Wherein Wicker is very tired. (Ch. 7)

 “Burning bush and soiled skies hold up the dream. But the dream has been whisked away, earthwards, downwards, into the ashen eyes of the south. None will wonder, even imagine that a thought could stray such. In time, as all things, men shall do just that, and think it commonplace.”

Excerpt from the Eiseneye prophecies, the litany of days to come, second standard edition.

 

“I have had occasion to read that literature of the barbarians. It has been an enlightening experience; one I recommend to those reading this statement in any time and place. I have looked at prophecies and futures as though I have never heard of them, and find myself appreciating both the artistry, and perhaps the flaws. My colleagues may shy away from me or attempt to reinterpret my words, and most importantly this admission, but the keen of mind shall ever discern both the meaning of my words and the meaning of my advice. There is nought to fear when we know the future, least of all from ourselves and our failings.”

Opening to the parting address of his third exile, Eato the half heretic.

 

The great certainty in his life was that he knew the future. For the past is as surely a mystery as the depths of the soul, and there has been no shortage of poets who have extolled that particular deepness. The past is nothing but a collection of souls, in horrific constellation to bring that state in which they lived to the current state around him. Once again, Guardian Gracchus was being melancholy and perhaps over dramatic.

 

Diving once more into the mass of scholarship he had so abducted to his study, his thoughts turned less introspective and more academical. “Strange, strange conclusions to draw. Strange that Eato would think he could pass criticism of the Mylian school even at its height. Didn’t he realize? Didn’t he care about anything he’d built up?”

 

The ruffling of sheets and writing instruments continued undisturbed by any bar his own thoughts for a time. But his thoughts were enough of a distraction, for they contained everything that might distract a young man: the body’s push to activity, the mind’s pull to contemplation, and that intangible quality that a sturdy soul imbues its host with that makes sustained immobility an ethical impossibility. He was hungry too, but that couldn’t bother him.

 

He turned to the work of art on his wall, one that none but him truly appreciated. A tapestry of some fabric unknown to him, resistant to the cruel dampness that ever engulfed that prison he called a home. Of course, Gracchus hadn’t the faintest clue as to whatever composed the tapestry, the artistry or the ingenuity that went into so wonderful a fabric. What he did grasp was the importance of that pattern of inks and dyes that told a story on top of the fabric. Truly, there were none quite like it anywhere in the world. It was truly an achievement to be proud of.

 

Oh he hadn’t created it. But he had found it, and more importantly, deciphered it. How he had done either of those things at his age was still a mystery to most at Pontiac’s point, though Gracchus thought this too was a mystery he could penetrate if only he framed it in just the right way. But that was for another time, as for now he toiled over what would surely become his everlasting legacy. Consulting the tapestry once more, he traced the intricate lines stemming from a point near the bottom left corner as they traced a contour around a variety of shapes and symbols: some of them letters, some ancient scripts, others simply an incomprehensible mess of lines and colors. Incomprehensible, alone that is. For as a holistic entity, the grouping could be understood, if only vaguely.

 

“This is probably what the Mylians saw when they joined the great Tellyphill debate two and half years in. And no one else knows! Fools. So simple, so simple…”

 

He moved to note his discovery in his personal journal, for that had always been his way of doing things. First it was added to his grand store of knowledge, then it was internalized by some complex process wholly unfit to be explained to the gentleman. Finally, some perfected product would be added to his body of official study, to be sent upstairs to the grand library: to be consulted and picked over by those vultures that called themselves the Goddesses’ men.

“And to think that I’d give them all the credit and accolades they’ve ever wanted if they’d only let me up there once in a turn or a cycle…”

 

The mutterings and the studying continued for a while yet. He’d trace a contour or two, realize an obvious historical or theological fact that just moments before he and any assortment of historians and researchers would have thought utterly inscrutable. Then he’d complain some more about his mistreatment. In all, it was a satisfying existence, bar the gnawing gaping hole that filled his stomach most times and his soul only on special occasions.

