“No food or drink shall touch my lips,” Daumantas declared. Others chimed in but immediately grew quiet when the Prophet spoke.
“You needed some shelter from the sudden snow; I do not grudge you that. Let us be careful not to leap ahead of ourselves. For the moment, you are welcome in this sacred place.”
“But you said there aren’t enough provisions,” the young woman persisted. “Our presence here endangers us all!”
Panicked murmuring rose up again, coupled with declarations of loyalty and offers to slay themselves so they would have no need of food.
The Prophet’s words brought stillness again. “What do you think, Andrius?”
Andrius had been halfway into a drink of water from his pitcher when the Prophet addressed him. “What? I mean—” He coughed. “Excuse me, sir, but I don’t understand the question.”
“What should be done for these people?”
Andrius lowered the frigid water from his lips and looked at all the faces listening expectantly, cut off from their families, terrified of the storm. He thought of the coldness on his own skin, but that was not as important.
“I’ll take them,” he said weakly.
“What do you mean?”
Andrius took another drink for courage, then regretted it, feeling once again how cold the water was. “I’ll guide them back to their homes.”
“That’s madness!”
“Really?”
“Andrius, the Prophet’s own!”
“Peace,” the Prophet said, and it was quiet. “You are certain that you can do this?”
Andrius nodded. “Yes.”
“People die from getting caught in the snow, Andrius. Every year. They get lost, unable to hear or feel anything, and tragically they die of cold. Snow is a pernicious blanket of death, robbing us of every sensation.”
“But I can use my eyes,” Andrius replied. “It isn’t that scary for me.” He shivered. “Just cold.”
The Prophet clapped twice.
“Solveiga, bring furs to Andrius. We will send the villagers out by section so that no one has to remain exposed for too long. Everyone living in Wood, stand by the door. Andrius will take them to their homes, return, warm himself, and then he will take Brick, and then Stone.” He leaned down and whispered into Andrius’s ear. “How will they follow you? By your voice?”
“We can just hold hands,” Andrius whispered back.
“Form a human chain, my children.” The Prophet smiled, and the villagers, though uneasy, responded well to his confidence.
As the people sorted themselves out by section, Andrius felt a warm, heavy coat drape over his shoulders.
The Prophet bent down and placed a hand on Andrius’s back.
“It’s not too late to back out, Andrius. It is dangerous—they would understand.”
“No, I’m okay. I’ll do it.”
The Prophet nodded solemnly. “Do what you were made to. Ramunas!”
Upon hearing his name, the doorman leapt to his task and heaved the wide doors open. Swirls of frigid, icy wind swept inside.
Andrius, who had before felt no particular fear of the storm, now began thinking of how long he would need to be out in order to get all of these people home.
A groping hand batted against his fingers, then clasped over them. Andrius looked out into the howling milkoud swarm.
“Let’s go.”
It was cold, wet, and miserable, and the length of each trip was compounded not only by the fearful hesitation of each villager’s cautious steps but also by the necessity of having to wait each time someone slipped and fell. There was a lot of falling and more than a little bit of weeping, but Andrius got everyone in the group home safe. Each time he returned to Gimdymo Namai his eyes were watering, his nose ran, and his cheeks burned, but at least Solveiga was ready with hot tea.
First Wood, then Brick, and finally Stone, where one of the villagers lived all the way out at Sixty-first Stone—the most remote address in the whole world.
When Andrius finally returned to Gimdymo Namai he was dizzy, unable to feel his hands or feet, and he was coughing.
The next several events passed as a blur in Andrius’s mind: Solveiga stripping him of his wet clothes, feeling hot water rush over his skin, the soft towels rubbing feeling back into his limbs. He was suddenly in his bed with extra furs and blankets covering him, with no memory of how he had gotten there. A fit of harsh coughing shook his small frame, and the last thing he remembered was a strong and gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Did you get them home, Andrius? Are they safe?”
