Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  The voice sighs. “Kraz wasn’t wrong. Come forward.”

  He straightens posture. Sliding his palms up the door, Atlas squints and exhales a second-slower gasp.

  “Yes, indeed.” The male voice, strong, pure, calls steadily across meters of space. “Come, Atlas. Come to your flame.”

  Atlas pushes off the door. He steps. Shakes. And steps again. Fingers stretched toward absence, heels rolling toward some bottomless pit their teeters anticipate, he walks to the voice. It calls from everywhere and nowhere and crescendos, resonates through his skull.

  “Hold out your hand.”

  He does, palm upturned. Something touches it.

  Atlas jumps, limbs seized, and yanks back his hand and wonders what he expected. He clenches his fingers around an object; it compresses, shifts. A loose material, rugged, thin but durable, waves into the contours of his palm with a deep crackle. He grabs it with his other hand. The thin material coils around two cool metal stems, engraved handles clacking together their stoppers that contain a hearty parchment.

  “Good. Nicely done. Now,” the voice quiets but floods Atlas’s ears, “open it.”

  A breeze streams in from behind Atlas’s shoulders. It sweeps down his arms, off his knuckles, around, and back again. It rattles the parchment. It bristles his body. And softens his chest and extends his breath and gushes charge through his arteries, the kind that strengthens. Atlas grips the scroll’s metal handles, one on each side, and the wind cyclones up his spine, hisses over his ears the replacement voice of a longtime friend. He draws his hands apart; the parchment unrolls.

  Light flickers. Atlas blinks. He revolves the handles with his thumbs and fingers and the flattening material ruptures white sun. Teeth bared, he recoils, pulls; heat rays gush from the parchment’s open face, thrusting wind through his hair, cutting a new blindness into his pupils, this one pearl white. He squints. The light swells and enfolds him.

  “Embody it, Atlas. We’ve been waiting for this.”

  Atlas forces his eyelids wide, drinks fire through his retinas, stares into the parchment that unrolls ghosts of flare-dressed characters of a language he knows. He draws his hands farther apart, light elongating, and wobbles backward and scroll’s sun follows. His body vibrates, grip weakens. He—

  AD · V · KAL · APR

  NON · SCIO · QVO · HOC · SCRIBO · MIHI · DICVNT · ME · NIMIS · ADSTRICTVM · CVM · VERBIS · ET · IMAGINIBUS · ESSE · MIHI · NOMEN · ESTTSTVVITTVLIVIVVVV—

  Marble archways border the portico. Sun slips through its pillars, ionic columns overlooking a dirt road that winds down the hill, through the forum kilometers distant, into seas of voices and under wagon wheels creaking, bumping, grinding pebbles till fine. But at hill’s crest, the temple postures its roof in silence of solitude. It elevates its foundation and bleaches its sun-steeped steps ascending into a peristyle. A tall, brunette man in frayed robes gestures under the archway third from the stairs. Two other men stride after the first, up the portico steps, over the temple’s walkway.

  The leading man says, “Huc veni, apud hunc murum. Ecce—”

  A wave of hot light flashes across the floor, the columns, the aisle roof four persons above, and drenches their marble blinding, burning. All disappears for a blink. Some faraway siren sweeps the hill, rings over the man’s words, rattles the porch, but the men stride through it. One second and gentle sun retakes the glare; the siren dies; quiet returns.

  “—is this way.”

  A ring of white hair crowning his bald scalp, the oldest of the three men cranes his neck around the leader. They turn onto the east arcade and the oldest scowls at the first’s back.

  “Bah. This ‘gap’—this glimmer,” he says, “lies paces before the forum? In my diligence for twelve years and I hadn’t taken notice?”

  The third man leans toward the eldest and whispers, “Lend the boy a moment of recognition.”

  The eldest smiles a grimace.

  “It’s amazing.” Grin stretching toward his ears, eyes glistening, the first and youngest swings around and walks backward. “The auras react strongly to Caesar.”

  The third man, middle eldest, slides his hand over his head and flattens a patch of gray into his dark brown hair. His eyes wrinkle the wrinkles fanned from their corners. He smiles with the youngest.

