Vibration shook her suit, but she’d heard nothing. Did this room gobble sound, or did sound need air? She’d test later. The other door stayed frozen.
Phos wandered over the fallen door into a hallway like she’d seen in the larger churches, and she turned her head to light the walls. Builders had created rooms to fit their bodies, everything their size, and they’d etched delicate traces of honeycomb patterns across the silvery walls.
‘To your left, Phos.’
She squinted. A faded green circle sat beside a blue, and other shapes lurked alongside, and a few moments of thought helped her understand. A map, the centre blue circle marked the room with broken desks, and five other areas grew from the centre like petals.
Mitch pointed. ‘A home needs four places: sleep, eat, wash and play. We’ve six circles here.’
‘Work? School?’
‘Blue is the work bit. School, I hope not: there might be homework.’
‘What’s the brown shape at the top right?’
‘Where?’
Mitch couldn’t see her letters, but she pointed out a thin black line scratching upward to a brown square, a road touching a target. Did these domes support the brown square, and had it come first?
Her helmet drifted pictures over the map’s circles: a misshapen bed hovered over one circle, and another showed a knife and fork designed by a drunk.
‘Sleep and eat,’ Phos said.
‘What?’
‘My suit’s showing symbols, and the green circle shows a tuft of grass, so it’s for growing.’
‘What grows without air, and why build farms indoors?’
‘We find out.’ An image flashed over the brown square at the road’s end – a tiny house on stilts. ‘This whole site is hardly bigger than our school, so I can’t believe it’s where everything started.’
‘Still hunting your world seed?’
‘There’ll be whole cities up here.’
‘Remember Christina and Frinelia, and your mum.’
The hallway led into another chamber, holding vast wheeled tubs and racks of shelves shunted against the walls. Phos grabbed the edge of one tub and stood on tiptoe to peer inside; soil filled each vat, but grey strands laced the earth like the ghosts of plants, maybe wheat – Caliper would know. Her helmet displayed stalks of living gold swaying in an unseen wind. Curiosity flitted through her mind, and her suit’s vision focused on a single grain. A century’s learning sat inside this image, and she recognised a handful of words as her helmet showed two linked spirals twisting through space to form a twisted ladder.
‘Not enough for a loaf,’ Mitch said.
‘This is for learning, not food, and our wheat is different.’
‘Did they try growing plants without air, and are these the original plants?’
‘Perhaps they changed this wheat into ours to let it survive the Enclaves.’
Mitch laughed. ‘Did they build your world seed here?’
‘Mocking again, Mitch?’
‘You’re a fountain of bizarre, Phos, but thinking our world squirted from a seed is fierce weird.’
‘There’s lots I don’t understand, but this hall seems simple, and it’s older than either Enclave. If the world seed exists, it’s close.’
They passed barrels cast from a buttery, smooth material, and split-open sacks spilling out olive-coloured grains. Mitch poked at a wall of pulled-out wires and twisted boards decorated with glittering square bumps. Above, an array of upside-down bowls hung from the ceiling to face the soil tubs.
‘Those were lights like our sun’s arch, but they don’t move,’ she said. ‘Where did the plants come from?’
‘Who built the builders, and is your knowing a need or a want?’
Phos focused on the green webbing circling Mitch’s suit and nudged him forward. ‘This isn’t a hobby, Mitch. We learn and survive, even up here, even if our own world changes.’
‘Steady, Phos. Don’t start enjoying the control.’
Phos examined the door leading into the next chamber, where dust on the floor had mixed with ice. She wandered inside and her face flushed; builders had fitted the plant room around this upside-down rocky bowl, so this dome had come first.
A brother to Morzenthal’s carousel; glass cases covered the walls and faded banners coiled over the floor. She approached a table holding a set of rocks. Amber light flickered around her feet and stretched into the distance to suggest a path. Phos followed for a few steps, but the exhibits bewildered her.
One picture showed a First Enclave spire with flaming clouds hiding its base. Another showed cones and cylinders hanging in night air, and a third showed curling lines and splashes of colour. Mitch studied a faded painting etched into glass: a shack built of metal facets and perched on four legs. Hadn’t Morzenthal held a model of that house?
