An End to Dreaming
By Michael Matheson
Smashwords Edition
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Copyright Michael Matheson 2010
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Cover Design and Art by Michael Matheson
Prologue
He huddles in the corner weeping, gangly limbs quivering with his racking sobs. He does not know what to do for her. No Elder will set foot in their hut with the Taint raging through its walls, spilling into its air from his mother’s pus-ridden, spewing sores. He cannot even touch her lest he too fall to the spreading plague. For long cycles their island has been free of the hungering sickness. And now it has come.
Her breathing is shallow, laboured. It has a sound and an echo all its own in this cramped place. But he cannot leave her. The moment he sets foot out the beckoning opening of their hut they will not let him back in. The Taint cannot be allowed to spread. Even if he is allowed to live, they will seal off the domicile and let the Taint rage within. And then once the signs have changed, and the winds turn away from the hut they will let the fires have it.
He lifts his eyes over the arm that has been helping him avoid having to look at her twisted, writhing body. Her hands wring together over her chest, trying to claw inward toward her heart. She has made shallow scrapes and tears on her chest and across her breasts, trying to get at the distended, engorged heart that is slowly killing her. No normal heart can absorb the fungal particles the Taint brings with it, that clog and filter the blood, backing up the blood flow and eventually choking off the life-sustaining fluid altogether.
And the ones who do survive, their bodies changed from within, would have been better off dying. He has heard the elders speak of those who wander the other islands after entire villages have been wiped out, carriers endlessly caught in a mockery of living. Their sores permanent, pouring the noxious pestilence out to coat their bodies, they infect everything they touch. With blackened skins, darker even than the void beyond the sky, they wander. Minds sundered. He shudders at the thought as his mother screams.
A spray of effluvia and fume bursts up from the spores coating her skin as she spasms. For a moment there is only great beauty - a sheltered sky of green and gold winking stars, reflecting off black particles within the cloud, lit by the hearth fire. It balances the earthy roan of the hut’s reinforced interior flawlessly. He stares at it wide-eyed, transfixed. Only waking from his momentary trance when the spores touch his skin.
With a flurry of action he flails, much like his dying mother on the other side of their hut, as the first of the spores dig into his pores. He screams as the sentient fungal growth burrows, blood seeping out through the paths it has left, some remaining behind as buds, soon to bloom into moored, spewing states. He shudders as the first of the seedlings takes hold inside, drifting swiftly through his arteries. It is almost as though he can hear them speaking to each other in fungal tongues as they drift and burrow into and through him.
He raises one arm before him, turning it over cautiously to stare in shock at the extent of the spores that already cover his arm. He is younger and healthier than his mother, and they use that. Turning his own accelerated metabolism against him as they begin the long, slow conversion of his system into a breeding ground. Involuntarily he throws up the contents of his stomach, the spew coating the floor and some of it landing on his dying mother, who in the throes of her own death is utterly oblivious.
His eyes, skittering wildly in his head fixate on the fire. A distorted, pernicious grin spreads across his features as the pain intensifies within. Thrusting his hands and upper arms into the fire, hot enough to blister and welt the skin, he digs out several logs. He tosses several aside in pain, unable to grasp, even as he roots among the smoldering, splintering logs. He manages to grip one, flesh sizzling, as those he has dislodged toss and roll against various portions of the hut, flames kindling and licking at the edges of woven fabric and mud and wood walls.
The flames flare around him, unheeded as he grasps the log firmly in one hand, lowering it slowly toward the other, dotted with spores along the forearm. Smoke begins to curl in the closed space, and fire builds outside of the hearth, glutting itself on whatever will feed it. But he is unheeding as he brandishes the log in his hands like a purifying torch, even as it burns the flesh from the hand he holds it with. The brand hovers above his other arm, droplets of flame falling to scorch his unprotected, spore-ridden appendage. Spores burn and wither at the touch of the flame, as victory and madness mingle in his eyes, reflecting the growing light of the fire all around.
Chapter 1
The whole village has come to watch Taiha’s hut burn. The fires have wakened many of them. Some mistook it for dawn’s first light, but the day cycle was still some time off when the light appeared. It was the smell that finally truly woke them.
He has been standing watching the remains of her hut simmer in the fire for a long time now. Maybe half a day’s cycle. He’s not entirely sure, but it is unimportant. Standing there, arms folded, he is thinking not only of Taiha, the village’s only midwife, but of the three pregnant women in the small collective as well. He trembles involuntarily. His father’s father spoke once of a time without a woman who knew the mysteries of the Birthing Rites. Told him the horror stories of births not attended by the proper rituals. Of children who came into the world different, deformed, without the presence of the proper metals to counteract the advanced gravitational and magnetic pulls left in their world after the time of the Upheaval.
Lengthy arms crossed before his chest, giving the deceptive appearance of aloofness, he is tense. Considering. There are still several lunar cycles between now and the first of the births, but without someone who knows the Rites there is little point in allowing the children to be born at all. A dark cloud covers his eyes and he retreats further inward. He remembers the other portions of the stories his father’s father told him.
A clamour of noise, and a quick scuttle of commotion outside the remnants of the still smoldering ruin catches his attention, and his eyes dart upward, seeking, as he unfurls his arms, letting them hang loose and ready at his sides. Many have been digging through the earthen patches and wood moldings of Taiha’s hut. But now a youth from the other side of the village, maybe the Wood Worker’s child from the look of him, has found something and dangles it aloft, screaming and waving it away from him in terror. It is the forearm bone of either Taiha or her adolescent child. But that is not what is remarkable about it. And as he stares his hands curl into fists, tight enough to draw blood. Adorning the bones like a graceful tapestry are discoloured, burned spores, their roots still gripping to the charred remnants of the bone.
