For his solitary birthday supper in Bari, Mario ate the final pizza marinara of his Italian trip. He also drank three bottles of red wine.
In the middle of the night, he wandered once again to the seashore and shouted obscenities at it, as if he could injure it.
The anger felt good. He couldn’t remember ever feeling angry before. He should get drunk more often. Maybe that was all he needed to loosen up those emotions.
No . . . he’d gotten drunk before, and all it did was make him sleepy. No . . . there was something about the sea here. Something that stirred him.
Cursing and crying, not really knowing why he was doing it, he took off his clothes and once more submerged himself in the sea.
He felt something clammy wrap itself around his wrist. Underwater, he opened his eyes; he immediately recognized that glow.
For twenty-five years, Mario endured this recurring dream:
He is five years old. He falls into the water. Everything is dark. Clammy fingers make contact with his chest. Suddenly, there’s a shimmering light. It’s a monster, touching him, glowing with a sickly green phosphorescence. The monster is only slightly bigger than he is. It has three eyes, and they protrude from its forehead at the tips of antenna-like appendages. Its mouth wriggles like a handful of worms. It has six short limbs attached to its crooked, lumpy body. From each limb erupts a nest of weedy fingers. Its skin looks like layers of bloody and mouldy rags. Where the monster’s fingers make contact with Mario’s flesh, prickly, needle-like shoots insert themselves under the boy’s skin. He senses something essential drain from him, leaking into the monster. Then there’s a sharp pain as he hits his head.
And he wakes up. Screaming.
The adult Mario struggled free. As soon as contact between himself and the monster was severed, the glow faded.
Mario surfaced briefly to fill his lungs, then plunged back and swung his hands in wide circles. He wouldn’t — couldn’t — let the monster disappear. He had to make contact. Communicate, somehow. He needed to understand.
There was a faint blip of light as the back of his hand brushed against something.
The monster.
Mario’s hand closed on a bunch of the monster’s fingers, and the creature became visible once more. It was about the size of a medium-large dog.
Mario felt that familiar, horrible pinprick sensation where his skin touched the monster’s fingers. That sensation of being drained returned.
No! Not again.
He wasn’t a helpless little boy anymore.
Mario punched the monster’s face. It had only minimal effect. Then, still holding on to its fingers, he yanked the beast toward him and hit it on both sides of the head at once.
The pinprick sensation retreated.
Mario swam to shore, dragging the monster, and bashed it against one of the big stones.
Goo seeped from its fractured body. But still it wriggled.
Mario grabbed a loose rock and struck the monster with it until his arm ached too much for him to continue, long after the beast stopped betraying any sign of life.
What was this thing, this creature? He’d been hoping for some kind of contact. Maybe a sort of telepathic communion that would reveal all. What a ridiculous notion.
He would never know.
But he wanted back what it had stolen from him.
He could only think of one solution. Communication had failed, but what about communion? Rationally, it seemed unlikely to work. Yet, it felt right.
He tore a strip of meat from the monster’s cadaver. It ripped easily. He was surprised by the tangy sweetness of the monster’s flesh.
The innards, though, proved to be quite bitter.
Mario nearly missed his train. He jumped onto the closest car, and immediately the doors closed and the train started moving. He’d barely located his car and settled into his seat when the train made its first stop, at Giovinazzo.
His heart jumped when he saw her board.
She checked her ticket, and, sure enough, she was seated in front of him again.
She sat down, nodded at him with a brief smile, and took out her iPod.
He leaned over and touched her hand to prevent her from putting on the headphones. Catching her eye, he said, “Per favore?” and asked her name. Hungrily, his fingertips prickled where they met her flesh.
THE DARKNESS AT THE HEART OF THE WORLD
As the boy Coro emerges from the Godpool, he sees the tears on his mother’s face. She’s staring at his right leg, which, more than ever, resembles a discoloured, misshapen branch. Two young acolytes help him step out of the holy water. This has been the most painful of his many submersions.
