After descending the mountain, the JRB returned to the valley and hiked out of the Blazing Mountains. They double backed on the previous trail for only two days before the path intersected the Benden River. Following their previously decided plan, they followed the Benden River toward the south. Rose constantly checked the map they received from Gryph, the village cartographer. It appeared they needed to follow the river for at least three days. At which juncture, the river turned east toward the Glass Sea. Soon after this turn, they would travel south in the Expanse – an uncharted section of the map (uncharted except for the name
“Expanse”). Upon reaching this uncharted region, would soon enter the Verve Valley- the belt of land that abutted the river. Somewhere around this juncture, the river’s name changed to Dry River – an ominous name for any river.
Following the Benden was more challenging than the travelers expected. The map, while proving accurate, failed to account for the meanderings of the river. By following the river, the troupe zigzagged through the land, an inefficient means of travel. Instead of walking in a straight line toward the desired end (and mirroring a bird’s flight), they spent significant time traveling side-to-side, just as a sailing vessel might tack into a stiff headwind. Daks suggested they abandon the Bind River and its meandering trajectory, but the other three eventually persuaded him otherwise. They emphasized the wisdom of being on a “certain path” regardless of delay rather than opting for the unknown outcome from traveling an “unknown path.” Accordingly, the “certain path” that initially projected as a “three day journey” took four times longer than expected. At least, as Talon hoped, they journeyed with full bellies; the river offered an abundance of food and water.
Three days into quest for the sand from the mouth of Dry River, Rose finally had opportunity to ask Willow about her flesh-restoring abilities. The moment Rose heard her explanation atop Five-Point Peak
In the healing of Daks, many questions flooded her mind, but she wanted to talk with Willow in private. (The girl still lacked complete trust in Daks.) Finding a few moments outside earshot of the two boys proved difficult, but a cloistered moment finally arrived. After setting camp along the Benden River for the evening, Daks and Talon attempted to make fishing poles. Neither had ever fished before, but they heard of the fishing exploits of a mutual childhood friend – Grayson Smith. Trying to recollect the seemingly endless – and mostly useless – information from their friend’s incessant spewing of “fish tales” was difficult. Because of Grayson’s exaggerated stories, anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path tried to disentangle from his conversation, and the most effective means for disentangling was to stare away blankly, nod occasionally, and listen inattentively. The most important rule, however, was never to ask Grayson a question, because once that happened, the talkative angler bounced from story to story in a futile effort to answer the question by recounting an endless litany of unrelated events. Further, because of Grayson’s storytelling propensity, most of the village used “fish-tale” as an expression for a person recounting lengthy and uninteresting personal stories. For examples, a person running late to a meeting might arrive with this excuse: “Sorry for being late, I got ‘fished-taled’ on the way here.” Most villagers understood the meaning. During their present predicament, Daks and Talon wished they had listened to Grayson more attentively. Surely, in all his ramblings, he explained how to fish, but the two travelers remembered very little. Using the little information they recollected, they decided to catch some fish for their dinner.
While Daks and Talon dipped into their first learn-to-fish escapade, the girls stayed at the camp – neither in a learn-to-fish mood. Once alone, Rose initiated a conversion she first wanted to have on Five-Point Peak. “Willow, I wanted to ask you about ability as a flesh-weaver.”
“Sure,” answered Willow; the tone in her voice did not match the receptivity of her words.
“Can anyone learn to be a flesh-weaver? I mean it is something you are or is something you learn to do?” asked Rose.
“Is there any difference?” responded Willow, “Can anyone learn to be a sun-sculptor? Is it something you learn or something you are?”
“I guess it’s both,” answered Rose.
“Well, I will tell you how my mum explained it to me,” interjected Willow, “She said, ‘The only way to be a flesh weaver is to be taught by someone else. No person can ever be one without having been taught, but the only way to learn is from parent to child. Something about that relationship enables the powers.’ That is how she explained it to me. I must say, however, her explanation never made sense, but what are you to do? There are lots of things that don’t make sense.”
“Strange,” responded Rose, “My father explained sun-sculpting to me with almost the same words. It never made sense to me either – sounded more like riddles than anything else.” Both of the girls shrugged toward one another in an acknowledgement of their mutual frustration. Rose continued, “I have another question for you. That day in your village when we were collecting the Isigor root, is that root needed for your potion.”
Willow answered, “It is. There are a couple of things needed, but the most difficult to collect is the Isigor root. As you remember, it can be very difficult to cultivate. The other things are readily available, but not the Isigor. So, realizing you were about to leave, I guessed I would leave with you, and I guessed that at some point in this little trip of ours something would go wrong and someone would need my help. Something also goes wrong, right?”
