The Sound of Bells
1.
Even though it was Yuma's idea, she still consented to follow her. It would be her first time in the place Clare called a cathedral.
Tabitha felt there was no specific purpose behind this visit: it was like one of those excursions to retrieve Clare they used to conduct back in the north – just without the troublesome complications of dealing with Clare's character. And when Yuma had proposed it, even Clare agreed to follow; though it appeared clear she looked quiet with a kind of shadowy disinterest. And Deneve, who mumbled something about Yuma being unnecessarily curious, still chose to follow them anyway.
By the time they entered the largest section of the building – which she assumed belonged to the benevolent man Miria was talking to upstairs – spear-lengths of sunshine tore through the eaves of the building. They struck out at divine, chaotic angles, littering the vast space with scars of unfiltered light. On all sides of the room were mouldy, darkened windows which stared outwards at the world around. But they did not catch any light, and Tabitha saw they seemed as drab as the walls.
She threw a glance across the entire space like she would an unfamiliar terrain in battle: an excessive, divided space. Messy, but still cluttered with a sense of orderliness. The blank windows like guards watching the outside (or was it inside?). The eaves like eyelids blinking with sunlight. The ceiling, vaulted, soaring beyond her. The stocky pillars. The cravings that flourished like stale, stone flowers from the tops of those pillars.
Planks – furniture she had never seen such seats before – long, snake-like, like tidily-shaved trunks of trees parting only to reveal one accurately central path down to the centre of the room. And then: a table, a platform, an assembly of thrones.
Above it, poking out of the dark stone walls like it should not be there: a haze of blood red, tan gold, bruise blue. A glistening, painfully bright slice of glass and colour seemingly embedded without purpose in the drab serious wall above them, like a jewel poking its sparkle from a mound of earth.
She turned to Deneve. "What is it?" she asked.
"What is what?"
"That."
When she saw Deneve –her eyes ground-wards, shielded, not even bothering to look – she knew she would not answer. Tabitha turned instead to Clare.
"Some work of art."
Clare tried again: "Someone painted it I think."
"But don't you think it's beautiful, Clare?"
Yuma, eclipsed by Clare's lack of a response, nodded instead.
She thought a word such as beautiful did not exist in Clare's vocabulary; and even if it did, Clare seemed loathe to use it. Still, Tabitha saw, she followed the ascending glances of Yuma and herself to the flashy mess of colours. From behind it, she saw the sun had smeared a template of shades, washing across in invisible waves of morning humidity, over the ground they were standing.
"It's called stained glass."
But Deneve was now looking back out the way they came, at the black timber doors like gates into the vicinity of this silent, nervous underworld.
"But." She saw Yuma look to Deneve and back up at the object. "What's it supposed to mean?"
This time Deneve looked right Yuma in the eye: "And how would I know?"
Tabitha drifted over to where the pool of sun-torched reflection of the stained glass ended; she thought she had just slipped into a water-less pond and out again. She posited herself at the bare box of heavy-set wood rising from the floor. Pulpit, Deneve called it. (So many new words!) A table beyond it – elaborately dressed with gold skirting, a green cloth surely, surely more luscious than Cynthia's tresses – laden with assorted objects left there so purposely they insisted some greater motive circulated in the very air around them.
She was waiting for Deneve to sacrifice the silence for an explanation. But instead Clare disrupted her; she watched as Clare, stealing her moment of quiet curiosity, clambered onto the – pulpit – and rose to her full height, like a scout. Only now she seemed to be trying survey the meaning behind everything they had observed so far.
"Clare are you sure –"
Deneve's all-knowing, all-seeing voice: "Let her do what she wants, Yuma."
She ignored all of them. Even Clare, who deftly plucked from within the – pulpit – a book which appeared to be impersonating as a boulder. She shut them out first: there was the dazzling coloured image which blazed and cast its own shadow upon her to confront. She traced the lines and symbols, tooth-like chunks which blinked at her; blinking, she felt, like opulent, over-obvious eyes begging for her to interpret them.
