The Arrival of Apprentice Pon er Lugal

Bridgehouse Overture III

A BOY CLIMBED a narrow path up the side of a canyon deep in the damp and craggy mountains known as Goddess’s Demise. Soft winds drafting through the expanse rustled his shaggy black hair and flapped the waxy black-green Godsleaf clusters sewn to his his mandated—and childishly short—linen apprentice’s kilt. His head was lowered with the exertion of ascending the path, his hands grasped his Storykeeper’s sash tightly and sweat beaded his tanned skin.

He was accompanied by his master, a lean man with dusty grey hair kept short, modestly-tall and wearing a black ankle-length wrap around his waist. In one hand he held a two-pace carved staff painted in a dozen colors; his thick traveler’s sandals poked out from below the wrap as he thunked the staff against the path’s dusty stone. Behind the pair plodded the master’s nameless, stubborn and hairy mule laden with packs.

Pon er Lugal, Storykeeper’s Apprentice, shouldered a deep shame he could not conjure the words to express.

He knew that the words existed. He had memorized many words, though he didn’t understand the meaning of most. What he lacked, what he had long grappled with, was the ability to articulate the words, to reach out and grab the words from the mysterious aether and cast them into being with his breath. He envied the way of his master, a man who could summon words at will and produce like magic entirely new phrases not found in the Stories—yet flowing with their wisdom.

“Don’t fret, child,” said Talis il Peloko, Storykeeper of Angel Bay and Pon’s master. “Not all reach the Gathering in their first year. There are many who must stay behind and assist with their tribe in other duties, and must await the following year or more to make the journey.”

Pon said nothing as they walked.

Talis asked, “What did the Angel-Sent say when she’d learned the Crest was already lost?”

“Arrival forestall’d, though late my coming still am I glad to have come to this place,” Pon recited.

Talis nodded, pleased.

He said, “The Messenger of Angel’s Sending was known for her wisdom. You shouldn’t worry about the time it takes to get where you’re going; you will get to where you’re meant to be. Be thankful you get to partake at all—at least you get to watch!” Talis chuckled. “The girls’ dances are always a treat, and something most are only granted the joy of but once.”

“Yes, sir,” Pon said stonily.

Talis scowled to himself and carried on in silence. Beyond a slight pockmarked bend the path transitioned to a narrow switchback winding up a sheer cliff, and at every turning were stone cairns, each stone newly placed by the youths who had made the journey in the days prior. Pon refused to look at them; Talis appraised them reverently.

Halfway to the top they took a short rest. While they caught their breaths Talis said, “Mind yourself from here on. I’m here only in ceremony, you only as my silent apprentice. You are not to take any part in the games, trials or presentations of the others. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good,” said Talis. “This moment is sacred. Can you tell me why?”

“No, sir.” I just want to see Lilia.

“We celebrate our deliverance from death. What is the ending verse to the Story of the Flood?”

Pon considered silently, and Talis gave him time.

After a short while Pon recited:

“And with Goddess-call did the Waters come,

Enemy perish, disrespectful fall

and She with Death Death’s mistress did become.

So do our People in Goddess’s shade

find true light of life through Her Sacrifice,

bless’d be Her Mercy for we who survive.”

Talis nodded with approval, but after several more turnings of the path Pon said, “Master, I don’t understand the meaning of it.”

The Storykeeper waved his arm up at the mountains above. “It was on these very peaks that the Goddess achieved the things you have just recited. It’s said that this path itself was trod by Her in that time, and that Her final Repose lay across a chasm on the Mount of Endings. The Gathering is made in honor of Her, of Her sacrifice, and so we further Her intent by coming together in continuance of Her People. Do you understand?”

“No, sir.”

Talis rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder, grasping it affectionately.

“You will,” he said. “Look!” He pointed up, where the path disappeared over a final rise. “We have arrived. Come and see.”

They crested the rise onto a grand shelf of stone protruding from the mountainside, and they saw spread across the shelf beneath a shining sky the meeting ground of Sedhari’s Grief.

At least two hundred small tents in myriad colors and design—representing all the tribes of the Western People—were clustered around a barricaded space at the shelf’s center. The barricade was simple, constructed of sticks and tasseled ropes, and the hard surface within bore the faint weathered engravings of an ancient and intricate design.

There, a small group of Elders stood in colloquy around a ceremonial basin of sand; their arms gesticulated wildly in contentious debate and Pon saw Elders Lokkoi ir Loshoi and Cili isc Maghi of Angel Bay presenting a heated argument to the others.

Male and female youths from North, South and Central tribes milled about the tents, some engaging in various duties or following the shouted directions of Elders, but most were lounging at ease. A nearby cluster of laughing girls in the pleasantly sparse clothing of the Southern tribes was in the midst of planning a dance to be performed later that night, but kept falling to giggles as Pon and Talis circled the tents. Pon’s eyes swept over the girls but did not linger.

None of you are Lilia.

Three sides of the shelf dropped off steep cliffs, and beyond was an expansive view both west to the Living Sea and east to the Sea of the Dead. The fourth, northern side was occupied by a loose covering of tall needled trees. Dotted with many tripping exposed roots, the woods climbed up a shallow slope toward the grey rock of the mountain’s peak above, and pitched beneath the trees were the larger tents of Elders and other officials from the tribes.

To the south was a sheer ravine spanned by a long rope bridge that provided access to the adjacent and craggy Mount of Endings. At the far end of the bridge a rough path lead through a cleft of stone and vanished around a bend where, a short way beyond, Pon could just see the crown of a grand tree above a rocky wall.

Talis pointed to the far peak. “There is the Place of Her Repose, protected on the Mount of Endings.” He gestured back to the central clearing. “And this is the very place where She stood when She defeated the Enemy. We walk on Holy Ground. Look,” he said, pointing east over the Sea of the Dead, “There’s the Fallen Mountain!”

