Prologue to "Passage of Time"

Prologue

The dying sun, bled its crimson light across the land, transforming the shadows into ugly scabs.  He stood once more above the plain of Keff, staring down on the broken and twisted bodies of friend and foe illumined in the baleful light.  Choking panic welled into a scream, and far away he heard a strangled cry.

The vision vanished and he found himself floating in that amniotic limbo between sleep and wakefulness where dreams lose their tyranny and for a brief, godlike moment become sensible to conjuration and clumsy choreography.

He called Nouli and she came, a wraith, tenuous and insubstantial, glimpsed fleetingly in the corner of his mind.  With loving care, he breathed substance into her ethereal form until at last she stood before him, less vital than in life, a shade of the woman he had known, but still sufficiently vivid to bring arousal.  Sadness filled her eyes as though aware she only lingered as an ember in his memory.  The hypnotic blackness of her pupils engulfed him and, for an instant, they were one again; her vitality filling him with a wholeness and sense of belonging he craved would last forever.  But the mood began to dissipate, diffusing like smoke under its own restless energy and his gentle attempts to preserve the moment only speeded its dissipation.  In their place came bitter memories of the anger and jealousy that had consumed him when last they’d met and from which there was now no absolution.

He sighed and opened his eyes to see an apple-gray square of predawn light framed in the infirmary window.  He heard the sounds of the Brothers and novices stirring.  Sighs, grunts and farts mingled with the creak of wooden boards as weight shifted from bed to floor.  The occasional strident voice of a youngster sliced through the soft murmur of the newly awakened--the sounds of two hundred and thirty-five novices and sixty-eight Brothers coming back to life.  By breakfast in a couple of hour’s time, the novices would be full of vitality, questioning and arguing with one another.  The older Brothers listening, remembering perhaps their own youth, quietly following the conversation, prodding lazy thinking, tossing in the occasional kindling to keep the discussion alight; all the time watching and appraising the novices.  After breakfast, the formal sessions would begin, the novices disappearing with their tutors into the study rooms surrounding the central courtyard, leaving the remaining Brothers to carry on with the day’s chores.

A good lunch and the heavy heat that penetrated even the college’s thick stone walls would bring calm to the afternoon and provide time for reading and reflection.  Some of the older Brothers sitting motionless, a book propped in front of them, would slip seamlessly from sleep to contemplation and back, their state only betrayed by their depth of breathing.  After supper, the novices and Brothers would retire to their separate commonrooms, perhaps to finish some work, prepare for the next day or just relax before retiring at the curfew bell.

However familiar and seductive, he could share no part of this communal life.  For several days, he had drifted in and out of consciousness, his only visitors the Principal and Brother Physician.  Officially, he was “Brother Nieman”, come to the island to convalesce.  While true, these bare facts would not satisfy inquiring minds for long.  Soon he would need to leave the safety of the college and begin his final journey north to Murmyn, but before leaving, he would set down his story for safekeeping with the Brothers.

He washed and dressed, then seated himself at the table and began to write.  “I was not born a rebel, nor did I choose to become one….”  He paused, then scratched it through and started again, “The day after sentencing…”