Chapter 1: The Garden of Sun

Kaken Kayen opened his eyes. For a while, he did nothing at all.

Warm light lay across his face, and all about him rose a murmur of unfamiliar voices. 

Faces crowded into his sight, small faces with curious eyes and bright, easy smiles. They were happy. Kaken knew not why.

Someone spoke to him. He stared. The words meant nothing; they were only soft, distant sounds, like a song whose meaning he had yet to learn.

He moved his fingers, then his arms, and his legs followed. Somehow he knew that he could stand, that he could walk if he chose. He simply did not wish to. Lying there felt better.

Then a shadow fell across him.

An old man stood above him, his face weathered by age and framed by long white hair and a beard to match. Yet his eyes were gentle, far warmer than his years would suggest. Before Kaken could make sense of what he saw, two old hands lifted him with great care.

The child looked at the man. The man looked back. Silence settled between them, unhurried and strangely comfortable. Then the old man smiled.

"Welcome, Kaken."

Kaken blinked. He understood nothing. The old man chuckled. "Welcome to the world, little one."

Several months passed, and Kaken learned a great deal in them. He learned to crawl, and that falling hurt. He learned that some people made very loud noises for reasons beyond him. And, most important of all, he learned a name.

"Sumpi," said the girl who held him. "Say it. Sumpi."

She was the first child the Great Wizard had ever made. When Sumpi opened her eyes for the first time, she had felt something she could never put properly into words: an emptiness, and beneath it, fear. She had been the first, with no sibling beside her and no familiar voice to tell her she was safe. 

Perhaps that was why she had grown into someone who could not bear to see another feel the same. She wanted her brothers and sisters to know warmth. She wanted them to laugh, and to know that they would never be alone.

Now she held the youngest of them in her arms, and he was staring at her finger.

"Come on," she coaxed. "You can do it."

His tiny hand closed around it.

"S... Su..."

Sumpi's eyes widened. Kaken tried again. "Pi." For a moment she only stared. Then her whole face lit. "You said it!"

Kaken blinked at her, unmoved.

She laughed. "Again! Say Sumpi!"

He opened his mouth. "Sumpi."

"That's right!" She hugged him close. "My little brother grows clever." Kaken seemed rather unimpressed by his own achievement.

Then the Garden shook.

A blast rolled across the grass, and Kaken's whole body jolted. His face crumpled, and he began to wail.

Sumpi whirled around. "Hey! You two!"

Not far off, two boys stood in the open, wreathed in the faint glow of Electron power. John towered over Steve, who lay sprawled in the dirt.

"Can't you see we're here too?" Sumpi shouted.

John glanced her way, grinning. "Can't you see we're having a duel?" He paused. "A massacre, rather."

Steve rose slowly and brushed the dust from his clothes. "A massacre. What a curious choice of words."

John smiled. Steve smiled back. Neither needed to say more, and they charged. Another burst of Electron power rattled the flowers nearby.

Sumpi sighed. "These two."

She turned back to Kaken and rocked him gently. "Hush now, it's alright. Let us find somewhere quieter."

She set off along one of the Garden's silver paths. Behind her another explosion rang out, and she did not so much as look back. "They'll be fine," she murmured.

Kaken's cries were fading, his eyes growing heavy. When she drew him against her chest, he went completely still. His small fingers loosened and his breathing slowed, as though nothing in the world could reach him now: no thunder, no strange voices, no fear. Only warmth.

Sumpi began to hum, and Kaken slept.

The path carried them deeper into the Garden. They crossed a little stone bridge over a clear fish pond and passed beneath flowering trees, until at last they came upon a patch of ground churned to mud and strewn with broken leaves, and upon several very tired children.

Sumpi stopped. "So this is the farm?"

Schnee looked up. She was mud from head to toe, and beside her Dino looked no better. Between them grew a small plant with a thin stem, a handful of leaves, and several lovely flowers. It had not a single fruit.

"Does that thing bear fruit?" Sumpi asked.

Schnee did not answer. Her hands glowed faintly with Proton energy, and her brow was furrowed in concentration. Nothing happened. She tried again, and her fingers began to tremble.

"We are trying," Dino said wearily.

"All day?"

"Almost."

"We can make it grow leaves," Schnee declared, pointing proudly. "And flowers! But the fruit just won't come."

Sumpi studied the plant, then the heavy-laden trees that dotted the Garden beyond it. She tilted her head. "Have you tried the bees?"

Schnee blinked. "The bees? Why?"

Before Sumpi could answer, a voice spoke behind them. "Because the bees may know something you do not."

They turned. The Great Wizard stood there with his hands clasped behind his back and a gentle smile on his face.

"Father!" Schnee ran to him at once. "Look! We made leaves and flowers, but it won't grow any fruit!"

"Then perhaps," the Wizard said, "you are asking the plant to do everything itself." He stepped closer. "Watch."

He raised one hand. A soft buzzing filled the air, and from his open palm a swarm of bees rose into the light. Schnee's mouth fell open. The bees drifted toward the plant, and one settled upon a flower, then another, and another. 

Slowly, the blossoms began to change. Petals folded inward. The center of each one swelled into a tiny bud, and before the children's eyes, fruit began to grow.

"We did it!" Schnee leapt into the air. "It has fruit!"

"You did not do it alone," said the Wizard, nodding toward the bees. "Never forget to thank those who help you."

Schnee nodded with great seriousness. "Thank you, bees!"

Dino laughed. The Wizard chuckled with him. "And now, why don't you two build them a proper nest?" Schnee seized Dino's arm. "Come on!"

"Wait, where are we putting it?"

"Over there!"

"That's far too high!"

"Then climb!"

They ran off, bickering all the way about where the bees ought to live.

Sumpi watched them go, smiling. Then her gaze drifted back to the Wizard. Schnee and Dino had been worn to the bone by a single stubborn plant. 

He had summoned a swarm and woken an entire harvest, and he did not so much as breathe harder for it. He never did. She had never once thought to wonder why.

"Come here, little one," said the Wizard.

She started. "Hm?"

"There is something I must show you."

"What is it?"

He said nothing. He only turned and began to walk.

Sumpi looked down at Kaken, still sound asleep, then back at the Wizard's retreating figure. Curiosity won. "Wait for me!"

She hurried after him, holding Kaken carefully against her. Around them the Garden went on blooming. The silver paths shone in the sun, and the flowers swayed in the breeze. Far behind, another explosion rolled across the grass.

Sumpi sighed. "Those two truly never stop, do they?"

The Wizard laughed. "No." His eyes lingered on the path ahead. "But perhaps that is what keeps a garden alive."

Sumpi smiled, and together they walked on into the Garden of Sun, where the light was warm and no one had yet thought to ask where it came from.

To be continued.