Feb 18, 2025
Dean Cornwell (1892-1960) “The Callers” Cosmopolitan Magazine Interior Illustration (1925) Source
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Dean Cornwell (1892-1960) “The Callers” Cosmopolitan Magazine Interior Illustration (1925) Source
@groovegalz made this incredible piece of my + my friends' band ocs!! I can't get over how lovely they all are 🖤🤍🖤 Thank you again!!
The cameras love Tim Travers, and it's very much mutual.
The Callers
directed by Lindsey Dryden, 2024
Book Review: The Callers by Kiah Thomas
In the world of Elipsom, the ability to Call, or summon objects, is a coveted, crucial skill, revered among its people as both a powerful tool and an essential way to sustain life. But despite an elite family history, a phenom for an older sister, a best friend who is set to join the Council of Callers, and his mother's steely insistence that he learn to Call, Quin doesn't have the gift—an embarrassment made worse when his mother gets his sister to cheat for him on his Calling exam. But everything changes in a moment of frustration when Quin, instead of summoning an object, makes something disappear. And what's more, he quickly discovers that the objects Callers bring into their world aren't conjured at all but are whisked away from another world and a people who for years have had their lives slowly stolen from them. Now Quin must team up with Allie, a girl who's determined to stop this unfair practice, and decide whether he should remain loyal to his family or betray them—and save the world.
4/5 ★
The Callers - 6
As she raced towards the top, she thought nothing of Bason-Itiosh, her home. It was now just a memory she had taught to her children, which would become part of the Bason-Bakiti.
In those first few days after her arrival, expeditions to her home forest had found it as she described; there was an irregular but tremendous strip of land within which there was sickness, death, or the dying. Without a clear cause (or pattern), the contagion spread; new pockets of it appeared and disappeared in other parts of the area. When it began to appear in the Bason-Bakiti forest, they had emigrated very quickly.
How long had it been, since then?
Decades, perhaps; she didn't know how many. In her current, cloudy state of mind, she really didn't care: the past was a pleasant blur, a vague feeling of contentment about a job she didn't remember doing, but knew she had done well. All that mattered was this, her final journey.
She knew the way. The properties of the place were always the same; an isolated, tremendous height. After she had moved with the Bason-Bakiti to this forest, she had discovered this tree towering defiantly on the edge of a cliff, and claimed it; after she found it, she had visited it every day for a year, until she could find her way to it in her sleep. But she had never climbed the tree until this day.
She climbed as quickly as she could. The wind whipped past, resisting her movements which, though still graceful and powerful, were much slower than they had once been. How impatient she felt! She wanted to see it, to reach the top, now. Her six limbs, moving in practiced unison, now flailed impatiently at the bark as she climbed. She must get to the top!
She had known with some certainty it was to be today. Still groggy, she had begun her journey towards the tree before First Dawn. She didn't tell anyone; no one spoke of such things. By Second Dawn, the compulsion had taken a hold of her: nothing in the world seemed as important as getting to the top of the tree.
This was a natural compulsion. All Bason felt the call at the end of their lives. She was content: life had been full and interesting, and she couldn't possibly imagine it any other way; wouldn't want it any other way.
The branches were closer together now. She used as many of them as she could to propel herself higher, faster, the until she was as close to the top as she could get. Then she raced down a branch that extended over the cliff.
The rocky valley spread out below her. She didn't hesitate, and hurled herself headfirst into the cliff.
From land we rise, she thought, as she fell. To land, we fall. This is the way of Bason.
She felt euphoric, at peace: as the ground rushed upwards, her eyes drifted shut.
The Callers - 5
She was a Caller; the oldest.
Her peers -- those with whom she had learned the way of Calling -- had long since returned to Yunal. But she and the one who now stood before her had chosen differently.
Her companion was also ancient, although barely half her age. He also walked in Unity; she had felt his approach and begun discussing with him a day before his physical arrival.
"Something outside Yunal brings death at the point of contact. The death zone is tremendous," the male Caller said, "And yet, the death is slow; the effects will not truly be visible for some time."
"Yunal neither seeks nor wants," said the elder Caller.
"But Yun desires life."
The elder sighed. At least, it could have been a sigh; it might have also been a soft breeze swishing through the foliage above. She had stood here, in the middle of a sacred forest, for centuries; to all appearances, she was just a slightly odd tree in a forest of slightly odd trees.
"Yunal is the All-thing," Yun recited, through the eldest, "The universe, and all within it. There is nothing outside Yunal."
"And yet," the male said slowly, "It appears that is no longer true."
The eldest gave a silent assent.
She, the eldest Caller had not disengaged from Unity for most of her life. As the forest she grew in had spread, her awareness had expanded with it; when the forest shrank, her awareness did not. Over the course of centuries, her Yun had grown to cover of a tremendous area.
And most life within that area -- including her tree-self, she knew -- would die from the contamination within a few decades.
The Yun's desire for self-preservation overrode hers, and in any case, she wasn't alarmed: it was in the Yun's interest to have a rich ecology, so any solution would, naturally, include her tree-self, which she had no particular desire to preserve anyway.
"What now?" the male asked.
"Madness comes to whomever Calls Yunal alone," the eldest recited again. "Find every Caller. We must talk to Yunal."
The Callers - 4
She was terrified, and lost.
No, not lost, because she didn't have a specific destination. Her surroundings were unfamiliar and disconcerting: there was an implied order in the arrangement of the trees back home, which was clearly missing here. She knew that forests grew with the same wild abandon wherever they took root, but still told herself that home put this forest to shame.
But "home" was no more. Everyone she knew was dead or, she desperately hoped, en route to warn other Bason tribes, like she was. It would be a miracle if they ever saw each other again.
Long ago, in a time with few settlements and many, many existential threats, the Bason -- ancestors of her people -- agreed that if one settlement was routed by a threat, each of its surviving inhabitants would fan out and warn all other settlements in their exit path. Fleeing individuals were welcome to settle at any other encampment they found. This was the twin-birth of Bason hospitality, and a custom they interchangeably called Flight or Escape.
Things had calmed down a great deal since the Flight tradition was introduced. She realized somewhat ruefully that, before her journey began two days ago, no Bason had invoked the tradition in centuries.
--
Bason territory wasn't always recognizable as such, unless one knew where to look.
With some practice, an earthbound traveler might spot the occasional unobtrusive symbol on (or near) a tree; no more. But she was Bason, and knew exactly where to look. It wasn't long before she found the name of the Bason tribe that lived here and, shortly afterwards, directions to their common area.
--
As far as the Bason-Bakiti were concerned, an impudent stranger had just utterly ruined their Second Dawn ritual. No emergency in Yunal could warrant such rudeness. Oh yes, she was Bason, and must immediately be treated with full Bason hospitality -- and sure, she seemed to have exceptional climbing arms -- but, damn it, they needed to talk about her rudeness.
When all available Bason had answered the call to assemble, and silence had fallen on the group, a hearing began.
"You."
It was a question, directed at the stranger, perched in their midst. She recognized the tone: to a non-Bason, it meant a death sentence. To a Bason, it usually meant the same.
"Bason-Itiosh," she replied. "I have traveled just over two days."
The Bason-Itiosh were known to a few, and some began to murmur that her home was about three days' travel away. Some observed the stranger's arms with renewed admiration.
"You may now run with the Bason-Bakiti," said her interrogator, formally welcoming her to the tribe. "But why have you comehere now?"
"I am an emissary in flight," she replied.
A silence descended on the gathering.