When Darkness Begins

by Tina O’Hailey

  Aithagg rebuked himself as he stopped at the large river. The water was overflowing its banks. The ice north of him was melting. The rivers were continuing to swell with it. He was glad his cave was high up a mountainside at a false valley. The valley itself would probably flood in the next hundred moons. He hoped the tribes in main-time would be unaffected. Aithagg assumed they would be. The floods would recede mostly by the time the tribes he fed on in main-time took root. The receding waters would leave a false bottom of sediment on the valley floor making the climb to his cave a shorter one. He hoped it would not make his home easier to find. He liked the stillness there. The nothingness. No one had ever been there. Given his ability to see through all of time, he would have been able to see if someone had been there, or so he thought.

  He dealt with the river by shifting back in time to an ice age where the river was non-existent. The temperatures were freezing, but it did not bother Aithagg. He crossed and then re-entered his frozen-time and continued forward.

  What might have happened so his previous self did not save her? Surely there were a thousand ways to move her away from the approaching whiteness. Simply move the stones he had placed to help her through time so she was away from the impact zone. Appear to her in the woods when she rested and tell her to not go into the whiteness.

  What if she did not step into the whiteness?

  Then she would not sync with him in time and place. The whiteness would not push her with its magnificent, powerful impact through time.

  It had not. It had merely—

  —crushed her.

  Aithagg knelt on the ground as the impact of the memories from his other self, his previous self, caught up and embedded in his brain. Being in his frozen-time the mud did not interact with him. The snake, frozen in its path as it slithered across the swamp, did not heed him. The tusked boar who might have considered giving a go at this potentially tasty though-unappetizing-smelling morsel did not move. The sky above Aithagg stayed frozen in its full moon. Forever midnight.

  As the new memories flooded his brain, he saw what he had tried to do, hundreds of times and failed each time. Every single time—

  —she entered the whiteness of the crashing meteor, reached for his hand, and the meteor crushed her.

  —stayed outside the whiteness and reached for him screaming, but the impact consumed her, anyway.

  —rushed forward and hugged him, full awareness in her eyes she would not sync with him. She whispered something he did not hear. Then she was gone.

  —she pushed him away, stoic and mournful, a grim and tight smile on her face as the fire from heaven rained down on them, pushing him into his time and ending hers.

  Over and over a hundred deaths of her filled his mind until his eyes bled. He sobbed.

  Eventually his previous self, near death, turned towards the journey and barely made it to the cave. Now it caught up with Aithagg. He fell flat on the ground in agony—a hundred deaths replaying in his mind.

  There was no passage of the moon or temperature change in his frozen-time to tell him how long he wept upon the ground. The tears dried. He ignored them. Did it matter how long he lay here? Did time matter anymore now that he was not a part of it? Aithagg brushed the tears, which had pooled and not fallen, from his eyes. Things reacted differently here in his frozen-time. Moved slower, had less weight, fell slowly.

  He picked up a river-smoothed rock from the swampy ground and threw it. It skipped through time and landed hundreds of winters in the past. Curious he threw another stone it skipped hundreds of winters into the future, though still many winters from main-time. Sitting cross-legged on the damp ground Aithagg, like a small child, tossed stones through time and thought of nothing. The curiosity sated him and he tried not to think of Catha.

  Eventually his thoughts turned to her and he knew he would have to try once again now that he was stronger. Perhaps he could shield her? All they had gone through to get her to the ritual site it seemed like such a waste to have it be in vain.

  He walked on. In the deafening silence, he missed the sound of birds.

  ***

  As he neared the site, he saw the trails of everyone through the multiple times as they had left the whiteness and synced into their own time. He did not see that before.

  One image of Eterili coming and going shown brightly. Only the last trip of hers was visible as if this was her frozen-time. It made little sense to him.

  Aithagg approached this whiteness again and dared to look at the ghost images of himself and Catha. All the time changes were not visible to him. He saw only the last occurrence, where she had refused to enter the circle with him and did not hold his hand. She stood there, stiff, resigned to her fate and smiled sweetly. His previous self had a look of defeat.

  Aithagg suddenly recalled it completely. After a hundred tries, each death of hers more devastating than the last, it had become too much. They both remembered the iterations. Their memory of time did not reset; they kept each timeline in their minds. Catha had died over a hundred times. She had endured for him to try to break through. Now she stood outside the circle, resigned to her fate, unwilling to try another time. He stood still, defeated, and accepted her decision. She had whispered something; he hadn’t been able to hear it.

  Aithagg, in his frozen-time, stood close and synced in with the moment so he might hear her, 70,000 years before his frozen time.

  “Last one there,” she whispered.

