Part VIII: Life Maker
It's cold now, foggy breath cold.
The light is pulsing, dim streaks illuminate the cellar. I move to the stairs and step out.
This isn't the top of a hill. I'm back among the trees. The wind howls. Not the empty howl of a desolate winter wind. Wind with life. Emissaries of the thing that lurks? Prisoners?
A glowing orb casts circles which dance in the fog. I want to dance with them, but the orb is up ahead. It's a winding path upward… no not up, down… wait maybe it's just straight and level?
I take a step and my head swims. Its disorienting to move. Dust, it feels like dust.
So cold.
Is that the faint hint of a melody?
Another step. Lights. Something about the lights. I need to follow the lights.
A sneeze racks me. I open my eyes. No! Its fleeing so fast, its getting smaller!
I begin to run after hand outstretched. Don't! Please don't leave. I'm sorry!
Achoo!
I tumble over a root and into cold thick mud. My fingers feel brittle from the cold, I'm shivering now and making irregular breaths it's getting so hard to see through the fog, its never been this dense before.
I get up. Odd shadows flickering across transform the world into a barcode.
It hurts, I can feel it in my chest, and now welling tears in my eyes. Why do I want to cry? It's getting closer. The lurker it's here. It's in the dust… no not dust.
Pollen!
Not fog either a thick miasma of alien pollen. Blanketing everything.
"Do not let them out of your sight." The Fae's voice rings in my head as the light begins to shift colors.
Its getting further.
Sht! Crt!
Broken branches, footsteps in the wood.
I scramble up in a sloppy mess, and begin to hobble forward towards the light.
Why am I crying? The pollen?
Yes, partially. Something else though.
No time to think about it. Light! Only light nothing else!
It's so beautiful, but its angry at me. Why is it angry? I didn't mean to do it oh beautiful light! I swear!
An ominous low hum.
It doesn't believe me, its fleeing.
Tht! Shtsh!
Rustling of leaves and sticks.
It's going to catch me. I want it to catch me. I want to die, why not die? I deserve it.
Snap the fuck out of it! You are Oez son of the Witch! A Seeker for the archives! A wielder of the laws!
Trip and fall again. Headfirst into a tree it smarts. Now I am shaking and crying uncontrollably.
Empty. Mere words. The light knows, Ves didn't make it. Why did I think I could survive? Just let it end please.
Fthump.
Now sight. Sight behind as much ahead. The neckball, until now it has only been an irritating commentator. I could not see, but now it stirs. As large as trees, distance unknowable but the lurker moves clumsily meandering towards me.
Lumbering and broken, reaching and flailing arms uncountable, twisting swirling head an uncanny addition, mere mimicry, it has no understanding, this the eyeless pollinator. It moves with indecipherable purpose and now sudden feeling in me. I want to die but something else pulls, this is not the place and that is not my doom. That hulking life maker, it is behind. A bridge stays but a promise is made.
I'm up, crying still but new determination. You belong to me light!
Patches of the path stretch seemingly endless, others I am upside down. I move forwards and the landscape stretches sideways. Faces in the trees one after the another, there one moment gone the next. Truly alone but never alone things off to the side hard to see move. Laws are truly strange beyond the eight. The light shifting in color, near then far, now something else. What was that? How did it do that?
Colder and colder, thicker and thicker the pollen.
Run and stumble, hobble and stretch. You will be mine light and then I will dance with you! It is playful and moody.
Holy will, be unending.
I'm shivering freezing cold. The lurker is close, not clumsy or meandering as I thought. It knows laws I do not.
The melody grows stronger.
Theres a large clearing up ahead, it's… frozen. A lake. Now much dark, the light has dove through the sheet of ice. Plunging and plunging deep below.
No! I will not stop! A rock near the lakes edge.
Lift and smash!
No use it's too cold, the ice is too thick. Not even much of a crack.
The neckball sings.
"In the days of yore when I was but a maid
I dreamt a valley cold,
And wept a sorrows old
When to that place you came, you filled my soul with coal.
Now that hole is foal and I am but asleep."
"To tartarus with your song eye ball!"
Alien laws, but some familiar. Spindle or no, spells are needed. Something quick.
"In the days of yore when I was but a maid
I dreamt a valley cold,
And wept a sorrows old
When to that place you came, you filled my soul with coal.
Now that hole is foal and I am but asleep."
The neckball sings again. Damndable thing!
No! Wait, perhaps there is reason. You filled my soul with coal, yes a symbol. A canticle for birth again, Symbols are engines, but an engine needs fuel.
But from where? I have not woven in advance and while cheap parlor tricks may subdue even a powerful fae this is not a fae.
Think Oez think!
"In the days of yore when I was-"
"I get it you infuriating-"
A low screech but backwards the pollinator sings strange life. What does it want with me.
