Naught

Thread 2, Part 4
Generator
Naught


(there) - hundreds of years ago

“Hello!?” Sari was trying to look through the window of the library. It was so dark inside and the the morning sun so bright. She knocked on the door again rattling the chain she was holding as she did. Miko stood calmly at the other end of the chain, naked and bare foot. Her hands were in front again with a half meter of metal links between the cuffs.


“Hello?!”

Sari saw some movement in the darkness and heard a timid voice call from within. “It’s open!”

Sari pushed through the door leading Miko in behind her.

“I’m forbidden to get any closer to the exit.”



Sari squinted into the darkness. She saw a slight figure beckoning her onward. “Sorry. I can’t see yet.” Miko seemed to know where she was going though and passed Sari, pausing briefly when the leash was about to snap taut, then moving on as Sari stumbled along behind her. Miko cupped the short woman’s face in her hands and kissed the crown of her head. She even had to bend a little to do so. 

“You must be Naught?” Sari asked. 

“Aye!” Naught placed her hand on Miko’s waist. “So, she did it! Congratulations! And you are her Generatrix, Sarah’s daughter!” Naught’s words were distorted with a bad lisp and as she spoke, Sari heard an occasional clicking sound. Sari figured that Naught must have some sort of tongue piercing. Whatever was attached was not small.

Sari’s eyes were finally adjusting to the dim light. “Yes. I am.” She held out her hand. Naught’s grasp was cold and her moon pale figure dropped to one knee. Cool, moist lips pressed against her knuckles.

“Miko has told me so much about you. I’m so happy to get to meet you finally,” Naught stood without releasing Sari’s hand and tugged her gently into the darkness. “There are some lanterns back here. I will take you down to where Miko is doing her work.”

Sari let herself be dragged along with Miko in tow trying hard to remember if Miko had ever mentioned Naught before. They turned a corner and entered a small room with a number of lit lanterns spraying orange light across the room in random shifting swatches. Sari watched Naught’s slight figure, naked and pale, float through the room gathering lantern casings.

“So, you work here?” Sari asked, immediately embarrassed by her obvious question.

“I clean up after all the scholars,” Naught said. “scrub floors, dust cobwebs, shelve books. It is my sentence. I’m not allowed to leave.”

Sari’s embarrassment doubled and she began to stumble over how to change the conversation quickly.

“It’s OK,” Naught held a glowing lantern up for Sari to carry. “I enjoy helping people like Miko.”

“I’m sorry,” Sari said. “How long until you are freed?”

“Forty two more years.”

“Wow.”

“I’ve been here for fifty seven so far.”

“What did… How did…” Sari stumbled over her questions as she and Miko began to follow the wisp of a woman down a flight of dark twisting stairs.

“Oh! I didn’t do anything. I’m serving the sentence for my mother.”

“Wow. That sucks!”

Naught led them through the darkness, around twisting corridors, past shelves of leather bound books. Sari felt herself enveloped in the smell of parchment and leather. They went up two steps and pushed through a heavy wooden door which swung closed with a heavy thump as they continued down another hall.

“So, you’ll be free once the sentence is over?” Sari asked.

“Oh, yes, of course, unless…” Naught voice trailed off. “Just down these stairs. We are almost there.”

“Well, in a couple hundred years, I’m sure your time here will feel like just a drop in a bucket.”

“Yes, of course,” Naught replied. “I don’t really know anything about the world outside. I was only five when I came here. I don’t really remember anything except for vague feelings… like the sun on my skin perhaps. So, I guess that the day that I am freed, it will be like I’m born.”

“I guess that there could be worse places to serve a sentence,” Sari said. “I mean, you can read all these books.”

Naught stopped and turned towards Sari. “Actually, that’s part of the sentence,” she said. “I’m not allowed to read anything. In fact, they have applied a technology to my eyes. When I look at the writing in the books all that I see is a page full of constantly shifting meaningless symbols.”

