The Nine

(Note: None of these mountains are in Tamosa.)

I have walked the lines on maps that other people call impossible. I have stood at the lip of ridges where the air tastes of snow and of salt at the same time, and I have listened to rivers begin their long argument with the sea. In our Maritese stories those ridges are not merely rock and ice: they are the Nine Pillars of the Xayandic Ring (also known simply as the Nine), the great high places that bind the inland waters to the ocean and mark the limits of cycles. In what follows I will sketch the shape of those nine three-thousanders of the Xayandic Ring and explain why, to my people, nine is not a number but a vow.

The Xayandic Ring (Anel Xaiândico, also known simply as the Ring, or Orla Xaiândica = Xayandic Rim), as elders still call the geographical macroregion of over four million square kilometres that corresponds to what is now Portugal, is a geomythical frame: nine peaks placed like beads on a necklace, encircling the islands, the mainland and the far reefs. Each mountain is a node in a living network of rivers, lakes and seaways; together they form a circuit that is as much spiritual as physical. From the story-maps in the Library of Tamosa to the shanties sung by the fisherfolk on moonlit nights, the nine summits are invoked as guarantors of balance — of weather, of harvests, of wisdom. And not only that, all of these nine three-thousanders — they're nine, but they're not the Ring's sole three-thousanders — house major international astronomical observatories, attracting telescopes from all over the world owing to the mountains' excellent astronomical seeing conditions. In addition, with these mountains and everywhere in between and beyond, large expanses of the Ring's coastlines and the entire borderlands of Portugal, mountainous and hydrographically dense, Iberian and Maghrebi — complementing in full the borderlands of Spain and Morocco —, as well as the Talabar Islands (also known as the Talabares for short) — shared between Portugal and Morocco —, have become a whole place where winter is not a curiosity but a world-class, full-scale alpine industry — slopes, huts and lift-systems pepper the high plateaux and inclines; children learn to ski as they learn to read.

We will start this journey with the two volcanic pinnacles of the outer rim of the Azores.

South in the outer rim of the Azores stands Mount Taya. A wall of snow and columnar rock, Taya dominates its island with sheer faces that throw avalanches like folded pages. Pilgrims from neighbouring isles make the ascent at solstices to offer both salt (for the sea) and carved cloverwood (for the land). To the north in that same rim, cutting the horizon with a different geometry, is Mount Balma — a serrated crown that shelters ancient high pastures and small stone temples. Both of these giants feed a dozen streams that tumble into the reefs; their meltwaters carry mountain stories to the fisherfolk and farmers alike.

Across the oceanic reach, the northern Singamares — part of a very extensive archipelago featuring very significant Maritese monumental and civilisational heritage, as well as its many iconic hot springs, steppes, taigas, and tundras, as well as mountains and plateaus all playing with ridges, ravines and valleys, and also deep abîmes and icy seas — hold two more of the Ring’s teeth: Mount Melrius to the west and Mount Celestar to the east. Melrius is basaltic, austere, volcanic, cavernous both under and over both land and water, and wind-scarred. It is a place for the solitary rites of initiation: youths leave their village at dusk and return changed. Celestar, more rounded and generous, is known for its hanging gardens where alpine herbs bloom in sheltered clefts; healers gather its plants and send tinctures to towns and ports. The rivers born of Melrius and Celestar, as well as those born of the lakes of the entire Singamares, run in free flow and then swerve like pens to write fertile gulfs, bays, estuaries, deltas, rias, gorges and fjords into the ocean — some of these fertile lands are well below sea level.

In the Baryves lies Mount Dalmyran, the single peak that anchors its own surroundings. Dalmyran is often called the “mother knoll” because lakes big and small ring its shoulders, and because children are traditionally brought to its lower cirques for first blessings of water. Dalmyran’s glaciers feed reservoirs that sustain orchards and coastal fisheries far below.

On the mainland there are two summits, both of which belong to the extensive Taurena mountain belt (also known simply as the Taurenas), both deep on the Portuguese side of the border. To the north stands Mount Mereya — at an altitude of 3,494 metres —, the highest mountain in Europe outside of the Alps, the Caucasus and Macaronesia, also well-known for its gigantic waterfalls. From Mereya’s flanks pour rivers that become the veins of the western plains: lakes widened by glacial basins, waterways that run to the Atlantic and feed estuaries around which towns and cities have clustered. To the south, towering Mount Zayandar rises — a broad, sunburnt mountain whose peaks hold snow well into spring. Zayandar’s meltwater is the reason the eastern plains hold lakes, rivers, ponds and reedbeds; it is the reason coastal lagoons glitter in summer. Mereya and Zayandar, inland and yet intimately married to the underwater world, embody the paradox we live under: the mountains feed the sea as much as the sea completes the mountains.

