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bookshelf-in-progress · 2 years

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Light of the World: Part One

A portal fantasy for @inklings-challenge.

This universe didn’t conduct sound, which made it an ideal place to study. Athan was one of at least twelve students who’d brought books to this pocket dimension’s grassy commons to take advantage of the silence. This particular reality was a close cultivar of the ordinary universe, so the the trees, grass, light, gravity, all were the same as the normal campus; no major differences existed to distract students into figuring out new rules of reality. Just a quiet, comfortable retreat.

Athan gave a friendly nod to an exobiology student carrying a textbook the size of a coffee table, and when she settled down beneath a tree a stone’s thrown from his own, he returned to the notes in his omnibook. He jotted down a few more thoughts about the Seven Tenets of Interdimensional Trade, then leaned his head back against the clay-like trunk of the tree and tried to recall the list from memory.

He remembered the first five without trouble, but the sixth...the sixth...

In his lap, his omnibook glowed, the golden light emanating from its pages.

Athan slammed the book shut, but the glow only got brighter. Athan swore, glad that this universe stopped the sound from traveling. He’d been meaning to adjust the message parameters for weeks, but though this new model’s brown leather binding was elegant, its internal workings were byzantine, and he had yet to figure out how to adjust any of them.

Finally, the glow faded, and Athan turned back to his notes. He’d check the message pages later--he couldn’t let anything interrupt this study time. If he got anything less than ninety percent on this exam, he’d face a reckoning with his parents. They’d agreed to let him study at Aldore, but that concession came with expectations.

The book glowed again. Athan slammed it shut again. The glow faded, and he settled back into his studies.

Glow.

Slam.

Back to the notes.

Glow.

Slam.

After the fifth round of messages, it became a matter of pride to continue ignoring them. After the eight round, the exobiology student put down her book and glared at him.

Athan gave a sigh that would have been noisy in any other universe and flipped to the message section just after the settings page.

Edith’s spidery handwriting filled most of a page.

Athan

Athan, are you there?

Open the book, Athan

I know you’re there

Come on, Athan

Stop it

Athanasius Gabriel Zimmerplotz, quit ignoring me!

Athan Athan Athan Athan Athan Athan Athan

Athan smiled. At least Edith was an entertaining interruption. But he did wish she’d chosen a more convenient time.

Can this wait until later? He wrote back. I’m studying for an exam.

Edith scribbled back. That means you’re in the Silent World, right?

Was he that predictable? Yes.

I’ll meet you outside the door. Half an hour. This is important.

What’s important??? Athan’s mind whirled with a million possible disasters. His family had been hurt. Edith’s father had been hurt. Edith had been hurt.

Edith’s response, thank goodness, was none of those things. I found a new portal.

Why didn’t you say that in the first place?

The multiverse tangled around all of reality, like an infinite forest sending branches, roots and vines out toward its neighbors. Over the centuries, Aldore University had explored it, studied it, mapped it, and tamed pieces of it into manageable gardens. The pocket universe Athan now sat in had been cultivated by a long-ago researcher working with a branch of a well-known reality. Dozens of professors had left similar projects behind, little pockets of other realities that connected to Aldore without disturbing the wider universe they sprouted from. Most students knew of ten or twelve that were marked by obvious doors, but Edith had made it a project to find all of them.

What had she found this time? A well-cultivated universe, marked by a brightly-colored door? A half-finished experiment with strange plants and wild weather patterns? A tucked-away pocket dimension where a gardener could store extra lawn tools?

Have you gone inside yet? Athan asked.

Not without you.

Athan smiled. Good old loyal Edith. Making sure he didn’t miss out on the fun, just like when they were kids.

His exam could wait.

Athan trailed Edith through the forested dell just outside the campus wall. This time of year, the leaves on all the trees were bright yellow, and showered down upon them as they followed the little creek that flowed through a narrow. Though Edith was a full head shorter than him, Athan struggled to keep up. She was wearing her adventuring outfit today—sturdy leather boots, her father’s old brown coat that fell to her knees—and she apparently intended to make good use of it. She hadn’t answered any of Athan’s questions yet—just dragged him along saying, “You have to see this.”

