by Robert Reed
There is a third voyage and then a fourth. The old female leaves at night and each is uneventful. But she has established a ritual that even stupid creatures can understand. The final journey is buoyed up by sunlight. She emerges to be met by a great flight of monsters. The coronas drifting below count the approaching machines and the little beasts riding inside the machines. Never has the enemy been so numerous, so close. Young voices and harsh voices renew the arguments about what the First of Firsts wants, and more to the point, what she deserves. Plainly, everyone should follow her. The monsters are sick with urgency, racing to catch her and butcher her, and this is a rare rich chance for the good world to rise in force, destroying every machine and a small, critical portion of the tree beasts.
But that is not the coronas’ way, of course.
The elders firmly remind everyone that they are tenaciously peaceful. Their power and speed are not attached to any rage. But talk doesn’t stop the more belligerent souls. Calming scents are more effective, but even then not enough. The most violent coronas gather near the barrier, waiting just out of sight, each spotting the machine that he or she will kill first, and in their minds, in secret, they see themselves bathed in the searing white light that the coronas like to aim at their heroes.
A thousand young coronas make a momentous decision:
If the old female fights, they will fight too.
That is the honorable way.
But when the monsters arrive, not even one of her heads snaps against them. With bladders swollen and empty, she remains in one place, inviting them to pierce her with spears and explosives. Then the monsters grab her limp form with bags of gas—bags made from the bladders of her own scions. Every corona watches the murder. Then the monsters drag the dead gray flesh to the emptiest piece of reef. An ugly night arrives, and a few coronas sneak into the other world, watching knives hack the body to pieces and then toss the pieces aside. The First’s glorious parts, too old to be given an age, are also too old to be used for even the ugliest purpose.
The waste is astonishing. What more proof is needed that the other world is ruled by insanity?
That wicked night is crossed at last, and other days and nights follow in turn. Another First is judged to be the eldest now. He is more male than female, and he might well be the same remarkable age. But his voice has never seemed as wise as the one who is lost, and where she was dramatic, he holds a duller kind of soul.
“She is not gone,” he reminds them. “Can you hear her echoes? Do you see her bright voice roaming in your brains?”
But the old female is gone, and without that living breathing body in this world, something has changed.
The Creation feels diminished, feels a little wrong.
Young coronas grieve.
And the First only makes the suffering worse. “What she did did not need to do be done,” he says.
Everyone aches. Everyone is unhappy with this tale’s finish. The Egg-of-all-eggs died among the worst kind of strangers, and where is the value in that?
“It was a worthless waste,” he says.
Every waste is worthless, is it not?
But then he offers something unexpected, unexplained. “I don’t know why anyone should care so much about one old obligation.”
“What obligation?” a few ask.
The old fellow acts confused by the question. Perhaps he didn’t mean to speak. His thoughts leaked free of his skin, oblivious to his wishes.
“What old obligation?” everyone asks.
He pauses. He reflects. Then with all of his strength, he says, “Once and for good left-behind reasons, she made a promise to another. All of this nonsense grew wild from that one foolish promise.”
“What promise? Which other?” the coronas want to know. And not just the young ones, and not just the loud brilliant ones. Even the elders beg for details, knowing nothing about this pact.
“Details are not important,” the First claims with bright, defiant flashes of high-purple. “To act on a pledge after so long . . . under these circumstances . . . well, her judgment was rotted through.”
One of his daughters is just a hundred days younger than the world. To him and everyone, she says, “I don’t recall any obligations.”
He says nothing.
“This promise was hatched in the other world,” she guesses, every head gazing at the demon floor.
“Not in that world or in ours,” he says. “I was with her when it happened. The other Firsts were elsewhere. I alone saw the agreement made. It was during the earlier Creation, and ask me nothing else.”
But a singular opportunity is been exposed. In one voice, thousands say, “Tell us about the world before this world.”
“It is not important,” says the old corona.
His voices are solid, but his colors are less than confident.
“That world is gone,” he says. “What value could it possibly have?”
No one in the world is working now. Bodies hold still and no one speaks, the jungle growing wilder by the moment while every eye and mind is focused on that ancient man.
“Our obligations are aimed at this day,” he says. “This day reigns, and I will do everything possible to see your work fulfilled.”
Days are like flesh. Each one is dressed in the same kind of flesh, and likewise, every night looks like every other.
But when have the coronas not done their important, eternal work?
Suddenly the old one flashes with rage. “We should have attacked those brutes,” he says. “When the beasts came for my friend, we should have killed them. And we would have dragged her home again, and she would die among us, and that story would be finished.”
He sounds crazy and looks crazy, talking this way.
“Those little monsters are getting strong,” the First warns. Talking to himself as much as to the others, he says, “I won’t surrender. Not to those little beasts, those foul murderers.”
The world is silent, but for him.
“And I won’t honor promises made to the dead, certainly not for reasons that I can’t pretend to remember anymore anymore anymore.”
