Biography:
Wooden Heart: [Warning – contains major spoilers]
After the fall of the Atlas Tree, Tara becomes inebriated and visits the site in the dark of night. Finally understanding the nature of the Cu’enashti, she addresses Atlas, speaking of their friendship and saying that she needs the tree’s companionship. The next morning, despite the tree’s extremely damaged state, it has managed to put out a sickly branch: Jamey.
The effort is not without cost. Jamey is unable to speak – much later, in Eden Blues, he will reveal that his muteness is to keep him from screaming. He finds himself on the strand below the Atlas Tree and makes his way to a refugee camp in Albion Port-of-Call. During that time, he encounters Tara and saves her life. She promises him a knighthood. This story is later recounted in more detail in “The Vision of Singing.” Jamey finds himself wandering aimlessly and first recognizes his own image in a tide pool. Because he cannot speak, he has to write his name in the sand with a piece of driftwood. He also discovers that although he cannot speak or scream, he is able to sing. He goes first to Merenis and then to Albion, where he becomes a farm-laborer in the camp. Tara visits the camp overnight, and Jamey stops an assassin.
When Guinnebar the Pretender captures Albion, she recognizes that Jamey has Cu’enashti eyes. A rampant xenophobe, it is her general policy to torture the Cu’enashti until they lose the ability to maintain their human form. Jamey, however, is capable of resisting despite the pain. This makes Guinnebar suspicious, and she calls in support from CenGov – Molly. When Molly attempts to do a deep telepathic probe of Jamey, she finds out his identity, but the experience of directly encountering a Cu’enashti consciousness traumatizes her. She forms an irrational hatred of Cu’enashti in general and Ash in particular.
Guinnebar uses Jamey as bait to lure Tara into a confrontation. She binds Jamey to a cross and leaves him exposed in the sun as her army progresses towards the Atlas Tree. Her intent is to burn it. Tara meets Guinnebar on the strand and challenges her to a one-on-one contest of arms. No Skarsian aristo would dare to lose face by refusing such a challenge. Guinnebar readily accepts because she is younger and faster than Tara, and sees herself at advantage. However, Tara is more experienced and more accurate, and after allowing Guinnebar to press an attack, kills her instantly with a well-placed kick to the head. Guinnebar’s forces are now compelled by honor to stand down. Tara, in some very forceful and colorful language, places the Atlas Tree under her protection.
In the meantime, the weather on Dolparessa has been worsening. Jamey intuitively understands why this is happening, but he is unable to communicate it to Tara. He is also dehydrated and weak from his ordeal and the damage to the Atlas Tree. Tara takes him back to Court Emmere and soaks him in a tub of RootRiot, a hydroponic therapy which proves to be enormously effective.
While Jamey is recovering, Christolea arrives, asking to see Tara. This is a surprise since the 5th Matriarch has been singularly unresponsive to Tara’s pleas for aid, both during the CenGov attack and Guinnebar’s insurrection. After a quick, titillating shower in front of Jamey, Tara meets with Christolea, who explains that the Archon is dying, and reveals a great secret – the Archon is actually a tree, an Arya Nau’gsh, which functions as a conduit connecting the Rip to the power grid. She reveals that the tree cannot handle the additional load placed upon it when Volparnu and Sideria were added to the grid. The Matriarch had sent Tara to a Terran university encouraging her to pursue an interest in studying the nau’gsh hoping that Tara would learn enough to devise a solution.
After a failed attempt to save the tree with horticultural means, Tara asks for the assistance of Clive Rivers and Lady Claris, and the 5th Matriarch arrives in person. Clive presents a plan to replace the Archon with a linked group of smaller trees. When this is attempted, the Matriarch is killed, and Tara must take her place, fulfilling the prophecy. The circuit containing the young Arya is unstable, and Jamey replaces them so that Tara does not meet the same fate as the old Matriarch. He transforms into the mothman and is recognized as Archon by the Staff of the Matriarch.
In the rest of Wooden Heart, there are snippets concerning what Jamey does in the following years. He becomes the Imperial Gardener and is rumored to be having an affair with the Tara. He learns GSSL (Galactic Standard Sign Language) so that he can communicate more effectively. He redesigns the palace gardens for Tara and Ailann’s wedding. When two seedlings from Atlas appear, Jamey is the one who nurtures them.
Eden Blues: Jamey is asked to give testimony in the mock trial of Dermot and Davy. He explains that he was emanated to deal with the experience of Atlas growing its roots through the ra’aabit hole – Ash knew the experience would be excruciating, and Jamey is the emanation responsible for healing physical damage to the tree. However, even Jamey is unable to cope, and Tara calls an end to the experiment. Jamey is enormously depressed at his failure. Lorcan, enthralled by Jamey’s suffering, proclaims his love, as much as a provocative gesture as anything else, but Jamey accepts it at face value.
