The first awakening

by Brett Davidson

Meyr loved the liminal span of sleep and wakefulness. Her sleeping half would not know what it was she had been dreaming and her waking half did not know into what she was emerging. In such a state she might cling to her dream, or let it flow like a mist exuded from her body to permeate her room so that every common object took the aura of magic and novelty.

This time, however, the mist of her evaporating dream threatened to become a miasma of panic. She remembered panic, being lost and running through a great echoing space that howled. No, no, that was not her dream… but it was her dream – or it was a memory. She took a deep breath and the sensation brought her to a sharper consciousness.

Carefully, with her sleep-shackled mind still slow, she began to take stock of her self in the physical here and now, to add new memories to this scant foundation of knowledge. Her knowledge of who she was came back to her slowly. She remembered being a young girl, and now… she did not know.

That would come too in time, she supposed.

Other perceptions that did not demand immediate understanding coalesced – where she lay, her being-in-herself. She could tell that a sort of light surrounded her, dim but appreciable. Before her there was a dark surface of indistinct proximity. She could feel the muscles of her chest and diaphragm move as she breathed, the pressure of the surface on which she lay pressing up against her back and buttocks with her full weight. Blood sang in her ears. I sense, therefore I am, she told herself, and held up her hand to see. It was blurred to her newly opened eyes, which struggled to focus, but it was still real. She flexed her fingers to confirm by kineasthesia that it was indeed her hand, then ran it down her belly and thighs. The feedback of action and sensation circulated in a loop that was her awareness of herself, further confirming her existence, though she had the impression that it was more than confirmation. It was creation perhaps, as if she was a sculptor. This thought amused her.

Resting on her belly above her pubis there was a heavy globe, a cue or mnemonic perhaps. She looked along the truncated landscape of her body into the bauble, hoping for some key revelation to be prompted. It was dark, almost obsidian, something within it looked like a black rose, its petals tightly folded. About it, distorted by the curvature of its transparent medium, there were glittering veils of silver, pearl and gold; what could be beauty suggested a shroud about a dark core…

Her thoughts drifted for a while. Perhaps she fell asleep again.

Eventually her tiny world broke open of its own accord and she was able to sit up. Bracing herself against the sides of the vessel that contained her, she rose. The contact with the hard surface made her start, as if the thing was ice-rimmed, and the sudden elevation made her dizzy, so she paused a while to steady herself and get her bearings and fell back immediately. The air was cold! It drove nails into her naked skin and washed like ice water down her throat and she could see the fog of her exhaled breath billow before her. Giddy and gasping, she wanted to withdraw, close the dark shell about her and dream once more of that strange play, but the cold only intensified her consciousness and demanded that she take action. The breath hissed between her teeth as her hands touched razor-chilled sides of her cradle, she pulled herself up, out and almost upright, to lean against its side. Another push had her over the edge and suddenly she almost tumbled down its side, barely able to grip and steady herself. Half slumped and half sitting on the stepped sides of the thing, she carefully tried to orient herself and tremulously put a foot to the floor that seemed to lap like a tide against the pedestal of her cradle.

The floor was surprisingly warm under her toes. Indeed the air itself seemed warmer. Perhaps the sensation of cold came from within rather than without and now it was ebbing away…

She tried to stand, but another wave of dizziness caused her to stagger and grip more tightly the side of the sarcophagus. After a while it receded and she pushed herself upright once more, blinking and squinting to clear her vision.

The sarcophagus – or cradle, or bower or athanor – dominated the space, a black bulk of rounded steps and layers, ornamented with elaborate ribs and conduits. The floor from which it rose was smooth as a still pond, made of a parquet of diamond-shaped glass blocks. The space itself was not so much a distinct room as an… eye or focus of sweeping glass walls of which the sarcophagus was the focal point. About the general perimeter there were a few caskets and standing cabinets, ornately lacquered and inlaid. All seemed purposeful, all seemed designed and arranged and was clear then that the sarcophagus and therefore she was of essential importance to whomever or whatever that had created this place. Who then, was she, and who was this master agency?

“Meyr,” she said aloud, the sound of her voice surprising her. Who was Meyr? First she was a haze of sensations, then she was the regard of a place, then she was herself uttering her name. Who had she been, who did this make? There were suggestions of memories, the fading ghosts of her dreams: a play, a man in embroidered purple, warm arms and whispers, a face like an eddy in water, running through great howling volumes while a vast fivefold beast pursued her… stories told, a family of found strangers, another play with herself now on the stage…

Then she had been a child, and yet now, her body was that of a grown adult.

