Another Jonathan

Two Years Earlier

“There’s always a way back, you know.”

Jonathan raised his eyes from the broad, dull band of the Green River. They didn’t call it that, here; another difference. It was called Verud. A difference, like drinking wine instead of beer, or the funny, shapeless sun hats the laborers wore in the fields, or how you could be beaten for not knowing a man’s rank.

He turned his eyes to his companion.

“The way back is up the river,” he replied with a shrug. “But we’ve come too far.”

Boris smiled slightly, the pale red cast of his eyes muted in the harsh sunlight of southern Carelon. Despite the unobstructed noonday sun, Jonathan felt an odd chill, as if a shadow had come between him and the sky.

“Let me tell you a story,” said Boris.

✽✽✽

There was once a boy of the Wet Feet people who went to play by himself while his parents worked. He was a good boy, and never went far from home, nor waded in the river alone, though he could swim well. As he played, he saw another boy run toward the river, and he followed, to make sure the boy did not fall in. When he reached the riverbank, the other boy was gone, but he saw a spirit of the water. She swam to him and smiled, and reached out of the water to touch his face. He was afraid, and the reeds rustled nearby, but he did not run from her. “Because you are a good and beautiful boy,” she said, “I will give you a gift. Return home to your mother and father, and then if you want your gift come back here to me.”

The boy ran back to his home. Along the way, he found one of the sentries of his village lying still in the bushes, with blood coming out of him. When the boy drew near the village, he found another sentry, and he was also dead. The village had been attacked by the Black Dogs, who are the most cunning and stealthy of all the tribes, and all the people of his village were dead. The warriors of the Black Dogs were still in the village, and they were doing terrible things. The boy did not cry, for fear he would be killed too, but instead he returned to the riverbank.

The spirit of the water asked: “Do you want your gift?” And because the boy was frightened and alone and sorrowful, and did not know what else to do, he nodded yes. “Go into that cave, at the line of the water,” she said. “Swim into it, and you will come to a chamber with air you can breathe. Climb out, and go home, and see what you see.”

The boy dove into the dark water of the river and swam into the hole. He could see nothing, and his lungs burned, but eventually his hands found dry air. He came up and caught his breath at the surface of an underground pool, and there he saw a tunnel that he could climb to the ground. When he came into the sunlight again, he saw the warriors of the Black Dogs creeping up to the sentry to kill him. The sentry waved at the boy, even as the warriors crept up behind him. It was the same man he had seen earlier, dead.

“Watch out!” cried the boy, and the sentry sprang to alert and sounded his horn. But the Black Dogs, furious at being given away, chased after the boy to take revenge. He fled back into the tunnel with his enemies grabbing at his ankles. When he reached the pool, he dove in and swam through the passage under the water, and came out again at the bank of the river.

“Now,” said the water spirit. “Did you like your gift?”

“If I go home now, will my family and my village be alive, or dead?” he asked.

“Dead,” answered the spirit. “They are only alive when you go through the tunnel.”

“But if I go through the tunnel, then I will be killed,” he answered. “This is a terrible gift, and you are an evil spirit.”

She laughed, and her laugh was like the bubbles of air from lungs that must soon drown. “You do not like your choice? Very well. I will give you another. Swim back into the passage under the river. When you reach the underground pool, take a breath, and then dive back in. You will come to another tunnel, and another pool. See what you see there.”

He did as she asked, because his family was dead, and in any event it is unwise to refuse the demands of spirits. When he came to the first pool, he rose to the surface and took a deep breath. There were the warriors of the Black Dog tribe, still seeking him with their spears. He dove back into the deep passage and swam on. This passage was longer, and he began to panic, thinking he would not reach air in time. As the boy was about to take a breath of water, his hands found the open space, and he rose to the surface. Just as before, there was a tunnel he could crawl through to reach the surface.

Now, the boy saw that he was near the sentry of his people, and he warned him. The guard passed the word, and the Wet Feet people were ready, and slew the warriors of the Black Dogs. But the boy went home to his parents and saw that he was already there, for he had never gone to the river. He knew if they saw him, they would believe he was a double-man and drive him out. So he swam back through the tunnel, back to the river.

There he found the spirit of the water. She smiled at him, and asked: “Now do you like your gift? Your family is alive, and your village saved.”

“But I cannot go home,” answered the boy, and he began to cry.

“The ripples cannot flow inward,” said the spirit.

