The labor of making a path to the fissure of light has begun in earnest, as people from all the different encampments roundabout have come together to gather stone and to pile it, a little higher each day, until it will allow them access to what they all hope to be an exit from this prison into the light of day. But Albrýndaer for the first week recovers from his wound, which has become red and inflamed. Since he is unwelcome in the house of Ílya’s father and yet not fit to return home, she gives him a shelter in an old tent at the edge of the encampment. Often she returns there during this time, sitting by his side not only to clean and bandage his arm but to speak and to listen, to cherish his presence as he does hers, both of them marveling at their unexpected reunion. And with the fever of enthusiasm that courses through the community like a tidal wave at sea, stirring many hearts and bodies to work and planning in preparation for their escape from prison, the two young persons go unnoticed.
“What a strange chance it was that after your flight you came first, and unknowingly, to this encampment,” remarks Ílya, wonder glistening in her eyes.
“I do not believe it was chance. Perhaps in the past I might have; but certainly not now. Everything, free though it be—and precisely in its freedom—is a part of the great fabric of the weaving of the One whom we do not see, and yet who is present in each and every thing.”
“Your unlikely escape certainly speaks to that,” she replies. “I am astounded that things unfolded as they did. Little hope was there for escape from such a place, and yet here you are, and here you are with news of a freedom that our people had all but ceased expecting.”
“I wonder what shall await us above, if we truly are to escape.”
“Does it cause fear in you?”
“I would not call it fear,” Albrýndaer says thoughtfully, “though I am concerned. I am concerned not so much about what we shall find as what we shall do when we escape to the surface.”
“Whatever we do, let us do it together.”
“Yes, I agree completely. But when I spoke of ‘we,’” he clarifies, “I actually meant to speak of the community as a whole. I am concerned that there is so much resentment and bitterness that our return to the surface shall spark violence and death.”
“I hear murmurings, the same as you,” Ílya says. “Whispered conversations, words shared in stillness and in dark corners. And soon I think we shall hear them spoken openly and even shouted as rallying cries. But perhaps the voicing of these things is necessary, and even the resistance. After all, an Empire that imprisons men and women and children in such a place cannot be one ruled by justice and good.”
“Of course, that is true,” replies Albrýndaer with a sigh, “and yet I worry that violence will cause as much evil as it does good, or rather that in seeking to demolish one thing it shall bring down many other things as well. Innocent human lives most of all. My concern is that we shall flee from violence and death beneath the earth to violence and death above it.”
“Yet there is little that we can do but witness the events as they unfold,” Ílya concludes with a tone of resignation. “What can two young persons such as ourselves do in the face of such events?”
“You are not wrong, at least in the main. But perhaps there may yet be some small measure of help we may give, or safety we may provide, even in a situation far beyond our previous experience and in a place we have never yet known.”
“You sound surprisingly hopeful.”
“Even in the face of great evil and suffering, I believe there is always a way for light to weave goodness, however hiddenly, into the fabric of loss. Having experienced what I did, of this I am certain. My hope is that in coming days we may serve in some small way the purposes of this goodness.”
“Then I shall join you in that hope.”
† † †
After he has recovered sufficiently to move about, though still too weak to travel, Albrýndaer and Ílya often walk slowly through the mostly deserted pathways of the encampment, talking quietly with one another or together remaining lost in silent thought. During one of these times, Albrýndaer asks her, “Have you ever heard of a writing entitled the Arechaíon?”
“Never,” she replies, looking at him with curiosity in her eyes. “Why do you ask?”
“Just interest. I read a while back a fascinating account of the origins of our people based in what I take to be an ancient history. It was called the Benaíon, and it referenced something entitled the Arechaíon, saying that it followed where the latter ended.”
“Those titles,” Ílya says thoughtfully, “are they not based on the two first letters of the Telméric alphabet?”
“How do you know that?”
“You did not learn that when you were young?”
“I did not,” says Albrýndaer. “I was acquainted with no other alphabet than our own.”
“The two are similar,” she explains, “but the pronunciations and the names we give to the letters are somewhat different, and the written runes also differ.”
