FORM

Chapter 8 : the devil

When they crested The Great Wall she steered Raven (by means of the haul ropes) towards the lip of the Forbidding Forest. Still the trees looked like ancient shrubs from the tremendous height, but she put them out of her mind, already tracking their progress towards what seemed like a tiny silvery pool. That great flowing ocean off ahead of them was still far out of eyeshot though she could feel it closing. She let go of the haul-ropes fairly certain that her trajectory was making appropriate progress towards the small pool below.

The splash would have been comforting if the landing hadn't felt like it had flattened her, despite the water to cushion the blow. In a few moments she was on her feet, the silvery droplets pelting the floor ever more slowly. It was comforting to see Purl bound out of the surrounding grove, even if he was rather miniscule after all this time. It was hard to believe such a confirmation of the passing time. While some parts had seemed to take forever, others had seemed to breeze by. She wasn't sure whether to be surprised at how little or how much time she had passed dancing there, apparently amidst naked flame. The emptiness picked her up though, the emptiness that had replaced awareness of her son. Her feet were moving while her mind reeled with the most horrendous images, stories she would never want to share. Her life, for all its awful turns, was something she had enjoyed, but the thought of losing her estranged son before she could show him that she did love and value him, made her want to give it all up. Nothing, not even her father imprisoning her in her early childhood, never speaking to her, having butterflies for her only friends, had prepared her for the threat of losing her first-born son. She shook her head to clear the brown snowflakes and hurried onward, Purl heeling her with every bounding step.

The sea was flowing closer at a remarkably rapid pace. By now Raven must be able to glimpse the rippling silver-laced surface as it churned its way through the groves. The Butterflies didn't seem upset at all, Raven still turned his lazy arcs, easily pacing her suicide march. He was smaller now, not just because he was so far up, he had shed two thirds of his mass. She had watched the whole thing. It was wondrous. With his beak he had rubbed and pushed his flesh almost bare. It looked like he was almost bare. Slowly with his claws he formed seven little colt-black birds. Homing Pigeons he called them. He said his master had taught him that. Homing Pigeons would go to any one place, just as you formed them to. When his master had taught him to heal and to grow by eating the dead butterflies, he had also taught him to form these Homing Pigeons. He explained that there would be times when he would need to temporarily grow oversize but that it would not do to be so gluttonous. And the Tree could always use the extra flesh to grow larger and comprehend more. So he learned to turn his excess flesh into Homing Pigeons who would go back and feed the Tree. The Tree was unlike all the trees she had locked away in her memory thread somewhere. Instead, the Tree of Knowledge grew, it consumed butterflies and other trees, converting them all into living accessible knowledge. A verdant repository that would out-exist any of the rapidly-diminishing groves of past wisdom. It was the homing pigeons that were teasing some elusive imaginings just then, while the back of her mind tracked an enormous sea that should be upon them at any moment. How she hoped it would be Ipni, safe, putting to rest the tales running through her head; Tales more horrible than anything in the Forbidding Forest.

She stopped dead when it seemed like the water must be so close that it might burst from behind a copse of nearby trees at any moment. Her anticipation was in no way let down, it did burst, right our from behind an unremarkable yellow-green cottony wavelike tree-it might have been a guide to forming simple mechanisms of knot-worked flesh if memory served-An ocean that swallowed all light, an ocean that stood with the stature of a small man, unmoving stolid eyes, long unusually thick hair. The devil himself crashed upon her disrupted shore. The one man who she wanted to blame for all this more than anyone else. Somehow. If he hadn't wrought that wondrous tree, she never would have discovered a fire so pure and deep that it dwells within all things. If he hadn't sent Raven to look over her. If he hadn't inspired her to kill herself in her former life, she might never have lost her son! You haven't lost your son. She repeated it over and over again in her head, tried to make it sound soothing.