A Fine Black Sky
CHAPTER THIRTY
Kid was not overly fond of the occasions when the Apprentices were called into a regimented locale within the South Tower, as it often meant integration with others. He was managing much more interaction with others, ever under the watchful eye of Ryla, when she wasn't distracted by her own pursuits.
There was a plethora of individuals, groups, parties and squads milling around, not to mention the silent Attendees, who floated about the darkness interweaving between people. It wasn't therefore the number of people, but rather the collected motivation of the same. Those who wandered were focussed on their own desires and duties, paying no heed to the small broken child, avoiding him if possible. This current grouping, however, had a purpose, which was about to be revealed.
Not all Apprentices were ready and present, demonstrated by the sudden arrival of Osseus Rivalis and his cronies. The tormenter continued his intimidating techniques, shoving others aside. Along the way to the front, Osseus passed comment on some of his peers. They were rapidly becoming young women and young men now, and the previous reactions of dismissive disparity to Osseus’s high standing within the Tower itself were marked decidedly by physical attention this day, in the form of attempted confrontation, though they became entangled with their calmer thinking friends, preventing them making a mistake they could not replace. Osseus Rivalis still had some power of status, but it would not last for long, not once the Apprentices came into their own and developed devious recompense for that damnable bully.
Kid, however, had no such friend to hold him back.
Osseus and his cronies broke through the line to stand at the head of the group, alongside Kid, who had found himself there for some time. Osseus had become bolstered in confidence, it seemed, from the size of the audience, and he had regained some of his power, sapped from him at Kid’s and Osseus’s last meeting. It led to a loosening of Osseus’s tongue. He turned exaggeratedly to Kid, “You. Get out of my sight. Your face makes me sick.” Kid simply ignored him. This was still mild for Osseus though, “I should make good on my promise, you know? I should throw you from the Tower. Perhaps then you might fall on the other side and even up your ugliness.” This elicited guffaws of barely humorous laughter from Osseus and his boys.
“All words, Osseus. I’m learning not to fear you, as all of these others are too. One day, we will all be equals, and -“ Kid reached for his lip. Blood dripped from the cut Osseus’s sudden strike had created, quite out of character, quite unexpected.
Kid stared shocked at Osseus. Even his cronies did not know how to act. There was a chilling silence, turned into an icy muttering, eventually into astonished conversation. Kid wiped the blood from his lip with a scrap of cloth, his mind moving at a million miles an hour.
It wasn’t painful, as it didn't hurt that much, but it was more the action - the escalation to physical violence. Osseus had become desperate and the only field left open to him was physical violence and intimidation. The bullying had changed state, from merely words to actual blood letting force. Something changed in Osseus’s face then, something dark. It was like he had lost something. Perhaps it hatched something awful, or turned something joyful into something dangerous, but for a while after, Osseus kept a distance from Kid, though when that attention returned, Osseus would reach a plateau that he might never alight.
Yet it was still the present, and, as Osseus was half heartedly preparing for another assault of words, the Tutor called for silence.
“Apprentices all, before you this day is the often referred to infamous Test of Integral and Rectitudinous Cohesion, or the Puzzle Of The Interpretive Heart. There is no right and wrong solution to this, though you should try your hardest to solve it as simply as you can - the simpler the better. It is a pump, a motor - a machine. It is an allusion to the heart, being a puzzle designed to perplex, make you think, and test your ingenuity and knowledge - that knowledge which we have laid before you, over these many past months. This heart is in a darkened room, filled with a thick, fog-like cloud that will obscure your natural sight. You will be expected to use the inherent instruments of pluck, nerve and spine to complete the task. First in is Vannon.”
“What a pathetic specimen.” spoke Osseus automatically under his breath as Vannon walked nervously past, enough so that those closest to him could hear his astounding quip and laugh nervously along with him. Those that were within arms reach did so too, purely out of self preservation. Kid was well aware they all had to do this, and a nervousness came out of him in how natural the joining with the apparent strongest of the group, being either accurately or falsely, Osseus Rivalis, was. It was easier to do what was expected than have an individual thought at that moment, as the task ahead, to many of Kid’s peers, had been drummed into them, now made apparent by a few of them sniffling and holding back the fearful tears that punctuated the evidential property of all, and of the Apprentices being far too young to be subjected to such stressful occupations as they were being compelled to do out of duty to their primary caregivers - principally their parents.
