Ancient Canada E-Book

Clinton Festa

• Herausgeber: CamCat Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 592

Beschreibung

A Mythological Tale

Leseprobe

Ancient Canada

A Mythological Tale

Clinton Festa

CamCat Publishing, LLC

Brentwood, Tennessee 37027

camcatpublishing.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

© 2021 by Clinton Festa 

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address CamCat Publishing, 101 Creekside Crossing Suite 280, Brentwood, TN 37027.

Hardcover ISBN 9780744304350

Paperback ISBN 9780744304367

Large-Print Paperback ISBN 9780744304381

eBook ISBN 9780744304411

Audiobook ISBN 9780744304459

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021945663

Cover and book design by Maryann Appel

Map illustration by Jerome Eyquem

5 3 1 2 4

Contents

Maragold’s Prologue

1. The Summoner

2. Heather

3. The Lichen

4. The Commander

5. Anders and Ylwa

6. Marigold

7. Prince Oslo

8. The Bog Man

9. Marigold

10. The Feathermen

11. Grandfather

12. Agrippin

13. Marigold

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For Further Discussion

Inspiration for Ancient Canada

Also by CamCat Books

Temple of Conquest

More Fantasy From CamCat Books

CamCat Books

Maragold’s Prologue

If I were to describe my sister in one word, it would be oversimplified. To define her solely by her gift would be equally unfair, although a common and convenient indulgence taken by some.

To say this is her story exclusively would also be untrue. It is many stories, each told from the perspective of a different narrator, and I merely fill these pages with their words. In doing so, I hope the word to be, as I am to Lavender, sibling to the deed and not its cousin.

Polaris proclaimed himself the religious, military, and otherwise autonomous leader of our people, our country, and its capital of York. With her words and actions, my younger sister challenged his authority. In recounting her story, I stand beside her.

Our journey bridges the lands of the known world, through both the wild and domestic, lasting an entire season of light and into a season of darkness. The encounters you read about are recalled by those we passed throughout our wandering. You will therefore not rely solely on my partiality but hear many perspectives on my sister. The narrators have directly formed their opinions, and through them you will likely form your own. In doing so, and objectively, you will have fulfilled my hope for this document.

1

The Summoner

“Treason, then,” said Polaris.

“How do you read that, sir?” I asked.

And just like that I crossed the line. He turned his six-generations-old head toward me and glared with his famous red, glowing eyes. I turned away quickly and straightened my back.

“You don’t think so?”

“I don’t recall writing it in my report, sir.”

“You didn’t. It’s right here,” he concluded, reading the colorful brochure from the Mystic Garden. “Services. Predictions of life and death. Verification of pregnancy, and how many. For just three tiles, our seer will tell you if you will live or die based on your current condition. Should those conditions change, your future may change with it. All receive a flower regardless of their fortune.”

“Treason, then, sir?”

He flared up as if possessed by internal combustion. “Is she not accepting a fee for a spiritual service? Is that not infringing on my authority?” He hated to be doubted, but as any summoner knows, a hypersensitive reaction reveals a level of preexisting guilt. Polaris had an agenda. “Treason and blasphemy. Go back and arrest her, Summoner.”

“But . . . the penalty for either of those is execution. Won’t she know I’m coming? If she can predict life and death, that is.”

“You’re not intimidated by a teenage fortune-teller, are you?”

“No, sir.”

He took a few steps around the private briefing chamber and dug his overgrown nails into the back of an empty wooden chair. “Let me tell you something I learned when I was a young man: All human behavior follows one simple rule. We weigh penalties and rewards, and in the moment of decision, we choose the path of least apparent resistance. Every one of us, every time. That’s not to say we take the easy way out. We choose based on what we can see. But simple minds will be clouded and nearsighted, so it’s up to the master to make sure the servant sees far enough into their future to make the wisest possible decision. Treason and blasphemy cannot be tolerated.”

“You make your point perfectly clear, sir.”

“Stop procrastinating. Put on your uniform and make your arrest. You may use any of the cathedral’s exit points. I’ll see you in the marketplace. Crimes like these require an immediate public trial.”

I am a summoner. I have sworn an oath to protect the Polarian mandates. When I arrest you, you won’t know who I am, and you won’t see it coming.

The Cathedral at York has a series of discreet entries and exits, each of which connects to a web of underground passageways and briefing rooms. This allows a summoner to enter plainly clothed, descend deep into the lowest levels above only the catacombs, and receive an assignment. We then return aboveground fully hooded, robed, cloaked, gloved, and strapped to the boot in dense gray garments.

To some, blood tastes sweet and savory; to others, it’s bitter and sour. When fully uniformed, a summoner cannot be recognized and does not speak, so as not to be identified by any other means. We’re ordered to arrest the mark, and in the event of resistance, use fatal measures. Should this be necessary in a public setting, or even with just one bystander, the summoner can return to life without judgment or resentment as the public reaction is unpredictable. Merely researching a summoner’s true identity is punishable by death. Call me Denton if you like. It’s not my real name.

I thought I understood the profile of a typical mark, and it was not a girl of fifteen seasons under suspicion of treason or blasphemy. However, most assignments are not ordered directly by Polaris himself, as in this case, concerning a young lady named Lavender. I needed to know more. I needed the man from the heavens to answer questions no one could ask. But when light shines on an agenda, it casts a permanent shadow, and he knew this. So, it was no accident that I never learned the real reasons why Polaris wanted her dead.

My assignment had started one day prior. In plain clothes I bought a small, fidgety bird in the marketplace, planning to then seek out the new business where this girl predicted the future. It was by no means difficult, as the report had not exaggerated about her older sister Marigold. Even in the commotion of desperate vendors and haggling customers, you could see and hear her without effort. She wore eye-catching pastels and stood on a salesman’s stool. Her hair was blonde, healthy, and well-managed, but so long that I wondered if it had ever been cut. In a sharp, high-pitched note above the droning of the marketplace, she hollered to the crowd, “Trade a small fortune for a great one?”

