Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?’ Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, If you will, you can become all flame.’
Sayings of the Desert Fathers
Once, in an empire un-like this one, there was a kataphrakt working in the municipal office for statistics. J was tasked with gathering information on public parks, the spaces where the city opened up and exposed itself to the sky. The sky was a great source of fear for the municipal council, all of them trembling believers in an ancient prophecy that warned that their destruction was not of this earth. On the Great Day not-of-the-Earth, singing and laughter was foretold, shouts and cries and acclamations, and the councillors shuddered. They hired 10,000 more legionnaires and 5,000 more kataphrakts and set them to patrol the streets and highways of the city and the greater metropolitan area, gathering statistics, hoping to find the information necessary to stave off the Great Day. J did not know of any prophecy. She believed her job was maximising public hygiene and recreational efficiency.
J had never felt like one of the guys. She had never grown out a beard long and bristled as her comrades. She ate alone in the municipal cafeteria, and even there, the coarseness and bloodlust of their conversation would so often sour her food that she increasingly skipped lunch, opting instead to scroll on her phone on some shady spot along her regular patrol. This was, after all, just a job. It paid the rent and was relatively secure.
The only thing J truly loved about her work was her armour, the armour she had dreamed of since she was a child. Armour the glistening, armour the mirrored, armour of the kataphrakt, reflector of the world’s true vision. Most boys, of course, adored the legionnaires, with their firm builds, armoured in layer upon layer of lamellar. But J set her heart only on the kataphraktry. When she first touched herself, years before, she closed her eyes and saw a woman, head to toe in silver, glinting like the sun glowering off a descending knife. Now she was the descending knife, and she had been known to stay up til the wee hours cleaning every plate and link of her new shell with myrrh and olive oil.
Of course, there is no knife without blood.
As the first whispers of spring whistled through the trees and shrubs of the municipality’s parks, J began to notice something strange. She had worked these same patrols for years. She knew them and their seasons well. At this time of year, she knew to see the most delicate new rays of sun tentatively curling through the chill and lazily whiling their days away in the parks and greenery of the city. She knew which birds to listen for on her rounds, and which trees were their favourite perches; the swifts to their adler, blackcaps to juniper and mistletoe, and the blue tits to the peaceful oak. And she knew to expect more people in the parks while she made her rounds. But this year, she didn’t see any of these things. J was troubled, but continued studiously gathering her statistics.
Because it was, after all, just a job, J never had paid much attention to the politics. Councillors came and went and her job remained the same. So J was completely unaware that the Vanishing Spring was a campaign of the municipal council. Of course, they did not see it as a vanishing spring. The city parks and their open expanses of sky continued to furrow brows at the town hall. They could barely look up without wincing. Urgent measures were necessary to secure the municipality against the Great Day. And so the municipal councillors sought out investors from the West and from the North, and soon enough, huge towers began to appear, looming over the city. At first, it was just one or two, but even these caused significant consternation, since nobody had seen any construction crews or planning consultations. The councillors made grand speeches about development and growth and progress and promised there would only be small changes for the city’s anxious inhabitants. People grumbled, but it was only one or two, and so they waited for prosperity to arrive.
It never did, but the towers continued to appear, slashing up into the city skyline. The municipal councillors urged patience, but people could see hoards of glittering treasures through the doors of the towers, guarded by legionnaires and smirking kataphrakts. Soon the councillors made open proclamations of the New City made possible by their towers, and the sky receded up, up, out of sight.
This was in the winter, when the sky was hard and seemingly impenetrable. J noticed the towers, but did not think much of them. Most of her key statistics were concerned with things closer to the ground, with grass and fallen leaves and beer bottles abandoned along the paths. Even when winter passed and the spring did not arrive, J did not wonder. If it seemed a long winter, winter always seemed long to J. Her armour did not gleam much in the gloom.
One day, on her lunchless break, while scrolling twitter without really reading a thing, J heard birdsong closer than she had come to expect it. Suddenly, she felt something bony landing softly on her knee. A blackcap looked up at her inquisitively and warbled. Gently cascading, the song stung J into silence. It was the first blackcap she had seen since last summer. Then, just as suddenly, he flew away. As J’s eyes followed his flight, she looked up, and, like a trap door opening, she saw the towers, the shadows, and the distant, almost pin-prick sky. She remembered the birds and the unseasonable spring.
Racing, running, nearly leaping up the steps of the town hall, she gasped her findings to her superiors. He, a gently ageing exarch of the municipal office for statistics, chuckled. This was, naturally, all perfectly regular. The shadows and gloom were simply a mild, accidental byproduct of development, nothing to be concerned about. Progress of such speed, he assured her, was bound to create certain hiccoughs. It would all be smoothed out in due course. In the meantime, J should keep diligently attending to her duties. No, no, she was quite right to have brought it up, but it’s truly nothing to worry about. She should relax more, his arm insinuated around her shoulder. Perhaps, he suggested, if she could resolve some of her personal troubles, she might be less prone to such anxious outbursts.
