The Tower
“You gonna miss it?" he asked.
Looking back over my shoulder at the fading dream, a smile creased my face. The mist drifted through the valley below. I turned my head to the old man, keeping my eyes fixed on the scene, "You know, I probably lived the whole thing."
The smirk faded as I glanced at him, then my eyes tracked back, and I took one last look at the dream. There was an odd piano tune softly playing in my head.
The love and the loss - a lifetime of emotion washed away as reality floods in.
"Let’s go," I said, and we turned away…
*****
I opened my eyes and stared up at the sky. The rhythmic sounds of water lapping on a shoreline and birds flapping in the gentle breeze assailed my ears as the deep blue of the sky filled my vision. My head throbbed and my eyes clouded as a lance of pain shot through my skull. The sun was low on the horizon, and a few clouds were floating through the sky. I guessed that it was morning. My fingertips played across my temples to abate the pain while I took stock of my situation. As hard as I tried, I simply couldn’t remember much. Awakening outdoors didn’t sit right with me and an unease coursed through me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
My mind was blank.
Amnesia? Did I hit my head?
I sat up to look around, but pain and dizziness flooded my skull. I closed my eyes again and cradled my head in my hands. It took a moment before the pain subsided.
Oh man, what happened? I opened my eyes and scanned the area, where am I?
I ran my hands over my chest feeling the rough texture of what seemed like wool tweed. I was dressed in some kind of patchwork material that covered my whole body, but I didn’t have shoes. My feet and the skin on my arms glowed with a golden color, which was odd.
I felt small too.
Was I a child? Just a boy?
I didn’t remember being a child. Then again, I didn’t remember much of anything.
This was all so bizarre.
I was sitting in the middle of a platform that extended out from the beach, which seemed like a dock or pier to me. The beach stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions. Inland there was a dense jungle with ferns and palm trees. Large rocks were scattered on the beach and on into the shallows. Beyond stretched the ocean. I couldn’t tell if this was an island or the coast of a larger landmass, but it didn’t seem like the beach ever ended.
Then I saw it.
The tower.
I let out a small gasp and my gaze fixed on the spectacle.
“Wow,” I muttered to myself.
The tower was otherworldly. It was the most fantastic feature anywhere in sight and it was massive. If I were to describe it, I would say it was like a pair of stretched pyramids connected at their base, like an octahedron. It must have been very far out in the ocean and stretched tens of kilometers into the sky. My gaze moved upward. Three orbs floated over the tower, each progressively larger than the last. They were enormous and they seemed to be the same material as the tower, which was extremely dark. It was more like looking at the absence of a tower rather than seeing the tower itself. The sky around the orbs softly pulsed in prismatic tones. Other areas of the sky had a cracked and torn appearance as if something had shattered it like glass.
The tower felt so familiar too, in an odd sort of way. The whole experience was surreal.
As I gazed out at the horizon a bird swooped down nearby, landing a few meters away and I let out a yelp. At first glance, it appeared to be a seagull, but something didn’t seem right about it. I squinted in the sunlight and saw that it wasn’t a bird at all, or at least not in the sense that I knew them. My eyes went wide. It flapped white feathered wings like a bird, but that was where the similarities ended. It had a long flat reptilian tail covered in fur and its head looked more like that of an eel with a circular, teeth-lined mouth, and no visible eyes or other facial features.
Jerking away from the creature reflexively I moved to the edge of the platform. My eyes were glued to the monstrosity and my heart thumped in my chest. Thankfully, my movement seemed to frighten it and it flew away.
“Holy hell,” I whispered, as the immediate threat seemed to be gone.
Afraid of what else may be lurking nearby I shifted my vision all around quickly checking for anything else out of the ordinary. Well, as out of the ordinary as anything could be in a place with an enormous tower and flying eels that is. Peering over the edge of the platform my eyes grew wide again, and I froze. There was a woman below lying on her back floating in the shallow water. Recognition sparked in my mind, but I couldn’t place her. Memory issues, you know. She was beautiful with long locks of golden hair, and her eyes were closed as if she were asleep. She wore a brown leather tunic that wrapped around her down near her knees… My mind stopped cold because I noticed her legs, which were NOT legs at all. It was a scaled fish’s tail.
I thought to myself, am I looking at a mermaid right now? I am. I am totally staring at a mermaid right now. I need to get out of here!
I struggled to my feet and bolted down the platform inland in total confusion and with no idea where I was going.