She thought if she tried to close her eyes to consolidate the image, it would be easier That was how it was meant to be, wasn't it? A tried technique she knew never failed: in darkness, a yoki-lit circumference of shades and hues. But, now in light, a freckled, light-tossed flower of questionable design.
She opened her eyes. Clare stood beside her, their shoulders almost touching, tense as if on the climax of some great discovery. Her presence chipped away her own senses: Clare was that unsettling.
She edged away from Clare; recovering from her self-imposed darkness, her vision fraying to tatters of vivid, opague shades of gleaming stripes, she found herself fixated. There were images there. Yes – they were there. Now, only now, was she beginning to detach them from the greater morass of incoherent shapes on the glass. She knew they had a meaning. She knew – surely –
"Do you see them?" she asked Clare.
Clare's voice struck like a handful of snow: "The things you see with those eyes of yours."
But she was seeing them; she was seeing them, so finely melded into the colours they seemed like blots of insignificance: a pack of panting, leering men's faces. A street of brown cobblestones so small and stoically drawn. A patch of houses, standing so plainly in the background scenery of the image, like flowers by a hillside. And at the focus of it: at the bottom left, a man, clearly wracked in pain, bloodied, surrounded by men, his face upturned at an infinitely twisted angle, dog-tongued, revolting.
His eyes, circles of swirling zero-points of black eyeing an atmosphere shrouded by clouds.
She stepped back, the image of the man hurting her eyes. She spoke, but to no one in particular: "What do they call this place again?"
"A cathedral."
"I think, Clare, that the proper name is a church."
She caught Clare as she flung an unsatisfied glare at Deneve, who was still slouching by the first row of the long wooden beams, with Yuma watching nearby.
"What purpose does it serve?"
Her echoing query made its way around them without an answer. Noticing Clare – slightly put off by Deneve – dusk her hands across the row of chairs, she moved into the unlighted corner of the church/ cathedral. The chairs were arranged so straight they seemed like a thicket of thrones.
"I think they pay respect to some person."
Paying respect - and what did that mean? As Tabitha traced the edges of carvings set into the walls she tried to imagine it: paying respect. The kind of respect she had for, say, Miria? That kind of respect? Or, throwing her eyes downwards to Clare – that kind of respect?
"Wait –"
She could feel their flickering presence even before she could see them, but Deneve had already drawn her weapon: two human men emerged from the doors. Within the light-torched window behind her, they were but twin pieces of movement, outlined fiercely by the central gap between the wooden planks. They paused halfway.
And then, they turned and disappeared, without acknowledging their presence.
Whether or not their appearance had anything to do with what occurred next, Tabitha was not completely sure. But shortly after, a deep ring, an echoing metallic chime surged through the entire place. It echoed once, then again, repeatedly, faithfully in the same two tones. Each tone, sharp and heavy, shook the windows, and made the furniture huddle in trembling.
"Bells."
Tabitha looked up. She knew they were coming from beyond the ceiling – if only she could –
"They're calling people to come," Deneve said again. "Let's go. We shouldn't stay."
She closed her eyes on Clare and Yuma making their exit. In the portion of darkness, raked by the mournful sound, she could still feel a faint, but warm, well of yoki through the deadness of the walls.
"Tabitha? You coming?"
Clare's voice overwhelmed her return to the interior of the Rabonan structure. Me? Follow you? Now?
"Miria is still here. So I'm staying"
She saw Clare shrug elaborately. She thought she heard her mutter "as usual" but at that moment the sound of the bells ended. And all she could hear were Clare's diminishing steps.
2.
As usual.
If only – if only – she could force that edgy sarcasm out from Clare's tongue. But there would be no use making a scene – that Clare – and the idea was unsavoury. That Clare – unstable, whiny, who did not care about whatever came from her mouth.
