TALES OF LONG SUNSET

I guess I should preface this prologue of this project by mentioning that this is an incredibly rough draft. There are certainly inconsistencies, sometimes of a maddening nature. The second draft will take care of most of those, but for now I’m just on a course of blazing straight through and knocking down every wall that writer’s bloc tries to build in my way.

So please enjoy the weekly postings of “Tales of Long Sunset.” God and Old Stone willing, I’ll have the book done by the time this blog catches up with me.

Let’s begin.

PROLOGUE: OLD STONE

They called it a children’s story, but the children disagreed. After all, for any tale to have survived the primeval dawn, the noontime of prosperity and the lengthening shadows of recent history, it must have been a story of great importance for many generations. The legend of Old Stone was the only one of its kind to survive so long, though the old folks said it was a myth from the years of noon and not a true story at all. The children knew better. Too many parts of the story told of things that never existed under the sun, and anyone with an imagination knows that storytellers cannot create something out of nothing. There must have been a foundation of truth behind the eons of retelling. The real reason the story was rejected by the old folks, the children suspected, was because it was, after all, a story about hope, and hope is a thing that frightens those who are set in their ways.

There have been different versions of Old Stone’s story, but the bones of the tale are always the same. This is how the children remember it.

Old Stone, as even those who don’t accept his whole story know, was the first father of all who live under the light of the sun. But he did not spend his whole life in the Day; he came from the darkness. His people were a violent and mysterious folk who knew only the black cold, and while Stone was still young he was a great hunter and adventurer among them.

When he had provided for his colony long enough to see his brothers grow into capable men, he grew discontented with the ordinary achievements that no longer held any challenge for him. So he chose a direction, took a pack full of meat from the great wild beasts he hunted in the snow, and set himself to walk as far as he could until he might find a new, unexpected and uncharted land.

Far he walked, farther than any other man or woman has ever been known to go. His beard grew long and streaks of gray began to appear, but he never slowed his pace nor wavered in his direction. On one occasion he found himself marching through a great freezing ice storm, as often afflicted those lands. He was compelled to hold his face down with his eyes closed against the blasting snow for months on end. At last the storm cleared away, and with it the black clouds. Stone lifted up his head and opened his eyes, and saw the glow of a great light illuminating the sky to the east. At first he thought he’d discovered a mighty bonfire, perhaps belonging to a race of giants, but as he marched on he saw that the illumination did not flicker or wave as firelight will do. With renewed vigor he pressed forward as the storms grew worst and the weather more unpredictable, as ice fields cracked and glaciers melted spewing freezing rivers across his path with no warning. The light grew slowly brighter on the horizon, and he stared in awe at the reds, blues and pinks splayed across the sky, colors he had never before seen or imagined.

The farther he went, the warmer grew the air until even Stone’s immense endurance waned. His breaths became more burdensome, his sight blurred and he was forced to rest at longer and longer intervals. The extreme cold was natural to him, but even the slightest hint of warmth on the wind was excruciating. Nevertheless he was determined to push onward despite the slackening pace, that he might at least catch a glimpse of that great light source before being forced to turn back.

But he stumbled upon something that gave him good cause to halt his forward progress. Upon descending from a treacherous glacier, he rested beside a mighty wall of sheer ice. He lit a fire to cook one of the furry snow-creatures he had recently hunted, and sat to eat it. The light from his fire fell upon the wall of ice and he gazed at it, rubbing his eyes in bewilderment at what he beheld.

Deep inside the ice, faintly visible only because of the pure clarity of the frozen water, could be seen the unmoving figures of men and women Some here standing, some sitting, some lying down. There were stone houses, crudely carved roads and carts filled with goods. All were frozen and still.

At once Stone turned his mind from the endless march eastward and set himself to dig into the ice wall to reach those mysterious entities within, to see for himself if they were long-abandoned statues, corpses of a forgotten people, or simply a cruel trick of the light twisted by an exhausted mind.

A simple shelter he built himself out of ice and rocks, as a barrier against the biting cold storms and occasional blasts of hot air from the east. Here he made a dwelling place for himself as he took up his axe to chip a tunnel into the ice.

The labor took him long. Though he broke the ice with immense strength and lit fires in the newly formed tunnel to melt it, the figures were so deep inside the glacier and the ice was frozen so solid that he found more and more white hairs in his long beard by the time he had nearly reached them.

One human likeness loomed hauntingly from the silent blue much nearer than the rest. Toward this one Stone cut his path, and then carved the tunnel around in a circle so as to perform the breaking-free with delicacy and care.

The figure was that of a young woman, much smaller than Stone (for the dwellers of Night were gigantic in proportions, as legends say). She was darker-skinned and covered in light clothing made of grasses and fibers, without a hint of furs. Her eyes were shut but the look etched into her smooth features suggested discomfort accompanied by peaceful acceptance. Upon seeing her beauty and gracefulness Stone’s relentless heart began to melt like ice and he fell in love, though he had no reason to believe she was anything more than a statue.

With long vigils he alternated between small fires to make the ice sweat and soft picking to chip away the ice where it lay thickest over her. The great care with which he worked cost him a great deal of time, but he would not risk even a scratch to the delicate vision before him. Soon there was but a thin sheet of ice surrounding her, and his work became ever slower and more careful.

After months uncounted inside his shelter and tunnel Stone stepped outside to hunt for food and fuel. At once he shielded his eyes, and it occurred to him that the world had grown brighter and a little warmer. The sides of the mighty wall of ice were dripping, and parts of his shelter that were made from ice had begun to droop.