“They’re safe,” he wheezed, and then all he knew was night.
Tortured screaming filled Andrius’s ears. First the desperate pleas of a mother, then the howling screams of children. Notes shattered and swirled together like spokes of a spinning cartwheel, sudaisy, bloodnote, fuzzymum, milkoud, highsky, grassentree, dirtyshoe, and notes that he didn’t recognize all coalesced, then shot off as dots in all directions, destroying whatever lay in their path.
Then, all of it faded to silence and nightish.
A thumping began and grew louder and louder until it was deafening. Boots striking the ground. Boots attached to feet, attached to soldiers, attached to guns.
They were there, suddenly marching past Andrius in never-ending columns.
Fire and smoke and the shouting of men and women arguing, grasping, clutching, clawing.
A freckled youth ran before Andrius, holding his ears, shutting his eyes, and singing nonsense words.
Breath failed him. The panic and pain of suffocation spread through his whole body, turning him highsky as he looked at the soldiers turning to find that a gigantic bucket, as large as a mountain, slowly tipped and began spilling its nightish, viscous liquid like a tidal wave over the land.
They tried to run, but they were overtaken, cannons and guns firing into the advancing mass, but it was unhindered as it swallowed them all.
A gasp of air filled Andrius’s lungs and the stink of the unholy tar sickened him. His legs were rooted to the earth. He watched it advance. The end was coming.
“Planned!” he heard a strained, maniacal voice shout. “Everything! Unwanted, discarded, forsaken, forgotten,” and then the disembodied voice laughed high and screeching as the nightish tar advanced to Andrius’s place, and the laughter turned slow, deep, and wicked.
The rushing tar split, running around Andrius in circles, then continuing on its way, destroying everything. The ground beneath him shook, then grew into a tower, a mountain, stretching the sky as the wind stretched Andrius’s face.
And then the mountain was gone, and he fell—falling and falling until he was in a room. It was sealed off from the world, a circle of men, a counsel of bedraggled, grizzled men. Shadows of shadows of men.
The maniacal voice spoke. It belonged to the central man, tall and dark-haired, and winsome.
“Touch four walls and begin.”
Suddenly Andrius was on the table, surrounded. All eyes of all notes, grassentree, sudaisy, singing into the emptiness from their unnatural sockets, pouring down on Andrius as he tried to scream, but no sound would escape his lips.
He tried again, but he was silent still. Terror overtook him as he drew in one more breath to try one more time.
Andrius opened his eyes. There was something over them. He couldn’t hear with his eyes.
A hand pulled away from his forehead, and he heard the sun’s cheerful song, as well as Jehena’s smiling face, pointed the wrong direction.
“Andrius,” she began timidly. “Andrius, are you awake?”
“Yes.”
A small squeal of joy escaped from her lips and she hurried from the room.
“Andrius is awake!”
Sitting up in his bed, Andrius was suddenly keenly aware of the cottony desert that was his throat. He rubbed his chest absentmindedly, and then people began to enter his room. First came Solveiga, second, Jehena, and finally Petras, Regent of Stone.
<
br /> It seemed odd that there should be a welcoming party waiting for him to wake, but he said nothing.
Solveiga came first to his side. She felt his forehead, then his wrist to count heartbeats. He watched her curiously.
“What is she doing?” Andrius said aloud. He had meant to think it.
Petras cleared his throat. “She is checking your condition, Andrius. You had us worried.”
“Why? Is it late? Was there something I was supposed to do?” he added quietly.
Solveiga breathed a sigh of relief, then dipped a rag in water, wrung it out, and placed it on the boy’s forehead.
Andrius looked around, not understanding the strange expressions on everyone's faces.
“Do you remember those people, Andrius? The ones who got caught in the storm and had to hide in here?”
“Sure. I mean, it just happened.”
Petras shook his head. “The snowstorm lasted for a week. Those people would have died had you not done what you did.”
Andrius peeled the damp rag off of himself and sat up. Blood rushed to his head.