“What can I do now?” asked the boy. “I have no family, and no village, and no food. I shall die in the wood.”

“Dive into the passage again,” answered the spirit. “Beyond the first pool and the second pool is a third passage under the ground and the water, and a third way to the surface.”

“And what must I do when I come back to the surface?” asked the boy.

“You must lead yourself here,” said the water spirit.

The brave boy swam through the long dark of the first passage, and the long dark of the second passage, and found his way into the third passage. It was choked with weed and mud and roots, and his skin was scratched, and his hand touched strange, slimy things in the darkness. He emerged into another pool under the ground, with another tunnel to the surface.

He found himself near the edge of his village, and saw himself coming out of his family’s hut to play. He knew the Black Dog warriors would be there soon. And so he caught his own attention and ran to the bank of the river, with his own self following behind. The river spirit was there waiting for him.

“Hide under the water in the reeds,” she said. He did, breathing through a hollow stem, and watched from under the surface while the spirit sent him home for the first time.

The spirit drew him out of the water. “You have been a good and beautiful toy,” she said, “and you shall have a reward.” She kissed him on the forehead, and he had the knowing of the branching pathways, that are like ripples on the surface of the river. He went home, and it was that his family was alive, and it was that his village was unharmed, and it was that the warriors of the Black Dogs had never been there. He grew up to be the chief of his tribe, and then the king of many tribes together. But when he grew old and frail, he bound his feet with rocks and threw himself into the river.

✽✽✽

“What does that mean?” asked Jonathan.

“That there is always a way back,” answered Boris calmly.

Jonathan snorted. “Maybe if you have magical river spirits swimming about kissing you, there is,” he answered. He peered down hopefully over the railing of the boat, into the Verud River. No helpful spirits presented themselves.

When he stood up again, Boris had gone away from the rail, and was sitting under the shade of a white canvas flap on the aft deck. A few of the other passengers sat on benches nearby. The men wore well-trimmed coats and pants, and the ladies wore walking dresses rather more frilly than their counterparts in Uellodon. But the people here in Carelon wore almost exclusively white when they were outside; it was only inside that they brought out more colorful clothing. Another difference.

They sat in silence for a time. Jonathan rubbed at his chest, trying to massage away the tight, lingering feeling of panic and unreality. It had been sticking there ever since the day…

His mind rebelled.

“Do you think…” he trailed off.

“Frequently,” answered Boris. “But I find the language of my thoughts makes a very great difference in the outcome.”

Jonathan turned to face his companion.

“Is there a way back through the branches?” he said to Boris in the fey-tongue.

When he spoke the alien words, his vision shifted, and he experienced a momentary flash of pain in his temples. The world around him blurred, and he saw copies of Boris, and the people around him, and the boat, all drifting off in different directions. The variations of the world, as each minor perturbation of matter and energy might create them, were briefly visible, before vanishing into a haze of improbability.

Something was wrong with Boris. This he could sense even when looking at the world normally, but it became more apparent when his thoughts and perceptions shifted into the structural ambiguities of the fey-tongue. There was a hole in the man. Something was wrong with his shape, or his size, or his smell, or another characteristic like, but not quite the same as, all of those things. Something else rode there with him—or in him.

“Is there a way to go back?” he asked again in the fey-tongue.

Boris simply looked at him quizzically. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I do not understand those words.”

Jonathan dropped his hands between his knees in frustration, hunching over to stare at the deck of the river vessel.

Then Boris spoke new words. They were in a tongue that Jonathan did not recognize, but they were musical, and rich in consonants and inflections, and unlike anything he had ever heard before. He looked up sharply. Boris’s pale skin and bald head were suddenly flushed, more even than might be expected from the midday heat. His pale red eyes twitched violently, and his brow furrowed. He bent his head to the side as if recoiling from some great pain, muttered a few more words, and then collapsed to the ground.

The other passengers cried out, and someone came forward with smelling salts and water. Boris slowly came back, his eyelids fluttering, and drank the water gratefully. Jonathan propped him up under the shade of the canvas and sat with him until he fell asleep naturally. Then he wandered up to the bow of the river boat, and stared out gloomily to the south.

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Before his traveling companion had lost consciousness, Jonathan had understood one snatch of a phrase.

“Do not follow where you lead.”

