Part Twenty Nine
A Divination Biscuit
Enin practically glided out of the swamp, his renewed sense of purpose propelling him.
What irony, he thought, that the next stage of my journey should take me so close to where it started. Kara Lys, just a matter of happenstance that it be the place where I landed after my journey to the mountains.
Enin’s trek to the Temple of Aina had been one of curiosity, mostly. He did not expect to locate the key to his desires there. After aeons of walking the world and over a century of living in Aurelia as a wealthy merchant, Enin had simply become restless.
The temple sat atop a towering mountain in the Realm of the Frost Kings. Often called “The Sanctuary of the Sky”, it was legendary for its beauty and tranquility. The songs of the mountain road which led to the temple described it as a “treacherous path to heaven”. Enin found the journey to be rewardingly grueling, but well within his capacity.
After meditating among the caretaker monks for nearly a year, Enin grew restless once more. The path of peaceful enlightenment did nothing to sooth his burning soul. The monks of Aina preached that all beings are one being, all breath is one breath. But Enin knew better than them.
“We are all separate and alone.” he told the primary sage of the temple. “I have searched this world from pole to pole and found no sign of the great connection that you teach of.”
The sage, a tiny and wizened old man laughed, “You are not wrong. But the way in which you are right is very very wrong”
“Is that what passes for wisdom here?” asked Enin, “I’ve found greater profundity in a divination biscuit.”
The sage studied Enin, taking him in for a long time. “You have lived a long life, Raktah.” He called the sorcerer by the name the monks had given him. It meant “red”, which Enin took to be a reference to the coat he wore.
“That I have.” said Enin, “Very long.”
“You think we are not connected because you have cut yourself off from connection. A great pain severed you long ago. Long long ago. The strings that bring us all together were sliced away from you. This happens from time to time.”
“So,” Enin retorted, “you must admit that your entire philosophy is worth as much as the emissions of a cow. Either all are linked or none are. If some people can become severed, as you say, then we cannot all be one.”
The sage pulled a clump of red yarn from the folds of his garment and tangled one end of it. Pulling a strand of it out from the tangle, he snipped it off with a knife he must have been carrying in his sleeve, removing a piece about the length of his forearm.
“We all start out attached to the whole.” said the sage, “But many of us are cut off from time to time.”
Slowly, the man tied the end of the piece he’d chopped off to the main cluster of yarn.
“But with time and care,” he continued, “we can be reattached.”
“Bah.” said Enin, “Your childish metaphors mean nothing to me.”
“It is simple,” said the sage, “Not childish. You were very young when you lost her, were you not?”
“Lost who?”
“Your mother. You wear a lock of her hair woven into your own. I see it. It is your connection. But she is no longer here. She has joined the whole. You cling to a dead part of her instead of seeking true relations with those in the world around you. Little do you seem to know that in others you may find her again.”
“If we are all connected, then the dead are as well.” said Enin, “If your belief is true then there should be no need for me to be bound to others around me.”
“Binding ourselves to others is necessary if we are to attach to the wholeness. We are infants in this cosmos. We cannot yet walk. The practice of linking with those who are here is what may give us the skill we need to connect with all.”
“I thought monks didn’t believe in attachment.”
“It is not connection that causes suffering. It is the self-imposed illusion of control.”
“That sounds like weakness to me.” said Enin, “If control is an illusion to you, perhaps you are simply not trying hard enough.”
They both laughed at this, but Enin was not joking. He refused to deny himself autonomy. In his long life Enin had learned that the world expected him to be shaped by it. He spent his years in defiance of that expectation. He saw the very fact that he still drew breath as an act of resistance.
That evening, after the primary sage had conducted the final prayers of the day, Enin wandered through the library.
A silent labyrinth of shelves, the library, to Enin felt like a tomb of books and scrolls, where knowledge went to die. He never saw the monks there. Enin surmised that the acolytes of the Temple of Aina were content with their aphorisms and sought no further edification.
