The Tower

Wren with her stupid camera. That was always how the trouble got started. She’d take a photo of someone that didn’t want to be photographed and it would start a fight, or she’s want to take pictures of some bank or a hotel and the security would hassle them and then Wren would take out this paper she’d printed from a web site stating her rights and get into an argument with someone with a gun or a night stick. It had even gone wrong in the other direction; a couple of guys at Baker beach and Wren takes their pictures and pretty soon she wants a shot with them and Natasha, and it’s a nude beach, so what the hell, everybody take it off, and a month later Natasha’s looking at this disgusting photo of herself with Sven and Pauly (the guys from the beach) hanging from the wall of some makeshift co-op gallery and it’s made even more painful by the fact that she’d ended up dating Pauly for a week until she discovered that he was unemployed and living with another girlfriend. Wren with her stupid camera. Now here they were, trespassing, way beyond the danger signs posted on the sagging and compromised chain link fence, making their way into the charred out ruins of some weird tower in the middle of nowhere. Their car was a hopeless hike behind them, parked on a turnout along highway one. They had been driving along when Wren said suddenly,
“Look at that weird fence.” And before Natasha could look Wren was already pulling over and climbing out with her Camera. Natasha climbed out to stretch her legs while Wren took a few pictures of the eight foot fence.
“Why is it here, do you think?” Wren was asking. “To keep us out, or to keep something in?”
“Maybe to prevent a landslide.” Natasha suggested studying the tips of her chestnut brown hair. It was time for a trim.
“No, this is like a little ravine, there wouldn’t be a landslide coming from here.”
“Well, like you said, maybe it’s just to keep us out. We should get going, I’m getting hungry.” Natasha released her locks and gave her head a flick to send them back over her shoulders.
“I wonder why.” Wren had said, and that was that. After throwing a stick at it to see if it was an electrified fence, Wren was making her way up and over, and Natasha, looking over her shoulder for angry park rangers or mountain people, had scrambled over behind her, protesting in vain. From there they had followed the babbling brook, Wren snapping away and speculating that the fence was meant to keep deer off the highway. Then it was up an embankment and through some trees and into this clearing where the weird charred out remains of a tower stood shadowed by the nearby ridge of evergreens.
“I just don’t think it looks safe.” Natasha said and planted her hands on her hips.
Wren having already frenzied with the camera on the outside of the tower was pressing on towards the black doorway gaping like an open mouth.
“It’s fine.” Wren said and with a step disappeared beyond the threshold. Natasha crept closer.
“Wren?” she called, but there was no answer. She came to stand right in front of the door and peered into the darkness. “Wren?” she called much louder. For a minute she held still and thought about what she had seen and heard. Wren took a step into the open doorway and vanished. There had been no sound of floorboards cracking and giving out, or of Wren screaming as she fell. Natasha repeated this fact to herself several times to calm herself down. “Wren?” she called again, “Don’t kid around. Are you okay?” But there was no answer and as Natasha studied the darkness beyond the open doorway she felt a cold chill race up her spine. The doorway was simply inky blackness. She stood right in front of it, careful not to cross into the tower. Nothing at all was visible. The darkness that she beheld was more than murk, more than the simple absence of light. It was a nearly tangible substance. Natasha stepped abruptly backward, recoiling from the mass of dark. Her mind was racing. Why hadn’t Wren noticed this oddity? What was it? What was happening. Natasha began to shriek,
“Wren! Wren! Answer me! Wren!.”
She stared up at the three rectangular windows near the broken top of the tower. She willed Wren’s face to appear there, with the camera, taking a photo of hysterical Natasha. But no face emerged in the dark rectangles, and without realizing that she was doing it, Natasha began to run in a wide circle around the tower. She screamed Wren’s name again and again, looking for some other opening, some explanation, some sign of her friend until she arrived once again at that yawning doorway of darkness. Trembling and panting, she picked up a stone and tossed it through the doorway and watched it disappear completely, as though it were being sucked into black velvet jell-o. It made no sound at all.
Natasha sunk down and rested on her heels sobbing. It seemed that she was having a nightmare, beyond a doubt. People don’t vanish like that. She sat and sobbed and waited for Wren to come back, then she waited to wake up, but neither events occurred. Eventually it grew dark and Natasha, doubting what she had perceived with her senses rose suddenly full of the conviction that Wren had fallen through the floor and needed help. With this in mind she raced back into the woods to return to the highway and flag someone down. But it was dark already, and Natasha had never been much good in the woods and was soon hopelessly lost and cold. She tripped and slid down a muddy slope and rolled into a stream. She crawled out unsure of which direction to proceed. The pale face of the moon glittered down from the tree tops and filled the surrounding forest with strange shadows and shapes. Nothing at all looked familiar.

