The Dragonfly in the Tower

9. The Choice of the Tower

Caught between life or death, Sharon hung on the balance. She was walking on a tightrope a million miles in the air, and looking down, unsteady.

Either I stay in this tower my whole life, or I pull the cord. I might die, but I’ll be free.

Does anyone have the willpower to firmly walk into their own death, when they still want to live?

Sharon had seen the electricity in every other room. She had made it. Dancing demonically, leaping from the bars, Sharon had feared it would somehow arc across the air to her hair, her clothes. Sparks of the bluest fire, running up and down and around the birdcage. With one touch, charring hands to charcoal and vital organs to ash.

She had pulled the trigger to the electric birdcages and she knew the trigger was to spontaneous death. The circuitry behind the cages was perfect, immaculate. Like everything else the previous occupant of the tower did.

“He was an artist… And his art was in all that he did.”

The four birdcages had lit up like neon signs, like fireworks, like a celebration of death.

It would start from my feet and travel up to my heart. It would fry my hair. It would run down both my arms, shortcircuiting the muscle fibers. My heart would stop and go, stop and go, and I would gasp and choke. It would take me down so quickly, in a flash, like lightning taking down a tree.

She stared into a vast open space, the lone pendants hanging in the middle.

Can I do it?

The pendant glittered and flashed like an opal. A green opal…

Dracrys, as immobile as a charm on the pendant, flew in a green shimmer to Sharon’s arm.

Sharon was not surprised.

“Hi, sweet one.”

Dracrys now flew in a pattern Sharon had never seen before, a graceful, looping figure eight around Sharon’s body, before curving to fly back to the corridor.

Was it… dancing?

Sharon got up and followed it.

Now Dracrys sat on top of the gold latch to the last red chest, the four chests with the severed heads.

Sharon’s heart hurt.

“Oh, Dracrys… I know what’s inside,” she said heavily.

The dragonfly looked out to her with its crystalline eyes, before closing them gently. Slowly, ever so slowly, the dragonfly began to evaporate, head first and then body, shards of green drifting up into the air like snow in a snowdrift.

“Dracrys! DRACRYS!”

She tried to cup the green shards in her hands, but they passed through her like holograms.

Tears came to Sharon’s eyes and she bit back her sobs.

Dracrys is gone. It finally left me. Did I know this day was coming?

But as she watched the green particles dance in the light and shimmer one last time, her heart grew lighter. She found she was smiling through her tears.

I can’t believe that it didn’t choose this moment for a reason. It left me now because it had faith in me to make the right choice.

It believed in me, and it believed I could walk forward.

She rested her hands on the latch on the chest, where Dracrys had spent its final moments.

The tower is so lovely. It’s been like living in a gilded cage. Where does my water come from? Where does my food come from? How is it that no one has ever come to hurt me?

She thought of the flowers blooming outside her window, the green vines tracing their way up grey weathered stones, the sun shining brilliantly on a grey sea.

Yes… this place has been my beautiful birdcage.

And Sharon thought of how immense the sea had been, how it stretched out beyond her view. How she could only see rolling hills, but one day she might see dots that might be towns, and one day she might see figures that might be other people.

The tiny, beautifully wrought birds of steel in the hall. came to her mind. Miniature gold birdcages still small enough to comfortably rest in her palms.

Impossibly lovely, but tiny. Confining.

This world isn’t enough for me.

This world that has been circumscribed by my tower…

She looked down at the red chest.

This was the last thing Dracrys wanted me to see.

The last challenge…

She opened it, and then she knew everything.

Hours might have passed in that silent hallway.

Sharon heard footfalls behind her. She turned to see Rainer.

There they were, locked in the silence.

Rainer did not look at the chest. Sharon guessed Rainer already had seen what was inside. Finally, Rainer said, “I’m sure you’ve figured out the secret of the tower by now.”

The ceiling fan in the hall with its six spinning blades twirled endlessly in Sharon’s imagination.

“I think I have.”

“Mind sharing?”

Sharon took a deep breath.

“I think that pulling this cord will lift the entire tower up by its foundations. There’s probably six huge blades underneath this tower that can propel it upwards. Like a flying castle… And then the door which is buried in stone now will actually lead outside.”

“But such a feat isn’t possible with mechanical engineering alone,” Rainer continued. “You need magic as the force.” Rainer stared at the last room, the heart of the tower, the final birdcage. “And the source of such magic remains one of our deepest mysteries. A life for a life. A death for a death,” confirming Sharon’s suspicions.

Now another pair of footfalls, lighter and anxious, came to Sharon’s ears.

Ilya came, out of breath, as pale and frail looking as he had been on the first day they’d met.

“Ilya.” Sharon looked at him with a boundless sorrow.

“Sharon, my Sharon, what is it?” Ilya knelt by Sharon, then saw what was in his chest.

His eyes opened wide and then reflexively, he buried his face in his red scarf. His shoulders were shaking.

Hours ago, with a feeling of immense foreboding, Sharon had slid open the latch of the last chest and pushed the heavy lid forward.

Ilya’s head lay inside, his blond locks scattered around his temples, amber eyes still open.

The fourth body! The son! The last person tortured and left here to die was Ilya!

