The Dreamspark of Claviskín:
The Quest for the Two Trees
This tale begins like most stories, or at least those most worth remembering: in the warm night air at the foot of a pair of porcelain-white staircases on the magnificent estate of Baroness Eleanor Elise ap Fiona of Highground… in her swimming pool. Through its star-cooled waters black shapes quickly dart just under the surface. Every few moments, a long and strange iridescent fish bursts through the water's surface, soaring for a brief moment into the air, only to disappear once more into the pool without the faintest ripple or sound, only a minute flash of green light.
At the very bottom of the clouded pool, beneath the dance of creatures in this strange aquarium, there lies nestled in emerald sea-moss a skeletal sculpture of rainbow coral, with two great pearls for eyes, eerily lifelike, eerily familiar, half-lidded by the coral. And on its head, rakishly askew, perches a pointed, broad-brimmed red hat.
Also, this eldritch creature is snoring, in the opinion of the fish, obnoxiously.
Dreams rush before my eyes like ripples on the turgid skin of a boiling ocean. I drift this way and that, a mere feather on the breath of God. Absorbing illusions, the whispers of phantom voices. Sometimes the voices are glacial and deadly, sometimes volcanic, sometimes dripping with wet—and they sing. Here, in this deepest dream, only music moves. Heat and ice, throat and eye, and madness for a thousand years, frozen blood boiling in my threadlike veins. I cannot open my eyes. Or if I can, everything is distant snow, blur.
As if responding to some secret signal—the full moon's languorous ascent through the star-dappled skies? a distant sound of laughter and splashing wine?—a heavy door at the top of the eastern staircase soundlessly drifts open, the gentle darkness within the great house spilling out. And then comes, as the silence thickens expectantly, the sinuous arabesque of a Spanish guitar. Beckoning, the undulating phrase's last deep note hangs in the air, disappearing into the blue moonlight.
The guitar continues its song, and a pulse of drums begins, resonating richly, its alluring beat rippling the secretive waters of the pool. With the impassioned, plaintive cry of a lone violin also come the delicate, virtuosic elaborations of a bouzouki and an oud. The Turkish strings and percussion give shape to the night air; out of it steps a gorgeous woman, the curls of her brown hair spilling down her shoulders. She dances down the steps with ethereal grace in a dress of Tyrian purple silk. Her dark-violet eyes, ivory skin, zills, and amber necklace seem filled with moonlight as she spins, gentle hands painting shapes in the breeze.
She reaches the bottom of the stairs and fluidly begins a new, slow dance around the water. As she circles, dancing her incandescent dance, a thousand candles floating in the air are ignited one by one. They sway and spin with the beat of the dance. A mermaid creature, basking in the starlight on an algae-covered deckchair begins to sing in a haunting voice. The water, burnt amber by the candlelight, ripples with delight.
“See there, past that far-off hill
A tower held in the sky.
Hear there, in that dark blue night
The music calling us home.“See there, in that far-off field
Flowers turned to the sky.
Feel there, in that dark blue night
The music calling us home.“Stars may always guide our way
From desert sands where winds blow harsh and long.
But here's where our hearts will pray
And all our loves will slumber with a song…”
At the bottom of the pool, the coral skeleton luminesces, radiating coruscating beams of many-hued light.
There is nothing else, neither night nor day, here—when suddenly all the hot and all the cold congeals into a single incandescent drop. I see the drop swell and burst into flame, the very same fire of divine substance that burns in the sun, the moon, and the stars, unfathomable, inextinguishable, insatiable. The great press of the universe takes form, slithering grey lava, a mane in ash. The sound grows primordial, an old world's lonely music congealing and plunging. Shapes of canyons, mountains, stone, bone, blood.
There's a country spread out in a new, moonlit sky, far-off, soaring out of a thickening, blackening cloud: I see two trees entwined, rising from a knotted, crepuscular carpet of rainbows and stone. To harden the earth is a stone's function, but this stone has become winged and learned to fly!
I move toward it, I see it more clearly now: past a far-off hill, two towering trunks, their limbs arched upward and then down towards me, soft green leaves and berries and fragrant acorns falling like whispers from the branches.
The air is now thick with the hushed falling of leaves through the blackening clouds, churning with lightning and stirring rain.
I hear music in that dark blue night calling me home to the two tower-trees. It is music filled with visions, memories, echoes of thundering hooves, lovingly kindled fires, and the laughter of a thousand voices among cascading stars.
I want to go on. This music melts my dreams. I have slept dreams of dreamless stones, have heard songs of ignited blood, but never have I slept a dream such as this. I step lightly, all barriers give way one by one, all gates are reduced to dust one by one. My eyelids that were kept closed are opened. Lighter than air, than water, than lips, than light…
The snoring abruptly ceases.
With a sudden blast of green light and a dreadful creaking noise, the coral skeleton thickens and smoothes its texture, its brilliantly-colored tissue turning to pale white. The light diminishes. The blue eyes of an old man open. His kindly face breaks into a broad smile, his time-gnarled hands secure his hat to his head, and then they push lightly against the seaweed. Breaching the surface just as the song ends, he and the woman regard each other silently, unmoving. With her hands on her hips, one eyebrow raised quizzically, her eyes twinkle. With a few despondent-looking fronds of seaweed wrapped about his hat, he smiles serenely.
After a few seconds, the gaunt man dreamily tilts his head: “I say, Eleanor. Um, would you kindly toss a naked old wizard his bathing leotard? It's just there, behind the moose, you see. No, no, the other moose, dear. I fear this wet hat of mine does nothing at all to protect my modesty, and, ah-ha, innocent bystanders.”
~~~
In the richly-appointed upstairs living room, the mage Claviskín sprawls out on the cushions before the hot fireplace. Now dry in a fluffy, pink dressing gown, he yawns loudly, stretching his limbs and arching his back like an elderly cat. Into the room steps Baroness Eleanor, elegant but at ease in a comfortable medieval dress, scrubbing a particularly dirty pot with unrelenting fury.
She chuckles merrily at the sight of the old wizard, his jagged, dejected-seeming mop of red-grey hair uncovered by his customary hat, left hanging to dry on a poker by the fire.
“I wish I'd brought my camera,” she says with a wry smile.
Automatically, and entirely oblivious to his ludicrous appearance, he chirps, eyes wide with childish delight, “My dear Baroness, I could grow you one! Yes, yes, I am sure I have got a bag of soil around here somewhere…!”
Laughing, Eleanor whips him lightly on the hand with a quick snap of her rag. She sits at his side on an especially cushy red cushion, sinking deeply into it.
“Claviskín… Would it irreparably damage my psychology to ask why you were sleeping at the bottom of my pool? Or should I say… oceanic micro-ecosystem?”
Blankly, he responds, “Ah, the little sea. I assure you it was entirely unintentional. I was feeling… contemplative.”
“Oh. So you were drunk.”
“Eleanor! I am aghast!”
“'Aghast.' Ha, a drunk, more like.”
“Madame Baroness, I assure you that I have complete control over my body's chemistry.”
