by Ivory Autumn
It seemed so ironic to have hope in such a state. He was dying. But there it was. Hope, shining brilliantly and unexplainably in the darkened room of The Fallen. Hope. It pulled him back from the clutches of death, caused his weary heart to revive. It was a wonderful sound!
The glowing bird fluttered its wings and hopped about on the sill, singing. It stopped and seemed as if it might flutter out the window and perhaps go somewhere else to cheer up another spot of gloomy land, or to be consumed by the gloom itself.
Andrew felt a sudden panic at the thought of the glowing bird leaving him alone in such darkness.
“Please,” he moaned. “Don’t…go.” The bird seemed to understand Andrew’s words. It cooed gently and stretched out its yellow wings, gliding onto Andrew’s chest. It sat there, a fluttering, uncontainable beam of light. It opened its wings and covered Andrew’s bleeding wound with its feathers, melting into his skin, causing the gaping hole in his chest to stop bleeding, and to form a thin scab. He cried out in pain as the bird melted in a brilliant shaft of light, seeping into his skin. A strange, fluttery, excited feeling began to beat in his heart, growing stronger with each second. Ever so slowly his skin began to glow, flickering with his labored breaths, illuminating the dark room as if he was a weary lamp.
Gong, gong, gong! The unrelenting bell tolled in the distance, gripping him even more as if holding him in this world by force. “Go, go, go, get up. Live, live, live!” the sound of the bell unmercifully chanted. Though his wound had stopped bleeding, and the pain lessened, he felt weak and unable to move.
“Get up,” the tolling music seemed to command. “Get up!” Andrew groaned. He scooted himself to the wall and leaned against it, heaving with pain. “I’m up,” he murmured, ripping a piece of his cloak and placing it over his wound. He closed his eyes, feeling himself slipping again. “No!” the bell tolled, “your sword, take it! Take it.”
“I don’t want the sword anymore,” Andrew murmured, tears of frustration coming to his eyes. “I’m so tired. Just let me go. Why can’t you let me go?” His glowing skin flickered with his faltering voice, and his sputtering hope.
Footsteps approached through the darkness. Andrew groaned, and pressed himself against the wall, too tired and weak to move. Even with the flickering light emanating from his skin, the room was still draped with darkness. The footsteps slowed to a shuffle. He could hear breathing. Then through the darkness, a dim outline of a figure appeared. The outline grew brighter and brighter until Freddie’s face appeared through the darkness. Freddie’s skin glowed, too, as if he had swallowed a healthy serving of warm, healthy sunshine.
“Andrew?” Freddie’s voice ventured, unsure and guarded. He held a sword in front of him and stepped nearer. “Is that you?”
Before Andrew could answer, Freddie ran to him and knelt by his side. “Oh Andrew! It is you!”
“Freddie,” Andrew cried, clasping Freddie’s arms. “I thought you’d been killed.”
“Oh, they tried,” Freddie said. “But it’s going to take a lot more than a rope to kill me.”
“Freddie,” Andrew breathed, “The others…Ivory? Is she safe?”
Freddie shook his head. “I don’t know. After I was questioned, they separated us. I haven’t seen Ivory or Croffin for several days. But I did see Talic. He is alive. Or he was, the last I saw him. I do hope he’s faring better than you.”
Freddie ripped a piece of cloth from his cloak and pressed it to Andrew’s wound, where blood seeped around the scab and pooled on the ground. “My, Andrew, you look terrible. But these days, terrible is pretty good. You could be much worse you know…”
“I’m not sure if it gets worse than this.” Andrew gazed at Freddie with glistening eyes, and smiled. Freddie’s skin glowed brilliantly beneath his clothes. He had a nasty gash across his forehead and scalp. His hair and left ear were covered in blood. His face was plastered in coal dust. His left eye was black and nearly swollen shut, and he had a nasty purple bruise all around his neck.
“You…don’t look so swell yourself,” Andrew murmured.
Freddie smiled, and shrugged. “I suppose that’s the price one pays for claiming they’re someone they are not. Counterfeits only get hanged, whereas real one’s get stabbed.”