Marigold even pointed to her and her sister’s studio to suggest that potential patrons enter their street-level dwelling—which rested alongside the busiest section of the marketplace—unwittingly guiding my investigation.

A long line spilled out the open door, the patrons pressing against the structure’s wall so those waiting nervously would not collide with the other vendors in the open-air bazaar. The door between the private-turned-professional dwelling and the market stayed propped open, the entranceway draped with plush violet curtains, above which hung a large wooden panel artistically decorated as if a tympanum. The entrance’s resemblance to a place of worship certainly didn’t prove blasphemy, but it didn’t help. The large wooden panel was semicircular, with a single large painted eye: white around a purple iris, and a small, beady, black circle for the pupil. Above the eye on the wooden panel read the title banner of their business: the mystic garden.

My briefing had included the category of the girl’s commerce permit: “parlor amusement.” There was nothing subtle about what I had seen up to that point, including the flamboyant Marigold, with whom I avoided eye contact and conversation in passing. I scanned the crowd for her younger sister but saw no girl with glowing purple eyes in the market.

I got in line, expecting, like the other patrons, to find Lavender inside. Looking at those in front of me and at those who stood behind me as we progressed, I felt certain that as an undercover summoner holding a small bird I was the least curious of the lot. Every third woman of childbearing age was pregnant, most only starting to show. There were older couples, often one spouse the other’s crutch. Men with diseased skin waited elbow to elbow with other guests. A curious boy stood in front of me, carrying a small serpent in a mold-formed glass cage. Some seemed to be holding a brochure, the one from which Polaris would later conclude Lavender’s guilt.

Another and another exited the dwelling, each holding a flower. Most returned to the outer marketplace with a mundane indifference, perhaps also with some relief.

The crowd grew hushed, staring at an older gentleman as he exited, weeping. He held a small, white-petaled stem in his left hand and was joined in arms with an older woman who appeared quite afflicted, presumably dying. Following them were an elated young man and woman, loudly discussing what to name the child in her womb. They held a small, tasteful, red-petaled flower, but otherwise it was an indulgent, inconsiderate display following the elder pair.

After some waiting and slow, forward shuffling, I passed to the inside of the dwelling, step for step with the child and his limbless creature, a small, thankfully caged, white-feathered serpent. When it was the child and his creature’s turn, the entire line laughed at the predictable shriek as he brought his pet behind Lavender’s cloth barrier. Next for services behind the boy and therefore closest to this utility curtain, I could hear every word.

“Don’t remove it from its cage, please!” said the teenage girl hidden behind the drapes.

“I caught him in the forest, and I’d like to know if he’s venomous,” said the boy.

“Him? How do you know it’s a boy?” she asked. “Are all serpents boys?”

“Yes,” he confirmed.

Hearing everything, the crowd laughed. The girl, aware of it, paused and told the boy, “Not this one. She’s pregnant.”

This time the crowd did not laugh. A general reaction of repulsion was the response.

“I see fourteen . . . fifteen . . . sixteen are alive, but I’m sorry to say two of the unborn appear to have died inside of her,” said Lavender, counting. “But you didn’t believe her to be female, and this is not why you said you came to me.”

“No. I would like to know if she’s venomous.”

“Well then, I suppose we’re going to have to take her out of her cage,” said the teen, sighing. “Not yet though. Don’t open it now.”

As Lavender emerged from behind the curtain I had the first glimpse of my mark. She was as described: neither tall nor large. Her hair was black, likely from dye, and cropped with short bangs. Her eyes were the color promised, although the beadiness of the painted version above their entryway was of course exaggerated. And possibly because it was late afternoon and the sun still shone, I saw no noticeable glow. “This will only take a moment,” she announced, addressing the patrons as they stared. She stepped into the kitchen, grabbed a pair of wooden tongs, and returned to the boy.

From behind the curtain, she said, “Stand back. I’m going to hold her head securely and slowly bring it to my arm . . . ”

Those in the line inside the studio froze.

“Venomous! Venomous!” yelled the girl, slamming the glass cage shut.

“I’ll have to take her back to the forest, I suppose,” said the dejected boy.

“Yes, please do,” insisted the girl. “Here. You are the newest owner of wooden tongs. And give this flower to your mother. You may need to if she’s already seen the serpent.”

The boy left with his creature secured inside the cage, and I entered with my bird.

“Your bird’s not venomous, is she?” asked Lavender, the mystic of the Mystic Garden. I saw the purple eyes, steadily now, and noticed a faint glow, aided from reduced light behind the curtain.

“Why all the rocks, crystals, and strange orbs?” I asked. The room behind the curtain was ridiculous—cramped as it was but even more densely decorated than the remainder of the studio.

“Oh, my sister . . . the flowers were her idea. ‘Mystic Garden,’ her idea. And the garish purple eye above our entrance . . . I am not to be blamed for that, either. But the flowers . . . we don’t always predict good fortunes, and we believe a sendoff with a small flower helps.” She lifted her chin and added, “So you are to live but I’m sorry to say your bird is going to die. Was that why you came?”

“Yes, but I’m curious now about what happened with the boy.”

She demonstrated with her hands as she explained, “With the tongs, I held the creature’s neck and slowly brought it to my forearm. Had that continued, I would have died, because the animal was indeed venomous. So, I drew it back and pulled away my arm. Sorry for the commotion, but this is a new service my sister and I are providing. We’re still developing policy. I can tell you I won’t do that in the future. And if I may, also in the future, ask that when you bring even a small animal that it be caged or harnessed. For the comfort of the other patrons.”

“Of course.” I had failed to follow the letter of their rules, whatever they were. “So, you essentially tricked your own gift with the serpent?”

“It works,” she shrugged. “I can’t explain why, although it seems to predict based on the extension of the circumstances and conditions of your life, which can change.”

“Thank you. So, what of my bird? What will cause her death?”

“Distemper,” she said. She paused. She scanned my face and said, “No, that’s not true. I presume you will eat her.” There was a second delay before she spoke, “Yes, I believe you or perhaps your family will eat her.”

