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

by T. Wyse

  "Me? But..." The answer was obvious and quick to come. She allowed herself a quick cough, trying to banish the soreness.

  "You are Amelie Beren, the flying girl, the child who knows the winds as any of us see or hear!" He stood up, making a wide gesture, then his hand tumbled down in a fluttering motion. "There is so much I've been wanting to ask you, and I am so looking forward to getting to know you, little Amelie!" He grinned broadly. His eyes were hypnotizing. She half expected sparks to emit from the intensity of his grey-rimmed gaze. His eyes seemed to pry into her, analyze her, dissect her.

  "My name is James Barret, I was the head of the special engineering department, before the stillness that is. I managed students, faculty, that sort of thing." He said, dismissive of the importance of his previous life. He knelt down once more, Amelie met his gaze, transfixed still on his eyes. "Now I run what remains, as a shelter for those who need it, and a trader of information. I seek to apply knowledge, to unlock the truth and possibilities before us, to help us survive today and what comes tomorrow." He straightened a sleeve of his shirt with a stiff motion.

  "So thrilled, yes so thrilled." He said, giving her a roving sweep with his electric gaze. "But there will be time for that, when you have recovered fully." He made a swiveling motion, then snapped back, returning to her eyes locked into his. "You haven't recovered fully yet...have you?" He asked with an almost childlike giddiness. "Have you?" Eyes sparkling with a surreal elation, as if she was truth itself sitting before him.

  "No, no sir." She coughed. "I can barely move my head." She wobbled her neck slightly, it didn't hurt quite as much, but the stiffness was still there. No, she hadn't fully recovered. "Professor, can you tell me what happened to M'grevor and..." She was cut off.

  "Plenty of time for that later, my dear, plenty of time." He trailed off in a furtive mumble. "That wildcat of yours is here." He chuckled, a half smile cocked across his face.

  "Little bugger went crazy the second I wheeled her out, but she got him to stay." Lyssa said, The Professor's eyes flitted upwards quickly to where she must have been standing, then back at Amelie.

  "His name's ‘Kokopelli’ apparently." The woman’s voice was suddenly slow, deliberate. There was some subtle meaning in this between the two adults.

  "Really now." The Professor mused, raising an eyebrow. "Certainly an interesting choice."

  He smiled, then held her hands, moving them, touching her palms with his thumbs. It was as if he was judging her pulse, feeling her strength. "I'm so glad we had this little chat." He smiled, wider than before, and replaced her hands back on the rests gently.

  "Tomorrow then, I think." He concluded with a nod. "Lyssa would you kindly return her to the clinic for the night? Get some volunteers to set up the quarters for her in the meantime."

  He stood up again, looking down at her. She sorely met his gaze, seeing the smooth white ceiling of the room above his head. "Why, I'd bet this time tomorrow, you'll be up and about again. Good as new!" He raised his hands, clean palms facing her.

  "Thank you Lyssa." He declared. He turned and headed with a pacing speed back where he had emerged.

  Given this as a cue, Amelie was spun back around, through the doors. The chair paused shortly, hovering a moment in the hallway as the doors came to a dramatic shut behind her. Even the sound of them closing gently echoed in the tower beyond. She caught a quick glimpse of more of the strange devices, one cylindrical, another squared and oblong, before a quick angled left turn took them back the way they had come.

  "I’m sorry for asking but..." Amelie coughed again. "Is he always like that?"

  Lyssa chuckled. "No, you've got him quite excited." They crossed the linoleum floored hallway again. "He's been waiting a great long time to have a chat with you."

  Her first night in that place passed without further incident or stress. Lyssa revealed a prepared cot behind one of the hanging curtains and Amelie was glad to take it at first. Unfortunately, the thing stank of disinfectant and detergent, the blankets both grated on her hands and feet and stung at her cheeks while somehow giving no warmth for this price. Thankfully Amelie had only needed some gentle protesting to prompt Lyssa to spin from the room and return with a thick quilt draped over her shoulders.

