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  Without any more words, Pualani bit into her timana, and all the men and women at our table did the same. As my teeth closed on the fruit, a waterfall of tastes exploded in my mouth. It was like honey and wine and sunlight all bound up into the most fragrant of juices. And yet there was something bittersweet about the fruit as well.

  Beneath its succulent sugars was a flavor I had never experienced; it recalled mighty trees streaming with spring sap and the fire of a greenness that no longer existed on earth.

  Even so, I found the fruit to be very good. Its savor was exquisite, and lingered on my tongue. Along with Pualani and Maram and everyone else, I took a second bite.

  The timana's flesh was reddish-orange and studded with a starlike array of tiny black seeds. It glistened in the waning light for an endless moment before I put the fruit in my mouth and ate the rest of it.

  'We're so glad you've joined us,' Pualani said as the others finished theirs as well.

  'Now you'll see what you'll see.'

  'What will we see?' Maram asked, licking the juice from his teeth.

  'Perhaps nothing,' Pualani said. 'But perhaps you'll see the Timpum.'

  'The Timpum?' Maram asked in alarm. 'What's that?'

  'The Timpum are the Timpum,' Pualani said softly. 'They are of the Galad a'Din.'

  'I don't understand,' Maram said, rubbing his belly.

  'The Galad a'Din,' Pualani said, 'are beings of pure fire. When they walked the earth in the ages before the Lost Ages, they left part of their being behind them. So, the fire, the beings that men do not usually see - the Timpum.'

  'I don't think I want to understand,' Maram said.

  'Few men do,' Pualani told him. Then she looked from him to Master Juwain and Atara, and last at me. She said, 'It's strange that you seek your golden cup in other lands when so much is to be found so much closer. Love, life, light - why not look for these things in the leaves of the trees and beneath the rocks and along the wind?'

  Why not, indeed, I wondered as I looked up at the soft lights dancing along the trees' fluttering golden leaves?

  'Am I to understand,' Maram said, breathing heavily, 'that this fruit you've fed us provides visions of these Timpum?'

  'Yes,' Pualani said gravely, 'either that or death.'

  We were all silent for as long as it took my heart to beat three times. Then Maram gasped out, 'What? What did you say?'

  'You've eaten the flesh of the angels,' Pualani calmly explained. 'And so if it's meant to be, you'll see the angel fire. But not all can bear it. And so they die.'

  At this news, Maram struggled to his feet, all the while puffing and groaning. He held his big belly as he cried out, 'Poison, poison! Oh, my Lord - I've been poisoned!'

  He turned to bend and stick his fingers down his throat to purge himself of the dangerous fruit Pualani stopped him with few soft words. She told him that it was already too late, he would have to live or die according to the grace of the Ellama

  'Why have you done this?' Maram shouted at her. His face was now almost as red as a plum. And so, I feared, were Master Juwain's, Atara's and mine. 'What have we done to deserve this?'

  'Nothing that others haven't done,' Pualani told him. 'All the Lokilani when we become women and men - we eat the sacred fruit. Many die, sad to say. But it must be so. Life without sight of the Timpum would not be worth living.'

  'It would be to me!' Maram cried out. 'I'm not a Lokilani! Oh my lord - I don't want to die!'

  'We're sorry this had to be, so sorry,' Pualani told us. She looked at Master Juwain, who sat frozen like a deer surrounded by wolves, and then she smiled at Atara and me. 'There are only two courses open to you. You may remain with the Lokilani and become as one of us. Or you must return to your world.'

  My breath came hard and fast now as the woods about us seemed to take on the tones of the waning sunlight It was a yellow like nothing I had ever seen, a waiting-yellow over the trees and through them. A watching-yellow that was very close and yet somehow faraway. 'Please forgive us, please do,' Pualani said. 'But if you do return to your world, we must be utterly certain of who you are. The Earthkiller's people could never bear the sight of the Timpum. And no one who has ever seen the Timpum could ever serve the Earthkiller.'

