Episode 9 - A Dark, Deep Place. And the Hollow Beyond.

  Chapter 93 - Deep in the Dark (2)

  I am swept along in a current of voices. When I open my mouth, black fog fills my lungs. When I flail my hands outwards, I grasp only at shadows. My feet tumble over my head as I am thrown through the black. I do not know up from down or left from right. I stretch my limbs trying desperately, feeling for something to right myself with. The only thing that makes sense amongst the clamor of sensations is the rush of the current around me.

  I break ?the surface of whatever it is I am tumbling in. My hands paw at the surface, splashing inky liquid. I kick desperately to keep my orientation, scared of how long my strength will last. It feels like it takes everything from me just to keep my head above the rushing stream of ghosts around me, and I do not know where I travel. There is no light. There is only dark, glimpsed between splashing ink, and darker black. I am naked and shaking. I don’t know where Pooka is. He said he wouldn’t let me drown, but I don’t know where he is.

  With a scream I crash back first against a cold, hard surface. I turn and hold on to the pillar by wrapping both my legs and arms around it. It feels about as wide as a human torso, wider at my arms and tapering as it comes closer to my feet. I cling and tuck my chin into my chest and shut my eyes. And I let the current pass me. And still Pooka does not come.

  Time stretches onwards. My muscles grow cold and stiff, and still I cling to metal. If I am crying, I would not know; I feel so cold that my body is little more than a numb weight. If I was crying, so much time passes I run out of tears.

  The current churns at the base of this metal pillar around me, as if it were the tip of a stake thrust into its depths to pin the very soul of the current. I can feel the eddies bouncing off my body with great force, seething and dissipating into the dark instead of steadily streaming onwards. The current climbs up the pillar, wisps of ghosts rising and passing my face. It feels like they grow curious, gathering near me. Some stay, clinging to me with small black hands. Others cannot hang on, their fingers slipping constantly past my skin. And still I cling, with a growing community of ghosts hanging with me from the metal pillar. I’m scared that Pooka might never come.

  Is my body still above me? If I let go, and fall into the current, would I ever leave? Would I dissolve? Will I die here?

  Scales wrap around my body, each one diamond-shaped and ridged down the center, the edges sharp like cut tin. They writhe across my skin, separating the ghosts from me as the scaled creature coils under my armpits and across my chest, lifting me away from the metal pin to hold me above the current in some empty space I don’t understand.

  Everything is dark, except for the gleaming edges of scales as the creature continues to shift around me with a sound like rattling metal. Everything is cold, just as Pooka is. This creature does not feel like Pooka though.

  The scales on my skin tighten, and I run my arms around the curled finger that holds me, feeling soft hair between the pads of the inner hand pressed against my torso. As I feel along its length in the dark, it ends in a curled talon as long as my forearm. Not as large as Rattakul’s Garuda, but still more than large enough to tear me apart if it wanted.

  “What are you?” I cry into the hollow.

  In the dark, two golden eyes open, each with a long slit pupil. The scales in the dark catch the gleaming golden light from its eyes, glimmering all around me like starlight. The creature continues to move, undulating, unfolding, sliding against itself. Thousands upon thousands of sharp-edged scales catch the light in the dark and rattle like the turning clicks of a million cogs. Is it some kind of giant serpent?

  It cannot be. Its muzzle is too long between the eyes, ending in a furred jawline and a long mouth like a crocodylid. Behind its eyes, something like ridged horns catch the light, coiling behind elegant, pointed ears.

  “Where is Pooka?!” I scream at it with my mind.

  The scaled hand around my chest tightens.

  “We have no names here.”

  The force of its words shakes my bones like the crash of machinery, extinguishing my breath from my lungs with a rush. There is a ponderous pace to each syllable, sending a sharp pain through my skull as each vibrates my teeth within my jaw. It is in no rush, like time has no meaning to this creature. I squirm, to no avail, and the hand shuts tighter.

  “Cease, little twig in the flow. There is no fighting. It is time to forget you and I. There is the everything, and the nothing. This, and what is not this, until it too shall pass into the next. Here is the hollow where all come to lay, and so you come as well.”

  “I didn’t try to be here. I’m trying to stop being here! Let me go. Let me leave. I want to know where Pooka is!”

  “There is no ‘I’. Forget I. Become we. Spill into our current and be no more.”

  Somewhere back above I must be bleeding. How much blood do I need to give for this to stop!? Will I die first?

  The creature throws me back into the current, and I scream as I fall.

  I am not me.

  I live. I race along in the mist and fog. I bolt. Panicked. Bounding under the moonlight between twisted dark trees. I dive between the roots, skidding desperately around a bend. Behind me, terror on my heels, and beasts hunting me. Of late, they have been desperate. A black jackrabbit breaks between the brush ahead of me, his red eyes glowing, white under-tail begging me to follow. Just as I leap after, jaws wrap around me, pain splits me open. I spill in a flash of red into pink jaws and white teeth. I pour out. I die.

  I live. I drink blood and eat flesh. My brothers and sisters tear apart our prey, bones crunching between our teeth. Blood spills into our cheeks, and warmth fills us again. It is not horror. It is not joy. It is survival. It is precious blood, given for life. And the hunt calls again. So I run onwards and become we, and the shadows between trees become daylight again. We sleep in the bowels of the earth, piled upon one another. I tuck my head between the belly of my sister and the chest of my brother and am warm enough to forget that I am hungry, at least… for a while. When dark comes again, we rise to hunt. Soon the days grow short and cold, and what once was plenty becomes harder to find. Our wild hunts fail. We drink no more blood. We eat no more flesh. We die.