“How can you tell these things?”

“The cause of death? Just a guess. When I lied and told you she was contaminated, she was then no longer ill-fated. From that point, the conclusion was that you originally planned to eat her. She is now, as I see her, again doomed, likely because I have told you she is not tainted. I’m sorry for the lie, but may I ask why you would bring a bird to me, one you planned on eating, and ask me to predict its cause of death?”

“I . . . I wanted to be sure it wasn’t sick. If it were sick, could you treat it?”

“I could not. It doesn’t work like that. Forgive my rudeness . . . I wish I could spend more time explaining, but we’ve printed some literature that should help.”

“I’d like two copies.”

“My sister . . .” Lavender looked beneath her seat for their brochures without success. “Marigold was distributing them.”

I knew precisely where Marigold was, advertising in the market street, but remained silent to observe my mark. Lavender called for her sister in a volume appropriate to the inside of the studio, then a bit louder, and with no reply to either attempt, broke from behind the curtain. She peered out and scanned the crowd. She quickly focused on an older man, fifth or sixth from his turn at the front of the line.

“Somebody fetch a medic!” Lavender yelled. “Immediately!”

The man’s skin looked like a fish and had the texture as well. If he were not leaning on his much smaller wife, he probably would have been unable to stand.

“Hey, we were in line long before he arrived!” said the couple in front of the dying man.

“You’ll live,” said Lavender as she glanced at them. “Medic!”

The man who was next in line complained, “Excuse me, miss, I’ve already paid. I don’t believe that man has paid quite yet.”

The lineup ignored Lavender’s attempts to call for help, and likewise, she ignored their complaints. I believe most of the dregs of society I’ve summoned throughout my career would have acted more appropriately than these patrons, and certainly faster.

Hearing her sister’s scream, Marigold ran inside from the street only to notice Lavender rushing into their bedroom, pulling out her own mattress, tossing off her sheets, and coming back again to where the patrons stood in the studio.

“Marigold, grab a corner! These people are sessile, useless, and this man is dying.”

Finally, as if waking from some strange trance, three men from the line stepped forward to grab a corner of the mattress as the old man mounted it as if it were a gurney. I volunteered as the fourth, but Lavender wouldn’t release her grip on her corner.

“We’re carting this couple to the hospital. It’s more sensible for me to be there anyway,” she announced.

“I’ll handle the customers,” Marigold said. “You go ahead, and hurry.” She waited for her sister’s exit, then announced loudly, “Clearly there has been an emergency, but if you require services today, you are welcome to follow me to the hospital where we shall continue, free of charge.”

“Will Lavender be able to save that man?” asked a patron near the doorway.

“It doesn’t work like that,” barked two other patrons in unison.

“They’re correct. Why does nobody read these?” asked Marigold, holding up her stack of brochures. I laughed quietly at her comment.

With my dinner squirming under the pit of my arm, I followed about a quarter of the crowd—perhaps thirty in our flock—out of the market district and on toward the old stone hospital. The sun was in our eyes, and the building was not near.

We found only Lavender at the hospital. We never saw the elderly man again. By our arrival he was dead. Our herd entered and stood back from the gifted girl, who was alone in the common waiting area, tears streaming from her eyes. She hunched into herself on an unpadded wood chair, not comforted by her own soft mattress propped beside her.

I assumed she was not permitted in the treatment areas, which allowed only hospital staff. From what I saw, I doubt the staff even thanked her. The older woman, now widowed, wasn’t there, nor were the three men who carried the mattress. It was clear the emergency had ended, and her old patron had died.

We stared across the empty space in silence. Lavender had been alone with her burden in the common area, and now was joined by thirty solemn sets of eyes. Marigold made the journey across the square, hollow room. The crowd held back and watched as Lavender barely stood. The two embraced, then Marigold held Lavender by her shoulders. The older sister’s lips moved, then Lavender nodded. I don’t know what Marigold said to her younger sister, but Lavender looked up, dried her eyes, and said, quivering, “I can see whoever was next.”

The crowd consoled her one by one as she told their fortunes. Marigold, as promised and with good business sense, did not charge any of these customers who walked to the hospital. I lingered long enough to finally receive two copies of the brochure Marigold had been providing, then returned home to prepare my report.

Leaving the cathedral following my briefing with Polaris, on my way to arrest Lavender, I decided to perform a disobedient act. I hoped for the girl to feel little pain, and so I planned to smother her with a rag soaked in a concentrated ether solution hidden under my attire. I knew I would eventually have this opportunity during the arrest, and the crowd would then see a disoriented, sedated girl unfit for execution.

The dense crowd of the marketplace parted at sight of me, or rather the sight of me in my gray robes, and the drone of their voices turned to silence. Transactions stalled, heads turned, and eyes stared, perhaps while an opportunistic thief stole a necklace to no one’s notice. The smell of blood came to the crowd, but not yet the taste.

I wondered how long it might have lasted for some of the hundreds of bystanders who stared, as I marched directly toward the street-side studio business called the Mystic Garden. Since they would not hear my voice, they would wait to learn the identity of my mark. With so many present in this area, I doubted less than half of their heartbeats quickened.

Marigold was again advertising in the street as their business thrived. The stretch of patrons was again cramped with the sick, aged, and pregnant. The line parted with much more urgent accommodation than it had the day prior when the elderly man waited for death.

I moved quickly into the studio. The whispers of the crowd breezed, “Oh, he’s here for the girl.”

I tore the inner drapery from its post, the curtain that shielded Lavender and her patron from those waiting in line. A seated sickly woman startled and turned to look at me. Lavender’s iridescent purple eyes latched on to me as well. All were watching. Someone in the crowd murmured, repeating, “Yes, he’s here for the girl.”

I swept the curtains around Lavender and tightly swaddled her arms and face, ensuring the process would leave her blindfolded but able to breathe. I carried her under my arm, squirming. I palmed the ether-dampened rag I had prepared and snuck it through the curtain onto her nose and mouth. She had no choice but to breathe it in.