Pon looked. In the east he saw a thin and hazy shadow on the horizon, an island in the Sea of the Dead. From the moment he’d stepped onto the shelf Pon had a growing anxiety he couldn’t identify—a sense of Presence he’d never felt before. When his eyes beheld the Island of the Fallen Mountain, goosebumps formed on his arms and his jaw slackened.

Master Talis is right, thought Pon. Holy Ground, and I can feel it to my bones.

It was an unnerving experience.

The Goddess Herself might be watching me this very moment!

“Come along, Pon!” called Talis, who had already moved on. Pon trotted to catch up.

They made their way to the wooded slope, passed through the scattered tents and found a clear place to pitch their own. Talis pulled reeds and leathers from the mule’s back while Pon tried and failed to understand how the Storykeeper had chosen the spot, then was distracted when his master asked for his assistance.

Over the previous weeks the pair had practiced setting up the tent—and Pon never succeeded on a first attempt. Despite Talis’s best efforts Pon still had difficulty following directions without doing more harm than good, and nearly an hour after they started the tent remained unpitched.

Pon was fumbling with a guy line when a buzzing of girlish giggles emerged from the bottom of the slope, and when he glanced out of the corner of his eye he saw standing among the trees a gander of Northern girls in their furs. He did his best to ignore the laughter they directed at him until Talis glared and gestured silently at the group. Pon heard the girls scamper away and frowned.

Where is Lilia?

“Why don’t you take a look around?” suggested Talis, resuming his work on the tent. “You can look at the bridge if you like, but don’t try to cross it. The Bridgekeepers will stop you.”

Pon sighed.

“Yes, sir.”

He rose from his failure and sullenly moved off through the trees and out onto the stone. He knew he’d only make more work for Talis if he stayed, so he risked subjecting himself to the attentions of the youths.

Mindful not to get too close to anything he could upset, trip over or inadvertently break, he circled the roped-off central area and passed two Elders who had left the colloquy and were walking toward the trees.

Pon heard one say, “—sure the Drowned Brother is an acceptable match.”

“Without guidance,” said the other, “we can only do our best. Besides, as an orphan I’ve heard the girl—”

Their voices faded beneath the general rumble of two hundred excited youths as Pon continued on, weaving his way through the various tents and favoring clusters belonging to boys rather than girls. Each tent was unique, even among a common tribe, though every region had its motifs.

Northerners had tents of heavy furs that looked comfortable; Pon was confused why so many of those boys seemed to avoid going inside them, instead preferring to sit around under the open sky and fan themselves with broad leaves. Southerners’ tents were light affairs, barely more than sheaves of reeds situated to block sunlight or provide cover from the persistent rains of the south.

“It’s the idiot!” called an Angel Bay voice, and Pon suppressed a wince.

I didn’t mean to walk through these tents.

“What’s he even doing here?”

“He didn’t actually make the journey himself, did he?”

“He’s just the Storykeeper’s pet! He’ll never pair with anyone.”

“Hey, idiot, wanna know somethin’ funny?!” Pon kept moving. “If you jumped off the cliff, you wouldn’t die! Do you know why?!” The jester turned to his friends, who all smiled, then shouted at Pon, “’Cause you’d get lost on the way down!”

Laughter, cheers, heckling. Pon kept moving.

“Ohh, no, no, no!”

A girl barred his way, arm up and palm out, and Pon staggered to a halt. He tried to eye an escape.

“We don’t want your stink here, dummy,” said the girl. Behind her laying and sitting at ease were the other Angel Bay girls. Pon bent to look around the sentinel for Lilia, eliciting exaggerated squeals and sounds of disgust from the group.

“Goddess be, can you imagine?!” cried one of them.

“Thank Her that none of us will ever have to worry about that!” said another.

“I’d rather pair with an Outlander!”

She’s not here.

He turned away; the girls’ jeering continued, but he had stopped listening.

Where is she? Did she not make it here in time? Is she in trouble?

Continuing his aimless walk through the melange of adolescent excitement, he arrived at the western edge and looked out over the world. Far away he could see the shores of the Living Sea just visible in the day’s haze. He thought, The village is there—somewhere. I bet someone else could point to it, but it all looks alike to me.

He moved south along the cliff. As it curved left back toward the east he saw the rope bridge leading south across the ravine to the Mount of Endings and the Place of Her Repose, and looking over the edge he was surprised to see rough narrow stairs of stone leading down the cliff to the thick jungle below. A shining stream flowed and glittered through the ravine, occluded by the dense foliage.

He moved on, nearing the sturdy bridge.

Two men Pon knew stood guard there; Yulo ir Masrin was Angel Bay’s highly-respected second-leader and Seppo ir Doun was the tribe’s famous and soft-spoken top hunter. They were dressed in the ritual garb of the Bridgekeepers, those who protected this end of the bridge against trespass.

“Greetings, apprentice Pon,” said Yulo. Seppo nodded respectfully.

Pon bowed to the two men. “Why are you playing Bridgekeepers?” he asked.

They looked at each other with a grin. Yulo said, “You haven’t heard?”

“Bridgekeepers protect the Goddess,” said Seppo.

“So?” said Pon.

“So,” Yulo smiled broadly, “the Elders chose an Angel Bay lass to play Goddess this year.”

“Oh,” said Pon. “Who was chosen?”

Yulo opened his mouth to speak but then hesitated, faltering. He looked away from Pon. Into the silence Seppo said, “Lilia esc Radhi.”

“Lilia!?” cried Pon. His eyes shot past the two men, far across the ravine to the Mount of Endings. He took an involuntary step forward and Yulo’s hand grabbed his shoulder.