“You made a pledge too?” one child asks.
Then another wants to know, “Who is dead?”
“Everyone is dead,” says the crazed old corona. “Haven’t you been damn well paying attention?”
Days are like flesh, worn for their time before dying, and the soul of the day, what matters most, is what lingers.
The Egg-of-all-eggs is dead and the days continue much as those following behind. The coronas measure each one of the days, and the Count of All Days grows larger by very little. What changes is allowed to pass, almost unnoticed. What matters is remembered as echo and idea. Pilgrims continue to leave for the other world and return again, claiming enlightenment. Nothing changes in either realm. But there are stories, scattered and occasional and perhaps dubious stories, where an odd creature gets noticed. Something that isn’t known by sight or by scent is spied in the other realm. Then one young pilgrim returns with the tale about finding a tiny beast tumbling through the emptiest air. The pilgrim looks closely at the creature, noticing that it is young and small but in many ways different than its brothers. Tasting the boy with his smallest head is only reasonable. But then one of the tree monsters—a familiar hunter—falls through the air to fearlessly snatch the boy and claim him. The monster covers both of them with an intense drenching of fear, and the two creatures soon vanish inside a giant gas-bloated machine, and that day is made remarkable.
While telling the story, the pilgrim wonders if that odd new beast was falling on purpose. Maybe he was trying to reach this world. And if so, why did the hunter risk so much to stop him?
Explanations are invented.
Inventions are decorated in smart light and shared with the world. But no explanation looks true, and what is known is just enough to breed curiosity and arrogance.
For another four hundred days, nothing changes.
And t
hen quite suddenly, for reasons that no corona can decipher, war comes to that mad, lesser world.
The battles are furious as well as beautiful. Burning forest and shattered pieces of the reef punch through the demon barrier, enriching the good world. War is an old story, something known and normally unremarkable. There have been many wars among the monsters, some as large as this and almost as fierce. Those in the trees and those on the reef are like siblings: they hate each other because they are too similar. Yet unlike the coronas, they have no good work that needs accomplishing. They do not have a jungle to cultivate or long days to cross. That is why they periodically fight until both sides run short of fire or hatred or willing bodies, and then the monsters weave a false peace that will last another dozen generations, or at least until the monsters again forget how horrible life becomes during war.
Six hundred days pass, and then the exhaustion arrives. Fights become less common, and big flying machines are scarce and fearful, and the coronas who have studied many wars can say with authority that neither side occupies any chance of victory.
Yet there is no peace.
The other world’s madness has never been worse. Both species fight on, and what matters to the good world, to the corona world, is that the monsters have to make new machines. And to build machines, they need fresh scales and skins, bladders and blood from the only source in the Creation.
Both species actively chase the pilgrims, and they battle one another before and during and long after each of these hunts.
And there are many, many pilgrims for the killing: six hundred days of war have spilled minerals into the coronas’ realm. Ash and reef rocks help fuel blooms of food, and nests are molded from fat and love, and every bright egg sprouts a child, and every new child grows to until they are slithering close to one another, fighting for the available space inside a jungle that cannot grow any larger.
Becoming a pilgrim, if only for a sliver of a day, helps calm the crowded soul.
Pilgrims leave by the hundreds, and some die.
Unlike earlier days, even the strong and swift can be slaughtered.
One day the Father-of-all-fathers holds council with the other Firsts and elders and certain important youngsters. Much is discussed. Nothing is decided. Every voice wants the normal ways to return, but the normal peaceful Creation seems impossibly remote. How can they ever fly so far?
Bold talkers wish for a new war.
Maybe this mayhem is a treasure, they argue. They have been given a rare opportunity. What if the coronas were to rise up and batter their weakened foes? If every one of their species plunged through the barrier—a great wave of focused, purposeful flesh—perhaps they could kill every last monster. Then the Creation would be freed of this scourge, and the Count of Days and the beauty of the nights would be assured for all time.
This is what teases, this promise of a peace that never ends.
The council speaks about these matters, other matters, and they talk long about nothing at all.
Nothing is decided.
The coronas will never change.
The Father-of-all-fathers delivers the final verdict. He gathers the coronas into a dense sphere while he floats in the center. Their multitude is a world onto itself, and it has never been so huge and worried. His worries have made him appear older than ever. But he takes his obligations seriously, reminding the coronas that they never kill for the sake of killing, and the other world cannot touch them or hurt them in any significant way, and he refuses to hear or see any words about making this ugly fight their own.
“Our obligation is clear,” he says.
But despite the sounds that he makes, and the light and the stubborn scents—others can’t fail to notice that the old one is offering the expected words, and in ways, he is distinctly unconvinced by his own words.
“Our flight path is set,” he says. “Our world moves where it needs to move.”
This is odd, unexpected phrasing, likening the world to an object passing through air. Why would the world move? The Creation is rigid, invincible and immobile. Just the image of motion strikes a few as being senile.
“We must do our work,” he says.
