Seeds of Juniper: Chapter 1

AND SO IT ENDS

Before Recorded Time

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“Well, what is it?” Tralaesh asked.

Juniper looked at the object in her hand and grinned. She held it out to her best friend. “What does it look like?”

“No fair,” Tralaesh said. “No games.”

Juniper’s friend was beautiful the way only a breaking heart could be beautiful. Juniper’s father had said that once. She did not know what it meant, but her father had told her that day he wanted her to be friends with Tralaesh. Since that moment they were inseparable. The two girls went everywhere together.

“You can have five guesses,” Juniper said, looking at the object brown with tinges of gray in her hand.

“It is a rock,” Tralaesh said.

“No, rocks are boring. This is life. What is it?”

“It’s a turd,” Tralaesh said.

“A turd? I’m holding it in my hand.”

“I don’t know,” Tralaesh said. “Sometimes you’re gross.”

“Sometimes you’re gross.”

“You’re the one holding a turd.”

“It’s not a turd. I wouldn’t hold it in my hand if it was a turd. What’s your third guess?”

“I don’t know, is it a, the skin of a mortal that you dried out and it curled around to form this little ball thing you can hold in your hand?” Tralaesh said.

“See, you’re the one who’s gross. It’s not the skin of a mortal. I would never dry out the skin of a mortal.”

“Daddy does sometimes,” Tralaesh said. “While they’re still alive. Gets pretty loud.”

Juniper knew not to comment. Tralaesh’s father was the reason Juniper had been told to befriend Tralaesh. He had said, “A girl like that with a father like hers needs a good friend.”

Tralaesh looked embarrassed. “No more guesses. What do you do with it?”

They were almost to Juniper’s father’s park. The citizens of the City of the Jinn called it a park because there was no other thing to call it. It was the seat of Haddacon’s might. The floating island in the middle of the city where Juniper’s father worked.

She was not sure what he did. Some sort of protection of the city or something, but everyone spoke of Haddacon, Juniper’s father, in hushed tones. Everyone paid him great respect and everyone loved her father. As Tralaesh and she drew closer to him, Juniper began to feel her heart quivering. She looked at the object in her hand and saw it vibrating. She stopped.

She was supposed to be bringing food to her father and had it in her air bag, but if the power coming off her father was going to destroy the object she held in her hands, then maybe she didn’t want to go.

“It’s a flower,” Tralaesh said. “Juniper, it’s the seed of a flower, isn’t it? The seed of a flower is the kind of thing you would carry around.”

The beast behind her grunted. She spun to see her father’s beast. It was brawny in the shoulders and chest, and lean when it reached its hips. It had the wings of a golden eagle, two of its heads were bird like, the third some kind of ape, and it had six arms all holding different weapons. It glowed orange as its long claws clacked across the surface of the glass road they stood on.

She looked below her, seeing the lake of ice and the houses of the Water Jinn, beautiful but not possessing the same splendor as the houses on her level. She was a Fire Jinn. The castles on her level were massive and beaten in gold, set with jet stones. She was a Fire Jinn. She knew that much. Father was a Fire Jinn. All of Juniper’s powers derived from fire. She could do some things that Fire Jinn couldn’t, and other things a Fire Jinn could do, Juniper had no hope of. Her father had told her that she was just special. Said she was made of a different form of magic than the average Fire Jinn. Special was the word she clung to. Sometimes when she looked around the houses of the other Fire Jinn, she wondered. 

The houses were all set in one gigantic circle. Outside of that ring, no one went. She did not know what was out there, but when she went to the back of her father’s castle at night, she could hear howling and begging in a language she did not know.

She looked up to the cloud castles and her mind seemed to uncoil. That level of the city was nothing short of breathtaking. She wondered if one day she might marry an Air Jinn and move up there. The Air Jinn were territorial though, and she knew none of their sons or daughters would want to marry her at all. The Air Jinn looked down on Fire Jinn.

Juniper stopped and leaned back, her eyes searching the top of the city as she struggled for balance, until she saw the roof of the city and the three castles built into it. This was where the gods and goddesses of the jinn people lived. The Earth Jinn. The Diamond, Emerald, and Ruby castles were more than she could ever hope to understand. From there, all laws and decrees came. The creatures that flew there protecting the houses of the Earth Jinn were awe-inspiring, and as Juniper watched, she knew that if she could ever marry a daughter or son of the Earth Jinn, she would be happy forever. She closed her eyes and prayed she might one day meet one of the children from the Earth Jinn families. She just wanted to meet one.

“Juniper, I thought we were playing your stupid game,” Tralaesh said. “I guessed flower. Admit you’re beat and tell me what kind of flower it is.”

Juniper looked at the seed in her hand, but when she opened her mouth, the beast behind her barked out a screech and clawed at the ground, making a horrid clacking sound that froze her blood. She spun, staring at her father’s beast, just then noticing she knew very little about this one in particular. It eyed her with rage and she realized this beast hated her. Maybe it hated her father. Maybe it had all along.