“Hanged?” Andrew questioned. “How is it that you are still alive?”
Freddie shrugged, and rubbed his swollen eye. “How am I still alive? Well, I’ll tell you. I’m not exactly sure. But those marks in my hands got really hot, and burned through the ropes on my arms. Then I was able to burn the ropes around my neck.
“That’s incredible.” Andrew’s face grew serious. “Maybe you’re not really a counterfeit, Freddie.”
“Don’t be fooled, Andrew. Counterfeits are useful in their own right, but they can never replace the real thing.”
“Perhaps they can,” Andrew said. His voice sounded weary. He closed his eyes, squeezing back a stab of pain.
“Freddie,” Andrew breathed, “Are you sure you don’t know where Ivory is?”
Freddie shook his head. “I’m sure.”
“Oh,” Andrew groaned. “I hope she’s alright. Safe. I hope the others are alright. You know I tried, Freddie, I really tried…” his voice was riddled with sadness. “But I couldn’t….I couldn’t…”
“Stop,” Freddie murmured. “You did what you could. We all did. Don’t blame yourself. If anyone is to blame, it is the weakness in men’s hearts, not yours, Andrew.” After he spoke there was a long silence as each turned to their own thoughts in the darkness. The only sound that could be heard was their own breathing, and the throbbing gong of the bell.
“Will you listen to that,” Freddie said, turning his ear to the sound. “What a stirring, unusual sound. That’s the sound that brought me to you, Andrew---showed me the way when I thought you were dead. When the sun grew dark, I just knew that it was the end. But then, after the dark and the crying and the howls, there came that beautiful sound, bold as you please, waking the dead as it were, lighting a world filled with darkness. Hope lit on me. A shaft of light, like small bird, filled me with hope, causing my skin to light up. In that instant I knew that you were still alive. I knew that there was still a chance. Call it crazy, but I knew. And so far, everything that hope has led me to has not been wrong. We must trust that voice, Andrew. That voice of truth. You, me, we have all followed that voice. It has led us here. And where it leads cannot be wrong. That same power has cut through the darkness where no flame could, and has the power to rekindle the stars and light our way. This hope that has been ignited in our hearts has the same power to ignite the failing hearts of men, to make them remember. I am convinced, that nothing, not even the thickest, most powerful darkness, can extinguish the hope that can exist in the human heart, once it starts burning.”
Andrew looked up at Freddie with hopeful eyes. “You really believe that, don’t you? Even after I have already fallen?”
“You have fallen more than once, Andrew. Both of us have. But does that matter? Both of us are still here. We have faced death, countless times. Yet we are still here. It is dark, but hope is still here, living in this very room.”
Freddie bent down and picked up Andrew’s fallen sword. “You must take it up again, Andrew.”
Andrew gazed at the sword with uncertain eyes. The blade was dark, tainted with his own blood. The memory of it made him cringe. He wanted to leave it where it had fallen. “No!” he shouted. “I cannot.”
“Take it!” Freddie urged him.
“I will not! You cannot make me!”
“Please, Andrew, you must.”
Andrew stared at it for a long time, unsure if he dared take it back. It seemed to him a traitor, something unreliable, something that had tried to kill him when it was supposed to protect him.
Freddie noticed the blood staining the edge of the blade and quickly wiped it off. “There, now take it.”
Without fully realizing what he was doing, Andrew slowly took the sword, staring
at his own flickering reflection in its blade. It felt strange in his hands, like a foreign object that felt only distantly familiar. He quickly handed it back to Freddie, unable to bear the sight of it. “Take it back,” Andrew shouted. “I’m not ready.”
“But…”
“Do not press me!”
“Fine,” Freddie took the sword, and gently placed it on the floor, watching Andrew’s pained expression, with compassion and sadness.