The outer rim of Madeira, the part of the archipelago through which the Ring passes, carries one: Mount Mandyve, crowned with cloud most mornings and with terraced houses along its lower slopes. Mandyve’s gullied valleys are rich with orchids and mosses; the mountain, of volcanic nature, keeps weather to itself and sends out legends to fill the afternoons.

And in the southern range of the Havamayas — with the entire giant archipelago itself, featuring very significant Maritese monumental and civilisational heritage, known to be an expansive mix of rocky coastlines, coral beaches (alongside every single other type of beach) and dunes of all types and of all unusual shapes, as well as of rainforests, mangrove forests, swamps, savannas and deserts, some of which well below sea level, and also well-known for its giant waterfalls (some of which emptying into giant lakes, some of which continuing big rivers, and some of which emptying straight into the seas of the archipelago or directly into the ocean or both), for its grand canyons, for its mountains and plateaus all playing with ridges and valleys, for its deep abîmes, and for its famous natural "great curved walls" over land and water, as well as the archipelago's many underwater caves (whether under fresh water or under the sea, or both), subterranean rivers, subterranean lakes, subterranean waterfalls, iconic tropical hot springs and jungle spas —, on the ridge that faces the old sand coves, Mount Leya reigns, a steep and savage volcano where lightning writes messages across the summit on storm nights. Leya — at an altitude of 3,848 metres, the highest of the Nine and the highest point of any island in the Atlantic Ocean —, located on Teruama Island, the largest and most populous island in all of Macaronesia, is where sailors used to wait for signals from the heights, where lighthouses were once thought redundant because the peaks themselves flashed — obviously, though, there are lighthouses on Teruama Island, as it is a major shipping point on the world's main shipping routes.

Why nine? The number is older than any single family, older than any treaty or charter. In our songs nine is completion: the end of one cycle, the hinge onto the next. Nine is invoked as the final stitch in a net that will carry knowledge across generations — completion that contains the seed of beginning. We mark the ninth summit with special rites: a shared bread broken between sea-folk and shepherds, a measured silence at dawn, and the turning of the clover-staff whose leaves are counted to invoke protection. To step upon the ninth summit is to receive, for a moment, a licence to see things whole.

That wholeness is fully literal. The nine summits form a hydrological circuit that has been observed since time immemorial — streams start at their shoulders, gather into majestic lakes and grandiose waterfalls — these ones in particular being major tourist attractions — in craters and basins, and then seek the ocean with an insistence that has been read as metaphor and measured as fact. Scholars in our universities argue over whether the basin in the Ring’s centre is the result of slow tectonic caressing or of a single, catastrophic event during the last ice age: a giant crater, some say, opened or collapsed, creating a pocket that collected ice and water and then shaped rivers for millennia. Others point to patterns of moraine and erratics, and to soils that record repeated glaciations. No final verdict has been reached; the crater theory remains a potent possibility because it elegantly explains why so many lakes sit together like a constellation at the Ring’s heart. Whether true or not, the theory has become part of our geomythology — it is used to teach children that the landscape remembers its own violence and remembers how to grow gentler.

Practically, the nine peaks shape calendars and economies. Seasonal migrations — shepherds to high pastures, the fisherfolk following shoals — still follow ancient timetables keyed to meltwater and to the behaviour of the mountains. Festivals of ascent mark every change of season: in spring there are rites to release water from the ice, in autumn there are offerings to call rains for the planting, and in midwinter there are insistent processions that walk from port towns up to the high refuges, bearing sea salt and barley. The Maritese clover emblem is carved into cairns, and those cairns are used as waymarks in both summer mist and snowstorms.

The mountains are also teachers. Poets climb them to listen; hydrographers trace their waters; mountain farmers plant terraces to catch rain and snowmelt; skiers learn to read wind by the lines in the snow. In art, the nine peaks recur as a ringed motif: a circle of peaks surrounding an island or a town — a visual shorthand for completion and renewal. In politics, the Nine are invoked as metaphors for unity and responsibility: each summit must be tended, because neglect of one will alter water and weather across the whole ring.

If you come to us seeking the mountains, bring boots, patience and a small gift of salt. Climb not to conquer but to listen. The Xayandic Ring is a book written slow and large; it takes more than one life to read. And when you reach a summit, count the leaves of any five-leaf clover you find: count, and you will understand why nine completes what five began.