Since leaving the forest, I’ve been many places and seen many things. But nothing compares to the sight of mountains. Maybe because they were so foreign to me, growing up in a closed place. The farthest I could ever see at one time was the distance from my childhood home to the far end of the clearing we occupied. My mother told us stories of lands without trees. Stories about mountains. But it was never easy to visualize.

  What is a mountain to someone who’s never seen one? What is a mountain to someone who’s never even seen a land not surrounded by forest?

  When I think of mountains, I think of my HoPa, and when I think of him, I see mountains. Not the Dragon Peaks of the south where they say dragons roost. But my HoPa is like a mountain in my memory. He was vast and imposing. Strong and silent. But powerful. Encompassing so much of my life.

  I often think it was he who held us most together. Kept us a family. Kept LoPa and mother so close. He gave shape to our days. He was a constant. My mother and LoPa shone brighter but it was as if they hovered round HoPa. He was a calmness. A steadiness. He was always there. Always providing and caring.

  But it’s hard for me to put words to him. To describe his personality or character. He simply was, in many ways. The way that MotherTree simply towered over the clan. The way the forest contained us. That’s how my HoPa was. In certain ways, I feel as if I never knew him. I definitely didn’t appreciate him for who and what he was at the time.

  How could I?

  How do you value the moons or the suns when you’re so certain they’ll shine again tomorrow?

  My HoPa was our mountain. We grew from him and he became our playground.

  He found most joy, I think, in teaching us how to do things. Whether it was showing my brothers how to build traps, throw clay, cook, sew, weave, plant, garden, or whatever else. Those simple aspects of life were his true domain and sharing them with us brought the biggest smiles to his face.

  I remember the day he showed me how to play Audra. It’s a simple game he invented when he was young that spread throughout the clan. Or, it begins simply, but it grows and flowers into great complexity. It became quite popular. Even still, I imagine you could walk into that village and start up a game with just about anyone, despite how much everything else changed.

  Akmuo and Medis each had their own set of stones for Audra. I used to watch them playing. The mysteries of their movements and the ways the stones changed hands in almost an instant but could be brought back almost as quickly.

  Their stones, like almost all stones, came from the riverbed. Akmuo’s were simple black stones, polished by the river itself to be smooth. Though their sizes varied, they were all used for the same purpose. Except for his Mountain, which was a larger stone that was vaguely cube-shaped. His Tree was a gift from HoPa. Carved to resemble MotherTree, its wide roots allowing it to stand without falling.

  Medis’ stones were covered with symbols only he seemed to understand. Crushing flowers and mixing them with water, he made simple dyes of red and blue which shined on the blacks and greys of his stones. His Mountain was clearly broken from a larger rock. Half of one side appeared shattered. He called it his moon. His Tree was also a gift from HoPa, but it was carved to look like a snarling wolf. HoPa’s huge hands carved such delicate lines to create the wolf.

  Neither of them would let me touch their Mountain or Tree.

  That day at the river, LoPa sang and mother practiced Mirtis Kardas before washing in the river. Akmuo and Medis play-fought by splashing and shouting and dunking one another. But HoPa wandered the riverbanks, digging in the sand and dirt. When he finally came in to wash, he floated this way and that, running his hands through the riverbed’s soft soil.

  Back at our home, after he and LoPa finished massaging mother, he sat in the dirt beside the fire and turned to me, “Come, little moon.” His deep baritone rolling over me.

  He was smiling, and I ran to him, “What’s it, HoPa?”

  With his finger, he drew a large square, then divided it into a four by four space. Identical to the playing space my brothers used to play Audra. My excitement was bursting from me but I tried to bottle it. Unsure of where this was leading. His thick pointer finger creating shallow ravines in the dirt. With each movement I got more and more excited. He nodded, put his hands on his knees, then raised his eyes to mine, “Want to play?”

  I squealed and threw my arms round his thick neck, “Yes yes yes!”

  HoPa laughed then lifted me above his head. My arms and legs pumping, he smiled up at me. He was missing a front tooth from a Meadow fight. His eyes black and kind. Tossing me once into the air, only moving his arms, I laughed and so did he. Deep and rumbling. He set me down then and I saw the playing space. My feet had kicked through it, making it unusable. I gasped at the destruction and turned to my HoPa who only laughed at the frown on my face.

  Wiping the dirt clear, he drew the playing space once more.

  “I don’t have any stones,” I said.

  That’s when he pulled out a small cloth bag, his smile so wide. “For you.”

  I bit my lip and tears were in my eyes but a shout of glee was bubbling in my chest. My heart raced and I wanted to run and howl but had to sit still and play. My tiny body barely knew how to handle this level of excitement.

  It’s funny how excited we get as children. I can’t remember the last time anything excited me nearly as much. Even Ogma can sometimes barely get a rise out of me with all her touches and songs.

  There’s a magic to childhood. The world is vast and unknowable, and every day, every experience, every sight and touch and sound and taste become monumental. My memories from those early days are still so clear to me. It’s something I don’t think I’ll ever understand. How those days so long ago burn so bright but the last few days—the last hundred, the last five years—are all fogged and hazed, like they never happened at all.

