The Vorrh tv-1

by B Catling

  ‘I must still find him,’ Cyrena was saying. ‘Whatever he is, wherever he has gone, he has changed my life completely.’

  Ghertrude sighed and let the last crumbs of denial fall to the kitchen floor. ‘He said he was going to the Vorrh,’ she declared. It sounded like a pact.

  * * *

  The Bowman and Paulus were entering fast-running shallows at a place where the land rose up out of the thin water in broken blades of stone, vertical, resolute and overwhelming. They stepped out of the boat into three feet of water, wading the vessel aground on a long shingle beach and letting its weight wallow into the glinting pebbles. The Bowman walked up onto firmer land and looked about him: he had been here before. The gravity of the place spoke of an entwining outside of his memory. He looked around for visual signs, but found none: the place spoke to him through another vein.

  They sat for a while and talked about their separate journeys, before and beyond, in a way that helped them arrive and depart. The Bowman was going inland; the boatman was returning to the mouth of the river. He would collect his self on the way back. Paulus explained that their landing place was the origin of both the river and the forest, and that it was a difficult place to walk; its ruggedness was not made for people, its steep ascents being full of declivities and unpredictable impasses. According to the unknown sources of history, the very name of the Vorrh came from its description.

  They continued to talk for a few hours, letting their experiences waft and disperse until the moment came. It crept in during a pause, announcing itself bodily with the stretching of cramped legs. The bow, quiver and other possessions were unloaded and placed safely away from the water. They rocked the boat gently out of the shallows and into deeper water; Paulus clambered on and punted it further out with the boat-hook, while the Bowman waded back to shore and watched The Leo join the stream, diminishing with its waving captain, beyond the range of sight. As it vanished, a light ripple dazed the air, a rhythmic shudder of ambience. He smiled to himself, realising that it was a farewell from his friend; a short, percussive rift, played on the rim of the boat’s wooden hull as it returned its captain to another world.

  * * *

  Cyrena sat in her favourite room, the one with the wrought-iron balcony outside. She used to spend hours there, over-sensing the city, its aromas and sounds shaping a landscape of poignant, knitted contentment and longing. One of her favourite times was the evening, when the city’s sounds folded down to allow the distant forest its full voice. She loved to feel the exchange, the tides of human and animal sounds passing each other in the growing dominance of night.

  Her sighted friends (and all were) had always said that she had marvellous perception of the world they shared. Over the years, they had learned not to lead their conversations with descriptions of sight. Cyrena had never minded, but she could always sense their embarrassment when they inadvertently referred to appearance, or invited her to look at something; little words that created errors in their shared reality, small slips in perceptual reciprocation.

  High above, the swallows turned into bats, foraging the sky for its shoals of insects. The birds’ tiny, sharp cries were like single stars, calling for a fraction of a second out of a constellation of glittering darkness; they became the stars she had never seen. Her first sightings of the swifts in the bright air had delighted her. Their spinning and darting was faster than anything she could have ever imagined, their spatial acrobatics instantly displacing her previous image of pinprick chirps echoing from a vast distance. At first, it had been a more-than-adequate barter, but over the weeks their sky-weaving had become predictable; dismally, unimaginatively attached to the food chain. Other things in her eyes were also beginning to flatten and become commonplace. The colours of her furnishings had started to pall. They had invigorated her in the beginning, their richness accentuated by their textures, which had once been their greatest appeal. Now they seemed to jump unpredictably, or daze the depth of the room; with sight, things seemed smaller and somehow pinching.

