Lightmaker

by Kevin Elliott

  Caliper and Mitch followed Terelian down the vast staircase, and the elder crept forward while staring at the floor. The carousel stretched both ways to form a hundred-foot-wide passage embracing the arena’s core. To the right, stacks of cartwheels teetered beside a giant human skeleton forged from rusting iron bars, and beside the outer wall a full-size dinghy with a dusty red sail perched on four wooden rollers. Patches of light glowed in the arched ceiling to drizzle a ruddy glow over the hall.

  Footprints snaked between piles of debris where broken gardening tools mixed with shattered pots and carved models of running dogs, and the paths vanished into dusk as the carousel’s curved hallway swept to each side. Huge alcoves studded the walls like smoothed-over doors. Model birds dangled from the ceiling to dot the gloom with metallic blue splotches, and stained tapestries hung beside them to twist in unfelt breezes. Movement to his left – had that statue of a young woman twisted his way?

  Terelian stopped and scanned the ceiling before leading them between cases, and glass crunched underfoot to spray out a reek of camphor. They passed displays of intricate model boats carved from dark brown wood, but Terelian showed them scars where priests had ripped away labels and plaques.

  ‘Priests, always frightened of stories, always coming with chisel and hammer to destroy. We’ve hidden many of the labels and stories that lived here, and if the church has truly lost power, we’ll restore these tales.’

  The elder padded over a twisted path and stopped before sniffing the air. Terelian edged closer to a statue twice his height: a man swaddled in white cloth with a mirror-like ball for a head. The elder bowed a fraction before turning aside.

  Further on, a plinth held a miniature liss tree. Another unfelt wind rattled its leaves, and Caliper saw through the trunk the same way he saw through Christina’s body. Mitch stepped onto the plinth and wafted his hand through a branch. The whole image collapsed into a blizzard of glowing dots before knitting back into the original tree.

  Terelian gasped. ‘Boy, rein in your curiosity: I have no desire to pluck your remains from my toga.’

  New glass cases appeared, larger versions with metal rims. One held a model house on stilts with golden foil wrapping its lower half. A tiny ladder had been fastened to a leg, and the upper half was a chaotic scramble of grey facets surrounding two tiny windows. A glassless case held a revolving ball covered in deep-blue paint with green and brown blotches. Mitch rubbed the ball but yelped as a sharp crack ripped through the air, and the sphere kept turning.

  Terelian turned to Caliper. ‘Does he ever listen?’

  ‘He might one day. Mitch, stow your hands for now,’ Caliper said. ‘Where did these exhibits come from?’

  ‘Everywhere: nearby, the ocean coast and forests, even the Outland – the glass mountains made a treasure vault and a thousand years of portering.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Almost twenty years.’

  Mitch’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You enjoy Morzenthal’s food?’

  ‘With sufficient practice, one develops a taste, and there are techniques for eating safely. I would provide instruction, but one suspects time is lacking.’ The elder stopped and held up his right hand. ‘What can you hear?’

  ‘Nothing, not yet,’ Caliper said.

  ‘The years have dulled my hearing, so keep listening. Any high-pitched chirping means we must stay still and silent – even your boy.’

  ‘Oh, he’s not mine.’

  The thicket of cases ended; a swathe of grey carpeted floor stretched ahead.

  ‘Here’s your item; well, two items.’

  Two bronze statues stood past the carpet: a naked, muscular man stood to gaze at his outstretched hand, and his fingers almost touched another statue, hovering ten feet above the carpet.

  ‘Are there wires?’

  Terelian grinned and shook his head.

  Each man was Christina’s size. Caliper stood underneath the flying man, and half expected the metal to crush him, but only a faint quivering showed in the smooth bronze.

  ‘There’s a stepladder, so try touching the flying man.’

  Caliper climbed and stretched his fingers upward, but the statue slid up and away. Mitch whistled.

  ‘You mentioned blue lights,’ Caliper said.

  ‘You’re standing in them.’

  Tiny pinpricks of blue glowed on the standing man’s fingertips, the same shifting colour Phos had braved. Coloured threads linked the statues. Other beams rose from the man’s toes, faint as a candle at noon, and Caliper shifted to watch light stream from his own chest.