“No, apprentice,” he said firmly. His grip tightened. “Nobody but the chosen Goddess is permitted to enter the Repose.” Pon looked at Yulo, frantic.

Seppo hand gripped Pon’s other shoulder. “It’s not allowed.”

Yulo said, “Calmly. You even being permitted at the Gathering is entirely due to Storykeeper Talis’s influence—don’t do anything to betray the trust placed in you.”

Pon squeezed his eyes shut and staggered back.

“Honor to the Storykeepers, apprentice Pon,” said Seppo. Pon turned away and continued along the cliff, fighting the panic filling his chest.

Lilia is the Goddess!

At every Gathering the girls performed dances for the boys, who would cheer raucously in support of each and so rank the performances. Then, in order of most supported first, the girls would make their pairing choices by dancing up to whoever most pleased her in the day’s games and pulling him out of the crowd as her own. At the end of the dance the pairings would retire to their tents. Some Elders gave recommendations about which boy should be chosen, but the final choice was always up to the young woman; it was possible but rare for girls to not choose in a given year. This was true in all cases but one.

Each year, one girl would be chosen from all the tribes of the People, and her task would be to perform the playact role of Goddess. That meant a day of fasting and seclusion spent in the Place of Her Repose, not engaging in any of the activities preceding the evening’s dance and selection. She would cross the bridge as the sun set over the Living Sea, then to initiate the girls’ dancing she would perform the sacred Ritual Dance while the Storykeeper gave a Telling of the Story of the First Gathering.

She would also be the first to choose from the boys—and the choice was always determined by the Elders; the pairing was always to a boy of a different tribe.

Pon clenched his fists and lowered his head as he stopped a dozen paces away from the bridge.

I thought I’d get to see her, to speak with her, even if only once!

As the Goddess, he would see her from a distance as she danced—and then as likely never after. He might, truly, never be with Lilia again. He shut his eyes and took a rapid, gasping breath.

A weird and warbling creak sounded over the ravine, followed by a twanging snap.

Pon’s head instinctively turned toward the bridge; nearby, Yulo and Seppo were looking over their shoulders and they each watched as the two halves of the bridge swung quietly down. The near half struck the cliff with a great clattering that shocked most of the assembled people to alertness and the far half struck an instant later, though the sound came delayed and attenuated.

Yulo and Seppo cried in dismay and yelled out, “The bridge has fallen!”

Pon stared at the now-impassable gorge and the Mount of Endings. A stampede of youths to the cliff’s edge was sharply reprimanded by several Elders and other adults in positions similar to Seppo and Yulo. The Elders sidled and winded their way through the energetic crowd as the boys and girls shouted and pointed.

Lilia is over there!

“Hey! Dummy!”

The clutch of Angel Bay girls were upon him before he registered their approach. One of them, Hedh esc Etsa, tapped his shoulder and his head whipped around to direct a furious glare at her; his expression caused her to step back half a pace.

“Wah!” exclaimed one of the girls. “He’s scary!”

Pon took a breath and stilled his features—a learned habit when dealing with his usual tormentors.

“He’s an idiot,” stated Hedh, regaining her composure. She shoved something at him; held in her fist was a scrap of parchment. Pon observed her quietly.

“She asked us to give this to you when you arrived, idiot,” said Hedh. “Just so you know.”

“Who did?” asked Pon.

“Her,” said another of the girls, pointing across the ravine. Pon tilted his head in question.

Hedh sagged and rolled her eyes. “Lilia, you dummy.”

“Not that you’ll get to see her again!” said one of the others, and they fell to nasty giggles.

Pon cautiously reached out and took the parchment, eyes on the girls and wary of treachery. Hedh allowed him to remove it from her hand, then stepped back as he looked; it was covered in the writing of the People’s tongue. His eyes raised to the girls and they staggered off, braying and laughing.

“Can he even read?”

“Who cares?” said Hedh.

They moved on, joining a steady flow of youths returning to their tents now that the immediate excitement had passed. The adults and Elders at the bridge were meanwhile loudly debating what to do about the problem, with a consensus slowly building toward waiting for the girl on the other side to make an appearance. Bows were produced, along with arrows fitted with thin line. Pon couldn’t make any sense of it.

Slowly he turned to face the Mount of Endings and stood alone on the cliff’s precipice, parchment clutched in his hand. The scrap fluttered in a light breeze.

She’s over there! She’s trapped!

“What does it say?” asked a woman standing next to him. He stepped back, startled, and turned to face her.

She was tall, almost a full head taller than himself. Shining black hair flowed in long tresses down her back and the clothes she wore would have been the envy of every woman in Angel Bay; they were in the style of his tribe but of immeasurably greater quality. Her eyes glinted sharply and her lips were curled in a soft perpetual smile.

“It’s you!” he exclaimed, then looked about sheepishly and lowered his voice, eyeing the nearby cluster of Elders.

“It’s me,” she said, her smile widening to a grin that dimpled her cheeks. Sunlight coruscating off her hair radiantly framed her face.

“I never thought I’d see you again, ma’am,” said Pon. “Where have you been?”

Her melodious laughter sent a warm sensation through his body, and his heated panic subsided to a self-conscious calm.

“You have become much more polite since you were a little boy.” He blushed. “I have been where I am. Before, I was in the house of your master. Now I am here, meeting you once again.” She gestured to the parchment clutched in his fist and repeated, “What does it say?”

Pon blinked and looked at the small slip Hedh esc Etsa had passed to him, then his cheeks heated further.

“I can’t read it, ma’am.” He held it up to her.

She took it from him, looked at it a moment then said aloud, “Pon: I am waiting for you, if you will make the journey. Please find a way to come to me.” She released the parchment and let it flutter in the air then over and into the ravine.

