Children of the Silent Season (Heartbeat of the World Book 1)

by T. Wyse

  Amelie turned, and realized the light's source. The small guardian cat creature was glowing softly with a pure white light. His fur looked silvered, but still unkempt, still matted. The source seemed to come from every follicle of his fur. He still looked rather loppish, and hunched, but there was the subtlest bit of nobility there, perhaps in memory of something long forgotten.

  Kokopelli leaned his head back, basking in the growing light.

  "Not much, not much at all, but a start to be sure." The creature sighed to himself. He looked back down at the girl, the white embers of his eyes glowing, seemingly on the verge of erupting into whatever radiant white flames they once represented.

  She realized then that the ringing had subsided, the cracking pain finally gone the moment he had looked into her eyes. The memory of the dreams still slipped away from her, but thinking of it at least no longer meted a punishment. She was free.

  The glowing figure moved closer to her and for a moment they both sat there, locked in each other's gaze.

  Kokopelli opened his mouth, breathing deeply outwards. The sound was somehow as soft as a sigh, yet conferring the force of a gale wind. Tendrilous smoke emitted from his mouth, like breath on a frosted morning. Slowly the breath began taking on shapes. Figures of various things formed, falling behind some invisible barrier of darkness before their natures could be discerned in full. Finally an orbed shape appeared in a crescent brown, its tips pointed downwards.

  Amelie’s jaw dropped, her own breath shocking her from her stupor. “What is this?” She raised a trembling and unworthy hand up to the formed light. “These colours, they’re…” She shook her head, dumbfounded, her breath catching in her throat. “I can see them!” The words were foolish, the meaning impossible to express.

  The colours before her crackled with energy and texture. They glowed and twinkled with substance and a candied gloss that licked sweet on her perception.

  “The…” Kokopelli paused, there was that nearly audible shuffling inside himself before he continued. “It is of you, the offering, and as such the lines speak of your…dreamscape, I suppose.”

  “Yes, dreams, that’s it!” A single awestruck clap.

  The unsure shapes of shining colours rippled at the sound of her clap. They remained obscured by the theater’s gossamer curtain, yet she savored the feeling, the ever missing link between her eyes and the wind connected for a glorious performance.

  The blues shone coldly, whispering of untouched air, of unexplored plateaus hidden on mountainsides. The reds shone spicy and pungent, of mummified apricots and tucked away secrets.

  The curtain lifted as she made her savor, presenting a flat image hovering perfectly between them.

  A curved crescent of musky brown stood the only revealed shape, and then it trembled to life as the creature spoke.

  "This is the world you live in." Kokopelli narrated. Grey cliffs shot up from beneath the ground, plants and trees of vibrant and pulsing green grew up with a smooth nature. Mono-coloured animals, of browns and whites and red simply appeared on the earth’s surface. The details of each were clear, though they were of a crude form, little more than stick figures with rounded edges.

  "The world is older than memory itself, and has a consciousness of its own, though it is less brazenly outward as those who walk upon it. The people who walk its paths, and the world you know is only a fragment of the whole. Numerous other planes, ones beyond your perceptions and some beyond even mine exist. One such realm is the world of spirit, one inhabited by creatures of imagination and legend."

  Under the crescent shape numerous glowing figures appeared, some glowed with a noble white, others with a pure red. The shapes were wildly varied, and rarely even vaguely humanoid. Though the figures were tiny, there was a beautiful intricacy within the simplicity of their lines.

  "Humanity has known of the spirit world since its very beginnings. The interaction changes over time, its perception distorts and fluctuates, yet it is consistently there."

  A soft reddish glow highlighted the figures of humans, now bowing to some indistinguishable idol. A figure stood with a staff, praying with hands aloft.

  The red glow felt strange, giving the scene the feeling of being far off, of an ancientness that softly lingered in the back of her mind.

  "When the world, when the creatures walking its surface, have lost their way, when they have turned away from the knowledge of the spiritual realm, the Silent Season shall come. When the people of the world have lost their wonderment, turned their backs to the spirits and gods, the Silent Season shall come. When a little girl flies, and the world seeks to exploit it, throwing its hands up in disinterest when they find that impossible, the Silent Season shall come."

  The figures inside the red glow turned their backs on the priest, leaving the temple behind. The figure with the staff continued deliberations on his own, the red glow waning into a muted darkness. The figure lay down on the altar, the glow within him fading away, and the idol crumbled into the earth. The small scene disappeared into darkness entirely.

  The figures of humans appeared once more on the earth’s crescent, this time with an energetic blue glow casting its light on a cityscape. A single blue figure appeared, human and small. The figure soared above them on stylized winds, with shimmering tracing lines of yellow.

  The humans at first were awed by this, gazing upwards, pointing with shock and awe. They quickly lost their interest, and turned their back on the small figure, still merrily sailing upon the yellow tides above.

  Amelie followed the little flying figure, watched it piff out into the blackness. It left the city with the small humans going about their normal business, in a fading blue glow.

