Chapter 6 - A Kytra, Afterall
The moment Faeron pulled the covers to his shoulders and closed his eyes, he knew sleep wouldn’t come easy tonight.
Faeron’s mind was filled with questions to which he had no answers. Could Jakob be out there, somewhere, alive today? If he was alive, did that mean he and Faeron might someday meet? Faeron didn’t know how he felt about that… It would be almost like meeting himself, though he supposed it would be cool to see what kind of kytra Jakob turned out to be.
His thoughts drifted to the dancing girl. How was a girl as young as Faeron, maybe even younger, able to shape as marvelously as the Hosts of legend? She even managed to outshine his mother, as far as he could remember. The girl's face was burned into Faeron's mind; no other memory of Jakob's world was half as vivid. He could still see the light of peridom shifting colors in her eyes and the way it danced like fire in her long curly hair. Surely a kytra that powerful would be somewhere in his mother's list.
After another hour of tossing and turning, Faeron decided to change tactics. Breathing slowly, in and out, Faeron hunted down each stray thought as he did when meditating, and, soon, quiet enveloped his mind. The world disappeared. Shapeless, thoughtless, a silent observer in the darkness, Faeron slipped away in the current of peridom’s light.
Jakob woke up in a hospital bed with a splitting headache and no memory of how he arrived. The light in the room was warm and natural, shining in golden rays through a small window above Jakob’s bed. His sister, Sylvia, stood smiling over him, relief painted in her eyes. She was much shorter than Jakob with wide shoulders and short sandy hair.
“Oh, no,” groaned Jakob, forcing a smile. “I think I’m gonna need a different nurse.”
“Har, har,” said Sylvia flatly. “What the hell happened? Did someone do this to you?”
“I… I don’t know,” said Jakob. “I remember leaving the library through the back… then…” He shrugged. “No idea what happened next… maybe... Proto!” he called.
“Over here!’ the index called from a bedside table.
Jakob sat up and instantly regretted it. The world became a spinning blur, and he fell back onto the soft sheets.
“Let me,” said Sylvia, snagging Proto off the table. She handed the lens to Jakob.
“Okay…” said Jakob. “ What I do remember is the ceremony, then a whole lot of questions, then leaving through the back. Can you fill us in from there?”
“Of course,” said Proto. “Let me just search for something that can convert… got it… and downloading… done!.” A projection of the park flickered into the air above Proto’s cyan-lit lens. It showed a large grassy space, with a perfect replica of Jakob standing in the very center. “Everything seemed normal, humans doing human things, no villainy afoot” reported Proto. “Until you met the dancing girl.”
“The dancing girl?” asked Sylvia, brow raised.
The model of Jakob began to walk and the park shifted, following the path Jakob took earlier that day. “And… here she is,” said Proto, “your dancing girl.” The dancer came into frame, leaping and kicking, then ducking low with her arms painting the air. The dancer’s form was exquisite.
“You think I’d remember a thing like that,” said Jakob.
“This is where things got strange,” said Proto. “You were going on about some sort of lights, listen to this...”
As Proto played back the final moments of their conversation in the park, there was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” called Sylvia.
A physician, fair skinned and bald with a long white coat, waved as he peeked around the door. Introducing himself as Doctor Ilberk, he told the siblings that all tests on Jakob had come back perfectly healthy and that his loss of consciousness was most likely due to the rapid transition from the chilly library into the highsun heat. With a cup of pills for the headache, Jakob was discharged as soon as he could stand.
When he got home, Jakob went to the index room, pulling the recording up on a larger stage. The whole room transformed into the park. Despite multiple viewings, Jakob's memory of meeting the dancing girl remained hazy, and he certainly had no idea what he, in the recording, was going on about regarding the “light.” The girl’s dance was impressive, but there were no lights to be seen anywhere. It was only on his fourth viewing that he noticed a subtlest blurring around the girl’s motions, like heat off the radiator back in his old Snowy Heights dorm room. It had been a hot day, but certainly not hot enough to show on Proto’s sensors. For a moment, he wondered if it could be related to the “light.” The detective in Jakob jumped, but he knew, more likely, something just got jostled when he passed out in the grass. Jakob would need to tinker with Proto and figure out whether it was the capture lens or the projector malfunctioning.
