V.C. Andrews - Gods of Green Mountain

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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O nce, in a time far removed from ours, in a place in the far reaches of our universe, there was a planet called El Dorraine, which meant the ideal. And so it was, or nearly so.

It was the most favored planet under all of the suns; however this was not always the case. In its faraway dark beginnings it had been named, and properly so, El Sod-a-Por, meaning the ill-favored oneand so it had been, decidedly.

Eons ago, two giant worlds collided in the black infinity of space, and they shattered into trillions of small pieces. The largest bit of all spun off and was captured between the gravities of two small suns. Thus it was that El Sod-a-Por came into being. And oh, but it was hot on El Sod-a-Por with the two suns to give it light and warmth! No sooner would one sun set behind the Scarlet Mountains, and the black cooling mantle of night settle down upon that heat-ravaged land, when the second sun would rise above the Green Mountain, to chase away the comforting darkness. Into the light and heat again the second sun would bring that poor, beleaguered world.

And oh, but it was cold upon El Sod-a-Por at the top and bottom poles! It was a sphere constantly spinning, blazing hot in the bulging middle; freezing cold at the receding, opposite poles. So perfectly was the world balanced between the two suns, no ray of light or warmth was ever allowed to penetrate into the icy darkness of either pole. Both were places of eternal night.

Only on the narrow borderlands between the two extremities could green life survive, under the Gods of Green Mountain. Even there the sizzling hot or numbing cold would sweep in and shrivel the tender, young growing plants. Nevertheless, somehow through the years, some life did persist despite all the obstacles hurled upon it, and resilient, determined, hardy life it was. When the people cameand eventually they didit took them billions of years to evolve from stationary rooted plants into ambulatory men. They were short, thick peoplesturdy as tree trunks, as obstinate, resilient and tenacious as the plant stock from which they had sprung.

To those harassed people, it seemed that natures elements waged a relentless, merciless, perpetual battle to stamp them out. Down into the deep bowels of their earth they were forced to dig to find water, and clever were the ways in which they devised means to bring it to the surface, and irrigate the parched land. Though it rained often on the borderlands between the too hot and the too cold, it was never a gentle, drizzling, soothing and nourishing rain. Oh, no! Sweet and gentle rain was never to be expected. Torrents of driving water hurled down on their land. A drenching downpour accompanied by swirling winds to rip and tear. And when the rain, the winds, were over, the water disappeared as quickly as it had come. Swallowed up thirstily by the cracks and crevices, seeping down through the many orifices in the hard top crust. Down into the dark inner-earth.

There were those, many, who argued that beneath this same hard crust was indeed the place where life would be easier. But the majority dissented. Thoughts of life in the dark caves, the cold burrows and tunnels, was abhorrent to them, the lovers of light and sun.

Their strange land, dominated by two suns, refrigerated at either end, steaming hot in the middle, created through the play of extreme temperatures, acting one on the other, narrow rims between the two climates, rocky lands of crystals of iridescent and radiant beauty. They didnt notice. The struggle to maintain existence was too backbreaking, muscle-aching, mind-fatiguing to appreciate what good they might have seen, or found. Theirs was labor that never ended. Never even lessened, no matter how much was accomplished during the long working hours. They were people of one occupation, one profession, one avocationto raise food, to plant it, to make an effort at harvesting, to keep alive, to endure. To survive. That was it.