A DARKER SHADE OF BRIGHT
Merlin Douglas Larsen
A Darker Shade of Bright
Merlin Douglas Larsen
Copyright © 2012 Merlin Douglas Larsen
Published by Merlin Douglas Larsen at Smashwords
To obtain any commercial gain from this work is prohibited by the author without prior consent.
The author can be contacted at douglarsen50@msn.com
Three Fatal Delays on the 78th Floor
Other books by Merlin Douglas Larsen
I could spend my whole life writing the visions and churn out thousands of pages – and it would only be the fragment of a beginning of the telling of what we are and what we do…
– Gilford Clover
In the Void only two objects existed: the Universe, so far away that it was reduced to the merest pin-prick of Light, and this body of a naked man: eyes half open yet not seeing, head thrown back, mouth slightly open yet not breathing, arms out-flung almost in a cross shape, knees slightly bent, touching, with ankles apart. The mote of Light, incalculably far away, limned the edges of the body as it rotated slowly backward and even more slowly in a barrel roll to the left. But nothing of this physical state had been noted by the brain for passing eons of mortal time because the body was as nothing: only tumbling, jumbling thoughts were real.
Your body was in this self-induced suspended animation but your mind could not shut down. The numberless names you owned, the numberless things seen, done and said, all lay coiled inside your skull like a cosmic pile of noodles. No thought emerged to dominate. There was no purpose, no imperative to separate anything for special attention.
How long?
The question was as meaningless as the Void itself. How long? It was an immeasurable concept. Your head was filled with a myriad ways of measuring time. But none of that related to how long this self-imposed exile and protest continued.
And here you would remain indefinitely until Existence itself ended, ending you. No one would come out to you. No one had so far, and there appeared to be no reason to expect otherwise. Even if someone did find you, what could be said to call you back? There was nothing left to do, nothing remaining to BE: nothing unseen, undone, unsaid, because you had been, seen, done and said everything, numberless times.
So you slowly twirled and spun with your chaotic memories. And as they fired and exchanged places in your sub consciousness, the Universe, that singular speck of Light that you no longer heeded, shimmered like a priceless jewel, impossibly brilliant as it was miniscule.
And there Existence continued as always. Your absence was no longer noted. So you assumed…
ONE
The World began this way: First One came there, alone, and saw the beginning where the Home was made and waiting.
Later suns would not be so grand, either in size or colors, for it burns with the entire spectrum of color that defines the World, and all those myriads of hues shimmer at the edges and roar in the heart of the first Sun.
And the planets circling the Home Sun are enormous and numerous in their many thousands, varied, and extending outward an intense distance. That single solar system is vaster in circumference than a galaxy. Yet in the beginning there was only the first Sun, and its planets and moons of fire and ice and life, waiting for the first Child to come and see.
First One emerged from the Sun and bent his way toward the Home planet, about midway in the array of orbiting spheres, the largest of them all, wrapped in clouds and beneath them vast oceans dotted with islands like brush strokes. Continental masses almost divide from each other, but not quite, for land bridges, isthmuses, join the whole of them together, forming large inland seas. Every form of life thrives there, in the waters and on the land and in the air above. Enormous trees stand like silent sentinels, their upper expanses wreathed in cloud. Below, lesser foliage spreads across the land in profusion, separated by plain and tundra and steppe, each open expanse teeming with various living things all intermingled in harmony.
To this Home came First One. In her mind was the voice of the Father, giving dominion and stewardship.
TWO
Not long after First One took possession of the Home he could tell she was no longer alone in the World. The First Generation of Siblings had come after himself in a simultaneous profusion.
Some were sleeping in the Sun or at its edges. Others were curled in sleep in the depths of space between the worlds, and others yet lay supine or prone upon the surfaces, or deep within the bowels, of those many spheres. Many more Children were slumbering scattered over the surface of the Home planet itself.
The Father awoke them with a word. And where each Sibling opened their eyes, that which they first saw they loved most above all later things.
First One went to the meeting place and called each Sibling to gather there. The meeting place is a vast, river-fed plain dotted with broad trees that spread wider than they are tall, providing shade between two towering snow-capped ranges of black-green clad mountains running from north to south. She waited there a long time, watching each Brother and Sister as they found their way thither. The last Children to come were from the Sun.
THREE
To awake, with no dreams yet to fill the timeless sleeping. To see and hear and feel the cauldron of the Sun’s heart all around you, like a loving embrace flashing with colors in their million-million hues!
Then to see the woman, a Sister of the Sun as you are a Brother; and her eyes opened just a heartbeat later than yours. You saw wonder drive the sleep from the depths of those matchless orbs that reflected back the colors of the Sun’s living fire. Then her eyes lifted a little higher, sensing your shape above herself and to one side, and your eyes met for the first time. Perhaps an age passed as you wordlessly sought some message in the first eyes. She smiled. And you realized that you were already smiling with pure delight and a deep mystery, and she was mirroring your expression.
Later, after the first joining, as naturally as drawing breath (from the very ether of the Sun’s spontaneous explosion), you wandered about testing the limits of your first conscious placement in the World: hand touching hand, caressing light-limned curves of fingers and limbs; running finger tips along brow, cheek, then up and down neck, delicious spine, rump, flank and loins: now all unconscious of the touching yet drawing sustenance from it like feasting.
