Within

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room.

The first time he led her to the room, after she had brought him food and drink and then he had bid her follow him, they ascended more stairs than she counted into darkness. By the light of the hearth she had beheld his kind eyes, and at first she followed his thick leather boots up wooden stairs. Candles in the stone walls became fewer and farther between, their small flames guttering before fading away, and eventually she was following not her vision of him but his heavy footsteps, the deep sound of his breath, the lingering warmth of his body.

Into the darkness.

She was used to flame and hearth, candle and flicker. She did not know darkness, and in its mystery she sensed something of the infinite. In the darkness into which he led her, up and up and up, she sensed possibility like she did not understand nor had words for.

She had been taught that the light and the walls kept safe, that within provided protection. Safety and protection from what were never mentioned, as though even giving dark potential name could lend it power.

She heard a metallic clank, a scrape of wood over stone. Then his hand, first on her upper arm before it slid down her elbow, her wrist, his fingers over hers as he led her forward, from the stairs to a level surface. The floor felt harder on her feet than wood, and colder, and she shivered as he led her further in until she felt softness like she’d never known.

It was a bed, and she slipped toward it, into it. The cloth was smoother than she had ever felt, and warm, and she imagine for a moment like she might sink into its great softness.

She felt his weight behind her, following her, and then their weight found each other. She remembered his kind eyes as she felt his hot lips, the desire in his body. No words were spoken; everything they had need to say had been said before, before the darkness and the candles and the stairs and the bed.

In the bed they were together. For him it seemed all that mattered. For her, it felt like escape.

After, they lay in the darkness, their breath ragged as it slowed. He had moved aside a layer and it was as though they were laying within the bed itself.

Eventually their breath slowed further into slumber, and from there into darkness and dreams.

*

She dreamt of stone, and flame, and wood. She dreamt of cloth, and darkness, of labor and service.

These things, she knew.

*

She woke to new. The room had been black-dark but now she could make out details. She could see, despite that there were no candles or flames, because in the wall was a large rectangle through which came grey light like nothing she had ever seen.

She moved her body from within the bed. She nearly yelped when she put her feet on the floor, so cold was its surface as it had not been warmed by hearth through the night. On the ceiling was a similar rectangle of light, but as she would not be able to reach it she moved instead to the wall, which seemed wrought of smooth rock like she had never before encountered.

And that rectangle.

Approaching from the side, it seemed to glow with grey light.

She reached out to touch it —

Searing pain exploded in her hand as though she had thrust it into flame, and a startled scream escaped her as she by instinct clutched her hand to her. Sudden flames licked over her fingers before she felt strong arms envelop her, pull her back to and within the bed. A powerful grasp held her for a long moment, before greyness again pierced the darkness and the man pulled aside the coverings from her face.

She had seen he was handsome the night before, sensed the kindness in his eyes, but in this new light, so different from candles and flames, she could more clearly make out his features: his black-dark hair shot through silver, his smooth skin, his startling clear eyes.

“You’re okay,” he told her.

She did not know how to respond.

He eased the covering down, uncovering her bare body. Where the new light had touched her skin there lingered pain, but already the flames were gone and if there had been burns they, too, had vanished.

“The light of the sun is not our friend,” the man said.

She understood all those words save one. “The sun?”

He looked toward the rectangle of light. “Right,” he said, as if gaining understanding. “Of course. You were born within, and it is all you know. Not outside.”

“Outside,” she repeated, following his gaze. “I’ve heard of it.”

He nodded toward the rectangle. “That is called a window, and beyond it is outside.”

“No one knows how big it is.”

“It’s eternal,” he said. In his voice she sensed awe. She wondered what wonders he knew.

“The light hurt.”

He nodded. “Outside there is more than stone and wood and flame. Outside it is only dark part of the time. The rest of the time, there is in the sky a great yellow sphere called the sun —.”

“The sky?”

He looked up. “Imagine if there were no ceiling above us. Just emptiness, and imagine that emptiness went on forever. That is the sky. When the sun is in the sky it is blue and bright and harmful, but when the sun is not, it is dark that goes on forever and forever.”