  Perhaps it was the recent meeting that had so depressed her. The Tulp girl had given a little friendship, but it had been a very slight compensation for the greater loss. Her expectations had been single-minded: their reunion that day had been the only option she had considered, she had pictured every detail of the moment. If ‘pictured’ was the right word; in truth, her anticipation had not been shaped by her visual imagination at all. It had been carefully sculpted from touch and sound, his presence bolder in the contours of those memories than anything she had seen since the miracle. Ghertrude’s descriptions had made it worse. How could she accommodate this ugly portrait with the sweeping clarity of the beauty of that night? Her new eyes were bringing more disappointment to her than she could have ever anticipated. They shunted in a continuous torrent of irrelevant detail for her to respond to and process; she feared that the profundity and articulation of her previous world was being frittered away, erased by an endless, low tide of brightness and an infinite shingle of pictures.

  And yet, it must be sacrilege to think such things. Everybody gave such enraptured sermons about ‘the prime sense’ and how wonderful it was that she had gained it – how could she be so ungrateful? How could she secretly long for the uninterrupted, dark containment of the world she had always known as reality? But sight made her lonely, and she had never been that before. The indifference of the world was jarringly apparent, and its knotted, adamant distance had begun to shrink everything she had ever achieved. It dwindled all she understood, and the intimacy where she once dreamt was engulfed by loud and vulgar light which always spoke of the space between things.

  The doubts suddenly ignited an obvious omission in her celebrations. She had shared the miracle with all around her, but she had forgotten one, the only one who really understood her sightless world. The one who had asked her to imagine sight, and had changed her childhood in a way she had never understood. Uncle Eugene. How could she have been so thoughtless? She did not strain at the question, because the answer was a shadow, a sourness; it was her doubt, her anxiety that made her remember him, because those were the tones of his being. He would understand. She would write and try to explain, to describe the bouts of sadness that came from nowhere, and he would advise her, tell her why light felt like treachery.

  The evening light drifted towards her, licking at her little resolve; it tugged at her need but she shook it off and sat down to compose the earnest letter in its sulking wake.

  Many minutes had passed since her moment of insight. As she wrote, a glass vase of fresh flowers billowed between her and the evening outside. The swifts were darting and spinning in the cooling air, their squeaks and dizzying speed calling her. She wanted to go out on to the balcony and listen to them, but the vase and its contents blocked her way. The colours held her at bay, their breath growing violent and unfurled. Plants had held little meaning in her life until now; she had never before understood the insistence of their horrid pressure and omnipresent existence.

  This bunch had been a gift. A well-meant but unnecessary mob of growth and vibrancy, just one of the many visual feasts bestowed on her with an over-generous zeal by friends and strangers eager to celebrate her new sense, her new affinity with their ranks.

  The vase was crowned by a bloated roar of colour. She decided to really look at the uncompromising entities within; she thought her maid had called them peonies, but she could not be sure. They had straight, confident stems which bristled with hairs and spikes, presumably to keep the subtle mouths of beasts, and the nimble beaks of birds, at bay. The leaves were long and pointed, catching every shudder of breeze from the balcony and giving the obstacle a faint animation, a lure just large enough to trap the casual eye into looking. At the end of the stalk gloated the flower. There were two varieties here, scarlet and pink, and they both shared the same salacious contours. Each head was like a bowl of crushed silk, opening out to reveal its dense, heavy layers and display the complex folds of its interior with
a powerful relish. The petals curled and ruffled to catch any saccade and pull it in, so that a maximum density of viewing was folded in on itself. All human sight was sucked towards a central concentration, a habitual, swollen funnel, like the mouth at the centre of an octopus’ beak, demanding to be fed by all its arms. The blooms seemed designed for the eye, matching their own craving to humanity’s visual gluttony; they even mimicked its anatomy, once the external ball was peeled away. A dozen or so of the bright, rumpled orbs moved at a speed concealed from her hectic eyes. Others stirred more positively, picking up the passing breeze, nodding in what seemed like a smug, taciturn agreement among themselves. Their vanity appalled; she could see the strain of opening as they demanded to be seen, the hinge at the base of each petal bending under the pressure, stressing until they fatigued and fell loose, leaving a swollen, pregnant ovary. That was the extent of their purpose: to gush colour and expose the wrinkles of their complexities; to attract admiration and excited insects and perpetuate the fertilisation of its kind.