  The quilt smelled, but it wafted of the memory of humans, of dank unused years, things that had never bothered her much. The warmth from it was immediate and enveloping, and smoothed the itching bite of the sheets.

  She fell into sleep as the smeared colours of the room faded into an ominous black, but even her trip to the dream state arrived with an unusual mercy. Her hands shaped no dreams to distract her, but a shroud hung about her in the pen, dulling her awareness as a child hiding under blankets from the monster under the bed.

  When she awoke the next morning, the only thing that followed her from that blurred darkness was a sense of hush, of pensive quiet, though there was no ringing to block it any longer it carried that same imperceptible after state.

  She rose as if under her mobile once more, eyes closed to the light burning red against them. It took the shape of the room yawning out before her, the rhythmic breathing of the woman just beyond the curtain, the jagged counters and drawers and maze of curtains to make her realize and remember.

  The bathtub still waited, now an empty pit and obscured behind a curtained wall. She forced her eyes open out of curiosity and saw the source of the painting light for the first time in full. A small window cut into the upper part of the otherwise bone white wall. Three panes of tinted glass lay framed, immobile in place: one red, one yellow, one blue.

  She let the curtain fall silently back, the blue pane painting the side of her box into a glowing sapphire. Resting her eyes against the light she focused on the figure of the woman.

  Lyssa slept slack jawed and looking like a cocooned caterpillar, fat with blankets and hardly ready to bloom into a butterfly. The chair wasn’t a recliner of any sort and stubbornly forced the woman into a diagonal position, her head barely supported by a cluster of haphazardly placed pillows. The tail of her cocoon was supported by a tiny footstool, though one of her feet had burst out, the loose fabric of a sock half on swaying slowly.

  Alone, and never alone, Amelie took a survey of herself. Her toes wiggled merrily and without any squeals of pain. Her fingers, smooth and red, clenched and clawed without tremor. Her arms and joints all swiveled with oiled eagerness, and her neck moved without a whisper of stiffness.

  All the chorus of limbs were eager to move, however, and her feet met the chilled linoleum covering with a pair of gentle pats. No splinters, no contact pain, even as she raised her weight upon them in careful increments. The bed, being about a stiff as a brick of wood, gave neither a creak nor a groan as she left it.

  The air flowed slowly, but she could feel the breeze from outside the door and yearned to taste that open space beyond. Her hair too yearned for that, being quite a tattered and matted mess, still sulking from being soggy for so long.

  She tiptoed as softly as her stumbling toes would allow, almost licking her lips with the anticipation of opening that door, of feeling that burst of living air upon her face. The idea of meeting with Kokopelli drove her too, though she couldn’t make out any shapes from under the door.

  The room was narrow enough that she had to slide sideways, leaning against the drawered sink to avoid contact with the woman’s splayed out half-socked foot. Still, the rhythmic breathing showed no signs of disturbance.

  The knob of the door proved to be the end of her, however. She moved it with a care that would have impressed her just a week ago, but the thing chirped out with a rattle disinterested in her skills. A muffled alarm, but a sufficient one.

  Amelie lowered her shoulders in superficial loss. It had been worth a try.

  The woman woke with a snorting half snore, then moving slowly, opened her eyes and looked towards the bed. Finding it empty the woman's head turned quickly and fixed on Amelie.

  "Oh!" She shouted, practicall
y jumping out of her chair. The footstool toppled over, causing Amelie to chuckle slightly at the absurdity of it.

  Lyssa’s face went from a stark annoyance, to one of relief. "And what do you think you were doing?" The woman scolded with mock anger. She rose from the chair, rubbing her neck. "Thinking to escape the evil witch, hmm?" Amelie wasn't sure if the accusatory tone was marred with sarcasm or not.

  Amelie looked down at the floor, elated with her regained mobility, only feeling the slightest pang of guilt for trying to 'escape the evil witch'.

  "Well, at least I won't have to sleep in that chair like that again." The woman made an arching stretch with her back. She gave a satisfied grunt, and resumed standing posture.