Nobody doubts that the work is holy, and the Creation as well as both of its worlds depend on their unflagging devotion to the jungle and the food the jungle gives, and to the night that cools the world and lets the world rest before another day.
“Nothing can ever change,” he promises.
Yet the very next day—in the midst of the most ordinary bright morning—one event leads to a place that no one envisions.
The coronas’ world is rich with animals that float and that fly, and a thousand kinds of golden foliage gather as airborne jungles. Heat and endless moisture produce visible growth, moment-by-moment growth. The wooden forests in the other realm are sluggish, thin and impoverished. These jungles are far more productive. This is why so many giant coronas can live inside such a tiny place. Life is an explosion, magnificent and relentless, and on those rare days when the First mention the former Creation, they describe a paradise much like this one, only a thousand times larger, more wondrous and more magnificent than this.
Even when the world is crowded with coronas, like it is now, there are places where few go. The Creation is a sphere, and every sphere reaches its widest place. The demon floor rests against the world. Shadows rule. Wild creatures and weeds are the only inhabitants. A few children—odd, impulsive children as a general rule—like to investigate that useless terrain. They crawl into the tangles and crevices, and they hunt for the odd creatures that live nowhere else. The demon floor is close, slightly weaker than elsewhere, and that is an object of fascination too. But mostly, the odd children are there to make bright light in the darkness, be free of coronas and expectations, enjoying the company of souls just as peculiar as them.
The council of important souls was held yesterday.
Today, a trio of young coronas rise toward the sun with an unexpected claim. They found a creature unlike any other. What they describe is suitable for a dream, not for life. A few adults bother to listen. Then they dismiss the nonsense, offering candidates from among the known species. “No, no,” the children say. “None of those animals fit what we saw.” And not only did they see the beast, they spoke to it, and it spoke to them, after a fashion. Then they promised their new friend to tell no one about him, after which they hurried here with this fine new story.
The adults are too old and far too wise to accept any portion of this lie. But there are some curious details, and even the dullest adult can still enjoy a child’s fantasy. That’s why the stories spread. A corona day is exceptionally long, and everyone hears every story, and this is how the last of the Firsts eventually learn about this impossible business.
Three of them dismiss the whole matter without qualm.
But the Father-of-all-fathers turns silent, and against his usual nature, he turns contemplative.
The sun is shrouded and night arrives, and he leaves, presumably heading for his home. But he passes the cavity where he has slept for millions of days. In secret, the ancient one slips down to where darkness always rules, spending much of the long night throwing light into the crannies and calling out with words that he hasn’t used in an eternity.
Just before dawn, what he seeks allows itself to be found.
The creature is exactly as promised—too strange to be real and barely comfortable inside its body. Noises rise from its peculiar mouth, and the Father-of-all-Fathers replies in various ways. Then the strange creature rises out of its hiding place, drawing images on sheets of gossamer weed, and the corona draws pictures on his flesh, each trading notions and truths until one of them is without hope.
The broken one starts home again.
He is devastated by the physical tolls, and those miseries are nothing next to the emotions roiling his soul. But his soul is a great thing, built large and everlasting in the world. How can such a soul change in one night?
The new day is well underway. Only the babies sleep, and he pauses in a pocket of still air, inside the half-born jungle, listening for his own essence living in the world. But all he finds, echoing in the air and in his mind, is that long-ago man.
A human, he is.
Human in shape, human in voice.
“These days will end,” says the man. “But I will grant you a few more days, if you promise me one impossible, wondrous task, sacrificing everything for the slenderest chance to save All . . . ”
ONE
He wore his age well, with gray lurking in the beard and a deep dark gaze that had witnessed more than most. The body still held its easy grace and most of that trusted strength, but the man inside was learning the benefits of filling a comfortable pillow, worldly eyes staring at a bare wall or the polished face of the floor. He had become a thinker. He often thought about his wives and their many children. Each wife had had a lovely name that he couldn’t forget, and the older children had claimed proud names that he never bothered to remember. He had loved his family as well as any man could. He still cherished almost every portion of his former life. But that was long ago, in a very different place, and whenever he thought about his ladies and his babies, there always came that sorry moment when he remembered again that each of them was dead.
His type of women didn’t live in this part of the forest. He had looked for them after arriving but always came home lonely. Some of the others talked about finding a girlfriend for the lonely man, but she would have to be brought from distant trees—in a bad humor, most likely. An angry and frightened bride would probably try to murder him before love had its chance, and that’s why he said nothing positive about the idea, and maybe that’s why the matchmaking had never happened.
There was quite a lot of talk in this place. Every subject was discussed in his presence, and he always listened to those pieces that concerned him. Words were very important, and he always worked to understand what he was hearing. Yes, he was a very smart man. But even familiar words were confusing when they were strung together, which was why he concentrated on simpler, surer qualities: he studied postures and hands and the colors of the voices and who was angry and who was most scared. That was how a smart man learned the others were thinking.
