Pale Reflections

The breeze whispered a secret through the broken glass of the tower. Garrick crept toward his many reflections in the jagged edges, breathing in the air from across the room like a breaching whale at midnight. The hum of the party played at his ankles from behind, the hollow glass instruments of the Halcyon with their distinct sound like drowning. He steadied himself on the stone wall, cold like metal, tracing the single filigree line to the window where it twisted and coiled into the motif of a black serpent with eyes like a new moon.

Garrick looked over both shoulders to the ballroom where men in silver bowed to women in silver who mimed shaking their hands with steepled fingers. Then folded himself through the opening, holding his breath that he might not tear the silk coat he’d been given. Before the shadow had taken him from the natural world, as it had begun to take so increasingly many, he would have bought his own, though certainly not for any social event.

The city tolled the shift of traffic below. Garrick set a foot onto the stone lintel, and about that time, recollected that his phobos of acro was not negligible. He couldn’t tell if the tower was actually swaying as the ground shifted by the bell’s warning or if it was only in his mind, if the black lower districts were coming toward him or if it was a premonition. He tried to shift his weight back, but felt a sharp pain in his hand and watched a drop of blood blacken into the abyss. He fell forward out the opening, clinging only to the shards of glass that had made him to fall. He hugged the frame.

He settled his feet on the lintel and breathed until he felt the stone beneath him. He sidled along the wall until he awoke as from a dream, an unending nightmare, when his fingers brushed a steel railing, and he clasped his lifeline, reminding himself to take each inching step toward it. He tried to reach the railing with his other hand without pulling his shoulder from the wall, but he couldn’t cross over. He glowered up into the black day sky, then prayed an apology before grabbing the rail with his other hand. For two heart beats, less than a second, he knew he couldn’t take his feet off the ledge. His jaw clenched shut, and he could not call for help. For one second, he knew he would die here. But then, as though his spirit had left his body, he was over the railing and lying flat on the cool balcony.

The city shook with the toll metronymic toll of the great pendulum, followed only by the sound of the constant breath of the city, stone grinding on stone with the shifting earth. The shifting ground at least. Here in the shadow, he wasn’t sure if “the earth” could be applied, here in the land of eternal night that contorted with every setting of the Sun in the natural world. Worst of all were ecplises, when the world opened a swallowed new victims in its path, casting them alone into this wilderness. It had taken Garrick only recently, while he was on vacation from his Masters.

He looked up into the eternally black sky, the only light was what those who had lived here generations called the Aefrad, a white thread like the Moon had been spread across the sky with an uneven brush, though few people here had even heard of the Moon. Garrick sighed and sat up, beginning to pick the glass from his hand by the crystal light.

“I get it.”

The soft voice drifted from above; Garrick started in his mind, but only breathed a heavy sigh.

“It’s at the surface of the water,” she continued, “that you’ve lost your air.”

Irising Sahtinen sat above on one of the thin steel bridges that connected the upper stories of the city. She also was facing the sky, her legs hanging through the railing, trailed by the gold silk coat that hung on her like mist. It was pale in the white light of the shadow she had lived her whole life, but no less radiant.

“And the only place you can see yourself,” he said.

“But nothing below.” She sighed.

Their breaths synchronized.

“Do you,” Garrick paused, “come out here often, then? I haven’t seen you here before.”

“I used to.”

He felt the warmth of her smile.

“Let me show you something,” she said.

With a silent relevé to her feet, she disappeared over the top of a roof, her coat an evanescing fox tail. Garrick paused for her to specify. The city tolled again, and he kicked himself to his feet, scrambling onto the railing and up like a hound up a tree to the bridge Sahtinen had just left. She had already lowered her feet over the parapet and dropped out of his sight the moment he reached the top. He loped to the edge, past which she was gliding along another bridge.

Garrick took a step back, bit his lip, shook blood into his hands and circled around to the ladder. By the time he made it to the bridge, he had lost sight of her. He panted, then slowed his breathing until he could hear absent echo of Sahtinen humming. He followed a few of her many voices before he saw her silhouette along the edge of a higher roof, and he took up pursuit.

The silver stone of the city was so polished he could see his reflection and hers running along side each other in the distant buildings. Sahtinen ran on the balls of her feet with her arms outspread along the gable of a roof, backlit by the Aefrad like she was balancing along it. She disappeared out of the reflection as Garrick pulled himself to the balcony where she had been.

“Do you see?” she asked, once again sitting above him on a long, arching bridge.

