by Luke Donegan
The chick chirped again, seeking its mother. But its mother stood in suspended animation halfway across the dome. It would not respond to the call.
The chick looked up at the strange face, slowly focussing its eyes. As the face drifted into clarity, the chick imprinted this pattern onto its mind and soul, the brown eyes, the honey-brown hair, the smiling lips – these were the shapes and colours it would from this moment on associate forever with love.
The animist sat alone on the dusty ground. Beside him was the enclosure they had built to protect the baby skinks and lizards birthed from the specimens in the dome. He sat with his back to the enclosure, his face buried in his hands.
“Saskareth!” called Clara.
The animist did not respond. She approached across the desert zone, passing snakes and lizards, camels and other unmoving creatures, forcing herself not to run.
“Saskareth!” she called again.
The emu man lifted his head. Red scars bubbled at his neck where the Commander’s shoulder spikes had driven through. Saskareth was in human form, but his human eyes were empty, lifeless. They looked through her as if she were a ghost.
His eyes terrified her. She feared she was too late.
“Saskareth,” she said, kneeling beside him. “I have a gift for you, something I want you to look after.”
She opened her arms and placed the chick gently on the soil before the animist. The chick stood less than a foot high. It struggled up on stick-thin legs. It wobbled, fell over and then sprang up again. It sniffed the air and chirped. It stepped up to Saskareth’s legs, pecked quickly then ran back to Clara.
Saskareth looked at the newly-hatched creature. His eyes were unresponsive, then, after a few moments, his eyes opened wider. Ripples of blue skin ran along his neck. The black, oily braids of his hair flicked between hair and feathers.
He looked at Clara, then back at the chick.
“You know what it is, don’t you?” she asked. “It’s an emu chick.”
The chick chirped and gazed up at Saskareth. It took a few tentative steps in his direction.
“Your animal species, Saskareth. Gone for two thousand years. I have brought them back.”
Saskareth leant forward and held his hands to the creature. It pecked at his dark palms. It showed no fear as he caressed its feathers with gentle fingers.
“It ... it is beautiful,” he whispered.
Clara’s face beamed.
“The Curator said we should birth small animals first. But I didn’t want you to wait.”
He looked up. “There are more?”
“There are two more,” she said. “They are hatching now. Come with me. I want your face to be the first they see.”
She lifted the emu chick gently from the ground and stood. She held out a hand to Saskareth. The animist smiled at her. Feathers sprouted from his head, the skin of his face and neck deepened into dark blue leather, a shiny black beak grew across his face.
“Gob, gob, gob,” he said, as he took her hand.
The dark Museum rose up behind the sand dunes like a mythological creature. As Erys and Sian approached the Museum, they gazed at its vast, ruptured bulk, and hesitated. Both had enjoyed the day away from the endless work that now filled their lives. Neither was quite ready to return.
“Let’s sit awhile,” suggested Sian.
They sat on the beach with their backs to the Museum, facing the ocean. They sat in silence, watching the waves rolling in, and the sun as it sank behind banks of clouds.
Erys watched the waves and listened to the rumble as each wave broke in the shallows and rolled in as white, foaming water to the beach. The memories of his short life rolled across his mind. Some of these memories burned him like hot iron, not just the painful events, the cataclysms, but also the bad choices he had made, the terrible ways he had treated people, the way he had treated Sian, Jay, the Taxidermist, the Builder. These memories ached.
“I am lost, Sian,” he whispered.
He pictured the face of the woman he had tried to save in the zeppelin explosion. He could see her terrified eyes as clearly as Sian’s, more clearly in fact. They were etched onto his mind. Terrified, blue-green eyes. He wished more than anything he had been able to hold on to her, that he had saved her. That horrified and disconsolate look in her eyes coloured everything he had seen and done since that event.
But, worse still was the vision of the beast which had followed him each day since the last day. He could feel it now, that terrible creature behind him ready to pounce, ready to tear him apart. He did not want to look at it. But he knew it was there, a silver beast, long and slender, with blue eyes and shining teeth. It had crushed a thousand souls between those jaws. He did not want to see it, but it could not be avoided. The creature threatened to drive him mad.
He reached out blindly for Sian’s hand. He gripped her fingers and felt their returning pressure.
“I do not know what to do,” he said. “I remember it all. So clearly. But I don’t know how to live with it.”
She turned towards him.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “You were there. You saw me, at Ocean-Hearth. Transformed!”
“Yes, I saw you.”
“And you know what I did. I killed thousands. I ... and I can’t even say it was beyond my control. To say I was just an observer is wrong. I was the beast. I chose to do the things I did. I ... savored it.”
He squeezed her hand, afraid she would pull away. She did not.
“I was lawless.” He laughed, then gritted his teeth. “The Teacher was right. I am an aberration.”
He closed his eyes. Roaring fire! Screaming soldiers, black masks falling! Walls and ceiling collapsing! And the taste ...
He shook his head. The sea stretched before him, waves rolling in. The sun was low now, lost behind clouds. Darkness rose up from the horizon, like an invisible wall building up, pushing in towards them. He could feel it coming.
“Tell me what happened,” said Sian. “How did Jay die?”