Now, Ilya lifted his head from his neck, stared down at his own head, and his face grew impossibly paler.

“It’s all true… it was all true…”

He looked down at his red scarf and with a single violent motion, ripped it off.

There was the red line on his neck where his head had been amputated.

“Ilya.” Sharon came to him and gently wrapped her arms around the boy. “How long have you known?” she asked in his ear.

“I wasn’t sure at first. Like I said, I couldn’t remember anything when I first arrived. Then, bits and pieces. I began to suspect when I saw the first head… She looked familiar, and I realized she looked like me … I’m sorry! I was following you in the walls. I just didn’t want you to get hurt…”

Ilya hiccupped and Sharon could see the shine his tear tracks left on his cheeks.

“I never knew everything for certain. Until now.”

“Rainer… if Ilya died, but he’s here – that means he’s a ghost, right?”

Rainer looked at Ilya as if judging if he could withstand the truth. Then he said, “Yes.”

Sharon turned to look at his hands she was holding.

They feel real. Substantial. I feel their clamminess… the texture of his skin… the weight of his bones…

The next words were very difficult for Sharon to say.

“I think Dracrys wanted me to take Ilya to the birdcage.”

“Theoretically, that should work… A life for a life, a death for a death. But who knows? I’ve never seen this situation before. Anything could happen.”

The three stood together somberly.

“You should know what death means for a ghost,” Rainer continued seriously. “Ilya’s death would be his final death. That is, he would… stop existing. And he wouldn’t transmigrate, or reincarnate, or exist anymore in any other form in any other world. The person you know as Ilya… would be totally and irrevocably gone.”

My freedom depends on Ilya’s death.

“Do it, Sharon,” Ilya whispered.

“Ilya…” Sharon’s voice cracked.

“I don’t belong here. I shouldn’t be in this place.” Ilya said, his face fever bright. “You can see it, can’t you?”

Rainer had said the same thing about me, a long time ago. That humans don’t belong in this tower.

“Rainer, is there a reason why you once said a human shouldn’t be in here?”

“That’s actually why I came here. The Light magic here is so strong and so chaotic, it’s a place where Dark spells react in unknown ways. That’s my research. But such a magic field may produce strange effects on humans. It also can anchor ghosts.”

“Light magic?” Ilya stared at Rainer.

“Oh, yes. Ilya, you still don’t remember?”

“No…”

“Your family was a respected family of Light mages… I asked around. Discreetly. Though I didn’t need to…” A look of sympathy crossed Rainer’s face. “Since they were most well known two centuries ago before dying out.”

Ilya winced.

“And of course, the designer of this tower was a family friend of yours. ‘Friend’… and the excess of Light magic he used scarred the land. You feel it like smoke rising from an open chasm of magma in the earth. Who knows when it’ll be gone?”

“Are you saying Light magic did this to my family?” Ilya said quietly. For the first time Sharon sensed some force in the frail body she was holding.

Rainer laughed bitterly.

“It’s that old stereotype again… Light magic and Dark magic, at their extremes, are one and the same.”

Ilya made a low growl in his throat, but Rainer continued.

“What did that sound sound like to you, Sharon? When you pulled the cord in the library for the first time…?”

Sharon had no choice but to respond honestly. “Angels.”

“Angels towering over you. Angels warring. Angels of mass destruction.”

An unbearable sound of loveliness threatening to rend me asunder…

“Rainer, what is your last name?” Ilya asked him with an intense expression in his eyes, and he had shrugged out of Sharon’s grip.

Rainer spoke his last name in German.

Sharon startled.

“I remember.” Ilya pinned him down with a gaze Sharon had never seen him use before, compassionate, but fierce, determined and resolute despite his frail body.

“I remember now. His wars… I lived through them,” Ilya said.

“I remember too,” Rainer said sardonically. “Or, I would, if I were born two hundred years ago.”

“Hey! Hey!” Sharon got in between the two. “Don’t fight.”

“Sharon. Take me,” Ilya said. “This isn’t my place.” An expression of endless grief contorted his face. “Or my time.”

“Oh, Ilya…”

Ilya pressed a gentle kiss to Sharon’s hair. “Take care, Sharon,” he whispered.

He looked at Rainer, and for a second Sharon thought he would turn and fight him, because his expression was like a stag before charging. But instead he spoke some words in German.

Rainer looked briefly surprised before saying, “Thank you,” with a musing expression.

On their way to the birdcage, Sharon asked, “What did you say to him?”

“We are not the sins of our fathers,” Ilya replied.

In the center of the immense birdcage, Sharon looked at Ilya one last time. They embraced. “Ready?” she whispered into his scarf. She felt Ilya’s assent.

“Will it hurt?”

Ilya laughed. “Svyet,” he murmured, and she could feel a cocoon of light spreading around them.

Why did this have to happen?

Why did it all have to happen like this?

Why couldn’t Ilya have been born into my time?

Or me born into Ilya’s time?

But such questions, like the deepest mysteries of magic, could never be answered.

She pulled the cord.

Next Chapter: -Director's Cut: The Secret of the Tower

Previous Chapter: 8. The Heart of the Tower

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