The Dark Crystal: Plague of Light

by James Comins

  "Don't yell at me," Cory said.

  "I--I'm not yelling, it's just--"

  "Please?" Cory added. "Please don't yell at me. I get enough of it at home."

  Loora growled and made claw-fingers and stamped her feet up a log step, which Cory proceeded to trip over. Loora closed her eyes and moaned, "Cory . . ."

  He let go of her hand and pushed her away even as she grabbed his arm again. Wrenching himself free, he stumbled toward where Aughra was chatting with Uncle Embling. She watched as Cory tried tapping his feet as he went, listening to his surroundings, acting like he didn't need her, shuffling forward, still tripping on everything in his path. As Cory kicked the back of Aughra's feet on accident, the old woman looked over her shoulder once at Loora with a baleful glance, then proceeded forward through the village toward this Skeleton Kid the Spriton girl mentioned, with Cory tailing behind.

  "Why do you like him?" the girl--was it Ormellia?--asked, rising physically through the ferny ground beside Loora.

  "Must you?" she groaned, stepping aside even though it wasn't necessary.

  "Landswimming. It's our gift," the girl replied. "Don't your people have one?"

  "Two. Self-confidence and privacy."

  "Liar. Bet you don't have either one. So, you and skinny blind boy, huh?"

  Loora lifted her eyes to the Skymother. "No. And he wasn't blind yesterday, and yesterday we weren't--I mean, I hardly knew him. Know him. It's just--his mother and my father--it's a long story. Please go away."

  "Wasn't blind yesterday," the Spriton girl repeated in a distinctly sassy tone. "Was it that Brin lady? Did she put a spell on him?"

  "No," Loora told her. "And there aren't any spells, just songs. Why don't you know anything?"

  Ormellia seemed to catch a whiff of Loora's dislike, flashed a hurt look, not dissimilar from Cory's and Aughra's hurt looks, and drifted away.

  Everyone was gone. They all hated her. Yay. Loora scowled at the lovely village, nearly imploded with anger as a splash of leaf-dew dripped on her hair. The boy called Meter knocked on a door far ahead and slipped through as it opened. Embling and Aughra followed, holding the door open for Cory. Loora was not actually going to go in, she decided. Other people could deal with Skeleton Kid. She was, in fact, going to sit on the mostly dry walkway just outside the door and sulk. Maybe she'd even sneak around the back and--but no, there was a wide porch area with windows and awnings and hanging U-shaped tree boughs for seats. So she found the most hidden part of the wall and slid down with her back against it and her knees up. She wished there were words that could communicate to everyone just how angry you were. But there weren't.

  Just songs.

  "The lights are out in Quillpine

  The houses all caught flame

  The children all have run away

  And the parents are to blame.

  I told them how the fires would come

  And burn the world away.

  But no one ever listens to me

  And now they have to pay.

  They begged me to quench the fires

  They told me they'd all die.

  I replied I didn't mind,

  I want to watch them cry."

  Loora shivered and started crying. Somehow it had been easy to deal with everything that had happened while it was happening--misplacing Cory, getting kidnapped and put in a cage by Brin, the tree shattering while she was up it, the near-miss with the spearbolt--it had all seemed easy at the time, when she was in charge and had important stuff to do. But now? The anger and fear had grown deaf to her strength, to her protestations, to her toughness. Like cold wind they blew through her, starting in her shoulders, and grew too big for her, and everyone else was inside the hut and she was alone and nobody was coming out or inviting her in or even paying attention to her and Cory was angry and now she silently promised herself she would never admit that it was her fault, no because it was his fault he couldn't take her bossiness, and she vaguely realized she'd been half expecting to marry Cory, it had almost seemed preordained, she'd just expected that after Aughra found a cure for the Light Sickness the two of them would marry and study with the old woman and learn all her wisdom and maybe carry on teaching and healing for the rest of their lives and--

  "Loora," Aughra said quietly, peering around the door of the hut.

  "What?" Loora snapped.

  "Cory has died."

  "What?" she said, her thoughts tossed.

  "Raunip spoke truly. Once the eyes go black, there are only hours left. UrNol's corrupted syrups sped the process. It was only the healing counteragent that kept the boy alive this long. Come inside."

