The Sky Lines – Chapter 49

The light that had shone from above into the darkness, was now accompanied by pealing thunder.  A tympanic thrum and rumble, striating the bruised purple sky with white etchings of silver light, as if the Moon Sprites had been gathered together, had ascended en masse above the roiling clouds and flashed angrily from their prisons beyond.  The dawn had come, but its early light had receded before this darkening bank of storm clouds.  Somewhere, high above the towering thunderhead, the sun’s rays may have warmed and bathed the high ceiling in golden brilliance, but below the darkness prevailed, extending the night.

Mason stood back from the group, watching the dark wall of clouds flash angrily, as Will spat angrily at Matthew, his hostility seeming far too excessive to be warranted.  O’Brian had not coerced anyone to follow him, nor did he designate anyone to follow him out onto the lake when they’d confronted both the Moon Sprites and the Manticore.  That had been Maeven’s doing more so than anyone’s, but even she had not compelled them to follow.  Will had something else in his craw that was bothering him and carried some bitterness towards Mr. O’Brian that was external to anything done so far in the Mid-World.  Mason wondered if something resided inside Will that was not as it should be.  At the mention of Torlah, the Banshee, Mason thought it best to step away from close proximity with Will, in case he proved to actually be another monster in masquerade.  Yet, he had passed Begglar’s test.  According to Mr. O’Brian, neither a monster nor a Xarmnian could achieve such with ease.  Yet the ingratitude in him fueled his anger, augmenting it to the point that he had become insufferable to be around.  It would further be dangerous to turn one’s back on him in a fight.  Facing an external enemy, Mason suspected that he would be the one most apt to come from behind and stab you in the back.

And what the others didn’t know is they had had a visitor, Hanokh.  A man of ancient times with acquired wisdom, a patriarch of the first order, and a keen sense of evaluating the measure of those passing under his scrutiny.  Yet, this wise one did not dispute or disparage O’Brian as a leader but rather affirmed and encouraged him.  Mason did not know why the man’s judgment impressed him as being so insightful, but because that man seemed to vouch for O’Brian, that was good enough for him.  Flawed though O’Brian might be, Hanokh saw something in him, that he trusted, a potential that O’Brian may have doubted in himself, but Hanokh saw past that, as he did in his evaluation of Mason.  There was something emboldening about having Hanokh’s approbation.  A confidence and surety about him, that Mason gave weight to.  No matter what the others may do, Mason determined in his own mind, that if Mr. O’Brian was still alive, he would help Miray and Dominic find him.  The falls in the distance roared with power, but he had a feeling that somewhere, deep within the caverns underneath such power, O’Brian, Maeven, Christie, James and Dominic’s parents Begglar and Nell still occupied the land of the living.  It did not make sense seeing the collapse of the cliff face, but somethings you just trusted and took by faith.

The two other young men seemed to waver between the two opinions of whether they should cut their losses, and attempt to return in the direction of Azragoth and hope they were found by the scouts, or seek to approach the rise and climb up to the Trathorn river’s edge and see if there might be another way down into the caves below the falls with the chance that the others had survived.

The young woman spoke up and offered a sort of compromise, seeing that Matthew and Will’s argument might soon come to blows unless it was temporarily mediated.

“Guys, let’s take a breath a minute and look at this thing,” she admonished stepping between them.

“In either case, if returning to Azragoth, or searching for O’Brian and the others, we will have to go back up the trail and to the top of the basin cliffs.  Let us see what is there before we make any hasty decisions.  If there is a way to enter the caves other than below the falls, we might at least explore the possibility that they survived.  If it looks like the caves are completely crushed and there is no possible way in, then we will at least know we tried to find them, and then return to Azragoth and seek help.  We’ve come too far just to write them off.”

“What about the others?” one of the young men asked.

“Do we just leave them to the Xarmnians?”

“No, but we alone certainly cannot go after them without weapons or a guide, or some strategy that will keep us from being taken too.”

They all were quiet for a moment.  She made a lot of sense and it was clear that, at least for the time being, they could all agree to go in the same direction.

