The aeons float out Crick’s body like loosed dandelion puffs, on up to my ear.
They whisper: dost thou know who the man is? Dost thou know the girl?
I don’t know them, I say to the Aeons. They’ve come here from far away. The Pilot wants to meet them, so he sent me to retrieve them. And that’s all I know.
The aeons gather on the bottoms of the leaves, soft balls of light, like foam at the edge of a stream. We’re riding the leaves of the oldest trees down to the earth. That ship they took, it crashed through so many of my old friends, hurt them. But they’ll heal back. All heals here, in the land of fecundity.
“Are we... falling?” Amara asks.
“This tree we are walking on, it is dying.” I say. “It is going back to the earth.” The bark is going from brown to gray, shriveling into itself. The aeons move about her head and mine, whisking about my antlers like dust in a breeze.
Dost they see us, Jack Karnos?
No, I tell them. I don’t believe so. The man is wounded and sleeps, and the girl has yet to wake.
Yet she walks and talks. How strange.
The outer worlds are strange places, I tell them.
Dost they hear us, Jack Karnos?
No. Maybe the man, while he dreams.
“Jack! The tree! It is breaking!” Amara screams, as the tree cracks and begins to lean. She thinks we’re falling and starts to panic. But the aeons know, and move quickly.
“Do not worry,” I say, taking her hand in mine. We hang in the air, the aeons flitting and giggling beneath us, already prepared with branches and vines to replace the dying tree and cushion our descent.
Why dost she worry so much?
She doesn’t know any better. Be kind, I tell them. “This is some deep science you use. Tell me this is just some sort of clever trick.” She looks to me, her mouth firm as if she expects me to affirm her suspicions.
“This is Arcadia, my friend, not the Land of Nod. There is no deception here. What you see is life unto death, and death unto life, two sides of the same face. And the knowledge that it is so.” The dying tree crumbles and curls as we descend, like beech bark in a fire. A cloud of insects charge in from all angles, red and black, and begin to churn over the withered trunk. They leave behind a soft hill of moss, from which saplings have already sprung, their fresh grasping hands reaching towards the sky.
“Death becomes life,” She says. “The scholar spoke of such life science. It worked in a faraway place, where gods lived. Have we died? Have we crossed over into the place of gods?”
“You are in the place of gods, but you have not died. This is Arcadia. You are close to Helios and Hyperion, the nearer you get to the center of the spiral, the more everything exists in its whole state.”
“Existence is strong here,” she says. “Like a strong island sun on a tidal fog.”
She is from the Coral Islands?
“You’re from the Coral Islands?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“I beg pardon, but I’ve never heard of them. It’s the Aeons who tell me these things.”
“The Aeons?” She follows my sword as I point out the puffs of light floating around our heads. “These things? They are like the lightning bugs of home. Only they do not turn off. And you speak to them? You are a special man, Jack. You would like the islands, I think. Very green and wet, like this forest. I have been in the Fade for a long time. The islands were almost all washed away by the Fade many ages ago. It sits at the edge of all the worlds. We have a saying back home, that the Coral Islands arose from a smile that crossed Hyperion’s face as he slipped from one good dream to the next. The Fade liked the smile so much, it could not find the will to wash it away. That is why we are still there. At least, that is what the scholar says. I left a long time ago.
“We Ma’atha celebrate life, you see. When not being forced into working the soil for the yama, or building roads, or powering their ships, we dance and sing, wishing for Hyperion and Helios to have good dreams, so that when they wake, they’ll be contented, and not anxious or confused. The scholar says we must do this.”
That’s beautiful. Tell her, Jack Karnos.
“That’s a very beautiful way to live,” I say. The aeons hang around the trunks of the saplings, which have already grown to the size of young trees, in a carpet as thick as the moss on the ground.
But does she know?
No. And she can’t. Not yet.
Can we tell her when it’s time?
Pilot will tell her, I say.
“Are the Aeons saying something?” Amara says.
Ah, she dost hear!
“They did. Can you hear them?” I say.
“It is like a mosquito is whispering,” Amara says.
She feels us.
Wait for Pilot to wake her
We are so excited to meet
Just wait, Aeons, just...
“By the Fox, look!” Amara falls backward on the giant leaf we are descending. Rising up towards us, a mere stone’s throw away, is the creature from the ship, the confused and hungry and abused being whose life I had to cut short high above us in the trees. The leaf stops just in front of the beast’s jaws. I run my fingers over the once sharp teeth, now eroded, the edges soft. The skin has grown leathery and dry, the eye sockets empty.
“It’s okay, Amara.” I say. “She’s very dead.”
Amara pokes her head up. Aeons flit about her head, their collective giggles like trickling water on smooth stones. “Oh, yes. I see.” She says. There’s a rustling sound from within the beast’s mouth. With my one free hand, I move the flap of the creature’s mouth to the side, to take a look inside. From death comes life, and this particular instance is no exception. At several arm lengths within the carcass, draped in shadow and aeon light, is a small creature, a lizard. Its body is thin, coiled around itself, like baby tree roots grown round an ant hill. Its flat head and closed eyes rest atop its small arms, the shoulders softly rising and falling with its breathing.
“Amara, come look.” She walks to the front of the leaf, and carefully looks into the hollowed out mouth of the once great beast from the ship they crashed here in.
“Gods, it is a hatchling. So this creature was a mother? It was pregnant?”
“No, I don’t believe so. But it was a carrier of a life force, which it gave back to the land once it died. This is the new life that sprang from it. Arcadia is a world of constant rejuvenation, of abundance and fertility.”
“And death begets life, as life begets death. It is a saying amongst my people.”
“The Ma’atha are a wise folk, it is said. Pilot speaks well of them.”
