A Fine Black Sky
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Long and languid were the nights without end, so that when the day dawned and presented light, order was to be reset and the inspections begun.
But no one wished to scorch themselves, expose themselves to the light, for they knew it contained the spirits of the dead, the evil incarnate and the creatures that wished them harm, simply for existing within their Tower. Out there was pain, suffering - rotten, creeping corpses, the detritus remains of the feared and the fearful, the monster and the myth, the truth and the balance. Inside, it was secure, dark, comforting, peaceful. Inside, there was love, leisure and languid days spent in obedient duty. No one wanted to go outside - though one of them must.
In times such as these, when the light returned to the world, and one was required to inspect the outside, a Lottery was formed, of all able bodied persons above a certain age. No one had a choice. All must enter the Lottery, or the decision would be made without them. And the decision would be for them, like it or not.
When she was told, his Wife was inconsolable, “You cannot do it! Refuse them!” Her cries woke the children, who sat up and cried.
They continued to cry as he answered her plea, “I want to.”
She pulled him to her, taking his skin in her grasp, filled with desperate emotion, a frightened animal in the strength of her stare, “Then do it! Think of me and your young Sons! We need you!”
And the boys continued to cry. He looked to her, then to himself, speculatively seeking the answer to his question upon the very dust in the air, “Can I? I think the decision is made for me?”
But she would have none of it. “Don’t be so weak!” she screamed, “You’re always so weak!”
But nothing could be done. His name was called in the Lottery. It was his duty to comply. All he could do now was prepare for his almost certain demise. However, there was always chance. Always a chance.
Lost to circumstance, he stood alone - save for the solitary guard who had a cloth tied about his eyes. He was now the Inspector Of The Light Ways, and ever would his name be recorded thus. He wasted no further time and stepped beyond the door. It felt like stepping on sacred ground, tarnishing the delicate silver pearls of illuminated flooring. His steps were cautious, even when the Tower door slammed behind him, a gust of wind from the sudden action propelled him forward an inch or two, breaking the spell of the tepid steps.
Everything began to slow, taking on a thick liquid-like trepidation. And all there was about him was silence. He was used to the many and varied sounds of industry, family and commerce, echoing and bouncing from the dark, damp stone walls of the only world he had ever known. Out here, in this alien world, it was like a cacophony of inner noises, such as the thump-thump of his heartbeat as it coursed rapidly through his chest and ears.
Within a short time, however, the novelty of the silence and the burning of the light gave way to the growing beauty his eyes took in once the whiteness dropped in intensity, replaced by the bright colours, the trees, the green - how in contrast it was to the dark, subdued insular essence of the Tower? The birds! Even the birds danced, darted and dropped around him, chirping happily in repetitive chorus, infusing the air with joyous endeavour. He was falling in love with the light - trepidatiously at first, but with each increasing minute a little more.
Eventually, and with rapidity, they came - the spirits upon the wind. They pulsed, jerked forward with a kind of grace imbued of curiosity, the very near transparent nature of them almost lost within the burgeoning glare of the sun, with tendrils snaking out from behind their convex mass of a body, flailing in unison to their wobbling motion, touching, holding, almost grasping for the things they brushed past and touched, but the body pulled the loose tendrils from their own exploration toward a greater purpose.
The Inspector Of The Light Ways began his duty, simple as it was, of investigating the Tower and its immediate lands. The City of Kombayn lay below, obviously, but it was too distracting and meandering to pay it anything but the most casual of glances. Particularly as all he really wanted to do was finish his work and leave, return to the cool comfort and security of the only thing he had ever known, where whole generations of his extended family had lived, worked and died. Where his own family were waiting for his return, with a kind of emotional desperation, himself dragged from familiarity and fragile knowledge.
Suddenly and without forewarning, the near transparent beings began to fly more erratically, the tendrils brushing him and causing a slip of balance here and there, bringing him close to the edges of the crenelated walls, dashing about his head, where he was forced to flail his own arms to force the creatures away from him, away from the sudden drops with the deadly, rusting spikes that were and always would be designed to catch the unwary, unused to the moss covered walkways so high above the tree-surrounded City. As though to deceive the unskilled, these walkways rose, fell, became a mockery of steps, deceptively lay missing, the illusion of thorough design mirrored on a painted wall, leading to nothing but a dark hole below and something perhaps unimaginable to the simple man, who did his best to fulfil the job for which he had been chosen. But the creatures were relentless, some whipping him savagely about the head and body, tripping him, buzzing about like giant insects, intention a vicious imperative - to see him fall. To see him crash upon the spikes. Perhaps even to break his body so they might feed upon him. Nothing wasted, not in the wild lands of the light.