But those people weren't here, right now. Those parents had, more than likely, not stood here at this age, and those who must have, seemed to have forgotten what it took out of them.
Vannon, a girl of strong will and fortitude, stood at the door where the object was contained - the machine. And only some short minutes after entering, with shock and fear upon her countenance, she escaped that room, prompting more whimpers from the others who awaited for their own personal Hells.
The next child, for a child he remained, was sent in. He lasted even less time than the first, desperately trying to hold back the racks of tears, to the assumption of failure and therefore disappointment or worse from his family. His exit wasn't helped by the jeers of some of his peers, markably Osseus, of course, the consummate insulter extreme.
The third child, someone Kid had in fact conducted a conversation with once, now bereft of the memory of their name and it failing to come to Kid’s mind at that moment, lasted only until the door was shut behind them before they screamed and screamed to be let loose from the horror in the darkness. This was followed by further jeers, until the next name was called out. Fuscus Praefuscus.
It was Kid’s turn to enter the belly of the beast, the throat of the darkness. Kid caught sight of Ryla as he walked almost as calmly as he was able, up to the rough and ancient wooden door. She was engaged in conversation with another, but the fact she was there seemed to be enough for Kid. He hobbled to the door, which was opened for him by the Tutor and he stepped inside. The door slammed shut and suddenly Kid was in a kind of silence broken only by a ghostly hum of something within the room, a thump-thump in rhythm to Kid’s own heart.
Yes it was dark. Nearly impossibly dark. And the thumping only aggravated the caged beast called fear in the back of Kid’s mind. But he knew it was a test, so treated it as such. Kid’s view was further obscured by the thick fog seemingly clinging to the air all around, creating a deep down-to-the-bone layer of chill, which only aggrieved the beast that much more. Kid held fast to his position near the door, not out of apprehension, but sensibility. He waited until his eyes and senses became adjusted to the new climate, so that he could see where he was treading, in case there were traps about him.
Kid could swear he was able to see occasional patches of a dark liquid long congealed, dried and staining the stone floor. It could have been blood, but it equally could have been a trick left there by the Tutors to create a level of fear and antagonising distrust of the safety within the room. Largely it was of no consequence. Kid was focussed. As he hobbled forward toward what he assumed was the centre of the room, there was an odour of urea and the resonant echoes of each careful step Kid made, which only added to the atmosphere the room created simply by being. The ground around this part of the room was layered in dust and had been infrequently disturbed, but there was the occasional footprint, assuring Kid he was headed in the correct direction.
A shape began to appear that stole the breath from Kid’s lungs, and left a lump in his throat. It was an object that seemed to be approximately adult fist shaped, solidly stationary upon a stick-like stand, which in turn was semi spherical at both top and bottom, thin in the middle, and a little under Kid’s own height, with an interweaving of entanglement in the definition of thick steel ribbons, encircling but not touching the heart machine inside. These ribbon-like metal entanglements were not as they first seemed. They had been placed, and manufactured in such a way as to deceive the viewer, allowing a misinterpretation of their shape, depth and position. From the top edges of these ribbon entanglements protruded a saw-tooth serration, which was undoubtably sharp. Not only that, but the ribbons had symbols upon them, confusing and meaningless, certainly at first glimpse, but the closer Kid came, the more focussed and defined were the symbols, parsing into a litany of words, intricately weaved upon the silvery surface;
‘Preparation is failure, and I fail to prepare, so work less and succeed more. Trying leads to failure while failure leads to effort, conversely effort leads to success and success is failure while also failure is success.’ is what they read.
The words meant nothing, or rather they existed to confuse. Kid looked long and hard at them, assuming that they were deliberately obtuse, and not simply a method of distraction. The more he stared the calmer he became, and the calmer he became the more focussed was he. It was obviously some kind of defence mechanism that had been built into the construction of the machine. Perhaps it had a useful purpose outside of a proverbial test for the anecdotally inclined, being a machine that at one time had functioned, become in need of repair, and finding there was no person left who was present at its installation, it remained as a carbuncle, a folly, a testament to what can be achieved and lost within the space of a generation or two. Yet it had a function, and therefore a solution to its problem.
