Twilight of the Wolves (11 page)

Cerill squinted and stepped around the fire, Aye, come on, into the light, let’s get a look at you.

His long black hair pulled into a topknot that fell down to his neck, his small frame visible, and his empty hands obvious.

Cerill turned and sat again but the Yi watched Sao take a seat on Cerill’s left and their right across from the sleeping man.

Cerill cleared his throat, Where you from?

The forest.

The forest is the world, Erin and Nire said together.

Sao blinked and glanced at them who stared at him, Is something wrong?

You are not::not what you appear to be::that you are not.

Cerill massaged his neck, Just a man in the woods like anyone else. Got a name?

Sao.

Cerill laughed, a short harsh breath, You really are from the forest, aye? One of these villages lost in the trees, aye?

Sao nodded and nodded towards Erin and Nire, Who are you?

Oh, they’re Yi if you can believe that. I’m Cerill. He clapped his knees, Never thought I’d be with Yi and a real forester tonight. Say—Sao, aye?—Sao, you know these woods well?

You are a wolf, said the Yi.

No.

You are a wolf::We came to find a wolf::You are a wolf! they stood and then sat, agitated, their bodies turned from languid to hyperactive, their legs bouncing, the rustle and stamping of leaves and dirt and twigs and steam pumping and releasing. They turned and whispered metallurgically to one another, the cacophonous music of their mouths tanged and clinked and welded round the fire.

Now, what’s this then, aye?

Cerill, Sao turned to him, What do you know of the war?

Cerill leaned back and exhaled loudly, Vulpe’s on the move and has been for two years, secretly at first, but there are no secrets now. Drache’s fighting back but it’s hard to know what’s really happening. Better not to know. That’s what brings me into the forest.

Wolf::you must::we must speak::you are a wolf::speak with us!

I do not want to speak with you. You disturb me.

They stood, Wolf!::oh wolf::we apologise::sincerely::but we must speak::we must.

Cerill laughed, Talk on, go ahead.

I am not a wolf, his voice quiet but firm.

There is a legend::and we followed it to this overland where::wolves::all the wolves::came from millennia::into the past::and out of the past::is born the future::ours::the world’s::we came in search of wolves::and we found you::here::in Yi the word for world::is forest::and the word::for god::is wolf::but there are no wolves::in the east::none who speak with humans::none who allows humans to see them::but you::we have found you::will you come to Yiyuyan?

Sao scowled but did not look at them. Closing his eyes, he leaned forward, I do not understand.

Me neither.

You are a wolf::we need you::we all need you!

I do not want to be a wolf. I am a man. A cursed man but a man. For now.

Cerill’s brow furrowed, Erin, Nire, sit, you’re incomprehensible and aggravating with your bobbing about. You say you’re cursed? We may all be cursed. If the world is the forest then the world’s burning down.

I tried to save the life of a wolf and for that I have been cursed. My body is on fire and I fear that it will kill me. But instead it only consumes. I will soon be a wolf. A demon. But I am still a man. Unless you can help me stop this, I do not want to hear
about wolves. Humans and wolves no longer understand one another. I was cursed. I am cursed.

A demon?

Save you?::can we save him?::a wolf to save us::not us for the wolf::but::maybe, they huddled together and spoke quickly, in dissonant music.

When I dream I am a wolf and I see the Memories of the World. Perhaps it is only the memory of the wolves. I see millions of years into the past but the future is opaque, granulated. I see nothing but shadows. When I am not a wolf I am a boy again with Laska, beautiful Laska, Sao stared into the flames, his expression distant and alone.

Aye, we all have one like her. The girls we left behind or lost in a past life. A demon, aye? I’ve never met a demon but it couldn’t be so bad being kind of immortal. You call it a curse but I call it a gift and I know that wolf who touched you felt the same. The wolves may not be altruistic but neither are they malicious or vengeful. Your wolf thought to elevate you and would probably be ashamed to hear the pain it’s caused.

I know. I hear her. She is the voice inside my head that calms me when I am ravenous. I thought it was Laska but it was her. The wolf. She speaks to me and I hold her essence within me.