“Right, you possess great and powerful spells… and a BAC of .20.”
Coughing, he splutters, “An accidental saint is entitled to some occasional debauchery. How could I be expected to neglect a poor, unlabeled bottle I found under Paternoster's bed, abandoned and alone? ‘Leave no one behind,' isn't that your motto? And there is an apocalypse on, you know. That is what we in Assisi used to call ‘mitigating circumstances.'”
“A thousand years old—” she begins.
“—several thousand. There was the incident with the—”
She continues, “—and you still can't pace yourself.”
Claviskín turns to Eleanor, taking her hand in his, smiling with ersatz innocence. “Please, I beg you. You mustn't tell the Pope, he'll be positively crushed.”
Rolling her eyes, she laughs and pats his cheek.
He looks deeply into her eyes as his own slightly darken.
“You are correct, of course, my dear. I have not been able to pace myself, as you say, since Beltane of… why, it must have been… 1248. But Eleanor… on the path to our highest destinies, to our true selves, we ought never to reject anything that the soul desires. Everything in this world is sacred, Eleanor. Everything, light and dark, is essential to the full experience of what the Universe has prepared for us. Our so-called temptations should be treated with honor, respect, contemplation. Then and only then will they reveal their meaning. And they all have meaning, and hidden dreams…”
“Yup. Drunk. But you are also right. The integrity of the whole depends on an eternal dance of opposites… What dreams did you find at the bottom of my pool?”
His eyes close and he leans back into his pillows. “I dreamt of two great trees drifting just above the clouds in a moonlit sky, that I was being called home to them.”
Claviskín animatedly describes his dream to the Baroness. As he does, a panel of wood on the wall behind him quietly creaks as it becomes incised with a strange design. The pair, engrossed in the story, do not notice.
“The Alabaster City . The Amorica!”
“Those were precisely my thoughts.”
“ Were your thoughts? What do you mean?”
“They were my thoughts when I first had this dream, months ago, at the moment I returned from Arcadia with my Farseer brethren. That I have had it again after all this time… perturbs me.”
“Because of the gathering clouds.”
“Exactly, Eleanor, exactly . The clouds represent a powerful hidden danger, one that threatens to swallow the Amorica and all we have worked to achieve when the rain finally awakens. That this dream has occurred again, now, after Cihuacoatl has been redeemed, means that the Amorica itself remains in grave peril. Something truly, truly dreadful, powerful, abominable… and unnatural is rotting beneath us.” Claviskín abruptly springs to his feet and hurriedly helps Eleanor up. His eyes grow wide with horror. “My dear, we must prep—”
In an instant, just as he moves towards the door, the old wizard seems impossibly ancient. He presses his hand to his chest, the wrinkles of his face deepen into scar-like crevasses, his limbs wither and break under their own weight, the gown falls from his desiccated frame, and his youthful blue eyes turn to black. Where in the pool they were as pearls, the two orbs are now lustrous obsidian.
Suddenly in complete agony, he screams and screams until his lungs begin to bleed. His eyes of bitter glass weep cold, ink-black tears as Eleanor holds her friend.
“Breathe! Francis, breathe!”
~~~
Three days later, the lucent cerulean-blue light of dawn washes across the gleaming towers of the Amorica. The massive canopy of the Treehouse, its blood-red trunk wrapped lovingly and gently around Kinrowan Spire, glows a soothing green in the early morning air. While most of the Amorica remains asleep, this canopy—a complicated network of branches, twigs, and leaves, all staggeringly large—is filled with activity. Animals that usually completely defy description fly about, jump here and there, swing from vines, and engage in other verbs too inappropriate to be noted here but perfectly natural.
At the very top of the canopy is a grand structure, a skeletal Flamboyant Gothic cathedral grown entirely from the living wood from the tree itself. The menagerie inhabiting the canopy hoots and plays freely within the church, worshipping Life in their own way. Lacking marble or limestone, of course, the floor is a lush bed of thick grass and flowers often as strange as the animals. The windows are paned not by glass, but by brightly and variously-hued exotic flowers, their brightly- and variously-hued petals creating patterns of dancing light on the grass with their bioluminescence. Comfortable seating grows directly from the tree in the form of massive flowers, mushrooms, and carved wooden benches. With its choir of singing chimerical beasts, chirping and hooting softly at this hour, this church is an exuberant celebration of the majesty of the natural and supernatural world.
At the center of the church, out of a soft bed of intoxicatingly fragrant wild bougainvillea, grows an enormous red orchid. Warm and waxy to the touch, it shelters a frail figure clad in a loose-fitting red robe: an old man, hollow-cheeked, much too thin, but alive . A nebulous aura of soft green light surrounds him. The cloud is slowly insinuating its way into his skin, visibly thickening his limbs and chest, rejuvenating his scar-marred face.
In a breathless moment, the sun rises, the blinding disc piercing the wrinkled ripples of high-flying cirrocumulus clouds, injecting them with soft rays of deep wine-purple, amaranth, burnt orange and umber, lemon-yellow. The cerulean dawn sky is warmed to indigo, and the birds and beasts of the Tree rejoice. From the windows, they sing, voices quavering, rolling, warbling, sounding out joyfully. They sing not with words, but the meaning is clear to anyone listening with an open heart:
“We must sleep with open eyes We must dream with our hands, wings, and paws, We must dream the dreams of a river seeking its course, Of the sun dreaming its worlds. “We must dream aloud, We must sing until the song puts forth roots, Trunk, branches, birds, stars. “We must find the lost word And remember what the blood, The tides, the earth, and the body say. “And return to the point of departure...”Over the dew-drenched grass come silent, light footsteps, the hem of a garnet-colored dress swishing in the air over the heads of eagerly-opening flowers. The thorny tendrils of bougainvillea whisper as they move, clearing a path for Eleanor. She places her right hand into the green cloud, placing her left to her forehead. The aura pulses, thickening substantially, and rapidly sinks into the old man. The purple eyes of a young woman open. Her kindly face breaks into a broad smile.
She whispers into his ear, “Claviskín… It's time to wake up…”
The old man's eyes open dreamily, cloudily, and he says quietly, “… O glistening starlight, you who increase life, you who rebuild the path …”
“Claviskín… you're safe. You're alive . You're—”
“ You are a flower that the winter of the serpent's breath can never injure …”
Eleanor lightly bites her lip, then smiles, realizing what is missing. She reaches into a bag at her side, and pulls out, with a dramatic flourish, a large and thoroughly pointed red hat with a wide brim and a vaguely harassed expression. She lifts up Claviskín's head slightly, and lightly sits it on his sweat-drenched mass of hair.
The mage's eyes slowly clear, returning to their familiar cerulean-blue.
He sits up suddenly, gasping for breath, nearly knocking Eleanor in the face with his own. He rasps, “ Kecharitomene! ” and then sits there, returning to stillness and calm. Within seconds, his face takes on its usual expression: sedate and contemplative, slightly befuddled, faintly amused. He sniffs, wipes his nose on his sleeve, and then notices Eleanor.
