Chapter 6
Jimothy Whyte
The message came while Jimothy wandered along the edge of a cliff, chalk-white, that jutted out over a drop into a bottomless chasm. He kept well away from the edge. A similar cliff, slightly lower, marked the other side of the chasm. It was far away, but Jim saw a crystal over there like a fallen star shining among the pale rocks. He was unsure about how to get across.
He was walking carefully, setting his cane firmly in the white dust every other step and pausing now and then to gaze out at the gray canyonlands, when his phone vibrated. He made a comfy chair, dark maroon, and sat down in it, grateful for the distraction.
??: finalLy!
??: hey There
JW: Hello
??: mY name’s derXis
DX: you can caLl me the Laughing God I suPpose
DX: might be BlaspheMy, who kNows?
JW: Oh, okay
DX: What’s your Name, fellow colOr priest?
JW: Jimothy
JW: Jimothy Whyte
DX: You have Two names?
DX: aweSome
DX: you must Be stronger thaN i Thought
DX: what does Whyte Mean?
JW: well I guess it’s like the color? Only spelled wrong
DX: the Color?
JW: or the absence of color, if you’re talking about pigment, or all of the colors together if you’re talking about light
JW: it’s probably that one, since light is my thing
JW: I’m the Hero of Light I guess
DX: I sEe
JW: what does color priest mean?
DX: I’ve been watching you PaInt
DX: and you caN color tHIngs even without Paint!
DX: whIch Is amaZing!
DX: wiSh I could Do that
JW: yeah it’s pretty cool
DX: you can miX colors, so That means you’re a coLor priest!
DX: likE me
JW: but anybody can mix colors!
JW: anybody can paint, even if they’re not good at it, like Bob Ross says
DX: who’S that? Another Color priest with TWO NamES?
JW: uh, yeah
DX: so waIt
DX: what’S your species calLed?
JW: humans?
DX: sO any humaN can paint?
JW: of course!
DX: juSt whenever they wAnt?
JW: yeah, I mean if they have paint
JW: and something to paint on
DX: heH hEh, weird
DX: muSt be CraZy!
DX: eVeryone ruNning around pAInting alL the time
JW: since you mention crazy, why are you typing like that?
DX: tYping?
DX: I’m nOt typing
DX: buT I know what you Mean
DX: yoUr bOok doesn’t like being ouT of the Library
DX: I tHink that’S what It is
JW: my book?
DX: I burgled It
DX: sHhhH!
DX: hEe heH hO!
JW: so if you’re not typing
JW: are you laughing a lot?
DX: hehE yeah
DX: tOo much, mayBe, Derxis
DX: nah, jUSt enough, D-man
DX: goT that right, DerXis
JW: um
JW: who’s D-man?
DX: it’S me
DX: You can call it me, I meAN calL me that, IF you want
JW: ok
JW: but, why did you message me?
DX: yOu in tHe middle of Something?
JW: not really
DX: I know; I can sEe you
DX: soRt of
DX: I’ve actuaLly been trying to taLk to you for a while
DX: You heaRd me in SkyWater, right?
JW: oh!
JW: are you the one that told me to paint?
DX: ;)
DX: woAh
DX: yeaH us Color pRiests goTta stick togetHEr
JW: I don’t really think I’m some kind of priest or anything
JW: Isaac’s the priest
JW: that’s what he says anyway
JW: anyway thanks for that
JW: for telling me to paint
JW: I guess it really helped me out
DX: riGht
DX: weLl listen,
DX: i’M not reaLly helping yOu ouT right now
DX: I’m juSt not really Down with kIlLing You
DX: bUt you’Re a Painter like Me
DX: so you Get a wArning
DX: doN’t trust the oTher ‘Gods’
DX: actUALly just to be safe you beTter not trust Me Either
DX: noT eVen me wHEn i’M telling you this Right now
DX: you foLlow?