  Nothing much of the next few tolls really stuck. None of it fit. It didn't make sense.

  An image of Cory's body lifted halfway, offering no resistance to Embling's hands, returning to the plank floor, burned itself permanently into Loora's mind. The smell of flowers tossed onto a moss fire. The feeling of pushing through a green garland draped off the roof on the way in and out the croaking-hinged door while getting fresh air, returning inside, leaving again. A low cough-moan that Aughra repeatedly made. The Spritons she'd met, bustling around her in a consoling way. Meter repeating the words, "He just dropped," over and over. Meeting a boy whose left side was damaged somehow, and whose bones showed through in some places. Skeleton Kid, she remembered that, that part made sense. Then some kind of big meeting between the families of the village, conducted not in a great hall but by word of mouth, lines of Gelflings standing along the narrow walkways between the huts, since there weren't any huts big enough to hold everyone. Messages passed in whispers like Pafaul's beetle communification chains. In the darkness of night, networks of standing Gelflings holding small glowglobes and speaking with sympathy about what to do.

  Loora slept and dreamed of Cory, who jumped from a window in a tree but did not land.

  * * *

  I am Pafaul. The Storyteller. A woman of the long-dead Partha race, I may be the last of my species. I know more than most of dealing with grief.

  This is how to begin it.

  First. Will we speak of our grief? Is it worth speaking of? Is it worth enough, wide enough, to admit, or should we hide it? Will we speak of healing, or pretend there is nothing wrong? Will we ignore our wounds? Will we let them fester? And what if our wounds are larger than we are?

  My audience, I say this to you: what is, is. What happens, happens. Do not hide from reality. Say the truth, just as it happened, without permitting your mind to create lies that comfort you. Here is my truth: My people have died. Most or all of them were not killed by knives or bats or groundworms. They were killed by fear. Their own fear. Let us admit it. It is impossible for me not to blame the Hunter for creating this fear. When my people were dead, he took their fur and flesh. I want him to be a monster completely. But inside the deepest honesty I can find, I will say that stronger-hearted creatures than Parthim would not have died in the Forest Depths as we did. Stronger-hearted creatures would have lived.

  I feel shame. I feel shame in saying this truth. But it is a truth.

  Thus I admit the truth as it truly is. This is our first step to surviving grief.

  Our second step:

  Whose fault is it that we are wounded? Who has done this to us? Who do we blame? Will we hurt them back?

  Do we look for revenge against those who took our loved ones away? Should I hunt the Hunter, punish him for what he did, destroy all Skeksis for destroying all Parthim? Should we rage against our injustices? Do we reclaim lost lives by ending others? Do we hurt those who hurt us? Does that make us stronger?

  I have not hunted the Hunter. I have killed no Skeksi. Does this dishonor the lives of my people, or does this prove Parthim to be superior to those murderers?

  Parthim value life. That is our strength. That is our gift. We share life and joy with everyone we meet. And we make no exceptions, we see no differences between good lives and bad lives. We celebrate all life. Thus do I explain my decision not
to seek revenge, not to unleash my anger, and thus do I honor the dead.

  Keeping our anger tamed in our hearts. This is our second step in dealing with grief.

  Here is our third step:

  Are there ways around grief? Are there ways to close our wounds before they're formed? Are we granted another opportunity to spend time with our loved ones? Can we hear their voice again, one more time? Can we draw their picture? Can we touch their skin? Can we go back to when they were alive, in real life or in our memories? Is there even a scrap of them left in the world, something to reconnect with? A talisman, a memento?

  Do we let them go?

  * * *

  "Find him for me, kThhrayahaya," the Chamberlain said.

  Huge brown wings spread along the bulbous yellow branch of the gooey succulent stub scrub shrub. Dried sap covered the bat's feet, and a strange laser of white light glowed from its chest. This was the fourth time the Chamberlain had visited the Hunter in the field, sent this toothsome animal to locate him, and that first original twitch of fear that had burrowed into his heart continued to subside.

  Flinging light in rhythmic pulses from its chest, the bat rose into the sky and winked away.