“We had better go,” Juniper said. “I want to go back to the castle.”

“What about your father’s meal?” Tralaesh said.

Juniper chided herself. She did not want her father to go hungry just because she was scared. She turned her back to the beast and took Tralaesh’s hand.

“It’s not a flower,” Juniper said.

“Then what is it? I give up.”

“It’s a seed for a tree I made up. There is only this one. I am going to ask my father if I can plant it in his park after he has had his meal.”

She saw her father and ran the distance. He looked up at her and grinned. His purple face beamed as he watched her come. Just as always, he held his staff upside down, the massive crystal head planted in the stone he stood on. The stone was round and gray and throbbed with power. The crystal head of the staff filled it with that power. The stone funneled magic down and out in many directions, creating soft pulses of pink light that struck the side of the city, flowed up and down, and wrapped the entire city in pink light beams that seemed almost like dozens of belts that held the city together.

Juniper bowed her head and waited.

“Well girl, get over here,” Haddacon said. He let loose of the staff, leaving it in its spot, and held his arms out to her. She leapt into them and he scooped her up in his arms.

Haddacon was easily the largest, most rotund jinn she had ever seen. His smile seemed a part of his face always, and she realized she had never seen him frown. She looked up at his face and felt his love for her, pure and unfettered. Freely given and bottomless.

“What do you have here, my little Juniper?” he said, looking at her hand.

“It is a seed for a tree I made, father, a tree with berries. Can I plant it in your park?”

Her father looked up, confused. He seemed about to say something before looking back down at her, distracted. “What, my love? What did you—” He looked back up and shook his head. “Get away from there! What are you doing?”

Her father spun her around behind him and charged the staff where the beast he had ruled all her life pulled his steel club and, with a thunderous cry, swung the weapon at the staff’s crystal head.

There was an impact and the club passed into the crystal. It passed through with no visible effect, but her father was still running, still screaming. The beast stepped back and crossed its arms.

There was an explosion, a deafening, crystal-shattering blast that threw crystal in every direction. It passed right through Juniper and her friend. As the crystal struck her, it opened tiny holes in her body and passed through them, into her body and out again to fly off in every direction.

Her father burst into flames and howled. He howled loud and long, and jinn from all over the city came to gawk in horror.

Her father turned to the beast and, with a tap of his finger on the creature’s head, it disintegrated. He turned to her and whispered, “Run.”

Her blood froze. Fear, horrible and paralyzing, gripped her as the ceiling erupted and massive beings dropped into the city from above. She stared in horror as a monstrous man with mechanical legs and a great hammer dropped before her father. He had two massive beasts with large heads and one eye staring at her.

A teenage boy dropped down beside him with a bow. He looked at her and snarled. He was without doubt the most terrifying thing she had ever seen. A teenager who had killed, what she had to guess, hundreds of times. This boy was scary the way the night could be scary. He was scary the way sickness could be.

Her father turned and, with a terrible building of his power, shoved pure magic in the direction of the man with the mechanical legs. The man was thrown back in a heap, and her father stepped before her and pulled more of his power to his body. She could feel the air pulsing with it, could feel the world starting to scream as the storm of her father’s might built.

The boy fired his bow three times. Then a fourth. All the arrows lined up neat and perfect side-by-side across her father’s chest. Right across his heart, four perfectly shot arrows drawing a line through his heart. Two more shots, one for each eye. Two more shots. One for the crotch and one for the throat. Two more shots. One for each kneecap, then one for each elbow.

Then it hit. When her father died, he exploded in a massive conflagration that pressed out in every direction searing everything instantly.

The teenage boy burst into flame and began screaming. He pumped great wings into the air to escape, but his wings were on fire, too, and he could do nothing but plummet to the ground and wail in pain.

Tralaesh wrapped her arms around Juniper and kicked into the air. They were both the children of Fire Jinn, no flames could hurt them or even muss their clothing, but these monsters fought with more than just fire.

Great glowing warriors of men and women fought the might of the city. One massive black warrior with a huge spear and flaming crown stood in the center of the city as the invaders attacked and killed everything around her. Tralaesh flew for her home, taking Juniper with her as she did.

The last thing Juniper saw before she was whisked into her best friend’s castle was the massive black warrior, easily the size of two levels of the City of the Jinn, stab his spear into the castles of the Diamond, the Ruby, and the Emerald jinn. The castles toppled from the sky.

Hours they hid in the castle of Tralaesh, holding tight to each other and weeping. Her father was nowhere to be seen and they had not heard from him since the fighting began. Tralaesh wept and whined about her father and what they must be doing to him, while Juniper fought to stave away the image of her own father exploding.

Tralaesh cried out in relief when she heard her father’s voice calling out to them. And Juniper hated herself a little when she realized she had been hoping Tralaesh’s father was dead so they could be orphans together.

