“There, now you have seen it, the pride of our people, the mark of the chosen, that great and holy spire unfathomed and unfashioned by men. In it is turmoil more terrible than the thunderous Kausuth seas, a fire hotter than the Anisuth desert. And mark how it stretches beyond the clouds, higher even than the mountainous east and west. As the edges of the world bear their terrors so in the center they are perfected. Indeed the world hangs on the movement of the Great Spire and the proceedings of the High Vlaydmir Counsels. Surely even so dismissive and fatal a man as you can now admit there is something of note, something of awe and therefore a truth in it. Truth. The thing you forfeit when you declaim our nation’s purpose. It is the very thing you cannot deny in the face of so mighty a landmark.

  “So arrest your qualms and doubts as to the divine calling of the Aurea, we will treat you fairly as according to our precepts. Or tell me, surely you cannot, that upon seeing from a distance those ferrous cords sprouting forever into the heavens, you still trust yourself, rely upon the strength in your own tired hands. Vain you who has said to me, and still will say, ‘I have already conquered the world.’ You I invite with grace to come. Approach that inconceivable spire, pull back the magnificent foliage. Even touch at the iron-base and feel the visceral reverberations humming through your heart. Then you will know the divine humility that struck our fathers as they climbed and fell. Down to this sacred earth. But welcome my friend and future compatriot, to the humble Alacosta estate. If there is anything you need, you have but to name it and I will tear down walls, put up provisions. I will treat you as I would my very nephew.”

  Thus spoke the fiery Duchess, equally ready to bless or curse her long expected guest with his temporary stay.

  “Your nephew,” chuckled the guest. “I should hope you’ll treat me like him. I was born to your sister after all.”

  Monta Alacosta endured his aunt’s speech gratefully, for he had missed her dearly. He had just returned home from a distant college in deep Halloughinn, far outside Vlaydeer Aurea. There was no feeling so weighty as heading northward again. He had just caravanned the distance with an embassy pilgrimming toward the capital for the Festival of the Tumblers and the Duchess Ange Alacosta, his benefactor and relation had the Obrivae estate, her summer lodging, prepared out of season for their coming.

  They stood in a yellowstone archway in the middle of an acre of golden hay. Most of it was harvested, but a few workers could be seen gleaning the field a final time. Two horses on a nearby post hoofed the ground and snorted, responding to Ange’s temper. The archway was the only thing that denoted a change in place. Everything on one side continued the idea of the other perfectly. She wore riding boots and a loose chemise barely a shade whiter than the crops. A purple sash and belt crossed her body and waist. The air was cool with that sense of quieting change that comes with a harvest, and the cloudless sky with the Kausuth sun reaching its peak framed The Great Spire in an oddly quaint fashion. It was a thin black line stretching forever upwards. You could achieve the same effect by holding a burnt matchstick or blade of grass up to your eye. And there it was, an unassuming hitch, an errant brushstroke in an impressionist’s landscape, or a crack in a window.

  “Now what sort of a greeting is that?” He went on. “I haven’t seen you in at least eight months.”

  He shifted his pack to his shoulder and slumped it on the gravel beneath him, then opened his arms for a hug. Ange threw herself into him and almost lifted him up off the ground. Her head nestled under his chin for a minute before they broke apart. They both laughed in the way one does when a fear is revealed to be naught but a shadow. Monta hauled his pack onto the horse his aunt had prepared. They unhitched the horses and taking the bridles with them, they led the animals back along the old familiar.

  “You deserved it, you beast! What with not writing all these long months,” The duchess replied. “All we received was 'Coming to festival, riding with embassy, bringing friends, Monta.' And I was merely practicing for when the ambassadors arrive. I’m surprised you’re here already, weren’t you travelling with them?”

  A slight breeze pushed through them as the archway slowly shrank behind. A couple of gray leaves came with it, reminding Monta of the coming cold.

