by D M Wozniak
He smiles, as if reading my thoughts.
“I wouldn’t touch it, Dem. With either body or voidance.”
“You think I care what happens to me?” I sneer. “I would gladly trade my life for yours.”
He raises his hairless brow. “Oh, I know. But it’s not you who will be torn apart.” He motions to Colu, Chimeline, and Blythe. “It’s them.”
Mander takes a deep breath, and then lets it out, the curtain between us rippling in light. He runs his palms over his breasts. “Do you feel that? The capacity to breathe?”
I don’t answer him.
“My membrane is woven deeply into their bodies,” he continues. “Where the throat divides and spreads out like the finest of tree branches, entering two sponge-like cavities.” He moves his hands from his chest and puts his palms together, fingertips toward the ceiling. “Do not worry your simple mind. My voidance still allows your friends to breathe, as long as you don’t disturb the membrane. If you do, the entire membrane will snap back to the plane. If you use voidance to counter it, it will do the same. It will, quite literally, rip their insides out.”
I lean to the side slightly, so I can see the light hitting the surface of the funnels where they enter their mouths. “If what you say is true, it would have taken you fullbells to construct this,” I say. “To weave the indivisibles. You wouldn’t have had the time.”
He smiles darkly. “It may have taken you fullbells, Dem. It didn’t for me.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Am I, now.”
He separates his palms and raises his finger until it’s a hair’s span from the membrane, and I cannot help but breathe in sharply.
He laughs.
“That’s what I thought,” he then says, lowering his hand. “You don’t know what you believe. You’re like this one-eyed soldier. Only seeing the half you wish to see.”
As frustration builds within me, I grab my necklace and enter the void.
Careful.
The enervated are speaking to me, but I cannot understand them. Maybe they are saying that I have nothing to be worried about. Destroy the membrane and then destroy Mander! End this now!
Or maybe they are telling me that I am a fool.
Within the void, I cannot see through the membrane, nor can I penetrate it. It is an impervious wall, but I can follow its surface. I see the curvature of one of the depressions. Chimeline’s, I think. I follow it down, descending into the cone, and then stop once I am deeply inside. The indivisibles are in front of me, branching like I am buried within the trunk of a millionescent. Threads are stitched with a different kind here, tiny knots like what comes forth from a weaver’s loom.
Mander’s membrane has literally become one with Chimeline’s body, in all directions.
Slowly, I back myself out, feeling nauseous.
I ready myself to let go of my stone in despair. Mander is right. His voidance is sound. The only way forward is to gamble, and if I’m going to gamble, it’s going to be with my life. Not theirs.
I turn away from the cone and cross the smooth vertical surface of the membrane. But it is not vertical to me. There is no up here. I am a Northinglight falcon flying over a frozen lake.
I see something else, out of my peripheral vision.
There’s something in the north wall.
It’s on my side of the membrane. Everything on the other side is smooth and colorless. Imperceptible. But on my side of the membrane, I can see everything. The dust in the air. The layers of paint on the north wall. The panes of mirrors. The smudges on them. Further and deeper, the lathes of plaster, millions of nails, the wooden studs which frame the building.
There is someone standing behind the wall.
The shape of a person is indisputable. Glistening indivisibles. Light that is not light.
Inhaling sharply, I release the stone and return to the mirrored and sunlit world, but I make sure that I am not facing the north wall. I keep my head down for a moment, as a bead of sweat falls down the bridge of my nose. I wipe it with my white shirt and then face Mander.
He nods to himself in smug satisfaction—as if he knows his voidance was so well-executed that I cannot unravel it. “Wise choice to leave it alone,” he says.
“What do you want?”
“I want many things. But let’s start with some information.”
“Let them go, and I’ll tell you anything you want.”
He laughs. “I am no fool, Democryos. Even your dogged moralities are no match for the hatred which you must have for me.” He sighs as he runs a hand over his smooth head. Already, it has broken out into a sweat since he toweled off, and the scalp is still as red as it was before.
He looks down at the perspiration on his hand, and frowns.
Meanwhile, I risk a glance to the north wall, just to my right.
At first, I don’t notice anything. No door. No handles or hinges. Only white-painted trim and mirrors.
But then I see it.
There is a slender, vertical crack in the wall, between the white-painted trim. A single handprint, upon a mirrorpane. The parquet floor, slightly less polished. Dusty footprints leading into the wall.
Someone is hiding behind it, listening to every word we say.
I quickly turn back, before I give my thoughts away. But my mind still races.
“What information do you want?” I ask him.
Mander looks up from studying his hand. He leans forward and glowers at me.
“I want to know how you’re still alive.”
Three Lighthouses
Mander’s green eyes glare at me from beyond the yellow-shimmering membrane as he waits for me to answer his question.
But I don’t want to tell him the truth. It could be a strategic misstep to reveal the source of my power. It’s my only upper hand.
The problem is, I cannot think of a lie that would fool him. And my friends’ lives hang in the balance.
Eventually, my thoughts lead back to his twisted justification, and this is what makes up my mind between the truth and a lie.
Mander said that the enervated are soulservants.
