Into Vast Silence

She stepped into the briar-boat and set sail across the Thornsea with a crown of withered leaves upon her head. Gliding hawks on unstirring wings accompanied her, goldenly shining like the Sun that sent them.

It was high Summer, and her robes murmured greenly in the warm breath of the West as she stood in the prow alone. White galleon clouds kept watch over the sky-blue skies above; below, in the unknowable depths, huge half-seen creatures moved. The lonely ballads of the thorn-gulls dwindled as the shore disappeared behind her, and the only sound was the gentle scrape of the waves against her briar-hull. One by one, the radiant solar hawks of her honor-guard drifted away.

The Thornsea unfurled around her to every possible horizon, limitless, undulating slowly with its quiet, eerie grace. Abiding recollections rippled there, at the edge of waking vision: memories of empresses and nations, of things both shining and forever lost. Of tears glad and terrible enough to drown the sea in flowing salt.

Ahead, the clouds were darkening. Rain whispered down through the violet dusk. Far away in the coming night, the hunching thunderheads flicked the brambles with lightning; but there were no sea-fires that night, and even the rumblings were too distant to be heard. She stood straight-backed and motionless, and her tree-cloak shed the rain.

No dreams broke her solitude. Day followed night, but she felt no thirst, having tasted the Wine of Fire. Each dawn rekindled the burning Eastern power at her back; each night, that power ceded Heaven to the pale silver wisdom of the Moon. The briar-boat sailed on, sailed on, sailed on. Thorn-whales broke the surface now and then, uttering strange songs, but she never joined her voice to theirs. She stood in the prow, alone, and the briar-boat sailed on.

There came a day of wind. Not the bright, warm zephyrs of Summer, but a cooling movement from the North, freighted with the redolence of old dim frost. At noontide she discerned a mote on the ever-distant horizon, and her heart dared to lift its head within her. Through the interminable afternoon, till shadow-fall obscured all things, the mote barely grew to a speck; and through the watches of night, she strained her eyes in the darkness, yearning like a melody of long-forgotten hope.

But in the morning, it was there: a tree. A sea-tree of the ancient race of maples. Taller than any tower, its trunk descended through the fathomless thorn-gulfs below, taking root in whatever somber, patient mysteries brooded there. Its branches rose in splendor from the waves, ramifying, millionfold, and its leaves were like the Flame of Creation. Red, red, infinitely beautiful red!

By the time she reached the tree, many more were visible beyond it. A sole crimson leaf spun down from a high bough, almost straight into her fingertips, and she reached up gently to accept it from the sky. Her boat proceeded, stately, through the clustering trunks of maples like reeds in a mighty river, and soon she could make out the glint of elms and willows from afar.

And then it was there—ultimately solid, rising over every treetop, every thorny breaker—the snow-peak of a true stone mountain. The signaling of earth, of landfall, of journey’s end at last. She felt the wetness on her neck before she knew she was weeping, and she fell to her knees, covering her face as the tears ran through her fingers.

From the nearing shore came night-black ravens, silver-winged, a silent lunar honor-guard to guide her home. The Thornsea ended on the Western coastline, where the mountains kept their vigil, where the true trees, rooted in the solid ground, stood their post among the foothills. And the trees were like the fires of morning on the heights: golden, orange, and lifeblood-red. She gazed, enfolded in that never-fading beauty, shaking with ambrosial anguish as her heart was broken and reborn, and she scarcely heard the crunch of sand beneath her vessel as it ground to a final halt.

Thus, out of the boundless deep, she returned to the Autumn Lands and heard the sound of children singing in the trees.

******

When the Librarian admitted me to the tunnels, he handed me a flameless luminescent rock about the size of a man’s fist. “Tread lightly, lass,” he murmured. “These books are very old.”

The Library was a single irregular passage, rough-hewn, meandering for miles upon leagues beneath the city of Ning Verrawn. The floor was carpeted with woven leaves; the walls were lined with a woodland’s worth of silver birchen shelves. Thus caparisoned, the passage—no more than eight feet on a side—muffled every whisper of a sound; but in that endless emptiness, each breath seemed profanely loud.

There was no categorization by subject matter, for it was deemed unneedful by the Scholars who, as a rule, were the only ones admitted. But, like the rings of a tree or the strata of old shale, each successive section brought one further back into the dimness of history. I walked for hours by witch-light till I came to the section dealing with the century I wished to study. Then, moving slowly, I peered intently at every spine and scroll until finally I found what I sought.

Lying flat on a breast-level shelf was a ponderous volume with a cover of cunningly hinged stone. Etched on the front in small cursive letters was the brief, woeful phrase The Ruination of Avalorium. I made no attempt to lift that tome, but left it planted solidly and used both hands to open it. The pages were simple vellum, and the script, though archaic, was legible enough. Rapidly, though gingerly, I leafed through those pages till I came to the fall of Trellem Vay.

