Crimson

by Warren Fahy

  She sat down in the pungent leaves between roots with a sharp carving knife to see how soft the beams of wood left by the beaver at the foot of her tree were. She thought she might carve them into rain gutters to replace the rotted ones she had discarded. But after she grooved an inch of one of the thick beams with her knife, she frowned. Replacing the gutters would be an arduous job—and a low priority. She could always fashion gutters with tree bark, instead, she decided.

  She climbed to her feet and set out for the beach.

  As she walked over the sand she regarding the dark ribs of Knot, which arched like the beams of a burned-out hall on the beach to her right. The monster’s skull seemed to be missing. She wondered if it had been pulled into the sea by the waves or if the sailors had taken it for a prize.

  The salt was tangy in the air and in her nostrils and the surf was loud. A blustery wind blew in off the choppy bay. Resting high on the beach, 30 yards from the bones of Knot, sat Trevin’s boat, Stargazer.

  As she approached the proud vessel her trident sail dropped and rippled defiantly. Neuvia heard a whisper and realized Toy was speaking to her, tickling her ear with his tongue: “She may help!”

  “Ah,” Neuvia said. “Thank you, Toy!” She bowed on one knee before Stargazer, touching her knee to the sand.

  Stargazer’s sail snapped sharply. “Why not look in Knot’s bones?” The air seemed to whisper the words over her rustling canvas.

  “Yes, mother!” Neuvia answered, instinctively. She was awed by the respect the strange beings in her husband’s world commanded. She rose obediently and walked down the beach toward Knot’s remains.

  Stargazer reflected a beam of sunlight from a brass fitting at the end of her yardarm, and the sunray danced inside Knot’s arching ribs. Neuvia noticed the glint of gold and ran through the corridor of bones. She bent down to dig out the golden handle that she pulled out of the sand. A square diamond as broad as her hand was set on its head. She brushed off the gleaming jewel in awe. Trevin had been right. This one had swallowed a stone of power, after all. As Neuvia looked at the scintillating gemstone she realized that she held the ancient scepter of Gieron himself. The myth of Gieron’s death, swallowed by Knot while sailing to the Dimrok in ancient times, was true!

  Though it was cut in cruder facets than the Cronus Star, Gieron’s diamond was unusually pure and perhaps even greater in size and weight. Neuvia knew now that this mighty jewel must have given that ancient monarch, Bondairtlen though he was, some of the certainty of his mighty reign. Somehow his golden scepter withstood a thousand years in Knot’s poisonous gizzards, shining like new in Neuvia’s hands without a scratch on its stone or handle.

  The sail of Stargazer whipped, and Neuvia hastened out of Knot’s ruins.

  “Hide the stone!” the wind hissed on the skiff’s sail.

  “Take it to the treehouse!” said Toy in Neuvia’s ear.

  And so, guided by her strange allies, she covered the scepter and hurried back up the path to the forest, even as sun spilled through the slate clouds and turned the bay blue.

  Trevin was lost in a wicked dream: a ship bearing soldiers defied his edict. A party charged ashore to confront him. They met him halfway up the marble stairs as he came out to warn them. But with the heat of a furnace his will poured out of the molten Scepter. And the men burst into flames, tumbling as they crumbled into embers down the stairway. And Trevin screamed as the Lightstone Tower shattered in the sky behind him…

  He sat up on his bed, having escaped the dream. It didn’t happen, he told himself. It was just a dream. Even as he felt a moment of relief, the Scepter reddened his room, again.

  He looked out through the north window over the island toward Ameulis. Sails dotted the distant horizon. As each grew closer and retreated, his heart ebbed and flowed with dread.

  He decided that he must find his grandfather’s book.

  Looking down through Elwyn’s Tower for hours, he searched every crevice of every floor, until he finally stretched back at last on his bed in exhaustion and saw it hidden inside the ceiling above him.

  He removed a series of lightstone puzzle pieces with trembling hands, and finally pulled down the heavy volume bound in the hide of the furious cave demon that his grandfather had slain in his youth. In gold was inscribed the title of Elwyn’s legendary book: Cirilenicon.

