The Beast
by Lyra
It was still early in Catheda, just past dawn. Spring was starting to creep its way through the cracks of the city, and standing in his office, hands clasped behind his back, gazing down at the spreading metropolis, Godwin could map it's progress.
The parks towards the central district were brilliant splashes of color between the grey, steel, and glass of the factories, the offices, the towers.Green urged up through the dried desaturated ruins that winter had left of the lawns. The hollow husks of trees perked up their fingers towards the sun, vivacious buds springing to life from the seemingly lifeless twigs. The downtown and commerce sections of the city were lined with blossoming trees, each one racing to out-pace the other with it's need to burst free, to scramble back to life once more with all the heavy branches to prove it. And from where he was, looking down at the city rather than sitting amongst it's folds and limbs, he could see people moving over the streets, eager to engage with the world once more now that winter's shackles had eased free.
It never ceased to amaze him how the earth, with seemingly so little effort, created so much from so little. Color surged, plants expanded, the world heated, so much change, so much energy, and from what? It seemed nothing at all, simply a breathe of air, the steady turn of time, and everything fell into place. He wondered, mused, if there might be armies of unseen workers beneath the soil, within the branches of trees, turning and spinning invisible machines with strong orders at their backs to accomplish such impossibilities.
Fall he understood. It was easy to fall. Easier than most people knew. It took so little to simply stop, to let things crumble away. Very few things truly wished to be alive, he'd concluded. If they did why would they let themselves slip apart so effortlessly? Individuals clung to life of course, but no one clings to something that tightly if they don't know just how easily they could lose hold of it. And when you piled lives, one on top of the other, when you snapped all those clumsy existence into a chain, into a knitted community, their totally effort to survive did not grow stronger, it grew weaker. The systems and structures that formed to unite lives, to allow survival, they were fragile things, and the more wills that joined them the weaker they became. Strange, he'd always thought, how people valued ten lives so much less than one, and a hundred lives less than ten, in many circumstances. The larger the fabric of lives, the easier it was to tear apart. It required no effort at all to do so, simply for the thread that ran through them all, binding everything together, to stop weaving, for the one man that woto just let it go. Then collapse. Then loss.
Governance, Godwin had found, was similar to being the constant master of an evolving mechanical beast, that possessed a malicious will, no sight, and was constantly plagued by other alien mechanisms nipping at it's ankles.
The beast was filled, toes to tip with other smaller fleshy beasts, who did not even know their home was alive unless it stumbled and they fell off their seats. They didn't truly see that the food they ate came through it's mouth first, or that the waste they produced fell through it's digestion afterwards. People were too busy clinging to their own easily misplaced lives to think of things like that. The beast was great, and always growing, always changing. Some days it needed to swim a river and such ability had to be provided for. Some days it needed to climb a mountain and such ability had to be provided for. Some days it needed to eat grass, some days meat, some days stone, and such ability had to be provided for. But this beast was cursed, doomed by the mistress of time to always move forward, to always run, and no new country it had to cross was ever the quite same. The beast needed to drop appendages as easily as it acquired them, and as a blind creature, it needed a careful master directing it's journey onward.
The master needed to guide the beast over hills, oceans, forests. And the best masters saw as if their eyes were constructed of telescopes, seeing not the present, but the future, the next country rather than the current. It hurt, to look so far ahead, but it was as it must be. The master had to prepare for the days yet unseen, live not in the present but in the shifting ominous cloud of things not yet passed. Looking ahead did not mean seeing only landscapes and obstacles, but other beasts that would circle and slash at it's heels, or pass harmlessly by. Sometimes preparing for such encounters meant building the beast a poisonous skin that was death to bite, sometimes it meant making it's shape match the oncoming creatures so they might mistake it's nature, and sometimes it meant taking careful aim through telescopic eyes and squeezing a trigger. The master had to guide the beast so smoothly that the creatures within never stopped guarding their own fragile lives, for if they did so, the cogs and gears of the beast would stop turning and it would crash into stillness.