✽✽✽

That night they slept in a rough village by the river, but the following evening they made port within the great fortified harbor of Ville Carel. Enormous stone walls, showing the wear of centuries, jutted out into the Verud, embracing a broad, deep pool on the western bank. Beyond them rose scores of stone spires clad in white, their roofs in red or brown slate. To Jonathan’s eye, the buildings had more curves and arches than Uellodon. Many were taller, too, and the decorations tended more to colorful patterns at the edges of the white walls than to the elaborate stone carvings from Uelland’s royal city. A single, massive spire towered above all others in the city, with stained-glass gracing nearly the entire eastern face.

“It’s a self-important sort of place, isn’t it?” remarked a short, bald, moon-faced man next to Jonathan, as they leaned on the rail waiting for the riverboat to dock. Jonathan looked at the man closely. He had joined the passengers only last night in the little village. He wore a simple brown traveling cloak, a rather stained white tunic, and short leather hose. There was a hemp cord hung loosely around his neck and shoulders, but it dipped into the tunic. He gave Jonathan a friendly, open smile, and extended his hand. “I’m Troutsbutt Stool,” he offered.

Jonathan took the hand and shook it. “Jonathan Miller, Mr. Stool,” he replied.

“Miller, eh? Good family name, good profession. You follow the family work, Mr. Miller?”

Jonathan shook his head. “I do not. Maybe I should have. I left it behind.”

The boat drew nearer to the dock, and Boris appeared on Jonathan’s other side, carrying their baggage. He gave Mr. Stool an appraising look.

“I left the family trade behind as well,” supplied Mr. Stool. “Good money, but I couldn’t screw myself up to a lifetime of the smell. The Pa, he came home every night from the village with his cart—made the best fertilizer, after a couple of years, you know, mix it with hay and leaves, you got paid to take it away and paid to sell it on again—but the man insisted that every meal the Ma cooked tasted like his work. I think he was right. You smell a thing all day, your stew in the evening ends up tasting like it, and your bread and milk in the morning the same. I can’t imagine how he and the Ma took to a bed together long enough to bring me into this world.”

Mr. Stool rattled on cheerfully, speaking in a faint southern Uellish drawl. Jonathan reminded himself that this man was from the north, relative to where they stood now.

“Where are you headed Mr. Miller, with your companion there?” Mr. Stool asked, as they clambered down the gangplank and onto the colorful, bustling docks of Ville Carel. “My first time in Ville Carel, yes, and here’s me barely speaking the language, but I make myself known. Perhaps three men together might be safer in a strange city than just one or two? Would you be offended by a third to lodge with you?”

After a glance at Boris, and a shrug from the same, Jonathan nodded to Mr. Stool. “Glad for the company, Mr. Stool,” he replied. “This is… er… Mr. Boris. We’re continuing downriver tomorrow, but we’ll need to book another passage in the morning.”

They found a cheap public house by the docks and paid for their room and board. Jonathan’s supply of Uellish coins, mostly square silver bottoms accumulated during his time working for Professor Stoat and Veridia Snipe, seemed to be quite acceptable to the merchants in Carelon, though they made change in odd-looking pentagonal pennies with holes cut in them that they called lévur. Boris seemed to have no money, and never offered to pay for anything, but Jonathan found he did not begrudge the strange, shabby man.

Over supper, Jonathan’s mind wandered where he didn’t want it to go. The tightness in his chest began to grip harder. He downed a mug of wine, ordered a second, drank that, and waved for a third.

“You drink like a man building a house,” said Mr. Stool.

“How’s that?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“To keep out the rain,” answered Mr. Stool, with a twinkle in his eyes.

Jonathan shrugged. “Everyone needs a roof in a rainstorm.”

Mr. Stool nodded, slurping at his stew. “I was in a rainstorm, once,” he said. “You see, Mr. Miller, Mr. Boris,”—and here he paused, and glanced around the room conspiratorially—“I had the odd fortune to join the Ecclesia just last year.”

Jonathan put down the mug of wine and stared over the table at Mr. Stool. Boris gave Jonathan a sidelong glance, but kept eating his stew. They watched Mr. Stool quietly.

“Oh hang it all, goodmen, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t kill anyone, or hold anyone down while the White Knights did the job. Didn’t march in the August Revolt or turn anyone in when the forage parties came around. It wasn’t like that. I was in a little hamlet outside Uellodon—you won’t have heard of it. Barely has a name. Just thought maybe the church was a way to get ahead that didn’t mean shoveling out the neighbors’ latrines for the rest of my life. And then, just as soon as I join up and get my Unbroken Circle, hey bang! Here’s a bunch of big hairy men from the Holy Empire turning up in ones and twos, and then tens and twenties, and then hundreds, saying God wants all his good priests to help them take over the Kingdom and save everyone’s soul.