“Oh, hello there, Eleanor. How are you? Would you perhaps care for a refreshing tea?”
“Claviskín, you silly old fool!” she cries out, hugging him tightly to her.
Blushing instantaneously and unsure of what is happening and what to do, he hazards to pat her lightly on the back.
“Eleanor! No, we mustn't! What if Lord Aziraphale…! Oh. Oh . I see. Tsk, I nearly died again, didn't I? Tsk, tsk.”
Eleanor relaxes her death clamp, sniffing.
Claviskín takes her hand. “My dear Baroness, I'm deeply sorry to have frightened you so. I hope I wasn't too much of an inconvenience.”
“An inconvenience? An inconvenience?” she cries. “You absurd, senile old man, I would have moved heaven and earth to keep you alive. I leave no one behind!
“We were at Mary's, you… you withered, you fell. But the Farseers, dozens of them were already on their way up the stairs. Oh, what was his name… a seer or prophet named… oh, yes, it was Akhmed the Mad—”
“—He's not really mad . He just gets these headaches…” Claviskín interrupts, although Eleanor doesn't notice.
“He said he'd had a vision, he'd seen this coming. So they created a portal between Kinrowan Spire and, and one of the pantries in the kitchen. They brought you back here, they've been doing rituals in shifts around the clock for three days to heal you. And they finally finished early this morning, but wouldn't let me near you… So, um…” She pauses her rapid flow of words and grins. “I encouraged them to… busy themselves elsewhere.”
The distinctive scent of gunpowder drifts off Eleanor's dress as she gracefully moves her hand to cover her girlish smile. The rising sun's light illuminates a lime-green pointed hat with a shotgun-blast through it, a large number of noticeable bullet-holes in the grass, and the panicked, muddy footprints of several dozen fleeing, slippered feet. Eleanor giggles.
Claviskín laughs uproariously, slapping his knee with delight.
As his laughter subsides, Eleanor looks down at her hands. “The last spell they cast, a Life spell… it was supposed to wake you up slowly, to heal your body and mind bit by bit. I accelerated the healing. I felt that you needed to be awakened.”
“Ah-ha, my colleagues, cautious to the point of inefficacy as usual... Honestly, if we mages constantly sit around worrying that every little spell, every little whiplash of Paradox is going to make everyone with a thousand yards' head explode, why, we'd never get down to the hard business of creating shrubberies that secrete sandwiches.” Claviskín smiles benevolently at a BLT-laden shrubbery sulking in a nearby corner, giving it a friendly wave. “Oh yes, or averting the destruction of all life, of course.” He chuckles. “Ah-ha, which reminds me.”
Claviskín closes his eyes and chants a spell under his breath. As he does, everything seems brighter, lit gently from within; the heady scents of the flowers, the exhilarating sound of the animals and the Tree's steady growing, the delightful feel of the cool wood and the soft moss are infinitely intensified. As Claviskín's magical aura fades, and the sensual exhilaration with it, the orchid's delicate tendrils thicken into legs. The gorgeous blossom tears itself from its stem with a great shake and takes a cautious step forward.
“Baroness, we must hurry. You too, flowerling.” The orchid lumbers forward clumsily and turns towards the western doors. Slowly accelerating down the length of the nave, the old wizard's head darts out over the side, nodding with the flower's bouncing gallop. “I was incapacitated far longer than I had anticipated, but I am nonetheless entirely certain we are precisely on schedule! Meet me in the library! I trust you brought the wooden panel, yes?”
Baroness Eleanor of Highground blinks twice as the orchid disappears from sight, hurtling madly towards the canopy's entrance to the Tree's interior. She puts her fingers to her mouth and sounds out a piercing wolf whistle. Within moments, a gigantic, winged, light-blue ape lands softly a few feet away, daintily devouring a comparably gigantic purple banana.
“Ook?” He motions to the saddle on his back with a graceful swipe of an arm thick as a tree trunk.
“Yes, please.”
“Ook.”
Once Eleanor is secured in the saddle to the safety-conscious ape's satisfaction, he leaps into the air. Hooting with ecstatic happiness, he soars down the nave, gaining height and speed until he bursts through the great rose window and shoots into the open sunlight, petals whipping and swirling behind him. The ape begins a slow, swooping descent towards a landing platform at the Tree's external library entrance several hundred feet below.
Gripping the reins tightly and expertly with one hand, Eleanor reaches with her left into her bag, her fingers tracing the deeply-incised wood panel. The image becomes clear in her mind: spiraling, knotting vines spewed from the jaws of bizarre animals, enwrapping terrifying, ferocious dragons, capering lions, stately perched birds, infernal monsters, mighty angels, human men and women—a great chain of beasts and plants. All the life and death in the world bound to two unearthly trees…
~~~
Regaining her balance after the thrilling, if slightly nauseating, ride on the jolly blue ape, Eleanor carefully climbs up through a wide knothole that serves as both a window and entrance to a vast chamber. The vast space is filled with toadstools, trees, and other entirely indescribable plants delicately designed to serve as exceedingly comfortable chairs, sofas, tables, and great cushions. Veins of blue and green luminescent moss grow on the ceiling, walls, and floor amidst soft grass, suffusing the area with a soothing, aquatic glow. Bright, white organic lanterns and lamps cast pools of comfortable reading light.
There are forest-like shelves throughout the room: trees carefully cultivated to hold books. Like everything in the Treehouse, these books are entirely organic and grown; their words are not written in synthetic ink but are actually part of the leaves as they grew into mature book-fruit, waxy like flower petals, but heavy as stones.
“Ah, one moment, Baroness. I'll be with you in just one moment!”
Claviskín darts between shelves frantically but purposefully, like a bee pollinating a flower, or a librarian gone mad.
“Please, do have a seat at the table, Baroness. I've prepared you a delicious, energizing tea,” he says, springing into the air and clambering up to the top of a tree-shelf to snatch another book like a monkey. Eleanor's enriching and quickening of the Farseers' healing spell has apparently had quite a dramatic rejuvenating effect on Claviskín.
Eleanor sits at the enormous central table on one of the mushroom-cushioned chairs, sliding the mysterious wooden panel from Mary's-in-the-Sky from her bag. She eagerly sips the hot tea, savoring its soul-warming flavors of cinnamon, clover, and ginger. She feels strong enough to leap over volcanoes as the Life-filled herbs burn into her blood and bones.
Claviskín lopes to her side, dropping a tall stack of book-fruits on the table with a loud thump. “Ah-ha, yes, those would appear to be, as they say, the last of them. Hm.” The old man chuckles at nothing in particular.
Eleanor stands, taking Claviskín by the shoulders, holding him still in front of her. “Claviskín, are you sure you're all right? You seem… a little… frantic. Are you sure
you're alright?”
“Entirely, entirely, I assure you! … Well, probably, anyway. My mind is like a perfect clock… though, like a good clock, it does regularly go cuckoo…”
He frowns suddenly, tilting his head.
