The Clear Sky Hermit: Chapter Four (Ianite’s Death)
It was in the sweltering light of morning that Andor experienced the darkest dread of his life. He felt that his stomach would burst open, severing his spine and laying him about like shredded cloth. He gaped, begging to vomit up wind. Nothing came. He lunged down to his knees and raked the earth with his fingers when he could not scream. His lungs welled against his ribs, full and overflowing. He could only breathe in.
The silhouette of Waglington’s tower blocked the most intense rays of the sun. The shadow was within crawling distance. Andor crept into it and cradled himself against a cliff face, weeping. As he rocked to and fro, a whisper tickled his ear. He snapped upright to see what could only be described as a ghost. Transparent yet vivid, it strode as if bearing its own weight. If it was a vision, it was the most lifelike Andor had seen. She was Ianite yet not – younger and sterner, wearing natural armor that conformed to her muscles. What a strange sprite had come before Andor. He wished to speak, and so the pressure in his belly relieved all at once, letting him sigh with euphoria. Opening his lips as if for the first time, Andor asked the specter where she had come from and for what purpose she had come.
The specter dug through a pouch at her waist, retrieving a scroll. She held the scroll up before Andor. The prince immediately recognized it as one of his own penmanship. The specter read aloud.
As followers of Ianite, we do not adhere to any one institution for absolute guidance. Nor do we view any one belief system as the true path. Lady Ianite brings unity to the separated; balance to the wavering. For as long as the goddess leads us in these pursuits, we take her as the figurehead of an infinite, incomprehensible movement, which the goddess would name, "All That Is."
Our ideal is this: in the face of oppression to offer calm negotiation; in the face if tyranny to show mercy to our captors; in the face of death to sacrifice ourselves so that flowers of guilt might bloom from our killers' bellies.
But there is a time, too, for nature to deal back the wounds it has received. There is a time, when a brother or sister ails at the hand of tyranny, to sever the hand at the wrist.
When rage boils in our blood and begs to spring, we will not block the throat of the volcano. We will rise, casting aside our ideals like a scorched garment, and overwhelm our oppressors with wrath.
We are not pacifists. Nor are we vindicators. We are nature. We are whatever balance demands. We are void and we are radiance at once. We are the healer. We are the warrior.
By acting on our purest convictions we give hope to our goddess, who in despair wallows; whose heartbeat matches that of the earth; whose breaths flutter and gasp like ours; whose steps wander realms untold, seeking what cannot be found but only fought for. In jubilation we fight for her. In drawing our swords we call her back. We say rise, Lady Ianite. Rise and reclaim your place in All That Is. Andor looked on in anticipation as the ghost tucked the scroll back into her pouch.
The specter said, “But can you hold yourself to it, Acolyte? In the face of a world withering, will you rise?”
“Of course I can. But what do you mean? The world is not withering. We will overcome our oppressors and flourish.”
“Of what god are you, Acolyte?”
“Ianite. You should know this, being a spirit of her likeness.”
“Then whom will you serve should your goddess die?”
Andor’s lungs expanded again, this time so painfully that he convulsed and fell limp to the ground.
The ghost departed the way Andor had come, its form unraveling into mist and then into air.
It had not occurred to Andor – the reason for his blustering episodes and burgeoning pains.
The answer to the specter’s question resounded in Andor’s mind – an answer his body could not bear to utter.
All That Is.
All That Is.
All That Is.
The pressure subsided. Andor stood his shaking body and flung himself toward Dagrun.
His very own sculpture of Ianite towered over the ruined city, sun streaking through the feathers of the hawk the goddess held on her uplifted hand. Andor had intended for that hawk to represent himself. He had promised to become Ianite’s champion; the uplifted soul.
Andor raced through the rolling hills, whipping his eyes about for any sign. Why was the grass greener than ever before? Why did flowers bloom in profusion?
He reached the gate of Dagrun without seeing a soul apart from a flock of owls that peered from the trees near Martha’s new home. Andor took a moment to smile at the house. It was exactly the sort of place to settle down.