“They dragged me out of the village, me and a couple others who believed, and made us march with them all over the south of the Kingdom—cooking meals, mending shoes, making arrows and whatever else the army needed. Wasn’t too bad—they treated us decent, fed us, had pretty good singing and chanting. We all thought for sure we were on the right side—we were on God’s side! But then I was at Baldwick, watching from the back while they all got themselves penned in and slaughtered like a bunch of goats.” He shook his head. “It was a close thing, Baldwick. But for that bunch of riders slipping around the back…” He trailed off.

“Anyway. I couldn’t stay. You can see how it is, goodmen, can’t you?” he pleaded. “I just wanted to get away—a long way away. There wasn’t anything left in my village; just ashes and bones. The King had every last priest in Uellodon thrown into the river, may he and his First Minister rot in in the thirteenth chamber. So, it wouldn’t do to look for a new start in Uelland. No, I had to get far away. You understand, don’t you?”

Jonathan stared at Mr. Stool for a moment. Then he drained the mug and waved for another.

“I understand, Mr. Stool,” he said, his words slurred. “I understand all about getting far away.”

The man’s round face brightened. “You do! Of course you do. Tell me, Mr. Miller, what are you getting away from? Was it the war? Family? Debts? You’re from the north by your speech—far from the worst of the troubles. What brought you down here?”

Jonathan stared at the sticky mug.

“There was a girl,” he said slowly. “I knew her for a long time.” He swallowed. “I loved her. I asked her to marry me. But it was wrong. I did it in the wrong way, or the wrong time, or used the wrong words. Maybe there was a time when it would have been right. But how I did it, it was wrong. She said no. And then I couldn’t go back home.”

The bright, cheery conversation in the public house flowed around them like water around a river stone. The next mug of wine came. Jonathan picked it up, but a hand clapped over the top. To his surprise, he found that it was Boris’s hand. He looked up in drunken irritation into the pale red eyes. Suddenly, those eyes seemed deeper than the Green River that flowed through all Jonathan’s life, deeper than the hot caves in the north where he had found the strange wheels, and kissed Merrily—deeper than the ocean, which Jonathan had read of but never seen. Boris smiled slightly.

“Maybe, somewhere,” he said, in his faint, roly-poly accent, “there’s a Jonathan Miller who asked her in the right way.”

Jonathan drew in a breath to retort, but before he could begin Boris cut him off.

“Let me tell you a story, Jonathan Miller, and then you can decide whether to drink yourself to death in some Carolese gutter. This is not a story about spirits. When I worked in the kitchens at Palace Naridium, I met a man who came north from the Holy Empire, across the Gulf of Carelon. The Holy Empire is old, old, and it used to be called something different. Do you know what it was called, Jonathan Miller? It was called the Empire of the Dusk. They do not study their history now as they once did. Now they only care what stories will make their God stay the hand of His vengeance. But the man I knew in Uellodon—he read old chronicles and histories in secret, until he was found out and he fled. This is the story he told me, and now I tell you.”

✽✽✽

The dusk is not the beginning of the daylight, is it? The dawn is the beginning. Empires come and go, and though their walls and towers may fall, the people whisper stories that last longer than stone. Long before the first Emperor stood before his people and declared himself to be divine, there was another people. They crafted miracles from metal that are forgotten now. You would call them magic, in the same way that a man raised alone in the wilds would call fire magic. The Empire of the Dawn spread from beyond the Holy Empire in the south to beyond Uelland in the north. Their knowledge of the workings of the world ran so deep that they could harness the forces of lightning and fire and metal to transform matter into whatever they desired.

There was a man among them—not an emperor, it is said, or a lord, or even a rich man, but a man who with his knowledge and will combine the wisdom of all the others. He saw that for all the power of his people, they were prisoners of outcome. Knock over a chair, and it will fall; jump out of a tower, and you will fall; breathe, and the air will move from your mouth. There may be a branch where you did not knock over the chair, but once you have done it, the only chair you can perceive is the one that is knocked over. Every choice leads to a thousand, thousand branching pathways of outcome, but once a choice is done, you have moved on in the branching pathways, and there is no way back.

