Prologue.

        There was a labyrinth by the shore.

        There was a labyrinth of statues lining the shore with the salt-ocean beyond.  She, that is the being walking now, occupied each stone form as well and in their exodus she watched each flicker of movement as they began to fade.

        The statues were all of her, all of the woman in the other place.  They were slender stone-forms like dung-brown earth or hardened bronze-clay and each reflected one moment of her life.

They occupied each thought and sensation and emotion from the earliest conception to now as the aged woman cane-strolled toward the cathedral of the trees.

        And she in her sea of flesh strode by with them, wandering amid the stone-walkers as they came into the cathedral.  The trees here formed a great arch and grey hall and though the statues should have taken forever and the cathedral should have been on the world’s other side, in fact it seemed a few steps and all were gathered here.

        And then she watched as each of them took position by the trees and slowly the stone softened to bark, the limbs uncoiled and uncurled to branches, faces smoothed and rotted into blank nothingness and all her former days were consumed, added to the grey as a rainfall of leaves littered the ground.

        And beyond the cathedral the sea of trees beckoned.

        In time each thought and sensation would fall subtly  backward into the sea of trees to be more than consumed.  To be forgotten.  For it was impossible to notice each individual branch or leaf.  It all fell together into a reflection of abject nothingness like the faces the dead once wore and if she tried to gaze at a single tree it would vanish, leaves glass-shattered and forms decayed to sand.

        She turned from the dead and returned beside the salt-ocean to wait for new life to begin.  And she waited and as she did her own form changed accordingly and soon she would occupy a new shape, new flesh . . . the moment was coming, the statue emerging from the sands, a head, arms, legs as it was pushed from the dust to become, and then . . . she felt something tearing at her soul.  It was an odd strange terror and suddenly it felt as if obsidian fingers reached into the labyrinth of herself and tore the statue away.

        And was gone.

        And a howl went out and silenced followed after.

I.

        The dreadnought sailed the sky a time.  The sky was rose-agate scarlet and the dreadnought seemed like a rounded grey egg flattened and bristling of a billion spines. 

        The spines were necessary.

        In the distance Magdanus noticed the sky-whale coming.  He, (she, but that was a time ago,) stood on the balcony, his rooms behind him and out coming fast the whale approached.  On Old Earth such creatures existed but they occupied the sea.  No seas dwelled here though; any moisture was taken by the sky.

        It thunder-marched close.  He felt its heartbeat from a mile away, the slow pulsing rhythm like the still screams of a storm.  It was a dull bronze behemoth littered of fins, two massive ones at the rounded base of its forefront and scattered behind others, thin like broken fingers or fingernails, translucent and transparent. 

        And each eye seemed a continent.

        He braced his rough hewn hands on the railing, his black coat hung tightly about him, terrified to move and for a moment he imagined this extended to the clothes, the railing, the immobile wind which always died down in its wake as if it devoured the very motion of the air, each current stilled in the presence of the hurricane’s eye.  All things in a heartbeat seemed utterly sentient now as if each inanimate thing were watching the god-thing approach.

        Then he closed his eyes, breathing hard, stilling himself, steeling himself for this.  And opening his eyes he stared into the continent of an alien world.

        The massive structure of the dreadnought held a population of close to four million, Magdanus but a mite upon the back of the machine.  And out there the entire city would have been nothing but a mite upon the back of the leviathan.  All others, all other sentient beings had retired, their balconies sealed shut. 

        Only he remained to watch the god-thing pass.  The spines were the only defense of the city, bristling poisoned burs which even the great maw of the whale could not safely consume without injury.  Each one was thicker than a thousand men and hooked, barbed and taloned.  But though they could injure they could not fatally wound nor long harm the beast.  He had seen the mouths of these creatures and knew even if it snapped jaws, even if it pierced itself in a thousand places moments later all wounds would ebb and be gone.

        Only the memory would remain.

        But the memory was enough.

        It stared then at him.  At him.  A seeming infinite mass, an ocean of life poured itself down the corridors of his eyes till there was nothing else, neither dreadnought nor sky nor air nor thought nor threat nor fear, nor love.

        And he stared back at it.  He stared into its continent of an eye which had seen images so vast and old, vaster and older than worlds and he added himself with them for it to remember him standing there, for his memory to be caught in its mind and preserved forever.

