He squints in the Light while sitting in the salty Water with his back to the boulder, and observes the white Sands stretching away on either side, the glittering blue-green Water, and the jungle trees guarding him from behind. Warm wind rides the waves crashing on the Sands. He breathes and rests on the heels of his hands, letting a smile form on his lips despite having no reason to feel happy. He does not know who he is, where he is, or why he is sitting on an endless shoreline. He merely knows that he is here, and that there is only “now.”
Perhaps that is why he smiles. There is such peace in disregarding what was or will be. But he is startled by the vague thought of something he cannot quite remember. He tries to retrieve it and runs against a barrier. Something about existing in only the present makes his mind spin, and he feels displaced, as if he does not belong here.
But why should it matter? He smiles again. “Now.” It contains everything. All that matters is “now,” and everything contained within “now,” which is, of course, infinite. These truths strike his mind as illogical, yet his soul revels in their robustness. All is fresh and all is stale. There is joy and peace in grappling with the oneness, and simultaneous individuality, of everything.
He stands and walks the beach to feel the sand between his toes, the warmth of the Light and the saltiness of the air. There are jungle smells; trees, undergrowth, and mossy decay. Other scents remain too subtle to describe, but together they bloom and grow to something gestalten.
He shambles up the incline toward the line of trees and stops just short to examine the boughs laced together like the weave of a shirt. They creak, pulled by the wind in an endless dance as it leads with hands on leaves.
How many arms the wind must have to dance with so many.
He approaches to join, and when his fingers touch one of the tree trunks, it shivers. He smiles and presses his hand against it only to see it slide aside and open a path into the jungle. He pauses at the entrance, and the green-scented breeze brings whispered melodies to his ears. He stops to hear them better, but they quiet as if carried reluctantly from the forest. As he stands contemplating whether there might be Music playing within, a strange sensation stirs him to turn.
He swivels and gasps upon seeing a speck of a figure bobbing on the waves. He sprints down the Sands and arrives at the Water’s edge as he realizes the speck is a young woman. The shoreline catches her with open palms, and his shadow casts long as his feet splash her shoulders. Her mouth is slightly open, and behind the heart-shaped lips are teeth like milky diamonds. She opens sea-bright eyes and smiles.
He crouches, meets her gaze, and says, “Hello.”
“Hello,” she replies.
He extends an arm and she slips her fingers between his, which are much darker than hers. She stands, but their hands remain entwined. They turn toward the jungle and, as they near the trees, the melodies return like the scent of roses. She looks at him.
“Care to dance?” he says.
She nods, and though he doesn’t understand the strength of his desire to explore, she seems to share it, and together they walk under the leafy canopy.
The path grows longer, and all around is the Music. They laugh and run, only barely keeping their fingers clasped as the trees part with increasing speed to make way. They break through the brush into an open space filled with stone ruins, and the Music hushes.
Now comes a pregnant silence—the living space between notes.
Arches, domes, and towers lie half-fallen across the ground. He examines the constructions with wonder, and brushes fingers across porous rock lined with zigzagging patterns of fleshy plant life. The ocean air is further humidified by the ever-breathing grove that, other than the creeping vines and lichen, keeps its distance from the buildings, as if the stones poison the ground.
Her thumb rubs the back of his hand, and he turns. There is love in her gaze, and he finds no difficulty returning it. She means much to him, though he doesn’t understand why. He leans in and kisses her lips, so soft and warm, and she kisses back. They admire each other and continue through the ruins.
She points to a black recess in one of the walls, and they walk to it. It is a grim opening, tarnished by weather and vine. A few of the stones lie on the ground like fallen teeth, and a staircase tumbles down its throat. He tugs her forward and they enter and find themselves in a tunnel with windows every fifteen paces or so spilling Light like Fog into the cobalt shadows. They walk with fearful reverence and arrive at a doorway in the shape of a shield with its center pressing toward them in a needlepoint. Forming a circle around the shield is an assortment of letters. They are strange, but somehow he understands them. He tips his head and brushes his finger across the chiseled words to feel their peaks and valleys. The Shrine of the Song. Who knocks?
The Music returns, marked by a tentative hush, as if the players themselves hang on every movement. The melodies twirl in gentle arpeggios, conjuring images of little rivers tumbling toward unknown bends. The man and woman look at each other and back at the shield, which stands guarding them from what lay beyond. “Who am I?” he says.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. Who am I?”
“I don’t know. At least, I don’t think I know.”
She frowns, examines the shield, and brings her fingers up to fiddle with the point. She accidentally pricks her finger on the tip, and draws her hand back and nurses it as he fights a nearly irrepressible urge to do the same. He makes a motion as if to turn away, but his hand darts forward and presses against the tip, drawing a drop of blood and mixing with hers. He pulls his hand back and the needle retreats into the shield until it disappears. An unseen mechanism grinds, and the shield rolls away, revealing a new, expansive chamber.
The Music deepens and expands, yet retains a measured patience, and he wonders what it means. He slips his arm around her waist and nearly asks, but it seems she probes his eyes for the same.
