5

Urik watches Jullee from a distance as she stills a moment to gauge the atmosphere of the crowd from the edge of the forest. She had left the Wards at the billabong, and Urik guessed she was leaving camp when he noticed she wasn't riding her horse barefoot. He glances Akhtar and Elstir, they leave his side at once.

~

Phaeona listens patiently to merchants berating the Regalian Council as her brother scrutinises his spear-gun for unrepaired damage. When he's satisfied, they hasten away from the marketplace, through the riverside urban maze, back to the Arena. Together, they pass a young girl sitting on a dusty ochre doorstep, holding a white play-cube; the dye of her blue dress reminds them of their secret Standard. Phaeona resists allowing the lump in her throat well to her eyes as her brother walks beside her - thoughts of shipwrecked coasts weigh her brow. She wrenches her heavy leather waist belt and decorated gauntlets tighter, to feel held. Trying to hold on to, yet hide, the world they knew lurking beneath the blank surfaces of the stone homes they passed was disconcerting -the promise of worlds aligning within their lifetime was growing with every year. She hit her brother hard on the back reassuringly and he grinned as she looked away; knowing Phaeona would kill it in the arena today, he wonders if, in time, the girl in blue will too.

~

Entering Buddha's Cathedral, Phaeona suspects she smells burning insects and sees where men on stilts once leant against fractured proudwork to repaint the eyes of monkeys. Moving beneath an ancient menagerie, Phaeona strides across a floor of moss dissolving marble, to seat herself in a sunlit corner of the bluestone ruins and watch Jullee converse with a ghostly figure in the centre of the room.

'We know how to put one foot in front of the other; but we need to know what direction,' asserted Joan.

'So we're pressing on without Nelesia too now,' conceded Jullee.

'We still have Poltauramy; young Poltauramy's twenty-seven now, but he's Ronan's protégé by all appearances,' added Joan pensively.

'Appearances,' reiterated Jullee hopefully.

'It's too late in the game,' began Joan as she remembered Ataur as a younger boy; sitting quietly, nursing a gamecube, and pondering their world through the mutc’dom window with Nelesia behind him. 'I don't understand him…anymore,' admitted Joan regretfully. 'I don't know anyone who does. How could we possibly get to him in time?'

'You want to carve this stairway...' implied Jullee, 'You'll have to try.'

'No, it's too dangerous; we can't risk him crashing the system,' declared Joan firmly.

Jullee stopped to acknowledge the fear in Joan's face as her slightly blurry figure blinked in and out of vision - static around the Dana Pinnacles was bad today.

~

Joan Thurman's no'skin continued translating as Remi and the guanatari led the way. The stone passageways bustled with people carefully skirting old machines - some were fixed to walls, others conveyed around them.

When Joan saw a visible tuneor on someone they passed, she let go of her discomfort with the labyrinthine feel of this underground place.

'Well, do you think you will be able to get the message through?' pressed Remi.

'With a window of time as big as a pinhole?' intoned Joan. 'Don't worry, my boys don't take orders, they've enough wit to take a hint.'

~

In the doorway of the Cathedral, Jullee gently turned an etched lower receiver over in her hands. With her fingers, she traced the crude ornation of a scorpion; it could have been made by any one of a number of rogue kahlifates. 

'The ultimate expression of our division,' muttered Jullee, tossing the receiver back into the rubble littered with rotted garments. 'Damn our will to beget.’

After the NibAri advance upon the Ashen state a schism occurred, between Gondor kahlifates claiming descent from an infamously sordid prophet accusing brethren of inciting some divinely orchestrated retribution. The NibAri, absent from all public texts of the kahlifates dogma yet central to the drama that had unfolded, had not been seen or heard of since the whitefire - until now.

Jullee recentred as she came to her senses; the clouds hugging the mountains on the other side of the canyon were luminous at this late hour of the day. Between the trees, a stag moved out of sight as birds took flight.

