Chapter 27: A Consultation of Fate

Miko:

I breached a grand limb, dragging myself up the bark and laying against the limb with my back supported by the trunk. My efforts had brought me this far, and before my eyes was the complex crown of the tree. The bushy part of the tree that can be seen from afar with regular trees — the part you climb up to with two or more steps and a muscle up. It took me a month to climb. Yet, I wasn’t exhausted or ready to give up. Nothing in my body hurt; I felt rejuvenated both in body and spirit. I had come this far and was proud to see my efforts realized, but this place, The Garden, gave me undying stamina. Of course, I did sleep during the climb, not because I had to; I actually wanted to. The rhythm of sleep keeps me focused, a small goal to look forward to. I kept finding myself desiring that next darkness so that the place that collects me in my sleep would arrive again. Today, I looked out onto the branches and twigs that webbed out in front of me, and a deep breath gave me a surreal feeling. A memory pulsed forward in my brain of where we were when I started this journey, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the state of my prior self; a joyful laugh. The laugh that comes when you reflect on how far you have come compared to your previous self. I did not regret who I was, but it did make me laugh for a moment. Then my goal sunk back into my mind, and where I was gained shape again. I fell forward onto my palm and then stood tall. Stillness took over my face as I prepared myself for the next part.

Ray’s of light found pathways through the branches and bushy treetops guiding my footsteps in this realm high above the ground. I might be as high up now as I was on the mountain, and there won’t be any rolling down, just a swift drop to my certain death. These branches were big enough to fit three carriages comfortably, so I stayed in the middle, away from the edges. I didn’t mix well with heights, so looking down was avoided at all costs. I walked around the branch I was standing on. A huge burl swelled around the trunk, which allowed me to further around the cylindrical shape of the tree. Against the bark of the trunk, juts of malformed material stemmed out a short way, forming a sort of unconventional stairway. Every muscle in my body had been worked tirelessly through the climb, so I didn’t mind a more relaxing way to raise the elevation. A constant full-body workout did provide some much-needed strength and conditioning. A rigorous version that provided with unlimited stamina allowed my body to engage itself to the limit and then build up my muscles when I slept. For the first time in my life, my body was improving rather than regressing. Maleki was leagues ahead of me still. I mean, he’s been doing this forever, but it felt good for once to rely on my own physical strength. The makeshift stairs wound around the tree as I walked around it endlessly, hours of my life staring at the intricacies of shades of brown. I can’t tell if this was made or cut, but the colossal tree’s bark grew around it. Even if you could see into the thick crown from the ground, the distance and texture masked this starlike shape from being seen like camouflage until you were right on top of it. The other branches all split off from the trunk, so occasionally, a divot in the stairs conformed into the thick branch pathways extending far into the edges of the tree’s range. However, I wanted to see where these took me, and my curiosity about what lay at the top kept me moving swiftly. The steps were misshapen, each different from the others, so my steps had no rhythm. Height and depth changed quickly, so I placed my foot carefully each time, resulting in slower progress up the stairwell.

Finally, the end of the steps arrived in my eye-line, and the scent in the air turned sweet. Not the fruit kind of sweet, more like the nectar of a flower that comes from a flesh bloom. The crown of the colossal tree opened up more here at the top, causing winds to travel through, carrying the scent all around in the breeze. Soft sounds could be heard above, footsteps and a hum combined with a whistle. I stepped lightly, careful not to make a sound so that I didn’t alarm who or whatever awaited me. My back pressed flat against the trunk as I listened for a change on the wood platform above. Crawling up the steps using my available arm to soften the impact of my movements, I got to the last two steps and prepared to peer over. This was the tree’s crest, the last of the trunk before it turned into tall, vertically angled branches to cover the top of the tree with leaves and more sub-branches. Four limbs in total curved off and twisted in different directions, the base of each branch connected to the sides of the tree, leaving this middle area untouched. Although, the circular disc we were standing on was not perfectly round, nor was the area entirely open to the air. The trunk curved up above, forming small walls randomly in certain sections of the platform. In the middle of the disc was a house-shaped out of wood and decorated with leaves and spare materials the colossal tree produced. It’s more of a big hut, actually; I’m not sure what the difference is; you can just tell.

