Gods of Green Mountain

by V. C. Andrews®

  Sharita raised her eyes, meeting her father’s grim look of smoldering anger. Like sun and shadows, her faltering, unsure smile struggled to become confident. He had never glared at her so fiercely before. “Your majesty,” she began in a humble way…

  “Go immediately to your rooms and stay there!” Ras-Far ordered coldly.

  Obediently Sharita entered the palace, still holding to Dray-Gon’s hand. From behind them, the king spoke authoritatively again, “Just a minute, Captain, I ordered my daughter to her rooms—not you.”

  At that, the young man turned and looked at the king squarely. “From now on, where Sharita goes, I go.”

  “Then if you want to come upstairs, to her tower, and watch while she is punished, I will allow that, but then you will leave and go to your room and stay there until I send for you.”

  “Sire, I hate for our new relationship to start off on such a bad footing—but you are not going to punish my wife! I am not going to allow that.”

  The false anger on the king’s face floundered and broke. “Your wife? When were you married?”

  Dray-Gon’s arm lifted to encircle Sharita’s shoulder. “By the old laws of El Sod-a-Por, there were several marriage ceremonies. Of course I know they are outdated now and considered old-fashioned. But there was a night in the God’s home when your daughter reached out and asked me to spend the night with her—that was once the most primitive marriage ceremony—especially when that night resulted in conceiving a child. I don’t think that old law has been recorded down in your latest law books—but you can easily have it arranged tomorrow.”

  Tears were in the queen’s eyes. She ran to Sharita and embraced her. “Darling, you mean…really? A baby? Oh, it’s been so long since there was a baby in this palace!” She turned to the king, her round pretty face beaming. “Ras-Far, we’re going to be grandparents!”

  “I am thinking of the embarrassment,” but nevertheless, the king went to his daughter and embraced her. He shook Dray-Gon’s hand. “Congratulations,” he said drily, “under the circumstances…a grandchild conceived in the God’s home? Well, you’re a better man than I.”

  It was then that Sharita went into her father’s arms and shone on him her most loving smile, washing away all his problems, his anxieties, with such little effort. Her hand lifted to caress his cheek, before she stroked his hair, and then lightly kissed him. “Father, Dray-Gon and I hid away in the prettiest little green valley, and it was like a wedding holiday. And while we were there, we decided to name our son after your father. Star-Far…he is going to be the most exceptional child ever born! Just wait until you hold him, and he smiles up at you.”

  Inwardly Ras-Far smiled, already convinced it would be an exceptional child. No doubt it would be a boy; his daughter usually got what she wanted; she made it happen. Then he sobered, and looked toward his new son-in-law. “My son, before you decide to make this marriage officially legal, there are a few facts you have to learn about your wife’s heritage.” Then he hesitated and shrugged with the futility. It was already too late for warnings. As he studied the two happy faces before him, he realized it had always been too late for them. What other choice did they have—except the way they took? So he wore a smile, and told of the wedding announcement he would make today, and tomorrow they would start on the formal wedding preparations: a grand, opulent wedding, to please his people, to give them something to remember

  And tomorrow could take care of itself.

  9

  The Royal Princes

  After the spectacular marriage of the Princess Sharita to Ron Ka’s son—a nobleman of the lower borderlands—the people of all El Dorraine became as one, no Uppers, no Lowers. Just Dorrainians. There was but one land, and this they determined to blend together without even a boundary line.

  The shimmering, lofty, arching doors of the domed cities were opened wide, and the residents of those cities marched out onto the unshielded, barren wasteland, risking the storms, the outlaws, the warfars, everything.

  And they planted. All along they had known the simplicity of it all, and just fooled themselves into thinking it was more complex. Everything started with the seed, with the green life, with the growing life, with the giving life. From the earth to the seed to the plant that bore the flower and then the fruit.

  Even the outlaws came to help, as if they too had been waiting for some miracle to give them back a meaning for living. In time, in a great deal of time, every square inch of their plains was planted. Long before that was accomplished, Sharita gave birth to her first child, a boy, just as she had known it would be. Proudly she laid her child in her father’s arms. “Look, Father, he has blue eyes—really blue eyes—like the God’s!”

