Guardian of the Dream
Part 4 - The Night of the Flower
Chapter 4 - The Wind of Destruction, the Flower's Song
Shuga looked down at Balsa as she pinned Tanda's unmoving body. Something moved out of the corner of his eye; his head jerked up.
Shuga opened his eyes wide. Yugno was falling forward, into the lake.
"Yugno!"
Shuga's voice overlapped with Yun's shout. "Your Highness? Your Highness! Is everything all right?"
Shuga turned around in a panic. Chagum, leaning on Yun, was slapping his own cheeks in the effort to stay awake. He was losing that battle; in short order he was unable to support himself, and fell into Yun’s arms as is he were drunk.
A voice drifted across the lake, seeming far away, but Shuga had no attention to spare for it for the moment. He tried to run to Chagum’s side, but while his feet moved, he didn’t go anywhere. He was stuck.
The commotion caught Balsa’s attention. She noticed that her surroundings were bizarrely distorted. The wind picked up, swirling over the lake, and swallowed everyone standing on the shore whole.
The wind was visible this time, which struck Balsa as odd. She could see light pulsing out of Yugno and Chagum’s foreheads, as if their souls were trying to escape. More white threads similar to the one emanating from Torogai's forehead stretched out across the sky towards the palace in the lake. Soul Threads. These were the connections between the Flower’s world and its victims in the real world.
Balsa placed both of her hands on her knees and mustered all her strength to stand up. She’d been in fatal danger countless times before, and she’d never flinched away from it. She was calm enough to make a plan.
"Shuga! Yun! Shake Chagum! Don't let him fall asleep no matter what!"
Balsa ran toward Yugno, her legs forcing themselves through the cutting wind. She was the only one who could help him now. He lay prone in the grass on the lakeshore. Balsa propped up his body and tried to lift him.
Yugno's head lolled from side to side like a dead man’s. The thread extending from his forehead was rapidly becoming brighter, as if struggling to escape him.
For the first time, Balsa regretted having no knowledge of magic weaving. In the confines of her mind, she reached out to Tanda, who would know what to do… if he was here. Tanda, how can I get him to wake up?
Then she had it, and cried out: "Li! Yugno is in danger!" Yugno had called himself ‘the one loved by the Li.” If the Li truly cared about him, they might save him now. Li tended to live near lakes and streams in the mountains. If there were any Li to be found anywhere, they would be here.
"Don't let him be taken, please! Li!"
Yugno was still trying to find his mother. Her voice guided him to the verdant green garden where his soul had been born. He remembered his father, tall and gray-robed and imposing. It was all so familiar and comforting to him. He felt like a child coming home, floating upward toward the palace.
“Not that way,” a bright voice said in a tone like tinkling bells. “Come this way.”
Yugno froze in place, and the palace drew no nearer.
In a flash, countless tiny hands clung to Yugno, holding him still. He remembered the song of the Li, which he’d first heard in early childhood, with perfect clarity. He needed nothing but music and song. His gifts could move people’s souls.
He’d sung to the Li as a child, fully aware of the danger of being cursed or lost or drowned. He shivered all over, gooseflesh prickling his skin, as he recalled all the choices that had brought him to this point.
Yugno couldn’t hear his mother anymore. The potent force that had been drawing him to his death no longer had hold of him. He smiled at the Li, which were still clinging to him.
It's all right. I'm not going anywhere. Yugno felt his soul return to his body at speed.
“Yugno!” Balsa called out to him, and he could hear her this time. “Wake up.” Warm hands shook his shoulders desperately.
Yugno stirred, but didn’t wake. He heard muffled voices, along with Chagum’s name. The sounds made echoes, and those echoes moved through him, trying to restore his body to consciousness.
The Li, still holding onto Yugno, murmured in resonance with the shouting voices; the reverberations of their voices shook him further. He felt his heart jolt into a limping rhythm, but it wasn’t painful.
Grass, trees, bugs, birds, beasts, fish, stones, water… the world came back to Yugno a piece at a time, each piece reflected in the echoes passing through his body.
