In a steep dark valley brimming with pine needles sits a rotting mill where the swallows gather and sing. The kind of old place where you hear the rain before you see it. The sky darkens overhead and the river responds, the waterfall driving the old mill wheel until a light starts to flicker and the burgeoning glow reveals…
... a key. Its glow, dying light reflected from its bodice (a menagerie of gold, quartz, emerald and bone), emanated with great magnification, courtesy of the crystalline, sweeping waters above. The keys form, skeletal, ornate, was a tiny, beautiful gasp of earthen materials. Its elements were organic, its intent a darker riddle that bled into the stream, intimidating tadpoles into a wide berth.
The light, glittering, shimmering, a kaleidoscopic refraction, danced briefly on the water’s skin, then died, snuffed by the roiling clouds above. It was not unseen. A shadow in the trees, ebon in the gloom, twisted on its perch and cawed a harsh caw along the stream’s winding course. Swallows scattered at the sound; its echo stumbled from tree to tree, growing weaker until it found the ears of...
...a boy. Purple painted broadly under his eyes, married to grey nestled beneath his skin. His pallor a far cry from the glittering key, now gently shining as if illuminated from the inside. Eyes darting up as breath stains the air, he spies rustling in the trees. A moment of admiration, the bird warms his soul. Perched atop branches, wings unfurling, the chill of night air rushing through feathers.
The bird speaks to the boy through the mind's eye, and his visions cascade onto the soil before him. The images fleetingly dance with the wind before being erased by the rain. Erasing the conjured moments and returning them to the earth. Where the visions once lay, the earth springs flowers. The petals dark as the night, and their touch a velvety death.
The boy, whose ebony coloured hair shimmered almost bluish in the moonlight, leaned down carefully to catch a closer glimpse of the lambent, rather odd looking object in the water. With his left hand, which was adorned with deep scars, he reached into the shallows as a dull rumble broke the treacherous stillness of the night. Something hid in the shadows, something even the Moon cannot reveal.
He looked behind him. The bird nodded. He saw nothing. He had to be fast. His fingers coiled tightly around the key, and instinct took over as he began his escape from the waterfall. The boy ran as he had been
taught, fast and without looking behind. Not directly, anyway. That's what his avian companion was for. As he ran, the bird flew above him, tracking the shadows below.
His heart beat hard against his chest while the darkness enclosed him entirely. "Focus", he thought, as his pupils began to dilate. He could feel the warmth of the trees, the breathing of the forest: As long as he maintained contact, nothing would happen to him. He had been born out of this forest, he knew the moss and ferns like the insides of his own hands. The bird screamed a warning.
Words dissolve back into the sounds out of which they emerged. Philosophies become bird song, the rustling of leaves or the sound of water sliding over green stones. Earth turns, shadows became solid and rocks fly up into a dense crystalline sky. All the stories were now reset and time compressed into that one moment of now, and a fluctuation of old energies begins to unfold into the ether.
The brief eternity slipped away. The boy was an aspirant of the sublime but not its master. Maintaining his connection was like climbing snowflakes as they fell. And so he fell. A soft thud punctuating the bird's cry, followed by the apologetic chime of the key as it slipped back into the stream. Silence pressed down on the forest. Soon the proud babble of the water returned, its prize reclaimed.
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As told by H.N., Shannon Wells, Kev Rooney, Gin Niemtus, Annie Rosenberg, Lilian Rauser, A.G., Stephania Olszewska, Garry Barker and P.R.H.
