The Seekers: The Children of Darkness (Dystopian Sci-Fi - Book 1) (3 page)

Once the voice from the sun icon had quieted, a sense of
satisfaction settled over the villagers. Orah waited for the vicar to dismiss
them with the usual intonation: “Go with the light.”

When he hesitated, she grew restless. Her heart pulsed
louder with each beat.

After too long a delay, the voice from the sun icon spoke again.
“The light is stronger than the darkness, but we must be vigilant. For hundreds
of years, the Temple has armed a few to be soldiers of faith. Little Pond is
honored this season to have one of its own chosen for a teaching. Come forward,
Thomas Bradford of Little Pond.”

The crowd went silent.

Orah turned to her friends.
Nathaniel bore a look she’d seen before, whenever he spoke about the death of
his mother. Thomas’s face had gone ashen.

“Come forward, Thomas of Little Pond, and be taught the
horror of the darkness, so you may keep the light shining in Little Pond.”

Thomas stood and drifted forward on wobbly knees. Orah
lunged to touch him, but he’d moved beyond her reach.

The vicar spread his arms. “Welcome, Thomas. You shall
accompany me to Temple City and return to your people wiser. Now, my friends,
go with the light.”

A subdued village repeated the benediction.

Orah squeezed Nathaniel’s arm. “What will happen to him?
Will he be all right? When will he be back?”

The vein in Nathaniel’s forehead throbbed. “Who knows? No
one ever talks about teachings, but it’s a three-day trek to Temple City and
three days back, so he’ll be gone at least a week.” When she remained
disconsolate, he added, “He should be home for festival.”

As the villagers dispersed, Orah rose on tiptoes to peer
over their heads. She caught sight of Thomas, hands held high in triumph, the
mask of his face painted with a grin as if he’d just won a race, but she knew
him better. Even at that distance, she could see the glow in his eyes had gone
dim.

Thomas squinted, trying to see the opposite wall. It had to
be near, because his boots pressed against it, but try as he would, he couldn’t
penetrate the darkness. Not a flicker of light to help, only the darkest dark
he’d ever known. No moon, no stars, no hint of dawn—a dark to haunt one’s
dreams.

He could guess the size of the teaching cell by touch. The
floor covered at most one pace square, enough to sit up straight with legs
bent. The wooden hatch that formed the ceiling hung well short of his height,
so he had to hunch over when he stood. He could sustain the position for only a
few minutes before dropping back down.

He’d given up trying to find a comfortable position. The
Temple hadn't designed the cell for comfort. They intended the teaching to be
harsh. No way around it, so now he stared into the darkness with his knees
drawn to his chin.

The voices of the vicars echoed in his mind. “Let us record
the first teaching of Thomas Bradford of Little Pond, blessed be the light. Do
you understand why you are here, Thomas?”

“Yes sir.” Temple City still dazzled him then, with its
lofty towers and arched halls that boasted row upon row of larger-than-life
statues. He’d felt privileged to be there.

“Why is that?”

“To learn to defend the light against the darkness.” He’d
been a fool.

The senior vicar had leaned forward and glared. “Do you know
what the darkness is?”

“Yes sir. The darkness is the time before the light, a time
of chaos and death.” The standard answer learned in school.

The vicar’s response struck like a slap in the face. “You
know nothing of the darkness, because you’ve never been taught. The darkness
would terrify a child, but you’re of age now, Thomas, a full child of light. We
chose you for this teaching, so you’ll guide your life hereafter to ensure the
darkness never returns.”

They asked him to say the precepts, an easy test, and with a
grin he recited what he’d memorized as a child. “Blessed be the light. Blessed
be the sun, the source of all light. Blessed be the moon, the stars, and our
own world, which revolve around its light. The light is the giver of life....”

When he finished, they said he’d recited the words with
“insufficient sincerity,” and sent him to ponder the meaning of the darkness.

He’d crouched in this cramped cell
ever since. Time passed, but he had no sense of it.

At first, he felt no fear. The Temple preached no harm to
others. Weapons, war and violence were of the darkness and forbidden. Gradually
he realized that the teaching caused him no harm, that the pain came from
within. The constant dark gave no measure of space and masked the passage of
time, leaving him awash in a sea of nothingness so large he couldn’t see the
shore. He longed for the light of a firefly, for news of the day. These
thoughts gnawed at him like a physical pain.

Deacons brought food and water at intervals, but never
enough. His stomach growled, and his throat stayed raw and dry.

His legs began to throb. To escape the cramping, he imagined
himself separated from his body, floating in the air overhead, but he kept glancing
down at the wretch below. He could envision himself clearly, all except the
eyes.