No words yet had been spoken.
Joined together you reached the edges of the Sun and saw the black Void beyond, and suspended seemingly not far away the nearest planet, a blazing ball of reflected light and its own molten fire. And beyond it many bright lights of varying sizes and colors: the other planets of the inner solar system. One dominated them for beauty: the Home planet, but at first you did not know that.
In wonder you both laughed again at this latest prodigy of Existence. There was an entire Universe beyond the sun, after all: how big or of what makeup remained to be discovered. For now just knowing was enough. You turned inward again, back to the already familiar and loved fire.
There were The Others – more Siblings – and most were joined like the two of you. But some were alone and seemed to prefer that.
Together everyone formed a loose community of sorts. But within the continual roaring of the Sun’s heart and the solar winds generated from it you maintained almost constant silence.
Mostly the Siblings of the Sun remained apart, aware of the nearness of The Others, but content to gaze and ponder thoughtlessly for a delicious age of almost vacuous innocence, joining and rejoining with the first Loved One seen at the moment of Awakening.
An Age passed without measured span.
Then the Voice of First One came to each of you, calling you out to the Home planet, to the meeting place. You could remain or come, the choice was yours.
At first only a few answered the call of First One to gather to the Meeting Place. But more Siblings of the Sun departed until you were quite sure that only the two of you were left.
She called you by many names, trying them each to feel their timbre and color, before moving on to another. You offered no names for yourself, being content with each one that Nova created. She could not choose one above the others, and had not, before you both decided to follow the other Siblings of the Sun.
The last name she gave you, as you both arced like blazing bolts out of the Sun’s heart across the blackness of the Void, was Harvey. It was the first nonsensical name that she called you by, and Nova laughed as she said it, repeating it as your paths crossed and crossed again while you cut your pair of ways swiftly to the Home planet. You half-pretended annoyance at her choice of a favorite name – after all the grand sounding ones that she had created to describe her favorite observations about you. And the pseudo annoyance gave birth to the first game you both played: Harvey in pursuit, Nova laughing musically and slicing about in ever more complex changes of direction to avoid you. Her laughter resembled the higher pitch of the Sun’s voice, only in delightful bursts.
Of all the voices from the Sun Nova’s was the best: full-bodied and of a mid-range, almost low enough to be a man’s voice. In anger (which you would not experience for a while yet) hers was as terrible as the Sun’s voice turned cold.
FOUR
To awaken in the Void! The first thing she saw as she opened her eyes was contrast. Half of her vision was utterly blank, the abyss of empty space, and the other half was sprinkled with shining pin-prick planets and the tiny sun dominating in their midst. It was odd, that first vision, because it seemed quickened, such that the orbits of the thousands upon thousands of planets were animated, as if from where she watched the whole World was displaying itself in a complex, circling dance for her amusement.
The outermost planet was swinging by below her for the third time when she moved herself effortlessly to intercept it. Swiftly the crescent of the sunlit side enfolded her descending face in a vast embrace.
The fringes of the outer atmosphere brushed over her speeding body. Clouds of some blackish-green gas tore at her hair and crushed her breasts. She let the pressure build on her eyes until it hurt. The screaming gas in her ears tore her mouth open and filled her cheeks. Her chin was forced down and the densifying atmosphere entered her throat and pressed toward her lungs. Before slowing her plummet toward the planet’s surface, she inhaled the thick gas till her body felt liquefied with its ichorous permeation. Then she exhaled it all back out into the atmosphere as she pivoted and allowed her feet to draw near the first land that she saw below.
She angled her direction in order to miss the eminence of a low ridge, opting rather to drop into an inky crevasse that glowed far down within from some kind of volcanic light. The heat was intense and she felt it until that hurt. Her feet entered a pool of ichor that burned a dark and lurid green with tinges of every shade of blue to black luminescence. And there she stopped moving down and walked upon the surface of the roiling liquid rock and gasses.
She walked about underground slowly, eyes closing to the symphony of rending, seething liquid rock and turgid air. It was the first Music.
She burst upward through another vent and soared screaming through the black-green clouds. Leaving the volcanism far behind, her mouth was opened wide and from it burst the song of Fire.
Working her way in toward the sun, she visited each planet one by one. And each had its own music to add to the growing symphony of the New World. Replicating it with her body became impossible. Only the various parts could be sung one at a time. In her head the total cacophony of harmonious intermingling went on, but from her mouth she must choose which part to sing.
Frustration grew as the number of visited spheres increased. The bigger the symphony, the more an intensity built inside of her. It was pain growing, and yet she could not stop. Planet after planet with their moons, she dropped down, went inside and soared about in their atmospheres: or heard the play of solar winds subtly stirring dust against the rocks on airless spheres.
She did not count them. But the parts to the Music were each significant, like a roster of the names of children in her mind. They were all variations on the song of Fire, and of Ice, of Wind, and of nuances to the Void itself as it closely surrounded each planet and moon.
Working her way in toward the sun, she visited each planet and moon. The Music became increasingly complex and she could not express it except one voice at a time. Her impotence to give full expression to the symphony of the spheres was intolerable.
Other children she met in her journey and they greeted her but she did not respond, but rather became reluctant to suffer their distractions of her quest for more parts, more variations, to the symphony.
