He loves sitting with his long legs dangling, talking about school and friends and what special things happened in the day, and when Father isn’t home, the boy always asks when he will be.
Father used to be gone overnight, but that has changed.
Quite a lot is different now.
Mother laughs as she cooks. Vents pull the odors outside, and an orange-headed monkey is drawn by the smells, walking past the front curtain and through the house door, ready to eat.
The monkey owns the boy.
That is the way the world looks to the monkey. His name is Good, and he is smarter and nicer than most orange-heads. But he isn’t much nicer. Jumping up on the counter, he tells the boy, “Move.”
The boy slides a very short distance.
“Food,” the monkey says.
There are indoor rules. Good cannot open drawers or the cooler and certainly not the oven, even if the fires are off. He has his own plate and cup, and he can eat his share of the day’s first and last meals. But he isn’t allowed to bite anyone, even the boy. And if he curses, which happens too often, Good is sent outdoors again, sometimes for the entire night.
Animals sleep outside.
Good is not an animal. He says so when he behaves himself, proving every other monkey inferior.
He loves his boy, even if he comes across as an irritable beast, giving orders with his muscular body and the crisp, fierce language. They sleep together in the boy’s big bed. Every night Good makes a fresh nest out of torn paper and clean rags, and he always uses the room’s chamber pot or house toilet to relieve himself, and there haven’t been any important mistakes for two hundred days. But Mother still doesn’t approve of Good. “Who else in the world invites an orange-head to her dinner table?” she asks.
“Nobody,” the monkey says, happy for the easy meat and sweet cold fruit.
A long table stands in a special room beyond the kitchen. The boy has the important job of setting plates and utensils in their places, which doesn’t take long, and then he and Good may go outside to wait. Father usually arrives when the sunlight looks tired and the faraway trees fade to sloppy, ill-defined greens and browns. People across the world are coming home. Marduk is a great ancient and very important tree. The only door to the outside leads to a new curtain wearing a giant corona, and past the corona is a new landing that looks like no other: its railing is tall and every wooden slat stands close to its neighbor, like soldiers ready to march, barely any room for a sideways hand to reach through. A great net is suspended overhead, every thin rope close to its neighbors and more ropes pulling the net outwards to create a lovely high dome. There is only one gate where people can come through. Monkeys can slip past the largest gaps but nothing larger. Birds and young leatherwings sometimes fall in through the same holes, and sometimes they can’t get away, flying about panicked and helpless, and the boy never likes that.
Three people are always on duty at the gate. Two inside and one beyond the landing. They are usually men and each is a guard, which is a kind of soldier, though they don’t wear uniforms and their guns are kept hidden.
Each guard has several names and a full long life that the boy didn’t invent. He knows their faces and pieces of their stories, and some of them are friendly and some prefer to act like wood, tough and immune to whatever happens in the world. No matter who they are, the boy calls to them by their names, and sometimes Good teases the guards, knowing just how bad to be without finding real trouble.
As a rule, guards curse easily and with great skill.
Night is coming into the world now, darkness rising out from the cool shadows, and then Father arrives with his own guard walking before him.
There are reasons for these precautions.
“Fear is the main reason,” Father has said. “Most of the fears aren’t even real, except when they live between the ears.”
The gate is unlocked for Father.
He enters and bends over, grabbing at the boy who barely looks human, what with the long legs and wrong feet and arms that are stronger than they appear but never gain the meat that even a runty girl would possess. But he loves this boy utterly, and they hug, and locking the gate behind him, an inside guard might say, “Good evening, Merit.”
His parents are Merit and Haddi, and those aren’t uncommon names.
But only one creature in the world is named Diamond, and he kisses his father’s scarred old face while Good hurries into the lead, already tasting dinner with a monkey’s keen imagination.
After guarding the gate, these retired
soldiers have forms to fill with careful words describing their uneventful shifts. Once the forms are filed, they are required to train hard at one portion of their unique job—marksmanship or risk-rating or hand-to-hand combat. Then they are free to stamp out and go home to their mates and children, if there are any, and they will end up in whatever bed is best, and they usually sleep hard for as long as possible. But whenever they awaken, day or night, their first duty is to fill out another set of forms describing their dreams and any second thoughts about the previous shift.