Exhaustion reigned above all. At first, he hurt too much to
sleep. After a while, he’d drift in and out, his head nodding until his chin
dropped to his chest and woke him.

Sometimes, he’d startle as the ceiling cover grated open.
Light would pour into the cell, flooding him with exhilaration. Such moments
meant more than food or water. He’d stand, stretch his limbs and look into the
plump faces of the vicars surrounding him, seniors all with their decorated
hats. They, in turn, would look down on him with sympathy before reciting a
litany of the horrors of the darkness.

In the darkness, they claimed, people spoke different
languages and worshipped different gods. Their leaders used these differences
to separate the people—each from the other—and then rail against their enemies to
turn focus away from their own shortcomings.

At first, they fought with simple weapons, similar to the
pocketknife the vicars had taken from him. Then their wise men studied in
schools and toiled for years to create bigger weapons to destroy their enemies
in greater numbers.
A tale to scare children,
Thomas would think,
and
I am not a child
.

Then they would close the cover, and the darkness would
return.

He’d awaken after a time, his mind confounded by sleep, and
watch the air above him shimmer. Visions appeared, showing ranks of people
rushing toward each other with strange weapons. They chanted the name of their
god as they attacked, each side in a different language.

It had to be a dream.

The vicars returned and asked why he carried the flute. They
warned that music, taken to excess, might facilitate the return of the darkness.
For in the darkness, the young gathered at night to dance to forbidden music, a
way of worshipping death.

Later, his cell lit up with visions once more. Boys and
girls, tenfold all those of the Ponds, crowded in the dark with strange lights
flashing above them. Their shirts bore images of skulls, and some had etched
symbols of death into their skin. A piercing sound pained his ears, a kind of
music played not with the sweet flute and drum of festival but with impossibly
loud instruments. The people swayed to the beat, oblivious to each other’s
presence.

Another dream?
He began to wonder.

The vicars told how scholars had created a liquid that melted
flesh off bone, and the leaders of the darkness allowed them to drop it from the
sky so they’d be deaf to the cries of their enemies. In their arrogance, they
even created a false sun. They dropped this too, so its heat scorched those on
the ground, leaving nothing but the outline of their bodies in ash.

This time, when the vision startled Thomas awake, he pressed
his eyes shut to block out the light, but the flash of the false sun glowed
through his eyelids.

Perhaps the horror had been real.

Again and again, the vicars told of the darkness. Again and
again, what they’d described showed in the dreams.

The vicars came so many times he lost count. Each interview
started with the same question: “Do you know the darkness?”

“Yes sir,” he always replied.

They’d ask him to recite the precepts. With each response, he
spoke with more sincerity, until one day he sobbed and struggled to get out the
words.

Then suddenly, the interviews stopped. No more questions, no
more visions. He waited in silence.

His cracked lips measured the passage of time. With no
taste, no smell, no sight, no sound, he exercised the last of his senses by
groping at the walls. They had the feel of stone, rough-hewn by unskilled
workers, but worn smooth by thousands of desperate fingertips. Like so many
before him, he’d been abandoned. If light was the giver of life, his would soon
end.

Then, as the wings of death fluttered in the darkness
overhead, a new vision appeared, no longer a nightmare from the past. He saw Little
Pond in the spring, its sparkling waters, its hills strewn with apple trees
newly bloomed, its granite mountains looming in the distance—and the utter
loneliness of his circumstance struck him. He imagined Orah and Nathaniel
strolling along the path to the NOT tree together, hand in hand, without him.
No longer their burden, he’d drifted from their memories. He reached out,
trying to touch his old life once more.

The vision vanished and the ceiling board creaked open. He
looked up at the panel of vicars and staggered to his feet.

This time, they asked a different question: “Thomas, are you
happy with your life in Little Pond?”

“Yes sir.”

“Do you care for your family and friends?”

“Oh, yes sir.”

“And would you like to go home?”

His throat seized up. He nodded.

The clerics leaned in and consulted with each other, and
then the senior vicar turned to him. “So you still may, Thomas. You’ve learned
of the darkness. We believe you may become a faithful child of light.”

Thomas waited.

“The Temple offers three teachings. The first demands understanding,
allegiance and proof. You must convince us you understand the darkness. Once
you’ve done so, you’ll prove your loyalty by swearing allegiance to the Temple.
But know this, if you go back on your oath, you shall endure the second
teaching, a hundred times worse than the first, and you’ll dwell in the
darkness to the depths of your being. If you stray after that, the Temple of
Light will deem you an apostate, and the people of your village will do as is
written in the book of light:

If there comes among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams,
and gives you a sign or a wonder, saying, ‘Let us return to the darkness,’ you
shall not hearken to the words. If your brother, or your son or daughter, or
your wife, or your friend, who may be as your own soul, entice you saying, ‘Let
us abandon the light and serve the darkness,’ you shall not consent to him, but
you shall surely kill him. Your hand shall be first upon him, and afterwards
the hand of all the people. And you shall stone him with stones, that he die,
because he has sought to thrust you away from the light.

