Chapter 48
Time, some may say, is perceived as an abstract dimension of the universe. A corridor that exists inside and outside all things in simultaneity.
However, the consensus in these parts perceived reality as many different processes, some complete, some that were still unfolding, and some that had yet to be.
When he first arrived at Marin Village. It was summer, and the air was heavy. The primsies were emergent above the fringe of the lowlands, speckling Aurelian and ochre on the wine-red chamomile lawn.
He recalled those curative days, attending the required morning assemblies.
Insufferable times, listening to Soporific bores, regurgitating the finer points of dogma in the correction of an unsound mind. But, what was even worse was, instead of being told the hour it would commence; he was simply informed by Beiba — it would start when nóin began. The Attendees were never on the same schedule. This, he reasoned, was some cruel mental game, designed to disturb his thinking. Later, he learned nóin meant when the temperature was clement.
The native Marigners understood their reality in terms of occurrences, transformations and processes. In these unshakable beliefs, the concept of ‘pure time’ or an overarching ‘time dimension’ was completely absent and unknown.
Many of the seasons followed the same philosophy.
Pastimes were never late or early, they’d simply occur.
To them, Time was recurrent events that could generate new content.
Now he was tired!
He wanted time to move to the subsequent interval.
But, in delicious irony, it ceased to budge. Time was running to a full stop.
He felt a spent force,
Like Galtee spread across too much lavender bread, painfully slender… tethered by faith alone, he asked: was he afraid to fail?
Could he afford to? Were the stakes perhaps too high?
The desolate figure stood at the last post and arbour. The arterial pathway meandered north-north-west to the mārin village check-point.
He wrapped himself in a declaring scowl as he mulled over the quandary whilst creeping so very slowly up the ancient cobbles that made no sound and were as opaque and empty as the grave. A ghost moth flitting from the small lantern to small lantern that were periodically sited to follow like breadcrumbs.
Bizarrely. A hush fell all about him as the wind died down. He pressed on into the crucible.
Bypassing some buildings en route that sat on the outskirts. He glimpsed signs of life, his countryfolk burning a dim light from within. He noted it as he drifted by, quietly, counting the columns and steps as he went, so as not to call any undue attention to his whereabouts and movements.
It also gave his mind a single-pointed focus.
He saw what he guessed to be one of his people standing at a window silhouetted, waving him on as he continued alone.
Until.
He had arrived.
It was not the most cordial of meetings.
In fact, no one was present to meet him.
He ruminated on nóin, again.
As he waited at the heart of the inner sanctum of the amphitheatre.
Was this a setup? He did wonder.
The envoys were as elusive as any of his sensibilities, and his integrity was washed-out and impalpable? as unexpectedly cloaked figures appeared from nowhere, clawing out of the shadows like pickpockets encroaching onto an unsuspecting mark.
Only for the interloper to turn slowly and engage his opponents, lowering his hood to reveal the razor-sharp eyes and silver thick head of hair of Li Kay in the smouldering torchlight.
He disarmed his greeters with a smile.
“You made it!” said one of them.
He answered with a nod.
He had come to harmonize their last stand.
This he wholeheartedly would pursue with all his might and vigour—and nothing else mattered.
Darkness, he brooded. Vantablack and terrifying. What demons awaited he wondered?
Perpetual darkness in his reverie.
As he saluted and inspected his men. He was met by the lean mass of 2nd leftennant Wi Sako and the slight but well-known stature of major Vir Okota. He felt comforted by the sight of them. The remaining men were sitting stonily, waiting on the steps of the amphitheatre, waiting to receive instruction, like grotesque sculptures intimidating and full of loathing, so prepared to be expendable. If only he could summon them to courage.
But for that, he would have to bang the drum slowly.
He articulated with the ever-present crackle of fear in his voice. This was now a no-man’s-land, and anything might happen and was surely likely to.
He cleared his throat — “Get all the men we have together and tell them to assemble into groups and put them at every window in every building along the riverfront. “
“But there are more windows than we have men!” replied one of them.
“Why don’t we attack now?” urged another man.
“Why wait?”
“Our only chance is a pre-empted strike!”
Kay unwittingly agreed with a nod, as he knew the advice was one he himself would have given.
He sensed a seed of dissension in the ranks. He recognised it too, an impossible undefeatable enemy that was in the way. But he did not doubt their desire to defend their homes.
“Sir!” He engaged the trooper, who was so forthright with his views.
“May I have your permission to speak?”
The rest of the men detected the suggestion of sarcasm but were startled to witness the Grand Marshall expressionless and solemn.
