Now all that was left was the color of secrets. One secret.
A secret of many colors.
*
In the end, it came to pass that what I had seen only fed my lack of sympathy for Tanen's behavior. There was a small time in which I had to think about it, brood over what it meant, but it sorted itself out well enough – as a non-game-changer. It could be a game changer – had the potential to be – but in its current form... No.
In fact it made him less worthy of the way he treated them.
And so my derision grew. Even as he continued to prove he was worth the investment I had made upon first instating him in this house. In the days that followed he took it upon himself to start innovating our garden, dredging a network of trenches and fashioning extra pipes from odds and ends of the city, creating a brilliant, automatic watering system he called irrigation.
It was a blessing, to be sure, not having to haul buckets of water to keep the garden nourished. But while his innovation was impressive as usual, he retained a status that failed to win me over, where the rest of him was concerned.
He came back from the city one day – he seemed to have adopted a hobby as an Albino; what nonsense, I thought, that a role of such gravity be taken for a hobby – and spent a good half of the rest of the day reading in the corner from a book he had charmed out of the rubble. I did not ask what it was, nor did I speak to him at all, even to remind him that the rest of us were breaking our backs over his share of the work, that day. I desired too much that he see it for himself, and also desired not to exchange anything with him, ever again, really, if such could be arranged. I wanted only to pretend that he was not there, the black spot in my perfect household. Life could be good, unhindered by those like him. I would not miss him should he cease to exist.
He seemed to think that his recent innovation – that irrigation system he had installed – had somehow relieved him of further duties for a few days, as if the convenience and efficiency it offered made up for enough labor to sanction a vacation.
Needless to say, when he came to me, I was not in the mood to hear it. Whatever it was that he brought with him.
“I've been reading about something,” he said.
“Oh?” As if I could not see you, over there in the corner blatantly ignoring your duties with your nose in a book.
“After you returned from the city the other day, I could not get your story out of my mind – your account of that place, where you found the girl.”
“Who?”
“Ombri,” he managed the name, and a fierce gloat lit my eyes.
“Yes, Ombri. What of the place?” He had not been in the room when I recounted my tale, and I wondered who had told him. Not that it mattered.
“The concept of such a place does not just depart on the next train of thought leaving the station,” he laughed, as if I were completely overlooking something obvious, something incredible.
“It is mischief, as thoroughly as anything else. Your interest is only a sign of naivety, Mr. Nysim. It is normal for one not well versed in the ways of the world.”
“Or perhaps you are jaded, Avante Siren. Perhaps you have no idea what you have at hand, here, because you too readily accept it simply as 'the ways of the world'.” He produced the book he had been reading, opened it to the pages he had been studying and held it out. On one side there was a picture, an artistic graph depicting something I did not have the immediate wit to grasp. I looked to the paragraphs on the opposite page instead, seeking some clue to what he was trying to show me. “Have you ever been privy to the idea of other dimensions?” he prompted, ready to explain his theory.
My eyes flicked back up to him, and I let the desire to analyze his puzzle evaporate, loathe to encourage him. “Where did you get this?” I asked in turn.
“I tracked down a library. It is not hard, if you know where to look. But I don't suppose a library was ever a privileged haunt of a slave's.”
“The only other dimension I believe in is a spiritual one,” I said in answer to his question. “The realm of the gods, and the extensions of it that reflect their doings.” With that, I made ready to withdraw from his presentation. “And if you found a library, you should tell us where it is – so we can burn it.”
*
He took me there, surprisingly – to this library. Some ridiculous remnant of shame for not being privy to the place lodged inside me as we made the journey. It was like some shard of old, acting up as old scars will, an annoying piece of glass rubbing at its lining as we walked.
“You may find it interesting, you know,” he said. “The theory.”
Of course he wouldn't drop it. “Finding things interesting does not feed hungry mouths. We don't survive on what is 'interesting'.”
“I don't suppose you're interested in recalling why you allowed me to stay?”
I glanced at him, frowning. His recent trick with the garden had been reminder enough. But he voiced a reminder himself,
“I was to offer you an edge over surviving, if I could.”
He proved an inconvenient memory as well. “By exploring secret winter wastelands?” I challenged skeptically. “There's nothing for us there.”
“There could be more. What if there are summery lands? Peaceful fields of springtime bliss beyond a simple door?”
I had to admit – to myself, of course, not to him – that I had not considered such. And if such a thing existed out there, among the rubble...well, I could not well bear to discover it after all this time and grief, could I? If there had been such an alternative all along, I did not think I wanted to know.
“The quirks in the rubble are not consistent,” I explained to him instead of admitting intrigue at the idea. “The door I found was one quirk. There is not going to be some network ripe for discovery. Order doesn't exist out here. It's not the way of it.”
“There could still be some explanation in the theory. What if it's all related? How else do you readily explain everything ceasing to exist as it should, and the phenomena that take place, if not by way of some collision with another dimension?”