The Taint has come to their island.
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The village looms in the distance behind him, nestled amidst immense green growth, rolling back into mountainous terrain. A verdant jumble against a sheer, jagged, earthen rise far beyond. He stands no more than a few feet from the edge of the island, erect, and arms again folded - this time in resignation. His head is down against his chest, looking at the endless fields of sky below their floating island. Here, in the upper troposphere the islands are scattered everywhere, floating and bobbing in an airy sea, kept aloft by the exposed rapidly spinning core that beats at the heart of their world.
He stares down into the vast and seemingly endless reaches below, trying, as always since he was a child, to see down to the depths where the core sits. ‘Wreathed by the great white clouds that once inhabited the sky, drawn to where the earth no longer lies, concealing the burning centre of the world where dwells the angered God of our people who first sundered the world,’ he hears in his head, remembering the cadence with which his father’s father spoke it. The resonant baritone, so unusual among his people, a delight to his young ears. He remembers the voice better than the face. Maybe because the face always seemed to be looking away, waiting for his son to return from the journey that took him from his people, and his own son as well.
His thoughts turn to his father as he continues to stare down into the endless amber sky, seeing in the edges of his vision other nearby islands, once the land that circled the core of their world. He is a grown man now, and still he thinks often of his father as a child might, wondering ‘would he care for who I have become? Would he approve of the path I have chosen for myself?’ He imagines his father’s father felt much the same longings to know his son’s thoughts again, long before the old man wandered off into the trackless paths by the jagged mountainous rises that skirt their village to die alone. As had been the custom of their people since the Upheaval. An act meant to lessen in some way the unknowable sin that all committed that is at the heart of their God’s anger and wrath. An appeasement meant to one day perhaps restore the world to its unified whole, when the God of fury and fire at the core of the world is appeased.
He lets his thoughts drift back to the present, and listens to the resonant hum of the magnetically repulsed and repulsing metals that keep their island aloft. It is louder here at the edge, where there is less packed earth to dampen the steady pulsing that is the lifeblood of the once-moored earth. He knows the legends by heart. The time of the Upheaval and the sundering of the world. The living wrath of their God, unleashed with a dance of primeval fury at the heart of the world, setting the great glowing orb of burning core to spinning faster than even the world itself turned. The Upheaval that thrust the landmass of their world into the sky with a shuddering as the backbone of the world thrust off its mantle. The oceans of their world left to boil in the newly opened presence of the core, becoming an ethereally wringing mass of cloud and mist, forever circling the exposed burning orb. Land and sky exchanging places, like partners in a dance, swiftly changing hands and clinging to new positions.
He stands watching what he imagines are wisps of moisture drifting lazily ages deep below. He knows it is too far to truly see the endless wreathe of cloud that circles the burning, swiftly spinning liquid metallic orb held in place and remaining cohesive by force of its own gravitational pull. He knows that the only reason he is not blinded looking down at the core is the invisible, dimming wreath of cloud and latent gaseous moisture. Still, it comforts him to imagine that he can see it, and the orb beyond. That he is able to somehow see to the heart of their world, and the God who dwells within.
A deep rumbling starts from somewhere limitlessly below, and he feels the shuddering of the magnetic force, resonating with the metallic veins running through the body of their island. He hears the beginnings of the jet, and takes several steps backward, so as not to lose his balance at the edge, to fall forever down and meet too soon with the deity at the heart of the world.
He keeps his eyes to the low horizon of the island as the spray of still forming water - vapour thrust up by a stray magnetic burst from the wreathe of cloud wringing the core - liquefies several hundred feet above him, and rains back down in a plume covering multiple islands. He marvels at the beauty of the inconstant rainfall, watching some of the near islands, looking for the telltale waterfalls from their bases that signify where the ‘rainfall’ has pooled, and seeped through the crusted floating earth to pour back down in rushing, deafening sweeps to the cloud cover below, there to mist and become gaseous again.
He arches back and raises his arms to the void above, knowing the stars are there, but unable to see them in the day cycle’s light. He stands, just letting the water pour onto his face, his eyes closed, and feels it wash over his entire body. The showers last a long time, and he is in no hurry. Soon, there will be deciding to be done by the Council of Elders, and the Taint to attend to. But here, now, there is only water, and the immediacy of natural ritual cleansing. He basks in it.
At length, as the rains begin to diminish he hears someone running up from the village, sloshing in the new small pools along the mostly overgrown trail that leads to this spot where once the edge was larger, before an unusually long and heavy rainfall took a portion of the edge with it when it rained back down toward the core. The newcomer is shouting, and as he opens his eyes and turns to face him he can see that the runner is waving his arms as well. He shakes his head to clear off some of the droplets that have accrued on his skin and puts his hands on his hips, waiting.
The runner approaches, gangling his limbs out at the end as he catches his breath, and comes to a halt a few feet before him. He lets the young man breathe for a few moments and then asks “Well?” in his own, moderately deep voice.
“The Council …” gasps out the boy, still recovering his breath. A Council Page then. Unused to having to run beyond the borders of the village. “They want your presence, Steel Shaper.”
He frowns at the title as he recognizes the boy’s voice, the withdrawn and haunted features, knowing him for the son of the Council’s head - oldest among village Elders. He dislikes the formality of the title, only his by right of birth, not by action. He will never be a metal worker. He has foresworn the path, but he is still honoured with the right of First Voice among non-Elders at the Council by his stature. He sighs. “Naithil, we’re outside the borders of the village.”