“That’s not how it works. You permit me,” stated the soldier, obviously
He looked back with an odd hint of a smile on his face. If he worried, he hid it!
“They don’t know that!” he said, answering the earlier question.
He remembered his vow to Min as he envisioned her voice carried on the distant wind. Promise me you won’t go to extremes for retaliation; Promise me, beloved. It said in a very Catulianian lilt.
Was he stifled by it?
He tried to tread carefully, the narrow line between honour and retribution. But like all charismatic leaders, he was sure he was about to abuse his custody.
He sat a moment on the dais at the centre as he clutched the doll that ūna had made him the last time he had any respite.
He held it firm in his hand.
“I’m so sick of being coerced, categorised, indexed, briefed and debriefed! I was once so content. And so naïve. I USED to be… SO FUCKING HAPPY! I don’t know what’s wrong with myself!” he said as if alluding to an enigma. As he sat, as if he were conversing with the doll.
The rest of the group looked on, aghast.
“I used to be so good-humoured that’s all changed, I’ve become quiet, despondent, I don’t want to socialise, I hide away, I sleep to block out reality, I use music and verse to escape but it doesn’t really work, it just helps.
I’ve got a short attention span; I zone out a lot
My family is a family that doesn’t really do family and I’m always alone. I used to love being around them, I used to be so Fucking happy!!!! “He thought about Elkie.
“I envy people who are happy!” he said with a lump in his throat as a tear nearly ran down his cheek.
The rant ended and left a painful silence that could be carved with a knife. His words were selfish and crass, now he knew he would follow with an eloquent articulation.
Before anyone else could utter a single word, he continued.
“I know. Some of you have a taste for blood. You want to cross over into stories of brave martyrs.”
“Because some of you have no reason to be, and I think people choose death over living sometimes when they don’t want to live no more.”
He brokered the conversation with a statement that seemed inappropriate for this moment. Nevertheless, he persisted in making his point.
“we’ve said goodbye to our friends, we lost our families, our loved ones taken much too soon, and with them our reason to be, and we say to ourselves I can’t give no more. You become hard-bitten, cold, yes, cruel and numb, but I’m here to tell you to choose life, but… why should you listen to me when you’ve lost so much? I am not Esmie my voice doesn’t speak in memorable lines and just perhaps for a minute consider if you shouldn’t…. maybe… go rogue,” his voice trailed off to a very soft tone before it returned to its resolve “but, whatever you decide to do I’m going to stand with you, I won’t abandon you to ruin. but n’… when I eventually, should I…. suffer the same fate as the fallen, please, I ask of thee, don’t make me a martyr, or any more important than anyone else,” the men looked around themselves perplexed in silence
“Cause, I promise, hope for me is not at a loss… when I leave you, you’ll know the many ways to fight and more importantly you’ll know how to live, and if you feel yourself lost, with no direction and going down, I’m going to appear from that place deep within your psyche hallowing worse than any Banshee that ever was, get up, Get up — everything not lost, get up…. cause Kay loves you,”
Impassioned, his bottom lip quivered as he shook tremulously.
“Today is a good day to die… But it is a better day to live!”
“This is a lesson I hope you’ll remember me for! Always,”
The gathering of soldiers seemed moved. Some covered their faces and trembled as they remembered those that had fallen, and some wiped their eyes, not just the young making their mark on the world but mature, vigorous men, who had seen many seasons. but it was only temporary as again.
They heard footsteps coming from the south as they shared a glance towards Okota as he snatched a small lantern and signalled 2 long flashes, followed soon after by 3 brief flashes and then 4 long flashes returned. It was the safe signal. they could breathe easily again.
As the figure neared, they sighted the dark countenance and bright amber eyes of the Moor Tumjai getting ever closer until he was standing nearby.
“Welcome my dark brother!” said Sako
Slowly, the motley crew gathered in numbers till there were around 100 of them. they rambled through the carnage of the streets.
Marching like ghosts haunting the streets, calling out any free people they encountered to rally with them as if following a tune set by an anonymous piper. That preceded them Down the promenade, it was not so long ago they had marched for the festival of light. But this had more of a finality to it.
They surveyed the quayside and across the river troops, illuminated by the flicker of simulated light and above the sky, was as bleak and as dark as choconiel with no stars or clouds.
Just the shape of the sky craft that was only visible from the faint shimmer of light. From below, it looked like staring up to an ebony singularity, looming, waiting, a giant mouth or a Black God in the heavens, quenching Leer’s light, dark and terrible.
It all seemed purposeless, a rather meaningless suicide when they saw the numbers set against them.