Tabitha sharpened her knuckles on her forehead: so she was a loyal warrior to her leader. And her leader was Miria. So what?
She waited in between the shade granted by two windows; the warped architecture gave enough shade for her to wait and be subtly mistaken for any of the statues littered in the sanctuary. Her position of camouflage kept away already insecure eyes – eyes flashing absently at her from the crowds of people ambling through the doors.
These guests milled around and finally came to rest on the wooden planks; others were to be found kneeling at the front, near the thing called the pulpit. She did not want to be noticed – but could not help observing them.
So was this the equivalent – no – the Rabonan example of paying respect? Or was it? Or were they waiting for something else?
She saw them, muttering, their heads falling steadfastly to the ground in a kind of numb, heaving repetition. Their hands were fitfully clasped with something she had once seen Miria – and, unbelievably, Clare – do, in a variation of many styles, types and manners. Something they called, in vague descriptive words, prayer – whatever it meant – something supposedly serious, forbidding interruption. Some kneeled so precariously: like they were waiting upon the graves at Pieta, in devotional ritual, in painful memory.
Only now there was no grave and no memory – she was certain she could not see any. Outlined by the drawling cast of a winged man, the crowd turned up-faced in one single direction – did that have a meaning, too?
(The form of the winged man, draped in stone, at ease with his sword – she tried not to look into his sheen-coloured eyes of plaster white. Prior to today, the only things with wings she had seen were yoma.)
A burdensome draft of silence. And the crowd turned quiet. Tabitha saw a man mount the pulpit : the same soft-faced man who had been addressing Miria when they left her in one of the inner rooms. She picked out his garb. Surely – ceremonial, lucidly symbolic: all those uncanny symbols branded into the fabric. He walked with an air of a northern forest enchanted by snow-drenched light – something mysterious. The other visitors and guests actively acknowledged his presence as he stood and watched them from behind the pulpit, like an eagle roosting on the highest peak.
Like the crowd, she paused to wonder. Is this the power this man has over other humans? The power that made Miria approach him equally, respectfully, calling him father when (as all in the company of seven knew) she had no memory of her parents?
She saw his eyes rush in her direction: they made the slightest twitch, as if they could squint through the thick shadow and pick her out. She stared back. But his gaze already moved away, falling on the repetition of upturned faces like flowers pressing for the sun.
His voice spread outwards like a gale:
"It is written in the scriptures – the just shall live by faith!"
What an unusual combination of words! Tabitha, her mind thinking, clambered over the first wave of this phrase which this man had spoke with a storm-laced voice and a cut from his right arm. A meditative pause followed, and still thinking, she realized she could sense Miria's presence. The comfortable texture of its yoki seemed to be descending away from where she stood.
"Yes. It is the truth through which we are all here today. In the face of the tragedies and the miraculous rescue from a monster we have witnessed, though we have seen many martyred for our faith." A broad sweep to the panel of richly-gleaming colours behind. "Through it all – the just shall live by faith!"
Was he talking about her? No – about the company of the seven of them? Tabitha wanted to listen on, but Miria's fading presence exerted a greater force, pulling her from her hidden point – pulling her away from this man. This man and his glass structure and his big words.
3.
She should have expected it. And she should have already predicted, understandably, the outcome of their meeting.
Miria, she felt, had long chosen not to exercise leadership or her trademark control over them. They were in the South now, free to make their own choices. So when all seven of them met to decide the next road to take, Tabitha knew their routes from Rabona (if they were to venture out at all) would diverge.
"As for me, I will stay and pray for your safe return."
Miria's voice, like a benediction, summed up the fulfillment of their agreement: they were going to separate. All seven of them would no longer be one company, one group. After seven years, she thought, Miria allowed the inevitable to pass.