  The Chamberlain, now removed from his life and his responsibilities, alone in a patch of new desert, waited. He was aware of himself, the Chamberlain. A beaked reptile, dressed ornately in a colossal robe, his hump-shape bare against the thin, streaked light of the sunset. His body merged with that of strange plants and cactulus and succulent drippers and flanged half-trees and barbed hateloves and one extra-large shadow produced by a shady trailtree upon the ridge. He cast his own dwindling shadow, saw it stay (just for a second) immobile, a momentary evidence of his existence. He was there. He was standing on the land. Behind him, the Storm broke, but the rain slunk away into the swamp, leaving the desert to collect moisture from the sodden air only. The Castle of the Crystal was a far memory, a hooked and clawed trap, a wasteland. The Chamberlain grew so large in his own mind that he cast a shadow over the entire castle. It became small to him, and he dreamed he might lift it in his palm and carry it in his sleeve.

  Swarms of fishflies hummed through the evening. The Chamberlain waited for the Hunter.

  * * *

  "It's day, Loora."

  She sneezed and a gasp-cry burst from her at the same time. She wiped her stuffed nose on whatever cloth was at hand and pushed herself out of a wicker platform bed suspended from the ceiling by four twisted branches. Aughra's noseless face was not far from her, and Loora laughed without a reason, then coughed a weep away, and then she found the covers and curled back up in them even though there was sneeze stuff in them.

  A quartoll later, she uncurled herself and slid down from the hanging bed and stood on the floor. The suns beamed through the wicker window. Loora pressed a hand to her heart and spoke the three sun prayers:

  "May the rose sun rise,

  May the dying sun set,

  May the great sun grow,

  May it happen forever."

  It had been trines since she had said the prayer--sun celebration had never been her thing, and working Gelflings like her family had never been invited to the Partial Conjunction ceremonies in the Celebrant Hall. Sigh. But there was something to be enjoyed in recognizing that the world was spinning between suns, and the spinning went on forever, and the events on Thra were small, and the world continued.

  Cory.

  Again she wanted angry words to let out what she felt. Words of anger and unfairness and incomprehension.

  Instead she found her feelings inside her and screamed them out wordlessly, powerfully into the now-empty hut, just a single bark, barely caring whether anyone heard.

  What happened next was very peculiar.

  From the next hut over, shouts. "They're awake!" came from a Spriton. A relay of happy voices. Embarrassed at having barked out her feelings, Loora tiptoed out the hut door to look.

  Bursting out of a neighboring door at the same time were a pair of Gelflings, not too old, who had a faint blue glow in their chests and black stars just emerging from their pupils. The two gazed around in the morning sunlight and smiled. Behind them shuffled a pair of caretakers. Aughra came around the corner from the other direction.

  "Miss Aughra! They've woken up!" a caretaker called.

  "Is there food?" one of the sick Spritons mumbled.

  "Who made that sound?"

  "I'll get some!"

  In moments, huts were bursting open and the Spriton villagers was greeting the awakened ones. Smiles, joy. Welcome. Reuniting.

  Cory was not here. He did not wake up. His body was presumably lying in state in the village, unless they'd already gone to return it to Quillpine for a Woodland Gelfling closing ceremony.

  Aughra's wood-like hand landed on her shoulder. "Tell me," the woman said. Loora ducked into the hut and Aughra sat beside her.

  "I was angry," Loora said. "I screamed."

  "And they woke up," Aughra mused.

  "Mm-hm."

  "Interesting. Tell me more. You were angry."

  "Cory--"

  The knobby hand squeezed her shoulder. She flinched but didn't push it away.

  "Cory is gone," said Aughra. "No power in our world may bring him back. That is death."

  Loora's voice was much smaller than she wanted it to be: "Was there anything I could have done?"

  Aughra sighed and swung an old leg onto the hanging bed beside her. "Gelfling. Ah. Here is what can be said. My son and I." She paused, scowled. "Hmp! I don't listen to him, and he doesn't listen to me. If we were closer, he might have told me what he knew of this sickness earlier. I might have told the ur-Mystics and they might have begun the search for a cure sooner. I might not have been so consumed with the idea of Cory's gift--" Vast eyebrows and trailing whiskers shut in despondency--"that I let him leave my sight while we made that amplifier to his future-seeing, now useless. Such a beautiful talent, gone. So much is lost in death."