The Aeons whisper Pilot’s name, flitting about us in excited arcs. We’re getting very close, and they feel it. Before the leaf can descend any further, Amara beckons to the small creature, waving it towards her with her hand. It watches her curiously with eyes that have just sleepily clacked open. The head bobbles back and forth, as if the neck is too young and weak to capably support it.
“Come, Amara. We must meet the Pilot. Your friend, he needs help, and there are things which must be done very soon.”
“Okay,” She says, giving up on the creature ever coming towards her. “Okay, let us go.” The leaf starts to move towards the ground again, until we see the forest floor below us. There’s a carpet of moss, atop which are dead leaves, ferns and broken tree limbs. We jump down, the moss coming up to cushion our landing. The brush ahead parts to offer us a clear path towards a rocky hill in the near distance, atop which I see the red scarf snapping in the wind.
The Pilot watches as thou dost approach, the Aeons say.
“Quick now, Amara.” I pick up Crick, and start running towards the hill. The forest suddenly clears, giving way to the rocky expanse that leads up to Pilot’s hill.
O! but look Jack, the babe dost follow you,
The young lizard from the insides of the dead creature watches us from the edge of the trees. It takes hesitant steps after us, whimperi
ng, not wanting to be left behind. “Wait, Jack. We can not just leave the little one there by himself.”
I want to tell her that in no time, the little guy will be a much bigger guy, and he’ll be much more at ease on his own than with us. I want to tell her that here, in Arcadia, there is no want, no reason to be afraid, that the space between birth and death is so small, that there is no place for fear to plant itself. I want to tell her that Pilot told me to hurry, to retrieve them as fast as possible. Yet, I also know that Amara is not one to take no for an answer. “Hurry, then. Get the young one.” She rushes back to the young lizard, who looks at her with searching eyes.
The Aeons sigh. The girl dost have a propensity for compassion, they say.
“Yes, she does.” Amara reaches down to the lizard, and carefully picks it up.
“It is okay, little one.” She says. “You have nothing to be afraid of. You are nothing like your mother was, right?” The lizard nestles itself into Amara’s arms, but then nips at the hair hanging over her chest. “Hey! No biting, okay?” Her dark eyes are stern, and the lizard lets go of the white hair from between its jaws. She smiles, but then becomes serious as she sees me waiting for her, with the pale form of Crick draped over my forearms. She runs towards me, the two of our arms full, hers with birth, mine, death.
The hill before us is rocky and sparsely covered with scrub and scraggly trees. There are broken pieces of glass everywhere, reds and blues and greens. As we come nearer, the Aeons all start humming, in flowing harmony. At the top of the hill is the Pilot, resplendent in his simplicity, the beige wool of his fatigues collecting the sunlight in all its coarse seams and glowing like a medallion. He wears the bomber cap he always does, with wisps of gray hair peeking out. His nose is swollen and pockmarked, his cheeks red. He wears a scarf around his neck which gracefully whips about in the unfelt wind. It is long, and would mostly rest on the ground if not for the invisible current of air caressing the hillside.
The Pilot hiccups. “You’ve made it. Oh, goody.” His voice is even raspier than usual, his words hanging off the shoulders of one another. He walks a few feet forward, taking exaggerated steps over the empty bottles by his feet. “You must be Amara. And oh, look, you’ve come by a little dervish. How... *hiccup*... how lovely.”
“I am.” She says. She looks down at the little creature in her arms, the dervish, and then at Crick’s lifeless body in my arms.
“Ah, yes, Crick. My, my. That’s... *hiccup*... That’s what he’s been calling himself, right? Crick? So, the story goes that he, he, he saw a grasshopper in the grass, back when he met William, and that’s where he got his name,” Pilot hits himself in the temple with the palm of his hand, a dull thwack on the leather bomber’s helmet. “But what he saw wasn’t even a cricket. How... *hiccup*...ironic.”
I lay Crick down at Pilot’s feet.
“How do you know that? Who are you?” Amara asks him. Her voice is tense.
“How do I know? Well, that’s a good question. One for which I don’t think there’s a really good answer. I just do. My name is Pilot, and I know everything.” I can’t bring myself to look Amara in the eye. I find an angular little pebble on the ground to focus on.
“You say you know everything, but you smell of a yama who drinks the fermented janjan, and speak like one, too.”
“Oh ho! She’s just as saucy as I’d come to expect, Jack Karnos. A real firecracker, as they’d say in William’s world. Or at least his grandparents would... *hiccup*... damn, these hiccups. Some fermented janjan juice would be just the ticket.”
“This is the man who would help Crick, Jack? Who would help us?”
“I said the Pilot wanted to...”
“To see us. yes, I know. Well, here we are, and this man is dying. Now, please,” She places the dervish on the ground and approaches the Pilot. “Can you help him or not?” The Pilot flashes a purple smile, and starts chuckling to himself. I can’t imagine what could possibly be funny in a moment like this, with this man so near death. This behavior is so unlike Pilot, drunk or not. To think he had me make haste to meet Amara and Crick, to bring them back as fast as I could.
“How long have you known me, Jack Karnos?” Pilot says, not taking his gaze from Amara. His voice has sobered. “In any of that time, have I not known what I was doing?” It takes me a moment to realize that he never actually spoke, his wine-stained lips never shifting from their drunken grin. It was a thought. It came up like a seed that had been planted in my mind from the beginning, and had finally taken sprout. It rose in my mind naturally, in reaction to the particular sequence of events he knew would happen, had seen happen. The thought was a culmination to the clever puzzle he had been assembling since I had met him.
