White and Other Tales of Ruin

“Here,” he says. I look. String is standing at a split in the rock, a crevasse that could easily be the doorway to a cave. Its entrance looks like a swollen vulva, and I wonder whether it is man-made. I also ponder what is inside, in the womb of the rock, hidden in shadows. As I near String he holds out his hands, halting me.

“Gabe, Jade brought you here. She’s a good woman, though I’ve told her before she should leave this dying place. She’s too independent to join us here, more’s the pity.” He stands framed by the cave entrance; his skin shines in the shadows as if possessed of an inner light. I feel completely insubstantial. “I’m going to cure you. You can be assured of that, though I know that until it’s done you probably won’t allow yourself to believe me. But I cannot cure everyone. There’s not enough medicine for the billion people with the Sickness. And there really aren’t that many people who I think deserve curing.”

I go to say something, but he waves me down.

“I’ve already decided that you’re worthy. Jade is a good judge of character. But we’re only a small community, and we treasure what we have. We have to. Because we have treasures. Do you have faith?”

“Yes,” I reply without thinking. He has a way of springing questions without warning, the only way to find an honest answer.

“In what?”

I think of Della; not only my utter faith in her goodness and knowledge, but also what she said to me. If you know someone’s faith, you know their soul…You may need it one day. “In a friend.”

“What’s her name?”

“Della.” I am not surprised that he knew the sex of my friend, He reminds me of Della in many ways, and she would have known.

He asks no more. I feel that I am about to swoon, but String is there before my body can react to the thought. He grabs me around the shoulders, and his touch seems to strengthen me. I have the unsettling certainty that he knows everything about me, understands that my feelings for Della lie way beyond simple friendship or even love. He knows my soul. But I am not worried, I have no fear. I think he deserves to know.

He points to the cave. “I’m going to take you in there, and show you some things. They’re things I show everyone I cure, once, but never again. They’re precious, you see, and precious things are coveted. Especially in the shit new world we inhabit. And ironically, that’s why I’m showing you. So that you know how special what we have here is. So you know that knowledge of good things shouldn’t always be shared, because too many bad things can dilute good things. Do you understand?”

I nod. He confuses me, his words twist and turn into obscure, half-seen truths. But I also understand him, fully, and it pleases me to think that there are still the likes of him living on our dying world.

“I can’t deny the power there is in me,” he says. “You may think I’m some sort of … magician? Witch doctor? I’m none of those things. In the old days, before the Ruin, I may have been called charismatic. But now, I’m a funnel for a power of a more fundamental kind. The real magic, my friend, is here.” He stamps on the ground, coughing up a haze of dust around his legs. He squats, grabs a handful of the dried soil and looks at it almost reverently. “The power of the greatest magic flows through my fingers with the dust.” The breeze carries trails of dust from his hand and into the cave entrance, like wraiths showing us the way. “The power of Time; the immortality of Gaia.”

I feel frightened, but enlivened. The Sickness sends a warm flush into me, but for once my body combats it, cooling the fever as if the atmosphere of the cave already surrounds me. String possesses me with his words, and I feel no repulsion, no desires to flee. My skin tingles with a delicious anticipation. I wonder what is in the cave, and I am sure that it is beyond anything I can imagine.

“This is holy ground, Gabe,” String says. “I don’t mean religious-holy. I don’t care for religion, and have none save my own. Similarly, you have your own faith, and that’s how things should be. But this site is powerful. It has a holiness that precedes any form of organised, preached religion. It has the power of Nature. It is the site of a temple, a shrine of rock and dust and water and sky that pays constant, eternal homage to Nature itself. See, up there.” He points to the strips of sky between the cliffs.

I look up and see the birds there, circling, drifting on up-drafts of warm air from the ravine. I sigh and feel any remaining tension leave me, sucked into the sky by the soporific movement of the birds, swallowed by the sight of their gentle movement.