Where the heck did I just wake up?! No more late-night drinking for me. I’m swearing off booze.
The platform I ran along was made of metal with wooden planks along the top and it was raised several meters above the water. It stretched out from the beach and extended over the water for a good distance. I noticed other platforms in the area as well. Some of them were short, and some much longer. All the platforms were not contiguous though; there were gaps in sections. They looked to be very old and were in disrepair. Over time parts had fallen away to the sea below. I noticed I was running at an unnatural speed. This was weird, but maybe I was still under the influence of whatever I MUST have taken. I had to be drunk or something. I just had to be.
Feeling my anxiety abate slightly, I slowed to a stop and took stock of myself. As I ran my hands through my hair, I noticed that my ears were slightly pointed but mostly hidden behind my own golden locks of curly hair. I pulled a strand down in front of my eyes. I let it go and it sprang back up.
Looking back over the edge I noticed that the mermaid had awakened and was following me from the shallow water below with incredible speed. I know I should have been concerned, but now that she was staring right at me, I was overcome with calm, and I didn’t feel the panic I had before. I didn’t fear the mermaid catching me. It was almost like I was being put under a trance.
Magic is the only way I can describe what happened next. As the mermaid swam underneath the platform that I was standing on, she suddenly materialized before me, balanced on her tail. I let out a yelp and landed on my rear as I fell back.
She reached for me and spoke, “Do not fear, little one. I am a friend.”
Hesitantly, I reached for her and as I touched her hand her tail separated and became two golden-hued legs. She pulled me up to my feet.
“You have the light within you,” she said and smiled at me.
“Wha… who… who are you?” I stammered.
Still holding my hand, she began to lead me back to the beach. She again spoke to me, “It is not safe here. The Master’s poachers might find you, and if they do, they will kill you. You must come back with me. There is so much you still do not understand.”
“Yeah, you’re telling me,” I said. “Wait, hold on! Did you say they would kill me?!”
At that moment fragments of memories began flooding back to me and my head began to ache again. I still could not remember who I was or where I was from, but I was certain it was not this place. I could remember a sailing ship and the many twinkling stars in the sky. I also had fleeting memories of the Master, a cruel man who wanted death and destruction, but he wasn’t called the Master. It was something else, but I couldn’t quite place it. He led his men as if they were an army and disciplined them if they didn’t meet his expectations. I had a vague impression of escaping him and his men before, but everything in my head began to jumble and didn’t quite make sense. These were my memories, but at the same time, they were not.
When we got near the beach still upon the raised metalwork, but closer to the water’s surface, she turned to me and said, “You’ll need a breathing apparatus. You are not yet ready to fully convert. Stay here and I will return with one.”
She smiled again and dove into the water. Her newfound legs quickly transformed back into a tail.
“Who is the Master?!” I yelled, but she was already gone.
“And what do you mean by convert?” I added to myself.
I sat on the edge of the platform and tried to get a grip on my situation. I realized that the mermaid had the same pointy ears and golden-hued skin that I had. All my instincts were telling me this wasn’t real, but here I was. The sun was bright, the air was cool, the sounds and smells of the beach filled me.
I pinched myself. Ow! Yep, I was definitely here.
I painfully tried to drag my locked memories back to the surface.
There was a woman, wait no, not just a woman but a family, and I was cold. And a cat… A cat?
That was a strange thing to have pop into my head.
Movement caught my eye and I saw two men moving along an adjacent platform further out over the water. I tensed and glanced toward the shore, but it was too late. One noticed me and shouted, and they both began to run back toward the beach to loop onto my platform. They were leaping from one separated section to the next. They were dressed in rags but carried knives and had a crazed look about them.
“Oh shit,” I said.
Poachers? The Master’s men?
I jumped to my feet and immediately reached to my hip as if I were drawing a pistol.
That was an odd reaction, I thought.
I then turned and with the same incredible speed, I had before and sped away from them back toward the ocean along my platform. The two men were hot on my heels as they made it to the beach and turned in my direction just behind me. They were shouting in a strange language that I did not understand, but it felt familiar. I reached a section where there was a huge gap. The wood must have rotted away and fallen to the sea below. My mind screamed that it was too far and that I would fall, but I felt an unnerving calm come over me, and I made the leap. Feeling panicked and calm at the same time was an uncomfortable experience.
I soared through the air and landed on the platform.
