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?
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