'Phaeona,' ordered Jullee, 'find the oracle - before they do.'

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~ ~ ~

 

 Finlee is careful not to crease any of the long paper scrolls bundled together in his arms; they ruffle in the wake of his pace, threatening to take flight without him. He passes an unnaturally clear window, and senses an unusual cave of wonders from the darkly lit concourse he was navigating. Inside, determined light swam over maroon drapery, glowed on beaded succulents hanging from the ceiling, shot from gilt edging, and sank into the fabric of a magnificent easy chair relaxing in front of a large, unlit, fireplace framed with kindling.

Distracted, Finlee returns to his counting. He squints at a series of murky green panels lining the right side of the corridor before it curves into total darkness. Honing in on a handle, he drives open a door with the full weight of his body. Stumbling on uneven ground, he turns to face a veritable garden with more succulents, Lions Paw, and –startling him- two young leopards.

Exclaiming, Finlee retrieves his dropped papers in a flurry as the black leopard pounces again- pushing him playfully against his will. From the shelter of nearby foliage, the spotted leopard keenly observes through green eyes.

Dressed in black, she finished placing a seventh vase on the mantelpiece and smiled demurely as she seated herself, in front of the now lit, fireplace.

‘Are you the artist?’

‘The architect,’ asserted Finlee; frowning as he brushed soil from the now buckled leaves of non-metallic paper in his arms, and futilely imitated re-attaching a torn, corner piece.

‘Oh, you’ll be wanting to see Raoul –he’s up there,’ motioned the woman who appeared to be keeping what Finlee had earlier supposed was a boutique, though now he wasn’t sure.

Following the line of sight drawn by the wave of her hand, Finlee realised he was standing at the front tier of an unforeseen expanse. Steered here by someone idling outside on the concourse -after he’d tussled his way out of the enclosed garden next door- something now dawned.

Rounding the freestanding wall of the fireplace, he set off, up a footpath worn into dark dirt, and towards Raoul’s two-storey home standing alone in the distance.

Captivated, he noticed the light was very different here. The sky was higher than in the Banquet Hall, and far higher than over the lake in Elbrihim. Water dripped from above on the far side and he suspected he could hear a river somewhere. But of more direct interest to Finlee, was a band of stone bordering the right side of the path. Trailing down a slope and disappearing near a collective of dwellings, this stone was at once unknown to him yet shadily familiar – blue obsidian? Curious, Finlee drifted, and set his foot upon it.

‘Need a hand?’

Finlee spun around to face a local? girl pulling a cart loaded with layers of coloured fabrics. Her long patchwork skirt reminded him of some garments that he’d overlooked, hanging where he’d entered. He thought back to the poised woman fronting this bewildering space, and looked up to the leafy canopy sprawling across the rocky sky. Fragmented thoughts of flora, minerals, and structural blueprints -the lay of unter land- filled his mind; his thoughts muddled as they plunged and raced to grasp something sensed subterranean.

Waking life called, he withdrew to ground level.

‘Yeah, nah. Sorry, all good. I’m working somewhere here ‘n got distracted,’ he shrugged.

She measured his grin as he half proffered a bunch of dirty, crumpled, papers.

‘You don’t see papers like those every day,’ she commented casually.

‘It makes erasing easier –the surface can be reworked time and again,’ marveled Finlee, adding, ‘as your mind changes.’

Noticing the hanging corner piece, he tore it off suddenly and handed it to her. He espied remaining bits of ruby nail polish on her fingers as she took it and regarded it slightingly.

‘You’re fixing Raoul’s place,’ accused the girl as she dropped the handle of her cart where she stood. ‘I can walk you there,’ she insisted, beckoning.

‘Oh no it’s okay, he should be expecting me,’ assured Finlee.

‘He’s not in the habit of answering his door the usual way. You’ll have to bang and crash your way to him in the basement if you want his attention,’ she lamented –already several steps away. Finlee realised he was still fixed to the wall, he roused himself to follow her; glancing the cart she so readily abandoned.