Years spanned the gap between the two states. Many years…

A few tottering steps took her to a wall and she stared into it, seeing her own reflection.

The adult face she saw was unexpected, even if she could not be sure what she had expected. Her shadow-memories had been of a child and this woman’s visage was disturbing in its profound difference – and even more disturbing in its similarities. What had happened to change her so? Where had the time gone?

She put her hands to her face, her fingers spread and pressed into the taut skin and hard bones of her cheeks and temples. Her skull seemed to be elongated and flanged like a helmet, but this may have been because her head was entirely hairless, lacking even eyelashes and eyebrows. In fact she was completely hairless all over, as if she was an embryo or immensely old. Her skin, parchment coloured and almost translucent, was as supple and as fine and as smooth as the finest silk. There were no wrinkles or sags or indeed any imperfections at all; rather she possessed a peculiar soft patina that was somehow obliquely suggestive of immeasurable age.

Her eyes were very strange. One iris was blue, a colour that recalled… what – clear skies? The other was albino-red, the colour of blood, of coral… and sunsets, and she knew somehow that in this place there were no sunsets to see. Her eyes were strange yes, and suggested strange associations.

And beneath this strange face, the long muscles of her neck and her clavicle looked like some flexible mechanism, far too overt and complex for anyone human. Down her hands went, mapping what her eyes already saw: tiny breasts, a sternum flat as a sword between them, a lean belly like a tympanum and hips like blades…

It was a body as spare and as suggestive as her consciousness. Hard, stripped, waiting…

There were no answers in reflections, her exquisite skin was cold and she had her basic needs to attend to. She padded about, a little more steady on her feet, opening the cabinets and hoping to find something that might warm her. Amongst the clutters of bolts of cloth, carved stone and wood figures and scrolled metal implements that might be musical instruments that she found within them, she found a robe that she could wear, ornate but soft and made of covert-coloured velvet with and elaborate flame-red brocade. It sat neatly and soft about her shoulders, giving off from its lining and active glow of warmth. She pulled it tight about her neck and fastened it with a silver brooch made in the form of a woman’s serpent-wreathed face.

What was beyond her cell was more of the same, much more. The whorl of glass expanded out and up into a great helicoid labyrinth and in every junction and cove of the labyrinth there was an exhibit of some variety or other. Whoever had curated the collection had a particular fascination for optical and timing equipment: there were many devices for projection and inspection, all seemingly focused on nothing, and there was an equal number of mechanisms with oddly complicated dials. The sound of chiming ran through the collection once in a ringing cascade that rose and fell and came together like an orchestrated fugue.

She found in one cove what must have been the optical sight and rangefinder for a major piece of ordnance, its coloured telltale lights still glowing as if it had been active only a few minutes ago. Beside that, there was a strange contraption, the hulk of a great fighting machine like an enormous stag beetle or spider with five heads mounted on long articulated necks.

Other coves contained puppets and dolls, as if this place was a great nursery of eikons. There were many mirrors too, and incidental reflections in the translucent walls as well. As she strode through her new or ancient domain, she saw in each of them a reflection of herself, but every image was different. In some she saw herself robed in purple, in others, blue, or armoured in red, eyes red, blue, black. In some she had black or white hair and in some she was a man, a neotenic woman-child or a sallow-pelted hominid. One even showed a strange thing that was all head and tentacle-fingered hands, seeming not at all human, but all she knew were like… other colours refracted through a prism, other pathways in evolutionary time, another labyrinth.

A maze has many false paths and a labyrinth has one meandering but true path and one centre. Which was she seeing?

One image recurred again and again: a big, full-bodied woman clad in a diaphanous sheath of iridescent red jewels, her alabaster-white body beneath inscribed with arabesques of glowing jale and an emerald ornamenting her navel. This image filled her with a strange mixture of nostalgia and anticipation. A time of youth and strength was implied by this eikon, hinting that now was a lean time as she was lean… and yet… and yet…

Another thread of thought that she could connect.