“That is the third and final teaching, Thomas. Think before
you answer. The Temple loves its children but will do what it must to prevent a
return to the darkness. Do you understand?”

Thomas tried to concentrate.
A prophet? A dreamer of
dreams?
He was no dreamer. He just wanted to go home.

He nodded.

“Thomas of Little Pond,” the speaker’s voice resounded
through the circular room. “Do you know the darkness?”

“Yes sir.”

“Can you recite the precepts of faith?”

He did, his voice growing stronger with every word.

“One final test and you’ll be free to go. Enlighten us as to
where the seeds of darkness have started to grow in Little Pond. Tell us the
names of those who have questioned the light.”

Thomas’s mind again switched out of his body. He regarded
his face, dust-covered with streaks of tears.

“But why, holiness?”

One vicar said, “It’s not for you to question—”

The senior vicar cut short his colleague’s words with a
wave. “You’ve endured much, Thomas, but what you’ve learned is merely a symbol,
far less horrible than the real darkness. That’s why the Temple exists—to
prevent a return. You say you’re happy with your life, but this happiness does
not come cheaply. Prove your faith by giving the names of others who need our
help. Show your loyalty, and we’ll allow you to go home.”

What were they asking?
For me to betray my friends.

“I cannot,” he said.

“Then, Thomas, you do not yet know the darkness.”

He sat down without being asked.

They slammed the ceiling cover shut,
and the darkness returned.

Orah worked the loom, trying to focus on the task at hand: shift
and weave, shift and weave. She marveled how her fingers passed the shuttle
back and forth while her feet rocked the treadle, weaving the weft through the
warp without engaging her mind.

Though most of her neighbors were farmers, her family had
been weavers for generations. Like everyone else, they kept a vegetable garden,
cultivated flowers to adorn their cottage, and raised a few animals for milk
and eggs, but they spent the bulk of their time at the loom.

Local farmers delivered wool or flax to Great Pond, where a
community of spinners turned the fibers into spools of yarn. They sent these to
families like Orah’s, masters of the weaving craft. The weavers kept some of
the resulting cloth for their own needs and distributed the rest to the farmers
and spinners, receiving food and yarn in return. Everyone had enough to eat and
wear, a balance so sensible Orah could imagine no other way.

Her mother had taught her the craft at eight years old, and Orah
had been taking her turn at the loom ever since. Weaving had become as natural
to her as walking.

Yet now she wished it took more concentration, that it
didn’t leave her free to think of other things.

She needed no calendar to tell that festival was near. She
tracked the date by the shadow on the sundial in her family’s garden, a
beautiful piece with a face of white granite, inlaid black numbers and a bronze
shadow maker. Her grandfather had carved the dial as a present for her tenth
birthday, after her grandmother died that spring. He’d used the sundial to take
his mind off his sorrow and force himself to look forward to the granddaughter
he doted on.

It had taken half a year to finish. First, he trekked two
hours to the base of the mountains, then climbed to where the vegetation thinned
and the granite began. He needed several trips to locate rock pure enough for
the face, weeks to carve out the piece, and nearly as long to drag it back. He
went whenever he found the time. Overall, he took the entire summer to gather the
materials and bring them home.

Every night that fall, he worked on the sundial by
candlelight. Orah would stay awake as her grandfather chipped and rubbed at the
hard rock until her mother insisted he go to sleep. Finally, in November, he went
to Great Pond and had the blacksmith craft a bronze shadow maker. When all was
ready, he brought Orah to a flat spot in the garden and sited the shadow maker
to point true north.

In the weeks leading up to festival, and for a number of
days thereafter until her birthday, Orah watched as sunset grew earlier and
later, and the shadow longer and shorter. Her grandfather supervised while she
recorded her findings in a log. For the past six autumns, she’d continued the
tradition, writing down the date and position of the shadow, learning to
forecast the seasons.

This year, she struggled to keep the log. Her grandfather
had died in late winter, shortly after her sixteenth birthday, unable to hold
on for her coming of age. As she penned each entry, she thought of him and continued
for his sake.