Wolf!::we will help you::but first we must return::to Yiyuyan::you have given us much::much to think about::to think about takes time but::we have decided to::help::help in what way we can::if we can::but first we must go::and then you must come::to Yiyuyan! Towering over him, the Yi’s smiles gleamed in the firelight. They took Sao by the shoulders and kissed him on the mouth, first one, then the other. Farewell::brother wolf::Erin and::Nire will save you::we must go::but find Yiyuyan and::all will be better::but::for now::we give you this. They lifted him up with surprising ease and enclosed him in the circle of their bodies and united arms. Closing their eyes, bowing their heads, smiling wide and placid, they sang, the sound of metal rending,
of it beating against metal, of steel on steel and welded tings of the hammer, and then within the cacophonous vortex, a soft chime grew from far away, singing through the percussive beat of their mouths. They swayed and the air cooled around Sao, his breath caught in his throat, as if thrown into icy water, his heart skipping beats, his eyes wide and dry. The song continued, the minutes wore on, the pain, a frozen burn deep below the surface, coagulating his boiling blood. The sway of their bodies gave him the sensation of twisting, of being caught in a tornado, the world spinning round him, blurring away reality in soft fiery hues. When they stopped, he fell and they caught him, set him down again.

Thank you::brother wolf::that will protect you for a long time from::transforming::

find us as soon::as you can::remember Yiyuyan::the word for world is forest::the world is a forest::look for us::in Yiyuyan::found beneath::and through::across::and below::a crack::a break:: through the dark::est of night::comes the bright::est of twilights! And they ran into the forest, the night swallowing them.

Cerill stared at the fire and glanced at Sao often, who swayed in his seat, leaning on his hand, then his shoulder. I don’t know what to make of what just happened, he said.

Nor do I.

Did it help?

I do not know.

It looks interesting.

What does?

The charm they gave you. It might be Yigold.

Sao felt the light stone on his chest, cold to the touch and incandescent with swirling twilight.

Will you go to Yi?

I do not know how.

No one does.

How will I find it then, he said without inflection.

Cerill scratched his neck. Might be someone in Luca knows. If anywhere, it’d be there.

I have heard of Luca.

Cerill laughed, I bet you have. The whole world’s heard of Luca.

What is it like there?

Whistling, he said, It’s like nowhere but everywhere. It’s the center of the world. Big and bright and beautiful. It’s the heart of civilisation but also its most cruel child. It’s everything and nothing, but the whole world exists within it, if only on a small scale. A microcosm of all of existence.

When all of this started and I realised what was happening to me, I went in search of weapons like what killed the wolf. I searched for rifles and thought if I could stop rifles from reaching the world then I could stop this curse—Cerill laughed—You’re right to laugh but I am serious. I went in search of those who kill and found that it is not one or two or even one hundred people acting this way. It is everyone. All people who have the power to exercise choice exercise it upon someone or something. I found Vera on accident and then went to Valencia on purpose. I spent four years in Vulpe but found no answers, found no humanity. I went in search of evil in order to stop it and found that evil was everywhere and justice was nowhere. Where I come from there are no weapons like that. There were not. There may be now. When I was exiled the rifles were new to us. The civilised world found us and brought destruction with it. People told me about the wonders of the civilised world and my excitement grew. They taught me language and symbols, what power is and what it means, but they did not teach me who wielded it because none of them know. Everyone believes that they are the possessor never realising that they are already possessed. They taught me of art and I fell in love with it. Truthfully, I have never seen anything so wondrous as the market theatre of Valencia but
what is art but another system of symbols based around control? All the world is subject to those who have power, whether it is symbolic or violent. The illusion of theatre is a manipulation of the viewer. It is—how to say?—exquisite—?—but it is not real. It does not feed the hungry or save lives or stop rifles and their ironballs. It is a way of appeasement. The actors mock their masters and this is allowed because their masters do not fear them. It is a supplication. They feign outrage and bully the artists in order to distract. It is illusion. The true theatre is beyond the stage. None of it is real. The twelve chairs for the twelve states of Vulpe where thirteen women pretend to be twenty million. What is that but theatre?

Where does the war fit in?

