The Truth of Things Unseen

The Pit

I trailed after the three young Aden. They were like crazed lanterns, swinging wildly around one another in and out of the trees. Every leaf cast three shadows: white, gold and pale. As we crossed an open space, Fen did a cartwheel. She came up with her hands covered in dew and crushed leaves.

"I’m so glad you’re able to be here," she said breathlessly, running back to me. Then she was off again, out in front, leaving me struggling along in the darkness.

Llandred strode out a little ahead of the others, tall and graceful as a storybook hero. I imagined him in golden armour, a horde of shadows breaking against his shield.

Esten, hung back, off away to one side, awkward, as though he couldn’t remember how to swing his arms. He kept his head down, intense, peering at empty places and frowning at the grass.

Fen came back to my side and nudged me. "He doesn’t really like it outside," she whispered. "It makes him afeared. It’s not his fault, and Mother says we’re all to be nice about it."

Then she was off once more, dashing towards a grey tower that suddenly loomed between the fruit trees.

But the tower was broken. As we came closer, I could see that a section had fallen away, but not down into the ground. The place where it had fallen was dark and confused, a hollow place. There was a wrongness here that hung heavy in the air. A brokenness, like a harvest spider swaying on too few legs after the scythe has passed. The three young Aden did not slow their pace, and rushed on towards the breach.

"Look out," I tried to call, but my voice failed. My knees felt weak, but Llandred and Fen rushed on.

My vision swam. My hand bumped up against something wooden and solid. It was the hull of a ship, flecked in patches of gold paint. A crash of waves, a cry of gulls. I stared at it, mute, unable to comprehend what I was seeing.

Then Fen was by my side, warm breath in my ear. "It’s alright," she said, taking my hand. "Don’t be afraid."

"Am I drowning?" I slurred.

"No, you're safe with me." She gripped my wrist, and her fingers were warm. I gripped back, and she pulled me up, and once again I felt myself back in the garden. The ship was still there though, dry and propped up on wooden chocks.

"There’s a ship," I said. My voice was not my own.

"I know, there’s a ship, but that’s not what we wanted to show you." She took my hand, and I stumbled behind her towards the tower and the dreadful thing that lurked beneath it.

It was thirty feet across. It bisected the tower as a spade bisects a worm. A wall fell into ruin at either side of it, or rather, it seemed to fall into it and crawl up out of it at the same time, like a snake eating itself, a clash of truth, both predator and prey. The world became confused around the lip of it, as though the grass and the meadow were tilting forwards, sliding in and down. As though all of the green world were just a drop of water rolling down a leaf, and me, clinging to the soil and sliding forward too, down and ever down into the black and the unliving darkness within.

Fen was there, by my side, and her touch was warm. I realised I was on my knees again. There were tears in my eyes and I brushed them away with the back of my fist.

"I know," she whispered. "It must be worse for you. I’ve grown up with it always here, but you’ve never seen it before."

I leaned on her arm, and she helped me to my feet. The unnatural feeling faded a little at her touch, but the sense of vertigo remained, as though the world were sliding down into it like a drop on the rim of a goblet.

Llandred stood a little way off, his back to the yawning abyss, framed by the breach in the wall. His cloak billowed about his shoulders and his dark radiance was visible against the bleak and broken stone.

"Can you hear it?" he called out in a voice like thunder. "Can you feel it calling you?"

I stood silent. I wanted to walk, but my feet wouldn’t move. I wanted to talk, but the pit seemed to suck the breath from me. A gentle breeze rushed in towards it, as though the wind welcomed the fall.

"It’s hungry today," called Llandred "Let’s go in," and I watched in alarm as Fen and Llandred climbed over a low wooden fence that ringed the pit and walked towards it.

Llandred strolled casually on long limbs, as though everything was beneath him and nothing could possibly be of any concern. Fen crouched and giggled, She picked up a rock, crawled up to the edge, and tossed it in. The rock disappeared without a sound.

Esten appeared at my side. "I hate it," he said. He wiped the corner of his mouth, and I thought I smelled vomit.

"It’s something," I said. I wanted to say something clever to the pale lord, but I had no words back then. "It's something."

"Like it’s full of a thousand lost souls," said Esten, with a faraway look in his eyes, "and even though there are so very many, there’s so much empty space inside, they can never find each other. Never touch anyone ever again. I dream about it sometimes. It’s like being tied up in a blanket and tossed in the ocean. I worry one day, I’ll sleepwalk and just jump in. That can happen you know."

“Come on, you pair of slugs,” yelled Llandred, striding towards the tower, like a farmer crossing his own land. "There's honeywine in the tower. Don't force me to drink it all myself!"

Fen was clambering on the rocks of the broken wall overhanging the drop. Esten was still by my side. The sail of the ship flapped quietly in the breeze behind me.

"You know, you really don’t have to do this," Esten said. "I'm Erin High House. Things are expected of me, but you’re nobody, and no one really expects anything of you. You can go back to your goats, or whatever it is you have, and forget it all."

I watched Fen climbing with her brother. Step by step, I forced my feet to move. I climbed the fence and shuffled towards the abyss.