If given the chance, Dem, what would you choose? To help a great people do great things forever, or to become nothing?
There is no injustice in his world. Only privilege, and an ancient ruin which must be restored. A cryptic way back home. This is why I must speak the truth. Because the truth is the only thing capable of shattering these notions.
“The enervated are protecting me,” I say.
He narrows his eyes even further. Without any brows or hair, his head is pronounced in ripples and shade. It seems even redder than before, droplets of sweat forming everywhere the wig used to be.
Mander slowly shakes his head. “You’re lying.”
“No. I’m not.”
He sighs as if he still does not believe me, and barely has the patience to explain why. “The enervated would never help a voider—they do not trust people like you. Besides which, you can’t even speak their language.” He smiles darkly, and then begins laughing softly to himself. “You fools at the university thought that the enervated were winds in a cave. How could you possibly hope to commune with them?”
“We commune because we have a common enemy,” I say.
His smile fades as he wipes his hand over his scalp, and it comes away dripping.
Mumbling a curse to himself, he quickly steps over to his dressing table and grabs the same white towel as before. Touching his stone, this time the rag begins to freeze and crackle. Steam emanates from it, but it falls instead of rises.
He gently drapes the towel over his bald head, exhaling in comfort.
“They’re protecting me because what you’re doing is wrong,” I continue, while his eyes are shut. “They’re helping me because I’m helping them.”
“You have no idea what I’m doing, and you speak nonsense.” His eyes are still closed underneath the edges of the towel.
“You asked th
e question, Mander. If you don’t like the answer, that’s your problem,” I say. “Now, release my friends.”
For a moment, he’s silent as the icy smoke dissipates around his face. Eventually, he opens his eyes, peels the cold towel off his head, and sets it back on the table, though not as neatly as before.
Then he walks back over to me, extending his hand through the membrane. It flexes around his fingers, like a glove of sunlight.
“I’m more than happy to,” he answers. “Just hand over the two stones in your possession, and they’re free to go.”
I take a step back in surprise.
How did he know that I have two?
“I feel them, Dem,” he says, as if he could read my mind. He bares his teeth with the word. “They belong to me.”
“Let my friends go first.”
“No.”
“Then I won’t give them to you.”
He raises a hairless brow. “Are you sure you want to play this game? You know as well as I do that with a mere thought, I can paint this wooden floor with your friend’s insides.”
“Perhaps,” I answer. “But your membrane will collapse. Which means that your insides won’t be far behind.”
He blinks rapidly, lost in thought, before grabbing his stone.
Without even turning to face my friends, all three cones of membrane begin to change. Starting from their mouths, the shimmering funnels unravel, so quickly that they seem to disappear, translucent threads fraying, snapping, shrinking back toward the vertical plane, like raindrops upon a still lake.
The remainder of the membrane still exists, but it is only a wall now. Ripples of yellow light cross its surface, repeating back and forth from floor to ceiling, and side to side.
Chimeline hoarsely cries out, while Colu spits blood on the floor. Blythe only opens his eyes and takes a rattling breath.
“Dem!” says Chimeline. “Don’t trust him—”
Mander grabs his stone again, as Chimeline’s eyes go wide. She nods and closes her mouth and eyes tightly, tears running down her cheeks.
“There,” Mander says, releasing his stone once again. He unbuttons his sleeves and begins cuffing them up to his elbows. “As you can see, I am a reasonable man.”
“That’s not enough. I want all three of them out of here,” I demand.
He shakes his head. “I can’t do that yet, Dem. One step at a time. A stone for a life.”
My eyes dart to my friends behind him, as I ponder whether I should comply. He seems to want my two stones so badly, I could demand anything, and he might grant it.
“Don’t do it,” blurts out Blythe, staring straight ahead at nothing. “Think of the souls.”
“Shut it,” spits Colu, before meeting my gaze. “Just give them to him so we can get out of here.”
I study Mander. His green eyes are bloodshot, which I hadn’t noticed before. “If I give them to you, you’ll let them go?”
He nods.
“Do I have your word?”
“Of course.”
I lift my voidstone from around my neck and remove Anaxarchis’ stone from my pants pocket.
“Dem, don’t,” says Blythe, using my name. He’s looking at me now. “Please. You hold hundreds of lives in your hands. If you turn them over, you’ll be condemning them to an existence of torment.”
Both stones and chains shift in my upturned palm. I bounce them gently a few feet from Mander’s outreached hand, deciding to use what bit of leverage I have for more information.
“I suppose you’re going to use these to continue to raise that massive stone underneath Xi Bay?” I ask.
He removes his hand from the membrane.
“No, Dem. I’ve already done it.”
I glance to the left, past the windows, and at the ring of ships, far away.
“It took over five hundred voiders. We fused anchors to the Axiondrive in all directions and hoisted it up.”
“Out of Blackscar,” I say, looking back at him.
He delicately touches his sweaty scalp again. It’s almost beet red, but he seems to have no idea of this—he must not have looked yet at his reflection in the mirrored wall. “Damned clipping glue. That charlatan Worchot sold me rubbish,” he mumbles to himself before looking up from his wet hand. “Yes. It was at the bottom of Blackscar,” he says, wiping it on his pants leg.
