The Pulse

by A. E. Shaw

  “Maybe he’s gone back. But he didn’t want to before. I don’t know. Would he, on his own?”

  Alej shrugs. “He never seemed to do anything but read.”

  Selina hops up, face creasing in a grimace as she straightens, biting back a groan of discomfort. She slides her feet into her filthy silk-topped, leather-soled shoes and pads her way to the door. She peers out cautiously, as if there might be monsters. “Maybe he went to search for something.”

  “But…what?”

  “I don’t know, Alej. I hope he’s not hurt, or distressed. He was so quiet last night. Did you notice?”

  That’s like asking a stone what it thinks of the rain.

  “He seemed himself,” is all Alej can reply.

  “You didn’t think he was different at all?” And then she catches her persistent tone with something more inquisitive. “Is he always like that with you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s always so kind to me. He talks so much. But he didn’t ask me anything. I should have told him before but it didn’t seem right, I didn’t think I was allowed to talk of my past, and I never asked him about his. Do you think it might be that?” She steps out onto grass wet with mist and dew and ignores the seeping cold at her feet.

  “Aiden! Aiden?”

  Alej sits alone on the bed. His is not to wonder why. He just does, and has done, and tries to listen when listening appears to be required. This was all he did last night, and if Aiden was quiet, well, when there are three in the room, surely it is still only the case that one can talk at a time, and Selina seemed to talk for a very long time.

  Pulling the door back shut behind her as she returns, Selina is shaking her head. “I can’t see anything of him. I can’t see any footprints. There would be footprints, wouldn’t there?”

  Would there be footprints? Alej doesn’t appreciate the sheer amount of questions he cannot answer. No-one has ever treated him this way before. Questions about what might be and what people might do are for Aiden. Even with Aiden gone, that doesn’t mean that they should automatically be asked of him instead.

  The way Alej thinks of things so objectively, so separately, what Selina says as being distinct from who Selina is, is symptomatic of his life in comparative isolation. Where Aiden has been built up, lean with ideas and grand thoughts, so Alej was built across, sideways, firm, strong foundations upon which dependability was built.

  “Where can he have gone? Down?”

  Alej shrugs again. Stop it, he wants to say, but doesn’t. “Why would he go alone?” He is frustrated. Aiden spoilt something that seemed good and well and right by doing something neither of them understand. “I don’t understand what it is I should do,” he continues, and then catches himself. “What it is we should do.”

  They pace the area. They call out. Selina worries Aiden’s collapsed somewhere. She begins to fear the fire damaged him more than they’d thought: perhaps he was overcome by fever and confusion in the night. They search, for a time and then for longer. There is nothing. No sign.

  The sun is high in the sky. As they search, they grasp handfuls of the wet grass and suck at it, finding it tastes sweet but does little to quell hunger.

  Selina is concerned Someone might have found Aiden out here. The quiet of the mountainside is the most threatening thing about it.

  They agree, eventually, there’s nothing more they can do for Aiden. He’s a clever boy, he’ll find a way to do whatever is best. It isn’t their fault (fascinating, that they come so quickly to the concept of blame, and assuage themselves of it) and they can’t help him if they don’t have him. Time to move on.

  They walk, and walk. They are not more than one third of the way down, but they will keep walking all the way. They won’t see Aiden again for so long that they will presume he is gone, lost, to the elements, to himself, or found by the wrong people, people who had not a moment to spare for him, and killed him out of fear, out of ignorance, out of rage…or out of pity.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Sea

  When Aiden awakes, he is refreshed. His body is healing, and he is swathed in warmth and reassurance. For the first time in an age he has an appetite. A raging appetite. He chews at a fern leaf, remembering ferns are poisonous to someone, or something, but supposing he is most unlikely to suffer in the same way as a mere something. After all, he can walk through fire.

  The fern is insufficient. His stomach growls and aches in emptiness. A touch reluctantly, he uncurls himself from his cosy state, stretches his limbs, sore from their contortions, draws in his stomach muscles and feels a shiver run down him, from collarbone to toes. He finds nothing worth eating in immediate reach, and, following instincts first, leaving care and sense to one side, he emerges from his hideout.

  Dawn is in strong evidence. The shades of grey he sees, with the sun not yet risen, are the most comforting yet. Vivid colour and bright surroundings were all very well, but this light is one that he feels he can understand. His skin is so pale as to absorb this light; he looks down at his bare arms, and is convinced that he glows. Feeling aware of this, he veritably prances his way towards the stream.

  It isn’t until he’s slicking his hair back in water so cold it’s ice at the sides that he remembers Alej and Selina, and looks around, more a courtesy, to see if they’re there. They’re not, and he feels confident that they won’t trouble him any longer.

  He strips and washes his clothes; can’t stand their filth any longer. He traps them under rocks, lets them ripple amidst the path of clear running water, rinsing themselves of the fire and the bloody residue of Aiden’s still-seeping wounds. With a little consideration and a brief burst of logic, Aiden teaches himself to take the sand that lines the water’s freezing flow to rub gently against his skin. The weeping and blistered parts of his arms, chest and thighs respond well to careful scrubbing. Dead skin sloughs away, and beneath he feels completely new, rendered fresh and shining.

