Chapter 14: A Thousand Distant Lights

At first their ambulations were stiff and furtive, as though she’d just awakened them from a deep slumber. And perhaps she had. Was she seeing bats? Birds?

The thought skittered away even before it could fully form, because there were lights now, and the darkness shimmered around them, as though they were red hot. Violet could see this somehow, it stood out against the night like a shroud of translucent silk being passed through a fog. And rising from the center of each distortion, growing stronger all the time, was a lusterless and flat color, like a mockery of vitality and life.

Even glancing vaguely in their direction made Violet’s eyes want to cross. She shuffled back against the mossy flank of the boulder, her heart suddenly in her throat.

Demons, she thought wildly, then discarded that notion. There was no paralysis or annihilation of thought rising from the view of the lights, only a dreadful, wrenching confusion of vision.

All along the treetops the lights began to swirl free, testing the edges of her lantern light. As they moved, treading the air with a busy, frightening restlessness, there came a great noise, baking off of them in the same discordant way that smoke gusted from the windows of a burning house. Yet it was a noise only in the way the demon speak had been, it was in her head and only there, pushing against the insides of her ears.

And the noise was legion. In an instant Violet could feel indelicate pulses of sound and feeling battering against the surface of her mind, like she was about to be pushed from her own body.

It wasn’t words, not in the way the demon had spoken them, but Violet could feel fractured bits of deeper meaning, things she recognized glittering like splinters of mirror glass, hot as lit magnesium. It hurt to hold such chaos even at arm’s length, but though she did her best to push it all away, to simply shake her head and tune this frequency out, it refused to go.

There was fear and anger, confusion and a deeper sort of numbness that scared Violet badly. Numbness not in herself but inherent to the lights, or whatever lived at their center.

Her mother sometimes groaned in the night, a toneless, low sound that put Violet’s teeth on edge and made her feel alone and empty. It was that noise she thought of now, quiet and droning, filled with a great and hopelessly mechanized yearning for better times.

The lights felt like that, and Violet could not contain a frightened, whimpering groan of her own as she turned the crank of her lantern and kept the sigil aimed. Yet the bladed circle might as well have not been there for all the effect it had on the swirling lights.

“Go away!” Violet pleaded, but her voice was tiny and for a confused moment she couldn’t be sure if she’d actually said anything or not, her mind was so scrambled.

Her eyes darted across the clearing, searching for a desperate moment before landing on the cat, which was passively observing from somewhere out in the night, eyes glowing white hot with lantern light.

“You have to help me,” Violet said, and was relieved to hear her own voice for sure this time. “Tell me what to do. Please.”

The cat regarded her evenly, expression neutral. It didn’t seem particularly concerned by her present situation, but then again it never did.

“You already know what to do. There’s nothing to worry about.” It said and then looked away, silently removing itself from the equation.

Violet stared, a bright flare of outrage surfacing within her, but though she was of a mind to pitch something at the cat she knew that being angry wouldn’t do a thing to solve the problem at hand.

Instead she focused her attention back on the lights, carefully ordering her thoughts in between the wild stabs of chaotic noise battering at her mind. She already knew what to do? What was that supposed to mean?! Violet was sure those words would make the cat sound wise and prescient if she actually figured out how to make the lights go away, but in the present moment they rankled like an infected splinter. The vagueness of it all only made her feel frightened and alone.

Was she supposed to try and talk to the lights? Violet tried to think of how that might work but knew that if she dipped even a fingertip into the frothing torrent that swirled and twitched around the edges of her lantern light she’d be swallowed whole. It had been overwhelming to listen to even a single hive of bees, to imagine the turmoil issuing from what felt like hundreds of independent voices (if they could even be called that) all at once….

No. No. Never.

But what could she do instead? What other options were left to her? Violet knew she could stay where she was and continue cranking her lantern, but the lights in the dark would not go away and their noise would not cease. No, they would only continue to bore deeper and deeper into her mind. And for how long would she have to endure that? Already her fingers were sore and Violet could feel a headache squeezing at the sensitive flesh behind her eyes.

She could run, but with the contemplation of that option rose a great tide of uncertainty. Violet already knew she wouldn’t be able to orient herself, not with the lights harrying her every step. And for how long would she be able to run before collapsing from exhaustion? The dark would be absolute and it would be all too easy to blunder off the edge of a cliff or down a hole. She could hurt herself, or run into some nocturnal predator even less afraid of her lantern and sigil….