  Our hearts are so small. So tender. Then they become hard and large. We go from being little pools, where every moment eddies through, maybe even changing its shape, but as we age we become like oceans. There’s so much inside us that it takes a hurricane to move our hearts.

  The cloth was soft and I moved my hands slowly over it, feeling the shape of the stones inside.

  “Deerskin,” HoPa said, his voice so low it vibrated through my bones.

  When I moved the bag, I heard the stones kissing against one another. A sound that, at the time, seemed so beautiful. I sat there without opening the bag, just feeling it. Just listening to the stones kiss against one another. At that moment, there was nothing else of importance in the entire world. HoPa watched me. His smile shining larger than even his mouth. Like my joy was his. As if he thought back to the day he gave my brothers their stones, or the day he first presented this game to another.

  I like to think I reacted better than anyone else.

  Because that’s what you want. When you spend days creating something for someone who means the world to you, you want them to cherish the gift. Not just the gift itself, but the craft that went into making the gift.

  Finally, I opened it, the stones kissing softly as they rolled and slid over one another. Pulling one out, it was so smooth. White with currents of red streaking through it. My mouth opened wide, but it was HoPa’s voice that spoke.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “I found it like that.”

  I placed it on the ground, then pulled out the next one. A greyish white. The next was the shade of an eggshell. The next white as an eye. And on and on. My whole set was shades of white. I have it still. I should’ve brought it with me. Maybe we could play. Anyway. Where my brothers had blacks and dark greys, I had whites.

  “It’s because you shine bright, like your mother.”

  I raised my eyes to his smile, “Mother has a set?”

  He nodded, “A white one.”

  I sucked in a breath and pulled the bag to my chest and stared down at the stones, so bright against the black dirt. Then a furrow ran over my forehead, “Where’s the Mountain? And the Tree?”

  “The Mountain you must find. Tonight I’ll make your Tree, once you tell me what shape it is.”

  “A wolf!” I shook my head, “A bird! A blue one! No…” Images cycled through my mind over and over and over. Constantly changing. Everything I had ever seen and could remember.

  HoPa saw my struggle and put a hand on my head, “Don’t decide until you’re sure.”

  I turned to my brothers who were playing a game of their own, “Med! What should my Tree be?!”

  Medis only shrugged his shoulders without turning, his focus intent on the game unrolling in the dirt before him.

  HoPa laughed gently, “Little moon, only you can choose your Tree and Mountain. Don’t look for them in others.”

  I sat back and crossed my arms, “I don’t know what to pick. What did mother pick?”

  “Hers is a moon when the moon’s shaped like a smile. LoPa’s is a tiny lute.”

  “I’ve never seen them.”

  “They don’t play much.”

  “Why?”

  He turned to them, his smile full of love. LoPa was tuning his lute and mother was lying on her back, staring off into the distance. A slight smile on her face. She was still naked, despite how the days grew colder. “LoPa plays with music and your mother plays with her sword. She never loved games, even as a girl.”

  I held my breath. I heard so little about my mother as a girl. I longed to hear more but was afraid to ask. Afraid my asking would stop the information from coming, so I waited. Eager, breathless.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, then leaned back onto his hands, “When we were children, she ignored the games we all played. She was fighting ghosts of her imagination. Inventing demons and ogres and dragons to kill. Medis reminds me of her. The way every stick becomes a sword. Tireless. Serious. That was how your mother was as a girl.”

  I waited but the story was over and HoPa dumped his own blue and orange stones into the dirt. I never knew nor did I ask why his stones were those colors. But I believe that part of Audra, part of its beauty, is that the pieces themselves tell a story about the player. Though HoPa seemed like a mountain in my memory, a distant magnificent and silent force, I don’t think that’s how he saw himself. His only expression of this was in his stones, though. He dressed like almost any other father in the clan. He didn’t create songs or tell stories. When he made pots and pans to cook food on, he made them simply. Functional. Even his woodworking and weaving were simple and functional.

  I think, for him, the art was in the process. His expression and heart were in the process. The shape or color of the resulting piece wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was his skill at the craft. He took pride there, I think, in all things. Whether cooking or creating or fermenting cabbage, it was the process that held most importance for him.

  But maybe I’m placing my own desires and wishes on him. In any case, his stones were blue and orange. They were bright and unpainted. I didn’t think of this back then, when he was alive to ask. But I think about it now. The days he must’ve spent looking for just the right stones. It’s possible he invented the game in his head when he was just a child, and it took him years of searching to find the right stones to make the game a reality. All those days at the river with so many thoughts and ideas sprinting through his head while his big body moved slowly through the water.

  That’s the way HoPa would be. That’s how I create his childhood. A slow, thoughtful, and infinitely patient child.

  He picked up a blue stone, then placed one on an open space on the playspace he drew.

  I waited for him to explain what to do, but he only smiled at me, then nodded towards the playspace. I placed one of mine down next to his. A slight shake of his head, and then he placed an orange stone on the adjacent to mine and his. Feeling as if I did something wrong, I placed mine in the corner closest to me.

