The Lightstone

Chapter 14

We walked in line trailing our horses with the Lokilani swarming around us. With the abandon of children, they touched our garments and let out cries of surprise at Atara's leather trousers, and most of all at the steel links of my armor. I gathered that none of them had seen such substances before. They were all dressed as was Danali, in simple skirts of what appeared to be silk. Many wore emerald or ruby pendants dangling from their delicate necks; a few of the women also sported earrings but were otherwise unadorned. None of them wore shoes upon their leathery feet.

Danali led us beneath the great trees, which seemed to grow still greater with every mile we moved into them. Here, in the deep woods, elms and maples mingled with the oaks. In places, however, we passed through groves of much lesser trees that were scarcely any taller than those of Mesh. They appeared all to be fruit trees: apple and cherry, pear and plum. Many were in full flower with little white petals covering them like mounds of snow; many were laden with red, ripe apples or dark red cherries. That they should bear fruit in Ashte seemed a miracle, and not the only one of those lovely woods. It amazed me to see deer in great numbers walking through the apple groves as if they had nothing to fear from the many Lokilani with their bows and arrows.

When Maram suggested that Danali should shoot a couple of them to make a feast for dinner, he looked at him in horror and said, 'Shoot arrows into an animal? Would I shoot my own mother, Hairface? Am I wolf, am I weasel, am I a. bear that I should hunt animals for food?'

'But what do you eat in these woods, then?' Maram asked as he shuffled along with his hands bound behind his back.

'We eat apples; we eat nuts – and much else. The trees give us everything we need.'

The Lokilani, as we found, wouldn't even eat the eggs taken from birds' nests or honey from the combs of the bees. Neither did they cultivate barley or wheat or any such vegetables as carrots, peas or beans. The only gardens they kept grew other glories from the earth: crystals such as clear quartz, amethyst and starstone as well as garnets, topaz, tourmaline and more precious gems. I marveled at these many-colored stones erupting from the forest floor like so many new shoots. They seemed always to be planted – if that was the right word – in colorful, concentric circles around trees like I had seen before only in my dreams. Though not very tall these trees spread out like oaks, and their bark was silver like that of maples. But it was their leaves in all their splendor that made me gasp and wonder where they had come from; the leaves on these loveliest of trees shimmered like millions of golden shields and were etched with a webwork of deep green veins. Danali called them astors. I thought that the astors – and the bright gemstones growing around them – must be the greatest miracles of the Forest but I was wrong.

By a circuitous route that seemed to follow no logic or path, Danali led us through the trees to the Lokilani's village. This, however, was no simple assemblage of buildings and dwellings. Indeed, there were no buildings such as castles, temples or towers; neither were there streets, for the only dwellings the Lokilani had were spread out over many acres, each house being built beneath its own tree.

Danali escorted us toward one of these strange-looking houses. Its frame was of many long poles set into the ground in a circle and leaning up against each other so as to form a high cone. The poles were woven with long strips of white bark like that of birch. Around it grew many flowers: dahlias and daisies, marigolds and chrysanthemums – and other kinds for which I had no name. Someone had adorned the doorway with garlands of white and gold blossoms whose petals formed little, nine-pointed stars. It was an inviting entrance to a space that was to be home, hospital and prison for the next two days.

Inside we found a circular expanse of earth covered with golden astor leaves. A small firepit had been dug into the ground at the house's center, but there was no furniture other than beds of fresh green leaves. Danali explained that this was a house of healing; here we would remain until our bodies and spirits were whole again.

After setting a guard around our house, Danali saw to our every need. He had food and drink brought to us; he had our clothes taken away to be mended and cleaned.

That evening he led us under escort to a hot spring that bubbled up out of the ground near a grove of plum trees Several of the Lokiiani women climbed into the water with us and used bandruls of fragrant-smelling leaves to scrub us clean. One of them, a Pretty woman named Iolana, immediately captured Marams eye. She had long brown hair and the green eyes of all her people, but she was almost as small as a child, standing no higher than the top of Maram's belly. The difference in their sizes, however, did not discourage htm. When I remarked the incongruity of a moose taking up with a roe deer, he told me, 'Love will find a way, my friend. It always does. I'll be as gentle with her as a leaf settling onto a pond. Don't you find that there's something about these little people that inspires gentleness?'

I had to admit that, their bows and arrows not withstanding, the Lokilani were the least warlike people I had ever met They laughed easily and often, and they liked to sing to the accompaniment of each other's whistling or clapping of hands. They spoke with a light, lilting accent that was sometimes hard to understand, but they never spoke harshly or raised their voices, to one another or to us. Why they were so kind to us after nearly murdering us remained a mystery. Danali told us that all would be explained at a council to be held the next day, when we would be summoned to meet the Lokilani's queen. In the meantime, he said, we must rest and restore ourselves.

