by M J Porter
“Where were these people based? I came across a farm where everyone had perished. They had left a script detailing their names. I should still have it. I meant to leave it with Rankil but forgot in my desire to get away from him. Not many rotations ago I would have known who everyone was. Since Rankil, and the ‘incident’ with my father, we haven’t tended to mix much”. Erann stopped and slung his backpack from his shoulders. He opened it and rifled around inside but did not find the note. In confusion he looked to Sereh and then he remembered that in all likelihood he had left it inside the building when leaving it so abruptly. He repacked his backpack and returned it to his shoulders.
“Sorry, I must have left it behind on the table. I didn’t mean to. I believe they were called the Sweinssons. Were they your friends?”
“Yes, they were. Was it you I have to thank for trying to see to the death rites?” Her voice wobbled as she spoke. Again, she had asked an awkward question for he had not been responsible. In the circumstances he decided it was better to admit that he had.
“Yes, I did. It was a most distressing sight. When you say trying, what do you mean? ” His voice faltered. He realised that he had not only failed to ensure that the fire be restarted before he left but he had left half eaten and half burned bodies littering the farm for Sereh to see, and they had been her friends. Guilt rushed through him. He had been traumatised by what he saw and he was merely a stranger. He was amazed at Sereh’s composure.
Sereh looked straight at Erann and tried but failed to keep the tears out of her voice and out of her eyes,
“The fire did not catch properly and there was a wolf attack. They must have come and tried to feed while the fire was burning. Some of the wolves perished in the attack and I had to restart the fire. I made sure that it caught fully before I left. Even the animal shed went up in flames.” Her voice quieted as she spoke, and staring off into the distance as she walked she recounted in an tired voice,
“Estrith and I grew up together. We were both only children and it was easier during the Long Night to spend time with each other than be on our own with our parents. We used to take it in turns to spend each Long Day with our families but each Long Night with each other’s. Luckily for her she was away from my family’s home when my parents died, otherwise she would probably have ended up with me as Rankil’s virtual prisoner. She kept in touch with me, always coming to see me at the Council. She couldn’t get her own family or her husband’s family to intervene with Rankil for me, but she tried”, Sereh said shrugging her shoulders in resignation, “No one else did”.
Erann wasn’t sure who Sereh’s comment was aimed at and as they walked onto Vatna Jokull his thoughts were distracted by the strangest thing he had ever seen. In front of him, as far as the eye could see, was a giant opaque purple wall. It shimmered and swirled in the opalescent rays from the sun. This time his loud gasp of surprise did startle Sereh, especially as he also stopped, dead, in his tracks. He could only imagine the look on his face as Sereh glanced at him in confusion, tears still falling down her face as she recounted her past and he paid no attention to her words. Her voice trailed off as she looked at him in confusion.
The wall seemed to cover the entire glacier. He had never seen it before, not even on his journey to Rankil when he had stumbled over the glacier by chance. He wondered where it had come from. He stepped forwards to touch it and as he did blue sparks leapt from its surface and floated off into the clear sky. He watched them fade away in wonder and turned back to the wall.
Sereh was still staring at him, Arrow by her side, as Erann feebly pointed towards it. She followed where his finger pointed and Erann anticipated her looking back at him, her face a mirror of his. Instead she turned back with a quizzical look on her face. He was driven to say,
“What, have you seen this before?”
She looked at him blankly before speaking,
“Seen what? Vatna Jokull, of course I have, I walked across here when I was escaping from Rankil, and it’s where I found you.”
“No, not the glacier, the purple thing, the thing all around Vatna Jokull.” His voice barely contained his frustration at her stating the obvious. Her head flicked back quickly and he could see her scowling at the view in front of him. Arrow started to whine.
“What are you talking about Erann?” Her response was as frustrated as his had been to hers.
He was astonished,
“Can’t you see it? Seriously, can’t you see it? It’s huge. It stretches from here”, and Erann touched where the wall started with his hand, sending a further trail of blue sparks into the still day, “all the way across Vatna Jokull, at least that’s what it looks like from here”. His voice held wonder and suppressed excitement.
Sereh turned and peered at Vatna Jokull but again she turned back to him perplexed,
“Are you sure your okay Erann? What you’ve just seen was really, really stressful and I imagine you haven’t eaten properly for days, what with you leaving your backpack with me, and I know only too well the awful food served by Rankil”.
Erann was dumbfounded. Sereh had moved forward to stand with him and was literally standing in the middle of the wall sending up a steady stream of blue sparks and yet she was totally unaware of it. He stepped bodily through the wall, noticing the pale purple it pulsed when he entered it and the stream of sparks which floated away, and turned to look at it from the other side. From this side he could not see anything. He stepped back to stand by Sereh and realised that the entire thing was no longer visible. Thoroughly unnerved Erann again took a step forward through the now invisible wall. He felt nothing and could see nothing. He reached his hand back up to where the wall had been mere moments ago in confusion.