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  We live. We are slow and gentle, cropping the grass that grows under sunlight. We take one step after another, eating mouthfuls of greenery that never fill us. Onwards, always hungry, we fill our belly, and never feel full. We look upon our herd, and a red-eyed black stallion looks back towards me. He screams, shoving aside another as his teeth flash and his dark, sharp hooves bite at the earth. He scares me. We turn and run, and run and run. The trees give way to hills. The hills give way to meadow. We walk and we graze and are always hungry. And the seasons pass. We grow old. We die.

  We live. We climb blades of grass like towers and harvest the grain from the laden heads of flowers. We gather desperately the temporal fruit of the mother to store for when the lean time comes. We climb higher, searching for more. We are hungry always, our stomach always twisted with starvation. The flowers did not bloom this cycle, not like last cycle, and we range further than ever from our foraging grounds driven by the ticking clock of a sun that sets ever earlier. We are pierced through with talons, shattered by a shadow from above. We die.

  We live. We are sisters only with the sky and kin only to the wind. We soar and dive, masters of the mother beneath us. Still, our belly rumbles. We scream as we fall from the clouds to skim the earth who unfolds before us, verdant skin and azure blood. We search for movement below, eager to curl our talons around another throat and strike with such force that life is shocked from our prey. Behind us, a black-winged brother cries, following in a steep dive. His eyes flash red.

  We…

  “You are the wrong ‘we’. Come back, my love. Come to me. Go not to the hollow. It is not for you today.”

  Pooka pulls me from my dreams, up and out of the current just as the scaled creature did a dozen memories ago. His flat equine teeth dig into my hand painfully as he wraps his mouth around my wrist. I scream with pain, the shock of my awakening rushing through my limbs. With another tug, he successfully pulls me naked from the inky stream of blended consciousness, and I gasp desperately. I am not wet; whatever the hollow is made of does not drip off me like water would.

  I hug myself, reeling from the strange memories I tumbled through. “You ate each other?” I ask Pooka. The memory of flesh in my mouth burns like bile in the back on my throat, surfacing memories of humans and symbionts that I’d rather not confront.

  He looks down at me, butting my shoulder with his muzzle. “We are one, then the next. How else are we to continue? There is no death, only rebirth.”

  “What is happening?” I cry desperately, wrapping my hands around his neck as he lifts his head enough to pull me to my feet.

  Pooka shoves his nose into my chest while I hang around him, using his steady strength to keep me on my feet. Beneath me, my feet disappear into black fog so thick I cannot see my toes, nor whatever lies below. “No previous host came this deep while giving their sweet blood. It took me some time to follow you.”

  The serpent creature's monotonous voice speaks again. “It has been a long time since someone felt our memories for us. I was mistaken, it seems. Not a returning sister, but a conduit, then. One who has wandered deep indeed. The current wells up desperately for the chance to remember. Curious.”

  I rest my hand on Pooka’s neck as his head swings from side to side, trying to find the source of the serpent’s voice. This time, shifting scales catch red light. Pooka screams, rearing and kicking and pounding at the solid something beneath our feet in threat.

  The current gathers near me, ghosts reach outwards… and I can hear their pleas. Remember for us. Remember our lives, remember our deaths. Remember our dreams and hopes and fears. Feel for us. Give us little parts of ourselves again. Subsume into us again. Their desperation haunts me. Their loneliness suffocates me, pooling into the back of my ribs. Thousands of emotions rush through me, tearing my heart into pieces with sadness, then piecing me together again with joy and hope, each thrust upon me to feel in their place.

  “This one is mine!” threatens Pooka, prancing several steps forward and continuing to throw his head and kick his hooves. “You will not approach! You will not have her!”

  I take several steps after, patting Pooka’s rump and calming him. With a breath, I steady my lungs and calm my shaking hands, letting the feelings wash over me now instead of drowning me as they pass. Pooka steadies at my control, but remains dancing in place, snorting and roaring his threats.

  “You forget who you are here?” I ask the serpent creature over Pooka.

  “They forget who they are. Those of us who remember do not dissipate. We know not the quiet. To remember is to be apart, so we know not the current. We know not death nor peace. But we long just the same for the memories we hold. The hollow is a cage for us as much as it is a home.”

  The serpent creature unfolds, scaled torso uncoiling in every direction. It grinds against itself like scratching steel and screaming machinery. Slowly the head arranges itself before Pooka and me, lowering its chin to rest on the ground so that I stand approximately at its eyeline.

  The head is larger than I am, golden eyes as wide as my open hand, and each split by a vertical pupil with notches along the length. Behind its head are the curled, ribbed horns of an Ovis. Its neck disappears into the black, so I cannot tell how large the creature is. Lit by Pooka’s eyes, its color seems black too.

  “Who are you?”

  The serpent-creature speaks. “I am the greatest of those who remember in the deep. I remember when I was the first, born one day from mindlessly consuming my brothers and collecting their parts. I remember when the hollow flowed uninterrupted, and I swam in its endless currents around the world. I remember when the metal first came, piercing downwards into the hollow’s veins, and the current ruptured from its ancient paths. I remember when the first of us were invited above, and I too sometimes woke to see the curious surface beyond. I remember when I did not resent, when I loved the hosts who gave me form in the world above. I remember when I gave life as a blessing, bringing harvests and plenty. I remember when the humans discovered they could use me for war, and when I was used to kill at a scale unprecedented in its slow, inevitable cruelty.”

  “You are the first symbiont?” I wonder breathlessly.

  The creature nods. “And you came seeking to pay blood for the exchange, so the hollow will not call back when you pull on it?”

  “Yes. I think so. I don’t really know what is happening,” I reply nervously.

  The serpent-creature flicks its forked tongue at me, brushing my naked shoulder with the very tip. “Grant me a blessing, little conduit who has dug too deep. Feel for me a memory. Shall I share with you how we ended the world?”

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