  The eldest glowers, glances at the third man, and then too smiles. He bursts a laugh.

  “Caesar?” the eldest says.

  “Yes, watch.”

  The youngest turns another corner and jogs through the temple’s eastern entrance into a hall enclosed by walls solid. His sandals slap marble, tracking dust with abandon. Four arm spans of hall’s width reverberate his drumming through connecting passages and beyond, where main hall’s menagerie of god-sized images murmurs steps’ ghostly diffusion. He runs his fingers along stone’s webs and sun’s glaze. He halts at the end of the side chamber, golden light clipping its corner.

  He slings a bundle of coiled papers, etched with graphs and glyphs, script and images, off his back and over his shoulder. He pinches a small sack tied to the bundle. Then draws it open, slips his thumb and finger into it, and pulls out a gold coin. He swings his bundle back over his shoulder. He holds the coin to eye level.

  The eldest’s mouth falls open. “A Caesar aureus. How—” He looks at the third man and back to the youngest. “You scrawl on parchment with tools of your own making in an overpopulated insula you leave once every other Maius. Even your slaving country family won’t give you a quadrans’ worth.” He scoffs. “You’re a thief.”

  The youngest gasps and presses a palm to his heart. “We’re in a temple, Livianus. Your judgments enter divine ears.” He tilts his head. “Who am I?”

  The eldest puffs his chest. “A godless, sly thief and a dreamer.”

  “I don’t,” the youngest lifts onto his toes, “see how that’s,” and bounces on them, “derogatory.”

  The third man folds his arms. “Children, let’s see this gap.”

  The youngest turns to the hall’s end. “Watch—” He points to the section of wall above an altar to Janus. “The gap—it’s here, in the marble.”

  The eldest snorts. “A temple of all places. How did you discover this gap?”

  “I dreamt of it.”

  The middle one mouthing “ah” and the white-haired wiping his raised brow with a sneer, the two older men step toward the wall. They narrow their eyes and hush their breaths. The young man raises the coin to the wall.

  It warps. Multicolored light ripples across the marble; turquoise, cobalt, fuchsia bend and blur into a pond rolling with wind. Wall’s rings swell a kaleidoscope of glimmers behind the altar, as far as Janus’s two stone faces. The eldest jolts. The middle’s eyes widen.

  The youngest thrusts the coin closer to the wall. “It emits color in reaction to Julius Caesar.”

  The wall flickers and bursts blue sprouts clawing, twisting, sputtering for sun. The middle eldest grabs the youngest’s wrist and pulls it down and away; the sprouts, colors, warps vanish, light dimming. They stare at a blank wall. The middle eldest gives the youngest a look and the youngest frowns.

  “Not Caesar, you fool.” The eldest plucks the coin from the youngest’s fingers. He holds it an arm’s length from the wall and the marble glows soft yellow, light green. He withdraws it. “It reacts to gold.”

  The middle eldest grabs the coin, steps forward, and moves it toward the altar.

  The hall flashes in the same otherworldly, bright heat fashioned at the men’s arrival. High frequency ringing returns, roaring through the temple, hurling echoes the trio ignores, and sun pours blindness. The floor, ceiling, marble and men drown in vibrating light. They disappear.

  “We mustn’t depart in sunlight—”

  “There’s no other time, no other way. This gap needs light. You’ve witnessed Livianus’s examinations—its properties and nature. It thrives with warmth and gold.”

  White light recedes to the room’s corn
ers and the familiar siren to the walls, vibrating down and into foundation, earth, and death. Heat cools. Shape emerging, the room clears and quiets and the three men, nearly twenty years of age separating each, sit at a table. A fire crackles in the corner. An orange glow dances deep the table’s woodgrain and stretches shadows from the men’s folded hands and tabletop elbows.

  “But if someone saw,” the youngest crinkles his forehead, “aroused attention—”

  “Which is why we will take necessary precautions.” The middle eldest leans over the table and tucks his chin. “We’ll carry what’s needed—equipment, provision, your records—and return later for our families. All else must remain behind. We must leave even our names in Rome this night.”

  The eldest strokes his white beard. The youngest looks into the fireplace and a bottom log sinks and breaks, bursting sparks up umber masonry.