The Aeons hum increases in volume, and I feel like something is about to happen. “Oh, it is. It is indeed.” Pilot says to me. In knowing everything, he hears everything, too. He hears my thoughts, the conversation that the Aeons and I have, floating back and forth like loose dandelion puffs.
“Amara, my dear, of course I can help your friend Crick. Look, already he is in much finer shape. Look,” Crick moans, as if on cue. His eyes are still shut, but his breathing has stabilized and some color has returned to his cheeks. “Such a form to take,” Pilot says, leaning over Crick’s broken body. “A real blue-collar man, with hard callouses on his hands and a weather beaten face. He’d have to be tough, to come this far, eh? Come, Crick,” He reaches behind him, and grabs a half-filled wine bottle from the ground. He tears the cork out with his teeth. “Come drink the nectar of the gods.”
Pilot takes a pull from the bottle. He wipes his lips with the back of his sleeve, then gently pours the wine into Crick’s open mouth. It seems to fill without stopping, until a red tendril leaks from out the side of Crick’s mouth and mingles with the whiskers.
“What is this...?” Amara doesn’t understand, but her face quickly softens once she sees the Pilot fall to his knees and start crying, his face in his palms.
“Master...” I say.
“No, Jack, please. I am sorry. It’s just...” He takes another draught from the bottle. “I’ve been the judge of many a man, many a world. But how am I to be the judge of the being at the center of everything? The being responsible for everything? You, me, Arcadia,”
“Master Pilot, what do you mean?”
My question goes unanswered, as Crick begins to cough, the wine sputtering like an oily spray from his mouth. “Where in the hell am I?” He says, darting up.
“Crick!” Amara rushes toward him.
“Amara. Jesus, how long I been out?”
“You became unconscious after we fell from the tree, and landed on the bough... by the Fox God, Crick. Your leg, it is... it is...”
Crick stretches his legs out, his arms too. “Well, it sure as hell a’int broke no more, but it’s sure stiff as a mother,” He smacks his lips together, tasting the wine. “Mm, that’s good.” He says, then looks up into Pilot’s face, which is suspended above him. “More of that wine where it came from?”
Pilot blinks a few times.
“Can I help you, buddy?” Crick says.
“Yes, you can. I think you can help us all. Helios.”
The sword nearly drops from my hand.
Did he just say
Yes, Aeons, he said
But how how how how
“There’s very little time for explanation, Aeons.” Pilot says, wiping the last of the tears from his eyes. He stays on his knees, and takes off his leather bomber cap, revealing greasy gray hair pasted to his scalp. “Even less for questions. Lord Helios has found his way to Arcadia. We bow to him, ever royal subjects in his court.”
I bend to my knee and bow my head. The Aeons stop their flitting, and bow as low as they can on their various planes of existence, as does all of Arcadia, the wells of the most primal and ancient life energy rising to the surface to bow before the great Father, the Left-Handed King, who has apparently come back to us in the form of an unkempt vaga
bond from the outer worlds.
“Hold on, now.” The man says, dusting the bottom of his denim jeans off and looking about him. His eyes move about, staring at each facet and manifestation of life that bends low for him. There’s uncertainty in the air, a big question looming over our heads: Is this really it? Is Pilot right, and this is what we’ve been waiting for?
Crick, or Helios, sniffs and jiggles his jaw. “Now, look, I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
“No, Helios. There is no misunderstanding. There are many things which I must tell you, many things which you must know. Firstly, you and I have met before, though I’m sure you’ve no recollection. It was back when you and your son first encountered one another, you see, in the soup of chaos that exists outside of the spiral.”
“What you talking about soup for? You know where my son is, don’t you?”
“Of that, I cannot tell you. Not yet, for he will wake if you know. And if he wakes, all is lost.”
“God damn it, stop with the rambling bullshit. I don’t care what you did for my leg, or how you did it. I’ve come out here looking for my boy. Now, you’ll tell me where he is.” Crick huffs. The Aeons shrink back, as do the trees, their spindly roots inching back in the dirt from where he flexes his fists. Pilot shrinks back, lifts his hand to his red face. “With all due respect, master Helios_”
“That ain’t my name, damn it!”
“But it is. With all due respect, the person you think you’re looking for, he doesn’t exist.”
“What?”
“Your son. The man that you’re supposedly looking for, who you were looking for all the way out there in New Mexico.” Pilot’s swallows, seemingly unsure if he can go on. He spits the rest of his thoughts out. “Can you even tell me what he looks like? What color his eyes are? Can you even tell me his name? While you’re at it, tell me that your name is actually Crick, and it didn’t just come from seeing a grasshopper in the scrubland, and thinking it was an adequate title for yourself? Please, sir, I only ask these questions to make you see_”
“God damn you, I a’int got to see nothing.”
Tears reform at the edges of Pilot’s eyes. “You don’t, you’re right. I know. But please, for the sake of all the worlds, for this being that is your son but isn’t son, please; try.” He looks to Amara, to me, then back to Crick. “I’m sorry for coming across, like... this. But you must understand, that this is a day I’ve been dreading since the day I was born. Even knowing how I was going to react to all this... it’s humiliating. I’m sorry...”
“Master, let me take you to rest.”
“No, Jack. It is okay. I have to see this through. I’m a slave to the movement of time, even though I’ve known in advance how these days would play out.
“How about, if you know anything about my son, you tell me. For your sake,” Crick rushes forward, towards Pilot.
“Crick, no!” Amara yells. I rush forward, all of us in a race to get to Pilot before the other. Sometimes, when I run very fast, time slows down. I can move through each moment like I’m trapezing between empty picture frames. I see Crick lifting his fist in a series of second-long frames. My sword is at his throat before he can even swing his arm down, enough pressure behind the blade to just about break his skin.