Sao shook his head and dropped it into his hands, That I do not know. I do not know who the actors are or what the script is. I do not even know the dimensions of the stage. It may be that the war is real. Perhaps only violence is real and the rest is just a structure of symbols that must be analysed and misunderstood by everyone, even those who use them. I do not understand war. It is only the civilised who seem so bent towards destruction. They say Vulpe is paradise and the model for civilisation. I have met men and women from the three nations I know of and they all appear to agree that Vulpe is the pinnacle but I have been there. They say that people may only live properly within civilisation. They called me a barbarian because I was raised deep in the forest surrounded by wolves and demons and living gods, though we never saw this. We heard the wolves and knew of them but I only saw one for the first time a few weeks before my exile. They called me a barbarian but there is no violence or injustice there. I was sent away and I resented them until I had been in Vera for half a year and I understood that this civilisation was cruel and heartless and demeaning. I thought maybe it was because of its location and so I went to the capital, to Valencia. They said I did not understand but I do better than they know. I
have been to civilisation. It does not seem civilised.

Cerill blinked then laughed, deep from his bulbous stomach, That’s the thing about civilisation: nothing compares to its barbarism.

Born to Death to live again. The grass so soft beyond the walls. The walls, our walls, so pale and alive in the sunslight. Twilight Days, born today, live for the dead to take them to Her. Mother. The grass so soft against the feet, every step takes one further away and into this shepherding life in the halflit world where the men take each other away from the Life and the Light and one must lead them to Death and to Mother to join in unity.

The gates of the living, one falls under the tree’s shade and all time washes away. The monastery glows through the gauze of Her Light but this one will return once the journey’s done. Through the tears there is Her face and Her voice within full of promise and supplication. Mother of us all, the vision blurs but a hand wipes it away for one must go on for one is needed beyond the walls.

The feet step closer and the beat of the world drives within and fills this shell and the breath shudders in the lungs blown from the living and on through the boundary this one tiptoes through the shadows watching the play of Light as the darkness dances to its song.

The threshold of Light and Life and the abyss of darkness, Light of the world, shadow of the Dream, keep safe this servant ushering the humans to Death’s bright door.

Crossing the treeline the knees hit the ground and the hands clench in the dirt, a sensation of drowning nothing can grow accustomed to. Eyes clenched tight, teeth clattering and echoing in the skull and vibrating through the spine setting the limbs to pins and needles of fire to the very tips of fingers and toes and the cough racks the lungs and the tears fall but every moment softens the world and the living. Slow and even, in through the nose, out through the mouth, over and over until the weight settles in the center and rises from the soft grass and dirt. Step by step plunging deeper into the living and the scents that attack the lungs and the nose causing sneezes and coughs and air so full and bright sucking it in if only to hold it within and to understand
what a man or a woman feels when they walk in this world of Life but this one walks between the shadows and through the dark stretches between daylight and the sunsrays.

The sound of animals and the song of birds so different from the Ravens’ cold aura of blinding pressure vibrating through the shell carried and housing. The steps grow light and the air thinner, so free from oppressive glares and emptiness. The world is so full! So bright and so green. So green and so lovely! Hard and rough, these trees blot out the sky but are warm to the touch from Life coursing through only a finger’s space beyond this shielded exterior. The hands warm against it and the face fits here and there is a song heard. Soft and deep as if from the Ocean. It does not rush or stampede but drifts through the wood and the body sets to tingle, its atoms vibrating with the deep resonance, as deep as the Grey one must navigate to usher the living to the shore. This vast world within the tree so alive and unknown.

To go on and go on but it is cold and alone without the touch of the tree and its song pressed against the heart and the brain. But the music is not within but all around and the shell floats from the ground behind closed eyes drifting through the canopy to the stars and the moons and the warmth of the suns destroys this shell and becomes one with all and everything and the Dream is both in and all around like this music of the forest and to live is to take part in this communion of that which has lived longer than human history.

Each step towards Life and the boundary blurs but it can be seen. The Grey. The space between the living and the dead, the path one must walk if one is to return.

To live is to die and to die is to live.

By giving Life one will die forever and share eternally in this everness. From that which never was to that which always is, we are the hands of the Mother who gave shape and texture to all existence. We are the pigments in the Dream and the weavers at
the loom of Life and Death.

