The Revelation of the Vine: Graft

Chapter 18: The Courts of the Garden

  We descended down the ridge. Grey and brown rocks mingled with grass and herbs along the path. The air was temperate in the Valley, maintained by the layer of mist that acted like a greenhouse ceiling. All kinds of different trees rose from the earth, some of their tops faded into the thicker parts of the mist above. It truly was a heavenly garden, untouched by the passage of time. "It doesn't look like the freeze reached down here at all," Teion observed, as we passed by lush vegetation that grew up along the bottom of the cliff to our left, and all the way up into the mist on the cliff wall to our right. "Maybe the mist blocked it," Atreios added, craning his neck to look up along the cliff-face. "That's exactly what it did," I said. "But not in the way you might think. The mist is actually a Bridge in the Veil that opened above the valley. Nothing can go all the way through it from either direction. The space inside the mist is infinite. It gives the valley its own climate, weather system, and light-source, as well as being the place where the only seed of the Lemniscus tree descended from the Vine and was planted into the valley which the Founders had found here. This is also known as the Valley of Heaven and Earth, where the Vine manifested itself in the Transition in the form of the life-giving tree, Lemniscus, which means adorned with ribbons in an ancient tongue." The valley floor greeted our feet with a layer of soft, moist grass. A welcome relief from the corrupted ground and hard stone we'd been traveling on. "Take your boots off and use the energies around you to recuperate," I said, kneeling down to loosen my straps and pull my boots off. "The ground here is filled with the energy of the tree, and will introduce you to the nature of the Vine. Only the tree's energy will affect you in your mortal state, but once you are Lemniscata, you will be able to gather the energies from everything around you, including the Core, through the conduit that is your soul." The grass felt cool, and soft, with a hint of misty wetness as it crumpled under my bare-feet. I felt a strong surge of energy course through my body. It rose up from the ground and was absorbed from the wind that blew by, from the trees and the animals within the forest, and from the mist and the light that traveled in the air. It began mending and healing my body, and revitalizing my weariness, hunger, and thirst. I also felt the Corruption cower and flee from it, searching for a place to hide, but the void-scar in my side remained, and there it hid. "Whoa," Rahlix exclaimed, rubbing his bare feet in the fresh grass. "It feels like my feet are being massaged by tiny sparks, and the energy is spreading up into my whole body." Jurgen walked beside Jeizen, who was beginning to heal. His wounds faded with each passing minute as they walked along the ground of the garden gathering the energy. They spoke as they walked, laughing, joking, and crying together. I sensed that a strong bond had been formed between them through the events they had endured together. A waterfall echoed in the distance to the northeast, feeding a large river that flowed into a lake at the center of the garden, and then diverged into many smaller streams that spider-webbed outward across the valley and into the mountains around it. The Dale contained the planet's most unique and varied assortment of wildlife. It seemed like every 50 years I had spotted something new. Some of the creatures existed only in the Dale, creatures that existed only in the true light that came from the Vine. Light Realm creatures that were brilliantly adorned with luminous furs and skins. I saw a group of spectral deer, standing a distance away in the shadow of the trees to the north. They had glowing fur, like millions of tiny laser-beams, and horns that crowned their heads like vertical lightning. The buck raised his head from chewing on a glowing, purple shrub next to the trunk of a tree with tiny spark bugs crawling up effervescent bark. When the buck caught sight of me watching, his eyes flashed a brilliant blue, and I felt him look into the depths of my soul. A swirling, black vortex appeared in the center of his eyes, like an abyss had opened that led straight to the Outer Darkness, and then the group of them reared-up and turned to flee into the forest. "Put your shoes back on," I yelled, "and gather up." The group started trickling together as I wondered about the frightened deer. "The Lemniscus is only twenty miles from here," I said when they had all gathered together in front of me. "But then it's another hundred and sixty miles to Mt. Atmos from there." The Seeds gasped and groaned. "It's gonna take forever to get there on foot," Atreios said. "Not when you have our feet," I said. "We'll be there before the morning, but first we have to get to the tree." We followed a stream north, walking deeper and deeper through the thickening vegetation. Refractions of light beams streaked through the leaves of the co-existing evergreen and deciduous trees that dwelled in the valley. The calls of songbirds echoed through the air mixed with the frequent rustle of leaves, as creatures scurried through the canopy, and the bushes and fronds that grew between the trunks. We pushed our way through the wild overgrowth along the side of the stream, climbing over palms and shrubs, and ducking under branches and switches. "Oh, man, sorry," Tenbu said at one point, jumping back a few feet as a critter took off into the brush. "I stepped on something's tail." I switched my visual spectrum to see through mist and the Bridge, so I could check the time in the sky above. The sun had passed the halfway mark and began to fall toward the horizon. I checked every hour as we pushed our way through the supernatural garden, taking breaks for the Seeds to take off their shoes and recuperate along the way. The strength of the stream's current began to increase, and shimmered with strings of green and gold light when we neared the lake from which it flowed. Clusters of smooth, wet rocks began to pile up alongside the banks and within the bed of the stream. Small rapids formed in the flow around them. I checked the sky again: the shadows of the mountaintops had stretched over the whole valley in the light of the setting sun above the mist. A golden-green glow began to pierce the forest in front of us, as a large clearing became visible up ahead where the trees began to grow thin. The shimmering reflection of the Lemniscus tree's light upon the surface of the lake started to become visible between them as we neared the clearing. The tree line circled around the lake, as we pushed through the opening in the forest. The celestial Lemniscus rose majestically from its center.