Voices

He is born in the dark, raised without light and without company so that he will not miss these things when his destiny arrives, for it is his fate to die alone in the dark. Thus, will the world be saved.

 

This he knows and has always known.

 

The cold voices tell him why it must be so. There is a Beast, which rises once in a generation and seeks to destroy the world. He will be the Bearer of Light, tasked with leading The Beast across the earth from the highest peak to the lowest valley, until he reaches the pit into which he will cast himself, drawing The Beast after him, back into the depths from which it came.  Thus, will the world be saved.

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Quietly, the years of his preparation pass, until the signs say The Beast is coming. A cold voice speaks to him. “Rise and hold out your hands.”

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He does so, and a small, smooth object is placed in his cupped palms. It is cold to the touch. The voice tells him to prepare himself for what comes next. He holds his breath. With a small snick of sound, a brilliant glow appears.

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It is the Light that will save the world.

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Awe. The Light is warm, softer than he’d expected, yet it pierces his eyes until they water and blur. The hands that lit the flame rest beneath his, steadying them until his vision is clear again. He nods to show that he is once more in control, and the hands vanish back into the dark. There is only his own hands, and the candle burning in them.

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He is led from the room that has been his world into a wider space beyond; then, a space even greater. Though he cannot see anything—already all other lights have been snuffed out and the magicians have laid a blanket of darkness over the sky—he can feel the air move around him. As if his consciousness is a long, reaching arm, he seeks for the edges of this space, but there are none. His heart quakes. But his hands are steady.

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The cold voice speaks for the last time. “The path lies before you. Do not stray or hesitate. And do not let the Light go out.”

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Downward he casts his eyes. The flame does not go far, but he can make out the path and his own feet set upon it. With his hands held before him, the Light guiding the way, he begins his journey.

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* * *​

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The path is easy beneath his feet, without stone or crack for him to stumble on. He grows used to the feeling of space around him and forgets that he ever feared it, comforted by familiar darkness and the closeness of the flame. Holding it out as he must, his arms weary, then shake, until at last they become numb; now the Light floats before him, wavering gently, beckoning him to follow its golden beam.

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The light is his friend, his companion. It is his whole world. He will follow it wherever it goes. So long as there is this light, he needs nothing else.

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* * *

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He does not know when the sounds first broke the silence of the world, or even when he first noticed them, so subtly did they come on, but he does know what they are.

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The Beast follows.

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He knew this would happen, of course, but he could not have imagined what The Beast would sound like. At times It is a loud stomping of heavy footfalls that shake the earth; at others It is a slithering and hissing as of a dense mass dragging itself through the dark. He imagines holes stomped in the ground, trees felled, rocks crushed, gashes torn in the earth, and he shudders. This is the destruction he must save the world from. This is why he exists.

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After a time, The Beast’s noisemaking no longer bothers him, fading into the background. So long as the Light burns strong and bright, The Beast is harmless. It cannot draw nearer and It cannot harm him.

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* * *

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How much of his journey is passed and how much remains yet before him he does not know. Time passes as it did in the room of his preparations: endless and meaningless. Only the endpoint matters.

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Yet it is no longer so easy to lose himself in the perpetual moment he was taught to exist in. The road has slowly decayed beneath him, fissures in the stone trying to catch his feet, pebbles nearly turning his ankles. He has to turn his eyes away from the Light to peer at the path, but the flame shows so little. He begins to take shuffling steps, seeking out hazards with the tip of his shoes, but this is no use when long strands of something—he has no reference to understand what—dangle overhead, brushing against his face or snapping against his forehead if he is going too fast.

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Obstacles appear in his path, sometimes huge shapes that he barely sees when the Light strikes them, other times small, hard things at the height of his shins or ankles. At times, he comes dangerously close to having no choice but to step off the path.

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None of the cold voices told him that the path might be damaged. He cannot imagine why, for it puts the Light at risk. Could it be that they do not know? Yet they knew everything else.

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There are no answers, so he holds the Light closer and takes greater care in his steps.

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* * *

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He is not prepared for when The Beast begins to speak to him.

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Its voice rises out of the dark, soft and gentle, full of sympathy and understanding. It’s a voice for only him to hear.

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“It is such a long journey to take by oneself.”

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He is not sure at first who is speaking—the flame? Someone hidden in the dark? Perhaps a voice from his own mind? He does not reply for a long time, but the voice goes on.

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“What a lonely path you’ve been asked to tread. Look at you: weary, yet you cannot stop; hungry, yet you do not feel it. You are losing pieces of yourself one by one—look what has happened to your arms. And not a soul to comfort you, not another living being to keep you company. Only a tiny flame, whose light is for itself rather than you. See how it refuses to shine brighter, to allow you even to glimpse your own fingers? What cruel things have been done to you.”

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Somewhere in this speech, he comes to understand that it is The Beast speaking. He is surprised at the kindness of its voice. That It feels badly for him. Why should it, when he does not suffer? It is a trick, of course; The Beast is evil. It belittles the Light, hates it because it is beautiful.

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He does not reply. Yet The Beast goes on, undeterred, sometimes speaking for great lengths of time: always patient, gentle, soft. It never says a hard word, never anything cruel. Its words are of comfort and kindness. He cannot lose himself in the flame anymore; the voice of The Beast is too distracting. He tries not to listen to It, but that is a hard thing when all the world is silence.

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The Beast begins to offer him advice. “Take care: the path comes to the edge of a cliff upon your left. A stray step would send you over the edge.”