“What are the first letters, then?”
“Arecha and Bena. I wonder if there are more accounts of a similar nature elsewhere in the world, taking their titles from the other letters.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Albrýndaer says. “I received the impression from what I read that the Arechaíon was much more ancient than the Benaíon, and written by a different people—a ‘veiled’ people in the land of Telmérion—whereas the Benaíon was written on our own soil. Either way, the import, it seems, was simply to write about the beginnings, the beginnings of our race and the beginnings of history, and titles based on the start of the alphabet seemed fitting to this purpose.”
“I agree,” says Ílya. “After all, our word ‘alphabet,’ in Telmeric, is pronounced as arechabena.”
Stopping in mid-stride, Albrýndaer turns to look directly at Ílya, eyebrows raised, and he says, “You perpetually surprise me.”
“Of all the things that we have been denied in this underground prison, Bryn,” she replies with a smile, “the gift of knowledge is not one of them. And for this I am grateful.”
“Yet what we learned was in fact so little! And there is so much more I would know, so much more I would learn!” cries Albrýndaer enthusiastically. “I sometimes dream of how many books I could read in the world above, or how many places I could visit.”
“As do I, although I admit I dream more of the latter than the former.”
“That is fitting for you. After all, what are words in comparison with the reality itself?”
“As the inverse is fitting for you. For what is mere external beholding without the vision and understanding of the heart?”
† † †
A few days later, in the evening, as they sit together in Albrýndaer’s tent eating what food they have been able to salvage, he voices to Ílya, “I worry for my parents. Not only did I depart from them in a manner that wounded our relationship, but I fear for their well-being and their life. I think I am well enough now to try to find my way back to our encampment, that I may see them again.”
“Do you really think that is wise? Even in our encampments it is dangerous, and outside of them immeasurably more so. I fear that if you leave you shall never arrive, and neither I nor your parents shall ever see you again. Should you not rather wait until we make our escape to the surface? Surely at that time you can find them again. Or perhaps indeed they too shall come to aid in building a way to the surface, and you shall see them here with no effort of your own.”
“I wish it were so, Ílya,” says Albrýndaer, “but I do not want to fail to do everything that is within my power.”
“And I do not want you to go,” she says quietly, somewhat abashed. “I do not see it failing to act but rather as recognizing the limits of what is prudent and right in the situation in which we find ourselves.”
After a moment of silent thought, Albrýndaer sighs and replies, “I-I will think upon what you have said. Although, unless something changes my mind, I intend to depart tomorrow morning.” And then, seeing her expression, he exclaims, “Oh, no—I hate seeing you look like that! I shall take all possible care and shall return as soon as I can, hopefully bringing them with me.”
By the time morning comes it is not Albrýndaer who has decided to remain but Ílya who has chosen to accompany him. If he insists on departing, she thinks to herself as she walks toward his tent, then she shall simply go with him. Yet beyond the plans or intentions of either, things turn out quite differently. When Ílya enters the tent and gently shakes his shoulders to awaken him, she immediately knows that something is wrong, not only because of the pallor of his skin and the temperature of his body, but also because of the smell. “I thought we were beyond this stage, beyond this possibility,” she says more to herself than to him, as his eyes flutter open.
“What is it, Ílya?” he asks groggily, his voice hoarse. It takes him a moment before he can speak, and then he says, “You look worried.”
“How do you feel, Bryn?”
“I…I feel very poorly. I do not know what happened.”
“I think I do. Will you let me see your arm?”
He holds out his right arm and she unties the bandaging covering the wound. It is as she feared: the wound is foul and festering, the skin around it off-colored, almost desiccated in appearance, and its stench is pungent.
“It is…” he begins, looking at it as well, though he refrains from saying the word out loud
“It is infected,” Ílya whispers.
“But how?”
“It must have happened in the last few days, since it did not occur in the time of the wound’s first inflicting. I thought I had cleaned it adequately and took care to protect it. But nothing is truly clean in this underground prison…”
“What should be done?” asks Albrýndaer, raising his eyes and looking at Ílya with concern. And she sees in his eyes that, even in the midst of his high fever and his evident pain, he is more worried for her than he is for himself.
