Chapter 1

THE IMPERFECTION OF MOUNTAINS

"Are you sure they won’t be able to see us?" Fansé asked. "We are not alive, remember?" Lugus wiped his long black beak along his breast and shifted impatiently.

"Yes, but we're no longer - ," she paused, and whispered, "... dead." Fansé knew better than to argue with Lugus, who had been with the Katikati for a very long time. Nobody remembered when he died or who he was when he was alive, least of all Lugus.

"Come, there's not much time left." said Lugus. A shiny black feather rocks down, as he soared upward. Fansé glanced back once to where the feather spun down then looked up and rushed her wings to follow the massive raven.

Lugus almost always preferred the shape of a Raven. He’d been woven from the essence of so many things in the “Seen” and “Between”, he could cast his essence as an eagle, or mouse. In moments of quiet contemplation he was a tree or flower or a drop of water. Sometimes he seemed invisible, even to the Pattern Masters; blending in and flowing out, in shadow and in light. Now, he flowed into the sky, visible to those with dreams and imagination, a wisps of ink beginning a story against the parchment sky.

Behind the ravens lay their home, the vast planes of Kyrkon, the home of Adahan and the Katikati. Below them treetops shimmered in the half dark. Ahead, lie the vast mountains of Vikandor. Lugus set course toward a peak and cliffs in the distance.

“We’re getting closer, stay close. The closer we get to the Castle, the more cross-winds we’ll encounter.” said Lugus. Fansé nodded and beat her wings faster steering ever closer to the big raven circling, in smaller arcs.

“Follow, stay closer”, croaked Lugus, more urgently.

“How far still?” Lugus didn’t answer but darted toward the peak which lay to the left and slightly below them. Fansé followed. They soared through a thin layer of mist toward what seemed like a path cut from rock. Shapes, barely recognizable as walls, followed the steep edge, their views amplified as each arc spiraled them further down, and indeed a wall seemed to grow out of the rock, trying to hide the irregular edges.

They found an opening in a parapet and made their way to the stone gates. Croaking impatiently, Lugus slid a thin thread with colorful beads through a lock. Weaving the thread and beads expertly until tiny rockshafts fell in place and a heavy stone door opened. The two ravens made their way inside not waiting for the heavy gate to turn, leaving the heavy stone to grind against the mountain. It was suddenly very dark and the gusts of wind still yapping outside as it howled at the ravens now inside the walls of the keep.

Two guards barely looked up as the ravens fluttered down the hallway. Lugus was right, to the living, they seemed like a shadow or trick of light. The living could not see between. The shadows shift and changes shape as Lugus and Fansé floated past the rooms and hallways.

“She’s in here.” Lugus paused. A shape and soundless gesture warned Fansé to be quiet. He tied two strings to the doorpost then as if slipping through the keyhole moved through the door and poured out on the other side, before assuming the shape of a raven again.

In the dimly lit room, Fansé could sense but barely make out the figure of a thin pale women on a bed. Her breath so frail and raspy, her arms and hands outstretched one moment, then limp the next. Fansé fluttered nervously, his gaze transfixed, not since her own death, was she so near another of the dying. While she struggled to find her balance, Lugus sat down on the dresser, and opened a small box, he scratched and croaked and pecked at ribbons, until he found what he was looking for. A tiny rock with a few smooth edges, gleamed in hues of blue and purple and green. Fansé glanced up as she saw Lugus fly past the figure now standing by the women’s bedside. Lugus had tied the rock in a web around his neck and it shone feint glimmer against the raven’s dark feathers. Lugus’ attention now shifted to the dimly lit face and hands of a figure who was adding a powdery substance to a cup, while Lugus and Fansé watched the bony hands move in grace, like a dancer, sinews and veins attached like strings to a bow. Fansé’s eyes followed the hands attached to arms, to shoulders until the odd figure in its entire obscurity made the raven, take a step back in shock.

The face cast in cold concentration, set after smoldering emotion convicted and steered decisions. The powder was getting mixed into the cup. Each circular motion, as precise as the following. The hands attached to arms, to shoulders to a body, barely recognizable as that of a women or man. Then, the stirring stopped abruptly. For a moment Fansé thought she saw the hand momentarily in hesitation. The two ravens hopped onto the bed and the women stirred.