And finally she heard First One’s voice calling her to the Home planet, to the Meeting Place. That voice, alone of all the voices of the Children that she had so far heard, added a timbre and meter to the Music that vibrated throughout her whole being. With a grin almost feral in its hunger, she turned away from the next sphere that she had been approaching and hastened toward the blue grandeur of the Home planet.
FIVE
He was on his back in snow and beneath the snow was a thick layer of ice. As his eyes opened he saw racing clouds tinged with the last rays of a sunset. The winds stung his naked flesh like enticing finger nails tracing every muscle. An unconscious smile animated his face.
Darkness took the fire from the clouds and they became ebon curtains folding and unfolding the other planets glowing in the night sky. He did not move yet but took in all details from his limited, supine vantage point. Morning came and the clouds had blown away during the night except for lingering wisps. The sun burned these away and filled his sky with color and shades innumerable. The front of his body where it stood out from the snow was warmed until he felt half-and-half frozen and baked.
When a full day had passed and the sunset come again, he finally stirred and sat up. Looking around himself he saw a mountaintop surrounded by an ocean of dense clouds. Other mountains in the distance thrust through the clouds that lapped their snow and ice covered heads. But none of them were as close to the sky as his mountain.
He watched the sunset. The clouds below were swallowed slowly in shadow, then the other peaks, and finally only his mountain top was bathed in the warm amber light, then only his loins and upper body. Finally the last sliver of the sun’s ruddy edge penetrated his eyes and slipped away. Pale blue, almost-white rays fanned up from beyond the horizon and slowly dimmed, shortened and then faded to nothing. A dying glow pressed down until only his imagination could supply a faint grey radiance where the sun had vanished. The sky became the blackest jet pierced with the planets in all their varieties of size and color.
He stood again the next night, pacing about on his mountaintop, noting all the heavenly bodies as they wheeled by over his uplifted face. He was already artlessly naming them.
This went on for a space of time. Then one morning he abruptly decided to turn his attention to the rest of the earth that he stood upon. There was no thought of taking to the air. Instead, he looked for a way to climb down using his body. Gravity tugged at him every moment as he clung to crag and inserted toes and instep into every possible purchase on the cliff’s face. And he made his way down through the layer of clouds until at last he was beneath them. The air below was dim, almost dark, and as he continued to descend the going got easier and the air less cold.
By the time he arrived at the first line of trees he was no longer climbing down but instead was leaping from rock to rock and then to earth and was running like a god down the face of the mountain, through the trees, weaving between them, singing a wordless hymn of joy.
The journey went on through mountains on either hand and spanning days and nights, passing over streams and around lakes where living things gazed upon him as he passed, some taking to the air to swoop nearer for a better look at this man. When they gave voice in their own tongue he took it for a greeting and answered back.
The clouds settled lower and a fine mist turned his body silvery. Then the cloud cover broke up and he was moving through hills alive with streams and lakes amidst grassy shores.
And along those shores he saw where The Others were gathering. It was night when he first saw The Children like himself. A group of men and women were standing and sitting mostly close together, though some were farther away and solitary.
He drew near and The Others made a ring of their number, admitting him, and then they all sat on the grass.
He introduced himself to them. “I am Climber”.
“I am Eve. You have an interesting name. Who gave it to you”? The woman who said this was with a man who looked almost exactly alike. Climber sensed that they were important because the others looked their way before and after speaking.
“No one gave my name. I chose it myself.”
“You really should let us choose a name for you, after a while, when we learn what is appropriate,” the important woman said.
“Why”? Climber asked.
“Anyone could choose any name for himself,” Eve explained. “It would not necessarily mean anything about them. If we decide on a name it will mean something about you.”
“The best thing about you,” added another woman.
“It will be the best name, but a name should be something we decide is best, which is not necessarily the same thing as the best thing about you” corrected Eve, the important woman.
Those seated in the circle nodded. Climber noticed some of The Others nearby moving off looking up at the light studded sky.
“My name is Climber.” There was no uncertainty in his statement.
“We can tell that the name is important to you,” said Eve. “Tell us why.”
Climber told of how he had awakened on the highest mountain alone and climbed down.
“How odd,” said Eve with a small frown creasing her lovely, dark brow. “Why did you take so much time and difficulty? Why not just descend like anyone normally would”?
“I felt like doing it that way,” Climber said.
“I would give someone the name Climber,” said Eve, “who had ascended, not someone who had come down. It is more specific. We could call you Descender, for now, I suppose – until you demonstrate a more appropriate name.”
Climber felt something resentful but could not give it a name. He answered: “You do not know about climbing down from the highest mountain, if you believe that it is all descending. I tell you, it is done by going back up to find another way down that works”.
He said no more but looked down and let his fingers braid stalks of grass.
Eve sensed the new-comer bristling in silence. She decided to lighten the atmosphere by an explanation.
“I am Eve,” she said again, “and my name was given to me by my man, Cane. We awoke together beside the canebrake, and it was evening. I named my man Cane. The Others came to us over the days and nights that have followed. First One called and we remain here.” Eve turned to the woman at her other side. “Tell Descender your name and how you came by it.”
“I am called River,” River said, “because I awoke in the river.”
“And now you,” Eve nodded to a man across the ring of Children seated on the grass.
