Chapter 110: Day 109

Day 109,

Alright, finally an opportunity to finish up the recap of the cathedral exploration.  Where did I leave off again?

Ah, yes…

Agenda for our day thusly set we squeezed through the gap in the doors single-file.  Once again, upon crossing the threshold that preternatural chill returned, its presence made all the more stark by how much the outside had warmed after months without rain.  That chill that marked this place as fundamentally divorced from the natural order of the Village and its island and reminded us that we were intruders here.

Maiko remarked that if she’d known it was this comfortable inside, she would have set up camp here ages ago.

The rest of us looked at her as if she must be joking.  She was not.  I recalled her ease with the temperature drop from high elevation on the floating island.  Not quite human, and not quite meant for tropical climes either it would seem.

The interior was as grand as I remembered, although somehow the drying of the puddles made it seem emptier; just more matte grey-green-brown floor where once the light was irregularly caught and reflected.  Vernon seemed just as awed by the sight as I was on my prior visit.  Perhaps not so jaw-dropped mouth-agape, but constantly uttering “fascinating,” “gorgeous,” “incredible,” and similar epithets under his breath as he stopped and turned around to take in the view every few paces.  A shame he wasn’t able to make the floating island trip.  I imagine his reaction to seeing Cloud Tower up close would have been something.

Meanwhile, Cass had taken Maiko by the hand and was practically running to show her the Reader, leaving me behind to shout for her to slow down while I caught up at a more measured pace.  Or perhaps “drowsy” would be a more honest descriptor than “measured” given my lack of sleep the night before.  Going back and reviewing the research notes (if I can self-aggrandize myself so much to call them that) I took that day, I’ve come to realize they were sloppier than normal, both in handwriting and level of detail.

Walking around the base of the Reader, Maiko confirmed its similarity to the one she’d seen in the structure on the eastern island.  It was bigger than the one there and the face and posture were apparently a bit different, but the overall image of a seated, winged, androgynous figure reading a book was the same.  As was the level of detail and stylization.

Moving on to the catacomb entrance, we took the time to remove additional rubble so that we could properly walk through (or at least crouch in Maiko and Vernon’s cases) rather than climb and crawl.

Descending into the darkness, we found that sprawling chamber as timelessly untouched by the elements as we had left it, despite our clearing of the rubble.  Proceeding to the nearest sarcophagic pillar, Maiko was able to confirm the script was the same as she had encountered.  She couldn’t say for sure, but she suspected that even particular strings of characters - sentences or phrases perhaps - were ones that she had seen when she was allowed to peruse Iole’s book.

Feeling more at ease now than I had on my prior visit - owing in large part to the additional company and in a lesser part to a general increase in confidence since then - I took the time to more carefully examine and compare the inscriptions on the sarcophagi.  I still couldn’t actually read any of it of course, but there did appear to be a handful of phrases of which at least one appeared on every sarcophagus I examined.  These phrases were typically either followed or preceded by a set of characters unique to each vessel.  Names perhaps?  Maybe something along the lines of “Here lies So-And-So” and “X is buried here.”  Reasonable guesses but no way to confirm.  At any rate, I transcribed some of it in my notebook.

Ready to move on from that initial pillar, we caught Maiko lingering with her hand resting on - no, gripping - the edge of a sarcophagus.  We asked her if something was wrong.

She said that although she knew we agreed not to open anything, now that she was here she couldn’t stop wondering what was inside.  Couldn’t stop thinking about the ones Iole had called “ascended” who had changed themselves.  Was that who was interred here?  If she opened up enough of these, would she finally find someone else who looked like her?

For a long, uncomfortable moment, the kind that feels indiscernible whether it has  gone on for seconds or minutes, no one had an answer to that.

It was Vernon who finally broke the silence.

“Would knowing that really help?”

Those were the words that cracked the dark stillness and hung in the chill air before being once more swallowed by the silence.

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No response except for all of us turning to look at him.

He continued on.  Asked if what Maiko really wanted was to find others that looked like her or to simply not be lonely anymore and find others that liked her.  Either way, a corpse in a crypt can’t help her do either of those things.  Even if she were to open up that sarcophagi right now and find that its occupant had a horned head and shoulder spikes, it wouldn’t be able to tell her where to find others that are still living and breathing, and it certainly wouldn’t be good company.  Meanwhile, she already had friends who like and care about her.  And while he understood that didn’t make a desire to find kin any less important, there surely must be better ways of finding them than disturbing the dead for answers they can’t give.

Maiko found herself at a loss of words for how to answer that.

It was Cass who broke the silence next, suggesting that we put off the discussion on opening up coffins until we can come back another time during the rain and listen to the voices, before going on to urge us all to get back on with the exploring.

