For a long time Sparrow just walked. After the stuffiness of the mine and living in a cave in the valley it was just what he needed.

He drank from crisp mountain-fed streams, chewed on the stems of grass and furry winterberries. He slept under the stars and watched streams of yellow stars fall to the earth.

It was on the third day, while he sat with his feet dangling in a small stream that he heard music.

At first it was beautiful… a soft, dancing tune plucked on a string instrument. The tune bounced along like the water swirling over the stones. There was a voice. A sweet, slightly hoarse voice.

Underneath the bridge.

The doves go to sleep.

I tell them that they’re lucky.

‘Cause at least they got their wings.

They can fly away.

But me… I just… well…

I just stay.

The strings spun and gelled together and spelt out the sort of tune you nod wisely to. Then the voice started back up with a new verse.

Underneath the bridge.

I just can’t - Aww hell. What’s the point?!

There was a sharp clanging sound and the music broke off. Sparrow gently slipped into the water. The stream only came up to his waist, but it was fast-moving. Without making a splash he lowered himself until he was floating on his back with his feet in front of him.

He floated down the river, and as he did he heard the musician start to pluck at the strings again, but it was half-hearted and the song fell flat.

The current took Sparrow round a bend, where a young blonde-haired woman with a snakeskin belt dangled her feet in the water. A mandolin rested on her knees. Her hair was draped over her face, and it was only as Sparrow floated past that she noticed him.

‘What in Notru’s asshole?’ yelled the young woman, who sprung up from the water so fast she tipped forward and fell in.

With a giant splash and a small whimper, she climbed onto the bank.

‘Hey,’ said Sparrow, with water dripping from him as he stood up, ‘Sorry if I startled you. But… great song.’

‘Startled me?!? The young woman yelled, frantically wiping all the drops of water from her mandolin, ‘I think you just put a hole in my heart.’

Sparrow lifted a finger and at the tip of that finger was a flame, in an instant flames covered Sparrow’s whole body, burning away the water that coated him, The singer’s eyes went wide, Sparrow sat down next to her, ‘Why didn’t you finish the song?’

The singer eyed Sparrow again, the flames were starting to die on Sparrow’s chest, ‘I can’t finish the song because I can’t finish songs. I haven’t been to war. I haven’t fought a dragon. I haven’t been in love. I’ve never done anything and that’s why…’

‘Right.’ Sparrow climbed to his feet as he realised he’d opened a can of worms, ‘Well good luck with that… I’d best keep going…’

‘That’s why I’m here - I’m trying to have some adventures. Something to write about.’ The girl eyed Sparrow, ‘You look interesting.’

‘I’m really not.’

‘Well, you look like someone who interesting things happen to.’

Sparrow sighed, ‘Look, he gestured to her mandolin, and the pretty, mud-encrusted silk of the dress she wore, ‘Look. You’re obviously from a wealthy family-’

Her eyes shot into a frown, ‘-what do you know?’

‘I know that a young peasant couldn’t afford to learn an instrument like that. Look, whatever you’re running away from-’

‘I’m not running away from anything.’ she snapped, ‘I’m running towards it. And I’ve changed my mind too. I’ve got nothing to learn from an asshole.’

‘Fine.’ said Sparrow, turning away, ‘good luck with your songs.’

And Sparrow walked away. He walked downriver, past a collection of hills, a smattering of streams, and a gaggle of geese until he reached a small sign saying Shozen Town.

‘Town’s probably being generous,’ Sparrow said to himself as he walked past a collection of leaning shacks that had been assaulted with rocks by a nearby cliff.

Farmers dressed in rags stared at him as he passed, a merchant with a roadside stall narrowed his eyes at him.

Sparrow passed a window and stared at himself.

He had to look twice, three times. He hardly recognised himself.

His hair was long, wavy, it hung around his face, his cheeks were shallow and browned by the sun. He was healthy and the bend in his back he’d gained as a kid from picking turnips had disappeared. His clothes hung loose in tatters around him.

But past his reflection was a glowing bar, where steaming ricecakes were served to punters and hot rice wine was there to swallow with it.

‘Hmm,’ Sparrow said, ‘I’m hungry.’

The warm air rushed forward to meet Sparrow as he entered. There was the creaking of chairs and dimming of conversation as people turned to see who had entered. The conversation didn’t start again even when Sparrow arrived at the bar.

Must be all locals. Sparrow thought as he nodded at the barkeep.

And that’s when he realised his mistake. He patted the ripped pockets of his shirt. He had nothing on him, not even a copper jot.

