Chapter 13: Beware the Night

Friday, 8 July 1955, City of the Gods

During the following days, the story haunted Wesley. He questioned Pol more in depth about the story, the promised deliverer, the origins. He wrote songs and poems about the goddess, some of which he included in his weekly letters to Rebecca. She became his own goddess.

The crew continued to meet each day at the central rostrum to strategize their work. A profusion of writing decorated the rostrum and this, Wesley was assigned to copy and begin translating. There was also writing on the base of nearly every pillar in the forest that surrounded the platform. The three examined several of the pillars and with their combined knowledge of Greek and Wesley’s linguistic abilities when they encountered the hieroglyphs, they pieced together one or two myths. The stories were told in first person by the character involved. They identified the pillars by the character and event represented in the story. Their first significant discovery was that the twelve pillars closest to the rostrum were named for the twelve principal deities of Greece and corresponded to the twelve signs of the zodiac inscribed on the edge of the rostrum.

Doc and Margaret moved outward, systematically plotting the names and positions of the pillars. Wesley and Pol set to work at the rostrum, Wesley copying the symbols carefully while Pol juggled or practiced magic tricks. The two got along well and frequently laughed at odd little bits of trivia.

The designs on the rostrum were a complex set of geometric designs, overlaid with hieroglyphs, overlaid again with ancient Greek characters. That was Wesley’s analysis. There was, however, a constant nagging at the back of his mind that he was missing something. He tried a half-dozen systems for drawing the patterns to scale. On one part of his drawing the figure was barren. On another it was too crowded to read. Beginning on one side and working inward left him with a funnel of data that got wider as he approached the center instead of smaller. It was plain by this approach that the contents of the circle took up more room than the circle itself.

Wesley sat at the edge of the rostrum with Pol, biting into dried beef strips for lunch and puzzling over the process. So far, he was getting nowhere. He dug into his satchel for inspiration in the name of a sharp pencil, finally dumping the entire contents out on one of the flat stones. Having found a pencil, he began replacing the contents. Candles, matches, gloves, electric torch, spare socks, button thread. He paused, looking at the spool of button thread in his hand.

“Pol,” he said, finally, “will you give me a hand for a moment?”

The boy willingly held one end of the thread on the symbol of Aries as Wesley stretched the line across to Libra. Here he cut the thread and they let it lie across the rostrum. Then taking a fresh end, Pol held it on the sign of Cancer as Wesley stretched the line to Capricorn. Once again, he cut the thread and laid it on the rostrum.

“Thank you,” said Wesley.

“What did we do?”

“Well, if our ancient architects were at all symmetrically inclined, we have just located the precise center of the rostrum. And even if they were not, we have laid out uniform repeatable quadrants. I can work from the center point out to map the circle, just as Doc and Margaret are doing with the pillars.”

Pol was impressed, though Wesley had his doubts whether he understood. At the moment, however, he was more interested in finding what lay precisely at the center of this circle. Pol leaned over Wesley’s shoulder to examine the crosshairs.

“What is it?”

“A star,” said Wesley. There at the center of the pattern was an incongruous, perfectly proportioned, five-pointed star, so finely etched in the slab that it seemed almost like a mosaic.

“It’s even a different color,” Pol said.

“Yes. Now that you mention it and we have isolated this one, you can see veins of color running all through the orchestra. Very faint. Blue. Green. See?”

The two stood on the rostrum looking down at the crosshairs formed by the thread. Wesley laid an arm around Pol’s shoulders and gave him a squeeze.

“It is important, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” answered Wesley. “Doc knows much more about significance as opposed to something being merely pleasing. But it is, somehow, inspiring.”

Wesley knelt to begin sketching the design once again. This time he sketched the crosshairs vaguely, indicating the signs at each end. Then he carefully penciled in the star at the center. The two talked as Wesley continued drawing, marking off sections within the section with additional pieces of string.

“You drew the string from Spring to Autumn and Summer to Winter,” Pol commented, surprising Wesley. “And the star is aligned to those directions.” Wesley looked at his sketch and again at the star in the center of the rostrum. He had drawn from a different position, but when he moved to what was obviously the base of the star he saw that the arms definitely stretched parallel to the spring/fall line and the crosshair stretched through the upper point and between the legs of the star from summer to winter.

Thursday, 14 July 1955, City of the Gods

It would be a long job to even come close to an accurate mapping of the rostrum. Of course, when Doc and Margaret had joined ‘the boys’, as they called them, there was a flurry of photography as they photographed the star and each quadrant of the rostrum. They would need more film with Brother El’s next delivery.

