Wisteria peered through a slit in the vault door. After a few moments of quiet deliberation she motioned for Faden to join her. “Look,” she said. “Look at them.”
“I don’t know if I want to,” Faden said.
“C’mon.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“I’m not forcing you if you don’t want to. But they’re quite beautiful, in a way.”
Curiosity overtaking him, Faden hastily checked around the corner one last time, then, abandoning his sentry’s position, skipped down the hallway to Wisteria’s side. She moved out of the way. He bent low so that he was at eye-level with the slit in the door.
The first thing he noted were the gremlins, scurrying about frantically like frightened mice. Bathed in a cocoon of honey-warm light, the gremlins were dwarfed by mountains of golden egg sacs. There were so many eggs that they formed piles grazing the ceiling. The gremlins climbed up the sides of the piles to get to the eggs near the ceiling, tumbling down after scrabbling for non-existent handholds and knocking over their brethren on the way down. Once festooning the depths of Viridwood’s canopy, the egg sacs were brought in batches of millions into gestation rooms like this one for safekeeping. The eggs’ brassy exteriors betrayed little of the creatures growing inside, though some of the eggs with underdeveloped sacs would occasionally tear, wafer-thin film lacerated by a gremlin’s clumsy swipe, and globules of amniotic fluid would dribble onto the floor to reveal still-pulsing purple organs.
Faden withdrew from the vault. “All those hatchlings . . . they’re going to die.”
Wisteria met his gaze. “It’s an evil that we must stomach. What would we do? We cannot save them.”
“The Spokes want us to die of thirst.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
“I never imagined there would be so many.”
Wisteria shook her head. “One day we’ll pay for our sins here. I don’t intend to waste away in a foreign cell while Myrrh rots from the inside.”
Faden looked at Wisteria’s face and suppressed a shudder. Her hooded lids, yellow irises, and black-violet hair reminded him of a Levantian panther, concentrating on naught but its hunt. “How do you propose we go back?” Faden asked.
“Once we have what we need we should be able to run to Myrrh in a fortnight.”
“If we’re to travel on foot, I hope there are inns along the way.”
“Don’t be stupid. They’ll be checking every inn from here to the coast. Now hurry, lest the guards return.”
Faden nodded. He produced a spiral-shaped blade, composed of four concentric steel circles pierced by a spear spanning the breadth of his forearm. The needle-sharp tip of the blade he inserted into the slit in the vault door. Faden thrust his arm forward so that the circular blades hit and latched onto the interlocking mechanisms inside. Then, he twisted his arm until the blades spun the cylinders into the opened position. This action led to a shifting of panels in the floor beneath his feet, and Faden stumbled back a few paces, trying to retain his balance, as the panels unfurled like heliotropic flower petals and expelled a cloud of steam to reveal a dark, asymmetrical pit where Faden once stood.
A faint metallic wail emanated from the pit. The hum in the gestation room all but concealed it, but Faden could just barely discern the wail varying in pitch and octave in such a way that it sounded like a parodical rendition of one of his childhood nursery tunes. The pit itself divulged no information about what lay at the bottom, except that the bottom was a long way down, for its contents lay black and inscrutable.
Faden put away his blade-spear and glanced at Wisteria for confirmation. She glowered and jerked her chin, indicating that the job was set. Skirting the pit, she opened the vault door. A flood of gold bloomed in Faden’s vision as a torrent of egg sacs and gremlins alike fell out of the gestation room and into the pit. The falling gremlins accepted their fate dully and silently, emitting not a peep of distress. Faden watched with sadness as multitudes of unborn hatchlings plunged into the abyss. Once the initial flow subsided, Faden followed Wisteria into the gestation room to push in the rest.
There wasn’t much to it. The eggs were light and pillowy, and the gremlins docile and empty-headed, offering no resistance. The two of them made quick work of it, except that they had to make sure not to accidentally touch a burst egg sac by exerting considerable caution when shoving the piles of eggs into the pit, causing them to go much slower than they otherwise would have. Unfortunately, the delay was both inevitable and costly, for not five minutes had passed since they opened the pit and entered the gestation room that the alarm sounded and the guards returned. Out of the corner of his eye, Faden saw Wisteria’s hand reach for the pocket in her boot where she hid her dagger. Faden had time to futilely brandish his blade-spear, which was not even a proper weapon, before a sharp rap to his head knocked him unconscious.
A large red circle is the sun. She sits on a small metal platform floating in an endless sea.
It was sunset, so the red circle was gradually becoming a half-circle, making its ponderous journey below the horizon.
The light was fading.
All around Wisteria, there was nothing but the dark ocean. Darkness extended all around her. Black waters lapped at the edges of her platform. Directly in front of her, the sun. The sun was a perfect red circle. Deep crimson, the color of blood spilling forth from an injured womb.
The red circle of the sun was very, very large. Larger than she remembered it to be. It was the biggest thing she had ever seen, and it was fearsome, but she felt calm and detached.
“Hmmm.”
A voice. She heard a male voice, coming from her left. Peeling her gaze away from the red-circle-sun, she looked to her left and saw a boy on a platform floating about five meters away from her platform.
The boy was lounging on his platform, a languid, satisfied expression on his face. He placed his chin in his hand. “You know, it’s incredible,” he said.
“What’s incredible?”
“Everything. Everyone. Just, my life.”
“Oh. I — ”
“No one ever talks to me.”
“Oh. What do you mean?”
Suddenly overcome with shyness, the boy backtracked. “Ah, never mind. Why discuss that which we cannot change?”
Wisteria tilted her head, intrigued. “So be it. Some things can be changed and others can’t. I won’t understand unless you explain more.”
“No one ever talks to me. I’ve been completely forgotten.”
“Oh.”
“It’s just one thing that I’ve noticed recently. I’ve been completely shut off from the world. All my beloved friends decided to carry on with their lives and leave me behind. They simply forgot that I existed. I’m not worth one thought in their minds,” he rasped jovially. “H-ho, how incredible.”
“I’ll talk to you, if that’s what you want. If your friends forgot about you, then they didn’t truly care.”
“Yes, I know. Don’t worry, I’m not sad. In fact, I’m really happy.”
He does look rather peaceful. “Can you help me?” Wisteria asked.
“Well, sure, I can try.”
“Can you answer a question for me?”
“Yeah.”
“What happens when the sun sets?”
Fire rippled across the ocean. Red fire, reflections from the red-circle-sun as it simmered gently over the rippling black ocean. Red fire. The boy raised his head. “I suppose you’ll return the way you came.”
“I see. Thank you.”
The boy nodded. He dipped his hand into the water. Wisteria watched the red-circle-sun. It was a half circle now.
Soon, I’ll be back.