“Where is this portal?” Athan panted, as she led him up yet another rise.

Edith clambered over a fallen tree. “Just ahead.”

Athan hefted himself over the same tree. “Are you sure we haven’t passed it? No one builds portals out this far.”

Edith glanced back, her eyes glittering. “That’s just it,” she said with a smile. “I think it might be a natural portal.”

“What? It can’t be.”

“Sure it can. They happen all the time. The multiverse tangling and twisting out there—a few runners are going to break through from other realities. That’s how we discovered the multiverse in the first place.”

“I mean they can’t happen here. Not anymore. Aldore’s tamed the multiverse.”

“There’s nothing tame about the multiverse, Athan.”

She said that like it pleased her. Edith was obsessed with the multiversal adventurers of old—the bold explorers who discovered new realities. That world didn’t exist anymore—the multiverse was known, mapped, civilized—but rather than finding that comforting, Edith fought against that and insisted that there were more realities out there just waiting for her to discover them.

“It’s probably a supply stash for the gardeners,” Athan said, trying to find a more logical explanation. “A place to keep leaf blowers and shovels and things so they don’t have to run all the way back to the maintenance sheds.”

Edith shook her head. “It’s not. Dad says there aren’t any of those on this side of campus.”

“He hasn’t worked here that long. He could be wrong.”

“There’s no stabilizer—not even a pole. Nothing to mark where it is.”

“Maybe it got washed away.”

“Or maybe,” Edith said, “it’s a natural portal. That’s what we have to find out.”

Athan’s steps slowed. “We really shouldn’t be doing this.”

Edith stopped and looked back at him, her hand on her hip. “Athan, we are students at Aldore University. We are here to explore other universes.”

“That’s why our professors are here. We’re here to read textbooks and write papers.”

Edith tilted her head. “Does it worry you, to have reached peak boredom at such a young age?”

Athan ignored the comment. “If it is a natural portal, we should report it. Let the proper authorities deal with it. Seal it up or stabilize it or whatever.”

Edith’s pose suddenly resembled one of the statues in the center of campus—one hand upraised as she gazed into the distance. “Did Lemrock Berren ‘alert the proper authorities’ before venturing into the Greenworld? Did Chrysanthemum Dare step aside and let the proper authorities tell her how to map the multiverse? You don’t discover anything by ‘letting the proper authorities’ deal with it, Athan!”

“It is a good way to avoid dying, though.”

“When did you become such a chicken? This is exactly what we dreamed of doing when we were kids.”

But they weren’t kids anymore. They weren’t playing in the safety of his parents’ gardens. This was the real world with real consequences. Athan understood that. He wasn’t sure Edith did.

“Finding lost pockets is one thing,” Athan said. “Wandering around through an uncharted universe is another.”

Edith’s face brightened. “Do you think it could be a whole new universe?”

If it was a natural portal into a fully-independent reality, it likely connected to one of the well-known varieties that connected to campus. He told Edith so.

“Then what are you so worried about?” she asked. “It’ll be perfectly safe. Come on.”

She charged ahead, and as always, Athan followed. Someone had to make sure she didn’t kill herself.

Two minutes later, Edith sprinted through the undergrowth toward a tree with a blue sock tied to it. “There is it!”

Athan rushed to catch up with her. Edith was right—aside from the marker she’d left, there was no sign marking this as a stabilized portal. But there was no sign that there was any portal here. The light was normal. So were the shadows. There was no abnormal coloring to the vegetation. Nothing besides the ordinary features of the ordinary forest.

“You’re sure this is the right place?” Athan asked.

“Of course I am. Do you think I just tie my socks anywhere?”

Maybe Edith had made a mistake. Maybe whatever portal existed here had already sealed. “What made you think...?”

