Escape (The Prisoner and the Sun #1) Read online

  Description

  Fantasy adventure. Inspirational allegory. The journey of a lifetime.

  Young Iliff believes his prison world to be all there is. But when a stranger tells him the incredible story of a long-ago escapee, Iliff resolves to learn the truth. Thus begins his journey to find the Sun, a magnificent power from which all things are said to originate – including him. But first he must venture beyond the very walls he is charged with upholding and into realms deep and dark, where fearsome creatures lurk.

  A fantasy-based search for one’s true self, The Prisoner and the Sun Trilogy will be enjoyed by fans of The Alchemist and Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

  Escape is followed by Lights and Shadows and Final Passage.

  Appropriate for ages 10 and older

  The Prisoner and the Sun I

  Escape

  by Brad Magnarella

  Copyright 2011 Brad Magnarella

  Possum Creek Publishing

  Electronic Edition

  For my niece and nephew

  Chapter 1

  On the same evening that Iliff came of age, the guards announced a newcomer to the cellblock. Iliff hurried to his cell door, pressed his cheek to the iron bars, and strained his eyes toward the swinging, swelling lights that approached from the far end of the stone corridor. The other prisoners on the block did the same.

  Before long the escorting guards lumbered into Iliff’s view. Between them, scarcely visible, shuffled an old man. He was slight and sagging, save for two shocks of white hair that stood to points above his ears and quivered near the guards’ lanterns. He kept his head bowed. A wave of whispers followed his progress. The guards led him to the cell opposite Iliff’s. Once shut inside, the old man felt his way to the cot in the rear where he sat, small and still.

  “Who is he?” Iliff whispered.

  “They say he can’t do the work of his old block,” Yuri whispered back.

  When Iliff turned his head, he could just make out the taped fingers hooking past the bars of the adjoining cell. Yuri was his longtime neighbor and closest friend, though Iliff had never seen his face. Their work duties started at different times and sent them in opposite directions.

  “Well, what’s he doing here?” Iliff asked.

  “I don’t know.” The fingers turned up. “Probably being held until something opens up in the block for the aged and infirm.”

  Iliff watched the old man, who had not stirred since his arrival. “He could at least deal himself some playing cards to pass the time.”

  Yuri murmured his agreement.

  “Of course, he might not have any cards,” Iliff whispered after a moment’s thought. “Or maybe they got left behind when he was transferred.”

  Iliff decided then to offer him his own cards at the next opportunity. And though it was his only set, the idea cheered Iliff. In the short time he had stood watching the old man, he had come to feel sympathy for him and, from this, a certain fondness as well.

  * * *

  The next day the old man was assigned to Iliff’s work group, a repair crew responsible for mending fissures in the stone walls of the cellblocks and along the prison corridors. Each of the men had particular duties. Five men prepared the mortar, one for each of its components: sand, gravel, clay, limestone, and water. The proportions had to be exact, and each man had become expert in dumping, sifting, and pouring just the right amounts into the mortar box. The mixer, a giant red-faced man, stirred the ingredients with a long-handled spade and, when not scooping mortar onto boards, scraped it back and forth to keep it from hardening. Five more men, of which Iliff was one, sealed the fissures, pressing the mortar deep into the stone with their trowels. A twelfth man weaved his way through the work site, ferrying boards of mortar to the trowelers and empty boards back to the mixer. Another man, the tallest on the crew, managed a dozen-odd lanterns, placing them on curved wooden stands near the work and repositioning the lanterns and stands as the work progressed. The last three men were charged with scouring the repaired fissures with metal wool until the dried mortar blended with the stone it sealed.

  Because the old man could not be expected to perform any of these integral duties, he was ordered to sweep the work site. On his first morning he tapped and scratched the bristles of the broom across the stone floor, though to little effect. The rest of the group paid him no heed. Iliff looked up from his work from time to time to find the old man tottering along the shadowy edges of the work site, almost invisible but for the spires of white hair that lifted and fell in slow time to the strokes of the broom.