“I’ll end you where you stand.” I say, but then the air floods with light, all coming from Crick. It’s like Crick has exploded and let loose a lifetime’s worth of starlight. It knocks me back into the air, and gives me this dazed feeling. It makes me think of...
Being born, the Aeons say.
Being born? What do you all mean? I ask them. Instinctively, my mind wanders back to my birth, where my first memory was waking atop a tree branch. There was fear, I remember, my breath catching in my throat like a hummingbird in a mosquito net. Then I let a sigh pass through my lips, and the thought struck me that this was all knew, that I had never breathed before opening my eyes. The huge gasp which roused me awake was actually my first. The leaves shook above me, as if nodding in affirmation.
“You are awake, brother.” It is so good that you are.” My brother had said from beside me. His fur was like fire, while mine was as brown as the earth. He was smaller than me, but so smarter. It was his cleverness which was his undoing. He was the fox and I was the deer, until Pilot gave us our names, our identities. “Oh, to finally be born into this place, this Arcadia,” Fox went on marveling at our surroundings, at the dying trees and the mushrooms which blossomed from them all in the span of a minute, at the strength of the light, at the rich smell of the mycelium beneath the dirt. While wondering these new thoughts, there was a loud crash from deep in the forest.
“What was that?” I had said to Fox, running as fast as I could towards the sound before he could even answer me. As I moved from the frames of each moment, I heard the voice of the Aeons for the first time, astonished by how fast I could run. As I got closer to the crash, their voices faded under a loud whine, as if passing from betwixt the lips of a hurt jungle cat. There was a voice, desperately reaching out. “Help,” it had said. I moved the leaves apart, and about five or so hand-widths below me, was the wreckage of a great machine, its metal body with the rusted holes and spinning blades so alien to the rest of the forest around it. Smoke and sparks bellowed out of its front end, as if it were a giant fire-breathing dragonfly with stiffened wings. I’d find out later that it was a biplane, a flying machine made during a great war on another world. I learned from the man who was caught inside of it, the man who had me call him Pilot.
Why do you want me to see this now, Aeons? I ask, but they don’t answer, at least not before I crash into a pile of stones and dead wood. The brightness has faded quite considerably by the time I can see straight, and though there are purple and green spots dotting my vision, I see Crick floating above the ground. His arms are spread, and by some miracle, all of his wounds have healed. Though his pants are ragged and his chest crusted with dirt and dry blood, he is as glorious as a newly forged star. He softly falls to the ground, his skin still giving off a faint light, where he crumbles, becoming prostrate before Pilot. His back heaves softly.
“What am I?” He sobs. He sounds different, like something in his facade has cracked, revealing a stronger stone beneath. “What is this that you have shown me?”
Pilot puts his hand on the glowing man’s shoulder. “I have done nothing but remind you how it was, Helios. Allow me to show you more,” Pilot says. There’s a tinkling like bells, and the rocky hill around us begins to shake and shimmer. It’s like I’m seeing the hill at the bottom of a tub and the water level is rising, subsuming the hill’s slope one grain of dust at a time. First the ground shimmers, then the grass, the treetops, the sky. The light begins to grow, only this time the nexus point has shifted from Crick’s entire body to Pilot’s hand on the strong man’s shoulder. “Allow me to show all of you,” He says, his voice amplified many times, and layered, as if a million Pilot’s were speaking. It seems to come from the light, and echos from everywhere. I imagine it’s what the Aeons tell me my voice is like, though I’ve never known my words to come from anywhere but my throat. They say it vibrates in a funny way around the light they float in, which is one of the reasons why they love to speak to me.
What is he to show us? Oh, tell us, Jack, the Aeons say. But their light is quickly consumed by the bright swelling sea, and their voices fade with it. Unlike when Crick exploded in anger, the light that comes from Pilot’s hand is not one that hurts the eyes. It’s more like my eyes are clearing up, like they’re adjusting to a bright morning light. Then just like that, the white light clicks off, and all is black. The ground is gone, along with the trees and the sky. It’s black space, and we’re floating in it. Pilot is by me, as is Crick and Amara, with the little dervish in her arms. They seem so close that, if I were to take a few steps, I could touch them. But then I really look at the space between us, at the great empty divide, and it seems infinitely vast. Does that make us infinitely large, like the
planets Pilot speaks of, great earthen gods? Even the little dervish must be the size of a large moon.
“Welcome to the beginning,” Pilot says. He waves his arm above his head, a stream of purple stardust trailing from it. The stardust coalesces into an eddy, spiraling around itself until it breaks apart and disperses to nothing. “As you see, it was quite dark. But it was out of this nothing, that everything sprung. You and your so-called son crossed paths here. To do that, you had to make it past all manner of chaos churning about and lurking in the dark.” The man Pilot would call Helios looks about him, his face contorted and pained.
“I... I think I remember...”
“It would be hard not to, sir. It may not look like it, but here, in this primordial soup, violence and chaos reign as king and queen. Strong beings thrive here, forces of chaos which know no bounds. The primordial beasts, as that man Pacheco refers to them as.” Pilot nods at Amara, whose white dread-locked hair floats like giant snakes about her face. “Pacheco dug them up, and they are marching as we speak to find you, Helios, and Hyperion as well. These are fearsome creatures, beyond anything in terms of power besides the spiral itself. If they ever took form in the worlds that we know, they’d all been buried, forgotten to time. These are the oldest of stories, after all, so old that nary a soul remembers them. The few that do are mad, besides. For the true nature of the beasts is underlined by the absence of reason. And that is from which these primordial beasts are made, and what they embody in any shape they take. Whenever anything arose in the great chaotic soup, there would quickly come along one of the primordial beasts to consume it or be consumed.”