JW: no
JW: Not at all
JW: sorry
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
DX: don’t Trust Us
DX: don’T trust these lAdies of skYWater
DX: thE Lords are on yOur side, they’rE okay
DX: Except lORd Foe
DX: obviously
DX: and yOu shoulDn’t eXpect much out Of lord Fool eitHEr
JW: okay
JW: I’ll try to remember that
JW: while also not trusting you I guess
DW: pERFect!
DX: oh Also, I thinK you Can fly
JW: fly?
DX: you’re trying to get Over to that oTHer side, right?
JW: Yeah, to get the light
JW: I need light for my lighthouse
DX: tHEn Just flY
JW: I can fly?
DX: i’M preTty sure you can do just About wHAtever you Want
DX: i Can alReadY Tell you’re the mOSt pOWerful
DX: ouT of the otHEr, uh, hAng on
DX: humans
JW: So should I warn the others?
JW: My friends, I mean
DX: thEY’re probably dEad by noW
JW: What?
DX: dO as You Will
JW: What do you mean?
DX: oh shIt
DX: I goTta scram, Maugrim Is
JW: hello?
JW: he’s what?
I am here, said the wolf. He sounded angry.
Jimothy fell over in surprise. His made-up chair vanished, and he landed hard on the dusty gravel. Maugrim limped down a steep embankment tufted with white grass. He made himself comfortable by resting with his head down on his forepaw almost exactly like Hazel, if Hazel had been missing a leg. Maugrim’s head, which was taller than Jimothy, was within throwing distance. Jimothy felt the warm, inky exhalation of the great wolf’s breath.
Maugrim closed his eyes. His huge tail swished lazily back and forth in the air. That one shall trouble you no more, Child of Lights, he said. I know him. The Faithful One.
“Oh,” said Jimothy, unsure how to react to Maugrim’s unnerving proximity. Jimothy had not glimpsed the great wolf since that night when he had cut its leg off. “How’s your, uh, your front leg?” he asked.
Solitary.
Jimothy wondered why, if he had just cut off one of Maugrim’s legs, the wolf had no reservations about coming back and relaxing beside him. He looked at Hazel for inspiration. Hazel only bared his milky fangs at Maugrim, hackles raised.
I have nothing to fear from you, Hero of Light, when you have nothing to protect.
Jimothy looked down at his phone. Protect. Right. He wasn’t too concerned about Maugrim hurting him, either. Maugrim wouldn’t hurt him, at least not until the lighthouse was done.
“Well,” he said, “can you not hurt any of my friends anymore? If any come to the moon.”
You require light.
“I’m not going to use someone’s soul as light!”
Soul?
“That’s what it is, right?”
I know only light.
“What about that, uh, D-man that I was talking to?”
Maugrim opened a deep gray eye and turned it toward Jimothy. The prince of fools. He should not be here.
Something the D-man had said suddenly came back to Jimothy in full force. They’re probably dead by now.
Hazel intercepted the panic that suddenly threatened to well up within Jimothy. Look at your medallion, said Hazel. Look and see.
Jimothy checked the white hexagon in his pocket. All of the lights were on. That means they’re alive, Hazel told him.
Jimothy decided to check with them in person just to be sure. That was how he saw that Isaac had messaged him sometime during his conversation with the D-man.
IM: Jim.
IM: Jim you there?
IM: Well maybe you’re asleep or something, whatever, just listen: if you get any weird texts, ones that aren’t from anyone you know, just ignore them okay?
IM: Actually, tell me what they say.
IM: There’s a way to reroute CHIME messages I think, like forward them…
IM: You know what, don’t worry about that. Just...tell me what they say.
IM: Holy smokes this is starting to…really hurt.
IM: Okay, see ya Jim.
IM: Remember: don’t trust them, okay?
“Hmm,” he said. “That’s what the D-man said,” he told Hazel. Hazel barked in reply. “So I guess…I could trust him about saying that?”
Isaac wanted Jimothy to tell him what the ‘weird texts’ said. But the D-man had said a lot. He was considering how to tell Isaac everything when Maugrim suddenly growled. The stones shook with the sound.