“It was signed ‘Lilia.’ Wasn’t that the name of that sweet little redhead?” asked the woman.

Pon nodded.

“It sounds like you should go to her.”

“I can’t,” he said, crestfallen. He pointed across the gap. “She’s over there. She’s stuck, and there’s nothing I can do.”

“Of course there is. You can do what she asked: find a way to come to her.”

“But,” he wailed, “there’s no way across! I can’t jump that far, and I can’t fly. There’s no way.”

“Are those the only ways across?”

“The bridge is gone.”

The woman made a silent “Ah” with her mouth, then leaned out over the cliff’s edge, looking past where the ragged remains of the bridge now hung. Then she looked across the ravine at the Mount of Endings.

“Did you know there wasn’t always a rope bridge here?” she said softly, still facing the gorge.

“Huh?”

“When She was lifted up and carried to Her Repose, there was--”

“—and Her mortal form by Him was taken,” interjected Pon, “Her body thus was brought to Ending’s Mount across the fire-fallen Bridge of Stone.”

The woman turned and beamed at him.

“And you said you could never be Storykeeper,” she chuckled.

“But,” he continued, “that bridge fell, didn’t it? With crumbling Mount did dark and fiery skies lay low the Bridge—yet blessed are we who alone survived.” He paused. “Master Talis says that means the stone bridge broke. It’s gone.”

She nodded. “That’s true—but the story doesn’t contain everything, you know. It doesn’t say what happened after.”

Pon’s head tilted in confusion.

The woman asked, “How do we know what happened to Her after She was taken to the Repose? If the bridge was broken, I mean.”

He spent a moment, trying and failing to recall a Story that might hold the mystery she was alluding to.

“Who was with Her?” she hinted. “Who carried Her?”

“Oh!” Pon almost jumped with excitement as it became clear to him. “The First Storykeeper!”

“And if the bridge was broken, how did he come to tell the Stories?”

The boy’s brow furrowed in desperate concentration. She waited, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and looking over the Gathering.

Finally he tried, “There—was another way?”

She nodded. Pon gasped.

“There’s another way?!”

“There is,” the woman confirmed, and pointed at the Mount. “There is a narrow way—a stair that leads up from the bottom of the ravine—that he used as he came and went, much like the one you can see on this side, if you look.”

She turned and placed her hands on his bare shoulders, drawing all his attention to her face. Her touch was like a warm wind across his skin.

“You can find what you’re meant to find,” she said. “If you try. It will be hard, and it will hurt, but I have faith that you can find it. Then, when your hardships are over, you’ll find your Lilia again—awaiting you at the Repose.”

He stood taller and nodded with a certainty that seemed to encourage the woman.

“Goddess be with you, child,” she said as she stepped back. “We may meet again, someday.” A smile returned dimples to her cheeks. “I am pleased you remember me—you were so young when we first met.”

“I’ll never forget you, ma’am. Never!”

“I believe it,” she said and kissed his forehead. She hesitated, then turned and walked off between the tents, stepping around clusters of youths who paid her no heed.

Pon rubbed his brow, a look of wonder on his face, then swallowed his worries and turned to the edge.

It took him only moments to find the topmost step of the stair leading down into the chasm. He didn’t look back as he carefully took that first step, or the next, or even as his head descended below the edge, his body flattened against the grainy stone of the cliff.

I am coming, Lilia!

—

A tall boy sat with a group of friends outside their tents somewhere between the central clearing and the posts marking where the rope bridge had been. The boy was broad-chested, with a lithe form and golden hair, and his name was Malin er Malin. He came from the same Angel Bay village as Pon.

His attention had been drawn away from his comrades when he noticed Pon standing near the cliff’s edge. The Storykeeper’s apprentice was known as a simpleton, but Malin watched in surprise as the other boy actually seemed to be talking to himself, at one point raising his hand and letting a piece of parchment flutter away into the air.

That one will never become a man, Malin thought with a strange mix of sadness and derision. Then his friend Gadd er Helmes struck him on the arm and he turned away. He was not watching when Pon began his descent.

* * *

A little less than an hour of slow and trembling steps later Pon found himself below the canopy of the jungle filling the ravine. The air was thick and damp, a strong contrast to the breezy atmosphere of Sedhari’s Grief above. The lower steps became moist and then slimy, and when he was nearly to the bottom his feet slipped. With a cry he fell from the stairs, crashed through the brush a pace below, rolled down an incline and then careened into a patch of soggy soil.

After a moment he lifted himself up, sputtering, and wiped the mud from his face. The noise of the Gathering above was faint, barely carried by the air into the depths of the gorge. Instead his senses were filled with the buzzing of insects and the chirping of birds and croaking of unknown creatures. He brushed mud from his nose and looked around.

Where am I?

He turned. There, a few paces above him, was the cliff he had just descended. Further up and obscured by the many leaves and fronds of the canopy he could just discern the distant remains of the rope bridge hanging against the cliff. He turned away and regarded the area in front of him. The ground was a mixture of stone knuckles, gnarled roots and moist soil covered in untold years’ worth of fallen and decaying leaves. He couldn’t see more than a handful of paces ahead but could hear the trickling of water past the deeper darkness of the greenery.

Muttering a prayer, he stepped forward.

Pon quickly discovered that traversing the ravine was nearly impossible. Each path he attempted was stymied by another tree or bush, thick shrubbery or huge jagged boulders sticking up in surprising places.

A kernel of fear settled into his belly. He’d never succeeded in finding or even following a path on his own, a failing that had kept him from officially attending the Gathering above. He had tried and even practiced with his master, but every time he ended up lost and anxious and Talis would have to rescue him. This was far worse; he had nothing to guide him but for the increasingly-obscured cliff behind him and the sound of the water ahead.

