The Gathandrian Trilogy 02 - Hallsfoots Battle

any of their neighbours. Neither was there any of the Kingdoms of the Mountains, the Air, the Desert or the Sea, none of which I, Annyeke Hallsfoot, have experienced. But I know and understand they are there for I have seen them in the minds of my people. Our legends also tell us our history. I have no reason to disbelieve what has gone before.
    “The darkness lasted for a time that cannot be counted, as time did not exist then. From eternity we come and to eternity we go. Our small life exists only in those boundaries. Once, however, and at the beginning of it all, the Spirit of Gathandria, which flows through all things and all people, visited us and saw our eternal night. The Spirit comes only in the daylight, and the night was an enemy to its purpose.
    “The Spirit needn’t have stayed; there are vast worlds of light elsewhere. But for whatever reason, it needed us. Perhaps something of what we could become captured it, but it is impossible to say. That part of the mystery will always be unknowable.
    “Still, wishing to live in the light, the Spirit created that which it so desired. It stretched out its arms, and the tips of its fingers began to glow. Slowly, so slowly that it would be impossible to tell when the movement commenced and when it ceased, that glow slipped the moorings of mythical skin and flesh and floated out into the darkness. With each departure, something of the Gathandrian Spirit also went with it. In the long pauses of time as the glowings of light navigated their way through nothingness, the Spirit also opened its mouth and began to sing.
    “It was the first of the ancient songs, and my words fall far short of that splendour. If you can imagine golden notes poured out over the brightest of water—as I know your heart element is water, Simon—then all the best of your imaginings will not echo even a hundredth of the Spirit’s song of creation. It was so beautiful that no ear can hear it or even sense what it might be.
    “As the small specks of light from the Spirit’s flesh began to break through the darkness, so the song’s notes began to form the world we know and love—earth, sky and water, rocks, trees and pastures, birds, fish, animals and insects. All of it beautiful and created out of perfection, none of it destroyed or damaged in the way we are today.
    “At last, after an equally long period of time that nobody can recount, the small lights from the Spirit’s hands came together to form the sun and moon and stars, just as you know them today, Simon—the owl, the fox, the oak and the wolf. Then the river, the elm and the horseman. Finally, after all these came the lovers, the lone man, and the vast, unknowable mountain, that which can never be measured. All of these are our stars, just as they are yours, although we do not trust ourselves to their destiny as many of your people do or see them quite as you do.
    “Meanwhile, the Spirit’s song created all that was good around us, that which lives and moves amongst us and is the form of our own spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These things are not created by law, but by harmony, which is the meaning of the song.
    “And still our world was incomplete.
    “Although, yes, all the lands were there—Gathandria, where the Spirit first stood and from where all things come, the four Kingdoms, the White Lands where you were born, the Lammas Lands where you fell into darkness again and all the neighbours between them. But it was not yet complete. What was missing were men and women.
    “The Spirit paused in its singing. The world fell silent, but there was nobody to hear the silence. For a long while, therefore, the Spirit wept at the loss that was no loss. Then it opened its mouth again and the last note of the song was heard, a note as golden and rich as a fertile river running to the sea, a note to conjure all the magic around us, in all its beauty and colour, and one that, if heard, would spoil you from hearing anything ever again.
    “This note filled the newly created air, and the Spirit of Gathandria, moved by what it had done, reached out and touched its perfection. At once, the note split, ravaged into a thousand, thousand pieces, the fragments spinning outwards. The force of the explosion flung these fragments into all the corners of the world. Some fell in the sea and were lost forever, some fell in the mountains or the rivers, some fell on the plains,