  ‘The beams travel through anything, though night improves the spectacle,’ Terelian said.

  Mitch reached for the standing man’s elbow. ‘Will this help Phos?’

  Caliper frowned. ‘I’m seeing art: light holds our flying man where the artist planned, so it’s designed. The arena had its design; the shaking broke the floor, but Phos’s light restored the design. I’m thinking we shift this standing man into the arena and make the designs argue, and the arguing might knock the floor slabs away.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll be shifting either of these statues. Not before the priests arrive.’

  ‘I’m not leaving Phos.’

  ‘No one is, but we need new thinking.’

  Caliper gazed at the passageways twisting further into the carousel’s curve; masts and boxes and glittering necklaces spilled over the paths. ‘There’ll be tools here to break stone, and we don’t stop searching.’

  Terelian winced. ‘I appreciate your urgency, but you haven’t had your limbs broken or your skin flayed by these exhibits; they may wake at any moment. Injuring or killing yourself will not aid the girl.’

  ‘You two head back to Frinelia and help her search, and I’ll handle the risks here.’

  ‘Nah. We’ll both search here and make it fun.’ Mitch unfurled his leather roll.

  ***

  Metal clanked under Phos’s thin boots, and frost glittered ahead. She pointed her torch at the ceiling but saw only a dim blur. Sense said to wait until Caliper ripped his way towards her, but blurs pressed against the sides of the frosted cubes ahead, and her footprints should show Caliper where she’d gone.

  She shivered. Grit coated her mouth, and trying to spit left her croaking in pain. Could she drink the ice coating the floor? Phos’s torch splashed light over the cube, six times her height and now close enough to touch. She stroked its side, and the nearest wall dissolved into fog. Mist churned around her wrist, but she felt nothing, so she inhaled and stepped forward. Grey fog blinded her, but another step carried her inside.

  Dull yellow light flickered over the room. Dust smothered the floor, and the air was warmer – even brackish. A colossal bed covered in grimy sheets huddled in a corner, and a bedside table held books looking like sawn-off planks. Two upturned chairs sat below a large table covered with plates holding furred scraps of food, and to her right an immense cabinet with drawers ran along the wall. Something rested on the top, too high for her to see. A single line of footprints crossed the floor, each print twice Phos’s size, and the footprints led into a stone cubicle filling the far corner.

  As a child she’d wandered inside her parents’ bedroom to stroke their outsize bed and wrench open the wardrobe doors to peek at the huge shoes and trousers; the strangeness had left her breathless. This furniture dwarfed her too, but she stepped forward to prod the bed.

  The blankets had decayed into tangled fibres that crumbled under her fingers. The corner cubicle mirrored the washing space above, and Phos dashed inside, but the booth stayed dry – a crack stretched across one wall.

  A simple bedroom, space to rest for a few days, but no one would live here, so had these people flitted like bag-hauling pedlars?

  A chair let her see the cabinet top: a scratched worktop crusted with dried-out stains, two enormous rusted pots crammed with spoons sat next to a dip in the worktop – a sink. Bottles crowded the far side, and Phos grabbed on
e, lighter than glass and paper-dry. She scrabbled through drawers for a sealed container or maybe a mouthful of water, but she found only giant teacups stuffed with yellow mould.

  Other cubes would show the same time-chewed rooms. These people had had a kitchen each – maybe they had enjoyed living alone. Phos climbed onto the chair again. They’d cooked here, so how had they drawn water? Her hands shook as sweat dripped onto the filthy worktop.

  Dad had muscled water from their garden pump, and she’d grumbled while hauling buckets. He’d silenced her by describing how the largest churches pushed water through pipes. These builders shifted stone with light and built homes from mist, so they’d never lug water by hand. She scoured the cupboards below the drawers and squinted at the join between cabinet and cube wall, but no pipes showed.

  The shower upstairs had painted her with water. Phos scraped dust from the sink and pressed her palms against the inside before circling her hand around the curves. Nothing. Phos closed her eyes and wheezed.

  Didn’t cooking need clean hands? She touched the surface to the bowl’s left, and a muted pulse stroked her fingertips. She pushed harder, and a pea-sized silvery ball flashed into place six inches above the sink and hovered before warping into a pencil-thin stream that spattered over the sink’s dust. No time for caution; she cupped the icy stream and drank, and she kept dipping her hand into the stream to gulp the water until she panted for breath. Close enough to water, anyway – she filled a bottle.