Toward this end, he later sent a beautiful woman named Pualani into our house. She had long, flowing chestnut hair and eyes as clear and green as the emerald she wore around her neck. They gleamed with concern as Master Juwain showed her the wound that Salmelu had cut into my side. With great gentleness, she pressed her warm fingers into my skin all around the wound, both in front and where his sword had emerged from my back. Then she had me drink a sweetish tea that she made and told me to lie back against my bed of leaves.

Almost immediately, I fell asleep. But strangely, all night long I was aware that I was sleeping, and also aware of Pualani pressing pungent-smelling leaves against my side.

I thought I felt as well the coolness of her emerald touching me. My whole body seemed to burn with a cool, green light. When I awoke the next morning, I was amazed to discover that my wound had completely healed. Not even a scar remained to mark my flesh and remind me of my sword fight.

'It's a miracle!' Maram exclaimed when he saw what Pualani had done. In the soft light filtering through curving white walls, he ran his rough hand over my side. 'This wood is full of magic and miracles.'

'It would seem so,' Master juwain said as he too examined me. 'It would seem that these people have much to teach us.'

As it happened, Master Juwain had much to teach them. When Pualani returned to check on me, she and Master Juwain began discussing herbs and various techniques of healing. She grew excited to discover that he knew of plants and potions of which she had never heard; then she invited him to walk among the trees so that she could show him the many medicinal mushrooms that grew in the Forest and nowhere else.

Later that day, after they had returned, Danali came to our house to escort us to a feast held in our honor. We all put on our best clothes: Maram found a fresh red tunic in the saddlebags of his pack horse while Master Juwain had only his newly cleaned green woolens. Atara, however, unpacked a yellow doeskin shirt embroidered with fine beadwork; it made a stark contrast with her dark leather trousers, but I liked it better than her studded armor. As for myself, I wore a simple black tunic emblazoned with the silver swan and seven stars of Mesh. Although I gladly left my mail suit in our house, I was more reluctant to abandon my sword.

The Lokilani, however, wouldn't allow weapons at their meals. And so Maram left his sword behind, too, and Atara her bow and arrows, and together we stepped out from our flower-covered doorway and followed Danali through the woods to the place of the feast.

The whole Lokilani village had assembled nearby in a stand of great astor trees.

There must have been nearly five hundred of them: men, women and children sitting on the leaf-covered ground and gathered around many long mats woven of long, green leaves. I saw at once that these mats served as tables, for they were heaped with bowls of food. Danali invited us to sit at a table beneath the boughs of a spreading astor, along with his wife and five children. And then, just as we were taking our places, Pualani walked into the glade. Her hair was crowned with a garland of blue flowers, and she wore a silvery robe that covered her from neck to ankle.

Although we had supposed her to be quite young, she was accompanied by her grown daughter, who turned out to be none other than Iolana. With them walked her own husband, a slender but well-muscled man whom Danali introduced as Elan. He surprised us all by telling us that Pualani was the Lokilani's queen.

Pualani took the place of honor at the head of the table with Elan to her left. Master Juwain, Maram, Atara and I sat to one side of the table facing Danali and his family.

Iolana knelt directly beside Maram, and they both seemed quite happy with this arrangement. She gazed at him much more openly than would any maid of Mesh.

Without fanfare, toasting or speeches, the meal began as Pualani reached out to pass a bowl of fruit to Elan. I saw that at the other tables surrounding us, the Lokilani were circulating similar hand-woven bowls. There was much food to heap on top of our plates, which were nothing more than single but very large leaves. As Danali had promised, all of our meal had come from trees or bushes in the Forest. Fruits predominated, and I had never seen so many served in one place, blackberries and raspberries, gooseberries, apples and plums. There were cherries, pears and strawberries, too, in great abundance, as well as a greenish, apple-like thing that they called starfruit. And others. It was all quite ripe, and every piece I put into my mouth burst with fresh juices and sweetness. They made good use of the many seeds and nuts, which included not only familiar ones such as walnuts and hickories', but some very large brown nuts they called treemeats. Danali said that they were more sustaining than the flesh of animals; they tasted rich and earthy and seemed full of the Forest's strength. The Lokilani cooked! them into a thick stew, even as they baked a bread of bearseed and spread it with various nut butters and jams. As well, we were passed bowls of green shoots that I had thought only a squirrel could eat, and at least four kinds of edible flowers. For drink, we had cups of cool water and elderberry wine. Although it seemed this last was too sweet to drink in quantity, Maram proved me wrong. He let the Lokilani refill his cup again and again even more times than he refilled his own plate.