Athan shifted a step to the right, and a breeze caught him square in the face. Not the normal breeze--the wind was at their backs. This wind was warmer and softer. It didn’t smell like the dying leaves and mud and rocks of the woods, but like something fresh, bright, and sweet. The wind of another world.

Athan gasped.

Edith’s eyes shone. “Still think it’s a supply closet?”

Athan didn’t, and instead of frightening him, it thrilled him. That wind had breathed new life into him, awakened the adventurous, fearless spirit of the child who had explored imaginary portals with Edith in his parents’ woods. It blew around him, calling to him. He could answer that call. Just a step inside--

He shook his head and stepped back. “We shouldn’t.”

“How can we not? Can’t you feel it, Athan?”

He could, which was why he had to stop feeling and think.

“Just a step or two inside,” Edith said. “So we know what’s there. It’ll be perfectly safe.”

Natural portals didn’t form to worlds that were toxic to human life. A step or two would harm no one, and would satisfy this longing to go.

“Please, Athan.”

His best friend was asking. How could he refuse?

“Just a quick look,” Athan said.

Edith grinned and handed him a roll of twine.

Athan tied it to a thick branch of a neighboring tree, flashing back to the dozens of times they’d played at being Thaddeus and Chrysanthemum Dare in the woods behind his house. Explorers going into the unknown, using only their wits and their strength. This was nothing like that, but there was still a thrill to it.

He handed the roll to Edith, then held the string in one hand while Edith walked ahead. They shared a glance, walked into the wind, and left the universe behind.

The world was full of light. A pitch-black sky was scattered with multicolored stars. Soft, round-leaved groundcover glowed so the world seemed made of white light. The trees bore leaves giving off similar light, while their trunks and branches bore a multicolored patchwork that glowed with an internal fire, like sun behind stained glass.

Edith stepped toward the nearest tree like someone in a dream. Light from behind the colored fragments of the tree’s trunk flickered across her face--red, gold, blue.

“It’s...” she breathed.

“Beautiful,” Athan finished for her.

They stood in silence, watching the lights dance. The wind whirled around them, bringing a sweet, earthy scent.

“Do you know where we are?” Athan asked under his breath. This world seemed to call for silence. Speech profaned it.

Edith slowly shook her head. “I’ve never heard of any reality like this.”

Edith knew the multiverse. If she’d never heard of this place, it had never been written about. Then again, universes were big places. Perhaps no one had been in this section before. Perhaps they had, and couldn’t bring themselves to speak of it. Athan had only been here a few minutes, and this universe already seemed like their private treasure, a small, beautiful jewel too precious to share.

Athan ran a hand through the groundcover. The leaves--round, soft--tickled his hand. Like the tree, the plant seemed transparent, its color coming from the light shining through its stalks. Was the light source inside, magnified by the exterior like a lens over a lamp? Or was the plant itself a kind of living light?

Athan knelt to examine the leaves. “I wish I’d thought to bring a magnifying lens.”

Edith followed the play of light up the trunk of the tree and into the branch, tracing it with her finger along the length. She stumbled and grabbed onto the branch to steady herself. It shook slightly--the shiver more like a strike to an iron post than a blow to a living branch--and what Athan had taken for glowing white leaves suddenly took flight. They whirled in a glowing cloud, stretching toward the stars, before settling softly back onto their perch.

Athan leapt up, forgetting to keep hold of the twine, and rushed to examine the branch. The leaves--wings--were still, moving only with the breeze. Teardrop-shaped and transparent, with no color save for the faint yellow light that lit it--something between a moth and a dragonfly, except that Athan could see no body attached to it.

“Plant or animal?” Athan murmured.

“Maybe there’s no difference here,” Edith said, standing on tiptoe to see it. “Like in XR-9.”

A tidal wave of questions overwhelmed Athan as he suddenly realized how little they knew. This wasn’t just a new country, a new continent, even a new world. This was a new reality. They knew nothing about how it operated.

But they could find out.

“Our own private universe,” Edith said, “just waiting for us to uncover its secrets.”

