The Vorrh by B. Catling

Author:B. Catling
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Fantasy, The Vorrh, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9780957142718
Publisher: Honest Publishing
Published: 2012-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Dusk and the benediction of shadow were coming back, but not for the Erstwhile, who had become too old. When the sun went away, they creaked and cracked, crawling on the forest floor and hanging sloth-like from the trees. There was no cave or simple dwelling for them. They did not have the pleasures of men, or the ability to make and change what was around them. They had each forgotten their purpose and the details of their design, how they had come to roam the ancient wood. But they all had longing, and it was attached to the actions of humans.

Their lightweight skeletons of spun coral and honey had absorbed the densities of water and time; now, heavier than bone, they filled their sluggish bodies with despair. Where feathers and light might once have been, there now grew vines and rough, scarred bark. Some had assumed coverings of fur or scales to keep their endless life forces protected.

Their unions with women had occurred thousands of years earlier, the resonant orgasm bleaching their voices and their sense of direction. Those that had mated were the ones that had been left behind with Adam, and with those that had been called the Watchers. Now derelict, their purpose and their application had washed away to rumour and ache. They roamed, pilfered and scratched a life in utter, total substance. Their ambition was to become invisible, to waste away into mist and breeze. But that too had been lost. Their given task was to protect the tree of knowledge, and so they remained in the forest, slowly becoming a forgotten part of it.

In previous times, a few had crept out, making short, scavenging journeys to the city. Fewer still had stayed away, to sleep with the Rumour, the name that they had given all those humans and semi-humans after Adam, to twin with them in attempts to understand. They were chosen for the task, to go to places full of the Rumours, where land and time had been cultivated in scratched, straight lines and chopped, mean patches.

Aside from the chosen few, it was forbidden for any others to trespass the places of Rumour; the species carried such a virulent contagion and misunderstanding of knowledge, that even God’s name was slutted by it. No one knew of the Erstwhile’s journeys to Essenwald until they pillaged the chapel of the Desert Fathers. They should have been pitied, or sympathised with, but that was not the nature of men-turned-Rumour, who could not be blamed for following their own righteous teachings.

The Erstwhile had broken into the little church to look at the paintings. Without strength or tools, they had rubbed repeatedly at a patch in the wall, gradually wearing it away a little more each night, until eventually they were able to squeeze through and crawl about in the clean, closed darkness. Such an enclosure was beyond their understanding; its straight lines and solid walls confused them with wonder and fear. Like an insect at a glass window, everything there contradicted the laws and form of their existence.

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