How I Discovered Deconstruction Of Light and Music.
Davy starts to hum. It is not long before others join into the song, and soon we are a chorus.
Trees understand music. It’s the trembling of a leaf in the wind. The electric buzz of a radio wave. The pulse and rhythm of the ground below us. Pitch is astonishing; I remember Daniel’s amazement at the familiar world of warm vibrations soaring into an entirely new sensorium. It’s a common reaction, and one of my people’s greatest joys. Cu’endhari workers always seem happy because they sing or they whistle. They clap their hands and snap their fingers and learn how to play instruments. Even Jamey can find his voice in a song.
Driscoll’s earlier statement, although arrogant, was correct. The auditory arts come naturally to us, but the visual ones are baffling. The sun is an enormous disappointment. The blanket of light is such a comfort to a tree, such a perfect fulfillment. But for a man to look at – horrendous. It’s painful, obscuring, not revealing. Harsh. Its only beauty is indirect, at dawn and dusk when it is tempered by the atmosphere, or in the illumination of other beautiful things. In the energy which causes them to grow. The sun is most beautiful when it’s hidden.
Most human babies are born gasping for their first breath in the cold air. The best midwives direct for the birth to take place in water, so the child is born into the comfort of a warm, aqueous world. The Cantor is a good midwife, and so the Cu’endhari are born at dusk, into music.
Words fail me; I am trying to describe a time before words, before images. I could sing it to you, perhaps.
All right, this is what I and I remembers. The feelings of ions in the air before a storm. The regular interval of ions in the air. And now, my knowledge that patterns of weather are far more random, more complex everywhere but home. The trees on other worlds are more watchful – almost nervous – in comparison to the nau’gsh, who take the weather for granted.
Elation – the feel of nitrogenous compounds surrounding my rootlets. It’s power – it’s what it means to feel power, to know that growth is coming. More – the indescribable energy from the nul-universe, surging up the taproot.
The sense of other trees in the distance. In the far distance for me. I am given to understand the community of the leaves takes on a whole new meaning to those of the forest. I am a lone tree, which means, to a certain extent, an alien. No different from a lone human.
The sun which comes and goes. Expansion as my leaves reach to the sky. Then silence, folding into myself.
That other sun, which also comes and goes, but not as predictably. Warmer than the first sun. Different. A different sort of light. A light that does not know that it is light, but a light capable of knowing.
Knowing.
All of this always existed, but suddenly, I am aware of knowing it. The second sun brought this illumination.
It is so small and fragile, not like the first sun, which is large and immutable. But it is quick! Quick! And surely with that speed comes playfulness.
It seems like fun.
This must have been what our ancestors thought when they became squirrels. Fun!
But we have evolved beyond that. Yes, there are squirrels, and avions, and insects. A whole community crawling on my body. It’s not as bad as it sounds. You have a whole community crawling on your body, too. Don’t even think about what lives in your intestines.
But the second sun is different because the second sun lives only half in the world of the senses; the other half is in the world of dreams. To be animal, only reaction is necessary – calculation, affection, but not self-awareness. Love can be. Fear can be. Hunger, and the immediate plan to steal the roast off the table can be. But not a self that loves and fears and is hungry, and debates the ethics of stealing the roast. Self-awareness implies sentience: I think, therefore, I am.
To be a tree, only dreams are necessary.
But the second sun not only perceives the world, not only dreams life, but lets the world affect dreams and uses dreams to shape the world. It moves easily in and out of these realms.
It moves. It moves! It’s quick.
I want that.
Suddenly, there’s an I that wants that.
There’s an I that’s a tree, and an I that’s a something else. A something else without a face, an I that needs eyes.
I and I wants out, and there’s a way out. Freedom. I and I wants to play, and there’s a way to play.
The Cu’ensali play. The Cu’enmerengi are free. But the second sun has left an offering to I and I. The second sun has made a promise.
I and I understands that to be free would mean to be free of the second sun. I and I can’t conceive of that. It’s a choice, but there’s no choice involved. I and I accepts the promise. I and I accepts.
Dusk falls, and I and I feels the vibrations. He’s felt these before, but they come at irregular intervals. There’s no predicting them. And they do not seem to herald anything useful, like light, water or nutrients. They just are, like the birds in His branches.
But this time, they feel different. They are quick, and alive, and full of joy. They fill His dreams with drunkenness, with a sense of spinning. With movement.
They pull.
They pull, and He lets them pull. There’s too much joy to resist. They pull, but He has to make the effort. They pull, but He has to make the leap.
It’s the perfect term, the grand jeté, because it is a great leap. But it is also a term borrowed from ballet, and when we leap, we leap straight into a dance. I and I is moving, moving, and there is music. He can hear! And there are others around him that He can see, some floating in air, some hitting the ground running. And the drums, the wild drums that sometimes the humans hear echoing in the forest during the time of the Nau’gsh Festival.
And the singing, the ecstatic song of the Cantor, which he understands by instinct: I have voice. I have voice and I can sing. I have feet. I have feet and I can dance.
Daniel has feet. He nearly trips over them, and it makes him laugh. Oh, he needs to breathe! He can move the air within him; he is no longer just leaves, moved by the air.
It’s fun!