She made it seem so plausible. Athan could see it. Her drive, energy and knowledge. His eye for detail and patterns. Between the two of them, they’d be a research team like the multiverse had never seen.

Athan tried to help the dream along. “If we alert the university, maybe we could get on the research team.”

Edith looked at him in disgust. “You think they’d let two undergrads on the research team? You’re not even taking an exo degree.”

Athan was taken aback. “We did discover it.”

“And when we tell them, they’ll pat us on the head, send us back to class, and make sure we never come within half a mile of the portal. At best, we’re a footnote in history.”

Athan could see this future as clearly as the first one Edith had outlined. It seemed much more plausible, too.

After seeing this world, he couldn’t go back to the normal routine of classes, homework and meals and find satisfaction in it.

“This is our world,” Edith said. “We have first research rights. We can find the answers ourselves. Go down in the history books as the uncoverers of a new reality.”

The kind of explorers that kids dreamed of being during summer vacations in the woods.

“We’ll have to tell them eventually,” Athan said.

“But there’s no reason to tell them now.”

Athan watched the light glimmer in the leaves, the stars, the trees. Felt the wind calling him onward. Could he leave this behind? Could he bear to be cut off from this light?

“We do this carefully,” Athan said. “Scientifically. We take every precaution and document everything.”

Edith grinned. “Great explorers wouldn’t do anything else.”

Purple rain pattered against the library windows while fish swam through the damp atmosphere. Athan bent over a table, entering new calculations into his omnibook. This pocket universe was so new he wasn’t sure anyone else on campus even knew about it. The perfect headquarters for their research. There were perks to Edith’s dad working as a campus gardener.

Athan finished the last page, then pulled the cartridge out of the spine. The omni’s pages went blank. Athan filed the cartridge into a carrying case next to the other four he and Edith had filled with notes about their universe--Lumen, they’d taken to calling it.

The library’s door opened, showing the sunlit blue skies of the campus’ universe. Edith barged through the door with a small cardboard box. “Got them.”

“All of them?”

Edith dumped two dozen info cartridges onto the table. “Most of these haven’t been checked out in years. The librarian almost force-fed them to me.”

Athan adjusted his spectacles and looked over the bounty, feeling as though a pile of jewels had just been poured out before him. Texts on physics. Geography. Botany. Biology. And there--beauty!--a text on astronomy. He swiped it up and slotted it into his omni’s spine. The pages filled with printed words and diagrams that poured out the secrets to deciphering the stars. Thaddeus Dare’s own words looking back at him, reaching across time to help a fellow researcher.

Every reality was different, but every one was built upon orderly rules, and there were constants that carried across all universes. Light was one of them. Athan knew those colored stars could teach him about the essential nature of that light-filled universe, if only he knew how to speak their language.

Athan had always been a diligent student, but learning had been a means to an end. The path to good grades. A good job. A respectable life. But this was nothing like the rote memorization of his classes. This was discovery. Finding answers where none existed before. For the first time, he understood that a university was a place to understand the universe. Specialization was impossible, because all knowledge tied to everything else. To understand this world, he had to learn about everything.

He also had classes to pass, but that could wait until later.

Edith placed one of the biology cartridges in her own omni--a smaller, cheaper edition than his, with a thin black cover, and tied together with a string because the book so often needed supplementing with loose pages. She spread out a vast array of those loose sheets and started taking notes. She had taken a special interest in the leaf/moths on the stained glass trees. Her current theory was a type of symbiosis between two related but distinct organisms.

“Do you think there is a sun in Lumen?” Athan asked.

“We’ve never seen daylight,” Edith said, sketching a moth in the corner of a page.

“Maybe we just happen to come at night. Or maybe the day-night cycle’s extremely long.”

“More like seasons?”

Athan pointed at her with a pen. “Exactly!”

“If there is, I don’t think the trees need it. Which suggests that maybe the universe doesn’t need it.”

“There’s certainly enough light in everything else.”

