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The Battle of Tulip Hill
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Edwyn dragged his useless foot across the village square. The cursed thing plagued him worse than ever today, yet he would not spend another day abed, waiting for the ankle’s pained twitchings to ebb. So he cursed at the stubborn stone at the end of his leg and bit the inside of his cheek whenever the pain flared too sharply to ignore.
His friend Owain skipped ahead of him, spry as a deer greater in wit than any hunter, while Edwyn laboured behind, awkward as a fawn with an arrow in its thigh. Owain was two years his junior, with short, curling dark hair and a complexion deeper than any other in the village of Tulip Hill. His father had come from the southern island of Calypt, though the old man had passed away in 1060 – six years gone.
“Shall I carry you, hurt li’l lamb?” Owain called, his voice lilting as he spun a dainty circle about Edwyn.
“Would you?” Edwyn replied, a strained smile breaking through the pain that lanced his thigh. “When only yesterday I saw your legs give way beneath a sack of grain? We’d both come crashing down, and then what would become of us? I too weak to stand, and you too weak to lift me.”
Owain laughed, then pinched his bicep and pouted. “You are not so portly as those harvest sacks, friend! Root and Rain have been kind to us this year. The more I struggle, the better we shall fare when the great cold is finally here.”
“And the great cold does come,” Edwyn said, shifting his weight to give his swollen foot a moment of respite. “Another eager, silver beast crossed the black fields last night. They herald the stampede, and of the passing of the Gods’ Caravan. The first winter of the 214th Passing shall be upon us tomorrow. My mother and the neighbours have already begun their preparations. In only hours the festival will bloom around us.”
“Well,” Owain said, glancing up at what was currently a clear, blue day, “has it truly been five years? I find the counting of passing days a dull task. The joy lies in the now! Come, friend – I shall slow my pace. Hobble behind, sure and strong, but mind you do not slip.” He cast a teasing wink over his shoulder. “For we both know I shan’t be able to lift you!”
“Aye!” Edwyn called after his friend, an uneven smile spreading across his damp face.
And then I’ll sit here, he thought, glancing at his foot. Just a stone in the way … gathering moss.
“Do you think Mari will make an appearance today?” Owain called. He had plainly lied about slowing his pace, for he now had to raise his voice if Edwyn was to hear him. “At the market? She’s bound to be wanting for something … even if it’s just tidings of the realm, or elsewhere.”
His foot seemed heavier with every step. For a fleeting moment, Edwyn wondered how much blood he might lose if he were to cut himself free of it.
“She’s not half so sweet on you as you are on her, foolish boy,” Edwyn replied, lifting his voice while struggling to stifle a pained groan. “You’d be better loved by another, you know?”
Owain flashed him a wicked glare, though the tension was brief as it quickly melted into a grin that showed his fine teeth. “There is no other for me than my Mari, Stone-Foot!”
Edwyn grimaced as he misstepped, too much weight falling upon his bad foot. “Would that I could catch up with you, and club you senseless with this stone!”
Owain threw back his head and let out an honest laugh. “Then we’d be stone-footed together, and late to the market besides – the traders already halfway home!”
“Why such haste, then?” Edwyn asked, curious about the man’s odd eagerness.
“Why, you said it yourself – she’s not as sweet on me as I am on her,” Owain said, sniggering. “So when the market folk last came through, two months past, I slipped a few silver pennies into Palm’s palm and bade the pint-sized fellow to fetch me some honey for when next he was here!”
“You witless lover,” Edwyn said, shaking his head. A soft breeze stirred his long hair, telling of a coming chill. “Honey? Tell me you asked for the kind that runs gold, not red?”
Owain planted his hands upon his hips. “Well that I could go and fetch myself! We’ve tulips enough upon our hill, and the common bees were fat with pollen last I saw them. No, Ed – the honey that runs red. The sweetest of all sweets. What better way to make my Mari merry than a gift so rare, a gift so thoughtful!”
“A gift so dangerous, you mean! Palm took those pennies and let them sing in his pocket, no doubt. He would not climb tree or mountain to a regent hive and risk getting stung. Else we might find him now, sprawled at the foot of our hill, a white crown budding from his scalp! No, those pennies would need be plenty, not few, to coax him to risk even spying such a hive.”
“None so fresh,” Owain replied with a chuckle. “Calm your panic, Ed. He’ll have fetched some along his travels for me – jarred already and with not a bee present, common or regent alike.”
At last, they reached the hill’s edge. Edwyn paused, looking down the many stone steps, and wondered – morbidly – whether he would survive a second tumble down them. The first, taken in boyhood, had left him a crumbled heap at the bottom, leaving him with a broken foot that would never heal quite right. It had left him lame. The hill itself was soft and green, shorn close, waiting to bloom anew with tulips once the great cold had passed.
