brilliance.
'Do you see?' Kalevi cried out, pointing at Flick. 'The angel fire — I did not imagine it! The giants call it glorre!'
'Glorre! Glorre! Glorre!' the many Loikalii at their tables chanted.
'It is a sign!' Kalevi cried out again, turning to Oni. 'You must take them to the Water!'
'Take them! Take them! Take them!' his tribesmates chanted.
I drew my sword and held it up toward Flick. Its mirrored surface seemed perfectly to reflect his fiery form. Whether it picked up the glorre pouring out of him or shone from within with this singular color was hard to tell.
'All right,' Oni said at last as she gazed at my sword. I saw for the first time how lovely her eyes really were. The ice inside her seemed utterly to have melted. 'In the morning, I will take them to the Water. But now, we should eat the flesh of the angels — and dance and sing!'
She smiled, and years fell away from her. Then bowls full of golden, ripe timanas were brought forth so that we might eat the sacred fruit and deepen our visions of the Timpum, and all living things. Daj and Estrella, to their disappointment, were not allowed to touch the timanas, for the Loikalii counted them as children even though they stood as high as many of the Loikalii women and men. Sunji, Maidro, Arthayn and Nuradayn, however, each picked up a fat, gleaming timana. Maira warned them that the very taste of it sometimes killed. Sunji, speaking for all the Avari, said that they would risk it. As he put it: 'We have borne heat, wind, sand and sun to come this far. It is said that if a man dies in the desert seeking visions, he doesn't really die when he dies. And so we will gladly eat these fruits that you have given us.'
And so he did, along with the other Avari. That night, none of them died, nor did anyone else in the grove partaking in this part of the feast. The Avari finally beheld what we had looked upon for several days but could never take for granted: the millions of Timpum in their glory, gleaming as brightly as the stars and whirling ecstatically in and out of the astor trees. Old Maidro, upon standing up to dance with us and the hundreds of Loikalii forming up into circles, laughed like a young man and called out: 'I'm still alive, but I'm finally
Later that night, after it came time for rest, we returned to our olinda trees. Maram, though, did not come with us. He claimed that Anneli had yet to heal him wholly, and so he would sleep inside her house so that she might bestow upon him her gifts.
Just before going off with her, he took me aside and draped his arm across my shoulders. His breath, heavy with the vapors of elderberry wine, blasted into my face as he said, 'Ah, Val, there is healing and then there is
And with that, this irrepressible man who had come so close to breathing his last breath, walked off into the woods happily singing his favorite song.
Chapter 27
In the morning, we all gathered in the grove, where Maira and Oni met us — along with all the other Loikalii. They thought nothing, it seemed, of giving up their work in favor of witnessing whatever event was about to occur. Oni led us through the trees in a winding way that followed no path. In the strong light raining down through the emerald leaves, the Timpum seemed to shine even more brightly than they had the previous night. So did the flowers and the birds and every other living thing in these mysterious woods.
At last we came into a clearing. A pool of water, fifty feet wide, gleamed in its center. The Loikalii sat around it on low banks of grass. Oni stood beside the pool's rippling waters with Maira and me — and with Kane. Although no one had invited him in so close, no one seemed to find the courage to warn him away. The Loikalii allowed no large predators into their woods, but Kane was like a tiger, pacing back and forth with a barely contained fire tormenting his great body as his fathomless eyes fixed on the pool.
Oni cupped her pale blue bowl in her hands, and shut her eyes. Almost immediately, the breeze died. A stillness fell upon the air over the pool. The only sounds were the songs of the birds deeper in the trees and Kane's restless footfalls.
'Be quiet!' Oni finally hissed at Kane. She opened her eyes and glared at him. 'Or else leave this place!'
Kane stared right back at her with a fiery gaze that might have wilted a tree. But he finally did as she had commanded, freezing into motionlessness like a great cat ready to spring. His bright, black eyes took in the glimmer of the pool.
As my heart drummed inside me, the waters of the pool grew stiller and clearer. I noticed that it sat within a bed of crystal that might have been diamond. No fly pad nor lake skimmer nor even a twig or a speck of dust floated upon this water. It came to me that I had never seen water so pure and deep.
'The waters of all worlds flow into each other,' Oni's voice intoned — a million miles away, it seemed. 'The waters of all things are one; in the end, there is only one Water.'
Now the pool's waters stilled with an utter clarity. In its depths — it was like looking through air — I beheld mountains and water-falls and a great, shimmering city. Crystalline towers half a mile high stood on rocky prominences above a broad valley. It must have been autumn there, for the valley's contours showed the yellows of aspens and maples' blazing reds — as well groves of astor trees whose golden foliage blanketed the earth. Throughout the valley and above it, upon rocky hills, stood many graceful buildings and houses agleam with the colors of living stone: azure and cinnabar, magenta, saffron and aquamarine. I knew that all these-structures had been built by the hand of man, but so perfect were they in design and in harmony with the landforms of the valley that it seemed here art and nature were as one. I couldn't help recalling the wondrous city that Ymanir had built high in the White Mountains: Alundil, the City of the Stars.
The valley's beauty called to something ancient within me. Without quite knowing what I was doing, I reached out my hand toward it. This simple motion unsettled my balance. Even as Kane's hand struck out to try to catch me, I found myself teetering at the edge of the pool, and then stumbling forward. I hit the water with a great splash. Its coldness stabbed into me like a thousand icy needles. The weight of my sword, strapped to my back, helped to pull me under, down and down into a deepening gloom for what seemed forever. I pulled hard with my hands against cold currents and kicked my feet. I swam up and up toward the light streaming through the water. Finally, with a gasp of air I broke from the surface of the pool into a burst of brilliant sunshine. I shook back my wet hair. I blinked my eyes because I could not believe what they beheld. Kane and Oni and everyone else who had gathered by the pool — the Loikalii, the Avari, too — were gone. The city that I had descried within the pool now spread out all around me, amethyst towers rising up from the mountainsides to my right and left. Upon the pool's grassy banks stood tall men and women with jet black hair and eyes as bright and black as my deepest dreams.
One of them, a man wearing a blue tunic trimmed in gold and a fillet of silver binding back his long hair, held out his hand to me and pulled me dripping and shivering from the pool. A woman — I had never seen a queen so striking, not even my mother — covered me with a long, thick robe of new lamb's wool. A man who might have been her brother stood smiling at me in welcome; the diamonds encrusting his tunic shone more brilliantly than a knight's armor. All these people, I thought, were like unto the Valari of my home, only more beautiful and even nobler in aspect. It come to
She spoke more words to me, and so did the others. As with veils pulled back to reveal a familiar fact:, their meaning became clearer and clearer. I realized that they were speaking in a language similar to ancient Ardik, which is to the language of the angels as the common tongue is to Ardik.
They gave me their names: Asha, Eva, Varjan, Jessur, Eldru and Shivaj. And Kavalad, Aja, Saya, Jerusha, Varda and Ramadar. They gave me to understand that they had come here to greet me; that seemed almost impossible, but I sensed that they were not lying. Something about the structure of their language made it
