by T. Wyse
The lantern cast a faint blue specter on the paned glass as she took a look at the school below. She could see the commons room, still illuminated now, casting a gentle mosaic of light into the silent world. There were the patterns of other windows, and the hints of movement from the four piercing patterns on the soil to her left. A dimmer light shone along the school’s spine, a more conventional triangular shape of glass facing skyward, forming a gently luminous river between the two glass towers.
The other tower stood burning bright against the darkness, much more comforting than her own.
She wasn’t alone, she assured herself. It wasn’t enough to banish her fear, the feeling of being so singular, that feeling that made her remember the taste of that creature again.
“Terror of Night.” She had known its name somehow the moment she had passed through it, felt its chill.
No, you’re safe here, she banished the memories of that feeling, of the events in their entirety. The children here are unafraid, strikingly so in fact. Her rationality spoke, quelling the fear of feeling that numb darkness again. The first of the darkened shapes approached the glass, blotting out the image of The Professor’s tower.
“Crow, just Crow.” She glared at the darkened shape. “I knew its name the moment it touched me, but I had to be told yours.” She glared at the darkened shape staring at her across the paned glass. They regarded each other a moment, pale blue eyes meeting burning red.
Finally more joined it, and the fluttering of wings began. She turned away, the spell broken, and gazed into the darkness of the tower. She could see the air rising from the cracks in the machine’s base, running up along the mazed patterns of its metal, but her little bed setup was an almost nondescript lump. It took the lantern light to truly give her quarters form, though the glow made the curtains seem like flattened ghosts, writhing ever so slowly in the ever moving currents of the room.
"Kokopelli, are you here?" She asked the darkness, her words echoed in the emptiness. The hulking machine stood with a gravity only enhanced by its silence and l immobility.
Some movement on the machine’s surface prompted her to raise her torch up to see. A tiny head, not following the contoured lines of the thing appeared at its pinnacle. He skittered down the side, making an acrobatic leap off of the roof of the bed's enclosure, landing beside her as she headed towards it.
"You should turn that light off. It's going to aggravate them more." He warned, following beside her.
"Not a chance." She replied quickly. "Not all of us have your little red eyes to pierce the dark." She scoffed.
“No, but you have your own eyes.” The creature purred softly. “There is comfort in light, however and I will not deny you that.” He conceded gently.
Sitting on her bed, she wrestled with her infuriatingly tangled hair, making no real progress. Through the repetition of this chore she followed the air’s dimensions filling out the space. She could make her own silhouette out with ease. Flashes of movement cast glowing bursts of clarity against the wind. She could see into the calm embers of both her lungs and Kokopelli’s with stark clarity. She could see the machine to a complicated detail, the mazed patterns on its belly defined with nearly the clarity of breathing lungs, and she could even feel the things in her cot down to the swaying curtains.
The wind pulled away from the floor, however, and even the glass seemed to repel it with some kind of simmering insult. This gave the room a disembodied feeling, of being within a tall, squashed sphere. A bubble perhaps, with the great machine keeping it anchored to the earth while it struggled to break free and fly away.
Surrendering to her hair, she stepped into the privacy square and changed into the softer pajama set, folding the uniform with care. It hadn’t been too itchy, she realized, though it had got more than a few scratching nips in when she removed it.
Kokopelli stood on the bed, not lounging for once, and he stared down at the book she had discarded onto the covers. The embossed words on the cover sparkled in the lamplight.
"What's this?" He demanded, a grave suspicion in his voice.
"Ah, I was going to ask you about that." Amelie finished tying her hair back and sat on the bed. She pulled the covers over her feet, already growing cold from the contact with the white concreted floor.
She held the book's cover up, admiring the way the letters shone like false blue jewels. "It's a book, some kind of introduction course for the engineering they do here."
"I don't like the 'engineering' they do here." Kokopelli said, his eyes affixed on the lantern. "It stinks of things not natural."
"Like talking cats and embodied concepts ‘unnatural’?"
"Things that shouldn't exist, things that are impossible inside the rules of the world, ‘unnatural’." He hissed back, his eyes now glowing at her. "As strange as the spirit world is to you, and those who seek to deny it, know that these things, that thing beside us, is not part of either of the natural orders."
"Have you spent all day, trying to figure that thing out?" She asked him, glad that she couldn't see the great machine thanks to the curtain.
"Yes. It bothers me, everything about it seems somehow wrong, and what irks me most is that I can't figure out why." He gazed through the curtain to the hulking machine.
"It's not putting out radiation, is it? Or some weird sound that only cats...or whatever...can hear?" She opened the book, hoping to find the page.
"Nothing so obvious, nothing so outward." Kokopelli rested his head down, going into his curled sleeping position at the foot of the bed. "For what it's worth, as far as I can gather, the machine itself is dead. I can't figure out how to get inside it, how the machinations move. There must be some other entrance." There was a strange unsure mumble in the latter lines, as if they had been added as an incidental afterthought.
"None that I've seen." She took a moment to ruminate on what that strangeness in his voice might indicate, but surrendered it for the moment. Amelie put the book down, and emerged from the warmth of the blankets.