“I am living in my dreams, Eleanor—that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, too, of course, but not in their own. That's the difference.”
Claviskín takes the Baroness's chin lightly in hand and whispers, “I understand your concern for me and your uncertainty as to the wisdom of tampering with my brethren's spell.” His eyes twinkle, stars of white shimmering in a halcyon sea of blue. His voice becomes even softer, words dancing on glass. “Nothing is certain but this: you have played your part in this story, as usual, flawlessly . You mustn't question yourself, you mustn't have doubts. Don't worry for me, Eleanor, don't worry. Instead, trust your inner certainty, live and follow your heart's story wholly and resolutely, wherever it takes you. Surrender to the story, Kecharitomene! ”
Eleanor gasps, “That word again, what does it mean?”
Claviskín squints, “Um, what word? ‘Heart'? Why, I have several fine specimens just here…”
“No, that strange word you just said: Kech… arito… mene? You said it back in the church, when I woke you up. I thought you were delirious, but there it is again, that word. What does it mean?”
“'Kecharitomene?' I… Eleanor, I don't remember saying any such thing…”
“But you did say it! Twice!”
He continues to squint, staring directly into Eleanor's eyes—no, not into her eyes, past them. After a few moments, he smiles manically and claps his hands, crying, “Excellent! How truly marvelous! Yes, yes!”
Eleanor takes Claviskín's head in her hands, “Claviskín, I am going to ask you this once, and only once. I am tired, confused, pregnant, and, most importantly, heavily armed . Explain. Now!”
“Eleanor, Eleanor!” he says, wiping a joyful tear from his eye. “That word, ‘Kecharitomene,' it did not come from me at all. It has come directly from the Great Storyteller, Himself, from the very dream He has twice sent to me, the dream that is guiding our Destinies.
“It is a word from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 1, Verse 28. It's Greek, you see, part of the incipient archangel Gabriel's salutation to Mary: he appeared to her, saying ‘ Chaire, Kecharitomene ,' or ‘Hail, Full of Grace!' How joyous!”
“But… what does it mean? What do you mean? This isn't a story, Claviskín, I… I'm not the Virgin Mary! I am me, I am Eleanor! And that is enough!”
“Yes, Eleanor, you are you, certainly, yes, what could be more true? But you are also Mary in this story. Don't you see? This is not to say that you mope around wearing the color blue, that you occasionally appear in flaky pastries and Guatemalan gasoline spills. Certainly not that you were impregnated by the Divine… although… I do concede Aziraphale is excessively muscular… a coincidence perhaps. Hm.” Claviskín squints at nothing in particular for a few moments. “Anyway, I presume that you conceived in the conventional way. Interlocking parts and all that.” He waves his hand in the air vaguely, and conducts Eleanor back to her seat. He kneels before her, taking her hand in his.
“Mary is essentially a symbol, an archetype—she is love, wisdom and purity, pure emotion, pure sympathy made flesh. She is a symbol of humankind's ability to give and to receive love, a… a true, natural mother who is trusting and trustworthy, comforting, protective and nurturing. She, like you, is full of grace. But most importantly, she, like you, leaves no one behind … Not even slaughterous death goddesses.”
Eleanor closes her eyes and crosses her hands on her lap. Claviskín's whisper reweaves itself out of white-hot thread deep in her mind as she remembers her confrontation with Cihuacoatl herself: “ You are a flower that the winter of the serpent's breath can never injure …”
Eleanor clasped Cihuacoatl's hand… “Yes, it is loathsome to be so vulnerable and exposed. But we are here to protect you. We are your shelter and your love and we see only your beauty and your strength. That is your gift, goddess, which is the birthright of this world…”
Claviskín's playful voice, like a breeze stirring leaves in midsummer: “My wisest teacher, my predecessor as head of the Farseer Order, Terip Wratchet, taught me one thing. Or at least, I hope he taught me one thing. He told me, ‘People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around. Stories exist independently of their players. And if you know that, the knowledge is power.'
“What he meant was this, Eleanor: The fluttering Threads of Creation's Great Tapestry move according to certain patterns, certain symbols and stories. These stories etch grooves deep into reality, deep enough for people to follow, to follow in the same way that water follows certain paths down a mountainside. Every time fresh waters flow down the path of the story, the groove runs deeper. And those with knowledge of those paths and of the ways in which stories function… those people possess power to direct their own.”
Eleanor looks up then, smiling and wiping the tears from her eyes. “And what is our story?”
“I feel in my blood that our story, my dear Baroness, is the best kind: a madcap 1940's comedy.” Claviskín nimbly jumps onto the tabletop like a cat. “And, to some degree, a holy quest. The other characters should be here soon enough, but… let me show you this now.”
He pounces onto an enormous book at the center of the table, several feet in width, several more feet tall. The book is clearly different from all the others in size as well as in age and style. Its ancient, decaying cover shimmers in the flood of light pouring from the lamps overhead. It is made of solid gold and pure silver, and dotted with cabochon-mounted gems: emeralds, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and others of heavenly origin. There are subtly hammered designs in the metal and so Eleanor stands and moves to examine the book more closely as Claviskín, with a great heaving pull, sits the truly massive book upright. It is larger than she had expected, about seven feet by ten. She reaches forward, tracing the designs with her fingers.
The design is precisely the same as that of the wooden panel—two trees, one withered, nightmarish and the other blossoming, flourishing. Two trees, and all the life and death in the world bound to them.
Before today, she might have been surprised, she might have even raised an eyebrow. But Claviskín had reminded Eleanor of a truth she had learned long ago, that she had taught many others: life pulses a steady rhythm that should be danced to, not analyzed.
While that pulse may be absurd, dying and reborn with each beat, pumping with intoxicating heaviness whether fast or slow, it is always beautiful. A true dancer moves with that beat, surging harmoniously ever-forward, moving with sympathy, compassion, acceptance, surrender. Her dance expresses what lies in the innermost heart of all things: an ecstatic yearning for the perfect cycle of inevitable, thunderous creation, sustenance, and destruction, forever and always, in love, in life, in death, inside.
Claviskín grins, wiping dust off a head-sized emerald. “ Frightfully shiny, isn't it? Gee.”
~~~
Claviskín and Eleanor sit in peaceful silence, sipping their tea as heroes trickle in through various entrances to the Treehouse library. Many of them seem faintly befuddled, a dreamy calm over their faces as they drift to their seats at the great table, as if pulled on invisible strings of Destiny.
“Good, good, they've all come.” Claviskín smiles, slapping his knees and springing to his feet. He helps the ladies to their seats and offers his guests refreshment, which he draws from several deep pockets in his voluminous red robes.
“Welcome and blessings to you all!” he cries happily. “Mighty Torn, honored Liza, Master Archibald, magnificent Amelie, brave Thorn, King Korael… ah, and Lord Aziraphale… Aha. Right… Welcome to the Treehouse, everyone. I'm sure you don't know why you're here.”
“I've got a few ideas,” Korael lets his sunglasses slide down his nose and winks at the senile mage. “But it's your show, my man. I don't wanna spoil any surprises.”