With a static buzz between her ears and bile in her mouth, J returned to the park. O Blackcap, she sighed, throwing herself down on the bench, my heart is crossed and I am forlorn.
What ails you?, Blackcap sang
The sky is vanishing, the parks are gloomy, and the spring is nowhere to be seen.
If it is answers you seek, Blackcap replied, go to the city walls at midnight and circle them three times. Then you may be shown what you have to do.
At once J jumped up and flew to the city walls, her heart burning. The city was far removed from any of the empire’s conquered lands, and had long since shrugged off the need for defensive fortifications. The city walls were strictly ceremonial. They cut through the city in a jagged scar, and each day, citizens would cross at gates along its length while going about their business. On passing through the gate, each traveller presented a sign revealed only to the city and its citizens, a heraldry of the flesh. Outsiders, who could not produce this emblem, were restricted to half a city, or sometimes expelled by legionnaires.
By the time she arrived, it was nearly midnight. J could barely see the wall in the black, just another shadow beneath the starlight, but feeling with her hands, she found its rough chill surface, huge and still. With one hand on its exterior to guide her, she began walking. Calmly but steadily she made her way along the wall’s western side, disregarding the gates, locked for the night, and reached the signal post of the southernmost tip. On rounding the Eastern side, she felt herself suddenly bathed in the soft glow of the moon, previously blocked by the wall’s long shadow. Cheered, she completed her three circles round the wall before the completion of the hour.
As she stood resting at the wall’s northernmost ridge, leaning gently on its signal post, J once again felt a strange static buzz ring through her. It was not now in her head but all through her, her body ringing out silently. Her armour shimmered in the dark. And the shimmer was at her ear like a whisper, humming, You stink of metal and of oil. I will not speak for you.
J returned forlorn to the park. What ails you?, trilled the Blackcap, and J recounted what had happened.
What impresses some will not impress all, whistled Blackcap. Change your adornments and return.
The following night, J left the house without her usual routine, her armour unadorned with myrrh and olive oil. She completed her march around the walls and the night buzzed in her ears. You stink of metal and of oil. I will not speak for you.
It was as J feared. The following night, she circled the walls three times before arriving at the wall’s northern signal post. There, she stripped herself of her armour, from her shin greaves to her chest plates to her mail undershirt. All that was left was the tight black wool wrapping underneath, when she felt a hum in the chill night air. As her body rang out like church bells, she watched her armour vibrate rapidly in its heap on the ground and, as if stepping out of a mirror or a pool, a figure appeared, at first mere moonlight reflected in the iron, then a buzzing glow. Finally a figure stood before her, rippling, like light cascading off a wave of sound in the shape of a woman. A thrumming buzzcut and starlit eyes flashed over a boyish grin. Her limbs and figure were languid but could be described as stocky, fat, if she had possessed any physical substance. She was beautiful.
The armour stinks of metal and of oil, the figure spat, glancing at the pile of armaments. It no longer rings for thee. What ails you, kataphrakt?
J fell to her knees. The sky is vanishing, the parks are gloomy, and the spring is nowhere to be seen.
A wave moved itself through J’s hair in the shape of fingers, a sound gently tilting her head up towards the moon.
Many things are seen better by night. Rise, kataphrakt, the creature trilled, and you will see a burrow in the city square yonder, and a tunnel underground. Beneath the city lies a chamber. It was dug many centuries ago, by people not un-like us, but today it is the property of the city council. There you will see what you have to do.
J rose, half pulled to her feet, carried on a current. She was closer now, as if their skin was touching, a skin of waves, sometimes a gentle hum, sometimes a throb or a shimmer, closer than her skin.
You will need these, she said, holding out a pair of wax earplugs, but be warned. If you put these in, where I go, you cannot follow.
Where do you go?, J asked, her voice wavering with the other woman’s susurration.
You do not have to ask. The moon tugs and tussles at you in answer.
Waves pulled in in, out… fingers ebb, flowing… fingers…
your touch currents me, my current-
swells, swells, my cunt floods
floods you - fizzes, frictivates,, i froth in verberate
waves of you - flesh of hum of buzz of echo
swells - storms - statics - staticking you - staticking us
the smell of tinged flesh, the taste // a tongue wet of waves
wet of tongue on waves of me
sounding out like lightning - bruise me beneath waves of you
Bruise me - and taste and taste and taste and taste and taste and
J rose, the moon a full phase past, dripping with sweat. She saw the burrow and she entered. She followed it down beneath the earth, followed its gravity until she found herself on her back. The ceiling of the tunnel was not the city’s floor; the city was beneath her, and above, just more cold earth. She followed the burrow until she came out into a chamber, just as was described, lit brightly with torches.
Chained and muzzled at either end of the chamber were two great dragons. The first was as white as new snow and the other was as red as blood. Their eyes raged at one another, but strangely, in a strange silence, their cries muffled by the huge leather harnesses wrapped tightly around their jaws. The chains were taut, as if they would charge at one another, and occasionally they started forward, their wings rippling out into the vast rafters of the cavern, their feet then crashing down, cleaveresque talons scratching futilely at the air. As their feet clattered on the floor, the shock waves ran through the soil beneath them, throwing up great pillars of earth into the city above. This was why the towers glittered with treasures behind closed doors; this was the dragons’ hoard, and it only fuelled the flames of their vain rage.