The following morning a patrol man discovered the empty car parked in the turnout. A day later a search was launched at the request of Wren’s parents. Natasha was found with a twisted ankle. She told the story of Wren falling through the floorboards of the burnt out tower, but despite the exhaustive search no such tower could ever be located.

Lego House

I step through the fog. Thick, like the layered contours of deep sleep. Each step leads me through a slower stew of grayness. Shapeless hands whip past me in waves of beaded moisture.
I am walking up a slight hill, known through the body and not the eyes unless against this window of pale breath. Long sinewy calf muscles are hard at work, pulling and tearing in an unusual effort. Dense ligaments have slept behind my thighs, only to awaken in this moment under strain. The past itself is a hazy fog, just blackness speckled with the light of an occasional star and multilevel building. There is a landscape of fuzzy lights, a city covered in smoke. Long, long ago. I move as though this has always been done, only the body screams otherwise. Each step, a pulse. Each step, traveled and regressed. Surrounded by white, forward seems to be back, only the incline reveals another truth. One moment after another, then another. Another step into the thickness of gray, into the clouds which cover me as though I was them. As though I was nothing but a movement of moisture and white mixing with gray and converging with water. Change is upon me with the stirring of a lavender scented mist. The clouds swirl as though in a last dance with time, peaking like ocean waves that have met the might of a great titan, and then recede. Each step takes me further from them. I watch as they swirl, trapped in a barrier they cannot cross.
The night opens like a flower. Black. I have nearly reached the crest of the hill, the mound which may be a smooth mountain. Ahead of me, at the peak of the hill is a multi-colored house. Almost square but for the small rectangular shaped tower on the right side. I run to it. I run as if it breathes. I run to my old friend. I run to the house. There are no lights, but we are illuminated by a yellow light that comes from no sun, no stars. An eerie yellow light that casts shadows on the grass that move with the shape of elephants and tigers. I run to the house, to a memory, to the self that I have left. My fingers caress the walls, the thick plastic bricks that protect the house from the night and the night from the whispers of those who dwell there. My body twirls with joy, with a memory that I can not recall and yet I look for.
The house grows as I open my eyes to its form, the life-size Lego house. I run around the periphery. There are four feet of solid yellow bricks that touch the grass and above is an explosion of color. From four feet to the flat roof is a mixture of red, blue and green bricks with an occasional yellow acting like a star. I touch the smooth walls as though it was a lover’s chest. Each side of the house has three small square windows. No glass or shade, just a portal in and out. Under the center window of each side is a bush of fresh lavender. I reach out to one and pull from a reluctant stem. “Thank you,” I say as I crush a purple cone between my fingers and bring it to my nose.
The tall tower, slightly larger than a chimney, is formed from solid green plastic bricks. At the top, a hard plastic flag stands. It’s shape invokes the memory of a proud flag flapping in the wind, crying for freedom. This flag is forever frozen in the ripple, a snapshot to a moment that existed with other material in another place. Beside the open rectangular door is a little plastic tree. It stands still though the night is alive with the dance of the wind.
The gap of the door calls me to enter. I step in. There are no lights. No sounds but the wind slamming against the plastic walls.

