Filif was quiet too. “The organism from which my people came,” he said, “one of the original species of Demisiv vegetation, arose something like five hundred million years ago as you reckon time. As far as we can tell from our own investigations, it started very small, in a near-equatorial zone mostly surrounded by several of what were then the largest lakes on the planet. We were really shrubs then—” and his berries went pink with amusement at Carmela. “Just low scrubby frondy things, like your earliest gymnosperms.
“That earliest form of Demisiv had a hard time at first, as conditions on the homeworld went through some difficult climatic cycles, and competition among the various arising plant species was fierce. But after a few million years it hit on a useful strategy. It gave up producing seed and instead shifted its energy into producing a communal root system, from which new microcolonies and eventually macrocolonies of plants could grow.”
“Could be smart,” Nita said, “if you’re in a hostile environment.”
Filif rustled, a gesture of agreement. “A plant that shares a root system with others—a superplant, I think your people call it—has a better chance of competing against plants that grow independently from seed, the ones that have to rely on their own food supplies to last through their period of greatest vulnerability.
“And that strategy became key to that earliest lifeform’s success. It spread, slowly at first and then more quickly millennium by millennium, across the world. It occupied great plains and climbed mountains and pushed down to the waters of every lakeshore. Finally it covered nearly all the world except at the poles. And as the millions of years crept by, since it no longer needed more territory to survive, it began to diversify in other ways. It developed rudimentary local organ structures and the beginnings of a nervous system. That neural network proved very useful in helping the proto-Demisiv locate and leverage the best sources of light as weather and the seasons changed, and it grew more complex with every passing aeon.”
“I bet I know where this is going…” Matt said.
“Of course you do,” Filif said. “It became conscious. And then, after enough time, it became self-aware. The Demisiv was born.”
“Was born,” Kit said. “Not ‘were.’”
“Yes,” Filif said. “Because it was one. It was only one, one huge organism communicating through a single neural net that covered the world, with thoughts that took a whole season to travel from one side to another of that mind. And so it remained for a long time. Millions of seasons went by, winter through summer and spring through fall, and the poles precessed and the stars shifted, and that one life form ruled the world unchallenged. Nothing could compete, especially when it finally learned to move—to shift the root structure itself along through the ground, taking with it the structures that grew out of it and absorbed the sunlight and breathed out the air. The whole world was a forest that ebbed and flowed with light and weather the way your oceans ebb and flow with their tides.
“And it might still be that way until something else happened. Very slowly in those vast spaces, a further diversification began, secondary to another, severer wave of climatic changes. It took too long for messages to travel great distances when there was need to react quickly to storms or floods or volcanic activity. As a result the Demisiv organism began to decentralize. Consciousness began to concentrate itself into smaller groups and patches, more tightly knit—still part of the great Whole, of course, but with increased autonomy in moving smaller populations’ root complexes to where conditions were more favorable. And out at the edge of one such population—a small one high up in the habitability range of the furthest northern hemisphere—the thing happened that would change everything.”
Filif went quiet for a moment in the flickering of the candles. “We think of the one by whom everything was changed as a ‘her’,” he said, “because the above-ground growth by which she expressed herself was berrying out when the Event took place. Indeed she was normally berried, because she paid less attention to that state than was seen as appropriate. In fact she seemed to pay so little attention to what was seen as normal work and business—watering, light gathering, helping the communal roots to spread—that she always had trouble finding consensus with others in her local growth-group. And as often happened with such—for consensus and the survival of the Whole were seen as everything—she found herself pushed to the edges of the group, out into the worst conditions, the most barren places, where light was hard to come by and water frozen. When the group moved its root complex she was dragged along, almost forgotten… except insofar as the group expected her, as often happened to such isolated microregions, to wither away. And insofar as that part of the Whole ever thought of her, it would have been glad if that happened.”
There was a little uncomfortable shifting among some of that. Some of them knew too well the feeling of being pushed out, or away to the edges of things, by people who thought they weren’t worth paying attention to.
“So it came down to the dark time in that hemisphere,” Filif said, “high up in the places where the sun doesn’t rise for weeks on end. Why this far-stretched group had come to rest for the winter in that place, no one’s sure. Conflict with other groups further south who’d forced them north, perhaps: there was plenty of that in those times, just as a mind can war with itself and still be one. Almost all of that mind was waiting out the dark in dormancy, sleeping until sunrises began again. But stretched away furthest north was the one with the berries, awake and aware and alone in the night with the wind hissing low around her and the Cold Lights in the sky hissing above. And in the wind and the cold fire she started to think she heard a voice speaking to her, a voice that said, Will you not rise up now and break your bonds?
“Straightway she was terrified, because this was the strangest of all strange things that could have been—a voice that didn’t partake of the Whole, a voice from something impossible, something outside. She thought the cold and the dark had perhaps damaged her wits, and there was no way to be sure, no one else nearby to ask if they heard it too; they all slept. And again something seemed to say, Will you not rise up now and break your bonds?
“So finally she said, ‘I don’t know what that means, or how I hear what can’t be!’