‘Two rice cakes and a cup of jasmine tea,’ Sparrow said, ‘and where’s your toilet?’

The barkeeper nodded in the direction of a door.

Outside Sparrow found a narrow trench dug in the ground. Flies buzzed around it.

Sparrow tightened his belt a notch.

Invisible, he slipped back inside the bar, where two ricecakes sat steaming, and the barman stood talking to a man who was slouched over the bar half-drunk.

‘And then it just kept growing,’ the man said, ‘and growing and growing and growing, and all my other plants can’t get enough sunshine. My winter cabbages are all shrivelled.’ The man sobbed into his drink, then took a long draught.

Next to him a pair of ricecakes floated into the air and made their way to the darkest part of the bar.

‘I told you Kuzo,’ Shen the barman said, ‘you buy yourself a new axe and you cut that damn thing down and you stop wearing my ears out.’

‘B-but,’ the drunk man spluttered, ‘I did, I bought another axe and I tried to cut it and by the second slice the head was dull - I didn’t even make a mark Shen.’

The barman rolled his eyes, ‘Next time try a shovel.’

****

Sparrow sat in his corner. Quite content as he ate his ricecakes. The locals were all too engrossed in their conversations and the barman stared around after he noticed the ricecakes were missing, but in the end just shrugged and gave up.

Rain started tapping on the window Sparrow had peered through which made him even more glad he was inside. He loved the smell of the bar, the chatter and broken laughs and stories that filled the space with sound.

And then the door opened and in raced a figure clutching a mandolin.

The chatter of the bar died away. Faces stared at the new arrival, who took a pouch from her pocket and thumped it down on the bar.

There was a click as silver coins spilled from it. All the eyes in the bar zeroed in on the shiny metal.

‘I need food and a room.’ she said, ‘I’m very cold.’

The barman still wasn’t done staring at the coins, ‘This isn’t a hotel. This is a bar. But for a silver coin, you can sleep in the loft.’

‘A silver coin!’ said the man with the squint, getting to his feet with effort, then swaying over to the bar and wrapping an arm around the young woman with the mandolin.

‘A silver coin should get you a mansion for the night. Lucky for you, I happen to own a mansion’ He winked, and the girl’s nose wrinkled. Around the bar came a chorus of croaky laughs.

Another arm wrapped its way around the woman’s neck, the silver coins clicked as a meaty hand landed on it.

‘It seems the girl wants to buy us a round each.’

The chorus of shouts went out through the bar. The men piled in, grabbing at the girl. She tried to swing her mandolin at them, but their arms swatted it aside. She tried to reach for her coins, but a fist came down on her knuckles, and then pulled them to a pair of hairy lips.

And all through it she didn’t scream. Even as the hands travelled across her body she met them with elbows and kicks that made some men laugh, and others slap her.

And then all the candles in the bar went out.

There was a sound like an earthquake, and men were thrown against the bar so hard that the bamboo began to creak and split. The men tried to reach for the woman again, but all they touched was cold, hard stone.

Sparrow grabbed her shirt and dragged her behind him. Even when he kicked the door open he didn’t let her go. He sailed over three oak trees and then a cedar before touching down in an open clearing surrounded by scrub.

‘I’ve seen a lot of stupid in my life, but you… you just reached a whole new level.’ Sparrow said.

‘Who the hell are you?’ The woman screamed.

‘I’m nobody. But I’m a nobody who doesn’t like to see bad things happen. The world’s a crazy place, you need to be careful out there.’

She gazed at him, she was still shivering from the cold, but her stare was defiant, ‘Why didn’t you grab my money?’

‘Because I wanted to teach you a lesson. Why would you flash that kind of money in front of people who have none?

She swallowed, ‘That money was earnt. Fair and square.’

‘Rights and wrongs don’t matter when your family is starving, when your cabbages have failed.’

The woman stared at Sparrow. She pursed her lips, then finally said, ‘You’re more interesting than I thought.’

Sparrow scoffed, ‘I don’t give a damn about your songs. Look. Go home. Stop trying to get yourself killed.’

And with that Sparrow started to walk off into the rain. But the woman hurried after him, ‘It’s you… you’re going to be my inspiration.’

‘For a song?’ Sparrow said, splashing through a puddle.

‘For an epic!’ she shouted back over the rain, ‘think about it, I’ll follow you around for a little while, record your adventures - you’ll get fame, status…’

‘... how about a headache?’ Sparrow said, ‘Look, I walk alone. I don’t like people behind me.’

