Gwen: Part I

An Introduction

All medium serves the primordial essence and space of the deepest heart. That service pulls us deeper into reality as we are able to accept our place within it. I am learning that every step of the way, that that has all life has ever been about, sweet discoveries, unveiling our true depth.

Whether this was written in the private chambers in the New Capital Palace, by the Queen of the Sister Worlds herself, or by a pauper in the streets, the space of the heart opens and a new depth of reality welcomes us in. We walk our patterns, each of them seemingly different, with values and prejudices assigned and suffered, only to find that story and meaning was merely wrapping paper, obscuring the real gift— the reality that we are divine.

I’m laughing at all the jokes played on me. It took God herself, making me Queen, (such a gaudy wrapping) the last thing I ever wanted, and the path I resisted most. It was thrusted upon me in order to teach me humor, and strangely to teach humility, to focus the inner eye, steady the breath, and to catch a glimpse of my own homecoming, deep in Her bright heart! What a trick of the light.

Yesterday, a young fidgety fellow was brought to my study, a Herbert Truetell, or something like that. Apparently I had hired someone, unbeknownst to myself, to write my life’s story! Imagine that, the first Queen of the Bainish Empire, now of the Sister Worlds, the very centerpiece in a coup to make it so, and still those close to me don’t trust me to write my own damned story!

The young fidgety man, Henry, Herman, Hugo, oh… something, did not take it wrong when I sent him out. “Ha! Not in your life, buster!” I think I said. No I definitely did say that. Sigh.

So much for humility. I shall have to call for him. After being vexed, and prodded into doing exactly what my precious grandmother said needed doing decades ago, I think yesterday I might have shot the messenger sent from Vo-Ma’s grave! Upon reflection, I see it is time, but still; I’ll not have someone write and sell my story. I will account for it, entirely. I will however work with this writer, whatever his name is. I must admit, In my anger, I failed to see certain signs, of something greater than “my story.” Harland in his gentle way showed me this.

“A Queen indeed allows others to serve her, in her own time of course. I hope you’ll reconsider speaking with the man.”

After putting Harland and my staff on blast, Harland played his metaphorical paan flute, sounding the right notes to stop the bull from kicking. Notes of intrigue floated in the air, details in a soft spoken story, such as where this fellow, oh damn it, Hector, Harry, came from. As it turns, ole… Hue, yes, Hue Truetell had for a number years lived on planet Banx, and stayed on the southern Antith Islands. No one really knows which one.

Apparently this young-ish journalist stayed among Nadthsade cultists, in an ashram of sorts, reformed after the holocaust, and headed up by none other than the child my invasion force helped to free several years ago. A New Niehembreth! The plot thickens. I cannot overlook the links to the prince, Jeshibian Khoorlrhani, that one degree of separation between I and my nephew Bren whom I’ve not put eyes on for nearly five years. There is always more to the story than the cover, more wrapping to undo. I shall send for this Hue Truetell at once. I have so many questions.

The Ten Worlds of the Banxisithine

Within the four charted sectors of our planetary system known as the Banxisithine, reside ten planets. The Heart Sector, closest to Sol, our star, contain the Planets; Quinc, and Aros. Sector One contains the sister worlds Banx, and Bain, as well as Drajaynas. Sector Two contains the planets, Surpia, Gaya, and the gas giant Petros I. It is in the 3^rd sector in which the twin gas giant Petros II, and the red water and mineral rich Arcana reside.

Trickhorn

When asked by Mr. Truetell the basic question, “What was your childhood like? Was it a good childhood?” I winced and resisted getting into the limbo of the usual autobiographical tropes. After a few hours, of chatting, off the record, and keeping it mainly about policy, and social theory, I indulged his initial question privately. I had only answered Mr. Truetell cryptically, “It was a successful childhood, as here we are.”

Privately, I recall my earliest moments as a girl, selectively bookmarked moments of distilled light, memories, where I was free, and knew somehow that it was that, perfect. What stood out the most was a memory of my love of mehras.

I always wanted one as a child. Where pictures of Mehras, in the pages of the heavy bound encyclopedias in my father’s study could be found, my fathers bellow could then be heard as he marked his discovery of the dog eared folds– my book marks– to which he’d huff, “Gwen… these are my books… not yours.”

The tribes of the main continent–Pangea– of planet Sten, had various words for these marvelous curled horned steeds. Depending on the Odan dialectic reference they were called: Miho, Mehure, and mehra. I loved everything about Sten, our most mysterious colony world, an over-big green planet of abundance from which so many of my favorite children’s story’s drew their inspiration, stories of adventure, pristine natural beauty, and the wild sharp eared and dark skinned Odan people— the Khoorlrhsni, the Mayak.

My father’s study was full of these books, those written for children as well as adults. My father, Duke Lawrence Edgewood, was a military man, descended from a great tradition of military service. His father and grandfather, and nearly all that came before them were high ranking officers in the army of our world—planet Bain.

Our histories would have one believe that Bain was the center the galaxy known as the Banxisithine as planet Bain certainly was the most dominant from a historical point of view. My father’s blood was the blood of earliest conquerors.

Still I could never imagine my father harming a fly. His blazing emblems, his red star and yellow crosses over his black uniform could not overpower the softness that I knew from that mustache beneath his fleshy nose, and the warmth in his deep brown and smoky eyes. I knew my father was a unifier, in the disguise of dictator.

I did not realize I came from wealth and privilege, not until after my eleventh birthday, my party which filled the palace with the children from great houses of Ephrasia, as well as many from Rumaria. I did not know there was a difference between these two countries, truly, and I did not know that it was my father’s softness that helped to better unify two rival nations, to unify them with a birthday party of his daughter rather than merely rule along the lines of threat my fathers post was traditionally meant to represent to the people of Ephrasia.

Our palace in Tel-Allal was vibrant with joy that summer afternoon, the lawns lined with tables with tablecloths with their perfect folds at their corners, the sky a delicious pink and orange on cool turquoise as cool breezes lifted the kites flown in contests held by all of us. I laugh now at how my greatest problem then was worrying my hand might be cut by the string as I maneuvered my red box kite high and well over the spires of our palace, our family home. I remember cursing Harland, my father’s man, for not getting me the grade of string I ‘specifically requested.’

That’s when I heard the grumbling sound of an approaching shuttle. I assumed it was a guest, late to arrive. In the distance, its red and orange beetle-like shape lowered itself onto one of the four pads that surrounded the grounds. I thought nothing of it, as my father called for us to reel our kites in, and all gather for the gift giving.

“Father! Who won though?” I kept demanding his final judgment of the kite contest.

No one cared. My father simply passed his large hand over my head, his fingers through my soft and thick brown hair, and said, “It was a victory in good fun, now come my dear.”

He said this as he shook hands with other men in uniform, and in other various costumes, multi tasking, speaking in coded jargon– no doubt settling local disputes– juggling business with pleasure and simply infuriating me for not giving me his complete attention on my birthday.

From the landing platform, I could see a large hovering carriage approaching, crossing the bridge over the deep clear water moat and passing the gates of the royal grounds. The carriage was gold, and seemed much larger as it approached along with its attendants. It had an almost obscene freak-show circus act branding to it, as if the contents were acquired by pirates. My father ran over to them to handle them. My mother meanwhile sufficiently distracted me with the piles of presents given to me by the hundreds of guests. There were so many, delightful boxes wrapped in silver and gold. The sky seemed to dim to twilight in the hours that it took to get through them all– enough time for me to forget about the strange golden carriage.

Finally, just when I forgot myself and assumed all was done, my father called out, “There’s one more!” and everyone gasped and throngs of children parted as my father reentered, holding a set of glowing silver psi- reins, behind him a large beautiful black odan steed, a mehra! Its large horns were curled almost like a rams. I could have feinted. In fact I remember feeling as if I were in a dream. How it could be that these creatures existed— in the flesh and bone— outside of my father’s encyclopedias, I wondered.

The animal, whom I later named Trickhorn, was captured, tamed, through the use of the reins, and brought to my father at his request, all by a subsidiary of the ancient East Ephrasia Corporation whose exploits had gone much beyond the continent of Ephrasia, — where my father commanded station– and delivered Trickhorn from an entirely new galaxy, the Diamond Region, where my new beloved playmate was from.

I learned to ride Trickhorn shortly after that day. It was my calling each morning to go to her in our stables and spend as much of my time as I was allowed. This was a sufficient plan made by my father, to keep my grubby little fingers away from the pages of his beloved hard bound books, and get me into riding, wetting my pallet for the hard training that a Rumarian princess, and only child, would receive at this age. Several summers we galloped in our fields and orchards. And that was the perfect painting– being a child and wrapped in the splendor that I knew the world to be, unaware of what was to come.

Vo Ma, Rumaria, and House Edgewood

Vo Ma, came from the old country, from Ephros, the southernmost city of the Ephrasian continent. My mother told me that she arrived from Ephros, to here, to Tell-Allal, to House Edgewood, the very night of my birth.

I had early impressions of it, memory perhaps, impressions. I was born in the late evening. I was held at first by arms of panic, of doubt, but then shortly after, as if rescued, held by powerful, vulnerable arms, held by wise experienced hands. Vo Ma did however often say that we always reinvent our past.

“How could I not come? I would not miss the opportunity to help raise my precious grand-daughter,” she doted, a rarity, for Vo-Ma did not often gush. I remember that day, a clear afternoon of us out on the grounds, in the sun as we reminisced, the three of us, I, my mother and Vo ma. White clouds gathered above the spires above our house. The warm colors of citrus fruit could be seen resonating beneath soft shadows, nearly hidden in the boughs of trees planted in soft beige dirt along the walkway of cobblestone.

Vo Ma then snapped back into her usual mode of deliberate and stern urgency.

“I wouldn’t allow the the Great Rumanian House to stamp their imprints on her. Never. Never,” and she glanced at my mother, with sharpened corners of her eyes.

“Mother, Gwen is better rounded than you give her credit for.”

“Is your giving her credit your way of abandoning your own responsibility to… hem… round her more?” My grandmother quipped, making round gestures with her hands. My mother sighed. I could see she was no match. Whatever fire Ephrasia lit in my mother, during her youth, was doused by years of living in our house, A Great Rumanian House, as Vo-ma put it ironically, with her emphasis on the word great weighted with tremendous sarcasm. My Grandmother did not approve of my mother marrying my father, a Rumarian, from the continent of the conquerors.

Edowina Constance Brava, my grandmother was old, even in my earliest years, ever so old. Her head shook, bobbled from side to side as she lectured from beneath the navy and gold veil of her habit. The sun glinted from off of her gold amulet strung with white prayer beads around her neck. The amulet bore the embossed image of a tree. Mother now feared the amulet, my father was offended by it. She was encouraged by my father’s staff to wear clothing more in line with Rumarian standards. She of course refused.

Edowina’s face was wrinkled and dark olive in complexion. Her eyes were a striking grey, penetrating and full of wonder. When my own eyes rested on them, unafraid, Edowina grinned her crooked smile, and nodded as if it was a kind of a reminder to herself.

Yes, she’ll be alright. This one will be alright.

“And what about that grandson of mine, Alexi. When will he ever stand still enough so that I might a get a look at him?” Vo-Ma complained.

“Alexi is doing fine.” Catherine, my mother sighed.

“Oh?! I should say not, shuttled off to be raised by tyrants, strangers!!”

“How many years at that blasted academy does one need to commit to in order to be deemed a man?”

Vo-ma did not care who heard what was on her mind. She shot straight as an arrow, which was not appreciated by the male attendants of our house, except Harland. Harland knew the kind of woman Vo-ma was, real, fiery, wise, and wonderful.

Thousands of years ago, the women of the old country of Ephrasia were the honored custodians of Bain, communing with our sister World Banx via astral travel and dreams. That was before the brutal times of the Rumarians who later stamped out all knowledge of such subtle arts.

“Mother Alexi has graduated the top of his class. He is now apart of the Fire-Wing and is stationed on the New Moon colony.” My mother defended, almost bragged.

When the Rumaria grew supremely powerful, and men developed machines, instead of their deeper selves, they gloriously proclaimed their discovery of planet Banx via space travel, ignoring what they had been told by sister Ephrasia for eons. To this day they still ignore our story of prior knowledge of our sister world. That was before I took the throne.

“Does that boy ever take a holiday, at least long enough to reacquaint himself with his sister, with his grandmother, or must the females of his family remain as mere background figures in his life?” My grandmother complained.

She always put it all on the table, my beloved Vo-ma.

Trikes

“Well, I certainly don’t see a thing.” My father, the Duke grumbled. He squinted his eye at the end of a long brass cylinder that was his telescope. Its tripod was set before the opened double glass doors that looked out beyond the white balcony of my father’s study room and up into the clear night summer sky.

“Well you would not see a thing, Larry. That telescope is neither as powerful as the Hoctoine array, nor is our planet near enough to Arcana, in our orbit of Sol, to see any vessels let alone their radiation signatures,” My mother, Catherine parsed, lectured, becoming aggravated.

They were in heated debate as I entered the room.

“It sounds like poppy-cock, all the same. Alien invaders!” My father poked– their brand of humorous warfare playing out in the symbiotic tapestry of… them, my parents, the heat of emotions burning through the masks of grins and words of affection. This was their tension.

“I did not say, Alien invaders! I merely said, activity.” Catherine, my mother shot.

“Probably some dust on their lenses,” Lawrence prodded, dismissed.

“You are so, obtuse sometimes my dear.”

“Yes, dust. A good lint free cloth might help.” my father teased. My mother turned the shade of red that signified her taking the usual kinds of delicious bait my father held out. The kind that would have her soon leaving the room to take a break from him.

“Radiation signatures that seem, dear, seem to indicate the use of a tension drive beyond sector three,” She growled. Her well studiedness did nothing but pass by my father un-noticed.

“Yes! We have colonial ships that fly all the time. All the time. In fact commercial ships from Arcana bring supplies of water that run though the pipes of this house.” A wave of his hand, a flash of white teeth, and a mischievous grin beneath his thick mustache revealed his taunting. Seeing this, Catherine took her usual deep breath that dispelled the color. My father was winning, but I knew he would pay for it later.

“My dear sweet knuckle-head of a man, these would be ships traveling well beyond the commercial routes of our own vessels. In fact, these are ships seen by our own, and whose crews report them as un-identified.”

“Im sure. Well, wake me when the invasion begins.”

“I’m leaving. I cannot talk to you when you are being coy like this.” Catherine said, and she did leave.

As she did, she looked down at me and passed an affectionate hand through my hair. Even in her anger, my mother was brilliantly poised. I admired the depth of blond in her hair which was wrapped into bun. As I entered across the deep maroon colored carpet, took in the hues of gold reflecting off from father’s wares, I passed my mother, took in the scent of her gardenia blossom perfume.

“I’ll leave you two to your usual philosophical discussions.” As she moved passed me, I took note of the deep navy fabric of her wide legged trousers, the sweeping motion of their bell shape over her white leather shoes. She left and closed the door behind her.

I sat in one of the two mahogany chairs that were across from his heavy desk made of rich Rumarian Oak. It was handed down from the first family of Edgewood settlers. My father took his chair, the usual position, behind the desk, with his patent leather boots resting on its corner of its glass top. His wooden chair creaked, the brass casters squeaking as he pushed himself more deeply into the red cushions. He sighed with telling relief.

He glanced at me over the silver rims of his round spectacles as he brought out his silver lighter and the cigar he had hidden in his uniform coat pocket.

“So that’s why you shooed her off?” I smirked accusingly at my father, “To answerer the call of your fiendish addiction?”

