by Luke Donegan
The big man had lost weight during hospitalisation. His face was shrunken and lean. His eyes were hollow. When he saw the blood on Erys’ robes, his eyes widened with concern.
“Erys?”
“It is not his blood,” said Sian. “The Teacher is dying.”
“What happened?” asked the Builder.
“Sit first,” said Sian, taking his hand. She led him back into the ward. They sat together on his bed. Sian held the Builder’s hand while Erys stood before them.
Sian shook her long, dark hair from her face and looked directly at him.
“Erys?”
“I followed him back to our office.” He avoided their eyes. “I tried to convince him to ... Builder, I told him everything. He knows about the animals. He has seen the cistern and the laboratories. I believed he was going to reveal us to the Director so I followed him to talk him out of it. And we argued. He grabbed me and somehow ... initiated Passage.”
“He had a bruise on his face,” accused Sian.
He nodded slowly. “Yes. I hit him. To get away. I think there is something wrong with him, something wrong in his mind.”
Erys slumped into a chair. No-one spoke for a long time. He looked at the bloodstains on his robes. He wanted to disrobe and wash the experience away.
The Builder looked at his feet. After a while Sian asked: “Builder, are you healing?”
The expression in the Builder’s eyes was distressing.
“I am sorry for what I did,” he said. “I lost myself.”
“You are forgiven, Builder.”
The man lowered his face and wept.
Erys watched the big man cry, but he felt no sympathy for the Builder. His admiration was gone. And he realised he felt nothing for Sian either. He felt nothing but cold.
The Teacher did something to me, he thought. He infected me, somehow.
He sat, detached from everything about him, and waited.
When the Scion-Doctor joined them he only half listened to what the young man had to say.
“The Teacher is alive.”
Erys gazed at the stains of blood on the Scion-Doctor’s white. He did not care.
“... I would be surprised if he ever walked again.”
These words were difficult to assimilate. Sian asked a question but he could not hear her voice.
The Teacher was alive.
He got to his feet and walked from the ward. He did not hear their voices calling him back. For the moment, he cared for nothing but sleep. To sleep, to disappear into darkness with a closed, empty mind. To escape the cold and the terrible, boiling mass of Dark Matter that was clinging to and suffocating his soul.
He returned to his room and washed. Boiling water scalded his skin, but still it was too cold. He scrubbed the Teacher’s blood from his body. A red mark on his chest would not wash away, a deep bruise beneath the skin of his chest. It was the mark of what the Teacher had done to him. An infection of Dark Matter.
He leant over the side of the washtub and vomited.
For hours he sat in the bath, staring into space. At one point he noticed a figure sitting across the room, watching him. The figure did not move. She watched and waited.
“Why didn’t you choose me?”
She did not answer.
“It was wrong,” he said.
The Teacher’s eyes did not blink. Her voluminous, red hair curled over her shoulders. He waiting for something, some movement, some sign. She gave nothing away.
“And where are you now?” he bellowed. Water splashed from the tub.
Nowhere.
She watched him as he walked dripping from the room. The water in the washtub was red with the blood of her scion.
He lay in a delirium that lasted for two days.
He dreamt that the Museum broke open like a shell and an endless issue of monstrous creatures spilled forth.
Aberration.
I told you, said Jay’s voice. Why didn’t you believe me?
The Laws of Nature were broken.
My god! he thought. What have we done?
There was nothing, no Law, no army, no amount of strength, nothing to stop the creatures piling out of the Museum, spilling out like an uncontainable tide, like water poured across the entire world.
Tears streamed from his eyes. He was only partly awake, his mind suffocated by fog. Cold air chilled his body. He could not lift himself from his bed.
He rolled to the side and opened his eyes. There were others in the room. Hands shook him but the hands were made of mist. They had no purchase. A hand slapped his cheek but it passed with a wet coolness through his face.
Wake up, Erys. Wake up!
A light shone in his eyes. Behind the light, seething and bubbling hung a core of darkness.
Is he going to die?
Have we miscalculated? Will we unleash a second Aberration upon the world?
The bodies shifted, came and went. But one figure was constant and clearly defined. Ariel sat across the room, watching him. Her red hair was the colour of fire.
He looked at her, and his tears issued like a flooding dam.
There is no ocean of souls! he cried. No Spirit realm. When we die, Dark Matter consumes us.
She did not smile. Her face betrayed no emotion.
There is nothing but the world, the desert, the sea, the sky! This beautiful, fragile life!
Even though his eyes were closed, he could still see Ariel sitting across the room, watching him. He hugged his chest and rocked. And shivered and cried.
How far are you willing to go, Erys? a voice asked him. How far will you go?
He woke in the dark of night, in his own room. He felt tired. There was pain in his chest, but he was awake. Ariel was gone.
Moonlight filtered into the room. In a chair beside his bed slept a figure, her head resting on her hand. Sian! Moonlight gave her face a hue of pale blue. Her dark hair flowed over her shoulders.
He felt a sudden relief that she was here. He studied her face. Her lips twitched and her eyes moved beneath their lids.