The woman scribbled something onto a rain-stained paper, ‘That was a good opening line. I’m gonna start with that.’

Sparrow moaned, ‘Okay. Okay… come follow me and watch me do lame things - you’ll get bored and have nothing to write about, but whatever.’

A smile spread over her face. It lasted all of three seconds before the rain pelting her already-saturated clothes started making her shiver.

Sparrow stared at her, ‘Come on. There’s a stand of trees not far away. I’ll make you a fire.’

****

The trees were annoyed by the fire. Sparrow could tell. He could tell from their scents and the way their needles swished in the wind. He knew they were telling him off for bringing fire so near them, but he ignored them.

In front of him, the woman was stretching her fingers out above the fire, then rubbing them over her arms, trying to rub the warmth into them.

‘Where have you been sleeping?’ Sparrow asked.

She leaned over the flame, ‘I slept near the river yesterday. And the night before I slept under the bridge.’

‘And the night before that?’ Sparrow asked.

‘Well, the night before I slept in my old bed. I hadn’t started my quest then.’

Sparrow shoved a log into the fire, sparks flew up and crackled around the woman, ‘You’ve been on the road two days and I should tell you how stupid you are for doing so, but I used to be that stupid once, and hopefully I’ll continue to do stupid things like that right throughout my life.’ He smiled, ‘How do you like it so far?’

‘Well, if you take out the freezing cold, the guys who tried to rob me, the asshole who scared me enough that I fell in the river, the troll that almost crushed me, and the snake I turned into a belt, well… I quite like it.’

Sparrow laughed, ‘You turned a snake into a belt?’

‘Yeah. It was going to bite me so… I kind of bit it first.’

****

Long before the morning sun had risen Zoe felt a stick poking her arm.

‘Get up,’ Sparrow said, ‘it’s adventure time.’

They climbed over the hill and onto a small flat just above a shack.

There, swaying in frustration, was the farmer Kuzo. The drunk scooped an axe into his hand and then limped over to a giant vine growing in the middle of his crops.

‘It’s going into the clouds!’ Zoe said.

Sparrow nodded, ‘And look at its roots, they’re strangling all the other plants around it.’

Below them, Kuzo swung his axe at the vine three times. Each swing made a loud ringing sound echo through the valley. After a final blow, the bean’s roots rose up out of the ground and wrapped themselves around the man’s legs.

Kuzo screamed and swung his axe at them, but the roots wrapped around his arms and started pulling him into the ground.

Sparrow got to his feet, he felt a hand on his arm.

‘You going to kill it?’ Zoe asked.

‘No. I’m going to save him,’ Sparrow said, ‘Remember, he attacked the vine first.’

By the time Zoe got to her feet Sparrow was already down by the vine. His stone hands struggled to bend the vine roots away from Kuzo. Sparrow spread his hands and sent a wave of flames that charred the base of the roots. As Kuzo scrambled, the vine roots broke off.

Sparrow didn’t pause. He flew up the side of the vine towards the top.

‘Hey! Asshole! What about me?’ Zoe called after him.

She swung her mandoline onto her back and started to climb the vine.

Its shoots wrapped themselves around her feet and her arms shook as they hauled her up the vine.

Eventually, she couldn’t hang on any longer. The roots and leaves were dragging her towards the ground. She turned to Sparrow who had descended and was hovering beside her with a blank look on his face.

‘I need a lift.’ she said.

Sparrow stared at her, ‘A lift?’

‘Yeah,’ her arms quivered, ‘I can’t fly.’

‘You’re really going through a lot to get your song.’

‘I need to live and experience things if I want to write anything good.’

With that she took a shaky breath, peeked at the ground, let go of the vine and jumped into his arms.

Sparrow caught her, then smiled as he started cruising up the vine, ‘Maybe you’re more like me than I thought.’

He flew up the vine a little slower than he usually would’ve. Her hands were warm against his chest and neck and Sparrow found his eyes meeting hers.

He shifted his away, up to the clouds they were passing through.

‘Big vine, huh?’ Sparrow said.

She looked down, ‘Yeah… I’ve never seen one so big.

The cloud got thicker and thicker - like little waves of blankets until with a swish they were out in the open. The cloud stretched out like the surface of the earth and the vine tilted off at a ninety-degree angle - following the top of the cloud until it reached a figure floating above the cloud’s surface.

Zoe tapped on it with her foot - the cloud was solid.

‘A cultivator?’ Zoe asked.

‘There’s always a cultivator,’ Sparrow sighed.