She wasn’t heavy, and the best she could do to resist was kick her legs. She fought off the ether, as I’d preferred, never allowing it to make her unconscious. I carried her past the frozen, shocked line of people and proceeded through the studio doorway into the crowded marketplace.

Easily, a thousand eyes eagerly attended the writhing, protesting creature wrapped in the curtain under my arm, and her concealed identity only compounded their curiosity. Seconds prior, all these eyes had observed a summoner in gray march into a crowded dwelling to make an arrest. Without releasing the girl, I searched left and right again for her execution squadron. Until their arrival, I could do nothing but absorb the stares of the crowd.

A yellow patch caught my eye. It was Marigold, stunned and no doubt hoping that I held a patron and not her sister squirming under my arm.

The next thing I noticed was to me a shock, as Polaris himself walked purposefully from the rear of the crowd toward me accompanied by several guardsmen in heavy, dark green armor and carrying nets and spears as if they expected the girl to transform into a hissing, winged jackal. From four corners of the market next came the execution squadron: men of significant stature, easily three times the girl’s weight, with shoulders so broad they could torque her neck and spine simply with their own hands. And yet they carried their instruments of execution: one, a small wooden platform; another, a broad axe for her neck; a third, a bucket and mop; and the fourth, a towering pike on which to mount her head once separated.

I stood barely three steps from the Mystic Garden’s entrance and pressed my back against its outer wall, Lavender struggling lethargically because of the ether. The commoners of the marketplace parted for Polaris to pass, many kneeling in reverence, reminding me that I too once viewed him with the same mystique. Marching with his guardsmen to within several paces of us, the crowd and I awaiting his command, Polaris instructed, “Reveal her!”

“Lavender!” yelled Marigold from within the crowd. Lavender’s eyelids drooped. She recognized the familiar voice and turned her head but did not respond.

“Quiet!” commanded Polaris as his guards turned to face Marigold and gripped their spears. Addressing the crowd, he continued, “This girl has committed treason and blasphemy. She is a threat to both our faith and our state. She has failed to follow mandate as the rest of you work so hard to do, and as such, you are promised a public execution.”

The squadron collected near me, moving quite quickly. But before the wooden platform could even be mounted, a voice came anonymously from the crowd. “Does mandate not promise the offering of a split sentence?”

“Who speaks?” shouted Polaris.

The bold man continued, “Is she not entitled a divide if she is able to persuade someone to host the other half of her penalty?” Squinting through my hood, I spotted him: a peddler, a poor man . . . unshaved and in dirty brown garments but with luminous green eyes.

The law was old but valid, written in a time of famine. A desperate man caught habitually stealing could be spared if his wife or child—be it for love or simply reliance—could not survive without him but was willing to endure exile. I was as discouraged as I was surprised that a commoner, and a poor man, was in this case more deeply and usefully educated than I in my own field. It didn’t matter who made the suggestion, simply that someone had. Had Polaris not ordered this public execution, he would not have triggered this trap.

Polaris stood in a small clearing that had formed around me and the girl, his guards posted along its perimeter. He responded, “Who would share a split sentence with a traitor against our country? Who would want this unholy girl to escape execution only to join her in exile?”

“Me. I will,” declared Marigold, emerging from her shock.

I studied Polaris’s face and watched his wrinkles ease. I certainly didn’t believe he’d expected the public spectacle he’d orchestrated to turn into a split sentence, but the idea of exiling the girl and her sister had to appeal to him.

“Arrest her!” yelled Polaris. His men seized Marigold as the execution squadron disassembled their small platform and stood back. The haste in which Polaris verified Marigold’s name and intentions left still-hazy Lavender no time to protest her sister’s decision. It also left me now more convinced Polaris wanted to be rid of both girls. Speaking to them loudly enough for the crowd to hear, he said, “You are hereby convicted of blasphemy and treason. You are sentenced to exile from the Canadian capital city of York and her surrounding rural districts. If you are found within these limits, you will be executed on site.”

As Polaris was speaking, the guards blindfolded and shackled the girls.

“You will be escorted by your summoner to a remote location and released into the wilderness. You may wander the remainder of Canadian soil but are hereby no longer considered Canadians, both civically and in the eyes of the faith.”

My final instructions were to load the sisters into a carriage and discard them to the northwest. I nodded in silence as they embarked for exile.

Traveling beyond the limits of the city, I recall the conversation along the way. Still affected by the ether and now likely numb, Lavender began to speak coherently but slowly to her sister. “I appreciate this, Marigold . . . but I hope you know . . . because I don’t . . . where we’re going.”

“I do not,” responded Marigold quickly. “Remember when we were children, and we would run into fences or trip on rocks? And Grandmother would say, ‘Never move in a direction you’re not looking?’”

“Well, we’re blindfolded now.” Lavender struggled to speak. “What are our . . . that we do . . . when this carriage stops?”

“Well, my intention is to interrupt frequently and reminisce about our home for the rest of our lives.”

“Marigold . . . please, not now. Please, no manipulative . . . no attempts . . . humor greatly trivializes . . .”

“Do you know what I miss?” said Marigold in the middle of her sister’s sentence. “The bakery back home. Oh, the aroma!”

By my estimation, Lavender was still somewhat under the ether’s influence. I had almost forgotten that I used no ether on Marigold, and yet strangely her mood did not seem indicative of a girl who had just . . . well, I need not defend her. I shall simply state that she is responsible for herself with no behavioral explanation that I am aware of.

Lavender sighed at her sister’s comments, numb now also with defeat, although that wasn’t her sister’s intention. “I played well . . . into that one. I should be . . . your inappropriate timing . . . I know. If it consoles you . . . a smile . . . half of my lips.”

“Of course. That was the original purpose.”

“This feels . . . surreal. Not five hours ago . . . was sleeping.”

“In a bed. No reminders, I beg you,” said Marigold in continued flippancy. “I don’t enjoy camping.”