Once the capital of the ruined kingdom, Trellem Vay had been destroyed in the Evangelization of Urd Thlol. There was an old legend that the Wayfarer’s Star had vanished from the sky on the night the city fell, and I hoped this ancient book might corroborate the tale.

There: “Erstwhyle that celestiall body nighest the Moon & happie omen to Urd Thlol folken / thereinafter neer agayne beheld i’ nighted skye. Wherefor this Star withdrewe, is not recorded but / the servant o’th’ Maimed Prophet saith She did turn away in shame.”

I nodded solemnly. The Ruination was the oldest firsthand account of those days; every chronicle of later generations leaned on its authority, and even the heathen apocrypha tended to reference or at least acknowledge it. This terse paragraph not only confirmed the date of the Star’s disappearance but supported the words of the Lady from the briar-boat: “That high Star once favored the people of Urd Thlol above all others, and did therefore hide her countenance from their disgrace.”

It struck me odd, for a moment, how closely her diction mirrored that of the book; but I waved the thought aside. After all, she had spent who knew how many years in the Elder Countries and naturally absorbed some of their dialect.

Regardless, I thought, I now had everything I needed. It was time to take these findings to the Queen.

******

In the ever-silent tombs below the castle,

Where the ancient queens in spidered splendor lie,

O’er the cerements and palls,

Age-old scrawlings mark the walls

Of the rises and the falls of pale cold skies’ sarcophagi.

In the ever-silent tombs above the castle,

Where the gelid constellations sadly turn,

Icy-whitely they await

That dark-burning night of fate

When the faring star forgotten will re-enter Heaven’s urn.

In the chambers of the mistress of the castle,

With the learning of the centuries arrayed,

When her realm’s revivified

As lost sages prophesied,

She will speak at last and speak aloud the Wisdom of the Maid.

“Anyway,” shrugged the Lute-strummer, “that’s how the story goes.”

******

The children climbed merrily in the branches, unaware of the strange disquiet in the evening air, and their laughter was a heartbreaking consolation to the woman at the window. She had wistfully hearkened to those voices ever since awakening abruptly with the Sere-Leaf Circlet on her brow. (She had, of course, no memory of her life before the Coronation.) The cobwebs of antiquity curtained the small glass pane that let in the sunlight, and the only sound within was the heaviness of dust.

A quiet knock. The Queen gestured unobtrusively, and her matronly deaf-mute attendant opened the door and curtseyed to their visitor: the earnest young priestess of the One Above the Gods.

Entering with a hasty bow, the priestess moved her fingers deftly in the tongue of signs. Your Majesty, our hopes are proven true. The Star disappeared on the night of the Evangelization, precisely one thousand and twelve years ago. Hence, the Great Wheel has accomplished one full turn, and the Farer may ascend once more!

The Queen looked steadily into her visitor’s bright, loyal eyes. She well knew how many months of travel and study would be needed to ascertain the exact date of Trellem Vay’s destruction, and she could imagine what grueling quests a junior priestess, not of noble blood, must have undertaken to earn a single day in the archives of Ning Verrawn. This wise young woman deserved a better Queen, but there was no other.

You have done well, dear faithful servant, she signed back . Go and say to the Lord Steward that, by the wish of his Queen, you shall have any boon you desire.

That trusting smile began to falter. But, Majesty, I seek nothing for myself. It is for love of the realm, and of you, that I have toiled.

Yes, I know. And you have my love in return. But I—involuntarily, she dropped her gaze —I am not ready.

The maiden stared in bafflement. Not ready? I don’t understand. Not ready for what?

I cannot say. Do not be concerned for me.

“Your Majesty!” she cried aloud, forgetting herself. “Please, whatever burden you face, let me—”

But at this affront, the Queen’s mouth opened. Her lips moved, and her throat worked, as if she would speak, but of course no voice emerged. Rather, a howling storm of winter snow burst forth and filled the room, and the lovely young priestess fled in terror.

******

“I just don’t understand. We’ve waited so long for this. She’s waited so long.”

“Longer than you guess. But that high Star’s return comes not without its cost.”

“What cost, my Lady?”

“You believe, child, that the Queen keeps the Star in some hoard, or locked in a treasure box. That now, when the appointed hour is come, she may loose it from her palm like a sparrow and watch it fly away home.”

“I—I don’t know where she keeps it. How could I? But if it’s someplace dangerous, someplace lost, I’ll go there. I’ll find it for her, I’ll face whatever I have to.”

“Of course you would. But the failure of the Star must be repaid, and in the end, we do not pay the price for our own failures. That price is paid by the very ones we most dearly wish to spare.”