Nobody knows I’m here—if I get lost I might never leave this jungle!

Biting bugs buzzed and irritated. He scraped the skin of his legs clambering over a boulder, then lost his footing and tumbled down a pace into a shallow bog. Again he lifted himself up, now coated in slime.

Lilia is waiting, he repeated to himself as he staggered forward.

He broke through a screen of bushes and his foot fell into cool, flowing water.

It was a burbling stream, almost a small river, ten or twelve strides across. The water was crystalline, its sound like a natural chime that left him enraptured.

A break in the trees offered a clear view of the sky, and visible above towered the Mount of Endings. Across the water the ground sloped up toward that prominence, and halfway up the slope was a solid wall of thick spine-bushes stretching the slope’s breadth.

Lilia is waiting.

He waded into the water. Its flow dragged mud from his feet and ankles and calves as he crossed, then his waist. The stream was much deeper than he’d supposed, and its current strong enough that he had to crouch down to keep his footing and use his arms to pull himself against it.

The crossing was exhausting, and Pon slowly climbed up onto the far side then knelt to catch his breath in the heavy air. After a minute of rest he took advantage of the stream, dunking his head and rubbing the mud from his body; he came up from the water cleaner than he had gone in.

Flying insects continued to buzz and he swatted at them idly as he stood and turned to face the next step. His eyes widened as he considered the obstacle before him: spine-bushes taller than he, tangled and pungent, with long frightening needles and thorns poking every which way. It was worse than he’d feared, and he then spent several minutes searching up and down the stream for an uncovered, or at least less infested, patch.

He found none.

Pon screwed up his courage and stepped up the slope into the forest shadows, then when he reached the wall he hesitated. The corpse of a small bird impaled on an upper spine twisted in a hidden breeze. He closed his eyes, swore silently, opened them again and looked to the now-hidden sky and obscured peak.

“I’m coming,” he stated, and drove forward into the thorns.

He pulled at vines and branches, he pushed away clawing spines and was jabbed endlessly for his efforts. The thorns fought to drive him back; he pushed harder. His flesh was scraped and torn as his body disappeared into the awful patch.

The needles came for his eyes and he gave up the use of his hands in favor of protecting his face from the inches-long spikes. He pushed harder, fighting against the stabbing and tearing agony. He began to cry out, sobbing with each step, his sandals torn away, his kilt ripped into strips, yet still he pushed forth.

The end of the horrible bushes came so suddenly that Pon tripped and fell with a gasp.

His body struck the hard stone with a bloody slap and he curled up in crying pain as a carpet of spines broke away from his flesh. Red beads of vitae formed from his many wounds and scrapes, and he lay there wailing desperately.

Slowly, slowly he regained his reason and uncurled. He could not bear to stand so he crawled, his vision clouded with tears. His blood left streaks on the stone as he moved upward—he did not know where his goal was, where the stairs would be found, so he merely continued forward, moving around broad root structures breaking through the rock and clusters of loose boulders and sharp stones laying hazardously everywhere.

He reached a wall and placed his bloody hands against it, gasping. With great effort he looked up—the wall he touched was the base of the Mount of Endings. He exhaled a grateful sob then turned and sat with his back to the rock; the path he’d taken was marked with dashes of disturbed earth and the dark smears of his blood. He checked his body—the many spines and thorns sticking from his skin were painful but not deadly, and his damaged skin was only superficial. He grimaced as he plucked the needles and threw them aside.

She’s waiting for you.

Slowly, painfully, Pon pushed himself to his feet using the wall as a support. He looked left and right, but he did not know in which direction he would find the stairs.

Still, he thought to himself, I didn’t really know what path to take to get where I am, and I’m here anyway.

He placed his right hand against the stone and began walking to the left.

He stumbled many times, and twice was forced to leave the cliff’s base to move around the trunks of great trees that had grown hard against it. He clambered over wild roots and under boughs that whirred with biting and sucking things attracted to his wounds.

Once, an unexpected low-hanging vine caught his foot and he nearly tumbled into a rusty cluster of twisted metal sticking out of the soil. He watched the formation intently as he carefully extracted his foot and stumbled around the sharp and deadly scrap.

Pon paused to rest and was too busy swatting at insects and listening to the surprising sound of a nearby waterfall to notice that he was looking at the hidden stairs—a full minute passed before he realized it and jumped back in shock.

The steps were rough like those of the opposite side, though even narrower and with even greater difference in rise from step to step. His eyes followed the steps up the cliff to the left and he began feeling a new fear; the climb actually seemed greater than his previous descent.

She’s waiting!

He kicked off his now-ruined sandals and took the first step, setting his chest flat against the wall. Then he took the second, leaving a broad smear of blood on the stone. He allowed thoughts of Lilia to focus his mind, never once looking down or away from the cliff as he climbed. His eyes remained fixed on each next step and on the distant edge above, which came slowly, slowly closer.

The sun struck him when he cleared the canopy; he did not realize it then, but his crossing had brought him around the Mount’s eastern face, out of sight of Sedhari’s Grief to the north. On he rose, step by painful step, until he achieved the top. He pulled his agonized body up and over the cliff’s edge and rolled onto his back with labored breath, chest pumping and pulse thundering in his ears. He lay there for minutes, not yet to terms with his victory.

Eventually he stirred, rolling away from the edge and slowly pushing himself to his feet. Ahead was a path flanked by craggy stone snaking up the mountain. Water flowed rapidly down in a channel parallel to the trail, and when the channeled stream reached the edge it fell into the ravine. He walked stiffly on and up.

He followed the winding passage until it terminated at a wider carved pathway curving away to the left and right. The right path led down—to where the bridge was, Pon guessed—and the left path was inclined toward the leafy crown of the tree he’d spotted from Sedhari’s Grief. The channel of water also came from there, and he staggered upstream along the path.