Yugno opened his eyes and slowly sat up, smiling. He laughed, feeling ticklish all over. The laugh changed to a song, high-pitched and enthusiastic, redolent with Yugno’s joy.
The Li were happy to harmonize with him, making the reeds around the lake tremble. The whole world seemed to shake--not like an earthquake, but like it was laughing along with Yugno and the Li.
The song even made the implacable, unchanging lake ripple.
The Soul Threads connecting the many lives and souls to the Flower swayed to the rhythm of the song, then sank into the lake. The threads pulsed and shimmered.
The song was the wind, and the voice of heaven and earth.
***
The world of the Flower was fading quickly. The palace made of white wood vanished like sand blown by the wind.
Tanda, who'd been trapped in a sandstorm, found himself free of its malignant hold. The wind that dissolved it was pure laughter and joy, and Tanda felt peace for the first time since he’d entered the Flower’s world.
Someone or something had caused this wind, and Tanda could only think that Balsa and Torogai were responsible. He felt like Balsa was telling him to not give up. "Yeah,” he said quietly. "I won't."
Tanda felt a lot stronger than he had before. He looked around and found Kaya staring at him with a brightening light in her eyes.
"This wind smells nice,” Kaya said. “It reminds me of rice fields. Actually, maybe a stronger smell. Like grass in the summer."
But the wind that had caused the sandstorm still wasn’t gone. Tanda felt it warring with the joyful breeze. The evil wind smelled of death and decay. The two forces were at odds, pushing past and around each other.
Tanda saw that he and Kaya were no longer in the palace garden, but a vast grassland. He hadn’t sensed a change in location, so he guessed that the Flower’s world had altered their surroundings somehow. The grass rippled in the strong wind.
Tanda stood up slowly. The other souls that the Flower had trapped were here as well, shivering from cold or fear or both. They got unsteadily to their feet, but they seemed to derive the same benefit of vigor and joy from the new wind that Tanda and Kaya had received.
Kaya and Tanda stood in the center of an endless grassy plain at the height of summer. The eerie moonlight, too, was gone. As they watched the windswept grass, excitement and new energy made them want to run. They looked at each other, and when their eyes met they both broke into a sprint. The longer they ran, the farther they wanted to go.
Kaya noticed that the white thread of light extending from her forehead was glowing. It felt warm to the touch, and she felt warmed from within, too.
I want to go back. She felt a cold, numbing pain behind her eyes and remembered…
She remembered the sharp clean smell of the dew that she inhaled every morning during her trip to get water from the lake, the cold grass pressing against the soles of her bare feet, the chirping of birds. The faces of her family and friends.
Darkness fell, restoring the world of the Flower around her. Kaya looked around and noticed that many white threads were reaching upward, toward the moon.
“Fly!” Tanda called to her.
Kaya flew, pulled gently by her Soul Thread. The whirling wind cast her from side to side, tempest-tossed, and she collided with other white threads and got caught in them.
Tanda watched in astonishment as he and the other souls returned to the palace garden. The other souls changed shape and rose into the sky, sparkling with a yellow-gold light like fireflies.
There was no Soul Thread to pull him up.
That's it for me, then, Tanda thought. He thought of Torogai--Tomca?--with regret. He thought he’d seen her before the new wind started blowing. Was that just an illusion created by the Flower?
Maybe, maybe not. Tanda decided to search for Torogai. He didn’t have any better options.
When Tanda took a step toward the place where he’d seen Torogai last, he felt a creeping root wrap around his legs and pull. The root was black and dead-looking, but more than strong enough to pin him in place.
"I won't let you go. You will dream with me for all eternity."
The root wrapped around Tanda like a snake and started squeezing him with tremendous force. The pain was more emotional than physical. Rather than physical constriction, Tanda felt a blank and endless sense of loneliness.
"Don't leave me…"
The root clung to Tanda like a desperate embrace. The sadness in that grasp moved Tanda deeply.
You were this lonely… I’m sorry.
As his mental strength waned, Tanda relaxed into the hold.
A loud yell shocked Tanda back into awareness with the force of a thunderclap.
