The Seekers: The Children of Darkness (Dystopian Sci-Fi - Book 1) Read online

  The voices of the vicars echoed in his mind. “Let us record the first teaching of Thomas Bradford of Little Pond, blessed be the light. Do you understand why you are here, Thomas?”

  “Yes sir.” Temple City still dazzled him then, with its lofty towers and arched halls that boasted row upon row of larger-than-life statues. He’d felt privileged to be there.

  “Why is that?”

  “To learn to defend the light against the darkness.” He’d been a fool.

  The senior vicar had leaned forward and glared. “Do you know what the darkness is?”

  “Yes sir. The darkness is the time before the light, a time of chaos and death.” The standard answer learned in school.

  The vicar’s response struck like a slap in the face. “You know nothing of the darkness, because you’ve never been taught. The darkness would terrify a child, but you’re of age now, Thomas, a full child of light. We chose you for this teaching, so you’ll guide your life hereafter to ensure the darkness never returns.”

  They asked him to say the precepts, an easy test, and with a grin he recited what he’d memorized as a child. “Blessed be the light. Blessed be the sun, the source of all light. Blessed be the moon, the stars, and our own world, which revolve around its light. The light is the giver of life....”

  When he finished, they said he’d recited the words with “insufficient sincerity,” and sent him to ponder the meaning of the darkness.

  He’d crouched in this cramped cell ever since. Time passed, but he had no sense of it.

  At first, he felt no fear. The Temple preached no harm to others. Weapons, war and violence were of the darkness and forbidden. Gradually he realized that the teaching caused him no harm, that the pain came from within. The constant dark gave no measure of space and masked the passage of time, leaving him awash in a sea of nothingness so large he couldn’t see the shore. He longed for the light of a firefly, for news of the day. These thoughts gnawed at him like a physical pain.

  Deacons brought food and water at intervals, but never enough. His stomach growled, and his throat stayed raw and dry.

  His legs began to throb. To escape the cramping, he imagined himself separated from his body, floating in the air overhead, but he kept glancing down at the wretch below. He could envision himself clearly, all except the eyes.

  Exhaustion reigned above all. At first, he hurt too much to sleep. After a while, he’d drift in and out, his head nodding until his chin dropped to his chest and woke him.

  Sometimes, he’d startle as the ceiling cover grated open. Light would pour into the cell, flooding him with exhilaration. Such moments meant more than food or water. He’d stand, stretch his limbs and look into the plump faces of the vicars surrounding him, seniors all with their decorated hats. They, in turn, would look down on him with sympathy before reciting a litany of the horrors of the darkness.

  In the darkness, they claimed, people spoke different languages and worshipped different gods. Their leaders used these differences to separate the people—each from the other—and then rail against their enemies to turn focus away from their own shortcomings.

  At first, they fought with simple weapons, similar to the pocketknife the vicars had taken from him. Then their wise men studied in schools and toiled for years to create bigger weapons to destroy their enemies in greater numbers. A tale to scare children, Thomas would think, and I am not a child.

  Then they would close the cover, and the darkness would return.

  He’d awaken after a time, his mind confounded by sleep, and watch the air above him shimmer. Visions appeared, showing ranks of people rushing toward each other with strange weapons. They chanted the name of their god as they attacked, each side in a different language.

  It had to be a dream.

  The vicars returned and asked why he carried the flute. They warned that music, taken to excess, might facilitate the return of the darkness. For in the darkness, the young gathered at night to dance to forbidden music, a way of worshipping death.

  Later, his cell lit up with visions once more. Boys and girls, tenfold all those of the Ponds, crowded in the dark with strange lights flashing above them. Their shirts bore images of skulls, and some had etched symbols of death into their skin. A piercing sound pained his ears, a kind of music played not with the sweet flute and drum of festival but with impossibly loud instruments. The people swayed to the beat, oblivious to each other’s presence.

  Another dream? He began to wonder.