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Or: “A stream crosses your path ahead. It is narrow, but swifter than it would seem. Do not step in or you will be swept away. Good, you are safely across.”

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He was told to follow the Light, that it would lead him in safely, but The Beast’s instructions come so much sooner and clearer, and avoid everything that threatens his journey. When he ignores The Beast, he stumbles and walks into things; but The Beast never leads him astray. He wonders how it can see so much better than he can. Reluctantly, he follows its instructions, though still he does not speak.

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* * *

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One day, a strange feeling comes over him, a pain in the middle of his body that doubles him over. He gasps and pants. Will he die before reaching his journey’s end? Will he be the first Bearer to fail?

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The Beast, which seems to know all things, says, “You are hungry. You will not have eaten since they sent you away, I imagine.”

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It takes him a moment to remember what these words mean—"hungry" and "eating". He consumed little food or water in the room he grew up in. His body needed little sustenance, the cold voices had said, none at all on the journey. He has never felt pain like this before. It is another trick of The Beast.

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But he cannot go on. His limbs are weak, his feet like heavy stones to lift. His arms tremble so that he fears he will drop the Light. When The Beast tells him where food can be found, he follows Its instructions, picking berries from a prickly bush, eating nuts from a tree, and sating his thirst from a stream. The pain eases. Feeling stronger, he resumes his journey. He will not die before his appointed time.

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* * *

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The Beast is silent for a while, only speaking to instruct him in the care of himself. Once more, he loses himself in the journey, but it is not the same as before. There are questions in his mind which he has no answers for. He begins to wonder what exists in the darkness that he cannot see. What does the world actually look like?

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These thoughts are dangerous. They distract him from his task. He focuses on the Light again, concentrating all his mind upon the flame, the shape of it, the way it changes with the smallest movement of the air. It is steady and pure, a white and gold brilliance in the darkness. The Flame, the Flame, the Flame, he says to himself, over and over until his mind falls into a stupor, lost once more in the perpetual moment.

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* * *

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“Why would they deny you food and drink to begin with?”  The Beast’s voice is almost as startling as the first time it ever spoke. Sweet it is still, but there is for the first time an edge of anger to it. “To set you alone upon such a hard task is cruel enough, but to deny you the most basic of your needs as well? You have done no wrong, to be so condemned.”

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Was this condemnation? He struggles to recall why he walks this dark path with his only companions a small light ahead and a soft voice behind. But of course—that voice is the reason. He must lead The Beast to the pit.

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Why does It follow?

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He does not realize he’s spoken at last until It answers his question.

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“Do they tell you nothing?” It tuts sadly. “I am a living being. Like all living beings, I need the light, and you carry the only light in all the world. I need you. And you, it seems, need me. “

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He has to think about that for a long time. He’d never been told what manner of creature The Beast was and so had never considered what needs It must have. Since he has already spoken to It, there seems little point in staying silent now. He asks a second question: “What are you?”

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The Beast gives a pleased rumble. “I am a living being," It says again. A creature who must feed and drink and bask in the warmth of the sun, though these things have been denied me for a very long time. I am lonely, for like you I have been cut off from all companionship. I long for light, for the sweet touch of a breeze, to see beautiful things once more instead of this neverending darkness.” It laughs, soft and sober. “I am alive, if you want the simplest answer. Tell me, what are you?”

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He has no answer.

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* * *

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They talk more after that. He has little enough to say himself, but The Beast is full of stories from the days when It had walked the earth freely and these It shares with him, telling him of sights he has never seen, sounds he has never heard, and things he has never touched in such vivid detail he can see it all in his mind and feel it in his heart. Soon he longs to see more than the small, flickering flame as it slowly burns down. He wants to see great mountains and vast oceans, fields of flowers and rivers of stars. What would it be like to touch the sunshine, to hear the wind move through the trees?

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He will never know. The end of his journey is death, an end to what little he has experienced. There never will and never can be more.

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“Will you ever see the sun again?” he asks to distract himself.

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There is sadness in The Beast’s voice. “It does not seem that I ever shall.”

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And his heart hurts because he is the reason and they both know it.

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“What if…” he bites his lip. “What if you didn’t harm the world? Then you could be allowed back into it.”

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“Oh, little one. I do not harm the world. But I exist in it differently, and there are those who do not allow what is different. This is why we suffer, you and I.”

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And he has to think about that one even longer.

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* * *

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The flame has burned the candle to a nub. The journey is drawing to a close. He isn’t sure if he is ready for it to end. He isn’t sure he knows how it ends anymore.

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They speak less now, both lost in thought of what is to come. He is sick to his stomach and weak in his limbs.

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He knows when he has come to the edge of the pit.

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For long he stands there, no longer gazing at the flame but instead at the surrounding darkness. The darkness protects, the cold voices had said; from what? he now asks. He has traveled across the world and seen none of it, and endangered his life and the Light of hope he carries many times. The darkness has not protected him. What of the people in the world, hiding away in their homes, all their lives put on hold; how is the darkness protecting them?

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What of The Beast? It is a living creature like any other. It has not harmed him, in fact has saved him and the Light many times. Doesn’t It deserve to live, to see the sun?

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The flame shivers. Its light will not last long. If he does not descend into the pit, the world will never know light again. The darkness will be eternal, and The Beast would reign. But that can’t be true. Living creatures need light, so what good would it do for The Beast to snuff out the light? Nothing makes sense anymore.

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As he wavers at the edge a warm voice speaks for one last time.

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“Do not do what they want you to do. Do not do what I want, either. What do you want? It is the only question that matters.”

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What does he want?