  “Aunt Ange, you cannot speak to them that way. They’ll never trust me again! And I’ll never trust you either. No more late night conversations about my friends, and give up any hope of me bringing a woman over to meet you if you’re going to lambast her like that.” Despite his hard words a smile hid somewhere behind his voice. “You are the queen of cankerous conversations”

  She reddened and with a growing smirk. “Oh Monta you flatter me! Ease your mind, I have actually been looking forward to this for some time. Now how far ahead of the party do you suppose you are?”

  “They should be getting here in a day or two,”

  Monta was glowing. The earthy air of the Obrivae estate filled his soul like nothing he’d experienced abroad. The freshness of everything, brightened by distance, put him at such incredible ease. And all the many hours of work and study, and every small occurrence of his time away that shared space in his memory bubbled and fizzed inside of him. It lifted him from underneath his armpits and behind his heels. The tension of meeting a deadline, the fraternity of striving together and against one another for a common goal, the strangeness of his new friends, and their foreign yet beautiful habits. He had just dipped his toes into the world of academia, and was now returning with a proverbial elixir of life.

  “There now,” Ange interjected. “You’ll have that much time to freshen up and prepare for the festivities!”

  While his aunt carried on about all the accommodations for hosting duties, Monta allowed his mind to wander. How many workers tended these fields and sustained themselves by the crop from season to season. How many served in the estate housing only when the duchess brought guests and hosted. What role did he play among them, not willfully a master but not a servant either. He thought seriously, perhaps for the first time, what the daily lives of these citizens might be when not only he, but all the Alacosta’s left. Two men with mud stains on their knees and bandanas around their heads silently took the horses from the conversing royalty. Their faces brightened upon seeing Monta’s homecoming, and the duchess directed them wordlessly in the middle of a sentence.

  They stopped as they reached the quarters, a brilliant mansion with two stories and three wings. Ange finally quieted enough to breathe and give Monta room to break in. But he only looked at his old summer home and laughed. Each stone piled and rounded on another, every board and window was exactly as he remembered, and each seemed to say to him welcome home. But one thing was wrong. Up the stairs at the back porch right beside the bench swinging chained to the ceiling, he pointed to a set of two simple dark brown doors.

  “Those should be opened!” He shouted, and he swung them wide, bounding up the stairs and into his old dressing room. He sat right on the blue carpet in the middle of the floor and laid back, stretching his limbs into a big X. Breathing deeply, his nose welcomed the familiar mustiness. And he rested there, his sore feet swelling from the long days’ walks, until he heard whispers, mutterings and an adamant shushing creeping up through the open door.

  He propped himself on his elbows and looked around noticing the bureau that held moth bitten linens, the vanity with the dusty mirrors, and the floaters in his vision from the window light and from his own tiredness. A shy tangle of long brown hair peeked out behind the open door. Then two wide hazel eyes, and a short pink gown, and two grasping arms yelling “Monta!” ran out towards him.

  “Gemia!” He sat up just fast enough to catch her and lift his beautiful baby cousin overhead. “You need to stop growing, I’ve been missing everything haven’t I?”

  One by one, the others came in to greet him with their own unique fullness. Raitero, Gemia’s older sister, came in slow and cautious as if she might break him with her presence. And Firth-arm their brother, the true heir and Monta’s older by two years jumped from the door all the way to the center of the rug where Monta laid to give him a firm clap on the shoulder. And their mother Ange tried desperately to hold them back, but they tackled him and each cousin refused to let go until they received their fair share of him.

  Finally they all found a spot standing or sitting around the room to listen. Firth-arm leaned up against the dresser smiling rather tiredly. He was wearing his work attire and had probably just arrived. Perhaps they had been waiting for him to unleash their surprise attack. Aunt Ange sat right on the hardwood in the doorway and gently pet Gemia as she tried to sit still in her lap. Raitero turned the vanity chair a quarter and lowered herself onto it, placing her hands in her lap.

  “You look thinner!” Raitero seemed to look inside of him in that moment.

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  “Yes, what are they feeding you over there?” Ange interjected.

  They all leaned closer and Monta began to talk. Such a simple question set him spinning like an overwound toy. He talked and talked for longer than he had ever talked before, uninterrupted and easy. Like his life for the past semester had been a song in a storybook, he re-experienced the whole in his telling.