  He’s transforming. At every single moment he is more and more and more alive, alive, alive. He feels an inch taller, broader, stronger.

  Aiden was taught about the old world, the ways in which his ancestors and their nations lived. In those ‘grandest times’ it seemed Outside was valued highly, that great attention was lavished upon the sun, and the air, and movement. There were tales of people running in circles, fighting in the open air, crowds choosing to watch. He’d thought such sport nonsense, the idea of participating in vast collectives in the Outside ridiculous enough, but even the idea that one might take such a thing as ‘a walk’, that there was a better use of time than spending it with the height human accomplishment, surrounded by fine and beautiful possessions, rich jewellery and glorious illustration, with the writings of generations for comfort, had seemed purest idiocy.

  Imagine, he had thought, Outside having as much to offer as Inside. Imagine it having any point at all. Oh, he thought, how those people of the past placed false treasure in the powers of sun, and of sky. Oh, how they underestimated true wealth: the jewels of the earth, hewn and sculpted and sanded into glittering lumps of perfection.

  This morning, with new breath in his body, he is forced to conclude there may yet have been something he didn’t know, for in this light, Outside appears as bejewelled and astonishing as any ornament on his long-burnt shelves. If there is one thing he did not know, perhaps there are more things he does not know. Although he understood there was a lifetime of information to read, he hadn’t quite grasped he had learning left to do.

  He washes again; even though he’s already clean, he’s not quite done with the sensation of fresh water lapping around his ankles. His feet are blue with cold but he doesn’t care - the numbness is welcome, anyway, for walking and climbing has taken a considerable toll on his already bruised and burnt limbs. Every time he splashes his face, things become a little clearer, a little brighter. How does one ever stop playing in the water? He has never felt so clean. It isn’t so surprising. He never could have been truly
clean, when always surrounded by the same air, the same ash, the damp and endless lack of light.

  The water tastes as good as it feels, runs pure through his insides, collects in his belly like a lining embrace of cold stone.

  “Thank you,” he says out loud, surprised at himself and the words, unsure as to whom he might be addressing.

  The sun looks out further from behind its early clouds, and Aiden swears that the sky moves only for him. He takes his jewels from the pail and washes them too, so careful with each, pressing them, when clean, to the soft skin of his cheek as if they were comforters (which they are, as best as he’s ever known, anyway).

  He rubs his face with the leather he snatched up, then pats it over his body, not so much drying himself, for the leather is quickly soaked through, but reminding himself of its feel, coaxing his skin back into sensation.

  Aiden wonders idly to himself if he could have leather sheets in this new life, once he finds his bed, wherever that might be. Leather sheets seem fitting for this new, more robust version of himself. Aiden assumes that, somewhere out there, a bed is just waiting for him. As it’s all he knows, he believes there’ll be another castle, a place from which he can conduct his perfect leadership of this world.

  Once more, he’s half right.

  He rinses his clothes, wrings them tight and holds them out to the winds, which whip them this way and that but make them cold, rather than dry. Aiden coats himself, more than dresses himself; the way they cling something that would be unpleasant to us, but is new, and therefore interesting to Aiden.

  Jewels safely in leather, self wrapped in wet silk that clings and flaps in the wind, displaying every bone and sinew of Aiden’s slender frame, he is ready. What he’s ready for, he has no idea, but that doesn’t matter, not yet.

  Far, so very far away, the world is gently waking up. Sunlight has spread itself liberally across all the surfaces that show themselves beyond the souplike mists of morning. Aiden thinks it’s nice of the skyline to adjust itself for his entertainment, but he doesn’t care about time, or pace, or how it looks over there. What the world chooses to do between now and his Arrival is utterly inconsequential. When he does arrive, he suspects there will be…parades. Speeches. Festivals. Butlers? Grand displays of appreciation.

  Instead of chasing his shadow straight down the mountain to the ground, Aiden finds himself caught out wondering, this new and agile beast curiosity inferring its own interests upon him, what lies further around this mountain. That there might be anything at all only occurs when he realises that he is looking down with a fresh angle, that today he can see a brown expanse, where last night there was only a grey confusion of edges. So, what will he see if he continues to move around, rather than down? Shouldn’t he survey his kingdom before he enters it proper?

  The idea that there are things where you cannot see them is still taking some time for him to digest, but he’s getting there.

  He travels lightly, gingerly, learning with each step what a foothold looks like, which branches, spiking at random from the earth, will hold fast, which will struggle to take even his slight weight. He discovers pale gold flowers, which match the colour of his skin. They match him so well, he feels certain they’re fit for his consumption (and being the way that he is, he extrapolates that idea to the one that they are only for his consumption). They taste creamy and bitter, but not worrisome, with a texture plenty fit for chewing. They will suffice, he decides, and so they do.

