The Resting Places, page 25
They couldn’t gainsay the words of the magister and I felt guilty for quoting scripture at them. But Change should be open to all in the valley. Everyone should be welcome in the light of the Crystal Tree.
In the square, they were setting up the stage and stringing the lamps between the eaves of all the houses. Icons fluttered from the gables and the air was full of laughter under the sapphire sky. The ironoak walls of all the houses shone with a dark, smoky lustre, and the scale-slate roofs were copper bright.
I met Mylin on the edge of the village, sitting at the banks of the brook as we waited for the lots to be called. He was pitching stones into the water, staring at its crystal depths with a pensive look on his face. Like me, he had not been blessed as everyone else in the village had been blessed. We had always been allies and friends, taking solace in our difference and spending long walks through the valley complaining about everyone who overlooked us. He glanced at me now as I approached and sat next to him on the grass. We were near where Avaryn and I had dug for changestone two nights before. I thought about telling him, but I didn’t want him to laugh at me.
‘You put your name forward then?’ I said. ‘Like we talked about?’
‘Yes,’ he said. He ran a hand through his silver hair, and continued staring into the chuckling surge of the stream. ‘For all the good it’ll do…’
‘Don’t say that. We’ve as much chance as anyone.’
‘You think?’ he said. He scowled. ‘Magister’ll probably see our names come up and declare them void, or pretend he can’t read our writing. We’re an embarrassment to them, don’t forget that.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said. I gave him a dig in the side with my elbow and grinned. ‘And so what if we are? The magister’s a pious man, same as everyone else. If Change is come upon us, then who’s to say otherwise? If our names get picked, then the Bird wants us for one of the Nine. End of story.’
He nodded thoughtfully and turned back to the stream, pitching another stone in.
‘Avaryn’s not going in for it?’ he said after a while.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Reckons she’s not ready. She wants another summer to go by before she takes the chance. Gives her head a little more time to grow.’
‘A head…’ Mylin said, with scorn. ‘What’s she ever done to deserve a head.’
I laughed; Mylin and Avaryn had hated each other since they were toddlers, but it was so all-consuming, it was a wonder neither of them had been able to recognise it as the love it clearly was.
‘It’s started talking now and everything,’ I said. ‘She’s delighted with it, obviously. Says it tells her secrets at night, when she’s dreaming.’
‘I had a dream last night,’ Mylin said hesitantly. He plucked at the grass on the bankside while I waited for him to go on. ‘A dream about the Crystal Tree.’ He glanced warily at me. ‘Both of us had been picked in the lots, but when we were taken up there, we saw that it wasn’t a tree at all…’
‘What was it?’
‘It was a mouth… Somehow, it had turned into a huge screaming mouth, with sharp teeth, and it wanted to devour us…’ He shook his head. ‘It probably means nothing, I know, but they say dreams are gifts from the Bird of Change, don’t they?’
‘They do,’ I admitted.
‘Where do they go, I wonder?’ he sighed. ‘Every year…’
‘They join the Bird in the roots of the Tree,’ I said confidently. I felt my heart swell at the thought, boundless with love and wonder. ‘They help it wake from its slumber, and then they praise it and worship it, and in its great and marvellous gift it makes them part of the Tree in return. Each of them becomes part of its roots and its branches, its trunk and the leaves that glint and sparkle when the sun rises in the height of midsummer. Every year, the Tree grows purer, until one day it will break apart and the crystal will fall away, and a flock of birds shall be released that will swoop down and change every one of us into something just as beautiful. Don’t you listen to the magister?’ I laughed. ‘He tells the same tale every year.’
‘I wonder why it’s always nine,’ Mylin said. ‘Nine picked every year.’
‘It’s the number of the Bird,’ I said. ‘It’s sacred.’
‘I know, but… why? Why nine? Why not… seven, or eight? Or ten?’