Liza carefully pours a measure of thick purple liquid from a large steel flask into her tea. The tea bubbles and the surface bursts into dark green flames for a moment. “Ohhhh, shit. This isn't one of those damn Fate things, is it, Clav?” She takes a long draught from the coconut mug and shudders.
Archibald adjusts his glasses with a dexterous movement. “Oh goodness gracious, yes. Yes, I think it is. Claviskín, old boy, what the devil are you up to?”
Claviskín giggles madly. “You've stumbled upon it, my dear Archibald. It is not by mere coincidence that Korael, supreme Lord of the Infernal Mantle and Steward of Creation, has been drawn here.” Korael smiles rakishly and gives a little wave. Claviskín looks upward contemplatively. “Although one could say that it is mere coincidence, just… a tad aggregated and intersected… Master Wratchet had a few interesting observations on the subject that I think you might find—”
Eleanor gives Claviskín's sleeve a little tug. “Claviskín, dear.”
“Hm?” Claviskín smiles wryly. “Ah, yes, the rambling. Apologies. Umm, let's see.” Claviskín cracks his knuckles. “Where to begin…”
“Howabout the ginormous book?” Thorn suggests
“Ah-ha, a fine suggestion, Prince of Swords.” Claviskín springs to the table in a smooth movement that visibly surprises the gathered heroes. He gives a dramatic gesture, incidentally shooting a vortex of leaves and flowers out of his sleeves that he ignores. “ This book is the Codex Arborum , the Book of Trees. It is the definitive text concerning great and magical trees, primeval and present-day, diabolical and divine, as studied by the exacting eyes of angels.”
Archibald gazes at the book with unabashed reverence. Bowing his head in meditative reflection, he says quietly, “The Codex Arborum … the Codex is among the oldest manuscript texts in the Angelic Library. It was sealed in the vaults of the archives—the angels permitted no one to see it, certainly not a mortal such as myself. It was said… to contain the secrets of the Garden of Eden itself, the secret details of its… horticultural processes.”
“Yes, yes indeed, Master Archibald!” Claviskín exclaims. Circling the book, Claviskín continues, “After I, aha, stumbled upon this book purely by accident , aha, in the sealed archives, I discovered that its tremendous reputation was astoundingly justified. The Codex is a guidebook that even an amateur gardener could follow… a guide to creating a Garden like unto the one to the East, in Eden . It also describes in rather enormous detail the inner workings of all manner of paradisiacal and infernal magical plants!”
“What is your point?” Lord Aziraphale asks incisively but without any discourtesy in his noble voice.
“Ah, yes! Quite right. My point is simply this: I have memorized the contents of this book… and it is now time for the nine of us to put those contents into practice. You have been brought to this table, not by me, but by the immutable workings of Destiny, Itself. We shall travel through fire and mist, through root and tree, into the depths of Hell, into the cool glades of Edenic Paradise, and thence, finally, to the Nightmare Grove of Father Root…”
Amelie raises her hand politely until Claviskín calls on her like a senile schoolteacher. She brushes her long red curls away from her angelic face with her hand. “Um, Mister Francis,” she says, her quick, bright, starry Irish voice lightening everyone's heart. “Well, two things. First, well, going to Hell and this Nightmare Grove thing do sound like a rollicking great time, but, I wonder, why? And second, why us?”
Claviskín bows, refilling her cup of tea through a spout on his staff, the gnarled Cruik of Saint Patrick. “Marvelously important questions. Regarding your first, we are going to Hell in order to get to Eden because, well, that's the best way: the true Eden is inaccessible to us directly from the mundane plane. We will be mostly following the path set down for us by the great Dante Alighieri and his companions. Um, but in reverse,” Claviskín explains breezily and rapidly. “In Eden , it is my purpose to obtain an artifact that, in the Nightmare Grove, can be used to transform Father Root into a Tree of Life and Knowledge and suchlike. There are, of course, details, I expect, but that's the idea as I understand it.
“Now, turning to your second question, why you. Why, even the wisest cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that it is because you are either a necessary part of this journey, or because this journey is a necessary part of you. … Does that make sense?”
“Less and less,” Torn mutters.
“Hm, well, for illustration…” Claviskín uses his staff to pole vault over Torn's head. He circles the table with an old man's lurching gait. “Some of you, Torn, Liza, and Amelie in particular, are here, I suspect, because of their particularly deep connections to Ireland . Others,” Claviskín gives Thorn a playful jab in the side with his staff and Archibald a light pat on the head, “were drawn to this place at this time because, well, Eden has something to tell them.” Claviskín continues his circumambulation. “Still others, Korael, Eleanor and… Lord Aziraphale, for example, are here to protect us all—with swords, guns, and miscellaneous other tools—and to guide us, to keep our hearts… filled with grace.” Claviskín smiles warmly at Eleanor.
Torn rises to his feet, “Look, wizard guy, I'm up for this mission… quest… thing. You've got my sword.”
Liza rises, also. “And my bow.”
Eleanor joins them, pulling a large metal device from her bag. “And my Mark XIX .44 Magnum Desert Eagle.” She cocks it. “Let's do some gardening.”
~~~
And so it was that Claviskín , Korael, Torn, Liza, Thorn, Amelie, Archibald, Eleanor and Aziraphale, heroes all, embark upon the Quest for the Two Trees, led through the labyrinthine circles and layers of Hell by the magnificent Lord of Hell himself. The Fellowship of the Two Trees then delicately negotiate their way past Eden 's gatekeeper, Lilith, who grants the worthy heroes access to the Serpent's Path, the secret and ancient Path which leads East, to Eden, under the very feet of the mighty Cherub who guards its gates with a flaming sword.
Weary from their long journey, the Fellowship of the Two Trees come to an unmarked crossroads in the Path.
“Eden, Claviskín, which way is it? Left or right?” Amelie inquires, taking a large bite from a peanut butter and honey sandwich.
Claviskín looks around, sniffs the air, gives the roots an incautious lick in various places, and flips a coin. He then sits on a large mushroom.
“Hmm,” he replies, immediately thereafter falling asleep.
Some hours of rest and several sandwiches later, the Fellowship give Claviskín a poke in the side. He wakes up from a loud, snore-filled slumber with a snort that echoes in the roots. “Eh? Oh, it's that way!” he declares, pointing to the right-hand path.
“He's remembered!” exclaims Liza, taking a celebratory swig from her flask.
“No, but the air doesn't smell so foul through there. If in doubt, Liza, always follow your nose.”
And so they continue, steadfastly following the right-hand path ever-upward, climbing the living steps formed by the warm roots into a vast, cave-like chamber, filled with a faint blue light pouring through a circular opening in the eastern wall. Thence issuing, the Fellowship once again beholds the stars.
~~~
The Fellowship had passed through the very roots of the Axis Mundi. Stumbling onto the cool grass of Paradise , the Fellowship discovers that they are atop a great hill at the very center of the Garden. Beautiful birds and regal animals of strange species that resemble the eldritch creatures of Claviskín's menagerie play and prance carefree in the dawn air.