Lavender responded, “Do you . . . take anything seriously?”

“Why would that be necessary when I have you?” Marigold shifted to speak to me, and I may have detected humor mixed with ironic flirtation as she asked, “Summoner? Might this carriage stop by my grandparents’ farm? We’re not interested in bidding permanent farewell to our family. Rather, if I am to be exiled, I’ll require a fresh pair of stockings.”

I laughed.

“You’re the man with the bird! I never forget a man’s laugh. You might say I have a gift.”

“Wonderful, Marigold. You have . . . discovered him. Now he is . . . he’ll kill us.”

“Well, are we glowing white?”

“I’m . . . blindfolded, Marigold.”

I looked around and saw nothing but trees and dirt country roads. I stopped the carriage, went to its rear platform where the girls were bound and removed their blindfolds. There was no longer a need for silence. “I’ll bring you to your grandparents’ farm.”

The day prior, an old man was dying while people stared. Today the people Lavender served nearly let her be executed . . . but this was not unfamiliar to me. A crowd expects the individual to emerge, someone else to step forward and assume the duty, risk, or responsibility. If this were not so common, leaders such as Polaris would not come to power. He never did consider the immeasurable benefit she could have had to our military. Or maybe he feared she would be stolen by the Siberians. One thing had made sense: the man with the green eyes knew to be in the marketplace, ready to save Lavender. If the execution were ever a threat to her, she would have glowed white; she would have seen it coming. But it was never that way. The green-eyed man had anticipated it.

After two hours, the girls emerged tearfully from their family’s farmhouse. They reboarded the carriage peacefully and we went northwest until we reached the district limits.

2

Heather

I never thought I’d give birth to a goddess, though I suppose I should be careful calling her that.

I was heavily pregnant, traveling in darkness to the far north to see my husband, when one of my five weary livestock nearly trampled a woman crossing a shallow river. Her silhouette knelt gently on the far side of the cool, flowing water. She was cradling something in her arms.

The silhouette approached, speaking unintelligible, guttural phrases, all while retching and grunting. This is no woman, I thought. She attempts the voice of one but is some female miscreation.

She stepped through the water toward me, carefully avoiding my livestock. I retreated quickly behind them. “What are you?”

The guttural cries continued from the creature. I was too pregnant to run. With little room left for my lungs, I would lose my breath quickly if I tried. I used the livestock as a living shield. She came right to my feet.

The clear sky and its stars revealed a human face trapped within a distorted woman’s body. Thorns protruded from her skin, her body a weapon, and yet she looked at me with desperation. What I saw was not simply a play of the moonlight; her skin was gray. She repeated her pattern of noises. She began pointing to her treasure but held it hidden beneath her robe.

“You’re a Siberian?” I asked.

“Siberia? Siberia?” she repeated excitedly, standing beneath me in ankle-deep water.

I had never seen a Siberian before. No Canadian had, except the few soldiers who had encountered them in battle and survived. From his training my husband had learned that they are lean, gray-skinned, and thorned. A sort of genetic abnormality, sharp protrusions of bone extend from their skeleton outward, piercing naturally through the skin. They are fashioned for violence, and their military invades Canadian soil relentlessly. “Go. I will not help a Siberian.”

“Canada! Canada!” she cried.

“Go! Flee! Do you understand?” I shouted, pointing to the shore of the stream.

She stared hopelessly, finally pulling her treasure from her robe. It was a naked infant, held out not for me to take but for me to see.

“Oh my . . .” The child was not thorned; I wondered if this was even his mother. “Give me that child! Give him to me!” I shouted and gestured. She drew back defensively, took several steps toward the shore, but did not run. “You Siberia! He Canada! Give the child to me!”

I hoped to avoid violence, and believing that she held a small Canadian boy as her hostage, I pleaded, “Bread? Fruit? I will help! I . . . will . . . help . . . you! Do . . . not . . . eat . . . the . . . child!”

She returned to the shore and waited. She didn’t run, and she didn’t wish to end our encounter. But she had the child. I moved slowly, went toward her, and crossed the cool stream. I brought bread and fruit; slowly I placed them on a large rock while she watched. I cringed, thinking that beneath her robe, the thorns of her forearms might be burrowing into the child’s soft skin.

Words were useless. I slowly pointed to the food, stood several paces aside, and prepared myself for pain as the desperate cannibal stared at me, confused. I reached into her arms, finding the child. She permitted a gentle touch, but once I tugged on the boy, the Siberian woman flailed a thorned backhand and struck me across the cheek.

I stumbled backward from the blow. She carefully set the child aside on the soil and charged as I retreated to the river. She reached me quickly, as if she wished to attack my womb, searching for another treasure, another infant to rip out and steal from its mother. She stopped and did not attack. Staring at me with her thorned forearms exposed, she might have slashed me anywhere she liked, but she hesitated. A jolt from a tollimore, loose and charging, knocked the barbarian upstream.

The unbridled animal came to my side. We were both a bit shredded, the tollimore bleeding from her scalp simply from burying it in the thorned Siberian’s flank. The woman rose to her feet, and a man shouted from the shoreline, “Stop!”

A lantern illuminated by the source of the voice, from where the woman had left the infant boy. A man stood holding the child in one arm and a light in the other. The Siberian approached him desperately, but he would not return the child. “Take the bread and fruit and be gone,” he commanded. “Find your way off Canadian soil.” He tossed a handful of tiles onto the ground.

The woman cried, whimpered, and yowled, but stayed on the shore of the shallow river as the man handed me the boy and I got on his cart.

“Thank you,” I said.

“The woman has food and Canadian currency. The child is safe and will not be eaten,” he said quietly amid the Siberian’s howls.

He was nearly forty, a half-generation my elder. He looked to be a poor man, for a merchant. He was overweight, unshaven, and smelled unwashed. He wore layers of brown garments, which I don’t doubt he slept in. But he had one remarkable feature: glowing, shimmering eyes, which were green like a celestial flare. I had seen green eyes before but nothing quite like this.