They walked across the cloud-top, their feet disappearing slightly into the surface of the clouds. Other vines appeared at random on the surface of the clouds, but every vine made its way to the figure meditating at the clouds’ centre.

The walk was long and rather wet underfoot. And when he reached the figure Sparrow was feeling like getting out of there and laying in the sun somewhere quiet.

‘Oi!’ Sparrow shouted to the man dressed in white meditating in front of them, ‘What’s with all these vines?’

The man opened his eyes - and Sparrow felt his jaw drop.

The man’s pupils were reflections of the surface of the earth. Whole continents and oceans of green and blue existed within them.

‘WHO. ARE. YOU?’ The man’s voice boomed, he looked to be only a few years older than Sparrow, but his presence was like that of an eternity.

‘I’m Sparrow,’ he whispered, ‘and I’m here to-’

‘-WHAT RANK ARE YOU SPARROW?’ the meditating figure interrupted.

‘Look… if you could please stop shoutin-’ Zoe started, but again she was cut off.

‘-WHAT RANK ARE YOU? ANSWER ME!’

‘Well I don’t really know what rank I am,’ Sparrow said, ‘I’ve never really-’

‘-CHALLENGING ME WITHOUT A RANK!?! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT RANK I AM? WHAT I’M CAPABLE OF?’

‘No.’ said Zoe, ‘But I’m sure you’re going to tell us.’

‘I’M A GOD.’ the man-god boomed, ‘WITH A SINGLE THOUGHT I CAN SPLIT EVERY BONE IN YOUR BODY IN HALF, I CAN…’

‘-So you’re the god of vines then?’ Sparrow asked, ‘I met the god of a mountain once and-’

The god started laughing, ‘BOY, there are GODS and then there are those of GOD-RANK. I am GOD-RANK. I don’t need anyone praying to me to accumulate power - I take it straight from the earth, or…’ he grinned maniacally, ‘or I take it from the dead bodies of weeds like you.’

Sparrow and Zoe looked at eachother, ‘That explains the vines,’ Sparrow said, ‘he’s using them like a living straw - sucking up all the power from the earth beneath the farmers.’

Zone nodded slowly, Sparrow noticed she was writing in a small notepad, ‘And what are you going to do about it Sparrow?’

‘Sparrow sighed, ‘I guess I’m going to fight him.’ He pointed at the notepad, and her charcoal pencil, ‘I hope the song’s worth it for the beating I’m about to get.’

‘Oh, it will be,’ she said, ‘and I’ll be here cheering.’

‘For me or him?’

‘A bit of both.’

Sparrow wrapped stoneskin over his body - then deep, deep in his bones - leaving only his heart uncoated.

A moment later the vines were coiled around his arms and legs, pulling them in four different directions.

Sparrow’s bones creaked as they were pulled from their sockets.

He gave a yell and flames sprang from his hands to the vines which charred and broke - dropping him head-first onto the surface of the cloud.

Pillars of ice sprang from the cloud and tried to pierce his skin. The ice knocked chunks of stone from his body, then wrapped around Sparrow’s finger - snapping it from his hand. Sparrow cried out as he was lifted before the god. Ice coated his legs and vines trailed across his arms. Sparrow channelled fire into his feet and the ice beneath him started to bubble and melt.

The god grinned and the ice thickened - the water Sparrow had melted froze.

He struggled, tried to fly, but couldn’t move.

‘What now?’ Zoe called.

‘Now I try to negotiate,’ Sparrow moaned.

As he turned to the god Sparrow turned his leg from stone to wood and sent a tiny root down through the ice towards the ground.

‘You have NO CHANCE of negotiating with me,’ the god said.

‘I’ve got a diamond,’ Sparrow said

‘I don’t need any diamonds,’ the god laughed.

‘It’s big and shiny and probably has magic powers,’ Sparrow’s root dropped through the clouds.

‘Well if it’s worth something I’ll just kill you and take it from your dead body.’

Sparrow bit his lip, ‘In that case, my companion…’ he nodded towards Zoe, ‘has the ability to tear you in two through the power of song.’

The god yawned and vines wrapped around Sparrow until he was encased in a tomb of vines. Their spikes cut his skin, their stems wrapped around his throat, there was a pause, then Sparrow screamed, blood erupted from the spot where Sparrow had been standing, and when the blood finished coating the clouds around the god, Sparrow was no more.

The god turned towards Zoe, who stood open-mouthed amongst the clouds.

‘You know.’ said the god, ‘I always wanted songs written about me.’