There was something else about the letters. Some sat prouder than others, while the symbols that surrounded the words, certain words, fulfilled a pattern. What looked like the letter X was always followed by something that resembled an S or a Y and sat two symbols or three from specified words, those being Preparation, Work and Success. There was only one place where these three words sat in parallel upon their own silvery ribbons, and at this point there was an almost imperceivable gap, large enough for a thin arm to reach in and grab hold of the machine.
Pluck, nerve and spine. The three words the Tutor had specified. Why these three? Why so specific a set of words that could easily have been three others, for strength, confidence and luck? Well, because as it began to dawn on Kid, they were part of the solution.
Cautiously, Kid reached his hand inside and grasped the heart machine - chosen certainly for its near perfect design as a pump for some essential function - and felt the throb-throb sensation Kid had nearly forgotten about, it being so in tandem with his own heartbeat, he assumed it was his. Kid pulled at the heart, and although it did come away from its plinth, it remained attached to it by some kind of stiff wire or thin chord. Its nerve. Kid tried to manipulate his good fingers into a position to undo the chord, but he could not. It remained stolen from his grasp. Pluck? No, that was pulling the object from the housing, and Nerve was the chord. So what was the Spine? Kid looked about him, but all he could see was the fog obscuring all else within the room, the object in the centre and the stick-like stand that held the puzzle in place. All remained solitary in design.
Kid was forced to move about the space, feeling upon the floor, finding nothing but dust in its multitudinous piles within the corners of the room. There wasn't even the evidence of rodents or their droppings - no living thing, apart from the Apprentices and presumably some Tutors in moments of clarity and epiphany when an idea had occurred to them, considered this room in any way accessible for any meaningful endeavour. The walls, though a little slimy and damp, a little cold in places where the fog had condensed, presented nothing but the shape and dimensions of the stones that made up its structure, at least as high as Kid could reach.
Confused and flummoxed, Kid returned to the centre of the room and the object in situ. The answer must be there, within the contraption. It wasn't the heart itself, as he had tried quite extensively to feel the object while he held it. It couldn't be the ribbons, as they had served and continued to serve their purpose. What was left?
Of course! The stand! It was the only thing that remained, after Kid had eliminated all other possibilities. He felt the stand from the very edge that touched the ground to the same where it came into contact with the entanglement. And only one place seemed retractable. With his poor hand Kid handled the depression, while with his other manipulated the heart into a position where he could once again grasp the chord and turn. It gave, slowly at first, from decades of seizure, but with a little effort, the heart machine finally came free of the chord. Now all that remained was to pull the machine from its defensive entanglement. Inch by cautious inch Kid pulled the heart away from its housing, and as he did so, a whining noise sounded. Kid ignored it at first, but as the noise became more piercing, apprehension crept into him and he paused - which became his big mistake. Without warning, Kid was thrown clear of the machine and landed hard upon the stone floor, where the world became a dizzy mess.
#
Pain. It was a familiar sense, having been with Kid for all of his cognisant life. One simply moved the feeling further back into the mind until it became an itch that never stopped.
Someone was laughing, but it wasn't a tone he recognised. He had heard many forms of laughter since before he could understand its intent. If it was a familiar one, he would have been able to pinpoint its origin.
The foreboding closeness and echoing properties of the room had seemed to disappear in the fall, where a soft breeze, stinging the nose with unfamiliar scents of recently cut vegetation and a thinness to the air he breathed, not clogged with the intense odours of indoor life, or the closeness of breath where large groups of people gathered, each taking their portion of the breathable air and leaving the thick distasteful air for shorter people such as Kid. It was so surprising it made Kid shoot up to his feet and look about him suspiciously.
Of course his first thought went to the assumption of mortality, and his lack thereof, but everything seemed to be functioning much as it had before. Kid looked about him, seeing a thousand small stones beneath his feet, like washed rubble, crunching as he stepped tentatively in a circle about him. it was a kind of open air corridor, with vegetation to the left and right, which followed the corridor its entire length and beyond. Kid chose an arbitrary direction and began to walk. The corridor came to a turn left, and there were no other choices, so he followed the new corridor cautiously.
“My darling boy.” a voice called to him, bereft of a body to speak it, and its point of origin difficult to ascertain. Kid thought he recognised it, a flood of memory tangled within the throes of infancy, of a soft voiced woman, with dark hair and marbled complexion, within the frame of ultimate kindness. It was Kid’s Mother. It had to be. “Why are you here, Fuscy? What do you hope to accomplish?” The words were confusing, coming from the depths of unconditional love as they only could. They spoke of disappointment, of disapproval. “My boy. My darling boy. Go no further.”
