Читать книгу Painted Oxen - Thomas Lloyd Qualls - Страница 17

From time to time, the world finds itself broken. At these times, all the magic that came before gets packed away. And those who carry it from place to place batten things down. What is left explodes. Into a billion tiny stars. And the light and the dark lose their separateness once more.

A space opens up during this time. A space held by the arms of eternity. In this time and space, in this corridor of eternity, the ants move. The monk knows something of their task.

Sometimes a journey is not about the traveler. It is not about a destination. It is about the bringing together of worlds. It is about lighting a path.

The ants journey not because of hunger, not to escape the rains, not driven by instinct or survival. They travel because they know the underworld. They know how to cross dimensions. They live between the worlds. Darkness becomes them and they are not frightened by the light. They are the carriers of the thread. When the world is broken above and below, inside and out, they are charged with mending the wounds in the dark, those left raw by the light. They are charged with building the new world. So we can start again.

He follows a thread that looks like theirs. Though he is above ground. Though his mission is not to wait until the world ends, but to find a way to the other side before it does. To prop open the door before it can be locked. To tie a suture before the fatal wound is made. To let in the moonlight before the sun is allowed to rise.