Hot Blue Moonlight Down The Steep Sky

The following are objects I found around the city after reviewing the attached account of K__. I believe that these may be related to other objects and senses which K__ might have created or encountered in their adventures and perhaps in the workshop; I have taken these for laboratory analysis, though, and they stymie:

The account:

I’d decided to take a day off, so, a few bus stops and some confused walking later, I found myself in the middle of a bookshop that I favored and frequented. There again were the books I disdained, others which I held great interest for but did not care to buy just yet. I should buy something, if not for me, for a good friend; what sort of books would they like, though? And I couldn’t keep sticking to that formulaic gift; so this is how I found myself, eventually, browning a store of knick-knacks on a quieter street as a light drizzle began. There were small plants and soft cloth and jewelry; I felt soft, despite everything, and so I decided to stay a bit longer, despite seeing nothing initially promising. The shop smelled faintly of pine and rose oil, and it all began to lull a bit.

The shopkeeper, having ducked out into a back room just before I came in, returned, saw that I was the only other person in, and resolved to let me be. Then she, sensing a sort of indecision in me, rearranged her posture into something more inviting so that I got up the courage to ask her for opinions and help. I explained, then, and she nodded, and we talked for a bit, then she mentioned that she had different wares in the back, not yet exhibited or just out of presentation, and yes, this was slightly different from most shops, but do come back with me and take a look.

So I followed. I didn’t expect much—there’s only so much space—but she led me down a flight of stairs into a room about the size of my apartment. The buildings are built into the hill, she said, which coincidentally makes it much easier for me to come into my shop and take the block’s elevator up to the top of the hill. As for the room, it was filled with shelves packed unimaginably tightly. The previous tenant, or owner, or whatever, said the shopkeeper, had left this for some reason, and as my agreement included this, and what little I found here was really tempting, I decided to keep it. I remember some nice scarves in the corner; if you’ll follow me. 

But I somehow lost her around a corner, and instead of trying to find my way out through the maze (it was almost as if the shelves had grown into dead-ends and turns), I thought it best to stay where I was. Then I noticed, on the bottom shelf, books; old, worn ones, and I bent down to run my fingers over their spines, and then my fingers slipped into a hollow and retrieved a velvet-clothed book bearing no inscription or clue of origin on its outside, but had a clasp that looked decoratively forbidding. I opened it to find a title page; Tlön, it said, but the pages had either been cut out or were blank, so far as I could see. But there were scraps of paper tucked into the book, seemingly as bookmarks or notes, as they had some sort of text on them. 

At this point, the shopkeeper had found me again, bearing scarves. I asked if I could keep the papers (yes; don’t they look like weird math symbols or whatever they use nowadays?), we climbed back out, and I was paying when a call came for her (so sorry, I really need to take this) and she rang a bell and a bearded man with a sad face appeared.

Oh, this is my lovely assistant Julien, she said. Please finish ringing all this up. 

She left. I paid; Julien packed. Wait, he said, what are those papers you have?

I found them downstairs. I don’t understand what this all means; math, somehow? Code? To be clear, there’s not much difference between them for me.

No, Julien said, pursing his lips. Let me take a closer look at them. Yes, they are familiar. I’ve seen them before. Just where did you find this?

I told him.

Funny, he said. I once knew a person from Prague who had a very similar encounter, down to the method of finding a book, except that he found a whole book, not just fragments of one. The symbols are words. He told me, as we were sitting eating vepřo-knedlo-zelo in a restaurant in Malá Strana, that first, the book contained several incredible copperplate engravings and illuminations, but of strange subjects, and that second, the night he took the book home, he woke up to see snowflakes spinning and drifting onto and across cornices and ledges outside, shining gold from streetlights, shimmering green from the light of the book. It’s beautiful, he thought, looking at the snowflakes then out over the sleeping hills, and, for a moment, he wasn’t sure which he was referring to. We haven’t spoken in quite a while; it’s as if he’s disappeared from this earth. All I can tell you is that later, he seemed harried, as if some unsavory figure were watching him, and that he became more and more evasive to my questions, and I grew worried. One day I stopped by his apartment to find its door ajar, and I stepped inside to see it ransacked, strange designs drawn in béchamel on the wall, and I was seized by a subterranean, primeval terror, fled the city that day for my home in Liège, and moved here a month later. Perhaps I must confront whatever that was now (here he glanced nervously out the window).