There are five acolytes in the cavern, deep inside the flat Earth. Their bodies pulse with Godlight, covered in the holy tattoos of the Green Blue and Brown God: twin green serpents coiling up around their legs, fangs biting into the flesh of their buttocks. From the waist up, their skins are densely decorated with stars, suns, and moons of various shapes, all in the colours of the God.
The pool of holy water lies in the middle of the cavern, radiating the Godcolours. The walls are streaked with pulsing veins of the same three colours. The room smells of sex, the humid air intensifying the heady musk.
The eldest acolyte says, “Even the God cannot help his body heal itself completely.”
“Put him in the water again” — his mother’s voice, pleading.
Coro yells, “No! Not again! Never again! It’s useless. And it hurts. It hurts so much.”
The old acolyte runs her hand through Coro’s hair, and he flinches at her touch. “Don’t worry. We won’t submerge you again.”
Turning to Coro’s mother, she continues, “Your son would only suffer. It’s never an easy process, and he is too weak to withstand another healing. He’s been immersed in the Godpool too often in too short a period already.”
Coro knows the Godwater is essentially dangerous. The prayers of the acolytes help guide it toward the desired results, otherwise both body and mind could be altered or damaged in unpredictable ways. Every village has a handful of now-misshapen fools who had unwisely engaged in unmediated contact with the God. Like old Urst, headless, with mouths on the palms of his hands. Or Caralla, who whispers to plants in a language no-one else understands and is otherwise oblivious to anyone around her.
And even the acolytes can’t guarantee the desired results, as the pain in his gnarled leg reminds him. The Moon rises from the bottomless pit at the centre of the world and blots out the light of the Sun. For a brief moment, from a perch on a mountain ledge, Coro the lame espies stars in the firmament, but quickly, blanketing the night sky, hordes of nightmares spew from that same abyss in which the Moon rests daily: the domain of their master, Yamesh-Lot.
Instantly, the strident battle cry of the Shifpan-Shap thunders from the sky. The warriors of the Green Blue and Brown God have come out of the fabled city of Shifpan-Ur — as they do every night — their luxuriant wings carrying them to battle against Yamesh-Lot’s nightmare minions.
Wielding their fireswords and their Godmaces, the Shifpan-Shap hold the nightmares back, keeping the world safe from the would-be invaders, those wraithlike nightmares who would otherwise slip down to Earth and infiltrate the dreams of the people of the Green Blue and Brown God.
Sparks of fire and Godlight flare up in the sky as the Shifpan-Shap strike at the nightmares. Coro cheers at the dark wraiths’ anguished shrieks.
Eventually the Moon begins to smoulder, and it retreats back into the pit before the Sun’s fire can consume it. The remaining nightmares flee from the newly revealed light and scurry back to the realm of their master.
Coro watches the Shifpan-Shap as they head back to the great city of Shifpan-Ur, admiring their powerful grace, envious of the awesome wings that allow them to fly. Once again the sound of their voices booms from the sky; this time it is their cry of victory. Coro tries to imitate it, but his voice is unequal to the task.
As
far back as Coro can remember, all he’s ever wanted was to feel his feet leave the ground. He dreams of soaring alongside his heroes, the glorious Shifpan-Shap. He yearns to have wings of his own, to battle at their side against the nightmares who hide the stars and who threaten to invade the dreams of mortals.
In the sky, his gimp leg would not matter.
He is old enough to take care of himself now. He knows he is nothing but a burden to his mother. Without a word to anyone, he decides to set out on his own, to finally fulfill his dreams.
Shielding his eyes from the reborn sunlight, Coro limps down the other side of the mountain, away from his home and toward his ultimate goal: faraway Shifpan-Ur, where he will ask the Shifpan-Shap to give him wings of his own, to teach him the art of flying.
Only a few days out, and Coro’s belly grumbles. He’s been foraging, picking berries, unearthing grubs. But it’s not enough.
Tonight, he approaches a cultivated field. He salivates at the thought of lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes.
In the sky above, the nightly struggle rages on.
The field appears unguarded, so he ventures into it. He picks a slightly unripe tomato and bites into it; its juice runs down his neck and chest.
