by kubasik
But what had I landed on? The crust never had the kind of hills on which I now rested.
Where was I?
It seemed that the rocks I lay on must certainly melt down and sink below the surface of the sea. But if these other conditions were not typical of Death's Sea, could I also be on a permanent island? Something that would retain its shape despite the heat around it?
It seemed possible if not likely, that I had dropped onto a strange island in the middle of Death's Sea, with nothing to do but wait patiently for Death to come and take me in his own time. Perhaps this was why I had not died immediately. Death knew I was ripe for the taking at his leisure.
2
The night passed slowly at first. I'd never developed the habit of stillness. Motion, motion, motion had been my companion through life. For hours—or at least that's how long it felt—time wriggled through my flesh. Irritable children waiting for a nap to overtake them, but too full of energy to sleep.
Given my nature, there was nothing to do but try to move despite the impossibility of it. I tried to lift my head, wiggle my fingers, lower my upright arm. Useless. The lack of success was frustrating, but only motivated me to try harder. Soon my breathing was fast, despite my absolute immobility. It was as if I had itches all over my body. All I could think of doing was moving! I had to move!
But nothing came of it. Soon, through exertion of will if not muscle, I was exhausted. I closed my eyes. I thought I might sleep. But images of waking up, finding myself in the same place, the same position, filled my mind. It seemed I would go to sleep, only to guarantee waking up to a nightmare. My fidgetiness returned in full force. Though I no longer tried to move, I became intensely agitated.
Memories began parading themselves through my head. All lost opportunities. Lost love.
How much I wanted to find someone who could soak in my excess energy! Someone who could handle me. Perhaps even calm me. My wife. My children. All gone from me.
To be missed. That is what I wanted as I lay on the island, waiting for interminable death.
All I could think was that everyone would be relieved that I had vanished. Who sets off in their life with such an ambition? Who had succeeded so well in it as I?
Finally sleep did come. Fitfully and in small chunks of discomfort.
From the changing position of the stars, just barely visible through the red haze, I knew that an hour had passed between each of my dozings. Each time I was more miserable than the last waking. My flesh felt scratchy, my throat dry. A dizziness passed over me, coming in rhythmic waves. Soon I longed for the respite sleep gave me from the pain. I wondered, more and more often, if there was any way to hasten my death. The thought that my condition would grow worse, the pain increase, the scratchy despair become more intense, made me long for movement again—if only so I could smash my skull to death against my stony grave.
The sun rose, and when I opened my eyes, I was at first startled. The heat of the air above made the sky shimmer, but the bright blue of the cloudless morning was a sharp, pleasant contrast to the distressing red of hours earlier. Though still lifeless, the black rocks surrounding me could be seen clearly now. I was not trapped in a world of round, obscure shadows. My imagination let me believe for a moment that the worst had passed. That if the memories of the previous night had not been a nightmare, then at least things would now be better.
I tried to move.
Failed. Only my left arm, at my side, broken from the fall, moved a bit. Not enough to propel me anywhere.
I waited. Took in a breath. I did not want to scream or cry, but the terror of the situation made it hard not to. I was still alive, and might live out my days trapped as I was. I looked about, frantic, pathetic, mindlessly searching for a clue, a means of help.
It was then my gaze fell upon the tower at the island’s center.
Red stones, each lined with black swirls like smoke and flame, rose up from the rocky ground, forming a round tower two hundred feet tall. Windows showed intermittently along the wall. At the base was a huge doorway formed of solid black stone. The doorway was without a door, and seemed at once inviting and challenging.
I had not seen the tower the previous night because of the darkness and because it was slightly behind me. Now I craned my neck as far as I could for a view of it. Was anyone inside the building? Anyone walking around it?
Not that I could see. More than that. The tower was steeped in loneliness. Against the bright blue sky, its dark red stones seemed incapable of containing any life. Yet what choice did I have but to hope for rescue from some inhabitant within?
I tried to shout, but my voice, like the rest of my body, was weak. It cracked, making nothing more than the dry rasp of pain. I tried again, this time managing to get out the word "Help!" It seemed loud enough to carry to the tower, and I waited for a response. I waited and waited, fearful that if I cried out too soon I would not be able to hear the response. Finally I called out again. Not a sound came back. I stared at the tower.
Watched the door. My gaze flickered from one window to the next. I saw only the darkness of the tower's interior framed by each window.
Staring up at the sky I continued to shout, calling and calling until my voice was sore and I was forced to believe that even though someone had once taken the time to build a tower on the strange island, it was now deserted.
For a long time after I had given up my shouting, I closed my eyes. Hope once again denied me, a bitterness crept into my thoughts. Not odd for me, I know. I've created a bitter outlook for myself, and have viewed most of my life from a bleak point of view. So I thought once more of how terrible everything is, how miserable is the end result of every action. Life is nothing but a series of longings, leading to one disappointment after another.