  "There are seasons in this world. They differ from place to place, country to country, continent to continent. The differences are there, and they are tangible and with purpose. In the place we live in, there are four such seasons. There is however, another season, hidden from the unknowing, unbelieving world. I have come to know this time as 'The Silent Season'.

  The people froze in place.

  "Every once in a while, the world decides that it needs to change, to grow. It does this in a way not unlike a spider, or a snake. There is no forewarning, no specific event that triggers it. People, specifically those looking for signs of something, even on an unconscious level, are able to sense its coming. The Silent Season is a time for malcontents, a time for the world to change its very nature.

  A dotted wall of red swooshed slowly across the crescent earth, everything it touched was absorbed, and flung into the sky. The jutting grey mountains were shortened to mere angled hills in its wake. The mighty trees that she had seen grow from buds just moments ago stood grey and bare in its wake. The animals and humans simply dissipated into nothingness in its wake. There were, however, pockets of things untouched. A stone monument stood, a mill of some kind, a bridge of cobbled stone.

  Some of the humans remained, still frozen. The last of the lingering blue glow ebbed slowly into blackness and they scattered for shelter, released from their stasis.

  "The Silent Season has no static form, no consistent way of presenting itself. The first time I experienced it, many years ago, the world was engulfed in flames. I have seen the world drowned beneath an abyss of water. There have been other, stranger, expressions of the season, their forms difficult to describe. The season can be brutal and cruel, or deceptively lush and inviting. Even at its cruelest the season is survivable for those who maintain their faith, and continue their pursuit of truth.

  The initial fear of the season apparently having worn off, the figures of the humans re-emerged into the silent world. Within each was a soft green glow, a feeling of discontent, of seeking wafted from the figures and the light within. They scattered slowly into the world, with no apparent destination or direction.

  With the light of the seeking humans gone, the scene faded out to blackness once more.

  "There are some things consistent to the season, not
eworthy and important.”

  A stone monument, with large obelisks making up crude columns for a temple, faded in with the faintest glow of white within. Two other figures appeared, though they were barely perceptible against the blackness.

  "Heralding its arrival, much of the old world is laid bare. Certain exceptions always exist, though they are seemingly without consistency. It may flood the earth, dissolving everything in its wake, but leave the mountains be. It may burn the world, but spare the trees. Or, it may choose to lay the world to dust, leaving the aged in its wake. There is always some sort of logic, albeit twisted and convoluted, that can be ascribed to the season.

  The monument grew, and the gentle glow grew with it. Human seekers, their green glows dimmed, exhausted, took shelter within it.

  One of the other two shapes revealed itself as a mill, one connected to a river’s flow. There was a gentle reddish glow to it, though barely enough to even illuminate it against the blackness. More dull seekers appeared, coming and going from the site, their lights more vibrant than its own.

  A bridge revealed itself, made of cobbled stone. More human figures were visible, huddled under its structure.

  The three shapes faded away, leaving the brown crescent once again alone in the darkness.

  "Know, that while the world you see in daylight appears to be an ashen waste, a plain of nothingness, it is still the world you knew. Everything of the old world is retained, though it lays hidden and malleable to the knowing. The people you have known, the places you have walked, they all exist and likely shall continue to do so once the season is passed. Let this knowledge, above all, sustain your spirit and your resolve to continue on. The world, though it may seem harsh especially at this juncture in its development, is not without mercy."

  A halo of pale white, high above and perpendicular to the crescent earth hovered. Uncountable and tiny figures were woven together in the halo, still intact but all completely still. There was an oddness to this halo, a crudeness that was different from the other shapes. Amelie realized that the colour lacked the meaningful vibrancy of the other glowing figures presented. She wondered briefly if it was something of its very nature, or an indication of a potential mistruth, something he was holding back from her.

  Blissfully ignorant, the words returned to her.

  "The key to this season, however, is that it represents a world where the spiritual and physical are one. During this time living mythologies walk the earth, not yet catalogued in your lore. Spirits, both fanged with malevolent intent, and with helpful benevolence walk the silent earth. This season represents the beginning of memory for the peoples of the world, and the beginning of the spiritual myth.

  "During the Silent Season the rules of reality work differently. The world shrinks, and actions that may have merited no notice before now cause great ripples in the fabric of what is real.

  A blue figure faded from the darkness, and for the briefest moment Amelie thought she saw something, a kind of halo hovering around it. The vibrancy and meaning was there in the blue halo, but it quickly disappeared, a white paw having shot into the canvas, dragging the small circle back into nothing. That feeling, it was so familiar too. Amelie pondered the feeling, reaching into her memory, and finally placed it as the feeling that had pushed against the wave, the feeling of the bubble forming around her and embracing her.

  Why did she need to be ignorant of that, she wondered.

  The blue figure walked the earth, unheeding of the removal of its strange circular halo or the girl’s own ponderings. Its steps made much quicker progress across its surface than any of the other figures before it. As it stepped, hills were formed, where its walking stick poked the earth, plants shot upwards.

  "So the world...is sleeping?" Amelie asked finally, her breath shot chaotic vapors of rainbow into the air. "It's like some dream, where no-one can die?"