“You always have your eye on me, haven’t you?” Lawrence chuckled as he lit the cigar as the lighter hissed.

“On everyone. At least that’s what Harland says of me.”

“How is old Harland, today? I haven’t seen him in weeks. I see your chess game progressing on the ole board over there.” He glanced behind me.

“Yes. Harland is as difficult to beat as ever in chess, but I guess he’s doing alright otherwise. He’s been in the hangars a bit, working on that old dart from the Academy.”

“I am trying to quit.” Lawrence said, almost grumbling, almost humiliated as a cloud of smoke passed his lips.

“I did beat Harland in chest last round, you know.” I said, ignoring his feigned penance, and charging ahead.

“You don’t mind the smell?”

“Father! You know you really must learn to focus on more than what comes into your head conversationally. That’s how conversations work. Besides, how many times have I told you, ‘the smell is fine,’ and besides this is your study.” I actually liked the smell of his cigars. They were strong, exotic, and repulsive to my mother, but to me they filled me with an odd sense of feeling protected.

“Quite.” Lawrence Edgewood, the Duke of Ephrasia said, and then relaxed. It was his study.

He took a few more tastes. “So you beat the old war horse, finally heh?”

“Yes. I got him cornered with a pawn, a rook, and a sneaky little bishop I hid deep in the background.”

We were quite for a little while. Next to his boot, I saw stacks of official work on the desk surface, orders from Rumaria, I imagined, endless directives to his post. They were a testament to the creases in his forehead, and around the eyes, the gray in his wavy dark brown hair. Glancing back at the telescope.

“What kind of invaders do you think we were?”

“Hmmm?”

“I mean we invaded the planet Banx two and a half centuries ago. I mean, alien invasion did not seem like poppy-cock to the Hoctoine, when we arrived.”

“What in the world are you going on about now?” Lawrence bit down on on the fat ember, and placed his hands behind his head. He reminded me of my elder brother, Alexi when he did that. It was how Alexi patterned himself after our father, mimicked his gestures.

“Firstly. We colonized Banx a long time ago. We did not invade them. There is a difference. Besides they’ve their independence. They are their own planet, our equal.”

“You think because I’m 11, I’m that naïve? Well, who is to say that some other species doesn’t colonize our worlds, and centuries later judge us as their equal?”

“Well first they have to get past the Black, Gold, and Red fleets, then…” My father laughed.

“Well, what if it were no problem to do so?”

“My love. You are far too young to worry about such things. Believe you me, that there has been enough interplanetary warfare among our two planets and colony worlds. Why dream of more? Why expand the imagination to include… a… Intergalactic chapter to Bain’s idiotic story?”

My father was no lover of Rumaria. That I knew.

“Because our presence in Sten makes it so. I know you don’t advocate the Rumarian dream, father. I think Catherine, knows this too.”

“Your mother.” The Duke corrected.

“I think that if what mother says is true about Arcana, and that visitations are occurring, well perhaps we’ve courted them during the course of history.”

“Manifested them into reality? Creatively visualized?” Lawrence bellowed with dramatic sarcasm.

“Exactly.”

“Well. You sound more like your grandmother now. How would we be manifesting this, my dear?”

“Vo-Ma says that our destiny could be better served by better actions, but until good actions are taken, men will only fight for scraps of bone like animals.”

“Ahhh, another Vo-Ma quote. How does it apply?” He blew out a large plume.

“Well father, if our actions as a culture have only been an animal-like thrashing about for bones, all we attract are…”

“Hmmm Yes! Other animals, yes. Perhaps a bigger animal, picking up the scent of blood, or signs of bones being fought for? I like the thrashing, bit. It calls to mind the great megalodons in the north.” More sarcasm.

I rolled my eyes.

“Good night father.”

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Tantric Series Creative Journal 2021 (For Subscribers)

by Neil Britto on December 25, 2021 at 10:23 pm

Posted In: Lore, Uncategorized

This years complete issue of Tantric Series, chock full of amazing art and story work by Mike Bennett, along with some of my own, all to be given to Santosha Ma on the anniversary of her enlightenment this December 11. If you have not already registered, now is the time. Click the register link! Note to view full screen of this edition, click the ‘Full Screen,” button when prompted. Enjoy!

[flipbook id=”4″]

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Dharmic Sci-Fi Fantasy: The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior – Chapter 9

by Neil Britto on December 16, 2020 at 8:29 pm

Posted In: Story II: The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior

Dharmic Sci-Fi Fantasy: The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior

The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior, is the second in the series of novels written for the Diamond Eyes series. It centers on the next generation of Khoorhani, whom Paen of Eastern Genia serves in his role as the Master. I’ve posted the first nine chapters out of about thirty three. Use the menu below to read the first nine chapters, or scroll to the bottom to download a copy. Enjoy

Chapter 9: The True Reflection

The months to follow were difficult, and in retrospect I found that I still resented how the play of life moved me forward, ousting me from my comfort zones and toward accepting my place among men, unprotected and now responsible for my own life. I began to accept it though, and eventually to forget my loss. I apologized to Master Paen. I spent days picking flowers for him and brought them to him each day until he invited me in his dihj.

“Do you remember what I told you that day by the mountain years back?” I lowered my eyes. He raised my chin again and said, “Tell me.”

“You said I will chase after more loves and defend against losing the ones I have.”

“And now, do you see how that is true, that you are doing that?”

“Yes.”

“You see, Jeshibian, the supreme warrior sees this tendency in himself all the time and avoids this mistake because he knows that he is actually no one, only a reflection of eternity. You forgot something else I told you though, something more important, the thing that allows for all of it. Do you remember now?”

“That if I really noticed you, I’ll see it all the way you do,” I answered.

“Yes! Don’t ever forget that mistake. Otherwise Jandee isn’t seen and can’t be defended against because of your fear of death. It is an important mistake to learn from. Now that you are more humble, I have more to show you.” He smiled, winked, and sent me on my way.

Thinking only of him, I reflected on what he had to say as I rode back home, and I understood. If I am the eternal one, then, who has lost their mother? If I am truly love, then the future and past are spent in play despite the appearances of birth and death. Who has gone? Who is it that ever dies? The master was training me to fight for this understanding! He was helping me to see as he did, that sight achieved only by relying on him and not on asserting my self who only dreams from within the rooms of the selfish point of view.

As more years passed to deliver me into my adolescence, my days were spent riding with Darlian, who at age twelve was given his own mehra. He named her White Mane, and she was splendid, her horns long and curled, nearly bone white. She was tan in color and her tail and mane were vibrantly white, and thus her name! Nanui, by default, became my own mehra. Grey with black horns and dark eyes, she was a dear to me. Together, Darlian and I ventured through the jungles of Genia, often engaged seriously in the hunt or traveling in an official capacity along with Minot and his detachment of men, bearing the standard of Arkaya. There was only duty. Our days of reckless adventure in the deep thick were gone.

We rode now, stronger, at full gallop, mehra hooves throwing clods of red Arkayan mud into the air as rain poured against our strong backs! We were bigger now, nearly grown, and our elder brothers Kuba and Seleth shared their duties with us. Darlian and I now routinely traveled the full perimeter of the entire Khoorlrhani circle. We rode along the entire outer fence between Tanaga and Kamina, further east to Isiwa and south to Kushite. We even traveled on occasion to the outskirt city of Ketique where Lord Dajai ruled. That year, I met all the chiefs personally in their keeps and corresponded with their families as was expected of me.

Though there was peace, the talk of civil war among Khoorlrhani was rampant. Dar and I wondered which one of the noble lords would be the first to turn, to cede. Tension was mounting as rumors of my father’s insanity circulated. Though no one doubted the master, the desperate political maneuvering to oust my father had begun.

Consequently we traveled to the outer cities with entire divisions, our arrival a show of Arkayan strength. Then I and Darlian were introduced to the daughters of lords, and talks of marriage proceeded to keep the Khoorlrhani unified. I was eleven then. My voice was beginning to change and I was taller, about the same height as Darlian. It was arranged that Darlian would be married to Lord Tannis’ second daughter. It was then arranged that I would be married to his third daughter, who was only eight years old at the time!

I was shocked by this and resented having to marry for political reasons. My father would not relent, however, and only spoke of my marriage in terms of what was good for Arkaya.

I hated that I and Darlian were Khoorlrhani-Tah’s political pawns, and over time the title of prince seemed menial, unimportant, and unchallenging. I wanted freedom! I began again to complain inwardly and dream of a life of dramatic importance—of my own kingdom if you will.

Disturbed, I confessed my feelings to Minot.

“Give it time. In due time things will make better sense, Jeshoya,” Minot would say.

I wanted to be taken seriously, to hold the reins of my own destiny. Why could I not choose whom to marry like my older brothers?

“Because your father is stingy with the bloodline,” Paen cracked. “He wants to keep the eldest brothers and their families close to the capital, which makes you the scraps he tosses out for political arrangements!” He howled.

Sasojeda, the master’s devotee, sat next to him in the grass beneath the sun, and they both listened to my complaining. Sasojeda laughed as the master teased.

“Scraps, eh? Tannis will not go for it, Sasojeda. Not enough meat, eh? What do you think? Do you see this boy before you as the next Prefect Lord of Kamina?”

“He should have at least offered Seleth.” Sasojeda said, his voice gravelly. “That would have been more convincing.”

“No. You see your tah is desperate and stingy. He never gets how he insults everyone,” the master said. And then he looked at me and said, “Don’t you worry about it, Jeshibian,” as if the writing were clearly on the wall for him see.

I had no eyes for it whatsoever. Paen explained later how afraid my father was, how cowardly this gesture of his was. He had no real faith in the peace. He kept the strongest near him and dispatched the young to sink or swim.

“And he cannot even see that his actions reveal precisely that!” Paen said, and then he encouraged me to let go of it. “For you are with me, and always will be,” he said.

So I then focused much of my potential on victory within ahenyeg, which I still hadn’t been chosen for. I figured that a splendid show of my ambition would speed it all along. I trained with Minot, who taught me fighting techniques late in the evenings. Beginning to take me seriously, he taught me several forms, his best.

From Minot I learned the form of the tiger and the asp. I could twirl the heaviest of scimitars fluidly, and I sparred with my other brothers and competed with them. Then I actually won contests and moved up in standing! I enjoyed the attention from the young girls now, and I no longer shrank away from the circle. It was not long before I became proud unto conceited.

“So now you seem to fit in. What do you want to do now?” Master Paen would tease. “Do you want to now fight a legion of Mayak single-handedly? Will that inform you of your purpose?”

“Yes! I mean, to have enough courage to fight a legion, I think.”

The master threw back his head and laughed. “And you are sure of this?” he asked. “I suppose then you’ll want to choose a wife too?”

I scowled at not being taken seriously. “I want to be like Minot. I want to be brave and strong enough to cleave Mandee and Jandee in two and best eighty warriors like him, like you!” I confessed.

The master laughed more, and then he beckoned me to take a seat on the mat he was sitting on.

“It sounds like Minot told you about all his precious victories, eh?”

“Yes,” I said. Minot then sighed, knowing he was caught. My father, who sat nearby also laughed. I remained on my feet and exclaimed, “He told me all about how you bested eight hundred men north of the gates but you were put in a prison by Toumak! He then told me that you instructed him to finish your mission! I didn’t know that it was Minot who took on my father’s Bakuwella guards, all eighty, and freed you.”

My father laughed harder as did Paen.

“I’m glad you now have humor about it, Boutage-Tah, but is what your son says true, enkosi?” the master asked my father.

My father lay on his side, grinning. He nodded. “All I can say is it was not a proud day for myself or for my army,” he joked. The master laughed loudly and nodded his head. He then sighed. They then seemed like old friends to me.

“Hm… Who did this? I did this? I don’t recall it, really. Was that me?” asked Paen, looking as if he was trying to recall a distant memory.

“Ah, Master, that is a good question. I’ve wondered who could manage such a feat,” the tah said.

I was darkening internally. If this story was a lie, I would be so angry at Minot, and I looked at him sharply.

I protested, still standing, “But I read scrolls, testaments of it in the libraries and…”

“Ahhrgggg… Gossipers will gossip,” the master interrupted, waving his hands.

“I certainly don’t recall doing such great things. I’m but a little old man!” Paen said. My father laughed even more.

Paen then turned to Minot and said, “Minot. I had no idea how much.. fighting skill you had. Why, for you to take on eighty men, and Bakuwella at that, all by yourself. I am astonished!”

Paen, approached Minot, who was dark with embarrassment.

“May I touch you, oh great Prince?” the master teased. “Bask in your brilliance?”

“Okay!” Minot grumbled. “So I did not tell it rightly.”

“Jeshibian,” the master said. “These events have some truth, but there is such a critical omission to Minot’s version of the story, and it is an interesting mistake, that omission, I keep pointing out to you. I hope you can learn from your brother’s mistake here.”

I finally surrendered and sat on the mat by him, folded my knees into my chest, wrapped my arms around them, and asked stupidly, “Omission?”

“Yes. You see you’ve forgotten so quickly already! If you had asked me who it was who defeated your father’s army, I would say, ‘Not me. I cannot do such a thing like that.’ I would say, ‘I can only cooperate with what is bigger, better, and more capable than me, and that SHE did that. She planned it. She made it come to pass.’ Do you remember Nayogi’s story?”

I smirked, somewhat reluctant to follow the thread, knowing that it would only lead to the master smashing to bits my ideas of how I accomplished rank in the anhenyeg or of how I could accomplish anything.

“Do you know what I am saying to you now, young prince?”

“Ashuta.” I sighed, giving in, and smiling as if the master removed my idea, a simple ware, and again placed it on his higher shelves from which he might give them to me later, when I understood more.

“Indeed, and said with such disappointment! He omitted Ashuta! He leaves the divine out of the picture entirely! Only the divine can do something like that. I can only cooperate with Her whim. I can only master the art of cooperating with Her, the art of humility. I am just an emptied vessel ready be filled at Her whim, an instrument plucked by Ashuta’s splendid fingers. So, young Minot, who was it really that moved you that evening that you rush to claim credit for?”

“I told the story out of conceit. It was you, Master,” Minot said, his eyes lowered.

“Yes, and I am no one at all, just an open field through which the Goddess flows. If you’re your attention is on me, then my capacity of perfect surrender is extended. Why did you tell your brother that you did this? Why do brothers do such a disservice to one another, put out this fool’s gold before them to chase after?”

The master only laughed as Minot said nothing. “I know why. To reinforce his idea that he is a great ‘one’ among others!” The master laughed. He leaned forward and looked at me straight.

“You see, the great One is the animator and does the doing as it seems to be done. You all forget this. You wish to possess it and control it. It will not work because in truth there is no separate you. So, Jeshibian, you want to be like your brother, or rather what you imagine him to be, instead of being yourself, noticing what truly IS and going from there. If you would notice what IS and go past the discomforts of seeming to have no purpose, nowhere to run and hide, you might discover something greater about yourself.”

“If you go around wanting to be like someone else at the expense of being yourself, then how are you any different from the first brothers, Khoorlrhan and Mayakti? How will this spell of separateness that has you sewn up ever be broken? This search for yourself, Jeshibian, is absolutely false, I tell you.”

I nodded.

“When will you stop putting mud on yourself to be like the swamp? When will you stop drowning yourself in the lake to be like a fish? And when you are in the lake as a dissatisfied fish, when will you notice how you fantasize about being dry and standing as a man. The grass is only as green as your willingness to love truth to its core. So what that you are still afraid of death, of the snake that killed your mother. I would be frightened of her as well. You are not here to be grand and untouchable, comfortable and pampered, but rather humble, human, and vulnerable, and above all that, mortal. And why?”

