The Pleasure of Memory (47 page)

Dael laughed. It was an odd sound, like stones pouring merrily into water. “Last night, you were afraid,” he said, “As you should have been. Fear is your nature. The Other understands this.”

“What do I care if he understands or not?” Beam said, “And I’m not afraid!”

At least, he didn’t think he was. He turned around. The younger Dael behind him was walking away from him. The strange, swirling fog was there, too, though here it looked more like a slash in the darkness than a portal here, like parting curtains slowly opening to reveal a stage. The silvery light swelled wider across the blackness as the young monk passed through into it. Soon, it engulfed him completely, and the curtains fell shut behind him, leaving only a midnight backdrop.

“You need to wake up, Beam,” the young Dael called from somewhere deep within the night, “You can wake up now, my son.”

“What? You’re leaving me here?”

He was too late. The young Dael was gone.

Beam turned around, and was deeply relieved to find the aged Dael still standing there. “You’re not leaving me, are you?” he asked the old man.

Dael smiled wearily, but said nothing. Then he turned away and began to walk toward the swirling silver portal. “Follow me,” he said, waving the back of his hand, “Follow me, or wake up. It’s your choice.”

“Wait!” Beam cried out.

The older Dael’s form grew weaker, less tangible as he neared the portal. It was consuming him, just as the curtains of fog had consumed his younger self. He was quickly fading into nothing.

“Wait,” Beam yelled after him, “Don’t leave me here!”

“Follow or wake up,” Dael said, “It’s your choice. It’s always been your choice.”

“Follow you where?”

Dael’s image vanished into the blinding light of the unearthly portal.

Panic seized Beam. It was the same fear and self-doubt he’d suffered back in Sanctuary, back when Chance left him for the tunnel.

“Wait!” Beam yelled as he ran after the monk, “Dael, wait! Don’t leave me!”

Beam flew through the spinning portal. As he did, the world shifted. He felt himself falling. Before he could even cry out, he found himself standing beside Dael again.

A towering wall of solid granite rose up before them. The monk reached forward and pushed his hand through the stone as easily as if it were wet mud. With his arm buried in the wall, he looked over at Beam and laughed. Then he walked straight into the cliff. He melted into the stone without looking back.

Beam reached out to touch the wall, but stopped just short of contact. It’s a dream, he told himself. Nothing here is real. They’re only images. Nothing here can hurt you.

Then he closed his eyes and stepped forward. When he opened them again, he was inside the cave. A low dais with four great pillars at each corner floated in the middle of the room like a glass barge on a frozen sea. A crystal throne rested upon it. A broken suit of armor was sprawled across the floor before the steps rising up to the dais.

The memory of the Vaemyn warrior washed through him like a late summer’s melancholy. He remembered the fight and the bittersweet victory of that warrior. He remembered the strange fire of grief he’d suffered at the Vaemyn’s death.

He stepped closer to the broken armor and nudged it with his toe. It’s a dream, he told himself. It’s only a dream. You can wake up anytime you want to. You just have to will it to happen.

The world shifted again. Beam stood before the stairs leading up to the dais. A ghostly image sat in the throne before him. Beam put a foot up on the lower step and leaned closer. The image was vaguely humanoid, but lacked any details. It was like the silvery portal, both tangible and indistinct in the same breath, a pool of slivery light somehow contained in the form of a man. He fingered the hilt of the sword hanging at his waist. He wasn’t sure if he should draw his blade or run away.

“Why so afraid, Beam?” Dael whispered behind him, “I thought this was only a dream?”

Beam wheeled toward the voice, but found nothing.

He turned back to the throne. A Vaemyn sat there before him, the same Vaemyn as in his dream back in the cave, the same warrior he witnessed murdered by the dark rogue.

Beam stepped up one stair. The man’s white hair draped his shoulders. He wore a brilliant blue tunic adorned with gems and gold thread. His legs were dressed in silken stockings that ended at the ankles. Strangely, he wore no shoes.

