I blame this one on the inspiration picture I chose this week and the fact that I’ve started reading Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities recently, and it’s got my head in a very interesting but odd space.
The Unknown City
(A flash story by Maggie Slater)
THE SAGE SITS sixteen steps below the door to the Unknown City, squinting into the setting sun. Her hair is thick and gray-streaked; her wrinkled hands look as soft as velvet folded upon her knees. At the top of the one hundred and twenty steps, I know them all for I have counted each one I did not have to walk—the door to the city stands open, a rectangle of cut obsidian set into the featureless sandstone wall. A moist, cold breath—a cave’s sigh—seeps from the lintel’s lips, flowing like a mountain stream around my knees. All is still in the fiery orange as dusk begins to draw its bedcovers.
The sage sits. I stand some steps below her, uncertain if it is rude to pass, to climb the remaining steps swiftly, as if speed will somehow carry more of me through the doorway. As if to enter before the night eats what remains of the world makes any difference at all.
I peer up at the blank walls, windowless, without carving or decoration of any kind. Its corners are squared in perfect succession, intruding and retreating at irregular intervals, all facing due west, its architects sculpting simplicity out of stone.
The sage shifts, easing herself to her sandaled feet.
“Elder Sister,” I say, extending my feathered fan, “please proceed and I will follow you.”
She looks at me with the same squinting gaze as she had peered at the sun, and shame overwhelms me as she takes in the rhinestones and gold silk and heavy embroidery I wear. I had not felt the day’s heat until this moment, sweat slicking my skin.
“Younger Sister,” says the sage, her voice like grinding rocks, “why are you here so soon?”
“The City has called me, so I have come. What else could I do?”
“You are not yet ready to enter. Is this true?”
“It is true, but for whom is it not? Are you ready, Elder Sister, having walked more steps than I? Have those steps prepared you better to pass through?”
The sage smiles. “No, I am not ready. But on each step, I have shed the things I must leave behind. I am now nearly prepared. Here.”
She removes a pair of scrolls from her sleeve and places them upon the step at her feet. “My life’s work,” she says, smiling fondly at them. “Now, I entrust them to the world. They are mine no longer.”
Then she turned to me, expectant. I set down my feather fan. I peel myself from my robes, step out of my beaded shoes. I stand before her in only a long, linen shift.
“Is that all?” the sage asks, though she knows it is not.
With a trembling breath, I lift my skirt and draw the soft child from where he has clung to my ankle to hold onto me, to keep me close, each step up to the City. He sleeps now, his lips parted as he sighs in his dreams. I bundle him up into my arms and kiss his hair, his cheeks, his nose, his hands. Then I wrap him in my robes and lay him gently upon the step beside me.
“How can I bear to leave him?” I ask the sage.
She takes her scrolls and tucks them into his arms, and I see him squeeze them tightly, replacing his grip upon me. He mewls, but does not wake. “Him, too, you must entrust to the world, now,” says the sage.
Then she takes my hand as I have so often taken his, and leads me up the steps to the Unknown City’s door. Without hesitating, she passes through, vanishing into the dark.
I want to turn around, to run down the steps and flee to some place the Unknown City cannot find me, but turning back yields only a view of the world passed into its own heavy slumber. The steps, all one hundred and twenty, have vanished behind me, denying escape. At my back, the Unknown City waits, a cold breath bated in its throat.