“Because you are here to face death.”

“You will get brave because bravery is in you and must come out according to God, not because it should suit your vanity and make you feel good about yourself, but because you need to face your death. It is no instant thing, Jeshibian. So you are still a bit sad that you miss Suwon. Your brother is at least right that in time you will be ready to let go of all of this. Go now, Khoorlrhan, and ride, forget about being so serious and demanding that God make you something else!”

I simply was as unoriginal as the master pointed out to me when I was younger. Being called Khoorlrhan by Paen made me sad with disappointment in myself. I just did not understand, and knowing that I did not understand, my master only told me to not worry, that I would begin to see for myself. He would be there for me once I did begin to understand, and unbeknownst to me at the time, he would give me everything so that I would see.

And so I did ride with Darlian through the jungles, forgetting my disappointments as I made friends, with whom I laughed and struggled. Darlian and I grew closer. We laughed and struggled to be straight with one another. The year seemed to fly by, and soon I was twelve. Still though, I would not forget my ambitions entirely. I found myself still wanting a sign, wanting adventure.

I continued to practice the rites, attained rank in the ahenyeg, and soon Minot initiated me into manhood. I knew that he would choose me for his group, but only after I showed him I was not taking for granted that he would choose me regardless by performing all my duties better than anyone else.

In celebration, I slaughtered a goat and we ate it, and that night a giant drum circle was held. The circle of girls anointed me with ash and each one kissed my cheek as I walked among them, my face painted red around the eyes, large palm leaves tied to my hair. Naked, I passed through a wall of palms and was presented to my father, who sat next to the master.

As was customary, I lay flat, my face to the tile floor, and my hands held up to receive the weapon to signify my rank as a warrior. Usually the one who chose the boy from the circle presented him with his first weapon, a dagger or short sword. I expected to receive this from Minot.

Into my hands was placed not a dagger but a sword, the feel like a scimitar, a weapon worn by a fully grown warrior. Still lying face down, I opened my eyes and lifted my head, surprised by the weight of it. The scabbard was jeweled with complexities unimaginable. I had to blink my eyes before falling into a trance. It was quiet in my father’s court, everyone as surprised as I was.

Was this a joke? I rose to my knees, swallowed, and struggled to straighten myself, my eyes fixed to the brilliance placed in my hands. It was curved, the handle of white beads, turquoise, and diamonds. There was a murmur. Everyone knew this blade.

“Do you recognize the warrior before you?” Paen asked Minot who grinned proudly at me.

“I recognize him,” Minot said, and he beckoned me to stand.

It was my father who usually initiated the warrior, not Paen. Paen typically never had anything to do with this ceremony.

“Jeshibian,” the master said, his eyes ablaze, his gaze burning into me. “This is my reflection, Maburata. Never forget her. This is your duty. Do this and you will see the face of God in all beings. This is what a true warrior does. Never forget your duty, warrior.”

I trembled. I was holding the master’s very own weapon! I looked into the eyes of Paen. My head felt full, my attention focused. I looked back down at the sword unbelievingly.

“I…I will not forget, Master,” I said. Such a gift, the master’s very own Maburata! I trembled beneath its weight. I never expected to see it twice, let alone hold it and much less have it presented to me. My arms shook, holding the weapon. I was in shock. The master nodded for me to unsheathe it.

I pulled the white leather scabbard apart from the handle, and with a chime, Maburata glided out. It was like the sun rising as she slid out of the sheath. The blade vibrated, rang, and shone with white light. The room was alight with her. The master nodded and winked at me. I loved the master, and Maburata betrayed my love for him as she glowed, getting brighter.

Khoorlrhani-Tah rose and held his hands up, and everyone cheered.

That was the day the master made me a man! In truth, Maburata, the master’s sword, was given to him by the Goddess Ashuta. He told me that it was his reflection of loving her. He said that to look at Ashuta’s face, to wield her blade rightly, you must let go of yourself entirely. When Master Paen held it, Maburata’s light was blindingly white, so hot that those who beheld it could even disappear. That is what he told me. He told me also that to behold such purity would disintegrate one’s ego, outshine it. I was dumbfounded as to why he gave me that sword. What did it mean? I could not understand at the time, but beloved Master Paen loved me so perfectly that he would give her to me so that, if I could not let go of my fantasies, he would walk me through the halls of those fantasies guiding me to the truth.

“What, you want I should take Maburata back? Suddenly you don’t want to stand for anything real?”

“No, Master. It’s just that everyone is jealous and thinks I’m so unworthy, and yet I think I am and it makes me feel…strange,” I said.

“Ahhh! I see, but you always feel strange, if you’d but notice, and it’s not your unworthiness that has you feeling this way.” That quip stung, but the master quickly moved onto other points.

“You assume that everyone was not jealous before you ever held Maburata. Everyone is jealous all the time, and angry all the time, and sad all the time. Maburata did not make this happen, nor did my giving her to you. Maburata, which is my reflection, only made this world and this dream of it more obvious to you.”

I did not think of that. I was quiet for some time as I stared off into the distance.

Days later, we rode into the jungle, I on Nanui, the master on Quanon.

“Maburata is not only my reflection but a reflection of what is truly seen. It makes you uncomfortable to see what is really happening here, doesn’t it? It scares you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” I could not argue. I could not escape the sense of humanity’s frustration and the fact humanity is woefully lost. I could not escape my own feelings of disappointment, anger, and humiliation.

“Why does it scare you?” he asked. I had only had the sword a week and already saw so much.

“Everyone is really unhappy, but no one addresses it.”

“And?”

“There is nothing in this world that grants lasting happiness or meaning. It all only persists to goad us as something, things or people, to desire, to covet,” I began.

“To be jealous of, and that is why being a Khoorlrhani prince seems to be only an empty title to you, doesn’t it?” Paen asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“And that is why you are scared, because along with the rest of humanity, you know that beyond transcending yourself there is nothing to ever be happy about. Depressing, huh?”

“Yes.” I sighed.

“Good. Ha! Well you must look deeper, my young prince. There is more to see. If you look you will see that there is a choice you can make, to know the truth and accept it or to not accept it. With truth, there is hope to transcend this nightmare as I have, and without it, well, it gets worse and you will feel more tightly hemmed in.”

I carried Maburata with me all the time and never forgot that she was in my care—or perhaps the other way around. I strapped her to Nanui’s side and would go to the woods just outside our dihj and unsheathe her. She responded to me, glowing brightly.

One night, alone in the room I shared with my brothers, I looked into the blade to see my reflection but no one was there. I turned her over and looked at the other side, still no reflection.

I must be doing something wrong, I said to myself.

“There’s no reflection because you are really no one, Jeshoya,” Minot told me, having stepped into the room without my hearing him.

“You take that back, Minot!” I said and stood over him in a rage. I was a warrior after all!

“Calm down and let me explain.” But before he could, Boutage entered our room. The air seemed to compress with his depression. As he walked by he grabbed Maburata from me and unsheathed her. She did not glow, but there was Boutage’s ugly face staring back at him clear as day. He bared his teeth the better to see them, and then he sucked them clean and belched.

“I see my reflection. I guess Minot is right. You are nobody,” he said and then tossed the sword back to me. He went over to his mat to remove his armor and helmet and instantly fell asleep.

“Boutage.”Minot growled as I ran out of the room in a panic.

I rode to the master’s dihj. He was drinking tea and waited outside the entrance.

“Jeshoya!” he called affectionately. “What brings you at this hour?”

“Take Maburata back, please,” I cried.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I want to be somebody,” I pleaded, somehow feeling that Maburata was a death sentence. I did not want to die!

“But you are somebody. You are Jeshibian Khoorlrhani, the young prince who has five brothers and a sister he loves dearly. You are Jeshibian, Minot’s favorite brother! You are Jeshibian, who we sometimes call Jeshoya because we love him so much even though he hates that nickname! You are Jeshibian who is so thirsty to know who he really is that the sword of truth tells him exactly that, the truth of who he is.”

The master chuckled. His eyebrows were wild above his large beaming eyes and wry smile as he approached me.

“You are Jeshibian Khoorlrhani who wants to be a real warrior. Hmm. Since that is what he wants, how can a warrior that is no one in particular be a warrior at all?”

I still did not understand. I was offended and shook my head. How could I be nothing? How could that be true? How could that be acceptable?

The master took Maburata from me and unsheathed her. The glow was indescribable. When it subsided he walked over to me and lowered her to show me that there was no reflection of him either.

“What could this mean? Why, I am the master, the master warrior even, and yet I am revealed to be no one as well! I guess I should get depressed, eh? Perhaps we can be drinking partners!” Paen mused, poking me with an elbow.

“Does all this mean you cannot play your part as all those other things, the boy prince, soon to be a great warrior etcetera, etcetera, and that you just should contract heavily upon yourself in self doubt and not accept it? Why, if I, master warrior, etcetera, etcetera, can accept the same information about myself, being nothing, no one at all, and still play the part of Paen, who is happy, who is kind and loves you dearly, what is it about you that has you holding back in such doubt?” he said, and with that, I dropped my head into my hands and wept happily, finally getting his joke, this wild prank he was playing on me! All was given but nothing meant anything, even my own appearance, my newly recognized status, and the stages previous to it. The master would give me his very own sword to show me how meaningless it all was.

Needless to say, I calmed down eventually, the master laughing at me between sips of tea, his eyes dark crazy orbs beneath his thick eyebrows. He sheathed Maburata, handed her back to me, and then brought me tea and we sat in his home. I sat in silence contemplating him, wondering, Who are you? I did not leave until morning.

When I carried Maburata on my travels with Darlian, I watched the world with different eyes. It seemed clear to me that everyone is asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking how could I be nothing, I should have been asking how could I be something? Boutage, my brother, assumed and believed in his “somethingness” with the greatest conviction. He had little or no thirst for the truth that lay beyond that assertion, and so he appeared clearly along Maburata’s length. There was absolutely no question of it. What do I believe then, I asked myself. Am I Jeshibian? Am I light?

Life suddenly began to take me on a different journey. I became more comfortable in my quiet nature and realized how my worriment was basically my demands eclipsing the very freedom that Paen showed me as my true nature. And so from time to time I enjoyed this glimpse of Paen’s quiet spaces where no on existed to register a complaint against the world. Who is uncomfortable anyhow?

We fished one day. “Yes, and you believed if you are uncomfortable it is somehow linked to your not being yourself!” The master howled, recasting his line from the river bank.

“How can you be yourself, really? Have you figured that out? What self are you being other than the one who is alive in the midst of an uncomfortable real life? Who do you find when you are in fact comfortable and only get what you want? The same one who is there when you are uncomfortable. No one! The only thing you can do is be mindful and accept the terms of real life. Otherwise you manufacture the who and his entitlement to comfort,” the Master told me.

“But you once told me to be myself As Is,” I challenged him.

“True, but the Self, not the self.” He gestured to accompany the words, his arms first spread wide and then barely spread apart. There is a difference. The one I refer to is the superior, all-pervading one that stands before the person you dream of as yourself, the one that seeks as though something stands apart from him. The One I implore you to be is the same One that I am.”

“Are you ever uncomfortable?” I asked

“All the time. This experience of form is mainly bothersome, and being among those hopelessly bound to their ego does not make for good company.”

“Master, what do you do that you are so happy?”

“Jeshibian,” he said. “In life, there is only doing your duty to ensure survival and to cooperate with the others here. Happiness is already happening if you would only notice it. Do your duty and do not make your ordinary life obligated to fulfill you. It will never work, trust me. I appeared only to serve a function. I only do my duty, so for me happiness is already the case, independent of experience.”

“What is your function, master?”

“To clue you in on the truth.”

“That no one is anyone?” I asked .

“That there no one in any world who is not God already right now and at this instant, that no speck of dust, mouse, mite, beetle, bird, monkey, mango, fish, person, man or woman, rich or royal has been abandoned, forsaken, or forgotten. It is all ME, my bright sphere, all God, all love.”

He told me more about his enlightenment, about what it takes to see with diamond eyes as he did. I only wanted to be with him. He would send me back home though. One night he said, “Keep Maburata for as long as you like, and do not worry about anything ever. Your attractions will move you and guide you. I’m always there.”

I did not know what that meant, but I felt that this was only the beginning, the tip of the iceberg of what he had to show me.

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Dharmic Sci-Fi Fantasy: The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior – Chapter 7-8

by Neil Britto on December 16, 2020 at 1:44 am

Posted In: Story II: The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior

Dharmic Sci-Fi Fantasy: The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior

Chapter 7: Warfare in Brotherhood

And after a while, though haunted by the initial telling of the master’s tale, I did not worry so much. I carried on in my assumptions, moving toward the paths of Khoorlrhani zeal along with my brothers. Soon I played with sticks, our swords, with Darlian, play fighting and imagining my own greatness as a Khoorlrhani warrior.

It was customary for boys older than nine to gather around a bonfire beneath the starlit sky. Some of the older adolescent boys would tend the fire while others beat large drums and formed a circle. Nearby, the girls gathered to dance and sing, and the boys would call each other out and fight with training swords.

This formal occasion of challenge among the youths was called ahenyeg, which means yield. This was how young boys would eventually become fighters, and some, those not already arranged to marry, husbands. Those who won the contests were acknowledged and usually taken under the wings of the older boys, young captains who led light patrols around Arkaya, guarding our crops in shifts alongside older, more mature soldiers. The most accomplished of these captains would get first choice of who to add to their group, their ahenyeg. Both Boutage and Minot were captains, and the most popular.

During ahenyeg, the contest was simple: stay in the circle and defend yourself against your opponent. Points were given for good clear strikes. The one with the most points won. If a contestant ran out of the circle, they lost. Those who lost kept developing their skills, hoping to be accepted. Those who won participated in the next level of the competition, fighting members of other captains’ groups in games such as conquest in which each team must defend a herd of cattle from the invading teams who tried to steal them. There were also variations of this game in which the object to steal or defend was a mere flag. The campaigns would go on in summer heat beneath the moons once a week. The games went to dawn until winter and the rainy months.

I did not participate happily. Uncoordinated and generally timid, I did poorly. I felt ashamed as my elder brothers watched me “continually lose to lesser families,” as my brother Boutage put it. I started out confident, but then I would find myself on my back outside the circle and eating the dirt dealt to me by my opponent!

Minot, always sensing when I was on the edge of giving up, would pick me up, brush me off. and say, “Jeshoya, it does not matter. It’s just a game, and that is the point of being a warrior, to not give up. Stay in the game. Stay in the circle.” Minot always encouraged me this way.

How could a Khoorlrhani prince be so obviously bad at holding his own in a fight, I wondered? I was terrified that I was inherently a coward. It was then I became sensitive to being called by my nickname, Jeshoya. It irritated me to hear it from my brothers as though it implied I was a simpleton. It made me feel reduced. I did not recognize that what the master had been telling me about Jandee was playing out in the slow boil of my life. I did not note that the spell of self-imagery was taking shape within me so strongly.

During the peaks of my frustration, I would avoid the circle and I told my mother, “I would rather be with you most times. It’s quiet and there are plenty of interesting things to do.”

My mother would laugh, draw me near her as we walked, hold me to her side, and sigh. “Jeshibian, you can’t do this your whole life. You cannot avoid what is uncomfortable. In life you must fight, and you must endure the fighting of others.”

She nudged me away, toward ahenyeg, the circle of boys. I tried my best to do what Minot taught me: “Keep your guard up, watch your hands, focus, block, watch your head…” But I was awful, getting black eyes, split lips, and torn clothing from savage opponents who had much to prove against a Khoorlrhani prince in the open circle! I loathed it, and then eventually, I slipped away.