  Iliff approached the old man during a work break. He had set his broom down and was sitting apart from the rest of the group, his head bowed low. Iliff squatted before him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” Iliff said. “I noticed you’ve no cards in your cell. If you’d like a set, you’re welcome to mine. They’re a good way to pass the time.”

  Iliff took the cards from his gray prison trousers and held them out. The old man lifted his head and looked at the cards without expression. Was he addle-minded? Iliff wondered. Yuri had said so. But in the next moment his dim eyes shimmered. He reached for the cards with shaking fingers, his wan expression stretching and lifting to reveal a few pebbly teeth.

  “Very kind, young master, very kind,” he said, bobbing his head. “Your sacrifice will be your greatest reward, I assure you.”

  * * *

  In the days that followed a peculiar change came over the old man. The day after receiving Iliff’s gift, he swept the floor with surprising energy, sending dust into the air and bits of stone ricocheting off the walls. He swept with glee, his pebbly smile of the day before appearing and reappearing throughout the morning. This continued into the second day. On the third day he began to whistle and shuffle his feet between broom strokes, as if trying to recall the steps to some long-forgotten jig. By the sixth day the old man was capering about with his broom, neglecting to sweep the floor at all. He also began to sing in a high wavering voice that grated on the ears.

  The work group was no longer amused by his antics. They met one afternoon after the old man had retired to his cell.

  “He’s an old fool and he’s distracting to our work—”

  “He can’t stay—”

  “He needs to be reported—”

  Reported? thought Iliff in alarm. Ever since he could remember, he had heard stories of prisoners being reported for disobedience and then disappearing in the middle of the night, never to be seen or heard from again. The stories terrified him.

  “Please, friends,” Iliff spoke out. “He’s a harmless old man. A threat to no one. And besides, he’ll be transferred out shortly. Everything will soon return to the way it was.”

  But the following day the old man was giddier than ever. He twirled his broom and passed it between his legs and up behind him. He pulled at his ears and made a tooting sound with his long nose. While spinning over to where the men were preparing mortar, he bumped the man pouring the water. Extra water spilled into the mortar box. The other four men hurried to add their solid ingredients, but the proportions were off and the mortar ran like curdled milk. The old man backpedaled and collided with the man ferrying the mortarboards. What remained of the good mortar fell to the floor. The old man bounced to his feet but stumbled sideways into a lantern stand, breaking two of the lanterns. He rebounded off the stand somehow but fell into another and broke three more lanterns.

  The corridor dimmed and the trowelers stopped troweling; the sanders ceased sanding. Iliff could not remember a time when the work had come to so sudden and complete a standstill.

  “Look!” cried the burly mixer, who was also the leader of t
he work group. “The old fool’s ruined the mortar and done havoc to our work site. The fissures here are deep and many. Hurry now, hurry! If we clean up now and fetch more lanterns, we may still finish the job before noon meal.”

  The mixer seized Iliff’s arm inside his giant fist. “You took up for him, so now he’s your responsibility. If you don’t want him reported, you’ll see to it that he stops this foolishness and returns to sweeping.”

  Iliff found the old man sitting cross-legged against a wall just beyond the work site.

  “I know why you have come,” he said. “Fear not. I promise to return to my quiet sweeping.”

  “Yes,” Iliff said, “you must return to your sweeping.”

  “There is a condition, however.” The old man raised his eyes. “You must first sit and listen to my story.” His expression betrayed nothing of the giddiness that had possessed his flailing limbs just moments before. His gaze was calm, his expression almost thoughtful.

  Iliff looked down the corridor to where the others had begun straightening up the work site. He guessed it would be some time before the mortar could be reconstituted and the lanterns replaced. The others would probably be grateful to him for keeping the old fellow occupied and out of the way.

  He hesitated, then took a seat.