“A week? But that’s—”
“You were sick,” Solveiga declared. “We thought you might die.”
A nasty coughing fit wracked Andrius just then, seeming to confirm her outlandish statement.
Before Andrius could protest, Solveiga’s ear was pressed against his chest. “Cough again.”
She didn’t need have to ask. A thick wad of mucus came up through his throat and lodged in his mouth. He wasn’t sure what to do with it.
“Does your chest have pain?”
“Mm-hm.”
His eyes darted around the room, searching for a place to spit. There was a cup next to his bed that would do.
“Does your head hurt?”
He spit into the cup, then marveled at the strange substance that had come out. It was phlegm, but it had an odd note: grassentree mixed with sudaisy.
“A little.” Pain knocked against his skull. “A lot.”
Solveiga nodded, then grabbed the cup Andrius had just spit into.
“Here. Drink this.”
His eyes grew wide and he could not form the words to protest. A voice saved him.
“He is awake! I’ve smiled on you, Andrius.” The flawless beard surrounded the Prophet’s smile. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
“Drink this,” Solveiga insisted, pushing the cup toward Andrius’s lips.
“Later,” the Prophet answered for him. “Andrius, if you are feeling up to it, I have something to show you.”
A change came over Petras. “But, Valdas—”
“I’ve made up my mind, Petras, thank you. What do you say, Andrius? Do you feel well enough for a little walk?”
Even if he hadn’t been eager for the Prophet’s surprise, it was better than drinking from that cup. He tried to move his legs out of bed quickly, but they felt like rubber.
“I’m up for it.” He tried to stand and faltered, thankfully falling on the bed and not on the floor.
“He needs rest, Prophet.”
“Nonsense. I just want to show him. It won’t take long. Petras, help him.”
The Regent’s strong arms moved under Andrius’s weak ones, helping him stand. Jehena came over to assist.
“I can help too, Prophet.”
“No,” Valdas said, already walking out the door. “You cannot go where we are going.”
Andrius was surprised by his own weakness as he was led down the smooth, marble staircase, through the halls, leaning on Petras. The quiet tapping of canes on stone was the only sound aside from the Prophet’s voice.
“Andrius, you are a special boy. You continue to prove your worth to my village.”
He stopped in front of a metal door. Andrius had never seen it open.
Valdas removed a key from his sleeve and felt around for the lock.
“It has been the subject of much discussion if this was the right course of action.” The key found the lock and turned with a satisfying click. The Prophet smiled. “And now more than ever I’m sure that it is. What I am about to show you only the Prophets have ever been shown, and only a few of the Regents, but now I show it to you.”
He pushed the door open and spoke in a low voice. “I’m beginning to suspect you are the one, and it is time we found out.”
Andrius found himself fading in and out of awareness. He realized that perhaps he was not up to a short walk after all, but the empty nightishness awaited them beyond the doorway, and led by Petras they descended a hidden stairway in silence.
“Here we are,” the Prophet declared, and the ground flattened out.
“The sun doesn’t sing here,” Andrius said, looking around. His eyes were useless in this secret floor.
“Doesn’t it? I would think of all places it would sing here,” the Prophet remarked. “Perhaps you just can’t hear it yet.”
Andrius strained his eyes, but he could discern nothing with them. The only sound was Petras drawing in breath and the Prophet shuffling away into the uncharted reaches of the secret room, sliding his ornate cane back and forth for guidance.
“Isn’t it curious?” the Prophet’s distant voice called out. “Marvelous?”
Andrius blinked.
“Maybe I’m just out of it,” he mumbled. He had a bad habit of talking to himself.
“Prophet,” Petras called out. “May I show him the noisemaker?”
“If you wish.”
The Prophet could be heard rustling through something.
Petras leaned into Andrius’s ear, speaking as he grabbed his hand and guided it along the smooth wall until they came to a sudden protrusion.