Erys clenched his temples.
“I saw him just before he died. I found him ... I don’t know where we were. Somewhere in the Spirit realm. He was almost dead. Maybe he was dead. But ... I am not sure of the order of events. I consumed the Ascendants, on the tower. As the beast, I consumed their power. Then I gave it to Jay. Because I couldn’t do anything with it. Because I was lawless. So I gave it to Jay. And that power rejuvenated him.”
A wind blew in from the ocean. A cold wind, heavy with the scent of something coming. It blew up the beach and pushed at their clothes and their hair, cold against their cheeks.
“So you saved him,” suggested Sian.
“No. I destroyed him. He used that power to obliterate Dark Matter. To bring Passage to an end. He saved the world, and then it ruined him. It destroyed him, and he is gone.”
The wind blew harder. Waves crashed and rolled higher up the beach.
“When Dark Matter was destroyed, I just fell away,” said Erys. “My body remains, but I don’t know what I am. I woke up on the floor of the hospital, alone. The Ascendants were gone. Jay was gone. I don’t know why I survived. I should have been dead. There was nothing left.”
Maybe with Dark Matter gone, I returned to my natural state, he thought. No longer immortal. Just a normal man, with a natural life span to live.
“When I woke, remembering what I had done, I was going to jump from the tower. Why am I alive? I cried. Why am I alive?”
“I am glad you didn’t,” said Sian.
He faced her. He opened his mouth to speak. I came back for you, he tried to say. Only for you.
She leaned close and kissed him, the gentle touch of her lips, her fingers on his cheeks.
I came back for you.
“I do not understand what happened on that day, Erys,” she said. “But I feel that, despite everything, without you, without what you gave him, Jay would have failed. I think, knowing that, you can find a way to forgive yourself.”
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The wind gusted up. A great wind, cold and clear, was coursing through their bodies.
“For me,” she said. “I do not need to forgive you. I don’t need anything else but what we have. I thought you were lost. But you came back. For me, that is enough.”
Their cheeks tingled with moisture. The waves crashed on the shore and a fine spray filled the air.
“I think we should go,” said Sian, rising. “The wind is picking up. We’ll get soaked before long.” She held out her hand and pulled Erys to his feet. She kissed him again, long and tenderly. A fine spray fell about them. Water glistened on their faces as they kissed. Erys pulled back to look at her.
How should I live? he asked himself.
Erys understood that the world about them - the beach, the ocean, the sea-spray on their faces, the sand hills behind, the Museum, the desert - the world was just a shadow of a greater reality. The Spirit realm, a broad endless stretch of sky across which a great wind blew. The physical world was something that existed in the imagination of those spirits flying on the great wind. But he still had to live in this world.
I used to be such a brazen man, he thought. So confident. I would never have hesitated like this. Even in moments when I stood to lose everything, I always had the courage to act.
He remembered falling from the zeppelin, fire and debris and bodies surrounding him. And the parachute pack, hovering before his eyes. All he had done was reach out ...
Sian’s face glowed with life and beauty. A drop of water hung from the tip of her nose, ready to fall. He leant forward and kissed her face. The taste of the droplet, clear and cold ... was not what he expected.
He pulled back, confused.
“Sian? The water …”
She touched a finger to the moisture on his face then lifted it to her lips.
They looked at the waves. They foamed and crashed on the beach, but the rising spray did not reach them by half. They looked up. A fine spray fell about them, building, thickening. As they stood dumbstruck and watched the drizzle fall about them, it soaked into their clothes. It soaked their hair. Water ran down their faces ...
... as slowly the rain grew harder ...
... and Sian could not contain the smile on her face, as this transformation of the world was realised around them, as sheets of rain built and fell, soaking into the desperate earth, drenching them to the bone.
“Oh Erys,” she said, as he held her on the beach. “I never dreamed I would live this.”
Lightning flashed across the ocean, webs of electricity leaping across the clouds, followed seconds later by the low rumble of distant thunder. Moments of fragmented light illuminated their faces.
He closed his eyes as they kissed ...
... and he was up in the sky, above the clouds.
Yes, he thought. As he fell through the sky ... as he rode the great wind with water on his face, plummeting from this day into the next ... as he flew with outstretched arms, he felt the true wind peel away his body, until only a shimmering Spirit of silver light remained ...
... as he flew, he thought: Perhaps this is where we can begin again.
Creatures of body and spirit, alive and flying freely on the true wind.
EPILOGUE
Rhada stood on the balcony of Ocean-Hearth, gazing across the ocean. The children were all inside, pretending to sleep their afternoon sleep. A cool wind blew in across the water, cool against her face.
I do not know where you are, she thought. I miss you.
The cool wind rose up, lifting her hair. White caps skated across the ocean’s surface. White caps flashing, silver scales, across the entire ocean. And far off on the horizon, white caps lifted up. Large rolling waves, tens of feet high, crashed down. White spray exploded into the air.
The sight made her think of Erys’ story. She hugged her body, and she could almost believe there was someone behind her, holding her in a warm embrace against the wind.
The Teacher’s story. She looked at the breaking waves on the horizon and imagined they were the billowing mainsails of great sailing boats, driving forward on the wind.