‘She’ll be right,’ she smiled, noting his concern. ‘Come on, I’ve got a minute,’ she admitted, continuing her walk towards the home.

‘Alright, thanks…thanks,’ he repeated, quieter.

Despite worrying about the sky falling curiously, Finlee relaxed enough to begin following her up the slope. Her long dark hair fell scruffily to her hip over a dark blue top, and the bottom of her long coloured skirt drew against dark red soil, staining it, but she didn’t seem to mind. She stepped surely as the path wound, narrowed, and even faded to the door. They wondered in silence as they wandered.

‘Ray!’ she cried, skipping up the steps and pushing open a warped wooden door.

Finlee heard something falling, the sound of grit, as they entered a largely empty room without a ceiling.

Treading warily over damp wooden floorboards and meek pools of water, Finlee inspected broken beams –splintered hardwood. The sky had surely fallen but there were no rocks in sight.

Noticing a large flat table he laid his papers down, to be unfurled later.

‘I can’t get him to leave,’ she admitted gently.

Finlee looked up, through the broken ceiling and into the extraordinarily high, leafy, green canopy. Looking again, he noticed it was flecked with paled blue light –he hoped what had fallen before, would not fall again.

‘Ray!’ she called again, picking up a stray plank of wood and knocking three times on the banister of a stairwell. ‘Ray! Come out!’

Sounds came from below –someone stumbling over metal sheaves, and something ceramic shattering –there was no cursing, only laughter.

Finlee heard a wooden stairway being climbed; not common to him as he had lived within Palaedes all his life thus far. To his knowledge, wood was a commodity afforded by affluent northerners. Finlee was looking forward to working with wood again and seeing his new designs come to life in the flesh. He was also nervous, and eager, to please Raoul; who was now retired, but was once Chief of Staff to the President, and still very much highly regarded.

Finlee anxiously fixed his hair as a voice wafted up the stairs.

‘Is that you lovey?’

She glanced Finlee, with his tousled papers and flip-flops as she replied.

‘Yes, it’s me! And I’m not alone,’ she professed.

‘Aargh, why didn’t you say so,’ bellowed a somnolent voice.

‘I can’t stay, I have something to do…but I'll catch you again later,’ she proposed.

Finlee watched her drop the wood on the floor and pick her way back towards the entry, affectionately brushing the relief art of plants carved into the walls as she passed.

‘You’ll be right from here,’ she assured Finlee from the doorway.

‘Thank you, ah…’ Finlee pressed expectantly.

Looking off into the distance, she stepped down from the doorway of the broken home where Finlee stood.

‘Lovely to meet you Finlee,’ she smiled politely, now looking over his shoulder. ‘Have a good one.’

Finlee turned to realise Raoul had appeared, standing at the top of the stairs.

‘Finally, we meet,’ beamed Ray.

Finlee nodded eagerly and stretched out a hand, glancing the deserted doorway behind him.

‘Prudent isn’t she,’ chuckled Raoul as the sound of something clattering on the roof in a neighboring room turned into a crash. 
Seen through the doorway, a large chunk of ice and quartz confronted them from its new resting place in the smoking coals of a brick oven.

Unnerved, Finlee hastened out of the house and stood back to see where the debris had come from. Raoul followed, and they looked up to see a portion of sky stone glowing pale blue-white.

A grey feline ran across the roof of the smoking house, pausing to locate them when Raoul called out concernedly, ‘Diana!’

‘I think it’s time to move on from this place,’ reckoned Finlee as a drop of water fell on his temple.

‘Yes. I suppose it’s come to that,’ conceded Raoul. ‘I do hope you’ll follow.’

Finlee looked at him quizzically.

‘With your ideas, your work good man,’ clarified Raoul.

Finlee suddenly threw his hands up in the air and clutched his head. ‘My work!’ he cried, as Diana ran out of the blaze.

[0]

~ ~ ~

Spring Equinox, 2017

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