“I know Naiyoki,” the boy says between breaths, still hunched over, hands on his legs. Unused to the exercise, though his slight muscles show he could do with more. “But the Council said the forms were to be observed. There’s a gathering coming,” he finishes, swallowing and rising to his full, moderate height, showing a slightly uneven smile as he straightens, happy to be in the presence of the elder man.
“The Taint,” nods Naiyoki to himself, staring beyond the boy to the village beyond.
“And other things I heard,” Naithil interjects solemnly, his features growing serious.
“Other things?” Naiyoki asks warily, already fearing the answer.
“Father said the Cycle of Appeasement begins once more,” the youth says, Naiyoki’s shoulders growing weary and sagging with the weight of the boy’s words.
Chapter 2
Naiyoki shoulders his way through the throng of villagers standing at the gates of the Gathering Hall, Naithil using the wake of his presence to ease in as well. No festive spirit hangs in this place as the night cycle approaches, the last vestiges of weak amber light shrinking from the sky. Solemn faces line the great rounded walls where vine and root intertwine with woven wood and packed earth. Sparse metal reinforcements, the work of his forefathers, line the foundations of the building, mooring it in place. The shaping and the placement of the metals has given the entire chamber a distinct resonance. It hums audibly. But the arrangement bears another purpose. A gift from his line to the Elders.
They use it now. Naithil’s father, Naioro, standing at the heart of the great circular chamber in a depressed well crafted of stone veined with polished steel set in an intricate webwork of lines and circumscribing runs, speaks. He raises his hands aloft, one holding his staff of office, and the venerable man’s voice is a thunderclap. “Silence,” it rings throughout the hall, magnified several times over. It sets the entire chamber to ringing. Immediately all voices halt, and Naiyoki finds himself a place to stand, Naithil sidling up close to him. Naiyoki spares him a moment’s glance, and leaves him be. He folds his arms across his chest, letting them slide into familiar grooves of muscle spacing from years of long practice.
The assembled villagers settle into the hall, and the outer gates are closed. It leaves the building a cloister unto itself, as was the intention when the Wood Workers of the forefathers first conceived of the Gathering Hall following the Upheaval. It is dark within at first until the banking fires set spaced around the upper reaches of the Hall are lit by those who serve the Council of Elders. Naiyoki finds it odd that Naithil is not by his father’s side, somewhere near the Hall’s Well of Resonance.
He turns his head to look down at the boy, standing a full head shorter than himself. He notes the tensed muscles, the slight downturn of the lips, and the set of the eyes. Naiyoki sighs, turning back to face Naioro. Naithil’s father has told the boy more than the youth has let on, and Naiyoki tries not to think of what is coming as he waits for Naioro to begin speaking.
Naioro glances once around him at the Council of Elders resting in the only seats in the room, arrayed in a circle around the Well of Resonance. Naioro turns slowly. He makes a full circle of his motion, looking at each of the Elders in turn, awaiting their approval before beginning. Naiyoki watches the reactions of the villagers as Naioro completes the ritual. Their faces are apprehensive. They know something is coming. Word of the Taint’s arrival has spread through the village. But Naiyoki suspects that the other news Naioro will speak at this gathering has not yet been guessed at. He draws his eyes back to the Elder as Naioro completes the circuit, permission granted to begin the proceedings. All done in accordance with the governing laws of The People.
Naioro takes his time and draws in a deep breath before beginning. He is old, and there is much to say. His voice is softer this time, no need to let it ring forth to quell the crowd. They are already hanging on his unspoken words. “The Taint has come,” he begins, his voice ringing forth to wash over them all. His words are not unexpected, yet the confirmation draws murmurs and discussion from the crowd. Naioro claps down the staff that dwarfs his own tall frame once upon the floor of the Well of Resonance, and the crowd grows silent. “The Laws will be followed,” he speaks softly, the Well reflecting it loudly enough to easily carry the old man’s voice into every curve of the Hall. Naioro glances about him once, nods to himself lightly, and leans on the resting staff with both hands as he continues.
“The Taint, long expected, late arriving, has finally come to our island,” he says, looking around him. He should turn to all as he speaks, but his bones are troubled by the moisture in the air and the crowd can all hear him well enough to forgive the oversight of protocol. He waits for someone to challenge the assertion. No one speaks and he continues, drawing in another deep breath. “The Council has conferred, and none have evidence of an infected carrier from another island coming to our shores. Do any outside the Council have evidence of outsiders coming to our island?” he asks, raising his voice to make of it a command moreso than a query.
“I have seen the remnants of an island hopper.” The voice is unexpected, ignoring the protocols of conversing with the Elders. All eyes turn on her, eldest daughter of the Huntress’ line. Impolite whispers follow her outburst. She is not well liked, she who does not follow protocol. She does not care, ignoring the whispers, staring at Naioro defiantly, not with the respect expected of one addressing an Elder, let alone the head of the Council.
Naioro looks into her eyes, leaning forward heavily, both hands still ringing his staff for support. “Daughter of hallowed line,” he begins, observing the ritual, for hers is a noble line, even if she has not honoured it in the eyes of her fellow villagers, “you have seen evidence of an outside islander?” he asks, his curiosity threatening to overthrow his observance of protocol.
Taiwa, eldest of the Huntress’ daughters, nods her head, and there is general disbelief. She glares around her, daring any to openly challenge her. Taiobe, daughter of Naioro, standing near to her father, returns the glare with her head thrown back disdainfully, but does not speak. The two stare at each other for a few moments, old hatreds seething to the surface, and Taiobe is the first to break the challenge, looking away as though she has better things to attend to. Taiwa does not press the point, merely scans her eyes over the entirety of the crowd to see that no one else will offer challenge. Few will even meet her eyes.