Mitch pointed. ‘Do we still want a small room?’
Dusty glass panes formed an unbroken cube reflecting their suit lights. The door stuck before springing open.
‘Perfect. We’ll tell Frinelia when we see her, and try to contact Christina.’
Phos brushed past two cupboards with ripped-off doors, and piles of paper crammed into a corner. Dust-caked books sprawled over a table, and a black slab hung from a wall. She reached out with her threads, but they skittered and died. They needed gum: the chips on the door meant air would leak.
She creaked a book open. Lists, words, numbers and more baffling pictures; all stories needed beginnings, but time had tossed these words into air. The same spindly house image repeated across the pages, two windows nestled inside a frantic mess of panels, and the building sat on stilts, so had a builder lived on a marsh?
‘There’re pictures of that all over.’ Mitch scraped dust from the glass wall. ‘Don’t forget Frinelia.’
‘I’m not, but we need to seal the gaps around the door.’
His hand brushed hers as they left the room. She flinched but pointed at the museum room’s far side. The rocky walls surrounded a gap, a breach, a gulf of utter black.
‘Ever seen light being eaten?’ She walked ahead of Mitch. Dust furred the cabinets here, and grey flecks coated two flasks sitting on the floor beside the hole.
‘Don’t take risks, Phos. Frinelia’s waiting, and so is your mum.’
She stepped forward. Walls had always surrounded her – a bedroom, or a classroom, or the world walls, and even the First’s bowl made a prison – but this rift meant change. Curiosity had loaned her enough strength to chase fire through darkness, so why hesitate? Both darkness and light could teach.
A muted scatter of glints dusted the ground ahead like gems strewn over a carpet. Another step took her up a shallow slope towards the broken wall – the dome’s edges buckled inwards as if a huge boulder had crashed into the dome.
‘Surface?’ Mitch whispered.
‘Surface. Must be the surface.’
Phos strode forward, and through the hole ripped into the wall. One more step, and she was outside; dust crunched under her left boot. More light here – a blue-white shimmer danced over the ashen dust.
Low rolling hills rose on her left – each one a treeless hump of ash, but three metallic domes capped one distant mound. Walking was a struggle, but she jumped forward with both feet together, and Mitch trotted behind and gasped. Ahead, a gold dot flickered just above the ground, gone the instant she looked.
‘You’re missing the fun again, Phos,’ Mitch said.
‘What?’
‘Look at your boots – we’re casting shadows.’
Slivers of night stretched out from her legs and over the dust ahead.
‘There’s light behind, but I daren’t turn,’ Mitch said. ‘You first.’
‘We turn together.’
The upturned bowls they’d left behind sat on the grey desert, but above them shimmered a brilliant blue-and-white disc. No, not a disc – a globe, a glorious blue marble, wreathed with curling strands of white. Seas circled green and brown islands. Dist
ant but immense, quiet and waiting, the globe hung without support.
‘What’s it for?’
Mitch’s question pattered across her mind. She’d always wanted to learn the stories behind each leaf and twig, every whistling gust of wind. She’d driven Dad half-insane with questions, but this globe crouched in darkness as if it didn’t need history. ‘It’s not for anything. It is.’
Did light flicker beside the globe? She stared at the overwhelming blackness surrounding the sphere until her eyes watered, but her suit took control and focused on the seas and islands. Her vision dashed forward until she saw light sparkle over the globe’s blue water, and green patches painting the islands with forest. Clouds hugged the curved surface; rivers meandered through deserts and grasslands. Her vision snapped back, and she blinked. The globe wafted out an icy light, utterly unlike Christina’s brilliant gold orb. Phos shook her head and stared at the powdered soil underfoot.
A path ran to her left where wheel marks had bitten into the dust. She looked along the path, and her golden fleck reappeared as a mote hovering in the night.
‘We explore there and head back.’
‘Our world poured out of your gold speck, did it? How far away? No, don’t tell me. Walking tells us.’
