Dreams and Legends

by Spadaro, Jason

  Fidget felt resentful. How had this become his responsibility? "Why?"

  "Because. You know what happened."

  Fidget scratched his head, and looked up. "No. That's not good enough."

  The shadow slipped off of Fidget's arm, and onto Gobble Dawn. It woke, bolting straight up. "What?"

  "It's not going to work," mumbled Fidget. He couldn't hear what was said, but had an idea.

  "Yes, I understand," said Gobble Dawn. "I see." It gently pushed Bone Teeth, waking him in a more dignified manner than it or Fidget had experienced. Bone Teeth was groggy.

  "What do you want, Gobble Dawn?"

  "The next phase of the prophecy is beginning. The exodus of the shadows." Bone Teeth's eyes lit up, with a little surprise. "So soon."

  Gobble Dawn gestured at the darkness on the sleeve of his robe. "The first one has contacted me." Bone Teeth shook his head in acknowledgement. "We must move faster."

  "Yes," replied Gobble Dawn.

  Fidget stood up. "What? What's going on?"

  "The prophecy is progressing. We need to move faster."

  Fidget looked back down at the fiberoptic end he was working with. "I thought that it was supposed to be some form of migration? One shadow is not a migration."

  "He's merely the first. Soon, all the victims of the furnaces will follow."

  "And?"

  Bone Teeth jumped in, "Where we are will be shrouded in darkness. It will spread, in the remorse of the lost."

  "Yes," said Gobble Dawn. "We need to resolve this. The Assistant Engineer needs these specifications."

  They picked up their things, and started to walk. Fidget protested a little, but understood he was following them, and not the other way around. That could change.

  They pushed on, and the shadow rode on Gobble Dawn's shoulder. They already had been tired, though, and despite the renewed urgency they decided they had to rest when they reached the T. They set their packs down, and looked down the right and left branches. Both seemed identical, but the Foreman had been specific; they should only go down the left tunnel.

  Fidget was tired of this. He suspected that anything down the right tunnel would be as protected from the burning as Gobble Dawn and Bone Teeth, and less driven by duty. When he was sure they'd fallen asleep, he started walking away from their camp.

  The right tunnel continued for miles, and the walls became rougher, less defined the farther he went. Soon he was forced to form his own camp, and settled in for a rest.

  When Gobble Dawn and Bone Teeth awoke, they noticed two things gone. The first was the shadow that had been riding on Gobble Dawn's arm. The second was Fidget.

  "Check your robe! Do you still have the specifications?" Bone Teeth was screaming, and it echoed in the hall.

  Gobble Dawn rushed to check it's robe's pockets. The specifications, in their locked book, were still where it'd placed them. "Yes. Should we go looking for him?" It had a feeling that it knew the answer.

  "No," said Bone Teeth. "The Chief Engineer take him. He didn't wake us, and we don't have time. I hope he doesn't cause trouble."

  Gobble Dawn chuckled. "How much more trouble could he cause?"

  Bone Teeth considered this, and grunted. "We should get moving."

  "Indeed."

  Bone Teeth began crawling down the left most tunnel, and Gobble Dawn followed. Its muted head looked behind them, though, wondering what had befallen Fidget.

  ~ ~ ~

  Fidget awoke, and began to regret having left Bone Teeth and Gobble Dawn. It wasn't immediate. The regret came as he continued to walk down the right tunnel way. Its condition deteriorated. What had once been even more ornate than the finished tunnels they'd passed through fell into a worse and worse condition.

  Ornate mosaics had clearly covered the walls at one time. Tiles had fallen off and disappeared, though. The grout between the tiles had turned a foul brown. The colors that must have at one time been vibrant were now dulled. The patches missing tiles now just had the grooved remains of the cement that had been used to hold the colored plates of ceramic to in place.

  He stopped and stood at a section that seemed less deteriorated than the others. An old man and a woman were depicted, sitting on a hill. It was surrounded by flowers. You could just see their faces. Another figured labored at the bottom of the image, a younger man digging with a shovel into the side of the hill they sat on.

  He wasn't sure what the image meant, or even truly depicted. He'd never seen a field of flowers. It was exquisite workmanship, though. He looked down the hallway ahead of him, and cursed.

  "Those filthy cogs."

  "Am I included in that?" The voice came from his ear. He looked down at this arm and recognized the shadow.

  "Yes. Why are you here?"

  "Being burned alive makes you a bit weary about the status quo."

  "I suppose it would," said Fidget. "If I get eaten alive down here, you can't really do much, though."

  "Not really. I may be able to yell at whoever ate you."

  Fidget's shoulder's slumped. "I supposed that will have to do." He started walking down the tunnel again. He couldn't go back to the furnaces. The more he walked, the more he felt certain he'd be turned to fuel if he was by himself. He couldn't really catch up to Bone Teeth and Gobble Dawn at this point either. He was committed.

