Singers 6 - 3/31/2014

Eventually, I leave the Tower of Silence and begin wandering. There are no songs to sing for a while, not for me. My throat is healed, but the music is quiet. Even the smallest Song of Light won't come to me. I even begin to enjoy walking in the half-darkness that is our city.

I look up, into a vision in my head. The city, curving above us, instead of just outward. A swelling of lights, small and large, spanning the darkness in every direction, scattering and moving, each to its own rhythm and path.

It passes, and above the tops of the towers is just darkness. The same flat darkness we have always known. I wonder at the source of that vision. Nothing like it has happened to me before. Perhaps my lessness is breaking me apart. Or perhaps it is the lessness of the taking off of blankets, the removal of a covering of the eyes. Perhaps my lessness lets me see what the moreness hid.

Or perhaps I am tired of all of this. Tired of singing, tired of walking, tired of this place that is all there is. Sleeping is what I wish for, but more than sleeping. Resting not for a few bells, but for hundreds, thousands, more. To dream and fly away from this constant doing, that seems to have no end.

Supposedly, Singer Isto counts the bells. Knows how many have passed since the beginning, but keeps that number secret, hidden in the ringing of each one. How many is it? Is there a word for such a number?

Other than Isto, I wonder who might know, or at least have a sense of how long it has taken us to build this place. I wonder who might know how many of us there are now. I realize I don't even know how big the city is. All I ever see is the piece I live in, passing by just a few places, out to get my song, to find a place to sing, and then back to where I sleep.

Is this what the songs are for? To make it so that we can sing more songs? So that we can make more of ourselves and build taller towers and push the darkness farther back?

Is that what we are?

388

Fog 5 - 3/28/2014

I'm glad I pushed. There's a finger of stone that I barely miss, sticking out from the base of my island. That would have hurt.

I'm tumbling, now, falling, I think, through the mist. My island is gone, and the sound of rain on leaves doesn't seem terribly strong, now, with the blood rushing in my ears and my heart pounding so fast and so hard.

I can't take this back. I've stepped off, into I know not what, and am tumbling from somewhere I didn't know much to somewhere that might not even be. The terror of that grips me, squeezes my bowels and bladder, tears at my voice and sends my fingers scrabbling to find some purchase in the wind to pull me back to where I was. Where things were predictable and safe, if alone.

But there is no purchase, of course. It is mist, fog, air, wind. Nothing more. Below I can see no more than I could before. I seem to have stopped tumbling, though there's no real way to tell. I have a sudden vision of me, and a thousand floating rocks of islands and the mist and we're all falling together. I can't catch another island because we're all falling together, and I see myself slowly accumulating bits of dust and stone flung away from the islands until I become like them, giant rocks floating in a mist that has no shape and no place and no time.

With that thought, the gray in front of me changes, darkens, and stops my plummet in a flash of light and pain and blackness.

269

Nemo 5 - 3/26/2014

The vodka makes a good lunch, but I still have to drift in and out for solid food and to check on other things. Immobility is death.

The details of this place and the criminal environment it is part of become clearer. Georgians and Russians run this place, an uneasy but effective truce. The Russians are definitely on their way out, though. Something recently cost them a major pipeline, and their influence is less than it was. That makes them desperate, and therefore not my choice.

I do not want position, seek no place within these organizations and what they call power. I want a few small jobs, a little cash for those expenses that credit can't pay. So I will work with the safer side. Less reward, less risk.

I am about to stand and weave my way over to Grigol and begin my pitch. He has a small package and his courier is late. Boris would be good for this, easy to overlook and underestimate. As I begin to rise, though, I smell rats.

Two of the lesser Georgians and a waiter leave through the back, quietly but all too quickly. Too bad, this might have been a reasonably good operation to become involved with. Instead of the booth, I head to the bathroom. By the time I am out the window, I am hunched over, shorter, dark, and old. Some weakened old man from several thousand miles to the south, just trying to find a dry place in the alley.

The gunfire doesn't last long. Sounds like Ingrams, probably knock-offs. Cheap, effective and disposable. Grigol and his crew just turned their pipeline over to the Russians, and two lessers and a waiter just stepped up a notch. Politics, always the bane of getting simple things done.

I walk off into the rain. Pizza sounds good.

