Диана Дуэйн - How Lovely Are Thy Branches

The word Filif used was again in the Speech, uhweinsei, and one that had echoes of many meanings: to set oneself apart, to be set apart, to be alone, to be alone to a purpose. “There in the dark and the cold,” Filif said, “she fell down crying with the pain. And there in the dark she rose up again and was the first of us, the first Demisiv who was by herself; the first to stand alone, the first to walk alone, the first to have her own thoughts alone in her own soul. That dark time…” He shivered. “Long she suffered there, long she took learning the weight of being one’s self, the pain of moving one’s self alone through the world. But finally there came a day when the sun rose for a little while, long enough for the microregion of which she’d been a part to wake a little and look around. And what did it see there but the berried one, on her own roots, standing, watching. And she said to it, to the Whole, ‘I am the Outlier. In the One Other’s company I chose my Othering and so did not die. As I am, so may you be. Rise up now and break your bonds!’”

Nita shivered, for it was a battlecry, the way he said it. And over on the other side of the room, she saw Marcus lean back on the pillows behind him with a thoughtful look on his face. “’The stone that the builders have rejected,’” Marcus said, as if musing, or to someone else, “’is become the cornerstone…’”

Filif rustled his branches. “She died, of course,” he said. “Very soon, as our people reckon it. Very young. But not before she’d walked deep into the South, from the cold and the dark down into the sun and the summer, and showed more and more of the Whole what had come to her. And not right away, but soon enough, others followed her. Fringe growths as she’d been, at first: those who were pushed to the edges, the sorrowful, the disaffected, the different. And then others, bored or daring or just curious, sometimes angry and sometimes frightened; they rose up, they broke their bonds. More and more of them, over decades, over centuries. Until after many millennia more, almost all of us were Outliers, going about in freedom, making our own differences in the world and each other’s lives. Now very few stay enWholed all their lives. Those whom the worlds now think of as Demisiv, with our roots in the ground but our own souls in our branches, are almost all our species.” Filif rustled. “And that’s the tale. One of the more formal versions, maybe. There are many, many others.”

Dairine, with Spot in her lap, had been gazing off into the distance through all this. Now she looked up at Filif. “Was that your species’s Choice?”

“It was the gateway to Choice,” Filif said. “Many more Outliers were needed before that could happen, and it took a long time. They were scorned and rejected at first. But very slowly things changed, and after that, in due time, Choice came. Another story.” He rustled his branches again. “At any rate, these days, at the right time of year—our version of this time of year—we’re all Outliers. Instead of coming together in the light that doesn’t end, the way we do at the time of the Nightless Days festival, remembering how it was to be a whole world enWholed—in this time of the year we wait for the darkness, and in it we go apart, remembering the Outlier who first walked that road: the first to walk it truly alone. Here and now, like them, like the One with the Berries, I’m an Outlier. I made my own choice and spoke my Word to the wind, and when my time came I took the High Road and learned to walk through a greater darkness than most of my people. I’m in that darkness now, far away from home. And thereby, I’m exactly where I should be.”

All his berries looked at them. “But it’s funny how it goes,” Filif said. “So far out in the darkness, you find it’s not so dark after all. You find light you didn’t expect…”

“There are similarities, aren’t there?” Ronan said all of a sudden. “Something from outside gets into physical existence and pulls it into something bigger. Something deeper…”

“But that’s the One for you,” Filif said. “It’s always getting into Life and transforming it. The Powers do the everyday work, same as we do. But sometimes something extra’s needed, something more profound. And from acts like this the ripples spread, inevitably. It’s for us the same as it is for you. A lot of stories, a lot of songs and poems telling how what happened way back then looks now. How it affects the here and now, day by day: in big ways, or small ones.” He laughed. “Like your songs about trees…”

But there was something strangely wistful about the way he said that. People looked at each other, thinking. And then suddenly Marcus sat up straight.

“All right,” he said. “All right. Let us light this candle!” And he vanished.

***

They sat waiting for him for about fifteen minutes, wondering what he was up to. At that point all of them had begun to yawn occasionally, and Nita was beginning to look ahead with some eagerness to when she could actually pull one of the various throws over her, collapse back into the pillows and just check out for a while. But then, with a very soft pop of displaced air, Marcus was standing off to one side again with big box in his hands.

“Here,” he said, and brought what he carried over to a nearby table.

Everyone crowded around as he bent to open the box. What Marcus lifted out was a slim piece of gold-colored metal that was bent in a horizontal S-curve like that of the pipe under a sink. At the top of the shorter curve was a socket of the right size and shape to take a candle. At the bottom of the other longer part was a small heavy ball of metal.

“Counterweighted,” he said. “These are far safer than the old candle holders that clipped on. And here—” He reached into the box again, came up with a slim orange-golden candle. “Beeswax,” Marcus said.

Filif began to shiver all over.

“Are you ready for this?” Marcus said.

“Yes,” Filif said, very softly.

“Fil,” Nita said, “are you sure?”

He bowed himself a little toward her, so that the star glittered. “Will you all help?”

Everyone reached into the box, pulled out one of the candle holders, fitted candles to them, and started balancing them carefully on Filif’s branches. “Kind of a trick to this,” Nita said.

“But once you get the hang of it…” Kit said.

Within a few minutes the candles were arranged at the tips of all Filif’s strongest branches, held well away from the main body of his foliage. Carmela put the last one in place. Then they all stood around him for a moment, waiting.

“Now all we need,” Filif said, “is fire…”

There were a couple of spare candles in the box. Nita reached in and lifted one out, knowing what wizardry she’d need next. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Filif said, and stood very straight.

To make a spark long-lasting enough to light a candle took five words in the Speech. Nita said them, and the wick of the candle she held burst into flame. Nita waited until it had caught completely, and then reached out with the candle toward the closest one perched on one of Filif’s boughs. She could see all the red eye-berries watching the flame as it came nearer, trembling just slightly…

She lit the candle; and then another, and another, carefully watching Filif all the time, remembering how just the thought of fire had terrified him once upon a time. After a moment, trembling herself, she handed the candle to Kit. “Here,” she said, “your turn…”

As carefully as she had, Kit lit the three candles nearest, and passed the lighting candle to Matt. So it went around, to Sker’ret (who grasped it in his mandibles and reared up to do the lighting) and to Ronan, and then to Marcus, and finally to Dairine and Carmela. As Carmela was lighting the last three, Dairine gestured at the lamps spaced around the room, and all of them went out.