Circles of Stone

by Ian Johnstone

  Without thinking, Naeo dropped her bag, stepped forward and extended her arms.

  Amelie rocked backwards, her mouth open, her arms limp at her sides.

  But Naeo took another step.

  “I know you,” said Naeo. She looked into Amelie’s face, her eyes brimming. “You know me.”

  Amelie looked at her in a bewildered daze, tears rolling down her cheeks. And then, without a word, she raised her arms and gathered Naeo into her chest.

  “I do,” she said, her voice cracking. “I do.”

  Simia leaned over Sylas, her eyes wild with panic.

  “Sylas!” she cried, holding his face between her hands. She turned and screamed: “SOMEBODY HELP ME!”

  A double shadow passed swiftly across the archway, breaking the evening beams. Suddenly Isia was at Simia’s shoulder, peering down at Sylas, taking in his taut features, his fixed stare, his empty face.

  She did nothing. She just gazed down at him and smiled.

  Sylas saw none of this. He saw only colour and form amid a sea of darkness. He saw the world ebb and flow: a great sky of gold, a cavernous pit of fiery red, a dreamy fog of silver.

  And then, in this vast nothingness, he saw a face: a face framed in green and burnished with tears. A face that was close and warm, that peered down at him with tender eyes and drew him close. He felt her body and he smelled her skin.

  Then he murmured something in a breaking voice.

  “I know you,” he said.

  “Who would eat the fruit of the Knowing Tree? Who will savour its sweetness, taste its bitter truth?”

  MARTHA DRESCHER ROARED WITH LAUGHTER. “Doctor Helman Schmitz, you can’t be serious!” She eyed her colleague, the smile falling from her face. “You … are serious.”

  “Well, I was being a bit serious, yes,” said Helman Schmitz, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He took the glasses off his nose and rubbed them mercilessly with his handkerchief.

  Martha pursed her lips in an attempt to lose the smile. “You’re really saying, Helman, that we’re single because people think we pose a health risk?” She swallowed another giggle.

  Helman returned the glasses to his nose. “It’s a theory,” he said, defensively. “Why? What do you put it down to?”

  Martha threw her eyes in the air in feigned thought. “Well, we’re hopeless nerds for a start,” she said, counting with her fingers. “Second, we haven’t exactly been blessed in the looks department. Third, we pretty much live in a laboratory in the backend of Germany. And, I mean, just look at it! Is this where normal people would choose to spend their time?”

  Helman cast his eyes around pathogen lab L65 of the Centre for Infection Research. His gaze fell admiringly on the chalkboards packed with mathematical equations, on the banks of glass instruments lining every bench, on the tubes and condensers, flasks and Petri dishes. Last of all, his eyes came to rest on the state-of-the-art vacuum room, complete with airlocks and a rack of airtight personnel suits. It all looked utterly normal to him: in fact, it looked rather beautiful.

  “Plus, there are big locks on the doors,” added Martha, “and we wear very weird clothes.” She stood up and twirled on the spot, showing off her blue plastic overalls and yellow rubber gloves up to the elbow. “It’s not a good look, Helman. And if you can’t see that, you’ve just made my point.”

  Helman managed a brief, slightly wounded smile. “OK, I see what you’re saying,” he said. He was quiet for a few moments. “Perhaps I’ve been going about this all wrong. Perhaps I shouldn’t be trying to date normal people. Perhaps I should be dating people like me!”

  Martha gave him a steady look. “Perhaps,” she said.

  There was a brief silence.

  “Martha?”

  “Yes …”

  “Do you think you might want—”

  “NO, Helman.”

  “But I thought you said—”

  To Martha’s intense relief the intercom suddenly buzzed. Then it buzzed again. And again.

  “Someone’s in a hurry,” she said brightly as she walked over to the receiver. “Perhaps it’s a secret admirer unable to contain themselves!”

  She picked up the handset and the little video screen lit up. She frowned. There was no one in the corridor.