Something deep within Kid compelled him to speak at this, “Why?” he asked simply.
“Lay down. You are tired and there is no more to be done.”
“I can’t. I have to move on.” And so he did, past the voice, to another turning. Ahead of him was a fork. To the left the corridor was bathed in darkness. To the right the corridor took another quick turn even before one could enter it. Darkness or more turns. It was a dilemma.
“Kid! Help me!” This time there was a body to the voice, to wit it appeared as Kid’s Brother, Muet. He was thin and wan, pale and close to death. No one had known what killed Muet, but in this vision, he was gaunt beyond life, his eyes sunken and clouded, his lids drooping and a languid mouth propped open, while he reached out desperately with his bony fingers for the air before Kid. And he muttered incoherently. Some green liquid seeped out of the numerous orifices of his face, without composition to identify it, “Brother! Why did you do this? Why do you want power so greatly? I could have taken your place? Now, you have taken mine. Why?” Then, as though to accent the experience, Eighteen, Kid’s older Brother and the reason for the Apprenticeship, appeared kneeling at his younger Brother, Muet’s side. He too looked accusingly at Kid.
“Look what you did. Look how even now your Brother dies. And all so you could usurp me and seize power for yourself. Usurper! Thief!”
“My Son. I have not the words for you right now. Sit over there and keep quiet.” Between the Brothers appeared a desk, Kid’s Father’s desk in fact, with the old man himself sitting behind it, quill in hand poised over a piece of paper. He looked hard into Kid’s eyes, and Kid himself felt he was back there, as a child - as an infant - to sit in the corner and keep civil while Father tended to business. Except this time there was no one else, yet Kid felt compelled to act as his Father had instructed.
Suddenly Kid felt the sensation of falling, from a great height, though when he looked about himself, he was still upon the floor and in situ. He felt the instant impact as he hit the ground of his mind, a stirring pain striking him, causing him to scream out. He had closed his eyes tight involuntarily, and when he opened them again, the visions had gone. Left with no further action, Kid took the path least travelled.
The corridor took long minutes to traverse. At points Kid was certain he had made thousands of twists and turns, had been walking for hours, as his bad leg itched furiously, which often demonstrated to him that it had been overworked. But all it took was a cursory glance behind him to demonstrate how short a distance he had managed. Kid began to fear he would be lost in confusion within this maze for the rest of his life, which returned with it negative thoughts of despair and the contemplation of taking a simpler step toward ending the horror. When he hit a dead end, not for the first time, Kid simply turned and fell to his knees, tearing up at a sense of frustration that tore at the back of his throat, demanding he growl, scream - anything to take the despair away.
It was at this time that the laughter which had greeted him upon entering the maze began again, seemingly further from reach than it had been before. It did nothing but add to the consternation Kid now felt, lost and alone in a defined wilderness, where the oppressive tree walls towered above and looked as though they bent at the tops, to seal Kid within this complicated and confusing prison.
Kid felt now he had lost something, something more than his mind or his way. He could see how being made to fulfil a duty he was never intended for had lost him his innocence, joy and emotion at a base level, deep and solid within his soul. He almost wished he had died when he was supposed to, falling from the window as a baby. Then it would have been so much simpler for all. Muet might still be alive, much like his Mother, and the Praefuscus Family of the North Tower could have thrived without the attentive care they were forced to place upon the Broken Boy. Sympathy or empathy, apathy or distraction, call it what he would, he had been made by his Father to become the Second Son by necessity, when no one really wanted him to be, not least his older Brother Eighteen, who had barely recognised Kid from the day he was born. He too would tolerate the state of affairs simply for saving face and out of a hereditary duty to the line of Praefuscus.
But tolerate it he must. There was honour in duty, and necessity in it also.
Kid stood and wiped away the tears that had formed beneath his eyelids. The people must have order, they must see that equilibrium is maintained. What was felt internally, it would have to remain there, ever a victim of the honour of rule. Kid would do his job, and do it well - not for himself, but for the people that relied upon it. If his Brother resented him, or Kid himself felt trodden upon, it was a small price to pay for the continued and effervescent peace that permeated the world of the City of Unity.