What is strange is how I quickly left this thinking behind.
The heat of Death's Sea overwhelmed my mental construction—my castle of stars.
Misery in the face of living my life was one thing. Moping and complaining was fine as long as I was free to do other things with my life. Now, however, I was trapped with myself. All I could do was complain about the misery of life. That was sheer terror. If I was going to starve to death on a barren rock, I didn't want to spend my last hours listening to myself whining. For the first time in my life I couldn't afford my self loathing or my self pity.
But what else could I do? The tower, deserted. The island, barren rock. The sea, hundreds of miles of molten lava. My body, frozen into inaction except for one broken arm. All was hopeless.
It occurred to me, though, that even if the tower were deserted, it might contain food.
Even healing potions. It might even possess a means of getting off the island. A moment of hope.
Yet, given my life, what hope could I afford? What could I possibly do to reach the tower? Even if I somehow made it that far, could there be any doubt that some terror awaited me within? Something like the decayed, reanimated corpse of my mother, perhaps? My life was full of thinking I had finally reached safety, only to realize things were still abysmal after all. What point was there to hope?
I rested on the ground, spent. The strain of arguing myself from one extreme of despair and hope to another had exhausted me. The fingertips of my left hand scraped against the rough stone, but I barely felt it. Nothing really mattered.
Memories of the fall came back to me. A realization. I really could have died. I should have died. If I had died, what then? Nothing. Eventually, someday, some one who knew me—my wife, my children—would notice that they had not seen me in a long, long time.
Or Mordom might meet someone and say, "There was a boy once who killed me. Now he's dead." He might smile as he said it. That would be that. My life, all the terror and hopes and fear and stabs at love I'd made, would amount to nothing. Vanished. A star dropped into Death's Sea, swallowed up.
My fantasy drifted on. I imagined myself dead and gone. All my life I'd been clutching at something—a longing for love. In de
ath the panic for that love was gone. There was no more need. I had no more expectations. Whatever I had, expected from life was now beyond me.
I began to relax, let the lack of need sift through my muscles. My breathing lightened. I had feared death not because I feared dying, but because I was afraid I would die before I got what I wanted—love. Now I was, for all practical purposes, dead, and that fear left me.
What if I pretended I really was dead?
What would I lose? Nothing. Life had already robbed me of all joy. I spent each day bracing myself against hope so I would not be tricked again.
What would I gain? Nothing. Except ...
A lack of need. Since I was dead, there was nothing more to think about. If I was dead, I could finally relax. There was no more need to get anything, to prove myself. To steal useless trinkets I didn't care about. To seek out love and attention from people I didn't know and would never know. And there was no fear of hope anymore because I had no reason to expect anything.
There and then, bones shattered and nearly dead from exposure, I smiled.
I wasn't dead.
And as I wasn't dead, I might as well live. Live not because I felt I had to do something, get something, accomplish something. But live because I chose to. I began to laugh. My life, already spent, was mine now to live as I chose. Why not have hope? If I was already dead, what would another disappointment cost me? I could no longer lose.
My hand, touching the harsh, coarse black surface of the island, felt for the first time since the fall, alive. The heat of the rock soaked up through my flesh. The coarse stone pricked delightfully at my fingertips. It was much like the sensation I felt when using my thief magic to scale a wall to steal a precious bauble. But I hadn't noticed the texture of walls in a long time. Not with the fascination I felt for the rock on which I now rested.
Not for years and years. I thought hack to the tavern where Garlthik had initiated me into the ways of a thief adept. Then all the particles of the world had been connected. I was part of it. Everything mattered, fascinated.
What had happened? I had simply stopped noticing. The goal of the bauble had supplanted the fascination of the action. Motion, motion, motion. Rush, rush, rush.
Always had to get somewhere. Steal something. Make a name for myself. Become a legend. Could I gain love then? No one, I knew, could ever love me. It would only be a collection of activities and accomplishments, the tag of notoriety, that would make me valuable to someone else.
And in my insane rush I had, of course, attained that notoriety.
"Who are you?"
"J'role, mad old clown;
I've always been so
Since my first sound. "
My fingers scraped against the rock. Where had my life gone? Could I really have been happy? Why did I let all the years slip by?
Tears, tears from years ago, from the present, welled in my eyes. I began to sob. I could not wipe the tears away, and they rolled down my cheeks, sticky and stinging. I thought of Releana, and of you and Torran. And I wished so desperately that you could be there, so I could tell you how sorry I was. Not just for hurting you, though there is shame and sorrow enough in that. But for not sharing myself with you. For in that moment, in the mourning for a lost life, I knew that there was actually something good within myself I might have given my family. I had just been too frightened to do it. I radiated pain instead. I had wanted to show you all how harsh the Universe was, so I made sure to be harsh for the Universe.
