Shadow And Light

by K. R. R. Bridgstreet

  “The Gods,” exclaimed Kali. “Do you know what this means, Sardra?” She matched Roghur’s smile now, letting the implications sink in. “Have you tried it on people yet?”

  “To fly, you mean? No, absolutely not! This was the first time I had attempted to lift anything bigger than a note card.” She again began to laugh, a throaty sound that was a mixture of joy and desperation.

  “Teach us,” Kali said.

  Sardra did. By the time Ganshi returned from the garage, carrying, quite awkwardly, the Gods knew what, Sardra and Kaliana, with the help of Roghur, had lifted the van and moved it forward and backward in a broad circle of several feet. They found when Roghur added his strong tenor voice to the two of theirs, the van lifted and spun faster.

  Ganshi, who had watched the three of them experimenting with the tornado’s song as he approached, called out for them to stop singing. The van crashed down once again, and this time, Kali felt the impact. She heard metal creaking under the van and a clatter as it fell to the cracked pavement. Ganshi shook his head, then wedged the long steel pole he brought beneath the front seat and anchored the other end to the floor in back with a clamp.

  Another large metal pole had been welded to the center of the first, and it poked out the van door about five or six feet. Attached to this pole was an anti-gravitational gyroscope from one of the wrecked aircrafts. Ganshi spun it carefully with his hand. “If it rotates clockwise,” he said, “the clockwise force will counteract the counterclockwise rotation of the tornado’s song, and hopefully the van will fly straight. Landing, however...” He looked at Kali and shook his head.

  “What?” Kali said, miffed. “How can one discover anything if one is not willing to experiment?”

  “We’ll need this van to stay in one piece,” Ganshi was in lecture mode now. Kali rolled her eyes, but Sardra and Roghur looked sufficiently cowed. “We don’t have any other options for travel. Plus, if the terrain evens out, we’ll be able to drive. We have plenty of the old plant fuel to run this thing. Please, do not test flying the van again until we have figured out how to bring it down slowly and with control.”

  “How about using this to experiment on, Master Ganshi?” Roghur said, and he dug in his knapsack and brought out a toy aircraft. He zoomed it around in front of his face for a moment, then reddened. He scratched the back of his neck as he handed the toy over to Ganshi. “I had this since I was a kid,” he said.

  “Perfect,” Ganshi replied, his sweet smile once again appearing.

  Roghur brightened a bit. This child was far too influenced by the admiration of authority, Kali reflected.

  “Come, let’s stand out here. Time’s wasting.” Ganshi was a force when he had a goal in mind, as Kali had discovered earlier. She traced her fingers along the silver clasp at her neck, remembering Ganshi undoing her robe what must have been only hours earlier.

  They all exited the van and stood in a circle around the toy aircraft. They started singing very softly, and as the toy craft stirred, their voices became louder. As all their voices grew, the craft shot up in the air about fifty feet, lifted by its own personal tornado. It spun wildly. Ganshi motioned them to lower their voices again, and the toy sunk back to the earth several feet at a time, in a pattern that would be stomach-turning had they been inside the craft.

  “Better,” Ganshi said. “But not really. Let’s try it again. Sardra, you start the song this time, just you. After the first measure, Roghur, you jump in. Kali, you come next in the third measure, and I’ll come in on the fourth. We’ll reverse the order when we try to set it down.”

  They tried it. Sardra began, and with her small clear voice, she made a song that lifted the toy a few inches from the ground. Roghur’s voice came in, and the toy lifted up a couple more feet. Kali added her own voice, and the toy shot up at least ten feet. When Ganshi joined the song, the toy craft rose once again to about fifty feet in the air, spinning the whole while.

  Ganshi nodded, made the hand signal for diminuendo, and then allowed his voice to grow softer and softer before he removed it from the song. The toy descended, and not nearly as jerkily as last time. Kali got the idea and lowered her own voice by increments as she withdrew her own strain. The small craft continued its slow downward journey.

