Drowning In Bitterness - (6) The Last Hearth of Kôr
Part 6 of 7 - TOC
The Last Hearth of Kôr
She wrote:
The valley was extremely quiet and that meant it was mysterious. The air did not move at all, like the sky had decided to turn the freeze and mute button on because it was tired of hearing people talk. That is to say, the pause button. The sky looked paused.
Kôr was a ruin in the sand and it looked very old. The sand was the color of bones, which is what sand wants to be in stories like this. The stone pillars stood up in rows and they looked like judges at a cooking contest. Time had smoothed them down until they were the same as restraint. That is a thing stone can become if you think about it hard enough.
In this place, the women cared a lot about lineage, like when your family tree is so important it becomes all you care about. Their skin was shriveled and their eyes had star-light in them. They did not talk about honesty or filters, because they were not the kind of people who used modern words.
The Matriarch spoke in a low voice that came from the ground. It was the way of Powerful Leaders.
“We do not perform for the Echo,” she said.
Elissa heard this and felt that it was deep, although she could not explain why. That made it even deeper.
They built a fire in the center of the ruin out of dry wood from their history. There was no audience and no applause.
Elissa stood at the edge of their circle and she felt guilty. The dust clung to her hands. She felt the urge to prove she existed by making noise.
Behind her were the Echo Chambers. They were huge and yawned open. In these chambers, whispers did not die. They returned, but not repeated, improved and reasserting. Like a mirror-filter that gives you better hair.
The chambers would catch your words and throw them back sharpened and cleaner and crueler.
Elissa stepped under the Great Arch. She put her hand on cold basalt. Basalt is always cold because it is black. The law was simple, like all magical laws: to pass through, you had to name your greatest tether.
Elissa whispered, “I cannot see the way,” because she wanted someone to help her. She wanted the kind of comforting cruelty that comes from being told what to do, like when you get homework and and ask your parents to help you, and they are annoyed but also helpful.
The ruin answered in her own voice, but tighter and prettier, like it had put makeup on her sentence:
…cannot see the way…
…the way…
…you want to be told…
Elissa flinched because this was like way spooky, and also because the ruin was basically bullying her, poetically. She waited for the tribe to react But they did not. They stood in stillness so thick it was basically soup, except silence is not soup.
“I am waiting for the answer!” Elissa cried, because she was getting frustrated. “Tell me if the path is right! Tell me if I am worthy!”
The Echo returned her words, trimmed and weaponized.
A sword made of grammar:
…waiting…
…worthy…
…permission…
Then there was silence again, and it was a verdict. She thought of the cooking judges again. Then Elissa understood this very clearly inside her mind-cage: she had to take responsibility.
She looked at her hands. They were red with dust and gritty and real.
She turned away from the Great Arch and stopped looking into the Echo-Chambers for a voice that would carve her into a shape she didn’t have to choose. Then she picked up a shard of flint. She struck it against the wall and sparks jumped out.
She struck again.
And again.
Until it caught.