308

Singers 5 - 03/24/2014

Bells pass in the Tower of Silence. I sleep twice before my throat doesn't protest even water. It is longer before I begin to feel normal again.

Lying there, though, I wonder what it is that I gave up for that Song. The sense of being less remains, although I can feel it scarring over, fading to something less than an ache. A forgotten memory, which I will forget even the forgetting of, soon. I can feel, so slightly, two other such scars, themselves forgotten and long since worn down to a smooth surface.

Much of the time, I find myself sitting by the one window in this Tower, up above the storage floor. The lights of Singers below on the flagstones moving back and forth on business I know I will soon return to. Singing forth those things we need, slowly adding flagstones to the edges of the city. And all the time, the stellated line of light that describes the edge of everything.

Sitting on the sill, only the general tones of songs come through. The whole Tower is insulated, to promote quiet and solitude for healing. Here, though, some of our singing is audible, a general sense of what is happening, a wash of voice and sound rising and falling almost regularly.

From time to time, shudders strike me, hot tears and quaking. I remember this, now. This drawing inward. Other Singers who have sung that song don't talk about this, but I've felt it all three times. Perhaps it is a flaw in me, in my Song, perhaps it is a flaw in them, that they don't feel it.

Eventually, though, with food and rest, and caring, I begin to find equilibrium. Not better, but less worse, or at least stable in that worseness. Perhaps from here I can rise back to what I once was, if such a person ever existed.

316

Fog 4 - 3/21/2014

This is the edge of the island. Above, below and forward, fog and something that is neither darkness nor light. The rock is exposed beneath my feet, the moss and fern-things stopping a pace or so short of this edge.

I've stood here many times, pissing into the fog, or watching a leafy bundle of shit fall away into this nothing that isn't nothing. And I've stood here other times, yelling, screaming, praying at the top of my lungs for someone or something to come here.

But nothing and no-one ever has.

You can feel nothingness, after a while. A sort of pervasive lack, a quality of the self, the air, the stone, and time itself. This is not, I think, a place. This is something else between is and is not, some kind of existence which does not exist.

And all of this is simply delaying myself from what I know I will do. Something I have contemplated more than once. Something I have not done because it cannot be taken back.

But now there is whatever wails, out there, down below, closer than any light has ever come. And there is something beneath the wailing, almost silent, a hiss.

Rain, striking leaves, I think. Coming from below. Rain falling on leaves that are not up here on my island. Rain falling on leaves and something... someone(?) wailing in the dark.

3.. 2........ fuck it.

I push outward, hard.

240

Nemo 4 - 3/19/2014

Boris feels right for this. Not Ivan, he's... provocative. I make sure I have a Merchant Marine card in Cyrillic, then drop down to the alley and over to the bar.

The interior is as dark as I had expected, the clientele no different than groups I've seen in a thousand other places. All thinking themselves unique, all thinking that their place is different than all those others. Blindness.

I wave a thin fold of bills at the bartender, ask for 'wodkya'. He overcharges me for something that the locals think of as such and leaves. Boris isn't a troublemaker, though, so I let him. The important thing now is to fade down and disappear. I hunch over my drink and let my ears become more sensitive, until I can hear every conversation in the room.

It isn't long before I can pick the players, the wannabes, and the contact points in the room. Some people think they're so subtle. Four different languages and 'sly' references to things. Listen long enough and they might as well write it all down and make charts for you.

The beginning is always the hard part. I'll have to be here for a few days, become a minor fixture, complain a bit about not being able to find good vodka. Once they've written me off as inconsequential, just a sailor drinking away his shore time, I can make my approach.

236

Singers 4 - 3/17/2014

I stumble down the stairs, feeling still less. At the bottom, Pohs is waiting for me, a bowl and a mug in hand. I take the water first, hoping it will soothe the ache and sting. It doesn't, much, but feels good anyway.

Pohs takes the mug when I'm done, and hands me a bowl steaming with something dark and a spoon. I start putting it in my mouth. It burns, nicely, and I glance up at Pohs.

“I had some curry left over from a few bells ago, and I mixed it in once I'd sung this stew. Thought you'd appreciate it.” I do, and say so.