“we’ve no chance against such feckless hate!” remarked Jai as he scoped the immense reflection of the Skye boat in the waters of the river Ylla and said aloud what everyone was thinking.
“No!” agreed Kay “My old friend! there never was much hope!”
And with that, Kay turned to his few closest trusted advisors as he was clutching at straws.
“But if the ogre who commands these armies should meet his end, there may be a resolution we can all live with, a stalemate. I need the few on the waterfront to buy me time, and merely protect the village,
And a handful of my best to get me to his location!”
As the not-so-merry band of rebels disbanded. some proceeded south toward the promenade, Kay and the few continued towards Lifrin and Aranmore
From yonder, a panicked voice from the scouts cried out, “In the sky!” and “Take cover!”
Above the horizon, he beheld small lights gliding progressively, imitating the flight of dandelion parasols scattered on the wind downriver. they stood out beneath the black sky; it was reminiscent of the sky lanterns at the previous festival of light. Gradually, the flares descended to the ground level. Fizzing As they met the ground, buildings fell down like long grains of chaff on the threshing room floor. There was the sound of everything ablaze as the flares turned everything to rubble and lit anything flammable.
Living and inanimate.
The ambient temperature was Clement, but now a sudden current of warm air gushed over them, sweeping down like a sickness and leaving a metallic taste in their mouths.
In the accompanying hue and cry of the blitz, they could see shadows and the living skeletal forms of their brethren in arms behind the screen of their eyelids.
It was soon followed by pandemonium. It hurt their ears and shook the earth.
They were covered with glass mortar and other shrapnel.
He thought they’d begin by cutting off the electricity and water at the Tesla tower. starting the attrition. He was wrong!
They went straight for the killing.
The sky returned to black. Now it was lit by pyres burning and smoke. An underworld he could scarcely imagine. As the small cinders fell and smoke filled his lungs and sauteed them as they activated shields to sift their air space from the effects.
They bolted toward Aranmore. With haste, passing craters and shadows, with no solid bodies to cast them. He suffered dread and fear in the pit of his stomach. He hoped the few soldiers would hold what was left of the riverfront for a time.
But he considered if he had abandoned them to a horrible death.
As he swallowed back a mouthful of acrid blood and felt queasy.
dread came over him like a sickness.
They had blacked out the night sky to be cut off from Leer and now, with great weeping and gnashing of teeth, he found himself dizzy cut off without borders with his faith left to wander.
Shell-shocked.
As they could see upon the far Hill, the scouts, waving them on toward a safe pathway. Many of them were young adolescents too young to see such wicked atrocities, yet they were present anyway.
He hoped they were sufficiently armed as he realised reapers would be out there, using the blackness of the night. shae soldiers who perversely used their ability to rush faster than the eye could trace. Perverse and sickening.
Jai fell to his knees as he shook, he looked wounded, “Kay, we’ll never make it too much open country between us and Aranmore,” he gasped as He sat on his knees powerless an executioner waiting for the sword to fall, upon his neck, oh the perverse irony. There it was the urge to quit, how sweet it was, every hero had felt it, and oh what an urge it was.
Kay needed to think fast, as he reassured himself to stay in it.
“There’s an old Portan half a mile from here. The village long has cared for and kept; at lackh-na-erīn, we could wake him up.”
“We can make that if we move quickly before the dust settles,”
“Old Lokaeel,” remarked Jai and nodded in agreement.
It meant a detour. Across the mudflats.
They caught their breath; as the Grand Marshall swept his brow and slicked his fingers through his hair.
Only for a hank to come away in his fingers. This was the bleak moment when he realised his time had progressed to the subsequent interval and it was infinitely restricted, as beads of perspiration and blood sat upon his furrowed brow. Time was departing from him. It was rather less spectacular than he had hoped. He sighed as the tall pale garish presence of Sako asked him, “Are you ok Boss?”
To wit, he just nodded stoically as they continued with great caution across the derelict fields, fighting a rear-guard action to get them to the mud flats on the other side of the mangrove forest.
It was not an easy passage, Fire and smoke, the pungent smell of toasted primsies. The prairies were scorched. like wading through cold cremated cinders.
But eventually, they stood at the dark, wet edge of the swamp at lack-na-erīn
They could see into the dark pitch black of the water’s edge and their reflection looking back as if the creek had a consciousness of its own and was peering into them.
“This place gives me the creeps!” proclaimed Okota.
“Do you have the whistle?” Kay inquired as Sako clutched his pocket and took out a small flute. As they watched on as Sako played a sweet melody, the flute was a weird woodwind that twittered as if practically chirping. “
a seductive melody one for an old, old creature whose kind was almost gone from the world.