“Had you not been here, I might have been killed. The child too.”

“You may thank me, but you have a fine tollimore if she is willing to defend you. Be faithful to her, and she will help you again. Eventually.”

“Thank you,” I said, looking over at my weary livestock keeping pace with the cart.

“I’m sorry you were injured. The cart has bandages and balm if you can find them. Among the herbs I have lavender, for any wounds. Please, I insist you use it.”

“I will.”

“Is your daughter all right?”

“Excuse me?” I looked him in the eyes as we rode. Without blinking I asked, “You say I am to have a girl?”

“A girl, yes. And please, have the lavender.”

“She’s fine. I feel her moving.”

“What are you doing so far from the capital?” he asked.

“I’m a farmer’s daughter from the rural districts north of York. I have a daughter, Marigold, with a man named Simon, whom I am traveling to see. Marigold is with my parents, on the farm. She’s not quite one and a half seasons, close in age to her younger brother or sister.”

“Sister.”

“So you say. Simon is my husband, a soldier in the Canadian military. He’s stationed at Fort Alert here on Ellesmere Island, and I would like him to see his second child. The Siberians invade Ellesmere as predictably as the long sunset. I worry what will become of my Simon. Blow the horn, signal the next horn blower to the south? This chain of horns may reach us back home . . . but of Simon and the others furthest north? I want him to see his second child at least once, in case . . . he doesn’t get another chance. My father provided five livestock from our farm for milk, protection, and a shepherd’s camouflage. In return I insisted on going alone. He wouldn’t have it, so I snuck out.”

“And here you are.” He smiled.

“But I’m not there yet.”

“I’ll make sure you get to where you need to be,” he said. “And your daughter.”

The journey to Fort Alert continued without any trouble, though the peddler believed we had a Canadian scout following us. He oddly asked that I not attempt to nurse the boy we had saved until we reached Simon, concerned that it could trigger labor. Along the horizon veils of green and violet rolled over the sky like thin curtains shifted by a breeze. It was the dawn of the Celestial Lights, illuminating our path and painting a peaceful smile on the peddler’s face. He said he didn’t want my child to be born until we reached the lights.

We approached a clearing in sight of Fort Alert. “I should go no further,” he said, stopping his cart behind a clump of thick trees. “Only military are allowed this far north, not visitors. I know as well as you that this is against Canadian mandate.”

He got out of the cart to release and return my protective tollimore. He kept the rest of the livestock, saying he would return them one day. I wouldn’t have been able to bring them home alive anyway.

“I suppose I’ll be arrested. But I worry much more about my husband’s destiny, as well as that of this boy, and my own children.”

“We have a future, not a destiny,” he replied.

“You don’t believe in destiny?”

“No. Destiny, or fate, is the absurd idea that moments in your life, other than death, will make certain they occur for you, and that the entire universe will orchestrate itself in preparation for those moments in your life. Young lady, these are the best words I can leave you with: do not fear the future and what it will do to us. Worry only about what you will do. Though if you were willing to make this journey, I’d bet you already knew that.”

“Thank you for your help, sir. I would be lost in the forests if not for you.”

“It’s good that you came here.”

From the clearing I walked, child in womb and carrying a child not my own in my arms, alongside my one faithful tollimore. The Celestial Lights were blooming and hanging, casting shimmering shadows behind us. Their beauty was pastoral to the heavens, so viewed with admiration by the sea that her waters reflected her sister’s display in echo and applause. I casually approached the battalion encampment in hopes to find Simon, so welcomed by the sky’s meadow that I didn’t consider how to approach the shoreline fort without causing an alarm.

None could have been more vulnerable than I was, and yet the lights were so convincing in their harmony that I considered danger impossible. How could this be the site of persistent Siberian invasion? How could human discord exist here? Or anywhere when your eyes look up? There must be no better place to have a child, I thought.

“Halt!”

Facing the fort, I replied, “I am Heather, wife of Simon.”

“Quiet!” came the voice again. I placed it behind me, from the forest, not the fort.

I turned to find a Canadian scout, bow readied and arrow drawn. He came toward me, body frozen above the waist, keeping the bow drawn.

“I come to see my . . .” I began, interrupted by a horn now coming from behind, from the fort.

The horn blew once more, and footsteps shuffled on creaking wood planks. Doors slammed, latches squealed, and a voice from the fort boomed, “You, with the weapon! Who are you?”

With tension still on his bow, I hoped the archer’s shoulder held strong. He answered, “A Canadian scout. I serve Polaris.”

“Very well,” boomed the fort. “Who are you then, with the tollimore?”

“My name is Heather, wife of Simon. I come to . . . ”

Another voice. “Heather? Heather, you’ve gotten so much bigger!”

“Simon! Simon, where are you?”

“Simon, hold your position!” came the first voice. “Woman, go with the scout. Leave here. It’s not safe for you, or for us to have you. It compromises our fort, all of our country.”

“I cannot! I cannot leave!” After a pause and no reply from the fort, I yelled, “I’m in labor!”

When I was carrying Marigold, the midwife explained that there is labor and there is false labor. This was very false labor—my own variety. I moved the infant boy, already beneath my coat for warmth, to my breast. “Ho, you’re a strong one,” I mumbled. The child found me and latched on with incredible pull. He was a survivor. I stood frozen, biting my cheek to adjust to the suckling, waiting for either the scout or the fort to do something, anything.

The scout relaxed his bow finally, and a single medic emerged from the fort to inspect me. I stood as Fort Alert remained silent, perhaps while a hundred young men stared from behind binoculars.

“Heather is your name?” asked the medic as he reached me, exposed in the field before the fort’s gate.

“Ye-yes.” I grimaced.

“And you are in labor . . . with Simon’s child?”

I nodded.

“You shouldn’t be here, Heather. But if you are indeed in labor, we’ll care for you.”

He walked around me the way a carriage driver would inspect his cart before a long ride. “What are you holding under your coat?”

