July — The Festival of the Chariots
The middle of July brought with it an abundance of early harvest, but the Caretakers were so busy, they didn’t even notice the buoyant unfolding of life around them. They spent day after day, gathered around the Twins, listening to the wisdom the two poured forth, wisdom whose source nobody really understood, and which, they believed, could only come from on high.
“What about you, doyenne?” Aifa asked. “Haven’t you heard this before?”
“Oh, no, child. No two years’ teachings are ever the same. What would be the point of divine guidance if you could sum it up in one year. The wisdom has no end.”
As the summer festival approached, the little stack of messages the Twins left with Aifa to give their future selves grew into a sizable pile.
“What should I do with all of this?” Aifa looked to her grandmother for advice.
“Keep your promise to them, as did all the Caretakers, since they first arrived in Cré. Keep them in order and return them to the Twins next year, and don’t forget you need to be mindful of the timing.”
“Do you have any messages to give them this year?”
“That is between the Caretaker and the Twins, granddaughter. It is a question that is neither permitted, nor answered. You should read the messages you were given, as you organize them. Some of those are actually for you.”
Aifa took some time, during the few quiet moments in the Hearth, to skim through the pile of messages, puzzled by some, amused by others, wondering if there was any point in delivering them at all, after all, in the year to come she might just as well approach complete strangers in the streets of Cré for what it was worth.
“The ways of the divine are not our ways,” she remembered the wisdom of her grandmother. “Everything happens for a reason; sometimes you have to trust before you get a chance to understand.”
It didn’t take Aifa long to figure out the older messages from the new ones. As time unfolded, the missives developed from short, childish comments or expressions of affection to long and elaborate communications, which were timely and precise to a fault.
“How is anybody ever going to understand this?!” Aifa blurted, exasperated, after she finished reading the detailed instructions for the construction of what, she could only surmise, was a flying machine. “Why would anybody ever believe something like this, or even attempt it? If we were meant to fly, we would have been born with wings.”
“Sometimes I wish you took my words, said in jest, a little less literally, granddaughter,” her grandmother couldn’t help but overhear.
Aifa pondered for a long time about what she was supposed to do with this mixture of wisdom and craziness, agonizing over the fact that it was, apparently, her responsibility to decide its fate. After she delivered the messages, they would most likely be lost, the Twins had no need for any possessions other than the shirts on their backs. If she didn’t deliver them, and instead kept them safe in box at the library, they again would be lost, because that defied their very purpose for existing and stunted the Twins ability to communicate with their other selves through time. She decided on option number three. As soon as she received a message, she wrote it down in a compendium, complete with the time when it was to be delivered and the events that surrounded receiving it. It wasn’t much, but it was the best she could think to do.
“Flying machine indeed! Sometimes I wonder who is crazier, them or me,” she brooded over the latest message, then shook her head in disbelief, folded it and placed it in her pocket, to be processed later.
She could hear the other Caretakers’ heated discussion about decorating the chariots. It was almost time for the parade and there was still much work to do to get them ready, so she joined the others to help out.
The chariot wheels were quite large, to make it easier for people to pull them through the market square, so the Caretakers had to help the Twins climb into them. When Aifa held Ama’s hand to help her up, the latter left another folded message in the palm of her hand.
The chariots advanced slowly through the crowds, in the middle of cheerful exaltation, and dancing for joy. The people of Cré loved to see the Twins paraded through town in their full regalia, as the living, breathing embodiments of the divine that they were.
The market square was so saturated by color and emotion there didn’t seem to be any room for anything else, so much human emotion it overwhelmed the soul: joy, sadness, elation, longing, all melted into a thick, heavy blanket that weighed the Twins’ spirit down like lead. The people of Cré didn’t notice, each one of them focused on bringing their portion of this gigantic shared public emotion to the square, impervious to the others’, in a communal outpouring of the soul.
The Twins’ faces were impenetrable, like stone. One couldn’t read any emotions on them, as it was fitting for living deities, they seemed so far removed from the daily concerns and tribulations of the people, but as the burden of emotion became heavier and heavier to bear, the smallest teardrop gathered in the corner of Jal’s eye and made its way down his cheek, slowly losing its own substance in the process.
As if waiting for a sign, the clouds gathered over the horizon, so thick and waterlogged it felt like they were dragging on the ground. Jal looked at them, like he expected them to come, and his relief allowed a second tear to follow the first. Deafening thunder shook the heavens, echoing between the old stone walls before it retreated in a low rumble. Another tear flowed down Jal’s cheek. That’s when the rain started.
People cheered, elated, pulling the chariots around the square in the pouring rain, grateful for the blessing of the crops, grateful for the harvest, grateful for life itself. As Jal’s tears flowed freely on his face, water rushed through the stone streets, down ancient steps and narrow alleys, washing them clean. It flowed through hidden aqueducts back into the fields, to water the crops, parched by the summer heat, and rushed in beautiful waterfalls down the cliffs, back to the sea.