  Trevin’s flipped back and forth through the Cirilenicon’s pages until he finally found something he could use:

  Techniques to Fortify One’s Defenses

  When Neuvia got back, she found Selwyn’s Prophecies opened on the floor of her bedroom. Her eyes barely read, “It will be hidden in fresh water…” before the pages turned.

  With a silver cord of braided spider-web, one of her wedding presents, Neuvia lowered the Scepter of Gieron into the cistern of clear water under the floor through the small trapdoor.

  She glanced at the book again, whose pages rustled, and she saw one wonderful word flash: YES.

  She relaxed then and took a corn biscuit from a shy red rat that must have stolen it from the Lightstone Tower and scaled the slippery tree. It had not nibbled a crumb. She patted its head for its noble effort and gave it some crumbs to eat.

  She sat on the bed and leafed through the white leather-bound volume Selwyn had entitled General Observations, munching the biscuit.

  Three ravens cawed around the treehouse. Then sparrows with emerald and blue feathers lighted on the sills of all four windows.

  Rusty-tailed gray squirrels sprang over them into the room and burrowed their heads under Neuvia’s legs on the bed as they switched their tails.

  She heard the stout, unmistakable claps of a beaver’s tail against a distant tree trunk.

  The great horned owl, out in broad daylight, landed on a branch over the brook outside the west window, its feathers raised and ruffled as it hooted low and aimed one its amber eyes at her as the other glanced out through the forest.

  Toy hissed in her ear: “He’s coming.”

  Neuvia aimed her spyglass at the tip of the tower—he was gone!

  Like a blooded bull, Trevin charged down the main path of Cintairn Gheldron.

  The Cronus Star set the leaves aglow like a rolling wave of autumn as bug, bird and beast alike scurried before him. Under his left arm, Trevin held the Cirilinicon.

  He turned left and down the ramp to the bay as the sun burned off the mist, and he finally arrived at the beach. Trevin did not even look at Stargazer as he passed through the ruins of Knot, searching with piercing eyes. He shrugged, finding nothing. The myth of Gieron’s death must have been a myth, after all.

  Trevin trained his eyes on the end of the beach instead then, past Knot’s bones. The cliff curved toward the sea there and from its base a broad vein of hard pink granite emerged, sticking out into the sea like a tongue. At the widened end was a perfectly round tidal pool called the Eye of Simairon. Simairon meant “sea” in Ardeyon, the language of Sentad, which had become the language of Ameulis after Elwyn was crowned King.

  Benches were carved into the pink rock around the Eye of Simairon like an amphitheater that faced the sea so that visitors could gaze into the pool at low tide. Trevin had visited it often as a child.

  Eager to peer into that window again, Trevin walked over the pink granite outcrop and was shocked to see the pool shining scarlet before him in the bolting sun like a bowl of blood. In the next instant the red pool changed into a rainbow of colors.

  Trevin was shaken, and peered into the pool as he drew near, seeing red fan-worms all across the bottom shyly extending and pulling in their feathery arms at each movement that he made. Apparently, all of the crimson fronds had been extended when he approached and all had withdrawn at once when he appeared. He sighed to find an innocent explanation and sat down on one of the carved benches, facing the sea.

  The pool resembled an eye with a deep black pupil at its center from which a hot trickle of water issued. This warm ribbon of fresh water kept the pool from becomi
ng too briny on summer days and too cold on winter nights. Three tides spilled over the pink granite bar each day, refreshing the pool’s cast of characters.

  Though the rock was pink, the “eye” itself appeared blue-green since the bottom was carpeted with anemones reaching turgid crowns into the water. Bursts of violet coral followed white veins of quartz to the eye’s pupil. Between the anemones and coral, in a thousand crags and tunnels and holes, were tiny green crabs, blue-and-yellow brittle stars, and purple-and-green sea worms with yellow-and-vermilion bouquets on their backs. Grazing snails like painted porcelain baubles, armor-plated chitons, keyhole limpets tipping their yellow hats, green abalone, orange eels, tiny pink octopi all came into focus as one looked into the Eye of Simairon. Even the friendly red-and-white shrimp could sometimes be seen, which groomed all creatures—except for the gold urchins that ate them. The shrimp were protected by Selwyn’s silver crabs, however, Trevin remembered. They had stripped the bones of Knot clean, Trevin realized, for they had been charged by Selwyn with keeping the beach clean, the kelp trimmed, and the urchins at bay.