'Ah, what a meal,' he said as he reached for a pitcher of maple syrup to drizzle over his bread. 'I've never eaten like this before.'

None of us had. The food was not only more delicious than any I had ever tasted, it was more alive. It seemed that the essence of the Forest was passing directly into our bodies as if breathed into our blood. By the time the feast ended, we all felt quite full but also light and animated, ready to dance or sing or tell stories according to the Lokilani's wont. As we discovered, our hosts and captors were quite fond of such after-dinner celebrations. But first, Pualani and the others had many questions for us, as we did for them.

'We should begin at the beginning,' Pualani told us in a voice as rich as the wine she poured us. Her deeply-set eyes caught up some of the color of the emerald necklace she wore, and I thought that she was not only beautiful but wise. 'We would all like to know how you found your way into our wood, and why.'

Since I – or rather Altaru – had led our way here, Master Juwain, Maram and Atara all looked at me to answer her.

'The "why" of it is easy enough to tell,' I said. 'We were fleeing our enemies, and our path took us here.'

I told her something of the Stonefaces who had been pursuing us for many miles through the wilds of Alonia. Of Kane I said nothing, nor did I relate my dream of Morjin.

'Well Sar Valashu that is a beginning,' Pualani said. 'But only the very beginning of the beginning, yes? You've told us the circumstances of your flight into the Forest but not why you've come to us. But perhaps you don't yet know. Too bad. And sad to say, neither do we.'

Maram, after taking yet another pull of his wine, looked at her and slurred out, 'Not everything has a purpose, my Lady.'

'But of course, all things do,' she told him. 'We just have to look for it.'

'You might as well look for the reason that birds sing or men drink wine.'

She smiled at him and said, 'Birds sing because they're glad to be alive, and men drink wine because they're not.'

'Perhaps that's true,' Maram said, squeezing his cup. 'But it tells us nothing of the purpose of my drinking this excellent wine of yours.'

'Perhaps the purpose is to teach you the value of sobriety.'

'Perhaps,' he muttered, licking the wine from his mustache.

Pualani turned toward me and said, 'Why don't we put aside the purpose of your coming here and try to understand just how you entered our woods.'

'Well, we walked into them,' I told her.

'Yes, of course – but how did you do this? No one just walks into the Forest.'

She explained that just as some peoples built walls of stone to protect their kingdoms, the Lokilani had constructed a different kind of barrier around their woods. She told us very little of how they did this. She hinted at the power of the great trees to keep strangers away and at a secret that the Lokilani shared with each other but not with us.

'Here the power of the earth is very great,' she said. 'It repels most people. Even many of the. bears, wolves and higher beasts. A man walking in our direction would find that he doesn't want to walk this way. His path would take him in a great circle around the Forest or away from it.'

'Perhaps it would,' I said, remembering the sensations I had felt the day before. 'But if he came close enough, he would see the great trees.'

'Men come close to many things they never see,' Pualani said as she smiled mysteriously. 'Looking toward the Forest from the outside, most men would see only trees.'

'But what if they were looking for the Forest?'

'Men look for many things they never find,' she said. 'And who knows even to look?

Even a Lokilani, upon leaving our woods, can forget what real trees are like and have a hard time finding his way back in.'

'Our coming must have been a wild chance, then.'

'No one comes here by chance, Sar Valashu. Few come at all.'

I pointed off toward a tree a hundred yards away where a young woman stood with a strung bow and arrow. I said, 'Your people don t hunt animals – what do they hunt, then?'

Pualani's face clouded for a moment as she exchanged dark looks with Elan and Danali. Then she said, 'For many years, the Earthkiller has sent his men to try to find our Forest. A few have come close, and these we've had to send back to the stars.'

'Who is this Earthkilier, then?'

'The Earthkiller is the Earthkiller,' she said simply. 'This is known from the ancient of days: he cuts trees to burn in his forges. He cuts wounds in the earth to steal its fire.

By forge and fire he seeks the making of that which can never be made.'

Her words sounded familiar to me, as they must have to Master Juwain. I nodded at him as he pulled out his Saganont Elu and read from the Book of Fire: He hates the flowers soft and white,

The grass, the forest's gentle breath,

For all that lives and leaps with light

Recalls the bitterness of death.

With axe and pick and poison flame

He wreaks his spite upon the land;

His armies burn and hack and maim

The ferns and flowers, soil and sand.

And down through rocky vein and bore

With evil eye and sorcery

He plumbs the earth for golden ore

In search of immortality.

Thus wounding earth to steal her fire

And feeding trees to forge and flame,

He turns upon himself his ire

And burns his soul with bitter blame.