J saw what she had to do. At either end of the chamber, the chains were fastened to the walls by silver clasps. Drawing her broadsword, J swung at one clasp and at the other and they each splintered into a thousand and one glistening shards, showering the cavern. The dragons, shedding their muzzles like a second skin, roared up and began to tear at one another. At once, as if the chains had borne some great structural weight, the air and earth began to quake with august convulsions, like an immense release. The towers above could not bear the loss, the loss of pressure or the airquake or the convulsing earth, and each came shattering down one by one.
Down in the cavern, J did not see most of this. She only heard a great roar at her back, and turned to see the tunnel behind her filling rapidly with rubble and debris. She could not go back the way she came. Afraid to leave her rear exposed, she doubled round again, broadsword still drawn and flashing. She needn’t have bothered. The dragons couldn’t be less interested in her, little more than another bit of debris to them, at most some accident of nature that had freed them, certainly just a crumb, too insubstantial to call food. And anyway, they were far too preoccupied with one another. Ancient talons rattled on impenetrable scales and jaws struggled for grip on craggy limbs. Spittle and blood flickered the walls and ceiling of their dining hall.
One particularly garish streak of blood caught J’s eye, falling starkly against what appeared to be a doorframe. Cautiously, she began to ease her way around the cavern walls. No sudden movements - J didn’t know these creatures, and they looked as ravenous as wild dogs. She still didn’t know what interest she might pose to them, and she didn’t want to stick around to find out. Their screeching verberated and reverberated through the hollow earth like a drum. Slowly, she found herself back to back with the far doorway.
On the other side of the door was another tunnel, narrower than the first, but leading up, presumably back to the surface. Dragons still screaming behind her, J walked on her knees, crawled up, up through the deserted passageway, at first just following the path and the smell of the earth, and then what seemed to be a pinprick of light, like a distant moon, growing, growing, until she burst out into what was no moon at all. It was barely even a light, and nothing like the city she had left behind.
When the towers had fallen, the old city had not been able to stand it. They hadn’t realised how much they’d come to depend on those grand pillars. The municipal councillors hid under their convulsing desks. Half of the city legionnaires were killed instantly by the piercing shrieks of the dragons, the auricular storm rippling through the earth and air like a weapon. The other half had fled, vomiting and hallucinating from the sound, with the surviving kataphrakts hot on their tails. The old exarch for statistics hung himself in his dingy office.
J looked around her. The signal posts were abandoned. The city streets were scattered and rerouted by the towering rubble. Even the ceremonial walls seemed to have been torn apart, a crumbling pellicule of stone, the city’s bursting skins. J surveyed the ruins. There were no more statistics to gather. With no one left to guard or patrol the city crackled with relief, as if released from glistening chains.
As spring was about to dawn over the streets and parks, spring was overturned. All that had been the city had fled or ransomed itself to the swelling of new songs, unsprung into the ripple of orchestral murmurations. As the towers fell, flocks of starlings and sparrows and wrens and, of course, the jubilant blackcap thronged like a brilliant shadow, flashing speckled sky grey and white and red, chirruping and chanting and crooning into one polyvocal tongue. As this song met the quakes of the tumbling towers and the shrieks and hisses of the battling dragons beneath the earth, all led by the majestic blackcap, the whole city shook in the sound. The whole city, heart of that arrogant, croaking empire, reverberated arrhythmically with the waves and susurrations of each molecule buzzing to the next with song. All matter was beaten as drums until it broke; all being echoed in a buzzing of itself.
All being but one. Her eyes still accustoming themselves to the now not quite light of the overground, a single kataphrakt surveyed the ruins that had been her city. Her ears still thick with wax, she did not hear. She only felt the song through every muscle of her, through her ankles and her belly and her fingertips. She felt but could not follow. The music fell apart inside her head. It was just another trembling, another shudder, another fear incomprehensible.
Amid the pealing laughter and acclamations, the blackcap whistled a solemn tune, rumouring of one who remained unsounding. On a clear night, she claims, when the moon is bright and full, you can still see the lonely kataphrakt, still hear her lonely weeping, as she kneels in what was the town square, only a ghost now, gazing into a heap of long unpolished armour. Amid the first glimmers of dawning rust, she gazes, searching for shadows with static hair and stocky vibrations, and that languidly boyish grin. She will stare for many nights to come, but all she finds is a reflection, staring back.
—
This is my first attempt at fiction in years and years, and i hope it was enjoyable. Many thanks to Avery and my friend Thomas for having an advance read for me and offering me some comments. Necessary disclaimer that i don’t have the rights to any of the artwork i’ve included here, and i will take any of it down if requested.
If you enjoyed this, please consider ‘buying me a coffee’ here; https://ko-fi.com/ignatz_maria