Naioro waits until Taiwa is done with her own personal ritual, and recommences his. “Daughter of hallowed line, did you find evidence of an islander with the craft?”
She shakes her head in response, shaggy loosely bound hair sweeping back and forth behind her skull. “Just wreckage,” she says, bearing no predilection for lengthy converse.
Naioro waits to see if more is forthcoming, and when Taiwa simply stares at him in response, he nods and turns to the crowd, calling out “Where is the younger of my line? Naithil?”
Naiyoki notes the downcast eyes of Naithil as the boy steps forward. The lack of protocol in front of the Council confirms what Naithil must already know, and what Naiyoki has for some time suspected. There has been speculation among the villagers as to who will ascend in place of Naioro when he walks beyond the village’s confines, to climb the mountains that skirt much of their island and perform his own personal Appeasement. Clearly he has not chosen Naithil, leaving only the tempermental and easily offended Taiobe to take her father’s place. Naiyoki fears for the village under her rule, but will not voice his concerns. Too few would listen: not enough of the villagers willing to go against the choice of ascendance made by a Council Elder.
Naithil puts his hands on the arms of those he is wending his way through, indicating he wishes to pass. Few villagers choose to move aside voluntarily for a lesser son. At length he reaches the edge of the seated Council members skirting the Well and bows before his father.
Naioro stares down at his supplicating child and says “up” in a harried tone. Naithil rises obediently, wondering at the lack of protocol being displayed here in the Gathering Hall. Naiyoki suspects it has not yet dawned on the boy that he has been passed over for his elder sibling. A twinge of sympathetic regret passes through him. He does not think overly much of Naithil. Few do. But truthfully, he does not think ill of him either. He notes the time Naioro spends looking at his son, taking long moments to consider his child. Naiyoki is not entirely sure what to make of the appraisal.
At length Naioro speaks, clinging to his staff and rising hand over hand to stand taller before his child and the assembly. Naithil looks expectantly at his father, and then quickly hides his crestfallen expression as Naioro turns to look at Taiwa. “Daughter of hallowed line,” he begins, all eyes momentarily turning back to her, “where did you find the wreckage of which you speak?”
Taiwa considers momentarily, and Naiyoki notes the slight change in the set of her eyes as she recalls. He watches the slight purse of her lips as she reaches back through her memories, studying the set of her face. “Opposite the great ranges, out beyond the fields of fallen trees. Near the farthest edge of the island, not more than a few spans before the lip” she says when she looks back up at Naioro. It has been a long time since Naiyoki has heard her say that many words together. From the susurrations throughout the chamber he is not the only one who finds her garrulousness unusual.
Naioro raises his staff an inch off of the Well threateningly, and silence is restored. His eyes scan the crowd to see if any will interrupt again, but none are interested in the volume of the reverberation his staff striking the Well again will entail. He lowers his staff back to the floor of the Well and turns his gaze on his son. “You will take Taiwa, daughter of hallowed line,” he begins, whose shoulders arch at the suggestion of being ‘taken’ anywhere but remains silent, only the set of her eyes betraying her irritation at the suggestion, “and have her show you where the wreckage may be found.” He pauses long enough to look from his son to Taiwa. “If any still live,” he says looking at Taiwa before turning his gaze back on Naithil, “you will make sure that no carrier walks amongst us.”
Taiwa harrumphs and looks away from Naioro pointedly as Naithil rises. Naiyoki cannot blame her. Naioro never was one to do his own dirty work. Naithil prepares to speak as he rises, and Naioro silences him with a small cut of his hand across the air. Naithil’s eyes rise to meet his father’s, and the old man whispers “now” firmly. Naithil swallows and bows before his father once more, taking a few steps backward before turning and looking for Taiwa in the crowd, who has already begun violently shouldering her way through it. No one dares remark on her overly forceful passage. Naiyoki watches her go. Naithil may not understand the dismissal, but she does.
Naiyoki turns back to Naioro, staring contemplatively at the old man, leaning deceptively feebly on his staff. He wonders what it is that the Council Elder does not want either his son, or Taiwa, to hear.
Naioro takes a moment to brush off some dust that has collected on one arm, steadies himself against his staff and rises to his full and impressive height. “There are … other … matters that must be discussed,” he says, looking out over the portions of the crowd he can see without having to turn to face them. Only breathing greets him in response. Everyone expectant, assuming that the Taint is the reason they are assembled in the Hall.
Naiyoki watches Taiobe shuffle restlessly, as though she has already heard what is coming, her eyes looking for something else in the crowd. He girds himself for what is all but sure to follow. He shifts his eyes back to Naioro quickly when he finds Taiobe’s eyes have found him and are trying to make contact.
“First among that which concerns us at this gathering,” begins Naioro, ignoring his daughter’s lack of attention, “is a pronouncement from the Oracle.” This draws Taiobe’s attention, and clear puzzlement, as well as murmurs from all in the crowd but Naiyoki, who already knows what is coming and is not keen to hear it - though he is interested, and vaguely disturbed that Taiobe was expecting something else. Arms still folded he waits for the old man to dispense with the necessary protocol. “The Voiceless One warns that the Cycle of Appeasement is again at hand.”
Though the crowd expresses their shock and dismay, it is Taiobe alone who glares at her father with unconcealed loathing. Naiyoki simply sighs inwardly, waiting for the inevitable. Taiobe’s eyes seek his, and he ignores her, waiting for Naioro to continue.