For golden cups that blaze too bright

Make hateful, mortal men afraid,

And that which makes the stellar light,

In love, cannot itself be made.

When he had finished, Pualani sighed deeply and said, 'It-would seem that your people know of the Earthkiller, too.'

'We call him the Red Dragon,' Master Juwain said.

'You have named him well, then,' Pualani said. Then she pointed at his book and asked, 'But what is this animal skin encasing the white leaves crawling with bugs?'

We were all astonished that Pualani had never seen a book. Just as it astonished her and all the Lokilani when Master Juwain explained how the sounds of language could be represented by letters and read out loud.

'Your people bring marvels into our woods,' she said. 'And you bring great mysteries, too.'

She took a sip of wine and slowly swallowed it. Then she smiled at me and continued, 'When you approached the Forest, we thought the Earthkiller must have sent you. And so we sent Danali and the others to greet you. We couldn't have known that you would be wearing the mark of the Ellama.'

'What is this Ellama?' I asked her, touching the scar on my forehead.

'The Ellama is the Ellama,' she said. 'And the lightning bolt is sacred to him. And so it has been sacred to us for years beyond reckoning. This is the fire that connects the earth to the heavens, where the Ellama walks with the rest of his kind.'

'With the Star People?' I asked.

'Some think of them as people,' she said. 'But just as people such as you and I are also animals, we are something more. And so it is with them who are more than human, the Bright Ones, the Galad a'Din.'

'You mean, the Galadin?'

'You say words strangely. But yes, I mean they who walk among the stars. When Danali saw the mark on you, he wondered if it was perhaps the Ellama who really sent you to us.'

Maram suddenly dug his elbow into me as if. to impel me to claim such exalted origins. Atara and Master Juwain both looked at me to see what I would say. Surely, I thought, the truth was a sacred thing. But life was more sacred still. If claiming to be the Galadin's emissary would keep the Lokilani from sending us back to them, shouldn't I then lie just this one time?

'We are emissaries,' I told Pualani. I watched her eyes deepen like cups that drank in my every word. If truth was a dear stream that replenished the soul, then wasn't a lie like poison? 'We're emissaries from Mesh and Delu, and from the Brotherhood and the Kurmak to the court of King Kiritan in Tria. He has called a quest to find the Lightstone, and we are journeying there to answer it and represent our peoples.'

While Danali poured more wine and the Lokilani at the other tables grew quiet, I told of how Count Dario had come to my fathers castle on the first day of Ashte to announce the great quest. Something in Pualani eyes made me want to relate as well the story of the assasin's arrow and all that had occurred since that dark afternoon.

And so, I told them of my duel with Salmelu and the Black Bog; I told them of Kane and the Lord of Illusions and the stone-faced gray men who had nearly driven us mad.

When had I finished speaking, I took another long drink of wine and blamed it for loosening my tongue. But Pualani looked at me with the opposite of blame. She bowed her head and said, 'Thank you for opening your heart to us, Sar Valashu.

Now at least it's clear how you entered our wood. You must be very wise to entrust your fate to your horse. And he must be blessed with much more than wisdom to be drawn by the Forest.'

She nodded toward a grove of apple trees nearby where the Lokilani had tethered our horses. Then she continued, 'If you hadn't been so forthcoming, we would have understood nothing about you. As it is, we can make sense of only a very little.'

She went on to say that the world of castles and quests and old books full of words were as unknown to the Lokilani as the stars must be to us. She had never heard of the Nine Kingdoms, nor even of Alonia, in whose great forests the Forest abided. In truth, she denied that any king could have a claim upon her woods or that it might be a part of any kingdom, unless that kingdom be the world itself. As she said, the Lokilani were the first people, the true people, and the Forest was the true world.

'Once, before the Earthkiller came and men cut down the great trees, there was only the Forest,' she told us. 'Here the Lokilani have lived since the beginning of time.

And here we will remain until the stars die.'

Atara, who had been silent until now, caught Pualani's eye and said, 'It may be that King Kiritan has no true claim upon your realm. But he would think he had. Your woods lie very close to the more cultivated parts of Alonia. Aren't you afraid that, the king's men will some day come to cut them down?'

'No, this we do not fear,' Pualani said. 'Your people build a world of stone cities and armies and swords. But this not the world. Very little in your world can touch the Forest now.'

'What about the Earthkiller?' I asked her.

Again, a dark look fell over Pualani's face; I was reminded of winter storm clouds smothering a bright Sue sky.

She Earthkiller has great power,' she admitted. 'And great allies, too. These Stonefaces of yours have tried to enter the Forest in our dreams even as they entered yours.'

