Aur Child

Alai-Tiul had feared all that day that Gallia-Tiul would ask him about the cube, but so far, she hadn’t. This emboldened him to hold on to it just a little while longer. It was already obvious to him that the object held a lot of energy, and even more possibilities. An enormous power cell.

The thought that the wind towers and the power cell were related had also occurred to him. The metals were similar. Not to mention the terminal that had shocked him that morning was nearly identical to those found at the base of the village’s wind towers, and every other wind tower he had ever seen. From before Cloudburst?

He wondered what this cube could have in common with the ancient towers. Ancient. He tossed that word around in his head. The towers were hundreds of years old - they’d been here since before Cloudburst. They were from people who had supposedly lost everything. He considered the wind towers artefacts. That’s what they had always been told. Yet he had found the power cell in the forest where it certainly hadn’t been earlier. It was this contradiction that drew him up the hill.

Although he had seen the terminals inside the wind towers a thousand times, he needed to check once more. In the evening, while the other villagers were distracted with their celebrations of the rains, he and the boy climbed up to where the towers rose high above the village to confirm his suspicions.

He skulked along the footpaths in the growing shadows to the top of the hill where it ended outside one of the wind towers. To the south, far across the bay, he could see their cottage. The boy gravitated towards the edge and threw stones over the steep, seaside tip of the hill. Three merchant ships, dressed in rainbows of celebratory signal flags from mast to tip, rested calmly in the harbor below. From this height, their mastheads were seemingly within the boys extended reach; sharp-tipped spires fashioned from trees and carved with horizontal grooves to mimic their landside counterparts in the harnessing of energy, the revered wind towers.

Beside the wind towers, the father and son were like twigs to trees. Alai intentionally delayed his entrance to ensure there were no villagers around. After a few initial glances, he slapped his palm upon the smooth external wall and looked up the tower in a casual manner.

“Were they always here?” the boy asked from the edge of the hill.

“Since before Cloudburst, is all we know,” Alai answered.

“But someone made them, right?”

“Must’ve been someone, yeah, but not us.”

“Elder Tiul says they’re a gift from the Aur children, but aren’t we the Aur children?”

Tough question. To be a father, Alai thought, is to always be confronted by how little you really understand about the world. He had asked a similar question of Gallia-Tiul once. “A rare achievement of concurrence between our people and the souls who were before,” was all she was willing to divulge. How to explain that to a young boy?

“Yes, we’re all Aur children, son. We’re all of our star. Surely, whoever made these towers long ago was also of our star,” he said.

“So, they’re a gift from the people who lived before us?

“Yeah, something like that.” To Alai, they had seemed more like tombstones of that earlier civilization.

The ribbed stacks of chalky white were different from everything around them. They did something that would fascinate and baffle the mind of any villager if he were to take the time to puzzle himself about it. Few did. Funny, he thought, how the most fundamental elements of their belief could also be the most obfuscated.

“But all they do is make energy for us?”

“That’s as much as most people care to know.”

“Why don’t people want to know more?”

Alai looked down at his son. “I want to know more, son.”

The wind towers were an anomaly. People were confounded by them. They were a manifestation of a way of life and a way of thought unintelligible to the minds of villagers. In a word, they were magic.

“But you do know more about them, father. You help everyone charge their power cells.”

“I know a bit more about how to use them, yes. But how they got here? Why they’re here? That I don’t know.”

The towers hummed softly in the breeze. They always did. It was a communication, the dull vibration nudged villagers into a constant state of awareness that these monoliths were the foundations of Our Order, and that they never stopped collecting copious amounts of energy; more energy than the village could ever need.

“Elder Tiul says the Earth faith relies on them. What does that mean?”

Alai started at the mention of the name of his clan elder. He scanned the grassy slope until he was sure she wasn’t there.

“Well, they’re important. They make energy from the wind. They guide ships safely to harbor. They keep us from straying too far into the hinterlands.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“And every family’s power cells depend on charging from them. You know how we each celebrate our family’s phase in the lunar cycle by coming up here to charge them? And then there’s the tower festivals themselves. The sun, the moon, and Earth are all connected to the towers that way.”

