Once upon a time, in a land far away, there once was an old storyteller who knew all the stories of the world.
He was a peculiar man, a wanderer who did not see the world in the ways of most. He knew the shape of others only as they appeared to him on the road, and all who passed him by only knew him ever to be on it. As such, he had come to know the contour of his entire life at an early age and made his peace with it: he had been born on the road, he had lived on the road, and he would die on the road.
But how exactly the old storyteller had come into the knowledge of his numerous stories was a complete mystery, and the source of much speculation amongst travellers.
Some said that he must have been a prodigious scholar in a past life, rewarded by the heavens for his studious spirit with a knowledge that accumulates from one life into the next. Some said that he had stumbled upon the path that leads to the very end of the world and the Orchard of Great Records where the infinite happenings of All That Has Been are inscribed within the ringed cores of its ever verdant trees. Still others said that the old storyteller was a fallen Immortal, punished and made forever aware of his insignificance by being granted the knowledge of all things and the inability to act upon it.
Of all the many rumors about the old storyteller, the latter was the most whispered and most convincing of all, for he was indeed a very old, nearly decrepit man, and had been so for as long as anyone alive could remember.
One warm spring night, a band of weary travellers made camp by the trailside, fatigued but no less cheerful from a full day’s passing on the road.
They set up camp with a well practiced, near thoughtless ease. They lit a large fire at its heart and gathered around the flame with their rations in hand. Low, comfortable conversations and the smells of savory cooked food soon filled the space of their makeshift home with a faint but enduring sense of warmth that lingered on even as the sun sank beneath the horizon and folded into twilight.
They were musicians, acrobats, rope walkers, dancers, performers all, all simultaneously loved and belittled by the threads of the societies through which they weaved. Though very few were related by blood, they considered and cared for one another as one family. No one else would. They were bonded by the sorrows and joys of their shared life between earth and sky.
As they huddled together and raised their hot food to their mouths, an old bent figure strode out of the surrounding darkness and into the light of their fire. He had large, white bushy eyebrows that hung down over his eyes, and a long white beard that went all the way down past his waist. A short, stout walking stick gleamed in his hand, polished to a dull shine from years of steady use.
“Grandfather!”
The leader of the weary band jumped up at once, for the old storyteller was a familiar and unmistakable person to all who had found refuge on the road.
The old storyteller bowed to the leader and his circle of companions. “My apologies for so rudely interrupting your gathering this night.” His voice creaked and stirred like the low hanging boughs of an ancient tree. “But the road is long, and the night is dark. Does your fire have the flame to spare for an old wanderer such as myself?”
The leader smiled as whispers of excitement spattered through his ring of companions. To be graced by the presence of the old storyteller was a rare, near regal, indulgence. “Of course, grandfather. Please. Our fire is yours.”
Needing no bidding, the group of travellers shuffled and widened just enough to make a gap in their ranks. The storyteller sat down into the seat with a sigh of relief.
An expectant hush fell upon the circle. The fire spat and snapped.
“If it would not be too much trouble,” the old storyteller said, calm beneath the gaze of every eye. “Would there be any food for an old wanderer to eat?”
One of the children immediately lifted her bowl to offer the storyteller a share of her dinner, but was stopped by one of the older, more accustomed members beside them who remained as they were, waiting and watching.
The group’s leader sat up straight and tall in his seat within the circle. He ran a hand through his darker, smaller beard as if pondering a grave and weighty decision. Then he shook his head and sighed in such a way that it pulled through the air and summoned the gazes of all the others onto himself, if they were not already there.
“Does the tree that drinks water not provide shade?” His voice moved through the silence like rich velvet and dark wine. “Does the deer that eats grass not provide sustenance?” He lifted an open hand before him with the palm facing up. “To give something for nothing goes against the natural order of heaven, and beckons calamity. What have you to offer in return for such nourishment?”
The old storyteller heaved a great sigh of his own as all the heads of the circle turned back in his direction, but his dark eyes glittered with mirth, for these were the words of an ancient custom of trade and respect, passed down only from memory to memory, inscribed on neither scroll nor stone. By the leader’s carriage, the old storyteller knew him to be a man of the world and by his words, a true heir of the old ways.