'But they haven't tried to broach it, in their bodies?' 'No – they will never find their way into our woods. And if they do, they will never find their way out alive.'

'Still,' I said, 'it must be a great temptation for them to try. There are things here that the Lord of Lies would give a great deal to know: how you grow trees to such great heights and grow gems from the very ground.'

'It is the earth that grows these things, not we. No more than a midwife grows the children she helps deliver.'

'Perhaps that's true,' I said. I touched my scar where the midwife's tongs had once cut me. 'But a midwife would be no more than a butcher without the skills taught her.

It's this knowledge that the Lord of Illusions seeks.'

'You seem to know a great deal of what he would wish to know.'

Truly, I thought as I recalled my dream, I did know much more of Morjin's mind than I wanted to. I certainly knew enough to perceive that if he could, he would crush the secrets from the Lokilani as readily as he would grapes beneath his boots.

'There is one thing he seeks above all else,' I said. 'The same thing that we seek.'

'This is the Lightstone that you spoke of, yes? But what is this stone? Is it an emerald? A great ruby or a diamond?'

'No, it is a cup – a plain golden cup.'

Here, Master Juwain broke in to tell of the gelstei and of how these great crystals had been made through many long ages of Ea's history. And the greatest of all the gelstei, he said, was the gold, which most men believed had been created by the Star People and brought to earth at the beginning of the Lost Ages. But he admitted that many also thought that the Lightstone had been forged and cast into the shape of a cup in the Blue Mountains of Alonia sometime during the Age of Swords. Whatever the truth really was, the Lord of Lies sought not only the Lightstone itself but the secret of its making.

'He would certainly create a Lightstone of his own, if he could,' Master Juwain said.

'And so he would certainly steal from you any knowledge of growing and shaping crystals that might help him.'

Pualani sat very straight pulling on the emeralds of her necklace. She looked at Master Juwain for a long moment, and then at Atara, Maram and me. She asked us why we sought the Lightstone. We each answered as best we could. When we had finished speaking, she said, 'The gold gelstei brings light, as you say. And yet this lord of darkness seeks it above all other things. Why, we want to know, why, why?'

'Because,' Master Juwain said, 'the gold gives power over all the other gelstei except perhaps the silver. It gives immortality, too. And perhaps much else that we don't know of.'

'But it is light, you say, pure light bound into a cup of gold?' 'Even light can be used to read good or evil words in a book,' Master Juwain told her. ' Just as too much light can burn or blind.'

I sat thinking about this for a moment and then I added, 'Even if this cup brought the Red Dragon no light at all, he would take joy in keeping others from it.'

'Oh, that is bad, very, very bad/ Pualani said. She bent forward to confer with Danali. After looking at Elan in silent understanding, she told us, There is great danger here for the Lokilani. A danger we never saw.'

'My apologies,' I said, 'for bringing such evil tidings.'

'No, no, you mustn't apologize,' Pualani said. 'And you've brought nothing evil into our woods, so we hope, so we pray. It may be that you're an emissary of the Ellama after all, even if you didn't know it.'

I looked down at the leaves on the ground because I didn't know what to say.

'The Ellama still watches over the Forest,' she told us. 'The Galad a'Din haven't forgotten the Lokilani, they would never forget.'

I smiled sadly at this because I supposed the Galadin had looked away from the ways and wars of Ea long ago.

'And we haven't forgotten them, we must never forget,' Pualani said to us. 'And so we celebrate this remembrance and their eternal presence among us. Will you help us celebrate, Sar Valashu Elahad?'

She looked straight at me then, and her eyes were twin emeralds, all green and blazing like life itself.

'Yes, of course,' I told her. 'Even as you've helped us.'

'And you, Prince Maram Marshayk – will you help us, too?'

Maram eyed his empty cup and the jug of wine that had found its way to the end of the table. He licked his lips and said, 'Help you celebrate? Does a bear eat honey if you hold it to his face? Does a horse have to be kicked to eat sweet grass?'

'Very good,' Pualani said, nodding at him. Then she smiled at Atara and asked, 'And what about you, Atara of the Manslayers? Will you celebrate the coming of the Gaiad a'Din?'

'I will,' Atara told her, nodding her head.

Pualani now turned to Master Juwain, and asked him this same question as if reciting the words to a ritual. And he replied, 'I would like very much to celebrate with you, but I'm afraid my vows don't permit me to drink wine.'

'Then you may keep your vows,' Pualani said, 'for it's not wine we drink in remembrance of the Shining Ones.'

At this news, Maram looked crestfallen, and he said, 'What do you drink, then?'

'Only fire,' Pualani said, smiling at him, 'But it might be more precise to say that we eat it.'