  The more she looked, the more she saw the extravagant blooms as an insolent, mimicking raid on her eyes and a mocking sham of her womanhood. Their heads nodded in agreement, grinning in a pretence which lay between frailty and obese saturation, and her indignance overflowed. She could have rung the bell and called the maid to take the odious creations away, but that would have been too easy. She clenched her teeth at the thought of being defeated by these wretched weeds that shouted denial at her sensibilities. Then, without plan or agreement, she snapped shut the lids of her perfect eyes, walked forward and picked up the vase; it slopped water onto her dress and all over the floor. She clasped it to her bosom like a troublesome child and walked purposefully across the room to the open door of the balcony, stepping out into the evening air as the peonies slid sideways in their vase, clinging together in an unordered, clammy sheath. At the far end of the balcony, she opened her eyes briefly and looked down into the corner of the enclosed garden. It was deserted. Closing off her vision once again, she lifted the swilling weight up and over the iron balustrade. The immense weight pulled at her joints, almost levering apart the clamped lids of her eyes. Then she let go, and a great gulp rose up from the earth beneath, to meet the vase as it plunged through a long and delicious time before smashing, in glorious, auditory technicolour, on the patio below. She remained there for a long, luxurious moment, arms stretched out, her eyes still shut, looking like an enchanted sleepwalker, smiling triumphantly on the edge of a precipice.

  * * *

  Tsungali was closing. His canoe was loaded with everything he needed: he did not trust this country to sustain him, and he wanted nothing to do with its people. He felt healed and strong, and the paddlings had refreshed him. He could feel the river knot and buckle around the slender boat, its muscle and his balance taut, as one. He could steer it by his chakra alone, turning his hips at its fulcrum, snug below the waterline, only a thin skin between it and his centre.

  The Leo appeared ahead, and he quickly estimated his distance from his target. As the two vessels passed, each man watched the other through slanted eyes, looks that held each other across the sliver of their crossing. Each guessed the other’s identity and the suspicion polished their eyes to steel. They were no more than forty feet apart, and passing fast.

  Tsungali’s Enfield, like the boatman’s shotgun, stayed cocked and flush against its master’s leg, turning with him to secure their continued passage upstream. Only when the men were out of each other’s sight did they turn away and face their own direction. Tsungali’s hackles had been raised, but he was more worried about the birds. They had watched him in silence throughout his journey, whistling and squawking and fluttering their colours before he arrived, and then falling quiet, hunched and watching, small beak whirrs and clicks flinting their treacherous eyes. It was affected, unnatural, and he sensed an omen or a spell buried in their intentions that chilled him.

  By dusk, he reached the place where the self must be given; he felt it being tugged loose in the tranquillity. He pulled the boat ashore, not wanting to travel in the dark with the dizzying sensation as his companion, and made a simple camp, deciding not to eat or sleep, but to stay alert and face anything that may want to shave or dissect him with hungry guile. He tied amulets over his ears and plugged his nose with scrolls; he put a yellow pin through his tongue and, below the waist, he hung sealants against entry. Last of all, after he had looked around and placed his back against a sturdy rock, he covered his eyes with sight amulets that locked all out and allowed him to see into other worlds. With Uculipsa on one side and a short, engraved spear on the other, he was ready for anything that dared to approach.

  The Erstwhile watched on, dismayed by the imposter’s barbarous arrogance. His disconnection of self, for such a short time, was a small price to pay for entrance to these sacred lands and they stayed afar, wanting no contact with the trespassing stranger. If they could have hoped, then it would have been for beasts to devour him, or for lesser men to emerge and gnaw on his godless, selfish bones. But morning found him safe and intact and, when the first warmth touched his face, he peeled his protections away, pushed the canoe back into the water and headed upstream, his stomach growling until breakfast.