The tree corridors did not relent, even with this revelation. If anything they became more complicated. Kid hit dead ends often, only to turn and see the places he had come from now changed, confused, revealing almost too many choices. Then Kid would make a guess which corridor to follow and was roundly jeered by the laughter all about him, sending him into a contemplation that he had somehow made the wrong choice.
Eventually however, Kid came into a clearing, where was placed a bed in the centre. Inside and under the off-white covers was a man. His hair and beard, both long and straggled, sat proud of the sheets. As he slowly turned his head, Kid could see his left eye was covered in long white scars, the skin around them puckered and wrinkled. And even as he looked into Kid’s own scarred eye, the old grey man slowly died, alone, isolated, in a space, on his own. The life drained from him, until all that was left was a husk, serene and bereft of a soul. He was gone, and there was no one to tend to him now he was dead. Fuscus Praefuscus was the old man. He was a vision of what Kid would be, if he continued as he was.
Kid sat with the older version of himself, looking upon the lines of experience he had obviously discovered over the decades. And Kid found he had become envious - envious of the life this version of himself must have led. Certainly not of the loneliness at the end. He must have met so many people over his time, seen so much, experienced it all, good and bad. And once he had accepted his fate, the solution presented itself to Kid and a door opened in the corridor. Kid grasped the handle and turned it.
#
Kid was still motionless upon the floor where the machine had thrust him crashing to the ground. Slowly and with strain, Kid lifted himself to his feet, noticing with suspicion how the fog had dissipated. There had been some kind of delusion perpetrated upon him, he guessed, assuming that the fog hadn't been merely the collected moisture sitting like a cloud within the room, but rather a further part of the defensive measures of the machine and its room, namely some kind of poison that acted upon him, making him think he had been lost within another dimension, or lost within his own mind. He had worked the solution, examined the puzzle and made it through to the other side, with nought but a little hurt pride and wounded emotion. He mused then that too much self examination and distraction had led to a sloppy ending to the test.
But it still wasn't quite over. The heart machine was gripped tightly in his hand still. It now pulsed strongly and pushed against his hand, attempting to fulfil the purpose for which it was created, to pump something, anything - and in this moment it pumped nothing but the fetid air about Kid.
Kid moved toward the Spine where now four holes had opened up around the base, once obscured by the fog. Each hole contained a thin silver tube. Kid took out one at a time from its hole and inserted it into the heart pump, along its four arteries. They didn’t appear to sit correctly at first, but after a little manipulation and realisation that they were to be inserted in a clockwise pattern, the tubes sank home with a click. Kid returned the machine to the housing, and reattached the Nerve to the base of the heart, allowing it to click back into place.
It was done, and the machine showed its appreciation by giving off a satisfied hum as whatever it was that was supposed to come from and go back into the tubes found its place once more in the long paused machine. Expecting admonishment upon his exit form the room, Kid reluctantly hobbled over to the handle and turned it.
He was first confronted by the Tutor, thick and heavy in voice, “What did you do?” he asked incredulously.
Kid looked about him to all the stunned faces, “I - made it work? I think it took an excessively long time to -“
“How - how did you do that? I mean - it’s unsolvable! How did you solve it?” accused the Tutor suddenly.
But the other Apprentices did not wait for an answer. The calamity of cheers rose like a ground swell of demolition. The Tutor could do nothing but stare into the room, into the darkness now broken by the glowing liquid that flowed through the arteries and out to goodness knows where. Kid suspected that many of his peers were cheering simply because they were spared the indignity of attempting the puzzle themselves. How could they solve that which had been solved? But Kid basked in the praise long enough to feel what could be, possibly could be, given different circumstances.
And as he felt the painful slaps of sham attention, Kid noticed Ryla smile at him from her vantage outside the circle of adoration. He grinned as broad as his face would allow, a painful experience and one he didn't much want to repeat too often, but he was swept up in the furore, pulled along by the crowd. However, what Kid did not notice was the glare, the seething entropy of a withering look Osseus Rivalis gave him. And the thoughts within, they would have been full of hate and jealousy. Try as he might, Osseus could not accept the crowd’s antics, and simply slumped off, even leaving his cronies behind, they themselves relieved the most that they would not attempt the trial at all.
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