Chapter 54 Eder
EDER
D arkness enveloped him, but it could not swallow him.
The cold licked across his exposed skin like a cruel tongue, but it did not awaken him.
Eder swayed within a cold, cruel cell, sometimes alive, mostly dead.
At both times, he dreamed. Dreams of freedom.
Dreams of starlit fields. Dreams of his brother, and the last time he saw his face.
The first of your hundred years begins here , Sariel had told him as he sealed the thick burlap. Consider this your penance. When the pride of the world is broken upon my cleansing laws, perhaps I will lift you up to witness the beauty of my work.
But that work must not have been so beautiful, for year after year passed, and Eder was not brought out to bear witness.
He withered, hunger so constant a companion he no longer recognized it as anything other than pain in his chest and abdomen.
Thirst, though, he always knew that one.
His tongue was swollen within his dry, cracked mouth.
He fantasized about water. He pawed at the thick sack enclosed around him, futilely, pathetically, without strength to even fray its interiors, but struggling nonetheless because he could hear the ocean below at the base of the Tower Majestic, sense its waves, imagine its spray, cold and thick with foam.
To fall within its embrace? To open his mouth and let its icy kiss rush down his throat?
To choke, to drown, even that death would be a relief.
Let the creatures of the sea devour him, if only so he might one day reawaken upon the shore, naked and gifted another chance at life.
Nothing. Just the sway of the cell. The groan of the rope. The howl of the wind, and the roar of the ocean.
Night after night, he died. The light of sun and stars was denied him, but he felt the passage nonetheless, an innate sense that grew ever stronger. Night after night. Year after year. Minutes became hours became days, all indistinguishable from one another.
Sariel never visited.
“Please, brother,” Eder whispered, his face pressed to the interior of the sack.
Sometimes moisture seeped into it from the dank, dark tower, and if he held his tongue against it, he would feel its faint gift.
It was the weakest of balms, but he cherished it nonetheless against his parched tongue and his peeling, cracked lips.
“Please, kill me true. Kill me forever. This life? I cannot. I cannot.”
Years. Years and years and years.
Eder was dead more often than he was alive. He used to cherish the escape. No longer.
When the delirium took him, his head gone light and his body numb and cold, he felt himself fly.
Perhaps it was the last of his sanity. Perhaps it was a dream.
Eder did not know, nor did he have the presence of mind to dwell upon it.
The very act of thought hurt him now. He only sought to exist, catatonic, within the blanketing darkness while rocking inside his cold cell awaiting the next embrace of dying.
And then it would take him, and he would soar heavenward, past the many floors of the Tower Majestic, through the broken top, to the skies beyond.
The stars would burn bright before him, swelling in size.
What started as cool and comforting turned to searing fire.
They scorched him, and whether it was a delusion, dream, or truth, it did not matter, because it hurt .
It hurt in a way he did not know he could feel pain.
It hurt in a manner that pierced through the fog and the hunger and the swaying silence that stripped away so much of his mind.
As the stars burned him, and the night sky imprisoned him, he hung there, weightless for a moment that might have been seconds and might have been hours, before plunging.
The stars would fade, and the pain with it.
His body would return. He’d open his eyes, see darkness, feel hunger, taste dry thirst, and then weep.
No moisture for the tears, the radiance inherent within him granting his body only enough liquid to wake for a few hours.
More years. More deaths. More trips into the sky.
The stars charred his flesh; at least it felt as if they did so, though he could not see his own body.
There were only the lights amid the dark field.
Eder endured, for what choice did he have?
But he steadily felt his mind break. These momentary escapes from his body were so much worse, because at the start of each one, he would feel a wondrous sense of freedom that would always be revoked.
“Stop it!” he screamed as the stars worked their evil upon him. “Stop it, please, give me death, but not this! Not this!”
Eder expected no response, and why would he? Every instance before, he experienced this wretched non-death in solitude.
But this time?
This time, he felt a searching. A yearning.
It was not like when his sister Calluna occasionally scried for his presence.
That was like a tickle in his mind. This was a crushing weight.
It engulfed him. His nonexistent limbs bent and broke.
The stars pulsed silver, and within their centers burned an array of colors, many of which bore no name.
The world shook. The sky rumbled. For the briefest moment, no longer than a flash of lightning, he felt something pierce through.
It touched his mind, and it was so familiar, so precious, it made him want to weep anew.
It was a feeling of love, and care, and deep-seated fear.
The voice of a loved one. His master. His creator. His Father.
Where are you?
Then the presence was gone, and Eder was alone. Abandonment crippled him, its wound all the more brutal because of the echo of love that still shuddered within his mind as he struggled to awaken from this strange, dreamlike delirium.
“Here!” he screamed as he fell. “Father, I am here!”
Eder awoke gagging in his burlap sack, retching in a futile attempt to vomit something from his empty stomach. Still no tears, but he sobbed nonetheless. His voice was a pathetic warble he did not recognize. It had been so long since he last spoke, but he forced air into his lungs. He had to try.
“Here,” he gasped. “I’m here.”
Each syllable tore his throat, but he shouted it with his every breath.
“I’m here! I’m here!”
Shouted until the words were drowned out by the faintest of winds and mocked by the crash of the distant waves.
“I’m here!”
Death came. He flew. He screamed.
I’m here!
I’m here!
I’m here!
The burlap shifted. The rope groaned. Light, dim light, poured through a tear in the burlap. More movement. Arms around him. He was free. Through the pain, he squinted up at his rescuer and saw Faron’s face.
“Brother,” he whispered, and then closed his eyes. Relief settled over him, thicker than any blanket. “Thank you.”
Sleep came. Sleep, not death, and it was blessedly empty of dreams and flight alike. However long it lasted, he did not know, for he drifted in and out of it so easily. Voices washed over him, meaningless yet comforting. Movement. Being carried. Warm blankets. A fire.
He awoke with a longing, deep and permanent within the pit of his stomach.
To be seen. To be found. To hear those words again, and feel the embrace of that being whose presence filled him with more love than all his years upon Kaus had granted.
His senses returned. The crackle of a burning campfire.
Quiet conversation. His eyes fluttered open.
His family was around him, his whole family, Eist and Calluna, Aylah and Faron, even Sariel, bound in rope before a fire.
It should have soothed Eder. It did not.
For the first time in years, the light of the stars was upon him.
The false stars.
The imprisoning veil.
He closed his eyes and wept as sleep carried him away, the darkness pierced again and again by the same three words, pounding at his mind, scraping it raw with an undeniable, unexplainable longing.
Where are you?
Where are you?
Where
are
you?