The next few days were a return to normalcy for Jakob. Other than a brief trip to a friendly woodworker down the street to get his key framed, Jakob spent most of the time at home making little progress on his next book. Hours ticked away and his stack of pages hardly grew any higher. Every so often Jakob would pause to look up at the key, now hung on his wall, wondering if they’d selected the wrong candidate for such an honor. Three stressful weeks later, Jakob drifted off to sleep and this time it was Faeron who woke.
If the dancing girl had returned last night, Faeron certainly didn’t remember it. In the blur of last night’s dream, all he could recall was a single image which he scrawled in the dream journal on his bedside table.
Hykel, 2 Cropsun, 4020
I see the hexagonal key hung above my desk. It sits on a shimmering blue mat with a narrow golden bezel around its dark wood frame. I can still feel his dread about his latest book.
An air of anxiousness followed Faeron around classes that morning, a mixture of gloom from Jakob’s authorly woes and his own excitement to dive into his mother’s list of kytra. Even Physics with Lieutenant P couldn’t cast aside Faeron’s mood.
Around noon, Faeron met up with Auri for a lunch of sizzling sadoe steaks and a cup of souroot soup. They shared their next class, Global Politics, although their interest in the topic was polar opposite. The class was taught by Professor Doug Kilmer, one of the more popular teachers in the academy. Doug was heavy set with a tidy goatee and short trimmed hair. He wore polos and what seemed to be the same tan slacks every day. He was close with many of his students, though he and Faeron had little rapport. If there was one thing that could get under Doug’s skin, it was willful disinterest in his subject. Unfortunately for Faeron and Doug both, Eamon and Mathas had insisted that Global Politics was essential for a kytra to understand.
After dozing through a lecture on the four primary settlements of Irasil and their different styles of government, Faeron was on to his final class of the day, the age-old art of Bo Kora. As he exited the elevator on floor fifty-eight to a candle-lit hallway, Faeron’s gut tugged tight. Just a short way down the hall, Lydia was standing alone outside the sparring room door, dressed in her white uniform covered in tiny dancers. In his dreary daze, Faeron hadn’t realized there’d be a good chance of seeing her today. They’d shared this class on and off for several semesters now.
“Faeron!” said Lydia, springing off the wall to give him a hug. “Alright, no more excuses. Class isn’t for another fifteen minutes, so tell me... How was your highsun?”
“Oh…” said Faeron, trying hard to think of a response. With everything going on, he’d completely forgotten to conjure up a better story than Deity, Prophet’s Guard, and night classes with Mathas. “Well… There’s the hair, you’ve seen that.” He pointed to his shaggy head. “It was a big part of things.”
“Naturally,” chuckled Lydia.
“I’ve also moved onto shaping with Mathas now,” offered Faeron, “if you know what that is.”
“Like, with your kytra stuff?” asked Lydia. “Shaping’s what the Hosts did… right? In all the old stories?”
“Yeah,” said Faeron. “I’ll be able to shape the world like they did. Not tomorrow or next week or anytime soon… But that’s the biggest thing, I’m starting those classes.”
“That’s amazing,” said Lydia. “I can’t imagine having superpowers. It’s just… you wouldn’t think that it’s all real, huh?”
“Definitely hard to believe sometimes,” said Faeron. “What about you? How was your highsun?”
“Practice, practice, and midnight mischief… Oh! You won’t guess where my dance troupe got to perform,” said Lydia giddily.
“Mainstage?” guessed Faeron.
“Thinking too small!” burst Lydia excitedly. “No… not in Erkwright Theater… not even in Eredith. They let us out beyond the wall, to Emberly.”
