At last he turned to the small cot where Yuri slept.
Iliff stood at the foot of his bed, his awareness illuminating the man beneath the covers. Though Iliff knew the man to be an aspect of himself, he no longer resembled him. A lifetime inside the prison had rendered him old and broken.
“Yuri,” Iliff spoke.
The old man stirred, then blinked his eyes open. Iliff could see in their emptiness that he was half-blind.
“Yes? Is someone there?”
“It is me, Yuri. It is Iliff.”
“Iliff?”
“Greetings, my dear friend.”
“Iliff!” Yuri pressed himself up until he was sitting. “Oh, Iliff!”
Iliff wanted to walk around to the side of the bed and sit beside his old friend. He wanted to embrace him and hold his hand. But he could feel the Sun’s awareness rising inside him, radiating from the crown of his head. It would be too much for Yuri. Indeed, too much for any of the prisoners here.
“Where did you go? Where have you been?”
“My journey has been long and difficult,” Iliff said. “It has carried me through deep, dark places and over lands strange and wonderful. But all of that is behind me, Yuri. The old man’s story was true. I can now see the Sun. I know who I am and where I come from. And now I am nearly free.”
“Free…” Yuri’s eyes shone for a moment, then fell dim. He bowed his head and began to weep, his hands clinging to the limp spill of sheets in his lap.
Iliff cast out just enough light to warm and soothe him.
“In the tunnel,” Yuri said. He stopped and sniffled. “I started to dig out the opening, the one you went through. I was going to follow you. I was going to go with you, Iliff. But then the guards called for me and I stopped. I… I couldn’t do it.”
“I understand,” Iliff said gently.
Yuri shook his bowed head. “I should have gone. I should have joined you.”
“It is never too late to go beyond your walls, to join me.”
Yuri raised his face. “Yes?”
“Yes, my dear friend.”
From Iliff’s crown, the Sun’s awareness burst forth. Light blinded the cell for a moment, driving the cold from the stone. Iliff willed it back down. He hadn’t much time. When the room dimmed again, Yuri’s eyes continued to shine.
“I see you now!” Yuri said. “Yes, I see you, but you are so high.”
He reached his taped fingers up to where Iliff stood.
“I will await you here,” Iliff said.
Night was ending when he arrived back on the plateau, the stars receding in final glimmers. Iliff faced east, where the cloud tops were just beginning to stir and the sky to change color. He shed his coat first. Then his vest and tunic. Heat grew from his body, ever brighter. But no longer did he suppress the feeling, this awareness of himself, the Sun. He stepped from his trousers last, folding and setting them aside. He lifted his face to the violet dome-side.
Now lavender.
Now pink.
And just as the barest crescent of radiance glimmered over the cloud tops, Iliff smiled and pressed his hand to his heart, to Skye.
And finally may you see me.
“What brilliance…” he had time to utter.
Chapter 31
The shouting and pounding startled Yuri awake. He lay listening, his eyes wide in the dark. Now he could just see a fog of light outside his cell door. In the next moment, the door banged open and the footfalls pounded into his cell.
“C’mon!” shouted one of the guards.
“Let’s go!”
“What… what’s this?” Yuri asked in alarm.
The guards pulled him to the side of the bed and thrust shoes over his feet. Before Yuri could reach down to tie them, the guards were under his arms, hauling him up, yanking him into his first painful steps. Yuri stifled a cry.
He was reminded of the awful time, so many years before, when his childhood friend had left the cell that adjoined his. A passing guard had noticed his absence, and soon Yuri was being awakened and dragged down the corridor in the same rough manner, the guards demanding he reveal Iliff’s whereabouts.
Yuri started.
The dream last night. Yes, yes, he had dreamt of Iliff. Dreamt that Iliff was standing on a high place looking down on him, telling him of his journey. His journey to the Sun! Recalling his joy at their reunion, Yuri nearly forgot his worrying state of affairs until the guards on each arm began to speak over his head.
“Aged and Infirm’s full.”
“Then he’ll have to go into holding on another block.”
“Can he work?”
“He can sweep,” the guard said. “They can always sweep.”
Their lanterns swung around, and Yuri was pulled along on his ailing legs. In a remote corridor, the guards announced his arrival. Whispers climbed from either side. No sooner had Yuri been shut inside a strange cell than he was being called to his new work. He struggled to keep pace with the gray march of prisoners before him. When they arrived at the work site, a broom was pushed into his hand.
“You’re to sweep,” a stern voice told him.
Yuri cringed away and worked the broom’s stiff bristles over the floor. He could not quite see the other prisoners on the crew, but he could hear their labor—a repair crew from the sounds of it. He could make out the yellow smudges of lanterns on the tall stands. Yuri swept as best he could, but the joints of his body ground and ached. And he was tired. This crew began their work very early, much earlier than his own crew. He guessed it was not even morning yet.
Yuri was grateful when the leader of the crew called a break. He shuffled to the very edge of the work site and used the broom to help himself to the ground. With his back to a wall, he closed his eyes.
He thought of his dream last night. He thought of his old friend.
I will await you here.
He remembered how the light had resolved his friend into perfect clarity. Yes, he had seen him, had almost touched him! And now Yuri recognized the same light growing inside his closed eyes.
