Midnight's Song

Midnight’s Song

By Keely Victoria

This is a work of fiction.
All characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the
author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any
resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2015 © Keely
Victoria

ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED

No part of this work may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise – without prior written
permission.

Part One: Crystal
Seas

Part One:

◊

Crystal Seas

Dawn’s first light still
hadn’t crept over the horizon when I found myself standing at the
foot of the ocean that morning. I stood there alone, meditatively
waiting to see the first hints of sunrise. This place was a
completely different world before the sun’s rays poked across its
shimmering sands. Each watery ripple reflected the moon as crystal.
Even the waves seemed calmer – more rhythmic than those of the
daylight.

It was something that calmed me, and
had kept me coming here almost every morning since I first
discovered the enchantment of this most deserted hour. I dipped my
toes into the cool morning surf, took in a breath of the salty air.
It delighted me to my very core; for I was a fisherman’s daughter.
No more, and no less.

And today was no ordinary day, either.
Today I was out here for good reason. You see, my Papa had been
gone for many weeks now; and today was the day that he was coming
home. My bones rattled with joy and excitement as I imagined him
sailing into view during the early morning hours – his crew happily
soliciting me to sing to them as they unloaded their catch at the
docks. Today also marked another occasion, I realized.

It was now one full
season until my 16
^th
birthday.

I felt a small shiver crawl up my
spine at the thought. I shook it off, telling myself that there
were better things to worry about. Somehow, I convinced myself to
forget about my troubles and replace them with what I could see and
feel around me. My soul soaked it all in like a sponge, taking in
every salty breath. Sure enough, the worries soon began drifting
into the far reaches of my mind. That was a good thing,
temporarily.

If there was one thing I knew that
always made me feel safe and calm other than the rhythmic,
nighttime waves; it was the unexplainable feeling that came from
surrounding myself with human singing. No matter where I was or
what path I chose, the world would always have music contained
within its bounds. I opened my mouth, feeling safe and at home in
the gentleness that shrouded me; and began singing a song that my
mother had taught me long ago:

A world of crystal seas
and crimson moon

Of blood-red roses and
lives anew

Where the scarlet lilies
bloom

Under the midnight
sky…”

It was a beautiful song
all itself, but the lyrics were captivating and even sacred. Some
say that the words were passed down from our ancestors; from before
even the Great War. Many of my very superstitious people thought
them to be supernatural.

The words were a folkloric
prophecy. It was a poem passed down many generations along with
dark tales of powerful beings walking among us; monsters disguised
in human skin. They were the talk of every communal fire in our
village. Parents often used these types of tales to scare their
children into behaving. Although there was something about these
stories that never quite affected me as did everyone else. The
parts which frightened most didn’t scare me at all as a child –
instead often intriguing me.

There was nothing to
believe, I told myself, digging my toes into the sand. Believing in
such tales always seemed just about as logical as believing in
mermaids or selkies. Those had been clearly disproven, yet
credulous seafarers and old wives would go to their graves
believing. My people were a very superstitious bunch.

My deep thought was
suddenly interrupted by a sound that was utterly terrifying. It was
the intercoms. They let out four shrill beeps, loud enough to rouse
anyone from the deepest sleep. After the beeps, there was a thirty
second pause. Then came four more.

Light continued spreading
across the horizon. I knew I didn’t have much time before I ran
into the deepest of trouble. Just a few feet away stood the
cottage; its painted exterior flaky and worn from years of being
caressed by the costal breeze. It wasn’t even really a “walk” at
all really. It was more like a step – perhaps two. Though it wasn’t
the distance I was concerned with.

From the hours 10:45
PM to 6:55 AM, public trespassing was
prohibited.
It didn’t matter if you
were standing in the town square or standing in your back yard.
Everyone in our sector had a strict lock-down curfew. The alarms
had sounded – meaning that the morning call was only 2 minutes
away. If I wanted to keep my back-end intact, I would have to
sprint.

I climbed up our porch and
wrapped a hand around the doorknob; but before I even so much as
cracked it open, I took a step back. In the faint light of the
dawn, I could see the outline of a single blossom beginning to
bloom in the garden beneath our windowsill.