In front of the building were a table and two chairs. One of the chairs was occupied by a person with long brown hair twisted together and twirled into two knobs at feminine shoulders. She must have been twenty feet away, but I heard her so clearly, even from here.

“It is impolite to leave a lady waiting, Miko.” She spoke smoothly.

My body was pressed hard against the top step, shocked she was able to know I was coming, and how did she know my name? I took a deep breath and stood tall, climbing the last step and then standing tall to accept whatever came next. “Forgive me, though, isn’t it rude to lay ambush on guests?”

“I have not moved. Weren’t you the one sneaking up on me?” She retorted.

I approached her right side, circling the outside of the circular wooden platform to get closer to the other seat available. “Fair point. I just expected someone to stop me from achieving my goal by force or convince me with more words.” She turned her head as I made it parallel with her body. Wanting to approach her and the chair head-on, I continued my unconventional walk to the other side of her hut.

“Stop you? I never quite had the touch for violence my siblings possessed.”

“More words to share, then? I’ve grown weary of stories.”

“We have much in common, then. I, too, have grown so tired of the monotony; I much prefer reality to fairytales. They never live up to the expectations we give them.”

When I caught her straight on, she brought her teacup in for a drink, and her face was blocked by her bangs. I grabbed the top of the chair with my right arm and took a seat. Unable to pull my chair up properly with only one good arm, I sat across from her with my chair angled awkwardly. I could have straightened it out, but proper has never been my thing. A tea set elegantly on the table. An odd thing to see in such a natural environment. She looked straight at me, her hair sliding back to the side of her head. She was young; she looked maybe fourteen. This would have surprised me, but after Khronos revealed himself, I somewhat predicted this since he said he had siblings. “You said ‘siblings.’ Khronos is your brother?”

She sat elegantly, her hands clasped around one of her knees that was crossed over her other leg. “It has been a long time since I called him that. Now I call him my husband.”

Had I yet taken a sip of the tea laid out for me, I probably would have spat it out. “Husband? Isn’t that frowned upon?”

Whatever I said must have made her laugh because she broke out in loud laughter immediately, having to set her teacup down to protect it from her fit.

She finally stopped after nearly struggling to get air. “I — I apologize. You must forgive me. I have only been privileged to meet a few mortals, so I tend to forget how foreign this must all seem.” She paused, taking a breath to continue speaking, “There was just us at first. In all the whole world, we knew only each other. However, if it comforts you, primordial genes operate differently than yours.”

“Still weird...We look the same. How are we so different?”

“The same.” She laughed audaciously. “I have lived thousands of years, yet to you, I must look but a child. We are the same species, but you are a far descendant. The properties of godhood were lost after three generations of children, our children’s children’s children’s children; the last gods.”

This was the closest I had gotten to real answers since I started this journey. “Is that why I’m sick because godhood wasn’t passed down to us mortal peasants?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Not exactly, Miko, and do spare from the toils of your reductive speech. Godhood isn’t all it is perceived to be. Immortality leads to inevitable failure and eventual collapse of the values we hold ourselves to. Your disease is linked to two factors.” She raised the appropriate amount of fingers in case I was unable to equate words to numbers. “We primordial were created to possess majik; our bodies are more durable and more capable of withstanding the effects. When my siblings ate the forbidden elemental fruits, they were corrupted by the purity, cursed from this place, and sworn to death. The Garden itself is conscious and was aware of the theft, and my siblings knew the price. ‘Whomever shall eat the fruit from the Tree of Majik shall surely die.’ They were banished from this place and the gifts it possesses, and eventually, they had children whom they passed their blessings and their curses to. After eating the fruit, the pure form of majik bonded to their blood and passed to their children. With each generation, the intended form of our species withered while still possessing majik.”

