For Whom the Sun Sings

by W. A. Fulkerson

  “Chicken! Cluck cluck cluck!”

  It was a new pattern, spreading across two pages like the other, but instead of a grassy field it showed chickens pecking at the ground in front of a huge bloodnote shack. Every object in the pattern had writing beneath it. Andrius held his breath as he turned page after magnificent page.

  “Chicken! Cluck cluck cluck!”

  He pressed down on the other animals and heard the unworldly voice say “Horse! Neigh!” and “Pig! Snort snort!”

  The significance of the marvel clutched between his shaking hands did not escape him.

  “This is the key . . .” he whispered. He finally tore his gaze from the magical book and looked over to the Book of Emptiness.

  “Man! Hello!”

  Andrius startled. His thumb had slipped onto one of the boxes. He looked to find a human face staring back at him.

  Chills ran up Andrius’s feverish skin.

  “You may enter.”

  The doors of Valdas’s sitting room burst open. Solveiga and Petras half dragged, half carried Andrius inside. He was covered in perspiration and his eyes were closed as he laughed, then jerked his head to the side and started shaking.

  Valdas stood. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s Andrius,” Petras replied, turning the corner and heading for Andrius’s bedroom. “One of the servants heard strange noises coming from the chamber stairs. We found him there, ranting and convulsing and covered in sweat.”

  “His fever is back,” Solveiga said over her shoulder.

  Andrius opened a tear-filled eye and noticed the Prophet following. He looked concerned.

  Petras heaved and suddenly Andrius was on the bed.

  “Key, key, key, key. I have it. Boxes and—boxes and in key chicken with the sheep . . .” His raving devolved into indeterminable noises then as he thrashed about, resisting Solveiga as she tried to undress him.

  “He is badly overheated,” she cried. “Hold him down!”

  Petras hurried over and gripped Andrius’s arms to immobilize him. His legs still thrashed and kicked.

  “Has he lost his mind?” the Prophet asked.

  “Let us hope not, Prophet,” the Regent of Stone replied through gritted teeth. “He is in the throes of the fever. His ranting is nonsensical.”

  “I can hear that for myself, Petras.”

  Andrius’s legs were suddenly cooler. Solveiga tossed Andrius’s garment to the ground and shouted out the door.

  “Jehena! Come with a bowl of cool water. Ilona, bring towels!”

  “This is unfortunate timing, Petras,” the Prophet said softly.

  Andrius settled down suddenly, his violent spasms replaced by occasional tics. He muttered quietly as the others spoke.

  “Jehena and I are going to our winter home at the end of Wood today. I hate to leave him in this condition.”

  “The snow has sufficiently melted for your journey?”

  “Yes,” the Prophet said sorrowfully. “It was a bad storm. The cost will be high.”

  “Tadas is taking a census,” Petras said, easing his hold on Andrius, who was now semi-lucid but very confused and in much pain.

  The Prophet nodded. “I know. Thanks to this one here, fewer will have died than we would normally expect. He has the village’s gratitude for that.”

  The Prophet thought for a moment as Solveiga fussed with Andrius’s bed. Jehena excused herself as she passed Petras with Solveiga’s water.

  Andrius felt a strange, cold sensation as a wet cloth was drawn across his bare flesh.

  “I never love to be without Solveiga, as you know, Petras; she is very useful to me. Nevertheless, I will leave her with Andrius. The boy must recover or it would grieve me badly. The Prophet’s own.” He smiled bittersweetly.

  “Should I send you word of his condition if the weather allows it?”

  “No,” the Prophet replied. “You know the rules, and they are sacred. I am entrusting him to you until my return. I will take another of my wives with Jehena and I to take Solveiga’s place—perhaps two. Take care of him.”

  Andrius felt terror creep into his heart and he began to rant and thrash once again.

  “Hold him down, Petras!” Solveiga screamed.

  Andrius pitched and rolled violently. The only sensation he had was of beads of sweat burning as they dripped into his feverish eyes.

  The key turned sharply in the old lock, and Andrius stood shaking at the entrance of the secret chamber. He held his wooden pitcher in his left hand and with his right he felt along the walls until he came to the protrusion that enabled his eyes to hear. Nightishness was driven away, and Andrius could look upon everything. It was right where he had left it.

  “Thank goodness,” he muttered.

  It had been two days since his last episode with fever, two days full of sleeping and drinking an uncomfortable amount of water. He should have still been in bed, but his curiosity would not be abated.

  The talking book was on the floor. Next to it lay the sudaisy stick he had found next to the Book of Emptiness. It was an odd little stick, but he found that he could make markings in the book with it if he pressed down and dragged it across the page.

  Andrius set his blanket on the ground and sat, pulling the book onto his lap and taking up the writing stick. He had begun writing dots next to the foreign markings—the raised kind he was used to.

  “I hope I can match all the letters,” he said, taking a sip of water. He winced. His stomach was so full of liquid already, but he knew he needed it to get better.

  Andrius gripped the writing stick and stared at the page. The transcription had begun.

  He had figured out the alphabet. He made a couple of mistakes along the way, but after transliterating the talking book all the way through, he corrected his errors. Now he stood over the Book of Emptiness with his list of letters and their dot equivalents, trying to read the sacred text.

