War in Heaven (97 page)

"But you don't love them as you did Jonathan, do you?"

"I am not sure," he said. "Between Jonathan and me there was an immediate resonance. Our hearts beat as one; it may be that we shared the same spirit animal, and so our wings beat together, too. With Jonathan there was always such
animajii
, this wild joy of life that seemed to grow directly out of my own. With the girls, there are other affinities. In time, I will come to know them more completely. Truly, it can only deepen, this blessed knowingness. Love for one's own child is special, I think, but love is always just love, yes?"

In the quiet of Tamara's new house, in all the silence of their suffering, Danlo looked at her for a long time. They understood each other well. Both of them, at different moments during the war, had desired death and had been as close to ultimate despair as the next beat of their hearts. And both of them, in plunging into the dark caverns of their souls, had discovered within themselves the ultimate fount of life. In every way, Danlo thought, Tamara's journey towards affirmation had been as daring and difficult as his own. But now, despite the sorrow that would always remain with her like the coldness of the stars, there was the new thing burning within her, the fire, the secret light.

"I think I really
do
love each of them as much as a mother could love any child," she said. "But I still miss Jonathan terribly."

"I miss him, too," he said.

"It's strange," she said, "but after the night on the beach, I couldn't imagine ever again wanting to go on living. But now I couldn't dream of anything else."

"Neither could I."

Tamara took a drink of coffee and nodded her head. "You have so much now, don't you? Lord of the Order, Lord of the Way of Ringess. And then there are these new accomplishments of yours. The way you healed yourself of the warrior-poet's poison. The way it's said you can look through light years of space to see things occurring far away."

For a moment, he looked across a few feet of space to drink in the dark fire of her eyes. Then he said, "Truly, I have almost everything."

"Something strange happened to you in Hanuman's sanctuary, didn't it? Something strange and terrible but marvellous, too, I think."

Terrible beauty
, he remembered as he closed his eyes to gaze upon the infinite light blazing inside him. And then he suddenly looked at her and said, "Yes, something happened. And yet I would give it all up to bring Jonathan back."

"You really would?"

"Yes, if I could — but that is not the way the universe is made."

"No, I suppose not," she said. And then she smiled sadly and looked off through the room's north window at the stars. "I think I understand Hanuman, now. I'm afraid I might try to make the universe differently, too, if
I
could."

At this he, too, smiled and said, "What is strange is that the warrior-poets might have been right, after all."

"Right about what?"

"About the eternal recurrence."

"That the universe recurs exactly as it is, again and again, for ever?"

"No," he said, "the universe is different in each moment. Truly, irreversibly, marvellously different. Like an infinite lotus, it opens ever outwards into new possibilities, yes? But true affirmation of this universe would be in wishing that it would recur eternally throughout time. That in every moment it is perfect and complete just as it is. And that all the moments of our lives are so perfect we would wish to relive them again and again no matter how painful this living might be. Nothing may ever be subtracted, the warrior-poets say. Nothing must ever be lost."

Nothing is lost
, he remembered.
Nothing can ever be lost.

"Do you really believe this?" she asked.

"It is not a really matter of belief," he said. "In the end, we can either say yes or no."

"Would you say yes, then, to the way that Jonathan died?"

"I am afraid that I must."

"And to your killing of Hanuman?"

Danlo gazed down at his left hand, remembering the most terrible moment of his life. Then he slowly nodded his head in affirmation.

"Is it that simple for you, then?"

"Simple, truly, but never easy," he said. "I try all the time now only to say this one word, this one simple sound. As I always will."

"Well, for me, it's not so simple," she said. "Sometimes I think I still
want
to say no. Sometimes I hate the universe for taking Jonathan away."

"But he is not really gone, you know. Nothing is lost."

"That's your faith, isn't it? I wish I could believe it."

"It is not faith. It is only remembrance."

"Whose remembrance? Yours, Danlo?"

"No," he said, "not mine. That is, not mine alone. It is the universe's remembrance of a single blessed being who was part of itself."

"And what is it you think that has been preserved of our son, then?"

"Everything."

Here Tamara sipped her coffee and shook her head. And she asked, "Then you think it's really possible, for instance, that the universe remembers what Jonathan said to me when I took him skating a few days before the war began?"

