Minnie heard the lantern-light more than saw it - the light in the sky was still high, and here at the spire's pinnacle, the cruel white of it was unfiltered by kindly dusk of shadow and lamplight. It made the red-dim mouth of the chamber seem darker, as the voice emanated.
The voice, though! You could swim in it, and it poured so thickly, that the swimming might carry you up, if you didn't wash away in its current. Now, the formality of her dress felt insufficient, for this was no longer simply research, this was something deeper.
I ha' left my story. This is the story of someone greater than I.
She squared her shoulders, adjusted her dress from the chairlift, and unpinned her hat to hold before her. Her boots pinched unpleasantly at her ankles. She curtsied with her regular incompetence, there on the porch to no visible recipient of her politeness.
Entering, her eyes began to run across the walls, with a torturous slowness. It was, perhaps, the most alien place she had ever visited, an altar to something that she could not understand - not emotionally, anyway, for intellectually, it was simple enough. The prosaic was fine. Her eyes stopped for a comfortable rest on a picture of an Akvatari gathering water from a sinuous river with a silver ewer, until she realized that in the shimmer of its surface, you could see the reflection of... she could not avoid looking at it. A child lay on a torn scrap of earth, her tail cut in tiny slender fissures, with the buds of wilted thorn-roses pressed into their hollows. This made her feel sick - but familiar too. It made her mind run into dark hollows, and she felt the thrill of her own death that she felt around the Evalin. The girl's face, in her mind, began to meld with that of Hannah, the girl that old Everto had fed to the Evalin, so terribly long ago. She felt smaller and smaller seeing it, felt docile and ill-fated.
Her shoulders began to cower, and she turned away her face - but the walls of the cave held no respite, and even the stone floor felt as if the striations in it nestled into terrible shapes, as if the cracks and irregularities spelled out all-devouring tales.
It was the last picture that saved her from being swallowed by the room entirely, for it was this image that left her alienated. In the image, an Akvatari woman here painted slow brushstrokes across a stone wall, her face obscured by the fall of her hair, beautiful waves of long, unbound hair, so soft on the stone wall, that Minnie felt the impulse to leap at the wall, to try to force herself into the image and wrap the long around herself, the nestle her face into it, to breathe the scent of it. The other hand held a slender penknife to the throat of man whose face was bent in the pain of lust, his hand at the throat of a third figure, a woman bent into the same passion, as they copulated on a cushion at the woman's feet.
But it was something in the twist of the man's fingers into the tender flesh of his paramour's shoulder that made her eyes travel back to the painter, and behind the fall of hair, just barely in the dark humid shadow of it, she could glimpse the contours of an eye, and the eye looked back at her. The other figures in the tableaus she had wandered over were bent upon their own pursuits, their own world, sometimes cruel, sometimes mild, sometimes. This one alone, had looked at her, the observer. And she looked back into, now, transfixed.
Look at this. Look at these who I hold sway o'er, and forget the teachings of the mind, look only on thy heart. And know that you understand this, all of this, at some level, and you wish for it. All that you have ever sought and wished for is on these walls, and the dark is inextricable from the light. You understand all of these things, and you desire them.
And her eyes looked back upon the two lovers at her feet. And she realized with a sort of shock, that no she didn't - she neither understood more desired this. And in that blindness, she understood something else, something that they eye could not fathom.
I look on thy wall, shadowed eye, and I feel just as thy people feel when they look on the stars and sea and sky of the Gods.
And a trickle of pity came with that, just enough pity to let her not be swallowed up, enough for her to leave the walls and pour back into herself, sicker and sadder and lonelier than when she began.
She stood just behind herself and spoke very soft, "Hello, Eversinger. I ha' come to ask about an acquaintance of thine. And 'haps a box that is nae yours, that I think thou may 'ave."
x
The voice, though! You could swim in it, and it poured so thickly, that the swimming might carry you up, if you didn't wash away in its current. Now, the formality of her dress felt insufficient, for this was no longer simply research, this was something deeper.
I ha' left my story. This is the story of someone greater than I.
She squared her shoulders, adjusted her dress from the chairlift, and unpinned her hat to hold before her. Her boots pinched unpleasantly at her ankles. She curtsied with her regular incompetence, there on the porch to no visible recipient of her politeness.
Entering, her eyes began to run across the walls, with a torturous slowness. It was, perhaps, the most alien place she had ever visited, an altar to something that she could not understand - not emotionally, anyway, for intellectually, it was simple enough. The prosaic was fine. Her eyes stopped for a comfortable rest on a picture of an Akvatari gathering water from a sinuous river with a silver ewer, until she realized that in the shimmer of its surface, you could see the reflection of... she could not avoid looking at it. A child lay on a torn scrap of earth, her tail cut in tiny slender fissures, with the buds of wilted thorn-roses pressed into their hollows. This made her feel sick - but familiar too. It made her mind run into dark hollows, and she felt the thrill of her own death that she felt around the Evalin. The girl's face, in her mind, began to meld with that of Hannah, the girl that old Everto had fed to the Evalin, so terribly long ago. She felt smaller and smaller seeing it, felt docile and ill-fated.
Her shoulders began to cower, and she turned away her face - but the walls of the cave held no respite, and even the stone floor felt as if the striations in it nestled into terrible shapes, as if the cracks and irregularities spelled out all-devouring tales.
It was the last picture that saved her from being swallowed by the room entirely, for it was this image that left her alienated. In the image, an Akvatari woman here painted slow brushstrokes across a stone wall, her face obscured by the fall of her hair, beautiful waves of long, unbound hair, so soft on the stone wall, that Minnie felt the impulse to leap at the wall, to try to force herself into the image and wrap the long around herself, the nestle her face into it, to breathe the scent of it. The other hand held a slender penknife to the throat of man whose face was bent in the pain of lust, his hand at the throat of a third figure, a woman bent into the same passion, as they copulated on a cushion at the woman's feet.
But it was something in the twist of the man's fingers into the tender flesh of his paramour's shoulder that made her eyes travel back to the painter, and behind the fall of hair, just barely in the dark humid shadow of it, she could glimpse the contours of an eye, and the eye looked back at her. The other figures in the tableaus she had wandered over were bent upon their own pursuits, their own world, sometimes cruel, sometimes mild, sometimes. This one alone, had looked at her, the observer. And she looked back into, now, transfixed.
Look at this. Look at these who I hold sway o'er, and forget the teachings of the mind, look only on thy heart. And know that you understand this, all of this, at some level, and you wish for it. All that you have ever sought and wished for is on these walls, and the dark is inextricable from the light. You understand all of these things, and you desire them.
And her eyes looked back upon the two lovers at her feet. And she realized with a sort of shock, that no she didn't - she neither understood more desired this. And in that blindness, she understood something else, something that they eye could not fathom.
I look on thy wall, shadowed eye, and I feel just as thy people feel when they look on the stars and sea and sky of the Gods.
And a trickle of pity came with that, just enough pity to let her not be swallowed up, enough for her to leave the walls and pour back into herself, sicker and sadder and lonelier than when she began.
She stood just behind herself and spoke very soft, "Hello, Eversinger. I ha' come to ask about an acquaintance of thine. And 'haps a box that is nae yours, that I think thou may 'ave."
x
