The ivory tower
She was sitting on the edge of a four-poster bed. She had no idea how she got there; her last recollection was her life oozing away into the dust of Salonia. A pale, directionless light was pouring in through the windows and reflecting off the polished wooden floor.
It was blindingly bright but Emily did not need to shield her eyes from the glow. The room was lavish and full of thick burgandy drapings and dark chestnut furnishings. The colours were unusually vivid and intense. Emily put her hand on the spiralled wooden bedpost and felt the flawless smoothness of it against her skin. How did she get here? Where was this? There seemed to be something ‘wrong’ with the place although it was difficult to know what.
She stood up. Her feet were bare and she could feel the silky varnish under her feet. She walked around for a while, wandering to the window and back. The window looked out over a garden with dew-drenched grass, a dark green maze of hedges and white statues. The statues were especially strange for although they appeared to have a form, when she looked at them directly they were blurred and it was difficult to make out what they depicted apart other than being vaguely person-shaped.
Emily put her hand on the velvety soft window seat and it occurred to her what was wrong. It was perfect, devoid of the flaws and imperfections of a real place. The room smelt of old wood but there were no chips out of the furniture and the grain had a faint regularity to it as if possessing a pattern that she could not quite grasp. It was a dream place. Emily wondered if she were unconscious but had never been or ever imagined somewhere that looked like this. In which case, maybe she were dead and this was the afterlife.
She heard a scuttling, clattering noise like something with hooves moving rapidly across the wooden floor. Emily turned around but saw nothing but was sure that she was not alone here. Sub-consciously, she reached for her energy weapon and was surprised to find one there at her side. She ran her fingers across its sleek surface - it was undinted and devoid of wear and tear. Cautiously, she rose to her feet and paced across the floor.
She saw a flicker in the corner of her eye and, again, the rapid clicking of hard feet against polished wood. It was not the figure that she had seen, she was sure for the noise suggested that it was not bipedal. She looked directly at where she had seen the flicker and there was nothing there. Emily walked into the corner and shifted a chair. She heard a brief scuttling sound and saw a flicker in the corner of her eye. This time, she managed to get a better look at it and had an impression of a scrawny shape with four stick-like legs. It reminded her a little of a thin dog with black, rubber skin. When she stared directly at where she had seen it, it had again vanished.
Emily had no idea how long this went on for before she began identifying a pattern in its movements and an odd idea formed in her mind. It did not appear at random. It was more that it became invisible when she looked straight at it and moved so that it materialised in the corner of her eye, normally her right one. If this was so then she may be able to move in such a fashion that she could trap it and find out exactly what it was. It seemed familiar to her somehow, as though she had seen it before.
She began to pace cautiously about the room, attempting to drive it into the corner near the door. Moments passed and Emily realised just how quiet this place was. She could hear no voices, no sounds but for the eeiry wailing of a distant wind and her own footsteps. Emily was terrified when she noticed that she could not hear herself inhaling air through her nose and realised that this was because she was not breathing.
The creature flickered into existence next to her and attempted to hide itself under the wooden window seat. Without looking at it directly, Emily made a grab for it. She felt its rubbery skin and then seized it by the collar.
The creature struggled, shaking its head backwards and forwards and gnashing its serrated black teeth. When she glanced at it directly this time, it did not disappear. She was gripping a wide, diamond encrusted collar that seemed to dwarve its skinny neck. It had long, thin, floppy ears, large milky white eyes and bony legs that appeared to be jointed in the wrong place. Its body reminded her of a starving dog with a protruding ribcage and prominent spine on which was surmounted a series of rubbery, backwards pointing fins. It had a thin black tail with a forked diamond at the end that thudded against the floor as it attempted to escape and small, cloven hooves.
It was utterly and totally alien. She dragged it backwards from where it was trying to crawl under the windowseat and glanced about the room, looking for some way of restraining it. She found a long, silver chain on a table nearby that she had not previously noticed. Emily grabbed it and found that it attached easily to a small loop on the creature’s collar.
Immediately it calmed down and collapsed backward onto its haunches. It regarded her quizzically in a way that was disturbingly intelligent.
“I wonder what you are.” she asked it, not expecting a reply.
The creature rose to its feet and scuttled over to the door, straining on its leash with an air of suppressed excitement. Emily was afraid that it would strangle itself on its huge yoke-like collar. She opened the door and the creature sped away, almost tripping over itself in its haste. It seemed to have scented something like a bloodhound and was now on the trail. Devoid of any other ideas, Emily decided to follow it.
They had entered a white, spherical marble hall with a high, domed roof through which the pale light flooded and curtained archways at either side. In front of her was a huge archway into a lobby where she could see a flight of curving stairs. The sound of the creature’s hooves on marble echoed deafening about the domed hall and Emily hoped that there was nothing more sinister occupying this building. It sped across the hall, up the few steps that ringed the circular hallway and then took a sharp turn left through the lobby.
They passed through endless hallways, corridors and rooms. All of them were as majestic and disturbingly large as one another. Every one was empty and Emily heard or saw nothing to suggest that there was anyone there. At some point, the hound began to make an insect-like chittering noise and Emily saw another dark flicker in the corner of her eye. She remembered the dripping mouth full of serrated teeth and was afraid. Perhaps this creature had eaten the inhabitants of this palace and was leading her to her death. It continued making the sound and Emily saw another flicker in the corner of her other eye. There were lots of these creatures. By the time they entered a shadowy cloister with arches covering one wall, Emily had counted seven of the hounds running alongside this one. All of them were calling to one another.
