Nearly six hundred days had passed since that last birth.
Tritian promised to tell the rest of their story, as soon as there was time.
Then the First left, saying nothing about his/her mood or intentions or any great old promises made to vanished creatures.
Morning arrived.
The sun found the Eight sitting inside a favorite crevice. In this place, the coral had grown like a tree thrusting sideways from the wall of the Creation. The demon floor lay spread out below like a great basin filled with magical water. The Eight could look straight up at the sunlight, but what mattered were the coronas. Unlike every other morning, the corona gathered in a sphere formation, each of them doing nothing but talking.
One topic was fascinating to all.
Nobody understood why, but long ago one of the Firsts had left this world. She/he went to visit the cold, and her body never returned, and now she lived only as memory and wisdom and the great songs woven inside all of their minds.
Tritian and his siblings were parsing out the heart of the subject.
“She was our mother,” each whispered to the others, to themselves.
And then the sphere of light and song was announcing that another one of the Firsts had left. Giving no warning, it had gone to the other world, and the central opinion in the midst of that confusion was the simple inescapable sense that it must be his/her time to leave flesh and join its celebrated mate.
Nobody inside this realm looked or sounded scared.
Tritian wasn’t scared.
He led the body out into the glare of the morning sun. The coronas’ everyday work had stopped, which was peculiar. Nobody was tending to the jungle. The day was as fiercely bright as it was after the jungle stopped burning. Squinting hard, the Eight spotted the last of the First—four giants hanging apart from the others, whispering with their bright high-purple lights.
The missing First was the same giant with whom they had just spoken.
Or it wasn’t.
Tritian and his siblings still knew nothing about the Creation. In what was possible, they said very little, at least from their perspective. If nothing else came from their time trapped in this nightmare, it was to appreciate just how miserably slight their knowledge was.
“We are eleven simple, stupid idiots,” Tritian muttered, speaking to the Seven but imagining the Three listening too. He imagined them so well that he saw Diamond and King and Quest standing at the lip of the crevice, tiny faces peering inquisitively down at them, taking his declaration to heart.
Something about that moment felt magical, which was not an uncommon occurrence. Every day had its moments when meanings seemed to raise their heads from the chaos. But that happened to be the moment when day vanished without warning, and in the same instant, the Eight fell out of the crevice, tumbling wildly through the black air, spinning toward a sun that had ceased to be.
“It’s out, it’s gone. The sun is gone.”
Seldom shouted those words, and people laughed. Everybody was surprised and scared, and there was a lot of laughing, giggling and cackling with wild, mad voices making everyone feel even worse. Then an older voice, male and very deep, repeated Seldom’s last few words. Diamond didn’t recognize the man, but there was a defiant tone to the way he spoke, a booming dismissal meant for everyone to hear, and then the man delivered a string of withering curses, belittling and denying even the idea that anyone could sprout such a stupid thought. And the room that was on the brink of panic suddenly fell back to skepticism and sanity.
Meeker’s shrill voice emerged, trying to gather control. He offered words that seemed to mean that the overhead windows had slammed shut, making ready for the papio attack. But darkness came in an instant. Diamond understood enough to know that windows couldn’t close so quickly. Yet he joined in with the giggling, which made him feel better. And maybe that new mood would have lasted, but then some practical hand thought to test the principle, striking an important switch, and the great room becoming quieter as everyone listened to the throbbing of an engine and the hard rattle of chains that were lifting plates of interlocking steel
One of the giant access doors rose. Everyone could hear it lifting, and everyone felt the inside air flowing outdoors. But when light-adapted eyes stared at the door, nothing was visible, nothing waiting but a rich and perfect darkness that had claimed the entire world.
Five or six measured breaths had passed.
Time felt dense, leaden.
The initial shock and near-panic from before was nothing. It was a mild emotion compared to the mayhem that followed, chaotic and incoherent and shrill. Every mind was taken, every heart. One portion of the crowd surged for what should be the open door, but at least as many tried to flee back into the facility’s hallways and safe rooms. No one could see past the wet depths of his own wide eyes. A small torch might be brought out of a pocket and lit, but that triggered ten hands grabbing for the treasure, and accidental collisions led to blind intentional battles, bodies dropping to the floor and a single gunshot—an accident, maybe, or warning shot, or somebody trying to win enough room to stand still and think.
Diamond was struck from the side by an anonymous adult, and he shoved back with an elbow and then his entire body.
King called his name, the voice tall but not as loud as it could be, and distinctly, richly frightened.
“Here,” Diamond called out.
A vast hand dropped on his head, little scales cutting into his scalp.
Then Diamond called out, “Quest.”
A dry angular hand brushed across his chest and his face, pinching shut the lips before he could say her name again.
Her invisible face came close. An odor like old flowers and mold rode in with quiet sharp words. “I didn’t,” she said. “I did not.”
Of course she hadn’t, no.
From overhead, King said, “I want to see.” He was nearly begging, saying, “Sister . . . can you make a light . . . ?”
But she already had, it seemed. He asked the question, and a second hand opened, revealing a pale red globe. The globe resembled the fruit of the fungi that lived at the gloomy top of the world. The nearest few people noticed, surging like moths. King let go of Diamond and pushed back the first wave, and the second, and then he picked both up by their waists, asking, “Where is that damned thing?”
The gray ball wasn’t where it was just moments ago. To Diamond, nothing was more reasonable than the gray ball riding inside the corona for one purpose, and having finally done the job, it had vanished. Or it became the world’s darkness. Unless the ball sprouted legs and ran away . . . which was just as easy to accept . . .
“Brighter,” King pleaded.
Quest’s face was sprouting globes like sores and broad nocturnal eyes, and from the mouth that was still human, she said, “Put me on your shoulders.”
Easily, yes. King dropped her behind his head, legs kicking his chest, and he turned once quickly, holding Diamond under his left arm.
“I hear it,” he said.
Something that wasn’t metal was being dragged and rolled along the clean floor of polished bone.
King followed the sound.
“Behind those soldiers,” Quest said.
Half a dozen young men had surrounded the mysterious orb. The surging crowd must have kicked it to them. Maybe they didn’t realize where it was, but they were standing in a rough ring, accidentally protecting what they couldn’t understand. Then they saw an apparition wading through the crowd—massive below and glowing above—and one of the soldiers managed to lift his rifle and fire two shots before his rifle was flying across the room and one of his hands was shattered.
The soldiers backed up and fell over, and King grabbed the prize with his right hand. But the ball was a little too large, and it was slick as glass, and falling free, it again gave off that faint ringing sound as it bounced.