He forced the vertigo from his mind, along with the cold dread of falling once more, and stepped into the lift that ran parallel alongside the steps.
The man who worked it was named Hefin. They shook hands briefly before he took hold of the hoary rope and gave it a firm pull. He was of stocky build, with arms thick as young trunks, hair coarse and dark as bark across the sinewy muscle. With a low grunt, the lift lurched, then tipped gently over the edge, settling into its grooves before sliding downward at a careful, measured pace.
“So,” Owain began, walking alongside the lift, his red-brown cloak snapping in the wind that rushed up the hill to meet them, “what are you hoping to find? Another tale of knights? Some lessons of the Five Gods ’fore they took their places upon the comet? You were reading of Root, last I recall … or was it Rain? Aye,” he said, nodding to himself, “some dreadful flood or the like. If those that suffered had a hill like ours, they might have fared better.”
“You remember that?” Edwyn asked, gripping the rail as the rope caught in the pulley. He thought the whole contraption might go hurtling down the last three quarters of the hill – but the thick-armed man merely snorted and carried on down as normal, a white-knuckled grip about the rope.
“Why, of course I do,” Owain said, arching a thin, dark brow. “You would not cease your prattlings the whole week you had your nose buried in it! Tell, do any of these books of yours have women in them?”
“Some,” Edwyn said with a thin smile. “Damsels and maidens, princesses and queens … witches in bogs, with bellies full of boy, and old nans who lie with harpies.”
Owain shivered. “My Mari is no nan nor bog-witch, I’ll have you know, but a damsel, a maiden, and a princess all bound into one fine woman that I’ll make my tulip queen. So, the truth of it, what book are you hoping they’ll carry this month at the page market?”
“Well,” Edwyn said, retrieving from the inner pocket of his green cloak the very book Owain had described, The Rains of the 190th Passing: The Birth of Lake Dox. “I mean to return this and I hope to find a tale on Ember. Out of the five – Ember, Root, Rain, and the twins, earth’s own children, Dawn and Dusk – it is Ember I know the least about. I would learn more of her, ere she became a passenger upon the quinquennial comet … the Caravan of the Gods.”
“A quiet goddess … so they say,” Hefin muttered.
“Yes.” Edwyn nodded.
“But one that lives in all of us, I’ve heard,” Owain said, rubbing absently at his chest. “Why’d they refer to her as a she, anyway?”
“Oh, that much I do know,” Edwyn replied, wishing that he had brought his cane, but the stick made him feel ever so old, and the children always stared. “An author and scholar by the name of Fruäla Amadå, of Loreno, once travelled to Ember’s old home, Violan, afore they became an odd, heretical island, its shores barred now to all but a few Calyptian traders. He wrote of Ember not as a mere spark, but as flame. ‘Curved and flickering, her tongues did reach on high, tasting the black fields where her silver cattle grazed. Upon her bed a hundred men did lie, and from that fire a hundred stars were born – never fading to ash-grey and falling like winter’s snow, but burning white and hot as they rose into her patient palm.’”
“So…” Owain scratched at his chin, the red stubble under his lip catching the light – the sparse showings of his mother’s colouring. “Ember was a whore, then?”
“Well, she took many a lover on that strange night, yes. Years uncounted those were, long ere she hitched a ride upon the caravan. And she bore many children besides. Some might argue not a doxy – if any of it is true – but a mother.” He looked ahead, catching sight of the market below, alive with its monthly mirth. “Care to tell me more?”
“I remember my teachings, you cheeky dolt.”
“I’m sure you do. But mayhap I’ve forgotten mine?”
“Not bloody likely,” Owain said, pulling open the lift’s oak doors and offering Edwyn a helping hand as the lift reached the foot of the tall green hill.
Edwyn tossed the thick-armed man a halfpenny, then shook his leg as if to wake it, though part of him wished it would continue its slumber, where the pain was only half as bad. The scent of baked goods lifted his dour mood only slightly.
“Ember is the goddess of fire,” Owain declared, educating only the children that darted past, their lips sticky with fruit preserve and their chins sprinkled with crumbs, “and of rebirth. She resides in every heart – from ant to man, from man to beast. In all of us, she burns bright.”
“And…” Edwyn prompted, gesturing Owain to continue. “What else is she, besides a goddess?”
“Well … one of the three siblings of life – warmth,” Owain replied with easy confidence.
“Aye!” Edwyn smiled. “Siblings, in truth – but you know how Ramsted folk twist the faith. Rain and Root are lovers, they say, and Ember the one cast-off, scorned by Root.”
Owain quickened his stride. “My teachings are done. Now hurry along, Stone-Foot, ’fore someone makes off with my honey!”