Our education takes about a month. We absorb spoken language rapidly, and then learn about human culture. Of course, the Cu’ensali don’t take it seriously, and most of us are Cu’ensali. They will play forever, never taking physical bodies, never bearing fruit. The Cantor tells us that this is the natural form of the adult Cu’endhari, the small, ephemeral creatures the humans call sprites. The Cantor tells us that we are different, special. We can reason, we can plan, we can think about ourselves.
After a few weeks, the Cu’enmerengi grow restless. They feel they’ve learned enough – they want to try it. It seems to Daniel that they know nothing. It also seems to him that they see nothing. They don’t see how the soil is really gold, or lead, or synthetic carpeting fiber. They don’t see that everything is a swirling mass of potential that could – with the right dreaming – be turned into anything else.
“They’re free to go,” says the Cantor. “They’re free. But the Cu’enashti see everything, and thus are bound to everything.”
There’s a question that Daniel has, but he doesn’t have the words for it, and he’s afraid of being disrespectful to the Cantor. Also, he has a gut instinct that the Cu’enmerengi would laugh. But once they’re gone, then he notices something. The ones that stay – the ones like him, all share his sense of heaviness.
They aren’t having fun anymore.
Finally he says it, the thing that all of them have been wondering for days. “What happened to the other sun?” he asks.
The Cantor smiles at him; it’s amused and only half-kindly. “Daniel, does your chest hurt?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says. “I didn’t want to be trouble, but is there something wrong with me? It makes me cry. I don’t like it – I’m losing water and mineral salts.”
There’s a murmur amongst the youths. They’d all been feeling the same way. “I can’t think anymore!” one of them cries. “I’m sorry Cantor, I am! Everything is swirling, and your teachings don’t make sense.”
“Well, they do,” says another, “but, it’s like there’s a big piece missing?”
The Cantor shushes them with a glance. “I have one last teaching for you. Or rather, the first teaching for you as Cu’enashti. It has three parts. The first is to remind you to, never, never reveal what you are. It’s true for the Cu’enmerengi, but especially true for you. You must to all eyes seem to be human. The second is to respect human boundaries. Even in a group, they are alone and need to be alone. You’ll understand this later. The third is that you have abilities that no human – or Cu’enmerengi – possesses. Don’t flaunt them, or your best efforts to live as human will be for naught. Don’t turn dirt into diamonds – Daniel, I’m talking to you.”
Daniel blushes.
“I mean it. You’re going to be a big tree, Daniel, and that means this will come easily to you.”
“I just want the sun to come back,” he says, shyly.
“All of you – here’s what you must do. Go into the town and find a job, the way I told you. Act in the way I told you, make money and get a place to stay. You’ll have to find the second sun yourselves. But when you find it, you have to pretend that you’ve never seen it before. In a way, you haven’t. You have to pretend that you’re meeting it for the first time. And try to stay composed. If you gasp, or tremble, or cry, or shout, you’ll make a really bad first impression, and you might not be able to recover from it. It would be a shame to have to grow another branch right away.”
“Another branch?”
“Humans value things that aren’t easy for them. So no matter how much it hurts, don’t follow the second sun too closely. Make the second sun want to come to you. Whatever you do, don’t stand there like an idiot, holding out a flower. Well, you all should go now. You have to try it. You have to let the teachings take root. But I’m here when you need wisdom. Don’t be afraid to ask. When you come back, I’ll have an important story to tell you.”
Daniel goes into Merenis Port-of-Call, a shipping village on the Sea of Illusion. Daniel stumbles around – he’s such a country bumpkin, and the people laugh – but they treat him kindly. There’s no malice in him, and they sense it, and it brings out the best in them. He only has trouble with those who have no goodness left.
But his chest still hurts, and when the first sun goes away, the big, bright, disappointing sun, he thinks that it would be a good time for the other sun to appear. Another thing – he feels flushed all the time, and his tree is changing. He’s going to flower. The Cantor told them what flowers were, but she never mentioned that it would feel like this. He thinks he’s going to explode.
His heart still hurts, but now his groin hurts too. That, at least, makes sense to him. He knows that flowers and cocks are both used to make seed. He needs to make some seed.
He goes up to his tree to see what it looks like. He’s covered with buds. It’s an awkward phase, and it makes him feel very self-conscious.
Suddenly, every flower is open, and his pupils are dilated, and he’s hothothot, gasping for air. He reels against the trunk. The sun is on the horizon, the sun is coming out!
She’s a long ways away, though, and he’s grateful. Now he understands what the Cantor meant about composure. He has to stop sweating and panting. And do something about that erection. Maybe if he untucks his shirt so that it hangs loose in the front, it won’t be so obvious.
It’s a human. A human, but different from other humans. Different in that all the light in the world is radiating from her, in that she’s the actual beginning and end of the entire universe.
She sees him! Well, she sees the tree, but – same difference. His mind goes blank; he has no idea what to say. She’s everything, everything, and his heart is in his mouth. She’s also an animal, small, and warm, and moist, and furry. Moist and furry and slick, oh he needs to make some seed and plant it deep.
He plucks his own flower and offers it to her.
That’s the best part yet, says Evan. You’re getting really good at this.
I’m starting to understand it, I say. It gets easier as I go. When you write, you’re really figuring out what you’re writing about.
We’re writing about ourselves, says Ailann.
It’s just like analysis, says Tarlach.
Yes. And I have to put everything in it, everything. And then Tara can illuminate it.