Indeed, breathing that pure air deeply, that air slate grey, indigo, rich violet, and sapphirine in the bright light of the clear moon and stars and dawn, the members of the Fellowship see that the sun is just beginning to rise. The stunning light of an Edenic dawn begins to spill through the easternmost trees, igniting the sky with prismatic hues, building to an incalescent sunrise more beautiful than any the members of the Fellowship had ever seen or imagined possible.
In this golden light, the Fellowship observes that the Garden is enormously spacious, many square miles of grass and glade filled with ecstatic life. A wide river winds its way through the Garden, from North to South, feeding crystalline pools and crashing waterfalls and bubbling fountains in addition to the lush foliage itself. The Garden is ringed by a high wall wrought not of stone or iron, but rather of thick and impassible bushes, shrubs, and verdurous trees many hundreds of feet in height: cedar, pine, fir, branching palm, a stately and primeval forest. A strong golden gate lays closed in the East, guarded by a meteorous, glowing figure bearing a massive, comet-like flaming sword.
“The angel Akaiah,” Korael reports, removing his sunglasses. “'Merciful and gracious, long suffering and plentiful of mercy.' Kindof her motto, but, y'know, merciful and gracious she really, really is not. Yeah, folks, it's probably best we hurry along with whatever. Say, Clav, my man, what're you starin' at?”
Claviskín is gazing back the direction they had come, but not at the small hole in the ground out of which they had crawled. Rather, he is transfixed by three skyscraping Trees that somehow no one had yet noticed, three luminous and hallowed Trees faintly resembling earthly ash, oak, and hawthorn, but many thousands of feet tall, their trunks at the ground broader than several city blocks. The blooming Ash and wizened Thorn twist upwards in a serpentine double helix around the majestic but wounded Oak, which is cracked deeply down its center. The Trees of Life and Knowledge around the Axis Mundi, the very Anchor of Reality.
A crushing sense of personal insignificance immediately combines with a firm and unyielding certainty of the Trees' transcendent sacredness. Everyone gathered there in the shade of the Trees' lofty and ancient branches falls immediately to the grass, some sinking into contemplative meditation or overwhelming communion with the Trees, others in prostrate reverence.
Everyone falls before the Trees, that is, except for Claviskín, who stands enthralled, shaking, sobbing, and laughing hysterically. Delirious with the pummeling pulses of his Destiny, the old mage secures the Cruik of Saint Patrick tightly to his back, rips the bandages from his stigmatic hands, and, with an exultant shout, runs with sudden speed to the foot of the Ash.
He begins to sing an old song in a clear, resonant voice as he springs into the air and begins to climb the Tree with animal grace:
“O ignis spiritus paracliti,
vita vite omnis creature,
sanctus es vivificando formas
“Sanctus es unguendo
periculose fractos:
sanctus es tergendo
fetida vulnera.
“O spiraculum sanctitatis,
O ignis caritatis...”
“O Holy Fire which soothes the spirit
Life force of all creation
You are Holiness in living form
“You are a holy ointment
for perilous injuries
You are holy in cleansing
the fetid wound.
“O breath of holiness
O fire of loving...”
His silver blood, pouring freely from his hands, sinks instantly into the warm, pulsing bark of the Tree, which he had recognized immediately as the very Tree of Life. His body grows faint and thirsty, and he can now hear his own heartbeat pulsing in perfect synchronicity with the Tree as he grows light-headed. He pushes on nonetheless, forcing himself to continue until he has climbed several hundred dizzying feet above his companions, until he has reached the proper point . It is there that he feels the peculiar resonance in his blood that distinguishes it as a locus of Destiny. There, he knows immediately what he has to do, what is expected of him by the Trees.
Poised a few feet away from the bottom of the crack in the Oak, the Axis Mundi, the Anchor of Reality, Claviskín kisses the bark of the Tree of Life and mutters a jubilant psalm in its honor. He then draws the Cruik from his back in a fluid movement and hurls it like a spear, bloodstained silver by his hands, into the black, empty crack in the Anchor. As the staff disappears into the crack, a silence falls over the Garden for a breathless eternity.
And then from the dark wound emerges a faint sound, the distant, chattering song of a morning lark. Soon, the little vocalist reveals itself, a tiny black and yellow creature hopping happily on the mouth of the crack. Soon it is joined by a little crow, clamoring its greeting to all creation. A dozen nightingales then shoot out of the abyss, and begin to circle, singing their mournful song, their mournful song in a place that knows no pain, no loss, no death. And then a swallow. And then three cuckoos. And then a swan. Within moments the air is filled with flocks of birds, singing in cacophonous harmony, in warbling honks and crisp chirps and gravelly squawks. The birds, gleeful and exultant, fly in a graceful dance.
A mighty and enormous eagle emerges suddenly, clutching a heavy staff tightly in its beak, its broad wings nearly knocking Claviskín from his perch as it soars past, dropping the staff into Claviskín's open hands.
As a torrent of wind and fragrant leaves and darting birds whips about him, Claviskín carefully examines the staff; the original oaken Cruik has been transfigured. Its gnarled wood has been straightened and infused with a shimmering inner light, and about it two other branches coil, one a smooth ash and the other a gritty hawthorn. Feeling the thick ripples of magical energy boiling under the surface of the luminous bark, Claviskín recognizes that this staff is a miniature of the Axis Mundi and the Trees of Life and Knowledge wound about it.
Enthralled by the happy sight, Claviskín is cracked painfully on the head by falling pomaceous fruits of silver and gold. As he quite automatically and unthinkingly places the fruits into his many deep pockets, Claviskín begins to hear a faint but growing whisper in his ears, as if the heavens call to him and the turbulent air itself gives voice. Softly whispering in the wind trailing the euphoric birds, whipped by their wings, he hears a voice that is a chorus of voices: “ Elear , Visionary, and Claviskín, the Sharp Key, our dear Francis… come fly, come fly, vieni a volare, Francis… Vicina all'elemento del fuoco sulla supreme sottile aria… Close to the sphere of elemental fire… in the highest and rarest atmosphere… ”
Claviskín, never one to argue with the voices in his head, steels himself, tightens his pointy red hat on his head, takes one last breath, and leaps out far into the aureate air, shooting through the thick ring of birds, berries, acorns, and soft leaves.
~~~
Claviskín executes a perfect swan dive towards the ground, tightening into a ball and extending again into a stunning nose dive. Perhaps no more than a dozen feet from the ground, the sound of rushing wind is in an instant replaced with one of mighty wingbeats. The mage's aged body is wracked with blinding pain as the direction of its movement suddenly shifts ninety degrees. Clutched tightly in Thorn's arms, his black wings slowing their desperate beating, the pain subsides.
“Ah, hullo, Thorn, my boy. What a day I've had. Say… you wouldn't happen to have a nice cuppa tea on you? Some relaxing chamomile, I should wonder?”
“Hm, lemme check for ya, Saint.” Thorn exaggeratedly pats his many pockets. “Nah, sorry, man, just the usual knives and guns.”