Minot would let me go, saying, “Cool off. Don’t worry, Jeshoy…ahhh…er Jeshibian! Come back when you are ready.”

Gone were the blissful threads of morning-light abandon, and instead I awoke to each day as a problem. I worried that I would never grow, improve and rather suffer greater insult in the circle. .

Away from the circle, I spent time basking on the rocks trying to forget about it, making Anya laugh by crossing my eyes or searching the nearby thicket for insects, my hobby of sorts.

In the evening, I could hear the aunts and uncles whispering. “He clings to his mother still,” Toumak said to my father, and I knew my father’s opinions of my talent.

“Yes, a bit soft and scattered,” Khoorlrhani-Tah would mumble. “Perhaps he will grow out of it.”

“Suwan will spoil him if she keeps indulging him,” said Toumak in the dining hall where my father ate only with his general.

“They are right,” Master Paen said one day. “You cannot hide from life.”

“But you said that I should do what I want,” I protested.

“True, but you must have balance. You must do your duty, and you must face your fears. You should want to examine yourself here!”

“But I’m so bad and everyone laughs.”

“Do you see me bent out of shape because no one, not a single soul in the kingdom is interested in enlightenment? Ha!” The master roared with laughter, slapping the low table top that we sat before in his dihj where I often visited him. His laughter was so loud that parrots in the distant trees mimicked him. I only grimaced and averted my eyes, now a stubborn nine-year-old.

“Do you hear me going on about how bad a master I am? Ha! Oh, that’s funny! What if one day I decided to not show up? Would that strike you as odd? It would be strange to you if Ashuta herself appeared to me and I went on saying, ‘Boo hoo, great Goddess, the tah and chiefs laugh at me because they don’t believe in enlightenment!’” He teased me mercilessly until I relented and began to laugh with him.

“Fighting is simple, and it is not personal. Face your opponent. Face him. Who cares who wins for who is winning anyway? That’s the most interesting question there! You’re not using the tools I have given you. By facing it head on and not trying to escape, at least you will discover if you can fight; and if you really can’t, then you can explore other options besides fighting. Running is not the answer. You see, you want a victory and are embarrassed by defeat, and now you look to your mom and me to do what? To fix it for you, to hide you away and keep you safe! Who are you anyway that a victory or defeat matters? Who does this mistake of assuming a you remind you of?” he chided.

“The first princes,” I replied, now seeing my mistake.

“Yes. So stick close to Minot and just do the best you can. Oh, you are a worrying soul, aren’t you, so desperate to fit in? I’m telling you fitting in is a confinement. Do not worry so much.”

I did what he told me and eventually learned what it meant to hold my ground. Eventually I came to understand and enjoy an aspect of myself that I and others assumed was not there. With green face paint around my eyes, I accepted the circle of the boys and soon I enjoyed the passion of the booming drums, the chanting girls, and the shouts of the other boys. This did not mean I was a champion by any means, and during my worst defeats it was still my tendency to run to my mother.

Still, with Paen’s teaching, I accepted my place among the boys, and with my insides uncoiled a bit and with coaxing by my peers, we adventured.

Minot and Boutage often promised, threatened more like, to take us beyond Arkaya’s gates, far to the north to the Nook. This was beyond where the outer stockade was complete and minor skirmishes broke out from time to time. My father stopped building the outer wall when the master brought him back to his senses, a topic Boutage and Minot never stopped debating. The outer wall, a very incomplete circle and an insane undertaking as it was, only met between the cities of Kamina and Tanaga. There was only a portion a few miles beyond both cities, its use now only as a large watch tower to see approaching Mayak should they ever plot to invade our cities again.

Boutage and Minot often romanticized making a trip to this wild area. Though they were more responsible now, their rebellious side often gave way to these kinds of plans, to dares and to double dares. They were not stupid though, knowing that, as heirs to our father’s crown, they should not endanger us all by pursuing foolish games. They planned for months, and then one day they came crashing into our quarters to tell us, “We’ll go tomorrow!”

We made that first excursion with perfect execution, and we enjoyed ourselves and each other’s company, and so we made a ritual of it. Our camaraderie was strong, each of the terrible six of us now able to ride and willing to brave where our eldest led us.

Our enjoyment of such excursions did not last long though. Soon the rivalry between Minot and Boutage began to darken the whole affair. One would assert leadership over the other, and then of course the rest of us were forced to choose sides.

One day our alliances seemed to be set, made for the rest of our lives. We traveled to the Nook that day and rested by a spot by the lake, our favorite that was surrounded by yellow cliffs. Wild plants clung to the edges of a calm pond that our mehra’s drank from as Boutage and Minot left us behind to scout our perimeter. Nothing much happened by way of danger on these trips, but today we were surprised by the appearance of Mayak!

As Nanui drank, I brushed her and hummed to myself. Darlian was squatted over the water, cooling off, when I heard him gasp. I looked to where he was pointing across the river and up into the cliffs. Seleth was nearby, tending to his mehra, Treetop, and quickly ran over to Darlian to smack his pointing hand downward. He then turned his back to the spying figure Darlian had spotted.

“Don’t point! Don’t point!” He said.

Kuba then said in a hushed tone, “He didn’t see, Seleth. His back was turned.” Kuba immediately gathered his things and mounted his mehra, Jester, to find our brothers.

“Be quick, Kuba,” Seleth said.

“Okay,” he said, galloping off.

The Mayak warrior at the top of the cliff was holding a spear, and he peered down at us, his hand over his brow. We pretended not to notice him as Seleth suggested, to not act alarmed, but then another Mayak appeared. My heart raced with what might have been morbid curiosity, a mixture of both dread and excitement. The warriors spied on us then disappeared from the ledge.

We did not know what to do but Seleth acted with bravery, helped us gather nerves and prepare for whatever was beyond the ridge. It was not long before we heard the sounds of hooves approaching, a cacophony coming from two directions. Seleth, the only one of us armed with anything better than a worn and rusted dagger, stood his ground.

From the north entrance of the sandy bank the Mayak appeared, two of them fast approaching us. They were wild, faces scrawled with white paint.

Then behind us our brothers emerged from the south entrance wielding their scimitars. Seleth fell in with us as Boutage and Minot rode before us. It was a tense standoff with mehra’s circling, rising to their hind legs, and almost locking horns in challenge.

I trembled, thinking my brothers might die before my eyes, as I saw the strength of the Mayak warriors, their thick arms and deep cheekbones and hard set eyes. They were fully grown men and had the air of seasoned warriors. The leader wore several feathers in his straight hair. He looked at his comrade as if confused by my brothers’ behavior, as if a mistake had been made. He then said words to him and the two backed off, pulled the reins of their animals to show a they were not hostile.

This gesture seemed obvious to us—a truce. It seemed obvious to Minot too. The two Mayak pulled away, their backs turned momentarily as they then tried to swing around to achieve greater distance between my brothers. Only Boutage took this with either insult or as an opportunity to attack.

On the back of Onyx, Boutage lunged for them! Minot yelled at him, and so having been warned, the leader quickly turned and thwarted Boutage’s attack easily with an open palm, sending my brother to the ground! Minot then dismounted and ran for Boutage where the two fought, Boutage in a frantic rage trying to reengage the Mayak leader. Minot exchanged awful blows, and I could not stand it any longer, and so rode out alone on Nanui to them and shouted at them. I was between my brothers and the Mayak, who were laughing at us. Darlian and Kuba then came to me, shouting for me get away from the dangerous killer Mayak, who only sat in their saddles enjoying the scene of the eldest of the Khoorlrhani princes trying to kill one another.

Kuba jumped off White Mane and stood between them, and Minot pushed Boutage back hard and cursed at him.

“You are such an imbecile,” he growled.

Boutage, obviously embarrassed that we were protecting the Mayak from him, simply spat on the ground and dusted himself off. Seleth fell in behind Boutage.

“What do they want?” Seleth said coolly.

“Whose side are you on, Minot,” Boutage growled.

“Look at their face paint, you idiots. They are ambassadors! They wear Father’s cipher!” he yelled. Minot, wiping blood from his lip, then spoke with the leader and apologized. The leader then put his hands up, nodded and pointed to the white mark, a leaf painted on his arm band, a red dot in the center. There was indeed a story behind their presence in the Nook. The leader spoke to Minot, and as he did, I focused in on the language. I very much wanted to learn it.

As Boutage typically ignored all talks of peace, he did not know that these men traveled from the mountains bearing gifts for our father. He did not know that the mark they wore was to protect them should others, aside from the Khoorlrhani party sent from Arkya to meet them, find them first. Minot, who took all protocols seriously, knew most of this and was only surprised by their presence. Despite the embarrassment suffered by having to deal with Boutage, Kuba and Darlian and I respected Minot and saw his actions as more wise. This infuriated Boutage. I would pay later. I knew it.

The Mayak leader, Theseron, told Minot in his own tongue that they were a party of six. Three had been killed by tigers that attacked the cattle they brought as a gift. They were unable to find the Khoorlrhani party they were to meet, and so, when they picked up our trail, they naturally thought we were that party.

Theseron was shocked to learn we were the royal heirs, and he almost seemed to chide Minot for endangering us: mind boggling and stupid were words that I could translate from the dialect. Minot sighed as he nodded.

We agreed to protect and drive the cattle south with them as far as Kamina. We met the third member of the Mayak party who guarded the remaining cattle, at least sixty head. On the way Boutage glared at me, his deep dark eyes on me like a panther. Kuba and Darlian received this same treatment.

We left Theseron and his party at Kamina where they would rest and feed themselves and the cattle while in care of the warlord Tannis, who was expecting their arrival. Before we departed, it was expressed by Theseron that, since the Arkayan party was nowhere to be found, Minot should escort them the rest of the way to Arkaya the next day. Theseron did not feel welcome by Tannis and his men and worried treachery would befall him and his men. Minot agreed and sent Boutage, Kuba, Darlian, and me home, obviously the worst arrangement in my view.

Boutage reluctantly obliged Minot and we left immediately for Arkaya. The whole journey back, Boutage terrorized us. When Kuba tried to defend us, Boutage shouted at him, pulled his hair, and even pushed him off of his mehra, breaking his arm. Having made an example of him, Boutage then pointed at me, called me a “peace-making woman” and told me to stop my whining after slapping me. Poor Darlian was frozen stiff as we rode Nanui. We were a broken party, following the tyrant who purposefully led us the longest way home so that, under the dim light of the moons, he could abandon us halfway home. From that day nothing was ever the same between us, only vile competitiveness and abuse remaining.

When we arrived at the royal dihj, Darlian and I tiredly put our mehra in the stable. I then went into our home and, upon seeing my mother, ran for her. She embraced me. I buried my face in her neck.

“What is the matter?” Suwan asked. I could not answer for fear of more mistreatment from Boutage. I heard Minot yelling in the background, from the main section of the dihj. As it turned out, the party my father dispatched to the Mayak had arrived moments after we pushed off with Boutage. Minot and Seleth, relieved of his obligation to Theseron, took the short way back.

“Bullshit! It was not a seven hour journey!” Then there was another voice, Boutage, answering nonchalantly, barely audible.

“Then why is Kuba’s arm broken!? Why is Jeshoya running to mother! You want broken brothers to be king over! These are your games! Screw your goddamned circle of brothers concept! Before you came back, no one questioned my competence! If they were good riders, Kuba would have stayed on Jester’s back and he would have kept up!”

“Why do you hate everything and everyone?!”

“I do not hate them! I just do not paint the world with fluffy clouds like you do!”

“Right, just with dark clouds! You have no honor, breaking their spirits so! You do not serve them, just yourself?”

“I don’t answer to you! You are just a woman, Minot, a weak minded woman who keeps his brothers needlessly on the tit! When will you… WAKE UP…from your idealistic dreams of…”

Then we heard a tussle, the breaking of objects, the scattering of servants, and the overturning of furniture. We knew fists were flying. The we heard the voices of onlookers, shocked at such behavior. Aunt Nandee rushed into the parlor wielding a fighting staff of tied heavy bamboo. She struck mercilessly. “Get up! GET OUT!”

And this was the way our lives were then. I loved my brothers, even Boutage. There were days of sunshine, wild abandon, and camaraderie, and then there were days like this, dark, full of awful competitiveness.

Feeling dark inside the next day, I hid from the circle of boys again, sitting on the edge of my mother’s bed. She comforted me and listened as I lamented.

“I don’t much like being alive,” I said.

“Don’t say that, Jeshibian! Why would you say that?”

“Because everything is hard and no one loves. What’s the point of being alive if tigers eat you and your brothers beat you up?”

Suwan laughed, knowing me to be a dramatist. I did not hate life but was merely venting, frustrated by its terms.

She stroked my hair, and then asked, “What do you think the master would say to your tantrum here?” I shifted my eyes to one side, looking at the clay floor and its embedded green and yellow tiles.

I thought a moment and said, “Well, he’d say, ‘The point of love, young Khoorlrhani, is not to just have pleasure in your life but to learn how to love in spite of your displeasure!’” I threw in the few hand gestures that I knew the master would make. Suwan’s eyes lit up and she clasped her hands and erupted with a barely suppressed laugh at my impersonation. “Ah, yes! I think so.” Suwan sighed.

“You think he’d say that?” I wondered, and I smiled at my mother, challenging her to suppress her laughter, but she could not.

“Yes. I think it’s good that you can imitate him so well.”

“Why?”

“Because it means you’ve noticed how wise he is and you love him. I’m glad that I can see that in you.”

“No one treats the master the way Boutage does us.”

“You don’t think people have tried to mistreat him, eh?” Suwan said. Her eyes sparkled and narrowed. She seemed to hold onto a secret she was now willing to share with me.

“Who?” I asked.

“Your father, of course!” She laughed.

“Really?” I said sarcastically.

“So then I can assume by your tone you know this. Oh yes, worse than young Boutage really, but do you know how the master acted?”

“No.”

“The master acted with the bravery of the supreme warrior, Jeshoya, a bravery that no man in the land has yet to know.”

And in that moment I wanted to know what sort of bravery this was. My eyes were locked on my mother’s as I waited for her to elaborate.

“A bravery that held to the truth so much that Khoorlrhani-Tah could never lie to himself. Your father recognized that it was indeed the awful treatment given to Paen that Paen returned to him in the form of truth and that he had a lot to learn about love. And do you know what that said about the power of love despite our displeasure?”

I said nothing, only waited for the answer, thirsty for it.

“That it can change even the darkest hearts, though it may take years, decades, lifetimes. It changes that heart to want to give love more than receive it. It changes you, son, if you choose that over your comfort. No sword or armor will ever compare to this, my darling. It is unbeatable. So think on that the next time you want to throw a tantrum about the discomfort of life.”

I smiled. My mother gazed at me and caressed my cheek with her finger. She then pointed to the entrance of her room, instructing me to leave.

“So do not hide in here with me, Jeshoya. Be in the world, your world of rotten brothers, stinky mehras, dust, bug bites, swords and armor, and learn to love it despite the displeasure. Listen to the master and do as he has already shown you, my sweet one. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, then ran out of her room.

That particular night, I knew the master was back from his travels and would be in my father’s council chambers. So I ran down the dark lower passageway—slipping in between the shadows untouched by the evenly placed torches that hung on the vine covered wall—that led to the lower depths of our dihj. Along the way I danced.

Restored to my humor, I wondered happily if my heart could change in the way Suwan told me it should. What was the supreme warrior? What kind of bravery could withstand all disappointment in life that did not require a thirst for brutality and acts of conquest and retaliation? Was it real? I wanted to know. I hoped for it, prayed for it. I would go straight back to the circle of boys if I could become that. I danced to a rhythm in my heart that led me to the master! I traced my finger along the complex patterns of the tapestries that hung on the cold grey stones of the walls below.