Then came another such sprite, though this one was larger, more defined, and its tendrils glided like gossamer trails of fine silk in a casual breeze, floating defiantly behind it. The others seemed scared of it, and they dispersed like so many soap suds into the shining sun. He, however, stood transfixed. It was as though this particular spirit looked deeply into his soul and saw something it recognised, for it came right up to his face, mirroring his every micro gesture, blinking even as he did, through its water-like mass, bending and twisting, ripples of the naked semblance of a countenance catching the light, yet casting no shadow. He smiled and it smiled. He laughed and it jostled in the animated form of something unused to the definable gesture of humour in its otherwise and largely content life. Suddenly it turned and performed a kind of carangiform locomotive-propulsive gesture, stopping, turning to face him, then repeating the process until he understood what the spirit was trying to tell him - to follow. He complied. He felt he had to, and that he had no choice. It compelled him much like the instinct to eat when hungry, drink when thirsty and sleep when tired. There was a kind of love, or at least gentle curiosity to both of them at that moment - some kind of bond made of serendipitous synchronicity. There was an age, too, in the spirit’s motion, borne through decades of surviving in a world obviously not made for soft fleshy people like him - the spirit gave the sense of a kinship with the small, solid arthropod that followed it.
It could be that many times before, it had seen those like him, and had never had occasion to deny them - perhaps to this spirit, they all look the same, and as far as it was concerned, this was the same one that had come before, and the time before that, back as far as the spirit could remember. Obviously to it, time passed in a different phase to those who dwelt in the Towers. Perceptively for this spirit, one man lived in the Tower, and every now and then, he would come out to greet the spirit with a friendship built of generations untold.
The spirit led him to a patch of green, bordered by stone, as everything was. Growing amongst the vegetation, even now browning and turning to mulch, was a flower. But it was no ordinary flower. He wasn't to know this, not yet, but the flower would represent much in the forthcoming days, months, even years beyond measure to the people of the Tower and beyond. For it was a purple flower, lilac near the centre, where sat a stamen bulbously proportioned, much like the spirit that had indulged him.
He knelt, gently stroking the petals, which curled inward at his touch, defensively closing up in prevention of further contact. But even still, he took a firm grasp of the stem and pulled. The flower was reluctant at first, spiting seed at him, which was part of its natural lifecycle. He used both hands and pulled. Still nothing. Then at first one soft liquid like tendril wrapped about his wrist, making a sultry journey down to his fingers and his grasp, followed by another tendril, then another and another - and slowly the flower escaped its moorings, releasing a tail of far extending roots grasping for the earth for all its life, not unlike the tendrils that flowed behind the spirit, similarly tasting the air about it.
Once the flower was free, the spirit turned and led the Inspector Of The Light Ways back to the Tower, safely leaving him there at the door, knowing he would go, only to return and meet once more, the spirit with the beautiful energy.
The world of light, regardless of what they said, was a thing of wondrous beauty, given the right stimulus. It wasn't the world of scary beasts and ravenous creatures - it was the world of the benevolent spirit. And ever it should be. The Inspector Of The Light Ways rapped on the Tower door, and within an hour he was back inside, holding a strange flower before him, that even now wrapped its roots dangerously around his wrist.
His Wife came to greet him, his children held his thighs, but the memory of the spirit could not escape his mind. His family led him back to the comfort of their home, yet the rippling twisting face of the spirit made him smile. He would eat and drink, but his thoughts would stray to the spilled water on the oaken table, that reminded him of the benevolent spirit, reigniting and recognising a friendship made long before he was born. He would sleep, and his thoughts would be of that spirit, pushing through the others, the juniors, the dangerous ones, to give love and receive love from the Inspector Of The Light Ways it presumed it knew.
And they had taken the flower from him, planting it in a ceramic pot, which the flower broke out of. They put it in a solid, stone pot, but it kicked and kicked with its roots until the pot fell apart. Eventually, they encased it in a metal container, restricting all but the minimalist movement, until it simply began to die, bereft of the things that gave it life. Those who tended to it knew not of the photosynthetic process, of light being life, except quite by chance one day when the light from a crack hit the flower, spurting it into life once more, defining it as a light detecting plant, one that could warn of the returning light. Over time it was left to fend for itself as the once attentive green fingered florists, the Tenders of the Purple, became bored while the darkness consumed the land and simpler necessities took priority.
Years rolled on and the flower became a vine, creeping about the Tower, slowly unnoticed. It was searching for something it could not find, not in the darkness of the Towers in the atramentous syrup of every day life.
And the once Inspector Of The Light Ways remained ever emotionally in that land of the light, restless like the flower he had plucked, an affinity with the plant in humble reflection upon the world outside. He ventured out the Tower once or twice during the long darkness, but it didn't seem the same. There was not the light, the colour - even the buzzing, hazardous juveniles. There wasn't even the flower, dead in the dark. Now new things supplanted the old, an advancement in the natural order of things. That which could live in the light would thrive upon it. That which could live in the dark did likewise. And he realised then, he lived in neither. He wanted the light, but lived in the dark.
He became lacklustre, apathetic, distant and full of the darkness that surrounded him. His family were worried, as he seemed constantly one snap from utter madness - until it the day came. The vine, that creeping, clinging vine that occupied every part of the Tower somehow in its neglect, began flowering.
So the Lottery was called once more and the new Inspector Of The Light Ways, that reluctant person, shivered by the door to the outside, while the guard wore the cloth about his eyes. Perhaps if the guard could have seen, he might have noticed the man pushing past the Lottery winner even as the door was opened, stepping through into the light, which at first blinded, burned and sapped at him.
But the guard, assuming the person had gone through, closed the door, locked it, barred it and removed his blindfold, only to see the Lottery winner staring back at him with a shrug and a brief explanation.
Of the man? He was never seen again. At least not at night.
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