Grudgingly, Will pulled back from his offensive posture and shifted his eyes to the young woman.  Rather than give her the acknowledgment of brokering a temporary armistice between himself and Matthew, he stared at her suspiciously for a moment as if searching her eyes and expression to see if her interference might hide some ulterior motive that could be read in them.  Finding none, he merely grunted and stepped back, turning away as if dismissing both her and Matthew.  She looked at Matt for a moment.  His face was flushed, and his neck muscles tensed and reddened by the rise of his blood pressure.  His face was, at first, inscrutable and his eyes showed a cool calmness, though his adrenaline pumped, and his blood rushed to his extremities, readying them for defense or attack.  Whichever one seemed warranted.  Matthew had endured Will’s arrogance, his seeming belligerence towards Mister O’Brian, without regard for how his attitude or challenge affected the morale of the group.  He had heard Will’s snide remarks, muttered and overt, had witnessed his condescension, heard him laugh at others’ misfortunes and he’d just about had enough of it.

Not only was a storm brewing on the brow of the distant cliffside, but one was also brewing within their surviving company.  If the physical altercation between Matt and Will did not come immediately, it would come soon.

A bolt of lightning struck from the overhead dark cloud bank and hit the surface water of the lake with a loud pop and crack.  The water churned and sloshed, spraying a furrow of water into the air as the current zipped along the surface and eventually expended itself.

The bolt had lit up the night sky and the massive column of clouds to the north, but its brilliant flash had revealed something else as well, standing along the edge of the cliff ridge, near the head of The Falls spillway.  Figures, maybe four or five, sky-lined against the purpling night.

***

The tall woods stood rank upon rank at the edge of the slope that ran down to the top spillway at the edge of the falls.  Large boulders, half-buried, turned in a jagged assemblage as they dug in against the slow but continual push of water over the edge of the falls.  When the falls had flash-frozen, the slow but inexorable push became a hard shove, as the water solidified into great bony hands, back built against the strength and weight of the river Trathorn’s water flowing down from the Mid-World highlands.  Centuries of gravel and sediment that had accumulated and anchored these great monoliths on the cliff’s edge were displaced and shifted, and the resulting fractures bled into the deep caverns below, like a dentist’s root canal surgery.  The upper bank from the edge of the trees had once sloped in a series of naturally carved steppes, bared to rock, and then accumulated green growth as sufficient sediment accumulated along the spine and ribs of the mountain canyon until it dropped sharply to the water’s edge.  Each steppe had formed when the river’s delta broadened, due to irregular mountain melts and rainy seasons interspersed with periods of drought.  At its broadest point, now at the first steppe down from the feet of the forest, the river Trathorn had been younger and the rains and melt carved away the river’s chin into its broadest grin, as its water peered over and tumbled laughingly into the basin lake below.

I and my immediate companions, Maeven, James, Laura, Nell, and Begglar, emerged from the rocky fissure into a shallow, stony tributary that had a small offshoot stream running down a narrow, ragged gulley that had been scalloped out of the forest and had a small wooden clear with deadfalls and broken limbs strewn about.  We stood upon the bank of the tributary, about twenty feet up the bank from the main water chute of the river.  Rain patter hissed down upon us from the dark black and purple brow of the sky, pealing with thunder and flashes of lightning etching and illuminating the lamp globes in the towering thunder-banked clouds.  The fronds and leaves of the brush, ferns, and bushes nodded in time to the drums of the heads, as the sky broke forth in is wailing and weeping lament.  The clouds were so grey and dark that I knew it would be impossible at this point to see the shocking dark blue varicose veining of the Mid-World heavens that I knew would be revealed when daylight prevailed again, and the storm had passed.  The sky lines.  Evidence of muted cracks in the atmosphere, strange and terrible to behold.

As lightning illumined the sky, Laura peered back down into the crevice we had escaped the caverns from and down the junk pile to the old light blue sedan with its trunk still gaping open, wrenched and torqued as it had by necessity been to free her from its hold.