Strange. How nature seemed to manage so effortlessly, how the beast of the world, which indeed must need the most vigilant and stern master of them all, hardly seemed to require one at all. But that was just the point wasn't it? In the beast of the world he, Godwin, was merely a creature along for the unperceived journey. The job of the master was to remain invisible. Maybe one day, if he looked close enough, far enough, he might glimpse the secret cogs of the world. Maybe one day, he would look into the great master's eyes and ask to understand such secrets.
Godwin knew that his beast was slightly different. When a beast stumbles so hard that every one of it's passengers crashes to the ground as well, they cannot help but suddenly know the nature of their lives. They cannot help but see the master and the fault he caused. They cannot help but hate. And when a new master picks up that beast, gear by gear, until it stumbles to a walk once more, and then a run, and then a climb, they cannot help but know his face. They cannot help but love.
From where he stood Godwin could see the factory the event was to held at in just a few hours. The factory was one of the earlier that he and Sarai had opened, a few months less six years ago. There were crowds gathering in the surrounding park already, blankets being spread, clusters of life settling into the space. The podium had been arranged in front, the factory still turning behind, it's breathe still pushing grey and white into the sky above. Clouds snuck across the sky but they seemed to lack conviction, he suspected the sun would be shining through by the time he stepped out in front of his people. There was a massive screen erected above the stage. His face would be nearly the size of a building, looking out over all of them, his voice filling the air with the force of a storm. Two banners hung on either side, one of himself, fifteen stories tall, the other of Sarai. Crowns on their heads, lights in their eyes.
The divine blood. What a concept. His father's blood had been as divine as his. He had been a cowering creature stained with his own shit clutching at a fourteen-year-old's feet, snot and tears running down his face. Divine did not come from blood. It came from will. Definition was a careful craft. Gods were built, not born.
He checked his watch neatly. The sun came to Metraterra sooner than Catheda. Sarai would likely be awake by now, especially if her dawn-sickness continued to plague her. Such inconvenience. It marveled him, even to this day, what she, what all women bore for the lives they created.
He pulled his phone from his pocket, working the necessary swipes quickly. It rang twice.
"Good morning," Sarai's voice smiled through the phone.
He could see her face, even hundreds of miles away. The sunshine suited her. Catheda was grey more days than not, and he could hear the light of her homeland shining through her now, filling her like a cup of clear, sweet water.
"How are you?" Godwin asked, sitting down in the stern-backed chair that faced his tidy desk.
"Oh, sick, happy, sleepy, you know," she answered.
"I didn't wake you did I?"
"Oh no, I've been awake a little while, should have been up well earlier. The house has been up for hours."
"Houses always wake earlier than people," Godwin said.
"Only when there's a few particular people there to rouse them," Sarai argued.
"How's the sickness?"
"It's not as bad as it was, getting better. He's settling in."
"Boy then?"
"I think so," Sarai says. He can almost see her through the telephone running a hand over her belly, less than half the size of what it would become soon enough. "Just my luck. Two boys. They'd never forgive me if this was still home."
"How's your cousin?" Godwin asked.
"He's alright." She paused. "It seemed good at first, better. It's become... challenging."
"It's quite the change," Godwin said, "for the girl."
Sarai sighed through the phone. "Of course it is, I suppose I just didn't realize just how dramatic it would be. I'm glad I came. I can't imagine if Eammon was alone."
"And how's Jozef," Godwin asked.
Sarai brightened. "He likes it here. At least I think he does, you know how reticent he can be sometimes. He's quite cynical for a ten-year-old."
Godwin smiles. "I'm afraid that might be my fault."
"I'm sure it's your fault," Sarai smiled back. "But this is good for him, I'm so glad he's here. He's never been around animals like this, or the fields. He's getting color in his cheeks. It's handsome. Good for him."
"I'm glad," Godwin said. And he was. He liked to see her happy, and to see Jozef develop. Both him and she went into their son in equal measurements, and if he prepared accordingly, Jozef's reign would be twice as successful as his own had been. And that was truly what mattered in the end. Persistence. Legacy.
"It strange, isn't it," Sarai started, her voice taking on that tone it always did when she was feeling reflective: misty, and filled with the knowledge that time, once set, stamped the world in one shape, but might have pressed into any form at all, "it's been thirteen years. Already. Although, maybe that's not quite right... Has it gone by quickly or slowly? I can't tell."