The arches of the cloister looked into a starry darkness. There was no moon and Emily could not see the ground. Surely sufficient time had not elapsed that it had become dark and she could not remember climbing so many stairs that they would be that far up. She wondered if these arches did not lead outside at all but instead merely projected images. She really wanted to be out of this creepy place.
They reached a door and Emily entered a brightly lit room with stained glass windows. A door at one end stood open and led out onto a whitewashed pier. Standing at one end of it was a pale lighthouse. The other hounds had vanished in the cloister and the pale light turned the hound’s thick, smooth, rubbery skin a dark grey.
Emily walked out onto the pier. It was a wall like that in Calendara with a rampart at one side just the same but this wall was much wider higher from the sea bottom. Emily had never seen a sea before except as an image but was sure that it was not like this. The water was a rich, deep blue and so clear that she could see the bottom. There were no fish, no life at all in the waters apart from a few green grass-like plants near the base of the wall. The sea bottom was covered in smooth, white boulders. The surface of the water was only a metre or so below the wall but it was so clear that it seemed insubstantial.
Emily could feel a cool wind against her face as she peered over the rampart and noticed that the sea was much lower at the other side and it lapped gently against the white stones at the base of the wall. There were no waves. It was then she realised the improbability of the entire scene because the wall ended at the lighthouse - there was no way of keeping the water height from equalising. She turned around and saw to her horror that she had emerged from a wooden door set in the side of a thin, narrow white tower with a diameter about double the width of the wall. It was extremely tall, elaborately carved and protruded all over with decorative stone shapes, mostly upswept prongs. The disparity in the height of the sea meant that at one side, it stood on the edge of a white stone cliff and at the other, it lay by the side of a beach.
The hound was looking at her expectantly and when she turned around, it tugged on the lead again, leading her along the wall towards the lighthouse. The transparency of the water meant that the walkway seemed dizzily high and she could not even face looking over the rampart. Each time she stopped to gaze at something, the dog would tug at the lead.
The walkway encircled the base of the lighthouse and as she walked around it she saw how the blue-grey sky melded into the rich blue of the water at the horizon. There was no star lighting the sky that she could see despite it being cloudless - the light remained directionless and pale. At the seaward side of the lighthouse where the wall ended, the higher water level formed a sheer cliff above the lower as if an transparent sheet stood between the two. Before Emily could marvel at this fully, she realised that she was not alone on the walkway. There was someone seated at the back of the lighthouse.
Despite living on a desert world most of her life, Emily was familiar with the concept of fishing but it was obvious from looking into the clear water that there were no fish. Further, they were fishing on the lower side of the water meaning that the fishing line was unrealistically long and given the size of the wooden rod it would have made it impossible to reel in a catch.
This was not the most noticeable thing about the fisherman and the thing that made Emily stop dead, back away and lift her energy weapon in terror. However, the hound’s chittering and the sound of its hooves on the wall attracted the attention of the fisherman and made it too late to flee. Emily screamed. The fisherman looked as terrified of her as she was of him, made a high-pitched keening that sounded as much in her head as outside of it and almost fell off the wall.
He appeared to have three legs and one foot although on closer inspection it seemed that one of his legs forked in two at the knee. The unforked leg ended in a large, flipper-like protrusion and the forked legs were surmounted by points. However, when he turned his face to Emily she realised that he looked to be melting. The overall impression was a combination between a candle in the shape of a man and a figure formed primarily of chewing gum. His legs and foot seemed to be oozing downwards under gravity but they never grew any longer. His fingers looked gooey and were melded into a trickling mass around the fishing rod. He was wearing what appeared to be a ceremonial military uniform in black and lumps constantly appeared under it, strained against the fabric and disappeared. The only stable feature he possessed was his jet black hair and large, pure black eyes although it was possible to distinguish a small, upturned nose and wide, purple lips. Dark whorls occasionally rose to the surface of his cheek and neck, thrashed like living things and sunk out of sight.
He regained his composture, spread out his dripping hands in a universal gesture of non-hostility and stood up. He was slightly shorter than Emily but not by much. She wondered whether his foot was actually a tail since the forked legs moved first and he dragged the other limb behind him. It appeared to be twisted at an angle and had too many joints. Emily had a sudden picture of herself approaching him and his sense of surprise and then recognition. She had surprised him but he was waiting for her.
He was looking at her expectantly. “You knew I was coming, didn’t you? Is that why you’re here?” she said, unsure whether the thing was communicating with her or whether it was her imagination. His (or its) dark eyes were identical to hers and full of a lively intelligence. It grinned, its lips stretching from one ear to the other. Its mouth was full of pointed black teeth.
Emily received a wordless impression of waiting in place for a long period coupled to an image of lying flat in a low place. “You are waiting for me whilst ‘lying low’.”
He nodded vigorously, causing his chin to avalanche over his collar and his nose to elongate so that the tip to hit him on the forehead. He put his hand across his nose and attempted to scrunch it back into place. “What are you hiding from?”
He pointed.