But he snapped away from fond thoughts. There was no time. “Ianite!” he screamed into the sky.
All he saw was the statue, its highest points piercing the clouds.
Andor spent the next week in the area. Not a step was taken without anticipation of His Lady visiting him out of nowhere. Camping in a secluded grove and avoiding all but the most fleeting contact, he slept a total of eight hours that week, lurching awake at night at every slightest noise.
Sparklez informed him that Ianite had gone to be alone. Andor seethed with jealousy. Nonetheless he built a great dragon for his ally and fellow worshipper. He did it without wings, a great test of his dexterity. The black beast wrapped around Sparklez’ Fortress of Fury, promising him protection but mostly coolness. It helped Andor take his mind away from gnawing paranoia. When he was done, it flooded back into his thoughts and he could not keep himself away from the last place he had seen the goddess. Andor, you mustn’t forget what it means to be a denizen of this earth,” Ianite gasped, whirling in ecstatic dance.
The young prince pressed his arms against his chest and waist, pursing his lips.
“Come on! Dance!” Ianite wailed, her spirals growing in strength.
“Stop,” Andor yelped. “You’ll lose your balance.”
“Of course I will!” The goddess’ heel shortly thereafter wobbled out of alignment and sent her toppling face first. She looked up at Andor with a mouth full of dirt and a bloody tooth and belted out a full, wheezing guffaw. Andor stood at the shattered bridge parting Dagrun from the fields. The river gently babbled. Andor recalled the marble statue he had built of his goddess just up on this hill. His father had melted it down as a demonstration of what happened to worshippers of The Wounded Goddess.
Andor had built a statue ten times larger as a demonstration of what could happen for those who kept the faith.
But no amount of clay, marble or stone could fill the pit of anguish and terror that rotted Andor from the inside.
While Andor paced, a flicker of movement caught his eye. He turned toward the ruined city. The same specter he had met a week before glided out from behind a boulder at the opposite end of the bridge. Without wings Andor could not fly across the river, so he called out instead. He found himself shrieking. “What has happened!?”
The ghost stared.
“Who are you? You’re not Ianite! You would be flesh if you were!”
“I am the only Ianite you may have.”
“What does that mean? Can’t I have the real one? I knew her once! I spoke with her many times! She lov--“
“She loved you?”
“Yes!”
“The goddess has no love for individuals, Acolyte. Remember your creed.”
“Fuck my creed! I want to see her!” Andor wept.
“And if you could see her?”
“I would tell her I’m sorry for not doing more. For not seeing the consequences. If I hadn’t been locked away, I could have stopped so much from happening. I could have kept her...”
“Alive?”
“I still don’t believe the show you’re putting on. It’s a test. She’s not... what you say. Where is she? Why does she avoid me? Am I not someone she considers important to her grand scheme?”
“Has she not shown you this?”
An updraft fluttered through Andor’s clothes. “I feel her nature in me. But it hurts. I don’t want it. I would rather have her.” Then Andor winced, realizing the implication of his words. “She carried a burden.”
The ghost was silent.
Andor wept. “She cast it on me to relieve herself. But was it really that great? Could love not have lightened it?”
“The goddess’ love is in you, Acolyte, rest assured.”
Andor gulped, staring with denial and pleading at once.
And the specter changed her countenance then. Her face lifted in a wild laughter. She lunged toward Andor, crossing the river in less than a second. Her face landed in front of his. She tenderly kissed his forehead. A heat like that of a hearth surged through his body. The specter pulled away and said, “Take my tailwind and run!”
Her body exploded in a shower of flower petals that coated Andor’s head and shoulders. Wind buffeted Andor, washing the petals away, and he fell to his knees. He reached up to grasp the outline where the ghost had been. He stroked the imagined slopes of her feet.
“Why, Ianite? Why!?” The afternoon passed like a dream. Andor got up from the ground as the sun was setting. As he trudged through the meadow toward the sky people’s homes, he saw a familiar violet hair-do bobbing toward him.
“Martha.”
The creases beneath her eyes had deepened, but she smiled warmly at Andor. “You’re back.”