A dog barks.
Coro runs. But his gnarled leg slows him down. He finds an old tree thick with branches and leaves to hide in. Coro climbs it rapidly before the dog’s jaws can snap at him.
The dog snarls at him from the base of the tree.
Coro stays in the tree for an entire night and day, before he climbs down and resumes his journey.
From now on, he will stay away from tended fields.
Coro the lame is no longer a young man; he is not old, not yet, but his youth is behind him. It is a long trek to Shifpan-Ur, longer than he had anticipated; but the desire to reach the fabled city of the God’s warriors has overwhelmed his life. So on he goes, swimming across rivers, climbing mountains, walking through deserts — heading in the same direction as do the Shifpan-Shap at the conclusion of their nightly battles against Yamesh-Lot’s demonic nightmares.
Coro was born with a twisted leg. As a boy, he tried to rise into the sky with every step, paying no heed to the ground underfoot. He jumped from cliffs, flapping his arms. Or he climbed atop whatever he could, trying to levitate into the sky by force of will. But he always failed. Always fell and hurt himself. Many called him a fool because of his frequent injuries, so he kept his dreams of flight to himself, not wanting to add fuel to the taunts.
With every fresh injury, his mother dragged him down through the tunnels, to the acolytes, but the Godpool’s waters never fully mended his infirmity.
On his seemingly endless journey — the horizon still betrays no hint of Shifpan-Ur — he avoids all company, detouring around any settlement or village or city, so that his thoughts never stray from his goal.
His leg hurts. But it always does, and always has.
One morning, for the first time, Coro, now a mature man nearing old age, sees the Shifpan-Shap descend at the end their journey back to Shifpan-Ur. He cannot see the city itself — not yet — but he rejoices at the first evidence that his destination is attainable.
He briefly wishes he could share his newfound joy, but he has not spoken to anyone since leaving the village of his birth, and he cannot remember the last time he even saw a settlement of any kind. But it was long, long ago.
He walks on, with renewed vigour.
Coro, now an old man, finally reaches Shifpan-Ur, and he despairs. Coro can barely grasp the glorious city’s dimensions. The city lies atop a high mesa with sheer, unscalable sides. Even if he weren’t lame, Coro could never hope to reach even the foot of the wall. Right and left, the mesa stretches out nearly into infinity before it subtly curves back on itself. The impregnably tall city walls are decorated with giant, intricately detailed carvings of legendary Shifpan-Sho warriors of past ages. These high reliefs glow with Godlight.
For one hundred days and nights, Coro wails at the foot of the great mesa. When, in the splendour of the reborn sunlight, the Shifpan-Shap return from their nightly war, he yells to them, yearning to be noticed, but even if his meek voice could carry so high as to reach the ears of the God’s mighty warriors it would be drowned out by their cries of victory and by the deafening flurry of their wings flapping against the wind.
Coro dries his tears and refuses to give up. He gets up and resumes walking, following the nearly imperceptible curve of the cliff’s base. There must be a door, or stairs, or an opening of some kind, somewhere. The whole city can’t be walled off like this. It must not be.
Coro loses track of the number of days and nights. Both the mesa and the great city of Shifpan-Ur atop it remain unbreachable. As Coro keeps limping along in a circle around the city of his dreams, despair steadily gnaws at the remains of his aspirations, until eventually only despair is left. Until he turns away from Shifpan-Ur.
This is not a conscious act. Coro is no longer capable of such. His mind is now blank as he wanders across the endless landscape of the flat Earth, without hope or purpose.
Coro’s parched, leathery skin is taut against his aged and brittle bones. The hair has long vanished from his sunburnt scalp. He has not used his voice since that last morning, long ago, when he cried out in vain for the Shifpan-Shap to take heed of him. If he takes nourishment or refreshment, it is only because his body compels him to. Conscious thought is a habit he has discarded, along with the last vestiges of his hopes and dreams, when he wandered away from the foot of the inaccessible city of Shifpan-Ur.