As for Tlön, it is a world created by a benevolent secret society some four hundred years old, counting George Berkeley among its founders. The society saw persecution in its earlier days, but reemerged to create said world successfully; this book was meant to be an encyclopedia of it, but you saw its censorship by malevolent forces. I could speak to you later this week about it, and maybe introduce you to a different acquaintance with discreet scholastic involvement, but now we have spoken too long, and I must restore the original text in the book; see me in the back corner of the café two blocks west an hour after sunset three days from now. And if you want to find out more between then and now, go to the Episcopal cathedral across the bay tonight at three, tap your foot thrice in the nave, and proceed into the shadow in the gallery above, but only for a moment.

Now the rain had stopped and a soft light swam gently through the window and touched the tables and wicker baskets.

At two minutes to three, I slipped inside the door, tapped my foot, then climbed the stairs and rounded a bend in the gallery where the darker shadows began. I felt a scent pass over me and leave my arm-hair prickly, but otherwise perceived no change. I waited for a while, hoping for some obvious signal, but eventually lost my patience and left the cathedral. In the square outside I saw a man reading a newspaper by the light of a streetlamp and the pinkening sky; the page that faced me bore a headline and a picture. As I came closer, I saw and read:

SHARK MURDERER BANISHED

With a picture of a shark impaled on a metal cross above the main portal of an unfamiliar Gothic cathedral. 

I walked down the hill towards the water and then a procession of people dressed in long brown robes carrying before them a cow on a bier. The cow had flowers arranged around it, and every few paces the procession would stop and intone something in a foreign language. I ducked into a side street and found a woman watching; she glanced at me and said no, you’re not from here are you? 

No, I said, I suppose not. 

Where are you from? The Temple? Your accent is strange. 

I came here by walking in and out of a shadow in the gallery of the cathedral on the hill.

Oh, she said. Then you’re from the other place. You should know that you shouldn’t be walking around in the open like this. They’re very strict about that: only acolytes and priests and such of Dargoos can pass. And so you don’t believe that his body was torn by tigers, that he wandered and disputed. If they saw you like this, especially without a fish, they’d take you away for a thousand years. 

I looked down to see a red snapper, flopping and gasping, on a leash which the woman gripped tightly in her hand.

Go back, she said. Go back where you came from! I sense their approach; don’t come back unless you’re accompanied. 

Chastened, I made my way back via side streets. As I turned the first corner, I saw a priest, accompanied by snarling dogs, seize the woman’s arm. You’re under arrest, the priest said, for heresy of the word, and don’t you deny it. We’ve been watching you smuggle thread and spoon between worlds for months now, and soon we’ll round all of you up. 

When I returned to the square, I found that it had been cordoned off by pike-wielding guards and that a crowd had gathered such that I could no longer reach the doors. But maybe a side or back door might work; I tried to wind my way through narrow streets towards where I thought they would be, but then I bumped into a burly man, who turned, squinted in fear and anger, and said loudly, you don’t have a fish.

I have a fish, I tried. It’s in my pocket.

Show us, then, he said, his voice drawing attention. Show us. I don’t make mistakes with this sort of thing. I don’t think you have a proper fish at all. 

Piss off, I said. It’s none of your business, and neither I or my fish owe you anything. 

You can’t go on walking around frightening children and disgusting self-respecting citizens like us, he said, seeing support in the small group that had gathered. Guard? Guard! Help!

I saw fear and disgust in the faces around me, and how they shrank back from me, holding their children to their breasts. Not one seemed open, and I knew that I had to get out; I started off towards the end of the block. Then a growl, snort, and a harsh laugh, and the crowd parted to reveal a water buffalo standing on its hind legs bearing a claymore with a great pink gem set in its pommel.