“The nomad settlement?” gasped Faeron. It was his favorite from Vox’s tales. “What was it like? Tell me everything.”
For the next ten minutes, while they waited for their instructors to come unlock the sparring room, Lydia told Faeron about all the strange Nomads she’d met in the great nomad tower: A shop owner who sold scavenged clothes from all different time periods (Lydia bought a killer graphic crop top and bright blue boots that just so happened to be her size), a barkeep who had lost half his nose in a fight with a vemrot, and a blind woman in a sinister looking owl mask. She also told him about the journey there, through the Nylkwood.
“You pass through the Nylk gate and it’s like walking into a dream,” she said. “It’s so much more real than in the VUEs. You can feel how heavy the fog is, and it's all cast in rainbows from the glass leaves.”
“You talk about it just like Vox,” said Faeron, feeling a twinge of jealousy. “I can’t wait for the day I get to see it myself.”
A small crowd of students had gathered around the door now. They were a strange collection, a wide range of ages from across all tracks. There were many familiar faces from past semesters and several new ones, with year tens and elevens taking their first step into the advanced sessions. Soon, their instructors, Saitum Orras and her father, Bennehym, appeared around the bend of the hall. Bennehym Orras had dark wrinkled skin, a clean-shaven head, and a long silver beard, braided and beaded, running down to his belt. His limp forced him to use a cane, so he primarily taught the history of Bo Kora and the Old-Scholars who once practiced it many thousands of years ago.
Saitum was about thirty years old and also bald, though her pointed jaw lacked her father’s beard. Where her father offered sagely advice, Saitum led the physical demonstrations, stretches, and practice exercises. In all his years learning Bo Kora under Saitum, Faeron had never once heard her speak.
Bennehym let the students into the sparring room, a wide open area with matted floors and mirrors for walls. He sat the students in a wide circle, then took his place at the center. Beginning this semester like every other, Bennehym recounted the story of his ancestor, Scribe Olomon, who was far from Ancient Eredith when his people, the Old Scholars, were slaughtered by the beast king Ozukette. Olomon would go on to serve as the first scribe of Glavius Adaeus, and his line would survive some four thousand years. Today, Bennehym and his family were the last descendents of Olomon and the Old Scholars.
Although they sat together, neither Faeron nor Lydia dared whisper over Bennehym’s tale, instead trading looks at all the best bits. When he was done speaking, Bennehym let the class out early. Faeron and Lydia walked together to the elevator, chatting all the way. The halls were empty with most students still in class, and Faeron could hear the muffled voices of different professors through the doors as they passed.
“Where are you headed now?” said Lydia, as they arrived at the elevator.
“Bo Kora is my last for the day,” said Faeron, “so probably the Athenaeum.”
“Such a pretty building,” gasped Lydia, pressing both the up and down call-buttons for the elevator at once. “I don’t think I’ve been inside since we took that field trip in year ten. All I remember is rows and rows of books. I really should go read there some time”
“Definitely go in the evening,” said Faeron. “The way the setting sun shines through the stained glass, painting the books in different colors. It’s… it’s...”
“Romantic?” offered Lydia.
Just then, the elevator door slid open and Alanah said, “going up.”
“That’s me,” said Lydia. “Motive Expression is up next.” Boarding the empty elevator, she caught the door. “You know, I’ve got dance most evenings, but maybe if I have a day off I’ll swing by the athenaeum.”
“You wouldn’t regret it,” grinned Faeron.
“Awesome! See you around then.” The elevator door closed.
Faeron’s elevator arrived seconds later, and he waited down in the courtyard for almost twenty minutes before a large group of students strolled out the Academy’s sliding front doors. The glare of the afternoon sun off of Auri’s bronze-tipped hair, cascading over her tall shoulders, made her stand out among them.
Spotting Faeron, Auri waved and ran to the ape fountain, where he was sitting. "Saw Quinn in the hall earlier. He's got tech lab until late, so... ready to get our hands on that list?" she asked, looking as giddy as he now felt.