Alai frowned. It was frustrating to have such weak explanations for his son. Contrived. He often wondered how they worked, how they got here, but he never really considered the mystic side of the towers. To him, they were just machines. Machines that oddly seemed to fulfil the sole purpose of charging the villager’s ramshackle household salt cells.

Alai hadn’t noticed anyone approaching the hilltop during his talk with the boy, so he raised the satchel he had taken from the bicycle and, with a casual tone, said, “I’ll just be a moment inside.” The boy had already been told they’d come here for him to run tests on a neighbor’s faulty power cell. “But you know the elders are sensitive about us being up here when it’s not our time in the lunar cycle, so let me know if you see anyone.”

“Alright father.”

He entered the tower through its doorway facing true north, the same as it was for all the others. Day or night, the circular interior revealed no discernable ceiling because the hollow towers reached up hundreds of meters like a tunnel to the dark heavens. He stepped across the room, directly opposite the doorway, where a plinth stood recessed into a column; the thick structural element originated deep underground, emerged from the ground, and rose into the dark recesses. Two other columns of similar structural intent were positioned around the room in a triangular orientation.

Standing before the plinth at arm’s height, Alai ran his fingers across the recessed shape of a hexagon on the shelf. He had always overlooked the pattern of the indentation. Now, the features seemed to make sense. This was where the village’s power cells could be set for charging; why not also for the one he had found?

With one last look over his shoulder and a positioning of his body so that the cube couldn’t be seen once removed from the satchel, he lifted the object up onto the plinth. His heart pounded as he slid the power cell with a perfect clunk into place and watched as it immediately began to glow from its nearest face. The lazy pulse was magnified by an oscillating hum that he could feel push against his chest.

He wiped the sweat from his brow. His breath quickened. It was charging!

“Oh, Hullo, Frenk-Hoenria,” he heard his son call from somewhere outside.

The boy’s warning had given Alai just enough time to rotate around and obscure the power cell with his body. He stared wide-eyed at the village drapier stepping through the threshold.

“So, it’s you, Alai. Thought I heard something in here,” Frenk said. “What are you up to?”

Frenk was a noodle of a man, nosy without malice, thin in every way; the offing of his trade used to assemble his personal patchwork of garments only exacerbated his floppy form. This was especially so since the man seemed to always have an abundance of curtain scraps. Alai had often wondered if the man’s limbs could ever fully extend under the weight of all that fabric. His close-set eyes, which dangled like dice rolled to ones and hung by an invisible thread over the narrow bridge of his nose, rested upon the stenciled line of a slightly curved smile.

“Oh, hey Frenk. I was just testing a neighbor’s power cell.”

“In the middle of all these celebrations? Curious! You really are an odd one, aren’t you?

Alai smirked and tilted his head. “Yeah, you could say so.”

“Well, sorry to startle you. It’s just that Elder Hoenria told me to run up here every once in a while and check on the wind towers. I guess all that fuss in Crabber’s Bay about findin’ no fish after the rains is makin’ people antsy? You heard anything else about that?”

Alai shook his head. “You know I fish this bay here mostly.”

“Yeah, that’s so. Well, how’s it working?”

Alai blinked his eyes quickly. “The fishing?”

Frenk’s arm lifted until it hit against the inside of his thick sleeve, only a bent wrist made it possible for the man to aim his finger directly at Alai. “No, the power cell. Have you fixed it?” He lifted his narrow nose and tried to look over Alai’s shoulder. A flicker appeared on the front of his velvety pantleg, suggesting a knee had been raised to approach Alai’s side of the room. Alai retreated, bumping up against the plinth and the gently humming power cell upon it. He instinctively raised his hands to prevent Frenk from advancing but could do nothing more to stop the man.

Suddenly, the boy pranced in through the door and nipped past Frenk, ruffling the man like a picnic tablecloth in a breeze. The drapier’s attention was immediately drawn to the flash passing him by. From the base of a column, the boy hopped onto the hollow, lattice-patterned rungs that ran along its side and zipped up in a handful of lunges to a landing. He used the rungs that continued from the landing further up into the tower to swing himself around to its edge.

Frenk had stopped in the middle of his step to watch the boy’s ascent and subsequent opening of the hatch that swung outwards to access the outdoor half of the rung loops.