I could hear the voices of Master Paen, Minot, my father, and the two Mayak we met days earlier. In the hallway, I sat with my back against the wall beneath a torch by the curtain that hung over the entrance. I gazed upward at two massive stone statues opposite me and right before the curtained entryway, sculptures of massive tigers baring their teeth, their large granite eyeballs glaring at me. It was a twin representation of Tiaga, the tiger goddess. I gawked at them for some time, and then I peaked beneath the tapestry to get a look inside court.

“Come in, Jeshoya,” I heard the master call. I was never good at concealing myself. I parted the curtain and entered. There was laughter as I did.

“If you were not so loud in your dancing, you might have stayed hidden, but why hide such joy?!” the master said, grinning. My father glanced at me and smiled. He seemed to be enjoying the same rhythmic tune playing in my heart, which was spurned by my thirst to be in Paen’s company, delightful thirst. I swayed back and forth, happily.

I came inside as was commanded by Paen, and I was met by the pressing eyes of onlooking strangers. The two Mayak warriors my brother and I encountered were standing before Khoorlrhani-Tah. Two others were among them who I had not seen before. They all grinned at me as I sheepishly entered, pushing past the spear wielding Bakuwella guards and into the clouds of incense within the interior. All of the lords were present, all seated, and all dressed formally in brocade kaftans and backed by their standards and the fourteen men in each entourage. The entirety of the Khoorlrhani nation was represented in a grand multicolored crescent of seated bodies before my father and the four Mayak.

Paen stood near my father. Minot stood by the leader of the Mayak, and between them and my father was gold spilling out of metal cases and onto the beige tiles, a measure I had never seen in all my life! One could say it was a significant amount of all Mayak wealth. There was a chuckle at my wide-eyed beholding of it.

“My son the dancer,” my father teased, introducing me to the hall. Everyone laughed. Minot translated what my father had just said to the other Mayak. Their eyes narrowed because of their wild smiles. They stood, elegant figures, pure, wild, ringed ears, straight braided hair, necklaces of animal teeth, and skirts of leather.

I shrank in embarrassment, but Khoorlrhani-Tah beckoned me, his many ruby-ringed fingers curling gently against his wide palms as a gesture for me to come in and take a seat on a vacant cushion by his side. He was warm to me. I went to him.

The Mayak leader, Theseron, resumed speaking to the tah, glancing at me and laughing as Minot translated.

“Enksosi, your youngest son, has a very good heart. I would be proud to call him my own,” Minot translated, and then he winked at me.

Through these four men, two of which Boutage nearly cut down, Unat the tah of the Mayak had sent his regards to both my father and Paen. Peace was being made. I was overcome by happiness and noted how Paen seemed to glow that evening.

“He agrees,” the Mayak reaffirmed. “Twelve families of Mayak and twelve of Khoorlrhani and a mixed force to keep the order for five years, this is acceptable. Unat Mayak-Tah agrees to this and the rules presented to govern the town.”

The cattle the Mayak brought were an offering, repayment for the many years of raids on Ketique ranchers in the east. The gold, many trunks of it presented before my father that night, was repayment for damage done to fields. My father was overcome by this gesture. By Paen’s work, by his travels to convince Unat, the Mayak were now ready to end the old conflict.

The Nook, our former playground, was now to be mutually shared territory. For centuries our tribes fought to control this region. Both tah’s agreed now that an equal number of families would settle there. If the peace lasted, then the Khoorlrhani would consider intermingling further south, opening their borders in years to come. It was a radical plan, again one that Paen was behind, for as the terms of the agreement were discussed in this final moment, my father struggled.

It was the warlords gave him pause. They looked on disapprovingly.

“I understand that this is difficult, but the idea of Mayak and Khoorlrhani coexisting must come to this event. It is you who must bridge the divide. Time will not do it for you,” Master Paen said, his hands turned upward.“How else could it happen except by agreeing to intermingle, share what is given on the One Great Land. And it must be done right now because there will never be a more convenient time, and you cannot wait until the noble lords become agreeable to this plan. Mayak and Khoorlrhani must eventually become something different, undivided. So what is that? How do we approach it? I can show you!” Paen said, Minot translating to the Mayak.

He then walked further out into the room, addressing everyone. “Great men destroy the confines of tradition by believing more in the truth and less in this cheapened standard of their sword that we live by. These…destroyers are truly great tahs! You see the metaphor of the sword is of truth, temperance, community, cooperation, not of revenge, of obstinate politicization, not of mere conquest as you’ve mistaken it for. Vulnerability is what fuels true living. Vulnerability! It can be done, but only if we cut through these political obstructions we have created among ourselves.” Minot translated as Paen glanced at the section of the room where the lords sat, their arms folded, their heads shaking in stubborn doubt.

My father sighed and said, “But there has been so much Khoorlrhani blood spilled in the Nook…”

“Yes, brother, let us now forgive the debt of an eye, a tooth, a leg, a life. All of it forgiven and agree to start again. You worry, ‘How will the lords react when told we must change? What will they withhold from Arkaya? How will they align themselves against me?’ Your mind searches for an answer in the darkness of the future. I say that it does not matter what these chiefs think if you are entirely aligned to me. If you are aligned to me, that future does not exist and so there is nothing to fear.”

And there was a laugh from among the crowd, a deep sinister chuckle. Paen’s words were seen as a direct challenge by the lower chiefs, mayors, and wealthy citizens from the outlying towns, who scoffed in their protest. They wanted to continue to profit from the war machine. Their agitated sounds began to resonate within the court. Lord Dajaai of Ketique rose and turned to look into the crowd with a stern face, silencing them all.

“Boutage-Tah, do you doubt me? Do you doubt that I could withstand their reaction against the policy of truth? Have I not already demonstrated strength, love, and utter reliance upon the truth? I ask you as well Chiefs Tannis, Shakuba, Chobaza, Bombazu, and Dajaai.”

Dajaai came forward on his knees, bowed to my father, and said, “I will follow you and Paen, enkosi. His words are sane.”

“Coward!” another faceless voice shouted, and Dajaai rose again, hand on the hilt of his sword at his waist, challenging his accuser with sharpened eyes staring through an orange band of ceremonial paint across his eyes. He wore a slender mid-thigh length black kaftan, gold patterns across his shoulders and a striking set of golden eagle wings displayed across his chest. His mane of hair was decorated with dyed feathers, gathered and tied neatly in three sections by golden bands into a singular braid. The room was silent as Dajaai again, by right, sought out his accuser, walking the smooth tiles of the front row on golden sandals. My father patiently awaited the outcome. No one dared challenge Dajaai. When every pair of eyes was looked into by the Lord of Ketique, they averted. It was then settled. Satisfied, Dajaai again seated himself.

On their knees, Chobaza and Bombazu both came forward, bowed, said in turn, “I will follow you and Paen, enkosi.”

My father’s nostrils flared as he leaned forward, his eyes narrowing upon the master, a smile coming to his lips.

“You are right, Master Paen. This will be done. I have been wrong. I do not doubt you. It shall be done.”

Then there was more shouting, a roar of it as Bakuwella pressed more deeply into the room and as Minot screamed the translation of my father’s words to the Mayak, who then smiled, shocked. They then, all four of them, stretched themselves onto the floor!

My father was again overcome, not believing his eyes, and he was so inspired he removed his crown, stepped from his bench, and gathered the Mayak leader up, embraced him, and kissed his cheeks.

I watched the northern lords, Tannis and Shokuba rise, twenty-eight men behind them, and bowed. The lords and their retinue walked out the court entrance in protest.

Later that festive night there was laughter throughout the dihj. The servants were kept up late preparing food and playing music. Our cavernous parlors were full, the stoves roaring and glowing with warmth, the Mayak ambassadors entertained and made drunk. The entire family was assembled, uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents, all telling stories about our meeting Master Paen. For the first time ever, I saw my father holding my mother close to him. She beamed as she looked into his eyes, as if the man she fell in love with had finally returned.

The rains began that day, a torrential downpour of the monsoon season, marking a period that seemed to clear the way for a new time—a prolonged peace. The main family room, a large torch-lit area over which an ornate wooden frame held up the vine roof, was loud with the sound of the downpour. There were several tables covered with fruit brought in that would have otherwise spoiled in the warm rain. The floor was smooth clay tiles, and my younger cousins slid across it in their play. I snatched a banana from the table, chased my cousins for a short spell, and then joined my brothers and parents in one of the smaller parlors tucked behind the family room.

They were talking openly and with humor. Their respective ghosts somehow had disappeared, outshined by the glow of the master who was in the center of the room. The conversation shifted to the future, and Master Paen again reassured my father that to worry about civil war was useless.

“The chiefs being stirred up is inevitable even without talk of peace to aggravate them. The Khoorlrhani nation has gotten too big. Your empire will inevitably divide as the continuity of ideas take on different shades along different lines. All can divide peacefully or not—it scarcely matters. This is not about the outcome of your empire; it is about your enlightenment, your freedom. The peace that matters is that peace, the peace that I am.”

As I looked at my father, I realized that Khoorlrhani-Tah had left his crown on his jade and ivory bench. He had forgotten it, distracted by Paen’s work, distracted in regarding the Mayak, who had bowed to him that evening as brothers. For that evening my father was free, happy as if Paen had removed an obstruction without my father knowing. Just as I made that observation, Paen glanced at me and winked at me.

And we were quiet. I swayed, loving Paen as he radiated and everyone just looking at him in silence. He was perfect, so unlike my father or me.

“If Lords Tannis and Shakuba plot against you, so be it. If they ride upon Arkaya, we will defend ourselves. There is no point worrying about what they think.”

But I knew my father would again worry, I could feel his pattern coincident with my own, my need for a crown of sorts. He would again become self conscious and seek his crown out. I knew this just as I began to know myself to be the same. In viewing my father, I saw my own reflection.

I did not worry about a fence being torn down, but rather, that I would not have one. Though on the surface I wanted to know what the supreme warrior was, how that concept could be real, how it could change me, I secretly conspired to exploit it, to make a life that was painless and to serve to create my own fence of invincibility. Paen knew, and with a wink, reflected this back to me.

I indeed fantasized about being the supreme warrior, full of vigor and grace, never wrong, never in need, as I played in the forests and in the cavernous underbelly of our royal dihj. This of course was the shadow of Jandee as I dreamt who I would become.

Chapter 8: The Threat of Mandee

One day, nearing the end of my ninth year, I was playing by the streams with my sisters. I had found the most vibrantly colored butterfly, its wings a beautiful pattern of oranges, turquoise, and dark blue. It let me get close enough to see it but never close enough to capture it satisfactorily with my eyes. From behind me, I heard my sisters splashing each other in the water. Suwan moved from her sunning rock and into the depths of the pond. I watched her for a moment as she untied her hair and moved waist deep into the water. Her skin richly deep brown, as she waded she ringed her wet hair then spread it over her shoulders. She saw me from below and waved at me. I smiled then resumed my pursuit.

The butterfly doubled back and I chased it down a small hill. I was intent on studying it. It flitted to a deeply shady and moist spot beyond some shrubbery. As I circled around it to catch a glimpse, I stumbled on a rock and fell, and then I heard the rock overturn.

Something, an animal, snapped twigs and ran away. I heard it making a commotion along a path downhill but could not really see it as if it moved beneath the leaves. I brushed myself off and then saw my winged friend a few feet from me. It flew again, further downhill, and I gave chase. Finally, it alighted on a rock by the creek.

Beyond the small boulder I could see Anya washing her feet, and my mother was approaching her. I focused on the butterfly, my two hands ready to catch it when I pounced. I jumped and missed, but then something was aroused. It hissed!

I fell onto my back and it was right before me, a large asp, its crimson hood majestically flared. I could not move. It stared at me. From the corner of my right eye I saw another one near Anya. Her back was turned to it. She turned and it struck her!

I tried to scream but only managed a gasp, compelled to be silent by the one before me. Be still or die, it seemed to say ever so clearly.

Anya was struck again, and she then screamed and cried. She stomped and was struck again. My mother ran toward her.

“Anya!” Suwan screamed. “Nandee!” She scooped up Anya only to be struck by the snake. It did not slither off but circled, slithered over the water and then struck my mother again. My mother screamed. The world seemed to shatter.

I was paralyzed with fear. I could not bear to look at what was actually happening. I stared into the eyes of the snake that promised to kill me should I move.

You are Jandee, I thought, in my panic.

It answered with a hiss. She did not like being named. My Aunt could be heard running toward me. I heard her halt in her horror as she saw me pinned below.

“Oh! Jeshoya, don’t move,” Nandee whispered. I did not move, every fiber of my being working against the reflex to flee.

“Stay there. Do not flinch,” Nandee warned.

You are Jandee. Leave us alone, I thought again, terrified but willing to receive her sting as an answer as there was no escape.

The snake hissed again, wavered, retracted her hood, and then followed her sister Mandee into the bushes. My aunt rushed to me and grabbed my hand. The servants rushed my sister indoors, and Nandee accompanied my mother and me.

“Khoorlrhani-Tah!” servants shouted. They rushed to get him.

We placed my sister and my mother on beds, desperately cleaned the wounds and tied off their limbs. The servants cut out and pressed out the poison, sucked it out, used herbs, prayed, screamed and howled, but my sister died within one hour. Nandee and the other aunts and cousins, lamenting, carried her body away.

My mother lay in bed. She suffered and cried from losing her daughter. I held her hand throughout the night. She looked at me in the dim glow of candlelight, her breathing labored, but she gripped my hand. Her mouth grew dry, her eyes red. As the sun began to rise for morning, she said my name.

“Jeshibian… I must go now…”

“Please don’t go, Mother. Please. Please,” I pleaded, feeling helpless. “Where is the master?” I asked looking around me. No one could answer. He was away. “Please don’t go, Mother.” I prayed, “Please, oh Ashuta, please.”

I stayed close to her. My father sat next to me. As my grip tightened on Suwan’s hand, hers lessened on mine.

“Mother!” I cried, shaking her hand.

She no longer gripped back. My father took me toward him, held me, a forearm against my chest,

“You must accept it, Jeshoya,” Khoorlrhani-Tah lamented.

“No.”

“You must.”

“Please,” I pleaded for the last time, and I then I died inside.

After the ceremonial three days, we cremated Suwan and Anya’s bodies. I can now look upon that day in hindsight as bittersweet as it began with my whimsical chase for the colorful hues and tones of life and ended with the blackness of my sister’s and my mother’s death.

I was learning that comfort is fleeting in this real world full of just as much tragedy as victory. I could not understand that happiness itself was independent of these events. Instead, like my father, I reached my hands into the rose bushes of my self-entitlement and was pricked by the thorns of my resentment.

I thought, Ashuta, why? Why did you betray me? Why did you take my beloved mother and my sister so cruelly? I was angry, so angry. Why did you make me so helpless that I could do nothing but be still and accept my mother’s fate!?

Had I not heard the master’s story of the first brothers, of how they each demanded Ashuta’s grace rather than accept what was given? Did I forget what my mother had told me about the supreme warrior?

Indeed I did, for I sat in my father’s throne room heartbroken. I could not hold to the wisdom the master had given me. Somehow, it was not relevant to me, to the very moment of my life as I lived for the past. I avoided Master Paen, angry with him. Why was he not there to save my mother and sister!? I shouted these questions inwardly, made these complaints in my heart. I wandered the jungles alone, and then one day, when I thought I was alone, I screamed at the mountains, “Why did they have to die?!”

