Chapter 21: Day 21

Day 21,

Today’s the day for heading out to Siren Overlook.  I’ll be catching a ride with Cass’s family into town and then meeting up with Lin at the library.  We’ll head out from there.

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Turns out that Cass and Lin knew each other beforehand.  In retrospect, that shouldn’t have been a surprise.  Still, I had a moment of panic when we walked into the library, the two of them saw each other, cut off their greetings mid-sentence, said “You” in unison, and began glaring daggers at one another while rapidly exchanging barbs and insulting nicknames.

To my relief, this exchange ended in laughter and a handshake.

It seems that of all her siblings Cass drives the hardest bargains on market day while Lin makes a hobby out of getting the best deals she can, and this has led to some sort of ongoing game of one-upmanship and rivalry.  Although any animosity between the two seems to be largely a matter of theater.  Or at least I hope that’s the case.

Greetings concluded, we soon set off.  There are two primary cobblestone roads leading out of the Village, one to the northeast (my usual route) and one to the northwest (which we now took).  As I’ve come to understand it, the two of them eventually meet up to form a circuit of the southern half or so of the island, with various farms and pastures radiating from it along secondary dirt roads.  The northern portion of the island and the innermost sections of that circuit seem to be mostly wild jungle.

Our own route went about half an hour out from the Village before we turned onto a side path that doubled back south but veering more toward the coast and climbing steadily upward.

During the walk Lin and Cass got to know each other better.  Lacking in a past as I was, they both already knew about all there was to know about me, but they still asked.  I didn’t learn much new about Cass during this, but Lin mentioned that she was glad to have a day away from her parents as they had recently been pressuring her once again to find a man.  Apparently most villagers are married and either have or are planning to have children by her age and her parents want grandkids.

Somewhere during this conversation “the Blossom Field” was mentioned again.  My curiosity piqued, I asked about the origin of the phrase.  Lin’s face went red, obviously embarrassed and regretting having brought it up.  Meanwhile Cass’s expression was best described as bemused.

Some verbal prodding latter, (along with a discussion of what is and isn’t appropriate to discuss in front of children, followed by protestations from Cass claiming that she already knew where baby farm animals came from) I eventually learned that “visiting the Blossom Field” isn’t a euphemism for attempting to have children but a literal required step.  As in, the people of the Village are literally incapable of having children unless both partners first visit a specific field of flowers that blooms year-round and breathe in the aroma in order to temporarily become fertile.

My knowledge of the world and life I had before this one may be fuzzy and full of holes, but I am pretty certain that is not how human biology works.  Taken aback as I was by this revelation, I said as much, which led to my turn to get embarrassed as they began asking questions about how I thought it was supposed to work.  Mercifully, my stammering attempts to explain how human society can function without special flowers was cut short by our arrival at our destination.  Still, this does seem to answer a different question that had been nagging at me of how the Village can apparently maintain such a near-constant population size over many generations.

I brought along the same notebook I was using during our trip to the cathedral ruins, and if you want a more detailed account of Siren Overlook itself then I advise you read that, but I will include at least a brief summary here.

As we got closer, our dirt path began to have large, flat pieces of broken white stone interspersed.  We began to hear the sounds of wind and ocean before the treeline abruptly ended, leaving us on a long, narrow cliff jutting out to see.  Excepting the bits of grass hanging over the sides, the sides of this promontory fell off at such a precise ninety degree angle that they must have been artificially carved away as such.  Adding to the evidence of artifice was the fact that the two long sides of the Overlook were – near as I could tell with the naked eye – perfectly parallel to one another.  Lining these ledges laid lines of bases of broken columns of white stone.  Down the center of this space was a rectangular pool a little wider across than I am tall and running nearly the length of the Overlook.  Our path terminated at one end of this pool, and across the plant-filled water several paces past the far side rose a set of steps onto a raised platform and a stone archway at the edge of the cliff.

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Lin was slightly less enamored of the sight than Cass and I were, having been here before on multiple occasions.  With a giggle our older companion admonished the two of us for staring with our mouths agape and ran on ahead.  Cass quickly followed, but with more restraint than she had shown back at the cathedral ruins.  I suspect that may have in large part been due to Lin’s presence giving her an adult to look mature in comparison to.  I swear, just listening to them talk it can be easy to get mixed up which is the adult and which is the kid.  Not so much in voice or knowledge, but in tone and attitude.