'Eat?' Maram said groaning as he held his bulging belly. 'Eat what? I don't think I can eat another bite.'

'Does a bear eat honey when it's held to his face?' Pualani asked him with a coy smile.

'You have honey?' Maram asked her. 'I thought the Lokilani didn't eat honey.'

'We. don't,' Pualani told him. 'But we have something much sweeter.'

So saying, she pulled off a silvery cloth from a bowl at the end of the table. Inside were piled many small golden fruits about the size of plums. She took one in her hand, and then passed the bowl to Elan, who did the same. The bowl quickly made its way around the table. I noticed that although Danali's three children all seemed quite interested in the bowl's gleaming contents, none of them touched the fruit I gathered that just as a child in Mesh would never participate in our rituals of toasting and drinking beer, so the Lokilani children were forbidden to participate in what was to come.

'The fruit has probably fermented,' I said to Maram as I took one in my hand and squeezed its smooth, soft skin. 'You'll probably find all the wine inside that you wish.'

'Now that would be a miracle,' he said as he picked up one of the little fruits and regarded it doubtfully. He looked at Pualani and asked, 'What do you call this thing?'

'It's a timana,' she said. She pointed up at the golden-leafed tree above our table.

'You see, once every seven years, the astors bear the sacred fruit.'

Maram held the timana to his nose for a moment but said nothing.

'Long ago,' Pualani explained, 'the Shining Ones walked the Forest and planted the first astors. The trees were their gift to the Lokilani.'

She sat looking at the timana in her hand as I might look at the stars. Then she told us that the Galadin were angels and this was their flesh.

'We eat this fruit in remembrance of who the Shining Ones really are and who we were meant to be,' she explained. 'Please join us in our celebration today.'

Now the whole glade fell very quiet as the Lokilani at the other mats put down their cups of wine or water to watch us eat the timanas. I wondered why none of them had been given any fruit. I thought that it must be quite rare and used by only a few Lokilani at any one ritual

Without any more words, Pualani bit into her timana, and all the men and women at our table did the same. As my teeth closed on the fruit, a waterfall of tastes exploded in my mouth. It was like honey and wine and sunlight all bound up into the most fragrant of juices. And yet there was something bittersweet about the fruit as well.

Beneath its succulent sugars was a flavor I had never experienced; it recalled mighty trees streaming with spring sap and the fire of a greenness that no longer existed on earth.

Even so, I found the fruit to be very good. Its savor was exquisite, and lingered on my tongue. Along with Pualani and Maram and everyone else, I took a second bite.

The timana's flesh was reddish-orange and studded with a starlike array of tiny black seeds. It glistened in the waning light for an endless moment before I put the fruit in my mouth and ate the rest of it.

'We're so glad you've joined us,' Pualani said as the others finished theirs as well.

'Now you'll see what you'll see.'

'What will we see?' Maram asked, licking the juice from his teeth.

'Perhaps nothing,' Pualani said. 'But perhaps you'll see the Timpum.'

'The Timpum?' Maram asked in alarm. 'What's that?'

'The Timpum are the Timpum,' Pualani said softly. 'They are of the Galad a'Din.'

'I don't understand,' Maram said, rubbing his belly.

'The Galad a'Din,' Pualani said, 'are beings of pure fire. When they walked the earth in the ages before the Lost Ages, they left part of their being behind them. So, the fire, the beings that men do not usually see – the Timpum.'

'I don't think I want to understand,' Maram said.

'Few men do,' Pualani told him. Then she looked from him to Master Juwain and Atara, and last at me. She said, 'It's strange that you seek your golden cup in other lands when so much is to be found so much closer. Love, life, light – why not look for these things in the leaves of the trees and beneath the rocks and along the wind?'

Why not, indeed, I wondered as I looked up at the soft lights dancing along the trees' fluttering golden leaves?

'Am I to understand,' Maram said, breathing heavily, 'that this fruit you've fed us provides visions of these Timpum?'

'Yes,' Pualani said gravely, 'either that or death.'

We were all silent for as long as it took my heart to beat three times. Then Maram gasped out, 'What? What did you say?'

'You've eaten the flesh of the angels,' Pualani calmly explained. 'And so if it's meant to be, you'll see the angel fire. But not all can bear it. And so they die.'

At this news, Maram struggled to his feet, all the while puffing and groaning. He held his big belly as he cried out, 'Poison, poison! Oh, my Lord – I've been poisoned!'

He turned to bend and stick his fingers down his throat to purge himself of the dangerous fruit Pualani stopped him with few soft words. She told him that it was already too late, he would have to live or die according to the grace of the Ellama

'Why have you done this?' Maram shouted at her. His face was now almost as red as a plum. And so, I feared, were Master Juwain's, Atara's and mine. 'What have we done to deserve this?'