  I noticed, that the children at our table, and every table throughout the glade, were watching us with awe coloring their small, pale faces. It came to me that awe was nothing less than love and fear, and I felt both of these swelling inside me. Everyone was looking at us in fear for our lives, watching and waiting to see what we would see.

  Suddenly, Maram threw his hands to the side of his face and let loose a wild, whoop of laughter. He fell to his knees, all the while shaking his head and laughing and crying out that he was being killed but didn't care.

  'I see them! I see them!' he called to us. 'Oh, my Lord - they're everywhere!'

  Master Juwain, who had been sitting as still as a statue, leapt to his feet and waved his hands about his bald head. 'Astonishing! Astonishing!' he shouted. 'It's not possible, it can't be possible. Val

  - do you see them?'

  I did not see them. For at that moment, Atara let out a terrible cry and fell backward to the ground as if her spine had been cut with an axe. She screamed for a moment or two before her eyes closed. Then she grew quiet. The movement beneath her doeskin shirt was so slight that I couldn't tell if she was breathing. I fell over toward her and buried my face in this soft garment. Her whole body seemed as still as stone and colder than ice. I knew too well what it felt like for another to die; I would have died myself rather than feel this nothingness take away Atara. But the cold suddenly grew unbearable, and 1 knew with a dreadful certainty that she was leaving me. There was nothing but darkness inside her and all about me. I could see nothing because my eyes were tightly closed as I gripped the soft leather of her shirt and wept bitterly.

  Then I, too, let out a terrible cry. My heart beat so hard I thought it would break open my chest. Everything poured out of me: my love for her, my tears, my whispers of hope that burned my lips like fire.

  'Atara,' I said sofdy, 'don't go away.'

  The pain inside me was worse than anything I had ever known. It cut me open like a sword, and I felt the blood streaming out of my heart and into hers. It took forever to die, I knew, while the moments of life were so precious and few.

  And then, as if awakening from a dream, her whole body started. I looked down to see her eyes suddenly open. She smiled at me as her breath fell over my face. 'Thank you,' she said, 'for saving my life again.'

  She struggled to sit up, and I held her against me with her head touching mine and my face pressing her shoulder. My breath came in shudders and quick gasps, and I was both weeping and laughing because I couldn't quite believe that she was still alive.

  'Shhh,' she whispered to me, 'be quiet, be quiet now.'

  As I sat there with my eyes closed, I became aware of a deep silence. But it was not a quietening of the world; now the songs of the sparrows came ringing through the trees, and I could almost hear the wildflowers growing in the earth all around me. It was more a silence within myself where the chatter of all my thoughts and fears suddenly died away. I could hear myself whispering to myself in a voice without sound; it seemed the earth itself was calling out a name that was mine but not mine alone.

  'Oh, there are so many!' Atara said to me softly. 'Look, Val, look!'

  I opened my eyes then, and I saw the Timpum. As Maram had said, they were everywhere. I sat up straight, blinking my eyes. Above the golden leaves of the forest floor, little luminous clouds floated about as if drawing their substance from the earth and returning to it soft showers of light. Among the wood anemone and ashflowers, swirls of fire burned in colors of red, orange and blue. They flitted from flower to flower like flaming butterflies drinking up nectar and touching each petal with their numinous heat. Little silver moons hovered near some cinnamon fern, and the ingathering of white sparks beneath the boughs of the astors reminded me
of constellations of stars. From behind rocks came soft flashes like those of glowworms. The Timpum seemed to come in almost as many kinds as the birds and beasts of the Forest They flickered and fluttered and danced and glittered, and no leaf or living thing in the glade appeared untouched by their presence.

  'Astonishing! Astonishing!' Master Juwain called out again. 'I must learn their names and kinds!'

  Some of the Timpum were tiny, no more than burning drops of light that hung in the air like mist. Some were as huge as the trees: the trunks of a few of the astors were ringed with golden halos that brightened and deepened as they spread out to encompass the great crowns of leaves.

  Although they had forms, they had no faces. And yet we perceived them as having quite distinct faces - to be sure not of lips, noses, cheeks and eyes, but rather colored with various blendings of curiosity, playfulness, effervescence, compassion and other characteristic that one might expect to find on a human countenance. Most marvelous of all was that they seemed to be aware not only of the trees and the rocks, the fems and the flowers, but of us.