Parts of what they do make sense to them.
They assume what feels silly is really smart, but they don’t waste the effort trying to piece together the obscure logic.
These strong men and very strong women are the result of a long, careful search. Each was born and raised in the Corona District, although their parents might have been born elsewhere. They have unblemished service records and no secrets left to uncover, and by most standards, they are neither political nor religious people. But the most important quality shared by each is a supreme, nearly superhuman capacity to avoid opinions about that one strange boy.
The guards’ identities are supposed to be confidential, but the District isn’t large enough for anonymity, particularly when the subject proves so fascinating. Every guard faces moments when a cousin or childhood buddy or that pretty woman on the stool beside him asks questions.
Simple questions are easy to deflect, and rare.
Everybody knows quite a lot about the boy already. Four magical creatures were rescued from the belly of the ancient corona, but despite his odd proportions and the curly hair and a nose that looks tiny against his very peculiar face, Diamond seems to be some kind of person. He certainly looks more like the guards than he looks like the papio. But his unique birth and curious appearance aren’t half as fascinating as his freakish, unnatural capacity to heal.
That’s what people ask about when they think they have permission.
“How fast does he heal?” they want to know.
“Have you ever seen him badly injured?” they inquire, hoping for stories of carnage and rebirth.
“Is it true?” they ask. “Can the creature cut off his own hand and then push it back on the wrist, and the hand reattaches in one or two recitations?”
No guard earns his pay by answering the wrong people’s questions. But if they told the truth, their audiences would be disappointed, probably dismissing the answers as lies. Diamond rarely suffers anything worse than scrapes or splinters. Four hundred days of shadowing the child has produced remarkably few tales about weathering injuries or other mayhem. And there haven’t been a dozen incidents where somebody had to brandish a pistol or wrestle some troublemaker to the floor.
Maybe the guards aren’t necessary. It’s possible that there aren’t any dangers looming over Diamond. But every person likes to believe that he or she is doing important work, and that’s why the guards see their own work as being instrumental, nobody else doing half as much to keep the client safe.
“And who are you protecting him from?” civilians might ask.
But everyone knows the answers. The world is the upper half of the Creation, and there can be nothing else. Old faiths are the most enduring, and every old faith, human or papio, claim that the walls of this world are its ends. Certain people whisper and grumble. They say that these strange entities—the four children of the corona—are abominations. Guards know that whispers often turn into action. Except this boy acts nicer than most boys, and he seems utterly harmless. Inside his home district, Diamond’s presence is usually taken as a blessing, and maybe he is a great blessing, just as their Archon says.
Trapped inside the corona’s stomach, the children weren’t dead and they weren’t alive. Rumors claim that the papio took possession of the biggest prize, but rumors are liquid, hard to hold and never the same shape twice. No authoritative eye has witnessed anything that casts a shadow. Of course it can be assumed that the papio are plotting to steal the most human child. But complicating the problems is a different mess of rumors about a secretive monster that lives in the wilderness, hiding between the old forests and the reef. If that monster exists, then one has to wonder if it will slip into the District some day or some night, aiming to steal away its one-time sibling. What the guards can’t dismiss, they have to believe. And then there’s Diamond’s famous brother who lives at the very center of the world, in the palace with the Archon of Archons. Except for having arms and legs and one head set on top of a giant body, that monster barely resembles humans or the boy or even the biggest papio. That powerful creature is covered with armored scales and bright sharp spikes, and he has two mouths and a burly temper, and he happily wears the name King, which is an ominous old word.
Every guard appreciates that List, the Archon of Archons, is ambitious and unnaturally shrewd, cultivating the talents of his adoptive son while no doubt wishing to steal Diamond away, earning him a special place on the chart of worries.