And standing with them, on the ramparts of Rabona, watching, waiting for her comrades to evaluate their decisions, she tried not to make eye-contact with Clare. Clare – who was going to chase remotely, to the ends of the earth if she could, her mysterious ally, the phantom-like symbol of that boy whose only existence, Tabitha believed, laid in the conceptual realm of a desperate warrior with a flawed imagination.
She was sure Yuma, Cynthia – even possibly Miria – shared her view. But she dared not speak out. Steadying herself as Clare and Deneve embraced, she still waited on Clare. Even though she was taking Cynthia and Yuma away.
When it came to her turn, she took Clare's hug as steady as she could.
She took a clear, possibly final, sidelong look at the grinning Helen, then to Yuma and her unassuming conversation with a bright-eyed Cynthia. Behind them, in an almost startling clarity, she could see almost five miles from the banners on the Rabonan ramparts to a haze-worn land blossoming with hills, and overlaid with grey-bottomed clouds turning as they trudged through the sky.
What a clear day, she thought.
4.
She followed Miria directly back to the – cathedral, leaving the other five to ready their preparations for departure. It did occur to her that only she and Miria would be the staying in Rabona – a final bastion for the city (plus the two recently defected warriors, plus the powerful blind nun) – but it did not come to her as a feeling. It seemed more an observation, something which should, properly, be so.
The door lay ajar. Inside, she took a moment to remember the surroundings. Unlike the last time she had entered the cathedral, the afternoon sun had now completely shuffled light, shade and darkness into new positions and degrees. The windows no longer divided the sanctuary into even portions of illuminated space and untended shade. Instead, they thrust a harsh afternoon glare towards the opposing wall, highlighting heads, legs, arms of the statues as if by diurnal accident. Everything else fell into a content shadow.
The fragment of swirling, hue-scattered reflections from the stained glass window had been tossed to the very head of the large space. Some of its colours seemed visibly twisted by the intensity of light.
A sword-like streak of pale red fell draped, possessively, on Miria's left shoulder. And Tabitha spotted her leader before the pulpit, her head lowered.
Tabitha approached. She could feel Miria's yoki, like a flare in the cramped half-light of the cathedral signaling her forward. The elder warrior gave no sign that she had noticed her closing in on her. Her head remained firmly, humbly sunk – Tabitha thought – into the devout solitude of the large figures in the stained glass that overwhelming her frame. Closer, just closer – and Tabitha saw, with a swelling discomfort, the faces of the evil, spear-tongued men in the glass image congregated around her leader like a pale crimson halo.
Was she – praying? She could only see the gently shut eyes, the clasped hands; she could feel the constant ebb and flow of Miria's breath. And the silent words, slipping from her lips into this repressed atmosphere, unheard but having meaning.
When she advanced further, Miria stirred, spoke:
"Tell me, Tabitha. Do you trust me?"
Trust me. Why the question? And what a question! Miria still had yet to rise from her position. With her forehead still aimed at the ground, Tabitha could almost imagine another voice from within the room had deceived her.
"Tabitha?"
Her name framed in her leader's throat like a plea: she knew Miria wanted more than just opinion. Trust. Standing square to Miria, she could almost feel the dancing, flaking yoki energies of her other five comrades in their supposed anticipation to depart Rabona. She could feel both their excitement and their anxieties accumulating, in the hushed, rapid whispering that Miria made.
And trust. Tabitha stormed deep into her thoughts to frame that word with Miria's almost hunching, penance-burdened form. Trust. Trust Miria like the man in the stained glass window, whose colours were absorbing them in a dissolving shroud of light – like that man's trust in his own god, trust to the point of shattering, screaming, resplendent sacrificial death –
But the answer never found any challenge, imagined or not:
"You know better than to ask me, Miria," Tabitha said. Her tone had quickened, like she intended it to be a trivial joke. From a certain perspective, she could not help thinking so.
"Our trust in you has gotten this far."
She thought she saw the edges Miria's mouth thin like a blade. But she confronted her with another question:
"Did I do the right thing, Tabitha? Was I right in letting all of them leave?"