  Loora reluctantly put her arm around the old woman's shoulder. Aughra bowed her head.

  "No more sight. No need for a meditation globe. Now we have no way to know what will happen. Less need for me to visit the Mystics. Less? MORE reason, now that I know what this Light Sickness can do! We have much to finish, you and I, if we want to save the rest of the sick from this blue death. But we have clues. Your scream of sorrow? Woke two of the sick--but not all of them. This? A clue. Hmp. UrNol the Herbalist told me he'd located the source of the sickness. The Great Crystal. A big clue. We will visit it before the end. Learn from it. Find the truth. Now? Two options--visit the Castle of the Crystal, or visit ur-Kalivath, the Valley of the Mystics. Both choices? Very, very dangerous."

  "But the Mystics aren't dangerous--"

  "Hmp! Fat piece of smarts you've got. Skeksis? Easy to manipulate. They have simple desires. Give them their desires? Do anything you tell them. Mystics are different. They will not do what you tell them. They'll listen, but their designs are subtle, thin to the eye. Sometimes they choose to preserve life. Other times? End it, to preserve other life. All life is not equal in their eyes, and above all, they want balance. Balance is nonsense. Only the good should be, and the bad should not. Mystics don't agree. Thus, Mystics are enemies to us half the time. Very dangerous indeed." The old woman snorted.

  "Aughra?" said Loora.

  "Mm?"

  "Where is Cory? I'd like to say goodbye."

  "You already did. Many times. Last night. They've already taken him back to Quillpine."

  "Oh." Loora held her feelings in place, to keep from screaming. "I forgot." A sapped breath. "He's really gone, isn't he? Bet his parents will be mad at you. I didn't mean to say that." She squashed her face into her hands and tried to wipe her feelings off her forehead.

  "Rest. I will decide what we will do next. Yrn may join us."

  "Yrn?" The word was new, a surprise. Eern, it sounded like. It wasn't a Woodland-style name at all.

  "The boy they call Ske
leton Kid. Yrn is his name. It means 'rot' in the old tongue. His body is infested with a death-dream. Half of him chose to die within him. His cells in the left side listened. Cells in the right side were strong and overcame it. He is a boy with . . . talents. Obsessions. We will see what can be done with him. Hmp. Rest. I will call on you soon, and we will travel."

  Loora rolled up the snotted sheets and pushed them onto the floor, then curled up in the hanging bed again, feeling a little rotted and a little dead herself.

  * * *

  "Pin in your shell, pin in your shell . . . More like lockpick in your shell . . ."

  * * *

  "Old memories, stranger than time," skekTek murmured. He felt . . . exhilarated. Wonders of technology from a time that time forgot . . . what potential, he breathed to himself, what waiting potential . . . glorious . . . ecstatic power, a thousand directions at once . . . a metal known only to the ancients, a crystalline stone that was so nearly bone that one might construct bones from it . . . build a new life and give it structure . . . an opportunity like no other on Thra . . . it was his, it was here, it was nearly unlocked within his trembling hands . . . a faint line of drool, wiped away . . . his sight faded, clouded, again and again . . . a desire, unfamiliar and yet deeply felt within his fingers and toes and behind his eyes, to stare deeply into the light of the Dark Crystal . . . what was this feeling? Had it been there always, and had it just now crept to his conscious mind? . . . a vision of stars voyaging through blackness, a beam of pure light, a guided journey . . . yes, the Dark Crystal . . . he opened the door, crept into the musty chamber, and peered in at the light of the cracked heart of Thra . . .

  Wildness . . .

  SkekTek awoke. He sat facing his workshop with his back pressed against the half-open door to the Dark Crystal. His new robes were torn open like a cracked tamtail egg, and his twisted torso and vestigial arms were exposed, black and naked and uncouth, to the room. He was doused with cold-blooded sweat. The outer door to the lab was locked, he remembered vaguely. He had locked it so no one could enter. His memories were in a snarl and he was uncertain of them. His naked hands pulled his robe shut. SkekTek was aware of his breath.