The Elder’s staff rings out once and the crowd, eager to converse but unwilling to anger the Council, lulls. “The Law will be upheld,” he speaks harshly, his derision for the crowd’s outburst open. He meets a few of the not easily downcast eyes and holds them, waiting for them each in turn to submit before continuing. “It is time again for a chosen vessel to leave the village and seek out that which will finally appease the God who dances in fury at the heart of our world,” he calls out, raising one hand from off his staff to hang in the air as testament to his words.
The Council nods solemnly behind him as Taiobe stares at him in disbelief, also seeing where this is heading. Naiyoki nudges one foot restlessly into the packed earth of the chamber, drawing circular shapes and tracing charms of protection his father taught him as a child before he had been obliged to leave the village to seek that which would appease their God.
Naioro gathers himself up straighter and brings his free hand down to rest on his staff again. “The blood ties must be held, and the Oracle has discerned that the son of the last vessel must make the journey to find that which will appease our God.” Nods of assent and small smatterings of approval rise from the crowd. Naiyoki supposes they will commend anyone as long as their own names aren’t mentioned. As no ‘chosen vessel’ has yet returned, and the furious God clearly hasn’t yet been appeased, it isn’t exactly an auspicious appellation.
Taiobe is the only one who voices any distress at the suggestion audibly, and even a threatening glare from her father can’t do more than silence her for the moment. Naiyoki considers the possibility that there may be others who are not happy to be losing the last Steel Shaper of his line to the Cycle, but he doubts that any of the villagers would voice opposition to the Oracle’s choice.
Naiyoki turns his eyes on Naioro’s face and finds the venerable man looking at him in turn. He can’t be sure what he sees in the Elder’s eyes, but it seems almost triumphal. And then Naiyoki understands, even before Naioro speaks his next words.
“The last order of business before us is a happier one,” Naioro says sweetly, raising his voice to all the crowd, who look upon him with confusion. “Taiobe, daughter of hallowed line, has reached the age of Ascension, and has chosen a mate. All joys be given to Naiyoki,” he calls thunderously. Only Naiyoki, and possibly Taiobe as well, catch the unvoiced laughter in his tone.
The outburst of jubilance is raucous. A Binding ceremony is cause for great celebration, especially one between an Elder’s daughter and her chosen mate. Naiyoki swivels his head around him as villagers swarm him, all looking to congratulate him in person, backing away only when they notice that his arms are still folded.
Naiyoki ignores them, thinking rapidly. It wouldn’t be hard to fake the proclamation from the Oracle. No one save the head Elder of the Council is permitted to commune with the Voiceless One, who communicates in written script: displaying their thoughts and predictions with the old system - their body hidden away from the world behind a labyrinth of worked steel and obstructing panels. The Oracle is supposedly from a time before the Upheaval - a freak immortal who also possesses the gift of foretelling.
All Naiyoki knows about the Oracle he knows from the tales the Elders tell to the young ones, the legends of the village and its many cycle spanning history. The Elders don’t know whether villages on the other islands possess their own Oracles. The Elders don’t volunteer that kind of information when emissaries and trade missions from off-island settlements come. The emissaries don’t either, so it is certainly possible that they too rely on an Oracle, though it is equally possible that the Oracle is the only one of her kind.
But here, Naiyoki is fairly certain the Oracle has not actually been consulted. His eyes narrow as he looks at Naioro, standing grandly, letting all who would descend into the Well and congratulate him as they would not Taiobe. None come near her. Where the village adores the head Elder, they fear his daughter. And rightly. Her rage is legendary. But it is her father that Naiyoki is concerned with now. The Cycle of Appeasement never falls again within the gap of a single generation. The last, too, had been early. Now he wonders if his father, like himself, had fallen out of favour with Naioro, who has been head of the village far longer than any Elder before him. Some hint at sorcery and dark magics. Some say Naioro possesses knowledge the rest of them lack. Naiyoki isn’t entirely sure the truth doesn’t lie somewhere in between.
Naiyoki and Naioro stand within the circles of adoring villagers, both receiving heartfelt congratulations, all the villagers’ troubles forgotten. And as the two men lock eyes, Naiyoki senses that Naioro’s smile is meant especially for him, and shudders involuntarily.
Chapter 3
Taiwa is a ghost in the jungle, moving from perch to mount to rise to hollow with the speed and effortless grace of the great predatory beasts that haunt these trackless paths. Naithil not so much. Silently she curses her luck for having to bring him with her, let alone have to make this journey. Every few score lengths she must go back and help disentangle him from one thing or another. Sometimes an upshooting jumble of root growth from the wild and untamed trees that rise high into the thinner air on the islands, sometimes the webbing of an unseen predator. Other times he simply gets caught up in the tangle of his own feet, unused to the overgrown paths of the island ecosystem after spending most of his life in the shelter of the village. Her patience is wearing thin as they approach the beginning of the pathways littered with fallen trees that lead up to this edge of the island.
The great trees here have been uprooted by too much water striking this spit of land. It is likely a magnetic confluence, either on the part of the pattern of the veins of iron ore that run through this portion of the island’s crust, or a point of intersecting thermal currents that force more water than usual up at this point. It is not Taiwa’s concern. That the fallen trunks make this place slow to cross, and consequently more dangerous, is. Though her ancestors fought hard to clear the area surrounding the village of predators until those creatures learned that something with a sharper bite than themselves had staked out territory. Still the jungles beyond the village remain wild. Her line does not venture here without necessity. Save Taiwa. Such ventures are a balm for her restless soul.