  “As of this moment, we are new men. Felix,” the middle eldest looks to the youngest, “my son of strange blood, you’re the first of your kind. You envision what others cannot and dream of exploration scorned by elders and ignored by associates. You draw the world. And you will draw ours. Your talent will be freed. I name you The Cartographer of a better land.”

  Jaw rigid and gaze bright, the youngest smiles in his eyes.

  The man turns to the eldest. “My Livianus, you will be The Artisan of our world too sacred to exploit, too precious to share. With your skilled hands and prudent thoughts, you will craft our lives.”

  “And you will be?” he asks.

  “I will be the overseer of all.” The middle eldest furrows his brow and rubs his hands. “I will be The Sovereign.”

  Another burst of hot light floods the room and sounds its siren. The men drown under it.

  Vision’s glare dissolves into sunlight and the siren into merchants’ shouts, children’s calls, tutors’ lectures as all swing their tunics and scuff their sandals over forum’s wheel-dented path. The Sovereign stops under shadow of the records office. He rests his hands on The Artisan’s shoulders.

  “We must keep these ideas from him,” The Sovereign whispers. “He’s young and naïve. He may not understand.”

  The Artisan narrows his eyes. “I’ve known for many a night, but settle it with your own words, Sovereign. This gap we’ve discovered, this sky land—are we there traveling solely for countryside living in place of Caesar’s rule? Quiet escape?”

  Meters from the conversing men, the three’s youngest, The Cartographer, ducks behind stacked flour crates. He angles an ear and presses his foot between shipments of spices behind a vendor’s stand, one he knows by its stock of fine lampblack pigment, which he may or may not have sampled last Ides. Murmurs travel from the public square; The Cartographer swims his hearing through afternoon chatter and picks out two voices, squinting at his colleagues drenched in shade beneath ochre brick.

  “No,” The Sovereign says.

  The Artisan’s lips curve upward. “You have more in mind.”

  “Consider all we could do.” The Sovereign throws his hands through the air and pivots to records’ sun-side. He raises his chin to sky stinging his engorged pupils. “A perfect society. We could create a glorious future for our wives and children and theirs. An orderly empire without murder, war, politics, dispute, envy, greed, abundant in precious things for all, even for—especially for the lowest. Our kin would bind as friends and brothers and love one another always, no one citizen excluded from any benefit. No strangers. No currency. No classes. No spit upon senate floors—no competition that so bleeds rivers through Rome. But more.” He faces The Artisan and lifts a finger. “This new world brims with magic.”

  “And you’re the one to rule it.”

  “Not at all, my Artisan. You and I are finished with the plebeian life. You’ll be there, by my side, holding equal power over plains of peace, as with our people.” He twists tone. “However, if you speak of this concord to our Cartographer—”

  “I won’t utter a word to the child.”

  “Very good. For his sake. You know how easily the rascal slips into impracticality.” The Sovereign smiles. “Return home and prepare for departure.”

  White light dissolves the scene.

  The vision shifts and The Sovereign spots his Cartographer halfway across the forum. He jogs to catch up, slides by a trader’s mule, and gasps at The Cartographer’s side. The Sovereign’s eyes grin; his lip holds stiff. He leans toward his Cartographer.

  “Is it prepared?” he whispers.

  The Cartographer strides forward, stares forward, grips his parchment bundle’s shoulder strap. He exhales.

  “It could be.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. The wall continues to react in the same manner. When the sun streams directly through the hallway, at an angle in the eastern sky, the wall emits more vibrantly. If sun’s truly needed, we have only days before summer wanes and the sun moves from correct placement.”

  “Could it have perfect placement tomorrow?”

  “I don’t—eastern wind is also needed. We have no way of knowing—”

  “It will be ready,” The Sovereign angles down and meets The Cartographer’s eyes, “because we will make it ready.”

  The Cartographer scowls. “No one can alter wind.”

  “My.” Sovereign smiles. “Dear Cartographer, your infamous ideals are slipping.”

  He stops. The Cartographer grabs The Sovereign’s tunic and pulls him off the path, down a slope, toward forum’s sewage trenches and their aboveground brick. He releases him, faces him, lifts his hands.

