The Book of Koli

by M. R. Carey

  “So why do you think we live here, under the ground?” he asked one time when I was by his bed and being talked at.

  “I don’t know, Senlas.”

  “Yeah, you do, Koli Faceless. Tell me.”

  Well, I didn’t have no idea at all. “Is it so them from the villages won’t find you?” I asked him.

  He just laughed at that. “Them from the villages isn’t nothing to me, Koli. They isn’t even as much as nothing. With a wave of my right hand I will strike them down, and with a wave of my left hand I will damn them. No, it’s not that.” He sit up and he turned my head around so it was facing past the lanterns into the darkness that come after.

  “There,” he said. “What do you see?”

  “I see it’s dark,” I said.

  “But what’s on the other side of the dark? Keep looking.”

  I kept looking and didn’t see nothing there. If something’s dark, that’s either because you can’t see through it or because there’s nothing there to see in the first place.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Keep looking.”

  “Nothing again.”

  He was still smiling, but it was a smile that looked like it was working hard to stay where it was and might fall off right soon. “The eyes of the innocent is not deceived by the tricks of this world, Koli,” he says. “They see past it. There’s light there, isn’t there? A long ways off. What do you see now?”

  His hand that was not on my head curled into a fist. It felt like I had got to give a right answer or else it would not go well for me. I did my best to think.

  “I do see a light,” I said to hold him off a little longer.

  “Of course you do. And by that light, you see…”

  “I… I see… the world that was lost?”

  Senlas give a whoop. “Yeah, you do!” he yelled. “Yeah, you do!” He grabbed me in his arms and hugged me something fierce, and I lost my balance. I didn’t fall though, for he was holding me so tight. I felt the edge of the DreamSleeve press against my heart, and I hoped like anything he wouldn’t feel it too, for if he did he was sure to think it was a weapon and get the hand people to take it from me.

  Even without that, the hand men and the hand women come in on both sides of us. They was watching me close, standing on the balls of their feet to be ready to jump on me if I tried anything. I kept my arms at my sides and spread my fingers out so they could see I didn’t mean to hurt their messianic.

  “Not one in a thousand thousand can see it,” Senlas said in my ear. “I feel like I’m alone a lot of the time. Him that sent me still lives in me, but like I told you, it’s hard for him to get his voice down low enough to speak into this fragile little world we got here. It’s good that you see, Koli. So good, and so meet. When your soul flies out, you’ll know the way. And you’ll light it up so I can guide the rest of them. We’ll ride the wagon into that place of endless grace. And you’ll be rewarded for your pain, for you’ll sit at my right hand in the body of an angel.”

  He kept on holding onto me for a long time, talking much more nonsense of the same kind. But I gun to get an idea now of what some of it might mean.

  “Senlas,” I says, “what about the others that went before? Them you chose as your altar boys, I mean. Will they sit with us too?”

  “No,” he whispered. “No, no, no. They lost their way, you see. They won’t sit with us because they never got there. If they had got there, the way would of opened. But when your soul flies, Koli, oh, it’s going to fly straight and true. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Senlas,” I says.

  “You’re going to be my beacon.”

  “Yes, Senlas.”

  “And my guide.”

  “I will, Senlas.”

  So now I knowed about the altar, and the bonfire, and the wagon. And I knowed that Ursala was right when she said Senlas was mad. He was the kind of mad where there isn’t nothing that’s real to you except just you, your own self. Even the people that loved him and believed in him was only important because they done and said all the things that kept him in that same love and belief. When he looked at them, he didn’t see nothing but his own shadow.

  And when I was with him, I felt more and more like I wasn’t nothing but a shadow neither. That was what made him so frightening. The times I knelt next to that bed, or half-knelt rather, was the darkest times in my life up to then. Senlas’s voice creeped inside my head and filled it up, so there almost wasn’t no room for me to stay in there my own self. Afterwards I would go back to the seclusion, and be locked up again behind the grating, and I would have to work real hard to remember what I said to him. It come back slowly, like a dream, though his words to me was heavy and solid like stones, sitting inside me and weighing me down.

  49

  The worst of it was that we didn’t know how long we had got. That lulled us somewhat into thinking it was more than it was. Ursala was cleverer than anyone I ever met, but there was a part of that cleverness that rested in seeing everything there was to see, knowing everything there was to know and only moving when she was sure. But here there was a great many things we couldn’t never be sure of. She said my leg wasn’t strong enough to take my weight yet, and there was truth in that. But she was also gathering all she could, questioning me on everything I seen when I was outside the seclusion, putting it all together in different ways to see what it looked like and how it might go.

  I think, also, we was both of us scared of what would happen if we tried to run away and was catched. That cave was full of people who lived in Senlas’s dream, and Senlas’s dream was full of blood and miracles. They would most likely tear us into pieces in bringing us down.

  And for me there was the other thing I already told you. I was trapped in them talks I had with him. I come away every time thinking I had got to run away right then, that night, that day even, and take my chances. And yet I was still there the next morning when the hand people come for me.