  The ball of white became hotter, it thrummed, and as it hit—

  —previous Aithagg looked at her and then noticed someone standing next to her: himself. He smiled then disappeared as the whiteness pushed him into his time.

  —now Aithagg put his arms around her in a reflexive, protective stance. He did not even think about what he did. He wrapped his arms around her pulling her weight to him. She had always been so warm. Her warmth touched his chest and he held her tightly. The whiteness pushed at them both and—

  ***

  The universe was hot, white, nothingness. It was a place devoid of sound, temperature, sensation—only the vast whiteness endured. Aithagg cast no shadow as he knelt on the solid ground. He dug his hands into the ground, scraping grit under his fingernails.

  Numb. Alone. He could not recall what had just occurred.

  He had pulled her to him. Her warmth. The whiteness engulfed all.

  He stood slowly, unsurprised to see Eterili.

  Before she uttered a word, he lashed at her with accusations, “Why is this place?”

  She did not answer. Only a cracked smile pitted her filthy, blood-streaked face: a macabre, black-toothed grin.

  “Nothing can change here. Why?” he shouted. His voice sounded hollow, the flat echo-less of it did not match the rage he wished to convey.

  Eterili came closer and Aithagg took a step backwards. She stopped in her tracks and held out her hands. Rings of vertebrae, many with small bits of hide still attached, adorned her fingers.

  She spoke, “Young one, you have an old soul.”

  Aithagg crossed his arms and waited for Eterili to say more. He did not care if he was being disrespectful.

  Eterili smiled and stepped closer, slowly.

  Aithagg stood his ground.

  She caressed his cheek with the back of her hand, a lover’s caress. The mottled fur from the vertebrae rings was coarse on his skin. He stood unflinching. The broken veins in her eyes looked like pulsing roots. A jagged rip marred the oblong dark pupil. Years of blood and filth matted and cracked on her skin. Her black teeth were jagged and broken into points, all of them, not just her fangs. He was surprised to see she had two rows of teeth. Dark. Jagged. He imagined green mold
on them, the death of eons. The anklet of fangs jangling about her leg was less frightful in comparison.

  “I am Eterili.” Her breath was of rotten corpses. “The Watcher of Souls.” She licked her cracked and bleeding lips with a fat tongue. “I am the beginning. The end. The Alpha. The Omega.”

  Aithagg stood still, his hands clenched his crossed arms. His chin dipped slightly, the only indicator he wished to retreat at least from the smell of her.

  She continued, “I am the mother and father of Vechey. After traveling here and sleeping under the ice, I called to the Vechey from the ends of the earth. They came here. I found this place and brought—” She cradled his chin in her open palm. “—bring the Vechey here. I send them to their time to carry out their duty. To watch time.”

  She tilted his head, exposing his neck. Fear jolted through his veins. He held still despite it.

  “As you get older, you will learn more about our ways, the ways of time, the ways of the universe,” she added.

  Aithagg interrupted, “Why do you only leave one trail of your latest coming and goings to this place? I can see all of my travels to the ritual site.”

  She smiled even larger and Aithagg regretted being able to see further into the gaping, double-toothed maw of death. He flinched slightly, pulling his chin back to cover his neck.

  “It would be too much for you to understand now.” She patted his chest and took a step back from him.

  Aithagg hid his relief.

  “The force of this meteor pushes you to sync into your time.” She held her hand out and looked out at the whiteness surrounding them. “Me.” She touched her fur covered chest. “I sync not into a time but into a universe and all of its time.” She slumped slightly as if was exhausting to explain herself. “Though I choose this shape, it is not my only one. I move here—there. In this form—in that, to make this universe what I require.”

  She advanced on him again with such strength he took a step back and uncrossed his arms, holding them up in a defensive gesture. “Do you think I am so foolish to not see you try to save her over and over and over again? Like a stupid squirrel caught in a snare.” She spat on the ground, a moldy red splatter. “Here you are again, synced and still trying.” She went to beat on his chest and he batted her hand away.

  “The whiteness,” she sneered, “is an entanglement of time. Anything that occurs in it can not be changed.” For emphasis she added again, “It. Can. Not. Be. Changed.”

  They stood face-to-face, noses nearly touching while she waited for his response.

  Realization hit Aithagg. He crumpled to his knees and hung his head.

  The whiteness seemed to brighten around them. It crept into his closed eyelids, seeped into his ears, and coated his bones.

  Eterili placed a hand on the back of his head and croaked, “It is the way in my universe.”

  Then darkness began.

  24 RAGE AND LOSS

  His limbs were as heavy as the planet. His feet as heavy as the universe. He opened his eyes and saw only blackness. Was this an eternal darkness? Opposite of the whiteness he had stood in with Eterili. He waited.