  'Look, Val!' Maram called to me. He stood above the table as he bmshed the folds of his tunic. These little red ones keep at me like hummingbirds in a honeysuckle bush. Do you see them?'

  "Yes - how not?' I told him.

  All about him were Timpum of the whirling fire variety, and their flames touched him in tendrils of red, orange, yellow and violet. I turned to see a little silver moon shimmer in front of Atara for a moment as if drinking in the light of her bright blue eyes. And then I blinked, and it was gone.

  'They seem to want something of me,' Maram said. 'I can almost hear them whispering, almost see it in my mind.'

  The Timpum seemed to want something from all of us, though we couldn't quite say what that might be. I looked at Pualani to ask if it was that way for the Lokilani, too.

  'The Timpum speak the language of the Galad a'Din,' she told us. 'And that is impossible for most to learn. Those that do take many years to understand only the smallest part of it Even so, we do understand the Timpum sometimes. They warn us if outsiders are approaching our realm or of when we have hate in our hearts. On cloudy nights of no moon, they light up our woods.'

  I looked off into the trees for a moment, and the great, shimmering spectacle before my eyes dazzled me. To Pualani I said, 'Do your people then see the world like this all the time?'

  'Yes, this is how the Forest is.'

  She told me that so long as we dwelled in the Forest we would see the Timpum. If we some day chose to eat the sacred timanas again in remembrance of the Shining Ones, even as she and the others had eaten them, our vision of the Timpum would grow only brighter.

  'If you decide to leave us,' she said, 'it will now be hard for you to bear the deadness of any other wood.'

  Just then an especially bright Timpum - it was one of the ones like a swirl of flickering white stars - fell slowly down from the tree above me. It spun about in the space before my eyes as if stuffing the scar cut into my forehead. It seemed to touch me there with a quick silver light; I felt this as a deep surge of compassion that touched me to my core and brightened my whole being as if I had been struck with a lightning bolt. Then, after a moment the flickering Timpum settled itself down on top of my head. Maram and the others saw it shimmering in my hair like a crown of stars, but I could not.

  'How do I get it off me?' I asked as I brushed my hand through my hair and shook my head from side to side.

  'Why would you want to?' Pualani asked me. 'Sometimes a Timpum will attach itself to one of us to try to tell us something.'

  'What, then?'

  'Only you will ever know,' she said as she gazed above my head. Then she told me,

  'I think the "why* of your coming to our woods has finally been answered, however.

  You are here to listen, Sar Valashu Elahad. And to dance.'

  And with that she smiled at me and rose from the table. This seemed a signal that Elan and Danali - and all the other Lokilani at the other tables - should rise, too.

  Along with Pualani, they came over to Atara, Master Juwain, Maram and me. They touched our faces and kissed our hands and congratulated us on eating the timanas and surviving to see the Timpum. Then Danali began singing a light, happy song while many of his people clapped their hands to keep time. Others began dancing.

  They joined hands in circles surrounding circles and spun about the forest floor as they added their voices to Danali's song. I found myself clasping hands with Atara and Maram, and turning with them. Although it was impossible to touch a Timpum, their substance being not of flesh hut the fire of angels, there was a sense in which they danced with us and we with them. For they were everywhere among us and they never stopped fluttering and sparkling and whirling about the golden-leafed trees.

  Much later, after the sun had set and the Timpum's eyeless faces lit up the night I took out my flute and joined the Lokilani in song. The Lokilani marveled at this slender piece of wood for they had never imagined music could be made this way. I taught a few of the children to play a simple song that my mother had once taught me. Atara sang with them, and Maram, too, before he took Iolana's hand and stole off into the trees. Even Master Juwain hummed a few notes in his rough old voice, though he was more interested in trying to ferret out and record the words of the Timpum's language.

  I, too, wished to understand what they had to tell me. And so, even as Pualani had said, I stayed awake all night playing my flute and dancing and listening to the fiery voices that spoke along the wind.

