Mark Chadbourn - The Burning Man

‘The question has been asked, Gao Yao,’ the Jade Emperor said to the new arrival, ‘and if our Empire of the Sun and Moon is to prosper still, it is one that must be answered in our favour. What is your judgment on this issue?’

Gao Lao lowered his huge frame to communicate silently with the goat. When he looked up, his eyes were wet with tears.

‘August Personage, my judgment in this matter is clear. Even this transgression can be breached-’

‘Even though the weft and the weave were cut by the Extinction Shears?’

‘August Personage, yes.’ Gao Yao bowed several times until Ruth became concerned he would not stop. ‘However, a sacrifice is needed. The spirit of a heavenly presence burns brightly and only that will break the dam.’

Dark thoughts played across Yu Huang’s face.

From the ranks of the gods, a muscular figure stepped forward. Bald, with a long, black ponytail, he carried a large silver axe marked in red with Chinese characters. A jagged scar ran across his face, and his left eye was covered with a patch. ‘August Personage, I will do this task for you. It is a small thing, and my battle-cry will echo through all eternity.’

‘No, Lei-Gong. The sun is setting on Existence, and I fear we will have need of your thunder before too long.’

One by one the gods stepped forward to offer their service, and one by one Yu Huang rejected them.

Finally he turned to the gods and said, ‘Return to the Palace of Heavenly Purity and make plans. The Transcendental Administration will be needed in the days to come. Let this be your legend: Honour. Fortune. Wisdom. Justice.’

When the gods had trooped by him into the stone tunnel, the Jade Emperor turned to Ruth. ‘Your spirit burns brightly. Believe in yourself, flower of the west, and all will be well.’

And then he turned to Church, Shavi and Tom. Church had recovered enough to stand unaided, but he was still pale and weak. ‘One of you must accompany me to the source of the Blue Fire.’

It took a second for them to realise what Yu Huang was saying. ‘One of us has to be the sacrifice?’ Shavi asked.

‘Why?’ There was force in Church’s question despite his physical weakness. ‘Because we’re not gods? Because we’re lesser?’

‘You would set yourself alongside the gods?’ Yu Huang’s tone and expression gave no hint of his thoughts.

‘We’re not lesser. Everything we’ve done shows that we deserve recognition.’

The Jade Emperor nodded thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps, then, it is time.’ He turned to Ruth. ‘You will accompany me?’

‘No,’ Church said. ‘I’ll go.’

‘You don’t have to keep protecting me,’ Ruth said sharply. ‘The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons are equals. I have as much right as you to be sacrificed.’

‘Typical,’ Tom said. ‘Fighting over who should be the first to die.’

‘You’re the leader,’ Ruth said to Church. ‘You’re the one who’s most needed. Not me.’ Ruth tried to stop her voice from breaking.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Church pitch forward. As she turned to see what had happened, a hard blow struck the back of her head. The last thing she heard was Shavi’s voice: ‘I will do it.’

Shavi felt as if he was flying through a brilliant blue sky. Hanging on to the Jade Emperor’s sleeve, they hurtled through hall and tunnel and cavern in immeasurable number, all of them lit by the brilliant glow of the Blue Fire.

Eventually they came to a halt in a cavern that Shavi guessed was the one Church had accessed in Vietnam in the sixties. He centred himself, trying not to consider what lay ahead.

‘Where does the Blue Fire come from?’ he said.

‘The source of everything under Existence.’

Something in the face his mind had chosen for the Jade Emperor reminded him of his grandfather. ‘And you and your kind stand with Existence?’

‘We stand for balance. The yin and the yang in eternal harmony. One cannot exist without the other: day needs night; love needs hate; peace needs war. Each defines the other.’

‘But the Void has been in control of the world for so long-’

‘In your terms.’

‘For the sake of balance, Existence should get its turn.’

A ghost of a smile. ‘Yes.’

Shavi imagined for a moment. ‘A golden age. Mankind in harmony with nature, not driven by the urge for money and power.’

‘A golden age indeed,’ Yu Huang repeated.

‘Then I am ready,’ Shavi said. ‘If my sacrifice could help bring that about, it is worth it.’

‘Why did you choose to put yourself before the one I had chosen, and the one who sought to take her place?’

‘They are my friends.’ It didn’t feel like enough of an explanation, so he added, ‘They love each other. They deserve a chance to be together.’

‘More than you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you fear death?’

Shavi smiled. ‘I do not welcome it. There is much more I feel I need to do before I leave this life. But no, I do not fear it. I believe it is not an ending in itself, rather that it leads on to something great and mysterious.’

Yu Huang nodded. ‘A wise answer. Your Brother spoke of his desire for Fragile Creatures to be considered equal to gods. He gives voice to a timeless prophecy of an age when the chi of Fragile Creatures will rise and advance. And in that time the age of gods will pass. This may well be that time.’

He approached a place in the cavern wall that was seared black, and for a second he appeared to be made of nothing more than blue light. ‘Tell me, little Brother of Dragons, if you could keep only five memories, which would you choose?’

The question felt like a request for a valediction. Shavi closed his eyes and thought. ‘My father and mother, hugging me on my tenth birthday. Before my father realised I was not going to walk his road and his heart hardened towards me.’

Shavi opened his eyes and was surprised to see that the thin pool of Blue Fire had licked up into a column three feet above the ground. Yu Huang watched it intently.

Closing his eyes again, Shavi searched his memories. If he was going to die, it would be good to do so with his best thoughts in his head. Was it an act of compassion from Yu Huang?

‘A kiss in the dark on Clapham Common.’ He saw Lee’s face, sweet and mysterious, and accepted how much he had loved him. ‘Lying on the Downs, looking over Stonehenge as the sun came up, listening to music on my iPod and feeling a part of something wonderful.’ His emotions surged and he thought he might cry. ‘Holding my grandmother’s hand while she died, and seeing her smile one last time, hearing her tell me everything would be all right.’

He took a deep breath, lost in the vast Otherworld inside his head, Yu Huang, the cavern, his impending death all forgotten.

‘The final one … sitting around a campfire at night, with Church, Laura, Ruth, Ryan, all of us laughing, and realising in such a powerful way that it shook me to the core that these were the best friends I could ever want. That they had enriched my existence just by being there, that they had changed my life, like the philosopher’s stone changed lead into gold.’ He let the image settle into his thoughts. ‘I will miss them.’

When he opened his eyes he was shocked to see that the column of Blue Fire now soared to the very roof of the cavern. Yu Huang studied it carefully before turning to Shavi with an almost reverential expression. ‘You have built a monument of wonder. A beacon in the deep dark of the Void.’

With a gesture, he raised another column from the Blue Fire, half the height of the one Shavi had created. ‘I bestride the heavens. I have seen all, done all, yet that is the height of my own monument.’ He looked from one column to the other and smiled. ‘These are strange times, great times.’