  "Only the world you know is sleeping. The world you experience now is as real as the one you have known your entire life." The darkness replied. "Make no mistake, humans are as mortal as they have ever been in this time, you would do good to consider that."

  "How long will it last?" Her breath circled the world, swirling with shimmering colour.

  "Trust that the time spent here is limited by forces beyond your current understanding. Great forces move now, taking advantage of the potential of the season. This time, however, it's different somehow. The world knows itself much more than last the season claimed its surface. This will likely simply serve to shorten its duration and resolution."

  "But, everyone's alive then, absolutely everyone?" Amelie wasn't entirely sure she could trust the eyes staring at her. Her breath twisted a spiraling orbit around the halo of the earth.

  "Yes," was his simple answer. “It is something known to all living things, albeit on a subconscious level. Surely you felt it too, felt that numbness to what would otherwise be raw horror.”

  The shining light began to dim, and waned to nothingness. Only the creature's red eyes pierced the blackness once again.

  "That doesn't tell me about the…crows though." She prodded angrily, frustrated that the words were again coming with effort. Her breath let out a halfhearted white glow, forming into a chaotic static against the empty canvas.

  "That has another price, and another time." The eyes disappeared into the darkness, leaving her in near blackness. The static formed into a flock of white birds, ones that Meldice would certainly have been proud of had she been there to see them.

  "Wait! that's not fair!" She protested, trying to locate him as even the lingering white of the birds faded into blackness.

  "Be careful what you asssk." The voice was beside her ear, somehow the creature had made its way to her side. What horrified her more so than his speed, was the fact that the small cat being was not tall enough to reach her ear. Something different, something other than the somewhat familiar form was beside her in the darkness.

  She reached out and pushed what was there away from her, off of the bed. The form she moved was larger, and more weighty than the small cat she had touched in the light.

  Four paws lightly touched the floor, and the familiar glowing eyes pierced the darkness, regarding her from the floor.

  "Be careful of the questions you ask." He repeated, leaping on the bed. "They have a higher price, both in sacrifice, and in your blissful ignorance."

  Amelie held the covers up as a kind of shield between them. Peeking over the covers, scrutinizing the darkness, she came to the conclusion that it was in fact the small cat creature sleeping at the edge of the bed, nothing more sinister.

  She lay there, in the darkness, trying to absorb the meaning of the words he had given her.

  She fell into sleep thinking of the Silent Season, and what it meant for her.

  The coming awareness of her dreams brought on only abstractions. Her flurried hands moved across the white wall, making pale and bleached approximations of the shapes she had seen, and yet even empowered by her pen the creation fell short.

  The distraction failing her dreaming mind, blinded by slumbering fog, made the mistake of turning to one side and finally becoming aware of the intruder.

  A blob of the tar wobbled and swayed, stifling the blue bladed grass underneath it. A trembling and pulsing tendril of the stuff lead outside of where the wall had been breached. The thing reflected no light, no colours, but instead it drank in the blues in the grass, tainting and greying the walls where it had spread like a moss. The little tadpoles showed their full form, tiny hair thin tails connected them to the sourcing blob. They continued their tireless nibbling but were still no fatter for the efforts.

  These were all minor horrors, incidental intrusions in the revealed shadow of the intruder. Propped up by the unsure blobbed body was a vague approximation of her sitting form, but bloated and trembling, as if shaped by a plague sickened sculptor. The vaguest crevices defined arms and legs, a jellied puddle melted outwards forming the base, and from this grew algae thick
hairs, mosquito thin and twisting outwards through the grass.

  Worst of all, beyond all of the alien coldness, was the face of the thing. It leaned in to her, neck outstretched, broken, twisted. Mocking blind eyeholes scooped out of the skull, tentacled false hair writhed and wiggled with worming life. It gulped like a fish, the face slapping up against the wall of the golden blob, slowly, repeatedly, with the force of tired and maddened obsession driving its impotence.

  “What…what are you?” The words pierced the golden globe between them and swirled around the blobbed head as it withdrew for another soggy strike. This caused it to freeze, head swaying and turning with an owl like freedom.

  It paused, the sunken eyes bulging out in some approximation of blinking. The face contorted into something, some expression that had never graced the face of a flashcard, and yet she could feel the sentiment radiating forth. Light curiosity laced an overwhelming animalistic hunger, driven to desperation by being denied something that it had tasted.

  It slapped forward against the globe, every drop of the intruding tar now frozen in anticipation. “What.” The whisper came out in a hot haze of red that splattered upon the wall between them, trickling sideways across it in drooling droplets—a question, a discovery, an affirmation that caused the carved walls to tremble around her, the grass to shiver and bow as the fine tendrils writhed in excitement.

  “What?” It whispered, hoarser, desperate, the spray of red vomiting forth with enough force that even the golden globule trembled. The tar trembled with a heightened fever and returned to slapping the smoothed mocking face against the barrier, faster and faster. “What what what what what what…” The red droplets exploded from the impact, shattering and dropping below whispers but echoing in an infinite legion. The slapping hastened and the question became a mist, raining red tears upon the shivering grass.