"What are you doing?! You’re a terrible apprentice!" Torogai walked up to the entangled Tanda and stood in front of him, hands on hips. "You idiot! Why are you getting attached to your enemy? You're a magic weaver, aren't you? Never resonate with a soul in despair!”
Tanda blinked.
“If you’re so sorry for someone who’s trying to kill you, why not do something to save them instead of giving up? You can start by shredding those roots."
Tanda smiled openly, letting his feelings of embarrassment and relief overwhelm his previous feelings of loneliness and emptiness. He made his whole body transform into water and easily slipped through the roots holding him.
A sad scream rose up with the remaining roots. They changed shape, twisting into the Flower’s Guardian.
Torogai approached the Flower's Guardian and stretched out her hand to clutch his shoulder. "Stop hiding in the shadows of other people and show yourself, First Queen."
The face of the Flower's Guardian distorted. The bitter visage of a woman emerged from the distortion. The First Queen shrieked, "Get your filthy hands off me, you vulgar commoner!"
Torogai didn’t let go. "If I were still Tomca, I would have let go and covered my eyes by now. But I'm the magic weaver Torogai. That means I transcend your definition of status, Your Imperial Highness." Torogai paused, then said quietly, “What is your name?”
The First Queen's lips trembled. She was very pale. "Liano."
"Liano. I came here to bring your soul back to the real world."
Queen Liano’s expression tightened for a moment, proud and haughty, but then something in her seemed to fade. She was strong, but brittle, and it seemed like a single touch would be able to break her spirit.
“I won’t go back,” Liano whispered. Sagum, her son, appeared within the circle of her arms, blurry and indistinct. “I won’t return to a world where my son no longer exists.”
Torogai seized Liano by the shoulders and shook her. “Your son isn’t here, either, and you know it. Why else would you be so unhappy? Why else would you have surrounded the Flower with this curse?"
Torogai spent a brief time considering the situation. Then she said, “The grief of losing your son isn’t something that’s going to go away, no matter what you do. It’s been fifty years since I lost my son, and I still remember it. Why do you think people keep on living even when it hurts so much?”
She smiled, and it was hideous, but well-intentioned. "People are more resilient than they think." Her smile was tinged with sorrow. "Now stop crying like a spoiled child and let go of your hatred for the world. I know what you're going through. There’s no shame in what you’re feeling. But you don’t have the right to make everyone feel the same way you do.”
Liano lifted her face and looked at Torogai. "I feel like I'm… many people all at the same time. When I invited Chagum here and trapped him, it was because I wanted to make the Second Queen feel the same pain I did. But when I became one with the Flower and cultivated its dreams, those feelings faded. Then, when Chagum tried to leave, I was distracted by the sound of wings. I couldn’t stop him."
"I tried to stop Yugno from coming here, so that he wouldn’t awaken the dreamers. I wished that we would all become tiny and disappear, but… Well, when I felt that wind, I thought that going back might not be so terrible, maybe. My own soul won’t do what I want it to. I feel torn.” A sad smile graced Queen Liano’s lips. "I've looked in on many of the other dreams. Those of men and women, girls and boys…"
Torogai grinned wryly. "Dreaming is tiring, isn't it?"
Liano's smile mirrored Torogai’s. She nodded in agreement. "I feel like I've been dreaming for ten, maybe twenty years."
"Does the smell on the wind remind you of the dawn?"
Liano's eyes fluttered shut. She inhaled sharply, then let out her breath slowly.
"Look over there,” Torogai said. “The wind can't wake all the dreamers by itself."
The palace garden was in disarray. Dreamers fell from their petals and crumpled to the ground. Some had severed life threads uselessly extending into nothingness from their sleeping faces, and they were slowly fading into the stem of the Flower.
One of the figures fading into the Flower’s stem was the Flower’s Guardian.
"Sleep is so close to death, you see,” Torogai said. “The souls of those who are sleeping can easily slide from sleep into the darkness of the other world."
Torogai took hold of Liano's arm and said in a tone of command, "It's time to wake up now. One day you won't be able to, no matter how much you might want to. I'll turn you into a white bird and let you taste the joy of flying through the blue sky. Don’t waste this spell.”