  Another hour's walk, and they came to a great stone arch. It had a large wooden door. Fidget knocked, an no one answered. They stood there a few minutes, then the shadow's voice spoke up.

  "Open it."

  "That's how people die. I don't want to die."

  "It's really not so bad."

  "You died in a very specific way. There's no guarantees about what will happen if I open this door."

  "True, but I have a suspicion that it won't end up too different."

  "Maybe. But you don't know that."

  "What's the alternative?"

  Fidget sighed, and opened the door. It opened to a hallway with an abrupt left and right.

  "See? That wasn't so bad."

  Fidget sneered a little, in no direction in particular. "Not yet."

  They began walking down the hall. It forked, once, then forked again. They took the left, then the right. It didn't take long for them to realize that they'd entered a labyrinth. They were wandering blind.

  "This was a great idea, Shadow."

  ~ ~ ~

  Gobble Dawn and Bone Teeth walked the hallway, until they came to a massive spiral stairwell. Bone Teeth tried to climb them, but they were too deteriorated for him to crawl up. Looking up, Gobble Dawn saw them spiraling into darkness, an indeterminate distance above.

  "I think this is where we must part ways, friend."

  Bone Teeth strained, trying to climb, then slid roughly down to the first few steps. "But what about the Lady? What about my mission?"

  "I'm sure she will see that you've done well. The attempt would slow us down, even if you could climb. This is for the best."

  Bone Teeth lay on the floor, resigned that this was as far as he was going to be able to go. "I see."

  Gobble Dawn patted Bone Teeth on the back, and began his ascent. The stairs continued high up towards the ceiling. Gobble Dawn walked until it had to rest, sleeping on the landings that occurred periodically along the way. At the center of the stairwell was a large open space. Laying on its bed roll, it conjectured the space could have been used for lowering down equipment and materials from above, but it was all conjecture. It could not see any pulley components, or guides for ropes and platforms.

  That night, while looking at the space in between the steps, Gobble Dawn's mind drifted to the Assistant Engineer. It looked at the specifications, and wondered what it was actually going to return to the Lady with. Would it return with volumes of diagrams and intricate guides? Maybe just a few short instructions?

  Everything could just be broken. There may not be a way of fixing any of it.

  The thought sent a chill down Gobble Dawn's split spine.


  Gobble Dawn's mute head just whispered, "You know, we've been here before." Its other head disregarded the comment, and tried to go to sleep.

  ~ ~ ~

  Fidget navigated the maze, with Shadow riding along. They passed more murals, and what at one time may have been traps and mechanical components. The peril was gone though; time had long ago condemned the machinery to disrepair and failure. Pressure plates would only partially depress. Noises of releasing springs and dull lever actions could be heard in the walls, but nothing worked. Maintenance had ceased to happen, or never happened, and now safeguards were broken.

  He turned a corner, and entered a room, dimly lit. Filled with rags and decay, he was surprised by the figure in the robe. She motioned, with a quiet, "Come sit by the fire with me." There was no fire, only ashes where a fire must have been, long, long ago.

  Fidget walked over and cautiously sat down on the floor across from the hooded figure. He looked down at the dirt on the floor. It looked like it'd been undisturbed for a long time. This whole place seemed to be either trapped in stasis or succumbing to decay.

  Nervously, he tried to re-attach fiber optic cable to his skin.

  "Isn't it warm?" she asked. Whoever she was, her voice was ancient. It worked its way to Fidget's ears in slow cracks and pops.

  Fidget looked up at the figure. "Who are you? Do you know the way out of this forsaken place?"

  "I am Helena. This place was designed to keep me here. The system of tunnels outside keeps me trapped. Make me a known quantity."

  This made sense to Fidget, but it did not make him feel any better. It meant he was no further to a solution than he had been before. "Most of what's keeping you here is falling apart. I was hoping you'd know a path out."

  A long pause, then one word. "Entropy."

  Still not helpful, Fidget thought.

  "Do you know... Frederick? Troy?"

  Fidget looked down at his fiber optic cable again. "No... should I?"

  "Troy made all of this. The traps, the caverns beyond, it all. It was probably Troy that put me here. Damn it, Troy."

  ~ ~ ~

  Gobble Dawn reached the top of the stairwell, and came to a long, wide hall. It walked along the passage, looking in doors as it came across them. They were mostly dusty storage rooms, the waypoints for things of a forgotten age. Piles of boxes and canisters stood stacked in anticipation of some future that never happened. One box was filled with bolts. Another contained electrical cable. Some of the rooms were like closets, while others were cavernous warehouses.

  They all were ultimately attached to this single hall, about fifty feet wide, and twenty feet tall. At the top of the spiral staircase there had been all the expected pieces of a form of industrial elevator for lowering them down to the level below. Gobble Dawn knelt down in the hall, after leaving a room filled with different forms of manufactured glass, and wiped away some dust from a groove in the floor. Beneath the loose antiquity it saw a metal track. A little more digging and it found a second rail running parallel from the first. They were spaced about five feet apart, and centered in the hall.

