Bright Illa

No one looks up, and the only sound is the shuffle of small, child-size feet scraping against the cement floor as Jaro passes. He keeps his eyes down and moves through the stone room. Wood benches are full of men and women in silent meditations, heads upturned to the very top of the Tower, still as rocks, almost lifeless. Children sporadically swing their legs back and forth, the only visible sign of life. No one turns to stare, no one moves, except Jaro, and he does so stealthily. The last bits of daylight are slipping out of the far end of Baldic Tower, and it is that light that Jaro presses towards. He is almost there.

Once, Baldic Tower had been something grand, a place of joy. Jaro remembers bits of stories his Poppo once told about the Tower; large paintings of people eating platters of fresh food and of smiling, laughing faces, of people singing in the Tower, voices sent up toward the sky above, where there was no roof, and just the blue, the clouds and sometimes, the sun. Of course, Poppo was long gone now and so were most of the faint and terrifying memories. In Jaro’s mind, based on Poppo’s tales, he imagines people fattened with the spoils of fresh beef and fish and sweet fruits, opening their mouths and singing loudly, ecstatically. Hands slapping together in some rhythm that made sense to people who were allowed to stuff their faces with food and send their voices up to their sky God, someone Poppo said no one ever actually saw with their eyes, but rather with their hearts and minds. The boy Jaro did not know what this meant, but it seemed important to Poppo, (his eyes filled with water and his lips shook when he spoke of this) so young Jaro nodded solemnly, clucked his tongue in the way that Baldic people used to show respect, and left his Poppo, wet eyed and shaking. Jaro has only heard singing once, from his long-dead mum, when she shelled peas in a dark corner of their hut, where she thought no one would hear. The sound was so low and so unfamiliar that Jaro didn’t quite know what he was hearing, and his mouth tried to form the words that she seemed to be breathing, but his lips didn’t know how. So, he just listened, straining to hear and when she stopped, it was like he had dreamt the entire thing.

Now, Jaro holds his breath and moves forward, toward the wide arch where the sunlight, waning and frail, still flickers in. He will likely find himself scorched before he reaches the outer gates; he knows this, and still, he pushes forward. Because he has to find her, his Illa. She is all he has left and she has vanished just two nights before. Children that disappeared rarely ever came back, and those that did, never came back with their mind intact. Illa was only up to Jaro’s waist in size, and she was Bright-eyed, adept at the work loads and the labor tests. Most children were more clever than their adult counterparts; they started out that way. But very few could do what Illa could, and see what Illa saw. Jaro only knew to protect her, though much of what she spoke of escaped his understanding. Illa’s mum, Hanna, was taken much earlier, when Illa was barely able to walk. Hanna was a Bright, (something either desired or hated, no one knew which), and They took her in the middle of one sweltering, wet night, while Jaro slept beside her, and baby Illa slept on a pile of corn husks on the floor. He tried to fight, to yank Hanna from their grasp, but Hanna had looked at him long and fiercely, (she really was a Bright-that much was certain, and it sometimes terrified Jaro), and she nodded her head toward Illa, still sleeping. He understood instantly. Save her. Save Illa. If you fight for me, they’ll take her, too.

Jaro watched her slip through the curtains, and the light became so bright outside the hut he had to throw his arm over his face, or risk scorching his eyes. His eyes watered and leaked, much like Poppo’s used to, but he knew she’d been right. Illa had to be protected. The child, her Bright mind, and the delicate golden locket that hung around her tiny neck.

The sunlight was now at it’s dimmest. Because the Baldic Tower was at least five corn fields long, Jaro planned his exit to the setting of the sun.

Sessions always started with the glowing light at the apex of the tower, directly above where everyone sat, chin upturned, palms flat. Children were harder to dismantle, but they always fell quiet and eventually tuned in. Children often moved their bodies during the sessions; little leg swings, arm twitches, sometimes shudders like those you get when it’s very cold outside, but the adults fell into depths that stilled every muscle in their bodies. There would not be any recall of the session; just the beginning and the waking. A few Baldics whispered about ways to stop the mental penetration of the sessions. If you closed your eyes, avoiding the glow above, you could keep yourself from going under entirely. Most people didn’t try this because after a time, THEY would know, and THEY would come, and those people often left in the middle of the night, never to be seen. Sometimes they vanished like Illa, and some were taken, like Hanna. But many were scorched, from high above, in the fields, or near the gates, or outside their huts, where they stood pissing on small potato plants to water them, longing for a sprout or two. Poppo used to say, “Follow, Jaro. Just do what They ask of us.” And so he always did, until now.