  Phos tapped the right side, and the water drained away to claw at the dust. She sat on the bed. The sheets crumbled to waft threads across her tunic as she prised a book from the table, but her fingers burst through the cover as the pages shredded. The next volume held together, and she coaxed it onto the bed with both hands.

  Its cover was bleached beyond reading, but her fingertips eased a page free. Solid blocks of text filled the pages, stained with age, crammed with letters sprouting extra curves and neater than any handwriting. Phos recognised a few words, ‘lift’, ‘access’, ‘return’, ‘mass’, but extra letters grew inside the words, so unpicking any meaning would take ages.

  Movement. The dust specks hovering in the air quivered before streaming towards the wall opposite the one she’d entered. The bed creaked and shifted, and Phos lurched as she fell towards the wall. Her hands gripped the bed, but its sheets burst into powder. She flailed and snatched the headboard, but the whole bed frame tilted and tumbled towards the wall – the floor – and she fell.

  Blackness. Phos’s arms and legs froze – she couldn’t breathe, but release came without warning. She fell again and her feet smacked into wood – skittling noises echoed everywhere. Her chest and face slapped into a rigid floor, and she slid several feet before stopping, but pain slashed across her legs.

  Some force made you fall; they’d never taught her its name, but it misbehaved here – down had shifted. Frost needled her face, and her fingers traced gaps between tiles as another crash echoed on her right. Blinking showed nothing, and weight pinned her legs, and this air was a bitter syrup of tar and mildew.

  One heartbeat had shifted her an unthinkable distance and thrown her to fall into this frozen darkness. A faint whistle shivered against the silence, and Phos heaved herself upright as timber slid off her legs. Her bruises screamed, but she sat and stretched forward, and her fingertips scraped her torch’s rubber body.

  She’d fallen into a bloated schoolroom. A sweep of glossy blackboard filled the wall ahead, and overturned chairs and small tables sprawled around her. The bed frame had fallen through the blackboard before shattering itself over the far wall, but somehow the blackboard was still intact and glossy. Green and brown stains flowered over tan plaster walls on either side, but a few posters still dotted the room, and two huge doors punctured the rear wall.

  The desks and chairs facing the blackboard were her size, but centuries of frozen gloom had gnarled the black wood into hard ridges. Graffiti had stretched down here; alien letters scratched the tabletops.

  The walls held shelves, rough planks stacked on bricks and bowing under normal-sized books, though the falling bed had scattered volumes over the floor. Phos stumbled towards the nearest shelf, but her torch flickered, and its glow faded into a fluttering violet bead before struggling back into a frail yellowed trace too faint for reading. Light; she needed light. She barged through the desks to the blackboard, but her fingers slid over unbroken glass, and she stepped back. Bitter air stung her nose and fingertips as the torch dimmed again.

  Mum had dragged her to church services, where light flared from dangling lanterns when priests groped behind their altar to make them glow. Teachers enjoyed swaggering into lessons. Phos rushed to the back doors and felt for a chair. She climbed up and scraped her fingers over the bricks as her torchlight died.

  One brick twitched, and light rained on her. The ceiling lanterns showed as spots of brilliance flush against the ceiling – enough to show ink on the posters clinging to the walls.

  She walked over while clamping her hands under her arms against the frost. Brittle paper flinched under her fingers, but faded marks scored the sheet: two figures, one twice the other’s height, more diagram than art, lines and shaded patches hinted at faces stripped of character. The large figure’s hand rested on the smaller figure’s shoulder, and faint lines suggested folds of cloth hanging over their chests, but age had bleached out any fine details, and any lesson stayed hidden. Was the large figure a teacher?

  Half the next poster sat curled over the floor, but Phos studied the paper still stuck to the plaster. A large curve, like a ball’s upper half, filled the top, and faded ink sketched out an oval underneath the curve’s left side. Tiny blocks notched the ball’s left side, like an ear. Animal? Plant? An infant’s artwork?