‘Well,’ I said, thinking back to my lessons. ‘Some say it’s because the Bird has nine eyes. Others, because it was one of nine eggs, and it misses its brothers and sisters. I’ve always thought that it’s because nine is the basic form of those not blessed with Change.’
‘How do you mean?’ he said, frowning.
‘Look, it’s simple.’ I sat up straight and pointed at each part with my finger. ‘One head, two eyes, one nose, one mouth. Two arms, two legs. Add them all up – nine!’
‘Huh,’ Mylin said. ‘I’ve never thought of that.’
‘Course you haven’t,’ I said. ‘You’re not as clever as me.’
There was a cry from the village square below us, the clamour of a glass bell. I could hear people shouting and laughing, could almost feel the tremble of expectation in the air.
‘They’re calling the lots,’ Mylin breathed. ‘We should go.’
‘We should,’ I said. I drew the obsidian mirror from my pocket and looked at my reflection. Nothing. The same brown eyes looked back at me from a face still stubbornly itself.
I looked up the valley, to where the Tree was wreathed in the sullen light of mid-morning. By the early afternoon, as the sun breasted the rise of the eastern hills, it would be lit with crystal fire. In the Brimful moonlight this evening it would be like a pillar of cold flame.
‘Come on,’ I said, getting to my feet. I felt a fluttering in my stomach. ‘We don’t want to be late.’
We stood in a circle around the square as the lots were called, and as the rising light filtered down between the peaks of the hills behind us to light the stage with crimson. The magister stood up there dressed in his simple teal robes, two hands holding the clay vessel, a third dipping in to pull out each marked shard of slate. I felt the fluttering in my stomach broaden and contract, like the wings of a bird desperate to fly free. I clutched Mylin’s hand. On my other side, Avaryn beamed at me with encouragement. Even my parents smiled to see me so nervous. The eye on my father’s temple blinked with a flurry of gold, the pupil glaring at me as if fascinated.
‘Kylavyth,’ the magister called out. He looked around the crowd. He was perfectly bald, and from the globe of his head rose the buds of two horns. There was a long, crooked mouth in the line of his neck, and as he spoke, it smacked its lips and emitted soft little fluting sounds. ‘Kylavyth?’ he said again, and a young man with a long, coiled tail detached himself from the circle with an abashed grin. He bounded up to the stage to join the magister with the others. Seven had been called now. They stood there mute with pride, looking on the rest of us, waiting to see who else would be joining them.
Friends and relatives cried in the crowd, with both pride and sorrow mixed. It was the greatest honour in our village to be picked as one of the Nine, but it was a serious undertaking too. You would not see any of your family again until that day the Tree finally cracked and the crystal birds came flying amongst everyone to bring them the gift of the Bird of Change too. It was not to be done lightly, and the pride of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, was balanced by an equal sadness. It was not death, but it was a life suspended. I had thought about never seeing Avaryn until that distant day came, or mother and father, and it wrenched my heart with grief.
But what other choice did I have? I remained unblessed and the only chance for me was to petition the Bird directly. I had to give myself to it, so that it could change me utterly. There was no other way.
The magister reached into the vessel with his third hand. I held my breath. He drew out the slate and looked up. After an interminable pause, he called out:
‘Mylin.’
Mylin’s hand jolted in my own, as if he’d been shocked. I could feel him shaking, could barely hear the words he whispered to me as he turned to go.
‘It’ll be you next, Vemari. I know it,’ he said.
I closed my eyes, felt his fingers slip away as he ran for the stage. I don’t think my heart was even beating any more. All I could feel was the kiss of the sunlight as it slipped over the line of the valley’s side and struck the back of my neck. All I could see behind my closed eyes was the burning crystal of the Tree, a million diamonds hurtling through the darkness of the Void, and the Bird of Change shrieking its welcome to all of us. To me.
I felt the intake of breath as the village waited for the final name. I thought of the cries of delight I had heard last year when the Nine were taken to the Crystal Tree, when the moon swelled to Brimful in the midnight hour and the Bird came fluttering from its nest.