He stepped forward a score of paces, wearily turned a bend with his hand against a smooth stone wall, and then the way broadened—and suddenly Pon was standing in the Stories.

Before him was a great stone hollow filled with a garden lush and verdant. The ground was grassy soil interspersed perfectly with smooth stones covered in colorful mosses and lichens. Several large pools rippled playfully and sparkled in the sun while bushes and ferns grew in well-ordered clusters, and the buds of many flowering plants were fat with fertility, ready to bloom at any moment. Water-flowers and lily-pads spotted but did not choke the pools, and animal life chirped and croaked from camouflaged lairs. Above all this, at the far end of the hollow, the greatest Tree that Pon had ever seen stood proud, its boughs casting green shade and admitting life-giving beams of warm light in an endless pattern as the branches swayed in the high breeze. Its trunk was several paces wide, its roots dug into the earth and stone and poked up as half-buried arches across the entirety of the hollow. Pon could see, at the base of the tree’s trunk, the powerful source of the water that fed the pools and the stream he had crossed far below; the spring bubbled with intensity out from some reservoir deep within the rock. Above the great tree rose the peak of the Mount of Endings.

This was the Place of Her Repose—the shrine-grave of the Goddess’s corporeal body.

But Pon’s eyes did not see the Storied beauty of the place as he stepped forward with soul-blasted reverence; his eyes were solely intent on his heart’s true aim: on the soft grasses beside the largest of the pools, seeming asleep in the shade of the tree, lay Lilia esc Radhi.

She lay there, her sun-bronzed skin exposed where her ceremonial blue dress wasn’t, her fiery hair radiating out across the green surrounding her head. Her freckled cheeks were smooth, showing not a hint of anxiety as she slept. He stepped closer and gazed longingly at her maturing hips, her firm youthful breasts, her legs and elegant feet. His breath quickened and his heart raced as he looked upon her lips, was tantalized by her glittering eye lashes.

Lilia is the Goddess, he thought distantly. In adoring awe he collapsed to his knees beside Her, beneath the branches of the great tree.

With a fluttering of her eyes she awoke, and as she rose to consciousness and laid her shining eyes upon him, she smiled.

“You came,” she whispered sleepily, raising her arms to him.

“Yes!” he cried and fell into her arms, embracing her as she did him. Their lips’ meeting was a balm to his fear and pain; the sensation of her was of the sweetest, softest cream—of the warmth of an afternoon sun illuminating calm motes in the air of Angel Bay’s Hall of Rituals while sharing cool fruit and childhood laughter. His hands caressed her body, reaching beneath her dress and seeking pleasure from her smoothness while also searching for her own pleasures, and her arms pulled him tighter as their kiss deepened.

Joyful moments passed out of mind.

Then with the startling suddenness of complete awakening her eyes shot wide and she pushed him away. Small red flecks of his blood dotted the blue of her dress.

“Pon!” she cried, distressed and clambering to her knees to look him over. “What happened—you’re hurt!” Her hands went all over his body, gently touching each of his many wounds; a biting pleasure.

“It’s nothing.”

“It is not! Oh—poor Pon! How did this happen? Did someone—wait a moment!”

She pulled off her dress in a practiced move—one she would recapitulate in the evening’s dance—and clad only in her undergarment slid a pace across the grass to the pool. “Did someone do this to you?” she asked, her eyes angry. She dipped the dress into the waters, then returned to him and began ever-so-gently washing his body.

“Tell me who!” she demanded.

Pon’s jaw worked soundlessly, and he shut his eyes in an attempt to concentrate in Lilia’s exposed presence. As she removed his ruined clothes and softly muttered, “The red will look black in the dark,” while more of his blood soaked into the blue-dyed fabric, he had a sudden inspiration, a feeling he’d never before experienced—a sensation of something in his mind snapping into place.

“Though the bridge did fall, he crossed the water and braved spines and thorns ever in service to She his Goddess,” he spoke.

Lilia froze, distracted from her ministry, then sat back wearing a queer look on her face.

“What is that?” she asked. “You’ve learned a new Story?”

Pon shrugged and bashfully looked away. “The—the rope bridge broke—and—and nobody knew what to do. I took another way.”

Her eyes widened and she breathed, “You climbed?”

He nodded.

“I had to.”

Lilia leapt to her feet, imperiously placing her fists on her hips and looming over him. He gazed up at her and sunlight glittered through the branches above, striking her hair and creating a blinding halo. Her bare chest and shoulders, shadowed verdant ambient, made his heart race.

“Pon er Lugal, you did not have to!” she cried. “You foolish boy! What if you’d fallen?! Anything could have happened! You could have been—hurt—”

He smiled and accepted her affectionate admonishments.

“—hurt more than you were, I mean!” she finished with a huff. She knelt down in front of him, then wrapped her arms around his neck and pushed him back onto the grass. Her head rested on his chest, her hair a blazing crest against his skin, and she caressed his arms and sides. Her thighs straddled him and her warmth sent pleasant shocks up his responding body.

She sighed, twirling a finger against him.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “You really shouldn’t be here, you know.”

“I know.” He petted her hair, following it down her form.

“They’ll probably throw you back into the ravine when they find out.”

“Probably.”

Their free hands clasped—she turned her head to look into his eyes.

“I would choose you, if they would let me.”

“I know,” he said again, his petting hand slipping down grasp her buttocks. Her body gently writhed against his arousal.

They kissed.

After a long moment she levered herself up to awkwardly remove her remaining piece of clothing and Pon watched with enthralled reverence as she revealed herself. Sharing in his glory, she fell sensually back among the grasses and flowers—and her thighs spread. Somewhere nearby, a creature croaked; a small fish leapt from the pond to snatch an insect from the air.