This session, Jaro would tune out. The glowing light started soft and small then wide and bright, and the low, vibrato hum started to work into the ears of the Baldic people seated below. Jaro had stuffed two pieces of cotton cloth into his ears before he’d walked in to the Tower. Illa, even so small she couldn’t climb the short ladder up the side of the hut to collect the small amounts of rain water from the pails, had told Jaro to tear the cotton from her mums old dress and stuff them in his ears. Bright Illa said it was a frequency, though that word would hardly form in Jaro’s mouth, and he didn’t know what it meant. “Frequency, Pop. Sound. Vibrating sound. From above. And the lights come. Then you slip away and they take from you. That’s what it is, Pop.” So he did just that, and lifted his chin and closed his eyes tight, and waited until everyone slipped under, or in, or out, (it didn’t matter what it was called, everyone was just simply gone), and when it was safe and silent, he stood quietly, stepped out into the aisle, and started plodding his way to the rear exit. It would take him an hour, each step only a tiny fraction forward. No big sounds, barely moving. Nothing to disturb the session, or awaken a committee members or an elder who might turn him over to THEM.

Now, he was a third of a corn field away from the waning light of the sun and the exit of the Tower. What lay outside the large, iron gates, Jaro didn’t know. But there was no choice any longer. He’d assured Hanna he would never let them take Illa. Though, he didn’t know if they took her at all; when he’d tucked her into her bedcover, she’d whispered, “I’m going to go find her. You’ll come, too.” Jaro had shuddered and said NO! But she only smiled and murmured back, “Must. Mum’s there,” and her eyes slipped closed.

The sun sinks quick and cold and the only light now comes from the glowing orb at the top of the Tower. Jaro hears a scrape, followed by shuffling. This time, small feet are moving faster, as if they are running in place. They are waking up, he thinks.

Jaro quickens his step, his breathing too loud and his blood jack-hammering in his ears, no longer stuffed with cotton. He hears everything including his own insides, pumping like a mad machine. He walks faster still, as the exhales from Baldics seated to his left and right, whoosh out into the stillness; signs of life, of awaking. Jaro tucks his chin down and darts to the exit, aware he is moving too fast and making too much sound, but unsure of any other choice in the matter.

“Ho. Jaro. STOP!”

It comes from behind him, probably a committee elder, and it’s close, perhaps close enough to catch him. Jaro sprints through the cement archway, into the dry and still air. His feet, bare and tough, pound across the dirt and kick up clouds that look like smoke as he shoots towards the iron gates and the rope that he’d thrown over the high, metal wall. He hears the distant hum of the machines in the land over the gate, and he feels the heat of either fear, or a blasting fire beam upon the back of his neck. Jaro leaps and propels himself two long leaps up the slick gate-wall, reaching blindly for the end of the rope with one hand and clawing at nothing with the other. His hand finds the rope, he yanks himself up, and the slip-knot he’d tied at the top tightens around the spire far above him, creating a taut, thick line. The heat is fear; Jaro feels no fire on his backside, and he pumps his bare feet against the gate-wall and climbs, hand over hand, faster and faster. He imagines the Baldics crowding outside of the Tower, staring across the dirt and to his dark image as it slips up and up, heading for a place no one has ever come back from. There are no more shouts behind him. It was his only warning; now they’ll let him suffer his fate.

Jaro reaches the top, and his hands grip the metal spires to hoist himself up, but he only hangs there, raising his head as high as he can to see. In the dimness, he peers across, seeing for the first time where THEY come from, and what lies beyond Baldic Land, and it’s desolation and hunger, silence and sadness and dry wells. His eyes try to adjust, to make clear the shapes, mostly unfamiliar and wholly staggering that dot the land as far as he can see. Jaro sees nothing he can describe, but he sees everything, all at once. He wants to scream back at the Baldic people who stand still in the dirt wasteland behind him, waiting for him to disappear or die, both fates a finality without answer. He has no words, no voice. A flicker of light from above, the anticipated scorch beam, glints on something atop the metal spear-topped gate. Jaro, hanging still, takes one shaking hand and reaches for the yellow, shiny object, hanging from the top, just under the loop of his own hand-sewn rope. The golden locket, shaped in a heart and full of some terrible secret that his Hanna (and maybe Illa, too) could never voice to Jaro, glints in this light. He looks across, to the other side, and he knows now that she is there. Maybe they both are. He feels another press of heat, but this time he knows it is the heat of something that turns trees into ash and people into bones, so he yanks the locket, breaking the clasp, and hurdles himself up and over, dropping into the blackness.