4 BOOK1: SPLINTERED MAPLE: CHAPTER4: “Small Steps”

CHAPTER4:”Small Steps”

Light filtering through the great hourglass spread and brushed across Tharne’s eyes. Colours immeasurable passed him and for the third time, he gave up on trying to get back to sleep.

Standing up slowly and painfully from the hard black tiles, he flexed his fingers, arms and legs in an attempt to get some feeling flowing back through them. Their makeshift camp spread before him around the alcove near the great fountain he had sat by only hours previous. Cloth beds they had made from tearing sacks and curtains from the kitchen, which they had then raided, setting the food in stacks nearby. Their coats and capes, hanging on a makeshift line above the roaring fire of discarded beams and felled bookshelves, the books, seeming too precious to burn, even in their blank state, lay carefully stacked and wrapped back in the corners of the library. More heavy beams and cracked remains of bookshelves lay in a formidable small wall in a semi-circle about waist high around the camp giving at least, the illusion of safety. Nearby, Nima stirred, rolling in her uncomfortable bedding and fell back to sleep.

Sitting silently on the sheer edge of the wall, sat Ivy. Her watch had been last, and she sat, staring silently, cross legged in the dim flashes of sparkling light, emanating from the enormous twisting structure less than thirty meters away.

“I can feel it” she said quietly, unmoving. “Just as I can feel you and Nima.”
“Like something hidden, hidden in the back of my mind”

“I Know” He said, and moved forward slowly to stand beside her. “I can feel it too”.

“It is strange, I almost feel like there is part of you there too” she said quietly.
“The same strong and gentle silence I can hear when you are nearby, it is one small part of this, this thing.”
“Nima is there too, Like a soft blowing hurricane” Ivy paused and chuckled.
“I’m sorry but it’s just how she, feels to me I guess”

“Yes I get the same from her too” Said Tharne, and he laughed with her. “Almost like a strong wind which careens around my feet, making me dance and testing my balance.” He stopped and paused deep in thought. “But a kind wind none the less” he added.

Staring towards the great Crystal structure of the Hourglass, he thought he could sense what Ivy meant. Somewhere in there was a gentle silence as she put it, which reverberated back like a harmony with his own voice. Nima’s Swirling, playful fury was there too and somewhere was the gentle, shy and unsure Ivy.

Almost in a whisper, Ivy spoke again “what do I feel like to you?”  Her face lowered yet clearly showing a blushed complexion.

“You are like a warm sun Ivy” he said, speaking without thinking “Always there, keeping everything good and whole and growing.” A small smile played from the corner of his mouth, ‘ and when angered you have a burning fury just waiting to be unleashed”

“ I am not a burning Fury!” she cried, Batting him with the butt of her Sceptre and a quick dancing chase around the strewn camp items followed, ending with Ivy Knocking over a stack of crates, Tharne laughing as he ran and tripping on Nima, resolving in her  waking and bellowing a few curses at them both , the likes of which made them gape in shock and then fall down Laughing all over again.

They set to getting ready and made a meal of the foods they had found, Preserved and cured meats and crisp sealed bread together with fresh fruits and vegetables Ivy had found growing in one of the gardens.

“We need to take small steps” Spluttered Nima through a mouth full of bread.
Swallowing hard she continued. “We should do this methodically, set up a more defensible position and explore from there.”
Taking another big bite of her meal she muttered, “I don’t fancy being run down by any of those beasties again”

They all nodded in agreement, they had no desire to live through that again.

During their brief time together they had all discussed their times before they had met. Before Tharne had met Ivy, she had awoken in a similar fashion to him on the far side of the great lake in the Forest room, after traveling around the place for many hours, she had been attempting to find somewhere to rest when a great ripping sound crashed in the distance and she watched as a great tree rotted and split in the forest ahead of her. From the bowels of the earth beneath it, erupted a foul creature of darkest shadows. She had outrun it, barely, for hours before Tharne had rescued her.

Nima had awoken to a similar situation, and found herself in a great maze of pipes. Following the flow of water, and avoiding the many huge gears and turbines, she had exited out into the start of one of the small rivers that flow through the great forest. Scavenging around for food, she was attacked by a flying beast of pure darkness, swooping down with its many crooked talons. Struggling to evade she had leapt for cover behind a looming beech tree. The creature tore at the tree, ripping huge chunks from its side and tearing branches asunder. Finally, cornered and desperate, she had grasped a fallen shard of the tree to defend herself and felt her energies surge within it. And as the great winged beast fell upon her the many shards of wood on the ground leapt to her bowstring, firing in a torrent of arrows all directly landing in a perfect circle in the creature, bringing it down.

Needless to say, whenever Nima told this story, she accompanied it with vigorous dialogue and dramatic acting.

