Page a Day: Four

I stood and stepped from the wide sarcophagus. Dust like chalk covered all my skin and clothes. I thought that strange, as machines keep all such rooms quite clean. But he waved me closer. “Come here.”

            I shrugged and walked to him. He reminded me of those hermitic scribes who claim the impossible oddness of the city when they first return to it after their long isolation. But it is they themselves who are strange, and therefore holy. Perhaps, I thought, knowing Jerem Cozak is like meeting one of them. But I knew even then that his strangeness would not pass. 

            When I reached him, he reached out his  hands. Grasping my shoulders, he leaned forward. I thought we might kiss, but he only placed his head above my shoulder and exhaled, as one would trying to clean a glass or mirror. The smell of storms grew stronger still. It was only then that I realized that he stood a full head shorter than myself.

            He stepped back, his eyes approving. A faint smile played across his lips. A white fog formed around my face. I started to wave it away, but Jerem Cozak grabbed my wrists. “Be still,” he said. “You did not know what you gave me. But they have not forgotten.”

            I coughed, nervous. The mist was in my mouth and nostrils. Cool fire filled my head, a taste like silver on my tongue before it numbed. “It...” I said. “What’s happening?”

            “They are machines, as the floor and ceiling and walls are machines. But these are the White Swarm, and will not be bound. What they are, what we will do, will shake the universe until the final moment of its collapse.”

            I stood there in their cloud as cool fire shot through my body. Soon, the mist of machines poured out my nose and mouth. It pooled around our feet and rolled throughout the room, rising to our waists. I felt that I might sneeze, but instead I began to breathe better, I thought, than I ever had before.  

         “Follow me,” said Jerem Cozak, and touched his palm to the wall.

Page a Day: Three

            I blinked. “But we already are at war.” Something passed through me, then, dark and cold as winter water. It was that sinking feeling that men call dread. 

            “They came a year ago,” I said, remembering. “From the void between the stars, in ships like moons. They never demanded anything, or told us who they were. They just came. They brought that black cloud...”

            Jerem Cozak pursed his lips. “The nightwind.”

            “The nightwind, that could change a person’s loyalty.”

            His face darkened.  “That power was not commonly known.”

            “I knew a woman. She saw things, painted things. The nightwind covering the world, and now I suppose it has. I met her just before they came. When the city fell, she... killed herself.” I frowned. “That’s it. That’s all I remember, finding her body. After that, I...” I waved my hand. 

            He frowned. “She was your lover?”

            “She would have said she was my friend.” My face grew hot.

            “Our time is hard for lovers and for friends. But it is good for allies now.” He pushed himself upright. “Come, Del. Victory never waits. ” He stepped out of the sarcophagus.  

             I laughed at him. “There are only two of us. But there are armies of millions of them.”

            I saw then that he had no scholars’ frame, soft and slight as I had often supposed, but a body wiry and tense, the build of a gunner of the veilmen, posted on the edges of the battle, but always fighting nonetheless.

            He turned and walked over to the wall, where the woman had gone out. “That was is over; we lost. The armies have moved on. But in this we will have allies. Stand up.”  

Page a Day: Two

             I remembered, then. I was sixteen when I stood in the vaulted, musty Temple, taking my final exam, right hand inserted inside a small box of clear plastic. Within, the silver machines that made Profusionist metal seeped around my skin, tingling and itching. While the Historians watched, I willed that the machines become hard as stone, then free and fluid as water. They did neither. 

            Nauseous from failure and over-sweet incense, I withdrew my hand. The great technologies of the world would remain forever dark to me. The mysteries of the relics of that time when humans crossed the void between the stars would never exalt my consciousness. No sentient machine would ever answer me.

            Yet I was now in a Well of the Profusion, a house of such machines. The walls and floor and ceiling were all made of them. The sarcophagus was not for the dead, but was itself some kind of machine. There would be machines too small to see, laboring in the air to cleanse it of our breath. 

            “Del Tanich, behold your ally,” said a strong, smooth voice. I jumped. But it was of course my companion, who had finally woken up beside me. And when I turned to look at him I nearly started again. For I knew him, in the way that nearly everyone may know a particular kind of person. 

            A shrine in the Market square displayed his piercing green eyes. Coins of the realm held his taught thin face and hairless head in sharply etched relief. His commanding baritone had authorized a hundred laws in my own lifetime. 

            “Our Faith,” I said, pressing my palms together and my fingertips to my forehead, as do all those who meet any more powerful than they. My hands shook, and now my stomach ached with hunger. My voice came out high and cracking and weak, as though I had not used it in a very long time. I realized that I wore only the sackcloth shirt and trousers which prisoners of the Temple wear. 

            A warm hand grasped my wrist. “The Faith is dead,” he said, moving my hands away from my face, “and there will be no other. I am Jerem Cozak. The Faiths came to give men peace. I’ve come to give you war.” 

Page A Day: One

Behold the Jade City

On the first day,          

            The Faith admitted that yes, I had once killed him. Then he changed the conversation. Now, of course, I know that he is only that sort of man. But then, when this all began, I did not even know his name. I barely knew my own.

            I woke laying with him inside a silver-sided sarcophagus which had no padding of any kind. We were arranged so that we faced each other. The lid, thick as his pale arm, canted against the side of our receptacle, having been slid aside and abandoned. Our other limbs were entangled. My left hand grasped his right foot.

            I guessed that we were not lovers, or not good ones. Perhaps we had been thrown there. We had certainly been unconscious. My companion remained so. He did not move, though I let him go.

            The soft scratching that had woken me continued. It was like the sound of leather on some metallic thing. I blinked my eyes and shook my head and remembered very little. When I sat up, my head and stomach ached. My mouth felt full of chalk. I had been drunk, or ill.

            The room itself was the same whitish silver as the metal sarcophagus, and square and small, no more than five strides along a wall. It held that smell that only comes immediately before a summer storm. It was dim, having no doors or windows. In fact, its diffuse light had no visible source of any kind. I shivered.

            And turned my gaze upward just in time to see a woman’s long, black-trousered legs struggle upward through the ceiling above the farthest wall. Even her boots were black, and it was their sound that had awoken me. The flare of her hips told her sex. But nothing could tell me how she had climbed a wall that held no handholds, and passed through a ceiling which had no opening. Before I could cry out, she disappeared. 

On Scripture: Job 42

Job 42:1-6, 10-17

Then Job answered the LORD:

"I know that you can do all things,

and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

`Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?'

Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

`Hear, and I will speak;

I will question you, and you declare to me.'

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,

but now my eye sees you;

therefore I despise myself,

and repent in dust and ashes."

And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring. The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job's daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children's children, four generations. And Job died, old and full of days.

On Scripture: Job 38

Job 38:1-7, (34-41)

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind:

"Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Gird up your loins like a man,

     I will question you, and you shall declare to me. 

"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

    Tell me, if you have understanding. 

Who determined its measurements-- surely you know!

    Or who stretched the line upon it? 

On what were its bases sunk,

    or who laid its cornerstone 

when the morning stars sang together

    and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

"Can you lift up your voice to the clouds,

    so that a flood of waters may cover you?

Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go

    and say to you, `Here we are'?

Who has put wisdom in the inward parts,

    or given understanding to the mind?

Who has the wisdom to number the clouds?

    Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens,

when the dust runs into a mass

    and the clods cling together?

"Can you hunt the prey for the lion,

    or satisfy the appetite of the young lions,

when they crouch in their dens,

    or lie in wait in their covert?

Who provides for the raven its prey,

    when its young ones cry to God,

    and wander about for lack of food?"