  Roghur just started to lower his own voice, when the earth rumbled again. Sardra yelled in surprise, and the toy crashed down. Roghur lunged for it, and he stumbled on the heaving pavement as he bent down to grab it. He lay sprawled on the ground, trying to grab it with both hands as the earthquake tossed him about.

  From the air came an enormous crack. Was that thunder? Ganshi grabbed hold of Kali, and as she watched Roghur, she felt herself being thrown to the side. She hit the ground hard, hands out, and felt her shoulder dislocate.

  Pain screamed through her arm, and with ears ringing, she grabbed her injured shoulder and curled up in a ball. A massive tree that had stood outside the loading docks fractured under the strain of the earth’s movements, and it crashed to the ground where they all had been standing. Kali had no idea if Roghur made it out before the tree fell. Tears stung her eyes. There was nothing she could do. She could not even steady herself to stand.

  In the periphery of her vision, she saw the van. It had slid several feet and rocked dangerously. It would be destroyed if they didn’t do something. “Friends!” she screamed. “Singers! It is time to go!” She cried out in pain as she felt someone grab her by the shoulders to lift her up. It was Roghur. Thank the Gods.

  “Chancellor!” He was panting. “Are you all right?” His eyes raked her body. He may or may not have been searching for damage. Kali nodded and looked around for the others. The ground still shook, but the violence of it had calmed. Her good arm around Roghur, they stumbled haltingly toward Sardra, who was in the van by herself, singing the tornado song to try and lift it. Her eyes were so wide the whites seemed to be the main feature of her face. Her voice was not strong enough to lift the van by herself.

  “Where is Ganshi?” Sardra said, panicked. “Ganshi!” she yelled.

  “I’m here, Sardra, Kali. Roghur, here you are. Let’s go. The earth can’t harm us if we are in the air.” Ganshi was limping. There was blood oozing down the right side of his face.

  “You heard him, let’s go!” Kali ordered. They were in the van with Sardra in an instant, and they once again began the last crescendo they had attempted. The van lifted. As it started to move to the left, Ganshi reached into his pocket and drew out a remote control. He pushed a button, and the gyroscope began to turn, clockwise.

  The van still tried to spin left, but the gyroscope’s action counteracted the momentum of the tornado, simultaneously straightening out the van and slowing it down. While the gyroscope didn’t appear to alter the tornado’s strength itself, it worked to steady their flight as they rose. The weight of the van only allowed the four of them to lift it about twenty feet off the ground, but that seemed to be enough.

  They were flying, and little by little, Ganshi manipulated the gyroscope so that they gained some control of their movements. After singing for a few minutes, the tension from Ganshi’s face fell out, and a hard determination came to replace it. He stared out the front windshield at Two Mountains Standing, smoking in the distance. Somehow, he kept the van pointed in that direction.

  Below them, Kali watched as the verdant streets surrounding the school heaved. Cracks sped up the flagstone paths toward the Conservatory and branched into mineral veins that sparkled with broken glass. She looked back at her dream, this school that housed so many students, broken and still being assaulted. When her eyes fell on the ancient fallen tree, white bark glowing in the moonlight, tears spilled out, and her voice cracked. The van lurched downward, but Kali regained her composure, and it leveled out again. She hoped there would be a later day to grieve.

  Pain filled her song. She caught Roghur’s eye and pointed with her good hand toward her dislocated shoulder. The agony of the day was the only feeling that could have superse
ded the throbbing hell her shoulder had become. Fat tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Roghur finally understood what she was communicating and steadied himself to approach her. While the van was more stable than it had been at the start, it still rocked back and forth like a moored sailboat as Ganshi strove with the gyroscope to keep it level.

  Wrapping his right arm tightly around the passenger seat behind Kali to brace himself, Roghur tenderly picked up Kali’s limp left wrist with his left hand. Kali heard his voice tremble slightly, and her breath seized. At that moment he circled her arm suddenly upward and back toward him. She screamed, and the van plummeted.