  It was much harder than he had anticipated.

  The letters didn’t match exactly. It seemed like the writer had used a writing stick, but in all the other books the letters were uniform—always the same shape, always the same size. The writing in this book made it hard to read.

  After several minutes of staring at the title page, he determined that it read: “Fhe Records Ot All Fhings.”

  Andrius looked at the page frowning.

  “What’s a ‘fhing’?”

  He coughed then and felt himself getting lightheaded.

  “Time to go,” he said to himself.

  A storm came again, and Andrius slept for nearly two days. He was still sick, and his cough persisted, but somehow he felt a change inside of himself for the better. Trips to the sacred chamber were continuous. He spent all of his time in that forbidden room, studying, agonizing over books and texts written in the strange script for which he could find no name. He left only to eat and to sleep. Water he kept with him always as was his habit.

  He had moved his patterns down to the chamber so that he wouldn’t have to leave when he wanted to work on them. All of this reading was giving him new ideas for a pattern that his instructor was sure to like. Perhaps he would finally be chosen to represent his age-peers during the Day of Remembrance.

  He mastered the alphabet, driven by curiosity as much as by the Prophet’s directive. The process of reading was slow, but he found himself getting faster over time. The only thing that eluded him was the large tome: the Book of Emptiness. The writing inside of it was not uniform, so he had decided to study some of the other books first to improve his skills.

  After all, he could not risk making a mistake for the Prophet. When he looked over the first few pages of the Book of Emptiness, he knew he was not getting it all right.

  So he studied the other books.

  The thin, illustrated books were first. He had found a note that called them “illustrated.” By looking at the patterns mixed in with the script, he learned words he had never heard of before, looked at things he had never imagi
ned: airplanes, trains, something called a carousel. It was all so fantastical and bizarre yet wonderful.

  Most of these books said that they were “for children,” but Andrius didn’t understand that. They were so intricate, so full of knowledge and wonder—powerful tools of learning. And they were written by people like him, people who use their eyes! People for whom the sun sings.

  He slept only when he had to, when his eyes burned from use. He graduated to the books that were only text. These were much harder, but they were incredible.

  Andrius walked to the familiar shelf and chose a book he had been studying. The front of the book was bloodnote—red, as the books called it—and it had no illustration, just two horizontal lines and the words “The Iliad.” It was the single most magical story he had ever heard.

  He had almost not read it because he didn’t know what an “Iliad” was. He still didn’t, but it was amazing. It retold the events of an ancient time, when the earth was covered with humans. These humans fought and killed each other in a great war, sailing in large, wooden ships across a body of water that seemed a hundred times as large as his village’s river. And the ships! Andrius had never thought of such a thing until he read the children’s books. He thought that perhaps he would make a ship for the river and travel along its path.

  Everyone was afraid of the river, but Andrius wasn’t. Everyone was afraid of running, too.

  There were already a hundred new concepts that Andrius had learned from the Iliad. “Armor” was hard metal to protect a soldier. Birds came in different kinds and had different names. Something called “light” seemed important, and “darkness” was scary, and there was much talk of “gods.” As much as Andrius could figure, these were superior beings who couldn’t die, looking over the affairs of men. “Prayer” was how you reached the gods, but it seemed just like talking. He didn’t know how to do it. The Prophet had never talked about prayer.

  Andrius remembered that the book was in his lap, and he had no need to reminisce when he could simply read. He cracked open the dusty pages with excitement. Today he hoped to figure out what a certain word he kept coming across actually meant. He wanted to know what it meant to “see.”

  Weeks passed, and all Andrius did was read and sleep. He couldn’t even work on his patterns since the snow and storms outside made collecting ingredients difficult. Instead, he read and studied day after day. His rate of learning increased daily, even as his sickness began to wither and fade. He was going to make it.

  After the children’s books and the Iliad, Andrius had read two others, and now he sat with a large volume entitled Michelangelo propped on his knees.

  His mouth was agape every time he picked it up to read.

  There were illustrations, but it was not a children’s book. Large, complicated patterns—pictures—covered many pages, but then came pages and pages of small writing which told about this great man Michelangelo.

  He had designed all of the illustrations himself, and the book said that they were only “prints” of the originals, which were massively big. The illustrations had names, even. The Sistine Chapel was one of Andrius’s favorites, and though he loved the pictures of carved rocks, he was especially drawn to the illustrations of patterns.

  He was fascinated. He read the thick book in a week, then he went back to look through all the pictures, and then he decided to read it all again. There was even more magic in this book than there was in the Iliad.

  Andrius sat in awe, wrapped in his fur, sitting with his back against the bookshelf with his trusty pitcher by his side, reading aloud in a quiet voice.

  “Michelangelo amazed the world with his statues, but he will always be remembered as the complete artist, conquering such difficult subjects as sculpting, design, scientific study and innovation, mixing, drawing, and painting.”

  Andrius drew a deep breath and closed the book in satisfaction. His eyes hurt, but it was well worth it. He had improved his reading and had gotten to look at the works of the ancient master.