  The vicars told how scholars had created a liquid that melted flesh off bone, and the leaders of the darkness allowed them to drop it from the sky so they’d be deaf to the cries of their enemies. In their arrogance, they even created a false sun. They dropped this too, so its heat scorched those on the ground, leaving nothing but the outline of their bodies in ash.

  This time, when the vision startled Thomas awake, he pressed his eyes shut to block out the light, but the flash of the false sun glowed through his eyelids.

  Perhaps the horror had been real.

  Again and again, the vicars told of the darkness. Again and again, what they’d described showed in the dreams.

  The vicars came so many times he lost count. Each interview started with the same question: “Do you know the darkness?”

  “Yes sir,” he always replied.

  They’d ask him to recite the precepts. With each response, he spoke with more sincerity, until one day he sobbed and struggled to get out the words.

  Then suddenly, the interviews stopped. No more questions, no more visions. He waited in silence.

  His cracked lips measured the passage of time. With no taste, no smell, no sight, no sound, he exercised the last of his senses by groping at the walls. They had the feel of stone, rough-hewn by unskilled workers, but worn smooth by thousands of desperate fingertips. Like so many before him, he’d been abandoned. If light was the giver of life, his would soon end.

  Then, as the wings of death fluttered in the darkness overhead, a new vision appeared, no longer a nightmare from the past. He saw Little Pond in the spring, its sparkling waters, its hills strewn with apple trees newly bloomed, its granite mountains looming in the distance—and the utter loneliness of his circumstance struck him. He imagined Orah and Nathaniel strolling along the path to the NOT tree together, hand in hand, without him. No longer their burden, he’d drifted from their memories. He reached out, trying to touch his old life once more.

  The vision vanished and the ceiling board creaked open. He looked up at the panel of vicars and staggered to his feet.

  This time, they asked a different question: “Thomas, are you happy with your life in Little Pond?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Do you care for your family and friends?”

  “Oh, yes sir.”

  “And would you like to go home?”

  His throat seized up. He nodded.

  The clerics leaned in and consulted with each other, and then the senior vicar turned to him. “So you still may, Thomas. You’ve learned of the darkness. We believe you may become a faithful child of light.”

  Thomas waited.

  “The Temple offers three teachings. The first demands understanding, allegiance and proof. You must convince us you understand the darkness. Once you’ve done so, you’ll prove your loyalty by swearing allegiance to the Temple. But know this, if you go back on your oath, you shall endure the second teaching, a hundred times worse than the first, and you’ll dwell in the darkness to the depths of your being. If you stray after that, the Temple of Light will deem you an apostate, and the people of your village will do as is written in the book of light:

  If there comes among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and gives you a sign or a wonder, saying, ‘Let us return to the darkness,’ you shall not hearken to the words. If your brother, or your son or daughter, or your wife, or your friend, who may be as your own soul, entice you saying, ‘Let us abandon the light and serve the darkness,’ you shall not consent to him, b
ut you shall surely kill him. Your hand shall be first upon him, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And you shall stone him with stones, that he die, because he has sought to thrust you away from the light.

  “That is the third and final teaching, Thomas. Think before you answer. The Temple loves its children but will do what it must to prevent a return to the darkness. Do you understand?”

  Thomas tried to concentrate. A prophet? A dreamer of dreams? He was no dreamer. He just wanted to go home.

  He nodded.

  “Thomas of Little Pond,” the speaker’s voice resounded through the circular room. “Do you know the darkness?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Can you recite the precepts of faith?”

  He did, his voice growing stronger with every word.

  “One final test and you’ll be free to go. Enlighten us as to where the seeds of darkness have started to grow in Little Pond. Tell us the names of those who have questioned the light.”

  Thomas’s mind again switched out of his body. He regarded his face, dust-covered with streaks of tears.

  “But why, holiness?”