A voice called over my shoulder, “Because it was their time, Jeshibian.”

It was Minot. He had been tracking me. I tried to run past him, but he snagged me with his long arms. I writhed, kicked, screamed, “Leave me alone!” But I could not get free. Minot held me until I finally relaxed.

“Now sit!” he said. I obeyed. “Wipe those tears, Jeshibian.” I obeyed.

We were quiet for a while. He then said, “Do you think you are the only child our mother left behind, the only brother Anya left behind?”

I had not thought of that.

“Everyone in the palace, everyone loved them, and was loved by them.”

“Sorry.” I sobbed. “I’m sorry.”

“I understand you are confused, but do you see now how you think, that you’re so special, and how you forget the rest of us here with you?”

“Sorry.”

“Do you see how that makes me feel, makes Boutage feel, Kuba, Seleth?”

“I know,” I whined.

“This is life,” Minot declared, and it angered me.

“I don’t like it.” And there it was, my rejection of life as it was because I was clamoring for an idea, a past love, as the master said I would.

“This is life!” Minot said.

“I don’t like it!” I screamed in contempt. And then he shook me, his large hands on my shoulders.

“This is life!” he yelled at me, not accepting my unreasonableness. I calmed down. “This is life, brother. You cannot change it,” he said, and let me calm even more before saying, “What is your duty in life? Do you remember, or have you so easily thrown out what the master has taught you and decided instead to be a spoiled brat. Use what he gave you. What is your duty? Tell me right now or I’ll be so mad at you, Jeshibian Khoorlrhani that…”

“To manage love,” I said. I could not bear Minot being mad at me.

“Even when…?” Minot pressed.

“To manage love even when it seems impossible.”

“ So, have you spoken to Master Paen since? Have you expressed your grief in knowing his devotee was taken away from him?”

“No.” I broke into tears, now seeing the cruelty of my privacy. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“You might want to tell him that. You are not the only one hurt by this, brother. We are all survivors and all obligated to help one another heal.”

“Okay,” I said as I squirmed and sniffed.

“Let’s go home,” Minot suggested. I saw that day why I loved my brother. I knew that day what it was Paen I loved in Minot as well, for in this moment Minot, who was dealt this blow we both endured and still managed to straighten me out and stand with so much grace, showed me so much strength. Out of all of my brothers, indeed Minot stood out, shone, and did not hide in his grief. Instead, he came to us all.

With him near, the thorn was removed from my heart and I knew from that moment on, as he looked at me sternly, that Minot expected to see me standing more strongly on my feet from now on. I hadn’t the clarity to see it then, but my mother’s death made way for my seeing Minot in this totally different light. Though frustrated, and seeming to be confused at times, Minot was Paen’s devotee. Paen looked on him with the same sternness as Minot was now looking on me.

I could no longer run now, and Minot would no longer console me. Instead he reminded me of what our master taught, to see the bigger picture, to love. To love as the mosquito draws blood, the wasp breaks the skin, the snake bites, only to love. To love while the tiger hunts, the brother betrays, and the mother dies, only to love. To love while all else fails, but never to fail at remembering and holding to love for, as the master had taught me, to fail at loving was truly to fail at noticing who I really was.

Minot n pushed me past my grief and took loving care of me, fed me the strength he stood with. We rode together much of that summer, mostly alone but often times with Darlian whose heart was also torn by our mother and sister’s departure.

Minot did well to keep us together, the three of us, to focus us, to let Suwan and Anya go, and to heal.

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Dharmic Sci-Fi Fantasy: The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior – Chapter 5-6

by Neil Britto on December 16, 2020 at 1:25 am

Posted In: Story II: The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior

Dharmic Sci-Fi Fantasy: The Last Khoorlrhani Warrior

Chapter 5: Khoorlrhani-Tas

Tas, or Queen, Suwan, my mother, married a man named Boutage, who was at the time a prince. Boutage, my father’s actual name, though greatly honored by the people, was not destined to be the tah; instead, it was his brother, Kalid, the eldest and most trusted by my grandfather, Baju.

My mother told stories about my grandfather, the first tah during the modern dynasty who was a peace loving man. He reversed the tides set in motion by his father, and through the advice of his wise son Kalid, the wars for a short time ceased.

My grandfather and all of Arkaya loved Kalid. He was wise, humble, and destined to rule with evenness and grace. My mother told me that, though she loved my father, she also loved his brother Kalid. She in fact loved my father because, she said, “His love for Kalid was obvious and made him shine as a wise man who would serve in his own capacity. In the beginning I admired his humility,”

When the time of my grandfather’s death neared, it was said that my father became jealous. He envied his brother and became ambitious in ways he never had before.

About Kalid’s death, my mother told me, “It was said there was an accident and Kalid, while trying to capture an eagle, fell into the nearby river and was carried over the falls to his death. Your father told this story to your grandfather.”

She said it as we ate breakfast alone together one bright morning, the sun accentuating her rich and regal features. She said these words for appearances, but the subtext hidden within her tone told me she did not believe that story.

When Suwan met my father, she said he was a happy man, kind and generous. Later she said he became obsessed with proving himself. He wanted more, his cup never full enough. When my grandfather died, my father became tah instead.

Suwan never accused my father of Kalid’s death. No one did! It was the great forbidden thing to speak of, and my brother, Minot, did not tell me about the story in detail after I was a man.

“It was an accident,” Minot said, looking off, his apprehension to tell me the truth as apparent as the horizon we both looked at as we rode together one day. No one would tell the truth, as if somehow the truth would harm me.

It did not matter to me. Somehow, when I looked at Paen, I knew that the man that Kalid was, the man my family missed and whose murder caused them to hate my father, was exactly the man who stood by Khoorlrhani-Tah today. I wondered why they would not see this. They were blinded by a veil of rational thinking, I thought, and even Paen agreed.

“If they all saw the way you do, Jeshibian, there would be no story, no drama. If they saw like you, they would only see the bright center and forget the edges of the dream.” He then patted my head and sent me off to play in the woods.

“Go and forget yourself and the intrigues of your father’s court, boy!”

Suwan, Khoorlrhani-Tas, spent her days away from my father, and whenever my father returned to their bedroom, she would be gone, spending time with my sisters and my Aunt Nandee until her husband was asleep.

No one could talk about my father’s deed directly, but neither could they forget it or forgive my father for that which the master had every right to not forgive my father—even though he had already forgiven him a million times.

My mother had little happiness. In the royal dihj as a whole there was not enough happiness, only reality’s heartbreaking contradiction to what was hoped for, only the glaring fact that no matter how lavishly decorated with silks, anointed with oils, blessed by clouds of incense, stocked with preserved fruits, cattle, and slaves life in Arkaya, though beautiful, was impossible to be fulfilled by.

I saw this kind of disappointment in my mother’s eyes. This in turn caused my father to stare into the horizon, searching for that which would fulfill him and yet somehow return him, magically, to my mother’s graces.

My mother was beautiful, with dark brown skin and large, rich brown eyes. Her hair was braided and tied back with white cloth. She wore a silver dagger beneath her navel over her long white tunic. Her smile, with straight white teeth, was genuine; and her heart was strong despite her disappointments. Her face was round, her cheekbones high, regal, her mouth generous.

She took care of us. Despite the ache in her heart, she held us, groomed us, and loved us. She absorbed pain with her touch. I wondered how it was that Suwan managed to love the way she did. Then I saw her eyes glow as her gaze settled on the master. The master would sit with her, and she would serve him food herself, and even served the servants. She loved him dearly.

Chapter 6: The Terrible Six

I had five brothers. From eldest to youngest they were: Boutage, who was named after our father, Minot, Seleth, Kuba, and Darlian.

We were spoiled but living lives where our sense of duty was always reinforced. My sisters, twins, were named Anya and Lenya. The terrible six is how the sons of the tah were teasingly referred to by Master Paen, who knew the handful we were to the women, my mother and Aunt Nandee, sister to the tah. My father also had two brothers: Toumak and Geeda.

Nandee was a warrior, a unique, tough, and fiery woman who never let us cry whenever we scratched a knee or were stung by an insect. She would not tolerate it and reminded us that we were princes. She watched us, pushed us, and disciplined us.

Somehow Nandee instilling pride within us worked like a painkiller, but there was not enough pride to be had to ward off the pain and discomfort dispensed from beautiful Arkaya. The jungles of my homeland were harsh, hot, itchy, and though Arkaya was splendorous on the eyes, the skin and feet were tormented by heat, poisonous plants, and many kinds of stinging insects. As a baby, I would look to the ceiling and see insects crawling between the interwoven palms overhead. As boys, we would play with scorpions or spiders and suffer the sting of a slapped hand from our aunt far being so stupid! Perhaps Nandee was more dangerous than these creatures.

When I was six, my brothers took me to explore the jungle for the first time. After being introduced to the world this way, my brothers and I ventured sometimes with cousins or other boys close to our family to the nearby streams. The eldest brothers took charge of us for the day and we would fish or play games in low streams. At age eight, I learned to nock an arrow for the first time, and as Minot stood behind me, steadying my hands, I sent the bolt through the heart of a caribou. I cried, but Minot showed me how it was a natural act and how to ask for forgiveness in loving respect for the animal.

Minot acquainted me with all the rituals of the hunt and never let me shy away from the harsh reality of the thick deep green world of Arkaya. Minot also encouraged me to not shy away from the inevitable fighting among my brothers and me.

At age twelve a boy was considered a man and so was not watched over constantly by the women though he was expected to be where he should be. That was hardly the case with the young Khoorlrhani princes, the terrible six of us, or at least the eldest of us. Minot and Boutage, the eldest of my brothers, endured scolding and beatings from Nandee and our uncles on a day-to-day basis.

Every morning was the same. Having slept beneath the stars in the summer, I awoke beneath the morning sun to silence and dew-jeweled blades of grass and fragrant leaves, the new air cool and crisp. My brothers would again conspire to have more adventures in the jungles, promising to return with meat or herbs or to run whatever errands that the adults required of them but could get them to fulfill. Minot and Boutage were household rebels.

During those earliest of years neither Minot nor Boutage took the adults seriously, and so every night was the same. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep through yelling, lecturing, and both of my brothers returning, huffing and cursing, into the large clay floored room we all shared. Later, however, they would be giggling and sniggering and planning to start over again.

Then Boutage and Minot would harass the rest of us—Seleth, Kuba, Darlian, and me—drive us outside to sleep in the tall grasses in peace. We were challenged to stay hidden from our maniacal brothers who, if they found us, twisted our fingers, pulled our hair, and wrestled us. It was always a late night frenzied chase beneath the moons, a wild circus game of them against us, and then the terrible six of us regrouping to escape the adults who grew tired of our ruckus.

Boutage would make wild and scary faces, and he always played too rough and recklessly, causing Kuba to cry or Seleth to bite! Darlian would snatch me away and together we would find the best hiding places.

Minot would often find me in the grass not far from the dihj, and thinking me asleep, he would cover us both with a blanket. He slept protectively beside me and then returned in the morning before I awoke. Then I knew no danger, felt no fear, and I took Arkaya completely for granted despite a scorpion bite, a hornet sting, or the other irritants that came with it.

Before that wilder time, as a mere babe of no more than three to four years old, I stayed home at the dihj, close to Suwan and Nandee. I played with my sisters in the streams while my mother washed her hair in the reflective ponds nearby. I marveled at the vibrant colors of butterflies and crawling beetles safe beneath the canopy of trees. There was no word for anything then. I only saw and wondered. Every moment was a stringing together of momentary beads of noticing, pointing, laughing, and contemplating Arkayan splendor: yellow sun, deep green and shaded jungles, fireflies, vibrant and wild orchids, and rainbow colored birds.

In those moments I basked in my mother’s glow. She was as beautiful as the Goddess Ashuta herself to me, her slender arms, soft bosom, and loving eyes. I loved being near her. I often preferred it to the raucous company of my brothers.

Occasionally Master Paen would wander through at dusk riding his mehra Quanon . My heart would light up and he would wink at me as he passed. As my sisters twisted my hair into locks, the sun would set over the leafy canopy, and soon the spicy aroma of stews and bread would fill the air, spilling down to the ponds from the south entrance of the royal dihj, where torch wielding guards stood watch over us. Upon the calling of the servants, Suwan would carry me inside. Then my brothers would return from their high adventures: Boutage bold and brash, Minot quiet and clever, Seleth moody and passionate, Kuba wild and funny, Darlian curious and hyperactive. The peace would become a twisted thing running hot and cold, delightful and dreadful.

Without fail, Nandee would enter the dining area and snatch away a bowl, Boutage’s or Minot’s usually, because something had not been done to her satisfaction. She would wield a fighting staff threateningly and chase them around. Sometimes this was funny, and sometimes a wound would need tending to. My aunt was something of a firebrand.

“You are all so terrible!” she would scream.

My mother would often shout at her to calm down. Sometimes my Uncle Toumak, the highest ranking warrior in the kingdom, entered and instilled the fear of God into my brothers to teach them a lesson. He was a pair of wide glaring red eyes, a flaring and ringed set of nostrils, a thick mane of dreadlocks, arms thick and tattooed, and he stood seven feet tall. During the worst of my eldest brothers’ mischief, I recall Toumak making an entrance such as this. The two were taken beyond the gold tapestry that divided the dining hall from the main parlor. There was the harsh sound of a heavy handed slap, but there was no shouting. It was over. I wondered what could possibly withstand a smack from Uncle Toumak’s calloused hands. Those hands, surrogates of my father’s, straightened out my two oldest brothers from that point on.

They entered, their faces flushed, humiliated, their vigor blunted. From then on, they focused on their duties and no longer mixed in their plans to escape for half the day.

When I was six I rode with my brothers for the first time. I had by then lost my fear of a mehra’s sheer size and shared a small one with my brother Kuba. A grey beauty with black socks and curled horns, we named my mehra Nanui. Darlian was only a year older than me, not quite yet old enough to hold the reins, and so he shared Seleth’s steed, Treetop, a male with a shiny brown coat with spots of white and pale horns against his large head.

In another year, Darlian was old enough to take the reins, and so Darlian and I shared Nanui as we rode into the thick wild jungle, the two youngest of the terrible six. My memories of that time are still very good, the sensation of it still aglow with life. I love to recall our mud fights and games of tag within the deep green mists parted by dusty sunrays cast over thick soft ferns. Ashuta called to us to explore her. I was captured by these jungles and giant moss-covered rocks and the towering buttress roots of bulky trees over deep forest floors.

I recall the sound of our mehra’s hooves digging up the moist red dirt as we ventured out on our own to command Nanui’s respect as well as the respect of one another. Over time my brother and I switched off the lead position riding our animal, and together we learned how to find our way about the thickness of Arkaya. By the time I was eight, Darlian and I frequented our favorite watering holes during the hot summers. In the winters, which were cold enough for fur boots, we explored the edges of the city. We ventured sometimes into Arkaya’s busy center to see the travelers, the dark faces of Bantu, their ornate long lances, exotic blow guns, and darts being sold along with jewelry we sometimes bought for our mother.

Mainly, however, Darlian and I kept to the woodland, where beneath the softly illuminant depths of Arkaya’s rich canopies, we explored and played our games. I loved it!

In time, our elder brothers mellowed and became more reliable. They showed us more about how to ride, the subtleties of how to track animals, how to fish, how to climb rocks and carve a dart, and which plants to use as poison or food. Every day we rode, pushing deeper and deeper, getting closer to the monolithic fence that divided our protected world of youthful abandon and curiosity from the dangerous world of harsh reality for which Toumak felt we were greatly unprepared.