He climbed another step. The man didn’t react, but only sat there on that crystal throne with one leg dangling casually over the arm. He had an elbow propped on his knee, and his chin nested in his hand. He was smiling at Beam.

“I know you,” Beam whispered.

“Do you?” the man replied. The words were Vaemysh, though Beam understood them perfectly.

“Yes,” Beam said carefully, “I think so.”

“You don’t know me, my boy,” the man said through a grin, “Why, you haven’t a clue. You’ve never seen me before.”

“Who are you?” Beam asked.

“What an odd question.”

“What exactly is odd about it?” Beam argued.

The Vaemyn laughed. It was a healthy, happy laugh that was fully contrary to the morbid image painted by their last encounter.

“What are you laughing at?” Beam asked him.

“You!”

“Me? Why?”

“I’m laughing at your worries.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“What has you so perpetually afraid, my boy?”

The question stopped Beam cold. “I never said I was afraid.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I don’t have to convince you of anything,” Beam said as seriously as he could manage, “And I’m sure as hell not afraid of you.” He absolutely was.

“Tell me, Be’ahm, have you ever seen the pig beeches in the forests of southern Mendophia?”

The question landed as abruptly as a fart in a cathedral. “Pig beeches?” Beam said, “I don’t know what you mean.”

The Vaemyn slipped his leg off the armrest and leaned forward onto his knees. “The pig beeches,” he said, “Do you know of them?”

“No, I don’t think I do.”

“Hmph. I’m rather surprised by that.”

“Why would that surprise you? You don’t even know me.”

The Vaemyn sat upright in the chair. He drummed his fingers on the armrest as he studied Beam. And then he said, “There exists in those uncivilized forests of southernmost Mendophia a most peculiar symbiosis between the massive pig beeches and the sugar boars that roam the forest floor beneath them.”

Beam wasn’t sure what to make of this, or even if he should be trying to make anything of it.

“The pig beeches begin their lives as five wide, flat, fleshy branches lined densely with tiny and most brilliantly blue flowers. These wide, flat branches and their flowers lay tightly against the forest floor so that they form a kind of bowl.”

“A bowl?” Beam asked, “What do you mean, bowl?”

The Vaemyn’s brow knitted tight. “Perhaps not a bowl, actually,” he said as if trying to make sense of it himself, “Perhaps they’re more like the fingers of the mortal hand. Or perhaps rather an upside down spider, one resting on its back with its legs kicked up in the air. No, that’s no good. That’s no good at all. There’d be no bowl on a spider, would there?”

The Vaemyn was staring into the air above Beam and drumming his fingers manically against his knee. He looked as if he were staring into another world.

Beam grew impatient. “Why are you telling me this?”

At first, the man didn’t seem to hear. Then he waved and said, “Bah! Flower, hand, spider, it’s no matter. What matters is that these paddles, if you will, eventually grow into a bowl large enough to hold a pig. When these pig beeches reach ten years of age, the hollow space within this bowl fills with a shallow pool of liquid.”

“Liquid?” Beam said, “You mean, like rain?”

“No,” the Vaemyn said with a laugh, “No, this liquid is nectar secreted by the tiny flowers growing along the five branches. The wild boars, through some heavenly design unrevealed to mortals, are irresistibly drawn to this nectar.”

“Pig nectar,” Beam said with a snort, “You know, you remind me of someone on the other side of this dream.”

“This isn’t a dream, Be’ahm. This is a memory.”

Beam shook his head. What had started out as a fairly interesting dream was quickly degenerating into tedium. “I’ll ask you again,” he said, “Why are you telling me this?”

“The pigs are so attracted to that nectar, they willingly climb into the bowl. They do this so they may better drink their fill of it. Certainly, they know it’s risky, for they’ve seen their brother pigs consumed by the same gluttonous urges, and yet they can’t resist the compulsion to possess what they believe they want most.”