“You sang a long and beautiful song, Mahd. It inspired all of us. Nearly a thousand bells went by while you were up there. Brek has said you're to take a bed in the Tower of Silence for a while. And thank you, Mahd, it has been wonderful to hear you.” Another smile, and I am alone.

The walk to the Tower of Silence is a short one, but nearly more than I can manage, even with curried stew supporting me. Twice I lean against a wall and simply breathe for a few moments.

Singer Lenn greets me with a blanket at the door to the Tower. I've never served here, but the Silence is taken very seriously, I'm given to understand. Healing is not of my nature. I'm not sure why, and sometimes I wish it was.

But we are as we are sung, and I am who I am. With that thought, I lay myself on the bed that Lenn takes me to. Dreams shortly follow, gray and confused.

279

Fog 3 - 3/14/2014

This is the edge of the island. Above, below and forward, fog and something that is neither darkness nor light. The rock is exposed beneath my feet, the moss and fern-things stopping a pace or so short of this edge.

I've stood here many times, pissing into the fog, or watching a leafy bundle of shit fall away into this nothing that isn't nothing. And I've stood here other times, yelling, screaming, praying at the top of my lungs for someone or something to come here.

But nothing and no-one ever has.

You can feel nothingness, after a while. A sort of pervasive lack, a quality of the self, the air, the stone, and time itself. This is not, I think, a place. This is something else between is and is not, some kind of existence which does not exist.

And all of this is simply delaying myself from what I know I will do. Something I have contemplated more than once. Something I have not done because it cannot be taken back.

But now there is whatever wails, out there, down below, closer than any light has ever come. And there is something beneath the wailing, almost silent, a hiss.

Rain, striking leaves, I think. Coming from below. Rain falling on leaves that are not up here on my island. Rain falling on leaves and something... someone(?) wailing in the dark.

3.. 2........ fuck it.

I push outward, hard.

240

Nemo 3 - 3/12/2014

I decide to keep wearing little Kimi for the moment. She's a comfortable little body, lets me slip through the crowds easily, playing little parkour games. Someone watching carefully might notice that Kimi moves more quickly than a little girl should, but they'd have to be very observant. If they're watching me that close, they already know what I am, and I lose nothing for the practice.

Save perhaps to get them to make a mistake.

As I pass the various little places, I take my breakfast. A pastry here, half a bottle of juice or water there. No caffeine, it hits me harder than it does them. A sip or two of soda and I get jitters. Not good for the survival instinct. Probably a result of my metabolism, or whatever it is that I have. Before long, I am fed, moving cleanly toward the port.

It's time to become older. Kimi should probably be in school by now. Even running, she'll attract attention. The crowd is thinning, here, too, which makes it worse. Fortunately, this country is big on public bathrooms. Enter Kimi, exit her older sister, heavy and skirted. One more, and their distant cousin Juan steps from a men's room and trudges painfully along the street. Obviously, he is going somewhere to seek work, his clothes a little dirty, a little threadbare, but clearly kept as well as possible.

The talk changes here, deepens, as there are fewer women and children about. Mostly they are men of significant physical strength. They go to move large things, a thing that men seem to do for money more than women. Gretchen had many things to say about such human tendencies. I wonder, from time to time, how right she was.

But also here are the grayer places, where one might slip from the legal to the illegal. A part of every world that I learn over and over. Each place has its dance, and the gray zones are where money is easiest.

I don't need much, but what I need I truly do. Being able to acquire funds is important. There aren't many legal jobs which pay only in cash, here, or anywhere, anymore. Certain types of crime pay well, once one knows certain secrets.

Dancing here is taciturn, I can see within minutes. Nobody speaks, but everyone listens to the few words that fall. Watching from a roof for several hours, the traffic leads me to a nameless little bar that is the hub of communication.

Time for a drink, then.

424

Singers 3 - 3/10/2014

The first of the bass notes come from my throat. The are long and low, slow and strong. Building in volume, I stand, the ring of light that is this city around me. I let my eyes close and feel the simple throb that is the beginning of the Song of Another.

These notes come and go, rising and falling away slowly, powerfully. Many bells pass as I wander among these deep notes, finding almost melodies. Then, they pass into a silence of just breathing.