The Poison Garden: Lorcan dedicates a volume of poetry to Jamey (the eponymous Flowers from my Poison Garden). He further creates drama when he threatens to slash his leaves over Jamey’s refusal to talk to him (ignoring that Jamey is mute.) For his part, Jamey accepts Lorcan’s petulant affections with grace.
When Seth begins a philosophical investigation of the nature of evil, Jamey shows him images of the pitcher plant, spotted knapweed, the dodder vine and finally, the Dolparessan deathweed. Seth is shocked to realize the little-known violence of plants.
In “The Prophecy of Towers,” Tara and Hurley walk through an amrita inspired dreamscape of Merenis, ending at an apartment complex called the Atlas Tower. She visits Lorcan’s apartment, and finds Jamey there, hanging on a cross. The dream is remarkable not only because Tara predicts that Lorcan will be the hero, but that Jamey replies verbally, “This is the best idea yet.”
The Perpetual Rose: Jamey is in the background, supporting Lorcan through his crisis. He emanates after Canopus is created, taking responsibility for training the potted tree into a Penjing. He then asks Tara to take him to visit the father tree. Afterwards, he explains that he needed advice on how to teach the Cu’enashti on Shambhala to transform the ecosphere to suit the human colonists. That evening, at a dinner party at Sir Kaman’s, Jamey reveals that he’d rather be called Sir James than Prince Jamey since the knighthood was earned and conferred by Tara. He explains that he is the white knight, and Lorcan the black.
The Portable Grove: Jamey first appears at Whirljack’s door with the solution to his problem: since Whirljack and Blackjack have been growing in separate directions for 20 years, healing the split would not cause the disappearance of BJ.
Experiment nine takes place in Jamey’s flat. He runs the experiment – seemingly a lesson in flower arranging – while Tara and Daniel finally come to terms with old wounds. The talk is a preface to the appearance of the mothman, whose redesign forms the major theme of the book.
In experiment ten, it is revealed that Jamey’s apples have the 4th largest nau’gshtamine content in the pleroma. In the twelfth experiment, Jamey is one of the original group who start to hang out at Sloane’s. At the end of the thirteenth experiment (in which Jamey didn’t even participate) he is declared the strongest branch.
We learn in the introduction to experiment sixteen that Jamey is disturbed by the occasional loud rows between Lorcan and Driscoll. Jamey prepares most of the food for the banquet in the seventh stress test (as well as the desserts – although we’ll later learn that their production is taken over by penguins). As a reward for this, Tara gives him his gift: the ability to telesend. Lorcan interprets this as a sign that Ash doesn’t want Jamey to remain silent. They speculate on the cause of Jamey’s muteness – especially considering that he can sing – but come to the conclusion that it must have something to do with sonic properties, like Beat’s odd ability to vocalize.
Correspondence Chart Entries from The Portable Grove
| Denotation | Sir James “Jamey” Maonach (Hebrew: That which supplants; Gaelic; silent). |
| Numeration | 9th Emanation of Ashtara; 9th branch of Atlas; 24 in the correspondence chart. |
| Age | 22 |
| Hotness | 8/10 |
| Vital Statistics | 1.882 meters tall, cock size 16.51 cm when erect. |
| Description | Strawberry blonde, slightly below shoulder-length hair. The thinnest emanation. Ethereal, pale, fine-boned. There is a great fragility about him. He is beautiful, but it is the sort of beauty brought on by much suffering. Wears folkish natural weaves in white, off-white and taupe. |
| Skills | Botanist. Gardening, flower-arranging, suffering. |
| Sexual Prowess and Kinks | Sex in the open air. |
| Average Duration of Play | 16 minutes, 34 seconds. |
| Totem Tree | Salix alba, the white willow. |
| Fixed Star | Lingua Hydri, the tongue of the hydra (δ Hya) also known as Liǔ Sù Yī, first star of willow. |
| Color |  |
| Esoteric Symbol | The geomantic glyph Amissio, loss. |
| Function | Creative initiation. |
| Official Title | White Knight of the Arbor; Imperial Gardener of Sideria. |
| His Prophecy | A wise gardener. |
| Dessert | Fresh nau’gsh with honey-ginger sauce |
Persistence of Weeds Addendum
| Branch Growth Characteristics | Natural branch growth resulting from the trauma of the fall of the Atlas tree during the CenGov invasion. Used as a template for his half-brothers on Goliath, Cyrus and Isaac. |
| Nul-history | Bonded with Callum; accidentally synched with Wynne and was drawn into the Atlas proto-consciousness. |
| Proto-conscious Root Concept | Empathy, designated Healing. |
| Prime Number of Energy Resonance | 89 |
| From Self-Portraits Not-of-Me II: Baby Pictures by Driscoll Garrett |  |