“Come, drink some of this”, a smooth voice said. The pale women lifted her head from the pillow, her face tinged yellow like a sickly moon. “Ca’sim”, she whispered, barely audible. While her gaze held the ravens fast. She swallowed the liquid down, like she had an unquenchable thirst. She smiled and held her thin hands out.

“Thank…thank you”, she gasped. The odd figure turned his gaze to both ravens, holding them. Lugus looked at Fansé, as if to warn her, not to break the silence. Then nodded. Moments later the women sunk deeper into what seemed to be sleep again. Her head was sunk in a pool of silver grey hair, her eyelids resting and shut. Then it seemed as if she rose, a shimmer only visible to the ravens, flowed out and around her body. Lugus flew up and pecked at all the silvery threads, weaving and untying a wisps of blue and silver lines that shone, attached to her arms and head. When he was done, untying knots and snaking loops through patterns in and around the women’s hair, she looked at the ravens and smiled.

“You’re here”. “I thought you said they couldn’t see us.” breathed Fansé. “They can’t, they’re alive” he nodded toward the strange figure now slumped in the chair with hands covering his face. “But the Queen is no longer part of the living,” he said. How sudden, the body and blood transformed in instant to an inanimate pile of bones and flesh. It startled Fansé. She kept looking at the body. While sensing with the senses of the between, the essence of this life, flowing outward and forward, filling every potentiality of space and time that was completely hidden and that the living was barred from before. “Can I see my son, before we leave” said the women, who was the Queen. Lugus nodded and with wordless gesture showed the Queen to follow them. She left the body, the strings that bound her to the body and the brain and mind that sunk heavy to earth and rot and cold and callous and kindness alike at every whim, was now exposed but she, now just regent of awareness and sensing what lay between worlds. “Come, your Majesty”, Lugus glanced back at the body on the bed, and perched on the shoulder of the ghostly outline of what used to be a women gestured to Fansé to follow them. They walked through doors and walls this time, not even trying to hide their seemingly endless power of flowing through matter and mind and opening doors and shadows and locks and colours that were previously hidden. All borders are meant to be crossed or crossed out, eventually.

After what seemed like an endless maze through the cold walls and hallways of the castle, the two ravens and the ghost of the women opened a door to a smaller room. A boy of ten or eleven is lying in bed, he opens his eyes and frowns.

“Mother?” his voice raspy from sleep.

“He can see us” Fansé gasps.

“I had hoped so” said Lugus as he stretched a wing, and tucked it in again.

“He thinks he is dreaming”, said the Queen. She moved toward the boy and held him firmer than she when she had flesh and heart and sinew to act in harmony. Lugus lightly touched the rock and ribbon hanging around his breast, while looking at the boy.

“Will he be looked after?” asked the Queen.

“I think so” said Lugus, then added, “Caásim will be like a mother to him.”

"Caásim has been like a mother to him.", the Queen said in a cold, soft voice.

Fansé felt embaressed but could not tell why. She wanted to hide or dive off in a bolt into the ice and wind as far away from the castle as she could.

When the ravens and the ghost of the women exit the castle, she felt the thin veil that hung between her and the living. And the cold, a cold that was razor sharp. She held on to the sense of warmth she sensed when she embraced her son. It held her, it enclosed her, becoming more than memory and being. Then she started to forget and saw two ravens pecking at insects, how odd, they don’t seem afraid. She smiled, and forgot while they scurried off in a flutter. She sensed the feeling of becoming thinner of dissipation. The moon, the light, pieces of snow, she disappears into the mountain’s flowing down as water, quenching thirst. A blooming flower, a cloud, a tiny rock crystal, transformed. She slipped into cracks in rocks, flowed with the smoothing tiny sharp edges in stone. She found her way through the stars, falling back from the moon, she became light, and she was everywhere and nowhere. More alive than in life. She was between. Who she was will eventually be forgotten by the living, but the ravens, the Katikati will remember. That is what they were here to do. They kept a pebble and a string and remembered. He could not recall his own life and death, but he was Lugus and he remembered the lives of others. He was apprenticed to the pattern master.

In the early morning light, the eunuch stirred. He left the embrace of his lover and made his way to the queen’s chamber. The wailing coming from inside the door, foretold what he already knew from the night before. The ravens had left.