Again Violet looked to the cat. And realized something.

It was sitting in the dark, well beyond the direct glow of her lantern, yet the lights were ignoring it completely.

…And the lights had only come out to attack her after she’d turned her lantern on.

The epiphany nearly took her breath away, but even as she considered it Violet felt dread rise from within her. The lights were patrolling the edge of her lantern light like Cossacks haunting a fortress wall, like moths drawn to a flame. A part of her, wild with fright, insisted that if she doused her lantern they would plunge in and be upon her in an instant. She could all but hear the drainpipe demon again, threatening to take her eyes.

But these weren’t demons, and what other choice did she have?

Ducking her head, ready to throw her arms across her face in case the worst came to pass, Violet found the lantern’s switch with one trembling finger and, before she could convince herself not to, turned it off.

In an instant she was enveloped by the night, her vision a shimmering sheet of afterglow left over from staring into her lantern’s glare. Violet stared wildly around her, suddenly unsure what in her line of sight was real or a product of her eyes struggling to adjust. But the noise battering her mind was less ambiguous. It stuttered and skipped like a warped record, then its intensity shattered and Violet heard the sound rise to cry out something that wasn’t quite words. There was no longer the confused, angry chaos from before but a bewildered melancholic emptiness, a loss that sent fingers of undirected noise glancing off the sides of her mind. Lights broke and scattered like planets thrown from orbit.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Suddenly it was very quiet in the clearing, true silence but for the departing lament of the lights. Through her slowly clearing vision Violet could see them guttering out like spent candles, and issuing from the very center of their undead illuminations came the barest trace of a sound.

It was more or less the same from light to light, a high and despondent keening, like a wail heard from the very edge of comprehension.

Violet sat and listened, a shiver rolling down her spine, heart thudding heavily in her chest. It was like sitting by the ocean, she thought suddenly, nonsensically. Like sitting by the ocean and listening to everything die.

“I’m sorry.” She blurted, but did not know where the words had come from, or where they were meant to go.

The cat slipped up next to her, silent on padded feet, and pushed its head beneath her arm, staring up into her eyes.

“Snap out of it.” The cat said brusquely, and Violet jolted. Now the silence of the clearing really was absolute, the nighttime returned to stillness once more. There were no more lights, no illumination at all but for the Glow and the stars and the pale disc of a slowly waxing moon, just barely visible over the treetops. It had all gone blurry and it took a moment for Violet to realize that her eyes were full of tears.

“What….” She had to take a moment to steady herself. “What just happened?”

“You did something very brave.” The cat answered, and its voice was almost gentle.

Violet nearly relaxed into it. She felt weirdly vulnerable and hollow in the aftermath of…whatever had just happened, like a vessel scoured with ice water and coarse salt. She almost relaxed, but then she remembered the cat examining the treetops as they approached the clearing, looking for something.

“You knew.” She said, and didn’t even have the energy to sound accusatory.

“Of course I did,” the cat said, slipping out from under her arm and seating itself primly in front of her. “I wouldn’t come across these things by accident, you must know that by now.”

Violet did, and tiredly tried to order her emotions. She didn’t feel angry exactly, at least she didn’t think so. Everything was masked by a deep weariness, so huge it was nearly intractable.

“I know you wouldn’t have let those things hurt me, but it was still scary and horrible, and I really didn’t like it.” Violet sniffled listlessly.

The cat shifted in place, no longer quite so prim and composed. It suddenly looked very uncomfortable.

“I’m teaching you that all of these horrible, scary things can be defended against.” It said.

Violet offered no reply. After a while the cat let out a small breath and looked off into the woods.

“Would you like to build a fire?” It asked.

“A fire?” Violet echoed warily. “Won’t that…”

“No, no,” the cat shook its head, attempting reassurance. “They won’t come back. Not for a long time. You really wore them out.”

Violet was silent for a moment, processing the cat’s words, her eyes on the ground. At last she looked back up.

“What were they? They were almost demons, but…not.”

“It’s not the worst description,” the cat said, hunting for stones with which to build a fire ring. “But you’re right, they’re not demons. Perhaps the best word would be…spirits.”

“Spirits?”

“They inhabit trees and plants, living things without souls…or maybe not souls as we recognize them. A spirit will live in a tree or some other place and, in exchange for some of their host’s energy, they protect against outside threats.”

“Like me.” Violet said.