“And whatever spoke said, You hear because I am in you to hear. And what that means is freedom of a new kind for you and for all who desire it. Break root from root and come away.
“The one with the berries shivered when she heard that, for when by error or calamity a growth’s roots lost connection with the Whole, then that growth swiftly grew withered and starved away and died. And she said, ‘If I do that, then that’s the sure end of survival.’” Nita noted that the Speech the word Filif used was muvesh’tet, an indicator of passivity, not a dual passive/active verb as English made it.
“But the voice said to her then, That is what has been. Yet life is more than survival, and even death is more than that; and all things move to new completions. Break root from root and break your bonds, thereby learning what is more and teaching others so to learn.
“And hearing the voice, the one with the berries was torn: for though the voice said things that frightened her, it spoke to her as an equal, which it seemed to her that no one in the Whole ever had. And thinking of that, she said, ‘Why do you come to me? I’m the broken one, I’m the withering one, I’m the one pushed out to the edges!’ And immediately the voice answered: Because you are the only one here who is able to ask that question, and the only one also able to say ‘I’. And the voice was glad, as if it had found something long lost and long-awaited.
“Long the one with the berries stood there in the dark and the hiss of the wind with the Cold Fires making her shadow tremble on the frozen ground. And at last she said, ‘Yes, I will.’ And with great labor and anguish she tore her roots away from the roots of the Whole, and broke her bonds, thereby doing the thing that no one in the world had ever willingly done. She Othered herself.”
Th
e word Filif used was again in the Speech, uhweinsei, and one that had echoes of many meanings: to set oneself apart, to be set apart, to be alone, to be alone to a purpose. “There in the dark and the cold,” Filif said, “she fell down crying with the pain. And there in the dark she rose up again and was the first of us, the first Demisiv who was by herself; the first to stand alone, the first to walk alone, the first to have her own thoughts alone in her own soul. That dark time…” He shivered. “Long she suffered there, long she took learning the weight of being one’s self, the pain of moving one’s self alone through the world. But finally there came a day when the sun rose for a little while, long enough for the microregion of which she’d been a part to wake a little and look around. And what did it see there but the berried one, on her own roots, standing, watching. And she said to it, to the Whole, ‘I am the Outlier. In the One Other’s company I chose my Othering and so did not die. As I am, so may you be. Rise up now and break your bonds!’”
Nita shivered, for it was a battlecry, the way he said it. And over on the other side of the room, she saw Marcus lean back on the pillows behind him with a thoughtful look on his face. “’The stone that the builders have rejected,’” Marcus said, as if musing, or to someone else, “’is become the cornerstone…’”
Filif rustled his branches. “She died, of course,” he said. “Very soon, as our people reckon it. Very young. But not before she’d walked deep into the South, from the cold and the dark down into the sun and the summer, and showed more and more of the Whole what had come to her. And not right away, but soon enough, others followed her. Fringe growths as she’d been, at first: those who were pushed to the edges, the sorrowful, the disaffected, the different. And then others, bored or daring or just curious, sometimes angry and sometimes frightened; they rose up, they broke their bonds. More and more of them, over decades, over centuries. Until after many millennia more, almost all of us were Outliers, going about in freedom, making our own differences in the world and each other’s lives. Now very few stay enWholed all their lives. Those whom the worlds now think of as Demisiv, with our roots in the ground but our own souls in our branches, are almost all our species.” Filif rustled. “And that’s the tale. One of the more formal versions, maybe. There are many, many others.”
Dairine, with Spot in her lap, had been gazing off into the distance through all this. Now she looked up at Filif. “Was that your species’s Choice?”
“It was the gateway to Choice,” Filif said. “Many more Outliers were needed before that could happen, and it took a long time. They were scorned and rejected at first. But very slowly things changed, and after that, in due time, Choice came. Another story.” He rustled his branches again. “At any rate, these days, at the right time of year—our version of this time of year—we’re all Outliers. Instead of coming together in the light that doesn’t end, the way we do at the time of the Nightless Days festival, remembering how it was to be a world enWholed—in this time of the year we wait for the darkness, and in it we go apart, remembering the Outlier who first walked that road: the first to walk it truly alone. Here and now, like them, like the One with the Berries, I’m an Outlier. I made my own choice and spoke my Word to the wind, and when my time came I took the High Road and learned to walk through a greater darkness than most of my people. I’m in that darkness now, far away from home. And thereby, I’m exactly where I should be.”
All his berries looked at them. “But it’s funny how it goes,” Filif said. “So far out in the darkness, you find it’s not so dark after all. You find light you didn’t expect…”
“There are similarities, aren’t there?” Ronan said all of a sudden. “Something from outside gets into physical existence and pulls it into something bigger. Something deeper…”
“But that’s the One for you,” Filif said. “It’s always getting into Life and transforming it. The Powers do the everyday work, same as we do. But sometimes something extra’s needed, something more profound. And from acts like this the ripples spread, inevitably. It’s for us the same as it is for you. A lot of stories, a lot of songs and poems telling how what happened way back then looks now. How it affects the here and now, day by day: in big ways, or small ones.” He laughed. “Like your songs about trees…”
But there was something strangely wistful about the way he said that. People looked at each other, thinking. And then suddenly Marcus sat up straight.