Godwin tapped his finger idly against the rich surface of his desk. "Maybe both at once. Years can go by slowly, and decades quickly. Jozef's decade has rushed past. And those first three years, with all we had to accomplish, all we had to rebuild, time passed so furiously."
"Mm," she hummed idly through the line. She was tired. She often grew philosophical when she was just barely awake or nearly asleep. "I'm sorry I'm not there."
"As am I," Godwin said.
"I miss them," Sarai said.
"Who?"
"All of them. My city. The people. I don't know when it became home, but it did. Here's still home as well. The smells are home. And the feel of the air. But I've given myself to those people, to our people, and they've given themselves back. It's as though we've exchanged something, a deep secret thing, passed back and forth, and I feel it's absence when I'm far from it."
He smiled. He'd chosen his wife exactly as he should have. Well, not chosen, none of them chose, not any more, not since he signed that document. But he had signed it, and if he hadn't seen her potential, her possibility lined up so neatly alongside his own, he may never have laid his crisp slanted signature along-side the others.
"You can come home, whenever you like. Tomorrow if you care to," he said.
Her answer came exactly as he'd known it would. "Eammon needs me, I can't leave now. And Jozef is learning so much here, things he could never have in Catheda. I'll stay. For now at least."
"Do what you feel you must," Godwin said honestly, warmly.
"Enjoy it," Sarai smiled. "Kiss the country for me."
"I will," he answered.
"Talk soon," she said, voice as light as the sun he knew was filling her homeland. "I love you. I miss you."
"And you," he said simply. "Good-bye."
They parted thus, and as soon as the conversation ended he stood, straightening his suit neatly and turning out the door, his sharp shoes carrying him down the marble steps, one crisp echo at a time.
It didn't take long to reach the event. The crowd was packed tight and vast in the park. There must have been five hundred thousand spread across the fresh grass and the closed surrounding streets. At the very least. There had been fewer last year, and double today's number when they had celebrated the tenth anniversary three years ago.
His state-car and security detail made it's way through the passage that had been carved through the downtown traffic especially for them, easing into the back of the factory. Once outside of the cool silencing walls of the vehicle the noise of the crowd bubbled up all around them like an eager living sea.
Godwin's tight darkly-clad security ushered him easily in the arranged entrance. As soon as he entered the factory applause and cheers rang out from all sides. The workers had all gathered to welcome him, thousands lining the first, second, third stories that all looked down into the foyer.
Godwin smiled, small and humble, waving back. The CEO was waiting for him, red face beaming, fat hand already waiting to clutch his own. He bowed as soon as Godwin let him take it.
"Your Majesty, it's an honor, as always. We're so grateful to host you, host this, on such an occasion."
Godwin smiled, "The honor is mine." Though the occasion was not remarkable. It was for them perhaps, the creatures within the beast.
He'd chosen this factory particularly. There were many that had been revitalized in the years following his father's death, and indeed this one was not unique to any of the three he had chosen on the past celebrations of the anniversary of his coronation. But there was more of an eye to the future in this selection. The tenth anniversary he'd held at a steel factory, the backbone of their industry that had crumbled under his father's wavering grasp, then two car factories, and today again, automobiles, or rather automobile parts. However, this factory held a specialization in battery production, an area it was vital to control if their automobile market was to continue to be relevant in the shifting dynamics of the times.
"We're all eager to begin," the CEO, Prevott, Godwin remembered easily, "I'm sure you are as well."
"I wouldn't want to keep anyone waiting," Godwin nodded.
"Then, your Majesty," the man swung an expansive arm, "we can head right this way."
They moved at a healthy speed, through cheers and applause echoing off and around the factory's walls, to up and out, where the cheers had no confines, and their numbers, their volume soared like a million cawing birds up into the sky above.
The day was bright, bright enough to cause his blue eyes to blink harshly as he passed into it. He'd never completely gotten used to the sun. It was usually so clouded over in Catheda.
Smiling faces and hands eager to be shaken lined the path to the podium. He moved through it slowly, and indeed he did feel Sarai's absence. When she was here he had another to share this attention, to take half the hands in her own, and return half the smiles. It was a greater burden alone.
