Sitting in a chair, she named dozens of people and her ties to each of them, and she mentioned some of the larger trees by names or species, ending with the famous old bloodwoods growing in the District of Districts. But no tree was better than Marduk.
“Why, mama?”
Because her ancestors claimed the tree when it was little more than a sapling and she was born inside its wonderful wood, and she felt nothing but pride for the home that had fed and sheltered her without complaint. No other blackwood grew such sweet nuts, and that’s what Father believed too, and he wasn’t even born here. He came from the District of Mists, and he was a hornbeam man. Diamond asked what that meant, but she didn’t hear him. Her face tilted backwards, eyes watching what only she could see. Then she smiled, and it was a different smile than any he could remember. Suddenly she was telling how she was a girl and Father was a beautiful soldier stationed in the nearby wilds, and that was how people from different places could meet and fall in love.
“The courtship and our marriage,” she said wistfully. “It seems so long ago, my parents alive, standing beside me at the ceremony . . . ”
Her voice trailed away.
“How long ago was it?” he asked.
That question she heard. Thorough calculations ended with the number, “Our wedding was five thousand and fifty-five days ago.”
The number made little sense. Trying to measure it against something familiar, Diamond asked, “How old am I?”
She started to answer, but winced and put one of her hands into the other and held it snugly, as if comforting herself.
“I’m past nine hundred days,” he said confidently. “But I haven’t reached one thousand yet.”
She found a smile. “Nine hundred and thirty days ago. That’s when you blessed us by joining our lives.”
How many of those days could he remember? Diamond looked into a bare wall, thinking back as far as possible.
“That was a very long day,” his mother mentioned.
Diamond looked at her.
“Sometimes that happens,” she continued, talking as much to her clenched hand as to him. “There are days that feel as if there might never be another night in the world. But night is inevitable.”
Night was a presence. It was something that lay beyond the reach of men, plunging the world into shadow whenever it wished. And the darkness was a mystery to the boy.
“And the dawn always follows night, bringing us rain,” she said.
Rain sounded beautiful, and it sounded terrible.
“You don’t understand what I’m saying,” she said hopefully.
Diamond didn’t know what he understood. But after a few moments of silence, he asked, “How old are you?”
New calculations were made. “I’m ten thousand, six hundred and twenty-three days old.”
That was an enormous number. He nodded and dipped his head.
She misunderstood. With a laugh, she said, “Don’t worry. My parents lived past sixteen thousand days. They enjoyed good long lives, strong to the end.”
“The end,” he repeated.
She said nothing.
“When you die, what happens?”
She looked at her hands again. The fingers began to wiggle. “Those left behind will cry,” she said. “Beyond that, I do not know.”
Father was a careful speaker, but even silent men are full of lessons.
He often wore special clothes, heavy clothes covered with deep pockets and sturdy loops. He had a favorite pair of boots with armored flaps over his exposed toes, and padded undergarments helped protect his heart and belly and groin. The gray work shirt and trousers often came home needing to be mended, particularly when he had been gone overnight, and after Mother washed them, Father would sit in his son’s room, expertly sewing up the long, unexplained tears.
Every person carried himself in a certain way, and Diamond studied how his father sat and walked; and later, in front of the big mirror, the boy would try to move like the scar-faced man.
When he was tired and smelled of death, Father’s words were less guarded. He might mention a distant tree or some other landmark, and Diamond knew that if he put on a curious expression, some detail might be offered about a distant, unknowable piece of the world.
One evening Father sighed and said nothing, exhausted eyes staring at the floor. Then he sighed again, and with an important tone he warned the boy that coming home always took longer than leaving.
“Why would that be?”
The man thought for a moment. “For every reason you can think of,” he said mysteriously.
Knots were their shared passion. Father showed the boy how tie the bright needle to the thread and pull it through the ripped fabric. He taught him how to marry two threads together and how to make one rope into a trustworthy slipknot. Every knot had its name, though he didn’t know where any name came from. And he was impressed when Diamond practiced on his own, mastering even the most intricate knots.
Father left late one morning and came home while the day was beginning to fade. The room lights were softening, signaling night’s arrival. Diamond was sitting on his floor, playing with the wooden soldiers. Father came through the door and smiled. He was wearing green clothes, soft and cut differently than his serious work clothes. This was what he wore when he didn’t have to go away for a long time. Unlike every other day, he knelt on the floor in front of his boy, waiting for something. The room’s door was ajar. He was listening. After a while, Mom called to him. She said that she was going to Cousin Ollo’s, and Father instantly shouted, “Fine! Your men will defend the fort in your absence.”
Something here was funny.
The two “men” laughed while Father reached into a front pocket, winking at Diamond. “I shouldn’t. Don’t tell her. But I saw this outside, and I thought . . . well, I don’t know what I thought . . . ”
There were colors in the pocket. A patch of blue appeared, brighter than any blue Diamond had ever seen, and around the blue was a thin gold ring, and on the other side of his father’s finger was a startling green—radiant and metallic, possessing depth, as if the greenness only increased as the eyes peered deeper into the beauty. The painted wooden soldiers were drab in comparison to this astonishment. Diamond giggled until his father held the colors close to him, and then he saw the dull black eye in the middle of the blue. The eye remained open, even as the man’s thumb pulled across it. A pair of matching triangles, orange and tiny, stood near the eye, and the boy realized that the triangles formed some kind of mouth and the blue color was the head of a tiny animal and that rich metallic green was a body unlike anything that he had ever envisioned.
“What is this?” Diamond whispered.
“An usher bird.” His father held the body and head in his long palm. “I found it on our landing. Poor thing flew into the window, probably just before I came home.” Using his other hand, he eased one of the little wings away from the body. Its underside was white as cold milk, and each feather was a little different from its neighbors. “He’s still warm,” Father mentioned. Then after some thought, he asked, “Do you want to hold him?”
Diamond nodded, and the bird rolled off into the cup made by his tiny hands. The body weighed next to nothing, and the open eye was matched by another open eye on the opposite side of that narrow head. Diamond turned the bird and looked down the mouth, admiring a tiny tongue, and he turned it over and looked at the golden feet with their long toes and curled claws. Returning to the face, he studied the eyes while holding all of it tightly. Then quietly, more puzzled than worried, he said, “I don’t think he’s breathing.”
“He isn’t,” Father agreed.
The boy looked up.
“He’s dead, sweetie.”
Diamond looked at the bird again, but differently.