“My name is Merry,” Merry said. “I too was awakened in the river. But River already had that name when I got here. Eve decided that since I make people smile and laugh I should be called Merry instead.”
“Do you see how it works now”? Eve asked Climber.
“I see how you do this. But I do not see why it is necessary to do it only this way. Why can you not have two Rivers, if both want to be called River”?
“That would become confusing and disorderly,” said Eve.
“Why are these wrong?” asked Climber.
“I did not say that they are wrong,” said Eve. “But they are not as good as order and clarity. Surely, we should do the best, even in small matters like not having people about with the same name.”
“I do not see any trouble caused by having more than one of us with the same name,” said Climber.
“Perhaps you would prefer a different name than Descender,” Eve said.
“Climber, will please me,” he said. “You can call me by another, but I will not answer.”
Eve frowned. “Your feelings are not helpful in this matter. You cause needless trouble.”
Climber said nothing. He looked around the ring of faces and saw agreement with what Eve had said. He also saw some who looked down or away and would not meet his eyes.
He sighed and got to his feet then. The others watched him. He took the braid of grasses and bent it into a circlet and tied it. Then he stepped toward the ring. “Let me pass if you please. I am going.”
The woman, River, jumped up and made room for him, smiling at his smile. Climber set the circlet of braided grasses on her head and walked off into the night without a word or backward look.
SIX
Climber left the valley of named Children. He knew that he would encounter Eve and her ways if he stayed. Yet he knew that this place was where they all were supposed to be. They were waiting for something from First One, but no one knew yet what it might be.
As Climber moved away up the valley he mingled with other Children in passing. First One was mentioned but no one Climber talked with or listened to had seen him. First One’s existence was not questioned. Knowledge of her was empirical with each Child of the first generation. But with no one having met First One it could not be said for certain what gender he, or she, might be. Some Children preferred to identify with one some with the other.
Climber went toward the west snow-capped mountains opposite the mountain range he had come down from. After a day of walking through the plains and passing more Children he arrived at the forest at the feet of the mountains and entered into the shade and sun-dappled shrubbery beneath the arching branches. Few Children were there. He passed some wandering in reveries. And some were joined and did not seem to notice his passing close by.
Climber lived up to his assumed name for himself. He kept going up until at length he had physically conquered the highest peak, a twin of his birth place in the range of mountains that he could now see far off to the east. His peak where he had awakened to the World was too far away to make out for certain. But he fancied that he was accurate in his guess as to which one it was.
Then he turned away from the morning sun and faced west and the vista of peaks and ridges to the horizon. And he saw the woman. She was slightly below his lookout point, perched as he was atop the highest wind-swept crag where it thrust up from the drifts of snow. She was lying supine, her four limbs widespread to form an X in the snow. Her skin glowed in the shade of the peak Climber clung to, down there in the otherwise pristine expanse of snowpack. The color of her skin gleamed like a low flame in comparison to the cold bed. The woman’s eyes were closed in a face tensed by some kind of concentration or conflict. Otherwise, she did not move a muscle and could be in a trance.
Climber did not breathe or move but only stared down at the apparition. She must be a Child too, a Sibling, but she seemed almost alien somehow.
There was no path through the snow to mark her arrival, so she must have ascended in the usual manner. (He thought of Eve’s priggish judgment of his name and frowned at the memory.) Climber determined to wait until the woman ended her vigil, or meditation or pilgrimage or prayer, whatever it was she was engaged in below. He would be doing something rude and possibly wrong to interrupt it.
Day passed, the sun set in the west and nightfall came and he clung still to his peak and his own vigil. He watched for any signs of change in the snow-enfolded woman, and alternately he studied The Three Moons.
In the intervening days, since his awakening, The Three Moons had manifested. The small moon seemed about the size of a large round grape held at arm’s length, and the other two moons were twice, and at least twice again, the size of the smallest. Their colors were the reverse of their size relationship, with the largest moon being sultry ochre, the middle moon being cheerful yellow and the smallest moon shining white like the snow-capped mountains around Climber’s perch.
Tonight, The Three were almost full and high overhead after sunset. They seemed suspended in a complex dance, for the two smaller moons orbited the largest one, and the smallest moon orbited in its turn the middle moon. Each night since their appearance Climber had watched them slowly changing position, and it seemed that the smallest would soon vanish, and reappear again from behind the middle moon, even as they passed in front of the massive largest moon. It was quite a display.
Down in the valley of named Children, the Siblings had discussed the phenomenon of The Three Moons, and various names had been offered for each of them. Climber preferred to call them The Three Watchers, and had begun to invent a story to explain how and why they danced. In his fancy, the smallest moon was the brilliant Child of the other two. But he hadn’t decided if the hiding of the Child was the Mother protecting her offspring, or a jealousy manifesting because “his” brilliance out-shown that of his parents.
The concepts of hiding and jealousy, or even yet of “Mother and Father”, were nebulous and had no real World components for illustration. Climber was in fact manifesting some of the earliest imaginative traits of his species but did not recognize the evolution of his thoughts.
The woman did not stir all that night. But at dawn she opened her eyes. And saw him almost at once. Her frown deepened for a long moment and was replaced with something like puzzlement. She sat up quickly then. The snow where she had been lying was unmelted as if her body held no heat. Climber sensed an alien manifestation in her more than ever now.