'Nothing that others haven't done,' Pualani told him. 'All the Lokilani when we become women and men – we eat the sacred fruit. Many die, sad to say. But it must be so. Life without sight of the Timpum would not be worth living.'

'It would be to me!' Maram cried out. 'I'm not a Lokilani! Oh my lord – I don't want to die!'

'We're sorry this had to be, so sorry,' Pualani told us. She looked at Master Juwain, who sat frozen like a deer surrounded by wolves, and then she smiled at Atara and me. 'There are only two courses open to you. You may remain with the Lokilani and become as one of us. Or you must return to your world.'

My breath came hard and fast now as the woods about us seemed to take on the tones of the waning sunlight It was a yellow like nothing I had ever seen, a waiting-yellow over the trees and through them. A watching-yellow that was very close and yet somehow faraway. 'Please forgive us, please do,' Pualani said. 'But if you do return to your world, we must be utterly certain of who you are. The Earthkiller's people could never bear the sight of the Timpum. And no one who has ever seen the Timpum could ever serve the Earthkiller.'

I noticed, that the children at our table, and every table throughout the glade, were watching us with awe coloring their small, pale faces. It came to me that awe was nothing less than love and fear, and I felt both of these swelling inside me. Everyone was looking at us in fear for our lives, watching and waiting to see what we would see.

Suddenly, Maram threw his hands to the side of his face and let loose a wild, whoop of laughter. He fell to his knees, all the while shaking his head and laughing and crying out that he was being killed but didn't care.

'I see them! I see them!' he called to us. 'Oh, my Lord – they're everywhere!'

Master Juwain, who had been sitting as still as a statue, leapt to his feet and waved his hands about his bald head. 'Astonishing! Astonishing!' he shouted. 'It's not possible, it can't be possible. Val

– do you see them?'

I did not see them. For at that moment, Atara let out a terrible cry and fell backward to the ground as if her spine had been cut with an axe. She screamed for a moment or two before her eyes closed. Then she grew quiet. The movement beneath her doeskin shirt was so slight that I couldn't tell if she was breathing. I fell over toward her and buried my face in this soft garment. Her whole body seemed as still as stone and colder than ice. I knew too well what it felt like for another to die; I would have died myself rather than feel this nothingness take away Atara. But the cold suddenly grew unbearable, and 1 knew with a dreadful certainty that she was leaving me. There was nothing but darkness inside her and all about me. I could see nothing because my eyes were tightly closed as I gripped the soft leather of her shirt and wept bitterly.

Then I, too, let out a terrible cry. My heart beat so hard I thought it would break open my chest. Everything poured out of me: my love for her, my tears, my whispers of hope that burned my lips like fire.

'Atara,' I said sofdy, 'don't go away.'

The pain inside me was worse than anything I had ever known. It cut me open like a sword, and I felt the blood streaming out of my heart and into hers. It took forever to die, I knew, while the moments of life were so precious and few.

And then, as if awakening from a dream, her whole body started. I looked down to see her eyes suddenly open. She smiled at me as her breath fell over my face. 'Thank you,' she said, 'for saving my life again.'

She struggled to sit up, and I held her against me with her head touching mine and my face pressing her shoulder. My breath came in shudders and quick gasps, and I was both weeping and laughing because I couldn't quite believe that she was still alive.

'Shhh,' she whispered to me, 'be quiet, be quiet now.'

As I sat there with my eyes closed, I became aware of a deep silence. But it was not a quietening of the world; now the songs of the sparrows came ringing through the trees, and I could almost hear the wildflowers growing in the earth all around me. It was more a silence within myself where the chatter of all my thoughts and fears suddenly died away. I could hear myself whispering to myself in a voice without sound; it seemed the earth itself was calling out a name that was mine but not mine alone.

'Oh, there are so many!' Atara said to me softly. 'Look, Val, look!'

I opened my eyes then, and I saw the Timpum. As Maram had said, they were everywhere. I sat up straight, blinking my eyes. Above the golden leaves of the forest floor, little luminous clouds floated about as if drawing their substance from the earth and returning to it soft showers of light. Among the wood anemone and ashflowers, swirls of fire burned in colors of red, orange and blue. They flitted from flower to flower like flaming butterflies drinking up nectar and touching each petal with their numinous heat. Little silver moons hovered near some cinnamon fern, and the ingathering of white sparks beneath the boughs of the astors reminded me of constellations of stars. From behind rocks came soft flashes like those of glowworms. The Timpum seemed to come in almost as many kinds as the birds and beasts of the Forest They flickered and fluttered and danced and glittered, and no leaf or living thing in the glade appeared untouched by their presence.