  Ras-Far couldn’t be truly surprised anymore; the unprecedented became the natural, expected order of the way it was. He looked down at the beautiful child in his arms, with hair the spectacular color of his mother’s and skin of saffron cream. An exceptional baby, as he would have to be. However, sadness was in his eyes as he said to Sharita in warning: “Keep in mind, daughter, that a man is allowed three children during his life span—if Dray-Gon chooses for himself a new wife for his middle years, she will give him his second child—and the new law that allows a woman three husbands in her life span may not do you any good, for men are notorious for choosing women much younger than themselves.”

  His daughter’s violet, almost blue eyes clouded over as she looked to her husband, now with his first son in his arms. His strong bronze finger was clasped by the baby’s tiny pale fist. Dray-Gon caught his wife’s gaze and slowly smiled. “Yes, I have been thinking lately of that wife of my middle years. A beautiful flame-haired girl I once knew named Ray-Mon—she will give me another son, or perhaps a daughter the exact duplicate of herself—that I would like very much.”

  La Bara looked up from her tapestry work, thinking this the first cruel, heartless remark her son-in-law had ever made in her presence, and she felt some anger toward him. Yet, for some reason Ras-Far was smiling, as was her daughter—and she had thought Sharita and Dray-Gon still madly in love…so much so, that sometimes it was embarrassing.

  “Let’s see,” said the king thoughtfully, “the name Ray-Mon is somewhat familiar to me. In my desk in a secret report about that servant girl—she sneaked out of the palace and met a bakaret’s son. And they had a day of fun at a carnival, and there were several other meetings too. That girl really did give my security agents a run for their money and managed to cleverly evade them several times.”

  Both Sharita and Dray-Gon looked at the king in surprise, and some little embarrassment. “Father—you knew all the time?” whispered Sharita.

  The king laughed. “I knew about that, yes, for when I was a young prince, I too often grew tired and restless with the many rules and regulations that routined my life, and I would disguise myself in plain clothes and do small things to change my appearance, so I could go out on the city streets and find out what life for a commoner was all about. And believe it or not, there were many pleasing aspects to being an average, everyday man, to do with your life as you will, to a certain degree. In fact, Sharita, that was the very way I found your mother. She was visiting in Far-Awndra with her parents and had stolen out of her home without a guardian and was sitting on a park bench, looking very young and scared, not knowing what to do with her freedom when she had it, and I came along and sat down to talk with her. Never in the least did I guess that someday she would be my third wife—and my very best wife.”

  Tears came into La Bara’s eyes, for he had never hinted that he felt this way. But when she looked at Sharita, she knew why her husband had said what he did: She had given him Sharita, the joy of his life. She trailed behind, after the grandson now. But her hands didn’t quiver as she skillfully applied the needle, and made the daintiest of stitches in the picture that was inching toward completion. To be a small part of Ras-Far’s life was enough.

  “Put down your work, La Bara,” said the king, and came
to take her hand and draw her with him to the nearest terrace balustrade, where they could see out through the transparent dome to the surrounding countryside. Sharita and Dray-Gon came too, with the baby held in his arms.

  It was a far different scene that met their eyes now—the wildlands were wild no more. The star-flowers grew quickly, and worked their miracles—and soon all the city domes would be torn down, and no longer would they see a view slightly unfocused.

  The roots of the marvel plants reached down deep into the inner-earth, and spread their webby network of absorbing tentacles, bringing moisture to the dry, crusty surface. When the deluges came from the worst blustering storms, the roots caught and held the water, and seeped it out later to the top surface—and now there was dampness to change what had been desert land. At last! The suns shone on the new wetness, and vapor rose to form soft, billowing white clouds, the kind of clouds they had never seen before: a kind of shield between the earth and the relentless sunlights from dual glowing stars.