  Following the rails down the hall further, Gobble Dawn started to come across workshops. From simple benches and screwdrivers, to large ineffable pieces of equipment whose purpose could no longer be fathomed. It kept walking.

  Finally, it came across a door with a small metal plate. Across the plate, in simple text, there were two words engraved: "Assistant Engineer".

  ~ ~ ~

  The Assistant Engineer's office was not what Gobble Dawn would have anticipated. It was orderly, but cluttered, with organizational system upon system layered on top of each other. There was a method, there were many methods, but they all seemed to become piles and piles of thoughts that did not coalesce, as much as take up more space. The office epitomized this.

  "What can I do for you?" The assistant engineer was unassuming. He had the look of someone who had once labored, but had grown out of it. With time, the toil moved from the body to the mind.

  "I have been sent," Gobble Dawn's vocal head said, "with specifications. The Rose has died, and the Lady in Scarlet sent me to the Foreman. He provided me with the specifications. I believe he requires a solution."

  "Troubling, troubling indeed." The Assistant Engineer reached across his desk and took the small book that had been given to Gobble Dawn by the Foreman, and thumbed through it. After a few minutes, presumably looking over the notes, he clapped his hands together. "Troubling, but not insurmountable. It will take me several days to work through this. Would you like dinner first?"

  Gobble Dawn was suddenly aware of the hunger that had been growing in its stomach. "Certainly, sir."

  "Excellent!" The Assistant Engineer walked over to a large bay to one side of the room. "If you'll excuse me, it's been a long time since I had any visitors." He punched several commands into a panel, and a table materialized in the bay. A few more commands, and chairs, a chicken dinner, and two glasses of wine appeared. "Come join me."

  Gobble Dawn sat at one of the chairs, across from the Assistant Engineer, and looked at his plate. He did not know what to make of the food that was on it.

  ~ ~ ~

  Shadow clung to the old woman, a dark spot across her shoulder. Shadow felt an affinity to her, a strange kinship with her presence since they'd sat down in dirty room at the edge of the labyrinth. She'd been surprised at first when he'd spoken to her, but only for a moment. The whispers of of the dead did not seem as alien to her as to most.

  They were finding their way out. Fidget moved ahead, trying to divine which tunnel ways were good and which were bad. The path of truth, or another lie constructed, by whomever had originally designed the maze.

  He'd taken to it, though. It was not, he thought, unlike the fiber optic's flow of information, in and out, across and over, and through. The cables were not aesthetic. Every time one of the glowing lines that fed in and out of his body became detached he'd lose a portion of himself. A small portion, but noticeable nonetheless. If he reconnected it correctly, in the correct port, his thoughts flowed smooth and orderly. When it was disconnected, or connected incorrectly, they became disorganized, with odd surges and waves of entropy. It was very uncomfortable.

  Working blind, he intuited the passage ways. Would this way lead to droning feedback? Maybe it would cause searing build up of thought and the senses.

  And as Fidget dowsed the way out, slowly learning the maze through the analogy of his own wiring, Helena and Shadow followed. They whispered back and forth, trying not to distract their guide.

  "How long have you really been here?"

  "I have no reference for time," she said.

  "What is that like?"

  "It isn't like... anything?"

  "Why were you left here to begin with?"

  "That was... it... jealousy. It was a long time ago."

  "How do you know? You don't have a reference for how much time has passed."

  "I know." Even though it was just a whisper, there was a harshness in her voice. Shadow decided to drop the topic.

  They continued to wander, sometimes doubling back, down the dimly lit halls. Most of the traps no longer worked, but they came to a deep pit, stretching across the hall.

  Fidget looked into the dark hole in the floor. "I don't know."

  Helena spoke up, "Shadow says he can go across, and check the other side."

  "I think that may be the only option."

  The dark spot on Helena's shoulder slid down her side slowly, and across the floor. It reached the edge of the pit and slowly disappeared. Helena looked over at Fidget. Her eyes were intense.

  "You need to bring me to Frederick."

  Fidget felt unsure. He didn't even know who Frederick was. He could feel the uncertainty slide onto his face.

  "You need to do this for me."

  "Okay." Her eyes. They shot through him. He hoped agreeing would put her gaze at ease.

  Eventually Shadow returned, sliding up to He
lena's shoulder. "Shadow says it's collapsed further down. We'll have to double back."

  Fidget sighed, and they started back the way they came. He regretted not marking where they'd been. It would be several days before they arrived at the spiral staircase.

  ~ ~ ~

  The Assistant Engineer was still working. It was a hard problem.

  Gobble Dawn sat by, observing the designs and prototypes that the designer materialized in the chamber they'd eaten in when it'd first arrived. "Damn limits," the Assistant would mumble, and try something new. A rose, or a thing like a rose, would materialize. Gobble Dawn would watch him measure and analyze the creation, then he would shake his head and it would dematerialize.