“Ianite. She’s...”
“I felt it too.”Martha’s eyes were like glass but then broke open. She rushed to Andor as his knees buckled beneath him. The two huddled together on the eve of nightfall, deaf to the hooting of the owls.
Andor woke the next morning beneath an unfamiliar pastel ceiling. He traced with his eyes the ornate lines of every wall. Even Martha’s guest rooms were exquisite. Steve had put his whole heart into this place. He must really have loved Martha.
The prince stepped into the kitchen, where Martha stood with an apron on and a cat-shaped oven mit over her hand.
“Whatchu making?” Andor wrinkled his nose, sniffing loudly to clear his nostrils. On top of his usual congestion, he just wasn’t very good at perceiving smells.
“A secret,” Martha winked, bending at the hips cutely to open the oven and retrieve what was inside, expertly blocking Andor’s view with a fold of her apron.
“You know I’m not too into the sweets,” Andor chuckled. “But I can make an exception. Today.”
Turning from the counter where she had laid a cloth over the rectangular object, Martha squinted mischievously. “I have something else to show you.”
Another new building had come up near Jericho’s mansion. It was a quaint cottage with brown and red tones. “I built it,” Martha jaunted forward. “Come see what’s inside!”
Andor did not have the chance to enter the suspicious fenced enclosure surrounding the door before a giggle pierced the air. Even from inside the building it was shrill and powerful for what sounded like a little girl.
“What the hell?” Andor cracked a devious grin as he ducked through the door, Martha standing aside to watch.
Andor caught his breath as a tiny creature lowered her leg from a stool that came up to her head. The opposite foot still clung to the cushion next to hear ear. She eased it down to the floor beside the other, gripping the stool’s wooden legs with her dainty palms to steady herself.
“She’s a little clumsy, but don’t let that deceive you.”
The girl faced Andor with the most stunning pair of lavender eyes he had ever seen. She was, again, Ianite, and now made flesh. Andor shut his eyes, wiping a hand over his face, and reopened them. What he saw did not change. “What is this?”
Martha noticed her nephew’s dismay and hugged him around the shoulder. “Tell him your name, honey.”
“INEEDA.”
Andor scowled. “You need a what?”
“A friend, maybe,” Martha nudged.
It was more of a shove, to be fair, and the prince found himself kneeling in front of the girl. They were now at eye level.
The girl sneered and thrust out a set of fingers to pinch and twist Andor’s nose. He complied, allowing his head to be turned sideways. The little fiend cackled.
“Bery good,” Andor moaned, his plugged nose distorting consonants. “Now show be your boves.”
The girl snickered madly and without warning swung her second hand up under Andor’s stomach and pressed up until his feet left the floor. Andor exited the house, arms flailing, with the thundering footsteps of the tiny terror propelling him along. Martha’s laughter rang across the hills.
“She even wears her clothes,” Andor returned to Martha a few hours later, fully dissheveled and swaying with dizziness while the child busied herself perfecting her submission hold on a pig. “What’s up with this girl?”
“She was the work of Sparklez, I’m afraid. She came out the golden egg he gave to Ianite. But would you believe me if I told you Sparklez keeps five more down in the Dank Weed Room?”
“The Dank Weed Room? And eggs, right? Not--“
“Yes, more Ianitas.”
Andor shook his head. “Ianita. That was the best Sparklez could come up with?”
“Ianite did.”
Andor bit his lip.
The two sat on stools in the daycare room and gazed out the wide windows while sipping their preferred beverages, Martha a gin and the prince a dandelion cordial.
“Did you get to say goodbye?” Andor asked.
“No.” Martha paused. “Did you ever get to see her?”
“No.”
“Mother was aloof at times.” Martha looked like she struggled against saying more.
“Was. Speaking as if she’s...” Andor’s bitter remark was interrupted by a sound of clattering armor outside. It was a sound which had grown refreshingly unfamiliar since Andor left behind his own suit.
When the two poked their heads out the door, Sparklez stood to greet them.
“I heard the screaming of a little girl and just had to come see what was going on,” Sparklez grinned full-toothed.