  I might of sunk all the way into Senlas’s mad dreams if it was not for Monono. She talked to me every night, since her charge was built up enough that she didn’t need to worry no more about running out. After that first time, she didn’t have no more secrets to spill out, so it was my turn to tell. I laid it out in scraps and whispers, from when I fell down off the lookout tower in Ludden right on through to where we was. I explained about Ursala too, and how I knowed her from Mythen Rood before I met her here.

  What Monono done, for her part, was to tell me jokes from the old times and then explain why they was supposed to be funny. I learned a lot from that, though the jokes made no sense to me even when they was explained, and I forgot them right after. All except for one, which was this.

  I just read a list of the hundred things you should do before you die. I was kind of surprised to see that shouting for help wasn’t in there.

  That joke got stuck in my mind not because it was funny but because it made me think about the things I would do if I got out of the cave. It made me see that being alive was something you should be thankful for instead of mostly not even thinking about it at all. I had been guilty of that not thinking, and I promised myself I would not be guilty again – though I know it’s easier to make such promises than to keep them.

  Monono played me songs too, choosing mostly metal since it’s the kind of music that raises up your spirits. It felt strange, having them loud tunes crashing in my ears when everything else was so still. But it was good, for while they was playing they somehow made it seem like the space inside of me was bigger than the cave.

  In the end, it was Senlas who told us it was time to move. On the sixth day – by my figuring – after I was brung into the cave, the hand people come for me like always. And I went with them, expecting it would be just the same as all the other times, but when we reached Senlas’s bed I seen that it wasn’t.

  All his people was gathered there too, the children sitting cross-legged on the floor and the men and women standing over them, all in a
half of a circle, none of them saying a word or even moving. I never seen children be so still or so quiet before, and it shaked me somewhat to see it then. It was like they had set their childness by and was turned into something else.

  The hand people put me down on the floor right next to Senlas’s bed. He was real happy to see me, smiling that big and secret smile of his that said he knowed a great many things and one of them was you. He sit himself up, and two of the hand men laced their arms behind his shoulders so he could lean back on them as he needed to. He stroked my hair and said nothing for a while except my name.

  Everyone else who was there said it back to him. “Koli. Koli Faceless.”

  “I had a dream last night, Koli,” he says to me by and by. “And I want to tell it to you, for it come from him that sent me. Would you like to hear it?”

  “I would, Senlas,” I says, though I really was not so keen at all.

  “There was a bird,” he said, and his hand was on the back of my neck now. Just resting there, not pressing hard. “A little bird with brown feathers, and I was holding it in my hand. It was singing to me, such a sweet, sweet song. I wanted to hold onto it for ever, to hear that beautiful singing, but the bird said it had got to go. ‘You see there’s orange feathers mixed in with my brown ones,’ it said. And I looked, and I seen that there was indeed. ‘Them feathers,’ says the bird, ‘that’s so dazzling bright, they’re to signify that fire’s my home and my belonging. It ain’t no kindness to hold me back from the flame, Senlas, and it ain’t no holiness.’ And I waked up crying, Koli. I truly did. Tears was just falling down my cheeks. But they was happy tears, for I knowed the dream was a sending. And nothing but truth and joy ever come from him that sends. Do you see?”

  “Yes, Senlas,” I said. “I think I see.” It didn’t take no great thinking to see that bird was meant to be me.

  “Of course you do. For the sender is in you, like the bones inside your skin or the meat inside a nut. Do you choose one of my eyes now, and touch it. Don’t fear, Koli. Anything foul, touching me, would shrivel away to dust, but you’ll be safe.”

  I touched the big eye that was on his left shoulder.

  “Good. Good choice. Lay your lips on it now, and kiss it.”

  My stomach near rebelled, but I done as he bid. The hand men and hand women come in close, partly to worship but mainly to watch, since they was Senlas’s fears brung to life and couldn’t never stop mistrusting.

  “That eye is gonna be watching you on your flight,” Senlas said. “And it won’t never look away until you’re come to where you’re going. We’re bound now. Do you feel it?”

  “I feel it strong, Senlas,” I said.

  I wish I could say I was lying but I was not. I did feel something not altogether different from what he seen in his dream – like I was held in his hands and was soon to be held into the flame, and my part was nothing but to take what was already decided.

  “I know you do,” he says. “I know you do, Koli. My altar boy. My bird of fire.” He looked from me to the hand women, and though he didn’t say a word, they knowed what that look meant.

  They come in on both sides of me and took hold of me. For all the warning Senlas give, and for all that he had gathered his people to bear witness, I didn’t know till the women took hold of me that he meant for it to happen right there and then. I seen now that all my chances and all my choosings had come down to this one.

  “Oh, Senlas,” I says. “But that’s a strange thing. It’s wondrous strange for us to not see the same.”

  A gasp and a murmur run through all the people that was gathered. It run through them, and ended up at Senlas. The hand women was already hauling me up onto my feet, but he lifted up his hand and they stopped, so I sunk down again on my knee and my stretched-out leg. “What’s that you say?” he asks me. “Speak up.”

