Shya Scanlon - The Guild of Saint Cooper

The realization of where I was crashed over me in waves, and I froze as though waiting for a punishment I deserved. The damp air filled my lungs — air that with each breath became earthier, smelled more of minerals and mud. And in part because I was concerned about my ability to stand, but also because it was where I belonged, I stepped forward and sat again in the chair.

Standing in the doorway where I’d just been, Russell smiled warmly. He was barefoot.

“When I was a child,” he said, his voice booming through the room, “there was a large black dog that lived down the street. This was in eastern Washington, mind you — very rural — and though we lived in town the yards were large, there were no sidewalks, and what you’d call a block might stretch for a quarter mile. Are you feeling okay?”

I don’t know whether or not I nodded. Russell’s smile had broadened somehow, deepened, had become his entire face.

“This dog, Ramen — like the noodles — was always chained up in the front yard. It was a well-known terror. No fence, you understand. All the kids in the neighborhood were afraid of it. It would growl, bark, lunge. It was a big black hole of a thing.

“To get revenge on this beast, a friend of mine, Joey, would stand at the far edge of Ramen’s tether and throw a stick beyond the dog’s reach in the opposite direction. The stupid animal would run after it, only to be jerked back violently when it ran out of chain. The dog would let out a high-pitched whine and skitter back to its place beneath a rhododendron it used for shade. It was a cruelty, I knew, though I didn’t stop it. Joey was something of a bully, and I enjoyed the opportunity to be on his side, to share in his dark jest rather than be the bare, willing butt of it.

“But one day on the way home from school, Joey offered me the stick. I remember looking down at the pale, barkless thing, a stick you might whittle into a point. I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t let Joey know that. I took it from Joey’s hand, held it by one end, and reached way back. I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to throw it far enough, that I’d be laughed at for being a weakling. But the stick went sailing out into the next yard over, far beyond the chain’s length.

“Joey was impressed — he whistled as it landed on the far side of a big hedge, and Ramen went after it as usual. Only this time the dog didn’t stop when he came to the end of his tether. He just kept going. He’d broken free. Joey turned and ran in the other direction. I, on the other hand, remained standing. I remember that my mind was blank, and that inside me were two conflicting emotions, both of which result in immobility: absolute terror, and resignation in the face of fate.

“Well, I didn’t have to wait long before the beast came bounding back around the hedge, stick in mouth, and I closed my eyes. I was dimly aware of someone shouting at me to run, but I could no more run than fly at the moment, and in that very last instant I become entirely slack. I thought for a moment I’d died, perhaps, that I’d somehow transcended the pulpy mass of my flesh as Ramen tore me apart, and it was a supreme act of courage, I felt, to open my eyes and witness the massacre.

“But when I finally opened my eyes, I saw only a dog sitting in front of me with an enormous smile, mouth open, panting through its yellow fangs. The stick was at my feet. Ramen gave me a friendly bark, and I picked up the stick, and I threw it again, and I tell you this story to illustrate another interesting element of living with the tide. Occasionally the ebb is severe, a larger wave gaining mass out at sea, and the water pulls back, it pulls back to expose the sea floor, and when it returns it can bring with it all manner of unexpected things.”

I was nowhere near able to process this story. Most of what I was thinking while watching Russell speak to me could not be accurately recounted in words. There were words, but they coursed through my mind haphazardly, a might making way for a worry , a pain being spun off axis by another. Escape came to mind. But like Russell with Ramen, I was held invisibly in place, and with what I could only assume was reverence for this man’s ability — because it did seem, at the moment, like an ability rather than some peculiar accident of echo and rhyme — to spin his story into my own, found my head nodding assent. Whether or not I actually agreed was irrelevant. My muscles, my body, my being was connected to his words as though tethered, and I could feel his satisfaction as he saw me concede.

“I want you to stay with us,” he said. “I want you to join us.”

“Us,” I managed to say.

“The Guild, the movement. Like everyone else, I read your articles in the beginning. I read your translated missives from the front line. Cooper’s missives. They were crucial for the powerless citizens given very little in the way of explanation for the goings-on around us, which explanation, when it did come, was contradictory at best, and very frequently overtly manipulative and sad. So now we’re on the verge of something significant. The Lights are weakened, they’re desperate, and they may well do something catastrophic. Do you know what would happen if the Ross Ice Shelf were dropped into the Southern Ocean? The Lights apparently either do not know or do not care. So it is time to act — it is time to send out a beacon to those still out there willing and able to rise up against the tyranny of Illumination. Know this, my friend: you’re needed again. Your voice is needed. Don’t worry, Blake, you’ll be safe here.”

Here he stopped, stood to one side, and nodded back down the hall. He wasn’t keeping me, his gesture seemed to mean. There would be no repeat of what had happened before.

Russell had released me, but I still found it difficult — no, impossible — to move. I tried to recall the first step of standing and remembered that it was a forward motion of the torso, a swinging forward of mass that upset the balance of being seated. I willed my head forward, not sure whether it was responsive, willed my head and shoulders and chest into the vacuum before me. Was I falling? Teetering? I could not be sure. Russell was now beckoning to me with his left hand, a soft patting motion of encouragement, something he might offer a child suspicious of his motives. Did he think I was simply reluctant to follow? I was struck by the idea that this could be it for me, that I had simply come to a halt, my struggle to act becoming manifest in a ludicrously literal interpretation, a parody of itself. No sooner had I thought this, however, than an abrupt ripple of half-laughter shot through my body, causing it to list forward, and before I knew it my legs responded by shooting out to prevent me from spilling to the floor, and all of a sudden I was standing. It was more like a crouch, really, but I was on my feet, and Russell seemed satisfied. “Yes!” he said.

“Yes! Come!”

I stood slowly, took a step, and Russell, seeing my difficulty, offered his arm. Together we walked back to the back of the house while he excitedly described what the future held. He’d planned the major actions, he explained — he just needed me to write articles from the front line, articles about Cooper’s activity with the Guild, about how we were a growing army of resistance.

When we emerged from the hallway, the room was lit, and because it was still night the floor-to-ceiling windows wore our reflections, a double of ourselves in a mirror world, and in this mirror world I saw Aya, and because I hadn’t seen her in the first world, I turned and there she was.

“You’ve met my wife,” Russell said.

“I—” I said. “I—”

“Aye aye!” Russell said, chuckling. “Good. She’s been what I’d call the moral compass of our mission.”