“I so hated that car,” she mumbled within my hearing, and I helped her move away from the place up onto the grassy shelf, where the others stood peering down into the basin, the rippling lake, and the roaring froth caused by the re-awakened falls again hitting the water below.

“Were you familiar with that vehicle below?” I queried.

“Of course, she looked up,” her expression phasing between a grimace and a dismissive smile as she shrugged its effect off, “I was my dad’s car.  The one he took that night from us when he left.”

A sigh escaped her, as she closed her eyes, trying unsuccessfully to distance herself from the Surface World memories.

“It was…,” she wiped a moistening eye, bravely trying to shove a painful memory away.  She breathed deeply and then turn to me, “It doesn’t matter now.”

She seems so small, standing there, shivering slightly in the cloak that we’d wrapped around her, water falling down on us all, yet beading and rolling off of the cloak.

I stepped behind her, untied the rolled hood portion of the cloak and pulled it up over her head, to further help keep the rain off of her.  I squeezed her shoulders slightly and leaned into her ear, “It does matter.  You are part of our company, now.  We’re not quite there yet, but we’re becoming a fellowship of family.  As much as we can, we stick up for one another and do care.  What harms one of us, harms all of us.”

She patted my hand on her shoulder, gratefully acknowledging the statement, but said, “Then perhaps I should not have come back here.  I have a lot of issues.”

I chuckled, “We all do.  You’ll see.”

Laura sighed and smiled wistfully, finding the emotional strength to continue.

“That is not the first time, I’ve been locked in that trunk.”

“But it will be the last,” Christie said, turning to our low conversation, and making sure the cloak properly covered Laura.

Nell and Begglar stood on either side of Maeven, their arms around her, supporting her with comfort against the chill of both the rain and the pain she had expressed.  We had all suffered so many things in our individual lives, yet had remained silent about their, choosing to bear our own burdens in shamed quiet rather than let anyone past our brave fronts.  It is an illusion to think that suffering borne meekly and silently is evidence of courage.  It is not.  Rather it is symptomatic of deep fear and distrust.  In our effort to protect ourselves from shame and vulnerability, we allow our hurts to burrow inside of us and eventually cut us off from the way out of our darkness onto the path of healing.

“My dad did it,” Laura said, offering us a rare and precious view into her vulnerability, “and then later, stupid me, I did it.”

She turned to me, looking up from underneath the hood, her tears mingling with the splattering slant rain that wet her rosy-pink cheeks.

“I won a small teacup pig at a county fair,” she laughed despite herself, “I had never won anything before so I was shocked when my name was called.  Mom had given me five one-dollar bills to spend at the fair, rodeo, and carnival.  I gave two dollars on a chance to win the pig and help this kid with leukemia out that went to our local elementary.  I wasn’t thinking about it being a contest or anything.  I just wanted to help the kid.”

“Big mistake,” she lowered her head allowing the water pooling into a fold on the top of her hood to run off onto the ground.  “Dad came to pick me up in the evening, and my friends made me go get the piglet before I left.  I told them they could have it, but they insisted, and I just wanted to make them happy.  I didn’t know what to do with a pig.”

She shrugged, and then looked back up again, “Well, just as I had suspected, when dad pulled up and saw me clutching the wriggling runt, he flipped out.  But my friends were watching from a distance and I could not let them know…”, she sighed again, “Well, it was not their concern.  Not wanting to make a scene, I tucked the oinker into my arms and climbed into the back seat.”

“What do you think you’re doing?!” he says, that slow burn beginning early this evening, without its usual aid of alcohol.

“Please, daddy,” I said, “Please don’t make a scene.  I’ll try to find another home for it, I will.  As soon as I can.”

“That pig is not riding in this car,” he said, glaring ahead his hands tightening on the steering wheel.

“What do I do with it?”

“You should have never taken it in the first place.  Remember Stimpy?” he said.

“Stimpy was a cat we had whose tail had gotten broken when it was run over.  Stimpy died in the street.  I got blamed and cuffed for it.”