The new room is circular and its walls are formed from polished stone. Ornate script runs along the bottom, and pillars rise like arms to support the ceiling with many hands. A single mural spans the room, and he spins to take it in, though it is steeped in shadows.
“What is this place?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” She squeezes his fingers as if to hold him more securely. “It makes me uncomfortable.”
A cold sensation settles in his stomach as he looks at the carven wall. He approaches for a better look, but she doesn’t follow out of the light, so he lets her hand slip out of his and, as his eyes adjust to the shadows, is surprised at the detail. There are countless persons in the mural, and yet he can see the expression on each face and the stitching in their clothing.
“You need to see this,” he says.
“There’s something here,” she says.
“This is incredible.”
“Come back. Hurry.”
He turns and sees her back against a pillar. “What’s wrong?”
She points and her green eyes frost. “What is that?”
Now, as a deeper note of the Music strikes, a silver shape advances, and darkness slips from its shoulders like a cloak. It pierces them with a hollow, metal gaze. Its arms bend at the elbows. Its legs are slightly longer than what would be normal on a human in relation to the torso, and each has two knee joints bending in opposite directions. The entire creature is bright silver with only rivets and lines where sheets begin and end to add detail.
They hold their breath, expecting the thing to continue, but it does not. The man edges toward it, but the woman pulls him back and wraps an arm around his bicep.
“Don’t …”
Amplifying curiosity distorts his face into a frown. He asks the thing, “What are you?”
Its gaze narrows, and it speaks from some hidden mechanism, “Who am I?”
Her fingernails dig into his arm.
“Are you not more interested in knowing who you are?”
“Why do we fear you?” the man says.
“Because I have the power to puncture your skin and spill your blood on this holy ground.”
Both man and woman retreat. “Stay back,” the man says.
“You have little right to make demands. You cannot stop the Music.”
“We want neither to hurt you nor to be hurt by you.”
Machine. The word comes to him, strange and familiar at once. That is what it is called. But how do I know that? The woman tugs his arm as if to urge him to silence, but he refuses, for questions compel him to speak. “Why are you here? What is your purpose?”
The machine says, “I am the keeper of the Shrine.”
He thinks of the fallen ruins, the unkempt entrance of broken molars, and the name on the door.
The Shrine of the Song …
Thoughts link through his mind. “Who owns this temple?”
“The Master.”
She keeps pulling, but his desire to speak with it grows greater still. The Music splits. One line ascending, the other burrowing. He says to the machine, “Who made you?”
It does not respond.
She whispers, “Don’t.”
He says, “When were you made?”
“I exist.”
“How? What does that mean?”
The machine says, “Time is a law of nature binding the physical realm to relatively steady movement down a unidirectional pathway, but ‘now’ is all that ‘is’ here. We sustain outside the boundaries of Time. And so there is not a time when I was made. I did not come to be. I am, as you are.”
He nods. Of course. He knows that. Or does he? He feels exceedingly strange in this place.
“We’re sorry for disturbing you,” she says. “We will go now.”
He scowls and says in hushed tones, “I’m not leaving. Go without me if you’re so afraid.”
She winces as if his words cause pain and flicks her gaze between him and the machine.
“What is this Shrine’s purpose?” he asks.
The machine says, “It is a haven for all who seek something more.”
“And do we seek that?”
“You are a part of the Music, are you not?”
He frowns. He is. Or at least he thinks he is. But his heartbeat strikes polyrhythms. “The doorway asked who we are but opened to our blood. Why is that?”
“You remain on the brink of both ends; a son of twilight.”
“You speak in riddles.”
“I speak plainly.”
“Then speak more plainly.”
The machine pauses. “You give your blood to the Shrine, and though the offering is symbolic, it represents your life, and the Shrine accepts you for it. This is not your home, yet it may be your resting place.”
“Where then is my home?”
The machine says nothing. It merely stares, its metal eyes jerking from time to time.
Her hands wrap around his arm, and she asks, “Is the Music you speak of what is playing through the forest, and in this Shrine?”
“The Music is the Song of the Master.”
They shuffle to the mural, now more fearful of the machine than the dark. The machine remains as if bolted in place, but its gaze follows them.
She brushes fingers across the mural and stifles a gasp. In the image, countless beings march in rows, carrying banners and weapons toward a City. The stone smells aged, like a tomb long sealed, but he knows that is neither an image nor a thought that belongs in this land beyond Time.
She turns to the machine and points at the leading figure in the mural, the one holding what looks to be a trumpet. “Is this it? Is this the Music?”
“It is.”
“What happened to them? All these figures in the picture?”
“They make war.”
“But here is a mural of them.”
“They make war.”
“You already said that.”
“I say that they make war.”
Its rebuke makes her chew her lip. “What do they war against?”
“The other Music.”
She points at the marching figures. “Who are they?”
“They are the Watchers, the Sons of God.”
The man thinks of the abandoned ruins outside and says, “Why is everything so empty and lifeless here?”
“It is not so empty as you think. If you wish to see more, I can show you.”
She fidgets and tugs on his arm. “We have lingered long enough.”