Pon with breath heavy and heart pounding descended upon Lilia, kissing her breasts, her collar and shoulder, her cheek. Her brow. His hand traced her belly; hers joined and guided his, and she bit her lip as he entered her.

“Slowly,” she sighed.

He nodded, shuddering. His hips moved, encouraged by her legs wrapping around his waist.

They kissed again, breaking in occasional time with his gently maturing thrusts. Her arms encircled his neck, held him tight, and she began to cry out with each gasp of breath to join with his own animal groaning.

His pace quickened. She tightened.

Unseen by either youth, tiny spindly root-like white tendrils grew from the soil and entwined in Lilia’s hair, flowing to her scalp unnoticed amid the growing tingle of her ecstasy.

Radiating out from the two young lovers, the budding flowers unfurled into bloom.

Lilia’s completion neared; Pon’s breath labored in resistance to his own.

With a happy laughing squeal her eyes opened wide, and Pon—head lowered with concentration—did not see the shining specks of light swirling in her pupils and coating her irises.

“Pon!” she cried. “Pon!” she gasped. “Something—! Glowing—!”

“Lilia!” he groaned as she breathlessly squealed mysterious things.

Her body shook, thighs squeezed his hip tight and her head was thrown back in involuntary wonder.

His thrusts grew ragged, bucking with strange energies; he buried his head into her neck with a trembling shout.

Neither of them noticed a soft sound of tumbling soil and stone from behind the great tree.

Stillness and breath.

Heat and wet.

Subsiding fullness and passionate kisses.

Pon’s hands grabbed Lilia’s hair, dragging his fingers through the shining red, and the tendrils came loose and fell away unnoticed.

* * *

“They said they would wait for you to appear before they did anything,” Pon explained as he lazed atop her warm and trembling body. Their hands clasped in idle affection.

“I understand it. The bridge will have to be rebuilt. They need someone—me—to be on this side so they can.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“You’ll always be the one I choose, Pon er Lugal, no matter what happens. You’re the only boy worthy of it.” She gasped and squirmed beneath him in girlish excitement. “Actually—no! The only man. You beat them all—whatever that Northerner thinks, you are my true pairing—Pon ir Lugal.”

He hid his face between her breasts.

“Say!” she said, and he raised his head in alarm. She was looking toward the end of the hollow, beyond the tree. She pointed and said, “What is that?”

He saw, then they both scrambled to their feet.

Behind the great trunk, a part of the stony back wall had collapsed into a pile of debris, revealing a shallow cave or tunnel. Pon and Lilia looked to each other and then stepped toward it with hands held. Closer they saw it was only a shallow alcove, but shaded within was a door with a simple curved handle, rounded at the top and made of a dull metal. They approached it.

“Was this here before?” Pon asked.

“No. It must have been concealed. Do the Stories mention it?”

“Not that I know of.”

Pon, filled with a pioneering energy, stepped forward and grasped the half-loop of the door’s handle and pulled. There was a moment of strong resistance that quickly faded with a faint hiss, and then it opened with only a light squeaking.

Within was darkness, and they stepped forward cautiously until their eyes adjusted to the dim light—and then Pon tripped on an unseen object. The thing was kicked away with a dry clattering as Pon fell to his hands and knees.

“Careful!” hissed Lilia. She moved to help him, stepping aside to allow more light through the doorway.

Less than a hand’s breadth away from Pon’s face was a human skull.

He sprang upwards, startling a squeak from Lilia. All the hairs on his body stood up in fear; Lilia saw the skull and scattered bones strewn across the floor and covered her mouth in shock.

“A tomb,” she whispered. Pon edged back towards the entrance.

“No, don’t block the light!” Lilia said. He sidled against a wall; the rock was cold against his naked skin.

They took frightened stock of the place. It was a low stone chamber several paces across and about twice as many deep. Crumbling wood of ancient furniture leaned against walls or lay in collapsed piles of dust and metal fittings. The bones seemed to comprise that of a single individual and had lain undisturbed as their owner had fallen, until Pon’s accidental disruption of their sepulchral order. Toward the rear of the chamber were two openings on either side leading into a deeper darkness.

Lilia stepped forward, careful not to further disrupt the inhabitant’s eternal rest. Pon stuck near the entrance.

He whispered, “Is this—the Goddess’s true Repose?” Even with Lilia’s backside exposed before him, he could not shake his eyes from the remains. A shudder ran up his spine. “Are these bones—?”

She knelt to inspect various leavings as she worked her way across the room, but found little of interest in the near half.

“I don’t think so,” she said—her voice held an unfamiliar intensity—and she pointed to a dusty pelvis. “These belonged to a man.”

Further in she found among a number of strewn bones the object Pon had inadvertently kicked: a thick rectangle of paper sheets bound to a sturdy spine.

“I’ve heard of these,” Lilia whispered as she took up the tome.

“What is it?”

“A kind of scroll,” she answered. “The people of the east make texts like this. I saw one, once—a southerner had taken one in a raid on Outlanders—or at least that’s what he said.” She held the thing reverently. “It was nothing like this, though. The construction is amazing!”

I can’t even read our own scrolls, Pon thought, feeling a mild loss of interest. A sense of the mundane took him and some of his fear evaporated. He moved to join Lilia, stepping around the remains and making warding signs with his hands.

She opened the text; the parchment within shimmered and seemed to collect the meager light flowing into the chamber, and each page was covered in runes, diagrams or both. She flipped through several sheets, then slapped the volume shut and opened it again to an arbitrary page.

Pon meanwhile explored the far end of the space and discovered that the two passages were actually shallow alcoves. In one was a low stone shelf and the other contained thin rotted textiles in a pile. A sparkle of red caught his eye and he knelt to poke through the fabric.