  Well, there was nothing to do but go on with what I started. I had throwed a raw egg in the air and had got to catch it without the meat spilling. “I had the self-same dream, Senlas,” I says. “The exact same, in all ways. I was sitting in your hand, and we had that talk, and I knowed the strength would be in my wings to fly when you let me go. To fly straight, and to fly true, and to light the way for you. And I… I was proud, Senlas. So proud, to think that it was going to be me that went before you.”

  Senlas nodded like this was only right.

  “But then, in my dream, the sender spoke up in a voice like thunder. He said, ‘What’s that pride you got there? That vainness and glorying in yourself? None is pure, faceless boy, save only Senlas. What are you, that you go before him and… and you light the way for him to come?’ And I said, ‘I’m his chosen, his altar boy.’ ‘Oh, you are that,’ says the sender, ‘and that’s glory beyond what any could deserve. So you got to purify yourself, is what. You got to go one whole day, and one whole night, without food or water. You just got to pray and pray and pray till all the heaviness and the badness of this world is gone out of you. It’s only then you’ll be able to fly, and it’s only then you’ll know your way.’ And by and by I waked up, and you called for me, and I was joyful, for I knowed the time was come. The time for my making ready, I mean. And then, after that, for the fire. But the making ready is first, and is on me, for otherwise I might fail you, which is a thing I could not bear.”

  I’m giving you the sense of what I said the best I can, but I said a lot more of it and it didn’t come out so smooth as I’m setting it out here. There was a great deal of stammering, and swallowing, and breaking off, and saying the same thing two and three times over. I heard my voice shake, and the tears starting to come, but I tried my best not to cry. I had got to look like this was joy and excitement in me, and not a bunch of lies welling up out of pure fear and dread of being burned.

  Senlas heard me out with a big frown on his face. And after I was finished, there was silence. It was like all the people there had died, almost, for nothing else would explain how there was not a single whisper of sound when the air in that place made even your breath sound like a river rushing.

  “You got to be pure,” Senlas said. Only his voice was halfway between saying it and asking it, so you couldn’t tell which.

  “I got to be pure!” I shouted. I grabbed hold of his hand and pressed it on top of my head like he was blessing me. Like I was hungry for his blessing and had got to have it. And all the while his next word was hanging in the air, ready to come down like a lit torch and burn me up.

  Only it didn’t. “This boy is my bird of fire!” Senlas yells out, his voice filling the whole cave and coming back from every corner of it. “Lay him down to rest now, and don’t none of you disturb him. See there’s no food brung to him neither, for food is of this world and he’s of the other world now. He got to get himself pure so he can fly.”

  The hand women reached out for me, but I had got the sense of it by this time and I was leaning in hard to how I thought it had got to go. It was like I was the messianic now instead of Senlas, but as soon as I said one wrong word or did one wrong thing I was like to lose it all.

  So I shrugged myself away from the women and didn’t let them touch me. “His hand is on me,” I cried. “Senlas’s hand is on me, and there’s a oneness there. Don’t let no other hand break that touch.”

  The hand women stopped where they was and waited for further orders. I looked to Senlas. “Who was sent first?” I asked him.

  “The dead god was first,” he says. His eyes was opened so wide I could see where they was now in among all the other eyes that was just painted on.

  “Who was sent second?”

  “Dandrake come second.”

  “And who was sent last?”

  “I was.”

  “Why was you sent, Senlas?” I yelled.

  “To lead the righteous home,” he bellows back at me, “to the world that was lost, to live in glory for aye and ever!”

  “And who’s gonna light your way?”

  “You are, Koli Faceless.”

&nbs
p; “Make me fit for it then!” I was all but screaming now. “What bird’s gonna fly with a broken wing? Make me whole, so I can fly for you.”

  He set both hands to the sides of my head, squeezing it like he meant to break it open. His face twisted up with effortful struggle.

  I stood up, slow as anything, his hands still on me. Then I stood up further so they fell away.

  It was a good thing I had watched all them times when Ursala put the splints back on me after she checked how my leg was doing. I knowed her knots, and they dropped out under my fingers quick enough so it looked like I just touched them.

  I held up the splints in my two hands. I walked a little circle so everyone could see. Then I broke the splints over my knee and flung the broken pieces to the ground.

  “Senlas!” I shouted.

  Everyone shouted it back. “Senlas!”

  “Senlas!”

  “Senlas!”

  “Senlas!”

  “Senlas!”The hand women fell in on the two sides of me as I walked through the crowd. There was a few who tried to touch me as I come by, for the blessing and the power, but the hand women fended them off and there was not a finger’s tip put on me. I seen their faces, one by one by one, and they was all mad with Senlas’s madness. It made me sick that I helped to bring that to a boil in them, though in truth it was simmering strong already.

  There was only one in that crowd who give me a different look. It was Sky. Her eyes was hooded and her mouth was set in a tight line. She held onto my gaze till I turned my head away.

  50