Tabitha began to feel a second uneasy feeling numb her thoughts. Miria still remained stagnantly in place, the last words of the question swallowing the air around them.
"You're our leader. We know, down to the very last breath, that you are right."
She exhaled. The effort in putting her thoughts into words took a satisfying but tiresome toll on her tongue, her head, her own imagination of the Miria she knew: the phantom touch of her reassurance and the strong power in her voice. Tabitha did not want either to fall from her.
In the grating silence, Miria's eyes finally glowed back to life. Not facing Tabitha, she spoke once more: "Maybe you should reconsider you decision to stay. There's nothing here –"
Enough – enough questioning –
Tabitha saw her hands reach out to her leader – she saw them soften into her shoulders – and then, her leader's eyes aflame, body tense beneath the sword-grip of her own palms, Miria's face was before hers.
"Why do you ask me?" Tabitha wanted it to be a question too. But it had all the harshness of a demand.
Do you not trust me?
Miria linked their arms, and Tabitha felt the press of her hands; she felt almost like her shoulders were being lifted. She tried her utmost to stare into her leader's eyes, being unable many times before to withstand her glare.
Miria shrugged. "I've been afraid for them. I don't know how many will return alive."
Tabitha felt warmed by the intense closeness in, and of, those words. She wanted to maintain the stare, hold the glazed, steady line of sight Miria possessed. If this was what trust felt like – she choose, in that split-second – to lower her arms, thawed from their rash move from Miria's shoulders. Until it was Miria who was steadying her.
"That's why I'm here."
"That's why you will have at least me when you choose to move out."
"And –"
Tabitha would never admit that, with Miria's arms forming a saving bridge between them, she would expect Miria to pull her close and embrace her. But Miria did. And when Miria – with her stoned-faced frown untouched, her thin lanky arms taunt and (probably) unable to withstand any longer, her fragrant locks grazing the side of her right cheek, her angular chin like a sword's hilt, planting and stabbing itself in the slope of flesh on Tabitha's shoulder – did, all Tabitha could remember seeing were the downward-flashing eyes of the men in the stained glass painting, made greasy by the light. She saw them – and she pressed her arms tighter around Miria's neck.
"You know I have no one else to follow –"
She did not mean it to be an emotional confession, or a observation point. To her, it was a mere statement of fact.
5.
She awoke to an anticipated absence of light. The underside of her thighs were numb with the cold – a cold bursting from the harsh stone floor, clinging to a long stretch of her skin. She took several moments to recall the surroundings. Her world, blurred by early morning serenity, burned into understanding.
The cathedral. The pulpit. The stained glass window –
No light decorated the stained glass window. And now it looked discoloured and inconsistent, like someone had shattered a pane and left it in its place .
She unfurled Miria's arm from her shoulders, taking care not to wake her. In her sleep Tabitha thought she could pass off as dead: completely silent and still. Miria's arm beckoned to her like a gesture urging her to remain. But Tabitha rose, following the nearest shred of light, and ending up at a misted window.
And as she watched the city slowly searching its way out of shadow into a sluggish creep of sunlight, the bells high above her sounded in a single chorus: a solid echo that flew across the still quiet city faster than light, faster than her own eyes –
She tried to imagine that after this morning there would be neither Helen to laugh along with, nor Clare to get resentful at. Clare, Yuma, Cynthia, Deneve, Helen – they were waiting to depart. They were waiting to disappear into the blind clarity of the opening day.
But now she shook the cold from her, running a palm down her arms. She moved back to Miria, still at ease with the impending sunlight and continuous striking of bells. And, lowering herself, she warmed Miria's upturned forehead with a kiss.
"Wake up," she whispered.
She found her voice drowned by the chanting echo all around, the two of them alone in the company of its deep music, untouched by morning light.
EDIT: Written to compliment Proximity. Static setting, but a bit emo. Please tell me your comments.