“Sometimes.”

She giggled. “This time of night, the Aefrad meets with the golden dome of the highest spire. And sometimes, you can touch the other end in the side of a building, like a ribbon road leading to something behind the golden light.”

“I always thought,” Garrick thought back to his life in the natural world, “I would follow the road on the water straight to the… the island, and I would find another bridge and another until I had touched every light.”

Sahtinen sighed deeply. “Maybe there is more beyond that one island, like a celestial reflection of the city, like white warp and weft on an ebony loom. Hundreds!”

“More…” Garrick said, feeling in his eyes the reflection of the stars of his old home. He looked up to Sahtinen, who was gazing past the golden dome, past the island, and even beyond. Garrick tried to pull himself up, but a few shards of glass still left in his hand bit in.

Sahtinen started slightly and tilted her head to listen to him behind her, then spread her arms and let herself drop backwards, catching herself upside-down with her legs.

“Here.” She took his hand in both of hers. Her thin fingers pressed his palm to pull out the remaining crystals of glass. Her cheeks were flushed from her position, and dimpled like they did when she concentrated. She lifted her black eyes to meet his stare, and he looked away toward the sky.

Sahtinen blew a lock of hair up that had caught in her mouth. “Why do you talk like that?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“‘Every light.’”

“Hypo—it’s a metaphor.”

“You dropped your phone.”

“What?!” He swiveled about, and just as soon as he was distracted, she pulled the last piece of glass out. “Ah!” He crawled away on his one good hand, shielding himself with the other.

“It was a metaphor.” She shrugged, flipping herself back upright.

Garrick rubbed his hand, pressing it till blood seeped out.

“What is a phone?” she asked. “I’ve heard you mumble about it.”

“It’s, uh, Greek. For “voice.”

“So, you want to find your voice? A funny thing to so easily lose.”

The city tolled, but the foot traffic had all but stopped below. The two waited in silence.

“Who are you?” Sahtinen finally spoke.

“I’m Garrick.” he said.

“What are you?”

“I’m a… man.”

“I was taught that there are no gods, that there is no world beyond the shadow. There is only Lo’r, word and truth.” She paused. “Were you sent by the gods?”

“I mean, not especially.”

She made a sound between a mirthless laugh and a groan.

“Sorry,” Garrick said. “I just—have you… ever wondered what would happen if a fish tried to breath at the surface like a whale?”

“How long have you ever held your breath?” she said.

“I have asthma.”

“I have my entire life, Garrick! And I look out at the Aefrad—almost—every night.”

“And you’re still swimming toward the sun.”

“What is the sun?” she cried.

Garrick backed up into the railing as the city tolled again. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s the only thing you talk more about than your phone: Anar, Juliet, Icarus.”

“It’s complicated,” Garrick said. He looked behind himself, over the railing into the darkness. “It’s, it’s a light from where I come from. It provides warmth, it keeps things going, gives light and rainbows, it parts the clouds.”

A single tear landed next to Garrick, falling like a star and disappearing in a ripple.

“What does the sun look like?” She asked, her voice slightly shaky.

“You.” Garrick’s hands trembled. His vision went black, and he gasped for breath. He turned to the ladder, sinking down. But he heard flying sound of bare feet pattering on steel. He screamed silently into his sleeve and stood, pulling himself up on the roof by a bloody handprint and sprinted to meet the setting sun across the narrow steel bridge.

“Wait!” he gasped.

She spun around, her coat spreading like a flower. “Do you know?”

“Know what?”

“You know the gods, you know the truth, you know everything!”

“No, not every—”

“You ridiculous man! She surged toward him, stopping at the center of the bridge, her raiment breaking past him like a gust of wind. “Everything that matters.”

“The one thing… but I can’t.”

“Even though you know?” She asked.

“I didn’t say—”

“Why not? Why won’t you tell me?!”

“I eat glass every day! Every day I want to tell you more and more. I am Icarus and you are the East, trapped in the shadow of Morogoth. “You can’t not—you know that I want to.”

“How much?”

“Not enough.” He replied.

“Then fix it!”

The silence rang with her voice.

“Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?”

She squinted into his eyes, and he pulled back.

“I…” He paused, realizing the silence had carried too long. With a crack the land twisted like a hand on a clock. The two split apart at the seam, as one hand moved south and the other north. Sahtinen reached out, but Garrick clung to the railings as he was turned toward the darkness, where he saw the shadow writhing in the distance like the black wake of a whale.