Her suit said nothing as the path coursed over gentle hillocks in the rocky dust. Phos felt an urge to hurtle towards the hills and cram as many secrets into her mind as fast as possible: what did those other domes hold? What stood behind those hills? Had Frinelia heard of this landscape? She’d compare this world with the First and Second, and learn what instructions lurked below the soil, and she’d learn without controls. Her boots kicked up enough dust to stain her legs grey. Caliper would have loved the mess.
Phos slowed and stared upwards. No clouds – not even the memory of clouds. Faint points of light speckled the vault. No, not a vault: an absence, an open sky, an end to walls and a velvet promise of freedom. With time, she’d learn how to fly, and without priests only sleep would slow her. She flicked her fingers to clear the webbing in Mitch’s suit.
She remembered counting at school; teachers had doled out enough words to let her reach a thousand, and she’d asked how you counted higher, but they’d spat out those angry words that said they lacked answers. She couldn’t explain why she needed to count more than a thousand, but why did anyone need limits? At night she’d created fresh numbers to let her count forever, and they’d find work up here. Phos kept walking.
To her left two huge carts squatted beside the hill domes as if waiting for entrance – their builder sized seats sat open to the air. The hills were smooth, maybe built from sodden clay, but this world seemed arid - had an ashy rain smothered any ruggedness?
‘We’re close,’ Phos said. The point of golden light showed now as a solid block, thirty yards away, wrapped in ripped and wrinkled golden foil. Splayed out legs raised the platform off the ground; the whole artefact looked like a battered four-legged spider. The foot of each leg was a bowl, pressed into dust, and one leg had a ladder attached. A black funnel sprouted from the block’s underside to point at the soil.
‘That’s the bottom half of the museum’s house – I thought it was a house, but….’
‘The ladder’s not our size. It’s for builders.’
They drew closer. A tall glass fence circled their platform, but sections had shattered, and a two-yard-wide gap let them enter and approach the block with its angled legs – scraps of gold foil clung to the metal.
‘This was an exhibit. You could look but not touch, don’t you think, Phos?’
‘Builders walked here.’ Huge footprints littered the dust as evidence of a lumbering dance performed thousands of years ago. One remaining section of glass fence sliced through a footprint. ‘The dome museum was ancient, but this is even older; the museum celebrated this table, and they wanted it shielded. Oldest thing we’ve found.’
A small four-wheeled cart sat nearby with two dust-caked metal seats, and boxes and cables dotted the dusty surface. Their road ended at the cart.
‘Builders lived in the top half, and that’s gone,’ Phos said.
‘Where?’
‘Think hard and stories come,’ Phos stepped forward and stroked the ladder’s lowest rung before pointing at the globe above. ‘Anyone living there would see us hanging in the sky, like we see them. Did they wonder who lived here? Did they travel here all those centuries ago?’
Mitch pointed at their block. ‘This is like your boat?’
Phos nodded. ‘A flying boat, maybe. I see two sets of footprints. We’ve seen models of the top half – you might fit two builders inside. Imagine builders voyaging from the blue globe and landing here to create our world. Perhaps they returned in the top half, but they left their mark.’
Mitch blinked. ‘Like seeds?’
‘Seeds have instructions inside, and maybe these builders had instructions. It’s a story Mitch, you don’t have to believe it, but stories can explain.’ Phos patted the ladder. ‘Perhaps this seed didn’t sprout, but imagine them sending later and larger ones which stayed and built more.’
‘Why did they come?’
‘Why does a baby leave a cradle?’
‘So, was this house your world seed?’
‘Let’s find out.’
‘After we help Frinelia and find your mum. There must be an end to your poking at stuff.’
‘No,’ Phos said. ‘I hate endings.’
A word from Kevin.
If you enjoyed Lightmaker do leave a review at the place where you purchased the book Reviews help me build a presence and let me publish more. Amazon’s review page is here.
Thanks to members of Oxford Writing Circle for guidance and support. Special thanks to Danni and Annabelle Parker, Jay Aspen, Helen Moulford, and Brigid Allen.
Development advice from Hal Duncan. Copy editing by Leonora Bulbeck. Proofreading by Nick Hodgson.
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Copyright © Kevin Elliott 2020
A Nebula Radian ebook.
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Nebula Radian.
The moral right of Kevin Elliott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this production may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
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