Well, the good news was, things were going well with Mary.

The bad news was, I still had no idea what had happened in the smith that day, almost an entire season before.

I had decided to ignore it; if something like the trick with the mithril happened again, perhaps by then I would have a better clue about what was causing it. Barring Grandpa bringing it up in a thoughtful voice, it was out of sight, out of mind.

It was the second day of summer, and love was definitely in the air. Rick and Karen were going to even more parties than usual, Kai was back and falling for Popuri hard, Cliff was playing the downtrodden card for all it was worth with Ann, and Doctor seemed completely oblivious to Elli's feelings.

I had gotten to be close friends with Mary, and she had even hinted that I might get to read her novel one of these days. I went to the Library every day after work, except Mondays - it was 'family time' with Mary's folks - and she showed me a great deal of things.

She was more comfortable talking to me than I was with her, let me tell you.

So, I came down the stairs of the Library from my search for any more books on minerals or metals to ask about them. Who should I see in front of the desk, handing a pretty blossom to my Mary, but Jack?

I had become better friends with him as well, and I didn't hesitate to say calmly, "Hey, farmer boy."

He turned to look at me, surprised, and then scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. I could see Mary filling a vase with water and setting the flower up in plain view behind him. Jack laughed, "Heya back, metal kid." We smiled in good humor across the room.

I moved toward Mary's desk and leaned against it, holding only one slim book. "Mary, may I borrow this? For reading in the Inn, I mean. And do you have any others on metals?"

She became all business. "I might, somewhere. How about you take that for now and I'll look around?"

"No, I'll help you. Where do you keep books if they're not on the shelves?"

She looked thoughtful for a moment, and said, "In the attic of my parents house, usually. Here, come on over. Are you coming too, Jack?"

He hesitated, glancing from me to her - then nodded. "If that's alright with you, Gray." He stood just beside Mary as she came out from behind her counter and touched her shoulder with his arm.

Their easy contact annoyed me. A lot.

But I smiled, all the same. "I don't see why not." We held an almost-glare - not exactly sure why we were glaring, but glaring anyway because the other was, too - for a moment.

"Come with me, you two…" Mary stuttered, leading both Jack and me out the door and down the street (maybe a whole ten feet) to her house.


I shoved the dusty stack of papers to the right, choking on it absentmindedly. There, under the abstract ink arbitrarily scrawled across thick parchment, was a tome of sorts. Blowing the layers of grime from the cover (and using my fingers to actually pry the more solidified bits from the depressed letters of the title), I read aloud, "The Gospel According to Suraia."

Mary heard me and made her way over, stumbling twice. "What's that? I've never seen it before."

I hefted it, testing its weight, and handed it to her. She almost overbalanced, but caught herself against stacked boxes and plopped down, somehow adding a measure of unconscious grace to the movement.

Ah, she was so cute with her glasses slightly skewed and a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She looked almost…approachable.

I was pulled out of my thoughts by Jack materializing at her shoulder and reading from the open page, " 'And I walked among the blossoms and here spoke them of the bounty they heralded, and I knew too much more than ever I had previously. To touch a thing of life was to see its birth and subsequent death, and, panicked at these revelations, I fled from the perfect moment and hid myself deep in the earth, to escape the whispers of the incomprehensible that emanated from the growing lives. But beneath the earth could I not escape the tide, and, alone among many, I saw one person who would know what I faced and would understand. But He had not yet walked His path, and so I resolved to await His coming before fully accepting or rejecting this overpowering gift.' "

I saw that the page was near the end.

Mary peered at the words nearsightedly and looked up a Jack with an odd expression. "I've never read this."

"Oh, horror of horrors," he smiled.

"No, really, I've read every page in town. I've searched through the attic before, and never found it. I don't think it was here before." She looked at me curiously. "How did you manage to find it? An enigma…"

My eyes hadn't left the book, and I wasn't really sure why. There was…a feeling. A rightness.

Hmm.

Mary's pale, petite hand waved in front of me, and she repeated, "I don't think we're going to find any more of your books on metals. Should we call it a day?" She handed the Gospel back to me to put away, and waited for Jack to start down the steep ladder leading back to the house proper.

I sat holding the heavy book, fingers tracing the title. Turning, I asked Mary, "Can I borrow this? I mean, to read?"

She turned around, surprised, and said with a not-so-innocent smile, "If you can get it down from here…be my guest."

After much laughter and expenditure of upper body strength, I finally got the Gospel to my room in the Inn.

And I began to read.


One week of sleepless nights later, I pushed open the wooden doors of the Church and stepped inside slowly. There was Carter, smiling benignly as though he knew the secret of life itself. I would have to compare answers sometime, from The Gospel According to Suraia.

"May the Harvest Goddess bless you on this beautiful and plentiful day," he said, nodding his head in greeting.

I nodded jerkily and let the Gospel drop onto his sermon podium with a resounding slam. "Carter," I began, not feeling myself, "have you ever heard of Suraia?"

His brows knit together, and he said slowly, "I know only the teachings of the Harvest Goddess, son."

"Tell me the origin story."

"Excuse me?"

"The origin story. Every religion has one. How did the Harvest Goddess do a bunch of magical feats and create the world?"