“I don't know about dimensions,” I reminded him. “I am a slave, remember? I am not educated in the greater concepts and theories of the world. My education consists of doing what I am told so as not to suffer consequences; of cooking in the kitchen because that's what feeds the mouths that command you; of making beds and weeding gardens because the masters of these things have better things to do – such as toying with the arts and sciences, which are things too beautiful and complex for our humble selves and simple minds. I am educated in lashings, Mr. Nysim. You showed me a chart of meaningless lines in that book of yours, but I could show you one of equal value upon my back.”
He trailed to a halt beside me – impacted by my words, somehow, but I would not look at him to find out how. Perhaps he stared at me. Perhaps he was stunned, or humbled, or appalled, or some combination of the three. I did not really care what he was, so long as he took my point, but after a time in which he did not regain his footing and continue in my wake, I glanced over my shoulder to see if perhaps he was intent on standing there forever.
Behind him, a good twenty paces across the rubble, a wardog slunk in both our wakes.
I stilled, all intelligent thought turning to ash as it drained away with the blood from my head. The hairs on my arms stood on end, clamoring my sudden numb terror. “Tanen...” I managed. It came out half-choked, quietly. But he could either read my lips or my face well enough, and he broke from his humbled standpoint to look over his own shoulder. The same feeling that had overcome me echoed in his stance.
...gods... It was the only thought I could conjure, beyond some vague memory of a wardog we had heard during the day, and then there was nothing but to let instinct take over.
Barren of a suitable weapon, or perhaps only the presence of mind to face such a beast a second time around, Tanen turned and bolted toward me. I saw the wardog pause, lift its head as if listening, and
then it bolted after him with a snarl fresh on its lips.
A prick of confusion saw me hesitate, wondering over the beast's body language. The creature tripped as its pace increased, but it recovered, ears swiveling, and kept coming. When it stumbled again, having an evident deal of trouble accounting for the rubble, it became clear to me that something was off. What in the gods' names... But then Tanen tripped, himself, and as his flight broke off, the wardog paused to listen, sliding to a halt in the rubble – and it all came together.
The beast was blind.
And of course – that was why it was out prowling during the day. The light did not bother it.
The conclusion stayed my hand in fleeing. I could not say if the creature had tracked us by scent or sound, but Tanen's flight had set it after him for good. In a complete revamping of instinct, I committed myself to my statue stance, hardly daring to breathe.
Tanen struggled, having the sense to fumble for a makeshift weapon as he fought to get back on his feet. A sharp piece of rubble found its way into his hand as he made the climb to his feet, but I had watched the wardog zone in on his struggle, and slink closer as he found purchase. The beast was close behind him, now – too close. As Tanen dug in for a fresh flight, the wardog did something frightful.
It pounced.
Confident in Tanen's whereabouts, the creature launched from its pedestal of debris and came down on the fleeing calves of its prey. Tanen buckled, and went down beneath the ferocious weight of paws and teeth that sought him.
I would like to say that it was my shock that stayed me at that point, but in truth I don't know what it was. In any case, I did not move from my designated spot of ground. I did nothing to alert the hunting wardog to my presence, nothing to help Tanen. I stood there like a deviant manner of statue in the open city, and watched a wardog feed a scarce few paces in front of me, in broad daylight, where everything in the world ceased to function as it should.
Tanen was not one to go down without a fight, though, and he had faced one of these things before. I may not have had much of an opinion of him, but he possessed a reserve of brutal strength that I might do well to acknowledge in the future – a future that he secured a place in, as it turned out, as that very reserve of fight that he had in him prevailed over the ruthless deliverance of wounds to his body and drove one, then two pieces of debris into his assailant's snarling ribcage, earning his release. The beast faltered, and it was all Tanen needed to shoot through that small window to freedom. He dragged himself from beneath the trapping limbs of the creature, even as it swiped at him, angry with pain. It was not mortally wounded yet, but its blindness and wounds made it a clumsy beast. Still in its path, Tanen was not out of the neck of the woods, but he was not going to die this day.
A knife from his boot found its way into his hand this time around, and he faced the clumsily oncoming beast with every intention of eliminating the threat now. When it took the ambitious leap for a second try at its prey, he slashed it in the belly and sidestepped its fall to the ground. This one he had killed, and it did not slink away into the weedflowers, wounded, whimpering.
I should have felt relief as he stood there, triumphant, a bloody mess but alive. But I didn't. I felt something else – the true shock of events hitting me. What had just played out registered, at last, for what it had been. Tanen Nysim, going down under a wardog on my watch – and my inaction. I had done nothing. Consciously, I had done nothing.
The implications left me stunned.
My inaction by itself was enough to convict me, but it was made worse, remembering: under opposite circumstances, Tanen had saved my life.
Consciously, today, I had not returned the favor.
If I had been one able to bear the truth, I might have revisited my recent broodings regarding true colors, as we stood there in the aftermath. But it was all I could do to recognize that 'what have I done' did not do justice to what had played out here.