“What?! How do you shelve the books then?”

“Books are more than just words. They have a certain feel, a density. You can tell by the way the smell or even how they taste sometimes. Books make different sounds when you flutter their pages or drop them on a table.”

“But there are thousands of books in here,” Sari said raising her lantern towards the closest shelves.

“You learn. Over time,” Naught sighed. “I’m given incentives to learn quickly. At least that’s how the Librarian refers to it… ‘incentives’.”

Sari looked at Miko simply to see if the short woman was pulling her leg. Miko stood still staring down the hall into the darkness with the hint of a smile on her face.

“Miko is working in the alcove right down this hall,” Naught gestured with her lantern.

They stepped into a tight space that seemed to suck the light from their lanterns leaving the walls and shelves shrouded in shadow. A small table stood in the middle of the space with a single thick tome and a stack of blank parchment.

Naught turned to ignite a sconce. Sari raised her lantern to shed more light around the room, but suddenly jumped back with a short yelp. A pair of bare feet hung in front of her only a few feet away, striped by a black lattice of metal bars. She jumped back, jerking her lantern up into the darkness, uncovering a human form suspended from the ceiling in a tight form-fitted cage. The bars and cross pieces pulled into contact with the unfortunate occupant, pushing into her skin wherever the metal touched.

“Meet Schapelle,” Naught said calmly.

“Yikes! What the fuck?” Looking higher, Sari saw the woman’s eyes closed peacefully - long dark eyelashes matching the long thin stringy hair poking through the openings in the steel head enclosure. A metal plate hid the woman’s mouth.

“She’s been in the Shadowlands for a long, long time. Much longer than I’ve been here,” Naught explained.

“Ooo!” Sari said. She tentatively pushed two fingers between the bars, pressing the soft supple skin of the woman’s abdomen. Sari jerked her hand back after the initial contact. “Her skin is so cold.” Tentatively, she pressed again a little harder until she felt a trickle of warmth and the pulse of activity beneath the woman’s skin.

“Why is she here?” Sari asked.

“I don’t know. The Librarian says that her lover had to leave her. I don’t remember who the lover was. I’m sure it’s written down somewhere.”

Miko had sat at the table and was fingering her way through the book resting next to her. She looked up suddenly glancing around quickly back and forth between Sari and Naught.

“Miko is nervous,” Naught said.

Sari pointed up at the caged figure hanging in front of the desk and glanced at Naught.

“No. Miko is used to Schapelle.”

“Oh!” Sari said suddenly. “Is there a ring in here? To attach this to?” Sari picked up the loose end of Miko’s leash from where she had dropped it on the floor. 

“Sure,” Naught pointed at the caged woman. “At the bottom of the gibbet.”

Sari pulled a silver necklace over her head with a lock and a key dangling from it. She used the lock to attach Miko’s leash to the bottom ring on the gibbet, looking up occasionally at the woman suspended within the tightly placed bars.

“It’s one of the side effects of this technology,” Sari explained though Naught had not asked. “Miko craves a connection, something to keep her grounded. She will get uncomfortable if she is not somehow held in steel.”

“I know,” Naught said quietly. Sari turned to find that Naught had climbed up on the table and was kneeling directly in front of Miko, cupping the Arbor’s face in her hands. “I have already brought down a chamber pot and a bottle of water.”

Sari felt a spike of jealousy cut through her when she saw the sparkle and devotion in Miko’s eyes as she stared, unblinking, at Naught’s face. She felt strangely possessive. She wanted to jerk Naught’s hands off Miko. She closed her eyes and collected her feelings for a second. She was the Generatrix, of course. Miko was her Arbor. Of course, there would be a sense of possessiveness. After all, this technology was to attract the attention of another woman. A woman with whom Miko wanted to fall in love. Naught was not a threat to her role. Poor, little Naught.

“I guess I’d better get going. I have commitments myself,” Sari said as she looped the necklace and key back over her neck.