All expands in the Grey, this halfworld one walks perennially through. All the trees loom high and every animal is felt and their hearts beat within and all around like the threads of a vast robe all interwoven and vibrating distinctly but in unison to a music they cannot hear but which causes their very lives to continue. Every flower, every leaf, every blade of grass vibrating through the vast empty Grey. We walk through without touching yet grooming.

Within the Grey spacetime fragments and falls apart to be rearranged as pieces to a puzzle. All the living and the dead cast across the board of eternity. A great river coursing through the everness with the living on one shore and the dead on the other. The dead drift away from the shore wandering into the grand nothingness of nonexistence and the eternal unity with Mother while the living sit alone together upon the shore and wait for one to take them across to share in the Memory of the World and to finally wash in the Dream. This endless river of Life and Death the final barrier between that which is and that which no longer is.

It flutters more than flies with wings the color of leaves and skies. Floating through the air in chaotic patterns without direction but moving as if pulled by the fecund gravity of overpowering Life. First here, then there, now forward and back, higher and lower, drawn by a million compulsions and no mind to decide which is the way it wants to go. As it flutters by the wind lifts and takes it away in search of new scents and thicker Life.

The air is like liquid one must swim through but constantly resurface to breathe. Every step is submersion and ablution and emergence, a constant wash. Life is to be reborn continually with every breath and movement and one flies through this pulsing world on the wings of millennia of beating hearts and growing
plants. The insects chirp and whistle and fly and jump all round and there are not hundreds but millions, one for each blade of grass, ten for each petal or leaf.

The heart skips and the world dims and one is drawn from the living. The scent of burning flesh and spilling blood and the howling of men not long for this shore. The chest caves in and the knees fall to the grass and dirt and the face rubbing against the great root for this pain within that is the pain of Life leaving and Death calling, the tension of a being on the needle’s eye between existential fields. The Grey expands and the distance is in the eye happening here and now and every ashing being rips at the planes of spacetime, calling for Mother but we are Her hands and She is our mouth and we will sing for them to bring them away and the feet move through this halflit precipice of being and naught. Though the forest surrounds and evershifts round we are unbound by spacetime and living laws and one can never be lost with the guiding Light and the Grey revealing all.

The boy is dying. His blood pools around him and there are many more reflecting this image collapsing and corroding all round. The colors and hues of Life tarnished and burnt to ash. All black but this twilight softens the massacre. The boy is dying and he has no hands. His hands are gone. His skin bubbles from the fires and the hole in his neck gurgles from the blood that pours away. The blood pours away and runs to the mud beneath. All the grass is scorched away and the greyblack clouds pushed by the timid wind graze like animals over the field of violet sky. All is violent. All is violence. The boy is dying. He has no hands. His hands blown away and his skin melted away turned black and red and raw and tight. The boy is dying. The boys die all around. Filled by sulphur and excrement and ash and blood and mortification and moribund boys, the breath comes shallow and labored.

The boy’s heavy head in the hands. The scenery fades leaving
only the sensations of a life with all its smells and touches and tastes, all its pains and pangs and ecstasies and heartaches and the world burns down and grows again with the wind howling through the chest and the eyes are open but there is no light but the light comes from within emitting back and the life projects visible all around. His eyes glossed, the Grey expands: the memories rush within and without and he runs through life from infancy to his second year when life slows and a mother dies from disease and a father disappears one morning down the mine and other women and men pass him by and one of them with almond eyes offers grain and bread and apples and a year of holding on and surviving with thin bones that push against his skin and rashes that red his skin he is taken by a fat black women who finds him beside the river eating his excrement for lack of all else and the bejewelled woman takes him in her arms and washes the foulness from his body and takes him away by carriage to a new world with long low walls and midnight bearded faces who smile at him and rub his redhair and speak in words he cannot recognise but which he will learn and he does after months of sleep and nourishment and comfortable cushions and tender caresses and the years go by and his own language grows thick in his mouth but he speaks it to the trees and to the other boys of different colors at the home he lives in and the woman comes less and less as years add and roll on and she grows weary and sad and often cries alone in her room but he and the pale boy listen and bite their lips and wring their hands and promise one another that they are brothers and will be forever and they will never forget their mother who saved them from Death and despair but after seven moons of prayer she gets sicker and less bejewelled and she bids them all a long tearful goodbye and large armored men usher them out of his home for the last three years and he and his pale brother head north and find the road to Luca and spend many moons cycles there on the bridge and at the market but the pale brother fights with him and they separate
and he takes the train alone to Valencia where he meets actors and more boys and the women take a liking to him because he is tall and strong with a square jaw and thick red curls and one takes him from the market and keeps him for half a year until he steals the maidenhead of her daughter and son and is prisoned for his unstable love and capacity for it and there is no light and little food and he grows weak and he defecates and smears it on himself and on the walls demanding them to set him free and sores grow on him but after the many days of darkness that may have been month they open the door and he steps free for the first time and they drown him in water over and over until he is clean and his sores are closed by an Arcane with skin blacker than moonless nights with a thick jewel hanging from his forehead who tells him all will be well and he believes for a moment that the pain he feels and the torture he endured can be balanced by the strange words of this strange man and then there is a knife in his hand that becomes a sword that becomes a spear and his feet go from walking to straddling and then the country expands but burns around him through forests and forests and forests that never end until the fire is everywhere and his hands erupt in violence and the scorched plain takes him to this land of constant pain so short but forever too long.