She stood then and leaned slightly forward as she met his eyes intensely. More than the glow of her amber skin her eyes contained a banked fire in their depths. Her wide staring eyes were green. He said nothing and felt transfixed, as incapable of movement as the very rock to which he clung.
Without a word the woman seemed to have made up her mind about him and her face closed, the enquiry finished in silence. The tense fix to her brow remained. She dropped her eyes and looked around at the sun-painted peaks and snow fields. Far below the crevasses and narrow valleys were yet shrouded in deep indigo shadows.
She turned directly away from him then and he could tell she was going to rise and vanish. A huge reluctance overwhelmed his silence.
“Wait!” he called and threw out an arm and spread fingers. Her whole body froze at the sound of his voice. “Wait! Don’t go yet! I am Climber and I have found you here on a mountaintop like unto the one where I awoke to the World. Are you not a Sister? From whence do you come?”
As he had spoken the woman untensed and turned and now faced him fully again. In the place of puzzlement he now saw something like pleasure spreading over her features.
“Climber?”
“Yes!”
“Climber, how do you know the song of Ice?”
In a heartbeat she was through the air and stood at his side. The sunlight bathed her golden flesh in a brighter glow than Climber had yet seen on any Child of the World.
“How do you know the song of Ice?” she repeated.
“What are you talking about?” he said.
“When you speak, you are making the song of Ice with every word.” She smiled and her face still asked the question.
“I was on a mountain much as this when I awoke to the World,” Climber said. “I was sleeping in the snow and when I opened my eyes I saw the sky and clouds and I stayed there an entire day before rising to my feet. I am drawn back to the snowed-covered mountains and they will always be my first Home. For a time I was in the valley where the other Children are gathering. But I tired of the thronging voices. And some few are not agreeable. So I came up here for solace. I thought that maybe I might meet First One here. In his stead, I find you.”
As he had spoken her eyes had closed and a very slight smile animated her face and she angled her head listening. When his voice stopped, her eyes opened only a little. “Don’t stop speaking, Climber,” she said. “It is like a part of the Music. It is as though you are singing the song of Ice.”
“What do you want me to say?” he laughed.
“Anything, just keep talking to me!” Her eyes closed and her hands sought his, touching his belly first, then her fingers sliding across to his arms and down to his hands. She brought them unresisting up and together, enfolding his hands within hers. She stepped close and held his hands bound in hers between her breasts. “Talk to me!” she repeated.
“Alright, if it pleases you.”
“Yes! Yes! It does. You do please me, more than anyone I have met. Your voice is like First One’s.”
He felt a tremor of excitement course over his whole body at her words. He didn’t understand them but he believed in the meaning of something behind her words. This woman knew things!
As he spoke of the story of The Three Watchers, making up many details as he went along that first time in the telling of it, Climber’s mind was partly distracted by the woman’s alien body: how it gave off no heat yet was not cold and withal was alive to his touch.
He had not arrived at an end to the tale, when she abruptly broke into singing.
He stopped speaking at the wondrous shock of that voice. It flowed over him like a fire and yet contained something of the depths of the Void in it. Climber had not experienced the Void so did not at that time identify what that quality was, but it thrilled him. The fire in her voice he partly understood, for fire, in all its variations, is always fire. But the Void between the flames awed him and made him a little afraid too.
Her singing did not last long. She looked into his eyes as she ceased, and she said: “That was the first song of Fire. It is the first of all the songs I have learned, and I know many songs! Here is another, it is different.”
She sang another song of Fire, only this one had different tones and hues woven in it. Climber was transfixed anew. An age could go by while the two of them stood together wrapped in her singing and he would not know the passage of time.
By then he wanted very much to join with this woman. She seemed unaware of his body’s intentions. He was perplexed, frustrated and thoroughly enmeshed by then. The concept of escape did not even enter his head.
“And here is a song of Ice. But not quite the same as you sing it,” she said, breaking at once into another avalanche of sound. The surface of the snow around them quivered.
He joined his voice to hers with a song much like the one he had sung as he came down through the forests from his mountain many days before. And while he sang, her eyes opened in wonder and she put her mouth to his but not closing over it, and together they sang for a long time. In the midst of that blending of song – only two parts, really, of the symphony of the spheres – their bodies joined as well. He breathed into her as he sang, and she into him; and she felt a coldness to soothe her heat, while Climber felt fire course over and through his entire nervous system.
Afterward, she said: “Your name is Ice, just Ice, without variation, Ice in purity, the Ice that holds Life! I am Fire, the purest Fire. The Fire that kindles Ice into giving forth its Life! In me your Life will give birth to more Life yet!”
“I don’t understand!” he cried.
“Neither do I!” she laughed. The sound made the snow around their peak avalanche down to the lower slopes. “This I do understand: I came here to the Home planet at the call of First One. I came seeking answer to my pain. And I was found by you! You came seeking First One and found me! It is First One as you and First One as me that have become one on this mountain. Between Fire and Ice lies the rest of the World!”
Her words frightened him in a nameless way, yet he was caught.
“I am the purest living FIRE!” she cried out, laughing. But she spoke presumptuously, not having as yet visited the sun.
SEVEN
Fire tried to teach Ice other parts of the Music, but it was beyond him. He only knew one part. He could see her mounting frustration and it was at first directed at him.