  Monta spoke of the very beginning of his departure and the days pulled by horses led one way or another, and the barely perceptible changes in the countrysides, then his first day and the people he met, his dormitory and the fraternity who shared his home. He told of his classes, his aspirations, the new ideas that flooded into his mind.

  “The world is filled with treasure chests, and I’m learning to play in every key. I used to accept the mysteries I saw in my life as unsolvable, and the precepts laid out from my birth as facts and now I’m gaining a new understanding of everything that I see. Look at the setting sun in the western sky. People said that every time it sets it dies and the stars were its scattered remains. Now we know that the sun which rises is the very same that set the night before. All of these stories that are told–”

  Ange cleared her throat loudly and Monta quieted. She pushed Gemia out from her nesting place and tried to say something about traditional beliefs and “surely our values are not… well perhaps we shouldn’t hastily…”

  Quickly the blushing duchess excused herself on the premise of finding a candle to light. The wide-eyed and stunned Gemia recovered herself and crawled into Monta’s lap, who still rested on the blue carpet. Firth gave a sigh accompanied by an imperceptible groan. Turning back to the guest of honor he leaned in and whispered.

  “It sounds like you’re really finding yourself out there.” His voice hid an uneasiness, but he wore at least half a smile. “I can’t wait to meet him.”

  Monta always looked up to the young master, and knew his path was to be different. Firth would be a duke, manage an estate, and perhaps in his later years take up a government office. At the moment he had military prospects and dreams of being a general finding glory in battle defending his people, but his sensible responsibilities already pulled him away from that direction. Ange always called it childish to go to war.

  Monta was pressured to join the clergy and learn the power of the scriptures. It was the position that would be most honoring to his family, but also one for which he had little interest and no aptitude. Instead of the emotive poetry and confusing fables of old, his mind delighted in the concreteness and form of reality, so he sought an education in the physical sciences much to Aunt Ange’s chagrin.

  But she returned as the blue that shone through the window dimmed, then shimmered gold. Ange’s candle burned until the wax filled the bowl beneath it. She remained as silent as she could during the conversation, which was a laborious task for her. At last the cousins had the chance to pour their vignettes over the room. Gemia showed off her missing tooth, and the doll that matched her curls. She fell asleep with her arms around Monta’s neck clutching her toy, and she slowly slumped into a comfortable curled shape. Firth-Arm implored Monta to come on another hunting party with him, and Raitero wanted to sing the aria she had been learning.

  Hours upon hours they spoke and shared sweet stories of all that had passed. The family was so enthralled with each other they let the candle extinguish. They laughed in the awkward darkness and began to wind themselves down.

  As Monta looked at his family’s silhouette, something in him sighed and he made a quiet wish to be with them forever. Ange ordered another candle which came at an inhuman speed and whisked Gemia to her nursery. He recalled the times he’d spent there, and now Gemia was preparing to graduate to an alcove of her own.

  Faster than Monta realized, Firth’s hand slipped strongly into his, and they gave each other a firm pat on the back before breaking away. “Meet me in the morning,” and a clip clop of heavy boots on the wooden floor sounded behind him.

  Raitero gave a curtsey as she quit Monta’s room. Her scent wafted by and took him away from himself. It was that of a woman from an Halloughinn pub and Monta had the urge to touch her hair and pick through it. He reached out and it brushed his fingertips but he stopped himself.

  “Rai! You should not be wearing such perfumes,” he said abruptly. Raitero stumbled back a step and gave another, more awkward curtsey before her hurried footsteps faded down the hall.

  Monta turned to his own room and swung his door closed. The only sounds after that slam were the creeks of the settling building, and his own breathing. He couldn’t stop thinking of her, the lady in the pub. Her red feathered cloak and the things she had said to him like she knew him. He blushed and his breath sped up. He turned to the mirror and wiped a layer of dust away to see he had been scowling. And he wasn’t clean shaven.

  The drawers of the vanity rattled as he rifled through finding an old, dry blade, a tin basin and a crusty towel. There was something missing. He forgot himself, closing and opening the drawers loudly as if they would release what they did not have if he just asked enough times. Suddenly he flung wide the window and from an old gutter he knew, drew muddy, stagnant water into the basin.