        But nothing lasts forever. 

        This he knew but for a time pretended he didn’t.  The dark-haired man, his beard black trimmed, his coat dark, his hands clenched tight and brown from the strain, in this moment he was all the behemoth saw and knew the behemoth saw him totally in its infinity of vision.

        And then it moved again and if it recalled him or the dreadnought afterward he did not know.  He could do nothing but pretend.

        And would he remember the sky-whale?  Of course.  But in a sky of thousands of such beasts could he tell one from another?

        He did not know but hoped so. 

        Then he went inside again.

        The planet was called Azairya.  It was a great desert scarlet- stained with a blunt ochre which tainted the continents and even the salt-oceans clinging like dull oil to the land.  One could walk in all direction and until they came upon the white flecks of the sea notice nothing except the crimson and the heat and the sun at its odd angle, itself scarlet as a wound.

        Only a small landmass contained any vegetation of any kind, an island continent which possessed a few broken remnants of trees.  And so instead all life had taken to the skies.

        Most dwelled near this isle of trees, a corridor touching from the ground to the void above and about this corridor the various races of Azairya dwelled.  The riders, the fire-drakes and even the sky-whales all congregated here from time to time but the sky-whales never lingered long.

        Instead they would pass through, seek out prey occasionally but since the only prey was their own kind they would often stumble backward into the aerial desert beyond. 

        Beyond the corridor Azairya belonged to them.

        Magdanus turned back to his white curved chair and sat and stared at the bookshelf behind him and forgot he even was.  For a time everything reverted back to when he was a young girl on Delta and she was swimming in a river and even this felt erased partly as if she were swimming through nothing and whatever it was was taking little pieces of her with it . . . he came to and got up.  He desperately had to move.

        He went to the balcony again but by now the sky-whale was gone.  It had fled backward into the beyond, moving to prey upon others of its kind. 

        He turned from the oval-eyed window of his rooms to the counter by the far wall and fixed himself a drink.  Smooth sensation of calm assailed him then, the green liquid dulling for a second his own terror.

        Then he returned to the chair and the table carved from a single tooth of the beast or its ancestor and sat curled in a fetal position a few minutes more.  The riders never did this, never actively stared at a leviathan.  He understood now why.  But he had to do this thing.  Yet he didn’t know why. 

        By now he’d completely forgotten.

        A fire-drake passed by his window then and rising went out to see it as it passed.  The serpentine body coiled through the skies, its eel-like shape contrasting to the reptilian head.  The fire-drakes sometimes let one ride them but one was just as likely to be devoured as ferried across the skies.

        Great yellow eyes shone up and its coiled form stalled and retread the air till he was staring at it in mimicry of his battle with the leviathan.

        But the fire-drakes were only thirty-feet long at the most and though thicker than a man would not even equal the tooth of one of the younger lords from beyond.  It stared at him a moment then abruptly fled back, speeding from him as fast as it could, grey dark-feathered scales rippling through the air as it flew.

        It was frightened he realized.  It knew he had been changed, touched by one of them.

        He was about to go to sleep, knowing why the others had told him the danger of doing such a thing.  He felt emptied as the bed slid upward from the ground and he fell backward as it became.  It had taken a portion of him in passing.

        And he must have taken into him a portion of it.

        Down below in the gardens they sat.

        Carcalla McKrimmom and Jullanar sat in a garden in the city’s heart and knew their child was gone.  The rider, her vestigial wings aching and arching in grief slung behind her, violet as flowers of Old Earth, while McKrimmom sat staggered to his chair.

        And with the child the other had likewise gone.

        The other was a memory.  The other was a keeper of memories.

        Each being on Azairya had one.  They were like a twin, an echo which passed from being to being.  Sometimes a keeper would dwell with a single species or even a single family while others migrated from fire-drake to rider and back.  Or to leviathan.

        In the language of the places-in-between, between life and birth and death the keeper trod the landscape of something ancient and familiar.  It was a world but was a world no more.  It walked mirror-slanted with the living taking slendered portions of its twin until at some point, far beyond when the sun of Azairya would be scarlet and cold, when the world would fade and the sky-whales in their last grief howl the keeper would have the total remembrance of All.