His fingers pinched a thick ring about the size of his palm, made of a red material with the texture but not the heft of stone; he gingerly lifted it and found that it was tied to one end of a long strip of material, and the other end was attached to the middle of a thin and sparkling blue rod as long as his hand.

A belt, he considered. Or a sash.

“Goddess Be!” exclaimed Lilia. Pon kept the belt—sash?—and returned to her.

“What?” he asked, looking down at the opened pages.

Across two entire sheets was inked a map covered in runic labels, and roughly a quarter of the map’s width from the leftmost side, among bumpy lines Pon thought might represent hills, a star was circled and an arrow pointed to it. The arrow was accompanied by a crown symbol and runes written in a different hand from the labels. The ink forming the circle, arrow, crown and runes had a distinct sheen that the rest of the map’s lines and labels lacked.

“This is the Crest!” said Lilia. She looked at him with a meaningful tilt of her head. Seeing his blank expression, she added, “The Crest of the Angel-Sent!”

“Oh!” he said. He closed his eyes and recited, “Looked the First with view regretful upon stymied Angel-Sent, and all the People felt the anguished loss they saw in her heart…” He trailed off; he’d always found the Angel-Sent stories to be deeply sad. He added, “The People cried because the Crest was already lost before she descended from the heavens.”

Lilia nodded eagerly, stabbing the page.

“I think this map shows where the Crest is, Pon! And look—here!” She pointed to the leftmost edge of the map, along which a long range of mountains were inked.

“This is Goddess’s Demise. I think this little mark here is where we are now. See this big area inked with dashed lines? That’s the Sea of the Dead. The mark in the middle is the Island of the Fallen Mountain.”

Pon frowned, having to take Lilia’s word; the way people used maps always seemed a kind of magic to him. He pointed to a symbol of three dots arranged in a triangle on the furthest right of the map. It was featured as prominently as the circled star, though without the emphasizing marks.

“What’s that?” he asked.

Lilia peered at it then shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you know anything in the Stories that mentions anything like that?”

Pon shook his head. “I don’t know—maybe. Master Talis would know.”

“Hmm.” Lilia flipped a few pages forward and back, then returned to the map.

She stated, “I’m going to go.”

“Ah?”

She looked him in the eyes while resting her finger on the Crest mark, and for a short instant Pon thought Lilia had grown into an entirely new person. She blinked and the moment passed.

“I’m going to go find it,” she said. “The Crest.”

He stared.

Go? Lilia is going to go? She’s going to leave?

“What,” he asked, his voice shaky, “what do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I think I’m not—but I feel like maybe I am. I think it’s something I have to do.”

Lilia straightened and held her head high. Standing naked in the tomb, warm sunlight casting a broad beam into the space and setting her hair alight, holding the book open before her, Pon felt that she truly was fit for the role of Goddess.

She said, “Whatever happens tonight at the Gathering, I’m leaving as soon as I can. I need to study this book. I think maybe I can learn to read it—no, I know it. I’m going to learn its mysteries, then—then I’ll cross the Sea of the Dead, and I’ll find the Crest.”

Pon once more could not grasp the words to articulate his confusion and despair; his eyes spoke for him, and Lilia’s sank with realization.

“Please, Pon,” she said. “Please don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to leave—leave you, but—this!” She held out the book. “This is bigger than we are.”

She turned to him and put her forehead to his chest.

“I love you,” she said, “and I also need to do this—please.”

I—I—

He’d been dunked into the coldest deathly waters.

You are—

“I don’t understand,” he said, and she trembled with a sobbing laugh.

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“I think you’re trying to enter the Stories,” he said. She tilted her head up to look into his eyes; his vision blurred. “Many sad things happen in the Stories. What if you, um, fall down?”

“What?”

“It’s nothing—just something Master Talis explained to me once.”

Her hand reached up to caress his cheek, and he took a deep breath.

“I won’t tell,” he said.

She sighed and pressed her body against him, then pulled back asking, “What’s that?” Pon looked down and saw he was still holding the sash—belt?—with the red and blue buckle.

“I found it back there,” he said. She smiled and gently took it from his hand, then inspected the material and tested its strength.

“Let me—” she murmured and wrapped the strip over his shoulder as a replacement for his spine-ripped Storykeeper’s sash, securing it by slipping the blue rod through the red ring. She smiled and caressed him.

“It looks fine on you, Pon ir Lugal,” she said.

He smiled, but could not keep the sadness from his eyes.

* * *

Pon remained hidden that day while Lilia showed herself at the broken bridge and performed her half of the temporary and frightening replacement bridge’s construction, then watched discretely as she crossed over with the day’s ending. The sun was dipping below the horizon in the west, reflecting silver off the Living Sea, and in the dark east lurked the shadow that was the Sea of the Dead. On the far horizon there misted the faint line of the Island of the Fallen Mountain.

As she disappeared among the tents at Sedhari’s Grief and preparations were made to begin the Dance and Telling of the Story of the First Gathering, Pon looked to the sky. The sun vanished. In the east, above the Island, the white dot of Goddess’s Promise glided rapidly upward, and nearly straight overhead Pon could see the steady, slow-moving pinpricks of light that were the moon-stars Eetun Bor the Winged One and its slower brother Heaven’s Tear.

Standing on the Mount of Endings, he gazed at the Promise and said aloud, “I swear to the Goddess that I won’t tell anyone you’re leaving, Lilia isc Radhi, and—” The young man took a deep breath. “—I swear to Her that no matter how far you go, or how long it takes me or what spines or thorns I have to push through—I will follow you.”

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The story continues in Chapter 1: Lunar Greetings!

You can read more about the life and adventures of Pon ir Lugal and Lilia isc Radhi in Bridgehouse, available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.

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