“Perhaps,” the cat allowed. “We are building a fire after all.”

Violet wanted to ask the cat if it was sure the spirits wouldn’t reappear the moment she lit the blaze, but bit the question down. Instead her thoughts wandered to the moments after she’d doused her lantern.

“They sounded sad when I turned my lantern off,” she said. “Lost and really, really sad.”

The cat began to say something, then hesitated and offered a curt little shake of its head instead.

“It’s best not to dwell on anything a demon or a spirit does,” the cat said at last. “That way lies madness.”

Violet’s brow furrowed as she watched the cat roll a stone to her feet with its front paws. It looked almost like a person rolling a barrel. A part of her wanted badly to stop thinking about all of this. It would be easier just to go and help the cat, that way she could lose herself in the pleasant crackling glow of a campfire…but she was still curious.

And it did feel kind of nice to have the cat doing the work for once.

“Is that where demons come from?” She asked. “Do they start out as spirits and…I don’t know, get tired of trees?” It felt trivial to condense a demon down to just that, but Violet forced herself to sound casual. She had been afraid enough for one night.

The cat paused in its work to give her a look.

“No.” It said.

“Then where do demons come from? And why are spirits so similar? They look almost the same.”

“But they aren’t. And I’m sure you wouldn’t make the mistake of confusing me with a wolf just because we both run on four legs.”

“But that’s….” Violet huffed and trailed off. The cat had evaded some part of her question but she was too tired to figure out which part or why it had done so in the first place.

“Maybe they come from a common ancestor.” She said at last. It was a term she’d read in a book once, but the book had vanished not too long after her mother had seen her with it and Violet had not been able to rediscover the volume anywhere in the house. She wasn’t quite sure what the term meant, but somehow she knew it fit.

“Perhaps.” The cat said vaguely, and turned back to levering another stone from the earth.

“Could a demon live in a tree?” Violet asked. “Or a plant, or….”

“No.” The cat cut her off with a brisk shake of its head. “Demons are picky and fussy and scattered. Spirits are more singular. A spirit might be content to hole up inside of an oak and live there quietly, but a demon would get bored. A demon would drain the whole tree dry and move on to greener pastures, or greener eyes. You remember what I said about a demon’s favorite parts of the soul?”

Violet did. The bright parts. The parts full of memories and experiences and interesting words that could be used to lure future prey.

“…There are creatures out there that can slip into a person or an animal the same way a spirit occupies a tree,” the cat continued, and its tone was newly grim. “There are even some demons that can do this and you would be well served never to encounter one. Now come and help me make this fire. I have no thumbs, I cannot do all the work for you.”

Violet did, and soon enough they had a tiny blaze going, the flames licking bravely at the star speckled sky, where thin azure blades of Glow curled across unmeasurable distances, languid and slow.

Looking at them made Violet feel a little bit better as she pitched her makeshift tent (the tarp propped up with a single Y-shaped stick she’d found while collecting firewood) and made sure her notebook was in easy reach. She settled back, sitting at the mouth of her tent.

“We’re leaving soon, aren’t we.” She said.

“That’s up to you,” the cat replied. “I can’t force you off of this island.”

The cat had been very quiet ever since their conversation about demons and spirits and was presently occupied with using its claws to shred a small leaf into thin, delicate green strips.

Even in that it seemed distracted.

Violet turned her gaze to the flames and the restlessly glowing bed of embers forming beneath them. It was a relief to look at illuminated colors that felt real and alive, not washed out mockeries of themselves. But that observation made her think of the weird, sad yearning she had felt bleeding off of the lights as they faded in retreat. Her stomach did an unpleasant little flip and Violet shook her head.

“I still don’t understand why they were so sad.” She mumbled, half to herself.

The cat sighed and flicked the remains of its leaf into the fire, where they curled and disappeared into a puff of smoke.

“There’s no hurry in deciding when to leave.” It said, then turned and stepped out of the firelight.

Violet straightened up.

“Where are you going?” She asked.

The cat paused and glanced back, made pale and indistinct by darkness. It looked surprised and almost a little self conscious.

“I usually sleep in a tree,” it said, indicating the forest at the edge of the clearing with a little point of its nose. “Up on a branch.”

“Can you stay here with me?” Violet asked.

The cat hesitated for the ghost of a moment, then turned and reclaimed its spot by the fire, eyes glowing gold and silver.

“I’ll be right here.” It assured her.

Violet smiled.