  He slammed it on the vanity and tilted the candle to heat up the water. The wax splotched on the redwood. He stared into the candle and breathed until he had calmed. Then, walking around the rug, he disrobed. His shaky hands fiddled with the buttons, and he came close to tearing them off. But off with his coat, and off with his sweat soaked shirt. He leaned on the vanity with both hands wide.

  Jet black hair covered his arms and decorated his shoulders and chest. It was thick, almost to the point of being sharp, and along his back it was completely wet. It was a forest, and he couldn’t help but imagine all the fleas and lice that could be hiding from him there.

  He submerged the towel in the water and began scrubbing his long forearms. He wanted to scrub them away entirely, to be rid of himself in that moment. The skin underneath became red and raw. He sank the cloth in the basin again and wrung the water in. This time he washed his chest and stomach until the hair pointed everywhere. The water was warmer now so he moved the candle to keep it from going out. It was a little shorter than his thumb.

  A third time he sunk the towel in, and something unusual happened. Bubbles formed, white and soapy. He rubbed it on his neck and armpits, and it made a soothing lather. He covered himself with it until he was dripping on the floor. A puddle of who knows what accumulated by his feet.

  Then the blade found a path to his hand, and with a fire in his eyes he cut down the forest. Piece by piece, clump by clump, he reformed himself into the man he knew himself to be. His hands shook, and he nicked himself in different places, but he looked at himself with a relieved pride. Cuts, bruises, raw skin and dark patches. None of his body was the right shade.

  He panted, and leaned on the vanity with both arms wide. A mixture of hair, water suds and blood spread across the surface. It spilled over and seeped toward the carpet. He stepped to the dresser, slipped and caught himself on the corner of it. Searching within he found among the linens and curtains a moth eaten fleece. It was a faded brick color with mud brown stains and it was the perfect absorber, for it had been used this way before. Sopping up the floor and the vanity and wringing it out in the same gutter beneath the window, he cleaned up his strange mess.

  Monta draped the fleece over the mirror and moved the candle again to help it dry. It was now a little shorter than an inch and the light was fading. Looking around, he saw his dry shavings scattered like black stars in a brown sky. The blue carpet presented itself as the perfect hiding place for this. He brushed everything onto the floor and knelt down to lift it. He winced and dropped it, the musty odor struck him so intensely.

  As he lifted it again, he saw a hole bored into the floor as large as his waist and he guessed it to be nearly a foot deep. It was filled and overflowing with that thick, compacted black hair, and a green and black mold strung itself along the edges.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” he whispered to himself. “It shouldn’t be this big.”

  At that moment the light went out. Monta waited motionless, holding the blue carpet up, exposing the hole to the open air. He felt his head leaning closer, though he wasn’t moving. The darkness magnified the sounds. A very subtle scuttling and a sporadic driping sound. And there was something beneath that he could almost hear, something akin to a spoken word.

  A deft swoop of the arm brought all the remaining debris into the hole. He brought the carpet to the floor and stamped it down a couple of times to give himself a sense of assurity. Still facing the carpet he stood and slipped through the door into the dark and empty hallway.

  He felt a cold hand on his shoulder and jumped right out of his skin. But it was only Ange.

  “Goodness Monta!” She exclaimed. “Are you alright dear? I heard a bit of a fuss so I came to see you.”

  He felt like someone woke him from the middle of a dream, his fingers wanted to coil in on themselves and his arms tingled from the pit to the pinky. And worst of all, he was shirtless in front of his aunt. She couldn’t see, though. If she could, a very different conversation would have ensued.

  “No, I’m just off to my chambers. Yes, I mean. I am– I’m alright.” Monta quickly tried to excuse himself. “I was reacquainting myself with the old room, and I may have dozed off on the carpet.”

  “That’s good to hear. You must need a lot of rest after you’re trip. Be sure you’re ready for the festivities. Do check that the windows are closed. And I noticed your stubble growing in.” She reached out and pinched his cheek. “You need a shave.”