South of Paradise: Chapter 5
A thick tree grows from a tiny seed.
A tall building arises from a mound of earth.
-Dao De Jing, Verse 64
We came out into the yard at dawn.
“Are you ready for your final task?” The master smiled with his eyes at us. Many of us were rubbing our legs, raw from the riding we had done the past week. Samson, who had been terrified on horseback, was the only one not sore. His powerful legs stood firm while the rest of ours slightly trembled.
“Certainly if it doesn’t involve horses!” Samson said with a grimace. The rest of us chuckled.
The master placed his hands together and started rubbing his hands greedily together. We stared at him in silence, exchanging a few confused hmms through our mindweaving, which had grown substantially stronger. Nothing like riding a horse back from the Southeast for a few days to give you the time to practice. The master started rubbing even harder, red coming into his calloused hands, causing us to now exchange glances. After all of this, he placed his hands on top of his head, to which we all smirked. Hahaha thought Kyle he’s a hot head. Our smirks deepened a bit.
“There are very few hot heads left in this land,” the master’s glance drifted to Kyle and shot back to look out over the northern mountains. “Most of what’s left are silent mountains, looming in the distance. Tonight, one top will be hot again.”
He reached down to his feet and pulled from the bag in front of him a small torch. It seemed like it would not burn long.
“Very simply,” he spoke, “you will each take one torch and climb up a different side of the Yellow mountain.” He pointed to a barely visible mountain off to the northeast. We started, wondering if we would have to ride horses again. Sid’s legs started to tremble, not from fatigue, but anxiety.
The master’s smirk drove higher up one side of his face. “Don’t worry, no horses this time.” Sid’s legs stopped trembling, but now we all had one question surfacing in our minds.
How- HOW HoW will willlll will- we we wee- get GET- there? We all thought synchronously, words coming in at different times but the intent landing at the same moment. We all simultaneously cast a puzzled expression at the master.
“Why, your legs of course. You’ll each need a torch from the shed-” before he could finish, we all scrambled to get a day’s worth of supplies.
Ian gave us quick orders, a mix of yelling and blasts of mental energy.
Wanda and Leon, Sid and Samson, water on the double!
“Jane, Kyle, Shane, Bailey, packs and weapons!”
Erin, come with me and we’ll grab the torches.
“BACK HERE IN 10!”
Wanda, Sid, Samson and I ran into our shared room, which was a set of 5 stacked bunks along 3 walls of a room. We each grabbed the water flasks out of everyone’s bags and ran towards the well. We also took our own packs to make it easier on Jane and the others. We sent a mental image of us shouldering our packs to communicate it to them. The other four came to grab the remaining packs and headed to the armory for the sabers. Samson worked the pump, his muscles glistening with sweat as he forced water from below into our flasks. We offered to help but he was adamant to continue on his own; a mental image of him shaking his head popped into everyone’s heads. We cheered him on.
The rest of the Wake moved over towards us, Ian and Erin bearing 5 torches apiece in the crook of their arms; the other four carried the remaining packs and weapons. We laid what we had in piles and took what we didn’t have, evenly distributing our load in a few moments.
The master’s eyes lit up as he saw us all readying ourselves. “Times awasting… Here’s a map showing you where you’ll need to be…” he pulled it out of his pocket, and as he brought it up, Bailey reached out, met his eyes, and took it from him. We all started at a modest pace in a line, while she brought up the rear looking at the map.
She stared at it intently, and we closed our eyes to help focus. The map had the Nest at the Southwest, and the forest to the north. The mountain was Northeast, with 10 small xs marked out on different points of the mountain. There were a few trails visible along its surface, but none of them connected to any of the marked locations. Once she had absorbed it fully and the rest of us had gotten a better view from her mind, she put the map away and we picked up speed. Now we were moving between a jog and a run, our boots kicking up dust and dirt into the wind. Our sore legs burned, demanding we stop.
The dust coming up was starting to become a problem. We held our hands out to shield ourselves, and rotated the person in the front out every few minutes. It was a fluid shuffling, like geese flying in a V formation. As we felt the person slowing just slightly, we would reach out and whisper to the back.