Oh, grant me that chance, sweet Bird of Change. Please…
The magister spoke, and he called my name.
It was an hour before sunset when they took us to the Tree. After a day of feasting and celebration, of tearful farewells to parents and siblings, the magister made us don the feathered robes of the Nine over our ordinary clothes and prepared to lead us from the square.
‘You have been called to a rite that has been enacted here for generations out of mind,’ he cried. He held aloft his staff, and the jewel embedded in its tip glowed with a strange and lustrous blue flame. ‘Many years ago, our forefathers left their lands around the Copper Henge and sought safety where none could find or persecute them, where they could live in peace and contemplation and raise their families safely in the Light of Change. Here, in this sacred valley, the Crystal Tree stands sentinel and guards us from all harm. All it asks in return is that we give of ourselves to the Tree, in the sacred number once a year, there to change in the light of its purity and grace, and to strengthen its boughs and branches.’
Solemnly we bowed and he blessed each of us in turn. He walked from the square, and all of us followed in the order we had been called, from first to ninth. Zaharix had been called, I saw. Yazeyla too, with her bifurcated tentacle. She lived only two huts away from me and walked with her usual preening stride, as if all this were only her due. I was at the end of the line, the last of the chosen to leave. My robes of blue and yellow feathers, the colours of the sky and the sun on the clearest day of high midsummer, trailed in the ferrous dirt at my feet. I looked at the puckered ironoak walls of the little houses I had known all my life and glanced back at the faces of the people who had always known me. Some wept openly, my parents among them. And then my eyes met Avaryn’s, and I could see the pride and happiness there. I could almost hear the words she was thinking: I was right, wasn’t I? It did bring you luck in the end!
We walked in procession for an hour, leaving the village and its festivities far behind us, until the head of the valley emerged from a glistening afternoon mist. The Crystal Tree proclaimed itself before us in spangled shards of light. Tranquil violet and sharp, piercing yellow met us; midnight indigo and balmy green, the bloody fume of red spreading out onto the silver grass. The Tree in its graceful order of flattened planes and levelled parings, its branches reaching in a beautiful, harmonic lattice towards the sky, was overwhelming in its scale and power. Its bark was as smooth and reflective as glass, its leaves like hammered gold or polished jewels. A hundred feet high, it seemed to set itself against the mineral breeze that swept in from the outside world, the harsh world beyond the valley where we would not be safe. It stood there, our silent sentinel, lit with such holy wonder that none would dare to violate the border it commanded. I looked on the Crystal Tree and wept, and my tears were but pale imitations of the jewels that dripped from its branches.
It was forbidden for any but the magister to approach the Tree outside of this sacred moment. Long had I gazed on it from afar, but I had never been this close. I took Mylin’s hand and felt the tremble of his reverence through it, as the magister directed us to sit around the base of the trunk.
‘Sit,’ the magister commanded. ‘One on each of the nine sides of the Tree.’
I looked to Mylin and mouthed Nine sides…
The jewel in the tip of the magister’s staff began to glow again, and I wondered if it was in some way a shard of the Tree given new form. I saw that there were iron loops hammered into the base of the trunk, a length of heavy silver chain. I sat down as the magister had commanded and slowly he began to thread the chain through the loops, until each of us was secured in place. My arms were free, but the chain was tight around my chest, and I found I could only take a deep breath with some effort. The ground was bare of grass here, right up against the base of the trunk. The earth was dark and smelled of well-handled copper, oily and rank. I looked to the sun as it began to slip down the flank of the valley, a shelf of light stretching out towards us, falling like an axe-blade on the body of the Tree. If I concentrated, I could almost hear it humming behind me, some radiance in the crystal vibrating to the touch of the sun. It would not be long till sunset and then the Brimful moon would rise above the western hills, an ivory orb shimmering with magnesium light.
‘These chains,’ the magister said, ‘symbolise the chains of Fate, as your fate is tied now to the good of the village. Blessings unto you, my friends, my children, my neighbours.’