“The scholar told us of a myth like this. In it, the Fox finds one of the gods of chaos sleeping, and leads his people to him. They cut into his chest, and build their worlds within him. The Coral Islands is one of these worlds.” Amara says. The Fox? Is the Ma’atha girl speaking of my brother? Pilot’s brow goes up when he sees the reaction on my face. Quiet, he seems to say. The dervish yawns in her Amara’s arms, a sound that echoes through space.
“It is an interesting myth, Amara, and one not completely without grounding. Yet, it is only a part of the greater story, and a small one at that. You speak of a god of chaos. That god was Hyperion. Before he was sleeping, he was part of the great spiral, and before that, he was drifting through the void of space, another being of unbridled power, cut from the self-same chaos that constituted the other primordial beasts. Reason, contrary to chaos, is deliberate systemization. It confines what would otherwise be chaos to a strict set of categories and values. Imagine an attempt at containing the forces of an ocean within a balsa wood box. The wild nature of the ocean will not tolerate being contained, and therefore break open the box as if it were nothing.”
“But Pilot, the Yama Dempuurns, who made their home on the Coral Islands, and made my people work for them, they’ve harnessed the power of the seas, and the rivers. They’ve built dams which funnel the water through turbines which bring light to our houses. They’ve built underground pipes and irrigation systems. They’ve managed to control their world.”
“Ah, the Yama Dempuurns. The descendants of the once great Ameshka Vega. Yes, you’re certainly right. But just as they came to control their world, so have countless other beings from all across the patchwork quilt which stems from the great gyre of Helios and Hyperion. It is the curse of reason, one might say, like a cancer growing unchecked. Categorizing and ordering the universe without end is what has brought about their disruption, and, perhaps, destruction. Look,” A shadow passes over all of our faces. “One of the primordial beasts.” My eyes follow his, but I can’t seem to bring them to focus. The blur I see above has no symmetry, seems to be beyond form. It is one great body, with smaller, independent parts composing it.
“By the Fox...” Amara says.
“Will it see us?” I ask. The outer membrane is a dull pink, like skin, but is cut up like a leaf ridden with caterpillar bites. Underneath the skin are spherical orbs bundled closely together, in varying colors, some with great black centers. My sight focuses until I realize that the orbs are in fact eyeballs, beyond number, extending like a great carpet into the bowels of the beast. I feel my stomach clench, and then a burning in my throat. I retch, the vomit floating off into space.
“No, it will not see us. It is bound for somewhere else.” Pilot says, a slight edge to his voice. “And don’t worry about feeling ill, Jackie-Boy. Seeing this creature would make any reasonable person sick. It defies the laws of the cosmos, of order and balance. And focusing on it with any great effort will just drive you further away from reason, into madness, should you go too far. Look beyond, instead. Look to where it’s heading.”
Beyond the great pink beast, far larger than the four of us or the space we take up, is a soft dot of light. It is pale and so small, but the sight of it causes my stomach to rise. The beast casting the shadow suddenly becomes far less important, becomes an afterthought, in fact. That quiet yellow light becomes the center of my mind, revealing itself like the answer to some question I didn’t know I had, the comforting voice assuring me that all will be fine, all will be taken care of. It is like looking into the eyes of God. The dervish makes a noise, looking from the bright pinprick of light to Amara and back again.
“That looks so familiar,” She says. “Like I have seen it in a dream.” Pilot wears a sad smile, as if he doesn’t anticipate ever seeing this sight again.
“Look past the star. Do you see the other light coming towards it? Do you recognize it, Helios?” Pilot asks, his voice soft and knowing, as if this is the moment he has been waiting for all those drunken nights spent on the rocky hill in the middle of Arcadia.
“Do I...recognize...?”
“Yes. Do you recognize your son?” The leather-skinned man with the thick red beard catches his breath. His eyes swell, and a tear slips down his cheek.
“My... son. Hyperion,” He says. He gazes with a longing, sorrowed face towards the soft light. He seems lost, hypnotized. That is until, above us, there’s a sound like an entire tree being sucked up into a tornado and torn to splinters, but it’s deafening, digging deep into my ears. Helios snaps out of his reverie. “That thing... it’s going for my son. We have to stop it.”
I bow down to the two men, one with his mouth cracked open in consternation, the other scratching his lower back through his pilot’s suit. “Master, Lord Helios,” I say, calling the shining man by the title Pilot has given him, and who Pilot has taken great pains in bringing all of us to the beginning of time to make believe in. I draw my katana out of its sheath. “Allow me to go. Allow me to fight it, until one or the other is dead and gone.”
Pilot’s look of concern shifts to mild amusement. “Oh, were it that easy, my dear Jack Karnos. But this has already happened. What you’re seeing, is merely a projection from deep within my mind. I’m only showing you. Were we really in the center of chaos, and this close to a primordial beast of chaos, then we’d be long gone. We would have been consumed, torn asunder before we could have even taken our first breath.”
“And that is what it shall do to Hyperion,” Helios says, but then his eyes change. They soften, and the longing, sorrowful face returns. His eyes well up again, until he cries out. His face wet, it shines, and I realize the white light has returned to him, his skin phosphorescent and otherworldly once again.
“Ah, you see, then.”
“Yes, Pilot. I see,”
I squint towards where they are looking, my sword clutched tightly in my hands. And then I see it too. Another pale light, only this one speeding along, at a rate so fast it appears to be just a thin line on the horizon, rather than a singular object. It is as if dawn has come to a world that has only ever known deep twilight and cold winter, peeking up under the heavy curtain of night as if it were made of black velvet.
I can’t help but cry out too. Tears wet my lips before I even realize I’m crying too.
