Chapter 51: A Step to Heaven

Joe had lived in Blackwood long enough to become familiar with the town's own collection of rumors.

Green Hollow possessed plenty of them, but village gossip rarely traveled far enough to lose track of where it began. Someone's cow broke a fence, a hunter exaggerated the size of an animal, two families argued over a boundary, or Pam remembered something embarrassing Mike had done fifteen years earlier and ensured nobody else forgot it either.

Blackwood had more material to work with.

There were old families, rich merchants, forest expeditions, guards, magistrate officials, martial practitioners, caravaners from distant towns, and enough taverns for a story to improve several times before crossing one district.

Most of those stories were entertaining and useless.

One particular kind kept catching Joe's attention.

Every few years, according to people around the markets, a child was born while something strange happened nearby.

The details varied.

A lamp suddenly burned bright enough to fill a room with white light. Flowers opened in the wrong season. Birds gathered on a roof. A cold room became warm for several breaths. Sometimes the stories were subtle enough that Joe suspected nothing unusual had happened at all.

What interested him was what supposedly came afterward.

If the phenomenon was obvious enough, the magistrate could arrange for the child to be examined.

Sometimes that led nowhere.

Sometimes one of Blackwood's established families became interested. Medicine, martial instruction, money, apprenticeships, employment—the exact form varied depending on who told the story.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

One case had become particularly famous.

Several years earlier, a child had apparently been born under a phenomenon significant enough that the magistrate became involved personally. The infant was examined, officials came and went, and not long afterward both parents left Blackwood with the child for the state capital.

That part remained remarkably consistent.

Everything before it did not.

The first detailed version Joe heard involved flowers.

An elderly herb seller insisted that an entire courtyard had bloomed in the middle of the cold season.

"Whole courtyard," the man said. "Every branch. Even the ones that should've been bare."

"You saw it?"

"My friend's older sister did."

Joe had already lived long enough in two worlds to recognize what that did to the quality of evidence.

The second version involved green light pouring from the windows.

The third added birds covering the roof.

By the fourth telling, the infant had nearly begun floating.

Joe stopped asking ordinary townspeople.

The underlying event still seemed real, so several evenings later he brought it up while Mira was eating with him and Simon at the courtyard house.

"The floating baby?" Simon asked.

Joe looked at him.

"You've heard that one?"

"I've heard better ones."

"Of course you have."

Mira laughed. "There really was a child."

"That much I believe."

"And there really was a birth vision."

Joe's attention sharpened.

"According to whom?"

"Father."

That immediately improved the reliability of the claim.

"What exactly is a birth vision?"

Mira hesitated.

"I know what people mean by it. I don't really know why it happens."

"That's already better than the herb seller."

Simon pointed his spoon toward Joe. "The flowers might still have happened."

"You weren't there."

"Neither were you."

Mira ignored both of them.

"Something unusual sometimes happens when certain children are born. Spiritual energy reacts around them somehow. Light, plants, animals, things like that."

"And the vision tells you what the child is?"

"No. They still test afterward."

"For what?"

Mira looked at him.

"A Spiritual Root."

Joe had heard the phrase before, usually surrounded by enough superstition that he had never known which part to take seriously.

Simon added, "Immortal seedling."

Mira immediately shook her head. "That's what people call them. It doesn't mean every rooted child becomes an immortal."

"I didn't say it did."

Joe looked between them.

"Which one of you actually understands this?"

Mira pointed toward the door.

"Father."