The Loneliest of Gods by Slawomir Rapala	Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion

The trinket was gold and it was a ring, but with the ring came implications that weighed down on Aldous though more than a year had passed since Cleo was gone.

The trinket was a ring and the ring had a power for which Aldous had asked when he had lain broken and shattered, his soul naked and exposed to the cold eyes of a god looming above him. And now, a year later, he still wondered why he had asked for that particular gift.

And he had no answer.

The trinket was a ring and it was cursed by the breath of the unnamed and the unknown, a beast with horns that stretched across the sky, a god of lore forgotten by men, a god who slept beneath the earth and waited for a second coming so that he could rise again and play a role in the shaping of the unmaking of mankind.

Aldous had used it repeatedly throughout this time although he had reservations at first, this being a gift from a god and coming with a price and a warning. But a power as such was a marvel and there were many things a time-stopper could do that other men could not. Freeze a moment that he loved and watch the hue of the purple sky descend onto the city lights, settle over the top of the skyscrapers, nestle in between the buildings and snake through the alleys.

And he could watch this one thing for days. A painting, a canvas of beauty and tranquility unsurpassed. A canvas painted only for him by the hand of a god who knew only earth and fire, and a curse that compelled him to come to those who knew his name.

Aldous was a scholar and he knew the god’s name, and by chance or fate, he had called it when his skills had failed him on that slippery highway, when his joy, the only thing he knew, was taken away from him. And he cried in despair then, his mind reaching its innermost chambers and finding a name from which others turn away with fear, for there was power in the very name alone. Because the god was unnamed, and to know his name and to name him was to wield power over him and to have him do a bidding. And such was the luck and the curse that was his, a thread spun a long time ago when his father had first taught him to read and instilled a love for knowledge in his young mind.

Thirty-five years later, his power extended his life by measures unimaginable by others. But the gift had a price and its weight was heavy, and that Aldous knew already though it had only been a year. To wield such power was a lonely road and one that he could not share. To watch the world on a canvas, painted in colours and hues he had not previously known to have existed, was a marvellous thing; but for how long can one gaze at a painting? The colours all fade as the lights dim and the eyes become restless; and then even a masterpiece becomes nothing more than a series of streaks and lines.

And then one lonely night, unmarked by anything other than a dark sky free of clouds, Aldous had climbed the roof of his house to look at the stars, for that was something he liked to do. Although it had only been a year, it had been decades for him who could stop the clock and watch the world stand still, the loom spinning but not for him. And after so long he could no longer recall Cleo’s face, and he knew that he would never be able to do so. And that he would never be with her again because his choice had led him astray and he had forsaken his soul for this gift no one else would ever ask for.

Time, time, time, he was always struggling for time. Time was his enemy and he wished it upon himself, to master it. Time was the reason behind Cleo’s death for they had been late that evening and he had raced through the deserted Arizona highways, the deserts and the moonlit canyons that even now shone as they did on that night, in an attempt to outrun the moving hands of the clock.

And now the clock was still. And Cleo was dead.

To stop the world, to stop the loom. A power so great had never been offered to men, or so Aldous thought, but he soon found of how little use it was. He soon became a shadow, a spectator, a perpetual outsider of a world that was happily spinning beside him. But he used it though he hated it, because with every turn of the ring he pushed further away the claiming of his soul.

But regardless of how many times he had stopped the clock, the hour was drawing near and it would finally come, that he knew, whether it was a hundred years or a thousand from now. As years went by, his years, not the years of others, he stopped the loom more often and soon he found that he didn’t recognize his children anymore and that he had nothing to talk to them about because their life was not his. Their world was not his. Their time was not his time.

And so heavy was his heart that fateful night when he had climbed the roof of his house to watch the stars light up the midsummer night, a slippery and wet night of tears that had killed Cleo a year ago, decades ago. And as he climbed down later that evening, his face streaked by tears, broken and shattered again by his failure to remember her face, Aldous slipped and he fell.

And though it was not high, he fell awkwardly and broke his neck. And in the breaking, his arm twisted and his hand turned, and by chance the ring slipped off his finger and rolled to a halt before his eyes. And there it lay, shining and beautiful, still amidst a still world with the light of the still stars colouring it and revealing to the eyes of the ruined man its whole artistry.

And he could not reach it, for he could not move his arm or his leg, and he could move only his eyes, but he found that he could not tear them away from the ring because it was right before him, his whole frozen world, his last final canvas of gold and nothing more.

Aldous blinked and a tear rolled down his frozen cheek. Then a shadow loomed over him and he knew it to be the god, the unnamed whom he had named a year ago, decades ago, and through doing so, had bound in ways that could never be undone, not by him, not by the god, and not by the Weaver Himself. The loom was spinning, though not for him, and into this still frame that was his life and his world, the unknown god had entered to claim his prize.

But although his horns stretched across the sky and though his eyes were ablaze, the god himself could do nothing to help or further doom Aldous, because the loom was no longer shuttling for this man broken outside of time and place. And even he could not claim the man’s soul because death would not come to the one who had stopped the clock and the loom with it. Time governed all but this one man, and his fate was to endure eternal pain and eternal death without release, not even by the unnamed who had been named and who had already sculpted a throne for the one who gave over his soul so freely.

And so the god whose name was to be forgotten once more until one was again born into the loom that would seek it and find it and compel the god to come forward again, this loneliest of all gods knelt beside the man whom he thought was his since a year ago, decades ago, and the god wept immortal tears. But they did not fall; instead they shaped themselves into diamonds and cut the cheeks of the god; but even then blood refused to come forth because there was no passage of time. There was a cut, but it would never heal. There was a crippling fall, but there would be no end until the time would move. But the ring was not within reach and it mocked the death of a man who could not die, and it shone its merciless golden hue into the unmoving eyes of the man who was now like a god.

The unnamed would weep for some time, shedding tears for the man and for the woman who waited on the other side of the bright light that so many failed to follow because of the fear they could find no release from.

The god would shed tears for himself and his own cursed destiny that chained him to the underground until such time that another war between Light and Dark would come and he would be released to choose a side once more.

He would shed tears for the beautiful throne he had sculpted for this man who was the only man ever to learn his name and who was to be his companion in the long years, decades, eons of solitude that were to follow. Whom the god thought was meant to stroll the chambers of the cathedral the god had chiselled by hand into the belly of the earth, illuminated by an unlight that shone only within the depths of the earth, and who was to keep company to a god destined to be undone but not for millennia to come.

And now that was gone, too, another bright thread broken.

All that remained was a thread that hung from the loom in such a manner that even the Weaver Himself could not cut it loose.

And so He wept too.

Copyright © 2011 by Slawomir Rapala

To Challenge 415...