“Sister,” he said reasonably, “it isn’t my fault. I don’t even know how I know the part you call Ice. No matter how I talk or sing it comes out as one way to you. This is a mystery.”
She smiled a little then. But it wasn’t enough to erase the irritation that marred her golden brow. She thought for a while then she said:
“Perhaps I have been mistaken. I had thought that The Children I have passed by knew nothing. Perhaps among them there are others who know more songs to make the Music. Maybe there are even others who know the variations!”
She stood up then and looked east toward the valley of named Children. Before Ice knew what Fire was about, she was soaring away and starting down to the purple distance with its meandering rivers shining like ribbons of quicksilver.
He stood nonplussed and then turned and started to climb down after her. “Come on!” Fire called back. She was circling far off. Her form was small but the impatience in her voice was not. Climber hesitated. Ice argued within his head. And although Climber felt betrayed into doing this hasty and pointless thing, Ice won out and took to the air after his woman. Fire circled once more to make sure he was following then laughed and put on speed for the valley far below. Ice raced after her but could not close the distance between them before Fire arrived over the valley and set her feet on the grass. She was striding toward a group of The Children, enjoying the shade of a massive tree, as Ice landed and walked beside her to where The Others were gathered together.
Without hesitation, Fire said: “I am Fire.” She began singing at once. The Children all watched and listened, fascinated with the prodigy that had interrupted their pleasant talk. Fire beckoned to Ice and he added the song of Ice to the Music.
After they were through, Fire said: “Do any of you know the part he was singing? It has a name…”
The Children looked around at each other. Some laughed and there was much shaking of heads. “He sounded, cold,” said a woman hesitantly.
Fire looked upon the woman intently, smiling. “Yes! His name is Ice. He knows the song of Ice. Between us two lies the whole remaining Music, the symphony of the spheres.”
“I awoke to the World of cold waters coming from the snow,” said the woman who had spoken. “The song of Ice sounds somewhat like the song I know.” She sang it briefly and Fire laughed with delight.
“A song of rushing rivers on the Home, it fits!” she exulted. “Yet this is only one river song. There are almost countless others,” she explained rapidly. “I know that there are many others I have not as yet heard. Does anyone know of the other songs that lie between Fire and Ice?”
“I know a song as well,” said a man with fiery ochre hair.
“I have heard this part also,” Fire said at once. “It is a variation of the song of The Moons.”
“How can you know that?” the man asked. “I haven’t sung any of it yet.”
“She hears the music you know when you speak,” said Ice.
“It is the song of Ayah,” Fire said, “the largest moon of this, the Home planet. I have been there on my way here.”
“Hear the song of Ayah,” said the ochre-haired man. And he began to sing. Then Fire and Ice blended their voices to his and they sang together. As they harmonized, Fire seemed transported. She sang with her eyes closed and her face open and uplifted slightly.
After a while, another woman and a man holding hands with her came running up to the group under the tree and at once began singing as well. Fire opened her eyes only enough to welcome them with a smile. Then she closed her eyes again. It happened many times as more Children heard the swelling Music and came to investigate the wonder of it. Some who came joined the Music with songs of their own. Most just sat or stood all around listening.
The sun went down behind the western mountains and the moons rose together soon after that. Now there were many voices from the World all blended into the mounting hymn. The singers and listeners were transfixed and time stopped for them all. When the sun rose the next day they did not stop or move much if at all. And continually more Children up and down the extent of the Valley, the Meeting Place, heard of the communion occurring and went to where the gathering was.
Days passed and still the Music grew. It built and swelled until all the Children in the valley were gathered, a mighty throng of them seemingly without number. By that point the symphony of the spheres was almost complete, and Fire guided them all into one last reprise.
Contained inside the Music was the tale of the World, of its making, of its purpose. Singers and listeners together saw and heard First One in the tale of the World.
First One said: “The Father has shown me everything done by the Father.
“This World has its beginning and it will have an end, but there will always be a New World born before the Old World passes away.
“There are other worlds without number to the Children of the worlds, but they are numbered by the Father (Who, being All, sees all, both beginning and end of the worlds’ existence).
“Father and I are One.
“And each of you began as One with the Father and with each other.
“Yet this has already begun to change as each of you exercises the Father’s gift of free will.
“You may comprehend that everything must be seen as it truly is.
“Without seeing truth you will not understand Joy. And to understand, you must experience opposition.
“Now you have this Home, this whole World as yours, forever. But you will only stay so long as Home gives you Joy.
“When you leave Home it will be to search for the Joy you do not have anymore.
“And when you understand Joy again, then I will show your way Home.”
Seasons had passed in the interim since the beginning of the symphony and the moment when Fire at last allowed herself to let it have an end.
EIGHT
The Children of the First Generation awoke from their communion with First One. Many were confused and afraid for the first time, but, most assuredly, not for the last.
Some there were who immediately called to Fire to resume the Music. But she was confounded by a rising tide of conflicting impressions. She wanted to do as bidden, but First One was not in the Music anymore, and she could tell without expressing this that were she to sing, and The Others to accompany her, the Music would not draw them together as it had done. It would not work in the same way. Fire needed to think about this. She needed to understand something before she would sing again with anyone else but Ice.