The podium rose before him and he crested, stepping to the top to a sudden wave of sound from the crowd spread out beyond. The citizens rippled, shifting and shining like a field of wheat under a summer breeze. Most wore red, the color of his house, of his family. Chants rose and fell, individual voices carried for a moment only to be lost against in the hum of the masses. He raised his have to wave and their voices cried out, the wave crested and shattered again over him. Love poured out of them, drenching him in adoration, worship.
He stepped back to where he should be as CEO Prevott approached the podium, ready to welcome him. The man clutched the podium, thanking the crowd, and a relative silence fell, anticipating the words to come.
"Thank you all, for joining us on such a special occasion," Prevott began. "We are truly honored to be the hosts of this year's coronation anniversary. May there be many more."
The crowd cheered, echoing his statement back at him-- "Many more! Many more! Many more!"
"You all know why we are here. We are here today because this city, this country, lived many years in a darkness few of us imagined possible. When I was twenty-seven, the same age as our king behind me, it seemed Catheda would shine forever. The factories rose by the sea, and the trade flowed as easily as the tides. And then a darkness fell upon us, and as with all shadows, the unexpected timing made it fall heavier and thicker than we ever imagined it could.
"The Divine Blood we had trusted so, failed us. Our king, failed us. When the world began to age, and catch up with our success, all that we had built began to rust. There was no one to polish what we had built, no one to ensure that we grew as quickly as the world did. Time passed over Catheda and it passed heavily, as a king simply stood by and watched, distracted so with his own demons that he could not notice the smell of his country as it rotted around him.
"I remember the day I had to release ten percent of my staff. Then thirty. Then fifty. I remember the day my neighbors across the street moved away, fleeing to Fleuvia with what savings they. I remember when the house next to them emptied, and the house after that. I remember walking streets and hearing more stray dogs barking after scraps than human voices, houses staring out at the street empty and forgotten."
“I remember when the anger of the people finally cracked. There were so few of us left, and we carried the rage of all those who had left on our backs. I remember when we walked to the palace, when we threw the rocks that had been out streets, the bricks that had been our homes, the steel that had been our work, anything, everything; we hurled what we could find at the place that had harmed us so. And all we received in return were bullets into the gathered crowds.
"I remember the day my wife asked me why we hadn't left. I remember when she looked at me, so tired, so lost, as all of us were. She asked why we hadn't gone with the rest of them, why we couldn't go. I couldn't answer her. I didn't know myself. I knew I loved my country, still, deep within. There was a part of me that still beat for Catheda. But I didn't know why. I didn't know how. Godwin Nikolaas Arnoldus reminded me. Godwin Nikolaas Arnoldus saved me. Godwin Nikolaas Arnoldus saved us all."
The cheers exploded out of the crowd, shattering off the steel buildings around them, soaring up into the clear sky.
"It seemed impossible," Prevott continued, "I know I was hesitant to believe, we all were. But it was true. Our miracle had come. The king was dead and in his place was a monarch who returned to us everything we had lost. Thirteen years ago today Godwin Nikolaas Arnoldus was coronated and took the place of his father on the throne of Catheda with his beautiful consort Sarai Eustance Celestine by his side, our queen, who we miss greatly on this day of celebration."
The crowd release a sympathetic hum of support.
"In thirteen years, Godwin Nikolaas Arnoldus has taken our capital from the most desolate of metropolises to a thriving, vibrate, expanding, industrial city that puts even what it was fifty years ago in the shadows!"
The cheers soared again, impossibly louder, impossibly stronger.
"And so, without any further delay, I give you, your king!"
The noise exploded over him, waves upon waves. The faces in the crowd were all turned towards him, towards the massive screen that projected his face ten stories high, towards the banners of he and Sarai and towered monumental. Godwin took the two steps up the podium to stand before them. He rested his hands on the smooth metal, and with a calm smile, he looked out over his beast.
It did not know it, but there was a mountain in the distant. A mountain that grew closer each day. It did not know. It could not see. It saw only their master, standing at a podium, smiling back at their love. But that was just as it should be. Godwin saw the mountain, just as he had for years, each day approaching, closer, closer. Godwin saw the mountain, and the beast did not know, but it was already climbing it's foothills.