this story is a sequel to Nothing and Nowhere and A Hole in the Ground, I suggest reading them first
He crossed his arms as he admired the great peaks reaching up to prop the sky. As he raised the land, it rumpled and tumbled upon itself, leaving it broken and uneven. The result was interesting and he was content to leave it that way, but it was best to be sure.
“What do you think?” He turned to the person standing beside him.
Another had been staring at the mountains, too. Now he looked at Beloshi, horizon-eyes troubled. “They didn’t raise the sky as you intended. They seem to have made it closer, although this may only be a matter of perspective.”
He glanced at the flattened dome of dead blue above them, then back at his companion. “Do you want me to take them away?”
“You can’t go higher?”
“I can push the mountains higher and higher into the sky, but I cannot push the sky itself. That is as far as it will go.”
Another turned his face up to survey the ceiling of their world. “As if there is some limit to how far we may expand. But only in that direction. You told me there was no boundary to how far out we might go.”
“Do you want me to expand more to the sides?”
“Not unless you want to.” When he declined, Another went back to staring at the sky.
Curious what so fascinated him, Beloshi asked, “What so fascinates you?”
“Here where we are was nothing. Limitless. How can there be boundaries to nothing?”
“How can there be boundaries to nothing?” he repeated.
“I don’t know. I don’t believe there can be. Still, something has boundaries.”
“How can we be sure of that?”
Another took him by the wrist and raised his hand. He put his own hand against it, palm-to-palm. “We’re real, we both agree on that. So we are something.” He pushed and Beloshi’s hand moved back. “We have beginnings and endings that are solid and tangible, which take up space they cannot share.”
“We shared our beginning. Now we’re making a place to share.”
Another conceded it was so, but pointed out, “We cannot take up the precise same place. We can’t push ourselves through each other or breathe each other’s breath, our hearts don’t beat each other’s blood. We are separate and individual.” Beloshi had intended to dispute these claims, too, but Another was already continuing, “I wonder if, now we’re making a real place, we’re doing it near something real that already existed. Butting up against it.”
This distracted him and drew his eyes onto the sky again. “There was nothing there when I started, we could see this for ourselves.”
Another shook his head. “But now it seems as if there is.”
“That’s a strange thought, Another. I could wish it lay beneath us where it would be out of sight and wouldn’t disturb you.”
“You’re kind to say so.”
“So what do we do next?”
His companion looked at him thoughtfully. Now they had made a land out of the firmament and fixed a sky above it, that distant glow on the horizon that had greeted him when first he woke and drawn him onward was no longer visible. He carried it with him regardless, because that light was in Another’s eyes where he might look upon it and be reminded of their promise.
“My throat and mouth are dry,” Another decided. “I find it uncomfortable.”
“We must make water that you can drink.”
Another nodded, adding, “We should make a lot of it so you need not continuously make more.”
“So it does not run out,” Beloshi said to prove he had been listening. “Can things run out? You told me the distance between nowhere and nothing is forever. By that logic, isn’t the time between now and later infinite?”
“Maybe,” his companion said slowly. He said nothing else.
Beloshi watched him, waiting for him to continue. When he grew bored with waiting, he asked, “Where should I put lots of water?”
Another turned in a circle. At last, he stood with his back to the mountains and pointed. In that direction their place had no boundary, and the darkness of nothing remained visible in the distance. “The water can be the edge. It can hold The Nothing away.”
Beloshi complied, bringing water and more water and more water still to the barren earth at the edge of their place. “Does nothing bother you?”
“If there is nothing, we are meaningless.”
“My meaning is to make these things for you,” he pointed out. “Your meaning is to want them. You have horizon-eyes that see farther than mine, right into the heart of things.”
Another didn’t respond, and he concentrated on making water. When it was done, they walked together down to the edge of the vast lake now stretching farther than the eye could see in three directions. His companion stooped at its verge and dipped cautious fingers. Then he cupped a hand and brought it to his lips, drinking. Beloshi walked right out into the water, curious to know what it would feel like. It had looked rigid, but he sank right through it, legs cleaving its form so it remolded itself around him.
Behind him, he heard Another draw a ragged breath. When he turned back, his companion was staring at the water’s surface. Mystified, he waded back to shore. Another pointed in front of him, but it took Beloshi a moment to understand what he was looking at.
Then he crouched too and stared: floating on the water’s twitching skin lay an image, flat and strangely empty. Two faces side-by-side, looking right back at them. Two faces dissimilar only in details, which moved as they did.
“This is us,” he said eventually. He indicated the image on the right. “This is your face, I recognize it. This must be me.”
“Why does the water show us our faces?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you know how to create these things when you don’t understand them?” Another persisted. “How do you know their names when you don’t know their properties?”
He had never thought to wonder and the question didn’t strike him as interesting. “How do you understand these things just for looking at them, even though you’ve never seen them or heard their names?”
“It’s in the shape of things. Can you not see their meanings, how they’re meant to be?”
“All I have is power and a desire for our promise.” He ran through this inventory, then added, “And you.”
“Of course.”
A new thought struck him, a terrible one. “If things can be used up, can power be used up? Desire? Can you be used up?”
Another cocked his head, considering. “I don’t think so. Time holds us in its hand and pins a tether on us, limiting our motions, because there was Before when we weren’t. This,” he waved a hand around them, “we made ourselves. A place to stand, a channel time might flow along. As we made it, so can we unmake it, which means it isn’t a cage with bars enough to hold us. Things within it may be used up, but you asked about things within us. That isn’t the same.”
Beloshi thought about this, nodding slowly. “How do we know that time is our master?”
“We might unmake this place. But we could never unmake the fact that we had made and unmade it. Once we’ve done something, time seizes it from us and holds it forever beyond our reach.”
“I see.”
“You don’t like this idea,” Another suggested.
“No, I don’t. I don’t want to be controlled. I don’t like the thought of things that are mine belonging to others.” He stepped closer to Another, until they were standing with their toes almost touching, raising his wings around them as he had raised mountains around their world. “I won’t let myself be controlled.”
His companion’s eyes had fixed upon the dome of rippling fire surrounding them. “Why do you have wings while I do not?”
“My wings are big enough to shelter both of us.”
Another agreed that it was true.
“Anyway. Now our promise has floor and walls and ceiling, and you are no longer thirsty. What should I do next?”
Comments are closed