The Fallen Mason

I am standing on the cliff again. This could be sunlight, but the weather only permits jaundiced shadows. The chill in the damp air bids me to raise my eyes. Their backs turned to us, clouds in competing stains of gray and black crash axes against shields. Why is there no rain? Their blood sprays in bright gouts that drains to the surrounding mountaintops.

The cloaked throng stands together, afraid to say what is already understood. Did I see my brother in there? I cannot tell.

I hear a faint shiver behind me. The blindfolded girl. But this time she is on the operating table.

The cloaked ones circle me like medical students, dreading yet eager.

Blindfolded? Yes. Is she anaesthetized? I hold out my palm.

"Scalpel."

My father's chambermaid places the obsidian blade in my hand.

I pull back the sheet. The incisions are fresh. I hear the hiss of gas and the clicking of her mechanical heart. The light of its furnace illuminates her entire rib cage. I smile with pride.

"We've done it, brother!"

The voice meant to be Marcus replies without emotion. "But that's not why we're here."

The sky shudders in rage, furious at my distractions. Enunciate with thunder and accentuate with lighting.

"The human tongue is much better for such things..." I feel a lecture coming on.

Impatience. Disgust. Desperation. As the dream dissolves like breaking clouds into limitless abyss something alien and unseeable hiding behind the last scrap of sky shrieks "NORTH!!"

I wake with a start, still under the canopy of fungus. I was unable to focus my eyes quickly enough to make out the shape that was inches from my face but bolted through the thicket of woody stems. These prints in the sand are bigger than mine. I can't even guess what made them. Is it the onset of pneumonia pressing a weight in my lungs, or is my body revolting to the stench of damp fur?