(no subject)
Somewhere a door opened. Light poured into Jacob's dusty prison cell from above. It struck the wall and splashed onto the stone floor. It got all over Jacob, who was sleeping there. He got up, cursing, and stood on a rock in the corner as the light sloshed around and (once the door, wherever it was, finally closed) drained out through the hole in the center of the cell. He was soaked. It had gotten all in his hair. He didn't get back to sleep the rest of the night. Everything glowed yellow.
He lay there still, half asleep, when a rooster crowed. Shortly after that, a crow roostered. Jacob groaned. The same cacophonous fracas was joined every morning. The rooster crowed again, a bit more emphatically. The crow roostered again, much louder. Jacob put his hands over his ears but it didn't help. Finally he grabbed a small stone from the floor, scraped and clawed his way up the wall, using the corner, and pitched the stone at the crow through his tiny window. He nearly hit it. Surprised into sudden flight, the crow cawed its annoyance. Somewhere, a cod crowed in response. Jacob groaned again and clambered down the wall to the floor of his glowing cell.
No one liked to live in a neighborhood with a prison, so all modern prisons were built on wheels. A little stone unicycle was built into every cell. Each cycle was coupled, via a gallimaufry of gears and chains, to one of the prison's many heavy stone wheels. If enough prisoners pedaled at once, the prison could achieve a steady crawl, moving perhaps a mile in a day. Wherever the prison came to rest, it would eventually outstay its welcome, and the villagers would heap abuse on the hapless prisoners until they had had enough and pedaled off to some other place. In the good old days, the villagers would throw good tomatoes and cabbage, and sometimes apples, to signal their disapproval. The prisoners would work the crowd for every morsel they could get, until the villagers lost interest, and then they would quietly pedal away. These days, the villagers were savvy. The things they threw now had not been smelled before on land or sea. It was awful.
Lunch was a strip of shoe leather and some grime. Old Joe came around afterwards. Years ago a townswoman in Blerth had thrown a funny-looking contraption into Old Joe's cell. It was made of two horseshoes, a length of iron chain, a few rods, and three brass rings. Jacob had seen this kind of thing before. It was a puzzle. The goal was to unhook the two horseshoes from the rings, or something, but Old Joe was able, by putting the horseshoe around one bar like so and bringing one end of the chain around like such, to move objects from one side of the iron bars of his door around to the other side. Including himself. He had tried to show Jacob the trick, but there was an essential part that Jacob's eyes could never quite catch because Old Joe always did it a bit too quickly.
"Rise and shine, lazyhead," Old Joe said. Jacob looked over his shoulder to see if Old Joe was making a joke. He couldn't tell. Old Joe just stood there smiling. "I was up bright and early today," Jacob said. "Did ye enjoy your filet of sole?" said Old Joe.
Then, "Speech, speech!" croaked Old Joe, his creaky voice initially muffled by uncontrolled white whiskers but ultimately amplified, distorted into the cry of a chain-smoking harpy, and conducted resoundingly to every corner of the prison by the polished stone corridors. "If yer glowing, ye must be radiant, and if yer radiant, ye must have spokes," Old Joe explained incomprehensibly. "And since ye have spokes, ye'll be our spokesman. What say ye then?"
"Let's pedal to Ichmere," Jacob said.
"We'll pedal to Ichmere!" exclaimed Old Joe, and disappeared. "You cain't peddle if you cain't sell," his wicked voice rang down the hall, becoming louder and more unearthly with each step. "But if there's one thing we know about it's cells! Pedal, men! Pedal like a church lady on an organ! Yessir! We're a-pullin' out all the stops today. 'Cause an organ's nothin' but a bunch o' pipes, and pipes are fer smokin', and where there's smoke there's fire, and if ye get fired, ye've been let go, and don't we all want to be let go? Let my people go!"
The inmates reacted variously. Some pedaled. Some railed at Old Joe to shut up. Some fulminated invectives against Old Joe's mother. Some covered their ears and wailed to ward off the noise, and when wailing failed, they beat their fists against their doors, and when being brutal proved futile, they bounced off the walls awhile, and when slow self-pulverization proved... well, painful, they gave up and pedaled. The prison ground into motion and trundled wearily away. Jacob held his sleepless head in his hands and groaned and groaned and groaned.