 

His state of not quite reverie was interrupted by what could only be thought of as a dainty knock. Futures! What futures were there here? Anything clear? Anything important? No time to consult it, no time to think if this was a moment big or small, he practically exploded out of his mangled mess of a seating arrangement in the direction of the door. This failed to help the orderliness of the room, which succumbed ever further to that special entropy which only the truly gifted and the truly useless can let engulf their surroundings. Unsurprisingly, most rooms deep here in the caverns were in a similar state, a fact that surely spoke most highly of late Pontiac historiography and theology.

 

Another fact that spoke most favorably of those late Prophesiers was standing just outside Gracchus’s door, preparing to knock again. Wicker thought better of it, but it wasn’t easy. She was exhausted and scared, just about ready to collapse in on herself and take on whatever shape demanded the least energy to maintain; she assumed it would resemble a raindrop, although she wasn’t too eager to find out. Much to her delight, and much more to the delight of her aching legs, the door opened as if to some mythological plane of the Goddess. A quick glance about showed all manner of nonbiological mess that could be assumed a Guardian would accumulate in however many years Gracchus had been down there.

 

The boy was saying something to her. Whatever could it be? Wicker knew it must be important. Everything this boy would ever say would be important, more important than anything she’d heard or learned in all her years of hexing and spell craft. And yet, it somehow washed over her along with the sounds of the grotesquely molded howling winds that echoed and bounced through the tunnels and shafts of the caverns. And how could those be washing over her? For someone whose life had surrounded around misshapen sounds for more than the better part of two months, she paid precious little thought to the dynamics that shaped the air.

 

To Gracchus, it seemed that the invader paid precious little thought to anything. She’d knocked at the door, and then scanned the room for something. He estimated she had come from some great and distant faraway land if her harrowed and fatigued look was anything to judge by. If his previous visitor had been all the way from the Caspian and he had looked so spry, surely one that looked as exhausted as this must’ve come from a land at least twice as distant!

 

Had Gracchus stopped to consider this train of thought, he’d have realized that a land as twice as far as the Caspian would barely be the port cities on the Caspian’s distant shore. Nevertheless, his fantasy persisted; geography was not a strong suit of his mental faculties.

 

Finally, Wicker located her prey: Gracchus’s cushion pile. Covered with a thick layer of papers and assorted scholarly appliances, it looked ever so inviting. She collapsed into it before she’d processed a single word he’d said.

 

“There really should be a permanent rest stop somewhere around here.” Mumbled Gracchus unappreciatively. He thought on the sentiment and felt himself growing disappointed in his attitude. The Ranger’s visit had been the most overtly exciting thing to have happened to him in a very long while. Who was he to now interfere if destiny had decreed his study to be a way stop for the best and brightest of the Goddesses’ servants?

 

With a sigh, he finally set deeper into the caverns to find those necessities a weary traveler and a hungry adolescent might need: food, drink, and most importantly more cushions.

 

The twisting ways were now as familiar to him as the twisting lines of the tapestry, though this achievement gave him not an iota of the satisfaction. Utility rarely arouses the pride that uniqueness does, no matter how obscure or pointless said uniqueness be. Excitement now slowly trickled through him, rising to a torrent of energy that he couldn’t quite fit into his respectable gait. The only sensible thing to do was to break out into a trot or skip of some kind. Dignity be damned, he ran the labyrinthine avenues and damply dim corridors. This was perhaps a foolish or even dangerous thing to do, but adolescents aren’t known for their keen sense of self awareness. And just as he had many times before, he got lucky; not a scrape or scratch marred his personage as he entered what should’ve been the impressive center of the scholarship chambers of the central mountain. As things stood, the kitchen, for that was what it was instead of a proper mess hall, indeed towered in a sense over even the most elaborate of the library rooms deep in the caverns. Had anyone possessed the bravery needed to scale the parts of the cliff face around these chambers or the even greater bravery needed to plumb the archives for records of the chambers’ commission, he or she might have discovered that this room was on the edge of the cavernous system. In fact, it was lodged in just the right way to just out of the mountain just a bit. Among many other effects, it made carving out the rock a fair bit easier if not very much safer; accordingly, the ceiling was somewhat higher than any other in the caverns.