I raised my wrists above the table, showing my forearms. “That doesn’t explain why I’m sick. I don’t have majik.”

She smiled at me, gesturing in the air, like when grandmother would tap me on the nose. “You catch on so quickly. Perhaps the difficult subjects will be easier for you to understand. Your illness is indeed rare. In fact, it is only supposed to affect those born with majik in their blood, none of which you possess. This is a defect placed by The Garden, which acts twofold: to call and to cull. When a child is born with this defect, they pass it on to their children. Khronos tells me there is an order that lies still, passed through the bloodlines. Any with your condition is to be slaughtered immediately to prevent the spreading of the trait to future generations.”

My heart felt like it skipped a beat. “So that’s why my parents hid me away. To protect me?” That’s why they were limited in their choices of healers and probably supplemented with people they could directly trust. I had been so angry with them for so long, feeling abandoned and unloved. “You mentioned the defect has two reasons. What was the second?”

“You have arrived at the truth of why you are. The Garden has a heart and soul of its own, and it plucks and influences those it finds suitable to test. Like you, this colossal tree is disease-ridden, placed upon it by the actions of my foolish siblings who stole the very life from this place. And so, it beckons those it deems capable of repairing its injury; to untwist the knife in the wound it received very near the beginning of time.”

I locked eyes with her. “Is that what you want then, for me to come all the up here and free this tree from whatever plagues it? Your husband didn’t seem too enthralled when I told him I was going to eat the fruit.”

A snark exhale left her nose. “Did you climb all the way up this colossal tree to ask how I feel?” She laughed until it quickly felt bitter on her tongue. “How sweet…’What I want?’ I could try to convince you not to eat the fruit, but something tells me those words would be wasted on you?”

“Of course, I didn’t climb all the way up here to be swayed. My mind was made when I was trapped down there in ‘paradise,’ — forced to stare at my brother’s limp body.” I shook that thought from my mind, preventing myself from getting trapped in that place. I didn’t want to offend her and prevent her from sharing more information, so I asked another question. “You mentioned godhood, so what are you the god of?”

She became excited, rubbing her hands together and taking a deep breath. Oh no, she’s definitely about to tell me a story. I rubbed my hand against my head in preparation for a headache.

“It was easier for most of my family to understand their powers. Being gods of elements you could find abundantly around you had that effect. Others were not so lucky, bearing elements that were more difficult to understand, but they still existed, at least. I, on the other hand, was not born with an element but instead a concept. I am Ananke, Goddess of Necessity.”

I knew I was fanning the flames, but I was curious. “I’m not sure I follow. What is necessity?”

Her eyes closed, and the area around us shifted in appearance to show a field of grass spreading out into infinity. It didn’t seem tangible, but my eyes couldn’t tell the difference. “Necessity, you ask? I posited the same query when I was first told of this ability, which was undefined at the time of conception. There are truths upon which their very nature is not questioned, and there are falsities, statements of possibility that cannot form. You will die.” She walked to a blade of grass that stretched to her thighs and glided her hand against the length of it, showing that it could be physically interacted with. “Even immortality is only bound by the plane that allows our existence, controlled by the inevitable heat death of the universe. So, you must die; that is a necessary truth.” I placed my hand against a blade of grass, but it passed through it. “You will die today. That is a contingent possibility, not necessarily false, but a contingently true statement. You are starting to understand, yes?”

No, I thought to myself.

“We are the offspring of Khaos and Khosmos, whose divinity was processed in the infinite void with a much greater potential than our own. When intelligence persuaded necessity, the very spark of creation was formed. The laws of the universe did not call for existence on this planet, so the first beings, in their union, allowed intellect to dominate what was necessary. The very laws of the universe were intrinsically manipulated to represent new values than their previous positions. Life was made necessary with majik, and then our eyelids unfolded and saw only darkness, the belly of the tree — surrounded by a cocoon of bark, but then it opened, exposing us to this paradise.”

