Chapter 1.
Red, Black, and White
"Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die."
(Death, from Markus Zusak's novel, "The Book Thief")
One story ends.
Another begins.
That is how they taught you to see things.
In actuality, they never knew themselves.
The truth is,
The story never ends.
It is only ever continued.
Let me tell you a story.
It began on a night like any other: a night where a young man discovered how time could be raised and sculpted by the hands of the most skillful.
His name was Caul Peregrine.
He lived in a big, old house filled with children. And a bird. They were very happy.
Until one day Caul looked into the mirror. At first he only saw himself, but as he stared longer, he began to notice that he was not alone. A great emptiness surrounded him, filling the room with air and matter and choices.
It was a blank page.
Caul could do anything with it. And he would. But first he needed words. He needed words that would sway others, words that would ensure their unwavering loyalty to him no matter how dire the consequences.
So he spoke. And they listened. He spoke again. They shouted their approval.
And the bird cowered. She was not foolish. She knew what horrors might follow.
And they did. They came faster than anyone could have ever imagined.
But there were a few who resisted. There were a few who tried to hold on to their past. Those few tried to resist a monster so deadly and cunning, that he took Caul's words and strung them together in a new pattern.
It was called the Script.
…
It was nothing but a broken mirror, cracked through the middle. A very fine layer of dust had settled upon its surface; no one had bothered to wipe it away. However, if you were to look in to this mirror at that particular moment a number of observations would have been made.
1. The men's eyes had been open, practically bulging from their skulls.
2. Their hands were clamped tight over their ears, their fingers dug so deeply into their skin that blood began to dapple the floor in miniscule dots of red.
3. They fell to the ground, one by one, and slowly the transformations began to take place.
There was one thing, however, that the mirror failed to capture. The screaming. It rent itself from each tormented mouth, each one more horrible then the last, filling the room with mindless terror. It never ended.
Now hold on a moment; I was getting ahead of myself. Why should you care that a couple dozen men experienced pain beyond their wildest dreams? It is only a story after all. It can't have anything to do with us.
Let us think of this night as chapter of some sort, a prologue to a far larger and greater story, the inciting event that grabs the listeners' attention. Our duty as the story-teller varies in many ways; whether we wish to become known throughout the world for our extraordinary stories that captivate and bewitch all who know of them, or we just have something to say. Maybe it is because we have nothing to say at all. But there is one thing that always stays the same, no matter what we strive to achieve. There is one goal that we all must fulfill. To get people to listen. If we can manage that, we are gifted with a power beyond any weapon that could ever exist.
There are only two men I know of who have ever held that power in their cupped hands. One was a strange little man who kept a strange little mustache. He wanted to someday rule the world. The other was a young man who only wished to be heard. He would be swallowed in inescapable indifference.
Their lives only briefly touched one another, and when they did the young man was already dead, but they never did forget each other—not even when the Führer delivered himself into Death's arms. For when men who are so similar meet, they are bound to be different. No, the young man would never forget how the Führer gazed at the screaming crowd with burning eyes, and spoke to them in the voice that laid down the lives of many.
"The world is how we make it. The future does not belong to those who are frightened to act, but to those have the courage to stand for what is right. There comes a time we must stand for the will of God, and fight against those who refuse it. This is that time, and I ask you now to raise yourselves together and rid of the plague that has spread across our world!"
He hated the Führer. He hated how his words were fed to the people, leaving them begging for more. But mostly he hated himself, for letting the monster swallow him in a flurry of empty promises and words.
No, this is not a simple story to be brushed aside by time. It is not story to be forgotten within a month or even a year. It must not be forgotten. It must not happen again.
Oh yes, the Bird cowered. She was not foolish. She knew what horrors might follow.
They came in the colors of red and black and white.