So saying, the magister looked at us in turn and smiled. But when his eyes met mine, I thought I saw something there that I was not expecting: a hint of sadness, a tremble in his lip like the tremor of grief. He looked away and leant on his staff as he took the path back down to the village. I watched him fade into the growing night as the light from the Crystal Tree morphed into something more gentle and subdued, biding its time until the pale moonlight could conjure up its mellow midnight fume. I could hear the joy and laughter rising from the village down in the valley, the scuff of dirt as those around the Tree shifted their weight and tried to settle themselves in their unease. How long would this night last? we all wanted to know. When would the Bird of Change appear, and with what shattering power would it overwhelm us?
The hours passed and the evening grew dim. Night crept across the valley, flowing like a tide. The shadows lengthened and were subsumed, and the stars began to glimmer softly in the sky above. The Crystal Tree hummed and vibrated behind us. The light that passed through its branches was cold, a wash of cerulean blue and pale amethyst.
We were all too apprehensive to speak to each other. Now and then, I heard the soft, moist click of someone’s jaw opening, but no words were spoken. I could see Mylin beside me if I turned my head, and although we often met each other’s glance, we didn’t say anything about how we were feeling. It was as if we had all come to a silent agreement that this was a sacred moment and shouldn’t be marred by speech. I wondered if the Bird of Change was a timid thing, more tentative than any of us had imagined, and that by speaking we would somehow frighten it away.
The moon dropped deeper into the night sky and the air grew cool. Soon my hands were numb with the cold, and I rubbed them together to keep warm. I could see Mylin shivering, his breath coming in a plume of steam. On my other side was Yazeyla, the first to be called. Her tentacle twitched and quivered from her shoulder, a slab of leathery blue muscle. I tried to catch her eye, to smile encouragement at her, but she looked away. I was beneath her notice, it seemed.
I shook my head, smiling. It’s strange the things we cling to, to make ourselves seem better than other people. Here at the base of the Tree, were not all equal at last in the sight of the Bird? When it came to change us, would we not all be changed equally?
The hours of night drew on. I must have drowsed. I dreamed of my parents, my father’s third eye peering out at me from his temple. It blinked and the pupil shivered, a blur of gold – and then I was awake, suddenly, and there was a noise on the air like ice cracking in the first thaw.
‘What’s that?’ Mylin whispered. ‘Did you hear it?’
‘Shh!’ Yazeyla hissed. ‘Be silent, we mustn’t frighten it!’
‘Is it the Bird?’
‘Be quiet!’ she hissed again.
There was silence for a moment; and then the crack of ice, a report as loud as an ironoak branch breaking in the forest. I felt my heart lurch.
‘It’s coming!’ someone said from the other side of the Tree. His voice sounded muffled, far away. ‘I think… I think the ground is opening, here beside me!’
I listened, trying to drown the hammer of my heart. Mylin’s breath came in ragged bursts of steam. Yazeyla’s tentacle spasmed and she reached out with her other hand to settle it. Another sound, like cracking twigs. The scuff of dirt.
There was a smell in the air then, slithering and rank. As the stench crept around the base of the trunk, I could hear Yazeyla start to whimper beside me. I shuddered, twisted against the chains and stretched my neck around to see. But there were only shadows, and the soft moonlight smothered in the veiling clouds, and the stench deepening around us.
‘What is that?’ Mylin said, his voice shaking. ‘It smells like… like death…’
Someone was crying now. The crackling noise continued. Beneath it, huffing and weak, there was a sound like some beast rising from the earth, dragging itself from a cankered prison of mould and rot and dirt.
The stench was so powerful now, I thought I would be sick. I could hear one of the other Nine calling out, ‘The Bird is here! It’s here, it’s come at last, it’s–’
A scream tore across the night, and it was like the scream entered the crystals of the Tree, the trunk vibrating madly behind me, the sound fracturing into a thousand broken shards. I struggled against the chains, could hear Mylin chanting a prayer, his eyes closed.