The correct sentiment:
What have I not done...
And all that went with it.
T w e n t y - S I x –
Essence
I became obsessed with two things following the incident with Tanen in the city. The first of these things: essence. What lived inside things. In a sense, I took it up in honor of Tanen, as, with his persistent talk of dimensions, he had challenged the way I accepted things as they were rather than getting to the bottom of what made them tick – as if honoring him thus made up for my stunt in the city.
I knew it could not smooth over what had happened as far as he was concerned, but I began on that path as soon as I had the presence of mind anyway – as soon after as our reaching the library. It was a wonder that he saw it through, taking me there, after the attack, but it was almost as if he did it to make a point. To rub something in my face.
Something to do with colors. True colors.
I don't know. After it became clear he was not going to turn back because of his injuries, and seemed, in fact, determined to ignore them until he'd fulfilled the gesture of taking me to that confounded library, I chose to focus solely on the inspiration of essence. And in the library, there was lots of essence ripe for discovery.
The library was underground, these days – only one window up in the corner of the towering ceiling cresting ground level and providing a single shaft of pale light in the place. The sole source of illumination was saturated with dust matter, just one spotlight of the stuff that haunted the fortress throughout. I could smell it on my breath, taste it on my tongue.
I entered one of the great aisles of books and ran my fingers gently over the row of spines. Visions resulted like a deck of cards being shuffled into my mind. Knowledge, stories of grandeur, theories, musings, facts... Thousands of charged words, carefully preserved between the covers of the books, breathed into me with my touch. I nearly gasped from it, but pressed my fingers flatter, drawing more.
The onslaught was incredible as I treaded down the aisle. And I realized: I could learn everything that had been poured into these volumes, without even reading them. To think, if I did read them...the extent to which I could fathom what had been put into them, and from whence it came.
From whence everything came.
Up until that moment, I had not rightfully considered the curse upon my fingertips for the gift that it could be, in this place teeming with the secrets of things that may very well explain what had hindered, condemned, and otherwise terrified the nation for all of these years of ruins, and the 'mischief' that had only ever been the only name we had for what had caused it all.
T w e n t y - S e v e n –
Void
The other thing I became obsessed with, following what became of my own essence in the city that day, was the new awareness of a strange void. I became aware of this void after events drove me to seek my reflection in a mirror. A mirror was not a luxury we sported in Manor Dorn, but I found one in the city, during my next loot. I saw it, in the rubble, and could not quiet the need to see what had become of me. Not simply because I had not looked in a mirror for a number of years, but because I had cause to question myself, these days.
I looked in that mirror, searched my reflection for the girl that lived inside me. If Tanen's theory of other dimensions had any merit, this was a small way I was giving it the chance to show me. And I had my own theory, as well;
When I was good and ready, I raised my gifted fingers, and touched my reflection in that mirror.
What would I see? It was a question that inevitably tormented me with curiosity. So it was a great disappointment, and a great thing of confusion, when I saw nothing. Not a single vision stirred. No sentiments, no sensations. Not a whisper, or echo, or flicker.
My inner workings were closed to me.
I did not know what to make of such a quandary, but it was inevitable that the inhibition frustrated me. How could I see into everything around me, but not myself?
Determined – or perhaps defiant – I took that mirror home w
ith me. It was not something easily stowed in my pack, but I hoisted it and bore it the long trek home without caring.
In the days that followed, while Tanen was treated and healed from his wounds, I found myself before that mirror without realizing I'd taken myself there, set on scrying the secrets from my own eyes. My taunting replica remained sealed behind the glass, however, and all I ever gained was the feeling of the pane against my fingers. Cold, smooth, and unyielding.
It did not even have the decency to grant me as much texture as a painting.
T w e n t y - E I g h t –
Manor Scars
I developed a hunger for touching things, for learning about my surroundings. I felt like somewhat of a child, sometimes, rediscovering the world through touch with such awe, but these textures ran deeper than pleasuring my curious fingertips. The textures I was dealing with now were complex beasties, full of history and sentiment and components too small to be read by the naked eye.
I read Lady Sebastian's diary over again, and this time I lived the events through her. With each page, I felt as if I were there. I saw the things she described firsthand.
I began to learn things about Manor Dorn. I saw where it was keeping Mr. and Mrs. Dorn – there was a room, hidden from us, behind a wall in the upstairs. Inaccessible, a room built into the house's soul, rather than any physical region.
There were other rooms, too, that we couldn't get to. The house itself was only the physical reinforcement that had been built for our benefit, boards tacked onto the spirit of the place, a solid extension of something deeper. The space had always been destined to be a fortress, had spent many years preparing itself for the vigil – and, in the end, had overcompensated, made itself ready for more roots than were staked into it. The overcompensation still existed, in spirit – a proud conjuring of what could have been, refusing to become wasted potential entirely, lingering on in the neglected, willful emptiness.
A Mischief in the Woodwork Page 20
