IT
The door vanished behind her, and this was a different world altogether.
Golben. But not as she knew it. Hedges were dying in their final summer blooms, ushering in the throes of autumn. Warmth was a weight in the air, moist and heavy, the last desperate vestiges of a hot sun-season. The sky above was as blue as polished turquoise. This could have been any hedge-garden, a royal strolling grounds for those of long gowns and waistcoats, but the weeds had grown overlong in the shadows of the thickets. The earth was ungroomed, patches of occasionall yellow grass sprouting like sickly hands from the flattened earth below her feet.
HIS LIFE [existence, being] CONTINUED FOR FOURTEEN MINUTES, SIXTEEN SECONDS, AND TWENTY-THREE FRACTIONS PAST THIS VERY MOMENT. YOU STAND IN HISTORY, INTERLOPER, BUT I [we] STAND EVERYWHERE.In the air in front of It, humming from a distant vibration, was a golden line of thread. Down the hedges, it was tied to the occasional branch, offering it tension. Up the hedges, it shook, carrying echoes of motion from its distant weaver down its length. It disappeared around a nearby corner.
YOU PERCEIVE TIME FROM A POINT OF ORIGIN TO ONE OF TERMINATION. YOUR LIFE [existence, being] IS PORTIONED INTO SMALLER AND SMALLER UNITS OF THIS VERY SAME CONCEPT. I HAVE BENT THIS SEQUENCE OF EVENTS FOR YOU BACK UPON ITSELF THAT YOU MAY OBSERVE [witness, spectate].Conversation chimed in the distance.
"My decisions," the seamstress said, "are not always the most informed. And my character--" her voice higher, thrown like a stone, "--is to be defined by me, and me alone. I am not your Junior Inquisitor anymore, Giuseppe. I've said to you my last good morning. Here, whether we were governors, advisers, or stupid children with -- with too many toys to break no longer matters."The goading whisper in It's conscience continued to speak.
AND THIS BEGS THE QUESTION [inquiry]: THOUGH YOU PERCEIVE YOURSELF HERE, IN THE SAME PLACE WHERE HIS DEATH OCCURRED, WERE YOU THERE AT ALL? CAN YOU HAVE ANY EFFECT UPON IT?MAY FATES BE REWRITTEN IF HISTORY ITSELF IS NEWLY EMBROIDERED ON THE FABRIC OF TIME?NIALL
The door vanished behind her, and this was a different world altogether.
A chamber as dark as a fading dream, though some errant specter of light illuminated her surroundings and was refracted through a thousand faces of blown glass. Around Niall, perched on bending shelves like ready soldiers, were bottles, flasks, and decanters of all different colors -- verdant green, smoky brown, desolate blue, some magnifying the visions behind them in distorted, bulging shapes. It was not a large room, nor was it impressive in scope. Dust danced in the air, each stranger like an aimless insect. On long tables occupied by countless bottles, some as short as hands and others as long as spears, there were candles that had half-melted into lazy puddles, wax dripping like over-extended fingers off the splintered edges of long-rotten wood.
At a central table -- its one leg propped up by books of inconsequential title -- sat hunched a figure, the bulge in its spine as bulbous as some of the bottles displayed. The head was nearly bald, smoothed by age into a round, monkish sphere.
"Most people only see the containers for the drinks within them," rattled a quiet voice, the head never turning to Niall. "But our eyes dictate our tastes before our tongue ever can. Our eyes are drawn first by the symmetry, by the glasswork, by even the design of the stopper chosen to keep air separate from liquid.
"Have you ever blown glass into a bottle before?"