“What they believe they want most?” Beam said, “For the love of Calina, they’re just bloody pigs!”

“Exactly!” the Vaemyn said with a slap to his thigh, “Exactly right, my boy! They are indeed just pigs. You are most astute.”

Beam rubbed his skull and then sat down on a bench that hadn’t been there just a moment before. “It’s a goddamned dream,” he whispered to himself, “It’s just a dream. You only need to wake up.”

“Why are you glowering so, my boy?” the Vaemyn asked, “Is perhaps your stomach troubling you?”

“No,” Beam said, “I mean, yes. I’m sick. Sick of this bullshit dream.”

“Now this chapter of the story is most important,” the Vaemyn continued, “The beech nectar has narcotic qualities. As the pigs drink of it, they are quickly lulled into an entranced state.”

Beam suddenly remembered the story, or at least he thought he did. But the details were there and gone too quickly. Still, the familiarity of it was as haunting as an impending toothache.

“So the nectar makes the pigs fall asleep?” Beam said at last, “They fall asleep in the tree? Right there in the bowl of liquid like a fat chop in a stew?”

“Ay’a! Exactly correct! And what a sleep it is! At the bottom of that pool of nectar are thousands of tiny hairs like tentacles. Once the presence of the pig is understood by the plant, these hairs begin to grow, and they grow with such amazing vitality! Before long, they completely and inevitably cocoon the pig in its entirety.”

“A pig cocoon.” Beam laughed at that. “That’d make one nasty looking butterfly, I imagine.”

“Soon after,” the Vaemyn continued, “Thicker fibers slip into the cocoon and grow into the pig’s own flesh. In a matter of hours they penetrate the skin and the muscles, the organs and brain.”

“Well, I’m sure the pigs find that most unsatisfactory.”

The Vaemyn laughed. “The fibers don’t kill the pig, my boy. They nourish it. They keep it alive and healthy, albeit in an entranced, cosseted state.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Through the course of a single night, the five branches close up around the pig. They form a pod, like a fleshy bubble that partitions the pig from world. In the matter of a few short months they completely assimilate the creature.”

Beam stood up. “Wait a minute,” he said, “You’re trying to tell me the trees eat the pigs?”

“No! No, they assimilate it! They fully assimilate it! The difference is distinct and inarguable. The pigs remain completely intact. They’re never harmed and never digested. The tree creates a kind of womb for the pig, and that womb becomes the tree’s heart.”

“A womb?”

“In time, the tree grows into a normal beech. If you were to look at a pig beech fifty or a hundred years after acquiring its pig, you might see the outline of a leg or a tail or even a snout growing like burls from the trunk. They’re completely covered by bark, of course, but their features are quite distinguished.”

“You’re joking,” Beam said. What else could he say? The story was like some kind of grim, ridiculous fairytale.

“And if you were to cut into a pig beech when it’s fifty or a hundred years old, if you cut into precisely the right spot, you’d still find the flesh of the pig inside it. The heart still beats. The meat is fresh. The sap from the tree is as red as blood.”

Beam shook his head. “Damn me,” he said, “Why in the hell would that happen? If the trees don’t devour the pigs, why would they waste the energy? Damn me, there’s no point. It’s an absurd notion.”

“You’re wrong, Be’ahm. Eventually, the two life forms become one. The trees allow the pigs to live for centuries, and in return, the pigs give the trees self-awareness.”

Those last words stopped Beam cold. He couldn’t get his head around it. “Are you saying the trees are conscious?”

The Vaemyn bolted up from the throne and seized Beam’s face with his jeweled hands. “Precisely!” he cried into Beam’s face, “That is precisely it! You are brilliant, my dear boy! Brilliant!”

Beam pulled his face free. He watched in stunned silence as the Vaemyn retreated to his throne. The man was trying to tell him something, that was pretty obvious. So why didn’t he just come out and bloody well say it. It was as irritating as a burr.