  Nothing moved. He listened to silence. Having fed fairly recently, he listened for his own heartbeat. It was there, faint, but steady.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  Thump.

  He did not believe himself to be dead. He tried to move again. Whatever held his arms immobile gave way. He shifted and jerked with all of his might until one arm freed. There was a slight temperature change on his hand. Not much.

  He was buried.

  His hand now birthed into the open air.

  Aithagg held his hand still, testing to see if pain would follow, if he was in daylight. He did not think so. Was it his frozen-time? He must not have been asleep, merely in a stasis of some sort. Had he slept, he would have shifted through time and collided with all of this dirt. Though he supposed so long as he did not wake during his slipping through time, it did not matter. He would be the last one there and his being would overtake what had existed in that place at that time. The fear was waking up embedded in a stone wall, or a tree, etc.

  He jerked and wiggled more until his other hand came to his face. Aithagg nearly hit himself when his hand broke through the dirt around his face into the small air pocket his limited breathing had caused. He continued pushing his hand up in front of his forehead toward where the other hand existed at the top of the soil. The work was slow. Dirt filled in the pocket in front of his nose and eyes but a new pocket opened up around his arm and hand as it dug upwards.

  Aithagg rested. His body pulling energy from the soil. He must be in his cave then. This was his synced place—the only place where his body pulled energy. With renewed vigor he worked to swim his feet in the earth, causing the loose soil to open up beneath him slightly. The soil was not packed solid. The weight of the dirt on him was as heavy as his soul.

  His actions were unchangeable.

  He focused on his lower legs and wiggled them from side to side, using his toes to grab purchase on anything and “swim” upwards, while he moved his arms back and forth to loosen the earth.

  She had died a hundred times under the meteor and he was unable change a single death.

  Now he began twisting his torso. Aithagg was an earthworm churning the cold, dark soil.

  The last time, the 101st to be exact, the meteor had not caused the last death at all.

  His second hand cleared the soil and found the open air. It was his frozen-time; it had to be. It must be his cave. Eterili must have pushed him here. She was more powerful than he had ever imagined.

  The whiteness had taunted him and he did not know its meaning. The whiteness made all in its path unalterable, unchanging. She had stepped back, after dying one hundred times and said goodbye.

  Overcome with sadness he had stepped forward as his synced, transformed-self and held her in his arms. The warmth of her on his chest was like a flickering candle’s flame.

  Aithagg frantically wiggling, throwing his body back-and-forth. The ground about him loosen.

  He had held her, the warmth on his chest. The hot-whiteness from the meteor in their faces, causing them to shield their eyes.

  With his hands he scooped at the dirt above him and moved his arms in arcs, pushing the dirt away from where his head should emerge from the soil.

  Did he imagine she had looked up at him? She had turned her head into his chest to shield her eyes and looked up at him.

  Dirt slid back into the divot, it ran across the backs of his hands. He flung hands full of dirt further. He supposed the dirt flew through time and landed about the cave floor.

  Aithagg had looked down at her and the meteor pushed at him. He realized, a moment too late, it was pushing him to his frozen-time. With his arms wrapped around her, she would come with him. In unison, their eyes showed recognition of what was to happen next. What the reality of her hybrid-ness would do.

  His hand touched his own forehead and scratched it as he dug. He twisted his head side to side to loosen the dirt more and flung handfuls out.

  Aithagg and Catha had synced into his frozen-time together. She did not sync completely. Her Vechey traits were not enough.

  His eyebrows unearthed. He kept digging and twisting.

  In an instant, she dissipated in his arms. For a moment she was there, then she fell apart in a shower of small blue sparks like so many fireflies. Then his hands were empty. He had torn her into his synced time and she had blown apart into nothingness.

  Dirt clung to his eyelashes. He blinked them away. In his cave. In his time. Here. Alone. He ceased his thrashing.


  She had been in his arms and then she fragmented through his fingers. He would never keep it from happening. The timeline event locked and would never come undone.

  Aithagg thrashed in the dirt and swore at the darkness until his railings weakened and stopped.

  His fingertips touched something on the dirt above his head. He gently probed, afraid of knocking the object into the hole where his head and shoulders were exhumed. His careful blind investigation found two objects on the ground in front of his tomb. He clasped them in his hands, not even needing to see them to know their shapes, and wept tears of blood in the darkness.

  ***

  He thought of himself as Yindi now. Why? How had he come to be inside this host? A Linear. He knew that much. Yindi yearned for the freedom he had tasted before. He had been floating, free, becoming one with the universe and then pushed, forced, trapped inside this Linear. He beat at the host’s head with its own hands and gouged the flesh from the cheeks in bloody ribbons.