They had ventured nearly a mile inside, supplementing their safety twine with spools upon spools of thread. They’d found flowers that flickered like candles. Grasses that let out glimmering sparks when brushed. Even a spring of glowing blue water. Half the time, Athan felt like some half-alive creature because he and Edith were the only things in sight that didn’t glow.

Athan studied the astronomy book, taking diligent notes. He couldn’t understand half of them, but he was confident understanding would come.

Edith left after an hour, brimming with theories and new knowledge, in search of a book to fill in gaps she’d discovered. Athan remained inside and forced himself to complete a reading for one of his classes. Interdimensional business--which had seemed like such a simple way to honor his family’s wishes--had lost much of its appeal.

He had to put aside such thoughts. This was a fun temporary project, but it couldn’t be his life. Real life would be waiting for him after they handed off Lumen to other researchers, and he would need to have a real job. Dad had one waiting for him at Vane Industrial; Athan had to learn enough to fill that place. But he could barely bring himself to read two pages.

At last, he gave up, put his omni into his bag, gathered up the cartridges, and stepped through the burgundy door into the waning light of a campus afternoon. He wandered in the direction of his dorm; he needed to sleep. Before he got more than two steps away from the hidden burgundy door, he heard his name.

“Athan? Is that you?”

A broad-shouldered man with Edith’s brown hair and long, thin face stepped out from behind a tree. He wore the gray coveralls of the university’s maintenance staff, but somehow made it look dignified enough for a concert hall.

Athan smiled at Edith’s father. “Hey, Max.”

Max pointed a thumb at the burgundy door. “What did you think of the pocket?”

“One of your best yet.”

“Not too much rain? I’ve been meaning to adjust the climate.”

“I think it’s relaxing,” Athan said. “I don’t know how it affects the plant life, though.”

They chatted for a few minutes about the ins and outs of pocket universe cultivation. Maximilian Vegers had never received a university education, but he’d worked with pocket cultivation companies for decades and probably knew more about the workings of the multiverse than most of the professors handing out degrees. Max was one of the few people Athan knew who could copy whole buildings into pocket universes, rather than building them by hand.

“Making more work for myself.” Max finished off the conversation the way he always did. “But it’s worth it.”

Only a few days ago, Athan had imagined his future with the multiverse looking much like Max’s did. A lifetime of respectable work--though with his father’s multi-million-dollar company instead of a landscaping firm--with a hobby cultivating safe, dependable pocket universes from licensed seeds. But Lumen had showed him something different--discovery, not cultivation. The thrill of the unknown. Of exploring something bigger than yourself to find its secrets. And those little pockets no longer seemed so thrilling.

“Good to make use of your knowledge,” Athan said, making half-hearted small talk.

“When it comes to worlds, it’s not enough to know it. You have to care for it.”

That glowing jewel box of a world filled Athan’s imagination again. He cared for it, alright. Max could stay here cultivating his worlds. Athan had one to explore.

“Did you hear that?” Edith asked, looking up from her examination of a flower that flickered like a candle flame.

Athan lowered his telescope. He hadn’t been able to find the star he wanted. “I heard the wind.”

“We always hear the wind. This was different.”

Athan listened, but heard nothing except the breeze through the undergrowth. “Maybe you stepped on...?”

“No, this sounded like a--”

From the distance, Athan heard, “Ey?”

“--voice.”

Athan dropped the telescope. They’d been discovered. Someone else had found the portal. They’d be reported for unauthorized exploration, reprimanded, kicked out of university--

A girl appeared from behind a stand of the stained-glass trees. She was taller than Edith, impossibly thin, with milky-white skin and hair and eyes that flashed blue in the light from the trees. She wore a gown of patchwork jewel tones that flickered as though sunlight played upon it.

Athan looked at Edith. Edith looked at Athan. Neither one could have guessed their jaw could fall so far.

“An inhabited universe?” Though she spoke beneath her breath, Edith nearly squealed the words.

Athan’s hands were cold. “An inhabited universe.”