Wizard

The stormy night rose around the tower as walls of rain and crackling lightning. The wizard took a glance out of one of the two little windows that were set high up in the stone walls. Unnaturally tall though he was, he still had to rise to the tips of his toes to peer out of the diminutive opening. The crown of his head was bald and shiny, wreathed by a mane of long thinning and matted black hair. His eyes, a keen pale blue, peered into the maelstrom which held him prisoner within his tower. A dark mood descended upon him, sired by the whip like arcs of light that rose from the earth all around his keep. The corners of a big mouth set in a broad face shaped like an inverted spade turned down and the thick black brows over his eyes lifted as if they might slide from his brow in resignation. The clang of the old clock striking eleven roused him from silent observations and he hurried back to his wooden table where 17 small figurines fashioned of wax were lined in three neat little rows. There were yet 18 figures that must be made before the stroke of midnight. Despair seized his heart and for a moment he contemplated sinking to his knees and enduring his imprisonment until starvation eked the last of his life from him. Then he recognized such apathy as the spawn of the malignant spell that raged all about him, and thrust it heavily aside. One candle burned on the little table, nearly down to the nub. He would need more wax. Bending his gargantuan height, he threw open an oaken chest and rummaged hastily about and seized three more tapers with his massive hands, not as much as he could want, but it would have to do. His faded olive robe flagged out behind him as he hurried back to the work table with heavy steps. One hour remained to complete his work. Whether it could be done or not he turned his will unwaveringly to the task.

* * *

Lucien passed over the green hill littered with gray stones that had once been the walls of a keep. He picked his way carefully among them until he had passed into the circle of ruins which were once the foundation of a tower. There was little in the way of relics to be found, others had come and carried away the most alluring items long ago. Lucien found a spoon lodged halfway beneath one of the fallen stones. Then he wandered out of the foundation and lifted his lithe body onto a boulder to survey the area. Among the stones and green grass, the burnt remains of four trees stood black and forlorn against the overcast sky. To the west, a river rushed hastily along its course. Lucien sighed and slid onto his rear. His mind turned towards his homeward voyage, towards his empty handed return to the old woman who cast the bones. He would tell her that there was no tower, and that there was no wizard with thirty five warriors of wax with which to defeat the Demoness of Berg. He supported his head in his hands and felt the ache in his feet. The sound of the rushing river reached his ears. It seemed for a moment as if it were singing a song, the words of which were almost decipherable by him. He shook off the eerie perception.
The journey home would be disproportionately longer than the journey here had been, now that he would have to bare the weight of disappointment. He resolved not to return. He would go on searching for another way to combat the Demoness, even if there was none to be found. He would search to the ends of the earth.

Thus thinking, he leaped down from the boulder and proceeded to pass by one of the burnt trees. His eye caught sight of a leather bound book resting at its foot. He wondered that he had not noticed it from his vantage point atop the boulder. Lucien’s heart fluttered. He could read. When the old woman had cast the bones for the six lords of Almerne she had insisted that a scribe and not a warrior be sent to retrieve the thirty five. Eagerly, he opened the book and flipped through the pages, glancing here and there. He let out an excited cry. Recipes and rituals were scrawled on the pages and notes about the weather and the writer’s deepest feelings. This was the journal of a wizard. He found the last written page midway through the book. On it was written,
“The thirty five are complete now. Their singing never ceases.”
The remaining pages had been left blank.

Lucien stood quite still for a moment. The mention of thirty five could not be a coincidence. This was a mention of the thirty five warriors he sought. He spoke the words softly to himself, wondering, hoping that something further would be revealed to him. The babbling of the river reached his ears again, almost melodic. He snapped the book shut with a start. Could it be?
Springing to life, he ran the distance to the river. Smooth white pebbles populated the bank . The rush and roar of the foaming water thundered in Lucien’s ears. He could hear the song it sang more clearly now. He gazed into the watery depths and searched through the changing liquid shapes.
At first, he saw only the green river ferns swaying beneath the surface. Then, as he listened intently to the singing of the river, the water seemed to adopt new shapes before his eyes. The bubbling and rippling water outlined the contours of fine faces and athletic limbs and subtle but feminine bosoms. These were not the men of wax that he had expected, but women of water, dressed in armor and helmets and wielding spears.
Lucien stepped back from the water, frightened and awed. He paced along the bank counting their translucent forms. Thirty-five. Here was the wax army of the Green wizard, transformed to water, singing battle songs beneath the river’s rushing surface to pass the time while they waited. And if they were here, waiting in the water, then the wizard that could command them must be somewhere as well. And if they were no longer wax but water, then he was free.
Lucien searched the sky and wondered. He looked carefully at the pebbles under his feet and at the hills around him. He sat down upon the river’s bank and searched with his eyes and with his ears and with his heart for the green wizard that could awaken the thirty-five. Whether it could be done or not, he would find the wizard. He would awaken the mage who must be hidden somewhere, everywhere, waiting to be roused.