As he watched her he worried that the Teacher had shown him the Truth. Dark Matter had touched Erys. An Aberration caused by the breaking of Law. And in his dream, a second Aberration had issued from the Museum.
Sian believed passionately in the Ark. She had devoted her life to growing the animals, and she dreamed of nothing but a future world filled with abundant life. While Sian believed in the Spirit, she was first and foremost a scientist. She worked in and fought for the physical world.
Erys knew now that there was no Spirit world. With the ocean of souls gone, sucked into the void of Dark Matter, physical life was all they had.
As he watched the sleeping girl, Erys understood the choice he had to make.
How far are you willing to go? he had been asked. All the way, because there was nothing else to lose.
Despite what would come, he was prepared to break the Law, for her.
He only needed to find the strength.
“You are awake. Good. We can not afford to lose two Teachers.”
The Scion-Doctor sat above him. The young man applied a cool, moist cloth to his chest. Erys winced with pain. His chest was covered with red welts.
Erys glanced around him.
“How long?”
“You have been out for three days,” answered the Scion-Doctor.
The young man finished sponging the wound then carefully pulled the bedclothes up to Erys’ neck.
“We did not realise how sick you were. The Scion-Curator of Nature found you. I’ve been attending you while the Doctor has been occupied with the Teacher.”
With the scion’s help Erys pulled himself into a sitting position. “What happened? Why did I get sick?”
“Passage,” explained the scion. “You almost went too far. Passage is self-fueling. The further you go, the more momentum it builds. You really should be dead. The Teacher, well ... he is alive, but I don’t think he will ever leave the hospital.”
Er
ys gingerly touched his chest.
“The chest wound is superficial,” said the scion. “It will heal. A day or two of rest and you should be okay.”
How far are you willing to go?
“Thank you, Scion-Doctor,” he said. “For caring for me. I think I will sleep now. I am very tired.”
“Yes, Scion-Teacher. I will return in a few hours with something to eat.”
He closed his eyes and waited as the scion left his room. He heard the man moving around the outer office. Then after a few minutes he heard the office door open and close, and silence ensue.
Erys dressed and made his way from the office to the elevator. He felt tired and in pain. But he was certain about what he needed to do. He crept like a cat along the corridors of the upper level.
The elevator carried him to the Workshop. He was halfway across the busy room before the children noticed him.
“Scion-Teacher!” called one. “You’re here.”
“Scion-Teacher,” called Felicity, pulling a safety mask from her head. “You’re okay? The Builder told us ...”
He waved them away with his hand. In the corridor outside the Taxidermist’s laboratory he met the Builder. The big man stood in his path. He stopped, because he respected the Builder, and because they shared a loss. But he did not have time.
“Erys,” said the Builder. “I don’t think you should be up.”
“You are back at work?” asked Erys.
“Yes.”
“Good.” Erys nodded. He broke eye contact with the Builder and stepped past the big man into the Taxidermist’s rooms.
“Erys,” the Builder called after him.
He passed through the laboratory and the secret rooms into the vast subterranean cistern below the Museum. Row upon row of capsules faced him. Thousands of frozen life forms, waiting for warmth, waiting for life.
The Taxidermist was across the Ark working in the Mammals section.
Erys descended the stairs and joined the Taxidermist. The Builder entered the cistern behind him.
Although the Taxidermist was unusually tall with a gray pallor to his skin, little indicated he was unlike other men. Not before the Teacher had entered the Ark had Erys guessed the Taxidermist’s secret. Not until he had seen the flicker of grey, scaly skin wash across the Taxidermist’s neck.
The Taxidermist closed the lid of the capsule he was working on and looked up, still and unblinking.
“The Teacher believes we are breaking the Law of Nature,” stated Erys. “He believes we will bring a second Aberration to the world.”
The Taxidermist looked from Erys to the Builder approaching along the row. He sucked his lower lip.
“He is wrong,” he said.
“Is he? I’m not sure. He showed me something that indicates otherwise. He was convincing.”
The Taxidermist watched Erys carefully. The young man was in a state of heightened anxiety. Erys’ eyes flicked around the cistern. The Taxidermist noticed that darkness pooled around the edges of Erys’ eyes.
“What did he show you, Erys?”
“The consequences of breaking the Law. Dark Matter.”
The Builder stood beside the Taxidermist.
“He reminded me of my role as Teacher,” said Erys. “A Teacher is the moral guide of the community. It is my duty to support the Laws. The Teacher believes I have failed in this responsibility. Can you convince me otherwise?”
The Taxidermist chose his words slowly. “Listen carefully Erys. Xia understands, as do I, that the world we live in is the consequence of the breaking of the Law. It is the consequence of what Kafka Yellis did, thousands of years ago. We are trying to mend what has been broken.”
“But does that justify another broken Law?” countered Erys. He did not expect the Taxidermist to answer. “I need you to tell me something. I need you to tell me it will be worth it. Can you promise me you won’t fail?”
“I can’t,” said the Taxidermist. “I can’t promise you.”
“But look at what we have achieved, Erys,” said the Builder. “There is hope here.”
“You speak of hope!” said Erys, turning to the Builder. “And yet you despaired! Who are you to speak of hope?”