A burst of a higher note, mid-scale, pure and brighter than those from before. I bring it up, then add a second and third note on top of it. I have reached the chords, and follow them from the depths to the heights. A laugh, in there, somewhere, as I feel the Song begin to pull some part of me away, that pain, that thrill of loss, of lessening.

And more notes. I let each of my three voices diverge, each one seeking some pattern, some song of its own, running, meandering, dancing about each other. Occasionally they come together and make something new, other times seeming not even to be my voices, but something simply flowing through me from somewhere else.

I know my body is standing here, above the city, swaying slightly from foot to foot as I pour all that I have and all that I am into this most difficult of Songs. The pain grows from a lurching separation into a dissolving flame, consuming me, turning my body, my heart, my mind into music just short of screaming.

And the bells pass. More and more of them that I am barely aware of. The Song grows frantic at times, and then peaceful. It is precise, loose, free and bound all together in one and three voices. It breaks me apart and remakes me, looses me upon the city and buries me in a single stone. I am flung forth into the darkness and fall away from the light.

And finally, it is done. I wake, still standing, still swaying. There is a new Singer out there, somewhere. Because I have sung.

Hundreds of bells have passed, longer than I have ever sung before. My throat burns and aches, both with use and with thirst. My stomach tells me I have not eaten in so long that it has forgotten to hurt, and can only shake my limbs with weakness.

I turn and stumble down the stairs to seek food, water, rest. I am lessened, and in that should find a balancing moreness, but it is not there. It is never there. We are made less by this, and I wonder if I shall ever be what I was when I began, or if I shall fade away like notes on the wind.

471

Fog 2 - 3/7/2014

The fog is changing. Thicker here and there, thinner elsewhere. I could swear, for a moment, just now, that I saw the surface of one of the lights. It shone like fire, right in my eye, before fading beyond some new thickness of cloud.

Why do I know what fire is?

I've never been able to make one here, but I know what it is. Bright flickering, hot and orange. Not really like the hard shine of that light, but I know what it is.

I call them fern-things, because I know they aren't ferns. But I've never seen a fern. Couldn't tell you what one looks like, but I know it's not quite the things that are here.

I know stone, and fog, and moss. But I don't know where from. I know that if I cut the trees down, they won't grow back. How do I know that, if I haven't ever done so?

The fruit is good, but sometimes I feel a wanting for something different. Something specific. Red, wet, chewy. Meat. What is that? Why do I think, almost, that I can smell it cooking, sometimes. Is cooking putting meat on fire? It seems like good meat is hot, and red.

How long have I been here? I don't remember before, but if I know things that are not here, then there must have been a before. Mustn't there?

234

Nemo 2 - 3/5/2014

The day begins to bustle, but not here. I can hear the cars and buses moving, the start of traffic into the workday. Earlier than I expected, but I hear more of horns and idling than I do of actual movement. Makes me think of the fish ladder I saw once. All that effort to go almost nowhere, for almost no reason.

I finish the rat and climb up to the roof. Standing in the day, I consider my options. I think I'll keep the body, at least for now. The hair needs to be longer, though. I let it stream out in the wind until it is most of a meter in length, then pull it together and fake a hair tie to bind it into a ponytail. My clothes become pink and black, cute little sweats with nondescript pseudo-logos on them. And a backpack, to complete the disguise.

The next building is about ten meters over. I step back from the edge of this one, take two steps, and jump. I land in a long stride. Running feels good, sometimes. Just pushing whatever passes for muscle in my legs and feeling the world go by. Rooftop to rooftop, up and down, climbing when necessary, leaping almost into flight where the opportunity presents itself.

Soon I am downtown, coffee and pastries filling the air. I like these smells. They mean that people feel like they are comfortable and safe. Smells like this lure. Soft, padded smells for small, padded people. Sheep and cattle that are moved through their lives by fingers they won't bother to see.

None of them ever knew a Gretchen. Gretchens don't exist here. Maybe there's only one, anywhere, and I was fortunate enough to be raised by her. Someday I will find her.

I come out of the alley, bouncing just enough to look young. This is an English street, only a few accents coloring the air. Good for listening and honing the local accent. Being able to fade is important. Accents, while sometimes useful, mostly draw attention, even if it's only subconscious. People remember 'foreign' more easily than 'person'.

