Red Twilight the Weaver chapter 29

Chapter 29

Prophecy of a Rising Sun

For many years to pass Jessica the Weaver traveled the planes, she has a sickness of the soul, and she knows it well. She searches the land for every sage and Wiseman she can track down. she asks all of them "how is one to heal a broken soul?" Finding no one on her native realm, she outreaches her search into the Never.

She would return home in the winter of the 40th year thereafter. She does not return to her people the Kobolts. She travels to the easternmost lands, the place she once knew as Silkland, now called Dagger Pass, the Rabbits country. but even a generation later and a world apart she finds she is not alone.

Jessica stalks the long rice grass of the lowland, dodging marching rabbits dressed in thick metal armor and demon mask. Jessica sits and waits until the sun starts to fall out of the sky. At last another kobolt comes into sight. She has white hair and a pink nose, a long tail and rounded features. She is the spitting image of Rodney. She walks with a baby hidden inside her robe.

"Jessica the Weaver?" the white-haired kobolt ask.

Jessica stands up. "I am."

The girl speaks up, running over to the Weaver "I need your wisdom. Kuro, the rabbit king, has ordered all the girl children in the land to be put to death. how am I to protect my young from them?"

Jessica places her hand on the girl's arms to calm her "first you must tell me; what is it that you require, for you to live alongside your children or for your children to live to birth children of their own?"

the white-furred girl thinks for a moment "I want my children to have children."

Jessica nods with a smile "that is the correct answer." Jessica looks down at the rustling in the girl's robe. "Show me the child please."

The women opens her robe to show a tiny girl wrapped in a blanket tied to the mother's chest. Jessica places a hand on the baby's head rubbings it's hair back "she has red hair. Did the father have red hair?"

Humbled the white-furred women blushes "I am a dancer. I have had many partners. I regret to say I can't place the father. there for I do not know."

Jessica looks deeply at the girl's eyes studying her "you are the daughter of Meredith the Illusionist are you not?"

"My name is Madeline; my mother was Meredith the Illusionist. are we..."

Jessica stops her "I was friends with The Great and Powerful Rodney."

"what do you require of me?" Madeline asks

Jessica takes a few steps back "start pulling up the grass around your feet, weave it into a covered basket. I will hold the baby as you do." Madeline works as she is instructed. Jessica holds the child. "Madeline, do you speak Koji, the rabbit's tongue?"

"I do."

"That is good." Jessica lowers her eyes as she looks into the future "Can you read Koji?"

"I cannot."

Jessica nods "I understand." Jessica's eyes burn for a moment as the future becomes clear to her "Aki, the Rabbit queen had a son and a daughter. The boy was called Son; the girl was called Moon. The girl died yesterday. what is your child's name?"

"I call her Heaven."

Jessica grins "Interesting, in Koji; a single character represents the moon and heaven. Once the basket is forged, I want you to write the child's name across her nose. You will spell it out in koji. I will show you how it is spelled." Jessica mounts her staff in the ground and begins to draw.

As the two later Madeline questions "Jessica, are you truly Jessica the Weaver. I was told you died in battle at Graywall."

Jessica explains, "that is true. I also did in the battle of Eden. but I am a child of Ceto, the cosmos will not let me stay dead."

"I'm sure I do not understand." Madeline keeps to her labors

"After the basket is complete you will draw this on the girl's nose." Jessica points at the now complete sigle. "you will then hold her to your breast and allow her to taste your milk for the last time. You will walk with the young to the river on the other end of this wetland. You will place Heaven in the basket and set it in the water. The water is life; the swamp is the womb; the river is the birth canal. You will watch as Heaven vanishes around the bank. Next, you will turn to face north. you will board a fairy going into Wolf country. Your life in Dagger Pass with the Usagi is over. once you have surrendered Heaven to the water she will no longer be a Kobolt; she will be a Rabbit."

Madeline locks eyes with Heaven; her voice shakes as she struggles with her breathing "must it be this way?"

"No," Jessica explains as she starts to walk to the road "you can choose to walk away now, go back to the tea shop, continue dancing and hide your newborn. If that is your chose, in six moons on the evening of Hethen Day, you will be found dead, murdered by a man that could not pay for your services. Heaven will die with you."

With that Jessica returns home, a small dugout with a waterfall at her back. She has gathered a grand selection of alchemy components that fill one side of her den. A bed made of straw sits off to one side, and as many scrolls, as she could carry crowed out much of the rest of her living space, Jessica has become a pack rat.

Jessica lights an oil lamp then unrolls a scroll to record her thoughts

'All that I have seen in the last forty sessions. None of it was a mistake. Kari gave me the sickness of the soul, but it was with the anticipation that I would find a cure. Kari to suffers the same sickness. I have traveled the Never, I have made preparations, looked into the future, Kari's gamble may yet work. from time to time my prophetic power confuses me, but today it is most clear.'

'Yggdrasil birthed the four gardeners, the gardeners cut from raw cloth the Asgard, and the Celestials, the Celestials governed the Telestrals and the Zodiac. I house holy blood even if it is of the leastest glory. Gods crowed out space. Lawgivers, order keepers, warriors, judges, Elementalist. all conceivable power is at their command but of all the things that they are Free is not one of them.'

'and so, the majestic blackbird comes to earth with a thorn in his foot to seek out mercy from the smallest of his creations. I can't help but wonder.'

'Yggdrasil, what is she. she is the goddess that birthed the first gods, but what gardener planted the seed from which she sprung? in the time before the time came to these cosmoses where was she? somewhere in the Never is there a place that is not temporal by necessity?'

'why can even us, the eldest of things, circum to sickness? In a world rolled by the laws of biology, the simplest sickness is when two genes encounter each other and take something from the other that is a necessity of life. Horizontal transfer, I think it is called. So, did someone, somehow, take away some peace of Kari?'

'Soon the Moon King will appear in my doorway, hand in hand with The Demon of the Snow, and Belmond son of Belmond, that is the assumption that they will be working under. They will ask me for a magic spell that will force Kari into a temporal state. I will do as I am asked, I will force Kari into the flesh. But that is where my visions end.'