Hurrying back through the forest, Carolus pulled his feathered cloak closer around his body. It was a bright day, but so little of the sun's rays penetrated the treetops, evergreen roofs supported by wooden pillars. It was approaching the equinox, and the snow turned the whole area white, obscuring his path back to the village.
Well, city would be a better term for it, but Carolus would always remember the village he knew and loved. Trade had boomed after construction of the well. That hole in the land, a land impervious to downwards movement past a a few span, stretched down and down. The sheer tower that stretched down into the earth was a marvel.
A dangerous marvel the previous elders had said. They had kept the whole village away from it, formed a great walled circle around the hilltop it existed on. They feared to close it up though. There had been prophecies, he had heard, though the elders had kept them to themselves, written them down on scrolls and hidden them away in their huts. They had hoarded away the knowledge and spread rumors of boogeymen coming out of the hole to scare off the curious. And then they died.
The fire had spread through the village burning homes indiscriminately, like a wave washing up the beach until the land was smooth again. He still heard the screams of the burned in his head, still remembered sitting in the ashes of his home, wondering what he could do to survive. That winter had been a hard one, though not quite as nippy as this chill he fled through on his way back from the southern kingdoms.
Walking ahead of him, the sun was quickly making its way downwards to meet the earth again, casting fleeting shadows back through the trees. Then in front of him the treeline cleared and he saw the city. It had grown much since he had left. The wooden huts had expanded out into stone dwellings, chimneys sighing out smoke from warm fires. Two stone walls rose up in front of him, one on the town perimeter to keep out the wolves that roamed the land, and the other stretching up to surround the hill in the town's center. The gate stood open, a guard resting inside next to a fire at the watch-house barely gave him a glance. He had dressed in the village custom, which at least hadn't changed much in the interim it seemed.
Carolus knew he would need to find an inn soon, but the hill drew him in first. The town itself lost its nostalgia in the cobbled streets and stone houses that now stood in defiance of the past, but the hill would always be the hill. The wall around it was not the barricade of the past, but a building's fortification, though this gate too swung open in the chill wind.
Despite the warm feathered cloak, he shivered. It was as it had been, but for the well. Some Mason had made steps to spiral down into the depths, a fact that would have scared the elders back to life if they could know. Stepping up to the edge, Carolus looked down deep into the darkness, trying to see the demons of the past that had frightened him in his youth. More wind, whipping around on this the highest part of the city, wrenching loose a feather from his cloak, then fleeing down the hole with its prize. The white shape fell downward, sucked in by the earth, and in that darkness something darker moved away, taking with it a small bit of the sky-world.
More dark holes in the ground hmmmm? The fire, what's the fire about? Is there water in the well? Why did the presence of a hole in the ground increase the economy. Weakest part of this is talking about the elders and what they had and did. You're telling a lot of stuff that seems automatic and irrelevant.The elders were scared, that's all you need to say. Who goes down the steps? No one it seems, so why build steps?
ReplyDelete