Without saying anything, Fire went away with Ice. She simply took his left hand in her right and they two ascended above the valley of named Children and went back to where they had first met. Those that followed them turned back when she called out forcefully: “Do not follow us! I must talk with Ice alone. We will come back later.”
NINE
You remember clearly what happened after the communion with First One ended. And it is painful to remember, because something began to change inside of you. You began to be discontent. But you did not know that, once begun, this discontent would last and grow. You did not know, because you had not learned.
The Music guided by the mysterious woman who called herself Fire, it had enfolded your whole being like reality. It was as if you had sight to take in the whole World all at once, from the Sun where you awoke to the World, to the most distant planet of green and blue fires, across the thousands of spheres between.
More than this, you saw your Siblings of the First Generation, how they had each awakened to the World in their myriad places within it, and how they had each come along their paths at First One’s beckoning call, to the Meeting Place. And now you knew each of them by name.
All of The Children who came from the Sun knew these things, now. All Siblings from the sun had participated in the Music. Because of that, and because First One had also awoken in the sun, you felt superior in the select place of your birth, and in the fulsome knowledge of all of The Children that this seemed to grant you. This knowledge also worked a subtle change in you which led to exile.
When the Music stopped and First One was gone, it seemed like a second awakening, but almost to darkness. You looked around at The Others, also awaking, and some had been standing, some sitting or lying on the grass, or leaning back against trees or against each other or embracing. The moment of the ending of the Music was at first as if most of the World had suddenly stopped being. That felt terrible! And you called out to the woman Fire to sing again. But she fled instead and would have become angry if you had kept following her.
Some days passed and The Children wandered but not far away. You were all waiting for the return of Fire to the valley alongside the rivers. There was much talking and singing. And the songs were good to hear but they were not the whole Music. The symphony of the spheres was missing. The songs could only recall pieces of it.
Everyone wanted Fire and Ice to return so that the mysterious communion could resume. There were those who expressed a desire to sing forever as we had done together for many moons. It had been a timeless place of pure sight and Joy, and returning to it was more desired than anything else. Everyone talked about that. Singing the songs tried to recreate it, but that was vain.
Nova spent the days since the communion talking to the other singers and organizing many of them together. She did her best to mimic Fire’s command of the symphony of the spheres. And you wondered why she was so intent on learning what she did not know. This was not her gift and it troubled you to see your woman behaving so.
Irony and perversity were unknown concepts then. Now you understand fully what Nova was about. She was trying to make herself into Fire so that you would not go away from her. For all her singular brightness and Joy in your love, Nova could not any longer hold your eyes. You did not see this but she did. She saw the change in you at once when the Music had ended. And now she was doing her best to learn to be like Fire, to learn the whole symphony of the spheres from The Others, one part at a time, for you.
Nova saw that your heart had been turned away. But she did not in her innocence see that the fault was in no way hers. So she tried to be other – more – than she was. She tried to please you. It is no wonder that she wanted to turn your fault into something good, to be able to give more to you than she already did. That was the irony and the perversity: that Fire, from the Void and her puny outer planet of green and blue flaming gases, could eclipse a matchless woman from the heart of the Sun itself. It was not really so. But you believed it.
At length your patience was done. You went in search of Fire alone, even while Nova organized The Others who assembled themselves beside the tree and harmonized what they could into a mere shadow of the fulsome Music. It was almost like a torture, this disappointment you felt at hearing it. And while they were at it, doing their best, you went to the western mountains.
The searching there was vain. Fire was not anywhere that you could think of. The hunger for Fire’s voice drove you. The silence itself was like an incessant call. You crossed the valley far overhead and heard the incomplete, the broken, Music coming from below. As if born on the air it followed your aerial path long after it should have faded to nothing.
An image of Nova at the center of it entered your mind. And something twisted inside of you, something wrong. For the first time, and most assuredly not the last, you blamed another for that wrongness. You blamed Nova for the wrong that you felt. Because she was trying to be what you wanted, that was all.
But what you wanted was not given for you. And the beginning of the first lesson in understanding Joy is, to comprehend that the whole World may be claimed, but not all of it by one. Everything, everyone, is meant to fit into the plan of Joy. And the secret to Joy is to know what is given, what is yours to have and to become.
Since you did not understand any of that, yet, your searching took you to the mountains to the east. And of course, Fire was not there. Everyone you chanced to meet you asked if they had any word about where she might have gone. Some of them looked at you strangely, and all said that they knew nothing.
Back in the valley of named Children, there was gossip spreading about the frantic search for Fire and Ice and of how they had disappeared. And any number of explanations was put forward. Nova heard others talking about a man who was searching all the mountains and regions round about. Someone told her that they had seen you asking where Fire and Ice had gone. And so Nova went in search of you. She followed your path until it grew cold. You had left the Home planet long before then.
You searched the entire World, starting with the sun’s heart and working your way outward, sphere by sphere and the Void between. Fire seemed to have vanished from the World entirely. All the Children you met gave back the same response to your query: no one had seen her anywhere.
“Nova is enquiring after you.” A number of your Siblings said this. Others would have said as much, you could tell by their faces. They did not speak of their thoughts, but instead left you quickly. They could see a change in you like unto the ending of the symphony of the spheres. The longer you pursued Fire, and fled from Nova, the darker your countenance became.
