Diamond was ready, and he always needed be.
END BOOK ONE
BOOK TWO
THE CORONA’S CHILDREN
PROLOGUE
Every soldier is born from wood—the finely grained wood of a tantalize tree carved and polished until the faces and strong arms and an array of dangerous weapons have been revealed. Every soldier wears paint and time. Each stands where he is set, a willing part of the colorful army that obeys every command. The soldiers never suffer fear, never know doubt, and despite similarities in appearance, each wears a unique name that serves as the trusted root from which one great life dangles.
The boy gave the wood their names and life stories. One glance, even a slow touch, is enough to recognize each good soldier.
The boy always knows where his army waits—on high shelves or inside their special box. Of course the soldiers aren’t waiting. Toys are objects, and objects are too simple to hold souls. But playing with the wooden men is more fun because it means nothing. Almost every day of his life holds games like these. His fierce legion battles bigger toys and pretend monsters. Each piece of painted wood is awarded its turn as hero. Then as the boy grows older and a little smarter about the world, he makes larger wars, and his voice is louder, filling his very big room with fury and brutality until sometimes the game goes too well and he makes himself afraid.
Like other children, he climbs to school to learn and tries to be normal, and then he climbs home again and plays games.
The warriors lie scattered across the floor, on their backs and bellies, yet they are beautifully unable to concede defeat.
Wood cannot breathe, cannot weep, cannot stand back from the carnage and wonder where the battle went wrong.
“It’s your game,” says Mother. “If you don’t like the results, pick up the pieces and start again.”
“But these are the dead.” He tries to be patient, except that he doesn’t sound patient. Pointing to the casualties, he explains, “They have to rest all night to be alive again. Those are the rules.”
Every game has rules. Life and the Creation have rules. Maybe there are agents somewhere that don’t obey the hard codes, but thinking that way invites a different kind of fear into the mind.
“It’s time for your early dinner,” his mother says, trying to make him stop.
Dinner isn’t ready. But he sets the dead inside their anglewood box, waiting to live, and the survivors stand on the shelves with a view of the green outdoors, helping watch for Father. The boy moves to the kitchen, sitting on the counter while his mother cooks and cools the various parts of the meal. Eating is a great pleasure. Nobody in their household eats like him. He loves sitting with his long legs dangling, talking about school and friends and what special things happened in the day, and when Father isn’t home, the boy always asks when he will be.
Father used to be gone overnight, but that has changed.
Quite a lot is different now.
Mother laughs as she cooks. Vents pull the odors outside, and an orange-headed monkey is drawn by the smells, walking past the front curtain and through the house door, ready to eat.
The monkey owns the boy.
That is the way the world looks to the monkey. His name is Good, and he is smarter and nicer than most orange-heads. But he isn’t much nicer. Jumping up on the counter, he tells the boy, “Move.”
The boy slides a very short distance.
“Food,” the monkey says.
There are indoor rules. Good cannot open drawers or the cooler and certainly not the oven, even if the fires are off. He has his own plate and cup, and he can eat his share of the day’s first and last meals. But he isn’t allowed to bite anyone, even the boy. And if he curses, which happens too often, Good is sent outdoors again, sometimes for the entire night.
Animals sleep outside.
Good is not an animal. He says so when he behaves himself, proving every other monkey inferior.
He loves his boy, even if he comes across as an irritable beast, giving orders with his muscular body and the crisp, fierce language. They sleep together in the boy’s big bed. Every night Good makes a fresh nest out of torn paper and clean rags, and he always uses the room’s chamber pot or house toilet to relieve himself, and there haven’t been any important mistakes for two hundred days. But Mother still doesn’t approve of Good. “Who else in the world invites an orange-head to her dinner table?” she asks.
“Nobody,” the monkey says, happy for the easy meat and sweet cold fruit.
A long table stands in a special room beyond the kitchen. The boy has the important job of setting plates and utensils in their places, which doesn’t take long, and then he and Good may go outside to wait. Father usually arrives when the sunlight looks tired and the faraway trees fade to sloppy, ill-defined greens and browns. People across the world are coming home. Marduk is a great ancient and very important tree. The only door to the outside leads to a new curtain wearing a giant corona, and past the corona is a new landing that looks like no other: its railing is tall and every wooden slat stands close to its neighbor, like soldiers ready to march, barely any room for a sideways hand to reach through. A great net is suspended overhead, every thin rope close to its neighbors and more ropes pulling the net outwards to create a lovely high dome. There is only one gate where people can come through. Monkeys can slip past the largest gaps but nothing larger. Birds and young leatherwings sometimes fall in through the same holes, and sometimes they can’t get away, flying about panicked and helpless, and the boy never likes that.
Three people are always on duty at the gate. Two inside and one beyond the landing. They are usually men and each is a guard, which is a kind of soldier, though they don’t wear uniforms and their guns are kept hidden.
Each guard has several names and a full long life that the boy didn’t invent. He knows their faces and pieces of their stories, and some of them are friendly and some prefer to act like wood, tough and immune to whatever happens in the world. No matter who they are, the boy calls to them by their names, and sometimes Good teases the guards, knowing just how bad to be without finding real trouble.
As a rule, guards curse easily and with great skill.
Night is coming into the world now, darkness rising out from the cool shadows, and then Father arrives with his own guard walking before him.
There are reasons for these precautions.
“Fear is the main reason,” Father has said. “Most of the fears aren’t even real, except when they live between the ears.”
The gate is unlocked for Father.
He enters and bends over, grabbing at the boy who barely looks human, what with the long legs and wrong feet and arms that are stronger than they appear but never gain the meat that even a runty girl would possess. But he loves this boy utterly, and they hug, and locking the gate behind him, an inside guard might say, “Good evening, Merit.”
His parents are Merit and Haddi, and those aren’t uncommon names.
But only one creature in the world is named Diamond, and he kisses his father’s scarred old face while Good hurries into the lead, already tasting dinner with a monkey’s keen imagination.
After guarding the gate, these retired soldiers have forms to fill with careful words describing their uneventful shifts. Once the forms are filed, they are required to train hard at one portion of their unique job—marksmanship or risk-rating or hand-to-hand combat. Then they are free to stamp out and go home to their mates and children, if there are any, and they will end up in whatever bed is best, and they usually sleep hard for as long as possible. But whenever they awaken, day or night, their first duty is to fill out another set of forms describing their dreams and any second thoughts about the previous shift.