She considers this errand pointless. The Taint has already come to the village; therefore, the carrier is in the village. Clearly, there is something she is not meant to know. Something that is being discussed at the gathering. She sighs inwardly. She dislikes politics. It is so much simpler to kill those who offend and move on than to dance interminably with them as with some prolonged mating ritual. She hefts the body length spear that flows like a natural extension of her arm, revelling in its weight and balance. A gift to her line from a Steel Shaper many generations back. It has never marred, and as far as she can tell never will. She has already coated it in the blood of enough predators to know that it never dulls and does not rust.
She does not know the secret of its crafting but trusts in it as she does the skills of her own line. And in the skills of the Steel Shapers. She likes the hands of the current Steel Shaper. There would be a fine mate. Too bad that Taiobe probably already has her sights set on him. She has seen the furtive looks the Elder’s daughter has given Naiyoki. Or tried to. She ponders the look that settles over his features when Taiobe stares in his direction. It seems to her much akin to the dull and ashen look that camouflaging prey adopt when confronted with less intelligent, and easily beguiled predators.
She is also fairly certain that Taiobe has already given favours to suitors jostling to be chosen as her mate in defiance of the laws governing the Ascendance of the child of an Elder. Like her to sample everything first before deciding. She wonders if Taiobe will take a harem to herself if she ascends, as it seems she will. Naithil may not yet have figured it out, but the signs are not favourable that he will ascend to lead the village. Indeed, Taiwa is not even certain that Taiobe will let Naithil live if she ascends. Taiwa’s pondering is interrupted by the crash of undergrowth behind her, and a loud ‘oof’ing from Naithil, sounding as though it comes from under a jostle of disturbed fronds and ground level growth. Taiwa sighs out loud, her brows lowering and her shoulders tensing, before she turns to help him once again.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It lumbers through the village, spraying plumes of fungal growth through the quickly thickening air. The Taint has spread so thoroughly through its system that the bulbous, vaguely humanoid shape is no longer of discernable gender. Villagers scatter before it, screaming for the Huntress and her cubs.
Taiyuki, heiress of her hallowed line and current matron of her brood is the first to emerge from their unusually large domicile, built larger in understanding that the women of her line have always borne staggered litters. A genetic trait fostered by selective breeding on the part of her ancestors. She thanks them for it now as the three of her daughters not out chasing ghosts and misdirections emerge swiftly behind her. Each of them bears the spears that have been crafted for their line. Three more are still unclaimed, a living memoriam to a time when the line bore still more children over the lifespan of its matron.
Her youngest daughter emerges last, carrying her own spear and Taiyuki’s. The current Huntress takes her studded spear, its end fluted and barbed, from her daughter wordlessly, letting her fingers fall over the familiar leather grips of its haft, worn down by the use of multiple generations. She can practically feel the sweat of her ancestors as her own pools beneath her fingers, drawing the leather closer to her hand. Binding it to her.
As one the women emerge to run in the direction from which the other villagers flee. Their limbs are longer than those of other lines, their hearts stronger in their chests. Their pulses infinitely faster. And so too, are their reactions. The carrier dragging itself through the pathways of the village cannot hope to match their speed, and they are upon it with spear and fire gathered from any hearth reasonably close. As the first tongues of flame lick at the green and black spores, glinting a ruddy gold in the devouring flame, the carrier screams. The wail is a fusion of what remains of the host’s voice, and the fungal sentience of the Taint itself. As the creature collapses, the Huntress and her children give it a wide berth. Wisely, for the shuddering, burning thing splayed on the ground sends up plume after plume of fungal growth in an effort to sustain its own life by spreading and burgeoning in fresh skin.
They ring the dying hybrid and watch the carcass burn. Slowly, villagers emerge from hiding and raise exultant cries to the heavens, praising the unknowable name of the God at the core of the world for having the foresight to beget the ancestors of the Huntress’ line. Naioro’s praise is loudest. His voice weakest of those assembled, but his words bearing more weight through distinction of office, his words accented by the beat of his staff upon the ground. He promises them reward, and defers discussion of what that should be when Taiyuki, shrewdest of her line, asks what he offers. He praises them all in turn for their defeat of the off-island carrier and then begins the long walk back to his hut, situated at the end of the village nearest the mountain ranges that border a long edge of the island.
Some of the villagers linger, eager to watch the final smoldering embers of the corpse wink out and die. Little is recognizable about the corpse any longer, both because of the burning and the fungal blooms that have so completely swept and suffused its form. And so they do not note that it is familiar to them. Nor do they note that Tairythil, youngest daughter of the village Weaver is not amongst them, or that her mother Taioa is absent as well. Or more accurately, that she is lying before them.
Taiyuki herds her cubs off to their own hut, their blood already cooling after the cycle’s exertions. They are too exhausted to talk, and none of them note the mild, almost indiscernible cling of fungal growth to the points of their spears. By the mastery of their craftsmanship the metals have never required cleaning, and so they pay little heed to the maintenance of the ancient weapons.
Nor do they feel the presence of watchful, distended and transmuted eyes beyond the borders of the village. Naiyoki alone feels the presence of something unwelcome, but can find no cause when he scans his eyes out beyond the borders of the village. And in time, he too, returns to the comfort of his hut as the heat intensifies in a final flush at the end of the day cycle, prelude to the mild chill that comes with the falling of dusk and the night beyond.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The additional time involved in looking after Naithal has begun to wear on Taiwa. Before it was an irritation. Now it is something more. She will not be back to the village before the night cycle begins, and aside from the danger of wandering the jungle while the day cycle’s light dies, there is a growing concern in her belly for the well-being of the village. She is, by birth and right of duty, one of its protectors. It bothers her to be away from the village for so long. She knows her family will manage in her absence, but still she does not like being away from her appointed duty so long.