“Do you even need to ask?” said Faeron.
They ran the two blocks to the Athenaeum, and found Mathas just inside, helping a customer check out a small stack of colorful books.
“Tell Ninci happy birthday from me, won’t you?” the old capillum said sweetly to his customer. “Three is an exciting year.”
“Yeah, sure,” grunted the man. He had short greying hair, a bristly goatee, and must have just gotten off work as he was still wearing his stark white City Customs uniform.
After the customs officer left, Mathas turned his attention to Faeron and Auri. “I suppose you’ve come for Evolice’s list?”
“If that’s alright with you,” said Faeron, exchanging an excited look with Auri.
“Of course,” said Mathas. “The Athenaeum’s quiet enough. If you want to follow me…” He led the pair across the commons to the glass elevator. They rode up to the second-floor reading room then took the southern hall past several dozen bookshelves to another wide open room. There was a set of stairs leading both up and down, several comfortable chairs, and a simple wooden door with Mathas’ name printed on a metal plaque.
Retrieving a small brass key from his pocket, Mathas unlocked the door and ushered Faeron and Auri into his expertly organized office. It was an L-shaped room, much like Evolice’s, with a long window on one wall looking down into the dark and lifeless workshop. Hand painted canvases of all shapes and sizes were hung on the walls, each with Mathas’ signature in the bottom right corner. They depicted forest landscapes and strange creatures: a single massive tree casting its shadow across a forested mountain, a squirrel with a long straw-like snout, eyeless birds and large-eared bats; Memories of Roana, Mathas called them. In one corner was an easel covered in a thin sheet and glass cabinets filled with assorted paints. Across the room, was a sturdy darkwood desk. There were narrow frosted windows behind his desk, and, between them, a hanging shelf with several colossal tomes.
Mathas selected one of the heavier titles with a plain black spine looking to be several thousand pages long. “Don’t be daunted now,” he said, heaving the book onto his desk. “The bulk of this is information regarding the early kytra and the Hosts. We’re only looking at the last half-millennium.” He opened the tome and flipped toward the back, no more than a few hundred pages from the end. Auri and Faeron huddled around the desk to get a better view. There was a large title at the top of each page, then several paragraphs of information. Most titles near the start of the book had multiple pages of texts where many near the back were nearly blank with just one or two sentences.
There were maybe fifty names from the last five-hundred years, and nearly every one of them had a little silver “S” printed beside them. Mathas told them it was to denote that they were only suspected to be kytra, never proven by Evolice. The one exception was a page titled “Itrhis - Host of Glavius,” though it had only a couple paragraphs of information below.
“I thought there’d be hundreds or thousands of kytra before the fall,” said Auri, sounding shocked as they flipped through the pages. “From this... Was there really so few of us?”
“As I mentioned before,” said Mathas, “Evolice’s research was far from complete. That said, in the years before the fall, kytra had faded to all but a myth among the few who still followed the patronage. I lived nearly my whole life never knowing I was one of them.”
“How is that possible?” asked Faeron. “How could you not know?”
“Without access to echo crystals, how could I know?” countered Mathas. “Auri, you and Quinn were discovered when you shared the vision of the obelisk ten years ago. For the rest of us, myself, Vox, Evolice, Eamon, the twins… even you, Faeron, we discovered your kytra nature when it became clear you could see the light in your father’s echo crystal collection at a young age. There are other signs, dreams of light, coincidences one cannot explain, but without the gems or events directly involving shapers, like Mr. Rite’s experience with the dancing girl, we have but speculation.”
“That’s…” Auri looked taken aback. “In a world of billions there were so few kytra, and yet in our small city there’s what, eight of us, nine counting Evolice.” Turning to Faeron, there was a passionate fire in her bronze eyes. “Knowing that, how can you care so little about the Patronage, about Glavius? He gave us a city of kytra to fight the plague.”