Liano seemed stunned and didn’t move.
"Become a bird, Liano! Imagine cutting the wind with your beautiful wings, a white flash whirling through sky. In the world of dreams, the imagination has power. Imagine it."
Liano remained still for a while, uncertain. With a single intake of breath, she began to glow with soft firefly light. Slowly, in bits and pieces, she transformed, becoming a white bird.
"Fly, Liano!"
Encouraged by Torogai's voice, Liano rose, flapping her wings. She flew straight up, toward the moon.
Torogai watched Liano disappear completely into a corona of white moonlight. Then she kicked Tanda in the shin. He was staring into the moon, too distracted to notice anything else.
"Ouch!" Tanda groaned, rubbing his leg.
"You idiot! Making me work overtime like this!"
Tanda laughed. He was still crying a little, not quite recovered from his desperation and the idea that he’d been trapped with no way home. He looked over at Torogai and noticed that she wasn’t looking at him. He turned around.
A tall man stood in the garden, gazing at Torogai with a lonely expression.
Torogai opened her mouth to speak, but she had no words. The face of the Flower's Guardian was far older than she remembered.
The Flower’s Guardian smiled. "Our son let the wind in, didn't he?" His voice was hoarse and hard to make out. His body faded in places; he was barely visible. He spoke again, directing his attention at Torogai and Tanda. "The seeds were safely scattered. Most of the dreamers returned."
"Your other so helped me,” The Flower’s Guardian said. “I didn't intend to make a resentful Flower’s Defender, but I couldn’t get anything to go quite the way I wanted. The Queen’s influence here was too strong."
"But you got control back in the end, didn't you?" Tanda asked.
The Flower's Guardian nodded. "Yes. I did what I could, so that the Flower's Defender wouldn’t crush Yugno's throat."
The Flower’s Guardian looked up at the moon. "The moon is setting. This Flower's time is almost over." His body was as transparent as the wings of a mayfly. He took Torogai's hands into his and said, "Farewell, Tomca, my love. The Flower's life is an eternal cycle, but I, who treasures his memories of loving you, am coming to an end. My world is about to disappear. This is our last farewell."
Torogai gritted her teeth. "Farewell."
The Flower’s Guardian faded as if dissolving into Torogai's grasp. She gasped as she felt his final wish flow outward, melting into her hands. She held onto it, though it pained her.
Torogai took a deep breath, then looked up. She spared Tanda a brief glance, then turned into a bird herself and flew away. Tanda transformed and flew after her.
The moon was rapidly shrinking, nowhere near full. Tanda and Torogai hastened toward it before it could disappear.
"We're gonna slip through! Make your soul small!" Torogai cried out.
Tanda and Torogai compressed their spiritual bodies and slipped through the moon. A gentle wind blew in their direction, giving them one last push back into their world.
***
Yugno watched as a thousand dots of light emerged from the moon, settled over the lake and then scattered. He heard music: resonances as the souls of dreamers escaped the Flower’s world and returned to their bodies. The music was beautiful and sad, and he was reminded of what Balsa had told him about the song he’d sung for her.
The moon waned, and the upside-down palace vanished. Two shining birds flew over the surface of the lake--the last two points of light left in the darkness. The moon still shone, but it was an ordinary half-moon, and its illumination was weak.
Suddenly, Yugno felt an overpowering surge of loneliness. The Flower he had seen grow since his birth was dead. He sobbed into his hands.
Yugno was aware of the change to his surroundings, but in his grief he was slow to comprehend it. He heard Torogai speaking, and Balsa. There was no distress in their tone. If anything, they seemed happy. Yugno didn’t concern himself with them. They were like shadows far away; none of them could touch his loss.
Yugno stood up slowly and moved to a grassy patch on the shore of the lake. He sat down again, his body sluggish. After singing with the Li, he was usually overflowing with energy, but now, for some reason, he felt as if the light of life had abandoned him.
He lay down on the grass and closed his eyes. He heard someone calling to him, but he waved them away.
How long did he stay like that? He didn’t know. But it wasn’t forever.