But our man, who studied the knowledge of his people, found what your lawyers today would call a ‘loophole.’ The stories of peasants, passed down from mouth to ear through the rise and fall of whole civilizations, do not record its nature. But they recall that he found it. And he built a machine that would bring the branches together again once they had separated. Like a weaving loom, the old people used to say. It was like a weaving loom for the branching pathways. You could step from the chair that you knocked over to the chair that you did not knock over.

Because he was a man, and greedy, he built his loom to be great and powerful, and then he built two more. There were three of them, once; one in the far north, one in the center, and one in the far south. They were great places of change, and they allowed the people of that empire, not only to control power and matter, but to control causality and outcome.

Perhaps men truly became as gods, or perhaps the stories are exaggerated by the passage of time and the ignorance of the tellers. Stories love to warn of men who would be gods, but bring themselves to sticky ends because, alone, they are flawed and selfish. This reflects, I think, certain storytellers who would have the audience believe itself small, unworthy, and safe only in submission. Whatever the truth, the people who made these machines did not survive. Their empire ended in fire and death. The stories all speak of its demise with a horror so unwavering that it must reflect some truth.

The two places of change in the north were lost to the tellers of stories in the south, and there is no rumor there of their fate. Of the third place—in the south—the chroniclers whispered stories and tales until their pens were silenced by the rise of the Holy Empire. Some said it lay in the impassable mountains near the lands of Broob; others said it was in the endless desert wastes south of Talen Vicarus. Wherever it was, the people remembered it until the Ecclesia made them stop remembering at the point of a sword. Perhaps, even today, some still whisper stories, or hold fast to scraps and talismans that would point the way. But no chronicle, history, or folktale that I have read recalled more than I have told you now.

✽✽✽

Jonathan found he was still holding the mug. He pushed it away silently, and looked down at the table for a time. Then he stood up without another word and walked away to the room they would share.

Boris smiled again, and winked at Mr. Stool. He picked up Jonathan’s mug of wine and took a slow sip.

“I’ll allow I didn’t understand all your story, Mr. Boris,” remarked Mr. Stool, “but it seems to me that kind of power is for God, not for men.”

Boris leaned back in his chair and took another sip of the wine.

“Neither God nor men, Mr. Stool,” he answered. “The only being worthy of such power is a god we make.”

✽✽✽

They travelled south on a new riverboat the next day. Mr. Stool came along, saying he wanted to get as far from Uelland as he could manage. The weeks rolled by, and the weather grew hotter. Never, when the boat pulled up to a riverbank village each night, did Jonathan take another drink. He merely slipped away from the table after supper and walked quietly by the riverbank. He looked up at the stars in the sky, or their reflections in the water.

When they reached Ville Maer, perched at the eastern edge of the vast estuary of the Verud, Jonathan announced he would make his way east, to Vale. Boris simply smiled, and Jonathan knew he meant to come along. Mr. Stool left their company courteously, saying he would go and see the Holy Empire for himself. Jonathan looked east at dusk with hope, thinking of what he might discover at the University City on the border of Brasse and Carelon.

But that night, he awoke to hands ripping him from his bed in the small waterfront inn. His own hands were bound and his mouth was gagged, and he was hustled downstairs in the darkness. If the innkeeper knew, he kept quiet. They brought him to a ship at the waterfront, already filled with chained men. He saw Boris was there too, chained and gagged with the others. Boris sat quietly, his body relaxed.

Mr. Stool came out of the night and walked close to Jonathan. He was not wearing chains. Jonathan struggled and tried to shout, but the chains were tight, and a whip cracked over his face.

“Do not despair, my son,” said Mr. Stool, smiling gently. The talisman of the Unbroken Circle was displayed openly on his tunic now. “You serve God’s purpose, and that is beyond any mortal honor. The money you and Mr. Boris have earned me will buy passage across the Gulf of Carelon, and I will present myself to the Mouth of God in Talen Vicarus. God’s servant will be ready for his next task. And you, Jonathan Miller? Do you fear these chains? Do not be selfish, my son. The suffering of your body will purify your soul, for it is only by suffering that we can escape the prison of the flesh. You will forget your sorrow for lost love and false freedom. These chains will set you free. Seek out God in your enslavement, Jonathan Miller, that you may profit from your suffering.”

Mr. Stool walked away into the night, and that was the last Jonathan Miller saw of him.