'Astonishing! Astonishing!' Master Juwain called out again. 'I must learn their names and kinds!'

Some of the Timpum were tiny, no more than burning drops of light that hung in the air like mist. Some were as huge as the trees: the trunks of a few of the astors were ringed with golden halos that brightened and deepened as they spread out to encompass the great crowns of leaves.

Although they had forms, they had no faces. And yet we perceived them as having quite distinct faces – to be sure not of lips, noses, cheeks and eyes, but rather colored with various blendings of curiosity, playfulness, effervescence, compassion and other characteristic that one might expect to find on a human countenance. Most marvelous of all was that they seemed to be aware not only of the trees and the rocks, the fems and the flowers, but of us.

'Look, Val!' Maram called to me. He stood above the table as he bmshed the folds of his tunic. These little red ones keep at me like hummingbirds in a honeysuckle bush. Do you see them?'

"Yes – how not?' I told him.

All about him were Timpum of the whirling fire variety, and their flames touched him in tendrils of red, orange, yellow and violet. I turned to see a little silver moon shimmer in front of Atara for a moment as if drinking in the light of her bright blue eyes. And then I blinked, and it was gone.

'They seem to want something of me,' Maram said. 'I can almost hear them whispering, almost see it in my mind.'

The Timpum seemed to want something from all of us, though we couldn't quite say what that might be. I looked at Pualani to ask if it was that way for the Lokilani, too.

'The Timpum speak the language of the Galad a'Din,' she told us. 'And that is impossible for most to learn. Those that do take many years to understand only the smallest part of it Even so, we do understand the Timpum sometimes. They warn us if outsiders are approaching our realm or of when we have hate in our hearts. On cloudy nights of no moon, they light up our woods.'

I looked off into the trees for a moment, and the great, shimmering spectacle before my eyes dazzled me. To Pualani I said, 'Do your people then see the world like this all the time?'

'Yes, this is how the Forest is.'

She told me that so long as we dwelled in the Forest we would see the Timpum. If we some day chose to eat the sacred timanas again in remembrance of the Shining Ones, even as she and the others had eaten them, our vision of the Timpum would grow only brighter.

'If you decide to leave us,' she said, 'it will now be hard for you to bear the deadness of any other wood.'

Just then an especially bright Timpum – it was one of the ones like a swirl of flickering white stars – fell slowly down from the tree above me. It spun about in the space before my eyes as if stuffing the scar cut into my forehead. It seemed to touch me there with a quick silver light; I felt this as a deep surge of compassion that touched me to my core and brightened my whole being as if I had been struck with a lightning bolt. Then, after a moment the flickering Timpum settled itself down on top of my head. Maram and the others saw it shimmering in my hair like a crown of stars, but I could not.

'How do I get it off me?' I asked as I brushed my hand through my hair and shook my head from side to side.

'Why would you want to?' Pualani asked me. 'Sometimes a Timpum will attach itself to one of us to try to tell us something.'

'What, then?'

'Only you will ever know,' she said as she gazed above my head. Then she told me,

'I think the "why* of your coming to our woods has finally been answered, however.

You are here to listen, Sar Valashu Elahad. And to dance.'

And with that she smiled at me and rose from the table. This seemed a signal that Elan and Danali – and all the other Lokilani at the other tables – should rise, too.

Along with Pualani, they came over to Atara, Master Juwain, Maram and me. They touched our faces and kissed our hands and congratulated us on eating the timanas and surviving to see the Timpum. Then Danali began singing a light, happy song while many of his people clapped their hands to keep time. Others began dancing.

They joined hands in circles surrounding circles and spun about the forest floor as they added their voices to Danali's song. I found myself clasping hands with Atara and Maram, and turning with them. Although it was impossible to touch a Timpum, their substance being not of flesh hut the fire of angels, there was a sense in which they danced with us and we with them. For they were everywhere among us and they never stopped fluttering and sparkling and whirling about the golden-leafed trees.

Much later, after the sun had set and the Timpum's eyeless faces lit up the night I took out my flute and joined the Lokilani in song. The Lokilani marveled at this slender piece of wood for they had never imagined music could be made this way. I taught a few of the children to play a simple song that my mother had once taught me. Atara sang with them, and Maram, too, before he took Iolana's hand and stole off into the trees. Even Master Juwain hummed a few notes in his rough old voice, though he was more interested in trying to ferret out and record the words of the Timpum's language.

I, too, wished to understand what they had to tell me. And so, even as Pualani had said, I stayed awake all night playing my flute and dancing and listening to the fiery voices that spoke along the wind.