  “Sculpting, design, scientific study . . .” Andrius absentmindedly repeated to himself as he reclined. He had learned mostly what all of those terms meant, that Michelangelo was an artist, placing beauty into his creations to inspire the world to believe, to view things in a new way, to remember the heroes of old and the Bible stories—although he still wasn’t sure what the latter meant.

  “The illustrations—paintings,” Andrius corrected himself as he rested his eyes, “are still my favorite part.” He always forgot to call them by their names.

  He was halfway asleep, dreaming of the beautiful works of art and the new words he had acquired, when he sat up suddenly with a thought.

  Panic swept over him. He threw his blanket to the side and snatched up the thick volume, clutching it to his chest as his eyes searched the room.

  “Where is it?”

  Andrius fought off the encroaching despair as he searched fervently through first one box and then another, teased by the seed of a thought that had been planted in his mind.

  “Come on, come on! Where are they?”

  He began pulling items off the shelves, forgetting his reverence for the antiquated relics in the desperation of his task.

  Then, behind a large box, he laid eyes on them and he stopped.

  Gingerly, still clutching the book with one hand, Andrius reached behind the box and touched a thin slab of bark, one of many he had stored there for safekeeping. It was one of his patterns—the one he had submitted to the contest this year.

  Gravely, with shaking fingers, Andrius drew the pattern out into the now-cluttered hall and gently set it on the floor. He stood, staring at it desperately.

  He began shaking his head and his breathing grew labored as he opened the book in his hands, to the page that showed Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, and he stared. First he stared at the book and then at his pattern, back and forth, back and forth.

  The book fell from his hands and Andrius slid to the floor, hunched over his trembling knees.

  Then he wept, because he realized that he was a painter, and the world was blind.

  There was relief in the storm once again. For an entire day it did not snow, though the ground was thick with it. The Prophet was still away; the people still kept to their homes. Andrius passed the day in thought, looking out over the blanketed landscape from the glass window beside his bed.

  Then came an unexpected stretch of warmer weather, and much of the snow melted off the roads. Andrius took to going for walks in the early afternoon sun, feeling it sing over him. It was as if he had been given new eyes.

  He had vocabulary for the experience now. The sunlight gleamed off of the snowy whiteness. Colors and sight and vibrancy were all named, described, and taken for granted in the books of emptiness. Once there were people like Andrius. Once, people could see.

  And now he was the only one. It was a troubling reality.

  The warm spell held on, and inside Gimdymo Namai it was discussed that perhaps the villagers should return to work and lessons so long as it persisted. Andrius sat in on the meetings between the Regent of Brick and the Regent of Stone as they debated. They did not know that Andrius was there. They did not “touch four walls.” He could see and they could not.

  Returning to work and to lessons was dismissed from consideration, but a village gathering was agreed upon. The break in oppressive weather would allow the ill-prepared to resupply, gather the villagers for moral support, and for the collective honoring of Zydrunas. Andrius knew about these developments before he was sought out and told. He already had a course of action stirring in his mind.

  “Andrius! Andrius!”

  With a start, Andrius closed the book on his lap, turned off the light—the protrusion and its false suns—and headed up the stairs to where Solveiga was calling his name. He realized, suddenly, that she had been calling his name for a while, but his mind had been somewhere else.

  “Andrius! Where are you?”

  �
�I’m right here,” he replied, pulling the heavy door shut behind him. He locked it as he always did.

  “Today is the first day—”

  “I know,” Andrius cut her off as he hurried by. “Lessons start again today, and they’ll be first thing in the morning again. I’m probably almost late.”

  “Age-group lessons are over already.” Solveiga did not like being interrupted. “Your lessons, which you teach, start very soon. Hurry.”

  Andrius paled.

  “I missed lessons?”

  “You are the Prophet’s own. You cannot miss your own lessons on the new sense, however. It was arranged by the Prophet specifically for you. Now go.”

  Andrius didn’t need to be told again. He burst out from behind the heavy double doors of Gimdymo Namai and into the fragile, newborn spring. Birds sang psalms of thanks for the clear weather, and Andrius ran down the road, clutching his ornately carved pitcher to his chest as he ran, the water splashing up onto his chin and neck.

  “Will people still remember me?” he wondered aloud, between gasps. “It’s been months.”

  His question was answered when he arrived at the field where hundreds of villagers had assembled, chatting patiently as they waited for him to arrive. The story of his blizzard rescue had spread.

  “Oh, good.” Andrius breathed a sigh of relief. He had been worried that no one was going to show up.

  “Andrius? Is that you?”

  He turned, and there she was, beautiful as ever.

  “Hi, Milda.”

  She smiled as she felt her way forward, stumbling a little now and then until she reached him. She gripped him by the elbows, then leaned up and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  “It has been a thoroughly exasperating winter. Thank you for making sure I’d get to feel the spring. I would have died in that storm.”

  “Is that him?” someone asked nearby.

  “It’s the Prophet’s own!”

  “He’s here!”

  Andrius felt a fluttering in his stomach, mostly from the kiss but also from the throngs of people around, cheering for him. They had their eyes peeled wide open, showing off milky, clouded, dead orbs that could not see.