"Yes," Danlo said. He looked through the east windows where the snow-covered slopes of Mount Attakel loomed up against the bright black sky. "The universe remembers the moon's reflection in the eye of an owl on a deep winter night a million years ago."

"Oh, Danlo, Danlo — I wish it could be so."

Now Danlo stared off at the Wolf constellation as his heart beat to rhythms as ancient as the stars. And then he smiled at Tamara and told her, "I remember what Jonathan said."

"But how could you?"

"He said this, then: 'When God made you, Mama, She used really bright colours.' Truly, God did, Tamara."

Tamara's hand trembled so badly that drops of coffee splashed out of her mug, and she began to weep. Danlo stood up then, and came over to her. He sat by her side, stroking her long, golden hair for a while.
The memory of all things is in all things
, he thought. And then he said, "In a way, Jonathan still lives. As he always has and always will."

Here Tamara put down her coffee mug and covered Danlo's hand with her own. She looked at him for a long time with tear-filled eyes but saying nothing.

"You could remembrance him as I have," he said softly. "You could remembrance everything."

"But how, Danlo?"

"It is truly a simple thing," he said. "The simplest thing in the universe. I could help you, if you'd like."

She immediately nodded her head. "All right — when shall we begin?"

At this sudden hopefulness, he felt all his love for her burning in his eyes, and she seemed to disappear into his gaze like a lightship falling into the sun. But his intense passion did not in any way consume her; it caused her only to begin to burn brightly, too.

"Now," he said. "We shall begin right now. In all the universe, as the past becomes the future and memory is created, just pure memory like indestructible diamonds out of the fires of time, there is only ever the blessed Now-moment, yes?"

But remembrance of the One Memory that some called the Elder Eddas, though always simple, was seldom ever easy for human beings to achieve. All through midwinter spring and false winter Danlo visited Tamara's house, and he helped her find the way towards the healing waters of the ocean of memories that streamed inside her. Each night, like a young dolphin diving deeper and deeper into the secret blueness of the sea, she came a little closer to the memories that were most precious to her. As false winter gave way to the cold, snowy days of winter and Danlo's vision of a new Ringism began to spread across the stars, Tamara began to remembrance and relive moments of her life that she had shared with Jonathan. Her progress was rapid. But what she most desired seemed always, like the sea's horizon, just beyond her grasp. During this time of frustration, Danlo grew ever more anxious to complete the great quest that he had begun so long ago. But none of this restlessness was directed at Tamara; with her he was always gentle, patient and infinitely understanding. He spent long moments in her house, staring out of the window at the frozen sea to the west or looking up at the sky, watching and waiting.

With the coming of deep winter, the Order's tinkers finally completed the destruction of the Universal Computer, and Tamara, like almost everyone else, took part in the celebrations held through every quarter of the city. She drank Summerworld firewine and ate golden honeycakes and looked up to marvel at the Golden Ring as it completed its growth across the heavens. The next day she returned to the remembrance of the true Elder Eddas, and day after day, as the weather turned colder and colder, she nearly despaired of making the same journey as had Danlo. And then one night nearly a whole year after Jonathan had died — a night of blazing woodfires and dreams and great galaxies of stars wheeling across the universe — time stopped and Tamara fell into the pure, shimmering consciousness that flows at the centre of all things. For many thousands of beats of Danlo's heart, she sat in her meditation room utterly transfixed as she stared into the liquid blueness of Danlo's eyes. She seemed almost dead and yet, paradoxically, as afire with life as a wild new star. And at last she laughed softly and leaned towards Danlo to kiss his forehead. Then she sprang to her feet and began to move about touching the flowers, the polished stones and other objects of the room.

"Oh, Danlo," she said softly. "Danlo, Danlo — I never knew."

Now Danlo stood up, too. "Shhh," he said, touching his fingers to her lips, "There is no need to speak."

But Tamara had always been a proud woman with a fierce will of her own, and she laughed again even as she danced away from him. With a few quick motions, she pulled off her blue meditation robe and stood naked in the firelight. Over the past year of skating and eating her fill, she had regained almost the same body that Danlo remembered so keenly: long, lithe, voluptuous, strong and fairly trembling with delight in its own existence. She began to dance around the room then, whirling across the polished wood floor with her arms thrown wide above her head. She danced for the sheer joy of movement itself, danced with an ecstatic attention to the flowing patterns of her feet and hands that Danlo hadn't seen since he had first met her years before. She seemed utterly happy, utterly radiant, utterly alive. At last she stopped and held her arms folded across her heart as she let the intense dizziness of her wild dancing fall away from her.