He and Edith had been so alone in Lumen, their little valley so peaceful, that the possibility of natives hadn’t occurred to him. Sapient races were rare in the multiverse, especially in the ones that connected to Aldore. Humanoid ones were even rarer. He hadn’t thought to prepare for a first contact situation.

“Oh!” the girl cried, running down the hill. When she came closer, she suddenly stopped, and her face fell.

Edith held up her hands and said softly. “Don’t worry! We’re nice!”

The girl started at the sound of Edith’s voice, but rather than running away, she stepped closer, peering at them as closely as they’d peered at any of the glowing plants. Soon she was ten feet away. Five. Close enough to touch.

Her light washed over Edith’s face as she peered into her eyes. Edith looked back with equal curiosity. The girl touched the collar of Edith’s coat. Edith touched a crimson patch along the girl’s wrist.

“The trees,” Edith whispered to Athan, confirming a suspicion that had been buried beneath his screaming terror about the situation.

Her words caught the girl’s attention, and something shifted behind her eyes. She looked young--maybe fifteen by their standards--but she possessed a shrewd intelligence. She mimed holding a pen and writing on a piece of paper. When Edith and Athan didn’t respond, she spoke a sweet string of bell-toned words.

“She wants to write,” Edith said.

Athan pulled out his omnibook, feeling as though he were in a strange dream. “What good will it do? We couldn’t read her language.”

“Your omni translates, doesn’t it?”

He handed the girl a pen--her skin was cold--and held open the book. The automatic illumination turned on, bathing the pages in golden light. “It won’t know her language.”

The girl scribbled a set of jagged symbols on the left-hand page. To Athan’s astonishment, an English translation appeared on the mirroring page.

You come from the world beyond the world.

Edith and Athan gaped at each other.

“It knows her language,” Edith says.

Athan replied, “That means this universe is known.” Extensively known.

Edith pulled a pen from one of the pockets of her coat and stood next to the girl. She wrote beneath the English words. How do you know?

My grandfather tells stories. Men with light in their books and no light in their eyes. She grinned at Edith. You are the first I have seen.

Even reading upside down, the meaning didn’t escape Athan. Not just this universe, but this valley was known. How had they missed every mention of it?

My name is Edith, Edith wrote. My friend is Athan. What is your name?

The girl wrote, I am Laeli. Have you met my grandfather?

Edith shook her head and wrote, You are the first person we’ve seen here.

The girl seemed disappointed. He has not yet returned from his journey. I wondered if he was seeking you.

Edith looked at her with sympathy before writing, We don’t know of anyone.

Then I will wait longer. I am glad you have come. It is good not to be alone.

The conversation continued for an hour, Athan following what he could upside down before laying the book on the ground and joining the written conversation himself. Laeli was fifteen light-cycles old, which Athan guessed corresponded to a year. She lived nearby with her grandfather had rarely traveled away from home. She was alone, caring for the house while her grandfather traveled in search of information.

He wants to find the stars, Laeli wrote.

Edith spread an arm toward the sky with its array of colored stars.

There are fewer now, Laeli wrote in reply. There used to be so many. They die with the winter, but so few have come back. He fears the trees are dying.

After several more questions, they learned that Laeli believed--perhaps truly, perhaps not--that the stars above them were the fruits of far-distant trees much like the ones that surrounded them.

Can he reach them? Edith asked.

He can find out where they have gone. There are others who will know. I don’t know, so I wait.

There were others in this world. People who had answers--who knew more than this sheltered girl did.

You can come with me, she said at last. I show you my home.

Athan was stunned she was so free with this information. This pale, beautiful child, all alone in this dark valley, was innocence itself. Far too trusting of these strangers from another world.

Or perhaps they were far too trusting, because the glance Athan shared with Edith showed a shared longing to follow her into the unknown depths of this world.

We can’t stay, Edith wrote with reluctance.

But you will return?

Edith shared another glance with Athan. They understood each other without words.

We will return.

#inklingschallenge #team lewis #genre: portal fantasy #imagery: light #imagery: wind #story: unfinished #light in the dark academia

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