"Now that hole is foal and I am but asleep"
Hole is foal? Pregnant, yes! Thats it. Pollen! Pollen is power, pollen is fuel, the ingredients for life for potential. I'm practically bathing in kinetic energy.
Trees sway menacingly all around the lake. From the neckball I see it: the lurker, no… three lurkers, or perhaps one in three directions. It makes no difference it is on the edge of the lake. A song of life it sings a chorus of hideous others join. Trees and winds and countless others beyond senses but all heard in a cacophony of madness.
I'd prefer a stick, but stone must suffice. I pick it up and begin the enchanting.
"You filled my soul with coal!" I sing as I close my eyes.
I feel a vibration as the stone quivers from the compacting pollen.
"You filled my soul with coal!"
Another shuttering vibration, this rock is not a good sponge for this energy. Its weak and shallow. It has no business being a focus. But a focus it shall be.
A crescendo of fury from tree and lurker, and a rumbling as a lurker moves to ice.
"You filled my soul with coal!" I bellow with absolute intent I feel the power of it hit me like a wave on the beach, not some ripple but a full on hit, it shakes me and I feel it in the neckball most of all. It rings like change.
"You filled my soul with fire!" I scream and slam the rock against the ice.
Ice and rock and fire fly.
And now splashing stabbing cold. A sting on my brow where a shard cuts. I am below now, silent and free.
The light it's so close now. I turn to dive towards it, ready and free.
But no. I feel a tug on my cloak.
No! Fuck you! I will not be yours!
The lurker pulls, I'll be above the ice again soon.
I can see it now mesmerizing and hypnotic. I wanted to dance with you light.
It thrums and sways as colors shift and rings flutter. My mind is a flight.
Collapsing and collapsing in on itself I'm gone. All of it is gone. I'm there but not.
***
Back, back Into the past I see it.
Naked. Eye to eye. Graduation night, the island is rejoicing in its own debauchery. Tomorrow at least four will be dead from some predictable and preventable means. Graduation is always that way. Ouzo and wine, peyote, and coke. Orgies and beach parties, driving drunk on the winding shore roads.
Not Pollux and I. Naked and alone only wine and a small feast. Together in his parents beach house. Open doors a dim flame in the fireplace. Pollux sweet and strong.
My finger twirls his calloused palm. I take a deep breath tingly and happy, post orgasmic lovers snuggles. A small smile and he pulls me closer.
I never want to leave the safety of his arms, but tomorrow is our end. Tomorrow he becomes commander and I leave, I leave to find the Order.
Thinking about it makes me want to cry. A stroke through my hair.
"Not tonight Oez, we're celebrating." He says anticipating my swell of emotions.
"Do you think I'm making a mistake?"
"I think you're an insatiably curious hot mess." He teases.
"I'm being serious."
"So am I."
I look away and sit up.
"Don't do this Oez." He says pulling himself up and putting his hands around me. "One last night just for us remember?" His lips caress my ears.
He's right. I'm the selfish one, this was my gift to him. He doesn't give a damn about traditions, I do, or at least that's my excuse. He and I both know better, it's me. Our romance isn't taboo, not yet anyway, but its bordering. Battle brethren often share more than the field of combat, Pollux has brought uncomfortable suspicion upon us. Thrice he hath turned down maids of merit.
"I've loved you since the day you stole that other boys sea shells." I tell him twisting to look back and smiling.
"I would have stolen all their sea shells for you." He replies in a flat rumble.
"I'm sorry." I'm crying now.
Waves lap at the shore as lights like diamonds twinkle, a blurred watery vision they become as tears well.
He pulls me close warm and powerful, olive skin smoother than pollished bronze, but oh so much softer and sweeter in its warmth.
"I wouldn't love you if you weren't leaving."
He squeezes and I want to die. My nature pulls but-
"All I want is you." I reply.
"Your dishonesty is cute because it's sincere." He wipes a tear away.
We make love again and again that night. Sweet feasts, cool waves, drugs and philosophy even. When I leave the next morning he bestows me his cloak. Its far too big, but that makes it all the better, makes me feel small like I'm still wrapped in his arms.
A cloak to remember him by.
A cloak that pulls. The moment has gone.
Back to the surface the lurker pulls.
No.
Down to the depths.
I love you Pollux.
Goodbye.
I unfasten my brooch and descend as the cloak is pulled away, pulled into the life maker.
Down, down to the deep. Down to the light, it's so close now.
No, I was wrong, I'm going too far. I'm sinking down, down so far. It seems out of reach. Arm stretched please light, please. Into dark. Far far below.
I want to swim to it, a thousand brain freezes in the back of the head. Twitching uncooperative fingers.
A hole is foal.
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