  Chapter 2

  “Very good, young master, very good.” The old man rubbed his palms against his knees and inhaled deeply. His gaze seemed to retreat to somewhere behind his large pupils. “Your mixer is correct,” he said. “Dangerous things, these fissures, dangerous things indeed. Especially the deeper ones. If they’re not patched up quickly, they’ll run farther, open wider. Tsk, tsk.

  “I worked on a repair crew in my youth,” he continued. “Filled the fissures using the trowel, same as you do now. We were a special group, assigned only to the most damning cases. Stone walls riddled with fractures, corridors on the brink of collapse.” The old man chuckled and shook his head.

  “There was another young troweler in our group. Salvatore. He was a dear, dear friend, was Salvatore. We were very dear to each other—we looked quite a lot like the other, too. Because Salvatore and I were the smallest, we were often sent inside the deepest crevices. There we would begin the repair work at the very back, only emerging after every nook and space had been filled.”

  Iliff had never heard of fissures so large they had to be crawled inside to repair. He doubted that such things existed but found himself becoming absorbed in the tale nonetheless.

  “Salvatore and I spent entire days crouched in those spaces, often with only a couple of small candles for light. It was hard to set up lanterns in there, you see. Sometimes we had to go without light. But we talked as we worked. We told each other stories to take our minds off the darkness. We pretended there were other places besides the prison, other worlds.

  “One day we were assigned to a site high in the prison. Up and up we went, one winding staircase after another. Took us the better part of the morning to get there. But we arrived finally at a long room with a high vaulted ceiling, like this.” The old man cupped his wrinkled hands together, palms down. “Stone pillars stood along the walls, six pair of them—here and here, in rows. At the far end of the room, steps led up to a large dais. I’d never seen any place like it. Neither had Salvatore.”

  Neither had Iliff. The prison he knew, though vast, had only dim cellblocks, plain corridors, and the straight staircases that connected them. Once again, he doubted the old man’s memory.

  “It was apparent the room hadn’t been used in quite a time. Centuries, perhaps. The work site was in the area of the dais. Huge crevices had opened on the wall there, some of the deepest we’d encountered. Salvatore climbed to the topmost crevice with his trowel and board. I entered the crevice just beneath his.

  “We had no more than begun our work when I felt the stone begin to move. I wriggled out of the crevice and tumbled to the ground just as the wall lurched forward. The largest crevices fell in like giant mouths closing. Clomp, clomp! I looked about for Salvatore. I cried out, ‘Salvatore! Salvatore!’ But there was no answer. The others told me that he had not made it out.”

  Iliff was leaning forward now.

  “We scrambled up the wall. Using the long handles of our tools as levers and some stones as wedges, we managed to create a space large enough for me to squeeze inside. Deep, deep in the crevice, I found my friend, crushed and cold. But as I pressed my head to his, I heard him mouthing words. ‘What brilliance,’ he was saying. ‘What brilliance is this?’ I cannot tell you my joy, young master. Still he breathed! Still he lived!

  “But when Salvatore returned from the infirmary some months later, he was not the same person.” The old man frowned. “No, not the same person at all. He no longer wanted to trowel, for one. It wasn’t out of fear. He hadn’t the least concern about climbing inside the crevices—he was eager for it, in fact. But once inside, instead of sealing the crevice, he could be heard chipping the stone with his trowel blade. Chink, chink, chink!

  “This upset us all, as you can imagine. The others in the group asked that I speak to him, to see if I could bring him to his senses. I joined him in his crevice one day.

  “‘You have changed, Salvatore,’ I told him.

  “‘Yes,’ he said.

  “‘Tell me, Salvatore, why do you now chip at the stone with your trowel?’

  “Salvatore stopped chipping. He grabbed my arm and pulled me close to him.

  “‘If I tell you,’ he whispered, ‘do you promise not to breathe a word to anyone?’ I promised him. ‘All right, friend, I will tell you. When the crevice collapsed and I became trapped, I saw the most wonderful thing.’