“It sounds . . .” she grasped for a word, but none she knew seemed relevant. She’d been taught about outside many, many years ago, back in school when they’d also told her about the great artists and writers of before, of a time when people had feared famine because they needed to consume something usually called “food.” There were rumors that food had once been important to existence, whisperings that there had once been a lot more to the world than just stone and darkness and flame, but no one seemed clear on what that was.

She had a memory of her youth, hundreds of years before, when she’d asked her parents about food, and what a word like the “world” meant, but they’d only hushed her and told her to mind her globin like a good girl.

She had not thought of her parents in decades. She wondered how they were.

“It’s more than anyone knows,” the man told her.

“You have a window,” she told him.

He nodded. “I was . . . not born within.”

“You’re from outside?”

“I’m from a place called New York,” he told her.

“Is there an Old York?”

He chuckled. “Not that I know of. There was probably, once, a York.”

“But yours is new.”

“It was new hundreds of years ago. Perhaps thousands.”

“You don’t know?”

He hesitated, his eyes still on the window, through which came that light grey light. It was dimmer than any candle she had ever seen but yet still hurt her eyes to look at it. “I never thought about it. I was . . . otherwise occupied.”

She followed his gaze again to the window, the narrow view it offered. It was mostly grey, with a hint of green, almost entirely featureless, and condensed on its surface with moisture that dripped down in rivulets.

“It’s glass,” she told him.

He nodded. “Clear.”

“And what’s . . . outside?”

“So many things,” he said. “We’re not in New York.”

“We’re Within.”

He nodded. “But so many places are within. We’re miles from New York. Sometimes I wonder if New York is even still there.”

“New York was America,” she said, remembering her lessons.

He nodded. “We are not in America. We are across an ocean, in a place once known as Europe —.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“I didn’t bring you anywhere except my chambers.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

He paused, then: “Because when I saw you in the darkness I thought you would appreciate it. I thought . . . you seemed to know that there is more to the world than within, and you’re right.”

“But I can’t see it,” she told him, holding up her arm, which was without mark if not without pain. “It hurts.”

“Only the light of the sun,” he told her.

“The sphere.”

“It’s a star,” he told her. “There are millions of them. Billions. But this one casting grey light through my window is closest of all and so its light on us does us pain. But our world —.”

“Our world?”

He pointed at the window. “So many of us have lived within for so long that we have forgotten that there is a world beyond. We have not just forgotten that the sun and stars exist but even the words for them in the first place. And our sun is one star, and a star is like the candles that light our hallways, the hearths that warm our evenings, but like there millions burning. Can you imagine that?”

She looked at the window and its grey light. She wasn’t sure she could. She told him so.

He nodded.

He traced his fingertips along her still bare skin. Some residual pain lingered but seemed as though a memory, and in the wake of his touch seemed more distant still. When his lips followed his fingertips and his tongue followed his lips the sensation overtook her, simmered through her whole body like warmth and light and flickering flame.

*

Darkness. Slumber.

*

When she woke everything was again black-dark. Ink-gloom filled the room, her senses.

“Are you awake?” came his voice.

She nodded.

He chuckled. “I felt that.”

“I’m awake,” she told him.

“Come with me,” he told her, and with that moved, from the bed, from the covers and the sheets and the warmth. The floor was cool on against her soles, and he opened and led her through the door they had used to enter the room, but instead of descending they climbed further still until —

She felt it first against her cheeks, cool air. Felt it in her hair. So light.

His hand guided her, gently, and then she felt the wooden stairs give way to another surface, something harder, and then the cool air was all over her, all around her.

“Look,” he told her.

And she did.

At first she saw only darkness and grey, but then her eyes seemed to acclimate to the darkness as her skin acclimated to the cold. Features and details resolved, and she saw that he had brought her up onto . . . a sort of platform, with a floor hewn of rock and . . . nothing else. She was used to rock and wood all over, surfaces joining and fixing, but there she realized there was nothing above her except . . .

“Sky,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said.

She looked up into it. It was darkness deeper than she had ever seen, darkness that just kept going and in that darkness shimmered points of light that sparkled and danced like magic.

“Stars,” she said.

“Yes,” he told her.

And she felt their warmth on her, not like the flames from the grey light of what he called the sun but the gentle heat of a billion stars.