Monsters of Men

Make of it that the Clearing are more dangerous to us than ever, I showed. Make of it that now is the time to end them once and for all, that we should release the river and erase them from this place as if they never were.

And the Clearing that is on its way? the Sky asked. And the Clearing that will certainly arrive after that? Because where there have been two, there will be more.

Then we can show them what will happen to them if they do not reckon with the Land.

And they will use their superior weapons to kill us from the air, where we cannot reach them. The Sky looked back over the Clearing. The problem remains unsolved.

And so we sent out more raids each day, more tests to these new strengths.

We were fooled and beaten back each time.

And then today, the Land was captured by the Clearing.

And was returned. With two different messages.

Emptiness.

That was what the Land who returned to us showed, the one who had been tortured by them, forced to watch another be killed next to him, and then sent back by the leader of the Clearing with a message of exactly what he wanted.

A message of emptiness, of silence, of the silencing of all voices.

He showed you this? asked the Sky, watching him closely.

The one showed us the message once more.

Showed us the utter void, the complete silence of it.

But is it what he wants? the Sky showed. Or was he showing us himself? He turned to me. You said they regard their voices as a curse, as something that must be “cured”. Perhaps this is all he really wants.

He wants our annihilation, I showed. That is what it means. We must attack them. We must beat them before they get too strong–

You are purposely forgetting the other message.

I scowled. The other message, the one delivered by the Knife, who had also obviously begun to take the voice “cure” and hide himself like the coward he is. The Sky asked the Land who returned to show us the Knife’s message once more and there it was–

His horror at how the Land had been treated, an old horror, a useless horror I knew all too well, and how he, and others, too, including the ones from the vessel and the Knife’s one in particular, how they did not want war at all, that above all else they wanted a world where all were welcome, where all could live.

A peaceful world.

The Knife does not speak for them, I showed. He cannot–

But I could see the idea of it churning in the voice of the Sky.

He left then, telling me to stay back when I went to follow him.

I seethed for hours, knowing he could only have gone to the Pathways’ End to consider how to betray us into peace. When he finally returned in the cold darkness, his voice still churned.

Well? I showed angrily. What do we do now?

And then came the whining sound in the air, from the strangely slow rocket.

All eyes be watchful, the Sky shows again, and we watch as the rocket makes an arc and curves back towards the ground. We watch the air above the valley, too, for a bigger missile or a return of the flying vessel, watch the roads that lead from the valley, watch for armies on the march, wait, watch, and wonder if this is an accident or a signal or a misguided attack.

We watch everywhere except the hill at our feet.

The explosion is a shock to every sense, jarring the eyes and ears and mouths and noses and skins of every portion of the Land, because part of us dies in it, torn to pieces as the lip of the hill erupts once more, members of the Land dying with their voices wide open, sending the actualities of their death to us all, so we all die with them, are all injured with them, are all covered in the same smoke, the same showers of dirt and stone, showers that knock down both me and–

The Sky, I hear–

The Sky? starting to pulse through my body, The Sky? a pulse carrying itself through the entire Land, because for a moment, for the briefest moment–

The Sky’s voice is stilled.

The Sky? The Sky?

And my heart surges and my own voice rises to join the others and I stagger to my feet and fight through the smoke, fight through the panic, calling The Sky! The Sky!

Until–

The Sky is here, he shows.

I reach for the rocks that cover him, and other hands come, too, digging him from the rubble, blood showing on his face and hands, but his armour has saved him, and he stands, smoke and dust twirling around him–

Bring me a messenger, he shows.

The Sky sends a messenger to the Clearing.

Not me, though I begged.

He sends the one who was captured and returned. We all watch through him as the Pathways follow him down the rocky face of the hill, stopping at intervals along the way so that the voice of the Land can reach into the Clearing like a tongue, speaking through the one chosen.

We watch through his eyes as he walks into the Clearing, watch the faces of the Clearing as they step back, opening up a path, not grabbing him, not cheering over him as they did last time, and in their voices, he can hear the order given by their leader to let him come to them untouched.

We should release the river now, I show.

But the Sky’s voice pushes mine back.

And so the Land walks through their streets, leaving the last Pathway behind him, making the final steps across their central square himself, towards their leader, a man called Prentiss in the language of the Burden, standing there waiting to receive us as if he was the Clearing’s Sky.

But there are others, too. Three of the Clearing without voices, including the Knife’s one in particular, whose face the Knife thought of so regularly I know it almost as well as my own. The Knife is by her side, silent as before but even now his useless worry is obvious.

“Greetings,” says a voice–

A voice not the leader’s.

It is one of the voiceless. Through the clicks they make with their mouths, she has stepped in front of the Clearing’s leader, her hand out, reaching for our messenger. But her arm is grabbed by the leader of the Clearing, and for a moment there is a struggle between them.

And then the Knife steps forward, steps past them.

Steps up to the messenger.

The leader and the voiceless one watch him, each held back by the other.

And the Knife says with his mouth, “Peace. We want peace. No matter what these two tell you, peace is what we want.”

And I feel the Sky beside me, feel his voice take in what the Knife has said, how he says it, and then I feel him reach out even further through the messenger, out into the Clearing itself, reaching deep into the Knife’s silent voice.

The Knife gasps.

And the Sky listens.

The Land does not hear what the Sky hears.

What are you doing? I show.