  Roghur lost his grip on her arm when the van began its sudden descent, and it dropped back to her lap. Relief flooded her body for the instant she realized he had moved her joint back into place, but vertigo replaced the pain immediately as they began to fall. Kali lifted her voice as loudly as she could in song, and moments before they smashed into the ground, the van once again leveled and began to rise.

  Kali spun around in her seat, eyes wide with adrenaline, searching her friends for injuries. Roghur, white knuckled, now had both arms wrapped around the back of her seat. His eyes were far away, and his dry lips seemed to form the song mechanically. Ganshi and Sardra stared back at her, mouths moving. Sardra kept her eyes latched on Kali as she reached behind her and drew a seatbelt over her shoulder. As it clicked into place, Kali turned around and did the same.

  Chapter Six

  Jurad whirled in layers of darkness. He was the darkness, swirling into himself. Jurad was everywhere. His body, consumed in the liquid river of fire beneath the earth, had merged with the flames of that river, and the shadows of the flames reflected his spirit. Jurad was everywhere and nowhere. He was nothing, a reflection of the fire that consumed him. But he filled up the earth, and his spirit pushed back on the dirt and rocks that strove to bury him. He pushed very hard.

  Jurad was expansive. As he pushed, he swelled. He found the cracks in the earth and slid inside them, feeling, wedging, thrusting. At first he slipped and edged, but then he felt less resistance, and the round particles of dirt gave way under his touch. Jurad rose. The river of fire, also inside him, followed Jurad’s movements upward. His shadow grew as he shoved at the soil, pressing ever upward. The fire within him swelled. The fire flowed around him. The fire was alive.

  Chapter Seven

  Under the wide clear sky and bright full moon, a group of men gathered close around a small campfire beside a mountain stream. Their eyes flickered between the fire and one another. The men were naked, as they had been for several turns, but they had no way of knowing how long they wandered. When the night had not ended, when they found themselves roaming alone in the dark, and when they stumbled upon one another as the earth shook, they instinctively clung to each other. None recognized the other, though they had been raised in the same drifting tribe. As boys they hunted together, and as young men they had drank and sang together. Now, they were strangers.

  One of the men stood and moved carefully over to the stream, stepping softly and lightly as if he were stalking an animal. He had been walking this way since the earth started to shake. The crouch offered him more balance in case the earth’s movements took him by surprise again. He had sustained a messy laceration on his arm during one of the first quakes when he had been tossed off his feet and into a sharp-edged rock outcropping. The men had bound the cut tightly with braided grasses, but the blood soaked through, and he bore a red band around his upper arm.

  He now removed this band and placed it carefully on the ground—the blood had finally clotted—then he dipped his toe into the stream and stepped in, feeling its heat wash over his brown calloused feet. He knew there was something off about this stream feeling so soothingly warm, but it was restful, and the thought of any sort of comfort was a luxury he had not pondered. Though a sulfurous smell grew as he entered, he waded farther in, letting the water cover his muscled legs and dangling cock.

  As the water crept up over his buttocks, he felt a hand on his good shoulder. He turned his head toward it, and another hand touched the side of his face and turned him around. He faced one of the men he had been traveling with, and he saw desire in his green-eyed gaze. His cock grew hard under the water. He felt the man’s rough hands on the curve of his shoulders, and the touch was like the fire simmering on the stream bank, warmer than the stream caressing his skin. Pain coursed through his injured arm, but he did not cry out.

  The moon danced on the beads of sweat that were forming on his companion’s temples and neck, glistening like diamonds. The green in this man’s eyes seemed alight with need. The bather reached out to him, touching one of the tiny diamonds, and it ran in a white rivulet down his chest and over his prominent ribs. Vaguely he remembered the agony of hunger. But he felt a different hunger now.

  He pulled this man toward him and parted his lips to receive his kiss. He explored a strong hand down the length of the man’s spine and found the curve of his ass under the water. The man’s hard dick pressed against his thigh, and ignoring the pain of his injured arm, he reached down and found it, massaging it under the hot water. The man released a sound of relieved satisfaction, so he continued with his sensuous touch, the same way he longed to handle himself.