But when the storyteller spoke his voice was weary and tired. “I am merely an old vagrant. With nothing to speak for but the dust on my feet and the hair on my head. I have no coins, no gold, no goods to barter. They are nothing but a burden upon the transience of my ways.”
Then he smiled a small mysterious smile and his voice grew in strength, but not volume, until it became all they could hear. “But in their place I have learned to carry within me a parchment that does not cease, and upon it I have written the tales that lay beating at the heart of all I have seen and heard. Its words are as wings on my shoulders and weapons in my hands. It is my sun that breaks the horizon and my steady star in the night. Such is my offer in exchange for the price of a meal and a flame: a passage from this parchment, and a worthy exchange I find it to be.”
The leader swept the arm of his open hand out wide with a smile. “A worthy exchange indeed. Are stories not the earth and the seed from which our lives grow?” he exclaimed, looking around the circle. “A story for a meal, and a meal for a story. By the ancient stars above us and the first flame that danced away the dark, a bargain is made.”
With this, he gestured to an older member of their group, who placed before the old storyteller a meal that had been preparing for him, unnoticed, from the very moment he had first arrived.
The storyteller accepted the meal with a gracious nod. Then, as if unaware of the attention sharpening upon himself, he lifted a steaming spoonful to his lips, blew on it with care, and took a bite.
“Now,” he said, speaking around the mouthful of food. A low, sly gleam crept into his down turned eyes. “What story would you like to hear tonight?”
Like a beast surging forward, the circle exploded with the sound of nearly a dozen excited voices, and their leader burst into laughter.
“Tell us the story of the tongue-cut sparrow!”
“Tell us a tale of the great hero!”
“I want to hear about the lands at the end of the world!”
“Tell us the story of the hare and the moon!” piped one boy, louder than the rest.
Everyone else groaned. Someone’s hand reached out and struck the back of his head.
“Who doesn’t know that one already?”
“You would squander this opportunity like that?”
“I just wanted to hear how it would sound coming from him,” the boy protested weakly, rubbing the back of his head. But he was ignored.
“Tell us a tale of Danmu!”
“Tell us of the Daughter of Heaven!”
The old storyteller raised his hand and summoned the circle once again into a sudden and utter silence.
“Hmmm.”
He took another bite of his food and looked around the circle with careful deliberation, meeting and holding each pair of eyes for a fraction of an instant before moving on to the next.
“Hmmm.”
He closed his eyes, hand in his beard, and tilted his head first one way then the other, as if shifting a weighty thought about in his mind. Finally, he nodded to himself.
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“Tonight,” he said. “This flame and this circle beckons from me a very particular story.” He opened his eyes to look up at the star studded sky. “How strange. For though it cannot claim to be the most captivating or even the most meaningful tale, tonight I am reminded that it is, in its own way, the most important one of all.”
He looked back down and around at the others one last time.
“Very well.”
The old storyteller cleared his throat and adjusted himself in his seat.
The fire cracked and popped
“This is a story as old as any I have ever told,” the storyteller began. “Older than the mountains and the rivers. Older than the sun and the moon. Older, even still, than the stars themselves.”
He paused, and the gathering hush tightened and stretched like a zither’s string before the first note.
“It is a story of the beginning.”
A long, long time ago, before turtles laid their eggs and tigers learned to smoke, the heavens and the earth were one.
All of existence lay in a great, swirling orb of watery vapor called Chaos and in it only an infinite darkness reigned. There were no mountains. There were no seas. There were no trees. No forests. No moon. No stars.
Out of that darkness stepped the First, clothed in a robe of pure white.
She was as perfect as the sea. Her eyes revealed the truth of all things. Her touch bent and bowed all of existence before her. But she was not beautiful. She was not wise. She was not strong. Such was the path the First and Only found beneath her feet. Not beyond compare. Without compare. She was everything, and nothing.
Compelled by a purpose she did not understand, the First wrenched the heavens and the earth apart with a foot and a hand. She breathed in the sweet, fresh air of new skies and gazed down upon what she had wrought. But she became dispirited when she saw she was indeed the Only, and that Only meant Alone.