  * * *

  Rumours tend to spread like ripples, circular waves moving out from a point of incident. In cities, they stop for a moment when they reach the outer walls, especially when the city in question is circular. Against those arcs of fact and protection, they are questioned, the hard litmus of stone, straw and lime interrogating their origin and validity, in the same way as those who camp outside, dreaming of entrance and stability, are made to prove their origins. If the story stands, it is filtered to the outside world in muted or fragmented form.

  When the miracle of the carnival reached the dispossessed and the injured who sulked in the shadow of the walls, a great stench of hope rose up, its heat cooking the story and causing a bubbling at the gates. That was when they started to arrive at Cyrena’s home. Not having the nerve to knock at the lofty door, they loitered outside her garden walls, hoping for a sight, if sight was in them, of the blessed lady, believing that proximity might affect their damaged condition, that radiance might mend.

  Chalky and his sister had found their way there hand in hand, begging their path to the ivy-covered wall. They carried white sticks, but, unlike those that Cyrena had so recently burnt, theirs had been cut each year from the forest and painted white by their father. Chalky’s eyes had been taken by flies when he was a child. They had crawled over him from the moment he’d left the womb, suckering and sweeping his sweaty skin, before leaving their eggs buried in his pupils at the age of three. It was not a rare occurrence in the village where he was born, but outside, on the road to the city, it prompted pity from passing travellers, and a slight income appeared in his father’s life.

  Exactly how his sister had gone blind was unknown. It had been sudden, having taken place in the middle of the night; all she remembered was the pain and the feeling that she was being held down, tangled in her gripping, sleeping sheet. Since then they had travelled the viable road together, bringing in an even larger revenue for the insatiable old man. The picture of them hand in hand, foraging by the busy track, would melt the hearts of travellers and prise open their usually reluctant purses. Their father did not know they were here; he assumed they were stopping the traffic outside the city with their tragic appearance, not in it, standing at the door of miracle.

  The story they had heard told of a grand lady who invited blind people to her home during carnival. The house had been bursting with them; the rattle and tap of their sticks could be heard outside, like the beaks of storks sounding from the rooftops. Perhaps she might make an exception outside of carnival time for two so young and needy?

  They arrived to find others lurking below the wall, sense depleted and seeking supernatural intervention in their grubby, alienated lives. Chalky, filled with the courage of lost hope, tapped gentl
y on the garden door. His approach was answered by a deafening explosion of glass, as if some terrible, angry weapon of water and crystal had erupted on the other side of the wall. His sister clutched his hand and they staggered quickly from the scene, in fear of such a reply, or of being blamed for the calamity that had just so violently transpired. Most of the crowd ran with them, leaving only a few behind to watch the sudden exodus in surprise. They were the deaf ones.

  * * *

  Dusk and the benediction of shadow were coming back, but not for the Erstwhile, who had become too old. When the sun went away, they creaked and cracked, crawling on the forest floor and hanging sloth-like from the trees. There was no cave or simple dwelling for them. They did not have the pleasures of men, or the ability to make and change what was around them. They had each forgotten their purpose and the details of their design, how they had come to roam the ancient wood. But they all had longing, and it was attached to the actions of humans.

  Their lightweight skeletons of spun coral and honey had absorbed the densities of water and time; now, heavier than bone, they filled their sluggish bodies with despair. Where feathers and light might once have been, there now grew vines and rough, scarred bark. Some had assumed coverings of fur or scales to keep their endless life forces protected.

  Their unions with women had occurred thousands of years earlier, the resonant orgasm bleaching their voices and their sense of direction. Those that had mated were the ones that had been left behind with Adam, and with those that had been called the Watchers. Now derelict, their purpose and their application had washed away to rumour and ache. They roamed, pilfered and scratched a life in utter, total substance. Their ambition was to become invisible, to waste away into mist and breeze. But that too had been lost. Their given task was to protect the tree of knowledge, and so they remained in the forest, slowly becoming a forgotten part of it.