  One vicar said, “It’s not for you to question—”

  The senior vicar cut short his colleague’s words with a wave. “You’ve endured much, Thomas, but what you’ve learned is merely a symbol, far less horrible than the real darkness. That’s why the Temple exists—to prevent a return. You say you’re happy with your life, but this happiness does not come cheaply. Prove your faith by giving the names of others who need our help. Show your loyalty, and we’ll allow you to go home.”

  What were they asking? For me to betray my friends.

  “I cannot,” he said.

  “Then, Thomas, you do not yet know the darkness.”

  He sat down without being asked.

  They slammed the ceiling cover shut, and the darkness returned.

  Chapter 4 – Emptiness

  Orah worked the loom, trying to focus on the task at hand: shift and weave, shift and weave. She marveled how her fingers passed the shuttle back and forth while her feet rocked the treadle, weaving the weft through the warp without engaging her mind.

  Though most of her neighbors were farmers, her family had been weavers for generations. Like everyone else, they kept a vegetable garden, cultivated flowers to adorn their cottage, and raised a few animals for milk and eggs, but they spent the bulk of their time at the loom.

  Local farmers delivered wool or flax to Great Pond, where a community of spinners turned the fibers into spools of yarn. They sent these to families like Orah’s, masters of the weaving craft. The weavers kept some of the resulting cloth for their own needs and distributed the rest to the farmers and spinners, receiving food and yarn in return. Everyone had enough to eat and wear, a balance so sensible Orah could imagine no other way.

  Her mother had taught her the craft at eight years old, and Orah had been taking her turn at the loom ever since. Weaving had become as natural to her as walking.

  Yet now she wished it took more concentration, that it didn’t leave her free to think of other things.

  She needed no calendar to tell that festival was near. She tracked the date by the shadow on the sundial in her family’s garden, a beautiful piece with a face of white granite, inlaid black numbers and a bronze shadow maker. Her grandfather had carved the dial as a present for her tenth birthday, after her grandmother died that spring. He’d used the sundial to take his mind off his sorrow and force himself to look forward to the granddaughter he doted on.

  It had taken half a year to finish. First, he trekked two hours to the base of the mountains, then climbed to where the vegetation thinned and the granite began. He needed several trips to locate rock pure enough for the face, weeks to carve out the piece, and nearly as long to drag it back. He went whenever he found the time. Overall, he took the entire summer to gather the materials and bring them home.

  Every night that fall, he worked on the sundial by candlelight. Orah would stay awake as her grandfather chipped and rubbed at the hard rock until her mother insisted he go to sleep. Finally, in November, he went to Great Pond and had the blacksmith craft a bronze shadow maker. When all was ready, he brought Orah to a flat spot in the garden and sited the shadow maker to point true north.

  In the weeks leading up to festival, and for a number of days thereafter until her birthday, Orah watched as sunset grew earlier and later, and the shadow longer and shorter. Her grandfather supervised while she recorded her findings in a log. For the past six autumns, she’d continued the tradition, writing down the date and position of the shadow, learning to forecast the seasons.

  This year, she struggled to keep the log. Her grandfather had died in late winter, shortly after her sixteenth birthday, unable to hold on for her coming of age. As she penned each entry, she thought of him and continued for his sake.

  Then the vicar took Thomas. Despite her best efforts, she could find out little about his plight, and no one dared predict the date of his return. The day Thomas left, she had drawn a double line in the log, contemplating a different kind of entry—not the trivial movement of the shadow on the sundial, but the progress of her life. Yet each day, she wrote nothing more than a brief note to Thomas: Be brave or Stay safe. Now the number of entries emphasized how long he’d been gone.

  The three friends had never been separated this long. When she and Nathaniel came together, they felt Thomas’s absence, but staying apart was worse. So each evening after dark, despite the encroaching cold, they met at the NOT tree.

  On this morning, she could hardly wait. She worked faster, but the thoughts kept coming. Thomas seemed to cry out to her from a cramped and lonely place, but she had no way to help. She concentrated on the loom until her hands flew—shift and weave, shift and weave—but her mind gave no rest.