        Only then would they be at rest and allow themselves to burn with all creation.  But in this moment both child and keeper had been taken.

        It had been her mother’s.  Jullanar of the crane-thin hollow bones, of the yellow-vast eyes, almond-shaped and wide, she who had tamed the fire-drakes at El-Adoni-Haddai, had watched her mother perish, fading and knowing that with her last breath her mother’s keeper went into her own child.

        And Jullanar felt the keeper there, saw as keeper to keeper communed in the forest cathedral, the ancient salt-sea, saw the rows of statues all of her mother and saw the first glimpses of her own child.

        All gone.

        And she did not know where either had been taken to.

        And McKrimmom, of Earth, the aviator, the wind-walker, the man who had come from the seas of water to the seas of sky, who had danced between the fire-drakes with his ancient dragonfly-silver ship only to linger in the company of the rider and become one with her.  In all things.  Even in this.

        He could not see the forest of course but the keeper in his dreams would bleed impressions into the man, small fragments of a face, a form.  He saw Jullanar’s mother in his sleep unknowingly once or twice, the cool smile, the glance toward sunset, the withered and wearied bones slouching toward rest.

        Now in their grief they lingered together.

        They had nowhere to go yet they knew they could not stay.

        They booked passage far from Azairya and with them went Magdanus.

        Something had poured itself into the man and he knew strange things, the slow rumblings of a god in night stumbling in the dark, the bludgeoning touch, knowing nothing could harm its flight.

        Together they decided to explore.  The universe was vast and Magdanus in his demon-haunted moments, McKrimmom and Jullanar in their griefs journeyed upon the Giles Corey, an ancient vessel meant to empty the lost and forgotten places and make them concrete as snow.

        And so they went.  Parts unknown.

        They passed many worlds in their wanderings.

        The Third Empire of the Douhrellia.

        Zheixjael where it rained diamonds sideways.

        Aoiria of the black waters and the red eyes.

        The countries of the falcons of Zyaura.

        The dead-lands of the lions of Kytherium.

But finally they came to the land of the bird-feathered women.

        The world of Saardanyx.

II.

        They were called the Qwulne. 

        They were composed of seven castes.

        Artists and builders.  Soldiers and makers.  Some sent to explore, some to defend and tend the young.  Some crafted new machines, even those to skin oblivion and the void beyond as it brushed their atmosphere.  Some of grey feather or raven-fingered hands or wings soundless as a tomb.  Some of flat faces or curved beaks or rounded gem-like eyes.  To this world the crew of the Giles Corey came.

        There was a tower here.

        In an empty wasted spot of ground a half-broken tower lay, talon-fine.  The Qwulne could not understand it but gave it name.  It was called Aita.

        And so the lovers in their grief stumbled to a new world while Magdanus lingered by the tower Aita to study its remains.

        And with them flitting from tree to perfume-scented tree was a child, golden-winged.

        Her name was Cairey.

        Cairey was born of Jamyroon and Iaeuilheus Xosh, born of a raven and a tan-winged owl.

        She herself was golden-feathered and an artist. 

        They had a house on the edge of a lake that smelled of a bitter wine that Jamyroon was reminded of.  Though she didn’t know why.  Cairey ran from room to white room, Xosh trailing her, brown-grey feathers melting into oblivion when Xosh decided to hide from Cairey.

        But no matter how well hidden Xosh was Cairey on those stubby little legs of hers always ran and later flew to wherever Xosh was.  It was as if she could see, even in the dark.

        And whenever Jamyroon hid, her face hidden, her body suspended up upon a ledge out of sight, still the tiny voice would utter, “I know you’re there mother.”  But the voice seemed not always of her child.

        And at night Jamyroon would sing the ancient song of rest, “the body remembers, and the body forgets . . .”

        Cairey was three when the strangers came.  It was the age their daughter would be and the terrible symmetry clung to them as they struggled to hide their suffering.

        The child was of fluttering turnings of gold in the green sun, the poison-seeming sun.  Far beyond there was even hints of life beneath the surface skin of fire, circling forms just below the star, writhing, as if to escape.

        And so while the strangers settled to Saardanyx the Giles Corey wandered on.  To investigate.