There are a thousand little places serving cups and plates. If I follow them north, I'll end up at the zoo again. But if I bend eastward, I'll find myself near the port. Many opportunities there for interesting information.

Eastward it is.

397

Singers 2 - 3/3/2014

Brek accepts my formal words of acceptance, but sees that I am troubled, and is concerned. Without further speech, I turn and walk back to the streets. Brek will ask, next time we meet, but for now will leave me with my thoughts.

I wander, some, and find myself where I knew I would, at the Tower of Winds. It is the tallest in the city, from which the winds which we breathe and which allow us to Sing are generated. I climb the stairs, eight long flights that I take slowly.

To be asked to sing the Song of Another is an honor, a sign of respect. Twice before have I sung it. Two Singers walk through our city because of my notes, my voice, my pain. To sing the Song of Another is to wrench part of oneself free, part of one's Song, and fling it to the Winds, that it might reappear elsewhere as a new Singer.

None of us knows who Sung us forth, and none knows who they sung, not anymore. When there were few of us, long before I was Sung, it was impossible not to know these things. Now, with so many of us, there is no way we can know who we were made by, nor who we have made. It seems to me that something was lost when this became true, perhaps something that should not have been allowed to disappear.

The top floor of the Tower of Winds is open to the world. Four pillars support the cupola, and only open air stands elsewhere here. I look out on the eight sections of the city, the line of Singers around it marking where we sing the Great Song of Light. The Song that keeps at bay the darkness that surrounds us.

I like this view. From here, individual Singers are just motes against the background formed by the flagstones of the city. From here, we are not beings of flesh and bone, we are light, champions of the Singing against the Darkness.

Some have thought of mixing the words of speech into our Songs, but none have done this, yet, I think. Only the voice, the note, the song matter. To add words seems... superfluous. It is interesting, though, to imagine what the addition of conscious meaning to the fluid content of Songs would do. I cannot imagine that anything would happen, as the requirements of the words would eliminate the intentions of the song. But who knows? Perhaps it is something I will try at some point.

The Song of Another begins to pull at me, deep behind my eyes. I can feel the first notes coming together, long and slow, deep like the bass notes of Singer Foun's Song of the Forge. None of us makes bronze quite so well as Foun, although not so much the iron and steel that are mostly used now.

With a deeper breath, and with reluctant anticipation tightening my throat, I begin the first note.

503

Fog 1 - 2/28/2014

There's something like dew on the moss outside of my cave when I wake. I look out into the fog and wonder, for the umpteenth time, where I am. It's never dark, it's never light. Good enough to see by, the mist swallows up whatever there might be more than fifty feet away. I can easily throw a stone so far I can't see it land.

How long I've been here, I'm not sure. Lost count of how many times I've slept after the first few hundred. Not that it's a meaningful count. I have no way of knowing how long I sleep, how long I wake, even how long it takes me to get someplace. Only soreness in my feet and legs tells me anything, and I can't trust that anymore, since I know every square meter of this island.

There's me, and the cave, and the inedible damp fern-things that I use for bedding. Behind the cave is a spring, and the trees that bear the fruit that I eat.

And one-hundred fifty-nine paces from the front of my cave is the Edge. It drops off into nothingness, just more fog. I can travel around the circumference of this island before I need to sleep, two or three times over. At no point is there anything but moss, fern-things, the cave, the spring, and I'm repeating myself.

That's a hazard, here. There is literally nothing to do. The fern-things won't burn, neither will the moss. The fruit trees might, but they never drop a branch, and I haven't got any way of cutting one down. None of the stone will take an edge, I can't find any dirt, even, to draw or write in. There's me and what I say to myself (is it out loud? I don't know anymore).

Out there, sometimes, are lights. Or there might be. Could be I'm dreaming, or imagining them. I keep thinking they might prove to be vessels, since they seem to move. Maybe one will come here and tell me where I am, and why. The fog washes out everything that might identify them. They could be a hundred feet or a hundred miles away.

There is no weather, here. Slight breezes on occasion, or I think they are. No rain, no snow, no hot days, no cold ones. Total neutrality of environment.

There's air, here, but no birds. No insects that I've seen. I haven't had a cold or the flu since I got here. But the moss is real, and the fruit. The water tasted pure, and satisfies my thirst.

So where am I, and why?

439