An Other Place
Page 25
I pause in the middle of a street. People are smiling at me, bowing to me. I wave distractedly to them but my thoughts are elsewhere.
An other place.
I’m not sure what that phrase means. There’s nowhere but here, no city other than this one, yet I have dreams and occasional visions of places that are not to be found in this metropolis, buildings with glass in the windows, cars with wings that soar high in the sky, a world of cities with gaps between, open stretches of land, enormous bodies of water.
I stand in the street, frowning, wondering where the visions hail from, where I hail from. A shudder runs through me as I recall times of hardship and suffering. A strange taste fills my mouth, something foul that I ate. I look at my hands and know that once they were red with blood.
The troubling sensation fades and my smile returns. I don’t know how long I’ve been here – I’m not even entirely sure what that means – but I’m settling into my role. The visions are nothing to be afraid of. Everything happens for a reason. To become who I am, I had to explore a path unknown to my fellow citizens. To care for them, I couldn’t be one of them. To rise, I had to fall. To embrace, I had to abandon. Thus it has always been.
The city makes great demands of those it entrusts with its secrets and powers. To build its key players, it must strip their trappings from them. Very few are suited to the position that I hold. The city tests many and the majority are found wanting. But every so often one emerges to be the man that the city requires. (It’s always a man, never a woman. Part of me knows why that must be the case, but I can’t put my finger on it right now. There are many things I can’t put my finger on, but that’s fine, just the way it is and always has been.)
It’s evening and the first stars are starting to show. I look up, half-remembering a time when I saw a face in the sky, the face of the city, with eyes only for me, choosing me from among the masses.
I remember howls too, claws raking my flesh, fangs ripping me apart, at the same time as they tore apart my predecessor. It was incredibly painful but the pain was shortlived and the body was meaningless. We’re never as dependent on our bodies as we believe, never as tied to them as we feel. It took me a long time to realise that – indeed, I had to lose my body to understand how little I needed it – but I understand now. Bodies are merely the bridges through which the will of the city flows.
I have a sense that those were interesting times, when I was linked to that body. I feel like I lived an interesting life. There was a woman, a partner. I told stories. I sought to get away from the city, to escape to that other place that I sometimes dream about. Ludicrous notions, but they motivated me for a long time, drove me in a way that I needed to be driven. The city required one who knew it intimately but who wasn’t in awe of it, who could cherish its secrets but not be crushed by them, a man who’d scaled heights and been destroyed, who’d fought and chosen surrender, who had accepted the city as his lover, his tormentor, his enigma, his annihilator, his all.
The city is constant but the rest of us are transitory. As my predecessor so aptly noted, all things will pass. All people too, no matter how mighty, no matter how small. I will be replaced, as the one who wore these robes before me was replaced, and I’ve no idea what will happen after that, if the city will have further use for me in a different guise, or if darkness will claim me for its own. Perhaps the city will abandon me, as I once would have abandoned it if I’d been able to.
But that’s a worry for another day, and in truth it won’t be much of a worry then either, because I’m at peace with the city. I accept its decisions, its whims, its cruelties and mysteries. Everything happens for a reason. We come, experience, fade. It’s not our place to know any more than that, merely to serve if asked, in whatever way we can.
I lower my gaze and chuckle guiltily. People are staring at me. They’re not accustomed to seeing me hesitate. I mustn’t do this again. Their faith in me needs to be rewarded. No visible slips or cracks. They look to me for so much and I must provide it, for that is the deal I struck with the city when my bones were crushed and my new body was forged.
(How? When? Why? Those are questions I let the lykans strip away with my flesh. I don’t ask them these days. I rarely even think about them now, and I sense that soon I won’t think of them at all. I’m still in the act of becoming.)
I spread my arms and move among my people, offering comfort and support, along with the assurance that all is well. Bad times will come – they always must – and everything will pass, but I’m the living proof that nothing truly changes, that all that seeps out will ebb back in again. I am their anchor and their hope, their guide and their monitor, their protector and their comforter. I am a new man (that makes me smile morosely, though I’m not sure why) but an old, established figure.
I am the Alchemist.
These are my people and this is my city.
Everything else is but a dream.
AN OTHER PLACE
was written between 6th february 1998 and 19th october 2016