NaNoWriMo Pt. 2: The Siege Engine

The next chapter in my story:

Are you there?

Just the next hill over… and the next…

Do you taunt me?  Are you so cruel as to play with my longing to see you?  You have ever been close, but a few steps off, or within earshot, or within eyesight, or waiting where you promised to, at least.  But now, you surely flee from me, for I can only catch your glow, and whenever I think to catch sight of you at the next dune’s crest, your light lurches away.  Could you have slipped?  I must catch you, and hold you up, should you stumble!

I run now, swallowing up the dunes in leaps and bounds.  I fall and fall again, scrambling back up, and even crawling onwards as I recover.  The skies and sands blur and tumble as I roll down the next dune, landing flat on my back in the dust.

And I hear a voice.

No, voices.

One voice stands out, in a continuous cheer.  It must be a prayer, an invocation, perhaps a mantra.  The other voices chant in response.  What they say, I cannot tell.  Curious, I gather myself up out of the sand and begin climbing this next dune.

As I climb, the rise and fall of the voices takes me back to the sea.

There was a single boat on the beach.  No, a plank in the sand.  Wood where none should exist, where trees were an unheard-of fantasy to the grey cliffs at my back, the ravings of a madman to the stones crunching underfoot.  I had nearly tripped over it as I followed you, running up to catch you after days of your distance.  Lying in the sand, I saw you waiting expectantly.  As I stood up and looked to you, the cheer and response of the waves roared in my ear.

I crest the dune to the next call, and I see the source of this tidal mantra:  a clattering behemoth crawls up the near dune.  From this distance, I cannot tell how it moves, but it seems to move as a litter of incredible proportions; the siege engine’s muzzein calls lustily from what looks to be a pale belltower, and I can hear him peal:

“…and even now, you beckon!  To us, to us and us alone, your chosen!  What can we do?”

The crowd, pressing forth with the litter echoes, “What can we do?  We must push!”

“Oh, how blind were we, how deaf, that you could have welcomed us to your city for so long, and we, we fools, we pitiful fools.  And that you persisted, that you, you light, you beautiful light, welcomed us still!  To the deaf, you appeared, and to the blind, you called, and even now, you beckon…”

As I draw near, I notice the motion of the throng:  Many simply mill about, gaping at the structure, conversing with each other, or even catching naps, before sprinting to the front to lie down again; a few run between napping and lifting the colossus, or weakly hold the siege engine as they walk along; deep in the crowd, only feet are visible of the figures hunched beneath the enormity of the tower.  All of these figures seem incomplete:  some blind, some unheeding of sound, some lame, others grotesque; all proceed together despite themselves, following the muzzein’s sightless calls.

I stare along the shore, and see pebbles clacking against each other, rolling as one mass, into the sea, as if in search of the wave that had stranded them.  The board rises out of these tumbling rocks and seems to flow in them as I lose my balance for a moment.  I reach into the sand, scooping out handfuls, armfuls, cartloads.  Time disappears, but I need only look at you to see that this is right.  And a small skiff rises from the sands and stones, and arises with the tide’s fall.

From within the swell of figures, it appears that one of these figures comes out, straightens up, and rises onto the platform, seemingly weightless, and joins a ring of hooded figures hanging at the platform’s edge, who glide out from time to time to raise a sleeping figure or guide another to the center of the throng, that they may hear the caller better and push.  Behind the shades, I can now make out the tower – there is no wood, no stone here, but bodies – the dry, pale bodies of other, wizened men sit atop each other, all the way to the herald’s feet.  But they are far from dead; now and again, one turns to another, and a whisper passes up the pyramid, bringing new words to the lips of the column’s mouthpiece.

As I marvel at the pulsing, flowing structure ascending, I catch sight of another tower, a small ways off.  It could be a carbon copy, were it not a hill to the former’s mountain.  As I circle the first litter to see the second, I note a hole in the colossus’ base, where the miniature could have come in seamlessly.  This tower has no great, milling crowd, as its few thralls are focused intensely upon the tower, and they seem to be facing away from the greater uniformly.  I see one glance back, but his brethren immediately seize upon him, and he again faces away.

As I observe the towers, I see both callers holding a bright torch aloft, the torches that fooled me into seeing you, and each calls of the ineffability of their direction, and ape you in their promises of your city, of your peace, of your promise of a place in your glory.  For all the calling of each, neither acknowledges the other, whether deaf to them or offended, yet they seem to move together, and their track appears to have run alongside for some time.

My footprints trail the path of the skiff as I press it down the shore to low water; the prow glides an arm’s length behind you, and I fear that I may run you down if you pause at the water.  But you do not stop, but step through the spray, the water gliding about your feet and glowing in your light.  I follow unswervingly and jump into the boat as it glides out with the last pulls of the tide.  Only looking back from you do I realize what I have done:  I have no hope of guiding this vessel, my feet will be of no use to march through the calm, my eyes can do naught in the swirling seas, and my hands cannot trace any map of whence I came or where I go – if I would turn back, if I would abandon my pursuit of you, if I were to doubt your promises, I should never find my way home, I should never find that beach again.

The oasis is well lost to me, but perhaps I could retrace the tracks of these human behemoths to their source.  As I turn away, I pause.  Where did you go?  Can I find you in this expanse?  Have you left me for the ears of those callers?

You cannot have forsaken me.  I followed you into the sea once, and I will again, for you abandoned me not through any brewing storm, through any raging tempest, through any sky-devouring hurricane that occludes the world in a grey whorl of brine.

Again I must abandon my home for you.