The Seed Tree
by
Amethyst

Fifth Day of Shamath in the Season of Winds:

Dust. We are dust, and there is no time anymore. I keep a meaningless record of days and call them by names of festivals that will never be celebrated. Beyond this island of life is only baked white distance and the charred lumps that once were verdant hills. We who survive-- the trees, the animals and me-- are a living museum, the anthropology of a world. We are remnants of life, like tears on a newly-dead face waiting to be dust.

Norann, how could you relegate me to this! I am only a refugee like the others. I only came out under the halal tree that day to get away from the tattered and burned who littered my floor and my Preserve. To put down my shovel which was never still anymore.

I want to lie down and be dead as this dead world. But when I sleep, shadows shift and wake in my dreams. Faceless, formless things--they call to me . . .

She came from the west like many of the other refugees, stumbling, starving. She wore a wine-dark shawl scorched black at one edge. It was the color of the rich earth of the valleys, or the sky in the Season of Storms. Ancient patterns swirled throughout, bringing back memories of my childhood. Wild berry juice sweet and purple on my hands, barefoot gardens damp with twilight, my mother's harvest songs. Like the rest, her body carried the ragged burns whose edges curled white. I closed my eyes when I saw them; I had learned there was nothing to be done.

In my dreams I try again every root and herb I know, while the wounds crawl deeper toward her bones . . .

She would die like the others. I did not know her at all, yet I was filled with the hollow pain of loss.

But, Norann had an air of urgency about her that made the wounds seem inconsequential. This puzzled me. Although most of those who came had simply wandered here, Norann had come for a purpose. She knew of this place and me; my family has tended the Preserve for generations.

As I added more herbs to the broth simmering over the fire, she watched me. As I moved among the refugees with cups of the liquid which gave both nourishment and relief from pain, her eyes followed me. When I offered her some of the broth, she shook her head and would not take it.

I felt she had something to tell me, but there were so many refugees that night, I had to construct makeshift sleeping pallets from tree boughs and move some people outside. A few of the bolder tocarra came with their long faces and wide eyes to see the strangers, then they stole silently back into the shadows on their three-toed feet. I looked at their luminous amber eyes and felt Norann's eyes calling to me.

When most of the refugees were asleep, I returned to find her waiting. Her eyes brimmed with pain, and from time to time her hands clutched convulsively at the pallet's edge or twisted in the material of her shawl which I had spread over her.

I sat down beside her, feeling that I had awaited her arrival for a long time. She brought news of the invaders who came months ago from outside our world, sweeping the land with their unspeakable weapons, pillaging and destroying. Our oldest legends speak of other worlds but until now only the superstitious had believed.