Andor cracked a smile against his will and moved in for a hug. It was an awkward, blocky, pauldron-impeded hug thanks to Sparklez' choice of outerwear. Andor had been right in shedding his Earth and Mage Armors back in the forest. Now all he had to do was tip his sombrero up a little. Of all the prince's inheritances, those from Steve were by far the easiest to carry.
Sparklez lowered his face with a solemn expression. “Have you heard? Our Lady has passed.”
Andor’s response was the same as Martha had given him and he found himself numb to the words. “I felt it.”
The next moments passed as a blur. Sentiments were exchanged; yes, all the things were said that friends should say when a loved one died.
Died. Andor could not stomach that word.
“How did it happen?” asked the prince. He needed to know. He needed to know what Sparklez had been shown that Andor had not deserved to see.
Hearing no answer, he lifted his face to realize that Sparklez was gone. Martha was too. Andor had never asked the question.
Only the Ianita remained in sight. How long had Andor stood there with blank eyes roving through impossible worlds?
He kelt down again before the girl. “Hey. Don’t pancake me this time.”
“PENCOCK!”
“No.” Back in Martha’s kitchen, Andor leaned against the cherry print wallpaper and sighed. “What do you feel happening inside you, now that she’s gone?”
“Oh my. A boy and family member shouldn’t ask that sort of question,” Martha muttered through her work on the secret object, still expertly hidden.
Andor huffed. “You know what I mean. Powers. Inspirations.”
“Oh. I’m not lacking in those.” She turned to stare Andor dead in the eye. “Are you?”
The prince froze then darted his eyes around the room, doing anything to avoid eye contact; even stare into the eyes of a cat totem pole by the entryway.
“I wish I could have said a proper goodbye to her too, lovie. Here.” Martha turned. “It’s finally done.”
It was an eagle cake, complete with colored feathers and sharp talons.
Andor stifled a laugh. “Martha, Auntie Martha, come on now--“
“Oh Nephie, you can’t refuse. Sit down.”
Andor pulled out a chair at the small kitchen table, blushing as the cake was lowered to his chest level. “What is this for anyway?”
Martha sat facing him. Tears welled in her eyes. “It’s for you. I don’t know. What else can I do?”
The two indulged in rich, creamy slices of the most delicious cake yet made in Ruxomar. Andor repeatedly tried to convince Martha of it. She insisted her future versions would be better. Andor rebutted that since he would never be able to eat them, this cake needed to be the best. After this, he would go full vegan. “I know it takes time, little dove.” Martha gave Andor a final hug as they said their goodbyes on a hilltop. “Give yourself the things you need, too,” Andor nodded. “You were closer to her than I was. It must hurt more.”
Martha lowered her face.
Andor turned away. “I still don’t feel clear. It doesn’t feel real. I still need closure. I never met her, did I? I never met her, not even once, not even in youth. She was never there.” He gave Martha a tormented smile and shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m saying. Bye.”
“Andor?”
“Yeah,” Andor turned back, the setting sun outlining his shaggy head.
Martha gave Andor a look of sadness, understanding and desperate, unfulfilled longing all rolled into one.
The prince shut his eyes, blocking out all other images until he was sure that he would remember the details of that expression. Micah’s visits to The Clear Sky Hermit were no longer escapes from city life but treacherous returns to a haunted place. Since the creature ribbed in gleaming black armor and cloaked in the void itself had visited him, he had not slept well. But he had to go on solving the riddles. He had to discover what was on the top floor.
The fourth level’s yellow glass floor and light green glass ceiling sandwiched Micah in their homely juxtaposition. Micah sat as close to the trapdoor beside the central pillar as possible, remembering how the dark figure had previously blocked his path of escape.
The third riddle had been more vague than the last, but the fourth seemed to depart from the usual structure, utilizing three lines instead of two. Oceans have it easy, drinking in but not giving back until the sun makes vapor and rain
My gulfs are lightless. If I don't push out new rivers, they'll run dry. So I prime myself to churn
My estuaries strain against gravity, surging into channels, wearing my walls and passions thin