“How did it get there?”
He looks at me with an expression somewhere between confusion and disappointment. “It crashed.”
“I know,” I say. “But what are the chances of, out of all places, it landing in one of the deepest trenches known to mankind? Unless it were put there for a reason.”
He scowls, disappointment on his face taking over. “No, Dem. The crash created Xi Bay. It created Blackscar.”
This silences me, and he begins softly chuckling. “There is so much that you don’t know.”
“But why?” I ask, ignoring his insult. “It’s not like you can build a new ship around it, and sail back home.”
He nods. “Correct. But I can voidspeak with it, over very large distances. That’s why I had to raise it to the surface. When it was buried in the trench, the thousands of feet of water above it dampened the voidance. Made voidspeech impossible.”
My eyes flash to Chimeline, and he notices this. “Yes, quite like I did to the whore. It’s also how I communicated to Marine. But this voidspeech is different. It is across the stars. Only the Axiondrive makes that possible.”
I stay silent, pondering the possibilities. Voidspeech is new to me. I cannot even comprehend doing it over the span of this room, let alone across the enormity of the sky.
“And this is the result of our discussions,” Mander says, raising his voice while extending his arms out toward the ceiling in beaming pride. “My map. My starglass. My people have been guiding me. Teaching me. Helping me look for what they call pulsars.”
“Pulsars?”
“Lighthouses of the night sky.”
I look up.
“This world is a rocky shore,” he continues. “And they are lost at sea. Amidst the fog of history. The location of the pulsars is critical to my people finding me. Locating this world. They needed three of them.”
I squint, picking out the detail from the emerald and gold ceiling, so many feet above. Among the hundreds of painted stars, I count precisely three of them that are much larger than the rest. A single gilded candle lamp hangs from each of them, unlit, yet still shining with burnished sunlight.
“A pulsar is a star?” I ask.
“Yes. A type of star,” he answers. “And, while I would love to educate you on the makeup of the night sky, it’s time that we get on with this. Hand over the voidstones.”
Looking back down, I see that his hand is again extended past the membrane, clothed in shimmer.
“Let one of them go,” I say.
He nods quickly, as if he were anticipating this.
With his other hand, he grasps his voidstone, and Colu’s hands are freed from behind his chair. Colu lets out a deep groan and rubs his wrists, standing slowly.
“One for one,” says Mander. He doesn’t even turn to meet Colu’s gaze. “You may leave.”
Colu glances at me with his one eye. He cocks his head sideways, as if to ask if it’s alright.
I give him a subtle nod.
Spitting once more onto the parquet floor, he looks around and then finds the patio doors to his right. Heading straight toward them, he leaves without a backwards glance, shutting the door behind himself with a deep echo. In my peripheral vision, I see his dark form walk the length of the patio, out of sight.
I throw Anaxarchis’ stone to Mander.
The necklace flies through the air, passes through the membrane with a sound similar to wind chimes, and falls into his outreached hand.
“Good. Good. Now the other one,” he says.
“Let the others go,” I say.
He bows his head while putting Anaxarchis’ necklace aroun
d his neck, carefully laying the chain around his blue collar next to his other one. He puts his two palms together, fingertips touching his lips and pointed toward the ceiling.
“You are a man of your word. It was always your greatest weakness, but perhaps now it is a strength.”
He grabs one of the voidstones, and Chimeline and Blythe are instantly unbound in similar fashion.
Chimeline cautiously stands, but Blythe shakes his head.
She walks over toward Blythe and places a hand delicately on his shoulder.
“I am not leaving,” Blythe says.
“Blythe,” I yell. “Get out of here. Take Chimeline with you.”
He shakes his head. “I am sorry, but I cannot go.”
“Neither can I,” Chimeline says.
I grit my teeth. “You both need to leave!”
She looks down at the floor and shakes her head quickly.
“Chimeline...” I shake my head.
“What about you?” she asks, looking up at me with fearful eyes. “I’m not just going to leave you here.”
“Stay then,” Mander says calmly to her. “If you don’t want to depart the Celestium, by all means, stand by your man. My membrane will not hinder you.”
Breaking down in sobs, Chimeline runs over to me, causing yellow ripples as she passes through the translucent wall with the sound of wind chimes. Crashing into my arms, I look over her shoulder at Blythe, who follows her steps, reluctantly. He stops briefly and peers at Mander with a detached expression, as he passes by.
“Dem, your last fragment,” says Mander, wiping away beads of sweat from the corners of his eyes.
I am about to throw my necklace, but Blythe, coming near, stands in my way. “Think about what you are doing.”
“I’m saving your life,” I say. “That’s what I’m doing.”
“A life is neither yours nor mine to save.”
“Blythe, move aside.”
I gently push Chimeline’s body off me. Then I step around Blythe and throw my last voidstone through the membrane to Mander in a graceful arc. As he catches it, the entire membrane, from floor to ceiling, collapses like a golden waterfall hitting rocks.