The field around us withered, and in her hands lay the ashes of a blade of grass. Then, I began to understand. “You can change fate?”

She ignored me as if I wasn’t present, disregarding my question. “The ever-present burden of cost, however, continues to impede progress. The ramifications of change in the spectrum of possibilities echoed throughout the cosmos, inducing a transformative shift in the very fabric of our galaxy — impossibility, imbalance, then immortality. What you call fate, I call necessity — a change in judgment by force. One cannot manipulate fate. It is not about what will be, those events that have yet to pass; one can only change what is and what is not.”

The place she made appear blurred out of existence until we were standing again at the top of her tree, having never really left in the first place. She can somehow manipulate the reality around her and will her desires into existence. “Tell me, though, Ananke. Why are you up in this tree, and Khronos isn’t if you can change things?”

She sighed, sitting back in her chair and regaining her previous position. “Our creators bargained with the great void to change a contingent truth. I imitated their great work, and I paid the price for the pursuit of forbidden sin. There was one rule. ONE RULE in this whole damned place!’” She paused. “Why couldn’t they just follow one measly rule?” She spoke in sorrow to herself before continuing in a more plain tone, almost devoid of emotion. “Although what I did might have been worse. I didn’t have the strength to do it alone, so I begged the tree to provide it for me. The tree did not yet yield the concept of necessity, so it accepted and gained my powers to its’ bidding.”

Her eyes filled with the weight of tears, her sin still brewing freshly on the surface. “What did you do?” I asked.

“Like you, I was doing what I thought must be done. I saved my family. Khronos and I had been out exploring for some time. We never counted the suns back then, so there was no way to know for how long, but when we returned, they had already eaten the fruit. When we found them, they were dying and looked half as bad as you did when you arrived. They explained themselves and their futile reasoning, and I made a decision. I changed the rules. ‘If you eat from the fruit of the tree of majik, you shall surely never die.’” Ananke wiped her eyes and sipped the rest of her tea quickly.

“I don’t understand. If you can just change the rules, you can fix Maleki or change your contract with the tree!”

“No, Miko. It’s never that simple, and I learned it the hard way. That’s what I am trying to show you. My decision saved my siblings’ lives, but it also doomed them. I thought I would be returning them to their original primordial state, the way we were intended to be. Primordial does not mean invincible; we are capable of injury, but we do not age and heal from injuries quickly. Mortal wounds can be performed against us, but at that time, there were no enemies to validate that. To never die, that is truly a vile curse. We are meant to die, boy. They now possess no soul and, therefore, no realm to go to after this life. I was grief stricken for many years upon learning of this, but they did not resent me and instead embraced me for the last time before their banishment from The Garden. It wasn’t until later, when their children filled the planet, that I learned the depth of my sin. All of humanity had been cursed to live and die without souls so that majik could flow through their blood. How vain am I?” She wept, placing her head into her arms.

I felt nothing. Her pain was her own, and there was nothing I could do to stop it or help her. My mission was too important. What would Maleki do? Would he let his compassion prevent him from healing me? In my place, would he console her? Ananke collected herself, and I got out of my chair. “I appreciate the information, but as I said, I didn’t come for stories even if they hold the truth,” I passed by her before a last thought was raised in my mind. “One more thing. There’s a place I go to when I sleep; my brother sees it, too. Do you know where that is or why it happens only to us?”

“A place?” She questioned.

“Yes, sometimes they are different. One after the other until I wake, but only when I sleep.”

“Miko, we gave that a word while in the depths of the trunk. It’s called a dream. The fruit eaters and their children cannot dream as they possess no soul. Take solace in that place you find yourself in — it is but a taste of the afterlife.”

I kept walking to the steps that brought me here before her voice rang out again.

“Miko.” Her eyes demanded of me. “We have both warned you now. If you do this, like my siblings before you, you will be forever cursed.”

I didn’t turn my head and kept walking. “I’m already cursed, Ananke.”