"I think I might be able to help you a little there." She took the blue light in her hand and proceeded towards the platform the machine was on. Her curiosity about the thing had been piqued enough that she could forget the little trick she had planned.
"Turn off that damned light!" He hissed at her, the rustle of feathers intensified a moment.
"I will, but not for you, little one." She said with pointed condescension. She gently stroked the light into its off position.
With the renewed darkness Amelie realized fleetingly that high above at the ceiling of the cylinder there was another ring of the tiny lights, framing a white lid in the false sky.
She thought briefly of a team of little “E”s, ascending that high up to hang the ring of lights, and somehow maintaining them. She dismissed the image and cleared her mind, focusing downwards. At first the effort seemed to cramp her sight, withdrawing it within for a moment, but she stubbornly doubled her effort to see down, and the air finally obeyed. Her sight trickled down through the circular parting of the machine’s base, down through more rough surfaces below.
"There." She said finally. She felt it at the base of the machine, reigniting the small lantern to investigate what she had found.
"What is it?" The little creature had trotted up close to where she now kneeled.
"A draft. Very lean, but it's there." She replied, pointing to the almost invisible crack between the machine’s base and the white clay. “I think it used to move, rotate maybe, when it was working.”
"What good does that do?" He asked. She smiled to herself, proud in that for once she apparently had him at a disadvantage of knowledge.
"I think I can..." She concentrated hard, focusing against the wind, through the tiny crack. It was surprisingly clear once that eye had been passed. Stagnant wind rose up and fell an almost angry torrent of currents framed out objects below, the only escape through the small crack.
“It’s like…” She focused, trying to
think of where she had seen shapes like this.
“Like a clock tower, or a mill, something like that.” She decided finally. “At least that’s what I think of seeing it. Old gears and stuff, big gears. I’d say the walls inside are about, twice as thick as the stairway’s width.”
"Do you see a way in, down below?" He crackled with curiosity.
"I...no, I can only see about halfway down the tower." She concluded. "The air’s still rising up now, and it’s strong enough that I think there might be another entrance, or else it wouldn’t flow like this.” She offered.
“The way the air moves is funny. There just aren’t many sources of ventilation.” She tried to stretch her sense out but it faltered, still only offering that stretched bubble of air. “The air rises from the machine and a little from the stairs, but then it all goes to the top and that pushes it down again. It only drains down the stairs really, the windows aren’t breathing at all, not even a crack.”
She took the lantern in her hand, and re-ignited it. The shadows cast by the light trembled and danced, animated by the slightest sway of the lantern. The sight felt wrong somehow, in some way she couldn’t quite place, and finally with a scowl she retreated to her cot and slid the curtain shut.
"They're just flying around, they aren't trying to attack like before." She said, getting back into her bed. "They can't get in...can they?"
"No, they can't." He answered with a comforting firmness.
"But...before...they broke down doors, they tore through the window, can't they do that again?" She closed her eyes, the flapping had become somewhat of a grey din.
“Creatures of the air,” he said dismissively. “Creatures of persistence, yes, but also respecting of flow and barriers.”
“They don’t seem that way.” She thought back, to seeing them on the winds pursuing her that first day. “They seem beyond the wind somehow. Their flight isn’t normal.”
“Of the wind, not on the wind,” he crackled.
Barriers. It hadn’t been until M’grevor had tugged it through that the full attack began. Perhaps too each of the doors had one or more of the things slipping through before they were shut.
“While I’m happy you are pondering it, I can assure you that no Aspect can breach these walls, nor would they want to.” He settled back into his spot on the bed’s foot.
“Do you remember what happened there? At the house?” she asked finally. “Did you see what happened to the others, to M’grevor and Timothy?”
“I saw no more than you.”
“Do you…” She paused, the watery sickness bubbling up. “Do you think they’re alive? Mrs. Roberts said…” But what had she said, exactly? Amelie probed the foggy memory.
"As long as they weren't foolish, and didn't get in the way, they would have been safe from the crows. The other though? Perhaps, perhaps not. Lingering speculation will only bring you hurt.” He sighed.
The book had found its way into her lap while they spoke, and the page seemed to flutter open on its own in memory of her exploration. She paused, letting the silence hang enough that the flapping chorus filled the night.
"Stop. Now." A fearsome silhouette, not reflecting the blue light of the lantern at all regarded her. It rose up, its eyes looking down on her larger and fiercer than she remembered.
"Why?" She said, not looking up into the face of the thing, her fear controlled. "Let's see here, it says Kokopelli was in charge of ushering the seasons in by playing a flute, that he was a trickster deity, who knew the lizards, the reptiles and—"
"Yes, reptiles, lizards." The shape leaned forward on thick and wilted arms. The face leaned in so close that she could feel the heat of the stare, see the red glare of its eyes fight to smother the revealing blue glow. She could taste the moisture of hot breath even as it tickled her lowered forehead. "Trust not in the words of those who choose to forget, to turn away." It hissed. An elongated forked tongue slid out of its mouth.