“And he let billions die,” countered Faeron, annoyed by the sudden attack. “Not to mention it was the Hoststone shattering that sent my mom away. Face it, no spirit of man made me a kytra, no spirit of man has done anything to bring my mom back, and no spirit of man is gonna fix this world. That’s up to the kytra and the scientists at the academy.”
“And who do you think gave us that academy?” growled Auri.
“Enough,” said Mathas calmly, placing a hand on both their shoulders. “Your differences are the reason that you are stronger together. Neither of you is fighting for nothing.”
Just then a knock sounded at the door.
“I’ll get it,” grunted Faeron, welcoming the interruption from Auri’s assault. He strutted over and opened the door, finding his father on the other side. Eamon had a black blazer slung over one shoulder. His button up was black trimmed in a gold matching the warmth of his eyes.
“Am I interrupting something?” he asked, stepping forward and embracing Faeron in a surprise hug. “Serris told me you’d be here.”
“Not at all,” called Mathas from his desk, “please join us.”
“Somebody, help,” groaned Faeron as his father squeezed him tighter.
Chuckling, Eamon released Faeron and strutted across the room to Mathas’ desk.
“Evolice’s list...” said Eamon, “for Jakob?”
“Not quite,” said Faeron. Rejoining the others, Faeron told Eamon every detail of his dream from the library to the dancing girl in the park. He explained how they were using her to try to pinpoint exactly when Jakob lived, since he wasn’t in the book, and whether Evolice may have gone after him to recover the vault key.
“Eyes like rainbow fire… never found anything like that… but, you know what…” Eamon smiled victoriously as he rushed around the desk to the book. “Three names come to mind. First is… Sophia something… where is it? Here!” He stopped at a page marked: Sophie Inulingua. “I remember this one. She was an old athlete, long before our time, broke just about every world record you could imagine in her era. But, if we’re looking for the living, the other two may be more helpful.” He flipped a few more pages, stopping on: Nu Flume. “She’s not a bad fit,” he said. “We saw her on an old Quisitive docVUE, like we did a number of the recent ones. She was a philosophy professor at Outmarr University. Disappeared about ten years before the plague. No trace of her.”
“Any descriptions of these people?” asked Faeron. “The kytra from my dream had dark skin and long curly hair… and like I mentioned, her eyes were lit with rainbow flame.”
“Five foot ten, salduni descent,” read Eamon. “I don’t know about the eyes but… it’s not impossible.”
“What about the last one?” asked Auri eagerly.
Eamon turned just two more pages and stopped. “Final one is a girl from Innit’Ro. She was a friend of a friend who was studying in the North Suburbs when the plague hit.”
“She wasn’t invited here?” asked Faeron sharply.
“Every living person in this book was extended an invitation, even if they weren’t in the names given by Glavius” said Eamon. “Most, like Fiat here, declined.”
“Why though?” asked Auri.
“Because,” said Mathas, solemnly, “the end of the world always seems like a fantasy until it happens to you.”
“I only ever heard stories,” said Eamon, “but word was she was a self-proclaimed ‘dreamer,’ bright as anyone our friend had ever met. It really did seem crazy, what we were telling people. We were lucky we got as many to agree as we did.”
Going back over the three entries, Faeron couldn’t say for certain whether any of them was the dancing girl. Some details seemed off, but not enough to knock any of the names out. There were still many more names to search for anyone Eamon might not have remembered, and it took the full evening to go through the rest of the list. In the end, none of them proved any more promising than Eamon’s three. Mathas announced he was going to start closing up shop and Eamon, Faeron, and Auri said their goodbyes, heading home toward the Twinfire Towers.
“Well, did any of them sound right?” asked Auri as they stepped into the cool night. Golden light from the Clearstream Cinema sign illuminated a group of women meditating on mats near the edge of the park. The trees cast long shadows across the well-trimmed grass and the sapphire and violet stars above shone bright despite the city's glow.