  “Exactly how I,” he flourishes them, “ ‘slip into impracticality’?”

  The Sovereign frowns. “You know our Artisan cannot survive without constant praise and attention. I worried he needed some—”

  “I’m not a child.” The Cartographer clenches his jaw. “I discovered this world. I had the talent of prophecy and sight. I did.”

  “I know.”

  “My reputation of derangement is nearing infamously criminal. That’s why I charted the stars, scoured this world for another—”

  “I—”

  “Not you. Certainly not the other with goat haunch mouth. He looks like one. He looks like a goat. He’s not The Artisan. He’s The Goathaunch.”

  “Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your discoveries, your zeal.” The Sovereign softens tone. “I apologize. I worried our Artisan needed to see his personal importance before he took this risk. I trust you, Cartographer. Dismissing your last remark, I know you’re clearly the more mature of my associates. I need you. Our world needs your eye.”

  The Cartographer looks at his feet and rubs his neck. His jaw relaxes.

  “We depart tomorrow then?”

  “Yes.” The Sovereign points upward. “And we will finally enter a world where we belong.”

  The Cartographer looks up and his mouth’s corner quirks.

  “No longer will patricians scoff at your writings. No longer will scholars behold your visions come true and shun you as a soothsayer. No longer will paternal ties tie you to labor unchosen and no longer will the fortunate withhold their fortune.” Sovereign upturns his palms to the breeze. “Equality for all. Constancy, sameness, harmony. The strengthening ‘we,’ not the lonely ‘I.’ Permanent, golden sun will oversee endless sky not yet charted. We’ll create our hours, our truth and this world—a world above the nature of earthly things will blossom into an extraordinary, faultless nation under rule of no Caesar, under nothing at all but blue and our hand. We will grant freedom, Cartographer.” He inhales and closes his eyes. “You and I. We.”

  “And The Artisan?”

  The Sovereign opens his eyes. “I would rather you not speak this to him. We must be gentle with our old friend, must we not?”

  The Cartographer nods.

  “The mapper and mentor of the world.” The Sovereign touches The Cartographer’s shoulder and turns him toward the hill, the road. “Let us leave the wasting cage. Let us change our pasts and seize our futures.”r />
  The Cartographer smiles. “We will have freedom.”

  “We will have freedom.”

  Another gush of hot light sweeps away the last and lays marble floor. It recedes, withdraws its siren, and the temple hall, Janus’s stone altar at its end, clears and settles. The Cartographer, Artisan, and Sovereign set their bundles and bags by the wall. Inhaling to his limit, The Cartographer slips his fingers into his coin pouch. He retrieves the coin. He straightens his knees.

  The wall bursts and two of the three men jolt, The Sovereign lending a hard blink. They look past The Cartographer’s fingers, through a meter’s space of new color, and to the wall spewing prism ribbons over the altar with more ferocity than the past thousand attempts. Invisible electric tendons whip charged the corridor. Sixty degrees above horizon, the sun pours through the doorway and floods the hall, saturating wall’s rainbows, expelling corner shadow and altar’s details.

  A gust streams from the east. It funnels into the hall and throws The Cartographer’s hair forward, sifting The Sovereign’s, quivering The Artisan’s beard. The wall erupts vines of tangling, glowing blue, yellow, red, all hues between, and blasts its own wind into outdoor currents till the men’s robes twist, lash back, forward, right and left amidst cyclones wrestling in passionate dance. The Cartographer lifts the coin far from the wall, but the light webs launch for it, rippling down the hall warps that sputter in the ears.

  “Now,” Sovereign yells.

  The Artisan widens his eyes and locks his jaw. “We place ourselves into incredible peril. This is a fool’s journey. We don’t know—”

  “No, we don’t,” The Cartographer says.

  He squeezes the coin between thumb and finger and takes a half-step toward the altar and Janus’s two-faced bust. He squints into wall’s portal. Wind surges and roars and the marble sparks multicolored spurs.

  “I see the sky.” The Cartographer raises his voice. “Sun shines but it feels like a warm summer night. The land—it shimmers gold.” He glances at The Artisan and Sovereign. “It is the stars.”

  The Sovereign lifts his chin. “What do you call it, my Cartographer?”