Jimothy saw the cause of Maugrim’s growl at the same time that Maugrim stood and turned to face it. Someone stood up at the top of the chalky embankment that Maugrim had limped down only a minute before—a dark figure constructed of jagged obsidian with a scowling mask. He was not large, the way a deadly serpent might not be large. Jimothy recognized him at once as Lord Foe.
No, said Maugrim. Too soon. He growled again, baring his fangs at the figure atop the hill. Your treachery is not to be revealed yet.
Lord Foe laughs—not such a laugh as that of an archetypal villain, nor of a cartoonish caricature. No maniacal cackle or gleeful howl. The laugh of a true villain is tired, ironic, bitter. He speaks, and his words are rocks in space: cold, hard, tumbling alone forgotten and forsaken through an uncaring void, knowing not where they go nor why. Things change, he says unto the Guardian of Hyperion, and any change is the better for one such as he.
No. Lord Foe declares: these heroes shall not open the door, and neither shall his brother. Lord Foe shall be a bringer of new things, of old gods and new heroes. Of new stories.
So he speaks, and so it shall be, though the great wolf stands to oppose him. Yet Lord Foe has spoken to one that Maugrim knows well, the Chained God, and he knows the wolf’s weakness. And is that a crippling injury? Lord Foe knows that even the Guardian of the
Maugrim sprang forward with terrific speed, and the action snapped Jimothy out of the entrancing speech of Lord Foe. The wolf closed on Lord Foe in an instant, but Jimothy could not see what happened next because it was both very bright and very dark all at once, like a photonegative image in high contrast.
Go! said Maugrim, though with his mouth he was howling, howling like a wolf, a sound that shook the blank skies.
A rain of darkness like ink began to fall, but much more sudden and swift than normal rain.
Fly!
The stone beneath Jimothy cracked apart, and suddenly he was falling, tumbling among rocks and dust into the shadowy pits of the chasm. Earth and air broke around him, shivered to pieces, and the wolf’s howl devolved into a terrifying snarl.
Fly, Jimothy! (And I love you!)
That was Hazel.
Fly? But how?
The words of the D-man came to him, almost as though a voice were whispering into his ear, just like he had heard back at Skywater. Don’t worry about how! Just fly! And there was laughter.
Like painting, thought Jimothy, and he was sure that this was his own thought. He didn’t really think very much about how to paint. He just did it! The colors were just there .
As he dropped into the darkness of the chasm, tumbling among the rocks, he closed his eyes and saw the Line. And knew what to do.
He later realized that he flew by wrapping himself in light and then moving the light. But he didn’t think about that at the time. He just flew .
Up and away, out of the chasm, stopping only long enough to snatch the ever-important crystal from the far side before zipping up into the sky like a reverse comet. Something loud and terrible, both dark and bright, was happening down below, something that shook the world and caused Maugrim to howl in pain, but Jimothy closed his eyes and flew far away, because he knew that that’s what Maugrim wanted him to do.
A tiny voice laughed in the back of his mind. It whispered that he should grab that little bead of light he had sitting in a box by his bed. He might need it.
Back to the lighthouse, which wasn’t really that far, not as far from danger as he would have liked, but he didn’t have any other place to go.
It was starting to get dark when he slowed to a halt atop the platform with two doors. He descended to the light room at the top of his lighthouse and put the crystal in with the rest. It drifted to the center and joined the cluster of brilliance. He’d already lost count of how many he’d put in there, maybe five or six. Together they made a clump the size of a basketball. Still not enough, not even close. But at least it was something. At least his lighthouse actually lit something up at night.
He went back up to the top to have a look around as the day faded into night. He missed sunsets very badly, he realized. All the colors. And if Hyperion was going to have beautiful, spectacular sunsets, he’d have to do them himself. And he needed light.
He was thinking about this, thinking about Niri’s light in a box by his bed, how it could probably color the whole sky, how everyone apparently had this light inside of them, when he got a message from Elizabeth.