  As he bent to kiss the man’s neck, he noticed the other man sitting by the fire, watching them. Their eyes locked, and the man rose. He walked toward the bank and stepped into the stream, eyes fixed on the two men in the water. He was a larger man, hairy and brusque, and he had been leading the other two on their aimless search.

  This third man stopped near behind the green-eyed man he himself was fondling. The big man held his own penis, and he clearly wanted to join them. When the wounded man’s hand stopped moving, the green-eyed man turned to see the third man. The big man threw an arm around the green-eyed man’s chest, bit the man’s ear, and rubbed his cock against his ass, feeling for his crack. The men began stumbling back toward the bank. He himself was so hard; he allowed himself to be pulled along by the two men.

  As they met the side of the stream bank, unthinkingly, he pushed the green-eyed man’s head toward his dick. The green-eyed man opened his mouth, bringing the bloodied bather’s purple veined cock inside. Relief flooded him as the green-eyed man’s head bobbed up and down on his dick. The big man, who was kneeling behind the green-eyed man, stroked his back, and must have found a spot that pleased him. The man, closing his green eyes, moaned and bobbed faster on the injured bather’s dick.

  The bather’s head fell back and he gripped the green-eyed man’s neck hard. The big man finally slid his dick into the man he was caressing, who was still sucking the wounded bather’s cock. The green-eyed man groaned, and then furiously licked and sucked the injured bather’s manhood while the big man took him.

  With one hand trailing in the stream and the other holding tight to the green-eyed man’s neck, the bather let himself go, spewing his seed into the man’s mouth. The green-eyed man spit it into the stream, and gasped as the big man continued to fuck him.

  They grunted as they fucked, lost in their own desire while the bather watched. The big man must have come, because he shuddered, and he and the green-eyed man sank to the muddy stream bank together. The green-eyed man, panting, felt for his cock, and began to stroke it. The injured bather rose, took the man’s hand from his cock, and pulled him up to face him. “Fuck me, right now,” the bather said. They were the first words he had said to either of them since they started wandering. The green-eyed man smiled, a sight that was foreign until this moment, and the injured bather recognized this hidden beauty as belonging to Rener, his boyhood friend.

  His eyes flicked to the bank and saw the big hairy man was Midan, one of the tribe’s bakers, and when their eyes met he knew Midan recognized him as Pendun, his longtime hunting partner. While Midan’s jaw dropped slightly, Pendun saw no remorse on his face.

  “Rener,” said Pendun. “I don’t want to have to ask yo
u twice.” Rener’s eyes seemed to refocus. He paused only briefly before whispering Pendun’s name as he moved behind him, gently bending him over the stream bank. He felt Rener’s finger first, and then heavy exquisite pressure as he slid his manhood into him. Pendun let the joy of pleasing Rener wash over him, and his hand once again found his own cock, relishing the comfort of his two friends in the long night.

  When Rener was spent, the three of them made their way back to the coals of their fire, and stoking it up once more, lay down around it and slept until the earth again began to softly rumble. From somewhere in the darkness, they heard laughter through the low groans of the earth, and song. The three men rose precariously, and without words, began making their way toward the singing.

  Chapter Eight

  Kali, Ganshi, Roghur and Sardra didn’t bother pitching a tent. With all the aftershocks, it would have almost certainly collapsed. Kali had been timing the quakes as best she could, but time was so hard to grasp. The only thing she knew for sure was that the quakes came frequently but had been getting progressively less severe.

  Her eyes darted back and forth between her friends and the now nearby smoking mountain. As they approached, they realized only one mountain had been issuing smoke. They called it the Shadow mountain, as it was north of the other mountain, so parts of it remained darkened by the southern mountain’s shadow throughout the day.

  Never having witnessed a volcanic eruption before, Kali advised her friends to stop here in the valley instead of moving closer to the peak. She had no way of knowing if this would keep them safe.

  Plus, when they had landed the van, they noticed curious traces of a recent bonfire, as well as a lifeless naked body abandoned atop a mound of fresh dirt. The mound looked like a grave, Roghur had observed, clearly disturbed by the sight.