“Such rotten luck. Ah well. Say, my boy, what brings you here?”
“Um…” Thorn blinks, furrows his brow, and opens and closes his mouth in quiet disbelief. “Um, not… much…?” After a long pause: “HEY, um, so, that's a neat stick.”
Moments later, Thorn deposits Claviskín on the ground next to Eleanor, who is almost hysterical, shaking with shock, surprise, and horror.
“ Claviskín! ” is all she can manage to shout.
“Yes, dear?” he replies. “Oh, say, you wouldn't happen to have a nice cuppa—”
“Of all the stupid, monstrous, suicidal things you could do, why that , why now ? What were you thinking ?” she exclaims exasperatedly.
“Oh, do you mean my little flight ? Tsk, yes, I'm quite disappointed as well. It did not go quite as well as I might have hoped. However, it did seem to be the thing to do at the time.”
“But you might have been killed! ”
“Killed?” Claviskín chuckles and, seeing Aziraphale stomping off to meditate some distance away, gives Eleanor a quick peck on the cheek. “Why, Eleanor, as the saying goes, ‘A man destined to drown can never burn.' And what kind of wizard dies from a fall, anyway? And furthermore , I still have, oh, let's see…” Claviskín pulls a complicated device from one of his pockets, a sort of pocket watch and hourglass combined with a toaster and guillotine. “Ah-ha, two months, three days, eight hours, forty-two minutes and eight seconds. Until my timely death, that is to say.”
“But you were just a few feet away from hitting the ground. If Thorn hadn't—”
“Ah, but Thorn did .” Claviskín winks at Thorn. “Please, dear, breathe nice and deeply. In, out, in, out. Yes, just like that. Remember what I told you about trusting the story? Now, then.” Claviskín claps his hands to get everyone's silence and attention. “I've got the Trees of Life, Knowledge and the World in the wondrously convenient form of a walking aid. Let's get to Ireland , shall we? I'd like to get home rather soonish. I think I left the kettle on.”
Claviskín begins stomping eastward, towards the golden gate and the glorious angel Akaiah, its guard. “Come along, younglings, come along. We've an apocalypse to avert, miles to go before we sleep, ekcetera, ekcetera.”
Korael gapes and walks alongside Claviskín at the front of the line.
“Claviskín. Uh, maybe you didn't hear me back at the Trees, but…” he says, in his light and breezy rock-star voice. “That huge-ass angel with the freaking comet guarding the gates? See her? That's Akaiah. She's technically a cherub, but not so much into the tiny-obese-mutant-baby-with-wings look. Skewering folks on a flaming sword, that's really her thing. Now, Clav, the Spear might get us past her, but, uh, why don't we just go back the way we came?”
“Oh, Korael, Korael,” Claviskín replies, patting the Steward of Hell on the shoulder. “Have faith.”
~~~
Having slowly made its way down the tall hill and through miles of verdant paradise, the Fellowship comes at last to Eden 's golden gate. Sealed shut with a heavy lock, the gate's thick bars are hot with the heat radiating in visible waves from Akaiah's smoldering sword, held tightly in her massive hands.
Akaiah is a remarkable sight to behold, a feminine but quite muscular figure clad in a tunic the color of burnt roses. Her face is angular, her lips thin, but her eyes are beautiful, large and almond-shaped. Her skin is dark olive in hue, as if it has been slowly charred over countless millennia by the heat of her dormant sword.
The moment Torn moves to open the gate, however, she lifts her sword with grace and ease and it bursts into a blazing inferno of saffron fire. The air is immediately as hot as in a frightful furnace.
In a booming, echoing voice, she declares, “You shall not enter.”
Torn opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it, squinting thoughtfully.
Liza gives the bars a nudge with her gloves hands.
The angel raises her sword high above her head, bursting into flames, herself, declaring louder than before, “You shall not enter!”
Again, the members of the Fellowship exchange confused looks.
Archibald stepps forward. “Uh, pardon me, Miss… Akaiah, is it? Miss Akaiah? Yoo hoo!”
The incandescent angel squints at the bespectacled librarian with faintly curious black eyes.
“Um, Miss Akaiah, with all respect, one humbly notes that we are, um, not… trying to enter. We're, uh, inside , on our way out . More of an exiting than an entering , you see.”
The angel inclines her head uncomprehendingly.
Archibald sighs. “Oh, let's see... Ol sonf vorsg, goho iad balt, lonsh calz vonpho: sobra z-ol ror i ta nazpsad graa ta malprg: ds holq qaa nothoa zimz, od commah ta nobloh zien: soba thil gnonp prge aldi, ds vrbs oboleh grsam… Okay?”
The angel blinks and, after a few minutes replies, “Micaoli bransg prgel napta ialpor ds brin efafafe. Vonpho olani od obza: sobca vpaah chis tatan od tranan balye?”
Archibald responds immediately, “Alar lusda soboln od chis holq cnoquodi. Vnal aldon caosgo ta las ollor gnay limlal. Amma chiis sobca madrid z chis.”
Akaiah nods and extinguishes. “Coraxo chis.”
The gate swings open quickly and soundlessly. The Fellowship of the Two Trees files past the angel in much the same manner, hurriedly passing into the cracked desert wasteland that is Eden outside the Garden. When they are some distance away, Liza offers Archibald a draught from her flask. Archibald takes it gladly as the rest of the Fellowship raucously pats him on the back, congratulating him on some Enochian well-conjugated.
~~~
As the Fellowship moves over the parched sand and cracking clay of the Desert of Eden , the landscape changes. Dust and miserable heat give way to icy chill and muddy, rotting earth. The sky grows dark, blood-red and streaked with black clouds. The dry and scentless air congeals and becomes rank with smells of death and putrescence, of acrid smoke and grotesque crimes.
They are in Tara, at the rotten center of Ireland , in the very middle of the Nightmare Grove. Snow crackles and crunches underfoot, but it is hideously dirty, covered in putrid plants and dead animals and blackened leaves, drenched in dark, dead blood and a slick indefinable sludge. Mad crows fly overhead on ragged wings, cruel and hungry for blood.
“Father Root is close,” Claviskín whispers. The fresh green grass, bright flowers, and small woodland creatures that usually appear in his footsteps wither and disappear like smoke in this poisoned place.
“Everyone, stay close together and be on guard. And Amelie, you keep right here by me,” Eleanor adds, cocking her Desert Eagle and loading her rifle.
Moving with caution and ready weapons, the Fellowship of the Two Trees proceeds along the treacherous path to the top of the Hill of Tara. All is silent, except for the hushed crunching of the festering snow under the Fellowship's feet, and the occasional cawing of the vicious crows.
And then they hear it, the piercing, roaring screams of Father Root, the wretched tree of nightmares made from screaming flesh. Lightning stabs at the landscape as the earth underfoot churns and curdles, dead blood bubbling up, bearing nightmarish insects: huge spiders and cockroaches, fanged worms and maggots.