He stared at me as though I was insane. "There is none. The Goddess is the deity only of the yield, and did not, as you say, 'create the world'."

"Oh."

"I'm afraid so."

"That odd, though, isn't it? How did the Goddess come into being?"

"She does not condescend to divulge Her beginnings."

"Oh."

"Yes."

I looked around, at the empty pews and the sunlight streaming in through fragile stained glass windows. Turning back to Carter, I nodded resolutely and had to consciously make myself stop when I picked up speed. Sleep deprivation was starting to play tricks on my mind. "Well, anyway, must be going, places to see, Grandpa to be heckled by."

He watched me go, confusion and concern etched into his face like stone.


Grandpa had taken one look at me and sent me home to sleep. For some reason.

So I lay in bed, mind racing. I still couldn't believe what had been written in that book. It was about a girl that was not ready for the burdens life had in store for her, and who grasped blindly for the hope that someone, sometime, would be able to help. And vague, random passages surfaced in my mind, without any effort to have memorized them.

For instance, the first passage was, 'I was, for the duration of my time as a natural-born woman, of a breed unique and separate from that of the norm. Never had I a niche to claim as my own. But, one day, as I cared for a seedling, it blossomed and bore its fruit and withered in death before I could drop it in surprise. And this was only the initial evidence of my strangeness.'

My mind wouldn't rest, and every detail of the Gospel floated around, meaningless so long as I couldn't think straight. I tried to fill my head with something else, and Mary appeared in my mind's eye.

"Gray…" she began, smiling cheerfully, "I'm glad to see you!"

Ah, that set me more at ease…

She continued, "It's so nice of you to visit Jack and me."

…but that didn't. I tried to change my train of thought again.

I wasn't aware of slipping into sleep, but I must have, because I was suddenly at Mother's Hill Spring, fully dressed and lucid. An ethereal mist hung in the air, and I peered into the water, wholly undisturbed and reflective.

A red flag flew up in my mind; a waterfall fed the Spring, and the surface was never clear like this.

An exquisite sound, akin to that produced by tracing a finger around the rim of a crystal glass, pushed the haze away, and there, in the center of the waterfall's basin, was the personification of elegance.

She was draped with a loose-fitting robe, light blue like the water her feet touched. Her hair - an unnatural blue, also, but what good are the details of a dream? - was braided and wrapped in buns at the sides of her head, the right one having even more braid hanging down to her shoulder. And that shoulder had such a gentle curve, up to her smooth neck, to her strong chin and flawless face painted with earthy tones and her eyes…

Oh, Goddess, her eyes…

They were blue, to say the least. More a sort of deep azure. But the emotion they held was unlike anything I had seen or felt. This woman had seen more than she ever should have had to.

It made me wonder how old she was, but I certainly wasn't going to ask. No telling what she would be able to do to me.

The crystalline sound changed, and the words You are wondering who I am appeared in my mind.

I nodded dumbly in response.

The woman raised a sculpted eyebrow. I am one that you should know.

"Wha-" I started, and had a thought. "Suraia?"

The eyebrow dropped and she looked stern, her lips not moving. It has been a very long time since I heard that name.

A tingling ran up my spine as the taste of the words gave me a sense of just how long a time it had been. "Then who are you?"

The mortals call me a goddess.

"The Harvest Goddess." I stood staring at her. Remembering myself, I landed on my knees and bowed low. "My lady!"

She came forward to stand only feet away, apparently unconcerned with such frivolous things as the laws of gravity and buoyancy of objects in water. Don't mock me with your misplaced humility. You do not believe in me.

From somewhere on the level of an exceedingly intriguing stick bug, I said, "He is a fool who doesn't believe what he sees."

No, not when he is dreaming. The teachings you follow, Gray, are of a different gospel. You follow that of the Suraia.

"The book? That wasn't some sort of holy scripture. It was fictional." I thought about some of the miraculous sorts of things she had done, and how real it had seemed to me. I amended, "I think."

I knew her. It is all true.

"Really?" I slowly stood up and looked around. "Um, what happened to her?"

'And here I wait until He shall come, forever and a day. Pass on my words to alert Him of my whereabouts, else these horrors have I endured in vain. This is my record, and it has kept my mind away from my consequences. This is my gospel, the gospel according to Suraia…'

" '…and it is to be continued upon His arrival,' " I finished the final verse.

She smiled, and it didn't reach her unfathomable eyes. Good luck on you path. She held up one thin hand in farewell, as though she didn't expect this to be the last time we would see each other.

I opened my mouth to say something, anything.

Suddenly the dense fog crashed back and I was blind.

I realized that my eyes were closed - and it was stupid to worry about being blind with my eyes closed.

I opened them and it was still dark. "Uh-oh," I groaned, rubbing my head and worrying more about being blind than before. But, no, it was only nighttime.

Something dangling from a chain on my neck bumped against my skin, and that hadn't been there before. Feeling it with my thumb, I found that a miniature silver hammer pendant had rearranged itself in the shape of - as far as I could tell - a human figure, still looped on the chain.

As I was wondering about it, there came a rustling of delicate cloth from over by the table, and a very female voice that had no place in Kai's, Cliff's, and my room in the middle of the night said, "Good morning, technically. And welcome to the first day of the rest of your life."