  Years passed before the star-flowers pushed back the bays of Gar and Sol, nibbling upon them, then taking great bites, then huge mouthfuls, until the bays were eventually swallowed up by the spreading green growth. The blue ice of Bay Gar melted ever so slowly, and trickled into the waiting gullies and ravines, filling the underground rivers to overflowing, until they, at long last, came to the surface. The melting ice caps caused the planet to tip bit by bit, until all that melting water emptied into the sunken plains of the bay of Sol. So they had an ocean now. Their first, and their last. It was the king’s comment that one ocean was enough, considering the size. “And just think,” he said to his first grandson, Star-Far, “that ocean floor was once Bay Sol, and your mother and father traveled across that bay to meet with Gods, and they crawled through a god’s grave to get to his home.”

  The boy’s blue eyes grew very large. “Is the God still living there?” he asked, very awed, as he was always awed when the God was mentioned. “Will I see him one day?”

  “Certainly,” said the king, “he has requested often to see you—since you were conceived in his very home. He knows you have his blue eyes, and your mother’s beautiful hair and saffron cream skin, and he was much impressed.”

  Star-Far was impressed with himself too when he looked in a mirror. Was it true, what everyone said, that he was the most handsome man alive? For he didn’t think of himself as a boy anymore, now that he had reached the age of twelve. That was Far-Awn’s age when he found the star-flowers growing in Bay Sol. That was a man’s age in old El Sod-a-Por, but not much of an age now, he had to sadly admit. Now he was just a boy and forbidden he was to marry until he was twenty. When he looked at his grandfather, he couldn’t believe his incredible age—so old—but not nearly as old as Es-Trall!

  Far-Awndra was an oceanside city, with sea breezes to stir Sharita’s long silver-gilt hair, with waving depths of amber, when she held her second son in her arms. His small head was covered with dark, almost black ringlets, and his violet, almost blue eyes were turning to a dark plum color. “Sharita,” Dray-Gon complained, “when are you going to have a son that looks like me? Now we only have one child left to go…and that must be a girl exactly like you! See if you can’t plan things a bit better from now on, for if she comes looking like me, I’m going to be really disappointed!”

  “Well, his skin is your color,” said Sharita in defense of this small dark-haired son that already had her heart, but she understood her husband’s desire to have a son exactly like himself. “Let us go to Es-Trall and make him change that law forbidding only three children per married couple—after all, we don’t live under city domes now, so we can’t overpopulate our planet.”

  But Es-Trall shook his wizened head. “No!” he flatly stated. “If I relax the law for you two, then others will demand more children, and in no time our planet will be overcrowded. Though I admit I am very sorry, for the two of you produce remarkable children—each different from any species yet.”

  “Species?” questioned Dray-Gon. “Are we species now, instead of men?”

  “Merely a way of speaking,” said Es-Trall quickly.

  “Look around, and you’ll see what I mean. Once all of us had only red hair and purple eyes.”

  While the new queen and her king rejoiced in the birth of their second son, the retired king and queen wandered on a long journey to look over their changed world, to visit with the God in his lofty green home. And indeed, it was a changed world, incredible to Ras-Far when he looked down at the ground from the airship window.

  Out of the star-flowered plants, a variety of other life had developed. New types of bushes and scrubs, trees thick and chunky, and other trees tall and slender, and numerous insects followed, and birds of all colors to feed on them, and soon other types of animals to catch what they could. “Look down there, La Bara—can you believe any of what you see?”

  La Bara shook her head, just as amazed as Ras-Far. She didn’t talk incessantly now, for her beauty, youth, and vigor were draining away. She was growing old much quicker than her husband…and to think she was but eighteen when he married her, and Ras-Far had been already in his first years of old age, though not in appearance. In appearance he hardly changed from what he had been then. That this was so puzzled her, and saddened him, so that he said to her in a very kind voice, “Perhaps, dear, it is time we went home.” La Bara nodded; she had met the God once, that was enough. “I think when we reach home, Ras-Far, I will lay me down to sleep.” Tears came in her husband’s eyes. “Darling, no! Not yet!—stay awhile longer, please.”

  But a longing for sleep brings it on, and no more would La Bara annoy her husband with too much talk, and now he could only wish that she were here to do just that.

