The Red Jasmine Revolution

17. Roseberry

The cold season kept turning in the forest, until the heat started to seep in with the spring. Jasmine bloomed all the year round, but the spring flowers had a scent that was sweeter that any other time of year. Trees that had been ringed a year before were cut down and set to rest on the high banks of the river. Old trees were marked for next years harvest and saplings were planted. Then the heat came and lasted so long that everyone forgot what it was like to be cool. Finally the circle caught itself up and the rains came again. The banks of the river swelled and the water rose up the banks to take the logs and send them down the river, where they sailed out of the forest and past the plains before finally reaching The City. A place no one from Buttersweet had ever been.

"Roseberry! Roseberry!" came a merry shout from the watchtower at the gate and soon that one voice became many and men all over Buttersweet were chanting the words in a rising and falling melody. A cheer went up as a flock of doves came into view above the camp and the men ran to the edges of the forest where the thickets of wild Roseberry grew. The doves came in to land at the rear of the large house at the north of the camp, where they had landed each season past for years.

The men returned from the forest and stood outside the house, lightly jostling each other for position. To an outsider it might have looked as if they were prospective suitors for her hand in marriage, as each one was cradling a branch or sprig of Roseberry and holding an expectant, enthusiastic look on their faces. It was not a necessity to feed them this particular plant, the doves would fly back to the City after a few days rest whether they ate Roseberry or not. Yet it was because it was unnecessary that the act had gained meaning and was now a firm pillar of Buttersweet culture. Roseberry was the favourite treat of the doves.

After the river sent the wood to the City, The City needed to send the payment to the forest. The City was at least ten days walk from Blackstone village and neither the men of Buttersweet nor the men of the city wanted to be away from their home for that long. The solution had been to send doves, trained and bred to fly great distances, with little bags tied to their legs. Inside were pieces of jade carved into delicate leaves. Each piece was only the size of a man's thumb and cut so thin you could see right through it. The jade leaves could be traded in The Valley for goods. When the system started it had taken a while for the people of The Valley to accept the leaves from the elephant camp workers, but they had come to accept it. In the early days, the men from The City circulated an announcement that if they brought thirty leaves to the city it would be exchanged for one ox. Of course no one ever actually hiked to The City to trade their jade pieces, but the promise had meant they began to accept the pieces for trade, until quickly they had forgotten all about the ox and began to think only in terms of the jade leaves.

Many in the camp had wondered if the agreement with The City would still hold. Perhaps Gunthaw had sent messengers there to tell them of the rebellion. After the logs had sailed down the river there was an anxious month waiting for the winged reply, but here it was, The City seemed not to care who sent them the timber, as long as they received it. The shouts from the men were more joyous than years past. This was their earnings and they wouldn't be sharing it with a boss and landowners who did nothing to earn it.

When all the doves had landed, Seng Nu took the small iron key from around her neck, and opened a lock box. Inside the box was another key which she used to open the door to the rear balcony that looked out onto the northern forest. Perched on beams and waddling on the floor were fifty exhausted doves, softly cooing in expectation.

After she had taken each bag from around the ankles of the doves, she laid out the jade pieces on the wooden table that stood in the entrance hall of the house. It was simple enough to count each piece out and then she divided the total into separate bundles for each of the thirty or so men who worked in the camp. Each of them came, picked up their bundle and went upstairs to the balcony to feed the birds.

Since the Battle At The Gate, Seng Nu had felt guilt like a stone in her stomach. Not a day passed when she didn't think about the men who had perished under her trees she had forced down. She thought of their families too. Their hopes and dreams which were now scattered to the wind like the particles of crushed dry leaves. She had never intended to use her powers that way. She had thought to use them only to scare or block, not to kill. But a rage had gripped her and she had lost control.

For the months after she had rarely left the master's house, and would not make eye contact with anyone except Zaw. She had seen her true potential now, knew that she could and had used her power for destruction and part of her worried that being in the world might awaken that killing rage again. Many of the men of the camp were upset too at how things turned out at the Gate, almost every man at the camp knew one or two of the dead soldiers as a relative or clan cousin. There were some dark hints among some that with Gunthaw's escape, the wrong man had survived. Few blamed Seng Nu for what had happened, although the younger men were more cautious around her. Some of the older men, who had seen battle before, thought her and the others naive to expect that it wouldn't have ended this way. They had never wanted to kill either, but knew from experience that claims to land often ended in bloodshed. They too had seen friends cut down in battle and knew what it was like to feel the red rage.

She was not a leader in the way Dow Som was. She simply organised certain things, like the distribution of the jade, and the storing of the workers fund. She had the responsibility to take stock and her ability to harness the power of the forest didn't mean she could skip learning how to take stock reports. She learnt how to mix and knead numbers together until there was a figure that equalled their value in Jade. It was a different type of magic. She did not take any jade for herself, claiming that the forest had fed her all her life and she couldn't eat a stone. But the men, especially the older ones, made her put aside some for herself, saying she might need it one day. Seng Nu put them in a box under her bed.

She was also, undoubtedly, the champion of the camp, although this was unspoken. Even though there had been bloodshed, there was a feeling of pride in Buttersweet that Seng Nu had protected them in a way that no one else could have. It almost felt like a reward for the years they had spent toiling for timber.

Zaw had joined her in the masters house. Her cottage in the woods was now empty. There were a few grumblings in the camp. An unmarried man and woman living together was unheard of in the Valley, although it was pointed out to the muttering voices that they could barely complain about tradition when they had rebelled against Buttersweet's landholder the previous year.

Rebellion was their way of life now. It had seeped into the camp like smoke.