Andrew leaned his head against the wall, and peered up, out the window. The world was drenched in a murky black curtain. An icy wind howled, blowing bits of frost through the opening. Above, the sky was strangely empty. No stars shone. No moon gleamed. No sun lifted its head to break the darkness. It was like staring into a blank cavity that would suck you in if you looked at it too long. The sky overhead was so dark and heavy that it seemed like the sky would fall and crush the people of the earth. Yet, for all the blackness, far below the castle, down in the valley, Andrew thought he could see random lights flickering to life through the haze and blackness.
“You see that? Do you see those lights?” Andrew asked
“Yes!” Freddie exclaimed. “Though it seems the world has been turned upside down, and the sky is black, here on earth a few stars begin to gleam. It seems that hope’s voice calls stronger in the darkness, because it is all we have left. This hope will summon the world, where we have failed. It has to.”
Andrew watched, silently listening as the tolling bell cut through the darkened land, lighting up those it touched, like lamps that had been pining to be lit. It tolled on through the night, gracing the hopeless with a spark that would not easily go out. It turned those eyes cast on the ground to the heavens, though they were black. It gave those in darkest despair a hint of some unexplainable something that turned just a small portion of their sad countenances to a higher power than even The Fallen.
Hope.
It glimmered through the dark world, cracking bits of darkness away, seeping through those cracks like rays of sunshine. In the places where this awakening hope struck at the hearts of those who let it ring inside them, the mists of darkness lessened.
Andrew could see, as it were, groups of brightly-lit people, like stars on the ground hidden under a thick fog, moving together.
Was this really the end?
Or was this the awakening? An awakening after a long slumber of endless night.
Maybe the sun would never rise again.
But hope was on the horizon. Rising with it, were those whom it illuminated by its power.
Chapter Forty-six
Black Snow
Andrew and Freddie had stayed in The Fallen’s forsaken room, safe from prying eyes, not daring to venture forth. They hid in the heart of the Shadelock castle for what seemed like many days. They did not know how long they had been there. The passing of time had ceased with the disappearance of the sun.
On this day, if you could call it a day, Freddie had ventured forth out of the room, looking for food and supplies, leaving Andrew alone.
The hours went by very slowly during Freddie’s absences. Andrew held his chest with his good hand, and slowly pushed himself up, groaning. His right hand was still useless and limp. He wasn’t sure if it would ever regain feeling. He wasn’t sure about anything. He wasn’t sure how long he could survive in The Fallen’s cold room. He wasn’t sure who he was anymore or what his purpose was. Nor was he sure of the hour, nor of how long Freddie had been gone. Every minute in the darkened room felt like an eternity. It was if The Fallen had sucked all the life out of it. The room reeked with emptiness. A crypt for shadows.
Darkness was Andrew’s ever-present companion. His only solace was the continued sound of the tolling bell. It spoke volumes, though no one ever heard a word. It rang out over the land, unhindered, though there were many who wished to silence it.
Andrew’s body tensed. He heard the echoing click clack of feet hitting against the tile, coming steadily closer. He pressed himself into the shadows and darkness, not daring to breath. Though the darkness was thick and bore down on him like a heavy blanket, he knew he was not hidden. His skin still glowed like a lamp in the haze of thick fog. If someone came into the room, they would surely see him.
A dark thought crossed his mind. He could let hope slip from his heart. Then he would be protected, hidden, absorbed into the black background and no one would ever know he was there.
But if he let go of the light that lingered in him, he would surely be gone, extinct in every way. No. He could not hide by becoming part of the darkness. He must stand strong.
The footfalls ceased. Now there was only silence, and the soft sound of someone’s wheezed breathing at the door. Andrew’s heart beat fast. Since the night The Fallen had darkened the room, and absorbed the life in it, it was as if the room had turned into a rotten cadaver, its dark body infested with maggots, shadows, and all creeping things that Andrew could not see. How he wished he could see what lurked in the darkness before him.
Andrew pressed his good hand to the blood-soaked cloth around his chest, feeling a pain rise and fall with each beat of his heart. He did not know the severity of his wound. Only that he was still breathing, and that the balm of hope had healed him just enough to linger in this world a while longer. If he let that hope go, he would never recover.