“What... is it?”
But before Pil
ot or anyone can answer me, there is another shrill, tortured sound from the primordial beast. With so many eyes, how could it not have seen the bright light, too? And then, the two rushing comets of light meet each other head on. There is an explosion of light, and a great whoosh of heat and energy washes over us.
“And so, the dance begins.”
“The dance of the spiral.” Amara asks. “I can not believe my eyes are seeing this.”
“It’s... me.” Helios says. His voice is weak, but the words reverberate around us, the sound of wind chimes. The light that had sped forward at such a great speed has now started to spin around the light of Hyperion, which does the same to Helios. The two spiral around each other, their speeds perfectly matched, in perfect balance.
“From the first moment that you two met, you were equals.” Pilot says. “You began that great cyclic dance, one around the other, and you learned how to see. You saw in him what you weren’t, and in that way you were able to understand what you were. From that knowledge, Lord Helios, I sprang. I came like Athena hatching out of Zeus’s head,” Pilot knocks on his leather helmet with his knobby knuckles. “By acknowledging the distinction between yourself and Hyperion, you created a framework, a system of compartmentalizing. In the spiral, one was able to distinguish the self from the other. And that, Lord Helios, is how all the worlds were born, with all their multifaceted wonders. It was how I was born. I’m the singular concept of omniscience made manifest. I’m everything in yours and Hyperion’s head, so to speak, given an ugly mug and an English accent.” He pops up the small collar on his one-piece outfit, and gives us a mock curtsy. The dervish burps.
“So if you know all, Pilot, then where am I from?” Helios asks, his eyes never leaving the spiral. “Where was I born. Why was I made?”
“Lord Helios, forgive me, but if you’re asking me that, then you’re missing so much of the whole point I’m trying to make. You and Hyperion, you finding each other, was the birth of reason! And I am birthed from that birth. As a rational creature, I can only speculate as to where you came from. Teleology, I’m afraid, does not serve well when considering something like chaos.”
The spinning of the two lights has grown so fast that they’ve lost their shapes. It has become the double-armed spiral that everyone describes it as, with trailing arms of light. Smallish specks come off the tips of the arms, as fine as dust from the distance we’re viewing it at. The spiral and the brightness it gives off grows as it spins. The primordial beast stops its forward progression. It gives off a great cry, then grows silent, as if it is listening for something. That’s when I hear a series of familiar voices.
What wonder, what greatness
Such a world as this is
“Master Pilot, do you hear! Those are Aeons!”
“Oh yes, Jackie, your head could be buried in an ant hill and you’d know if an Aeon was close by. They were born quickly after Helios and Hyperion became one, the oldest form of conscious life in all of the existence that came from Helios and Hyperion. They’re like the breath of the gods, of Helios and Hyperion, which have permeated all of reality over and over. They occupy multiple levels of existence, simultaneously, time and dimensionality having little to no meaning for them. They make up everything, the glue which gives the world forms.”
“The glue...” Helios says, and his voice echoes through the space again, matching in timbre to the sound of the Aeons, who are harmonizing like a chorus, their volume growing as the light from the spiral also grows. Suddenly, a part of the primordial beast’s body breaks off. The broken piece of the beast’s body is like a large, pink jellyfish, with thin, gelatinous tendrils streaming behind it.
“What’s happening?” I ask, my hand still on my sword. I can’t seem to accept that we are merely just observers in the events surrounding us.
“Chaos is falling apart. It has come upon a force unlike any other in the cosmos, something stronger than itself but which doesn’t need to consume or destroy. The reign of chaos and violence is over, Jack, and it more or less happened by chance. The father and son were drawn together by that speck of light, each racing the other to consume it. By being equals, the spin began, the force of law and order was introduced. This beast or any other could not stand up to that.”
Another piece of the beast’s large body comes off, then another, then another. Each of the pieces floats away on on their own course through space, but as more and more light from the great spiral touches them, they seemingly shrink in on themselves, until there is nothing left. The chorus of the Aeon’s seems to swell with victory as each successive piece of the beast is swallowed up, until there is nothing left, just two spinning arms around a core of white light and the dust flecks that leave their loose embrace. Everyone’s faces are tear-strewn, save for mine. Amara’s face shines, as beams of light refract of her wet, dark skin like polished wood. “It’s so beautiful,” She says. “I feel I have seen this all before. Perhaps in dreams.”
“Perhaps,” Pilot says. I recognize the way he says the words. He sounds like he is hiding something, that he has more to tell which he is not letting on. “Come, let us go closer to the spiral.” In an instant, we are at the center of the spinning cone of light, awash in the collection of Aeon dust motes and light rays. Three silhouetted figures appear, floating in space, all looking to a certain degree humanoid. But only one of the figures has four limbs. The other two, under manes of delicate hair hanging in space like oil on water, have eight.
“What in the...” Helios says.
“Oh! Would you look at that! If it isn’t little old me.” The figures come closer, and as they do, I can make out the shape of the four limbed one. It is just a little human boy, with curly brown hair and fat arms and legs. Around his naked limbs swirl the Aeons, their voices excitedly whispering things to him in a multitude of tongues. He came into this world knowing the beginning, middle and end of all things, and that is evident by the look on his face: bent in consternation and on the verge of tears. The other two appear as women, their stomachs slender, with finely imprinted indentations running along their ribs. The only oddity is each of their six arms, atop a pair of two long legs.
“That little boy is you?” Amara asks.
“Ah, yes. A babe, with succulent little cheeks and a precocious set of eyes, to boot_”
“But who are the other two?”
