David Zindell - The Lightstone

So saying, she pulled off a silvery cloth from a bowl at the end of the table. Inside were piled many small golden fruits about the size of plums. She took one in her hand, and then passed the bowl to Elan, who did the same. The bowl quickly made its way around the table. I noticed that although Danali's three children all seemed quite interested in the bowl's gleaming contents, none of them touched the fruit I gathered that just as a child in Mesh would never participate in our rituals of toasting and drinking beer, so the Lokilani children were forbidden to participate in what was to come.

'The fruit has probably fermented,' I said to Maram as I took one in my hand and squeezed its smooth, soft skin. 'You'll probably find all the wine inside that you wish.'

'Now that would be a miracle,' he said as he picked up one of the little fruits and regarded it doubtfully. He looked at Pualani and asked, 'What do you call this thing?'

'It's a timana,' she said. She pointed up at the golden-leafed tree above our table.

'You see, once every seven years, the astors bear the sacred fruit.'

Maram held the timana to his nose for a moment but said nothing.

'Long ago,' Pualani explained, 'the Shining Ones walked the Forest and planted the first astors. The trees were their gift to the Lokilani.'

She sat looking at the timana in her hand as I might look at the stars. Then she told us that the Galadin were angels and this was their flesh.

'We eat this fruit in remembrance of who the Shining Ones really are and who we were meant to be,' she explained. 'Please join us in our celebration today.'

Now the whole glade fell very quiet as the Lokilani at the other mats put down their cups of wine or water to watch us eat the timanas. I wondered why none of them had been given any fruit. I thought that it must be quite rare and used by only a few Lokilani at any one ritual

Without any more words, Pualani bit into her timana, and all the men and women at our table did the same. As my teeth closed on the fruit, a waterfall of tastes exploded in my mouth. It was like honey and wine and sunlight all bound up into the most fragrant of juices. And yet there was something bittersweet about the fruit as well.

Beneath its succulent sugars was a flavor I had never experienced; it recalled mighty trees streaming with spring sap and the fire of a greenness that no longer existed on earth.

Even so, I found the fruit to be very good. Its savor was exquisite, and lingered on my tongue. Along with Pualani and Maram and everyone else, I took a second bite.

The timana's flesh was reddish-orange and studded with a starlike array of tiny black seeds. It glistened in the waning light for an endless moment before I put the fruit in my mouth and ate the rest of it.

'We're so glad you've joined us,' Pualani said as the others finished theirs as well.

'Now you'll see what you'll see.'

'What will we see?' Maram asked, licking the juice from his teeth.

'Perhaps nothing,' Pualani said. 'But perhaps you'll see the Timpum.'

'The Timpum?' Maram asked in alarm. 'What's that?'

'The Timpum are the Timpum,' Pualani said softly. 'They are of the Galad a'Din.'

'I don't understand,' Maram said, rubbing his belly.

'The Galad a'Din,' Pualani said, 'are beings of pure fire. When they walked the earth in the ages before the Lost Ages, they left part of their being behind them. So, the fire, the beings that men do not usually see – the Timpum.'

'I don't think I want to understand,' Maram said.

'Few men do,' Pualani told him. Then she looked from him to Master Juwain and Atara, and last at me. She said, 'It's strange that you seek your golden cup in other lands when so much is to be found so much closer. Love, life, light – why not look for these things in the leaves of the trees and beneath the rocks and along the wind?'

Why not, indeed, I wondered as I looked up at the soft lights dancing along the trees' fluttering golden leaves?

'Am I to understand,' Maram said, breathing heavily, 'that this fruit you've fed us provides visions of these Timpum?'

'Yes,' Pualani said gravely, 'either that or death.'

We were all silent for as long as it took my heart to beat three times. Then Maram gasped out, 'What? What did you say?'

'You've eaten the flesh of the angels,' Pualani calmly explained. 'And so if it's meant to be, you'll see the angel fire. But not all can bear it. And so they die.'

At this news, Maram struggled to his feet, all the while puffing and groaning. He held his big belly as he cried out, 'Poison, poison! Oh, my Lord – I've been poisoned!'

He turned to bend and stick his fingers down his throat to purge himself of the dangerous fruit Pualani stopped him with few soft words. She told him that it was already too late, he would have to live or die according to the grace of the Ellama

'Why have you done this?' Maram shouted at her. His face was now almost as red as a plum. And so, I feared, were Master Juwain's, Atara's and mine. 'What have we done to deserve this?'

'Nothing that others haven't done,' Pualani told him. 'All the Lokilani when we become women and men – we eat the sacred fruit. Many die, sad to say. But it must be so. Life without sight of the Timpum would not be worth living.'

'It would be to me!' Maram cried out. 'I'm not a Lokilani! Oh my lord – I don't want to die!'

'We're sorry this had to be, so sorry,' Pualani told us. She looked at Master Juwain, who sat frozen like a deer surrounded by wolves, and then she smiled at Atara and me. 'There are only two courses open to you. You may remain with the Lokilani and become as one of us. Or you must return to your world.'

My breath came hard and fast now as the woods about us seemed to take on the tones of the waning sunlight It was a yellow like nothing I had ever seen, a waiting-yellow over the trees and through them. A watching-yellow that was very close and yet somehow faraway. 'Please forgive us, please do,' Pualani said. 'But if you do return to your world, we must be utterly certain of who you are. The Earthkiller's people could never bear the sight of the Timpum. And no one who has ever seen the Timpum could ever serve the Earthkiller.'

I noticed, that the children at our table, and every table throughout the glade, were watching us with awe coloring their small, pale faces. It came to me that awe was nothing less than love and fear, and I felt both of these swelling inside me. Everyone was looking at us in fear for our lives, watching and waiting to see what we would see.

Suddenly, Maram threw his hands to the side of his face and let loose a wild, whoop of laughter. He fell to his knees, all the while shaking his head and laughing and crying out that he was being killed but didn't care.

'I see them! I see them!' he called to us. 'Oh, my Lord – they're everywhere!'

Master Juwain, who had been sitting as still as a statue, leapt to his feet and waved his hands about his bald head. 'Astonishing! Astonishing!' he shouted. 'It's not possible, it can't be possible. Val

– do you see them?'

I did not see them. For at that moment, Atara let out a terrible cry and fell backward to the ground as if her spine had been cut with an axe. She screamed for a moment or two before her eyes closed. Then she grew quiet. The movement beneath her doeskin shirt was so slight that I couldn't tell if she was breathing. I fell over toward her and buried my face in this soft garment. Her whole body seemed as still as stone and colder than ice. I knew too well what it felt like for another to die; I would have died myself rather than feel this nothingness take away Atara. But the cold suddenly grew unbearable, and 1 knew with a dreadful certainty that she was leaving me. There was nothing but darkness inside her and all about me. I could see nothing because my eyes were tightly closed as I gripped the soft leather of her shirt and wept bitterly.