The wheezed breathing continued, like a disease-ridden cat. It grew louder and more labored. Shadows churned through the room, disturbed by the sound, but the sordid shadows paid Andrew no mind, as if they concluded that he was already near death. Still, the sound came nearer, closer and closer.
Andrew closed his eyes, feeling as though that would keep him hidden. He did not reach for his sword. He had an aversion to it. To him it was as if a dear friend had betrayed him---a friend who had sworn to protect him, only to be the means of harming him. Something like that was not to be trusted.
He groaned, and pulled himself back against the window, breathing heavily, scanning the darkness with searching eyes, trying to see through the shadows and mist.
Without warning, the sound vanished as if cut off and suffocated by the darkness, leaving an emptiness in the room that chilled Andrew to his core.
What had cut off the sound, he did not know. Perhaps something far more frightening than the sound itself lurked in the darkness, ready to silence him. Yes, the unheard, the unseen, the hidden were far more frightening than footfalls in the darkness. Andrew pressed his eyes shut, and leaned against the windowsill, breathing slowly, trying to make his heartbeat even, so the pain in his chest would lessen.
Beyond, in the darkness, the bell still tolled, trying to cheer him though he felt anything but cheerful. He squeezed his left hand into a tight fist, feeling anger swell inside him. How was it that he still hoped? How was it possible? He must be crazy, delusional, feverish, and absolutely mad. Why did this hope linger in him? Why did it light his skin? How had it brought him back---why had it brought him back?
Why?
He peered out through the window, watching the flickering lights in the distance, as they moved steadily towards The Shade’s castle. What were these lights?
Were they people, whose skin radiated the light of hope and truth inside them? Were they coming, at last? How was it that he hoped that the people had finally come together? Were they just merely floaters in his eyes---something he wished would be?
The air was heavy and cold. A strange, black snow had started to fall, building up in great dark drifts around the castle walls. The snow was unlike anything Andrew had ever seen. It was like frozen, black ink that stained everything it touched. It was as if this black snow was trying to cover up the gaping holes, and shafts of light that the strange sound of hope had created. It was as if the darkness was trying to hide the light so that no one could tell, nor see those whom this new sound of hope had touched and lit up with its light, causing those unpolluted souls to wonder if they were alone once again.
Maybe they were? Who could tell in such bl
ackness?
Freddie had been gone a long time. Andrew was beginning to worry. He took a deep breath, and let the soothing sound of the bell wash over him, letting hope ring in him, letting it absorb the fear inside him that crept up on him in the darkness. It was far better than the dark alternative.
Andrew strained to see out into the dark world. The only light, beyond hope itself, was the light of The Fallen. There was no mistaking where he was in these dark times. His light was king. His light demanded to be looked at, revered, worshiped and obeyed. A great multitude of people had already migrated to his land, taking shelter under his brilliance. Andrew could see The Fallen’s luminous light, as the being moved below the castle, walking steadily towards a tower then disappeared inside. The light from the being emanated through the cracks of the brick, so that Andrew could see as he moved gradually up a flight up stairs, until he reached the top. In full view of the land, The Fallen shone like a glowing sphere, illuminating the land in a twisted, subdued light. Clothed in his vast array of cosmic glory, his light cast far. The light he gave off was nothing compared to the light of sun, or even the moon that he had absorbed. Most of the light that he had stolen was lost inside his depthless void, giving only slight illumination to those who were his closest companions. His light, alone, cast the entire world in an eerie, unreliable glow. In his light, it was neither night, nor day. It just was. There was no explaining it. Just as one cannot explain the feeling of a nightmare, the color, the texture, or the sounds of it. His light existed, yet seemed non-existent. The light he radiated was like a cold fog---ghostly, severe, condemning, entrapping. One minute you thought you could see your way in front of you, next, the light was gone, leaving you lost and floundering.
A stray beam of light from The Fallen swirled on the edge of the windowsill, gleaming as if glorying in its own brilliance. Andrew put his hand out in front of him as if trying to catch and hold the strange light that shone off The Fallen. But it churned and vanished, appearing in patches far out of his reach.