“A child. A boy. Not my own.”

He waved for the scout. “Archer! Come here; we’ll need you to return to York quickly. Bring this baby to safety.”

“He has no parents,” I explained. “Please, I will nurse him. Let me keep him. I can raise the child.”

The voice from the fort commanded: “Heather, do as the medic says and give the boy to the scout. If you wish to adopt him, do so formally through the orphanage in York.”

“No!” My body had not yet responded, and I still needed the child to induce labor.

“Please, I must inspect you,” explained the medic.

“Clean your hands first! Give me a moment to nurse the—” and my water broke.

He shuffled me away from the fort because I was not permitted inside, even considering my condition. Simon was excused from duty to be with me. We were together, finally, in a small grove under the sky, under the lights. I embraced and kissed my husband and between contractions tried to explain my journey and its purpose.

The scout left with the infant. Explaining the red lines of blood across my face, I told Simon about the Siberian creature from whom we rescued the child. He said, “Canadians often say that Siberians eat babies, but until now I assumed those to be words of ignorance and intolerance, or at least exaggeration.”

“She was a monster.”

The medic rejoined us with his kit full of sharp tools and bandages, reminding me of the pain and blood that lay before me. The joy in Simon’s face faded as he said: “Heather, thank you for coming here, but you’ll be arrested, and possibly our child as well.”

“At this point, I’m relying on it. I have no other means of returning home. I have little supplies, no tiles, no protection, and soon a child.”

“Well then, I won’t wait to tell you,” announced the impatient medic. “You and I, your tollimore and your son or daughter, will be returning to York once you’ve given birth.”

“My daughter,” I explained. “I am to have a girl.”

Simon and the medic glanced at each other but chose not to argue with a woman in labor.

The colors in the sky continued to dance while the two men stayed by my side, politely bored as I battled nature. “Have some milk from the tollimore,” I offered. “She would appreciate it if you took some out of her.”

I needed something to focus on to get through the pain, so I studied the tollimore. A tollimore’s head is waist-high to a human. The animal is four-legged and hoofed, with long, usually black, shiny fur clinging to its body. Tassels hang beneath its chin and behind each hoof. Its lower jaw protrudes a bit more than the upper, with thick, flat, grazing teeth that grind left to right, a sight that is always worth a smile. Each eye’s pupil resembles an hourglass on its side. Its abdomen bulges behind its ribs, as if the creature carries a treasure inside, but the greatest value of the breed is the female’s well-developed udder, the result of generations of selection.

I studied the tollimore again. A tollimore’s head is waist-high to a human, four-legged and hoofed, with long, usually black, shiny fur clinging to its body . . . 

I paced around the grove, leaned against nearby trees with the palms of my hands, and howled through the contractions. My parents more accurately remember the details from Marigold’s delivery than I do, as I inexplicably forgot much of my own experience of the process. However, with Lavender, none present in her grove or inside the fort could forget the display in the sky, which provided such a beautiful distraction. It was clear and cloudless with the Celestial Lights glowing like a broad, delicate ribbon. Iridescent jades, identical in color to the peddler’s eyes, and fresh lavenders shimmered in spectral bloom and pleasantly occupied me in labor. Only these visions, along with Simon, the animal, and the fort’s medic accompanied the birth of my second daughter. The illumination poured down on our clearing as she was born and remained there for some time.

It had happened. Simon had seen his second child.

Quietly and peacefully, she opened her eyes, quite soon after birth. Perhaps the brilliance of the sky overhead opened them itself, and if so, it was our first indication that she had the ability of sight.

“I’ve never seen that color before,” said the medic.

“Nor I,” said Simon. “They’re clear, not even murky like Marigold’s when she was first born. Are those truly purple eyes, or is that just an effect of the Lights?”

“No, they really are purple. Or maybe a sort of violet,” said the medic.

“Or maybe lavender,” said Simon. Once I told him what the peddler had said earlier, about the lavender I traded from him, we agreed on her name. I didn’t expect the color to be her permanent shade, but to this day they are identical to when she first opened them, when they were soaked in the Lights.

Immediately after Lavender’s arrival, once the medic had finished performing his duties, he returned to the fort to inform the battalion leader of the birth. The medic then circled hastily back to our clearing. We had little time to recover as a family before he instructed Simon and me to bid our farewells. For my entire journey to this moment, I had been certain this farewell would not feel so ominous. I reminded my husband of his two daughters who needed him, my father’s farm, and anything my mind could produce in the moment to encourage him not to be a hero in battle. But in the end it would be our final good-bye.

The medic escorted me south, directly to York, where I was imprisoned with my newborn daughter. They did not separate us. The justice we would receive for disobeying a widely known war mandate—that a civilian must not enter a military zone—would quite possibly require the attention of the great Polaris himself.

After two nights my father and mother were permitted to visit. Marigold, one and a half at the time, stayed with neighbors. She would have to wait patiently to meet her younger sister.

My parents and I shared explanations. The animals were gone, aside from the one tollimore, which the medic returned to their farm. When I saw that they weren’t bothered by my news, I knew something much worse had happened. My father explained that all the men of Fort Alert had been killed when the Siberians attacked, with the exception of the medic who escorted me to prison. The invasion was held off at the fort nearest to the south, but Fort Alert and its men had been destroyed.

I would in time grieve for my husband, and still do, but throughout it all I held a newborn child in my arms.

Then I was confronted. On the third night in prison, I received a visit by the great Polaris, the celestial ruler of Canada’s military and leader of our faith. He wore a white-and-black robe, black on the left and right, the middle, a white stripe from his neck to his feet.

“Why are the men of Fort Alert dead?” he questioned. “Why am I wearing a robe of mourning?”

“The Siberians, I understand, sir.” Lavender’s cries competed with Polaris’s voice.

“And where was the medic?” He lunged toward my cell, as if to insist I was only safe from him because of the bars that protected me.