Coro takes a step, and, as it did so often in his youth, his foot fails to find purchase. He falls — into Godwater. He sinks until he is completely submerged. His mind refuses to acknowledge the pain that comes with the transformations provoked by the Godwater.
Automatically, still mindless, he swims. He reaches the farther shore and emerges onto dry land. He stands up and holds still; his mind stirs as, stunned, he takes notice of his new body. As the Sun dries the Godwater from his skin, he marvels at his youthful, muscular frame. He is now taller by more than a head, his strong limbs easily twice their previous girth, including his crippled leg, fully restored to health. To better than health.
Dry, and imbued with a newfound serenity, Coro looks to the sky as he boldly, buoyantly, takes a step forward. And another. He has taken only a handful of steps when his foot fails to land on anything solid — or anything at all.
Coro falls into darkness. And falls. And falls — until he lands on a soft surface. It yields subtly under his weight, but its touch chills him.
He cannot see anything. Something slithers on his cheek, and thin tendrils penetrate his ears, his mouth, his nose. Godlight explodes around his head, and the tendrils tear themselves away from his orifices. He is dropped — by whatever it was that was holding him — and he thuds onto a dusty surface. He wonders why he is not hurt, and then he recalls his new body.
He is assailed by whispers buzzing in his ears. As the whispers fill up his mind, his own thoughts and memories are gradually crowded out.
Slowly, his eyes adjust — or, rather, learn to see differently. There are dark shapes radiating a black luminosity, an anti-light, darker by far than a mere absence of light. These radiating shapes, such as the whispering, skittish wraiths besetting him, contrast with the inert matter of the pit’s walls and various outcroppings, allowing him to distinguish his surroundings.
Coro, confused yet calm, gets up and walks, surprising himself with the purposefulness of his gait. The whispers are guiding him, wordlessly teaching him to understand what he sees.
Gigantic dark tendrils slither menacingly throughout this strange area, all seeming to emanate from the same source, a source that Coro cannot fully fathom or perceive. But the whispers soothe his fears.
Coro moves on.
He reaches an enormous globe, resting on an earthen cupule. The Moon.
He sees human shapes, their eyes glowing darkly, labourin
g on its surface. Many of them are missing a limb or two. They smell of decay, and bone shows through their rotting flesh. Some of these reanimated corpses dig enormous holes, leading into the bowels of the Moon. Others climb down into those holes, then emerge from them, bringing forth a dark substance.
One of the slithering tendrils surges toward the Moon and gathers dark matter from a number of workers. It also grabs one of the workers. Coro hears bone shatter as the tendril crushes together the dark Moon matter and the remains of the worker.
Coro wobbles as the wraiths leave his side. They circle the tendril that has enwrapped the dark matter of the Moon and the worker. The tendril molds itself in the shape of a funnel, and they are sucked in.
The tendril flattens so tightly that it almost folds upon itself; sparks of dark anti-light explode from the pressure.
Coro reflexively shields his eyes, but he quickly resumes watching.
The tendril approaches, unfolding in front of him, presenting him with a sword, a darkly luminescent weapon nearly as long as he is tall. Coro picks it up. The hilt burns his flesh and fuses with the bones of his hand. The pain makes him want to scream, but the weapon whispers to him and he is comforted by its now familiar voices.
He cannot make out their words, but he grasps what the nightmares embedded in the moonsword are telling him: he must plunge his weapon into the body of a slumbering mortal, so that the nightmares may flow from the sword and into the land of dreams forevermore, to claim it for their master, Yamesh-Lot.
The Moon rises. Coro watches it make its way up through the dark pit until it vanishes from his sight.
For a time, nothing happens. And then there’s a flurry of movement, as all the other wraiths whoosh up from the pit, following the Moon.
Yamesh-Lot wraps one of his tendrils around Coro, enfolding his arms and the sword.
Coro is dizzied by the speed with which he is carried upward. In no time they breach the mouth of the pit. Surrounding the dark abyss is a moat of Godwater — the body of water into which he had fallen before entering Yamesh-Lot’s domain; its sparkling luminescence forces him to momentarily close his eyes.
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