Then the vicar took Thomas. Despite her best efforts, she
could find out little about his plight, and no one dared predict the date of
his return. The day Thomas left, she had drawn a double line in the log,
contemplating a different kind of entry—not the trivial movement of the shadow
on the sundial, but the progress of her life. Yet each day, she wrote nothing
more than a brief note to Thomas:
Be brave
or
Stay safe
. Now the
number of entries emphasized how long he’d been gone.

The three friends had never been separated this long. When
she and Nathaniel came together, they felt Thomas’s absence, but staying apart
was worse. So each evening after dark, despite the encroaching cold, they met
at the NOT tree.

On this morning, she could hardly wait. She worked faster, but
the thoughts kept coming. Thomas seemed to cry out to her from a cramped and
lonely place, but she had no way to help. She concentrated on the loom until
her hands flew—shift and weave, shift and weave—but her mind gave no rest.

***

Time passed no more easily for Nathaniel. He pressed his
father for information about teachings, and with each day Thomas was gone, he
found himself slipping closer to impertinence.

That morning, his father had asked him to help stack
firewood. Nathaniel waited on the porch, surveying the mounds of wood the two
of them had split through long hours at the chopping block. They looked like
mountains.

His father stepped outside, rubbed his hands together and
blew into them. “Are you ready, Nathaniel?”

He stood tall for a man of the Ponds, but shorter than his
son by a hand. Hard work on the farm had thickened his muscles in a way that
would not come to Nathaniel for years. His hair had grayed only at the edges,
and his chin remained prominent. Deep-set eyes showed both the pain and joy of
life. Nathaniel knew the pain came from the loss of his mother, and he himself
was the joy—the son she’d left behind.

Nathaniel nodded, then held out his arms while his father
piled three logs onto them. “I can take more, at least four or five.”

“We don’t need to carry all at
once.” His father grabbed a couple of the larger logs and led him to the
lean-to.

They laid down
an evenly spaced row on parallel beams and placed the next row crosswise to allow
the wood to dry. After several trips, sweat began to bead on Nathaniel’s forehead.

When they’d completed the third
cord and a fourth had grown to Nathaniel’s waist, his father held up a hand. “Let’s
stop for a drink.” He set a water bucket onto a bench—nothing more than a plank
nailed across two tree stumps in front of their cottage—filled a ladle and
offered it to his son.

Nathaniel refused the offer and glared
at his father instead. “Why won’t you tell me what they’re doing to Thomas?”

His father withdrew the ladle and took a swallow before
returning it to its hook. “We’ve discussed this, Nathaniel.”

“When will he come home? It’s already ten days.”

“They’ll teach him until he’s taught, another week or more.”

“That’s almost festival.”

“It’s not for us to rush the Temple of Light.”

He turned away, attempting to resume their chore, but Nathaniel
blocked his way. “Will he be all right?”

“Yes. The Temple does not harm its children. You know that.”

“You said it might change me if I were taken.”

“Change is different than harm. Yes, he’ll probably be
changed.”

“In what way?”

His father’s shoulders slumped, and he let out a long stream
of air. “After teachings, people become more serious and sadder too. Thomas
will learn the stark reality of our past. He may go through a... period of mourning.
He’ll need time to recover and might be distant with you and Orah. But as far
as permanent change, I can’t say.”

Nathaniel studied the toe of his boot, which did its best to
dig a hole in the ground. He’d come of age, no longer a child, and deserved the
truth. “Why are teachings so mysterious? They’re not described in any of the
books, and every time I ask, you avoid answering.”

His father rested a hand on
Nathaniel’s shoulder. “I’ve explained all I can.”

Nathaniel felt an unfamiliar
tremor. Fear. He’d never seen his father afraid before. He tried to lock eyes
with him, but his father released his grip and went back to the woodpile.

“Now hold out your arms.”

Nathaniel opened his mouth to
argue, but before he spoke, his father loaded him up with logs until he grunted
under the weight.

“Take these to the shed. One
more effort like the last and we’ll be done by sunset.”

Nathaniel dumped his load on the ground with a thud. “You’re
hiding something from me. Why?”

His father flushed and grabbed the logs himself. At the entrance
to the woodshed, he spun around. “You forget yourself, Nathaniel. I’m your
father and you’ll show me respect.”

In his young life, the two had never exchanged such words.
Nathaniel knew he’d overstepped but couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Without
answering, he whirled about and ran off.

***

Susannah Weber glanced up from the kindling to find
Nathaniel approaching on the path to her cottage. Usually, he bounded along,
all arms and legs with only a hint of how to make them work together, but now
his limbs hung limp, making his whole body sag.
The vicars and their
teachings, honestly.
The boy looked awful, and her daughter seemed no
better. The girl worked the loom as if her father had passed to the light that
morning. Still, poor Thomas would be worse off.