“What do you mean, sound right?” asked Faeron as they descended the steps and began their stroll along the park’s edge.
“Like, when you first meet someone,” said Auri. Her hair shone fierce as ever in the golden light, her eyes warm and determined. “They say their name, and in your head, you’re telling yourself, of course that’s their name? It just fits perfectly.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Eamon. “Never met a Garrett I liked.”
“Exactly,” said Auri. They passed the women meditating and continued on the path. Up ahead loomed Erkwright theater, muses carved into its stone walls and grothgoyles jutting menacingly from the corners of the angled roof. “Your dancing girl,” asked Auri, “was she a Sophia, a Nu, or a Fiat?”
“I don’t know,” said Faeron. “Nothing really leaped out at me”
“Then maybe something will turn up in your dreams to help narrow things down,” said Auri. “After all, your mom didn’t leave because she saw a man write books his whole life. Wherever Jakob’s story is headed, I’d bet you the dancing girl is part of it.” A pair of young joggers in academy track pants passed with a friendly wave on the far side of the street.
“Assuming I can remember anything if she does show up,” said Faeron, glumly. This morning he had worked up expecting to take a more active role in finding his mom. Now, he was back to waiting for answers.
“If I had to guess,” said Eamon, “I’d wager you only remember last night’s dream so well because of her. The light surrounding her sounded simply unforgettable. If she shows up again, you’ll probably know it.”
Faeron considered this, walking in silence past Erkwrite and the Woven Dome, a massive bunball stadium. The dome, for which it was named, was made of a series of beams that looked like long white reeds, woven loose enough to leave the field below mostly open to the sky.
They turned off Perimeter Lane at the east end of the park, following another wide road between the stadium and Astral Cafe. The night was louder here. The path was well lit. Both the Bellwillow Market and the many restaurants near the foot of the Twinfire Towers were alive with chatter.
As the road grew steadily more busy, faces in the crowd began to turn at the trios passing. Those quicker to recognize them offered a smile, wave, or a “Host Eamon,” with a bow. Each time, Eamon returned the greeting cheerfully.
“So, Auri,” said Eamon, as they neared the Twinfire Towers’ cobblestone courtyard. “Patron Odom, mentioned you’d be leading a new team at the tech drive next week.”
“Yeah!” grinned Auri. “We’re trying to get the year sevens involved this year. Paeris Aekins from that year has a whole group she’s got interested, so I’m going to be looking after them. I was thinking though, now that I have you here, what would you think about using this to start a pen pal program between the youth group and some of the kids in Korva receiving the tech?”
“Love the idea!” clapped Eamon. “I’ll try to get something together for that tomorrow. Vox’ll be proud to know it was your idea.”
Auri beamed proudly as they entered the wide open courtyard. Far above, the statue of Glavius stood atop the bridge between the towers. He looked like a younger Bennehym, bald with a braided beard. He wore long rippling robes painted in violet and crimson by the flames in his outstretched palms.
They made for the door of the violet tower, on the right. Inside the lobby, the floor was decorated marble, etched in Patronage iconography. On either side of the central walkway, leading back toward a fleet of elevators, were a number of busts depicting the Patronage’s many Hosts. Despite its grandeur, the lobby was a cozy place, filled with social seating and wings off to either side, leading to more private gathering spaces. Looking up, they could see through the hollow center of the hundred ringed floors to the stained glass ceiling far overhead.
From above, Faeron could hear the echoes of ambient chatter and laughter.
They took the elevator to floor sixty-two, and as Faeron and Auri got off, they said their goodbyes.
“I’m glad I got the chance to come by,” said Eamon. “Sorry I’ve been so busy while you’re dealing with this. We should do dinner upstairs, at home, some night.”
“Yeah, let’s do that,” said Faeron.
“Of course, you’re invited too, Auri,” said Eamon with a grin.
“I mean, I assumed,” said Auri playfully. “Goodnight, Host Eamon.”
“Goodnight, kids.”