by Simon Birks
The Ballad of Broken Song
Book One
Death and Resurrection
Simon Birks
The Ballad of Broken Song Book One
Death and Resurrection
First Edition
First Published in the UK by Blue Fox Books
Copyright 2016 © Simon Birks
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For Marielle,
Whose Enthusiasm
Is My Enthusiasm
Part One: Broken Song
Far from Broken Song
The desert was cool in the pre-dawn light. Two figures walked along the sand. They’d been travelling for more than two hours, setting out from Broken Song when the only light to aid them had been that reflected from two Orbs that hung silently in the sky. The Orbs, one predominantly green, one predominantly grey, swung through space with them, forever there. No one thought of them as planets; sometimes it was hard to recognise the very thing you stood upon.
The path the two walked was often travelled, although it bore no obvious markings. The lead figure, a thin seventeen-year-old boy named Gideon, walked twenty feet or so in front; upright, confident, assured. In contrast, the man who followed, known to many as Ka Pinto, walked slowly; stooped, resigned, apprehensive.
He walked behind partly out of respect and partly out of tradition. Not all of the Kas would have been so diligent. In fact, their level of care towards the children varied widely. This troubled Ka Pinto; all the children needed their help. That was the point of Broken Song.
“Wait,” Pinto called, and Gideon stopped.
The Ka turned and looked behind. Broken Song was far out of sight, perched on a slither of land where civilization faltered, and the sandy wilderness of the desert took over. The Ka surveyed the plateau where they now stood, at the wide vistas the dawning light was giving shape to. It was a mysterious, beautiful place, and not for the first time, he wondered to himself, what is all this for?
It always must be¸ replied the voice in his head like a mantra, and it calmed the Ka, like it always had. From a young age they were taught to trust themselves and to realize that they had everything inside of them to cope.
Up ahead, Gideon shifted from one leg to the other, waiting for the Ka to start walking again, strangely impatient for what lay ahead. Ka Pinto indicated for the boy to resume with a nod of his head, and Gideon turned in an instant.
The Ka brought his stick up, moved it forward and placed it down into the sand. He noted the cool, refreshing air. It wasn’t nearly as dry as it would be once the sun was perched high in the sky in a matter of hours.
However many times Pinto had made this walk, on however many similar dawn treks, it had always been the same; beautiful, magnificent, dangerous. He moved his stick forward again. He didn’t need it to walk. It was simply an extra level of defence against the desert.
Against the boy.
Ka Pinto heard the voice. He ignored it. It didn’t matter if it was right or not.
He watched Gideon walking ahead of him; never wavering, never doubting. It was very impressive.
He’s prepared for the Resurrection, the man thought, placing his stick into the sand once more.
He’s prepared for what’s to come.
He’s prepared to die.
The Voices and the Sparks
Gideon’s head was empty. He had meditated that morning, casting all of his emotions out, letting blissful peace fill the space left behind. Now he was just a machine, cold in the warming sun. He had a job to do. He was a grinder to crush wheat.
Had he thought about running? No. He had accepted the truth, but it was more than that. He welcomed the Resurrection. He would experience it, eyes open, and wholly embrace what needed to be. Something inside him longed for it.
Gideon slowed. Walking too quickly would give him away, alerting the Ka to his urgency, and he didn’t want to do that. It was always best to keep the Kas in the dark. The less they knew, the less they could judge.
*
Ka Pinto worried about the boy. There were always children at Broken Song who didn’t quite fit in, and it was his job to look after them, but Gideon was by far the strangest he’d ever dealt with.
Remember the voices?
Ka Pinto thought he could explain the voices. He thought it was nothing more than the mumblings of a boy experiencing a nightmare. The explanation made sense; it fitted, and in the Ka’s subsequent moments of doubt, it was enough. Did it matter that he hadn’t recognized the languages he’d heard? Or that it’d sounded like there were at least ten different voices in the boy’s small hut?
And what about the sparks?
Ka Pinto looked around the desert. Thoughts of the sparks made him do that. He should have mentioned them to the people in charge. He knew why he hadn’t. They would have mocked him, called him stupid. They would have told him the boy was not responsible for the elements around him. They might have stopped him from being a Ka, and reassigned him to some other duty.
Every time Ka Pinto asked Gideon about the sparks, the boy would frown, shrug his shoulders, and shake his head to signify his confusion.
Ka Pinto didn’t trust him, though, didn’t believe him. The boy must have seen the bright white flashes. They appeared in mid-air near Gideon’s house, with an angry fizzing sound. It was enough to convince Pinto of their origin, but he knew he’d need to see them appear directly from the boy before he could feel confident in speaking his concerns.
