The Passing Of Shadows

The Elder stood at the edge of the firelight, brooding as he always did. In years, Jachob had not seen the man step any closer than the dusky edges of the fire, except to speak, as now.

"Come, Jay, I have a way I would discuss with you," somehow the man brought the shadows with him. Nachten had always been Noc, a man-of-the-night, but to be respected, for he was one of the village's three elders.

Stammering, Jachob rose, nearly stumbled, nodded to the others around the fire, and paced slowly toward the shadow within a shadow of Nachten. &emdash;How can anything be so black?&emdash; Jach wondered. Behind him, the adults of the village smiled in silent understanding.

"Come now, the night is chill but will not bite." Nachten's silken voice urged, then added, "Nor will I." as he spun into the forest's shadows.

Jach paused a moment, pulled his cloak tighter about him, and followed. The two walked on through the night for a time. At first, Jachob could see nothing but the swirl of Nachten ahead of him, but soon trees gave way to fields. The moon sat giant above the plain and slowly rose half up the sky, a full moon, and enough to see by, as their eyes became accustomed.

After what seemed like miles, Jachob ventured his first words since they left, "How far are we going, Elder?"

"We are nearly there," came the reply, "Do you see those white shapes ahead? That is our goal, the edge of our realm."

"Houses? This is beyond us."

"Yes. But I would, as I said, have a way about things with you. Old things." Nachten raised his arms with a sigh, lowered his hood. Face turned to the sky now, arms spread, he spun slowly. As he finished, a smile spread across his face, an ebony fissure among the silver planes of his long face. He looked at Jach and laughed. It was the last thing he was expecting. "Come along, you look as pale as death. Look about you. There is nothing here to harm you but your fears." he glanced again, bemused, "Though, I'll admit they look considerable from here."

Jachob did look about. On all sides a silver sea of grasses swayed in the slight breezes. Far off behind them the forest stretched across the horizon, tethered to them by the thin mooring-line road. Ahead, small white blocks shimmered between the grass. Jachob felt like he was in one of the pictures he'd seen once on Remembrance day, the ancient black and white scenes so realistic he thought he could step into them. . . Photographs, the Recordkeeper had called them. Nachten watched Jachob, let him complete his spin, and took his shoulder as they began walking again.

 

The buildings loomed about them, moon-bleached skeletons and heaps of charcoal rubble. As they walked the streets of the ruin, the grass gave way to a soft black stone Jach had never seen before. The structures drew closer together, rose higher against the blue-black sky. Jach looked to that sky as he'd looked at his feet before. Something bothered him about this place, a wisp, a stirring of a memory of a memory.

Nachten stepped in then, with a question. "Jachob, do you remember the Tales of the Sun? The stories your mother told you, about the Fall, and the way of things since?"

"Yes, the children's tales. But that was long ago."

"Jachob, this is what I came to tell you. I see you do not remember them. . . From the beginning, then." he began slowly to walk down the street toward the moon, staring alternately at the husks and at something much farther away. With a deep breath, he continued.

"The ancients were much like us. Nearly a thousand years ago, they walked the Earth as we do now. They looked like us, talked like us. But there the closeness ends. There were a wise race. They held secrets we can only dream of, and can never make. But we do not want to. For they were a cruel race, too. The records we have from them, photographs, copies of books, sculptures, everything paints them harshly. There were too many of them. They killed each other frequently. They put out poisons so that the land around them died, and in the end, they, too, died. They had lost touch with their world."

Here he pointed to one of the buildings with a shaking hand. Behind him two eyes opened wide, trying to catch every detail of the mostly intact building at the end of that long reach. It squatted low to the ground like a hiding animal. Jagged teeth stood in broken holes, glinting moonlight into the eyes of the two trespassers. Jach shuddered and stepped back.

"They shut themselves up in these buildings, sealed from the elements. In the winter, the houses warmed them. In the summer, great machines blew artificial air through the house, cooling it. But they sealed themselves in other ways, too. They used great machines to cut the grass about the house, all the while blowing enormous clouds of poisonous smoke about. Every morning as the sun rose they would rush from the doors of the houses into even larger contraptions of metal, smoke and glass and zoom across the land at speeds faster than an arrow's flight. When they stopped, they shut themselves up in more buildings until the sun was falling. When the sun came to earth. . .

"When the sun came to the earth, they locked it away in their houses. They held the sun in at night, pulled it inside so it wasn't free to go. Then, the light imprisoned, they roamed about, and without the light, they could not see right from wrong. Throughout the night it burned, and by its light they worked harder to further the evils done during the day. In the darkness they did evil, and in time this evil crept into the day. It was this that ended their stay in this world.

"We let the light out after the fall. Look how much more easily we live&endash;look at these cold, hard buildings with their thick, solid walls. They were built to keep the world out. But nothing can live apart from nature. The land around us is what sustains us. You can smell it now&endash; the warm grass smell, the last fruit trees in bloom, the first dusty smell of fallen leaves, and the first crisp whispers of the winds of winter. You can hear it in the solid footsteps in the dust, in the shimmer of grasses against the passing foot, see it in the scatter of stars in the night sky. It is nature. We must respect it, live with it, not despite it. Yet with all of their wisdom, their wonders great and small, the ancients did not see what I tell you tonight. I wonder at their blindness, but again&endash; they locked away the sun.

"We are the children of the sun's freedom. We were born of the ancients, cleansed in the fire that consumed them. The fire&endash;the one you sat at tonight, the one we built yesterday, the one in the wood, for tomorrow, this is what we keep to remind us. We do not lock the world away. And now, finally, we are free."

With this, Nachten slowly, surely, brought out a small ember from the depths of his coat. He bent over, picked up a splinter from one of the houses, set it next to the ember, and blew. The light flared, and the two were bathed in a golden glow, and the world closed about them. Then the light faded, split into two small candle-flames. One Nachten held close to him in his right hand, the other he held out to Jachob. For moments Jachob stood there, transfixed by the light, before he solemnly lifted the flame to his own chest. Nachten brought his flame up to his mouth and blew it out. With the cinders, he drew a sign on the boy's chest, the sign of the sun.

Turning once more to the night, Nachten and the boy Jachob walked off into the silver sea.

Notes:

Noc: man-of-the-night, one who lives at night. There is nearly always at least one Noc in a tribe or clan.

Role:While not understood, they are accepted in the Sun tribes. It is assumed that just as the tribe watches the sun, so someone must watch the night and understand the moon's ways to keep the balance.

Root: from the English nocturnal