  Each time a visitor looked into the Eye of Simairon, there were new marvels to behold. Trevin set the Scepter on top of the Cirilinicon by his side and folded his legs, throwing back his robe, sitting naked as he absorbed the welcome sun before the pool that gradually turned red, again, before him.

  “Spy,” Toy whispered.

  “That’s what I’m doing.” Neuvia parted ferns at the cliff’s edge. Below she saw Trevin peering into the Eye of Simairon, naked with his hair flung back by the sea-wind.

  The great horned owl lighted in the tree above her, fearless in the bright sun as it warbled in agitated fashion. A brown sea eagle sat on the tree’s highest branch over the cliff, adjusting its wings as it kept watch over her.

  The owl hooted and the eagle cried, lunging into the sky.

  Neuvia let the ferns close and ducked down, lying flat.

  Trevin heard the eagle’s cry and, sensing something on the cliff behind him, he pointed his silver spyglass. The eagle flashed the sun and Trevin followed the bird as it glided north along the cliff.

  She extended her gold spyglass, resting it on a rusty fork of fern fronds as she twisted the tubes to focus the lenses. Neuvia saw Trevin following the eagle with his spyglass away from her. Then she saw him put the scope down as he lifted a large book bound in black onto his lap. Then, suddenly, he closed the book as he seemed struck by something that he saw in the pool.

  He rose and shielded his eyes as he gazed into the water.

  She steadied her hold on the spyglass and noticed a rare black nautilus swimming in broad, fast curves in the tidal pool. The creature’s creased shell cut the water like the hull of a ship as jets propelled it over the surface. It must have been trapped by the tide.

  Then she noticed an orange hand floating in the green pool to the left of Trevin.

  It was a starfish, one she had heard of but never seen called a gyre, which meant “monster” in old Ameulintian. She was never sure that they existed before.

  The gyre could float and swim like a human, Trevin remembered being told as a child. And now as he watched the rare animal point one of its arms foreward like a head tipped by a purple cluster of eyes, and then use its other limbs like arms and legs to swim, he realized it was hunting the jetting black nautilus trapped in its tide pool. It may have waited for weeks, he thought, like a spider in its web, clinging to the bottom during high tide and floating to the surface when a nautilus was washed into its trap.

  The gyre stroked its legs and then floated still, sinking just below the surface. When the nautilus’s looping course finally crossed over it the gyre closed its orange fingers so fast they cracked the nautilus’s shell sharply and sent up a splash of water. Then they sank to the bottom together.

  Trevin put his boots on and trudged into the pool. He reached down into the water and lifted the two creatures locked in their mortal grip, cocking his head as he observed the age-old mechanisms of their gruesome dance.

  Neuvia watched as Trevin stood perfectly still, examining the nautilus and the gyre in the middle of the pool.

  “Why can’t I call him?” she whispered.

  “Not yet,” Toy feathered her ear.

  “What is he doing?”

  “Toy doesn’t know.”

  Nothing. She found nothing in the book of prophecies when she returned to the treehouse, and she sighed, feeling weary then. She craved a cooked meal. The sea eagle brought her a fish each day, and the owl seemed to try something different each day to find out what she wanted. Generous birds even brought her three eggs each morning, but she had been fearful of building a fire. Would Trevin see the smoke if she cooked? She took her books and climbed down the stairs carved on the massive branch. She reached the dressing room, where her very cold shower was, and there she took the spiral stairs around the trunk to the low-ceilinged kitchen.

  She appraised the queer stove there, an iron grill with river cobbles piled under it. She searched through cupboards under the counter around the stove. She found several corroded copper pots and cobwebbed utensils, and then she found a mildewed book with a yellow ear of fungus growing on its spine. She vaguely remembered the book as she scraped the growth from the binding and separated the leaves of vellum in a sunlit window to let them dry. My Cookbook was scrawled on the first page in Trevin’s childish hand.