  However, Ras-Far was to see the God in his great green home many times over. When they first began their great explorations and developments, the father of Sharita had gone on every journey that was made to visit and converse with their great and wise God—once only a man, for he kept insisting on saying that, as insistent as they were persistent in not believing. For they would have him what they wanted to believe he was. Once a century Ras-Far traveled that way to pay his respects, for it had been figured out, more or less, the relationship of the God’s time, in comparison to theirs.

  And indeed, a hundred years was for all of them an endless, long wait for such a momentous occasion. But to their God it was a matter of but days. Ras-Far began to suspect that a delegation of magistrates of high officials of state could be somewhat offensive if they came more often than ten days apart. Then, most regretfully, he ordered the visits spaced even further apart, for something was happening as the years passed, something strange and unexpected. This made the former king smile to himself a bit uneasily. There were times when he just wasn’t comfortable when he looked at his own personal calendar and figured out his tremendous age, and as for Es-Trall—who was ever going to believe it?

  Ras-Far spoke to his daughter when he returned home. “You and Dray-Gon must go on the next visit, and forget all your official responsibilities. As incredible as this may sound, the God does not look well to me. It seems to me, though speak of it to no one else, that he is not as sharp of wit as he was.”

  It was true these delegations from the capital city extracted so much from the God that often he felt a bit depleted and drained when the minute questioners departed. He would sit for hours, not moving, restoring himself and wondering about the changes that time was giving to the “ant”-size men that had first visited him. They were no longer insect-size, but growing steadily larger.

  And surely, when he looked out of his round window, it seemed to the God that the red rocks mounding the grave of his countryman, the ones they called their “Scarlet Mountains,” were not as lowly as once they had been. Even his intelligent small worshippers had casually mentioned his “Green Mountain” home was not the tremendous monumental ship it had once seemed to be. “Our wise man, Es-Trall, has theorized the quality of life and
death and decaying matter is changing and enlarging the size of our small world and peoples much more quickly than he had anticipated.”

  “Cannot Es-Trall himself come at least once to visit me?” asked the God rather peevishly. “It seems it could be arranged, even if he is so old he might break like a stick. You could transport him carefully.”

  It was King Dray-Gon he talked to this time, and Dray-Gon laughed. “Lord God, not I, not my wife, not even you can tell Es-Trall what to do with his time. He has every second of his days filled to the brim, and in odd moments of his schedule, he falls asleep. He refuses to take the long sleep, for he is keeper of the records since Sal-Lar died.”

  The king looked at his wife, who sat very silent and subdued, studying the imaged face of the God in the wall of glass. “Why do you look so sad, lovely Sharita?” asked the God, the question Dray-Gon was too polite to ask.

  “I don’t know. It is just that sitting here, looking at you, I fear this may be the last time we meet.” For it was true; in the sky blue of the God’s eyes, so like her first son’s, there was a haunted, shadowed look, the same look she had observed in her mother’s eyes before they were closed permanently.

  “So we have met, and we have looked, and we have talked over many things, but we have never touched, except spiritually. Isn’t that enough?” asked the God.

  Sharita held tight to Dray-Gon’s hand as they headed home, toward Far-Awndra, and thought to herself, no, it wasn’t enough. How horrible to be only an image in a wall of glass, beyond the reach of a hand to clasp yours.

  The mighty God of indescribable size had the very same thought in mind as he sat alone after the departure of his royal guests. Heavily he sighed, and made his decision. They didn’t need him now, though once he knew from the tales of their history that they had needed him desperately. Now he could do them a favor. He knew better than they that all the curses of weather, charred and blackened earth, and dry land that wouldn’t produce could be laid on his doorstep. He sat there, quiet, pondering, refusing to lift his hand and push the button that would energize his ship by pulling up strength from the earth beneath the silver legs. A revitalizing strength, which, withheld, depleted his mechanical, calculating brain behind the racing colored lights, so that one by one the lights faded and went dark. Now, without that energy supplied to him, his own life could no longer be sustained.