The first thing he noticed was that he was standing up, surrounded by darkness. He didn’t remember standing, but he decided to look around before resting again.
He was dreaming, he realized. Standing in the palace courtyard where the Flower had grown. He saw another woman in the courtyard with him, old and wrinkled and familiar.
"Master Torogai,” he said politely.
Torogai smiled, her expression serene. That was strange to him. He was used to seeing her in crisis, either angry or terrified, but now she seemed entirely at peace.
"Where are we? Is this the Flower's dream?" Yugno asked.
"No. I called you into my dream. You seemed sad."
Yugno nodded. "When the Flower disappeared, the light inside me did, too. My heart feels like a hollow drum."
Torogai reached out and caressed Yugno's cheek as if he were a small child. "Yugno, the Flower hasn't disappeared. Look."
Torogai opened her palm, revealing a brown seed.
"This is...!"
"Yes. It's the Flower's seed. The Flower's Guardian left this in my hands at the end." Torogai rolled the tiny seed between her palms. "What is the Flower? What was it, when was it born? Where did it come from? Is it really a flower, or is that just what it looks like to us?”
The brown seed looked quite ordinary. Torogai frowned down at it. To Yugno’s astonishment, the seed shrank in size and became white and small instead.
Torogai tapped the seed thoughtfully with one finger. After a few seconds, it changed into a larger brown seed again. “I see. It always has to be a seed, but the color or shape of that seed is irrelevant. It can’t turn into, say, a stone. It’s limited by its inherent nature, but it can still change itself. Dreams are changeable by nature, too.”
Torogai looked Yugno in the eyes. “The Flower obtained its original form from a dream, I think. This Flower was controlled by a dream that pollinated it--the First Queen's. Even so, it remained true to its essential nature of being pollinated, producing a seed, and then dying, scattering its petals on the wind."
Torogai frowned. "The Flower's Guardian protects the Flower’s essential nature, to ensure that a new seed is always left behind.”
"What does the Flower's Defender do, then?"
Torogai chuckled at Yugno's question. "The role of the Flower’s Defender was to protect you, wasn't it?"
"Huh?"
"The original purpose of the Flower’s Defender was probably to protect you in the Flower’s world. The Flower’s Guardian needed Tanda to agree to being used, at least a little. I think that the Flower’s Guardian asks a dreaming soul to help defend the one who brings the wind. Of course, it didn’t work out quite that way this time.”
"No. The Flower’s Defender was twisted by the First Queen’s will."
Torogai nodded, then smiled, though there was bitterness in it. “I think the Flower and the First Queen shared at least one goal. They wanted to prevent you from cutting ties with the Flower and running away. That would have been catastrophic for both of them. That’s why they both sent the Flower’s Defender to bring you back to the Flower’s world.”
Goosebumps prickled Yugno’s skin.
"But when the First Queen tried to crush your throat, that was not in accordance with the Flower's will. The Flower's Guardian said that he tried his best to not let the First Queen control the Flower. The First Queen, as deeply connected to the Flower as she was, might have sensed the Flower's will. That’s why she feared that you would bring the wind of life and free the trapped souls. She decided to send the Flower's Defender to attack you, and to kill you before you could come back to the Flower’s world."
Torogai plucked the seed from her palm. "The Flower is a living organism, much like ordinary flowers that depend on pollination for survival. The fact that you are Li Tou Ruen, ‘the one loved by the Li,' is not a coincidence. You’ve been blessed with long life and the ability to move people to their very souls through song. The Flower needs someone like that to help it grow and produce a seed. Its cycles are long, and lives are generally short.”
After a pause, Torogai said, "You told me that your mother in your nightmare said that the Flower's Defender would crush your throat so that you could never sing again. That made me wonder why she was so fixated on your song. But interpreting your nightmare in terms of what the Flower needs makes sense, doesn’t it? You needed to be long-lived enough to survive the fifty-year cycle, and you needed to have some kind of power that could manipulate souls. Without those things, the dreamers would have been trapped, and the Flower wouldn’t have produced a new seed."
Yugno laughed weakly. "And now my purpose is done. Is that why I feel empty?"