  She unfurled the fallen roll and winced as it cracked, but the torn edge matched the wall poster, with more lines and a mess of curves. The outer curves made a circle, and two ovals winked at her to bracket the centre, each taller than wide, not a child’s scribbled face but a painstaking diagram. A brown tint touched each oval on the side nearest the ball’s centre.

  Phos gasped. If she sliced through a ring, she’d see two ovals, and her world was ring-shaped. Carpenters carved models of their world, but this worked for posters; a long-vanished artist had drawn a slice through her world. What did the outer circle show? She sipped icy water while shivering. Someone had scrawled a bowl shape under the ball’s left side.

  Another poster showed a jagged grid of boxes, each holding one or two craggy letters, and Phos thought back to the cube rooms stuck to the vast funnel chamber outside but couldn’t see any link. The last picture showed a man standing beside three spindly liss trees. Arrows traced paths between human and tree and back again. What was the message? Humans planted trees, and trees bore fruit? Humans cut timber and gave – her thoughts juddered as frost clawed her hands, and pain stopped her thinking.

  Scuff marks covered the floor before the back doors, and Phos would follow even if she was centuries late, follow before the frigid air silenced her. She pulled and pushed at the door handles, but the metal sucked warmth from her hand. She tugged her tunic sleeve over her hand to make a glove, but the door stayed as rigid as iron. Pounding the rigid wood only made a muffled thud. She spent a scrambled minute searching for discarded clothes or rags to swaddle herself, but found nothing. Phos crouched beside a wall and slid her numbed hands inside her tunic as her breath fogged. Caliper couldn’t hear her or find her, so would this frozen silence end her journey?

  ***

  Caliper imagined his hand slapping the sculptor’s back. They’d share a crisp cider beside a tavern’s fire, and he’d ease questions into their chat: who had taught him the statue-making? What skills let him chisel feelings into metal? How long did he spend watching people? A metallic echo of the artist’s story had survived these dark years; the flying man planned an urgent voyage, while sadness squatted on the standing guy’s face.

  Night
trickled into the carousel’s hallway as the ceiling patches dimmed, and Caliper sensed the piles of exhibits inching closer as dust thickened around the bronze statues. The rays streaming from the arena’s scar dwarfed the frail glimmers here, so these frail threads couldn’t punch through the arena’s floor. Caliper stepped back and stared along the curved hallway, at the bronze masks grinning at him from the glass cases, at the clay pots shaped like bloated feet, and the child-size porcelain dolls staring from a cabinet. Hadn’t Frinelia mentioned exploits marrying themselves together to spew out new creations? Did a key lurk inside a half-buried box?

  Caliper peered down the carousel and gazed at four wooden mannequins. They startled into life and shambled closer, slow but certain. Their spindly fingers twitched. Five minutes, and he’d need to scarper.

  ‘Don’t let the mannequins touch you, and watch out for the birds,’ Terelian said.

  The elder ushered them deeper into the carousel. Four dog skeletons jerked into life as Caliper passed. One sniffed his knee and followed for ten paces. Terelian hissed warnings as they passed an alcove of eyeless bird models on strings. Dim light glinted from the blue sheen of their flapping wings. Further on, a three-foot crystal cube perched on a table, and dark brown grit filled the bottom quarter. Caliper ran a finger across one edge and recoiled as tendrils of sand leaped against the cube’s top before collapsing. He pressed both palms against the smooth glass, and the crystal vibrated as grit fountained upward. If he imagined separate piles the sand divided for him, but sand wouldn’t free Phos.

  The mannequins lumbered around the curve and shuffled closer, and Caliper squeezed past a teetering hill of musty jackets to face a doll’s house like a toy version of Leester’s thatched homes. Four-inch figures glided through rooms, and one stumbled downstairs as if drunk while a couple danced by the twisting flames of a tiny log fire. They never noticed him, and watching revealed their pattern – a repeated play without story.

  They stumbled onto a bare stretch of stone floor, and Caliper slumped onto a narrow bench beside a wardrobe and a lantern hanging from a pole. Morzenthal’s carousel museum stretched ahead, a thousand-yard-long maze of risk; any key could hide anywhere. Terelian sat beside him and rattled through stories of injuries the museum had caused, and Mitch stood in front to lob questions Caliper couldn’t answer. Even if he broke through the stones, how could he lower himself? What if Phos had wandered? How could they stop Rastersen?