  Lyssa, now fully awake, bundled the blankets back onto the chair haphazardly, then stepped towards the door. She opened the traitorous knob with practiced silence. "Since you are so energetic this morning, I propose we set you up with some clothes, and introduce you to Melissan. I imagine you were attempting to get a self-guided tour, or perhaps you really were thinking to escape my evil clutches?" She made a mock clawing gesture with her free hand.

  Amelie's guilt swelled, sad that she had perhaps hurt her hostess' feelings by her silly actions. "I'm sorry ma'am. I just wanted to get a look around, without waking you." She smiled apologetically. "Thank you for watching me."

  "You are quite welcome, you strange little creature." The woman chuckled. She pulled the door fully open, saying "I bet this little fellow...yup here as always." A familiar shagged grey blur snaked through the door the second it opened a crack.

  "Hello again Kokopelli." Amelie exclaimed, scooping him up. He hung down with disinterested awkwardness, giving her a bemused look. "Looks like you're alright at least!" She exclaimed, looking him over. He looked as he did when she had first seen him, and she was glad. There was still that strange repulsion, a snake in a sheep's skin feeling that weighed on her subconscious when looking at him. He had, however, become the most familiar face to her in the recent time, and she was glad at his safe return. She dropped him back onto the floor, and he paced around her.

  "Shall we be off?" Lyssa beckoned from beyond the open door.

  "Delighted." Amelie smiled, following out into the dim hallway, her small guardian trotting along in step.

  The path they took began the same as the earlier one, only now they took the stairs down. The halls were unremarkable in their way, expected notifications and posters decorating them. It wasn’t until they were beyond the doors and into the stairwell that the constructed oddities presented themselves once more.

  Approximately three quarters up the wall of the basement, a crack rippled through. It wasn't a crack so much as a spaced line, but rather gave the appearance of one. The crooked random line separated two very different building materials. The first material seemed to be the kind of pebbled concrete familiar to those who had seen buildings naked of their decorative walls. The second, more interestingly, seemed to be of the same white material that made up the floor and walls of the tower she had been escorted to the day before.

  As they descended the final few steps she satisfied a tactile curiosity, running her hand along the surface of the wall gently. The white concrete wasn't concrete at all, but something smoother, not unlike marble. It was slightly warm to the touch, as if heated by gentle sunrays within its own body, and was a dull and utterly uniform white. The woman had stopped in front of a pair of rather ugly and old industrial doors, a small window in each of them offered nothing but blackness beyond.

  "What's this material, down here?" Amelie asked as Lyssa opened the door at the bottom of the stairs.

  "Don't know, actually." She answered with a curiosity that seemed long buried under acceptance. "Tough stuff though, really tough." The woman seemed to fumble at her belt for a moment, continuing her divergent explanation. "When they were building on top of the old ruin, they tried to make new passages and such. It just wasn't possible, so they had to build around it." She ushered Amelie through.

  The basement was almost completely immersed in pitch blackness. Tiny guide lights, no larger than those used as a novelty for holiday decoration, ran along the corridor, framing the meeting of the floors and the ceilings to the wall. The odd lighting gave the basement the illusion of walking in a darkened and linear star field of some kind. The meager light shone upon the concrete by the guiding lights showed the entire corridor to be made of that same white concrete.

  "It's awfully dark." Amelie said with reluctance, afraid of losing her step. Strangely there was none of the flittering shadows that seemed common to darkness, it was a uniform and logical dark. The air in the basement wasn’t entirely still, but it seemed unwilling to cling to the white material, making it that much more clumsy for her to navigate.

  "Ah, that's why we have these." Lyssa was illuminated with a soft, but prominent blue glow. She held a lantern of some kind, dangling from her reach. Its own light cast upon it with an insufficient paleness, apparently interested more in illuminating things other than itself. It seemed to be a spherical object, framed by a cubic bracket of thickened wire. The sphere shot light in four opposite directions out of rounded windows in its shell. Even though the light should have made piercing beams, its light focused through the obstructing design, it seemed to emanate its soft blue light in a sphere. The light billowed gently outwards, rippling upon the walls, casting a gentle blue hue to the pale white. The blue seemed to stop short at a set line both in front of and behind them. Beyond the lantern's soft light there was nothing but the tiny white stars to guide them.