Ka Pinto felt the most guilt about the sparks. They weren’t normal and he should have reported them. Something was wrong with Gideon, had always been wrong, and he’d done nothing about it.
The sun continued to rise, and the Ka, walking alone with the boy who produced the sparks, realised he was as scared as he’d ever been. Pinto breathed in deeply. Not for much longer, he thought. Today was Gideon’s Resurrection, and the boy, and his strange phenomenon would be out of his care forever.
Death and Sandwiches
Gideon saw the plinth in the desert, and his heart beat faster. This was his time, his moment. The top of the plinth stood three feet from the sand, its top slightly indented to mark where he should lay. He smiled. It felt like it had been a long and impatient journey.
The boy and the man stopped, and the Ka cleared his throat.
“We are at the edge of the world,” the man said. “And the edge of this world gives us a new beginning. You will give yourself to the Resurrection, and you will be reborn with a new life. This is the gift we’re all given. This is the life we all lead.”
“I am ready,” the boy replied.
“Then take your place. Lie where your ancestors lay, breathe with you
r brethren, see with new sight. The Resurrection will take you, it will deliver you, and it will complete you.”
The boy got up onto the plinth. He lay down, and breathed out, his body quivering.
“With the touch of sun’s first light. With the last of night’s dark shadows. With the good and with the bad, with the innocent and with the guilty, you will find a new path, and it will be your path, your beginning and your end. May your journey be true. May this Resurrection destroy you to rebuild you. Unpick you, to refasten you. Melt you to re-forge you.”
*
Ka Pinto finished the prayer as the first beam of sunlight touched the top of the stone. The bottom of the plinth started to shine, to glow a silver colour, and shimmer like sun on water. The consistency of the stone where Gideon lay appeared to change, becoming gloopy, and the boy fell into the liquid, as all the other children had done before him. Ka Pinto watched the stone return to solidity once more. It was as if Gideon had never been there.
“Fair weather,” Ka Pinto said.
Resting on his stick, he swung his bag around to the front of him, and put his hand in. After a few moments of searching, he brought out a package wrapped in paper and twine. He walked up to the plinth, sat down, and rested his back against it. For the first hour or so he would sit in the sun until it became unbearable, then he would move around the plinth and into its shade.
Ka Pinto undid the twine and smiled at the sandwiches within. The trick was to eat them early before the sand got in them. He took his first bite. The meat was still just about warm. He smiled, closed his eyes, and waited for the boy to return to him, however long it took.
Falling Upward
Stars, falling upward. That’s what they said he’d see. And now, here they were. Just a few at first, brushing past his shoulders and thighs, snagging at the fabric of his clothes on their way past. He wasn’t falling, it didn’t feel like that. He was just floating down.
Two stars changed to four, then to eight. They doubled every few seconds, and the more there were, the more his clothes were caught, ripped, shredded. But he didn’t mind. He knew what to expect.
They said it would last a long time, and it would feel like it lasted a long time, but if it was, it still wasn’t long enough for him. He had heard from the Ka, and had been read to when he was a young child, of this time of Resurrection. He hadn’t been scared, as some of the other children had been. He was able to accept that it happened to them all.
Dying once to live again.
Above him he saw the tiny threads of his clothes wind upward, like single strokes on an artist’s new canvas. He had liked painting.
You would like it again, his mind cut in.
Yes, he would like it again. He would like everything again.
Most of his clothes were now gone. The threads wound upward out of sight, converging at the edge of vision before disappearing altogether. But, as the first stabs of pain punctured his flesh, he knew the clothes were not the end.
“The stars take everything,” the old saying went. “We are the stars, and will be again. At the end, the stars take what is rightfully theirs.”
And as the fabric of his clothes moved upward, his very flesh was being peeled away in delightful little barbs. He watched it, carried on stars tainted with the colour of his skin, and the redness of his blood.
And only now did the floating become falling, as if he were nearing journey’s end, and gravity was pulling him there ever faster. He tried to turn his head to see where he was being taken, but he could not. It took him a moment to realize why. His muscles were gone. They had disappeared toward the heavens, and now he was little more than bones held together by memories.
This was nearly the last of it, for his body and for the pain.
But the pain was good. He wanted the pain. He respected the pain. How must he look now? Like some sort of monster. He’d have laughed if he could. But now, even his bones were being disassembled by the stars.
He looked at the stars, though his eyes were long gone to the place above. What were these strange things? They reminded him of the sparks, but where the sparks were random, uncontrollable, these stars seemed in control.