Our breaths came out ragged after a few hours of running and rotating. We reached a more grassy area, so we maintained our place in line, weaving to avoid watery ditches and mud. The mountain still loomed in the distance… we were only about a third of the way there… and afterward there was the climb. Our Wake did not have a dedicated climber, but I was always the most adept at acrobatics, so I was our de-facto lead climber. We had rope and a few odds and ends of hiking equipment spread among us, but it would certainly be a struggle. (But we never struggled, ha.)
Ian lifted his fist up and we felt him say, in our minds’ eyes Let’s stop for a bit. We pulled off to a grove of trees, stretching and resting for a few minutes. We drank a bit of our water, conserving it for the climb ahead. If we saw a stream we’d most likely down it and refill, but there was no guarantee. This region was sparsely populated and the map was not helpful when it came to landmarks like creeks.
Erin swore under her breath, looking at the map once again. She noticed there were small marks next to each X, which she now realized were names. From the peak of the mountain in a clockwise direction towards the middle, it read “Erin, Sid, Leon, Bailey, Shane, Jane, Kyle, Wanda, Samson” next to the xs, arranged at the hour positions of a clock. We were going to have to communicate in different groups once again, as there seemed to be a limit to the distance we could mindweave at that time.
The wake stood up, looking at the mountain that still was hours away at our quickened pace. We gathered our belongings, stretched quickly and sped off once again in a column, this time shuffling ourselves closer our intended shape. Our ragged breaths and burning legs kept us company as we moved close to the mountain’s base.
We realized that our breathing was synchronized, our steps almost in sync like the rippling legs of a many-legged insect. The mindweaving was beginning to affect our emergent behavior, as we moved and thought more as one connected entity than as ten individuals.
Ian thought on how best to spread ourselves out. If we climbed from the same side we might not make it to the opposite ends quickly enough, but if we split up, the risk of one of us getting hurt or lost certainly increased. And our nearest pairs along the ring were some of the more unfamiliar matches, putting a strain on the coordination we would have to hold ourselves to. Judging by the size of the torch, they would only stay bright for a few moments before fizzling out and leaving only a faint hue that would not be visible back at the Nest (or to the overseers stationed around to view the obstructed view). We were going to need flawless timing.
We packed up and set out again, this time in a large semicircle, which had the nearest members of the destined mountain circle next to one another in a line. Erin on the far left and Ian on the far right, with Sid, myself, Bailey, Shane, Jane, Kyle, Wanda, Samson in between.
We began our exercises with our pairs, and Ian rotated over to Erin after they had worked with their inner partners, to start the exchange of words. Simple word pairings at first, with sentences coming shortly after. We slowed our pace a bit as we spoke, but once we communicated nonverbally, we picked up running again, Ian dropping behind the line and coming around to swap pairs on occasion. There was only dirt and grass ahead of us, so the dust was not a problem.
After a few more hours of this, we finally reached the mountain base. It was now past noon and the sun was far overhead. We saw off in the distance storm clouds moving in. This would be a problem. If it was raining we would not be able to set these torches alight very easily, nor would we be visible from the Nest. We would be a set of dim candles flickering in a storm. But what we didn’t know was how brilliant the flames would be. We may not be able to see each other, let alone the Master and other overseers see us.
We set off in our semi circle, moving farther and farther apart as we moved up the mountainside. We took more frequent breaks as we moved up, since the climb got steeper and we were tired from running during the day. Sid could push himself up well, but Samson was a very strong climber, since he had such good finger strength he could easily climb a sheer face.
We scurried over rocks and zig zagged up trails to move up the mountain, hitting some sheer cliffs along the way. I was the most adept climber; so I coached folks around tough points if they sent me an image they couldn’t get through, or the image would come down a chain of folks to me and I’d communicate back the most effective way I saw to get around. A lot of my advice was about going backwards and around just to go forwards.