As he entered, cold moonlight spilled through the skylight, illuminating an iron scroll case that Enin had not noticed on his previous visits. Curious, he pulled the case from the shelf and opened it to find a sheet of flattened metal, rolled up inside, its surface etched with white grooves. Imprinted atop the grooves was a map showing the coast of the Anzarean Sea. Tracing his finger along the shoreline, Enin located the spot where his current home of Aurelia could be found. A city was marked there, labeled as Hekashra in the old tongue. Diamondhead. That had been the name of the city ages and ages ago. When he ran his finger across the name, the entire map sprang to life. The metal seemed to hum at his touch. Just southeast of Aurelia was the symbol for the word “Door”.
“I thought you’d never find it.” spoke a shadow at his back.
“Suriel.” said Enin, not turning around, “What brings you here?”
“The moonlight. As always.” said the demon.
“This scroll,” he asked her, “it marks the location of a Door. Is this the door that I think it is? The door to the Greater Darkness?”
“It is a Door to Darkness, yes. Not the only one, but perhaps the only one for you.”
“I have seen this door mentioned before.” said Enin, “In this very library.”
He practically dove into the shelves, in search of it. After several minutes of digging through the already disheveled collection of tomes and scrolls, he located what he was searching for.
“Here!” he said, unfurling the sheet.
Under the lands of the living where no sun strides, in the tunnels of silence, lie the pits that open to the Great Darkness. Let none approach save he whose heart is made pure, for the Door shall not suffer the unclean.
“Pity.” said Suriel. “Your heart can no longer be made pure. Seeing as you sold it to me so many ages ago.”
“Yes.” he said, “Pity. And yet...” Enin trailed off.
“And yet?”
“I was afraid when I sold you my heart. I thought that I was old then. Dying. But I had not completed my task. I needed more time.”
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said the demon. “For me it was, in a way.”
“Is there no buying it back?” he asked.
“You know now as you knew then. What’s done is done. I can no more return your heart than one could uncrack an egg.”
“But perhaps I could obtain another.” mused the sorcerer.
“From whom?”
“There are countless human hearts. The world is rife with the damn things.”
“So you would just steal one, like a fiend?”
“No.” said Enin, “I would have to pay for it, wouldn’t I? As you did with mine.”
“Do you not like it? Your iridescent little friend?”
“I have a name!” said a voice from within Enin’s shirt.
“No.” said Enin, “No you do not.”
“And who’s fault is that? I’ve been living in your chest for tens of thousands of years without one.”
“We are not having this conversation again.”
“So, then.” Asked Suriel, “You expect to open this door to the Darkness. Then what?”
“Then I will get the one thing I truly want.” said Enin, “Peace”.
Part Thirty
A New Outfit
Tula knelt over the woman, “She’s dead!” the girl cried.
“Yep.” said the Bird. “Looks like she got zapped.”
“How can you talk like that? This woman is dead and it’s my fault.”
“I’m sorry.” said the Bird, “How is any of this YOUR fault?”
“She just wanted to help me.”
“By stabbing you with a sword?!”
“No...not at first. You heard what she said. She just didn’t understand. She thought I was possessed by Ko-” Tula stopped short. Kokaibel was gone. All she had left of him was this clumped pile of...material and a bit of thread.
“That lady was crazy.” said the Bird. “She called herself a hierophant of Maj.”
“I don’t even know what that word means.”
“Me either, but it must be something crazy. Did you see her sword? It was clearly magic.”
“And when it touched me,” said Tula, “She died.”
“Well,” corrected the Bird, “she died when it touched my cage. Like I said, pig iron.”
“But why?”
“The iron of this cage disrupts certain types of magic, I think. That’s what I gather from what she told the demon while you were passed out. But what do I know? I’m just a bird.”
“You seem to know a lot.” she said.
The wad of sparkly black matter moved and Tula nearly jumped to the ceiling.