“Where do you suggest Nima” Said Tharne,
“well I think that big kitchen is a good bet. The walls are solid, we have food and water and the doors are big enough to stop even an assault by Ivy!” and she winked cheekily, her smile growing bigger as Ivy’s face grew more and more shocked and outraged.

All agreed, and the work was quickly done, the big stone kitchen was cleaned and everything organised. They set three big rolls of sack cloth into one of the large storage areas and strung them up into three hanging hammocks. The food was organised and stored and all the equipment they had salvaged from the library and store rooms nearby was stacked nearby. Rope, bags, sticks and water jugs were all ready to go should the need arise.

Lastly, at the end of the corridor, they stacked their makeshift walls and set them in the hall before and after the doors. The doors themselves were shut and the large brass key tested. Finally feeling safe and secure, they locked the doors, set a watch and let the fire burn low as they slept in turns.

“Remember” Nima said. “Small steps first, let’s not get ahead of ourselves”

“Agreed” said Tharne and Ivy nodded silently.

Exiting the kitchen they locked its great stone doors, Tharne took the key and hung it around his neck to keep it safe and they set off. The tunnels Nima had found herself in appeared to also have an entrance from the great Hall into them through the door directly opposite the kitchens. They all gave the giant crystal hourglass a wide berth but the silence in the group reflected the feeling of dread they all experienced when they were near that blood red strand, as it glowed and choked the other twelve colours. Water dripped from a crumbling balcony above them as a great flock of brightly coloured birds took flight, their tiny figures weaving patterns through the air above him as he walked and watched for danger.  Choking green vines and great drooping trees above seemed to cluster over the hundreds of spiralling stairs and walkways above them and lights of a million colours sprayed through them as the hourglass reflected its light through the water and glass, spiralling upwards till it was lost from sight.

“It must be hundreds of floors to the top” Moaned Ivy. “How will he ever find our way out of here?”

Neither of the others spoke. They had been thinking the exact same thing. It could take years to explore this place. And years which they could not calculate, some rooms, Like the great forest, appeared to have days and nights in a set pattern and yet others like the kitchen library and even the great hall itself had a permanent never ending glow to them even when there was no source of light. Almost as though the Black walls and stone pillars themselves generated a dreamy pale undertone.

As they approached the tunnels, they prepared themselves. The tunnels it seemed were in a state of permanent blackness. Even the light they created through fire or their wooden totems natural glow didn’t seem to penetrate far enough into the blackness. As though it was keeping the light at bay.

Tharne produced a long cord of fine rope they had found in the kitchen store rooms and proceeded to tie it first to himself, then Ivy and then Nima, leaving a length of a few meters between them. Then taking the other end he fixed it to the arm of the strange warrior statue on a pedestal nearby, and they proceeded into the tunnels.

Soon they were lost; the tunnels branched left and right and seemed to somehow twist un-naturally around on them where they should have not been able to do so. Sometimes they would pass great machines of unknown origin, gold, yet dull and pale in the shadow of their lights. The machines were mysterious enough when their purpose was discernible. The oddest were the machines which appeared to have no purpose. A gear which spun another gear which spun a third gear, all pulled on metallic chains attached to nothing. A sphere which rocked back and forth like a pendulum propelled by a pair of giant mechanical hands protruding from a wall. A strange conveyor belt of small buckets which seemed to pass water through a small box which froze it into cubes, then another box which melted it again and then another which froze it again until it was dropped back into the dish the first drew water from to melt slowly to liquid again.

Ahead, they soon noticed a whirring sound louder than they had heard before. And eagerly, yet cautiously, they approached.

“Watch out!” yelled Tharne, as Nima stepped forward, narrowly missing stepping off a sheer cliff where the floor ended suddenly.

A small ledge opened up ahead of them and then nothing but darkness and a droning hum and clanking of machinery.

“I can’t see anything out there, we will have to go back” said Nima, leaning forward and squinting.

“Wait a minute” Tharne said, reaching out with his Willow staff. “I have an idea”

Reaching forward he concentrated, his energies flowing to the front of his tall staff pointed out into the gloom beyond and then, it fired. Straight out like an orb and stuck to the roof of the chamber, glowing like a globe, it illuminated the room.

Hundreds of great gears turned in a pit of mechanics, whirring and grinding to their own rhythms. Some as large as a house themselves, others as small as a mouse and everything in between, they pulled and spun through cycles of jittering speed.

“What’s this “Ivy said, and reached forward to brush the surface of a small pedestal at the far edge of the platform.

As she touched it, the panel at its top began to glow and a gear in the centre of the room fell into place. Suddenly, the sporadic movement changed to something purposeful and the great gears spun together in a pure fusion of mechanical process.

Above them, somewhere in the structure, a thundering sound echoed, as though one million doors had opened together.

Something was happening.