“Then my dear, dad, climbed out of the car, pivoted around and opened the back door and said, ‘Give me the pig.’  He kept his voice low and quiet because people were still milling around in the grassy parking lot.  He did care somewhat about perception, but not enough for it to matter when he eventually left us destitute.  I had no idea what he was going to do, but I didn’t dare tell him no.”

“He took the pig from me, opened the trunk of that blue car and tossed it in and closed the lid.”

“The pig went wild, bumping around in the dark back there, screeching and making a terrible noise, that scared me and I started to cry as he climbed back in, slammed the door, turned the ignition and peeled out of the grassy parking lot, cutting divots and a furrow in the grass as he sped away.  He was mad, and I knew I was going to catch it when I got home.  The noises coming from the trunk both humiliated him and enraged him, but he would not let that pig out of there though I cried and begged him too.  The little thing was scared, and I tried to stop my ears from hearing its terrible noises.  He saw some of his co-workers next to their cars as he was leaving and waved to them and they waved back, puzzled at the noises coming from somewhere inside our vehicle.  I had ducked down and was curled up into a ball on the back seat as Dad just continued to drive through the lots and across the cattle guard and out onto the county road.  He told me to ‘Shut up’ or he’d put me in the trunk with the pig, and I could only whimper and try to control the sobs.  He didn’t want to drive through downtown with that pig making noises like that, so we went the long way to our house, going outside the city limits and then coming back around from the Interstate.  He drove until the pig quit making noises.  I do not know how long that was because I fell asleep on the back seat, having cried my eyes out, and then just…fell asleep…and forgot…”

I woke up in my bed the next day, and mom got me up for school.  I got dressed, ate some cereal and then hurried to make the bus.  I didn’t remember about the pig until I got to school and saw my friends.  I didn’t know what happened to it.  Dad never said, and I was too afraid to bring up the topic to him.  I just assumed he drove out into the country while I was asleep and just turned it loose out there to fend for itself.  I only found out when…”

She shuddered, “I was a stupid little girl.”

“That night when mom and dad fought, I did not want to be with either one of them.  I just wanted a place where people didn’t hit one another, didn’t scream at one another.  I had to find another place to live.  I had to get away from the town and everyone who knew me.  Start a new life, where no one knew the screwed-up little Laura girl.  Poor Laura.  I..”

“I don’t know what I was thinking when I climbed into the trunk of his car when he was distracted.  I closed it over me, heard the lock mechanism click and then smelled that horrid smell.  My dear daddy had left that poor pig in the trunk for a week and it died in there.  He had thrown the carcass out, but that smell never left.  I think that pig’s death haunted him.  At least, the smelled did.  I didn’t last very long in there.  I could barely breathe that terrible odor and at one point I started screaming.  That memory has been a nightmare I have on occasion.  I haven’t had it in many years, but last night, it came back in vivid detail and I just could not get out of it.  I felt so helpless, and then I remembered you guys.  I could not believe it when you finally opened the trunk and got me out.  I still don’t know how that happened.  Why it happened.  I keep pinching myself, but I am here.  I am really here.”

Begglar, Nell and Maeven had drifted back over and had heard Laura’s very raw, very vulnerable account of her traumatic memory, and we pressed in around her, as a family might, comforting and empathizing with her tale and reassuring her that she was no longer alone, but had people.  At last, what she had so longed for, a place where she belonged, she’d found here with us in the Mid-World.

Standing there, as we were, listening to Laura, we had not noticed that the storm overhead, had begun to die down, and the daylight was at last breaking through the gray, purple of the thinning clouds, casting shadows and errant beams of light, silvering the edges of the clouds that had threatened to extend the dark.

I was just able to see past a thinning cloud to the canopy of fading stars overhead as they paled into dawn.  The sky lines, what Nell had referred to as “the gray fingers”, that I had expected were there, but there was one vein in and among them that seemed to be fading and closing up as if its fissure was in the process of healing.  And I knew why, though I was not at liberty to tell the others just now.

That healing sky line was representative of what was happening to Laura.  She was at last on the path she needed to be on, with a fellowship of friends, who loved her and supported her…were so happy that she had returned.  And at least, with this new development, the sky was in one respect beginning to mend.