Chapter 211 The Ninth Spring
Chapter 211 The Ninth Spring
Chapter Two Hundred and Eleven
The Ninth Spring
The ninth spring in the Boston garden arrived on the last day of March, which was earlier than any previous spring and which the garden had earned by being, in its ninth year, the most thoroughly established version of itself it had ever been.
She was in the garden when the spring arrived — she was always in the garden in the early morning and the spring arrived in the early morning the way the most significant things arrived, before the day's ordinary claims had established themselves, in the specific quality of the hour between darkness and light when the world was at its most receptive.
She felt it through her palms on the cold March soil and she knew immediately that the ninth spring was different from the eighth spring in the specific way that the eighth spring had been different from the seventh — not richer in the sense of more of the same quality, different in kind. The dissolution that had begun in the eighth spring had been advancing through the eighth autumn and the eighth winter, and the ninth spring was the first spring that arrived after the dissolution had been advancing for a full year. The ninth spring was not the dissolution beginning. The ninth spring was the dissolution at full progress.
The source and the spring were not yet indistinguishable — the distinction was still present, still readable. But barely. The distinction had thinned over the year of dissolution to the point where reading it required the full depth of the foundational awareness sustained for several minutes. The distinction was there but it was approaching the quality of something that existed only because there was still time remaining in the dissolution rather than because the nature of the source and the spring were truly different.
She read the ninth spring for eleven minutes.
What she found beyond the near-complete dissolution was the quality of the forward motion. The medium space's eight-thousand-year directional transmission quality — the quality that put the dissolution's merged source-and-spring into directional motion toward the world's own most natural expression — was present in the Boston garden's ninth spring. Not fully, not at the depth that the Norwegian forest's geological foundation held it. But present. The beginning of the medium quality arriving in the Boston garden's source, the dissolution approaching completion producing the first hint of the quality that came after completion.
She thought: the ninth spring is the spring in which the Boston garden begins to move. Not physically — the garden is in Boston, it will always be in Boston. In the directional sense. The quality that the Norwegian forest has been moving in for eight thousand years is beginning to arrive in the Boston garden's source quality as the dissolution approaches completion.
She thought: the Vermont garden in the fortieth spring was where the dissolution began. The Boston garden in the ninth spring has the dissolution at near-completion and the first arrival of the forward motion. The Vermont garden is further along the dissolution than the Boston garden — thirty-two more years of foundational work, thirty-two more accumulated summers. But both are moving in the same direction.
She surfaced from the reading and sat in the March garden in the first light and felt the gift's gladness of the ninth spring's quality — the gladness richer than any previous spring's gladness because the dissolution had brought the source and the spring closer to being the same quality, and the gladness of the gift was the gladness of something that was more fully itself than it had been in the previous spring.
Eleanor called at seven. She had been in the Vermont garden since before dawn and she called with the quality of someone who has been receiving something significant and wants to communicate it before the day makes communication more complicated.
"The fortieth winter has completed its work," Eleanor said. "The dissolution is further than any previous year. The distinction between the source and what it generates is — I have to look very carefully to find it. It is still there. But barely. A few more springs and it will be gone entirely."
"The Boston garden's ninth spring," Lily said. "The dissolution is near-complete here too. And the medium quality is beginning to arrive. The forward motion."
A pause. "You feel the forward motion," Eleanor said.
"The beginning of it. The first quality of the Norwegian forest's directional transmission arriving in the source quality as the dissolution nears completion."
"Yes," Eleanor said. "I felt that too this morning. Very faint. The direction. The forward direction of the gift's eight-thousand-year motion beginning to arrive in the Vermont garden's source." She was quiet for a moment. "Lily. I think I need to go to the Norwegian forest."
"Yes," Lily said. "I have been thinking the same thing. Not yet — the dissolution is still in progress. But soon. When the dissolution completes and the medium quality arrives fully. That is when the Norwegian forest needs to receive what the Vermont garden has built toward."
"The medium space receiving the dissolution's completion quality the way the completion space received Eleanor's forty-year quality in Chengdu," Ethan said from the kitchen doorway. He had been listening with the anchor bond extending through the morning, the mirror receiving the quality of the spring and the call simultaneously.
"Yes," Eleanor said, through the phone. "Ama. Lily. Me. The Norwegian forest. When the dissolution completes."
"When the dissolution completes," Lily confirmed.
The March morning was clear and cold and the ninth spring was alive in the Boston garden and the network was warm through three hundred and thirty-seven frequencies and Eleanor was in Vermont in the fortieth spring with the dissolution near its completion and the forward motion beginning to arrive and the Norwegian forest was doing its eight-thousand-year work in the direction that the gift had alwa
ys been moving.
Forward. Always forward.