The museum was also filled with myriads of other ornaments, gathered like dust in its crooks and corners. She contemplated a doll collected among a thousand others of its kind. It was a pretty thing; its face was made of glazed ceramic and it had been much loved. Many generations of hands had held it and polished it with their natural skin oils so that its surface had a deep, glowing sheen. The handling had smoothed most of its raised contours, leaving them a little paler than the concavities and suggesting a sort of chiaroscuro. She was much like this doll, worn down to the barest essence by her age, but somehow enhanced by it too. Her memories might have been consumed by the abrasion of ages, requiring the contrivance of her museum for their imperfect recall, and yet the process had left her with the same unexpected beauty of form and substance as this relic. It was as if, she thought, she too had been deeply loved by someone. She held it to her breast to see if it stirred more memories. There were echoes of childhood, lovers… no children, no issue of her own to love.

“I was my own doll,” she said aloud. Meyr felt that she should weep for this, but could not. It was almost impossible to avoid drawing parallels between herself and the pearl and the doll. The image was almost comic: she was the pearl and her sarcophagus was the oyster; she was the doll and this was her case. Her body might appear to be ageless, but by all the evidence about her, she knew that she was very old.

At a point where the curving walls gathered again at what seemed to be the peak of the complex, she found a scene that was still stranger in its incongruous domesticity. Upon a rich red-purple carpet, there were clustered things that made a sort of casual living space: to one side there was a low chair, luxuriously carved and upholstered, to another there was a console bearing wine, food and a samovar of tea wreathed in steam. Opposite the chair there was a mechanical bust on a pedestal, an urn of black onyx on another, and in the centre there was a low pentagonal table, its patterned surface cluttered with a variety of mechanisms and figurines.

The aroma of the food and the tea triggered a realisation of her hunger to the exclusion of all other needs and, ignoring the mysterious game board, she strode over to perch on the edge of the chair began to gorge herself. There was a sensual pleasure in the warm food entering her gullet that was so intense as to be almost sexual. Drops of fluid dribbled down her chin, a glaze of tea and honey trickled between her breasts and crumbs stuck to her grand robe. She almost choked, coughing, but did not stop. She gulped spiced red wine and it settled in her belly, burning like a gentle fire there and making the cold pricking at her extremities seem like a pleasurable counterpoint.

She slouched back, contented, almost expecting her belly to have become a pot, but it remained visibly flat. This amused her. It might take work, but now she could imagine a life of eating, a life of senses. This turned her mind to thoughts of sex. Had she had sex? Her body seemed virginal. She stretched herself and her legs parted. Her hands cupped her groin. The movement and its exciting, soothing familiarity was not the sensation of a virgin. Who might be her mate? She was alone now and remembered no one.

No one in particular perhaps. She laughed, but knew that the joke was an empty one. There was, there were… ones, one, many.

Ah, damned emptiness. There were facts, names, events, there were roaring festivities and rituals in her past, invisible reflections behind the mirrors of this palace. Why were they not present now?

Perhaps though she should enjoy her state as it was? Had she gone to sleep wanting to remember or wanting to awake clean and naked?

No. She was a sensual woman, not a lazy one. This was a fact of which she was sure. She patted her belly and burped. She would be full of food, full of memories, full of blood and life. Facts, list facts, list actions, act, yes.

To begin then, she had a name: Meyr, she was sure of that without knowing when exactly she had recalled it. Other things had names. That urn, for example – it looked like a memorial reliquary. Then there was this bust, which was of a famous man and he had a name. She looked at it. Long-featured, surely noble. Pallin ex Asphodelos, that was who he was. Yes, that was good and right, even if she did not know why, but it led to another datum: the name of this place, the Great Mother Redoubt. Oh yes, true. She was pleased with herself; facts, perhaps lubricated by alcohol, were coming in a warm rush now. Mother Redoubt stood eight miles tall, a pyramid of adamantine metal, huge, vast, warm in the cold Night Land. It was the last and greatest monument of humanity, it was humanity combined in one great body and she was its secret queen.

Ah, now that was a delicious fantasy! What did it mean?

“Feyyy…”

She started and looked around. She had not spoken – who then had? Looking up, she saw that a face had emerged from the green star-vault of the ceiling. No ornamental boss, it moved fluidly, doubled itself, became a row of five that flowed down the sides and reformed again at her own level. It smiled expectantly.