But I’m perhaps getting off topic (if I truly had one to begin with).  Siren Overlook.  And its namesake feature.  Once we left the trees behind us we could begin to hear it, just as the faintest background melody that you almost had to actively listen for to notice.  As you got closer to the edge of the promontory, particularly the far end, the voice grew louder; a sweet, soothing song that melted away stress and tension (as Pat said).  If there were words to these vocals, they were in no language any of us could understand.  There was no otherworldly compulsion to follow the song though beyond that soothing sensation growing stronger as the sound became clearer.  And yet, we found that if you ever moved dangerously close to the edges, whether outside the columns or past the arch your ability to hear the song would abruptly cease, bringing with it a shock of awareness not unlike suddenly snapping awake after beginning to slide off balance from dozing off.

We spent the next couple of hours looking around; me taking notes, attempting sketches and making speculative comparisons with the cathedral, Cass wandering about trying to keep up a cool, unimpressed façade that would slip any time she got too close to the arch, and Lin collecting plants from the pool that she explained had medicinal value.

We picnicked at the end of the pool where the song was quietest.  During lunch Cass pulled out the mask she’d taken from the cathedral to show off in lieu of any new treasures being found here.  She explained that she didn’t like wearing it because every time she did she’d start getting sad for no reason and find herself thinking about things that might make anyone she looked at sad too.  She offered to let us try it on for ourselves.  Lin said she didn’t feel much of anything when she tried it on and in my case I felt some twinge of nameless sorrow tug at me, but that may just as well have been because I was primed to expect such a response.  Put off by this and wanting to prove she wasn’t making things up, Cass snatched the mask back from me and took a long look at each of us in turn.  To Lin she whispered what she felt to be the older woman’s personal sorrows, and whatever words were said, they seemed to convince Lin.  Whatever Cass saw in me with the mask she refused to repeat, but when she finally took it off she had to wipe tears from her eyes.

Attempting to change to a lighter topic, I asked Cass if we ought to give Lin one of the bracelets as a “fellow explorer”.  After some theatrically feigned reluctance she agreed.  Lin accepted the inaugural gift into what seemed to be becoming a little club of sorts between us.  I then realized we should probably explain what we believed to be the paranormal properties of the bracelets, especially with that being a potential invasion of privacy.  If anything that just made Lin more eager.

From there, as we were wrapping up to return to the Village I told Cass about the discussion her father and I had regarding apprenticeship and my potential use for an assistant.  Cass kept up her signature mask of smug nonchalance throughout the offer that I made her, and when I asked what she thought about it she said that she’d “allow me to benefit from her worldly expertise.”  If I weren’t used to this child by now I might have been offended by that.  I went on to clarify that the job is mostly reading through and sorting dry old books and only rarely going out exploring like this.  She said that “of course” she knew that, and besides if it got too dull there were always other people looking for apprentices and assistants.  Did she glance at Lin during that last part?  If she did, it was nearly too quick to catch.

After that I took one more stand at the archway to clear my head before turning to head back to the Village.  It had been over a week now since the shades and the ensuing nightmare, and I’d mostly gotten back to normal, but I had to admit that coming to this place sooner might have helped more quickly shake off the funk I’d been in for several days after.  The fact that the song seems to in fact be coming from the arch and not across the water raises a whole new set of questions though.  I poked around at it for a while and made some other notes to that effect in my notebook, but I wasn’t able to find a definite source on the arch.  No hidden, anachronistically advanced (or perhaps just on par with Cloud Tower) speaker system.  Then again, it does get difficult to concentrate or worry about things when that close to the source.

On our way back Lin’s constant humming turned into full-fledged singing of her own, far more lively than the Siren’s song.  After a couple rounds of the chorus to learn the words I joined in, and soon so did Cass.  The three of us must have been quite the spectacle as we came back.

There were still a couple hours of daylight left when we reached the library, so after that we parted ways, agreeing to meet back up at Norman and Marva’s for dinner.  In the meantime I looked through requests that had arrived with my two days of absence and gathered up those materials to deliver tomorrow.

Of the dinner, I‘m too tired at this point to say much other than it went similarly to last time except that now Lin joined us bringing along a dish of her own, some discussion of apprenticeship arrangements for Cass were touched on, and that now I’m writing this from the private archival study rather than their couch.

 

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