This one sings, and the dying boy’s eyes focus but he looks through and he stands at the shore. The hands take his and he climbs aboard and the boat takes him to the other shore and he stands with Her. Her. Mother. Mother. So young and so old. Infinite Life, Your hair so black as to put Raven’s to shame. The emptiness of space, an eternal midnight upon Your forever head. You sing and the melodies fall together as a double helix spinning round its center, the boundary of everything, of Life and Death held between Your lips. Your face so pure and Your eyes like twilight smoke that swirls and consumes all that step within that violet hazeworld where all memories of all worlds past and future tornado and there exists the Dream and with a
final breath he passes from existence to You and there is nothing in the hands as the ash swirls away to mix with the other transformed lives.

The song rings through the air so thick with carnage but the work never ends for men will always die. The boy is dying and the hands take him. The boy is dying and the Grey expands.

The river is cold and the suns shine at the horizons in these Twilight Days of indigo and lavender. The Death drips from the hands and new Life rises. With every day we are born again not as men or women but as the guardians of existence, as daughters to the Mother. Mother, our Mother, watch over this one from sun to sun through moon and moons. Make this one whole and last forever between ever and never. This one is Yours. To live is to die but first we must die. We give everything to You, Mother, for we are Your daughters, and we will die forever.

Day after day the fires singe the air and the Grey is everywhere. The boys are dying but who will live? The boys die and die and the forests burn and burn and the smoke covers the land but it never seems to end and the tug is always there pulling across nations and forests to carry these boys to our Mother and sing for them so one may sing with Her and hear Your perfect voice. All for You, Mother, to die forever.

The burnt trees cry when touched but cry loudest when they’re not. Trees are old. Older than humans and this tree comes from the very beginning, before this scar on the planet and before the forest it incinerated was a forest. Centuries upon centuries it stood here and watched the forest made around it by the wolves. From there the timeline bends into two divergent paths. One on through the female and one to the male, two lives began centuries before they found one another again. Born from the moon, the first generation of wolves from thousands and thousands of
centuries ago. The fragmented moon before it fragmented when all the wolves slumbered within it like an embryo within an egg but then they woke and the moon broke and they came through space to this empty and lonely rock covered in water and empty deserts of evershifting dirt. The wolves emerged and watched the suns and counted the planet’s revolutions and brought forth plants from deep within the soil and animals sprang from the falling stars in the sky. She went one way and he the other and they traversed the planet a thousand thousand times only to meet after a thousand years of travelling like discovering one’s reflection for the first time. They copulated for centuries and sprang forth thousands of pups and then united long before the transmogrification of humanity or even of Angels. Now they are only a burnt stump crying out across spacetime to their descendants who may no longer live but if they do then they will hear and they will know that the world is changing. The draw and the heart shrivels and the jaws chatter and the spine will not settle but spasms and this one will not be afraid though the boys are dying and will not stop. All must die but first they live and we die in order to live and die forever. We are Your hands and Your silent mouths. This one belongs to You and will die over and over, forever and ever after. Mother, our Mother. Ash and cinder and smoke and blood and Death, the boys are dying and the Grey expands.