I turned and watched as both men jumped, yelped, and fell short. One missed completely. The other managed to snag the edge, but with a wide-eyed shocked expression, he quickly slipped off and fell into the water below. The water on that side of the platform was more shallow than the surrounding area, so the men were able to stand. As they collected themselves, they groaned loudly from the fall, but then looked up and quickly refocused their attention on me.
They began to throw rocks and swore at me. At least I think it was swearing. I was confident they would take my life if they caught me just to see what was in my pockets. One of them began looking for a way to climb the metalwork that held the platform, while the other continued to hurl debris at me.
There were several long, pointed metal shafts on the platform. They were rusted over and crusted with salt from the sea. It looked as if they had been unattended on the platform for a very long time. I picked one up and threw it at one of the men, missing just barely. I looked down at my hand with wide-eyed disbelief. You would think I was a champion javelin thrower with that toss - another oddity. The man yelped and his face contorted and flushed red. He pried the rod from the seafloor where it had impaled itself into the soft sand and hurled it back at me. I dipped low to one side and the shaft sailed by. I grabbed another and threw it at the second man climbing the scaffolding, missing, but causing him to fall back to the ground.
Thirty minutes ago, I was lying flat on my back staring up at the sky as peacefully as could be, and now here I was fighting off a pair of marauders.
I sighed as I readied another shaft to throw, but I stopped with it hoisted in the air and squinted at something in the distance. I saw a group of young men in brown military-style uniforms coming in our direction from further down the beach. It appeared that they had seen the two men, but I don’t think they noticed me.
More poachers? Come on. This just wasn’t fair!
I tossed the shaft down and dropped flat on my belly. The newcomers immediately shouted and burst into action through the shallows as they stormed the two men. They brandished knives, clubs, and other crude weapons. There must have been more than twenty of them and they poured through the gaps in the metalwork. My eyes grew wide.
Nope, definitely not marauders. At least not on the side of the first two anyway.
The men shrieked as they were torn apart. The water turned crimson around the crowd as the newcomers brutally dispatched the men in rags. I felt sick and I had to look away.
Where in the world am I? Seriously, I am ready to wake up from this nightmare.
I peered back over the edge of the platform. The young men were as different from me as the other men had been. Their skin was not golden as mine, but instead, they shimmered with a black shadowy glow. Their ears appeared to be normal as well, with one exception. I noticed that all of them had a symbol burned into one of their earlobes.
It was a circle set inside a rectangle.
Out of the chaos I did catch a little of what these shadow men were yelling, and to my surprise, I understood them: ‘For the Master!’ and ‘the Master will be here soon!’
This must be the Master’s army, I thought.
I noticed more men along the shore as they were checking the platforms. It seemed as if they were looking for more prey. My body tensed once again. I needed to move and quickly.
During the frenzy unfolding below me, I decided to scale the other end of the platform into the water. I trembled, and nearly slipped off. Fear gripped me as I neared these maniacs. This seemed to be a common emotion for me today so far. Luckily in all the commotion I was not noticed, and the water was deeper on the end that I descended, so I was able to submerge to hide as I crouched down. I crept around the end of the metalwork, and I noticed more of the men… hundreds of them.
This was not good; not good at all.
They were all congregating in the shallows as they streamed in from the beach.
Their clothes were worn, and they had a haggard look about them. Maybe they had been traveling for a while now. Carefully, I maneuvered behind the men. The water lapping against my face as I lay prone.
Quiet and slow, I thought. If they notice me, it’ll be over before I know it.
To my surprise my speed, agility, and stealth came with an ease I wasn’t sure I should have had. As I approached the group my mind raced.
What was I going to do? What’s the plan?
That’s when the tingling began. I froze.
What now?
My golden shimmer intensified and then became muted. The tower pulsed in the distance, but my attention was entirely on the changes happening to me. My skin darkened and I was shrouded in a cloak of sorts. My clothes changed into one of their uniforms. My height adjusted to more closely match theirs, and I aged several years into early adulthood. My ears lost their points, and my skin took on a shadowy appearance. It was as if by sheer will I was able to magically conceal myself in the image of a shadow man.
Nice! Nothing like avoiding being mauled to death by blending in.
The strange part was when I looked down at myself there was a duplicity to it. I saw the outward appearance of a shadow man, but I also saw the golden-hued boy. It was a strange experience.
Maybe someone slipped me a hallucinogen at a party or something, I thought. There had to be an explanation for all of this. I wish I could remember something… anything.
A trumpet sounded, rocking me out of my reverie and all the men began lining up. They all stood at attention like an army regiment. Rather than being noticed, I lined up with the rest of them.
