White and Other Tales of Ruin

String nods. I am sure he already knew. “I thought so. That cannot happen.” He motions for me to follow him and we walk towards the cliff face, passing into the shadow of the mountain. He starts climbing the scree slope without pause, and I suddenly wonder whether he intends to haul himself to the top. I look up, see the thin wedge of blue sky high above, reminding me of that first day in Jade’s courtyard.

“Here,” he says. I look. String is standing at a split in the rock, a crevasse that could easily be the doorway to a cave. Its entrance looks like a swollen vulva, and I wonder whether it is man-made. I also ponder what is inside, in the womb of the rock, hidden in shadows. As I near String he holds out his hands, halting me.

“Gabe, Jade brought you here. She’s a good woman, though I’ve told her before she should leave this dying place. She’s too independent to join us here, more’s the pity.” He stands framed by the cave entrance; his skin shines in the shadows as if possessed of an inner light. I feel completely insubstantial. “I’m going to cure you. You can be assured of that, though I know that until it’s done you probably won’t allow yourself to believe me. But I cannot cure everyone. There’s not enough medicine for the billion people with the Sickness. And there really aren’t that many people who I think deserve curing.”

I go to say something, but he waves me down.

“I’ve already decided that you’re worthy. Jade is a good judge of character. But we’re only a small community, and we treasure what we have. We have to. Because we have treasures. Do you have faith?”

“Yes,” I reply without thinking. He has a way of springing questions without warning, the only way to find an honest answer.

“In what?”

I think of Della; not only my utter faith in her goodness and knowledge, but also what she said to me. If you know someone’s faith, you know their soul…You may need it one day. “In a friend.”

“What’s her name?”

“Della.” I am not surprised that he knew the sex of my friend, He reminds me of Della in many ways, and she would have known.

He asks no more. I feel that I am about to swoon, but String is there before my body can react to the thought. He grabs me around the shoulders, and his touch seems to strengthen me. I have the unsettling certainty that he knows everything about me, understands that my feelings for Della lie way beyond simple friendship or even love. He knows my soul. But I am not worried, I have no fear. I think he deserves to know.

He points to the cave. “I’m going to take you in there, and show you some things. They’re things I show everyone I cure, once, but never again. They’re precious, you see, and precious things are coveted. Especially in the shit new world we inhabit. And ironically, that’s why I’m showing you. So that you know how special what we have here is. So you know that knowledge of good things shouldn’t always be shared, because too many bad things can dilute good things. Do you understand?”

I nod. He confuses me, his words twist and turn into obscure, half-seen truths. But I also understand him, fully, and it pleases me to think that there are still the likes of him living on our dying world.

“I can’t deny the power there is in me,” he says. “You may think I’m some sort of… magician? Witch doctor? I’m none of those things. In the old days, before the Ruin, I may have been called charismatic. But now, I’m a funnel for a power of a more fundamental kind. The real magic, my friend, is here.” He stamps on the ground, coughing up a haze of dust around his legs. He squats, grabs a handful of the dried soil and looks at it almost reverently. “The power of the greatest magic flows through my fingers with the dust.” The breeze carries trails of dust from his hand and into the cave entrance, like wraiths showing us the way. “The power of Time; the immortality of Gaia.”

I feel frightened, but enlivened. The Sickness sends a warm flush into me, but for once my body combats it, cooling the fever as if the atmosphere of the cave already surrounds me. String possesses me with his words, and I feel no repulsion, no desires to flee. My skin tingles with a delicious anticipation. I wonder what is in the cave, and I am sure that it is beyond anything I can imagine.

“This is holy ground, Gabe,” String says. “I don’t mean religious-holy. I don’t care for religion, and have none save my own. Similarly, you have your own faith, and that’s how things should be. But this site is powerful. It has a holiness that precedes any form of organised, preached religion. It has the power of Nature. It is the site of a temple, a shrine of rock and dust and water and sky that pays constant, eternal homage to Nature itself. See, up there.” He points to the strips of sky between the cliffs.

I look up and see the birds there, circling, drifting on up-drafts of warm air from the ravine. I sigh and feel any remaining tension leave me, sucked into the sky by the soporific movement of the birds, swallowed by the sight of their gentle movement.

“The temple is a place of faith, worship of the cosmos. The site of a temple was often ascribed by the flights of birds, their cries, their circling. As if they knew more than man of the powers of creation. And why shouldn’t they? Man has long distanced himself from the truth, even though there are those who profess to seek it. He distances himself even more by worshipping gods who suit him, gods who tell him that he is set above the animals, and they are his to lord over. Man has denied Nature. That’s why he no longer knows true holiness. But the birds, now. See the birds. They know.

“This is Nature’s temple. Come inside. Let me show you wonders.”

PART FOUR From Bad Flesh

I

We enter a tunnel. It smells damp and musty, the walls sprouting petrified fungi and lank mosses. True darkness never falls before light intrudes from above. It is cool this deep in the rock, and the air seems to possess something more of the climate I am used to: moisture. I breathe in deeply, relishing the coolness on my lungs, hearing String laugh quietly to himself in front of me.

The floors are uneven and the ceiling low enough in places to make me stoop. String is short, so he can walk through normally. A smell reaches us from further in, a waft of something familiar yet long lost carried on warmer currents of air like dragon’s breath. I cannot quite place the scent, but I do not feel inclined to ask String. He is going to show me, anyway, and I am almost enjoying the adventurous mystery.

Looking up, I can make out where the light is coming from — natural vent-holes that reach high up to the top of the cliff — and in doing so I miss the abrupt change from tunnel to cave. I stop, stunned by the sheer size of what lays before me.

The cave is massive. I can see that it has been hacked from the rock by crude tools, their marks still peppering the wall and ceiling like the timeless signatures of those who did the deed. It could be recent or ten thousand years old, there is no real way of telling. There are no vents in the ceiling here, but the walls are inlaid with a strange glowing material which gives out a muted light. It looks like glass, feels like metal, and it’s warm to the touch as if heated from within. String stands in the centre of the space, smiling and staring around as if wallowing in the grandeur of whatever has been achieved here. And just what is that? What is the smell that tickles my memory once more, encourages me to silence, comforts me, conjures a million facts from a million minds other than mine?

“Books,” String says. He holds out his arms, indicating the hundreds of boxes stacked around the edges of the cavern. “About two hundred thousand in all. Mainly factual, though some fiction. We want out descendants to know our dreams, don’t you think?”

I cannot talk. It is not simply the sight of so many boxes, but the effort that had obviously gone in to bringing them here. And not only that, but the thought and experience and life that has been poured into making every book here. Billions of hours of struggle, work, strife, pained effort in creating, writing, producing and then