Chương 22: Plum

I rang the bell at sunrise but nothing answered. I rang it again twenty minutes later, and then a third time after that, in case the first two had been impolite somehow. I sat very still on the stones in front of the tree for an hour, and nothing came. I tried hiding behind one of the low structures at the back of the garden, in case the spirit was the type that only showed himself when he believed himself unobserved, and I held the position long enough that my left foot fell asleep. Nothing came.

But I was not discouraged. I tried walking the perimeter of the garden three times in a slow circle, based on something I once read about spirits, then I tried sitting cross-legged in front of the bell and chanting the only ritual phrases I could remember from any of the books, which were not very many and which I was reasonably sure I was mispronouncing. I tried saying hello in a clear loud voice toward the tree, then please then I begged, yet nothing happened.

Around midmorning, I noticed some sorts of fruits on the tree, so I climbed it and found them hanging in small clusters on the inside of the canopy where the pink flowers were thickest, dark red and round. I picked one. The skin gave under my fingers in a way that suggested it was ripe. I held it for a moment, looking at it, and then on impulse I climbed down and laid the fruit at the base of the tree as an offering and climbed back up to hide and wait.

But nothing, so came I climbed down and took the fruit back and ate it.

"Mhmm." It was one of the best things I had ever put in my mouth. The juice ran down the side of my hand and the flesh came apart against my tongue, then a slow warmth spread through my chest the way it had spread through it when I had drunk the tonic in the forest, only deeper and quieter and longer-lasting. My channels felt fuller a moment after the swallow than they had felt a moment before. +3 Mana Pool +2 Stamina I picked another and ate that one too.

I was four fruits deep, sitting in the fork of one of the higher branches with juice on my chin and a small contented heat running through my mana pool, when I heard footsteps on the flagstones below.

"Young Lord." Mireth was standing at the foot of the tree with her hands folded in front of her, looking up.

"Mireth. Hello."

"Those are suren plums."

"They're very good."

"Yes, Young Lord."

"Are they... should I not be eating them?" She smiled.

"They are yours, by every right this place recognizes. The tree produces only a few each season. The keepers leave them for the birds, since none of us would presume. I am told they are the finest fruit in the kingdom. I would not personally know."

"Oh." I looked at the half-eaten one in my hand. I had been about to reach for a fifth.

"It is midday, Young Lord. If you would care to come down, the meal is ready." I came down with two of the fruits in one hand and started up a branch for two more.

"How many will there be at the meal?" She blinked up at me.

"Your meal will be served separately, Young Lord. In your quarters." I stopped halfway up the branch.

"Oh. I was hoping I could eat with you, actually. If that's allowed. I... I like the company." The keepers were not like the people who had moved through my old wing back at the estate. The four attendants who had dressed me in formal robes for two separate councils had not met my eyes once between them. Mireth had met my eyes the moment she straightened from her first bow at the gates and had not stopped meeting them since, and so did the other keepers. It made it easier to ask things. She paused for a beat, then…

"... There would be three of us, Young Lord."

"Then four plums." I climbed back up, picked two more, and came down with all four cradled against the front of my robe.

"I thought we could have these later. With the tea, perhaps. They really are too good for one person to eat alone, and it seems unfair that you've been tending this tree for so long without ever having tasted what it grows."

"Young Lord, I could not. It would not be—" The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Please. I would like it very much." She looked at the plums in my hands, and then at my face, and the small smile from the garden returned.

"... Thank you, Young Lord. We would be honoured."

"Thank you. Please. Lead the way."

The meal was simple. Grilled fish I did not recognise, a small bowl of pale brown grain I had never tasted before, and a few cold vegetables on the side. I was not going to pretend it was the finest thing I had eaten, but Mireth and one of the older keepers had cooked it themselves, and I was not about to say anything other than what I said, which was that it was good.

"You are too kind, Young Lord." The third keeper, a thin man with white hair tied back at the nape of his neck, asked me how the morning at the shrine had gone. I sighed before I could stop myself.

"I didn't manage to see anything. I tried, I really did, I rang the bell three times, I sat very still for an hour, I walked the perimeter, I tried hiding, I... yes. Nothing." The three of them exchanged a small look between them.

"Do not be too disappointed," Mireth said.

"Saoren has not been seen by living eyes in a very long time. It is not unusual for the elder spirits to withdraw to their own world after a long enough silence on this side. Many of them never come back at all. It would not be the strangest ending for him." I set my chopsticks down on the edge of the bowl and looked at the grain.

"Young Lord." I looked up.

"May I tell you a small secret?"