Does it all really end like this, I thought, so soon? I cannot outrun him. I don’t know how the hell he’s holding that sword with goddamn hooves. Maybe I can cut through a building. He’s coming. Run—

I don’t know how I managed to stay ahead of that beast for so long. I flew like I never had before. Pedestrians regressed into blurs, but their jeers remained clear. Eventually, I found an open grocery store and tried to evade him in the isles with double-backs and whatever back exits I could find, but now I began to tire, and the claymore swung closer, and I grew so desperate that, passing a carton of rambutans, I stopped and flung one rambutan after another at him, hitting his chest, his nose, his eyes, one horn. And then I noticed that the rambutans were moving of their own accord, and that, as I picked up each fruit, they squeaked a bit, and that each one which I had used against the buffalo lay split and bleeding on the ground. This all seemed to stir the buffalo into a greater rage, and he cursed me, and promised that I would live on in infamy in the textbooks of young students, and I fled into a freezer in the back and closed and barred the door as best I could. He slammed against the door, and instantly it bulged alarmingly, and the hinges began to pop, so I looked for something to hide behind; there, behind a pallet of whatever moving fruit was there in the corner. I squeezed in and noticed an opening in the wall behind that, and so I squeezed into that, which was a tunnel, and I crawled frantically as the freezer door finally gave way with a great crash, until I shuddered all over and fell unconscious.

I woke up to the sounds of conversation just past the lighted crack in what appeared to be the door of a container I was in. The voices faded, and I pushed open the door to find myself in a locker room in a basement. Music floated down the hall towards me. 

That night, I found the café, which was doing a surprisingly brisk business for the hour, and found Julien, as previously agreed, sitting at a back table tapping away at his phone. He didn’t seem to notice me, and I desperately needed caffeine—anything to keep me awake—so I went up to the counter and ordered a coffee; yes, coffee, no sugar or cream, thank you, here’s my card. 

Won’t you take some of this, the barista said, motioning to a pastry with piped cream and sliced strawberries in the display case. It’s our specialty. 

Yes, I might as well. 

I took my food over to Julien’s table and slid into the chair in front of him. Oh, hello, he said, looking up. You’re here. You don’t look well.

I crossed over, I said, and I was not welcome. 

Julien slid his phone over to me. I gathered as much. You’ve made the news.

The phone showed a picture of me, chased by the buffalo in startling detail. 

I should have warned you, in all honesty, continued Julien, but we shan’t cry over spilt milk. You must be desperate for an explanation, then and now; I was hoping to let you take just a gander at the other city, but now that you’ve taken a bit more, I think that you will have to take a bit more explanation, and I do apologize for what prating I must do.

There is a loose group of people who are of the night, either through birth or through accidental acknowledgment. I once knew someone who was both; after she crossed, she seemed to find herself more, but could not, like most crossers, make for herself a home in either city. She changed greatly in demeanor and appearance, and soon she could not bear to look at herself in mirrors, which she described as pools of uneasy water in which clouds forever turn. 

It is difficult to perceive, for most, what lies below and around us, for, firstly, they exist by different sets of meanings, and secondly, more importantly, we shy away from our sleep. Sleep is, said my friend, a guilty immunity; it shields us from our roots; it offers an illusion of a separation from our primeval selves. We, through talk and rule and such, encage the creature within us. If it be a lioness, she is encaged by the ring and clowns and dolls, but we forget that she retains her snarl and her teeth. Our fine selves go on treading water, but we must go down to see our doubled true selves. We kneel before the altar and we kneel before each other. In lives such as my mirrored friend, and, I think now that this group includes my Czech friend, we and they see continual accidents; permanent mistakes. But there is, first, a beauty in that. And then, as, again, she said, we must, owing to our learning, dress the unknowable in the garments of the known.

But there is no such truth, no formula. And indeed God should wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death; neither sorrow, nor crying, for death is intimacy walking backwards, and we shall be alone like animals, for we know neither ourselves nor others once we have crossed the line between cities. And sometimes we must rehabilitate ourselves as beasts; we were all once beasts. Remember that next time when you draw the ire of a guard or walk about flagrantly without a fish. 

But surely someone who has lived decades in this world cannot merely cross a border and become a staunch resident of another space? I asked.

Julien raised his eyebrows and said, no, don’t say that, it’s never like that, and don’t make that sort of deeply offensive analogy. We do not transform but acknowledge. And if the existence of a parallel world offends you and your God, your God which primeval man created to create primeval man, I cannot help you. The barista is calling for you now, but I must rephrase; do not deny the newly realized hopes of those like my friend who hope to cross permanently one way or the other and live contentedly, and may God forgive you.

I called you over, said the barista when I arrived at the counter, to relieve you of responsibility.