Sereh was looking really concerned now and Erann realised he needed to forcibly pull himself together or she’d have him pegged with snow blindness for sure. With visible effort he looked at Sereh and shrugged his shoulders,
“Maybe it has been a more intense day than I thought. Come on, we need to get as far away from here as possible”.
He strode forward purposefully, knowing that Sereh and Arrow would follow. He was quiet as he walked thinking about the things he thought he had seen. What was happening to him, because in his heart, he knew he had just seen a mythical golden dragon with huge whirling green eyes, and a huge shimmering, purple shield that covered the whole of Vatna Jokull.
The Librarian
He had turned aside from his copying task. He had been right after all. The time was now. All the endless waiting and years of near inactivity were about to come to an end. In his blue tinged library he looked around him at the near endless array of scripts which had all been neatly written, and then copied by his own hand, to preserve them. Some of the original scripts yet remained. Most had perished in the inhospitable conditions that ravaged the land. As air tight and water tight as his library was, there had still been occasions over the years when damage had occurred which could not be repaired. In all that time he had never left to seek more suitable accommodation. His place was here, as it would continue to be.
For the first time in many years he picked up one of the yellow glowing candles which lit his room, and turned aside from his desk to ascend the steep steps dug into the black granite of his basement home. His knees cracked as he lifted his legs and he felt a dull ache at the base of his spine. He should have kept in better condition. He clutched the hand rail with his free hand, and used it to pull himself up the ten steps. At the top he paused to regain his breath before pushing on the heavy wooden door which groaned under his hands. He smiled to himself bitterly. He had never oiled the door. It allowed him to know when others entered his domain.
The door opened onto a long corridor which stretched away endlessly in both directions. He turned right, and walked along the wooden floor, his feet making quiet shushing noises with each step. It was warmer up here. Not that it was cold in his basement, rather here was the heat from the huge fire in the kitchen combined with th
e tantalising smells from the kitchen. But he had not come for the heat or the food. He had come to see for himself.
The candle flame shifted slightly in the breeze which flowed through the corridor but did not gutter. It was still night outside. He had forgotten the time of day when planning his journey. It did not matter. What he came to see would be obvious regardless of the time of day.
He shuffled past closed doors which retained the heat of a series of rooms and finally made his way to the main door to the building. He would have preferred to simply peer through one of the open shutters but had realised that all the shutters were still tightly in place, serving to hold in even more heat. That could have been all the confirmation he needed but instead he decided to seek the sight for himself.
The main door finally came into sight. It was even more elaborate than his own door which sealed him within his basement. It was carved from a bronzed wood and gleamed under the light from the candle. The door bars were luckily not in place and he easily swung the door towards him. His candle instantly gutted and he cursed to himself. He would need to walk back in the dark now.
Luckily the thickly lying snow outside shone silver in the light from the stars and he was able to clearly see its staggering extent. It was all the confirmation he needed, and shivering from the sudden cold, he reclosed the door and retraced his footsteps back to his Library. He had seen all that was needed.
Speaker
He walked through the cavernous cave, dark apart from ithe faint green illumination which seemed to pulse from within the dull black rocks of its construction. His eyes feasted again on the vivid images projected onto the inky surface as he watched them swirl from one bright impression of his kind to another.
He loved it here. He could clearly remember the first time he’d visited the archive. He had been astounded by the sights before him and even more amazed that his brothers and sister had not been as equally dumbstruck as he had been.
He had been sent here to be tested that day. To see if he would live up to his genetic inheritance and if he would be able to fulfill the position that his eyes had predisposed him to. He was glad that he had passed the test and been gifted with the opportunity to visit the archive whenever he wished. The only others of his kind who could visit had to obtain special permission from the Speaker and they were never allowed to see the extent of the treasures which could be displayed.
That said, not that many of his kind were overly interested in the Archives. They lived their lives knowing that the Speaker was ensconed wihin the Archives and that everything he did was for the good of his kind. Yet there were always the odd one or two whose curiosity could not be quenched by the stories given to them as children. They were the ones to whom the Archive was a glittering expanse of knowledge just waiting to be discovered. But they were restricted from stepping more than a few body lengths inside the archive and when they did visit, he had watched the images they were allowed to see. None of them were even a half as informative as those which he saw and he did not doubt that when he became Speaker himself, even more views would be made available to him.
One day his special skills would force him to live away from his home and he would have to dwell within this huge cave complex, alone. The thought did not upset him anymore. As an adolescent he had worried and wondered how he would survive without his parents care. Luckily, he had not been called to his position during those few difficult years and as much as he wanted to see more and expand his knowledge, he did not fret impatiently for the day when the entire Archive would be completely open to him. He had years and years ahead of him and although he did not wish to become Speaker only to sicken and die of old age, neither did he wish to be the youngest Speaker of his kind, ever.
He was not allowed to meet the current Speaker. Not until the time of the Speaker’s death would they be allowed to meet. For now he had the occasional use of some of the Speaker’s servants and they provided him with intermittent images from the Speaker. There was never anything substantial to the visions, only ever a concern for his well-being and his health.