Torogai grinned. "Absolutely not. Your life has only just begun, you whippersnapper."
Yugno shook his head. “I feel so tired. I don’t even want to sing anymore."
Torogai squeezed his hand gently in hers, still smiling. "Yugno. You are a child of extremes--dawn and dusk, night and day. Like the dimness that surrounds us, you exist in the liminal space between the two.
"Your song has the power to brighten people's lives, like sunlight. The source of that power is your nightly dreaming. Sleep heals the body and the mind, and dreams heal the soul. Even nightmares serve this purpose of healing. They help the soul's deepest wounds heal. It’s similar to exposing a wound to the air to dry it out and help it scab over.
"The Li resonated with your soul and created a song. The power you have when you sing it is the healing power of dreams."
Yugno bit his lip.
"Do you want to continue singing?” Torogai asked quietly. “Or do you want to live like a normal person? People are resilient. You might feel empty now, but that feeling won’t last forever. I can help you find some other path to follow. I'm sure you could have a peaceful life, if that was what you wanted."
Yugno shook his head. "I… I can't live without singing."
Torogai nodded. "Give me your hand, then."
Yugno felt a chill go up his spine. It's like when I sang for the Li, the first time. He was at another crossroads: another important choice. How many times had he wondered what kind of life he would have had if he hadn’t sung by the lake that day, so long ago?
He knew now. Whatever happiness an ordinary life might have had for him, that wasn’t what he wanted. All he wanted was to sing.
After a brief hesitation, Yugno held out his hand. Torogai placed the Flower's seed in his palm.
The seed was as warm as Torogai's skin. As he gripped it, the seed sank cleanly into the flesh of his hand. Heat spread from his palm to the rest of his body, soothing and slow.
Memories of the dreamers still dozing within the seed gushed into Yugno's soul with the force of a flood. He gasped and covered his face with both hands. Emotions and burning desires that weren’t his own washed over him, swirling like a whirlpool and sucking him down.
In seconds that felt like years, it was over. The whirlpool of dreamers sank to the bottom of Yugno’s soul and was still. The Flower’s seed was a part of him now, and it had changed him. How, he wasn’t quite sure.
Yugno let his hands fall from his face and looked up.
His outer appearance hadn’t changed. He still looked like a man in his twenties, but Torogai noticed that his eyes were different. Older and knowing, as if they alone were affected by the passing of time.
Yugno no longer had the brash and carefree nature of a child. His eyes conveyed compassion and commiseration in grief. In at least one way, Yugno had finally grown up. Because the dreams of others that he’d absorbed, he understood the pain of dreams. He understood why so many people never wanted to awaken.
"Hold onto those dreams tight, now," Torogai said. She was still smiling. “You might find it harder to sing happy songs, now. But you’ll also be able to move people’s souls without the help of the Li. When I leave this world, I'll call for you. You can send me into the next world with your song."
Yugno nodded. Torogai took his hand. "I don't know if the Flower was born from your soul, or if your soul was born from the Flower, or if in the beginning you were one and the same. You're entwined so profoundly with the Flower that it's hard to separate you."
Torogai looked at Yugno and said in a sing-song voice, "You're the child of dawn and dusk, of extremes, of liminal spaces and the boundaries between worlds. The seed of the Flower sleeps within you, and when you come to your final night on earth, it will sprout, taking shape within your final dream. A new Flower will bloom, because a new Flower always blooms. The end of one cycle is always the beginning of another.”
Yugno looked at Torogai. She clapped him on the shoulder strongly enough to take the wind out of him. "So, now. Fly with a cheerful song in your heart, the son of my dreams. It’s time for you to wake up.”
Yugno opened his eyes. He sensed more than saw that he was back in the ordinary world. It was dark, not yet dawn, and he could see very little. The light of the fire flickered over the faces of Balsa, Torogai, and other figures huddled around the unmoving Tanda.
Yugno felt like his dream with Torogai had lasted a long time, but it hadn’t, not at all. Torogai was awake, too, sitting up near the fire. She smiled at Yugno when she saw him. Then she stood up, stretched extravagantly, and walked over to Tanda and the others.
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