“This is my favorite part,” Petras whispered. “They’re all over Gimdymo Namai if you search for them, but this one is the noisiest.”
He pressed Andrius’s hand upward and the protrusion flipped up with them. Everything changed. The room was suddenly alive, and Andrius did not know where to look first. The sun sang brilliantly into the cavernous space, revealing stacks and stacks of bizarre, unrecognizable objects. There were books too, a whole shelf of them, and one in particular set prominently upon its own stand in the center of the circular room. Everything had its note—grassentree, fuzzymum, skyhigh—moving the stick on the wall had driven away the nightishness entirely.
“Isn’t that strange?” Petras asked, smiling.
“It is the most magnificent thing I’ve ever experienced,” Andrius gasped.
“Is the sun singing now, Andrius?” The Prophet felt his way toward the books from several yards away.
“Yes,” Andrius replied, breathlessly looking up to the ceiling. “It’s singing from holes in the roof—round orbs of sun.”
Petras laughed. “There are no holes in the ceiling here. What of the noise? Is it not strange?”
Andrius noticed then a high-pitched whine in the air, accompanied by a steady hum. It seemed to be coming from a metal monstrosity in the corner.
He couldn’t stop looking around. He had no words. He was in a room of mysteries.
And then it was gone again, blinked into nightishness.
“Why did you do that?”
“Hm?”
Distressed, Andrius grabbed his hair and began searching the wall for the magical protrusion. Finding it, he placed both palms beneath it and pushed upward.
Nightishness was driven away once more. His eyes were overwhelmed.
“Oh, that?” Keep it on if you like, I suppose. It’s a little annoying after a while.”
Andrius couldn’t believe that Petras didn’t appreciate the difference. He marveled as Valdas lifted the prominently placed tome and reverently carried it to where the others waited.
“What is this place?” Andrius asked.
“Sacred,” the Prophet returned, “and dangerous. You have been taught of the fires of purification, haven’t you?”
Andrius didn’t need to think twice. Everyone knew village history. “When Zydrunas founded th
is new colony to save humanity from the disease that broke out at the end of the Hausen War, he called all of his followers together and had them burn every trace of their old lives in the old world. All of their possessions, burned into the ash from which we grew,” he recited.
“Good,” Valdas nodded. “Only it isn’t true.”
“What?”
“It is true in a metaphorical sense, which is why we keep the story. After all, the First Ones did leave their old lives and the old world to find this haven against man’s mortal enemy, the disease. But as to their belongings . . . well.”
“You stand among them,” Petras declared.
Andrius’s breath caught in his throat. “You mean . . . ?”
“There was no bonfire, only a collection. Zydrunas locked all of their old things down here. Among the many strange and mysterious items in this secret room is this.” The Prophet patted the giant book reverently. Dust rose from the disturbance. “Do you know what this is, Andrius?”
It couldn’t be. It made no sense. And yet here it was. “One of the empty books.”
“Wrong. It is the preeminent volume among them. This is the sacred Book of Emptiness.”
“I figured you kept it upstairs somewhere.”
“No!” the Prophet scoffed. “It is much too dangerous there. Something could happen to it. Zydrunas spoke of these books often, but their secrets are not known. Pages and pages but inside,” he opened the book, “nothing.”
Andrius looked at the book, then at the Prophet, then at the book. “It’s not empty.”
“Watch what you say, Andrius,” Petras cautioned.
“This is hardly a typical boy, Petras. Let him speak his mind. Well, Andrius,” he ran his finger along the pages. “I don’t feel any words. So aren’t they empty?”
Andrius couldn’t help a smile as chills ran up his spine.
“They aren’t the kind that you can feel. You need to sense them with your eyes.”
“You . . . can read them?” Petras whispered.
Valdas held the book out closer to Andrius.
“What does it say, my son? The Prophets have long said there would come one who could read the books of emptiness.”
Andrius leaned forward to study the writing. He was feeling hazy again.
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