  "What is that?" Amelie asked, following behind the woman's pace. They turned to the left, following the hallway down.

  "A lantern." Lyssa began walking, the light of the lantern staying eerily constant, though it swung gently in her hand.

  "It looks strange." Amelie poked further.

  The woman nodded. "Things like these are why our school is sought out by those who know to look. It’s strange, for reasons you likely can’t see now, but it is beautifully simple as well."

  Amelie waited, hoping that she would continue on, to explain a little further. However, no further secrets spilled from the silhouetted woman who lead her.

  They walked past a door, Amelie glanced at it, unable to fully make out the words on it but managing to read what she thought to be 'Museum' amongst them. The guiding lights veered sharply right and they turned. The wall on her left felt odd somehow, but Amelie didn't have the time to view it in the light and keep pace with the woman. The wind seemed able to cling to that segment of the wall, showing a roughened and ugly texture as they passed.

  "Are you able to keep up? Are your legs okay?" She asked with concern, stopping a moment and regarding Amelie.

  "I'm fine, sorry. Just saw a door..." Amelie looked back a moment.

  "Please don't fall behind." The woman nodded, and returned to the path, her pace renewed. Another door passed, this time to the right, its label was lost in her desire to stay close. "I’m sure you’re curious about these things, but I simply don’t have time for it right now. If you get lost down here it could be difficult to find you, and I definitely don’t have time to search." She warned.

  Amelie looked down, and saw Kokopelli's glowing eyes. They flitted around nervously, and he stopped there for a moment, walking with caution towards another section of wall to their left that resembled the first. It was very rough, and of the newer kind of concrete. The little cat’s silhouette seemed to bristle, chilled by some unknown aggravation.

  They passed a hallway that went on into darkness on their right, the stars trailed off into a seeming infinity. The stars veered sharply right, and they followed, finally stopping before a door to their left.

  "And here we are." Lyssa declared, raising the lantern to illuminate the door’s marker. 'Laundry,' it declared simply. The doors bewildered Amelie as she approached. A pair of them each bit into the wall on oversized hinges, and swung open like the entry to some rock troll’s s
aloon. Even as she followed Lyssa in she couldn’t avert her gaze from the structures, trying to pinpoint what seemed so odd about them.

  They lacked locks or even bolts to hold them shut, but those were certainly not overwhelming crimes. Her inspections ended as the room flooded with light intense enough that her ears drummed with the force that slammed her eyes shut.

  "Sorry, should've warned you." The woman's voice was close by. Amelie opened her eyes a squint, and searing pain was her reward for the attempted politeness.

  Lyssa bore a pair of clothing sets still skewered by hooks and wrapped in plastic. Glancing from one to another she arrived at her conclusion. “Hmm think this should be alright.”

  The searing faded ever so slightly, and Amelie could finally see more than a blur. A school uniform lay beyond the smooth plastic that hid it from the wind. It featured a jacket and skirt, both a rather ornament-free brown, and a gleaming white dress shirt.

  "Try these on, see which fits best," Lyssa ordered, pointing to a privacy curtain at the other end of the room. Kokopelli took a waiting seated position beside the woman's leg.

  Thankfully the garments didn’t puff forth the chemical stink that she had expected, and she tried them on without more than a little tickling against her arms and a little burn at the back of her nose. The room itself was perfectly cubed and entirely constructed of the white substance. Large open wheeled tubs lay around in tight formation, and a set of racks with plastic hangings filled out a good half of the entire space. A line of huge machines, what must have been washing machines, lined the entire face of the wall opposite the door.

  "Socks, shoes." The woman pushed a set of socks, and a pair of shoes under the curtain's gap.

  The second set fit a little more loosely, but the neckline dangled a little too much even with the collar button fastened.

  “I apologize, really. We should just have pants for everyone, but we have to make do with what we have.”