Tralaesh’s dad came and beckoned them both outside.

When they arrived at the main balcony and looked out at the City of the Jinn, Juniper sobbed. And Tralaesh screamed. Dead Jinn floated everywhere. Magics the likes of which Juniper could not imagine had shattered parts of the city that would never go back. The three Earth Jinn were nailed by the throat to the roof of the city by three of that teenage boy’s arrows.

Juniper turned her eye to him and saw he was burned from feet to skull and charred. He looked like blackened wood and his wings were inky oily smoke. The sneer on his face made him seem as if he were enraged and in pain as he stared around the city with an arrow notched back, his black eyes searching for a place to put it.

The massive black warrior, bigger and more horrifying than anything Juniper had ever seen, stood on her father’s park, his head nearly scraping the roof of the city.

“Haddacon did his best. He held us out for years beyond count,” the great man said. “His portal magic was too mighty for even us to break through. But we are here now. Get used to it.” He turned to look at every citizen of the city and grinned when he said, “I am Wrath, god of darkness, and I have come to recruit. I killed your guardian and—”

“You’re a cheater!” Juniper shouted. She stormed to the end of the balcony and stared up at Wrath with every ounce of hate she could muster.

The teenage boy pulled his arrow back and lowered it at her.

She stared at him and snarled. “Do it. You killed my father. Go ahead and take the daughter, too. I am not scared of you. You’re burnt up real nice, aren’t you? Does it hurt? Does my father’s flame still hurt?”

The boy pointed his arrow at her face and Wrath placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“You have all sat the war out like a race of cowards, too good to come out and sully yourselves with the blood of either side. That ends today. We are recruiting troops for our war and we will have them. Anyone who struggled against us just now and survived will bolster my numbers,” Wrath said. “The Earth Jinn are no more. I have wiped them out and they are never to be mentioned again. There never were Earth Jinn. The Air Jinn have always been the ruling class. They will be obeyed or I,” Wrath placed splayed fingers on his chest, “am coming back. Now, everyone who helped us can stay. The rest of you, come with us.”

Tralaesh’s father wrapped an arm around his daughter but did not go.

Juniper turned to him and he smiled at her.

“Sorry, little girl. Your father was a great man, but I’m not tangling with the gods.”

Juniper sneered at him. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew they were coming for my father. You didn’t even warn him.”

The jinn laughed. He waved a hand out in the direction of the city. “Most of us knew. Haddacon was a great guardian, but he loved the Earth too much. It was time for Fire and Air to rise.”

Juniper looked at Tralaesh, who was crying. “Did you know your vile father was going to kill mine?”

“He didn’t kill your father, he just—”

“Your father is a monster!” Juniper shouted.

“Let me kill her, master,” the teenage boy said. He placed the arrow at her chest and grinned.

She snarled up at him and nodded. “You had better kill me.”

“Cupid, hold,” Wrath said. “Don’t loose that arrow.”

Juniper looked past the archer’s charred face and stared at Wrath.

“Do you have everything you need?” Wrath said over his shoulder.

She looked at the back of the park, where the man with the mechanical legs sat holding the shards of her father’s staff.

“Almost, there is the crystal, that makes the portal, and the stone, that makes the lock. I can figure the lock, but I can’t figure out how to make the crystal work. No one ever was able to. Might be a skill only Haddacon was capable of.”

“Hephaestus, might that skill be housed in his daughter?” Wrath said.

“I’m not helping you win your war,” Juniper snapped.

“Might be, but I’m not going to gut that little girl to find out. There are limits to what I will do.”

“I need that technology. Take it all.” Wrath turned to Cupid. “Take her, bring her with us and do her no harm.”

Cupid reached out for her and she burst into flames. She felt the power of her father’s magic flowing through her and Cupid pulled back in fear.

“If you lay a hand on the Daughter of Haddacon, I will burn you to cinders where you stand,” Juniper said. “You felt the father.” She stepped forward and looked straight in his smoking eyes. “Want to feel his daughter?”

Wrath shoved Cupid aside and snatched her up in his fist. She burned and seared and forced her magic as hot as she could, but the hand did not burn or flinch as she reached temperatures that could burn air.

She felt her body leave her city and, burning within the fist of Wrath, she wept steaming tears.

When she was dropped, she hit the ground and looked around her. Sunshine she had been taught about. The air was crisp and clean. The light bright and white. Around her, green grass, trees and a silver river. She heard a strange kind of snapping, cracking noise and turned around.

Before and below her stretched a massive sea of dead. Huge men, women, and creatures lay a field bleeding and baking in the sun. There was a crack in the ground, and on the far side of that crack was another unbroken sea of dead. Behind both sides stood the shattered remains of two armies. And above them all soared huge glutting ravens feasting on the corpses of the gods. Juniper had made it to heaven.

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