No matter how much is known, a great deal is mystery. No opinion should feel like steel. But Diamond has been tested by doctors and scientists. Blood and hair and his skin have been studied with every available tool, and according to the smartest gossip, he is surely the most human among the four.
This intrigues the average citizen more than anything else.
Yes, the boy seems indestructible. But his magic blood looks and tastes like ordinary blood. Under a microscope, his skin is indistinguishable from human flesh. Tree-walkers and the papio have very similar bones, varying a little in shape in shape and size, and it’s the same with Diamond. Every human is assembled according to the same orderly rules. What’s more, Diamond’s voice and most of his manners are familiar enough, and if you didn’t see his odd face, you might think that you were talking to any child.
Unknown beasts and the armored King can make the public marvel only to a point. Similarities are what make Diamond the biggest wonder among the corona’s children, giving rise to dreams and endless and nearly crazy speculations.
Guards should never discuss their duties or observations with the world outside. But in their own realm, when two or five or ten of them are together in the same private room, they’ll trade stories about the boy and his odd ways and the monkey nobody likes and the school where Diamond pretends to be normal. Drinks help the guards share frank opinions about the boy’s friends and his teacher and those old people who pretend to be his parents. Then one of the guards, usually someone who has been off-duty for a few days, will turn to the others, and with a quiet, careful voice, he or she will ask what matters beyond everything else:
“Are his whiskers coming in?
“Is he losing that little kid voice?
“Any sign, anywhere, that his seeds are trying to move?”
Diamond’s parents work to immerse their son inside a happy, half-normal life. The boy has friends and routines that include attending the local school with only minimal precautions in place. Bright children deserve the best teachers, and the boy has a genuine Master named Nissim—a one-time butcher and scientific scholar brought to the Corona District through some fusion of fate and odd opinions.
In principle, Diamond is free to travel anywhere inside the local District, but always accompanied by his guards. Calibrated intrigues try to deflect the uncounted, mostly invisible enemies. Meanwhile, important people have traveled across the world just to shake his hot hand and match his white smile. List has visited the boy several times, usually for important civic events, bringing that odd shrill voice to make apologies for deeds that might be regretted and disasters that were misunderstood. He even brought his monster son for the last visit, which meant that ten guards were stationed in the same room, each hoping for the excuse to shoot King, leaving him temporarily dead. But the armored creature said nothing except polite words, and King left without challenging his brother, not with either mouth or a single one of his armored fingers.
The local Archon has always been the b
oy’s great champion. Prima was adored long before this wonder-child fell into her lap. No other Archon could have handled her citizens with the same graceful ease.
The other Archons are considered the same as generals and scientists. They can’t visit the boy at home. Home remains a sanctuary clad in nets and guards and sensible rules. Prima is the sole exception. She is welcome to walk through the corona-adorned curtain, and portions of her staff can come along. But nobody will argue if the parents say, “No.” Nobody dares. Master Nissim is also welcome, and certain trusted neighbors have attended occasional feasts held on the big new landing, and every happy boy deserves to have good friends.
For four hundred days, public opinion has held steady as an old blackwood: the boy is a prize leftover from the Creation, and he could well be a treasure too. If the big Archon wants to steal Diamond away from them, then Diamond certainly must be a creature worth knowing.
Hundreds of children attend the Marduk school, but barely a dozen are allowed inside Diamond’s home gate. After classes, once every three or four days, a group gathers on the landing. Ancient contests like tag and spider-scramble lead to new games invented for the occasion, using whatever props and moods are on hand. Diamond isn’t a natural climber. His arms are short, his instincts slow. Everybody else finishes before their friend climbs to the top of the net and back down again. But the boy runs faster than anyone on the flat wood, and he rides a bicycle built to fit his long legs, and when the current game ignores him, he quietly settles down to do nothing while his friends play, sitting next to the stoic guards while gazing at the net overhead, screams and laughter filling the space, right up until Haddi steps outside, arms waving as she chases away the chaos.
Exactly two children are special enough to be invited into the boy’s room.
Seldom is a slight but growing boy, and Elata is still a sharp-tongued girl with a strong build and very little fear.