  ***

  Time passed no more easily for Nathaniel. He pressed his father for information about teachings, and with each day Thomas was gone, he found himself slipping closer to impertinence.

  That morning, his father had asked him to help stack firewood. Nathaniel waited on the porch, surveying the mounds of wood the two of them had split through long hours at the chopping block. They looked like mountains.

  His father stepped outside, rubbed his hands together and blew into them. “Are you ready, Nathaniel?”

  He stood tall for a man of the Ponds, but shorter than his son by a hand. Hard work on the farm had thickened his muscles in a way that would not come to Nathaniel for years. His hair had grayed only at the edges, and his chin remained prominent. Deep-set eyes showed both the pain and joy of life. Nathaniel knew the pain came from the loss of his mother, and he himself was the joy—the son she’d left behind.

  Nathaniel nodded, then held out his arms while his father piled three logs onto them. “I can take more, at least four or five.”

  “We don’t need to carry all at once.” His father grabbed a couple of the larger logs and led him to the lean-to.

  They laid down an evenly spaced row on parallel beams and placed the next row crosswise to allow the wood to dry. After several trips, sweat began to bead on Nathaniel’s forehead.

  When they’d completed the third cord and a fourth had grown to Nathaniel’s waist, his father held up a hand. “Let’s stop for a drink.” He set a water bucket onto a bench—nothing more than a plank nailed across two tree stumps in front of their cottage—filled a ladle and offered it to his son.

  Nathaniel refused the offer and glared at his father instead. “Why won’t you tell me what they’re doing to Thomas?”

  His father withdrew the ladle and took a swallow before returning it to its hook. “We’ve discussed this, Nathaniel.”

  “When will he come home? It’s already ten days.”

  “They’ll teach him until he’s taught, another week or more.”

  “That’s almost festival.”

  “It’s not for us to rush the Temple of Light.”

  He turned away, a
ttempting to resume their chore, but Nathaniel blocked his way. “Will he be all right?”

  “Yes. The Temple does not harm its children. You know that.”

  “You said it might change me if I were taken.”

  “Change is different than harm. Yes, he’ll probably be changed.”

  “In what way?”

  His father’s shoulders slumped, and he let out a long stream of air. “After teachings, people become more serious and sadder too. Thomas will learn the stark reality of our past. He may go through a... period of mourning. He’ll need time to recover and might be distant with you and Orah. But as far as permanent change, I can’t say.”

  Nathaniel studied the toe of his boot, which did its best to dig a hole in the ground. He’d come of age, no longer a child, and deserved the truth. “Why are teachings so mysterious? They’re not described in any of the books, and every time I ask, you avoid answering.”

  His father rested a hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder. “I’ve explained all I can.”

  Nathaniel felt an unfamiliar tremor. Fear. He’d never seen his father afraid before. He tried to lock eyes with him, but his father released his grip and went back to the woodpile.

  “Now hold out your arms.”

  Nathaniel opened his mouth to argue, but before he spoke, his father loaded him up with logs until he grunted under the weight.

  “Take these to the shed. One more effort like the last and we’ll be done by sunset.”

  Nathaniel dumped his load on the ground with a thud. “You’re hiding something from me. Why?”

  His father flushed and grabbed the logs himself. At the entrance to the woodshed, he spun around. “You forget yourself, Nathaniel. I’m your father and you’ll show me respect.”

  In his young life, the two had never exchanged such words. Nathaniel knew he’d overstepped but couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Without answering, he whirled about and ran off.

  ***

  Susannah Weber glanced up from the kindling to find Nathaniel approaching on the path to her cottage. Usually, he bounded along, all arms and legs with only a hint of how to make them work together, but now his limbs hung limp, making his whole body sag. The vicars and their teachings, honestly. The boy looked awful, and her daughter seemed no better. The girl worked the loom as if her father had passed to the light that morning. Still, poor Thomas would be worse off.