It had begun moments before as a simple paling, but now a glimmer was emerging into his blindness, rising from a low crescent to reveal more and more of itself. The light was not amber like lamp light or angry like firelight. No, it was a white light, very pure. And purer with each moment. Its enormity soon filled all of Yuri’s awareness. And with the light came a deep warmth, much like what he had felt in his dream. A warmth that enveloped him from without and at the same time radiated from deep within, soothing him. Yuri sighed as his pain abated, then departed. He felt light, suddenly, lithe. But he did not dare move. For now his heart was swelling with a profound love, one he had not known in his own life and yet one that had found him anyway. Deep blue and boundless, it was a love that promised to hold him for all time.
And then there came a moment, a brief, euphoric moment, when he felt he was nowhere at all and yet everywhere at once.
“Sir?”
Yuri stirred.
“Excuse me, sir,” came the voice again.
Yuri’s eyes blinked open, and the light fell from his vision.
“I noticed this morning that you’d nothing in your cell to help pass the time. Here, you’re welcome to mine.”
He was young, Yuri saw. Still a boy. And he was holding forward what looked like a small cup.
Yuri blinked once more, then felt his lips break into a smile. Even though his failing vision was filling with the drab of the work space again, even though he felt the stone wall against the bones of his back, a part of him was beyond the prison now. Far beyond. He could no longer see the light, no, but he could feel it. He could feel it inside him, and he knew it belonged to something that no amount of stone or mortar, no monotony of duties or routines, could ever contain. And it had been there all this time, he marveled. If he had only allowed himself to see it.
Yuri reached forward now and took the cup from the boy’s hand. He gave the cup a gentle shake and li
stened to a pair of dice rattle inside. He did this a few times, chuckling with the sound. At last he tucked the cup away.
“Very kind, young master,” he said. “Very kind. Your sacrifice will be your greatest reward, I assure you.”
He was not sure where the words had come from. He was not sure why he had spoken them. Something in the boy had compelled them. There was his kindness, yes, his earnestness. But, too, there was a light within him as well. A kernel of flame that begged a little stoking.
“Back to work!” called the leader. “Lest you want the fissures to spread!”
By the time Yuri stood, he had made up his mind. With a final smile toward the boy, he set his broom over his shoulder and strolled back to the work site. Yes, when he managed to get him alone, he would tell the boy the story. The extraordinary story of Iliff and the Sun.
The old man began to whistle.
The End
From the Author
The concept for The Prisoner and the Sun came from a dream I had while in my young twenties. In the dream, I was clad in prison attire and tunneling through the earth. The tunnel gave way and I fell into an underground dwelling. It was a delicate, fascinating place, with small alcoves in the walls that held things like roots and mushrooms. Though the abode was simple, there was a reverential quality to the way it had been arranged. Like I was in someplace sacred.
I felt a presence behind me and turned to behold an angelic being, feminine and beautiful, though in a solemn way. Of the earth. In the middle of my apologizing for my presence and for being a prisoner, she set her hand on my shoulder. My prison clothes fell away and I ascended to where light streamed in through a small opening high in the wall.
That was one of the most vivid dreams I’d ever had. I thought about it a lot. Who was the prisoner? Why was he imprisoned? Where was he trying to escape to? Who was this woman? What did the light mean? Some years later I discovered Joseph Campbell, the brilliant mythologist who wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Through his work, I became enamored of the hero’s journey, the process of departing a limited, accepted reality for one much greater, and the trials that inevitably come with it. Mind-expanding stuff for me at the time. I decided that the prisoner in the dream was embarking on his own hero’s journey. The woman was his “supernatural aid” and the sun his ultimate objective.
The trilogy flowed from there. I do hope you enjoyed it.
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Books by Brad Magnarella
XGeneration 1: You Don’t Know Me
XGeneration 2: The Watchers
Escape (The Prisoner and the Sun #1)
Lights and Shadows (The Prisoner and the Sun #2)
Final Passage (The Prisoner and the Sun #3)
The Prisoner and the Sun (The Complete Trilogy)
Acknowledgements
One night in 2009, I sketched an outline for what would become The Prisoner and the Sun. It was to be an allegorical journey where the world through which the hero traveled both seeded and reflected his inner trials and transformations. That the resulting trilogy bears only scant resemblance to the plot points on that first piece of paper is secondary to my continued wonder that a book — much less three — emerged at all. To this I owe many people many thanks. Much gratitude goes to my beta readers, not least among them my own mother, Sharlene, who spent a generous amount of time on the drafts for each book; to the people at Possum Creek Books; to Mark and Jessica Magnarella, who contributed to the cover designs; to Gary Smailes for copyediting the first two books and teaching me a thing or two about the craft of writing along the way; to my proofreaders Joel Palmer, who cleaned and tightened up the first book, and Red Adept, who lent their talented services to the remaining two. And finally, to my readers, especially those who have reached out with messages of appreciation and encouragement. Your support is beyond anything I ever expected or could have imagined three years ago when I sat down at my kitchen table with a piece of paper, a pencil, and an idea.
Table of Contents
Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
From the Author
Books by Brad Magnarella
Acknowledgements
Final Passage (The Prisoner and the Sun #3) Page 20