“TooOooOla Puh...tekk” came a sound from deep within the lumpy mass.
“Oh Kokaibel.” she said, patting the subtly vibrating stuff gently. “What has become of you?”
At her touch, the material quivered and the stars within flared.
The strand of thread that wrapped around the spindle pulled loose of it and whipped about like a live wire, bursting with sparks.
“What?” gasped Tula.
The glittering thread lashed out at her hand. Before she could react, it wrapped around her wrist.
“Gahh!” she shook her hand as if trying to dismiss an insect, but the thread spun and twirled around Tula’s arm. In an instant it covered her like a sleeve.
“Bird...what is happening to me?”
The bird did not say a thing.
“Kokaibel, is this your doing?”
The thread did not answer.
It merely circled around her neck, shoulders, chest and arms. By the time the thread reached Tula’s midsection, it began to pull from the clumped pile of stuff. Spinning and spinning around with Tula as the spindle. The raw material of Kokaibel’s being spun itself into thread and somehow that thread weaved its way upon her like a garment.
In thirty seconds, perhaps less, Tula stood wearing a shirt of inky darkness, filled with twinkling stars and galaxies.
Part Thirty One
A Speck of Red
“What really are the pillars?” asked the Boy.
He and the Muck Witch had been traveling silently beside one another for quite some time and he could not go another moment without conversation.
Maegda was quiet for a while. Finally she spoke,”The pillars are like ancient nails that bind the earth to heaven and reality to itself.”
“No. Really.” said the Boy. “What are they?”
“They are really big monoliths made of marble.” she said, “Is that what you want to hear? The pillars are both a physical thing and an esoteric concept.”
“Who built them? The gods? The ancients? Did they grow out of the ground like trees of stone?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes to all of that.” said the Witch. “The pillars are real. They are solid bits of stone that go deep into the world. They are probably the works of humanity. Yet they were also put there by the gods. And they are also a force of nature.”
“How?” asked the boy, frustrated, “How can they be all those things at once.”
“When a man plants an acorn,” said the Witch, “And a tree begins to grow, is it he that made the tree or did the tree make itself? Or is it the gods who gave the man his life and made the sun that feeds the tree?”
“Yeesh.” said the Boy. “Sorry I asked.”
“Well, do not ask big questions if you do not want to listen to complicated answers.”
The pair rode their paksi along the road for a few more hours without speaking. The swamplands at the bottom of the steep embankment gradually changed to grass and sands.
Peering down at the landscape from the causeway, the Boy spied a speck of red moving rapidly.
“There!” he shouted, “It’s him! Enin! There he is!”
Maegda pulled her mount closer to the edge and looked down as well. She saw the man in the distance, his brilliant coat billowing behind him as he sprinted out of the wetlands.
“How do we get down there?” asked the Boy. “We need to face him!”
The embankment was too treacherous for the birds to safely descend.
“Another mile down the path, Boy.” said the Witch. “There the road slopes lower and we can approach him.”
The Boy looked ahead at Enin’s trajectory.
“The region between the swamps and the sea becomes a rocky badland up ahead. There will be many places for him to hide there!”
“We will find him.” said the Witch. “We cannot intercept him now, but we will cross the grassy countryside as soon as the road meets it. From there we can cut toward the badland. He is on foot.”
The Boy’s heart raced as he urged his paksi forward, not even thinking of how he would confront the sorcerer or what he would say to the man. All that mattered now was getting there.
Part Thirty Two
A Head full of Stars
It started with a flicker. A brief, passing sense that her hands were...off. Not wrong exactly, just larger. She flexed her fingers, and the sensation intensified—like she was wearing oversized gloves.
Every pulse in her fingertips boomed as she curled them into fists. Her hands seemed huge.
She glanced down at legs that felt like tree trunks.
She was still standing on the floor in the old woman’s house, but felt herself drifting away.
She grew, expanding, until the room could barely contain her. Her head ballooned outward, yet still she stood in the same small space. She hadn’t actually grown, but her sense of proportion had.