  “That’s strange,” she said, turning around. “Helman, did you—”

  When she saw Helman, she froze. He was staring at the laboratory windows, his eyes wide with terror. Martha’s skin crawled as she followed his gaze across the workbenches and slowly up to the windows.

  She staggered back into the door, trying not to scream.

  On each of the windowsills stood a dark cloaked figure, arms braced against the stone uprights, hooded head pressed up against the glass.

  She blinked. Impossible. They were four storeys up!

  But then, as if to answer her doubts, one of them moved. It lowered one arm and brought it up to the glass. Martha squinted out into the darkness: that was no hand. It was half covered in black fur, and it seemed to have … claws – long, razor-sharp claws – one of which it now extended until it met the security window, then it began to sweep downwards in a wide arc. Behind the claw Martha saw the silver trail of cut glass.

  She glanced across and saw the other figures doing the same thing.

  “Helman!” she shouted, “the samples! Into the vacuum room! Lock yourself in!”

  Helman snapped himself out of his trance. “What about you?”

  “Just do it!”

  She whirled about and slammed her fist on the red panic button next to the intercom. Instantly the lights dimmed to red and the room was filled with deafening noise. The breach alarm sent out an urgent pulse accompanied by a harsh male voice.

  “ACHTUNG – ALERT! ACHTUNG – ALERT!”

  Heavy steel shutters began to drop on the cabinets around the room with a series of rattles and bangs.

  Martha turned to see Helman fumbling with stacks of vacuum cases.

  “Careful!” she shouted over the din. “There are pathogens in those!”

  She rushed across to help him and was almost at his side when a new, deafening sound made her stop.

  BOOM …

  BOOM …

  BOOM …

  She looked at the windows, but the three figures were still cutting their way through the thick security glass.

  Reluctantly, she turned towards the door.

  Another BOOM reverberated through the room, making the floor shake.

  This time she did scream, but her throat was bone dry and she made no sound. There were four protrusions in the reinforced steel: four impressions of something that had struck with incredible force.

  Each was the shape of a head.

  A monstrous, canine head.

  She was not just dreamed, she was there; she was not just seen, she was felt and heard and smelled and known. She was before him and she was everywhere, filling the empty space in his heart, enclosing his world.

  She was there. His mother was just there.

  He reached out with his mind and held her close. He saw her lean forward and he felt her arms about him. He breathed in her presence and drew in her warmth.

  But there was a rift, a rupture, as though she were seen through a prism. Part of her seemed unreal, unfound. And then, as he looked up, as he drank in the sight of her, he knew that he hadn’t moved. That the eyes moving over her face were not his. And although he felt her embrace, he could not raise his arms to return it.

  He saw her look down and speak, but he could not hear her words. And then he stepped away from her, even though that was the last thing he wanted to do. He willed himself forward, yearning to return to her, but he was powerless, as though his legs were not his own.

  He gasped, feeling the chill of breath in his lungs. Something about that cool evening air made the rupture more real. In the same moment, he felt the tears on his cheeks, the tautness of his muscles, the back of a chair against his shoulders, and he heard a sound: a voice, not h
is mother’s, but Simia’s, close at his ear.

  “Sylas!” she sobbed. “Sylas, say something!”

  His mother faded, drifting into the silver fog. In her place he saw Simia, her eyes bloodshot, her face pale. She was leaning in to him, pleading with him.

  “Not you!” she implored. “Please speak to me!”

  And in that moment he understood. He knew that he and Naeo were one, that right now he was there with her even as he was here, with Simia. He knew that by some strange twist of Nature, some break in the universe, he was somewhere between the worlds, between himself and his Glimmer.

  Then he saw Isia, bold and beautiful, enrobed in a sunset. She gazed at him with ebony eyes and spoke to him with his mother’s voice.

  “You have eaten the fruit of the Knowing Tree,” she said, no longer with the voice of his mother but instead in the tones of a young woman.