Aifa had participated in this festival many times, but she had never been close enough to the Twins to see what was actually happening. She always took it for granted that the Twins’ nature was in some unknown ways transcendent, but this was not a subject that occupied her mind. She had her education, and her family, and all of the activities and social events that marked the life of the city like an animated calendar, so metaphysical issues were never high on her agenda. These were things the elders pondered, mostly because they had fulfilled their social obligations and had nothing better to do with their time. But now, as she watched Jal cry rain from the sky, her heart skipped a beat and really started wondering what kind of beings the Twins were. They looked human in every respect, and in some ways they were very naive, childish even, and yet, Aifa could feel their presence touch her, even from a distance, in an undeniable way she had no way of describing.
“What are they, doyenne?” she asked her grandmother, when the shock of what she had experienced receded.
“That is the mystery,” grandmother replied. “We have been the Caretakers of this mystery for many centuries, and still, nobody knows.” She looked up at the sky, from where rain kept pouring thick and heavy. “We need to bring the Twins back to the Hearth, we don’t want them to catch a cold.”
Since the roof had its circular opening right above their sunken water beds, Aifa was worried that they will find the Twins’ beds filled with water, only to discover, with bewilderment, that they were completely dry.
“How…” she started asking her grandmother, who stopped her question with a gesture of her hand.
“Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to, granddaughter.”
The Caretakers ran around the Twins like mother hens, bringing towels and dry garments, and starting a fire to keep them warm, even if it was the middle of July. Outside, the rain kept pouring down, its even patter interrupted by the rhythm of powerful lightning and thunder.
The Twins were tired, more so than Aifa had ever seen, and curled up in their sunken beds like cats, mysteriously shielded from the rain falling from above, and immediately fell into a deep sleep.
“It is the rain,” grandmother said. “It soothes them. Maybe it reminds them of home, who knows?”
The Hearth turned very quiet, as not to disturb the Twins’ slumber. The Caretakers moved around like ghosts, attending to their chores, the shuffle of their bare feet on the stone floor drowned by the powerful rapping of the rain.
Aifa finally found time to get out of the wet clothes herself, and as she changed, she remembered the little message Ama had given her before she got up in the chariot, and reached eagerly for it. It was so badly soaked she worried it was going to fall apart in her hands as she tried to open it, but it didn’t.
The ink was bleeding onto the page, almost washed away in places, but the message was complete enough to read, so there was no doubt about what it said. Unlike the previous notes, it was very short, dated one year from now, and it only said ‘we did remember’.
“What are you doing, granddaughter?” grandmother surprised her. “Change out of those wet clothes, you are shivering.”
Aifa obeyed, with mechanical gestures, her mind fixed on something else. She wondered, since the Twins seemed to be tuned into their future selves, whether she could ask them questions about the following year, whether it was even allowed, and if it was, did she really want to know it? It was a great responsibility, learning about the future.
Her grandmother seemed to guess her inner struggle.
“I see that you found something else to place your fears on. Why don’t you fear the past instead, I’m sure there must have been something unpleasant in it, and the past is just as much with us as the future. Stop waiting for the next breath, granddaughter. You should be living your life, not allowing your life to live you. Fulfill your purpose, the reason that brought you to this life, the rest is irrelevant.”
“So, learning about the future is pointless?” Aifa asked.
“It all depends on whether what you learn helps you with your life’s purpose. If the Twins found it in their hearts to allow you a glimpse into their future, they must have done it for a good reason.”
It was still raining at night fall, and it was going to rain for days on end.
“Why don’t we sleep here tonight? There is no point in braving the elements just to have some place to come from in the morning?”
Aifa looked around and noticed that many of the Caretakers had the same idea; they were lighting candles and laying pillows on the floor, and brought soft blankets closer to the fire, to warm them up.
The rain continued through the night. Whether it was the rain or the exhaustion of a very emotionally charged day, everybody fell into a deep sleep without dreams. Aifa didn’t know what it was that awakened her in the wee hours of the morning, but when she opened her eyes, for just a fraction of a second, she could swear she saw a water surface gleam softly from the Twins’ beds. The vision disappeared immediately, as her rational mind went back to processing the reality around her, and she saw them as she was supposed to see them, two siblings, looking so much alike it was hard to tell them apart, curled up like cats under their soft blankets. Aifa assumed she was still dreaming when she first lifted her head from the pillow, because she couldn’t have seen what she saw. She glanced quickly at her grandmother, wondering if the latter had had the same experience, but her grandmother, like everybody else in the Great Hall, was fast asleep.
If there was one good thing about being thirteen, it was that one didn’t take things too seriously. Maybe it had been a dream, maybe it was something she was supposed to see, and if she did, what of it? Nobody would believe her anyway. Aifa shrugged, turned her pillow over and went back to sleep.