She is deep in thought, and vaguely worried though she knows not why by the time the two of them pass beyond the field of fallen trees and come upon the remains of the crashed island hopper. She has only seen it in passing once before the events of the gathering, some days ago when she was scouting in this region of the island. Farther afield than perhaps was necessary, but her caution now seems foresightful.
She examines the derelict more closely this time. It is not a usual island hopper. Though it bears the normal skeletal structure of wings and grips and a razor thin rudder the craft is too large by half. There are also additional grips and a reinforced structure for the skeletal spine of the entirely metal glider. She bends down to get a closer look, though she stands well back from the spores that ring the metal. They are charred and blackened in the fire that has resulted from the crash of this craft, sparks from metal hitting earth giving rise to a quick brush fire. Still she is wary. Naithil bends down and lets out a low whistle as something catches his eye. Taiwa pulls him back with a quick jerk of her free hand as a small patch of unburned spores let forth a weak burst that falls only a few feet from the metal of the craft, but which would have covered his face had she not withdrawn him.
Naithil’s breathing all but stops and his face goes blank. Slowly his eyes turn to regard Taiwa’s face, but she is not looking at him. She is trying to discern the nature of strange shapes and swirls of red colour slathered across mooring beams and the wing lengths of the island hopper. She cannot see them clearly, and they have been burned in the fire, but she would swear it is the repeated, stylized image of a figure dancing in a globe of fire.
Naithil gulps and pulls himself back. She lets him go, still staring at the designs emblazoned upon the wrecked structure of the unusually large island hopper. He inhales sharply, still looking at her. “Do you think anyone made it across?” he asks. She nods, eyes still staring forward. “I mean, do you think anyone survived the crash,” he corrects himself, his fingers curling and uncurling at his sides restlessly.
“Yes,” she says absently, her attention fixed on the dispersal patterns of the spores scattered across the metal.
“Why would a lone carrier use an island hopper?” he asks, more of himself than her, scratching at his skull in the easy and uncomplicated confusion of adolescence.
“Not alone,” she remarks quietly, shaking her head and performing rapid mental calculations. “It supports three,” she whispers softly, tightening the grip on her spear.
Chapter 4
He stirs and rolls onto his side in the darkness. His sleep is fitful and his dreams are like those of someone else. Full of images he has never seen and places he has never been to. And for all the variety and breadth of the images that flit through his head, there is a constant, unmodulated buzzing. There is also a sustained ‘pock’ing noise outside of his dreams, emanating from one side of his hut. He rises, groggy. Using one arm he raises himself up off his back, coming to rest in a sitting position. Not yet sure why he is awake, and seeing nothing immediately within the unlit confines of his domicile he puts a hand to his forehead. Breathing in deeply he wipes the hand down his face, over his eyes and across his mouth, dragging his lips along with the motion. They sweep down slightly, opening his mouth in a half yawn, and then close of their own accord as he blinks his eyes rapidly several times.
He swivels his head around the room, still blinking periodically, still half asleep. He is ready to lie down again when a scent like mild ozone attracts his unfocused attention from near the hut’s opening, the drawstring closure secured, but not impassible. He cranes his neck forward and blinks his eyes a final time to make sure that he is seeing what his eyes tell him is there.
Hovering, emitting small sparks of evanescing silver light, is a brilliant green and black insect. It bobs up and down in the same pattern as the islands do in the sky, as though pulled by the two competing forces that keep the landmasses themselves moored. He watches it for a few moments, and as he pivots his head to one side to see if it is still present on another angle - his logic still tied up heavily with the dreamstate he is coming out of - it moves a few lengths closer across the darkness of the night cycle that has taken up residence in his hut.
He moves his head up and back, stretching his neck, more surprised than anything else. It resembles fairly closely the insects that can be found all over the islands: broad sweeps of base colour, with small slashes of highlights designed to fool or intimidate predators. But there is something different about this one. Though it seems to possess a stinger, the needle is far too flat, almost geometrical, curled up directly under the insect’s thorax. He regards the ineffectual weapon momentarily, before noting that he cannot see the insect’s wings. He can hear them, and there is a vague blur of motion in the mostly dark of his hut, the moonlight just creeping in around the edges of the drawstring closure of his hut, but there is no visual trace of the wings themselves.
He is still pondering this in his not yet fully awake state when the insect darts upward sharply, circuits the curved roof of his hut once and streaks back toward the hut’s opening. It hovers just before the hanging closure that functions as the hut’s door. He blinks several times reflexively, and thinking that he is perhaps still dreaming, rises unsteadily. He finds he is clutching his coarse, thickly woven blanket and tosses it back onto the floor mat without looking after it, his eyes still on the insect waiting for him. His first step stumbles and then he finds his footing, knuckles one eye with a hand that hasn’t fully woken up yet either, and comes to stand just before the entrance to his hut.
The insect sparks feverishly, buoys up and down momentarily and darts around the hanging closure and out of sight. He sweeps back the drawstring and shields his eyes from the moonlight momentarily. It is weak, but his eyes are not well rested, and there are metal foundations scattered everywhere in the village, their long ago forged edges peeking up through the ground, for the glowing silver light to reflect off of.
The insect is hovering over by a nearby hut now. Silent, save for the vague humming that surrounds its tiny form. He takes one look back at his hut, debating simply going in and lying back down, leaving all this skullduggery to someone else. And then he shrugs with the kind of resignation it takes one’s shoulders years to learn and walks as silently as he can manage after the no longer buzzing insect.