As we moved it was almost impossible to maintain our mindweaving, but we persisted so that we could keep the connection as we moved farther apart. We started together but slowly drifted outward, testing the boundaries of how far away we could be. A single sentence would flow through the group, like a pulse of blood pushed by the heart:
This
Is
Really
a
Huge
pain
in
My
Hand
…ow
We chuckled to ourselves, bits of mirth flickering through each other’s heads as Ian had stubbed his toe or finger moving upward. Whatever our injuries from the previous tasks, there was no time to worry now. It was pure willpower and bits of adrenaline as we slipped and scrambled.
A memory of the master standing around us years ago came to me at that moment. We were straining in the yard, pulling bags of animal feed that must have weighed 2 or 3 times our size. We were doing it in pairs or by ourselves, straining with all our might. Sweat and gristle caked our foreheads and backs.
Bailey, ever inquisitive, turned towards the Master.
“Why are we doing this?” She asked between gasps of air. “Will this ever help us fight in the future? Aren’t there better ways to improve our strength?” She let go of the sack, placed her hands on her knees, and gave a big sigh.
The Master, with that mischievous gleam in his eye, came over and sat back on his haunches in a squat. He spoke with an intensity that made his whisper audible to all of us, purposefully audible.
“A man can teach a man to fish, but he cannot teach a man to fight the ocean, or prepare a man for unknown dangers. The only preparation for that is willpower. I can’t necessarily teach you that either,” he gave a smirk, as he slumped a heavier, weighted pack on her back.
“But I can certainly try.” With that he scanned the rest of us, and we redoubled our efforts, as Bailey struggled harder against her additional weight.
He can certainly try, I thought, and the nearest member of my Wake must have heard, as he pushed a bit harder towards the summit. Willpower is definitely not something you can teach, but you can give people the opportunity to teach themselves.
We climbed for a few hours, taking short breaks to drink some sips of water. The heat of the day was passing, as the storm clouds brought themselves closer. Streaks of lightning burst over the plains to the west, electrical rivers flowing in the sky. I could see Sid growing weary off to my left, taking more frequent breaks than he had before. Bailey was farther behind but still pushed forward, not taking breaks but taking the climb more slowly. I could barely make out my brothers and sisters beyond those two, as we had spread further and further out.
The clouds had moved in, and rain splattered the mountain. The dirt and dust we were moving through turned to mud. While the cooling effect was nice for the first few moments, it quickly was displaced by the misery of straining in the rain with little protection against the elements.
The clap of thunder pushed us forward, realizing that if we didn’t summit soon, it would be impossible to see the flames. Our hands and feet were raw, climbing over the muddy earth.
After some time, as the howling and crackling of thunder drew closer, I saw the top very clearly. I pulled myself onto a square rock and took a deep breath, I gasped for air. Sid pulled himself up almost a half of a kilometer away, and I could just barely make out Bailey in the opposite direction, a bit farther down but moving along steadily.
The rain was now hard. It obscured my vision so much that my main way of seeing Sid and Bailey was through their own sight, which now both overlooked the cliffs. They shared images of our kin via a bucket brigade, where each person knew the two people on his/her sides were OK.
Erin? Yes
Sid? Uhuh
Leon? Yep
Bailey? Fortunately yes.
Shane? You betcha
Jane? What the f-
Kyle? You better believe it.
Wanda? What took ya’ll so long?
Samson? Easy climb
Ian? Always
We knew now was the moment, as the visibility took a toll. We could see the view our neighbors had in their minds’ eyes, their hands on their torch. It would be hard to light in the storm, so we all sought shelter under rocks to light or in the crook of our bodies. We could see the views of our neighbors as well as their views of their neighbors, so that I very faintly could see the image of my own vision and Erin and Shane.
Links in the chain. Echoes in the chain.
Ian counted, it reverberated in all of our heads.
1
2
3
We struck the torches alight, everyone succeeding after a few tries. We each held the torch high above our heads, and for under a minute, it flickered in the dark, a simple array of beacons wavering in the gloom of the world. We knew we had done it right, because we each felt at that moment that we could do no wrong, and saw what the others were seeing at the same time.
In the light of the meager flames, and from the tendrils of lightning, dark shadows danced victoriously at our feet.