Outside, a blue and gold trolley pulled up. It seemed to be made not of polymers or metals but slabs of gleaming marble, and its flanged metal wheels seemed to cut tracks through the road that disappeared as soon as the trolley passed. The door opened, and two light-haired girls with swooping shadows underneath their eyes sprang out bearing a stretcher, which they left right outside the door, after which they marched straight to Julien, who, upon seeing them, turned pale.

You are being arrested, said the girl in a blue top, for heresy by thought, word, deed, and of action. Did you think that our actions wouldn’t escape us? That your imaginary Tlön-group, Orbis Tertius, didn’t have moles? Your wicked spread of the denial of the world that is and that is destined ends here. 

I wouldn’t recommend interfering with them, murmured the barista, who I now recognized as one of the people lining the streets as the buffalo had chased me. You wouldn’t want them to take you too, and, besides, I have a knife pointed at your kidneys right now (and here I felt something cold press against my side).

Sit down, said the other girl, in a brown top. Don’t you move, unless you want to be taken too forcibly.

They have taken many people this way, said the barista. They even took my son, but not before the other people corrupted him with odd conspiracies born of mysterious prophecies and texts and alphabets. He hid that from me after he realized that the other city bore a far greater attraction than this one. But he brought more mysterious people over, some who I saw many times, others less. Some of them gave themselves to the other city. But the temple’s enforces are different. Of all those they’ve taken, I have never seen them either here or in the other city.

Julien, meanwhile, had decided to be taken with dignity, but not before saying, defiantly, your Dargoos cannot will any more than it can truly perceive or command you; the apple of its eye changes with every glance, and the collection if its independent acts will one day arbitrarily turn your own order against you, so I condemn you.

Then he went outside, where Blue and Brown strapped him to the stretcher and carried him inside the trolley. The door disappeared after they had gone inside, and the trolley turned up the hill, headlights bouncing with the slopes and potholes until it had crested a rise, and then its beams of light were swallowed up by the night sky.

You’ll want to save your friend, said the barista. Act quickly. Do not dally as I did with my son. Go up the hill for three blocks, turn left, continue until you see the coral tree, and go into the house which it is in front of. Then go into the back room, turn the apple on the table thrice, and tell them that Michal referred you. 

I ran.

On the other side was the inside of a temple, with rhomboid copperwork and leaded stained glass depicting what seemed to be a great battle between marine and avian life. I stood in a gallery; below me, a dark-haired woman in white robes was leading a ceremony of prayer. Julien stood by in golden shackles. A hexagonal tank of honey lay bubbling with thrashing fish, and a priestess emerged from this tank now with a chain, which she attached to a collar on Julien’s neck. Think, I thought. Find a way down.

Door behind me unlocked; try the one at the end of the hallway it opens to. I took the stairs three at a time. Another hallway, curving into a spiral staircase. Now the hallways are getting larger and more elaborate; getting closer. I turned the corner to see a thin shortsword pointed at my throat by the same dark-haired priestess.

We’ve been waiting for you, she said. Waiting ever since you first found that book in the basement and brought it to Julien. And we can’t have you running about trying to free heretics and spread the rot that, if set, threatens our society. 

I spun and ran back the way I came. Alarm bells rang, and I could see mice frantically scurrying to cut off my avenues of escape. Metal sheets descended to cover windows. Deadbolts slammed shut. But there was one door which remained ajar, and I took it to a courtyard with a staircase to nowhere and a light hanging from above, which I ran up. The priestess followed, and laughed. Save your energy, she said. You’ll need it later. 

No, I decided, I won’t drown in honey being eaten by future and former people if I can help it. And I jumped for the light and climbed up its supporting column to bang my head against the painted sky. I pushed against it—a trapdoor opened—and I climbed into a pod, which shot off.

I popped out at the top balcony of the university tower and could hear the woman’s curses coming from the tube mouth. There were no doors. The curses grew louder. Then I saw a train of small elephants marching out from a small archway in the corner; reaching a finger in, I felt an outcropping, which I pushed, and the door expanded to allow me through. The curses grew louder. I saw below me banks of fog upon which people frolicked and picnicked. I shall never return, then, I thought, and then I jumped.

Words: Stephen Yang

Photos: Christina Kan