Upon laying eyes on the great fence, its massive sequoia logs buttressed by stone watch towers, crowded by jungle mists and vines, I was filled with awe. I wondered if I would ever be brave enough to venture beyond that mysterious barrier. Would being made a warrior make me worthy, like my brothers bragged that they were already?

Still though, the lands behind my father’s fence were not entirely tame. When caught leaving the homestead, Darlian and I were often forced to ride with a larger company, usually our brothers. Unfortunately that meant we were the lowest in the chain of command on such rides and had to endure the dominance games always played among us.

We all stopped one day along a steep switchback of a hillside that had a clear view of the great log fence right before us. Further in the distance, the ramparts could be seen, including the tiny figures of warriors standing watch along the parapets.

“Would you go past the gate, Boutage?” Kuba asked.

Boutage smirked and glanced back at him. “I already have at least a hundred times.”

We were all wide-eyed with admiration.

“What’s over there?” I asked, seeing something moving in the brush.

He looked at me, devilishly, and then glanced at Minot. “Manju tigers, all hungry for young Khoorlrhani meat. Ha!”

I swallowed, trying to believe he was only joking.

“There’s no such thing!” yelled Darlian.

“Of course there are. Don’t fool yourself. There are quite a few Dar,” Minot said.

I sat behind Darlian, who was a few inches taller than me, on Nanui. We both looked beyond the fence and into the mists of the open land. From over his brown shoulder I looked deeply into the mists beyond that line.

“Shoot, a manju tiger is the last thing I’d be worried about over there, Darlian,” Seleth muttered. He snapped a bite free from a fist full of dry meat and passed the meat to Boutage.

“There hasn’t been a raider seen this close in four years, Seleth,” Minot corrected him. He pointed upward, to the snow-capped mountains. Seleth looked at Minot, and then nodded.

“They’ll come down soon,” Seleth said, chewing. Seleth’s hair was straight like a Mayak’s, like our enemy’s. He was often teased for this, and it angered him.

“I’ll be ready for them,” Boutage growled, and then he glared at Minot. Boutage was dark skinned and thick like a grown man, his arms full and defined. Boutage had indeed encountered Mayak before, and once was even by kidnapped them. He had escaped, and in a manner that earned him the nickname “the black diamond,” a story to tell later.

“They won’t need to come down if the agreements are kept, Seleth,” Minot said.

“You mean if we keep paying them stocks of our food,” Kuba said, stirring up the debate.

“Let’s ride,” Minot groaned, annoyed.

Darlian and I said nothing and fell in behind these two as we descended back into the jungle. I looked behind us to eye the great fence as it sank from view.

To say the least, my brothers argued a lot. They were, after all, Khoorlrhani: hot tempered and opinionated.

“It is an agreement for peace, the master’s great plan,” Minot growled, taking the bait as we rode along a rocky stream.

“You mean to make us cowards, to make our father a fool,” Boutage shot back.

“No, to stop killing each other,” Minot said.

“I’m fine with killing Mayak. You are the dreamer, peace maker Minot,” Boutage shot back. “Father always thought you were.”

“You are short sighted, a narrow minded ogre, Boutage. Mother always thought you were,” Minot returned without skipping a beat.

This same pattern was oft repeated: hard verbal attacks taken in jest or seriously depending on their tolerance that day, and sometimes they would yell and knock each other off their animals. Seleth and Kuba would then have to separate them, reminding them that they were brothers.

They were both hot headed, but Boutage fast became the tyrant among us. He took after the Khoorlrhani-Tah, our father. Minot, although known for his quick temper, was nevertheless regarded as having a more even disposition and displayed the characteristics of my mother. Although she had a calm reserve about her, Suwan was as formidable as our father. Minot was dark, tall, and slender. He had a neatly trimmed long mane of dark and twisted hair tipped with dull green dye. Minot, like Seleth, had our mother’s thin facial features. Minot’s eyes were large and dark and his cheekbones deep. He wore thick beaded bracelets around strong forearms, and two gold hoops decorated his earlobes. The only traits my two eldest brothers shared were the deep ridge of their brow, a deeply brooding Khoorlrhani gaze, and our father’s hands.

Boutage, heavy with large shoulders and arms, was a head shorter than Minot. His head, a round weighty thing held by a thick strong set of shoulders that obscured his neck, was shaven, a length of his scalp dyed red across it and tucked behind his ivory ringed ears to denote junior rank in our father’s personal guard. Boutage’s eyes, like our father’s, often betrayed his shifting moods: rage, ambition, and deep concentration. Boutage was full of heart and Minot contemplative.

They had fought on a number of occasions, and each had overcome the other, Minot through stealth and grace and Boutage by brute force and determination. In the end they were always again brothers. During the worst of it, however, Master Paen would always happen by. He would get word somehow.

“Nothing remains unsettled between you. That is the rule,” Master Paen said this to us on more than one occasion. “The lines we draw in the sand cut us off from the wealth of our knowing ourselves.”

“We’ve only forgotten that the Mayak were once our brothers,” he told me. “Your brothers carry on just like the first sons of the first tah. No one see’s this though. They can’t step back and see it and do what is right.”

“Why are they always fighting?” I asked once, troubled by the violence between Minot and Boutage.

“Oh, to uphold identities, to passionately have a side, a point of view, something to stand for,” he murmured as we strolled along the creek near our dihj. He studied the white orchids growing along a length of thick bushes beside us.

He knew that I, being only eight, did not understand and so he elaborated, “As you live and grow, you will begin to hold on to what appears to you. You will protect everything you love and lament its passing. Sometimes, Jeshoya, you will not notice that what you protect is just an idea of who you think you are. You will chase after more ideas and defend against losing the ones you have.”

“Like my butterfly collection?” I asked, recalling how I had refused to let him throw it out as he insisted I start a less murderous hobby.

“Ah-ha! Yes!” His eyes lit up and he laughed. “Your idea of art! What if I was to take that nasty, albeit colorful, collection of bug carcasses from you? You would protest even more and then be sad to not have it, and your days would seem empty until you started another collection, right? He picked a white flower that stood out to me as we passed. I nodded.

“So that means your collection gives you meaning. Oh, what would you do without it? Well if you could remember the time before having it, then perhaps you could ask, ‘Would that be so bad? Did those dead bugs make me who I am?’ Who are we before we possess things and have ideas? Isn’t that person more our true self to already be enjoyed without needing things or events or ideas to make it enjoyable? Aren’t all these ideas we desire a way to posses ourselves and others, to only selfishly delight and be of use only to ourselves? Who is that self that we are pleasing here? That is the more puzzling question.”

Master Paen then pushed the stem of the flower into my hair behind the ear.

“Your brothers want life to go according to how they see it, and if life does not look that way for any single moment they get angry, frustrated at what they think it implies about them and what they think they deserve.”

“Like Father,” I murmured.

“Like your father, exactly. Like everyone though.” And he drew a circle around us to imply the whole of the kingdom. His finger then stopped, pointed at me, and touched my nose.

“Except you, Master. Why are you not like this?” I asked.

“Because I can see it all so differently, as though I had great big diamonds for eyes instead of those coals that are stuck in your brothers’ heads.”

I would always laugh when I was with him. The weight of the world would lift suddenly because he spoke the truth, and he lit the sky with his presence.

The master told me that there was no difference between us and the Mayak. As we passed by another clearing and viewed the great mountain beyond that fence from whence they came, the master said this: “This war between Khoorlrhani and Mayak began with a disagreement between brothers. You didn’t know that, eh?”

“No,” I said. We walked together through a grove en route to the palace where he would leave me.

“You haven’t heard this story? Yes, all wars start this way, with brothers refusing to see beyond their disagreements and ideas. Let me tell you the story, the story of the first tah,” the master said.

We sat on a nice flat rock with just enough room for both me and him to sit. The master looked off into the distance at the approach of a golden sunset, and he then said:

Ages ago, there was only one tribe of Genia, the Great One Land of the world. The world was nameless and was only known as the world appearing for the living things to dwell within. Man flourished. By firelight the people told stories as a means to remember and honor where they came from, the source. It was said that the first man lived in the depths of the valley of Arkaya. He had a wife and together they birthed the first generation, the one tribe. The ancient stories passed down by word of mouth say that the unified tribe of men flourished under a single tah, a wise man who recognized the Goddess Ashuta as everything.

“Now do you know who Ashuta is?” the master asked me, testing to see that I did not let my attention wander.

“Of course! She is all of the jungle,” I said.

“Ahh, but she’s more, Jeshibian! She’s that mountain over there, the sun, moons, and the stars in the sky and…she is even you,” the master said, and my mind stopped, my attention consumed by his bright radiance. I smiled my then mostly gapped and crooked toothy smile and turned to face Paen more squarely. And just how exactly was he going to explain this to me? How could She be me?

He went on.

The tah, or the man with open eyes, could see Ashuta’s form, God’s form, dancing everywhere within the jungle and knew her to be the divine, the source of life. Though he was not a perfect man, Nayogi, this first tah, loved Ashuta and this love sustained his people.

“I know you are everything that is! Oh, and how you appear,’ he cried, ‘taking form and moving it, being all of it simultaneously. You laugh and play with us, your children, as us, bending, whirling, and dancing! It is your knee my daughter skins when she trips! Your tears she cries! It is you, your heart as the inspiration in the bosom of my son in watching the moons with your own eyes! Oh great one, yours is the beauty splendorous beyond words, beyond feeling, beyond touch, taste, and desire. I am dying to be yours! And yet here I am, freely lived by you who appears, whimsically dying and being born yet always divine. My heart is yours! I love you and my love is yours. Oh and how you know this already for how could it not be? What a mystery, this game of appearances!”

And Nayogi did love her. He could not explain his knowing the divine in this way. It was perplexing to others, the trickiest of all riddles, but he knew that loving her made none of it a problem. The expression of his love was barely on the tip of his tongue. He was only the natural expression of God. Nayogi relied on that, on her, completely. Though he was a man, Nayogi deeply suspected that he was not separate from Ashuta, and though he loved his life he gave it entirely away in his contemplation of her. In everything he did, he saw her, recognized her. There was no line that held anything apart. It was all Her. Because he saw life in this way, Ashuta’s divine qualities became more and more Nayogi’s, and the good tah enjoyed a great intuition. He called this intuition his diamond eyes.

Nayogi saw the world with diamond eyes, a gift from the goddess that revealed the world as mere play of her. In this way Nayogi lived with detachment and humor in his separate appearance. He did not struggle for control for he knew control did not exist.

His children, however, were frightened. They only knew themselves as they appeared, in an individuated form, separate, limited and threatened by all other entities of the divine play.

Then the master affectionately asked me, using my nickname, “Do you follow me, Jeshoya?”

I only nodded, so entranced by him that I could not speak.

“Nayogi, Ashuta called, “you must watch over your children, guide them and keep them from harm. Teach them all you know about loving me. Keep me in their hearts and minds. Bring them my love. You must tend to them. This is your duty.”

Ashuta blessed Nayogi and opened his eyes to see the world and to understand its nature. He understood the properties of form, and with his creative spirit he understood many of its secrets. He brought much to his people whom he faithfully served. Through his insight, he discovered fire, which kept the beasts of the jungle in full view at night, and Nayogi also created the spear to enable humans to hunt for meat and fight off the predators of the jungle.

As other men appeared, they turned to Nayogi, relied upon him for their survival. The men and women of the valley cooperated with one another, shared the knowledge of the tah, and in harmony they survived harsh winters and predators together.

Nayogi was decorated with feathers given to him by his people, who wanted to be with him, to know his gift of diamond eyes. They served Nayogi and Nayogi served them. The circle of mankind was unified and it endured for centuries, eons. All were of and lived within this circle of illumination and loved one another with innocence, openness, and with bravery, standing alongside their tah, who lived many hundreds of years.

“Master Paen, hundreds of years!? How is that possible?” I questioned.

“I don’t know! Ask Ashuta. I certainly do not envy Nayogi, would you?” Paen said.

“What?” I queried, not quite getting that Paen was only teasing me.

“Never mind. Anyway…” He cleared his throat and resumed.

Ashuta was all the tah ever spoke about, and he taught his people many lessons of how she was everything, including their own bodies and minds. The tiniest particle of them was of Her!

“We must regard all others in our lives as the same heart,” he would teach, wanting them all to let go to and enjoy this reality.

They trusted him, and respected him for he had diamond eyes, the eyes that saw no boundary.

Nayogi surrendered perfectly to the goddess and stayed in Ashuta’s grand room of mindless abiding, which dwarfed Nayogi’s point of view, reducing it to nothing.

Then Nayogi was gone. There was no one. Then Ashuta was gone. There was only Brightness of Being, the nameless One.

Nayogi, alive and yet somehow dead, stayed still, and that grin that was once Ashuta’s grin was now his own. Nayogi wore that smile. There was no place to hide, no space set off by boundaries, no personal self, no death, only divine consciousness. Nayogi was that.

He was love itself, boundless in its glory! He enjoyed the vast play of light taking place as many worlds, including the world in which he appeared. Only the tah knew no dilemma, took no refuge through identity, only laughing while being Being himself!

In Genia, the Great One Land, this time was a grand time of loving, creation, and sharing. It was the golden age, as the one tribe looked up to the tah who was true and the tah’s children loved him as though he were a god! And he was, for his disposition was that of the eternal one who moved through him now unfettered. The tah loved his children, for he knew that they were the same heart, the same God that he was.

The golden age of the awakened tah began to tarnish, however. Nayogi had two sons, Khoorlrhan and Mayakti, bitter rivals, and it was the loss of love between these two men that, like an axe, drove the awful wedge of differences within the land of Genia. Khoorlrhan and Mayakti, both passionate men, were jealous of one another, and instead of being content with what they had, what their father provided for them, they desired more! They competed in every way and always wished to have the circumstances of the other brother’s life.

When Nayogi-Tah died, his eldest son, Khoorlrhan, became tah. His attention, however, was not on Nayogi or Ashuta, but rather, he was consumed with bettering himself in comparison to Mayakti, his brother. Khoorlrhan was too proud, too ambitious, and Mayakti too vain, too calculating.

Nayogi warned them, “My sons, you must hold your attention on the divine, the source itself, not purely the modifications of it. It is unwise to obsess on this and that the way you do. The treasures you seek in your lives will only serve to distract you more and more from her ultimate form. If you forget that your heart is entirely Ashuta’s, entirely divine, you will lose your humor. You will suffer limitation upon limitation. Your mind will become an abstract prison for you to dwell separately from Me. There you will be exploited by other entities that will use your tendencies against you and you will suffer unnecessary drama.”

He looked to his eldest, Khoorlrhan, and Nayogi pleaded, “Our people must continue to enjoy this true connection to Ashuta, and therefore you must serve her only and in doing that you will see that in truth you and all beings are divine. Neither that which you can acquire nor experience can compare to this understanding, and to assume that any such a thing can ever compare to this sight, the sight with diamond eyes, will be your undoing and the ruination of our circle!”

Nayogi begged for his son to hear him, but Khoorlrhan could not be convinced. He viewed his father as a sentimental fool. Khoorlrhan was stubborn, hypnotized by the spectrum of possibilities of objects and sensual circumstances within the light play of Ashuta. He was convinced that, by besting his brother at all things, he would be happy. So he solely pursued victory and attainment in his life, squandering his father’s gifts of understanding to serve his own purpose.

On the fateful day when Khoorlrhan became tah, wisdom was forgotten. Still, the children of Genia looked to him with open hearts, but in return Khoorlrhan lied to them to suit his desires. He convinced the women that they should please him, and he convinced the men that they should honor and respect him without question. They feared his wrath if they did not for he was thought to be the same man as his father. Tragically, they were wrong.

