A Translation of Inspiration

by A.S. Morrison

ation of Inspiration

  By A.S. Morrison

  Copyright 2014 A.S. Morrison

  Table of Contents

  1. The Cliff and the Clock Man

  2. The Woods and the Shadow

  3. The Castle and the Wizard

  4. The Water Ship and Its Captain

  5. The War and the Princess

  6. The Lake and the Lake Monster

  7. The Office and the Coworker

  8. The Canoe and the Sun People

  9. The Plateau and the Very Familiar Face

  10. The Hut and the Child

  11. The Spoon and the Snowman

  12. The Hat and the Nomad

  13. The Streetcar and the Vendors

  14. The Book and the Reader

  15. The Precipice and the Clockmaker

  16. The Secrets and the Sorcerer

  17. The Power to Control and the Villain

  18. The Cabins and the Cookbook

  19. The Destination and the People Who Live There

  1. The Cliff and the Clock Man

  I stood. On a cliff. The remnants of white waves found their end on the jagged rocks hundreds of feet below. The hard cold breeze blew soft around me. Clouds hung low, occasionally wrapping themselves around the cliff. There were no other sounds apart from the waves and the breeze. My ears struggled to hear more, to find a more important noise, the aftermath of a massive shift or the beginning of something bigger.

  I only became aware of my surroundings after a long moment of mental emptiness. The first thought was of past movement. I felt as though I had just stopped; a sudden halt of motion that caused my head to swim and my body to tense. One thought led to another, each more complex than the last. Nothing stuck. They came and went, just as the waves and clouds before them. And I was alone again, on the cliff without a thought.

  This continued for an indefinable length of time. The world around me changed and grew while I remained stationary. My first impulse was to jump. I wanted nothing more than to feel the air as I fell and the hard smack as I landed, just to make sure everything was real.

  I don’t remember how I got to where I was. The limited memory I could access told me I had never been there before. But it also said there was no place other than where I was. The world began and continued from that spot. There was no place else, at least I was certain there wasn’t. But what comes with every certainty? More doubt. And I had it. I tried my hardest to bring forth any recollections I could about my past. I struggled and strained but none could be found. Language was in my head and on my tongue. I had enough mind to know that had to come from somewhere.

  I looked down to the sea below. It stretched off into the distance. There was no other land observable from where I stood. The impulse to jump grew stronger. I wanted to, I needed to. It felt good. Everything would become real if I jumped. I had to. It was no longer a decision to be made. I was going to do it.

  I stepped up to the edge, my mind clear, and my body longing for a rush. My arms spread wide, my hands twisted, feeling the breeze on its entire surface.

  My eyes found the water below. It looked soft from so high up. I knew I could miss the rocks if I jumped far enough. It was a risk I had to take. I bent my knees and looked up to the sky one final time. My feet launched off the rocky cliff. There was nothing but clean air below me for a ways, always shrinking. My limbs were sprawled out, catching the air that couldn’t slow me. I dared not close my eyes. I wanted to see the water rising to meet me. It came at lightning speed.

  I grinned at the rush. No memory came to tell me how that would feel. It was wondrous, but short. I hit the water with a great force and sank below the surface.

  I opened my eyes, I was underwater. The light came from above and made it possible to see far. Behind me was the stone of the cliff. But in front of me, in front of me I could see the ends of the world in a blue haze. The bottom was sandy, not a creature or feature stood out. I started to swim down. I approached the sand. I could just about reach it if I stretched, and then the sand was no longer there. It vanished in an instant, swallowed by the blue haze. The water now stretched endlessly below me. I continued to swim down. The blue turned darker and darker until it was all black. I looked back up to see a ceiling of black blocking my return.

  My lungs filled and deflated with ease. They did not know that they shouldn’t. I continued down, answers remained just out of view. I reached around, but could not touch them, and so went deeper. I swam where no light could shine, I hadn’t earned it yet.

  Time passed. I don’t know how long, I had no way of knowing. I couldn’t stop. The dark began to frighten me. What if I never came to anything? What if I was in a void that lasted forever?

  The fear left as I saw a pinpoint of light somewhere below. I went to it. As I did the dark faded and the blue haze returned. There was no source. It appeared without one. The pinpoint moved as I got closer. It floated smoothly away, settling in the distance.

  The bottom of the body of water was no longer sandy. There were trees. They continued on as far as I could see in every direction. I pushed up on the water, getting closer to the canopy. I dropped below it, through the leaves. A swamp came into view. My feet touched the soft ground. The water all evaporated in an instant. I stood in a swamp, air replacing the water. I looked up. It was dark. I could see nothing through the trees. The point of light I had seen was now a good ways ahead of me, but I now knew what it was. A window of a little house, lit from within.

  I didn’t feel any different now that I had air around me. There was no sense of a pressure adjustment. I started for the little house. My feet sank into the saturated ground. Pools of greenish water bubbled mysteriously. I made out a slimy trail to the house. It curved and wound through the pools of water. I knelt down at the first pool and studied the surface of the water. The light around wasn’t strong enough for me to see down into it. I straightened up and continued. As I approached the house I had my first coherent thought that would stick in my mind. How was I to get in? I thought about walking right in, but I knew that was wrong. Instead I chose to knock at the front door. I could hear movement inside. The door opened a crack and a face appeared.

  “Do I have a clock for you?” The man in the door asked.

  “I don’t believe I ordered a clock.” I said.

  “Well then come in.”

  The man opened the door and I stepped inside. The small house was warm and bright. On a closer look I saw that it was a workshop. Clocks were everywhere. They were on tables, hanging on walls, and suspended from the ceiling. Clock parts were everywhere as well. Gears, springs, and pieces of wood littered the floor. The majority of the clocks were cuckoo clocks. There were so many that several were going off at any one time.

  The clockmaker had a short gray beard and wore a long apron. He showed me around, tripping on gears and knocking over half finished clocks onto the floor where they joined the mess.

  “I wasn’t expecting you today.” He said. “I would have done something.”

  “I wasn’t expecting me today either.” I picked up a clock and examined finely painted little birds. “And I don’t believe you did at all.”

  He froze mid step and slowly turned his head back to me. “Are you sure?”

  “No.”

  He continued around the small house. “Oh well.”

  I put the clock down and picked up another. This one looked to have the same basic design but painted by a child with little to no artistic training. “Do you happen to know where I am or who I am?”

  He cleared off a table by wiping his arm across it, sending all sorts
of little mechanisms to the floor. “I don’t know who you are if you don’t. Weren’t you paying attention to where you were going?”

  “I was but it kept changing.”

  “That’s how life is I’m afraid.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  He put his hands on the table and leaned forward. “I think it is.”

  “So you don’t know where this house is?”

  “I know, but it may be different for you.”

  “A place is a place, it can’t be different.”

  The clockmaker smiled as though remembering a tale he heard long ago. “A name of the place will be the same, but the place itself is different for everybody. When I come in here I feel a certain way, certainly not the certain way that you felt coming in. That’s all I mean.”

  “But that does not tell me where I am.”

  “Tell me where you were and we can start from there.”

  I thought back to swimming in the water and standing on a cliff, finding no memories before that.

  “I believe I was standing on a cliff.”

  “And how did you get to the