“I do not think there is anything that can be done,” she replies, a painful lump in her throat and her heart heavy in her breast. “Perhaps in the world above a wound such as this could be treated, but here…I do not know.”
“Is there anyone whom we can ask?”
“I…I could try try find someone. Are you willing to remain here alone while I inquire around the encampment?”
“I do not have any other choice,” says Albrýndaer. “And I am dreadfully tired. I will sleep until you return,” he continues, already beginning to slip again from consciousness.
“I will return as soon as I can.”
† † †
When Ílya returns with an aged woman named Málva, Albrýndaer does not awaken with ease, and when his eyes finally flutter open his gaze is unfocused and his speech incoherent. “He burns with a fever so high it is unsafe,” remarks Málva. “How long ago did he receive this wound?”
“It was a week and a half, nearly two,” says Ílya, “and yet despite some redness and inflammation it did not look infected or worrisome until this morning.”
“Aye, well, that did not mean all danger was gone. I think to myself at times that the very air down here is poisonous. And for an open wound such as that, it is a deadly risk.”
“Deadly?” Ílya breathes. “Do you think…?” And now it is her turn to refrain from speaking.
“Only time will tell,” Málva says, and then looking intently at Ílya she places a hand upon her shoulder and adds, “We shall do what we can for him. But it may be up to him whether he survives or not, whether his own heart and flesh can conquer the sickness that overtakes him.”
† † †
For six days Ílya tends to Albrýndaer in his illness, with Málva also often visiting the tent to assist in the ministrations or simply to sit for a while with the two young persons, offering what little consolation she can with her presence and with what she has gained in wisdom over many years. Albrýndaer passes in and out of consciousness, at times somewhat lucid and at other times delirious, incapable of rational discourse, his mind somewhere else, fixed upon fears and imaginings in his own interior, where the two women have no access. Occasionally he cries out in fear, and occasionally he speaks to an invisible presence in words full of tenderness and trust, and at times he speaks to Ílya and yet without looking at her, as if she lives before his mind’s eye even were she is not present in the flesh. Eventually, however, he sinks into a prolonged silence that extends for days, in which he either slumbers deeply or lies with his eyes open, their stare empty and glassy, as if both seeing and not seeing simultaneously. This expression most of all worries Ílya, and at times she fears that he has died even with his eyes open, and she must pass a hand before his face in order to assure herself that the breath is still in him. In such moments she feels the warmth of his breath and also knows that, as far as his mind has departed, his sight remains, for his eyes flicker toward her hand when it passes before his gaze. Often, as if this movement irritates him, he closes his eyes afterward, sinking into some deep and inaccessible place.
But to Ílya’s astonishment and gratitude, the infection gradually clears, and on the morning of the seventh day Albrýndaer awakens with no fever, and his skin is cool to the touch. He turns his gaze to look at her and tenderness is in his eyes. Sitting up and taking both of her hands in his own, he says, “H-hello, my friend. The corn is green in the fields and the rocks glow like lights. Aren’t they p-pretty?”
“What did you say?” replies Ílya in hardly more than a whisper, surprised.
“I m-meant to say that you are s-shiny in my eyes.” He smiles a childlike smile as he looks upon her, his mouth a little crooked as if half of his face is droopy and unwilling to awaken from sleep. Then for a moment half of his face spasms, as if the muscles uncontrollably contract. And even when his expression has returned to normal, his right eye remains partially closed and his mouth askew. “But methinks that m-my mind is a little gargly, and that the statues are hiding in the rocks.”
“The statues? The ones with which we play?”
“The very same. And y-yet they are in me, in the crevices of my m-mind. I like to p-play with them.” He pauses and confusion passes for an instant over his expression, as if for a moment he is aware of the apparent absurdity of his speech. And then, forgetting himself again, he says to her, “W-would you like to come in and join in my play?”
“Yes I would, Albrýndaer,” Ílya is able to say, leaning into the tenderness of his gaze even as her heart aches with sorrow, “yes I would.”