“The bravest women I’ve ever known. My sisters.” Pilot snaps his fingers, and as if our surroundings were just a backdrop on an exceptionally large diorama, the spiral, the Aeons and all of the black space disappears, and we’re back at the base of the rocky hill in the middle of Arcadia. Amara sets the dervish down on the ground, before laying herself down.
“By the Fox,” She says, her eyes closed.
Pilot ignores her. “Now do you see, Lord Helios? Do you see who you are?”
Helios opens his mouth to speak, then seems to reconsider. He picks up an angular stone in his hand, observing its many sides, before speaking. “Of course I see. I saw everything you showed me. But that’s just it, you showed me. Sure, it seemed real damn familiar, but how do I really know that’s all real and not just some fancy magic trick? I think all you’ve managed to do is show me that I don’t know a whole lot. Maybe I’m just more open to your story because I don’t have a story of my own. Who knows?”
The sky turns dark, the once deep blue sky consumed by fuchsia clouds. Pilot’s face has grown long and skeletal, his eyes dark, the pupils at their center a fiery red. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We don’t have any more time for this going back and forth. Those women in the memory I showed you, my sisters, are in grave trouble. I’ve done everything in my power to show you the truth. Either you believe me, or_”
“Oh, come off it, Pilot.” The voice comes from above us, high up on the hill. It’s calm, buttery smooth. “Is that really any way to talk to a god?”
Pilot’s face reverts back to normal, as he turns to look up the rock-strewn hill. The clouds above us
remain, however. It seems that there’s a storm about to tear open the dark nimbuses above us, whatever way we want to look at it. At the top of the hill, atop Pilot’s large, plush chair, is a slender man with dark brown skin and long white hair. His appearance, in fact, is much like Amara’s, except that his hair is straight, and his eyes bright like those of a wolf. The shirt he wears is black, and fits tightly to his chest. The pants, also black, fit looser around the legs but grasp the ankle tightly. His shoes are brown and pointed, and grooved like a caterpillar’s body. His arms are tightly muscled, and around his wrists are two huge stoney gauntlets.
“Drinkwater,” Pilot says. He makes a feeble attempt at a smile, but his sardonic wit is smothered by his apprehension, even fear. “Well, you’re a smidge early, aren’t you?” The man named Drinkwater grins, his teeth sharp, his smooth, handsome face suddenly turned beastly.
“Pilot, Pilot, Pilot,” He moves one of his hands up to push a stray strand of white hair behind his ear. Small strands of lightning sprout from the gauntlet, which is bigger than his head, and into his amber eyes. The irises shine green once the blue lightning touches them. “You of all people should know, that I’m always early.”
“Master Pilot, shall I dispatch of this man?” I say, my hand on my sword hilt. I’m ready to rush through time again, to end this man who has trespassed into Arcadia, and mocks Pilot by sitting atop his throne.
“Hold, Jack,” Pilot says. “He’s not alone.” As if a cue for their entrance, four other men in black clothes comes over the rise in the hill. Most are large, except for one small, fat one who looks like a bloated fish. Some have white cloaks over their bodies, and some have their long hair tied back behind their heads or in some style of braiding. But they all have the same set of earth-hued stone gauntlets around their wrists. Silver strands, thin and shiny like spider webbing wrapped with dew, extend from their hands. At the end of the leashes, bound in heavy collars, are small, wrinkled creatures. The Aeons gasp.
Jack Karnos, those are
“Yes, I know. Weavers.”
“I’ll be taking what’s mine, if you don’t mind, Pilot.” Drinkwater says. The lightning flashes from his eyes again. The weavers start to cry out, but the men yank on the leashes and quickly silence them.
“You cretin,” Pilot says. “Let those weavers go.”
“Then give me what I want. I’ve come here for Helios.”
Helios and Amara both have confused looks on their face, unsure of what to make of these men. “He doesn’t belong to you, Drinkwater. You’re but a man, albeit one with quite the overactive imagination if you think for one second you’re in a place to control a god.”
“Is that all you can do now, is lie? You gods are nothing but glorified relics. Want to see what I do to glorified relics? Inchbald, please.” He motions with his hand to one of the men standing behind him. The man quickly steps forward, and tosses out from beneath his white cloak a round object, with coarse, stringy hair spreading from its surface. It bounces on the ground a few times before rolling to a stop at Amara’s feet. The dervish skitters to it, sniffs, then growls up at the men on the hill. Amara jumps back.
“By the Fox, it is a head!” She screams. Pilot makes his way towards Amara and takes the head up in his hands. Whether it is the warrior-queen Magdala or his other sister, the nurturer Kokole, I cannot be certain. It is one of them, though. The face is much more lined and the hair grayer, but I still recognize the black eyes and sharp shape of the face from the memory Pilot shared with us.
“You killed my sister, did you?” Pilot says, his tone betraying nothing. “There really is no hope for you, is there?”
“You don’t sound too surprised, Pilot. Of course, you saw all this already, you knew it was coming. Then you must also know that I’ve also seized the mecha from the World Tree. It’s lying in wait for Helios just a few leagues from this hilltop. We followed the old maps, the Grid that all the Helios-Hunters of old used to follow. Why try and stop me? You know I succeed today. Why not just let me have what the future deems to be rightfully mine?”
“You have the mind of a child,” Pilot says. “You cannot begin to fathom what awaits you should you continue down the path you are headed.”
“That’s very foreboding and all, Pilot, but while you may know every corner of time and space, do you know any other versions of reality. What of the time that comes after the spiral? What happens when you no longer exist, when you are not even significant enough to be a memory? Do you know who Helios will belong to then?” Pilot just looks at Drinkwater, then at the weavers at the end of the silver ropes. His lip quivers.