Is this what he feels like all the time? Thought Tula, like the sky lives in his head?
เ ђคשє ภ๏ ๏tђєг ฬคא ๏Ŧ Ŧєєlเภﻮ. said a voice from within her. tђเร เร ђ๏ฬ เ คlฬคאร ค๓.
“Kokaibel?” Tula said out loud, “You’re alive? Are you really you?”
คร ๓ยςђ คร เ єשєг ฬคร.
“Why do you sound like that?”
tђเร เร ђ๏ฬ เ ร๏ยภ๔ ...Ŧг๏๓ tђє เภรเ๔є.
“You made the thread spin itself around me? And into a shirt?”
ภ๏. tђคt ฬคร คll y๏ย.
Dizzy, she sat down on the rough floor. Her head now the size of a planet and expanding.
“How do I stop this?”
รt๏ק ฬђคt?
“Becoming like you?” she said. “I don’t want to be so...big...I just want to be me again.”
l๏๏к ๔๏ฬภ.
The garment she wore now covered her entire body. Lifting her hands to her face she saw them like his, black slices of night filled with glowing nebulae and scintillating points of light. The dark room with a dying fire in the hearth still surrounded her, yet she also surrounded it. She surrounded everything. The world. The sun. The galaxy. She didn’t even have words to describe the vastness of the universe and all the trillions upon trillions of stars within her, but she encompassed it and it encompassed her.
“I’m full of stars.”
гє๓๏שє ๓є. ภ๏ฬ.
“What? No, why?”
Yoย ςคภภ๏t ς๏ภtคเภ tђเร ๓ยςђ ๏Ŧ tђє ς๏ร๓๏ร Ŧ๏г l๏ภﻮ, ﻮเгl. เt ฬเll ๔гเvє y๏ย เภรคภє.
“But I feel it.” she cried, “I feel EVERYTHING.”
Y๏ย ภєє๔ t๏ รєקคгคtє. Y๏ย คгє ภ๏t гєค๔y Ŧ๏г tђเร.
“But I’m so big!” she said. Nothing else mattered. The heart that had been torn from her, the evil sorcerer she had been seeking, the firestorm, the Witch, the entire world crumbling around her. These were tiny tiny things. Infinitesimal. It was all so far beneath her now.
ภ๏! lєt เt ﻮ๏!
The garment of stars pulled away from her. But she resisted.
tђเร ฬคร ค ๓เรtคкє tยlค קєtєк. เ ค๓ ร๏ггy.
Her mind, now the size of the observable universe, said NO.
Her thoughts were galactic filaments. Rivers of pure energy racing through infinite creation.
YOU CANNOT TAKE THIS FROM ME, LITTLE DEMON. I AM GOD.
๏ђ ๔єคг. Y๏ย’vє ﻮ๏t เt ๒คd.
Tula sensed the universe expanding within her. She felt the heat of the singularity that gave birth to the heavens.
She directed her gaze toward the infinite sphere of light and heat that made up the beginning. The event horizon past which nothing could be seen. She needed to understand what was there. Compelled to know the time before time. The space beyond space. She pushed her consciousness toward the light and heat.
tђคtร єภ๏ยﻮђ ภ๏ฬ!
Just as her mind reached the center...the edge...the middle...the beginning. Direction no longer held meaning for her...but just as she reached the singular point of the start of all things, she felt a tear.
She felt her skin rip from her body. Her bones tear from her flesh. Her thoughts pull from her brain.
She screamed.
And Tula Petek opened her eyes to find herself on the rough floor beside the last embers of the old woman’s fireplace.
Kokaibel stood above her, fully formed once more.
“Let us never do that again.” said the demon.
Tula sat upright, slowly regaining her sense of self.
“Was that it?” she asked, “Was that the undivided wholeness?”
“No.” said Kokaibel. “That was just the tiny fraction that the wholeness cut off long long ago.”