She did her best to soften her expression and be welcoming. “Why,
Nathaniel, what are you doing here so early? The farmer’s life must be easier
than I presume.”

Weaving demanded less physical effort than farming but took
more time, especially in the winter. She and her daughter spent long hours producing
cloth to trade for their needs.

“Good morning, ma’am. Is Orah here?”

“Of course, but she’s taking her turn at the loom. I’d
prefer you don’t disturb her until she’s done.”

“I’d really like to see her.”

She resumed her work, half-heartedly tossing kindling into a
basket on the porch. “We all want things. We don’t get them the instant they
pop into our heads.”

“Yes, ma’am, but it’s been so hard since Thomas was taken.”

She thought of herself as kindly. When someone asked for
help, she never paused to consider her own inconvenience. Once she understood
the young man’s mood, she set down her load and gave him her full attention. “Yes,
I’ve seen it in Orah as well. Her turn will be done in an hour. Can I give her
a message?”

“If you please. Tell her to meet me as soon as possible. She’ll
know where.”

Susannah laughed.
The three friends and their secrets.
She knew vaguely of some meeting place in the woods behind the Rush cottage. “Would
you mean the NOT tree?”

Nathaniel nodded shyly.

She imagined how his deceased mother would have responded,
and cut short her laughter, pursing her lips as if to say “poor boy.” Like
everyone else in Little Pond, she liked Nathaniel and hated seeing him unhappy.

“I’ll tell her, I promise, as soon as I’ve finished with
this firewood. I’m sure she’ll want to meet you when her work is done.”

Nathaniel thanked her politely.

As he walked away, she shook her
head and—after glancing around to check that no one could hear—mumbled to
herself. “Why in the name of the light don’t the vicars leave these young
people alone? Honestly.”

***

Nathaniel wandered about the village, reluctant to go home,
but after a while, he worried he’d draw attention and retreated to the seclusion
of the NOT tree. He checked his tracks before entering the hidden path. No
trace of his passing showed on the hard ground and, unusual for so late in the
season, no snow had fallen.

When he arrived at the clearing, his heart sank. His mind held
an image of a magical place, but now, with no greenery to brighten the view or
night to cloak the scene in mystery, it seemed bleak and cheerless. As a child,
he’d played their summer games here—make-believe adventures with his friends--but
for him, they were much more. He’d go home and reflect on them as he lay awake
at night. In the dimness of his bedchamber, the darkness they’d fought would
transform into grotesque creatures, winged and scaled and breathing fire, or
fanged serpents with slit tongues. Yet always, the hero of his imagination
remained the same: tall, a plumed helmet upon his head, a gleaming sword with a
bejeweled hilt grasped in his right hand. And on his chest, an obsidian
medallion, all blackness, the oval talisman he’d used to capture and imprison
the darkness. For nothing could destroy the darkness that dwelled in each
person’s heart. Only great courage could constrain it.

A deep sigh. The scene before him triggered none of those
fantasies. Beneath the noonday sun, the hut seemed small and bare, a skeleton
of his childhood.

Usually by this time of the year, they’d have performed
their winter ritual, cutting down boughs of balsam fir and covering the frame. Usually
snow would have covered the land and... usually the three friends would be
together. Nathaniel’s throat started to close, and the world weighed on him as
if the adulthood that had hovered over him since his coming-of-age had come
crashing down.

He heard a crackle of dry leaves and turned to catch Orah
jogging along the path. Her breath burst out in gasps, and the color had risen
in her cheeks.

“I came as quickly as possible,” she said. “I didn’t finish
my turn, but I’ll make up for it tonight.” She grimaced at the bare shelter and
stepped forward to touch the wood. The circle of slats held fast in the frozen ground,
and their tops remained tightly bound. Nathaniel’s father had done well by them.

When she looked back, her face was drawn. “Do you remember
how the three of us would play our games?”

Nathaniel forced a smile. “You’d always set the rules.”

“I did not.”

“You most certainly did.” He mimicked her voice. “‘Thomas, go
off to the right, and Nathaniel to the left. I’ll stay here and count to ten,
saying one Little Pond, two Little Pond, which should give you plenty of time.’”

“Well maybe, but you and Thomas would argue with me.”

“That’s why we came up with the Pact of the Ponds.” He
placed his right hand over his heart and thrust his left in front, then
gestured for her to do the same.

Her hand ventured into the space between them, but pulled
back. “It won’t work. We need three to form a circle.”

“Then let’s pretend Thomas is here.”

She glared at him but finally gave in, covering her heart
and grasping his wrist.