With a flourish, Drinkwater leaps up, so that he’s standing on the throne. With one foot on the arm rest, the other still on the seat, he spreads his arms wide, as if addressing all of the world around him. “Do you see?” He says, his voice mocking. “Even the big know-it-all doesn’t really know everything. He cannot see past the beginning, middle and end of his life, of his frame of reference. What do you see after I kill you? Is it blackness?” Drinkwater laughs. “The age of gods is over. This is now the age of yama.”
Pilot holds Magdala’s head in his hands, his bulbous red nose all I can see from his bowed head, other than the leather helmet. “The cogs are set,” He whispers to Magdala’s head. He slowly peers up, until he’s looking Drinkwater dead in the eye.
“I know everything that was, is, and ever shall be. Now Helios, these men here, they seek to imprison you, like they did your son. I’m sure you recognize them, Amara. The men you see before you are from after your time. They are the descendants of Ameshka Vega and Vega Mardur, after ma’atha and yama interbred.”
“That is impossible,” Amara says.
“It is not only possible, it is what happened. They want to finish what their forebears started, to harness the power of you and Hyperion for themselves. It is folly, just as much now as it was then.”
“You’re just scared of losing your place in the pantheon, old man.” Drinkwater says. He steps down from the chair, and takes a few steps down the hill. Lightning stretches from his gauntlets up to the storm clouds. A violent wind suddenly tears across the hill, sending dust and dirt up into the air.
“This man is a drunk and a buffoon, Helios, and terribly old-fashioned. I mean, just look at those clothes. What are those, army fatigues?” Drinkwater shares a laugh with his men as he continues stepping forward. “Come with us, Helios. We have a suit of armor waiting for you over the hill, which will make you stronger than you’ve ever known. You’ll be able to shed that frail human body that’s been giving you so much trouble and slip into something a little more... comfortable.”
“Don’t take another step, if you know what’s good for you.” Helios says. His body’s effulgence intensifies. His muscles seem to swell out of his body, and he begins to levitate.
“Oh, really? Do you really think that standing up to me is such a wise idea, Helios? Come on, Pilot, tell him. Tell him!” With the last words, he snaps his arm forward, as if he’s throwing a ball our way. Lightning cracks from the cloudless sky, and hits the ground between Drinkwater and Helios. It rips through the earth like a wave, rushing towards us as fast as if it were flashing in the sky. My katana is out of its sheath and in my hand before the lightning can make its way down the hill. I rush forward, time slowing enough that I can observe each individual moment like a picture in a gallery. I move between each of them, time inching forward ever so slightly as the frames progress. But the lightning is fast, faster than anything I’ve ever gone up against. I realize I’m not quick enough for it. It meets the edge of my sword, but my balance is off. I can only deflect it just over our heads, not back at Drinkwater like I had planned. It singes through the leaves behind us, leaving a flaming hole in its wake. The force of the lightning knocks me off my feet, sends me flying back. I’ve been knocked off my feet so many times today that it is beginning to be old hat. I skid to a stop on the gravel by the base of the hill, my blade in the defensive b
efore me.
“My, my, you’re a fast one, aren’t you?” Drinkwater says. I stand as quickly as I can, the sword pointed forward in chumae-gamae stance.
Aeons, I say, I’m going to need your help
Oh, Jack, oh! Would you look at the Pilot! At the head of his sister he holds. Just look!
I hold my stance, and keep my gaze locked on the man on the hill, his gauntlet smoking with a sulfurous haze. Out of my periphery, I see the head in Pilot’s hands squirming around, its mouth moving. “Take your hands off of William, Bart, you coward!” Magdala’s head screams from between Pilot’s hands.
“Bart. Damn him. Magdala, my sister, you don’t have to say anymore, it’s_” The head is bouncing around in his palms, the hair matted with dried blood from the severed neck. “You’re only heralding your death that much sooner, Bartholomew. Be warned.”
She speaks as if Bart stands before her.
Is she in hell, with the lord of nightmares? the Aeons say
“Pilot! The Aeons, they think...”
“Yes, Jack. I know.” Tears are streaming down his red face in well-trodden rivulets. He looks all of a sudden very old and tired. “She speaks as if she is still attached to her body. And her body must be in so much pain, that it is consumed by desire for wholeness, for...” He pets his sister’s head, which has quieted again.
“She... she said William. Does she mean William Koster?” Amara says, holding the dervish tightly in her arms, watching the men at the top of the hill nervously.
“She does. He is as important to this story as all of you are. Even more so, in fact. They are in Golgotha, you see, the land of skulls. Arcadia, a world of perpetual rejuvenation, of love and compassion, cannot exist independently. At the other extreme is Golgotha, a place of insatiable desire, of hate and destruction. The two worlds must exist to affirm the other. It’s the dual nature of Helios and Hyperion. Creation can only exist in the presence of destruction.”
“Eros and Thanatos,” Drinkwater says, his face contorted with a ferocious smile. “Brahma and Shiva. All different names, all the same. Right here, even, we have the archetypes made manifest, in the form of Pilot and Drinkwater. Only you, Pilot, are the languisher, the one who stagnates, while I am the one who creates,” Drinkwater motions to his followers. “And destroys.”
Lightning cracks in the sky above our heads, and the five men charge down at us from atop the hill. I’m still shaken by the first blast of lightning from Drinkwater’s gauntlet, but the immediacy of the situation gives me strength. Helios floats near my right, his fists clenched. I can feel the Aeons charging through the trees and life all around us, drawing it into the battle. I won’t be alone. The men crash down the hill, a stampede of thunder preempting the lightning which is percolating in the clouds above our head. I ready my blade, steadying it before rushing forward, trapezing through the frames of time in the battle for Helios and Arcadia.
Chapter XIV: “The Descendants”