  She peeled the molded pages apart, reading his imaginative and imaginary recipes for his “favorite” meals. He had tried to cook fried sparrow’s eggs with spices and butter gravy and even black biscuits, using unspeakably silly ingredients, and poor Trevin noted “less pepper maybe” or “no snail juice” or “doesn’t work” under his recipes. He had tried frying the colorful tree snails that inhabited some of the forest’s trees, but after proudly explaining his herb, meal, and grease formula as “delicious and fit for the very Gairanor,” he added the next day: “Yuuuuuck!”

  She was warmed by the guileless optimism in her husband’s young heart and held the clever book to her bosom.

  “The stove,” Toy whispered in her ear.

  “Eh?” She stroked his ivory braid, and peeled back more pages until she came to a passage that read:

  MY STOVE—Father helped me make the most wizard stove of all! I say “Back you go!” and throw one of the river stones in the Chuckling Wee. The rest get hot—with jealousy, Father says. Ha!

  “Thank you, Toy! Now let’s hope it works.” Neuvia selected a smooth pebble from under the iron grill and went to the window. But a branch had grown between the kitchen and the stream, so she pulled open the door on the outer wall and climbed the stairs carved onto the branch to the miniature dining hall held by the branches at the end.

  She knelt at a window over the stream. She saw that she had a slim shot at the water between a few branches. If she missed she would have to get more stones to throw. “Back you go!” she said, without much hope, according to Trevin’s instructions. She eyed the shard of water and flicked the stone. With a winking splash, it struck the water and her wedding ring glinted. “Ha!” she declared.

  She ran nimbly down the branch to the kitchen and crouched as she entered the door and peered in. The stones under the grill were pink as a basket of newborn puppies.

  When she approached and tested the air over the iron grate with her hand, it was searing hot though the heat dissipated quickly as she raised her hand. She decided that if she boiled things in water, she could cook without smoke, and it was this amenity that seemed to make everything suddenly bearable.

  At sunset, she a boiled rabbit provided to her by the owl with red butter and green onions and blue potatoes and steamed flat bread. She was a master cook, and even this improvised dish was better than the fare of most country hamlets.

  Neuvia sipped a cup of herb tea after her meal, sitting in the ornate dining room at the end of the branch. As she read, she looked up from her books occasionally into the forest, whose instruments fluted
and chimed. Suddenly her eyes fixed on a figure hanging in the maze of branches on the far bank of the brook.

  It stared back at her with turquoise eyes, a man-like creature covered with long orange hair. Its legs were like great arms spread in different directions gripping branches.

  Neuvia was soothed strangely instead of frightened as she noted the powerful beast’s gentle manner, for she knew it must be the “Orange Man” that everyone had heard of though few had ever seen.

  It was said to have lived in the woods since Elwyn’s time but it had almost never made an appearance since then. After staring for several minutes at Neuvia, the Orange Man yawned, baring horseshoes of yellow teeth before it moved slowly through the canopy, one hand at a time, swinging off into the darkness.

  Dusk fell and stars glittered through the forest’s roof amidst the white star flowers. Neuvia lit a yellow candle and ascended the central stairway to the highest branch with her satchel of books. And as she climbed the steps to her bedroom she felt reassured somehow to know that somewhere out there was the Orange Man.

  Once ensconced on her bed, she resumed reading Selwyn’s General Observations. And, very late that night, she came across something so extraordinary she wondered if was still awake:

  A NOTE ON THE WYNDERNAL REALM—Never have I visited the Wyndernal World. As far as I know, my father was the last Cirilen whose link to that magical place was strong enough to open the eyes of his second life in that place of pure glory.

  None of my living kin on Damay has been there, except for Dantair, who went there only once. My father described the Wynderne World as the world of the possible and “what this world might be, for better or for worse.”

  It is, all Cirilen who have been there agree, however, the source of our power. By discovering how that place’s possible forms may project through a gateway like the Cronus Star, the Cirilen may bring forth miracles into the Hala World. It is said that only when a Cirilen succeeds in letting enough Wyndernal properties into this world do his “second eyes” finally open there when his first eyes close.