The sight stopped me
dead in my tracks. The bed I was looking at was so infertile that
it couldn’t support a simply vegetable garden. To think – something
could grow
here?
I reached out to touch the bloom and laced my fingers around
its petals in astonishment.

The moment was halted
again. Time was clearly of the essence. The morning call rang
loudly throughout the village. Every citizen in the village that
had been deemed fit to work opened their doors in a uniform chorus.
The group included most everyone; friends, neighbors, and my weary
mother.

It was law that every working citizen
was to emerge from their home, fully dressed in their grey work
attire at exactly 7:00 every morning. For some reason that neither
I or anyone else could ever pinpoint, it was also law that after
they step out they were to remain in place for exactly 120 seconds
after the final call. Long enough to remind them of their duty to
society, I guessed, or maybe just long enough to remind them of
their place.

In those 120 seconds
I was frozen with them. I crouched in the garden for a few seconds,
my petite frame going unseen beside the porch. I heard an inspector
approaching and panicked. I jumped up and surveyed my surroundings,
locking eyes with my mother. The lines on her face, representing
both age and worry, were clearly defined. She moved her eyes in the
direction of the window as if to say:
jump, and jump fast.

Without hesitating, I
climbed through the window and landed on the kitchen floor. I heard
the inspector’s clinking boots getting closer before coming to an
abrupt stop. He stopped at the door, suspiciously examining my
mother. He saw just as clearly as I could that she was docile and
worn; weary from the many years of slave labor she’d been forced to
work by the Magistrate. She couldn’t possibly be a troublemaker,
they realized. The clinking boots carried along.

After the 120 seconds,
there was a resounding bell. That was everyone’s cue to leave their
places and go to work. Just like that, my mother walked with the
hoard to the cannery. She went off to work while I sat on the
kitchen floor.

I wasn’t allowed to hoist
a sail or even operate a single lever. This was my bargain with
society. I was one inch too short to work in any of the manual
trades. Since those were the only kinds of trade we had in the
Katie Isles, it really meant that I considered too short to do most
anything at all.

Even though I couldn’t
have gone with her that day, later on I’d still wish that there was
something I could have done differently. If I would have known, I
would have spent the entire night sleeping at her side. I only wish
that I could have kissed her goodbye.

But, I was unaware of this
right now. My mind suddenly whirled back to the sight of the
flower. The light had grown to shroud the Earth, and now I could
see it clearly. I poked my head out the window. This time, I could
tell that it was no ordinary flower, either.

It was a single white lily; having
fully bloomed before the first touch of sunlight.

The news came from the
factory late that morning. Papa had arrived home only minutes
earlier. I had been sitting at the kitchen table, listening to
Friday’s mandatory radio broadcast from the Magistrate’s grand
palace as I worked toward perfecting my naturally pitiful knitting.
(Pretty much the only petty “work,” that a girl of my size in this
caste was allowed to do at all).

I took in the leader’s words in
stride, keeping in mind that his influence over me was only about
as potent as the faulty box that his words came out of. Even though
I wished I could turn it off I still had to listen. All of the
channels were broadcasting this same message right now. As if that
didn’t make us balled and chained to his authority enough, if I
turned the radio off the whole world would surely know. The angry
airwaves would alert patrolling guards to haul me away for
perpetrating an illegal silence.

“Keep in mind, dearest citizens,” the
Magistrate stated as the start of his customary but drawn-out
closing, “that as survivors of the Great War, our generation is
chosen by the Creator himself. Our ancestors marred their own
society. It is important that we reject the evils that they
unleashed into their world in full. You all fully know what these
evils are. They are things such as slander, superstition, and the
darkness of all worldly debauchery.”

He went on to
explain again, as he did every week; that what our ancestors did in
respect to these great sins is the very thing that made us who we
were in the present day. Then he proceeded to once again remind us,
that as our constitution states; although we were all chosen by the
Creator to have survived the Great War, we were
not
all of equal favor in his
eyes.