"Oh, Danlo," she said, looking at him, "I never knew it was possible."

And Danlo looked at her, and he smiled, and the words thundered inside him with every beat of his heart:
Yes, yes, yes.

"But
how
is it possible?" she asked. "How could it be possible that everything is really all right?"

"How could it
not
be possible?"

"I remember you saying something like this once," she told him. "You said, 'how is it possible that the impossible is not only possible but inevitable'."

"You
remember
this?"

"Yes — I'm sure I do."

"But I said those words on the night of the eighty-eighth of false winter. After we had gone for a walk on the beach and joined together in your fireroom. Almost eight years ago."

"Yes, I remember."

Now Danlo stepped closer to her and brushed the long hair out of her face so that he could better see her eyes. He said, "That was during the time of our deepest togetherness. The time of the memories Hanuman took away from you."

"I know," she said. "The memories of you and me."

Nothing is lost, he
thought,
never, never, never, never.

"I remember the way you loved me," she said. "I remember the way I loved you."

"But what do you remember, then?"

"Everything."

So saying, she lifted her arms around him and kissed him long and deeply in a way that he had almost lost hope of ever kissing her again. And then, in this miracle of healing, in all the wild joy of recovering what she had given up as for ever lost, she fell against him laughing and weeping, and kissing his forehead and lips and the tears from his eyes, and with utter abandon kissing as well his throat and chest and even the hard white scars along his hands.

"Tamara, Tamara," he finally said after he had found his breath again. "Tamara, I — "

"Wait," she told him, pulling away from him. "Please wait."

She left and Danlo listened as her feet flew lightly up the stairs towards her sleeping chamber. A few moments later she returned, still naked but for a single piece of jewellery. Danlo smiled to see the pearl that he had once found for her on a frozen beach and fastened on to a necklace braided from his own long black hair.

"Do you remember making this for me?" she asked.

Danlo stared down at the pearl that hung between her breasts. It was shaped like a teardrop, and its swirling colours of soft pink and iridescent grey-black made a startling contrast against her creamy skin. "Do I remember?" he asked.

"You gave it to me in promise to marry me. And I accepted it in promise to marry you."

"Yes," he said, "I remember."

"I'm sorry that I had to break this promise," she told him. "But Hanuman had broken my memories of you, and I couldn't even recall the first time I met you."

"I am sorry, too."

She looked at him deeply and knowingly, and said, "Well, I suppose there's no need for this promise to remain broken for ever, is there? Unless we both want it to be."

"I do not want that, Tamara."

"Neither do I."

Tamara smiled at him and said, "It's strange, but I think I know now the answer to the riddle you asked Jonathan. About capturing the bird's spirit unharmed."

"You mean, 'How do you capture a beautiful bird without killing its spirit?' "

"Yes," she said, nodding her head. "And the way to do this is by becoming the sky, isn't it?"

"Truly, it is."

"I want to become your sky, then. I want you to become mine so that we can fly together."

And so even as they gazed at each other and with their eyes renewed the deepest promises of life, Tamara pulled Danlo down to the white shagshay fur spread out in front of the fireplace. They joined together as man and woman in an ecstasy of love and creation. Danlo sensed the awakening of her body's cells and her desire to make a new child together while in this wild, exalted state. In the whisper of her breath, in the fire of her heart, he heard her calling him into the centre of her being as if she were saying, "Fill me with light, fill me with life." There came a moment of utter joy and completion when they both knew that they had brought forth the second of their children out of the wild white seeds of life that burned inside themselves. She would be something marvellous, something that had never before existed in the universe. Some time the following year in winter when the snows came, this child of the stars would open her eyes and look out in wonder at the world, and nothing would ever be the same again. And someday, farwhen, through the doorway to the shimmering, golden future, their children's children would fill the stars to the end of space and time. This was Danlo's and Tamara's dream, made real in all the love and life that they poured into each other. Although they spoke no words to affirm what they did together, every atom of each of them cried out, yes, yes, yes!