The heroes blast at the ground with flames of purification, shotguns, and pistols, or simply stomp on the abominations as they struggle up the Hill, the path slippery with the unthinkably vile sludge. All the while, the trees and bushes, gnarled, thorny, warped, and tangled, scream nightmarish words of poison in the heroes' ears, filling their minds with visions of chaos and discord, of hate, of blood.
At last, clambering to their feet at the top of the Hill, the Fellowship looks upon Father Root and trembles. It is a shriveled, black thing, less a tree grown from the earth than one assembled from the corpses of the dead: dead bushes and trees, dead dirt, dead victims of the blood cults. It screams and screams, its incoherent despair and hatred withering the heroes' will to continue, their hopes for the future, their very dreams.
Icy rain begins to pour, stirring and thickening the bloody ooze, as it pelts the Fellowship like shards of bitter glass. And then, out of that ooze, extends a wretched hand. The blood cults have arrived to defend their Father.
Suddenly there are hundreds of them, blood-drenched and monstrous, of all ages, dressed in ragged clothing if at all, hungrily wielding machetes, cleavers, tire irons, anything sharp enough to kill with, however slowly. They crawl out of the muck, claw out of the sludge, joining their screams with Father Root's. The Fellowship tries to fight them off, but there are too many.
“Kecharitomene!” Claviskín shouts, falling to his knees. Just as at St. Mary's, Claviskín suddenly seems impossibly ancient, the wrinkles of his face deep and scar-like, his limbs thin and desiccated, his eyes black and their sockets hollow.
Eleanor, her purple gown miraculously spotless races to his side, blasting the heads off crazed cultists with her rifle and with her Desert Eagle as she gracefully reloads the rifle with her free hand.
“'A man destined to drown can never burn.' Remember?” she whispers in his ear, kissing his cheek as she decapitates a burly, bellowing butcher. She pulls Claviskín close to her.
A sharp, deafening crack sounds out over the battlefield as the Umbra splits open. Through the shimmering and luminous portal emerge a host of heroes: Sounds the Way, Corax; Most Ancient of Bears, Gurahl; Nadja Inecatul ap Eiluned; Princess Diezel Maros, Redcap; Sir Careg Layne ap Dougal; and Marena, Delon of the White, also called Chet, Sluagh and White Fomorian. With them crawl legends of an ancient time, given new bodies and strength: Mordred de la Fey, son of Arthur; Sir Galahad, Troll; Sir Gawain ap Gwidion; Sir Lancelot ap Fiona; Sir Bedivere, Fianna Philidox; Merlin, Mage; Sir Kay, brother of Arthur, Fianna Ahroun; and Arturus, legend's King Arthur, Gurahl. The valiant King Arthur surveys the field in an instant and, with his Knights of the Round Table, leaps into the heart of the battle. Cutting through the cultists, the tide turns and an expanding ring around Father Root is quickly established.
As the screams grow quieter, and hope returns, Claviskín forces his body to its feet, forces it to pull itself together. With a series of sickening crunching and squishing noises, it does so, and he is, once more, an old man in a jaunty red hat.
“Fellowship of the Two Trees, circle around Father Root!” he bellows, steadying himself with his Staff. As the forces led by Sounds the Way and King Arthur hold the cultists off, the Fellowship forms a ring within the ring. “We must each of us make an offering to Father Root. Hurry now! You already know what to give! Give it! Clockwise from Torn!”
Despite Father Root's continuous, piercing shrieks, each member of the circle approaches the Tree and makes their offering, with astounding resolve: Torn offers a large, golden coin, which he tosses in the air and cleaves in half with his sword. Archibald offers a tiny bottle of blessed water. Liza an apple from her bow. Eleanor a blessing from her brisingamen, which shines forth coruscating amber light…
Only Claviskín remains, eyes closed and head bowed. He stretches out his arms, the transfigured Staff of the three sacred Trees in his left hand, and in his right a small, scintillating green flame of primal Quintessence that glows brighter and brighter. Slowly moving towards Father Root, his voice rolls forth, low and meditative, singing, weaving his spell:
“O comforting fire of the Divine,
Life, within the very Life of all Creation.
Holy you are in giving Life to All.
“Holy you are in anointing
those who are not whole;
Holy you are in cleansing
a festering wound.
“O sacred breath, fire of love
illumination of clarity divine,
brilliantly clear, wholly complete.
You are the path which unites All, restoring All to All.”Claviskín raises his arms bringing the Staff and the flame together overhead. The green flame explodes into an intense blaze of enchantment, coiling itself around the Staff, ever-tighter, ever-brighter. He sings:
“Through you, Holy Spirit, the earth exudes Life, moving in All.
You are the root of all creatures,
washing away all impurity,
and anointing wounds
As the Creator's own pure blood touches them!”
Claviskín opens his eyes, white as pearls, now standing at the twisted roots of Father Root, those blasphemous roots drenched in wet and diseased blood. He drives the luminous Staff of the Trees deep into their midst and all is embraced in a deep green darkness lighter than air, than water, than lips, than light…
~~~
Several hours later, the assembled heroes finally managed to rouse Claviskín. The secret, it seems, was simply to steep a spicy cinnamon tea in his vicinity. His eyes snap open at the first and faintest whiff of the brew and he leaps to his feet, patting himself all over until he locates a large ceramic mug somewhere near the lower-left.
However, as Eleanor begins to fill it, he walks forward, transfixed by the sight before him, spilling boiling water all over his hand but noticing not at all. He takes a long drink before commenting on what he sees, his mind struggling to understand it.
Looking from the high Hill of Tara, he saw what the Staff of the Trees had wrought. It was an unbounded Garden of Eden, dazzling and green in the clear sunlight; thick bushes, dense shrubs, and verdurous trees all of primeval size and loaded with fair fruit covered the landscape further than his weak eyes could see. Beneath his feet lay neither the slain cultists nor those they had slaughtered; there was simply strong, green grass, and wildflowers as bright and perfectly formed as stained glass, blowing in the soft, warm breeze. There was no stain of any kind on any leaf, flower, or blade of grass. The sky was clear and deep blue overhead, the air as pure as it had been in the Garden, fragrant with the blossoming flowers of all colors sprouting everywhere, in the grass, upon bushes and shrubs, in the mighty trees.
Father Root himself had been transfigured as well; no longer was he a hideous monument to hatred and bloodshed, to pointless suffering and to despair. It was now an enormous, luminous apple tree filled with white, trembling flowers and heavy with apples of silver and gold.
“Well, fuck,” said the saint, squinting. “Say, has anyone seen my hat?”
· This story is strongly inspired by the literary works of William Butler Yeats, Dante Alighieri, John Milton, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Bill Shakespeare, Hermann Hesse, and Hildegard of Bingen, and the music of Gustav Holtz, Thomas Newman, Claude Debussy, Loreena McKennitt, and Eric Whitacre. And many, many others. That is to say, this story includes elements drawn deliberately or accidentally from music, poems, and even television shows that are often not specifically cited at all. Cuz that's how wizards roll.