Here she spread her great arms and shouted the single loud lonely word that lies inexpressible at the heart of every being. Its utterance shook the finest motes of existence and left them reeling in echoing strains of heartbreak and hope. Its trembling, shimmering sound twisted then soared up, up above even the heavens, and shattered into slivers of pure silver that nestled themselves deep within the cosmos and burned with a pale white light. Seeing how they shined, bright against the black, the First felt her hope rise above her loneliness, and so named herself Mother, the first of many.
Now Mother was tired and weary from her labor. Having no place to rest or call her own, she looked back and forth between the heavens and the earth. She looked above and saw how the heavens glimmered and shone with newborn stars. She looked below and saw how the earth lay cold and lifeless beneath her. And as easily as a leaf turns towards the sun, she stepped up into the heavens to make for herself a home at its heart.
But the heavens, yet newborn and young, were not prepared to receive her. They shuddered beneath her first step like a pond beneath a stone. They howled at the raw touch of her purpose. Having known only an eternity of darkness and chaos, they thundered with the deafening, discordant, agonizing peals of emergent life. So loud was their tumult that the broken shards of Mother’s silver cry stirred from where they slumbered, and woke.
They rose from their countless positions above the heavens in total unison and bowed, all of them, each to their neighbors. Then as one, without a word or thought passed amongst them, they stepped the very first step of what would be their endless dance.
And so came the Second, blinking out of the moving starlight.
He was of humble appearance. He held his hands folded before him and spoke with a soft voice. But before his eyes bloomed the great Tangle of All Paths like the ever moving veins of a mountain. He, and only he, can walk there and back again between Then and Now, and so he called himself Time, the Mountain and the Mile.
As he appeared, Mother gave a cry of delight. She threw herself into his arms with a joy that forgets dignity. In turn, Time gazed upon Mother and saw that she was beautiful, strong, and wise, and it was so. When Mother saw the image of her in his eyes, she blushed without shame and there grew between them a fluttering of a hundred wings that was both hot and cold, painful and sweet.
Moved by the stirring in his breast, Time reached inside and drew the shape of it from within himself. He broke it into two pieces, one large and one small. The larger one he cast up above the heavens where it chased away the dark and shone with a bright and burning light. The smaller he threw in the other direction and built eight and twenty houses for it to dwell in. Together they symbolize both the steadfast and ever changing nature of that from whence they came.
So came the Sun and the Moon, the Third and Fourth to come.
Then Time looked down from the height of the heavens onto the earth, now lit by the light of day, and felt a great Sensation well up within him that would be the beginning and end of all things. Unable to restrain himself, he bellowed a great wordless roar of exultation, and out of his mouth sprang two beings, first one then the other.
The first came with fierce, glaring eyes and a smile that rumbled with distant thunder. His back bore a tall, flapping banner and his hands wielded a long, wide glaive. The second was robed in a thick leather apron and smelled of metal and flame. In one hand he held a hammer, and in the other a measuring stick.
Together they were the Fifth and the Sixth, the Conqueror and the Builder, and their coming portends all.
For an age, the four of them lived in happy company beneath the watchful eyes of the Sun and the Moon. They ruled over the heavens and the earth in perfect harmony as one family in one heaven over one earth.
Soon, Mother’s belly rose and grew plump. Before long, she and Time bore their first child, the Seventh to come, whose laughter banished shadows and danced amongst the stars. Her parents wept before her, enthralled by her beauty, overwhelmed by the immeasurable love that welled within them, and so together they named her Fate, the summit of all paths.
But seeing the love that Mother and Time had for their child, the hearts of the two brothers twisted with envy and they went off by themselves into the furthest corner of the heavens. They muttered to one another with dark resentment and from the crossing of their shadows welled two black pools that spilled over with the consistency of oil and blood.
Two figures rose from the pools whose faces and forms were hidden in the deep folds of dark hooded robes. The first clutched a gourd of oleander and aconitum in a pale sickly hand, and a thin bright dagger in the other. The second had his lips sewn shut and held an endless scroll on which a record of all deeds done in a private and secretive spirit are kept.