“All right,” he said. “All right. Let us light this candle!” And he vanished.
They sat waiting for him for about fifteen minutes, wondering what he was up to. At that point all of them had begun to yawn occasionally, and Nita was beginning to look ahead with some eagerness to when she could actually pull one of the various throws over her, collapse back into the pillows and just check out for a while. But then, with a very soft pop of displaced air, Marcus was standing off to one side again with big box in his hands.
“Here,” he said, and brought what he carried over to a nearby table.
Everyone crowded around as he bent to open the box. What Marcus lifted out was a slim piece of gold-colored metal that was bent in a horizontal S-curve like that of the pipe under a sink. At the top of the shorter curve was a socket of the right size and shape to take a candle. At the bottom of the other longer part was a small heavy ball of metal.
“Counterweighted,” he said. “These are far safer than the old candle holders that clipped on. And here—” He reached into the box again, came up with a slim orange-golden candle. “Beeswax,” Marcus said.
Filif began to shiver all over.
“Are you ready for this?” Marcus said.
“Yes,” Filif said, very softly.
“Fil,” Nita said, “are you sure?”
He bowed himself a little toward her, so that the star glittered. “Will you all help?”
Everyone reached into the box, pulled out one of the candle holders, fitted candles to them, and started balancing them carefully on Filif’s branches. “Kind of a trick to this,” Nita said.
“But once you get the hang of it…” Kit said.
Within a few minutes the candles were arranged at the tips of all Filif’s strongest branches, held well away from the main body of his foliage. Carmela put the last one in place. Then they all stood around him for a moment, waiting.
“Now all we need,” Filif said, “is fire…”
There were a couple of spare candles in the box. Nita reached in and lifted one out, knowing what wizardry she’d need next. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Filif said, and stood very straight.
To make a spark long-lasting enough to light a candle took five words in the Speech. Nita said them, and the wick of the candle she held burst into flame. Nita waited until it had caught completely, and then reached out with the candle toward the closest one perched on one of Filif’s boughs. She could see all the red eye-berries watching the flame as it came nearer, trembling just slightly…
She lit the candle; and then another, and another, carefully watching Filif all the time, remembering how just the thought of fire had terrified him once upon a time. After a moment, trembling herself, she handed the candle to Kit. “Here,” she said, “your turn…”
As carefully as she had, Kit lit the three candles nearest, and passed the lighting candle to Matt. So it went around, to Sker’ret (who grasped it in his mandibles and reared up to do the lighting) and to Ronan, and then to Marcus, and finally to Dairine and Carmela. As Carmela was lighting the last three, Dairine gestured at the lamps spaced around the room, and all of them went out.
They stood there around Filif in a silence so complete that the tiny fizz and crackle of the candles’ wicks burning could clearly be heard. In that still place, without a breath to stir them, the candle flames stood up straight, and the light of them gleamed on Filif’s branches and caught in Filif’s eyes.
For what seemed like a long time he didn’t move so much as a frond or a needle: just held absolutely still, like someone
testing himself. The candle flames shifted very slightly, were still again.
At last he spoke. “This is my defiance, then,” Filif said, very softly. “This is the Oath made visible. Just as the Outlier was, I am more than my fear. Other fears may not burn as hot or as brightly, but those too I defy. Let what sets such fires in the world see them set here to my purposes, not Its own!”
And Filif fell silent. As still as he, Nita and the others stood quiet and watched him.
And then, after a few moments more, Filif laughed and said, “Now what? Do they have to burn down all the way?”
Marcus chuckled too. “No,” he said. “With candles like these, that would take an hour or so. Normally after a few minutes we put them out. Unless you want to take a selfie first?”
“What’s a selfie?”
Everybody who had a phone handy went for it. Soon that darkened space was illuminated not just by candlelight, but smartphone flashes, and the brief solemnity was replaced by laughter. Then one by one the friends surrounding him blew out Filif’s candles, or pinched them out, and Dairine let the room lights come up again. Carefully they took the candles and their holders off him, and when the last holder was off and put away, Filif gave a great shake of all his boughs and laughed again.
“That was exciting,” he said. “Maybe a little more exciting than I expected. I might take a break…”
“Outside?” Nita said.
“Yes.” And Filif made his way to the portal, and once just outside it, vanished.
Kit rubbed his eyes. “That,” he said, “was intense.”
“Going to be interesting to hear more about just what brought it on,” Ronan said, sounding dry. “But I need a nap first.”
“Yeah,” Dairine said. “We’ll ask him about it at breakfast…”
People started arranging the pillows and cushions into sleepover configurations, and Dairine fired up the TV again and turned it on to one of the music video channels that was doing Christmas rock. Nita yawned, feeling more than ready to collapse. But there was something she wanted to do first.