Latest / KofiTable - Mystery Box stories / The Word That Blinded

Transcript

The Word That Blinded · KofiTable - Mystery Box stories

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Lesejo pressed her palm flat against the black stone Hao
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: had given her, and the word inside it gurned like ice.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: The drowned cave breathed around them, saltwater dripping from stalactites,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the distant groan of the tidal door shifting in its sleep.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Beside her, Thabo kept watch at the fissure where the
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: MEP agent had erupted, his jaw tight, his eyes scanning
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the dark. He didn't remember her, she didn't remember him,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: but the stone remembered both. Say it again, Nomusa urged,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: her voice low and steady. She knelt in the shallow water,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: her duk soaked through, her hands tracing patterns on the
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: stone's surface. Not the sealing word. The other one. The
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: one that was underneath. Leseho closed her eyes. The word
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: rose from somewhere deeper than memory, a place where the
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: spiral brand on her wrist pulsed in time with the
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: tidal door's slow heartbeat. She opened her mouth and spoke.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: The stone shattered. Not into pieces, into absence. A black
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: hole yawned open where the stone had been, a perfect
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: circle of nothing that pulled at the water, the air,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: the light. Lesejo felt her feet leave the cave floor.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Thabo shouted her name, her name, he knew her name,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: and lunged, but the darkness took her before his fingers
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: could close around her wrist. She fell through silence. No up,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: no down, no cold or heat. just the spiral on
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: her wrist burning brighter and brighter until it was the
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: only thing left. Then light. It pulled her out like
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: a hand from a grave, and she landed hard on
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: something soft and springy, moss or something like it. She
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: blinked against a glare that had no business existing underground.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: When her vision cleared, she stopped breathing. A city rose
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: before her, Woven into the trunks of trees so vast
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: their crowns disappeared into a sky the colour of amber honey.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Bridges of living vines spanned the gaps between branches. Buildings
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: hung suspended on pillars of light, their surfaces alive with
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: climbing flowers. Below, rivers ran clean and bright, and creatures
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: she had no names for moved among the roots. Tall,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: bronze-skinned beings with eyes like polished jet, their robes shifting
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: colours as they walked. One of them stood over her now. Orun.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: The gatekeeper's face was the same as it had been
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: in the drowned cave, but here her bronze skin seemed
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: to glow from within and her eyes held something Lesejo
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: hadn't seen before. Hope. You spoke the word, Orun said.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Not the sealing word. The opening word. The one I
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: have waited ten thousand years to hear. Lesejo pushed herself
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: up on her elbows. Her helmet was gone. Her suit
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: was gone. She wore a simple tunic the colour of
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: red dust, and the spiral on her wrist had stopped burning.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Where are we? True Mars, Orun said. The Mars that
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: was hidden from your telescopes. The Mars the MEP have
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: spent millennia trying to erase. She gestured, and Lesejo saw
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: it now. The curve of the city. The impossible scale
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: of it. The way the trees themselves seemed to breathe.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: The 80-20 split. Your people built towers of glass and
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: called it progress. We built inside the living world and
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: called it home. Lesejo stood. Her legs shook, but she stood. Thabo! Nomusa!
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: They're still in the cave! The MEP— Are already tracking
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the hole you tore open, Orun finished. They will find it.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: They will come through. And when they do, they will
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: see what you have seen. She stepped closer, and her
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: voice dropped. The question is not whether they will follow.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: The question is what you will do when they arrive.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Lesejo looked at the city. at the bronze-skinned beings who
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: had stopped to watch her, at the children peering from
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: windows woven into tree bark, at the old ones who
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: bowed their heads as if she were something sacred. She
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: thought of Tabo's hand reaching for her in the dark.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: She thought of Nomusa's voice, steady as a drumbeat. She
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: thought of the MEP agent erupting from the fissure, demanding
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the key. I'm not a key, she said quietly. I'm
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: a door, and doors can be closed. Orun smiled. the
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: first real smile Lesejo had seen from her. Then you understand. Come,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: there is someone you need to meet before the MEP arrive,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: someone who has been waiting for a human to speak
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the opening word since before your species learned to walk upright.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Lesejo followed her into the living city, the spiral on
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: her wrist warm against her skin, the memory of the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: drowned cave already fading like a dream. But somewhere beneath
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: the amber sky, She felt the MEP's presence pressing against
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: the edges of this world, and she knew the truce
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: she had come to broker would be tested sooner than
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: any of them expected.