“But—”
“It is time to leave.” She jerks him toward the entrance, but he does not want to leave, and his mind scrambles for some way to stall her.
“Do we have names?” he calls out.
The machine says, “You do.”
She stops and offers a wary glance.
“Do you know them?” the man says.
The machine says, “If I tell you, will you stay?”
He looks at her, and she presses her lips together.
“We will stay for a time,” he says.
“Your words will bind you,” the machine says.
“I bind myself to my words.”
“Very well. Your name is Seth, and hers, Ayla.”
He tries to imagine owning that name, but his mind rejects it as unfamiliar. He looks at the woman the machine calls Ayla. That name seems strange as well, but when he mouths their names, something about their shapes feels familiar.
He looks at her, remembering her desire to leave. He points at the mural. “Where is this City? The one under attack?”
“It is the center of this world.”
“And where are we now?”
“The Shrine of the Song lies on the outskirts, near the Sands that keep the Waters of Time within their borders.”
“Is the City occupied?”
“A different Music plays there, and it finds discord with ours. If you wish to see more of the Song of the Shrine, I can show you.”
Indeed, the desire to see the rest of the Shrine and listen to more of the Music swells in his chest. “Please, lead on.”
Ayla glares, but says nothing.
The machine walks past a few pillars, and Seth pulls her to follow. It presses its arm into another shield-like door, which rolls away just like the first, revealing a long passage down into darkness. The floor is smooth, yet not steep enough to warrant danger. She stops urging him back, but her hand clutches his arm, and when it becomes too dim to see, the machine’s eyes cast light such as two lamps.
Questions breach the surface of his thoughts. “You spoke of Sands that hold Time. What does that mean?”
“The Sands are where Time begins and flows outward in ever-multiplying rivulets. Without the Sands, Time would not know where to begin and end, and would flow on endlessly until all movement and depth vanished.”
“How are we here?”
“Your bodies are dead.”
Ayla’s grip tightens on his arm. “We are dead?” Her face registers the same fear he feels as terrible realization grates his skull and numbs his tongue. He asks no more questions while they journey down the tunnel, and the only noises are of grinding metal, and the fleshy slap of foot against stone.
38
Rows of light glimmer down the corridor as more flicker to life like so many glowing insects. They hum and buzz dully as they hover, causing Seth to keep a wary distance.
“They are not alive,” the machine says as Seth sidesteps one with a suspicious glance.
“Where are we?”
“The Hall of Worship, where the Watchers keep vigilance.”
Seth imagines beings filling the hall and trailing after one another in reverent lines, but it is massive and bare, and imagined secrets bloom like nightshades. The machine leads them down the corridor, past pillars and opulent floors. The hall curves to the left, but ever so slightly as to be almost imperceptible. They arrive at a set of broad doors on the left-hand side, and the machine opens them. They enter another hallway, only this one is smaller, with many doors and no pillars.
The mach
ine stops and says, “This is the Eastern Nexus, from which the Chambers of Science branch. Wish you to see them?”
“What are they?”
“They devote themselves to the Mystery of Life. It is the Master’s hope that the Watchers may find greater life through the Chambers of Science.”
“Lead on.”
“You must choose your own path now. Each note struck here resonates the instruments till they sustain with synchronized troughs and peaks.”
Seth looks at Ayla, who shrugs. “So we are to choose a door and open it?”
“Choose carefully.”
He brushes his fingers over subtle artwork, like shadows burned into the wood of each door. After viewing four, they examine the doors on the opposite side. Back and forth they shuffle until they see an image of a flower. Ayla points, her eyes widening. “The Aylana, the White Flower! It’s the very same I was named after, though it is black here.” She frowns. “And I cannot remember who named me. This memory loss is so very strange.” She looks at the machine as if desiring to ask it all her questions, but the Music rolls on, gaining volume and momentum.
Seth grabs the handle of the door with the black flower on it, his hands growing clammy, but before he opens it, he whispers, “Do you want to go in? We do not know what lies beyond.”
“I am not as afraid of this one as I am of”—she pauses and glances at the beast on the next door—“the other ones.”
He looks at that image, a lion with the tail of a serpent and a forked tongue springing like dancing fire from its jaws. He glances at the door in front of them and notices thorns at the base of the Aylana. “Why would this image be here if not to function as a sign? It nearly bears your name.”
“Perhaps the Shrine, or maybe the Music, knows us.” She nods as if conceding a begrudged truth. “But we know so little of it.”
“It is causing us no pain, no discomfort. Indeed it is fascinating.”
She nods, but looks hesitant.
“We will view just one room. Then, if you wish, we will turn back.” He smiles, and she attempts one in return. He throws the door wide and lights glimmer as if awakened by their movement. Their glow is filtered through glass and liquid, and the kaleidoscopic reflections dance as the pair makes their way forward, the machine following with head bowed and footfalls like cymbals. Throughout the room are cylindrical vats of liquid tinged green as if by algae. Lights gaze up from the bottom of each, and floating in them is what looks like twisted branches and roots.
Cain: The Story of the First Murder and the Birth of an Unstoppable Evil Page 17
