December — The Birth of Life Itself
It was the week before the feast of the Birth of Life, a time when the city of Cré was usually bustling with activity. Everybody rushed to finish the preparations for the feast, get the gifts wrapped, and most importantly, get ready for the big social gathering that happened at the Hearth each year to mark this event.
Aifa and her grandmother had woken up very early that morning, to get to the market before the sun was high up in the sky. They got out of their home at sunrise, bundled in warm winter gear, and found their way to the marketplace through the stone streets of Cré. They walked briskly along narrow walkways, and through arched passageways, and up flights of stairs, they walked so fast Aifa could barely keep up with her grandmother, who had maintained herself in great shape, despite her advanced age.
There were two reasons that allowed this to happen. First, it was a matter of personal pride for every man and woman in the city to take good care of both their body and their mind: the body had to be healthy, tastefully attired and always flawlessly groomed, and the mind had to be clear of distasteful or dismaying thoughts. This was a moral imperative for the elders in particular, since they were to set themselves as examples for the younger generations. Nobody was ever sick in Cré, the advancements of medicine had made ailments of the body a thing of the past. Second, if somebody needed to get anywhere, they had to walk there. The topography of the city did not allow for roadwork accessible by any sort of vehicle. Between the stairs going up the hill, and the passageways at times so narrow one could only squeeze through them sideways, it was not easy to be out of shape in this city and still be able to function.
“Keep up, granddaughter. We don’t want to get there late, all the good stuff will be gone,” the lady admonished, without turning her head.
Her voice betrayed no effort, as if the last three flights of stairs they had just climbed were flat ground. Aifa picked up the pace to catch up with her.
The streets already started getting crowded, filled with the colors and scents of the holiday. There were bakers, carrying their baskets full of still warm bread on their backs, who rushed past them to sell their merchandise door to door. There were silk fabric merchants, praising the softness and delicacy of their fabrics to those who stopped to admire them. There were artisans displaying their crafts and perfumers dabbing scent on small cloth swatches. There were coin minters, and sausage vendors, and farmers with bushels of seasonal fruit, blending into a colorful crowd that moved through the city like rivers through stone canyons.
Everything in Cré was made of stone, because its architecture was meant to last forever. There was no such thing as a temporary structure and most of the dwellings were hundreds, if not thousands of years old.
“Thank goodness we’re almost there,” Aifa's grandmother said, engaging the last flight of stairs that wrapped around an imposing building and exited unexpectedly into the market square. “I told you we’d be late, everybody’s already here.”
“What are we looking for, doyenne?” Aifa asked.
“Fruit, cheese, greenery for the wreaths. White silk thread for your holiday dress. I can’t believe you’re still working on it, you’re going to be still sewing on those last stitches as you’re walking into the Hearth.”
The celebration of the Birth of Life Itself was one of the many holidays during which the city dwellers gave in to self-indulgence. The usual mores regarding self-discipline and restraint went out the window, and were temporarily replaced by sinfully hedonistic excess, mirth, and good cheer driven by the strongest of spirits.
“Oh, dear! I almost forgot the chestnut brandy. Your grandfather would never let me hear the end of it”, Aifa’s grandmother mumbled, grabbing a couple of bottles to add to her shopping basket, which was already almost full and was getting quite heavy.
The market smelled of pine needles, hot spiced tea and fruit pies, the usual blend of scents that accompanied the winter holidays, and especially the feast of the Birth of Life Itself, the day when the community celebrated the Twins’ birthday. Of course, nobody knew when, or even if, the twins had been born; entire philosophical schools spent centuries debating their origin; some thought they had to be born in their bodies at some point in time, others insisted that the two had just been, forever, without beginning or end. That didn’t prevent the good citizens of Cré from celebrating their birthday, which some of the very old manuscripts in the library archives had placed at the beginning of winter, with all the pageantry and excitement the blessing event called for. If other holidays invited to self-reflection and altruism, this one was a feast of pure joy and child-like merriment, and it was so celebrated, no holds barred. Grown men and women walked the crowded streets of Cré munching on candy apples and praline chestnuts, fortified against the cold by the strength of the hard cider in their cups. The city was filled with evergreens, holiday decor, music and laughter during the giant birthday party for the Twins.
The market square was surrounded on three sides by the oldest buildings of Cré, and it marked the old center of the city, the location of the first settlement, which had remained its heart through the millennia of its existence. The Hearth itself was there too, gracing the center of one of the market’s long sides; during the large celebrations the entire plaza became an extension of the ancient hall, a much needed outlet for the overflow of people.
The fourth side of the market, opposite the Hearth of the Gemini, was looking out to the open waters over the old city wall, whose impenetrable fortifications reached hundreds of feet down into the sea, and whose foundation was constantly battered by its merciless waves. The whole city harbor could be seen from there, not too far away, with its ships moored by ropes covered in ice, and projecting a forest of frozen masts and sails onto a somber sky.
Aifa loved the sea with a passion quite difficult to understand for the average citizen of Cré. Ever since its inception, the city had been conceived as a shelter, a fortress against the whims and perils of the restless waters, and with the exception of those who had made braving the waves their life’s work, the populace simply ignored the presence of the sea, comforted by the security of their indestructible haven of stone.