The one they called the Master appeared. He was a tall man that wore an old western-style duster. He was an older man too, his hair tinged with gray, and his skin slightly wrinkled. He wore a black wide-brimmed hat, and his eyes glowed with an unnatural red. There was something unsettlingly familiar about his face too.
He looked upon the young men with pride… his men. There was something about him that made my skin crawl and just for a moment his eyes caught mine and I detected a spark and a light that didn’t seem to belong to this world. It wasn’t something I saw, but rather something I felt. He was more like me than anyone else present. He was more like me than anyone else I had ever seen, or at least I think so; memory issues and all. I averted my gaze and avoided any further eye contact. My heart was racing. My shadowy cloak seemed to keep me hidden though.
He spoke with a slow drawl that matched his cowboy attire. It was what seemed like a call to rally. He encouraged the men, praised them, but also voiced that they should follow him and only him. He talked about finding and capturing the girl.
Girl? What girl? The mermaid?
I had no idea what was going on. Confusion seemed to be another state that I was constantly afflicted with this morning.
A pair of the men dragged another man to the Master.
“Sir, we captured the deserter!” one of them said, he spoke in the clipped tones of someone in the military.
The Master pushed his hat up and smiled. He waved the two men away and looked down on the man, who was now on his knees.
“Please sir, I’m sorry! I won’t do it again!” the man begged as he sobbed and shook uncontrollably.
“Well now, I reckon you won’t.” the Master snarled.
He waved his hand over the man and the symbol on his earlobe plucked itself free and floated in the air near the Master. He reached out slowly closing his fist around the symbol, smiled, and looked down on the man, who was now bleeding profusely from the wound on his ear.
He snapped his fingers, and the man began to scream as he was engulfed in a blue blaze. The fire licked high into the sky and after no more than a minute the screaming stopped. The flames disappeared and the charred husk of the man slumped over into the shallow water. The rest of the men stood at stiff attention.
He continued his speech and stated that they must do anything he asks of them. Fear welled up again. I knew that I was not safe here. After his monologue, he began checking all the boys’ ears one by one. As the wave of fear shivered through me, I realized that he was checking for the mark, the burned symbol. As I reached up and touched my ear, I noted that my cloak hadn’t manifested it. There was something supernatural about the mark on the men as if it were not a normal burn or tattoo. What would happen when he got to me? There were hundreds of shadow men here willing to kill for him, and no doubt when he found that I lacked the mark he would see through my cloak. He would have me killed. I just knew it. I felt it. This man was the essence of evil.
I looked to the water and wondered if I could swim away. I gazed back at the men and the old cowboy and noticed that several of them carried pistols. I closed my eyes a moment and let out a small sigh. They would probably shoot me down if I made a break for it. As I looked around, I noticed something the others did not. Slowly, moving toward me over the water was what appeared to be a snorkel. One eyebrow rose.
That’s certainly odd, but hey, seems to be the theme for the day, right?
When it reached me, I grabbed it, and noticed that just below the surface was the smiling face of the mermaid from before. She motioned for me to follow her, and with incredible speed, she swam down and away.
I was standing in twenty centimeters of water. How in the world was she swimming down? This place made no sense.
I looked again at the procession of shadow men, and their Master, as he checked their loyalty. The whole group was focused on the old cowboy. I looked down at the breathing apparatus in my hand, then at the pistols on the men’s sides, and made my move. With lightning speed, I put the snorkel on securely, turned, and dove into the water. My shadowy cloak melted away and I was the golden-hued boy once again.
As I sank below the surface, I felt the water rushing past my face much faster than I thought possible. I was swimming at an incredible speed. I felt different too, something had changed when I hit the water. I also felt the bullets stream past me, and ahead of me, I saw the mermaid. I dove deeper and deeper, moving away from the shore and toward the darkness below. One of the bullets grazed my upper arm causing me to pause in my descent. I grabbed my arm, and a burst of air bubbles erupted from my lungs and saw a swirl of crimson in the water. Again, the mermaid motioned for me to follow. I realized I wasn’t using the breathing mask anymore either. I didn’t seem to need to breathe.
As I moved closer and closer to the mermaid my vision began to get blurred. The pain in my arm throbbed and the pain in my head grew again. Everything began to fade. My memory of this place began to get foggy, pain spiked through my head, and at that moment, I went unconscious and woke up all at the same time.
Crazy.
