The Dedalus Book of Dutch Fantasy by Richard Huijing

Author:Richard Huijing
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

No one observes this death. Nobody visits the faun, by the last train and the last bus, by cars standing at night on the verge, on bikes put askew against the barn. There are no people standing in this draughty barn in the dark so that you see the fiery tips of their cigarettes flare up or describe arcs when they take their cigarettes from their mouths. And so there isn't any hushed conversation either. As dark as it is, that's how silent it is too, and so deserted, and there isn't a single sign of life except for that of the wind blowing across the earth precisely the way it already did millions of years ago.

The spider's heart is still beating.

That's annoying! When Baldur no longer leered, his much shrunk brain switched to observing this beating. It became hollower all the time and it made an echo beneath the calcium, reverberating dome of his skull.

Now that dome had to be freed of everything still there within: Baldur's brain. So it shrank and withered away.

Thus the heart tolled away perception. Both grew dim in time with one another, for the beating of the heart diminished and the echo died away. The dome became larger and empty. And silent.

Millions of years ago the wind blew the way it does now. It could not set anything in motion except the waves and the dust. At that time, in a swamp or deep down in the sea, in vaporous light or in a violet darkness, movement came about. Movement which was sealed into a form; movement that became beating, the beating of a heart, the beating of Baldur's heart, the tolling in this dome of calcium that is empty and silent once more.

Calcium.

It beats one more time.

Calcium.

And No, no more now. It is over.

A dead spider! It is as though the shapes have become vaguer already: the legs, the maulers, the head, the body. Granules are what remain. Barely, really.

'No one, never,' Baldur said, and this was right.

0 wondrous life that began to move in a swamp or a sea.

O sweet promise of a heart that beats; this was Baldur D. Quorg, spider.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.