Slowly, Mimi recovered. She woke up one morning and looked at her mother with a calm, steady gaze, and told her of what she had seen on the night she was struck by lightning.
“Many are the fantastic figures we see in our feverish dreams,” said Aki.
Mimi did not think that her memories were dreams, but she couldn’t be sure. She decided not to press the point.
Tora was summoned again to see if anything could be done about Mimi’s left leg, which was numb and refused to obey her. It was as if the leg was no longer a part of her, but something alien attached to her body that she had to drag around. Her hip, where the leg connected with her torso, tingled with the pain of a thousand needles stabbing into her.
“I can give you a poultice made of shrimp paste and seaweed for the pain,” said the herbalist. “But this leg… will never walk again.”
Aki smiled and said nothing. It was the fate of the poor to toil and endure, wasn’t it? Surely the gods would not deprive Mimi of the ability to do so.
“It hurts so bad that I can’t sleep, Mama,” said Mimi. “Tell me a story.”
CHAPTER SIX
THE HUNDRED FLOWERS
Growing up, Aki had told Mimi many stories that she would recall in later days. But memory was a lump of wax that was reshaped by the knife of consciousness with each recollection, and as Mimi grew up and changed, the way she remembered the stories also changed.
Flowery metaphors replaced homely similes; sophisticated kennings replaced unadorned phrasings; echoes of the Ano Classics replaced the patterns of the sea in her mother’s murmurs. It was as impossible to recall the words of her mother accurately as it was to hold on to the sand slipping between the fingers of a squeezing fist.
But the hearts of the tales remained, and the scent of home lingered in those memories: They were the landscape of her childhood dreams, the shores of her first narratives.
Now, my Mimi-tika, before your father and I had children, we used to entertain ourselves by telling each other stories on long winter nights, after we had coupled and before we could fall asleep. Sometimes the stories were told to us by our parents, and by their parents before them. Sometimes we added to the stories, the way daughters mend and alter the dresses inherited from their mothers, the ways sons adapt and reshape the tools inherited from their fathers. Sometimes we swapped the same story back and forth, changing it in each retelling, the way love is shaped and crafted and polished and built up by two pairs of hands in a space of their own.
This is one of those stories.
You know that the years come in cycles of twelve, and each is named after an animal or a plant. The cycle starts with the Year of the Plum, which is followed by the Cruben, the Orchid, the Whale, the Bamboo, the Carp, the Chrysanthemum, the Deer, the Pine, the Toad, the Coconut, and finally, the Wolf, before starting with the Plum again. The fate of each child is bound up with the plant or animal governing the year in which she was born.
But how did these animals and plants become selected for the calendar? That is a story worthy of telling and retelling.
Long ago, when gods and heroes still walked the earth together and fought and embraced each other as brothers, the years were without character. Each year was as likely to be gentle as a carp drifting in mountain streams, bringing with it bountiful harvest on both land and at sea, as it was to be fierce as an aged pine waving its gnarled branches, bringing with it strife and lean winters.
“My brothers and sisters,” said Lord Rufizo, the compassionate god of healers, one day, “we have let time pass by as an undammed river for too long. But our mother, the Source-of-All-Waters, bid us to care for the people of Dara. We must discharge our duties better by bringing order to time.”
The other gods and goddesses assented to this most excellent of suggestions, and the decision was made to divide time into cycles of twelve, much like the way the mighty Miru River is now tamed by dams and water mills every dozen miles or so along its course. Twelve was a good number, as it accounted for the four worlds of Air, Earth, Water, and Fire, multiplied by the three aspects of time: future, present, and past. And each of the years in the cycle would be named after an animal or plant of Dara so as to give it a guiding disposition. That way, the farmers, hunters, fishermen, and shepherds would know what to expect and thus how to prepare for the long term.
“Civilization is a matter of endowing nameless things with names,” said Lord Lutho, who was always interested in giving everything a bookish sheen.
“I nominate a pair of ravens for the first year…” said Lady Kana.
“…because everyone knows that ravens are the wisest of birds,” finished Lady Rapa.
“No, no, no,” said Lord Tazu, who loved contradicting his siblings. “What is the fun in all of us nominating our pawi? First, there wouldn’t be enough of them to go around; and second, we’ve just fought a war over who among us is supposed to be the first among equals. Do we really want to start that again?”
“What do you propose then, Tazu?” asked Tututika, who also disliked the idea of further argument among the gods.
“Let’s make it a game!”
The other gods and goddesses perked up at this, for the gods, like children, loved games most of all.
“We will let every flower, tree, vine, bird, fish, and beast know that the gods of Dara are selecting champions to guide time. On the announced day, we’ll hide in a corner of Dara, and the first twelve living things to find us will be given the honor of governing the years.”
All the gods and goddesses thought this was a brilliant idea, and the game was on.
“Mama! I want to look for the gods!”
“Whatever for? Don’t you know that nothing good ever comes from bothering the gods when they don’t wish to be bothered?”
“I want to know why! Why is Papa gone? Why have Féro and Phasu been taken away? Why was I struck by lightning? Why do we work so hard and have so little to eat—”
“Hush, child. There aren’t always answers, only stories.”
On the designated day, all the plants and animals raced to search every corner of Dara so that they might be among the lucky few to claim a year as their own.
Some subjects of the vegetable and animal kingdoms sought to accomplish their mission on their own: Sleek whales, largest among fish, raced around the islands to explore every hidden cove and visit every pristine beach before the others; golden chrysanthemums bloomed everywhere and saturated the air with their fragrance, hoping to entice a beauty-loving god or goddess out of concealment; clever ravens swooped over the cities of mankind, their eyes alert for anything that seemed divine rather than mortal; coconuts dropped into the ocean one after another, splashing out novel and pleasing tunes that they hoped might move a listening god to yield an exclamation of delight; golden and red carp danced through the ponds and rivers in scintillating formations, brandishing their diaphanous fins and waving their whiskers to mesmerize and delight the immortals; the lotus turned its thousand-eyed seedpods to every direction in the air and bared the hundreds of openings in its roots to listen for minute tremors underwater, a miniature all-seeing-all-hearing spy tower in operation; rabbits and deer raced across meadows on Écofi and Crescent Islands, each intent upon finding the unusual hump in the sea of grass that might be a god in disguise—unaware that the grasses were also plotting to weave false hiding places to divert the silly herbivores while they themselves sought the gods underground with their sensitive roots.