Maybe they will come, she thought. The penguin people of Tarc. The seafaring animists of that land far to the south. Sail in on the great wind, berth your ships ... come in and join us for a meal.
She smiled. Jay would have liked that story.
She closed her eyes, lifted her face to the wind, and imagined his face. She saw it clearly. Stars reflected in his hazel eyes. His hair billowed in the wind. No ... it billowed slowly, without weight, as if under water. She pictured Jay underwater. He slowly closed his eyes.
“Hearth-Mother!”
No, Jay! Not like that. Your face in the wind, eyes open. Look at me. Look at me!
“Hearth-Mother!”
The voice came with intensity, from a distance. She looked around. Inside the hearth?
“Hearth-Mother!”
No, the cry came from outside. But where? Then a panic rose in her stomach. Her body became rigid with alarm. The voice was Jayda’s.
“Jayda! Where are you?”
“Down here!”
Rhada leant over the balustrade and looked down. Oh Jayda, she thought. Ocean-Hearth sat upon a cliff. Ninety feet below the balcony, a jumble of rocks sat at the base of the cliff, falling into the sea. Waves crashed upon these rocks and white spray filled the air. And climbing across the rocks, only feet from the violent sea, was Jayda.
The girl looked up. “Hearth-Mother!” she cried.
“Wait there!” cried Rhada. “I’m coming.”
She ran through the building behind her, across the courtyard and down the steps at the hearth’s entrance. She raced to the beach and followed its line as it merged with the cliff’s edge. She climbed across the rocks, skirting the edge of the cliff below the hearth. Her heart hammered in her chest. Missing her footing she cut her shin on a sharp edge of stone.
Jayda, please be safe, she begged.
She had a flash of Hearth-Father diving into the sea to rescue Jay as a little boy. She had not seen this, but the story seemed as real as a memory.
Don’t be in the water. Please!
She clambered over the rocks and rounded the cliff. Waves crashed, showering her with sea spray. She wiped salty water from her eyes, and there Jayda was, perched on the highest rock above the water, sitting with her knees tucked close to her chest, a bright smile on her face.
“Don’t move,” she ordered as she approached.
“Hearth-Mother ...”
“Oh you are in trouble, little girl.”
She climbed over the rocks below Jayda.
“Hearth-Mother! There!” said Jayda, pointing.
“Now climb down to me,” said Rhada, holding out her arms to catch the girl.
“There!” insisted the girl, pointing behind Rhada. “Look!”
Rhada turned. Below her was a small grotto at the base of the cliff, a sandy-bottomed rock pool, protected from the waves by large boulders. Water lapped in the rock pool, and small fish flashed across the sand to hiding places amongst the rocks.
Sitting on the sand, half immersed in water sat an oval object. An egg. The largest egg Rhada had ever seen.
She stared at the object in disbelief. The egg was easily two feet across. Its shell, so smooth in texture it almost glowed. It was coloured pink and flecked with gold. A beautiful egg.
“How did ...” she began.
“It’s an egg,” said Jayda.
“Yes, it is.”
She looked at the object. Had it floated in on the tide? How had it not smashed on the rocks? What could possibly be inside ...
Rhada carefully climbed into the grotto. She stood in the water beside the object and examined it cautiously. She knelt in the water and touched the shell. It was hard and polished ... and warm. It was much warmer than a living egg should be, as if there were a fire burning inside.
Jayda giggled with excitement and clapped her hands.
“Hearth-Mo
ther, can we take it back? Can we?”
“Hmm,” muttered Rhada. It won’t last here, she thought. Not when the tide comes up.
She bent down, placed both hands around the egg and tested its weight.
Not beyond me, she thought.
She lifted the egg. It was surprisingly light.
Sian will know what it is, she thought.
“Okay Jayda, we are going back,” she decided. “You go first. Be very careful, and mind you don’t get too close. I don’t want to trip over you.”
The girl got to her feet and jumped down to the lower rocks. Her balance was sure. She made her way back along the cliff base, glancing back regularly. Rhada stepped up from the rock pool with the large egg in her arms.
Be careful, she thought.
But the shell was thick, and her arms held it firmly. Heat radiated from the egg, warm on her cheeks.
“Hearth-Mother!” Jayda called back. “What’s inside it?”
“I don’t know,” replied Rhada.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know, Jayda.”
She stepped across the jagged rocks. The safety of the beach crept closer.
“Hearth-Mother!”
A rock shifted under her weight. She stumbled, then paused to regain her balance. She breathed deeply.
“Hearth-Mother!”
“Quiet girl. Wait till I get to the beach.”
“Hearth-Mother! Do you remember Jay’s story?”
She looked at the egg in her arms. Pink and smooth and flecked with gold! She remembered a description from a story long ago.
Her heart skipped. The most intense feeling of happiness washed through her. Like a warm breeze, like arms holding her from behind ... and wings of fire soaring above the ocean, riding the great wind, lifting up ... a distant cry, a beautiful sound, like the call of an eagle.
“Hearth-Mother! Do you remember?”
“Yes sweetheart. I do. Now, be patient.”
I am almost there.