"Then YOU tell me." Amelie put the book down, and glared directly into the burning eyes of the horrific creature her guardian had become. She glared with ferocity, with rage, and without fear. The demonic figure paused at her gaze, its eyes blazing red. The burning embers of white had become the tiniest spots in the sea of angry red. "Nothing to say, old god?" she snarled, moving closer to the thing's face. “I think any fear I had was lost the second time I died. I’ve lost it for this, for all of this.” She motioned outwards to the panoply of crows circling the tower. “Now I’m just annoyed.”
"Oh, really. Are you?" The silhouette grew clearer, the shoulders popped into sharper blades under loose skin. The face was ever the same, but larger and stretched, the jaw sporting more teeth that glowed red against the scowling almond eyes that raged with hellfire.
Amelie’s cold eyes locked upwards, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “Annoyed,” she snarled.
"Good...very good then." The shadow’s show waned slightly, the scowl softened, and the shoulders shrank into a more passive position.
"So tell me, then. Tell me who, what you are," she demanded of the shade. “If this is a story from people who forgot and ran away, then give it to me from the cat’s jaw.”
"Cannot tell you that, not yet, not now." it declared.
"Why not? What is your price this time?" She raised her left arm mockingly. Its eyes narrowed, the red lit teeth revealed into a derisive snarl.
“You are defiant yes, but your bravery wells from desperation, from sadness,” the silhouette hissed. “You demand answers you are not yet ready to accept, and know that you have only one more set remaining.” He hissed, though it petered off into a sigh as the creature shrunk down finally.
"I am an old man...a very tired old man. In truth I have already spoiled you in ways you do not understand. Your spirit reminds me of my youth, and for that you have more than my fealty, but for now you would ask truths I cannot give, ones you must discern for yourself," Kokopelli sighed, curling up into a ball.
"When will it be time for the third answer then?" she asked.
"That will be part of the price," the crackled purr answered. “Come to me when your heart is even, when your bravery is sane and true. Only then will you be able to hear and understand my words, only then will you find value in the answer.”
She clapped the book closed and sighed. “Another day then,” she muttered, placing the book on the table and putting the lantern to sleep. There was always tomorrow.
She pulled the covers up to her neck and lay there, the silence allowing the flapping to filter through, echoing in her skull.
Then through the darkness came an unprompted mercy.
"Once, a very long time ago, there was a god." The voice crackled from the darkness. "His worshippers were many, he was known by many. He had many servants, many admirers, and even a loving wife." The voice was strange, in a different dialect perhaps, but more human than before.
“All things change in time, even the world of the immortals, and those who knew him faded. With their attention and love fading so too did he and he was left alone, his wife gone, his servants and admirers passed away and forgot.”
The voice trembled slightly, with morose remembrance. "But gods are not wont to die, only fade into shadows, whispered remembrances. He was spared the fate of the shadow’s obscurity, pulled back from the brink of near nothingness, but little of his old glory remained. Very few remembered who he had once been, almost none knew the truth. So few knew him now but it was enough, enough to grasp onto a lingering echo of existence.”
"You must forgive my wrath, little one. I am very old, and very tired." He said finally. “You feel frustration for things unsaid, truths not spelled out to you. Know that your frustration is a speck compared to what I feel when speaking to you. I would tear open the universe to satisfy your curiosity, to play illuminating games and set you upon paths unspoken if I could.” The last three words were spoken with the weight of great boulders, set upon his back to carry through the world.
"F
ine then." Amelie growled, still defiant in the face of the things she had seen.
"Perhaps, I could tell you another of the tales." He purred softly.
"Fine." Amelie replied curtly.
"This tale is the same as the previous two, it is about the Copper Egg and the Oaken Coin."
"Much time had passed, since the tale of the Merchant and his suitors, and the names underlying the greater titles had shifted once more. They had been passed on to a pair, a man and woman who had been together since they were young. They were seekers and open minded, but that wasn't what had convinced the former merchant and his beloved to pass them onto the pair. It was the spirit of the two which won over their favor, and which won them the trust of the relics themselves."
"They weren't their children?" Amelie asked, more interested in being prodding to his story than ever before.
"They had no children, for the same reason that he had claimed no wife for so long. The children would surely notice the power and difference, and though they would surely grow to accept the power of their parents if taken out of society's eye, there was no guarantee that a child would not wrest the power from the two of them. Such things happened often in those days." Kokopelli answered with a gruff annoyance.
He waited a moment, anticipating another jabbed comment, but continued with her silent consent. "The merchant and his wife passed out of the title of the relics, and faded from the memory of the world. They had explained the powers of the two relics to the new holders, but they were cleverer and more open than the previous holders had been, and saw even more potential in the objects than had been described."
"For all their wisdom and vision, however, they were fools. Instead of simply reaching for the things of comfort and decadence, to live a life of ease under the stars of the artifact's powers, they had decided to accept the weight of the objects as well. While the previous Copper Egg and Oaken Coin had sought only what they needed, the newcomers sought to better the world with the power."
"But showing the power would destroy the power, I thought?" Amelie interrupted again. "That's why he couldn't have a wife, and his only friend was the wolf, and why they didn't trust anyone."