3
I cried for a long, long time. When I was done, I did indeed feel better. I had never believed much in the power of tears. They suggested a weakness I thought others would exploit. I remembered Releana's constant suggestions that I release my pain openly to her. How I thought it would be too much for her to bear. That my pain, openly expressed, would drive her away. Yet what did it amount to? Tears on my cheeks.
I looked back at the tower. It stood lonely and somewhat threatening. I had one arm that moved slightly. I tried a simple wriggle and found my hips could also move a bit. It was possible, I might be able to crawl and wriggle to the tower. On my back. Slowly. Over a hundred yards of rough rock. But what other choice did I have? And why not? Thoughts of my false death came back to me, and it seemed I might as well try, if only to give myself some purpose with my second, unexpected life.
The thought actually caused me excitement. The ridiculous impossibility of it teased my mind, tasted like sugar on my tongue. I was doomed to fail, trapped halfway to the tower, starving to death before I reached my goal. Thus, there was no pressure. The safety and perfection I'd always sought was well beyond my grasp. The attempt was all that was left to me.
I shifted my weight, moving my shoulder blades off to the right, pointing my head toward the tower. My left palm pressed hard against the rough ground, and I slid myself forward alittle. I then shifted my shoulders a bit, moving slightly to the left as I scrunched up my spine, dragging myself forward. In this way, like a man using one paddle in a small boat, I moved forward, slipping left then right as I alternated using my shoulders and left arm.
Although my progress was difficult, the awareness that I was making progress sent another wave of ridiculous enjoyment through me. I could barely feel my body, but what I could feel was struggling, alert, and alive. I was living to stay alive, rather than to prove a point about misery. The lightness of this made me giddy, and despite my exertions, I smiled as I moved on.
Then I paused to rest and rolled my eyes to look at the tower. No more smiling now. In my thoughts I'd traveled yards. In fact, I'd moved only several inches. It was only then that I took in the full difficulty of the task. Yet I set myself to do it, and with a long intake of breath to launch me, started again.
I stopped later that day, falling asleep. When I woke, the sun had passed into late afternoon. I began again. Although tempted often to check my progress by looking toward the tower, I made it a rule to do so as little as possible. Only when I needed to confirm the direction I was traveling. The slowness of my progress was all too depressing.
Rises in the rocks caused terrible difficulties. I had to push myself uphill, the pressure scraping hard against my back, ripping into my already ragged shirt. I suspected I was bleeding along my shoulder blades, but could not be certain. Because I could not maneuver myself with any dexterity, the trip downhill did not go any easier. I was still obliged to push myself along, and with my head tilted back as I moved, I could see the tower clearly and how much farther I had to go.
Night came. I slept again. Woke in the middle of the night. Feverish. Dying, I think. I weighed out the choices. I could rest and try to get better, and then die later. Or struggle on, hoping against ridiculous hope that some sort of comfort waited for me at the tower.
I chose hope
On the fourth day from the fall, hunger began gnawing at me like a rat inside my flesh.
My body, in its efforts to keep me alive, had burned up whatever food had been in my stomach, food I had eaten days earlier in my home in the jungle. Waves of dizziness started to pass over me, and I often woke up with no memory of stopping my journey.
Sensations came to my tongue. Pears and apples, sticky and juicy in my mouth. Roasted boar, cooked crisp on a spit. The taste of rice wine, sweet and dry. These thoughts supplanted concern over my interminable progress, though the exchange gave me no comfort.
I continued on.
Late in the morning of the sixth day I was still at it, though I had no idea if I really was moving forward. It seemed I might simply have been rocking back and forth, and no more. Thus, I risked a glance at the tower, needing to know I was closer, but afraid to learn how much farther I had to go.
It turned out that I had, even in my stupor, made tremendous progress. I remembered how far away the tower had been when I'd started out, and now, at late morning, its shadow fell over me. It seemed possible I would in fact reach it.
Then, in one of the windows of the tower's third story, I sa
w a shift of gray. I blinked, uncertain. Hunger, exhaustion had already taken their toll. You and Torran had come to visit me the night before as little boys, wondering where I was. Begging me to come home.
I looked back toward the tower. No. There was something. Someone. A woman. A shout formed in my throat. Shattered on the way out, my voice unused for so long. I tried again, calling over and over for help.
The woman, thin and delicate, old, as old as me, with thick gray hair, walked slowly past the window. Her hand touched the window frame as if leaning against it for support. She paid me no attention.
Shouts poured from my raw throat. I filled the air with as much noise as I could. Still, she did not acknowledge me. She moved on, and the last I saw of her was the back of her simple white gown as she vanished out of sight.