Each sphere yielded nothing, until you came finally to the outermost planet. It was the silence which alerted you. In your memory of the symphony of the spheres this planet was one with Fire and its song matched her exactly. Now as you came there it was soundless – it gave back no such song. The vitality of the volcanic fires and erupting gasses were wild and altered to a different noise that did not match with the symphony of the spheres. This hellish sounding spoke of something dark, more empty somehow than the pure Void. Your mind did not comprehend it, but something about your body was already drawn to a likeness in this alien cacophony. And, descending to the planet’s surface, you felt an assurance that your search for Fire was done. She was there.
Now every smoking sea, lake and river, every blasted plain, ridge and summit, every valley, crevasse and vent, must be searched for the woman who had led all of the First Generation in the Music which had communed with First One.
You did not find her, but you did find a dark woman who gave you no name for herself, a stranger whose form hardly resembled the woman who had called herself Fire. She was in the bottom of the deepest recess from the surface, beside a molten underground river of lurid blue-green flames, and she was curled in upon herself, quivering in the grip of some tortured dream-vision. Her face was deeply etched with suffering and indescribable loss. You did not move from the spot where you had first seen her form. A dreadful paralysis seemed to enter your mind and flow to your limbs. Ichorous fumes stung your eyes and burned in your nose, mouth and throat. The roiling liquid of the river roared in your ears. The very heart of the Sun did not possess the same reality as that underground realm!
A determination to retreat to safety was only just beginning to form in your thoughts, when the woman sensed some subtle change in her self-imposed prison and opened her eyes, and looked straight into yours. You were then stone.
A fleeting expression of hope was banished from her face by dread. And finally a rigor mortis of all emotion except lust overlaid her features like a mask. She got to her feet and swayed up to you. The green eyes blazed brighter than the liquid fire in the river beside where the two of you stood.
“Sbakhet,” she said. And then you knew that she would never call herself Fire again. She had seen The Children of the Sun, like First One, in the Music. She was calling you the Fire Star. In the World there was only one such place and that was the Sun.
Like an offering the woman stood there for you to do with what you wished.
“Will you sing with me?” you asked. And she did so.
The sound was deafening. You couldn’t really hear it anymore because your whole being was beaten to the core with it. And in the midst of it you were changed: instead of your song raising her back up to where she could command the symphony of the spheres again, her alien theme tore your song asunder. All that remained of it was darkness.
Stepping back in horror at last, you could see finality to the woman’s metamorphosis. In taking you to herself she had fallen beyond hope to a state beneath the Existence of the World. She belonged outside the World, perhaps even beyond the Void. It was a damnable concept incapable of expression.
Yet your singing, corrupted as it was, went on together. And in it you learned what had happened to the woman who had, for a few seasons, called herself Fire. Her man, Ice, wanted to sing forever with her, to comfort and encourage her to return to The Others and commune again in the Music. But she knew that it would not happen, because First One had been there before and now he was no longer at the Meeting Place. And she did not know where he had gone, or even if he was gone, or ever had really been. Without the full symphony of the spheres, she could not feel his presence anymore, much less see and hear him. She was devastated. When Ice had insisted that this was only temporary, and that surely First One was only occupied but would return, she had become angry. That First One would use her like this – to only be completed when the whole Music was being performed by all of The First Generation – seemed like a terrible jest being played at her cost. So she left the man she had named Ice and came back to the first sphere she had ever seen and heard. She vowed that the symphony of the spheres would remain incomplete, without her, because she would not return until First One came to her and gave back the complete Music to be hers forever. She called to First One but he did not answer.
Your quest to find Fire was over. The symphony of the spheres would not be resurrected through her. Perhaps it would never be heard again. But when you went to the surface of the planet and willed yourself to leave, to return to the Sun, you discovered that a final, terrible change had taken place. You could not ascend beyond the atmosphere. Looking directly into the Sun’s blazing glory, even this far out, caused your eyes pain. Somehow joining with the woman of this planet had worked a final degrading of your natural powers and now you were trapped here. That would have been an eternal hell. But better, you have often felt since, than utter banishment.
For a space of time you and the woman who now held no name endured together. Being alone would have been far worse but that short exile from the rest of the home World was horrible enough. You blamed her for your benighted state. She accepted all your scorn without a word or an outward emotion. You could never tell what she was thinking or feeling. All that the two of you had was the duet of your broken singing. Being more tormented by utter silence drove you to join. But it was a feeble shadow of your former, glorious songs: and even less measurable compared to the whole Music.
A day came, and you were joined again, and the duet was like a dreadful mockery of what you both had lost and wanted back again. But anger, self-loathing and irrationality had increased the darkness of it beyond measure.
And that was how you were when Nova finally found you.
The disappointment and shock of that reunion was more than her innocent love of you could bear and she exploded in rage at her personal sense of loss. Her voice that you had remembered with tormented longing became as cold as a sun bursting apart and dying away in the Void. You fled from it, and the dark woman seemed to be consumed by it and vanished from the World like dust blown on a solar wind.
Then all was gone. Anguish and abyss were your waking sensations, as you clawed slowly up from those depths into a realm of barely discernable objects: gloam light showed your heavy eyes a familiar long, narrow room, packed with rows of sleeping soldiers...
TEN