All at once he was filled with a certainty that was both wondrous and terrible: the warm light was slowly but steadily enveloping all the land. Before much longer he might have no choice but to retreat back into the colder lands to the west, lest he suffer the unendurable brightness that was surely on its way.

Yet as Stone gazed at the horizon, curiosity once again took hold of his mind. When he shielded his eyes he could see that the source of the great light was just below the distant mountains that formed the edge of his sight. He would not be able to rest or work in peace until he had seen that great luminescence for himself.

Setting aside his work for a short time, he journeyed toward a high mountain that lay just east of his shelter, climbing up from the glacier valley. From the mountain he hoped to see over the horizon just far enough to catch a glimpse of whatever was changing the world with light and heat.

He stayed in the shadows of the west side of the mountain, climbing up with his customary agility and speed. Looking up at the ridges that towered above him, he saw bright shafts of white light shooting through the drifts of snow that circled and danced in the air. It was a marvelously beautiful sight to behold, and he knew whatever sight that waited for him beyond the ridge must be even more beautiful still.

He reached the high ridge of the mountain and brought his face direct into the path of the light. For a brief moment he glimpsed a landscape from a different world. The fields of ice ceased, giving way to a horizon filled with greens and blues.

It was only for the briefest of moments that he saw this world, however. His eyes flitted toward the center of the light, which did indeed rise just above the farthest line where sky met earth. In that instant he became the first man to ever see the Sun.

Then his vision left him. The unendurable brightness of the sun struck him instantly blind.

In darkness and great pain he stumbled his way down from the mountain top. To navigate in utter darkness was not altogether impossible for such a man bred in a world devoid of light, but he had still come to rely much on his sight. He fell many times and found himself lost, wandering the ice fields in search of some smell he might recognize, or some rock whose touch might be familiar. Every time he thought himself nearing a path he had trodden before, he would slip on an unseen patch of ice or catch his foot on a sharp rock and fall headlong into a crevice. Soon he was unable to tell east from west or up from down, and he was utterly lost.

Despairing at last he lay himself down on the ice, shutting his eyes and resigning himself to a fate of hunger. The darkness closed in around him and the wind gave way to silence, but then the silence was interrupted by a distant cry. Stone did not move at first, believing the cry to be a last trick of the breeze on his dying mind. But the cry came again and Stone, though exhausted beyond measure, stood up and began to move quickly toward the sound, never minding the rocks that tripped him and the valleys that opened up before him. The cry was repeated, guiding his way, and it was the cry of a young woman.

Stone found himself soon treading paths that he knew to be within reach of his shelter and the tunnel he had chipped into the ice. Though the cries came in no language that he recognized, Stone knew in his heart that the voice must belong to the woman from the ice, freed at last by the melt.

Again she called out, and this time he called back. He reached the entrance to the tunnel and heard the soft footsteps from within. Neither understanding the cries of the other they ran together and embraced, the only two occupants of a lonely land between night and day. She was starving, he was blind, and they helped one another to survive in the strange world neither of them understood.

In the rock hut they lived together for a time, Stone tending to the shelter, cooking food and rebuilding walls as the ice melted. The woman (whom he called Day) took on the tasks of hunting, for she was delicate and fleet-footed, and was happiest in the warm, bright air. But time went on and the heat grew more extreme. Stone knew that he could not stay much longer in the daylight, for as the sun rose slowly his skin began to burn and his head to throb. He told this to Day (for he had learned her language), and she sighed. She was not certain she could live in the cold, but there was another reason for her great sadness at the prospect of leaving. The rest of her people still remained frozen beneath the ice, deeper still than she had been. As the great glacier slowly melted it shed its ice in great rivers that flowed above and below. Even now the water flowed ankle-deep through the tunnel in which she had been found. Given a little longer the structure of the ice would fail, crushing her people within it long before it melted around them.

Old Stone then chose to stay in this place until such time as he and Day might free her people from the ice. He did not fear death, and the cold darkness of the western lands held no appeal for him ever since he had glimpsed the sunny lands. That image of green hills, blue lakes and a crowning, glorious sunrise was etched forever in his mind’s eye; as long as he held onto that image and onto the woman he loved, he was happy. So he began to tunnel farther into the ice, Day guiding him with her sight. Much time passed and the couple grew old together, and one by one they freed her people.

When they all walked once again in the clear air they took their leave, wandering eastward into the lands fully illuminated by the sun. But Day chose to stay with Old Stone on the border between night and day, where neither would thrive but both would be happy with one another.

After that time nobody ever heard from Stone and Day again. But a long, long time afterward a race of hearty men and women, strong like Stone but quick like Day and able to live under the sun, found their way eastward toward the settlements descended from those freed from the ice. Many believed these newcomers to be the grandchildren of Stone and Day. They mingled with the day-dwellers and intermarried, until the lines of descent were intertwined. With this mighty bloodline, the day-dwellers spread far and wide across the land, building great cities above and below the ground. When the sun reached its apex in the sky the people prospered, their empire both mighty and peaceful.

There are some that say Stone and Day still live, that they dug a deep tunnel beneath the ground to shelter themselves from whatever storms might pass. If that is true, then they will emerge again - perhaps after long ages when the Sun has run its course and again descends behind the western hills - and they will lead the people to new sunlit lands once again.