In the Company of Stones

Chapter 1: The Long Walker, part 1.1

Ljót strode through the forest, her smooth flesh aglimmer, the red threads of her crown hyphae swinging behind her back. She placed each pale foot with care for the small life beneath them, hands ceaselessly blessing each tree, each bush as she passed.

He cleaved as tightly to the trailing fiber of her tail as a Little-Brother-Under-the-Soil fused to its tree root.  

Last spring he had been just another rounded nodule on the webwork of roots, one of myriad Little Brothers.  Then Ljót quickened him.  His limbs grew long and straight, his skin thickening into the silvery bark of a young stripling. His fingers and toes lengthened, becoming twiglike.  Still tiny, he became motile, able to swim through the soil to reach Ljót, his queen.

Now he lay upon the fused filaments of her roots, the shining white tail that slid behind her. He was content to watch the forest floor pass by as he rode, savoring the secret dells of fern and mallow. It was bliss to bask, alone, in the center of his queen’s affections.

He tasted Ljót’s amusement.  

::You’ll be growing very fast now:: she said. ::Soon, you will be too big for me to carry::

::Is it time for me to take a name, and be a Long-Walker? Is it time for me to found a new grove?:: He would prove his readiness to stride forth, to carry her seed and die to feed her offspring. He slid to the ground, treading swiftly to match her much longer steps, his roots still attached to hers.

He felt her taste his thoughts in turn.  Love and sadness, sweet and bitter warred in her response. ::I do not know. Perhaps I will need defenders instead::

He mulled her thoughts with care.  They were like none other, for Ljót was his mother, the lodestone, the queen, the mate, the reason for being, the All.  To a Little-Brother-Under-The-Soil, Ljót was the sun.

Now, his source of light and warmth was troubled.  Ljót’s thoughts surged between two different directions, two different impulses, two different outcomes.

On the one stream, she tasted of retreat--a journey and withdrawal into the forest. On the other, the tang of change.

What would she have him do? It was his future Ljót debated within herself.  He felt very small, very inadequate for the great purposes of a queen.

::Do not fear those who come:: she said.

He curled his tail tighter around her own. ::I am not afraid:: he replied, adopting what he hoped was the resolute flavor of a grown Long-Walker.  

Males lived--and died--to please their queen. He knew no other world outside her root-radius.  What was fear, against the chance to serve Ljót?

::The tailless ones, the brjálaður who burn the forest. They walk like you and I, on two feet.  But they have no roots. No connection to the soil.  Nothing like this::The link between them strengthened, feeding him, bolstering him with its sense of refuge, of belonging.

He tasted her thoughts again, making certain he understood. There, underneath Ljót’s oceanic calm trickled the tiniest thread of unease.

Ljót turned and crouched down. Her eyes gleamed a solid opalescent blue as she regarded him.

::They are like looking into a stream and seeing our broken reflection. But brjálaður are no more than mist and smoke::she said. ::It is not they who frighten me:: Her long, white fingers traced the arc of her tail and his, blessing the connection between them with her sure, light touch.

He saw them in her memories--tall creatures, tall like Ljót, but not as tall as he would be when fully grown. And their skin! Moist, soft skin the color of river-bed stones with a touch of rose like summer’s blossoms.  Two-legged, like their kind--but oddly unbalanced without root-hyphae grown into a proper tail. He twitched his own, testing the security of its fusing within Ljót.

::What then:: He had to know, to understand. He would not let it go. What could frighten his queen?

Sadness washed over him -- Ljót’s sadness, carried to him through their conjoined tails.  

::I chose in you better than I knew::she said. ::Curiosity. And stubbornness::

He felt her thoughts fly outward, far along the root-works, touching uncountable numbers of Little-Brothers-Under-the-Soil. She drew them together, her taste, her thoughts linking them into one vast, diffuse Presence. He became a fragment of that forest of minds, comforted by the familiar presence of his Brothers, secure in the context of being many, together, inseparable.

::You ask what frightens me?::Ljót said.::This::

She set him down, detached his tail from hers, and backed away.

The taste of myriad Little Brothers vanished. Her taste vanished.

Desolation.

He was no more than a mote, lost in emptiness that went on forever.  His body a tiny thing, dry and twiglike, finite, fragile.  The trees around him, no longer a part of him.  They loomed above him, foreboding, awe-full.

Up in their limbs, two ravens cawed. Did they look on him with hunger? Their black eyes gleamed darkly, night’s stars seen by day.

Ljót’s fear became his own.

He shuddered, his thoughts turning liquescent. They seeped from his pores in a silent scream of loss. His tail battered against hers, seeking a stoma to enter, seeking the precious connection of Little Brother to queen.  

::Now you have tasted of the thing I fear::  

In his terror, he did not register their reunion at first, not against the enormity of his hunger for her.

::You will go where a queen cannot. You will learn what I cannot--how to heal the brjálaður of this alone-sickness. Some grow mad from emptiness, and wreak havoc in their madness. But you will not::

Ljót picked him up, resting him on the arc of her hip.  He clung to her as the threads of her hyphae entwined with his pale crown-rootlets. Still trembling, he watched moisture surge along the fine veil of filaments. He felt the liquid enter him, wash through and strengthen him.

He clung to Ljót as if to bury himself within her. His mother, his queen, his All.