The Devil's Lullaby

Midnight in Atherest wasn’t marked by the striking of a clock as it used to be. When even the sun abandoned the barren plains that surrounded the dwindling city, the streets echoed with the noise of windows and doors slamming shut. It didn’t prevent people from being taken, but everyone felt just that little bit safer when the ‘devil’s lullaby’ began to sound.

Finn closed his eyes to the crisp gust of wind blowing in from the darkness outside. It fascinated him every time that air could feel so fresh and exhilarating, completely unlike the hot vacuum they suffocated in during the day. As he welcomed the night’s cool breath into his lungs, he could almost believe the stories of when the world itself was living and even beautiful. Now there were just living things surviving on its rotting corpse.

At last, Finn brought his gaze up past his own musings, over the empty terraces to rest on the one place he usually wished he couldn’t view from his room. Soon the poisonous melody would beckon another set of victims on their one-way journey up the hill in the middle of the city, into the tower that sat on top. It was all the boy could do to move his hand to the locket hanging around his neck and grip it firmly in his palm. He didn’t quite know why it brought him comfort. Even the window shutters appeared more protective at a glance, but he couldn’t argue with the peace in his heart.

“What is inside that tower?” Although he asked himself the same question every night, right now it particularly irked him. His nails dug into the windowsill as though it might help his eyes bore into the night.

Instead, it unburied his sorrows – friends he had lost, family he had forgotten, neighbours who had disappeared.

The wind bit and tore now. Yet the shiver which ran down his spine was not so much caused by the cold as by the sweet voices floating down from the tower on the hill. Midnight had come.

“Finn Rothersin,” he reprimanded himself as he dropped the locket back under his shirt and shoved his boots on. “You are an idiot.”

Outside, he hugged the buildings as he ghosted down the dark street. It was more to hide from his fear than from any danger that might spy him. Even so, he still bit his tongue in fright when the door he was about to pass flung open, spitting out a man in a night-shirt. Without the slightest acknowledgement of anyone else, the man turned his feet in the direction of the hill and set off down the street.

It wasn’t hard to catch up to him in his dreamlike wandering. Finn was upon him in a matter of seconds, overtaking him and grasping him gently by his wrist. “Mr. Hagel?” Finn started. He recognised the man from working in the mill but had no idea Hagel lived so close. He was about to comment on the subject when he found his hands empty as his work colleague pushed straight past him. “Wait! It’s me – Finn!” He caught up with him once more, this time walking alongside him while peering closely at Hagel’s face.

Though his eyes were wide open, there was a glaze over them that illuminated the blue around his pupils as though he were staring into a bright light.

“Mr. Hagel?” Finn tried one last time and waved his hand in front of the man’s face when he received no response.

A long sigh escaped Hagel’s lips, echoed closely by Finn, whose hand dropped in relief. “You had me worried there, Mr. Hagel,” he said and couldn’t resist a triumphant smile. Perhaps he wasn’t such an idiot, after all.

Had Hagel been given an opinion on this, he would have disagreed. Rather than turning towards his young companion in thanks, he tilted his head upwards and resumed his journey forwards.

Finn jolted after him only to freeze in place a moment later as he, too, stretched his gaze upward to see the tower on the hill now directly above him. So black and monstrous did it seem that he fancied it were not a structure at all but simply a hole in the night sky. Where else could such an emptying song come from?

“Fool,” he hissed, though he wasn’t sure whether he meant himself or Hagel as he scuttled up the dusty hill.

The higher they climbed, the more eager Hagel seemed to reach the top, soon forcing Finn’s breaths into ragged gasps as they ran up the steep slope. Again and again Finn twisted his head over his shoulder to look at the city below, hoping it would draw him back before it was too late to return. Yet, as he saw each glazy-eyed dreamer race past him, he only had to imagine each of his friends, each of his parents, running to their doom in the same way and he had no choice but to turn his head to the tower and push on to the top with the rest.

When he finally passed through the gaping entrance on the heels of the last dreamer, he had just enough nerve to adopt his best impression of their hypnotic gaze before the darkness closed in about him, blocking off all sight of the city.

“Welcome!”

As a deep voice boomed from the shadows, Finn’s hands shot to his mouth and chest to suppress the frightful shout that wanted to burst out of him. A cold light appeared ahead and, peering through the small crowd, he made out the figure of a man dressed in a white robe whose glow was second only to his shining blue eyes. The jet-black hair floating about his face was the only feature attaching him to his ominous abode. Even his voice was somewhat jarring against the longing chorus that had not ceased upon their arrival.

“Tonight you may bid farewell to your lives of toil and sorrow.”

The song swelled and the dreamers sighed. The man locked eyes with Finn.

“Here I will give you the rest and peace you have desired. Enter.” He held out his arms and the dreamers surged towards him as the darkness faded, revealing a land painted with colour. Luscious green fields rolled beneath a vibrant blue sky. Sweeping white clouds mirrored the clear bubbling streams, and there was not a patch of space left unadorned by flowers of every size and colour imaginable. Even in his dreams, Finn had never encountered such a paradise.

All thought of his dying home left him and he fell in line to take his place with the dreamers. Just a step away from that thick, soft grass and the man’s hand pressed against Finn’s chest. He looked up in alarm, but the shining blue eyes were not looking at his. Instead, they were fixed on his chest.

“Where did you get that?”

Finn followed the man’s line of vision, soon coming to rest on the heart-shaped locket now glowing brightly on the chain around his neck. It must have come out of his shirt while running. “I’ve always had it,” he said. “I used to fancy my mother gave it to me before she disappeared, but I don’t remember her anymore.” He fingered the locket reflectively for several moments before glancing back up at the man.