The servants were a strange race. He knew them only as the Others. He had never seen their like before. They were so different from his own kind and so small. They scurried around on their two legs, busily maintaining the secretive home of the Speaker and seeing to his needs. He was always treated with courtesy when he came to wallow in the deep, warm pools which lay invitingly under the flickering images and likewise he treated them with the curtesy due the representatives of the Speaker but he oftentimes found himself wondering about them. How had they come to be here? Why were they servants to the Speaker? Why did the stories he had seen on the walls show him so many more of the Others? Why was their existence such a closely guarded secret from the rest of his kind?
He liked to lie back in the heated pools and stare at the shifting images above his head which showed him stories of his kinds past. The soft trickling of the water as it dripped through the series of gradated pools often caused him to sleep whilst he bathed. Sometimes when his eyes were closed he understood things he had seen which had previously made no sense to him. Sometimes he was convinced that he could understand the whispers of the Others even though it was impossible. They used speech. His kind spoke mind to mind.
He was sure that of late he had followed the softly lit winding passages to the Archives more frequently than previously. He was becoming increasingly irritated by his brothers and sister and sought to gain some time alone from them. As the oldest he had always been the one to play with them and make up games and stories for them but now he found the activity tiresome and simply craved the peace and quiet so that he could think his own thoughts. Much of what he considered revolved around the obvious secrets contained within the Archives of which even his family had no knowledge.
He entered the deepest pool of the five individual pools and lay back, letting the heat still his mind following his brother’s latest annoying prank. He cleared his mind and instead focused on the image directly above his head of his kind, arrayed in all their bright colours. Before them stood a party of the Others. They looked dour and tiny compared to his ancestors. There clothes were muted colours and their faces looked tiny and pinched, and if he was honest with himself, afraid. He did not know the story behind the images. He would not know such important details until he was the Speaker himself. Still, he could admire the blindingly bright colours and the view of what his home must look like outside the caves they were all constrained within.
Unbidden his eyes closed as he finally relaxed for the first time all day. Mere moments passed before he felt a loud grumbling all around him. He did not panic or rise from the pool. It was simply the earth talking. It was common in the caves his kind lived within. However on this occasion he was shocked by the force of the shudders which stirred the water of his pool to such a height that it went completely over his head. He had to shake his head to clear the water from his green eyes which snapped open in startled surprise. He felt a loud crash and looked instinctively out towards the heart of the cave system with alarm.
He felt a low moan close by and the level of the water shuddered around him again. He turned back and examined ths surface of his pool. There was a hollow in the deep water as if something had fallen in. His prominent green eyes were not good at looking at through water and so it took him some time to realise that there was something resting at the bottom of the pool. He was unsure what it was but as soon as the rocking and shaking sensation ended he swam swiftly over to the area of the pool where the object had fallen.
Instantly he realised that it was one of the Others. He had thought he was alone in the room. He reached down with his huge front claws and pulled the tiny creature up so that it was clear of the water; he doubted that it could survive under water for long. His kind certainly couldn’t. As he held the Other clear of the water he noticed it’s face looked oddly shaped and was covered in streaming red fluid. He wondered what it was, holding the light, unresponsive
body within his glinting claws.
At that moment, another Other ran into the pooled area. It stopped abruptly, watching him with an unfathomable expression on its face. He gently lifted the creature onto the black surface by the side of the pool. The Other instantly coughed and the dry Other made as if to run towards it, stopping well short and away from him when it remembered that he was there. He saw something in the eyes of the Other which he instinctively felt showed fear and made him immediately back away from the wet and coughing Other he had deposited on the side.
As soon as he was away from the wet Other the other one ran forward and picked it up awkwardly and carried it away. The Other was muttering something incoherent to itself and unbidden an image entered his mind, of the current Speaker trapped and motionless under a huge jagged piece of rock which had fallen when the cave shook. It was instantly replaced with an image of himself lifting the body clear of the water. He shook his head to clear the visions but they instantly worried him.
As the Others stumbled away towards wherever they lived, he jumped from the invitingly warm pool and landed on the smooth surface adjacent. He cooled instantly to his normal body temperature which was a slightly unpleasant feeling. Normally he worked his way through the slightly cooler pools before leaving the Archives.
He shuffled forward, holding his dripping tail high above the ground and went into the tunnel that led from the pools to the home of the Speaker. He had never been through it before. It was exclusively for the use of the Speaker. The tunnel was long and dark, illuminated only by the same dim green glow that lit the area of the Archives which was open to him. He was unsure of the exact distance of the unel and was surprised by itssudden ending as it suddenly opened into another huge cave which was surrounded by more images of his kind.The huge space was lit by a massive piece of jade stone which dominated the centre of the cave, casting light into the deepest recesses of the massive space. By it he could see what he feared. The current Speaker was lying trapped under a huge slab of rock which had sheered straight off the roof during the tremor. The dead Speaker’s eyes were wide open and staring, and in their slowly dimming brightness he could see his own dripping wet image reflected.