Lord of Lies

of our deepest dreams.

One of the Lokilani women, older and taller than most of the others, pressed through the throng and stepped up to us. She wore emerald earrings and a diadem woven with tiny emeralds around her silver-streaked hair. Her face was rather striking, with fine features and an expression that conveyed great sensitivity and kindness. Through her eyes poured a radiance like the sun's light through elm leaves. Aunai presented her as Ninana. I immediately took her to be the Lokilanis queen, but I was wrong.

'We do not have this word 'queen',' Ninana said to me after I had tried to explain the ways of the world to her. 'It is a strange idea to us, that one of us should tell others what to do, or should have a greater say than others in what occurs in the Forest.'

Here she turned to look at the great and silent trees rising up along the rim of the beach.

'Sometimes it seems strange to me, too,' I said to her. 'But so it is everywhere — even in your people's other Vild.'

I told her of our journey through Alonia and our sojourn in the Vild that had remained hidden in the deep woods there for many ages; I told her how Maram, Master Juwain, Atara and I had eaten the sacred timana fruit and had been gifted with sight of Flick and all the other Timpum that dwelled there.

'And that is even stranger,' Ninana said. 'To think that you Big People have found your way into the Forest where our cousins live — and now you have found your way here.'

The hundreds of Lokilani standing around us nodded their heads and murmured their amazement at our feat. And I said, 'Has it been long since anyone has come here, then?'

'No one ever comes here.' Ninana stared out into the lake and added, 'No Big People, that is. We allow the birds to come, and the butterflies — and a few other things.'

'Who allows this, then? If you have no queen, is there another with whom we should speak? A man or woman of power? A sorceress?'

I tried to explain my mystification at the barriers that had nearly kept us from the island, and to determine who had summoned them. Ninana listened to me patiently as she gazed up at me. Then she touched the fabric of her skirt and told me, 'It takes only two hands to weave the angel moss into our garments. But it takes many hands — many, many — to weave the mist around the Forest.'

'Very well,' I said, smiling at the Lokilani encircling us. 'But we have so many questions, and we can't speak with all of you.'

'You must speak with all of us. And we must speak with you. We have many questions to ask you, too.'

Ninana watched as one of the Lokilani children, a little boy, danced around Flick's silvery swirl, all the while clapping hands and singing and piping out sounds of delight.

'Come, now, come,' Ninana said to us. 'We've agreed that you shall sit with us in the Forest and take refreshment with us, if you are willing.'

Like a flock of birds suddenly changing direction, the Lokilani all turned away from the lake and began walking toward the woods. We followed them. When we reached the line of the trees, the air suddenly fell cooler and quieter, almost alive in itself like the great green sentinels all around us. Giant oaks and elms predominated here, but there were silver maples, too, and many groves of fruit trees laden with apples, pears, cherries and long blue fruits, bright as lapis pendants, which I had never seen. There were more flowers than I had remembered from the first Vild: goldthread, queen's lace, periwinkles, and tiny white starflowers that grew in bright sprays across the forest floor. There, too, out of the earth, grew amethysts and rubies, sapphires and perfect diamonds as big as a man's fist. We had to watch where we stepped for fear of trampling these pretty jewels with our boots. The Lokilani, however, seemed to follow invisible lines through and around the trees. With precision, and yet with naturalness and grace, their leathery feet found their way across the carpet of gold leaves laid oot before us. Many of these had been shed by the splendid astor tree, whose fluttering leaves seemed to have soaked in the essence of the sun so that their canopies shone like clouds of gold, even at night. The astors' fruit, the sacred timanas, were golden, too: all round and brilliant like dusters of little suns.

But the loveliest of light to grace the Forest were those of the Timpum. There were thousands of these twinkling beings, millions. They came in as many kinds as the squirrels, deer, bluebirds and other animals of hoof and wing that dwelled here. No flower unfolded its bright petals without one or more Timpum hovering over it like an even brighter butterfly woven of pure glister and radiance. No tree there was, however great, that did not emanate an aura in glowing curtains of green and gold, violet and silver and blue. As we walked deeper into the woods, Flick made acquaintance with his brethren beings, and he whirled with them in an ecstatic dance of white and scarlet sparks, and some part of his brilliance seemed to pass into them, and theirs into him. The Vild quickened him and made new his splendor with a living presence that was a marvel to behold.

About two miles from the beach, we came to a place were hundreds of mats woven from long shiny leaves had been laid out in a grove of astor trees. On each mat were set bowls of food: fruits, greens, nuts and other nourishment provided by the Forest. Maram eyed the pitchers of berrr wines, which he had learned to like better than beer or brandy. He also drank in the beauty of the young Lokilani women as they took their places around the various mats with the men and children. I felt his belly rumbling in anticipation of the feast, even as his blood burned for more fleshy pleasures.

'Ah, Val,' he murmured to me. We sat down with our friends across from Ninana and two other Lokilani women whose breasts were, as he put it, as ripe and perfect pears. 'I think I've finally come home.'

'Careful, my friend,' I said to him, 'and remember why we're here.'

'Can not a man as large as I contain multiple purposes?' I smiled at him and said, 'Is that why you agreed to this little quest with so little complaint?'

'Indeed it is. Since I've risked death venturing here, shouldn't I, ah, now enjoy the sweetest fruits of life?'

He smiled at the pretty woman across from him, whose name proved to be Kielii. Then he added, 'I'd like to see Lord Harsha interrupt this feast.'

Just then Aunai joined us with a muscular young man he presented as Taije, who turned out to be Kielii's husband. When Maram learned this, he seemed crestfallen. But only for a moment. Upon looking about the woods at all the women kneeling around their mats, he said, 'Ah, well, a bee doesn't forego flowers just because all the nectar has been gathered from the first one he sees.'

I looked about us, too, trying to descry any sign of the Lokilani's village. Through the spreading astors and out between the great columnar trunks of the oaks beyond, I saw nothing that looked like a human habitation. When I asked Ninana where her people's houses were, she looked at me in puzzlement.

'And what is house?' she asked me.

I tried to explain the kinds of structures in which all people everywhere lived at least part of their lives. 'Even your cousins in Alonia make houses,' I said.

'Is that true?' Ninana said. 'It has been long — long past long — since any of us has journeyed there.'

'But where do you take shelter when winter comes?'

'Here there is no winter.'

'But what about when it rains and falls cold?'

'Here it rains only when we wish it to rain — and then we bathe or wait beneath the tallest trees to keep dry.'

'But where do you sleep, then?'

Ninana waved her hand toward the mosses blanketing the ground. 'We sleep wherever we fall tired.'

Maram, growing irritable at the sight of all the delicacies spread out before him that he hadn't yet been able to sample, growled out, 'But what of the beaife then? Don't you wish for a good fire at night and a stout wall to keep them away?'

But his words only mystified Ninana and the others. This necessitated another long round of explanations that delayed our meal even further. I tried to tell Ninana how other peoples made fire, which she had seen kindled only by lightning. And Maram tried to describe the eating habits of his huge, hairy friends.

'The beare here,' Ninana said at last, 'eat as we do. Do your bears really kill animals to eat them?'

'Sometimes,' Maram said.

'Do they eat people?'