And so the adults found themselves following the child’s lead, continuing on until we hit a wall and then splitting into two groups to follow along in either direction until we met back up on (presumably) the opposite side of the crypt (after Vernon had used the word we’d taken to calling the place that instead; partly to avoid confusion, partly to avoid inviting ill luck by skirting taboo, and partly because it was the more accurate term in retrospect, being a one large vault rather than a series of tunnels).  Thus we made our way around the perimeter, one of each pair examining the wall to verify its uniformity and the other casting an eye toward the pillared interior and tracking their counterparts’ light as it appeared to wink in and out from intervening obstructions.  Meeting back up on the far end, we went down the center, roughly beneath the aisle of the cathedral above, until we once again reached the spiral staircase to the surface.  

We found no other chambers, exits, nor entrances.  Nor did we find any further mementos of past explorers.  We did observe, however, that the crypt was not at full capacity.  Most of the columns at the far end from the stairs (beneath where the front doors would be up above) had empty recesses within them, forever left waiting for the day when a new sarcophagus would be added.  Still, I’d estimate that there were hundreds of bodies down there.  Assuming, of course, that there are actually bodies at all.  And while that sounds like a lot, given the size, age, and apparent population stability of the Village, that number is low enough that I’m theorizing even back then this form of burial wasn’t standard practice.  And while maybe those who used the cathedral and buried their dead beneath might have simply been a small faction within the village, the sheer scale of the architecture contests that theory.  No, I suspect that those interred here were specifically chosen for some reason or another.  That said, I’ve chosen to keep that supposition to myself for now, lest Maiko be spurred once more to disenter them.

Returning to the surface and sunlight, we moved on to our exploration of the cathedral’s exterior.  The jungle growth was dense here so it took a long time, but eventually we found a broad, flat, and obviously artificial paving stone beneath the leaves of the forest floor.  With that as a starting point for orientation and perspective we were able to piece together the outline of a courtyard adjoining the cathedral (it appeared there was once a side exit that was now blocked off by a tree trunk) and the foundations of two outlying buildings, none of which were anywhere near as well preserved as the cathedral itself.  And by not as well preserved, I mean they’d been reduced to suggestions of rectangles with bricks tangled in the roots and embedded in the trunks of trees.  If either of these buildings had once possessed lower levels, we’d need to uproot the trees growing on top to get at them.

I find myself wondering, given the size of the trees intertwining with the main cathedral, has this place truly been abandoned for so long that such massive new growth came to be or were these trees here to begin with and the cathedral built to incorporate them only to have them continue to grow out of their allotted space once it had been abandoned?  Or was this the work of the Wandering God or some similar being?  I find myself thinking back to witnessing that giant plant a fallen log into the ground and inducing new growth in a matter of minutes.  Could it have seen this unused edifice as yet more detritus to use as a scaffold for renewal?  A kinder thought than the alternative.

As for looking for upper levels of the cathedral, Maiko led the way, scaling one of the ingrown trees to the first terrace of rooftop and then tying off and throwing down a rope that Vernon had provided.  And that’s how we all learned that I can’t climb a rope to save my life.  Cass and I wound up following along from the ground while Maiko and Vernon picked their way across the overgrown rooftop.  Cass was none too pleased with this arrangement, but I had a responsibility for her safety and we already knew the roof was unstable enough to have gaping holes in it, not to mention being slick with moss and leaves (albeit less than it would have been any other time of the year).  I had no interest in telling James and Antigone about how their daughter went climbing on top of a place they’d already said wasn’t safe and then fallen through to break her legs or arms or neck.

Surly, Cass asked if I would have kept her behind on the ground if I hadn’t been too weak to climb up myself.  I told her yes.  It was probably even true.

From Vernon calling reports down to us, it seemed there wasn’t much of significance up there that we couldn’t tell from down below.  Any windows just looked back into the main interior space we’d already been in.  When they reached the stained glass on the backside of the building Cass and I circled back around to the interior while they climbed through a long-shattered pane.  It seems that interior balcony didn’t actually lead anywhere, or if it did it was blocked off by overgrowth and rubble.  I found myself wishing we had that machete.  As it was, best as we could tell, the interior balcony was purely for show with no way to access under normal circumstances.  The only things of interest up there were broken pieces of colored glass and worn, moss-filled inscription in that unknown language.  I tossed my notebook up for Vernon to transcribe as best he could.  He said that with how small and rough it was it looked more like graffiti or maybe a signature than a planned part of the instructure.

Anticlimactic as it was, that concluded our exploration for the day.  The sun was already starting to set by the time Vernon and Maiko climbed back down, and while I had the nagging feeling that there was something more I should be doing, somewhere else we should be looking, none of us could actually think of anything we hadn’t already covered, short of returning with digging tools and cutting implements to clear out the courtyard and side buildings.  Or opening coffins, but no one said that.

Maiko left us shortly before we reached the main road.  Said she preferred to stay off of it when she could and that her current campsite wasn’t far.  As we made our farewells, I reminded her that my house was open to her when the rains return.

She said that she would keep that in mind.

That lingering pause of one who is unsure about saying something but realizes it’s their last chance to do so before departing.

She said to say hello to Lin for her and then disappeared into the woods.

Another eyebrow-driven exchange ensued before we got moving ourselves to return home for the night.

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