  He snorted and smiled, “Why there?”

  I shrugged with my eyebrows.

  His face became serious and his eyebrows low, “Audra is a game of thought more than one of action. It doesn’t matter where you place the stones. Well, that’s not true. But what matters most is that you think carefully.”

  “But I don’t know how to play,” my voice plaintive.

  He nodded, “That’s a good answer.”

  We spent the day playing. He explained the mechanics of the game, which were simple. Simple enough that he likely thought I already knew them, considering how often I had watched my brothers play. But it’s difficult to explain what went through my head as I watched them play before that. I wasn’t trying to understand. I don’t know why, but I never bothered to put the pieces and moves together. Watching Audra was like watching a dance. Elegant and simple. But it was also like watching a war. It could be brutal and chaotic and evershifting. The pieces flowed over the spaces. And sometimes my brothers would try to play on eight by eight or ten by ten playspaces. The game would drag on forever, until they gave up or got distracted. There’s a flow to Audra. Momentum builds like a wave. A single stone dropped into the water creates a ripple that builds and builds until it’s a ship-swallowing wave. But even as that momentum builds and threatens to crash against your stones, you can deflect that storm back onto your opponent, or even nullify it with a Mountain or Tree. The way you use those two pieces also says much about who you are, both as a person and player.

  I sometimes think HoPa stumbled into the complexity of Audra on accident. A happy accident.

  HoPa showed me how to use the Mountain and Tree pieces. His Mountain was a ring forged in bronze. Where he acquired it, I’ll never know. Perhaps from a neighboring clan or from my mother’s adventures abroad. It had clearly once been smooth and shining bright, but splashes of dull green that were almost blue now coated it. To me, it showed how meticulous he was about his pieces, but also reflected the game itself. Patience. Change. Nothing lasts forever, even the perfectly forged metal. Even the perfectly placed stone is but a moment. His Tree was a woman.

  “Your mother,” he tried to hold back his smile and avoided my gaze. Sheepish and bashful, like a boy caught playing with himself.

  I held it in my hand. Heavier than expected. Where his Mountain showed its age, his Tree showed his craft and his love for the craft. A battle against time. It appeared as if he had carved it just the day before, though he must’ve made it years before then. It was my mother. Her skin smooth and her face kind. I imagine it’s what she looked like before she left the village for the first time. Before she lost the music of the forest.

  She was beautiful and HoPa’s delicate lines captured her. So alive. She looked as if she could come to life right in my hand.

  I marveled over it, running my fingers alone the curled lines that mimicked the tight curls of her hair. The smooth lines that defined her face and arms and legs. The sweeping lines that made her skirt look as if she was in motion.

  HoPa took it back from me, “When you play with others, never touch their Mountain or Tree,” and placed it in front of a cluster of my own stones.

  “Why?”

  “We put parts of ourself into them. You are my daughter so you can hold it, but others would find it rude or unkind.”

  I don’t think I ever did touch another one.

  As the suns descended, we packed up our stones and HoPa said, “Have you decided on your Tree?”

  I gulped, “I still don’t know.”

  “It’s good to think long and hard on it. Never rush with Audra.”

  LoPa struggled with dinner, “Kalna, I’m hopeless with this.”

  Mother laughed and leaned into my brothers, “Your LoPa only knows how to make noise.”

  My brothers smiled, curling into her.

  LoPa said, “But the noises I make are beautiful!”

  We laughed as HoPa took over the cooking.

  “Dain, what is this?”

  Mother rolled back with laughter and LoPa’s expression was one of shame and amusement. He said, “I thought it was rabbit stew.”

  “Sweet saknis paste with rabbit chunks,” HoPa laughed.

  Mother found her breath after losing it to laughter and sighed while wiping a tear, “Little Lu, how was your game?”

  “So fun!”

  “Yeah? Tell me.”

  Everyone turned to me as I explained the many games HoPa and I had played. LoPa and mother reacted dramatically to my explanations of the drama that makes every game of Audra, while Akmuo and Medis held hands and smiled, making jokes to one another that only they could hear.

  “Amazing!” LoPa said while picking me up and throwing me into the night. Laughter burst from me and I came down into mother’s hands, who spun me round a few times before pulling me into her lap.

  She whispered, “What will your Tree be?”

  Frowning, I crossed my arms. “I don’t know.”

  LoPa crouched before me, “Need help?”

  I shook my head earnestly, “HoPa said my Tree needs to be me!”

  LoPa laughed but mother said, “Good advice.” She turned me to face her. A serious expression etched into her face. “In all things, give extra time to thinking. Never rush into your first idea before considering others.”

  “There’s too many ideas!”

  A smile cracked her seriousness, “Don’t think too hard either. Sometimes you need to jump when the fire’s hot.”

  My expression must’ve been as confused as I felt because mother’s seriousness evaporated in laughter.

  She said, “Sometimes you need to run as fast as you can but other times you need to sit and wait, even if everyone else is running. Part of life is discovering when to run and when to sit. It’ll help you with Audra as well.”

  my patreon for more.