Master Paen told me this tale lovingly, his one leg crossed over the other, shoulders bent forward to explain to me not only about my brothers but also about my father and what was happening between them. How long and passionately Paen worked—seemingly lifetimes! He not only worked to free for my father but for those before my father as well. He began on that very day teaching me the timeless lesson of all generations, teaching me to see, to choose enlightenment instead of dominion born of presumed separateness over the land. This is why he was here! The master was the One! Ashuta’s agent! Placing a hand on my shoulder, the master went on to tell the tale.

Mayakti was young and beautiful, and Nayogi loved to hear Mayakti sing and play his gunbri in his courtroom. Mayakti’s eyes were deep and dark, his hair long and twisted in even locks, and his form slender and nubile. He was not like his brother Khoorlrhan, who was mighty, broadly built, and bald.

Khoorlrhan was strong. He had large competent hands, large arms, and a dark and stern face. Khoorlrhan was built for work and Mayakti to inspire, and that’s what they did respectively. Khoorlrhan worked the fields with the tah while Mayakti wrote songs for him.

Nayogi instilled in his sons that which they were capable of mastering. In the fields, he taught Khoorlrhan how to grow and care for crops. He also taught him to hunt for meat and defend the kingdom from predators. He gave his beloved first son the knowledge of fire. “Which will illuminate our village with a circle of sight,” Nayogi told Khoorlrhan. “You will bare this most important responsibility to care for your brothers and watch over them. You must teach them and your sons everything that I have taught you to keep the tribe unified. You must keep the beasts, the manju tigers from our villages. You must keep our circle lit, Khoorlrhan! This is your duty. It must always be done perfectly, lovingly, honestly, and as service. Your commitment to this must be as great as my love for you.”

The tah taught his second eldest son the art of inspiration through music. He saw in his son’s heart the ability to express the beauty of Ashuta. In the court of Nayogi, Mayakti would play for his father and many guests who sat on great cushions in a large circle. Mayakti’s songs were also sung in the fields as workers toiled and abided in loving remembrance of the sacred.

Nayogi would instruct his son, “When you sing, you must let go of yourself completely, so much so that no ear can possibly mistake who it is that really sings and really plays. It is Ashuta! You will bare this most important responsibility to inspire your brothers and remind them that they are the same One, the same heart. You must keep the truth in my court. Using inspiration, you must fend off the fear and doubt of your brothers and keep them in the light of truth with your art. Each song you write must be made attractive in this way for all to pass down the generations when I’m gone. This is how you will serve.”

I thought of my brothers, how instead of doing what Paen asked they competed with one another. I saw how this error had been passed down. Paen went on:

The tah warned both of his sons to stay clear of the haunted swamps that were beyond the royal jungles, at the edge of the circle of illumination. These were the forbidden woods as they were the gathering places of lost souls, entities that interfered with the living. And Mayakti and Khoorlrhan stayed clear of these places in their travels for many years.

The day came, however, when they lost their respect for those woods and began to take shortcuts through the swamps in order to make their way back home from their wandering. These two terrible sons began the journey of their own independence, of asserting and then insisting on their separateness.

As Mayakti was walking the forbidden woods, he met the twin snakes, Mandee and Jandee, tricksters Mayakti’s father warned him about. As Mayakti passed them, he paid them no attention. However, ignoring them would not be enough.

“What is this I hear of your brother’s purpose being greater than your own?” Jandee the snake of lies asked.

“You see,” Paen said, leaning in. “The twin snakes will try to complicate the world of their victim. It only takes merely acknowledging them, Jeshoya! It begins with Jandee, the trickiest of the pair, who, by appearing before you, makes you believe you are separate. It is a lie that you are separate and you must remember this. Then Mandee fills you with fear and desire, makes you worried and impassioned. Together they consume the delicacy of your attention as if it were an egg.”

“What if one does not acknowledge her?” I asked, trying to change the story.

“Acknowledge who?” the master asked calmly, crossing his legs and then leaning into me, challenging me to understand him.

“Jandee!” I exclaimed.

“Now, exactly what is a Jandee?” the master teased.

“You just told me, the snake of lies!”

“Well, who is being lied to? Do you know who that is?” Paen teased.

I leaned forward against him, a bit feisty and angry. He was making me work for the rest of the story. I pondered the question, picked my nose, fidgeted my feet, and patted my chin. He stayed quiet as the breezes ran through the nearby treetops. The sky was turning deeper hues of orange. Finally I took a stab at his question.

“Master, I suppose no one?” I shrugged. Master Paen put out his hand for me. I put my smaller one in his and he clasped it in a congratulatory hand shake.

“Good job,” he said. “Jandee is the very lie itself that you are separate. Jandee is a quick and subtle suggestion, so easily overlooked. Very good, Jeshibian!”

Nodding, the master went on:

So, upon assuming Jandee was true, Mayakti became afraid. When Mandee struck fear and insecurity into the heart, life then became an impossible riddle to solve. Mayakti kept walking, not listening to the beast of the swamp. Rather, he focused his mind on the task at hand, which was to deliver his new song to the tah who would be waiting for him at home.

“Why does Khoorlrhan hate you, Mayakti,” Mandee the snake of fear asked, her black tongue slithering. “Tell us why! Tell us why!”

Mayakti ignored them and was soon far beyond them; however, their words penetrated his mind and remained in his person. As Mayakti played his gunbri, he hesitated and became stuck, self-concerned and bewildered. He played his instrument sloppily, without focus, and his voice fell flat upon the ears of Nayogi.

“What is it my son?” Nayogi asked him, who had noticed Mayakti was struggling as he tried to understand the questions put to him by the twin snakes.

“Father,” Mayakti began, “am I not useful?”

Disturbed by such a question, Nayogi leaned forward in his chair to inspect his son. He could see sadness and doubt in his heart.

“You play your role wonderfully, my son. Why are you self conscious?”

Afraid that his father might suspect where he had been and that he had disobeyed him…

“Oh!” I exclaimed at seeing how this was unfolding. “Mayakti lied,” I said.

“Yes!” Paen exclaimed.

Paen was teaching me that, in asserting my separateness, the world would become complicated for me like it was for my brothers. It was a disturbing story and yet I was intrigued and motioned for the master to continue.

It was a trick of the snakes, for Mayakti was never before moved to lie. “I wish only to be sure that you are pleased, Father,” Mayakti said. He swallowed and looked away, ashamed. Nayogi, not entirely believing his son, cocked one grey eyebrow.

“I have never given you reason to not trust me. You need not lie to me, my son, for I love you beyond words. You shock me with this. Tell me where you have been?”

The tah stroked his beard, thoughtful in the wake of his son’s silence, then his eyebrow arched.

“Ahh… Have you been to the swamps?” And the tah beamed, smiling. ‘What an awful place, eh? Come let us laugh about it and write a new song for amusement,’ Nayogi said, trying to cheer his son up. But upon being discovered, Mayakti became afraid! The spell of the asps was now an awful spiraling mess! It was as if Jandee and Mandee burrowed into the young one’s mind and created a maze of confusion and doubt.

Mayakti could not laugh for he was self conscious, the asps having veered his attention away from what is true.

“So, great Khoorlrhani sage, do you know what is true? I’ll give you a hint. It is what Nayogi knew,” Paen asked.

“There is not a separate one!” I exclaimed. “But how can this be for this tree is right here, Master. I can feel it right here! I am not the tree,” I said as I ran my fingers against the bark of a tree growing beside me.

“It is all light, all of it the same, including you, and with all as the One, there is no one who is separate, no grounds whatsoever to be self conscious. That is the truth, and knowing that most deeply is the secret to my diamond eyes,” he said. He then went on with the story:

There was no one to be self-concerned to begin with! Mayakti forgot this though and indeed felt separate. He thusly felt he must solve problems as presented by the asps. For the first time in his life, Mayakti felt terribly separate, a separate individual to be compared against another! Mayakti, seated before Nayogi, feared his own father, feared God! He saw his father as an other, and because Nayogi could see him, Mayakti became even more afraid, ashamed, and protective.

Knowing that his father, the tah, could see him through and through, Mayakti still lied to him and would not confess his fear.

“I have not been in the swamps, Father.”

No matter what the tah said to reassure his son that Mayakti was the same heart as God himself, Mayakti only doubted it more. Nayogi’s head sunk. He had lost his dear son to the spell of self possession.

But his other son was also in danger at that very moment. Khoorlrhan was cutting bamboo while he traversed thick mud. He traveled near the bog and was nearly out of it when he heard the voice of Jandee: “So what is this that I hear about your brother’s purpose being greater than yours?”

Khoorlrhan stopped cutting. He looked behind him to see the asp coiled on a nearby log. In disbelief, he placed his bulgy fists against his thick hips and stared with large and clear brown eyes at the black snake, unafraid. He laughed loudly, throwing his shiny bald head back.

“Demon snake, you mean to trick me, don’t you? You will have me walk your dark paths with you, enter your maze of lies? I do not think so.” Khoorlrhan held up his blade, meaning to cleave Jandee in half. He did not see Mandee hiding at his ankles, and she, queen of fear, flared her red hood of death and hissed at him.

“You are eager to die!” she said, bearing her venomous fangs, startling Khoorlrhan and making him drop his scimitar. He fell on his back into the mud and could not get away. His eyes were wide with fright as the asp loomed over him, black eyes glistening. She swayed to and fro, dancing her black dance.

“Sister Mandee, release him,” Jandee, said. “He does not see that I was only doing him a favor in telling him about the lies his brother has been spreading. Perhaps Mayakti is right, though, as there does not seem to be a brave bone in Khoorlrhan’s body after all. Look at him trembling before your small form. He is ten times your size! Perhapsssss the tah has him working the fieldssss and lighting torchesss to save his feelingssssss. Poor stupid Khoorlrhan. Perhaps Mayakti was right after all—he is uselesssssss. Release him sister, let us go.”

The master’s rendition of Jandee’s voice sent chills down my spine. I knew he was telling me this story to prepare me for my own eventual meeting with these characters. I had hoped that day would not come. Still knowing that I was slightly shaken by the story, and despite the darkening sky, the master went on.

And Mandee subsided, and she and her sister slithered away. Khoolrhan’s mind was on fire. He hung his head and wept from the worst sting he had ever experienced, the sting of tremendous doubt and fear of death, a fear he had never known until then. In the fields that day, the tah showed Khoorlrhan more about growing food, how to do it with greater care, but Khoorlrhan did not seem to be listening. Instead, he seemed angry, defensive, and disagreeable.

“What is troubling you, Khoorlrhan?” the tah asked.

“Father, do you not believe that I am capable of this?! Why do you criticize me so much? I am not so stupid, if you would only believe it!”

Khoorlrhan swallowed a lump in his throat, the lump of fearing that his father did not value him. What a silly assumption! It was a lie! The tah was shocked and almost could not respond. After taking a deep breath, the tah merely said, “No, son. You are not stupid. I am sorry for insulting you.” Khoorlrhan, however, refused to believe his father and turned his back on him to finish working alone. The tah begged his son to release his fear and trust him.

“You are my beloved son,” he pleaded, but to no avail. Khoorlrhan was full of doubt and pride, his world made complicated. He began to trust no one. The tah left Khoorlrhan in the fields to work alone, saddened that his oldest son had fallen into the trap of the asps, the trap of separate identity.

Soon the two brothers lost their interest in serving their father. They no longer yearned to be in his company, and instead, they worked on their separate strategies to solve the dilemma of their self-consciousness. Mayakti focused on creating an image of his self that proved he was just as strong and skilled as Khoorlrhan, and Khoorlrhan created one to prove he was just as beautiful and talented as Mayakti. They forgot that their roles were suited for them, to serve mankind, to serve Ashuta and their own awakening to their true nature!

Nayogi cursed the twin asps as he lay on his deathbed. He knew that Jandee and Mandee, the snakes of fear and deception, had poisoned the minds of his sons and pitted them against one another. It was too late to help them for he was old and worn and soon his body would fade from the world. The destiny of a divided kingdom was already established, as the brothers’ love for one another was forgotten. In forgetting their love, they forgot Ashuta as they built the walls of separation between them and made demands that the divine mother serve their desires and aid them in victory against one another.

“Ashuta, make me desirable, make me beautiful, make me talented, make me better than my brother,” Khoorlrhan prayed.

“Ashuta, make me strong, make me brave, make me a skilled man, make me more fierce than my brother,” Mayakti prayed, and the goddess, entertained by the play, answered them both.

She brought grace to Khoorlrhan’s form and hardened Mayakti’s. They were both attractive warriors but now also bitter rivals. Many of the women in the tribe noticed Khoorlrhan, including the stunningly beautiful Urso, Mayakti’s very own wife. She became drunk on the sight of Khoorlrhan, the new tah, and seemed to be in love with him. This outraged Mayakti and so he took his wife and children to the far reaches of the kingdom to live with them alone, keeping his wife far from the tah. Sick with love for Urso, Khoorlrhan thought of nothing but her. He resented his brother for taking Urso away, and in his bitter distraction, the circle of illumination was neglected. There was no warrior to guard its dimming boundaries, and many suffered because of the new tah’s preoccupations.

The manju tigers of the jungle entered the unguarded circle and killed many, including Mayakti’s wife Urso and their children. Angered, Mayakti swore to avenge their deaths. Mayakti no longer had a brother, and many, put off by Khoorlrhan, followed Mayakti to the northern hills. There Mayakti learned to hunt the snow-covered woodlands.

His gunbri grew old and worn as he no longer played it, and so not only those left behind in the old kingdom but those who followed Mayakti to the highlands never heard the song of heart again as Mayakti learned to build and fight. Ashuta had answered his prayer and made Mayakti the fiercest warrior ever seen, and he was the tah of a new tribe called the Mayak.

Khoorlrhan, drunk on the sour wine of his ego, played his own gunbri, singing songs that expressed his own beauty, his vanity.

Sadly, man became preoccupied with dividing the Great One Land and with dominance over one another, competing for resources. Nayogi’s enlightened kingdom faded as it became common for mankind to settle for mere survival with no understanding of Ashuta’s light play, no enlightenment. Tah after tah of both tribes, for thousands of years, struggled in vain to understand the real truth. They could not see as Nayogi saw. Instead, they were only bewildered, afraid, and in anguish brought upon by their greed and war mongering and by forgetting the God knowledge of Nayogi-Tah. They essentially exiled the true tah from the kingdom of the Great One Land. With Khoorlrhan and Mayakti mortal enemies, the one tribe of man became divided into the two main tribes: the Khoorlrhani and the Mayak.

After that, we were silent again. The moons were but two silver crescents in a dark indigo sky. Before us were the random silent explosions of fireflies floating in the warm Arkayan air. I looked at the silhouette of the great mountain ranges in the distance colored by the remains of twilight’s glow.

My heart was heavy and I sulked. I recognized that this story was about all of us turning away, and I was bewildered by the lack of a way it all could be undone. Master Paen took my chin with his curled index finger.

“Don’t you worry, Jeshoya? I have been showing you all along how to see past Jandee—by noticing me. One day you will see it all as just a story and you will enjoy playing your part as much as I do.”

“Do you promise, Master?” I asked.

“Indeed I do.”

“Will the tribes remember love again?” I sobbed, and the master took me under his arm.

“As long as at least one of them on each side loves the other, yes. You will see it all come to pass, my dear boy. You will truly see me and you will see it all.”

“Master, you are like Nayogi! Why are you not the tah?” I coughed and wiped my tears away.

“HA! Don’t you worry at all. You will see it all. You will.”

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