My father has asked me to fill in the details of what happened on Dolparessa while he was away, since obviously, he was away.
Father. The term is rather inaccurate. If my parent-tree had chosen a human who preferred females, I would have a mother, I suppose. We haven’t quite negotiated a language for these relationships. Family groves are a very recent idea. It used to be common practice to ignore one’s seedlings.
Kaman tells me that among Earth-trees – true trees – it often isn’t common practice. Apparently, many trees can recognize their seedlings and supply them with nutrients until they are of sufficient size to support themselves.
My father did not supply me with nutrients. He supplied me with Sir Kaman. He can hardly complain about my choice, then.
Of course, he hasn’t. No Cu’enashti would. It’s the humans who look at us askance. It’s bad enough that I’m considered somehow royal, and people are envious of Kaman. The aristos think he’s stepped out of his place, the commoners think he’s putting on airs. But the other thing is that humans see me and read me as a sixteen-year old boy. They have the most vile opinion of Kaman, and even though I drew this image from his fondest dream, he refuses to touch me.
I really need Tarlach to do a show on this. Cu’enashti and humans have some fundamental differences, and “age” is one of them. If Kaman were to take a sixteen year old human as his lover, yes, a case could be made that it was manipulative and exploitive. But I’m not human, and I’m the one doing the manipulating and exploiting. Seriously.
Of course, he’ll get something in return – namely, everything he’s ever wanted. But the fact is that I can’t exist in a human form without him, and I wanted to exist. I wanted to breathe and feel the air moving inside of my lungs. I wanted to have feet that could dance, hands that knew the difference between the roughness of my bark and the softness of my hair. I wanted to go to garden parties and try Lwrence’s famed gourd salad.
The reason that Daniel didn’t emanate until Atlas was nine years old had nothing to do with his age. It had everything to do with Tara’s. She left the tanzaku when she was sixteen. Before that, she was too young to mate. Kaman, on the other hand, is almost sixty. He needs someone to reset his telomeres and tinker with his insulin-resistance.
Why did I choose Sir Kaman? Well, he was there. That sounds more terrible than it is. It’s not like I had no experience at all of humans – humans were constantly coming to the Atlas Tree, to pay their respects. But it was Kaman who took care of me, pruned my branches and mulched my roots. It was he who kept the garden area surrounding my trunk in beautiful order. He planted the little patches of flossflowers whose riot of color set my bark into relief.
He’s had his hands all over me since I was a sapling. Hmm…maybe that sounds kinkier than I’d intended it to. Then again, maybe it conveys the idea pretty well.
The other human who visited constantly was Tara. She came with Jamey, who, in a way, was my father also. Same tree, different branch. Again, terminology is failing. No Earth-tree would differentiate what branch a sapling came from. But to the Cu’enashti, it’s important. It’s important because we aren’t just trees. We’re trees that are also a small tribe of people.
Genetics aren’t the only thing that matters. We’re more than tree, more than flesh. There’s a spiritual inheritance. My spiritual father is Patrick. My spiritual mother is, of course, Tara. While she contributed nothing physical, no genetic material in any obvious sense, if not for her, I wouldn’t exist. I am a subsidiary product of my father’s lust for her. Not terribly different from a human conception, is it?
I have known Tara all my life, and I am awed by her. And all my life I have lived quite literally in my father’s shadow. Even before I had eyes to see, I knew he was a behemoth – unique among trees, monstrously perched on the side of a mountain, roots buried in rock, defying gravity as he stretched his ungainly plethora of limbs over the abyss. And I knew why he was like that – Tara’s dreams.
Tara’s dreams are of gods and goddesses and bloodshed and battle. They’re of monsters and heroes and heroes who slay monsters and heroes who become monsters. They’re of strange journeys and stranger incantations, poisons that kill and poisons that make you immortal. They are the dreams of a woman who murdered her babies for revenge.
Sir Kaman’s dreams are of lovely young men on tropical beaches, drinks with paper umbrellas, the opening of cherry blossoms, floating over the capital in a dirigible. In his dreams it is always a sunny day, the sandwiches have the crusts trimmed off, the aristocrats are vain and absurd and amusing.
It is the difference between an ancient Greek epic and a picture-book about an absurdist tea party. The Argonautica vs. Alice in Wonderland. Is it any wonder I chose to go down the rabbit-hole?
Hmmm, I’ve rather gone off on a digression, haven’t I? Well, you said that you wanted my story. But you didn’t want my story, did you? You wanted Tara’s story. I could feel your leaves perking up a bit when I was talking about her, Father. But surely, you can forgive me for putting in Sir Kaman.
Besides, the story is really simple. It was yet another formal reception for the K’ntasari delegation. But the thing is – and this was brilliant on General Panic’s part – since everybody knows that the K’ntasari are completely loyal to Ari, SSOps didn’t bother to search them. Why insult them for no reason?
Bonus points for anyone who remembers the essential plot device here: Caliban.
General Panic never expected that the singularity tactic would work. Nor did she expect to defeat you at Dumati. Things hadn’t gone entirely as she had planned, however. She had entirely expected to be able to escape. The web of Skattershot was a great idea – kudos to Owen and Mickey for thinking it up.
But her plan all along had been to distract you, get you far enough away for her to assassinate Tara. She figured that in one blow she could take out both leaders of the Matriarchy, because without Tara you’d go mad, and the likelihood that you could hold it together – the way Suibhne did the time you believed Tara was dead – was much lower since you would most certainly blame yourself for this. At the least, the Domha’vei would lose all direction; the most extreme result was that you’d immolate, leaving the system without the power grid.
It was such a huge mistake on your part that I don’t think it could’ve been a mistake. I would’ve seen it sooner, except I was looking at Kaman. Of course, my alchemy isn’t nearly as good as yours. I doubt it ever will be. My tree will never be that big, and I’m not sorry for it, either. I know damn well that the number of branches is a measure of the tree’s suffering.
And now I have two, because by the time I smelled the bullet, the only thing I could do was jump in front of it.
I guess you won’t be seeing much of me for a while because Raoul looks in his mid-thirties, and Kaman has no problem fucking him.