  The sun has risen completely, and, quite some way down and about, Selina and Alej are calling Aiden’s name, but even if he wanted to hear their voices, he wouldn’t be able to. They’re calling into the winds, and Aiden has ears only for the future.

  As he traverses the mountain, so the view shifts. Then again, around, and around once more, and then, then there is a drop. No, an opening. A vast opening.

  He has come to the end of the world.

  There is nothing. Aiden stares and stares, but sees nothing at all. His stomach falls away from him; gravity feels forceful, his knuckles whiten as he clenches tight into the ground, gripping into the only thing he can, earth pushes his fingernails back, his arms and back flexed forceful, holding himself upright with all he can. His breath isn’t coming of its own accord: there’s nothing at all inside him. Everything that ever was and ever has been is ahead of him in this void, this expanse. It is far past his understanding.

  He closes his eyes, tight. Staring has not helped. Perhaps it is a kind of blindness he’s experiencing: too much Outside. And yet, when he opens his eyes again, the emptiness remains. A taunt, a crisis, a wall of blank panic.

  He stares, and stares still. It’s as if he stared into night, that expanse of dark that cloaked everything, but this isn’t night, because the Sun is up there and that is just a fact. And the blindness, it isn’t dark, it isn’t a colour he knows the name of, but it is an infinity of it - grey, yellows, a hidden blue, sweeping, stretching, never moving, expanse forever, stop it, stop it, can’t there be an edge to it? Can’t something contain this? How does it exist? How can this be?

  Aiden stands for more time than he could count, glaring, furious, crazed with lack of understanding. How. Is. This. Possible. Part of him wants to dive into it; he can’t take the emptiness, feels it might be better to die as a part of it rather than to be trapped here forever trying to understand it. This much of anything is too much, is beyond concept, beyond fact, so it isn’t right, how will he ever move again?

  He wishes he could squeeze it, tries, with his hands, blanking half the view, then all of it, then trying to frame it between his fingers, to make it small. But still the blankness never shrinks.

  So he wants to destroy it then. Burn it. Can it be burned? He rocks back and forth, willing the mountain to collapse down beneath him, to fill that nothing.

  He sits, and watches, waits.

  Eventually the scene changes. Or rather, is changed by the light. In time, there comes a shimmer over part of the expanse. Flashes of light. Waves of curling, bowing gleams.

  In still more time, he sees that there is an edge, after all. There is a division between the sky and the water. A final line where the light can’t pass, where the clouds can’t push any further downwards.

  There you go, Aiden. The horizon.

  Finally he looks down, straight down, sees the mountain cut away, becoming steep and sliced here and there into brutally jagged edges. It is fortunate he did not jump, as he so wished he could, for he would certainly have become as cut and scattered as the peaks and spikes below him. And at their feet, at the very base of the mountain, clear this side, where it’s chopped raw, there the light and white lines leap and scatter in a million fragments, rushing back and forth with an agenda all of their own.

  At last, at last. It takes so long. Realisation makes Aiden feel slow and foolish, but even he can confess he wasn’t equipped to deal with this.

  “Hullo,” he says, knowing at last what it is he’s talking to.

  It is the sea.

  Or, perhaps, it is even the ocean. One of the Great Oceans, that swole so deep and huge it swamped the Old World, forced death and destruction and changed the scope of things for ever (and there, with a full stop, is where the most up-to-date of Aiden’s history books has left him: that’s worth remembering for his next chapter).

  It seems that sea is much more than water. Water is contained. This sight is the absence of anything. Just as the sky, as the distance, as perspective was so much to take in, this is, yet again, infinitely more than he had imagined.

  He knows he can’t simply leave this. He wants more of it. The city can wait. Imagine seeing the city before he’d seen this.

  As his eyes grow more accustomed to it all, he can identify the individual waves. The shines and shimmers are their peaks and troughs, their rise and foam. The sea is pulled by the moon, he remembers, so he’s been taught: the moon ploughs the earth as the ox ploughs its pastures.

  The moon has a thousand ropes tied to t
he waters.

  He comes to a flat place, and puts down the pail that’s weighed so heavy in his hand for all this time. He holds out his arm, perspective showing it there over the ocean. Forwards, backwards. Forwards, backwards. He moves in time with the ebb and flow, imagining his arm is strung to the crest of infinite waves. He can control this. What a feeling, what power.

  So, at last, the sky once more begins to dim, and the light shifts and shades itself for the next phase of its own cycle.

  Where to aim for?

  Decisions. It is important to make the right decision here. The ground beneath him is not all the same, as he’d assumed. Where should he go? He only gets one attempt at a grand entrance. (Oh Aiden, you plan away, be happy for now. Your entrance into the real world will be shambolic and humiliating; it’s fortunate you don’t have any idea how much so). And it’s a shame that, now you’ve decided to take your time here, you’ve moved too far forwards. Because you’re teetering on the edge of discovery, and from here, well, it’s all very literally downhill.