Afeallan

"Chapter" Eleven

Léas spent the night alone, waiting for the first rays of sun to peak over the walls of Afeallan. In the hours before illumination, he drew sketches and outlines—faint traces, he considered, compared to that which Líchama had accomplished. He scribbled all the more furiously for it. When the shadows began to become defined on the ground, he sprinted to his uncle’s workshop with invisible purpose. Every piece of scrap metal became his to claim. He took horse hair and sand and clay and loam, mixing all the elements together with water, and began shaping his bricks, carefully smoothing the edges before he let them bake. Then he began on the inner mold. With painstaking attention he began shaping his tiny campanulate mountain. And when he reluctantly decided he was finished, he placed his work into the furnace, and began the process again for the cope. As he smoothed the inside, he took scrupulous precaution to make sure his handiwork betrayed its creator. And when he was finished, he placed this, too, in the fire. As the casts hardened, Léas set to work on liquefying the metal. After the casts had been set, while the metal was being smelted, he removed the casts from the flames and placed the larger on top of the smaller, twisting them back and forth. He packed sand into the space between the two, leaving dual openings for both entrance and escape. And when the metal was ready, he poured it very carefully into one of the holes. The fluid splattered on his glistening arms, freckling him permanently with tiny white scars. He paid the pain no mind. He was almost finished. And when the last drop of metal had been poured, he waited. He tried to rest—his arms felt as if they would burst under their own weight and his back could not be unbent—but he could do nothing but stand and watch his creation. Night had fallen again but he could not sleep, waiting for the molten metal to cool. It would be another three days of waiting before the mold could be broken, revealing his treasure inside. And when the third day came, Léas destroyed the cast with great intent. He knew it was not finished. He hoisted his work off the ground and began skirting the bottom, then the sides, working his way to the top. It began to resonate. He could see his haggard face and smiled. He tapped the side of his product and, unhappy with the result, crawled inside to sand away the unnecessary metal until his bell had the tone he desired. Over and over again he struck it. Until he began to weep. And it was finished.

 

The cock was yet to crow when Léas began constructing the land-raft. There was not enough wood to support his bell, long enough to get where he was going, so he looked around his uncle’s workshop. The boards of which the walls consisted of were warped from the heat of smelting. Léas went to them, peeling them rapidly, one by one, his hands bleeding full of slivers of copse, throwing recklessly the planks into a pile until a third of the fortification was absent. He united the timbers with rope, affixed wheels near each corner. He rolled the land-raft directly beneath the hanging bell, and introduced his two creations to each other, slowly lowering one toward the other. The wood screamed beneath the pressure of the weight. Léas hoisted the rope he had attached at the front over his shoulder and pulled. He winced at the pain from the splinters of the rope being introduced to his already mangled hands. He pulled the egregiously monolithic bell through the town, the sun slowly rising, glistening against the sheen of his imagination. The wheels grumbled with the gravel, arguing and tussling with the earth. And Léas pulled as the early-risers peered through their windows at the shining dome being paraded through the city. Some began to follow him, recognizing him as the man who accompanied Rýnelic. Hours they followed him as he inched excruciatingly toward his destination—blood like rivers down his forearm, collecting and dripping from his elbow, leaving a scribbled trail in the dust by which to find him. He walked to the other end of the city to the wall that the Tavern was nestled against. He paid no mind to the twenty or so people trailing behind him, nor the patrons curiously stumbling out after their noontime drink. He looked up at the rafters that jutted out from the roof or the roughly made establishment. With great exertion he began pushing the bell off of the raft next to the wall of the Tavern. One end slipped off before the other fell with an immense muffled thud. With the crowd creating a semi-circle around him, Léas began disassembling the land-raft and piling the planks neatly against the side of the building. He stepped back for a moment to survey like an artist the canvas with which he was provided, sucking on the tip of his thumb. Then he set to work once more. He cleared a space roughly ten feet from the left side of the establishment and began pounding into the earth to form a post hole, then another creating a kind of square around the diameter of his bell. By the time holes were deep enough to his liking, the cock had not only crowed, but had begun contemplating a mid afternoon nap. With inconceivable power, Léas smote the earth with the first piece of timber into the hole he had created. Then into the other. He found a piece of rock and converted it into a crude hammer, fisting it in his already bloody hands and letting it slip only once before he turned rage into a kind of gravity with which let nothing escape his grasp. Feverishly he continued his construction, climbing up the posts like a frightened rodent, piecing together what wood was necessary to pacify the phantom that haunted his mind. His breathing became more like throaty, guttural groans than the passing of air. Rýnelic stepped outside of the bar, followed by Byldan, as her services inside were no longer needed, as all patrons had coagulated outdoors to watch the spectacle of human creation that Léas was performing. When the beams were precisely parallel to the wooden girders of the Tavern, Léas conjoined them with two leftover pieces timber, geometrically reinforcing the boards with triangles made of whatever was available. He stepped back once more, almost into the crowd of onlookers. Then, with a heavy, self-propellant sigh, he approached the bell that seemed, for that moment, to consist of the entire world. Rýnelic drew close to him, feeling that perhaps his work was finished. Léas pushed him away violently and spurned the ground with each step as he walked toward the bell. Léas recovered the rope that once toted his land-raft and detached it from the remaining splinters of wood, only to reattach it to the crest of the bell and lob the end of the rope over the horizontal beams he had just put into place. With a yawpish groan he wrought himself forward against the earth and pulled. The wooden beamed creaked but maintained. Rýnelic once again offered his hand to help his friend. “No!” screamed Léas in a squeaking and parched voice, waving one hand hastily, releasing a cascade of sweat and debris, almost losing his grip. Léas ploughed forward until the bell was as far from the ground as gravity, strength and architecture would allow. Then Léas tied the end of the rope to a tree trunk and collapsed. After sitting a spell he brought one leg into himself and stood, staggering, and turned to face his slain demon. Byldan stepped forward with an outstretched hand, and Léas, as if noticing a shift in barometric pressure, turned to face his companions. He ran past Byldan, still holding onto his rope, and embraced Rýnelic, leaving a handprint of blood and sweat and dirt on Rýnelic’s white shirt. Léas began to sob, then laugh, then utter a mix of the two hysterically. Ringing the gigantic bell and burbling. Swaying. Then he fainted. With all the people looking on, Rýnelic hoisted Léas onto his shoulder and carried him home with Byldan following worriedly behind.