  He saw Simia turn from him and glare at her. “What have you done to him?” she screamed.

  “Nothing that will not pass,” replied Isia calmly.

  Simia hesitated. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it offers a temporary gift. Sylas has been given true knowledge of himself. All of himself. He sees as Naeo sees, feels as she feels.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “I thought you’d poisoned him!” yelled Simia. “Why didn’t you warn us?”

  “Because the fruit works best with an open mind – a mind free from fear and unencumbered by hope. If I had told you, it might not have worked at all.”

  Sylas fought a battle with himself, struggling between the image of his mother and Isia’s voice. He yearned to return to the warmth, to the certainty of his mother, to her face – that precious face, now marked with care but still beautiful, breathtaking, magical.

  But it was distant now, somewhere beyond the silver mist. It was as though Simia and Isia – with their clear, hard words – had sent her back into a dream.

  He felt the unwelcome sensation of his own limbs, tense and straining. He felt his stomach tight and bloated – newly filled by the fruit of the Knowing Tree. He felt a trickle of sweat rolling down the back of his neck. He wanted to push these things away, but they became ever more real and his mother was crowded out by these clearer, louder, sharper things.

  Suddenly Isia’s face was before him, her almond eyes smiling into his, banishing all that was left of his precious dream.

  “I must call you back now, Sylas,” she said, gently, “back to this world and to this part of yourself.” She reached forward and stroked his cheek. “I needed you to see the bond you have with Naeo with your own eyes – or rather, with her eyes. If you are to meet your potential, you must believe your bond, feel it, live it. You must overcome the division of our worlds. Make it irrelevant. Bring it to nothing.”

  Sylas felt her take hold of his hands and draw him upwards. His legs felt remote and numb, but he found himself rising to his feet. He became aware of a hand around his arm, supporting him, and he heard Simia again.

  “Where are you taking him?” she said, full of suspicion.

  “He’s fine,” said Isia, turning her radiance to his companion. “But we must go outside while the effects are still strong.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have only shown him part of what he needs to see,” she said with a serene smile. She turned to Sylas. “Sylas, you have seen how close you are to your Glimmer, even when she is far away. How she is you and you are she, even when you are on two sides of a broken universe. But that is not the whole truth. To understand your gift fully, you must first know a greater truth, the truth of all humankind.”

  Sylas was still in a shifting, giddy daze. The world was at once dreamy and yet sharp and clear: every sound piercing, every detail precise, every sensation almost unbearably intense. As Isia led him around the table, he saw the dancing light in the crystal, the dusting of yeast on the grapes, the too-bright colours of the cakes. He heard the shuffle of his feet over marble, the halting breath of Simia at his side, the breeze groaning slightly as it passed through the arch.

  And then he took an involuntary gasp as a shock of cold wind blew through his hair, fingering his face and buffeting his clothes. Suddenly his vision was clear and he saw Isia to one side and Simia to the other. The wide arc of the circular terrace stretched out ahead – one of the giant platforms that he had seen from the ground. The other loomed above.

  Between them, and laid out as far as the eye could see, was the great city of Gheroth. It huddled in the evening light, glowering at the dark horizon, rumbling with activity, churning out countless trails of smoke. Sylas’s piercing sight picked out crooked buildings in chaotic streets; tiny figures moving through a busy throng; traders peddling their wares; women hanging washing from their windowsills; children playing in a distant square. He saw all this in a heartbeat, his gaze encompassing all things as though they were near at hand, as though he were walking in the lanes, standing at the windows, playing in the squares.

  Isia led him towards the precipice at the edge of the platform. He felt an urge to resist, to keep back from the brink, but his limbs carried him forward until the wind whipped at his body. Soon all that lay between him and oblivion was a narrow ledge of stone.

  One final step.

  Suddenly Isia let go of his arm. He tottered, trying to find his balance.

  When he lifted his eyes, he saw Isia on the very brink, pointing down with a blurred, outstretched finger.