It had always been, and always will be. It will never end.
These were the words that stayed with him when he was nothing but a soul falling down.
These were the words that kept Gideon together. They were everlasting words.
And then, when he reached the bottom, when his soul hit the hard ground and the bonds between what was left of him started to weaken, Gideon thought, death. This is death. The one everybody has told me so much about. And the soul of Gideon smiled, as best it could.
Remote
Gideon’s Resurrection had taken nine hours, and Ka Pinto had not heard him come back. This was unusual in itself; the Resurrected nearly always made some kind of noise on reappearance, usually a scream.
This time, however, Ka Pinto had simply looked up and the boy had been there, looking down at him quietly. The Ka had given him the spare set of clothes he always carried on these occasions, and brought him back from the desert.
There was something different about him; a remoteness that wasn’t there before. Now, instead of just being quiet, he was completely detached, almost unaware of his surroundings. Conversation had been impossible.
It was dark by the time they saw the back gates of Broken Song.
“You can leave me now,” Gideon told the Ka when they reached the entrance to the boy’s house. “I am fine.”
“I must ensure your wellbeing,” Ka Pinto replied. “You are in my care…”
“No more. You can leave me now. I will prepare for the Telar-Val.”
“The Telar-Val will want to know how you’ve been since your Resurrection. It is my duty to visit you.”
“You can tell the Telar-Val that I have been fine since my Resurrection.”
Ka Pinto forced himself to look at the boy; something about Gideon’s face made the act difficult.
“I will tell them the truth, Gideon. If you do not let me visit you, then that is what I will say. And they will arrest you.”
A look of cold steel entered Gideon’s eyes.
“Do you not think I am fine?”
Ka Pinto smiled a troubled smile.
“You are far from fine, Gideon. And if I don’t see an improvement in the coming day, I will tell them so. That is my duty. That is my word.”
“Then so be it,” Gideon said to him. “Visit. But I will not be welcoming.”
The Weeping
Gideon’s people lived alone from a young age. Given up willingly by their parents, they were raised in communal houses for the first ten years of their lives. There, they were nurtured, monitored, protected, but rarely loved. No harm came to them, and that was enough. That was their way.
On their tenth birthday, the children were taken from the communal houses and moved out into the Complexes, away from towns or cities. The housing was identical; regimented and thirty feet apart, hexagonal fences ensuring the inhabitants always kept to themselves. At certain times each day they were allowed to walk around, but for this they must wear garments known as Blinks. Communication with other children was strictly forbidden.
There were dissenters, people who thought it was too harsh on the children, but these people invariably kept quiet and hidden. Anyone found raising their own child would be imprisoned, or worse.
And the children were treated well. They were educated, and whilst they were not allowed to interact socially with other children, they were allowed games that the Ka could help them with.
This was how it had always been, and there was rarely a problem. In return for their care, the children were simply asked to keep their houses clean and undamaged. If they did well, they were rewarded with more food. If they did not, they got less.
*
The first day after the Resurrection was known as the Weeping, but Gideon woke laughing. He couldn’t remember why. As he lay in the dark
ness of his bedroom, he heard a shuffling nearby, and when he looked up, he saw, framed by the light coming through the door, a familiar figure.
“You were laughing,” Ka Pinto said. “For a moment I thought you might be crying.”
Gideon sat up.
“It must have been a good dream,” he said, then added, “I don’t remember getting here. I don’t remember my Resurrection at all.”
The Ka stepped into the room.
“You should let the Telar-Val know when they arrive tomorrow.”
“Maybe I will,” the boy replied.
*
It was nearly the end of the Ka’s shift. He made his way back to his own house, amongst the sand and debris. It was no different to the children’s houses. Three rooms; one each for sleeping, bathing and meditation.
He reached his door and let himself in. The Ka took off his sandals, wiped the soles of his feet with the palm of his hand, and let his toes stretch out on the cooling, compacted earthen floor. In front of him, from the meditation room, the warm glow of the fire rocks, heated by the sun through the hole in the roof, took the chill out of the desert evening. He felt relaxed.
At home.
“Yes,” he said aloud. “At home.”
He moved through to the bathing room, disrobed, and washed using the water stored outside the house, in a tank high up the wall. If you wanted warm water, the evening was the time to use it.
In his lonely, pre-Resurrection years, Ka Pinto had dreamed of being a warrior, wandering the wilds, slaying dangerous creatures, maybe even rescuing a maiden. He wanted to be praised, revered, or liked, and whilst he may have grown older, those dreams had never really gone away.