“Hey!” the man yelled. “You shouldn’t be up there.” But it was too late; the boy had already exited the tower, slamming the hatch behind him. Frenk turned and marched out of the room, apparently in search of the boy. Without a hitch, Alai swept the cube into his satchel and followed Frenk’s departure.

Outside, it was already dark. Only the thumping of feet suggested the direction in which Frenk had chosen around the tower in pursuit of the boy, but the man’s tinny voice was soon heard delivering an energetic lecture.

“He shouldn’t even be in there,” Frenk said, turning to Alai with his hand on his head.

“You’re right about that; I’ll take him home now and have a few words with him.”

Frenk sighed and turned towards the path down to the village. “Well, look. If you notice anything strange up here, just tell Elder Hoenria, would you?”

Alai raised his hand and said, “Sure will, Frenk. Enjoy the festivities.”

Alai saw the man’s silhouette nod as he slipped down the hill. When Frenk was out of earshot, he turned to his son.

“That was quite a stunt.”

The boy returned a smile. “Why did we really come here, father?”

“I told you.” Alai tugged on the latched satchel. “I wanted to make sure this power cell was working.”

“But why tonight? We can come here anytime.”

Alai shrugged. “It’s easier to check without anyone else around.”

“And why didn’t we bring our own power cells?”

“It’s not the end of our lunar cycle yet, son. I wouldn’t want to have to start explaining to everyone why we get special treatment.”

“Well, I see people bring their cells up here when they’ve run out of power.”

Alai laughed at this observation.

“Yup, that’s why it’s so difficult keeping some family’s power cells in good order,” Alai mumbled mostly for his own benefit, but loud enough so that the boy might also hear it. “The membranes get fried when they overcharge them like that.” Then, Alai thought to himself, they blame me when their lunar celebrations are spoiled.

“You’d think we’d have better power cells,” the boy said, looking at Alai from the corner of his eyes.

Another good observation. Alai had protested countless times about improving village batteries. He looked at his son with a smile of pride; the boy’s small body mostly hidden in shadows.

“I’ve suggested that,” Alai said towards the inky space occupied by his son. “But… you know, the elders think it’s best not to change things.”

“Meddle not with what we do not understand,” the boy quipped with stern eyebrows of a scolding elder.

Alai wanted to laugh – it was funny – but he knew he shouldn’t condone disrespectful behavior.

“We have it pretty good, though, son,” he said. Pretty good, but there could be so many ways to make things work better. The flawless functioning of the wind towers was proof of that. But technologies like power cells, as well as the other main machines used by villagers - motors, pumps, and pulleys - represented the limits of what the elders were comfortable with allowing people to use. And some, like scriptleafs, were mysterious objects he didn’t dare attempt to pry open to investigate their insides.

“Yeah, we do,” the boy replied after a few moments of thought. And then, “But, if we can use this magical thing,” he was looking at the tower behind them, “why can’t we also use others?”

Odd. “Well, it’s not really magic, son. It’s a technology.” He grimaced, because he wanted to hold the next thought, but he was compelled to connect the dots. “A technology we don’t understand.”

That was indeed the implicit hypocrisy with which Alai struggled. The wind towers were incomprehensible, yet the Elders embraced them into the deepest parts of the Earth faith. Alai could only shake his head when he was reminded of this thought. “We reject the wisdom of these achievements while we welcome its offerings,” Alai had once protested in a fiery bout of frustration when Gallia-Tiul calmly refused to acknowledge the merits of his projects.

To this, she had solemnly replied, quoting from the scripture of Our Order, “Even the edges of a dark forest may provide sweet fruits.” What could he do? Secretly, he tinkered with projects to satiate his curiosity, accepting the secret failures, successes, and injuries, as well as inevitable frowns from his fellow villagers and lectures from Elder Tiul upon her discovery.

“You’d think these towers came with power cells,” the boy suggested.

Alai gasped. He stood with his mouth agape. It was marvelous how a mind unencumbered by preconceptions could be so brilliant. For how long has he known? But he could not shower the boy with praise. He would not make the boy complicit in his transience. In time, perhaps, he might be able to praise the boy’s ingenuity. Nay, he would give the boy all the credit for making the connection. But for now, no. Not yet.