“It runs into your blood,” the grandmother commented as she watched Aifa gape at the rhythmic movement of the waves, which to her sounded almost like a heartbeat.
“What does, doyenne?”
“The sea water,” the grandmother smiled. “It runs in your blood. Mine too. Some of us have been born to it.”
“Don’t you ever wonder what’s out there, under the surface?” Aifa turned towards her grandmother, eyes filled with wonder.
“There is wondering about it,” the grandmother answered cryptically, “and then there is knowing. Always strive for the knowing, granddaughter, and you won’t have to search for the answers to your questions. The answers will find you.”
“What is knowing, doyenne?”
The grandmother didn’t answer.
“Why do you think you are drawn to the sea? Certainly nobody taught you to be curious about it, our culture doesn’t have much interest in studying it.”
“There is something out there that calls out to me,” Aifa said, almost as if in a dream. “I can’t explain why I feel this way, there is no rational explanation to justify it, but I have no doubt there is something out there for me. Something I should learn about.”
“The call of the sea,” the grandmother replied thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t be the first to hear it.”
“What do you know about it, doyenne?”
“There are folk stories, most of which have never been written down. Old wives’ tales say the first settlers found two children with long flowing hair running and playing on the beach early in spring, a boy and girl who looked so much alike it wasn’t easy to tell them apart. The only way to know for sure which one you were talking to was to look into their eyes: the boy’s eyes were blue, the girl’s green.”
“The Twins!” Aifa gasped. “So, do some believe they have come from the sea?”
“Nobody said that, they just said that the children were found on the beach.”
“And then? What happened after that?” Aifa’s eyes widened.
“The villagers thought the poor children were lost, and took them back to the city, where they cared for them, fed them, clothed them, taught them their ways and their laws. Legend says the children matured miraculously fast, and by the end of fall they were all grown up, ready for their life to begin. When the first snow fell, some swore on their lives they saw the two disintegrate into a myriad tiny snowflakes that got carried by the surf back out to sea. Whether that is true or not, it has never been established, but the fact remains the villagers thought the Twins were lost and mourned their passing. The whole village loved them and people were inconsolable, and for three whole months they kept looking for their beloved adopted children and praying that wherever they were, the kindness of nature will keep them safe from harm. Just when they had resigned themselves never to see them again, the Twins returned, healthier and more beautiful than ever, but with no memory of ever having known the villagers at all. So the good people of Cré brought them back into the city, fed them, clothed them and taught them their ways and their laws, and by the time winter drew near, the two disappeared again.”
“So, how come there is no mention of this in the library archives?”
“Anthropologists collected and studied these oral traditions and found no evidence to attest their validity. They concluded the stories were just that, stories.”
“So, how do we know that their birthday is in winter?”
“I’m not sure there is consensus about that either, but there is no harm in celebrating their birth some time, is there?”
“But what if they just materialized, out of nothing, the same way they disappeared?”
“Ah, so you decided to ascribe to that school of thought. There is no proof they are anything other than fully human, you’ll see when they arrive. They eat, they sleep, they feel joy and pain, just like the rest of us.”
“Can they get hurt and die?”
“For that year, yes. There is evidence of several years when that happened. But they always return healthy and unharmed the next spring.”
“What happened during those years when they died, doyenne?” Aifa asked.
The grandmother hesitated before answering, but because their society had based its entire moral code on the pursuit of truth, she continued.
“It wasn’t good, child. It felt like existence itself mourned their passing. There was famine, and drought, and terrible storms, it felt as if the whole balance of nature had been disrupted.”
“Is that why the High Council decided to create the order of the Caretakers?”
“That’s right. You have inherited a great honor. Just in case the Twins get on your last nerve, as they undoubtedly will, always remember that you are not babysitting two obnoxious youths with endless reserves of energy, you are caring for the well-being of life itself.”
Aifa looked out to the open waters, as if to search for that something that kept calling out to her from under their dark surface. She couldn’t explain it, and she didn’t dare mention it to her grandmother, but she just knew the Twins were there, they were going there every winter, they were going home.
The grandmother frowned, almost imperceptibly, at the intense determination in her granddaughter’s eyes.
“Don’t dwell too much on fairy tales, granddaughter. If you were meant to be of the ocean, you’d have been born a fish. I think learning our ways is more than enough to occupy your time for the foreseeable future.”
“Ain’t that the truth!” Aifa thought, dejected.
The education system of Cré started at the age of three and spanned over two decades. There was so much to learn that it was virtually impossible for a youngster to get a general education, and then specialize, so varied knowledge paths split relatively early, around the age of ten, in order to accommodate the sheer volume of information relating to a specific vocation. The mere thought of ten more years of it made Aifa tired.
“But what of the sea water in my blood, doyenne?” she dared ask eventually.
“Oh,dear child! Don’t you give credence to an old woman’s ramblings. I forget myself sometimes,” the grandmother said, with her back turned, so that her granddaughter couldn’t see her smile. “Use both straps for the basket, dear, you need to keep your spine straight under the load, and fix your apron, it looks like it’s hanging to the side.”