  Chapter 15

  Our vision of the Timpum did not fade with the coining of the new day. If anything, in the fullness of the sunlight, their fiery forms seemed only brighter. It was impossible to look at them very long and imagine a life without them.

  After a delicious breakfast of fruits and nutbread, Atara and I held council with Master Juwain and Maram. We stood by a stream not far from our house, inhaling the fragrance of cherry blossoms and marveling at the splendor of the woods.

  'We must decide what to do,' I said to them. 'By my count, tomorrow will be the first of Soldru, and that gives us only seven more days to reach Tria.'

  'Ah, but do we even want to go to Tria?' Maram asked as he stared at an astor sapling. That is the question.'

  'There's very much to be learned here,' Master Juwain agreed. 'Very much more still to be seen.'

  Atara smiled, and her eyes shone like diamonds. She said. 'That's true - and I would like to see it. But I've pledged myself to journey to Tria, and so I must go.'

  'Perhaps we could stay here only a few more days,' Maram said. 'Or a few more months. Tria will still be there in Ioj or Valte.'

  'But we would miss the calling of the quest,' Atara said.

  'So what if we do? The Lightstone has been lost for three thousand years, likely it will remain lost for three more months.'

  'Unless, by chance,' I said, 'some knight finds it first'

  'By a miracle, that would be,' Maram said.

  I pointed at the crown of lights that had floated from the top of my head and now hovered nearby over a blackberry bush. There, among the little ripe fruits, twinkled many Timpum that looked something like fireflies.

  'Does it seem to you that the world lacks miracles?' I asked.

  'No, perhaps it doesn't,' he admitted. His large eyes gleamed as if he were intoxicated - not with wine or even women but with pure fire.

  'There's one miracle that I would like explained,' Master Juwain said to me. 'What happened last night between you and Atara?'

  I looked at Atara a long moment before she answered him. 'After I ate the timana,'

  she said, 'I saw the Timpum almost immediately. It was like a flash of fire. It was so beautiful that I wanted to hold it forever - but can one hold the sun? I felt myself burning up like a leaf caught in the flames. And then I couldn't breathe, and I thought I was dying. Everything was so cold. It was like I had been buried alive in a crystal cave, so cold and hard, and
every-thing growing darker. I would have died if Val hadn't come to take me back.'

  'And how did he do that?' Master Juwain asked.

  Again, Atara looked at me, and she said, 'I'm still not sure. Somehow I felt what he felt for me. All his love, his life - I felt it breaking open the cave like lightning and burning into me.'

  Now Master Juwain and Maram looked at me, too, as the bluebirds sang and the Timpum glittered all about us. And Master Juwain said, 'That sounds like the valarda.'

  Master Juwain's use of this word, utterly unexpected, fell out of the air like lightning and nearly broke me open. How did he know the name of my gift that Morjin had spoken to me? For many miles, I had wondered about this strange name, as I wondered about Master Juwain now. But he just smiled at me in his kindly but proud way, as if he knew almost everything there was to know.

  It seemed that the time had finally come to explain about my gift, which they had already suspected lay behind my sensing of the Stonefaces and the other strangenesses of my life. And so I told them everything about it. I said that I had been born breathing in others' sufferings and their joys as well. I revealed my dream of Morjin and how he had prophesied that one day I would use my gift to make others feel my pain.

  'It would appear,' Master Juwain said, looking from Atara to me, 'that you also have the power to make people feel much else.'

  'Perhaps,' I said. 'But this is the first time this has happened. It's hard to know if it could ever happen again.'

  'You say you are able to close yourself to others' emotions. Then surely it follows that you should be able to open them to yours.'

  'Perhaps,' I said again. I didn't tell him that in order to do this, first I would have to open myself to the passions that blazed inside me, and that this was more terrifying than facing a naked sword.

  'You should have come to us long ago,' Master Juwain told me. 'I'm sure we would have been able to help you.'

  'Do you really think so?'

  The Brotherhoods taught meditation and music, herbology and heal-ing and many other things, but so far as I knew they knew nothing of this sense that both blessed and tormented me.