"... Yes?" She glanced once at the other two keepers, who did not seem surprised, and then back at me.

"The texts say the veil is thinnest at night, on a full moon. The bell in the garden is not an ordinary bell. It belonged personally to the fourth Axiom of the line, and he is said to have rung it on nights of the full moon when he wished to speak to Saoren. As it happens, tonight is a full moon." I straightened on the cushion.

"Really?"

"I would not have you hold too much hope on it. But you are who you are, and the moon is what it is, and the bell has not been rung by an Axiom in over a thousand years. Perhaps something will answer. Perhaps nothing will. I only thought you should know."

"Thank you, Mireth. Truly." She inclined her head, and we went back to the meal, and I ate the rest of the grain without tasting any of it because my head had already gone somewhere else. The afternoon passed slowly. I sat under the suren in the garden for most of it and read nothing and thought too much.

At sunset the three keepers brought tea out into the small courtyard outside the main building, and we drank it together on a low wooden bench while the sky over the eastern ridges turned from gold to copper to a deep blood red, and the suren plums were laid out on a small lacquer plate between us. Mireth ate hers slowly, and she did not say anything for a moment after the first bite, and then she said oh very quietly. The other two followed, and had similar reactions. I watched the sun fall behind the mountains.

I had never seen a sunset from this high up. I did not have words for the colour the light went as it left the sky, but I supposed a simple, honest way to say it was that it was beautiful. Then night came. The keepers retired to their wing. The lanterns along the path were lit and left burning low. The full moon climbed over the eastern ridge slowly, and by the time it sat clear of the rocks and the garden was lit silver from above, I was already standing in front of the inner gate.

I pushed it open, stepped through, and rang the bell. The sound carried out into the garden once, clean and small, and faded into the silver light. I stepped back from the basin, crossed to the largest of the mossy boulders near the wall, and crouched down behind it to just wait. The moon was directly above the suren by then. The pink flowers were silver in the new light and the garden had gone very still, no wind, no insects, no movement from the path beyond the gate.

I held my knees against my chest and watched the bell on its post and waited. Please come. Please come. Please come. I sent the thought out as hard as I could. At the bell, the moon, the tree, even the open air around all of it. My eyes started to ache from not blinking, and I kept going anyway. I am not sure they closed though. My eyes, I mean.

The soft sound of the bell pulled me back as I gasped them open, afraid I might have missed my window, but thankfully, the moon was still where it had been and the garden was still silver and the bell was still making the small soft sound on its post, and— … Wait… The bell! For a second my heart climbed all the way up into my throat before I understood, as I checked, that the sound was just the wind. A fresh clean wind off the upper slope, the kind of wind that makes you sleepy without warning you it is going to.

I had nodded off. I had no idea for how long. I let my breath out slow and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes then stood up from behind the rock and dusted the moss off my knees, walking back across the garden toward the tree. If I was going to be awake on a mountain at midnight under a full moon for nothing, I might as well at least get another fruit out of it. I reached the trunk and pulled myself up to the first branch and from there to the second, into the inner part of the canopy where the plums hung.

I picked one and ate it standing. The juice was as good as it had been at midday. Better, maybe, in the cold air. I closed my eyes for a second to let it land, and when I opened them again I saw a light. It was on a branch a few feet above mine. A small soft blueness sitting in the air where there should not have been anything blue. I blinked, and it did not go away. I frowned, and it did not go away. So I narrowed my eyes at it, and the blueness held its shape for me, and then it started to resolve.

The shape pulled itself out of the blue from the inside. A small body. Four limbs that I could count. Round dark eyes, big in proportion to the head, set into a face that was somewhere between a cat and something I had no name for. The blueness was the colour of the fur, or the skin, or whatever was on the outside of it.

The thing was about the size of a large house cat, and it was sitting on the branch above mine, balanced on its lower set of arms, and its upper set of arms were folded across its small round chest, with its tail curled around the branch behind it. It was looking directly at me. Ding! [Spirit Sight: Level 1 (0%) > Level 1 (2%)] I did not move, or breathe, for that matter. The creature on the branch tilted its head a fraction. The big dark eyes did not leave my face.

"... You can see me?" The voice came out small and a little startled. It moved on the branch as it spoke, shifting its weight, the arms repositioning, and I felt my eyes go very wide and I still did not breathe.

"You really can see me..." My heart was beating hard, as I suddenly realized it was the middle of the night, alone on top of a mountain, in a tree, and the entire idea suddenly seemed like the stupidest thing I had done in my entire life as a creature with an alarming amount of mana stared back at me in a distinctly unfriendly way.