So came the Eighth and the Ninth, the Sunderer and the Shadow.
Urged on by the two brothers, the Sunderer waited for the cover of a moonless night to creep into the small space between Mother and Time where their child slept. Unnoticed by either parent, he brought the mouth of his gourd to her lips and she drank its contents greedily drop by drop until she finally succumbed to a weariness heavier and deeper than slumber. Then he hastily returned to his brothers who praised the virtue of his strength to such a degree that he cackled and clapped his feeble hands together in excitement, for the Sunderer will always and ever be one to seek such gratifications.
When Mother awoke and found her child cold and lifeless between them, she threw her head back and let out such an agonized cry that the Sun and the Moon hid beneath the horizon and the stars turned their backs in sorrow.
Beneath the black and bitter sky, Mother and Time mourned without cease for the duration of one and twenty days and nights. They buried their child deep within the bowels of the earth and wept over her such tears that the soil of the earth could no longer contain them and their waters rose and overflowed, threatening to submerge all the lands beneath its waves.
Then out of the waters rose one who resembled the daughter they had lost, but also did not. She was as naked as a newborn child and bore three faces upon her countenance. The first wore an expression of surprise, the second that of horror, and the third an expression of welcome. She held her cold hands against the faces of her parents, and kissed their eyes until their tears stopped, telling them that in the end their parting would only seem a swift and fleeting dream. Once their tears abated, she bade them farewell and disappeared from their eyes.
But all shall meet her again, for she is the one who waits at the end of all paths, garbed of both face and form in the same manner as those whom she receives.
Another age passed. Mother’s belly grew swollen and plump again with love, and she gave birth to a second child. A son. When he was born, he did not cry, or wail, or even utter a sound at all. Instead he emerged from his mother with open eyes that watched without blinking and burned with pale yellow fire. He looked up at his parents and smiled up at Mother and Time as if he already knew them. And so he did, for he carried within him the memories of his elder sister.
But the brothers gathered once again in the far corner of heaven, urging the Sunderer to do as he had done before.
But Mother knew now the shape of their hearts, they who had not come from her. She bent low over the child who had already known the taste of treachery and whispered into his ear.
Immediately the child leaped into the air and became at first a butterfly that sparkled with the light of many gems, then a bear as large as a mountain, then a pheasant as quick as thought, and finally an eagle with wings like sails. Without even taking the time to bid Mother goodbye, he folded his wings beneath him and plummeted down to earth below.
The Builder and the Conqueror, not ones to be easily denied, leaped after him waving their hammer and their glaive. But it would be to no avail. The nameless child was in the wind and hidden from their sight within the fast growing forests of the earth.
So came the Tenth, formless and free, and to him we owe the deepest debt of all.
Finally Mother gave birth to a third and final child, the Eleventh, who was of such exquisite beauty that all that moved within the heavens and the earth became still and fell into a profound silence. The seneschals of heaven - the stars, the Sun, and the Moon, hung all together in the sky and gathered low over the sleeping child in rapt reverence. Even their combined light could not have hoped to compare with the child’s transcendent bearing.
So heart rending was her beauty that when the Builder and the Conqueror returned from their long and fruitless pursuit, they dropped their instruments at their feet and kneeled before her without a word. Then the Builder gathered jade, pearl, and precious stones in vast quantities. He built around the child a divine palace and laid such enchantments upon it that it would never fall or crumble away. Before it he built an entrance of stone and steel in front of which the Conqueror stood guard.
Relieved and pleased by the harmony their child had brought at last to the heavens, Mother and Time moved happily in together with their child and named her Daughter, most beautiful and beloved of all.
And so the Age of the Ancient Ones of heaven began. Once again one family in one heaven above one earth, they presided over the world and its balance of good and evil, right and wrong, light and dark. Countless eras of men would pass peacefully within their keeping, and while they ruled they were extolled throughout the land for their wisdom, their beauty, and their strength. Indeed it is said that they would have ruled for an eternity, if it were not for their Daughter and her heart that grew too big for the palace walls of jade, pearl, and precious stones.