“You mean she has to. . . redeem the Wayfarer in some way?”

“Not redeem. The Farer looked down on centuries of agony and grief, shepherding the slain, before the Ruination broke her heart, and the other orbs of heaven still honor her sacrifice, though she did fail in the end. But her abdication left a soreness in the sky, and she can no longer heal it. Another must do so.”

“What other?”

“One who may abide the sufferings of the earth. One who may speak the Maid’s Wisdom and lead the dead of a thousand years to their celestial rest. And the coming of that one is the enduring hope of her whom you name the Wayfarer. You see, the stars too have their prophecies.”

“My Lady. . . My Lady, how do you know these things?”

******

With the Lady of the briar-boat beside me, I returned to the chambers of the Queen. I would not have dared to return alone.

The deaf-mute matron admitted us, and my mistress accepted our curtsies with a nod. Inwardly, I shrank from her hint of a frown; but the Lady had charged me to bear the Queen’s ire for the Queen’s own sake.

Your Majesty,the Lady gestured . I know your hesitation. I come to counsel you.

There is no counsel, signed the Queen, as her frown deepened into a scowl. What counsel could solace me?

None. I offer only a reminder of your duty.

My duty! The duty was yours, damn you.

The Lady’s gaze, suffused with sadness, was nonetheless unwavering. Yes. And my dereliction wrought more woe than you realize.

Her dereliction? A wild surmise took shape within me.

The Lady pointed to the window, where the laughter of the children could be heard. Ere aught else, I love the Autumn Lands. Already I bore the guilt of harming our country by cutting her off from the world outside—for the Sea of Thorns began to grow as soon as I abandoned my post. But it was not till I returned to these shores and removed the Sere-Leaf Circlet that I remembered the full truth.

Warily, the Queen gestured back, What truth?

That the children in the trees are ghosts. Trapped for more than a millennium, unable to find their way home without the Wayfarer’s Star to guide them. To take their sorrow on herself.

The Queen made no reply. But, slowly, like blood welling up in a sharp, deep gash, the tears began to fill her beautiful eyes. I’m afraid,she signed. I am so afraid.

I turned on the Lady as comprehension filled me like a bloody sunrise. If you are who and what I think you are — My hands could not keep pace with my passion, and I burst out, “You can’t let this happen!”

She shook her head. “I hope—oh, God Above the Gods, I hope you never know remorse like mine. I would bear this burden again, ten thousand times over, but the same wearer cannot don the Circlet twice. Once it’s taken off—”

I snatched the crown from the head of my beloved Queen.

“No!” the silent monarch screamed. “No, no!” There was no snowy gale this time, but now her tears spilled out in earnest.

“Forgive me,” I stammered, shocked at what I’d done. “Your Majesty, forgive me. I couldn’t let you do this.”

“Please,” she begged the Lady of the briar-boat. “Please, not her!”

The Lady had turned white as bone. “I did not foresee this. But I see it now. You were chosen, Majesty, for your selflessness—but there is one who is yet more selfless.”

“I remember everything,” said the Queen. “She doesn’t know what she’s undertaking.”

“No one does, in any task,” the Lady said quietly. “We’d none of us accept the gift of life, if we knew what pains would purchase all our joys.”

My limbs were atremble, but I forced myself to speak steadily. “What happens now?”

“If you are set on this, you must accept the Circlet from its former bearer. You will lose your voice—your memory—your very destiny. You will have no further choice, and so you must choose now. I will give you the Wine that I brought back with me from the stars—the Wine of Fire—and you will rise into the Firmament. For one thousand years and twelve, you will guide lost souls to their eternity, suffering all their torment, and never knowing why you suffer. Never knowing when your agonies will end. This alone will you fully understand: that without the steadfast resolve of the Wayfarer, uncountable multitudes of innocent spirits will be trapped in a purgatorial wilderness of echoes and shades, unable to reach what awaits them beyond the stars.”

And for a moment, it seemed, I shared her gift of foresight—that hardest and bitterest of gifts. I saw the centuries stretching out before me, cold and silent, teeming with miseries on the very brink of despair.

But one thing more. I knew that I would always know the truth: that through me, the One Above the Gods brought healing to the broken world, one lost soul at a time. And I wept with fear, and I smiled with hope, as I sank to one knee before the Lady of the briar-boat. For I am the Maid, and this is my Wisdom: “I accept.”

She placed the crown of withered leaves upon my head.

THE END

Bio: "I've previously published nonfiction with Critical Blast and Horror Tree, fiction with Polymath Books and Bacopa Literary Review, and poetry with Kosmos and Sostenuto Journals."

E-mail: Rivka Crowbourne

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