 

None of this was in the universe currently considered by the intrepid Guardian. He was very much obsessed with his quest for sustenance as opposed to architectural appreciation. In this quest he was of course rather successful, as most all other residents of the cavern were some factor of four or five times his age and had none of the spryness or flexibility needed to properly raid the various oddly shaped cabinets and storage spaces that littered the kitchen. All things must balance out, and he fittingly had to wait on the older Scribes and Guardians when it came to the preparation of anything more complex than boiled grain. Gracchus would’ve insisted he was getting better should this ever have been brought up to him. As things stood, not much of anything got brought up to him by anyone.

 

A proper raid later, he’d filled a sack with all he believed he’d need for some immediate future. Evidently, Heave thought differently. The mechanism always allowed him entrance but would bar his exit if he took so much as a dried apricot out with him. Others would’ve left it at that, but Gracchus hadn’t been satisfied, and surely enough he’d found a way around the conundrum.

 

“Oh, you’re a greedy little thing aren’t you Heave?” Gracchus whispered at the faint glowing light that somehow emanated from the smooth unstained walls that surrounded the one entrance and exit to the kitchen. “How do you do it Heave? Know that what I tell you is true? Why does it satisfy you?”. The wall, of course, said nothing. On occasion Gracchus would’ve sworn that the wall would hum in response, but this was not one of those times; the orange glow of the walls persisted, as uniform as ever. Without so much as a sigh, Gracchus unveiled one of his many insights, one of a kind that others would’ve slaved away for years to obtain. “Eato didn’t write anything directly about the Sebastopol schism. What we call his notes on the Sebastopol schism is really a series of collected notes and lectures he gave in the Gelton Isles around the same time. You can tell that’s there’s no unified body of work when you consider the conflicting message we’d obtain if we use the tradition method of analyzing his work chapter by chapter: there’s no antithesis to his “honor thesis” from the third chapter, not even in inference. We must therefore conclude that at the very least, the third chapter is either edited somehow, or part of another body of work. But without the third chapter, none of chapter 14 has any basis as a uniform conclusion! The only conclusion is that both 3 and 14 are separate from the others in some distinct way. And once that’s affirmed, the rest falls apart; chapters 1 and 2 are obviously one offs, incoherent as part of a grander narrative, 4 to 6 are just reiterations of the parting address of his first exile, probably put together by a later author trying to prove himself worth his bed and board. And the rest are just random things he said around the same time.” In satisfied response, the orange glow of the wall faded to a sickeningly bright red. This was the sign to pass.

 

For some reason, he was the only one who’d figured it out. Not just about Eato and the Sebastopol schism, but about Heave. Maybe it was that Gracchus had bothered to name the strange light where the others just accepted it. Maybe it was how Gracchus always said a word or two to it even when he didn’t want to take anything with him. Or maybe others knew the trick, but simply couldn’t produce near the amount of insight needed to properly utilize the mechanism. After all, it wasn’t that far a ways to get to the kitchen, so why bother working at a decent pace?

 

This was arrogance of course and should he have considered it but a passing moment he’d have realized. As an adolescent he perhaps should’ve been hyper aware of these flaws of his, but mysteriously these weren’t the flaws he may have agonized over. Gracchus obviously had no time to agonize over anything, so he simply made his way back to his rooms. The excursion hadn’t taken him twenty minutes, even with the added load of the food going back. Rather as was to be expected and still rather to his disappointment, Wicker was still fast asleep; faster maybe should that statement make sense. Well, that left him time to do what was important: prepare a meal, find some more cushions, and of course consult the futures and opportunities opened up by this disturbance to his monotony.