The blue glow seemed to have lessened somewhat and Finn could almost detect a hint of wonder beneath his piercing gaze. Yet no sooner did he realise this than the man frightened his focus away with a taunting grin. “Would you like to see her?”

Finn blinked in surprise. “See her?” he stammered. “See my mother?”

A simple nod was given in reply and the man took Finn’s hand, at last leading him into the land of colour. “Do you like it here, Finn?” the man asked, hearing him gasp and sigh in amazement at each turn of his head.

“I can’t believe it! What is this place?”

They passed a young girl lying asleep in a grove of wildflowers. “Look.” The man pointed to her. “How peaceful she is. She loves the flowers. And over there.” He indicated an old man wandering around with his neck stretched up to the sky. “I think it’s the clouds he is so fascinated by.”

Now that the man had pointed out those two, Finn began to notice people scattered all about the vast plains – laying, sitting, wandering, sleeping – each riveted on one particular feature be it so small as a blade of grass or so grand as the golden sun above. There was but one thing they had in common. “They all sway their heads with the song. But where is the singing coming from? None of them are opening their mouths at all.”

“Remove the locket from your neck for a moment,” the man instructed him. “But take care to keep a hold of it lest the song take hold of you before we reach your mother.”

Finn gave him a questioning glance but did as he was told. He cried out in shock and would have forced the chain back around his neck had the man not grabbed his hand, stopping him from doing so. “What are they?”

Surrounding each dreamer was a small group of terrifying creatures. Covered in grey feathers, they looked out of shining white eyes and had a large dark hole in the place of a mouth from which their eerie song came pouring out.

“Their one wish is for their song to be enjoyed. I allow them to call a new set of people each night and in return they give rest to those I have entrusted to them.”

“Can they be seen by the people?”

“No. They are ashamed of their ugliness and wish only to reveal their song. Put the locket back on now. It protects you.”

Finn was glad to do so but found he could no longer enjoy the sights or look at the people the way he had before. “Are we close to my mother?”

“They are, indeed, a chilling sight,” the man remarked, chuckling to himself. “She is up there.”

Finn’s heart skipped a beat as he followed the man’s arm to a woman sitting atop a small hill. She had her arms stretched out as though to catch the wind that set her golden hair dancing behind her. Finn was off in a flash, dragging the man after him until they stood before her, one with tears of joy, the other with tears of admiration. “Mother,” Finn breathed. At last he had a face to match with that word. “It’s me.”

She did not respond. She was looking straight at him, but her glowing hazel eyes did not see him.

“She is beautiful, isn’t she? Just like the day I met her – only then she was not so happy as she is now. I come here most often.”

It was almost a glare that Finn turned upon the man now. “She is like them.”

The man smiled sadly and nodded. “She could have stayed with me, but she sent you away with the locket and succumbed to the song.”

“Why?” Finn didn’t know whether to be angry at his mother or the man. “Can’t I free her?”

“She is free, Finn. It was you she sent into exile. With the locket, she knew you would never be drawn up here by the song and would be left in the outside world forever.” His expression betrayed a terrible sense of yearning, and he lifted his hand as though he wanted to touch Finn’s face. “But tell me, my son,” he continued, contorting his face in his effort to restrain his hand. “What brought you up here tonight?”

Though frowning, Finn’s eyes were wide, and his heart deafened his ears with its hammering. “I have no one anymore,” he said in a low voice. “They have all been taken. They have all disappeared in here.” His voice threatened to break, but he caught it just in time. “So, I came here to find them, but now I see that none will remember me or notice me, for they are trapped by your beasts and—”

“Yet they are happy that way!”

The boy shook his head and stared with his glum eyes. “They are as good as dead.”

“No, Finn,” growled his father, withdrawing his hand as though it had been bitten. “The outside world is what is dead!” He produced a small seed from the folds of his cloak. “Life is so fragile out there. Things die quicker than they can regrow. Like this seed. It is the last of its kind, but it has so much potential. Put it in the barren earth and it will soon be killed, but… put it inside that locket and it will allow this land to grow.”

Finn gripped the locket.

“Don’t think of yourself, Finn. Think of everyone out there. They are suffering to survive. Even you have had to work to exhaustion, and you are still young. There is no future in that world.” He lifted the seed to his son’s face. “They need you, Finn. See, that locket holds this land inside it and now that you have returned with it, you have a chance to right your mother’s error. You have a chance to welcome all here to end their suffering and find rest. Just open that locket, my son, and when you close it with this seed inside, the song shall be heard and enjoyed by all.”

Even after his father had finished speaking, his words hung in Finn’s ears as he searched for the truth in them. He looked at the locket, radiant in the world it had trapped within it. Then he looked at the seed, small and bare, yet full of life waiting to sprout. Finally, he turned to the silent woman beside him. “My mother might be happy.” He caressed her vacant, smiling face. “But she is not free.” He did not even give his father the chance to draw breath before throwing the locket onto the rock beside him and crushing it with his foot.

The song rose and fell, the colour faded into darkness, and the tower collapsed on those within.

Over the hill in the middle of the city, the sun rose without the shadow of the tower blocking its golden light. In its place, a tiny sprout poked out of the ground. It was hardly much taller than a fingernail, but it was not missed. After being woken up unusually early by the unhindered sun, a young girl came wandering up the hill and could not contain her delight at what she had found. Every day, she returned to water it until it grew into a great tree with hundreds of sprouts shooting up all over the hill.

No one knew how it had started to grow, nor what had happened to the dark tower. All they knew was that the devil’s lullaby was no longer heard, and that they had a reason to be happy again.