The Builder stepped back, rocked by these words.
“Promise me,” demanded Erys, speaking again to the Taxidermist.
“I can’t promise anything.” The Taxidermist gestured around him, at the cistern, at the animals in the capsules. “But this is worth fighting for, even if we fail. It is worth fighting for.”
“Even if we summon Aberration?”
The Taxidermist lifted his hands in supplication and stepped towards Erys. “Return with me to your room,” he said. “You need to rest.”
“No. Change for me,” he said.
The Taxidermist looked at him without understanding. “What?”
“I need to see it. Change for me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Erys,” entreated the Builder.
“I know what you are,” said Erys, his eyes flashing. “Change for me.”
The Taxidermist looked at him for a long time, chewing on his bottom lip.
“No,” he said eventually. “I will not.”
Erys’ shoulders slumped with exhaustion. “Change for me,” he pleaded. “Please. I need to see it.”
The sympathy in the Taxidermist’s eyes broke over him like a wave. He felt himself tumble out of control.
“Please,” he begged. “I need to see it. If you don’t show me, how can I believe that what we are doing is right?”
“I’m sorry,” said the Taxidermist.
The Builder placed his hands on the young man’s shoulders. “Erys, let me take you back to your room.”
Erys swung around and pushed at the Builder’s chest, shoving him back.
“Don’t touch me. You let her die,” he accused.
The Builder gazed at Erys with shock and disbelief.
“You let her go! When you should have held on! You didn’t even try to save her?”
“Erys,” warned the Taxidermist.
The Builder put a hand out to steady himself.
“You didn’t love her enough!” Erys unleashed himself, and the attack rolled across his lips like flames.
“Erys!”
“It was Passage, Erys,” defended the Builder. “What could I ...”
“What did you do? She died and you did nothing.”
“What could I have done?” asked the Builder. The large man fell to his knees. “Ariel? What could I have done?”
Erys stood over the broken man. “You could have held on, but you let her die.”
“Erys!”
The Taxidermist grabbed him from behind. Erys twisted in his grip and found himself facing an animist. Before his eyes the Taxidermist’s skin morphed into grey scales. His mouth widened and extended to become large jaws. The creature’s nostrils flared. Its jaws sprang open and hissed viciously at Erys. Its blue tongue wagged inches from his face.
He felt the heat of its breath and the spray of its saliva on his cheeks. Its jaws snapped shut. Yellow eyes glared. It hissed again.
Erys flinched slightly, but he faced the creature. He feared it would bite his face.
It is still him, he told himself. Just him in another form. A creature of Nature! Erys felt its heat. A strong scent of musk filled the air. He breathed deeply and drank its smell.
Erys allowed its essence to bleed into his spirit. This was the closest he would ever be to the Spirit of the natural world. He drank until he was full. He found what he came looking for, a reason to break the Law. In this hissing, spitting essence of Nature, he found the strength to accept the consequences of their actions. Whatever they would be.
He lifted a hand and gently touched the reptile’s head. The creature twisted its head and looked at him sideways.
Despite what may come, he thought, it is worth the risk.
“I’m sorry,” said Erys. “It’s okay. I�
�m sorry.”
The creature’s eyes blazed with yellow anger. Then slowly it calmed and its anger drained.
Erys caressed its scales until it transformed back into its human form.
“I’m sorry Taxidermist.”
The Taxidermist glared at him, then stepped past to help the Builder to his feet.
How far are you prepared to go?
Erys regretted immediately his attack on the Builder.
“Builder, the things I said. I did not mean them. I ... Ariel loved you. As do I. You have been like a father to me.”
He approached, but the man held up his hand and turned away.
“You have unscrupulous means, Scion-Teacher,” hissed the Taxidermist.
“I’m sorry Gregor,” he said. “I’m not sure I can explain. I know now it is worth the risk. But I needed to see you, to really see you. I needed to convince myself. And, I think I know how to convince the Teacher to allow us to proceed.”
He avoided their eyes.
“You are my friends. I hope you can find it in yourselves to forgive me.”
He left the two men. He knew now how far he was prepared to go. Despite what he had seen of Dark Matter, he knew he was going to violate the Law.
Ariel had understood that the world was dying. That it would continue to decline until all was lost. But with the Ark, there was a chance, just a chance that life could be saved.
And Erys agreed. If they had a chance to bring life back, to return even a part of what it had once been, perhaps it would be worth it. What did they have to lose?
Chapter 12 HOPE
A cool breeze blew in across the ocean. It would not last. By the time the catch-laden morning trawlers returned to shore the day would be bright and hot.
Walking along Ocean Road he watched citizens of Pars going about their lives. On the beach fishermen untangled nets and mended rigging on their boats. A man on the road offered to sell him a handful of barnacles he had scrapped off some rocks.
Ocean-Hearth rose up on the headland, a square shaped structure surrounding an inner courtyard. Its design was the same as other hearths. Erys had been raised in Desert-Hearth and was familiar with the way hearths operated. His hearth had been a hard place. There was little laughter nor playing during his childhood. As such he was not ready for what greeted him at Ocean-Hearth.
