Ouverture
(Les Chroniques infernales)
(Les Chroniques infernales)
Esther Rochon
(Excerpt: p. 123-130)
The sparkling giants
Lame woke up Sarhat Taxiel, who was taking his nap in his cabin:
"There's light on the water."
He went outside, rubbing his eyes.
"Have you ever heard of such a thing?" she asked him when they got outside.
They watched the waves, tinged in the distance with a silvery light.
"No idea what it is," he replied.
"If I am the guardian of the sea, I suppose that it's to warn others in cases like this?"
"No one told you anything when you assumed your duties?"
"Mostly they said that nothing ever happened."
She went into the tower and picked up the phone - which in itself was an event.
Rel in person was making the trip, accompanied by Fax. They arrived the next day and got the motorized boat out of a shed, loading it with provisions and fuel.
"You know how to steer this thing?" asked Taxiel, mockingly.
"I think I learned it in a previous life," said Fax.
"With this kind of boat?"
"No, actually."
Rel, on the other hand, had learned the basic manoeuvres, but lacked experience.
"It's stupid for you to go: if you drown, we'll really look smart."
Taxiel, as former head enforcer, was loath to take unnecessary risks.
"Well, we're not going to bother anybody else over a few glints of light," replied Rel without hesitating.
In fact, the light was now only a few glints, which seemed to come from underneath the water and diminish very slowly.
"Our coast guard could do with more advanced training," Taxiel observed.
In the old hells, no one went on the water. Nobody had any reason to. The current situation was truly novel.
"You could just leave this light alone," Lame added. "I was convinced my title of guardian of the sea was purely honorific. I was wrong, but that doesn't mean we have to investigate further..."
In fact, she wanted to feel Rel beside her.
"I don't think there's any danger," he answered.
Since the old hells had been strongly intuitive and dreamlike in appearance, such a remark from the one who had once reigned over them was significant.
He kissed Lame, then looked at her for a long time.
"Be patient," he said.
Fax also said goodbye to Taxiel and Lame. The motor sputtered and they set off over the calm water.
The sea was not huge. In another context, it would have been called a lake. But the wall at the end was far enough away that the boat disappeared from Lame and Taxiel's view before they reached it.
They expected to see them return after a few hours. This was not what happened. The light on the water had gone out a long time ago and they had not come back.
Lame picked up the telephone again. To make a missing persons report. A worried crowd arrived and set up camp on the beach. People were sent to patrol the waters, but came back empty-handed.
Eight days later, the light reappeared and, a few hours after, Fax and Rel, smiling, were escorted to shore.
"Where were you?" they were asked.
They were served soup. Everyone gathered on the beach to listen to their story.
"We left by boat, towards the light," Rel began.
"But the light was actually underneath the water," continued Fax.
"Yes, and we ended up under the water too, strange as it may seem."
"As if there were a portal between worlds in the water itself."
"And indeed, we found ourselves on the other side, and it was another place."
"Maybe they're developing new technologies that allow you to go from one world to another without hardly noticing."
"The other world looks a lot like this one, a kind of suburb perhaps."
"That's what we said to each other."
"Do you know how long my position as guardian of the sea has existed?" asked Lame."
"Even when I was a child, the sea was guarded here," said Sarhat Taxiel. Of course, it was also an entrance to the hells. I have always wondered why the position had not been abolished when the hells were moved."
"Because the judges didn't want it to be," said Rel. "They didn't say anything about it either. I suppose they anticipated us coming."
"Okay then, what did you see?" asked Dix, a friend of Lame's who had come for the occasion.
"Well," said Rel, "we found ourselves in a subterranean canal, still in our boat."
"Which didn't even fill up with water," noted Fax.
"There were lights. It was quite well lit. Everything got wider and wider, higher and higher."
"Until we came out in a lake, with lampposts almost all the way around. The lampposts were very high. We could also make out lights from houses, quite far down the shore, with their reflections in the water.
"And on the other side of the lake, we saw a giant. He saw us, too, and came towards us making a dreadful racket."
"You must have been scared."
"Oh, we certainly were. We didn't understand how we'd ended up there, and what we'd done to deserve such things."
"It was a kind of waking dream, except that we were both dreaming the same thing. The giant reached us, and he was at least twice as tall as us."
"And three times wider!"
"He was all black, but, with the strange lighting, especially with the lights behind him, his silhouette almost looked phosphorescent to us. He had shining eyes, white teeth, and he looked extremely strong. He was wearing a kind of loincloth of silver lamé and he had long, very curly hair."
"Did he say anything to you?"
"Not right away. He seemed happy to see us. He gestured that we should follow him. We left the boat and walked with him to a house. It was a big house, with many rooms and many people."
"All giants?" asked Dix.
"No," Rel replied. "They were our size. But they seemed younger than us, and they were speaking a language we didn't know. They were mostly boys, but there were a few girls."
"We thought that they might be from an outside world."
"Yes. We had the impression that they were glad to stay together, but that they didn't like the darkness outside. They gave us something to eat. I think it was made with chick peas. The giant spoke to them, and they looked like they get along with him. They showed us a room with beds, and we just flopped into them and slept."
"We were very tired. We really had no idea what this place was where we had ended up, but we felt safe enough to curl up in the covers and fall right to sleep.
A sigh of relief was heard from the gathering. Many of them were starting to stretch and look for more comfortable positions. Fax and Rel finished their soup.
"The next day," said Fax, "was very different. People were still friendly, but busy. The whole sky was illuminated, bright enough that even trees were growing, with birds in them. The giant wasn't there. They gave us things to do, explaining with gestures how the machines worked."
"I think that day we washed the sheets for the whole household."
"Yes, and they loaned us books about their language. They seemed to expect that we would be staying with them for a while!"
"Early in the evening, we went back to our boat. Fortunately, no one had touched it. We nibbled a bit on the provisions we'd brought from home, wondering what we should do: try to make them understand that we were just inquisitive, try to explain to them where we came from, to find out what they were doing, or else return home while we still had the canoe - well, that is if we could. The passageway between worlds had appeared on its own, and the giant had seemed to know where we were coming from, but that was no guarantee that we would find our way back."
"It was a bit perplexing," Fax added. "In the house where we were staying, we had seen almost nothing that looked like communication equipment. It felt like we were in a kind of summer camp for young adults - Lame, you know what I mean - or else a dead-end where the others had arrived long ago without really knowing how they got there."
"They often sang in the evening and told each other stories. We sang things for them too. That is how we spent our days. Our lives were not unpleasant but what in the name of hells were we doing there?"
"From time to time, we saw other giants, in the vicinity of other houses, in the distance. In those houses, obviously, the same thing was happening as in our house."
"In fact, we even went to visit them, everybody in a truck, once."
"Yes, and we were singing in the back of the truck, if you can picture it."
"But they must have realized that you were older than them!" said Dix.
"Hardly," answered Fax. "They treated us like greenhorns, I can tell you. Equal treatment for everyone."
"It's true you don't look old," Taxiel commented.
Fax rolled his eyes.
"I found it rather pleasant," Rel admitted. "Nobody knew who I was, and the others didn't ask me anything."
"In any case, it all came to an end after a week," said Fax smiling.
"The giant came back. He spoke our language and knew who we were!"
"And he showed us around the whole facility, gave us a few words of wisdom and sent us back here."
"Okay," said Lame. "And what was the facility?"
"A thing that has existed since the beginning of the world, except we didn't know about it..."© 1997 Éditions Alire & Esther Rochon
To find out what happens next...