Every few feet it stops to wait for him. Always close to a building, as though it is afraid of being seen by anyone but him. He cannot think why. It is an insect. What possible issue could there be with an insect roaming the village. Granted, it’s a sentient, patient insect. But how is that unusual in a world where the God at the centre of the world has deemed that the earth and the sky should trade places, and the Taint runs rampant, turning people into roaming, cadaverous gardens?
He follows it unfailingly, growing sleepy again, and then he is wide awake as they come before the Gathering Hall. He halts while the insect darts in. When he does not follow the tiny thing zigs back out, hovers and hums more loudly than it has yet managed. He looks down at it momentarily, then up at the rolling, interwoven trunks of the gnarled and aged trees that make up the crazily veering, intertwined fulcrum of the building’s roof. He cannot remember anything good ever coming out of being in this building, but the diminutive creature seems insistent.
He nods and the insect buzzes happily. He stares after it, considering, as the insect darts into the building, buzzing in what he would swear is a melodic humming. He raises his eyes once more up to the building, different in the night cycle’s illumination. Here, silver and ebony hold sway. Unlike the chalky daytime exterior and interior of the dead wood that forms it, leaving it devoid of feeling, the night lends it a decidedly sinister tone. The manufactured dome of bent and broken wood is at odds with the natural art of the Wood Workers. He remembers the story his father’s father once told him of the command of the then Elder to craft a building that would ‘shape the land to their will, unlike the others of the village that accepted the subservient role The People held to the land’. He can see the truth of such a tale in the night-lit wrongness of the building. He has been mistaken all these years. It is not devoid of emotion, but full of it. And all of it is the wood’s pain.
Eyes watching the building warily, he moves easily past the more figurative than literal gates: a set of posts meant to demarcate where those within should not stand past if they wish to get the full effect of the Well of Resonance’s placement. The perfectly circular interior holds a distinct difference of tone in the night as well. The metal here takes on umbral shades, seeming like jagged rotting teeth devouring the rising, screaming wood silently. He wonders if anyone contemplated the ramifications of the pattern by the light of the night cycle or if his own forefathers and those of the Wood Workers crafted the building only by the light of the day cycle.
He stands just within the entryway, staring upward at the bent and bowed wood framing the upper reaches of the dome, until the insect buzzes once more. Less patiently than before. He turns his eyes on it, and the insect seems to be glowing here in the darkness, illuminating his path. It is hovering above the Well of Resonance, occupying the dead centre of the building, humming to itself it seems to him. The insect’s drone is magnified by the properties of the well, but it is still a whisper compared to the words of those who normally stand within that august depression.
He comes to stand before the Well, and the insect buzzes again. His eyes dart back and forth between the Well and the insect before he motions his head toward the Well questioningly. The insect buoys up and down, before coming to rest on the lip of the depression, and quiets. He exhales, purses his lips in contemplation, and his whole body shrugs as he steps into the concave depression. He stands in the centre, looking around him curiously. There is a sound of slow stone on stone from somewhere deep below him, and as he looks down the depression groans softly and begins to lower into the earth. His head darts quickly from side to side, and then upward, as if to reassure himself that the dome is indeed receding, rather then he advancing toward it. The insect buzzes happily from it perch, accompanying him down, as the Well of Resonance descends, now dampening sound instead of amplifying it as they advance into the deep layers of the floating island.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The route down, though a straight shaft bored deep into the floating island’s crust, is a long and tedious traffic. More than ever he thinks he is still in a dream. The sound of stone grinding on stone is constant, growing louder as he descends, the air growing distinctly warmer. A waft of air ascends toward him from beneath the concave platform he occupies and in its breath as it rushes past him he can scent a tingling, burning odour with which he is not familiar. It is not a living odour. It is something born of the metals his line works with, but distinct. And new.
Naiyoki wonders if this is where Naioro sometimes disappears to for half a cycle at a time. Certainly the route down seems long enough to account for the Elder’s disappearances. As he scans the smoothly lined tunnel through which he travels, the insect behind him buzzes, prompting Naiyoki to turn around and stare down at it. It is glowing more brightly than before, and illumines more sharply as they continue to descend, as though drawing strength from what lies below.
Naiyoki wonders at what awaits him at the base of this shaft, sunk deep into the bedrock of the island, and then the platform comes to rest on a plinth of worked stone and he need no longer wonder. The cavern into which he has descended is carved. Worked in long ages past by hands that have since fallen to dust, even the memory of their bones likely forgotten. No natural, or artificial light girds the chamber, but various ores running through the rock are luminous. And it is enough to show him what lies around him. The carved, almost perfectly rectangular cavern stretches several hundred lengths before him. Its sides are preternaturally smooth. No simple working of stone this. This is work like those of his own line perform, though this must have been wrought by Stone Shapers. He has only heard tell of them. With the rise of his own line the Stone Shapers dwindled, and eventually died out.
Given the majesty of what confronts him, Naiyoki is forced to wonder if perhaps it is his line that should have been subsumed. Though there are no perfect edges here, the chamber has the appearance of flawless crafting. The planes are all slightly off, but only his experienced eye can tell. No one who did not work with delicate tools and the fine instruments of his craft would be able to tell, to see that the craftsmanship here was anything less than flawless.
Caught up in his adoration of the seemingly artless, though intricate skill it has taken to craft the voluminous chamber in which he now stands he does not at first notice that the insect has risen from the descended Well of Resonance, and is buzzing impatiently at him. Only when it increases its droning does he wrench his eyes from the near perfect symmetry of the walls. He turns wondering eyes on the insect, and then follows it with the full turn of his head as the hovering speck of green and black darts off toward the far end of the chamber, veering wildly as it goes, as though accounting for the magnetic drafts that must surely emanate from the exposed iron veins within these worked walls.
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