Rose nodded in agreement. Despite Willow initial hesitancy at answering her questions, Rose now found her forthcoming. Thus, sensing the receptivity of the other girl, Rose continued to press. “Did you heal lots of people in your village? I mean, if someone was sick or something, did they come to you to get better?”
Willow snickered quietly to herself. The question posed by the curly haired girl exemplified an over simplistic perception that was not borne out in the lived experience. Still smiling but keeping her thoughts to herself, Willow responded, “It is not quite like that. People do not just show up on door step one after the other wanting to be ‘healed.’ To begin, my mother is herbalist, and that is the trade in which I am being trained. Villagers come to us for their herbal needs – some are medicinal, some are aromatic, and some are culinary. On rare occasion, some people even want ornamental herbs. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. By trade, we are herbalist. I spend most of my time collecting roots, leaves, and stems, and my mother spends most of her time processing these items. Not terribly exciting, but it is a decent life.”
“So, when do you heal people?” pressed Rose.
Willow answered, “We don’t really ‘heal’ people. We fix them. When there is something wrong with their bodies, we restore them to the natural state. We never think of it as ‘healing.’”
“Okay, so when do ‘fix’ or ‘flesh-weave’ others?”
“On rare occasions, when people are very ill or have great need, we will restore them, but, I must tell you, our restoring powers are not looked upon fondly by the others. People do not mind coming to us for a medicinal herb, but as for restoring, that is another thing. You must know that we are considered ‘freaks’ and ‘outcasts.’ You’ve seen our house, right? We don’t have many friends, none really. Someone in our village has to be very desperate before they come to us, and when they do come, it is usually late at night. They want avoid being seen by others, and when someone questions them about how their sudden improvement, seldom will the healed person tell the truth. Everyone pretty much knows the truth even if no one will really admit to being restored by us.”
Somewhat taken back by the realization that Willow and her mother were considered “freaks” and “outcasts,” Rose changed the conversation to another matter. She wanted an answer to something that vexed her for weeks. Rose rhetorically asked the younger girl, “Do you remember how our village was designed just like your village – the same layout?” Willow nodded i
n agreement. “Well,” continued Rose with another rhetorical question, “Do you remember how we could not remember what exactly resided in our village at the spot where your house would be?” Willow nodded again. “I know what resides there.” Rose paused for a moment as she noticed the increased attention of the other girl. With Willow’s eyes staring straight into hers, Rose continued, “It is a graveyard.”
“What?” asked Willow, “A graveyard? What is that?”
“It is a place where they put dead people into the ground.”
Willow contorted her face at the idea. “You put dead people into the ground. Whatever for? In my village we always burned their bodies in a pyre.”
“Same as in my village, except for that one spot. For some reason, the village has a graveyard, and there are these stone markers that identify the person who has been buried at that spot.”
“Oh,” quipped Willow, who was obviously disgusted at that notion of dead bodies lying fallow beneath the soil. She hoped to change the conversation when Rose continued the banter.
“Why do you think there is a graveyard in our village at the place of your cottage?”
Willow was obviously flustered by the question and as a result, she snapped an answer rather than giving the question any thought, “I don’t know. Go ask Daks and see if he has an idea!”
“You have the powers to defeat death. That must be it! Do people even die in your village? I mean can someone come to see you and can you keeping healing – uh, restoring – them so they don’t have to die?” asked Rose.
Willow shook her head from side to side, mostly in frustration at need to respond to the simplified notions. She answered with intonation indicative of someone repeating a well-known phrase, “No one cheats death. As a flesh-weaver, that is first thing you learn. No one cheats death. We all die at some point, and we do not have the powers to prevent that from happening. Sometimes people will come to us for restoring, and the process simply does not work. It is seldom, but it does happen. We have no idea why it works like this, but it does, especially as people get older. When it is time for a person to die, we can do nothing. In addition, once a person dies, we can give no help. There must be a spark of life for a flesh weaver to revive a person. These are just a few of the many rules involved in restoring others. We don’t just trot around touching people and making them better.”
“Oh,” answered a now defensive Rose, “I wasn’t trying to say that you did, I mean … I am just trying to understand you better.” Despite realizing the other girl’s frustration, Rose continued to query her companion, “Did you worry that you might not be able to heal Daks … since sometimes your healing thing doesn’t work.”
Despite the more invasive questions, Willow grew more at ease with each ensuing answer. She tended to be overly defensive when explaining her healing abilities. Prior to meeting Rose, however, these types of questions just probed for information to ‘justify’ the pre-label of “freak.” Inquirers simply snooped for antidotal evidence to bolster their predetermined conclusions. As Rose continued to ask her, Willow grew more aware that Rose’s curiosities did not derive from a tacit disapproval. Ulterior motives obviously motivated the older girl’s search for information, but the motives lacked the intent to demean the flesh-weaver. Thus, Willow willingly continued the conversation.