  “Behold the plight of humankind,” she said, her robes whipping around her in the mounting winds.

  Sylas looked down to the plaza, to the expanse of white stone, to the ring of Ragers and the thousands of huddled worshippers arranged around the great tower. He saw with penetrating clarity, looking past and through things, into and between things so that nothing in the world was closed to him.

  And then he saw something astounding.

  Rising from among the gathered bodies of the worshippers, there were countless silvery trails, climbing like gossamer strings up and up above the surrounding buildings, above the smoke and bustle of the city, up the flanks of the great Temple of Isia. It was a flux of living lines – one beginning with each person huddled below – reaching up into the void as though seeking something out. They were graceful, ethereal and exquisitely beautiful. Yet something about them made him inexplicably sad.

  “The fibres of the human soul,” said Isia, “stretched thin between the worlds, searching for what has been lost.”

  Sylas was transported, his heart aching, his eyes still fixed on the silvery tendrils, tracing their dancing, twisting, turning paths. They climbed ever higher into the sky, curling around one another in a graceful dance, drawing ever closer until just below the platform they formed a shimmering, mystical twine.

  “This is my veil of greatness,” said Isia, her voice piercingly clear. “They believe I answer their prayers, but in truth the whispers they hear are not mine. And the comfort is not mine to give. They comfort themselves. Their words are their own, spoken unknowingly in another world by another self, resounding across the rift. When they whisper, they speak only to themselves. When they find courage, it is their own. When they discover hope or love, forgiveness or compassion, it is theirs to give. All they seek is in the lost part of their own soul. In their Glimmer.”

  Sylas turned to Isia. His lips parted to say something, but when he saw her his eyes widened and he staggered backwards.

  “Sylas!” screamed Simia, grabbing him around the shoulders and pulling him back from the edge.

  He rocked forward, but his eyes never left Isia. To him, in that moment, she was as radiant as the sun, her beauty dimming the rest of the world so that only she mattered. It was not just her shining skin, or her eyes of sparkling black. It was the wide arc of radiance that lay all about her: a seething mass of silvery trails that curled up from the edge of the platform and fell upon her from above, engulfing her in a heavenly light. They were the ghostly threads that h
e had seen rising from the worshippers far below, but now they were almost one, surging into her as though they had finally found their home.

  “It is not me. I am nothing but a gateway, a pathway for lost souls,” said Isia, as though correcting his thoughts. “Through me, the two halves may touch. For a fleeting moment, questions are answered, doubts are overcome, dreams are fulfilled.”

  Simia gazed about her, wide-eyed, looking for these wondrous things, searching for her own thread. “Can I see?” she asked, her voice suddenly full of yearning. “I want to see mine!”

  Sylas glanced up and caught a glimpse of a silver trail curling up above her, tracing an arc before darting towards Isia. And then he looked away. For some reason he felt that he had seen something he should not.

  Simia hesitated. “Do I even have one?”

  Isia moved, making the many radiating trails flex and turn, flashing with a new brightness. “Of course you do, Simia. We all have a Glimmer.”

  Simia looked at her with wide eyes, struggling to comprehend. “But can I see?” she asked again. “I think if I could just see, I might—”

  “No,” said Isia, firmly. “The fruit of the Knowing Tree would drive most people to madness – there is such a thing as too much knowledge.”

  The excitement drained from her face. “But Sylas …” she said, turning to him. “He can see!”

  “He sees because it is his calling. Do not envy him that burden. He and Naeo must heal the division of our souls, or they must try. They may eat from the tree because to find our cure, they must first know our ills.”

  As Simia gazed at Isia she seemed to grow smaller, the hope fading from her eyes. She began to look as weary as she had before they had arrived at the temple.

  “Don’t be sad, Simia. You have a Glimmer, somewhere out there, in the Other. Think of that. Your path has been hard, but there is hope and there is comfort. Your Glimmer is proof of that. Your Glimmer is the joy to your despair, the Salve to your pain, the answer to your loss.”