I didn’t retreat from the bars, not with my child in my arms, simply because he advanced too quickly. Standing near him but with bars between, I noticed what rumors had told me. He was older than anyone you know, beyond a number, already a grown man when he came to our ancestors from the sky. When he approached, the color from his red eyes almost vanished, his skin became ashy, and I saw just how old he was. There were wrinkles of course, many of them, and nearly as many scars like the one I would soon have across my cheek from the Siberian’s backhand. And yet if he retreated only slightly none of this was discernable.

“The medic was with me, sir,” I answered after gathering my courage.

“Yes, he certainly was. And do you know what happens when it’s very cold, and a Siberian sword, or even just one of their thorns grazes a soldier’s shoulder, or a Siberian arrow lands on a Canadian’s toe?” he asked rhetorically, yet obviously demanded a response.

“No, sir, I don’t.”

“The wounds become fatal!” he shouted, flaring up like a furnace, ignoring Lavender’s continual screams. Noticing the bandages on my arms, he continued: “You see when a soldier is inflicted with a minor injury and does not have the luxury of comfortable temperature, they will experience one of two hands: the hand of a medic to heal their wound, or the hand of death. It’s just one of many reasons Canadian mandate clearly insists only soldiers occupy certain regions. Why, young lady, did the poor soldiers of Fort Alert experience the hand of death and not that of a Canadian medic?”

“Well, sir, I had just given birth and the medic was . . . ”

“I know what happened!” He continued to smolder, asking, “Are you Siberian yourself?”

“No, sir,” I said, confused as to how he could think that. “I don’t have thorns.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he scoffed. “You and your child, whom I might add also broke mandate, would be fortunate to be exiled and not beheaded.”

“My husband is dead because of this! How could that be the work of a Siberian? How could I have wanted this to happen? I’m left to raise two young girls alone.”

“That’s true. Perhaps knowing your actions have killed your husband will be punishment enough,” he said calmly, extinguishing his rage abruptly, like a snuffed flame. With this, his rant seemed to have been so deliberate and almost calculated. I was relieved, but his words were scorched into my mind. Every day since then has convinced me that I truly received a crueler punishment than death.

He released me from prison but warned me that he was doing so after an act of treason. From that day on, he kept a file on Lavender. I know he did. I could see it in the way he looked at her bright, beautiful eyes.

I returned to the same farm, yet a different home. Simon had died, Lavender had arrived, and I wished to adopt the infant boy. After several days I walked to the orphanage in York and asked for him. He was not there and never had been. I never saw the child again, not since he left the fort in the hands of the scout. I don’t know what his future held but decided to take the peddler’s advice. I stopped worrying about the future.

3

The Lichen

I used to be a monster, but now I’m not.

Sister Lavender and Sister Marigold were the first two humans to come to my clearing, speak to me, and survive. When I first heard them talking, they were discussing their next meal. The horizon was dim but not entirely dark, as it was the time of season when Brother Sun dips only a little below the horizon at night. I went into my usual performance when I heard the humans: a territorial scream, stomping my stone fists against the ground and against each other, and went into a slow crawl to follow their voices.

“What are those noises?” one of the girls asked the other.

“I see nothing. I’ll tell you if we’re in danger,” she responded.

A thick, dead tree made my threats more convincing. With one stone fist I swept it up by the roots and smashed it into the ground while its brittle branches snapped.

“Stop, please!” yelled one of the girls.

I searched for them in the dim light, but for voices that sounded so near, I still couldn’t see them. I pounded the tree again and swung it left and right to vibrate both the earth and the air.

“Peace! Peace!” cried the voice again.

“Yes, peace!” yelled the other. “And happiness! Rainbows, sunshine, fresh bread, and all good things. Please, rock man; just stop!”

I finally saw them, hiding behind a poison-berry bush.

“Are we okay?” asked the yellow-haired one of her sister, still fixing her gaze on me.

“Yes, Marigold. We’re fine. I told you I’d say something if we were in danger.”

“You didn’t even look at me,” said Marigold. “It would make me feel better if you looked at me.”

“Why didn’t you run?” I asked.

“We were never in any danger,” said the one with the short, dark hair and purple eyes.

“How did you know that?” I asked.

“My name’s Lavender, and this is my sister Marigold. I have the ability to tell if someone is about to die. Are you the Lichen?”

“Yes. And this is my lake. You have wandered into my clearing.”

“You’re huge. You scared us, you know. You sounded like a geyser,” said Marigold.

“When have you ever heard a geyser?” asked Lavender.

“This would be my first. If it were one.”

“You’re really the Lichen?” asked Lavender. “We’ve heard legends about you.”

“Oh? And what do the humans say about me?”

“That you’re a large creature with arms but no legs, made of a series of stones held together by some kind of dry lichen plant. All of which appears to be true.”

“And that you kill anyone who comes to your clearing,” added Marigold. “But you don’t seem like you’re going to.”

“I’m not going to kill you. I’ve never killed anyone. You’ll find more danger in the berry from that bush than you will from me.”

“Yes, we know,” said Lavender. “These berries are poisonous.”

I set the dead tree down and told them, “That’s the only danger you face here: the mushrooms and berries.”

Lavender paused, stared, and asked, “So you’re a friend?”

“I can be. I’d like to be.”

“Then why the attack?” asked Sister Marigold.

“To scare you away. It’s true; if any human comes to my clearing, they die. But I’m not the one who kills them. It’s the food that grows around my lake. All of it is poisonous.”

“Not all the berries are,” explained Sister Lavender. “We’re figuring out which are edible, and which aren’t.”

“How?”

“Trial and error,” smiled Marigold. “I slowly bring a berry or mushroom to my mouth, and if my sister yells ‘Poison!,’ then I don’t eat it.”

“That’s very trusting.”

Marigold continued, “It’s that or we starve. We’ve been exiled.”

They waited for me to speak. “You’ve been exiled? Then come with me. I have a pile of curiosities that I’ve stripped from every traveler who has died in my clearing. You may take what you like.”

“How long have people been dying in your clearing?” asked Sister Lavender.

“Centuries.”