The girl with ashen skin and blonde hair answered the question about healing Daks, “No, I had no worries about healing Daks. His injury was the result of an accident. You remember what happened, right? The ice just gave way. That fall looked unintended. It was just an unfortunate event, and when such events happen, we can restore those wounds. Usually, my mother and I can tell when someone faces death as a result of the way and when someone faces death as a result of marring.” The moment the words exited her mouth, Willow braced for a new wave of inquiries.
“The ‘way’ and ‘marring’, what do they mean? I have never heard of either one of those.”
Willow answered, but she opted for an abbreviated response. She knew, of course, Rose wanted (and need) to know more, but at present, a shortened answer should suffice. “The ‘way’,” Willow began, “Is a term we give to the nature of things, at least as they should be. I have always thought of it as the ‘The way it should be,’ but, when we speak of the way, it is much more than just a wanting of how things should be. It speaks more of how things will be, at least when all is made right. Thus, to speak of the ‘way’ accepts that the life in Centage is not right as it is, and life is not as it should be, and life is not as it will be. Thinking upon the ‘way’ also possesses great hope in that one day the ‘way’ will become the norm, and right will prevail in all things.”
“And ‘marring’?” asked Rose.
“Oh, yes, I almost forgot,” answered an increasingly emboldened Willow, “‘Marring’ refers to how all things have been distorted from the ‘way’. It tells of how all things moves toward death and destruction. There is more to it than that but you get the idea, right?”
Rose countered, “Not everything moves toward death and destruction.”
Willow immediately countered back, “Show me a living thing that can live forever – that never dies – and then I will believe you.”
Rose started to speak but then realized she had nothing to say. She reflected, Willow was right in her contention that all living things must die, but was dying an essential element of living? Rose preferred to entertain these ideas in her mind’s solitude rather than via quick, and seemingly well-rehearsed, responses of her compatriot. Thus, she casually nudged to conversation topics to other matters. Willow, for her part, experienced relief that the conversation ended. She disliked trying to explain these things to other people. I just recite the things my mother said, she realized. When Rose pushed for further explanations, I felt overwhelmed. How can I, a mere eleven-year old, be expected to answer such difficult questions? Why was she considered the expert? With these thoughts dancing through her thoughts, she easily joked with Rose concerning the likely ineptitude of the boys’ fishing exploits.
Talon and Daks returned from this initial fishing trip with saturated clothes and empty hands. Apparently, Talon noticed a number of good size fish swimming close to the shore, but for some reason, the fish refused the bait – a small insect the boys found next to the shore. Growing frustrated by the fish’s disinterest, Talon jumped into the river in an effort to catch the fish by hand. Not knowing much about rivers however, Talon knew nothing of the slick, algae-covered bottom. Once his feet touched on the river’s rocky bottom, he slid flat down on back, which submerged his entire body. Daks, not privy to his companion’s rash plan, only saw his friend suddenly leap into river and plunge immediately below its surface. Believing some harm befell his fellow traveler, Daks likewise plunged into the water’s depths in effort to rescue his friend. In the end, both were soaked and quite embarrassed. Hoping to avoid an inglorious return, the two JRB members attempted to drip dry before returning to the camp. After two hours of huddling in their cold, wet clothes, they abandoned their drying effort and returned red-faced to their campsite. Rose and Willow both noticed their soaked companions, and opted for perhaps the most bothersome response of all, they said nothing.
In the ensuing days, the travelers continued along the Benden River, and as expected, the trip took much longer than their original calculations because of river’s indirect path. At times, they left the river’s edge during their travels in an effort to reduce their travel time (just as Daks originally suggested), but they remained in sight of the river for fear of getting lost. Even though the trip required more days than expected, at least, their path was certain.
The fishing exploits also continued during the evenings, but with much better success. Daks and Talon were still getting soaked on most evenings, but at least they were also starting to add some fish to their evening meal. Neither Willow nor Rose showed much interest in fis
hing. Both were content to feast upon the berries and edible foliage that grew close to the water’s edge. The landscape, now in the full bloom of spring, was a vibrant array of color, beauty, and life. The magnificence of the outer world betrayed the agony of the JRB’s struggle self-chosen struggle to counter the tide of evil. Even the four adolescents seemed to have forgotten their plight. The last few days offered a reprieve from their struggle. Their attitudes were increasingly carefree, and while Talon was sure to remind them of the reason for their voyage, his increasingly rare rebukes lacked earnestness. These carefree days, however, were fading just as certainly as spring eventually fades into summer (and summer into fall and fall into the lifeless of winter.
13 SUNRISE