Miko sat up a little straighter and pressed her lips to Naught’s for a second.

“She always reads to me,” Naught whispered without looking away from Miko. “I’m going to miss that.”

“I’m sorry,” Sari said.

“No! No! I’m not blaming you. This is a great thing!” Naught said, finally releasing Miko’s face and climbing off the table.

“She was reading a story about a tree that had legs and walked the earth looking for the perfect place to settle down and plant its roots. I asked her if trees passed the library very often,” Naught let out a short laugh. “I had forgotten what a tree looks like. I had forgotten that they can’t walk around. When I get out of here, I want to go and see a tree.”

“You’ve forgotten trees?” But Sari did not really say it like a question. Any feelings of jealousy were forgotten.

“I have a gift for you,” Naught’s face brightened as a thin smile turned up her cheeks.

“For me?” Sari asked. 

Naught went to a shelf a pulled a book down, handing it to Sari. She looked at the cover and brushed her finger across the indention in the soft leather made by the stenciled letters of the title. “Axsbar: The Serpent Queen!” Sari read. “I loved this book when I was young!”

“I know,” Naught said. “Look inside!”

Sari looked up at the strange, little woman for a moment. She was smiling back innocently nodding her head, prompting Sari to look.

Sari began to flip through the pages. “This is exactly like the book I had when… Hey! This was my book! Look! See where I marked some notes in the margins!” Sari held the book towards Naught who glanced briefly in the area where Sari was pointing, but otherwise kept nodding. “How? How did you get my book? Where did this come from?”

“Your mother’s estate, of course,” Naught explained. “I remember when she was committed to the Hollow Well. Some of the scholars were practically giddy to get their hands on your mother’s book collection.”

“I remember near the back of the book…” Sari thumbed through the pages, stopping suddenly on a silvery page which suddenly sent a beam of reflected lantern light dancing around the room. “This page was supposed to have been made from Axsbar’s hall of mirrors.” Sari looked into the mirror at her reflection - a smiling face beneath a halo of dark, unruly curls.

“Keep it. It’s yours.”

Sari continued looking through the book for a minute, lost in memories of the past. Finally she looked up. “I guess I should go. Can you… uh… help me get out of here?”

Naught smiled, “No problem.”

Sari turned to go looking up briefly at the caged body hanging from the ceiling.

“Wait!” Naught said. When Sari turned around, she found Naught pointing at Miko. Miko was looking up at Sari, her standard hint of a smile missing.

“Oh!” Sari leaned over and pressed her lips to Miko’s when she stepped back, the smile had returned. “I’ll be back in a few hours to pick you up, my love.”

Sari was certain that the path they took through the maze of stairs and corridors was different than they had taken earlier. Naught stopped three meters shy of the door. “I can’t get any closer.”

“OK. Well, I guess I’ll see you when I come to pick Miko up,” Sari said.

“You have to kiss me before you leave.”

“What? Oh, OK,” Sari bent over to give Naught a peck on the lips, but as she did Naught wrapped her arms gently around Sari’s shoulders and pulled her closer. Naught’s lips were cold as was her tongue which wormed between Sari’s lips after a moment. As she expected, Naught’s tongue had a large metal ball affixed to the top side and anchored by a thick piercing. After the kiss, Sari stepped back a little stunned and stared at the short, pale smiling woman.

“Hey! Thanks for the book!” Sari said, somewhat embarrassed. “And I’m sorry about the sentence.”

Naught stood staring past Sari for a moment, silent, the smile suddenly dropping from her face. Sari turned to see if there was someone behind her, but saw no one. She turned back to Naught, “Well, I’d better go. See you in a bit.”

Naught seemed to focus again, but her smile did not return. “OK, I’ll have a cold compress prepared.”

Sari’s brow wrinkled in confusion for a moment, but then she shook her head and turned towards the door. “Bye!”


“Oh!” Naught said, “And don’t worry about my sentence. It’s just one. You have a whole book full of them in your hands.”