        Blunt-faced grey women crept near to Magdanus as he worked.

        Their role was to tend the young, and defend.  He nicknamed them abu markub in honour of an ancient race of creatures from the Old Earth.  But as he journeyed deeper in they all refused to go.

        The tower was composed of a thousand rooms, or once was.  Now it had crumbled to less than half of that.

        He gathered himself and crossed half-lit rooms, noting ancient writing.  And machinery.

        The Qwulne, although spacefaring, did not seem advanced.  They used no guns, had no machines to calculate or create.  And though their houses were beautifully ornate they seemed somehow half-done.

        And yet this tower spoke of older things.

        There was a machine buried below. 

        He had but to reach it and to know how the Qwulne had created such a thing.

        The Giles Corey had reached the edge of the sun.  Long instruments brushed against fire and below green fire was movement and below movement was thought.  Something struggled in the deep-below . . .

        The child Cairey was an artist.

        She worked in the sand-clay which shifted to the rhythm of a thought and the deeper the thought the more certain the image became.

        In the galleries the artists lingered, in those great empty-shadowed places the artists delved and drew forth ideas made flesh in clay.  And so McKrimmom and Jullanar watched as Cairey worked.

        Jamyroon had come to watch as well whose triangular face, tapering to her chin gave an odd appearance, more than simply a bird, something more subtly alien.

        Cairey sat upon the ground, the earth molding itself before her as she worked and McKrimmom and Jullanar watched as terror slowly entered their hearts again . . .

        In the deepest down-below he found the clue.

        Embedded upon the walls was written the story.  And with the story was her and the story was her and the story had been her.

        There had been a race called the Qwulne.  This he thought he knew but it was not this race here.  For they had built planets,   created suns, had even engineered entire portions of the sky.  And they had existed billions of years before.

        And so they created a race of beings to serve them. 

        A race of machines.

        The machines had dwelled in a world of machines, silver cities stretching continent-wide.  And in the Qwulne’s final act they had placed themselves in their creation to live forever. 

        But nothing lasts forever.

        Slowly the machines and their memories of the Qwulne died as eon piled to eon till only one was left.  Aita.

        And she in her desperation fled and attempted to create new life again.

        So she built a race of beings native to the sun the world revolved about but they could do nothing but destroy.  And abandoning them realizing she could not create instead scoured existence to find new forms of life to use.

        She pored over planets and at moments of her choosing took beings away to make them in likeness of her kind.  But over eternity she forgot what they looked like so seeing in the skies of many places birds imagined this is what the Qwulne must have looked like.  So she turned her new daughter into birds in mock- likeness of herself.

        But at the end even she died.  Yet her program lingered on, her last act as her dead grasp pulled others forth to Saardanyx. 

        To be born . . .

        And Cairey revealed the sculpture of Jullanar’s mother and taken aback, wheeling in their grief they watched as Jamyroon went to a small room and drew forth dozens of statues.  All of the keeper’s memories.  Memories of the beloved . . .

        And McKrimmom and Jullanar wept so loudly even the dead heard it.

        The Qwulne were tested.

        Some had been human, or rider, or oliqui, or aigandran or any of a number of races.  Some known, some unknown.  All now Qwulne.

        The creatures buried in the green sun were freed and allowed to go sailing away, perhaps to whatever memory of the machine world remained.  Aita feared they would destroy all things.  But all things change.

        Magdanus named them the brothers of leviathan.

        McKrimmom and Jullanar sat amid trees of stone in a house by a lake reeking of a bitter perfume and watched as Cairey smiled at them.

        And silent Xosh sat by Jullanar and raven-handed Jamyroon by McKrimmom.

        Both had been told the truth, that each was human, that their families thought them dead decades before.

        And so they sat and made this request of the strangers in their midst.

        “Tell us about ourselves,” they said to them.

        And McKrimmom and Jullanar did as Cairey by the lake made a sculpture of them all and a small little spider nestled upon the strange girl’s back behind the small wings she wore.  And a voice no louder than a spider’s said the spider was an image of a keeper.  It was a portrait of itself.  And Cairey smiled and added something childish and young. 

Studio Wildcard                           

cgnastrand is from Saint John, Canada.