  “Salvatore told me that he had been thrust deep inside the crevice and pinned. A large stone pressed against his chest, choking off his breath. He could no longer see the mouth of the crevice. In the pitch black, he gave himself up for dead. But then the space around him shifted, and a chink opened at the end of a cleft in the stone overhead. At first all he could see through it were gray wispy forms drifting past. They distracted him. Salvatore watched the drifting forms and soon forgot his plight. Eventually the forms broke apart and a field of rich blue emerged, more profound than anything he had ever seen. It soothed him. Salvatore watched the field of blue and soon forgot his pain.

  “After a time, the blue paled and a soft glow began to show in the small opening overhead. It was not amber like lamp light, or angry like firelight. No, no. It was a white light, very pure, and purer with each moment. It soon filled the small space in which Salvatore was trapped. It warmed him outside and in, filled him with a wonder he had never known. Salvatore soon forgot all else.

  “But when Salvatore tried to look straight at it, the light blinded him. He squeezed his eyes shut.”

  “‘What is this brilliance?’ Salvatore asked aloud.

  “The stone walls trembled and a voice sounded from nowhere and everywhere. ‘I am the Sun,’ it said. ‘I am eternal. I am immanent in all things. All life, all experience comes from me.’

  “‘How do I see you?’ Salvatore asked.

  “‘First you must seek me. Then you must come to know my nature. And finally may you see me.’

  “‘Where do I seek you?’ Salvatore asked.

  “‘Beyond your walls.’

  “‘But I cannot go beyond these walls,’ Salvatore cried. ‘I am a prisoner here.’

  “‘Are you?’ the voice asked.

  “Just then, our efforts to widen the crevice shifted the stones around him. In an instant the light vanished. The voice went silent. Cold and darkness swept over Salvatore, and his crushing pain returned.

  “‘And now,’ Salvatore told me, ‘I can think of nothing else. Nothing but how I may be able to escape beyond these walls and end my suffering here. How I may be able to find and look upon this boundless Sun, to learn at last where I come from—where we all come from.’

  “Naturally, I doubted his story. A world beyond the prison? What wo
uld you have thought! But because I cherished my dear Salvatore, I kept my promise and spoke nothing of what he had told me. He stayed on with our repair crew but was made a lantern bearer. After his reassignment he would beg me to let him slip inside the deepest crevices before I began sealing them. Ever was he searching for a way out.

  “One day, a year after the accident, he leapt inside the crevice where I was working. His eyes were larger than I’d ever seen them.

  “‘I’ve found it,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve found it!’

  “‘Found what?’ I asked.

  “‘A way out, a way out!’

  “Salvatore then revealed that he had discovered a room on the lowest level of the prison where the stones were deeply cloven. At the back of a certain five-pointed crevice, he had discovered a dirt wall. ‘A dirt wall!’ Salvatore said. ‘Don’t you see? The way to freedom is but a shrew’s hole.’ Salvatore then became solemn. ‘I am leaving tonight,’ he said. ‘I cannot remain here another day. I want you to come with me.’

  “The thought frightened me. ‘Leave?’ I said. ‘But what about my duties, my routines? They are all I know.’”

  Iliff found himself nodding his head.

  “‘Yes,’ Salvatore told me. ‘And that is the problem. Our routines here are all we have ever known. But they are meaningless and we are captives to them. There are far greater things beyond these walls. There is a Sun. A Sun waiting to be sought out and known and seen. My friend, we have told each other many stories in these crevices about other places, other worlds. Now at last we might experience them! My dear friend, you must come with me.’

  “But the more he insisted, the more fearful I became, and the more excuses I found. ‘All right,’ Salvatore said at last. ‘I have prepared an extra bag for you, regardless. I will place it behind the large stone in the farthest corner of the room. The room is distant but easily found. You must but follow the staircases down until you can go down no more. I leave tonight, at midnight.’