Pol gladly worked with Wesley, even drawing some of the symbols when he was not juggling. And their discussions took on a depth that was both refreshing and surprising. The boy was not, and did not pretend to be, a theologian, but Wesley attended what he said as if he were the twelve-year-old Jesus teaching in the temple.

“I believe the stories,” Pol said, “but I do not understand them. Why are we made guardians of ta hagia hagion? When all the gods have flown to the heavens, why do we preserve the mystery of the one left behind?”

“I don’t know, Pol. Why don’t you make the choice that your father made and become a Christian?”

“But my father taught me the stories. He still believes, even though he embraces the new faith. And there is no one else to give charge of the stories to.”

“Maybe that is why you must keep the mystery safe.” Wesley had begun to show as much compassion for Pol’s beliefs as Pol respected Wesley’s. One thing that he was learning on this journey was that he had a far greater capacity for belief than he was aware of.

As the day drew to a close, Doc and Margaret returned to the rostrum and looked again at Wesley’s quadrants, carefully laid out again that morning. Wesley and Pol began rolling up the thread and stowing it in his pack.

“That is an idea we could expand upon,” Doc mused. “In a climate as still and dry as this, we could save a lot of re-tracking in the morning if we sectioned off the pillars we have identified by laying a piece of string around them. Ultimately, we would have quadrants laid out throughout the city. Nothing living here to disturb them but ourselves.”

“No.” Pol’s voice was small but commanding. “You see nothing alive here, but it is a living place. Even a thread might bind a god that mortals would break without thought.”

“They don’t change places, do they, Pol?” Margaret asked.

Wesley laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”

There was a long pause and Wesley knew he had misspoken. He was drawn back in his mind to the patterning of the rostrum. He was sure there was a connection.

It was Pol who once again broke the silence.

“It is time to go.” He marched down the Cancer Avenue. It had been named by the group according to the sign on the rostrum in that direction. They were reasonably certain that this was east. It was the route they entered and exited by. They linked together and followed Pol as fog closed in on them again.

When they emerged from the fog, the sun was still glimmering on the horizon and they had adequate time to locate their gear and light small lanterns before cooking the simple meal at dusk. The skies had stayed reasonably clear at the base camp with occasional wisps of cloud floating overhead.

Wesley sat huddled in silence with the pages of drawings he had made laid one over the other on the ground in front of him. The dim lantern light did not make reading easy when the last light of day faded from the sky. Not far away, Doc and Margaret were huddled in a similar position with papers spread between them, talking in low tones. Pol, it seemed, had gone to sleep shortly after dinner. Wesley, too, was tired enough his eyes were blurring. They played tricks with the symbols, leading him to believe he could see through them, superimposing fragmented lines over one another. His mind painted the colors over the figures that he had seen on the rostrum. In the middle, spun the star.

In the half-awareness brought on by approaching sleep, Wesley’s mind slipped into channels he would consciously block. It was like this when he first made the leap from Wilton’s notes to musical language. He jerked awake to refocus on the maps in front of him. It was a strange way to draw maps, but if every direction led to the same point, then that point had to lie in every direction from all other points. The rostrum would be represented by the circumference of its circle, the avenues of pillars by the design inside.

He jerked himself awake again to stare at the patterned drawings laid one over the other, wondering what made him think of maps. This was a great mandala—a patterned design that held the secret of ancient faiths. He lost himself in the patterning of the mandala drawn into its rhythm. He was unaware of the fact that he hummed as he worked. His tongue worked against the roof of his mouth, clicking out time as his voice wandered through the maze of the mandala. He was unaware that Doc and Margaret stopped working and stared at him. He did not notice that Pol opened his eyes from sleep to look and listen.

When preparing for the trip, Wesley had carefully explained the use of voice as an instrument when discussing musical language.

“An oscilloscope will show that there is pitch in every sound,” he lectured to Doc and Margaret. “When we hold the notes and speak them at different rhythms, we essentially have music. But part of the mystique of the voice is that the notes are not clear. We vibrate with overtones and undertones. It is what separates a folksinger from an opera singer. The opera singer spends years training his voice to hit pure notes, hence the oft-referenced ability to burst a crystal wine glass with a sustained vocal note. It is not just hitting the right note and having the right volume. It is the purity of the note. On the other end of the spectrum, a crooner might have a wide range of overtones that enhance the emotional impact of the music—or that detract from it in some cases. I have heard of a choir in Bulgaria that can actually split their voices into two or more concise tones, though with the communists in control, I suppose I will never get to visit there. The voice is a mysterious instrument and can mimic many different orchestral parts. I find that when the piano is inadequate or the guitar has too little range, adding the voice will enhance the emotional impact of the music.”