the stiffness or weakness that hampered most people his age. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him; his wrinkled leather skin sat atop wiry muscles so sharply defined you could have taught an anatomy class using them. Of course, I was seeing more of that anatomy than I truly wanted to. It’s one thing to discover your long lost grandfather is still alive. It’s another thing entirely to learn he’s a grass-colored nudist with his privates stuffed into a dried fruit.
“I knew your grandson, Stagger,” said Infidel.
Grandpa frowned.
“His real name was Abstemious Merchant.”
I winced on hearing my birth name. I must have been really drunk to have told her. Abstemious means someone with control of his appetites… perhaps my father’s lapse on his vow of celibacy inspired the choice. Stuck with this moniker, it was only a matter of time before I became an incurable drunkard.
My grandfather frowned even deeper. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve had seven wives. My children have produced scores of grandchildren. I’m afraid the name isn’t triggering any memories.”
The words were like a slap in the face. I’d revered this man. I lived on the Isle of Fire in imitation of his greatness. He didn’t even remember my name?
Infidel produced the bone-handled knife. “You gave him this when he was ten.”
My grandfather took the blade, sliding it in and out of the sheath. He scowled as he saw the dried blood smeared along the metal. “He didn’t take care of it. It’s dirty.”
“He took great care of it,” said Infidel. “He kept it clean and sharp for forty years. If it’s dirty, it’s my fault.”
“Hmm.” Suddenly, a light flickered in his blue eyes. “I remember this knife. The handle was carved from the tibia of a dragon.”
Or so he thought. He’d told me this when he gave me the knife, but one of the monks who specialized in the study of anatomy had assured me the bone was merely that of a bull. But, what if the monk had been wrong? If the hilt truly was dragon-bone, could the magic that infused dragons explain how my spirit had become ensnared by the knife?
As Judicious turned the knife over in his hands, he nodded slowly, as if he were accepting the memories flooding back to him. “I had a son who became a monk. Studious, I think? He had a bastard child raised in an orphanage. That was Abstemious?”
“Yes.”
Grandfather grinned. “I recall him now. Bright kid. Voracious reader. He became a monk?”
“He became you,” said Infidel. “Or, at least his dream of you. He was an explorer, a scholar, and a storyteller. No one knew more than him about the ruins of the Vanished Kingdom. He lived in your old boat in Commonground.”
“I notice you’re speaking in the past tense.”
Infidel nodded.
Grandfather sighed. “I outlive many of my relatives.” He looked down the slope, in the direction of Tower’s party. “I suppose, if you’re friends of the family, I should show a little hospitality. Go tell your companions they’re welcome to stay the night in our huts.”
“I’m not sure they’ll take you up on the offer,” said Infidel. “The leader of the party is kind of snooty.”
“Still, extend the offer.”
Infidel nodded. “If they accept, you need to know that I’m pretending to be a machine. I don’t talk around them.”
“Ah,” said Grandfather. “I wondered why you were dyed silver. I thought it might be some new fashion. You fooled me, by the way. When I first saw you from the trees, I mistook you for one of the ancient engines, and wondered how you were still intact. You reminded me of a mechanical dancer I once excavated. A lovely, wondrous thing, though I never found her head. The clockwork that used to drive her had long-since corroded, but I’m still left breathless by the cleverness of the men who once lived on this island.”
The pygmy huts were better described as tree houses. I’d never been in one before, though I’d caught sight of them often enough. The floor of the forest can be a quiet place; the real action is unfolding high above in the canopy. Here, the forest-pygmies had woven together seemingly endless ropes from blood-tangle vines and strung them together in a complex network of swinging bridges. Houses were built with floors of dense netting spread from branch to branch, with roofs of still-living vines and branches woven together overhead. The floors seemed solid enough when the pygmies flitted across them, but once Lord Tower began to carry the party up to the huts, the platforms sagged ominously beneath the weight. The floor weavers had probably never planned for someone as large as Aurora to visit. No-Face swiftly moved toward the thick trunk of the tree that formed one corner of a large communal area and wrapped his chain around it, with his good arm still coiled in the links. It was hard to read the mood of a man who didn’t have expressions, but I got the distinct impression he didn’t like heights.
The forest-pygmies seemed especially wary of Aurora. None dared look directly at her, though behind her there was a crowd of small green people pointing and gawking.
“The blue tint of your skin makes them think you’re some sort of oddly sized river-pygmy,” Grandfather said. “The river-pygmies work with the slavers, so they’re wary.”
Aurora took a seat near the edge of the netting, looking out over the lush forest. She didn’t seem bothered by the sagging floor or the drop off. “Since I left the north, I’ve gotten used to people being cautious around me,” she said. “At home, I was a runt and a weakling. If not for being born with the mark of a shaman, I doubt they would have fed me as a child.”
Zetetic stayed as close to the center of the floor as possible. I remembered his reaction when he’d first arrived in the cave. Apparently, No-Face wasn’t alone in his acrophobia. Yet, though Zetetic clung to the woven floor with white knuckles, his voice was curiously enthusiastic as he said, “Mr. Merchant, I’ve read everything you ever wrote about the Vanished Kingdom. The world lost quite a scholar when you vanished.”
Father Ver glowered as Zetetic spoke, ready to pounce if the Deceiver attempted anything. Reeker also kept his gaze fixed on the man, no doubt intent not to be taken by surprise again.
My grandfather seemed unaware of the tension in the air. He dismissed Zetetic’s compliment with a shrug. “The world lost nothing. I’ve come to understand that scholarship has very little to do with actual knowledge. In the world I grew up in, knowledge was something found chiefly in books. It was information that gets passed on as scribbled marks on paper. When I first started exploring this land, I wrote down everything I learned, because that seemed like a validation. It was as if nothing I was doing mattered until I committed it to paper.”
“It’s the echo of the divine that makes you feel this,” said Lord Tower. He had never actually landed on the platform; instead, he was hovering a few inches above the netting, perhaps worried about adding his weight to the already strained vines. “When we write, we imitate, in our own pale way, the original act of creation.”
Grandfather chuckled. “You’re my guests, so I’ll say this as respectfully as possible: books aren’t real. I mean, yes, books as physical objects exist, but they contain no reality or truth within them.”
“Have a care,” said Father Ver. “Your words venture dangerously close to the heresy of the Deceivers.”
“No,” said Grandfather. “The Deceivers think that everything is a lie. Reality itself is a fiction, which clever men are free to rewrite.”
“Actually-” said Zetetic.
Grandfather kept talking, ignoring the interruption. “The Deceivers are wrong, as is the Church of the Book. Neither accept the obvious truth: the only thing that defines the world is the world itself. Reality is the tree we sit in; it’s the sun on your face, the evening breeze, the bitter burst of jawa fruit on the tongue. The things we write in books are only daydreams and memories, mental constructs pleasant and useful, but not real. By the time a man writes of an experience, that experience is forever gone. The past vaporizes behind us; the future is devoured voraciously by the present. It is only in the now that we are alive. The physical world surrounding us is the only truth.” He looked out over the green mountain, toward the azure sea. “It is… enough.”
“Bah,” said Father Ver with a dismissive wave. “These are the pointless musings of the spiritually weak. The here-and-now is but a trap; the pleasure of the moment seduces men from contemplation of larger truths. Feeble-minded youth sometimes fall prey to the desire to glamorize the now, but I’m disappointed a man of your advanced age has made this error. Look around you, old man. You live in a bug-infested tree, among primitives who don’t even know how to make clothing. Without accepting a greater spiritual truth, man can be nothing more