This presence was not of her choosing. Looking sourly at it, she threw her goblet of wine at it. The liquid splashed garishly about it in a crimson corona and then trickled down its contours like a sweat of blood while it smiled its ghastly smile all the more. It babbled words that she did not understand, so she shouted at it, cursing it for intruding on her amnesiac complacency.

She looked at old Pallin. “So?” she demanded. “Face. Whose face is that?”

The bust spoke. “My old friend perhaps made this thing.”

“Who is that?”

“The Watcher of the South, of course. Consult your mnemonic globe.”

“I left it in my coffin. Tell me yourself. No riddles.”

“Ah yes, the very point. Riddles indeed. A pity the thing answers them, or compels you to answer them, as the case may be.”

She snorted contemptuously and stared into the depths of her chalice. One babbling mask was enough.

Silence was too much, so she turned back to the effigy again. “I am probably mad, you know,” she said lightly, trying out the phrase.

“Of course.”

“I don’t know who I am.”

“You are Meyr.”

“I know that.”

“Yes, and why?”

Another thread wove itself into the tapestry of her self. “Final Child,” she said automatically.

“Ah, yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“I cannot tell, but perhaps I can show – shall we play a game?” He nodded in the direction of the pentagonal table with its articulated tessellations and strange array of objects. She examined it while the effigy explained the rules of the game to her and something of its history. It was a fiendishly complicated thing, half board game and half clockwork mechanism with toothed wheels and tracks carrying little doll-figures about in intersecting arcs. Amongst the complexity, there was a basic structure: a grey metal pyramid at the centre, set in an aperiodic tiling arrangement based on five axes. The pyramid itself opened like a flower to reveal intricate nested structures and more tracks centred about a translucent jade kernel. The object seemed to be for one or all of five grotesque sentry figures at the corners of the board to either enter the pyramid and claim the pearl or for the pyramid to repel them – and yet as Pallin explained the rules to her, a win and a loss could be exactly the same.

“Rather like a courtship,” she commented ironically. The game’s purpose seemed to be as much philosophical demonstration as it was entertainment. It had been devised, he said, many ages ago by a pair of lovers who were brilliant but not heroic. What a strange way of putting it, she thought, thinking that he was a snob.

“And why am I to play this game?” she asked. She had hoped to understand at her own pace and resented the lesson implied.

“So that you might see where you are.”

“Then show me where I am,” she said impatiently. She was no child to be so patronised – and she had been impatient as a child too, she remembered. “Show me directly where this glass palace and this Redoubt have been built and why this game was devised in such a way.”

“I can show you the wider board if you wish…”

“I do wish,” she snapped.

As if a prism was tilted just the right way to reveal a spectrum, a vista appeared in the near wall. The image was bleak, fascinating, painted in shadow and guesswork between faint, ambiguous spanglings of light at the edges of the spectrum. From an altitude of several miles she could see an undulating plain pressed under a black sky and split by volcanic fissures. Spaced about the horizon there were mountains, both natural… and unnatural. Great black forms had the appearance of hunched figures, though they must have been miles high. Were mountains sculpted? No, these lived. They lived and the waited and though she could not see their faces in the blackness, she felt intensely the knowledge that their corrosive collective gaze bored into her, into her palace. Another name fell into place: Watchers.

She compared this with the board with its neat mechanical arrangement. A foolish little thing, it now appeared not a little desperate in its depiction of those immense brutes. Amusement was at an end.

“You are stronger than they, Meyr,” Pallin said.

She shivered and pulled her robe tight, making a soft cone of warmth about her. “Do you think so?”

“I will show you why and how. How it began, how it ended.”

“Ended?”

“Will end.”

She sat down and contemplated the waiting board. “I do not want to remember,” she told the effigy. “Stop this thing, change it, devise another game.”

“I cannot do that.”

“No, you cannot,” she observed bitterly. “So I have no choice but to remember.” She looked down at the board and noted that the representations of the five Great Watchers had closed in their curving tracks on the central prize. Like a flower closing, she thought, an inverted opening. Fate unfolds, destiny approaches.

She picked up a piece, a maiden on the cusp of adulthood. “I wonder about my true object – I should wish to be human, I think.”

“Through fantasies we understand the ideal and then return to the real for the first time.” That had the sound of a quote.

“So it seems.” She moved her piece one step closer to the centre.