Beneath Surfaces

I crumpled and threw up my tea. The monk’s serene face looked down at me.

“W-why did you do that?” I gasped.

“I have been asked to give you a gentle introduction to our order.” The monk helped me to my feet.

My stomach throbbed. “Gentle? That hurt!”

“Pain is in your mind, not your body,” said the monk. “Some of the brothers have voted to speak with you. I am to bring you to them.”

I blinked. “The Wizard is much older. And the Hunter is much more experienced. You’d be better off—”

The monk punched me in the stomach again. My bound hands hit the floor for the second time. The smell of regurgitated tea filled my nostrils.

“If,” said the monk, helping me up again, “what we suspect about you is true, you must learn, and quickly. One of the monks in our order has the gift of prophecy, and many of us can sense when others have magical gifts. Your fellow pilgrims are gifted magic users. The other is a re-animated corpse. You are the only one who’s just a normal person.”

“I knew it,” I said. “Asuana is gifted. She’s has magic too?”

But before I could analyse this new information, I sensed the monk tense and guarded my stomach with my bound hands.

“You flinch,” said the monk, backhanding me in the face. I crashed into bags of rice. “The remembrance of pain rules your body.” The monk picked up a metal pot and brought it crashing down on my shin so hard that the pot’s wooden handle broke. Ignoring my scream, he said, “Oops. I will be punished for that. That pot cooks rice magically, without the need for a fire. Very valuable!” As I extracted himself from the rice bags, I pulled the knife from my boot (which had miraculously appeared there again this morning). Moving to help me, the monk found the edge of an invisible blade at his throat. His eyes widened with surprise.

I grabbed the door handle and stumbled into fresh air.

“Someone whose wrists are bound,” said the monk, “probably shouldn’t have a knife. Come with me, and I’ll pretend I never knew.”

I didn’t move.

“On my honor, I will not strike you again,” said the monk.

I replaced the knife and followed, limping warily as the monk led me outside. The brewing storm clouds were still rumbling. “As I was saying, some of the monks voted to talk with you. One of them has been having dreams and says he saw you in them. Then again, we’ve all been having dreams, lately, so there’s been some debate about whether his is a prophecy.”

“Dreams?” I said.

“Ever since the storm began,” said the monk, “we’ve dreamed of a great city to the south—a city the size of the desert itself, left over from a time long forgotten. The architecture of this dream city is reminiscent of our chapel here at the monastery. In our dreams, we see that it shall become the last refuge for humanity against the morls.”

When I followed the monk around a corner, I saw that the monastery chapel was built from giant gray stones and covered with stained glass windows. The monk led me into the chapel, where other monks were all engaged in some combination of three activities—chanting in a strange language, punching each other, and bleeding. One man, with a metal plate on his knuckles struck another monk in the nose as he chanted an eerie melody, sending him sprawling (and still chanting!) onto the ground. Blood sprayed the stone walls. Monks carelessly obliterated the faces of other monks. Then, they switched places. Crashing fists made wet sounds, but never a scream of pain nor anger was heard.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said the monk. “This is the way of our particular order.”

“You hit each other?”

“On this day of the week, yes. We have a schedule. Tomorrow, there will be burning. The next day, devices such as the iron maiden, the rack, thumb screws, etcetera. We conquer our pain through a multitude of practices, awaiting the moment we are needed most,” said the monk.

I jumped out of the way as a man suffered a knockout blow from another man’s elbow. Most of the monks who took the punches never fought back. They simply stood up and asked for more until they were no longer conscious. Always, the chanting continued. When I reached a portion of the church where the monks were engaged solely in chanting, I breathed with relief and tried to ignore the sounds of pain from behind me. But the weird chanting had a way of getting into my head, like it was resonating inside my skull, giving me a migraine.

“I have brought him,” said the monk to his chanting brethren. One by one, they opened their eyes, closed their mouths, and turned to me in silence. “Tell him what you have dreamed.”

One monk—left eye black and swollen—said, “Yes, this is the face I have seen in my dreams.”

Another—with missing teeth—looked me up and down then pinched my arm hard, causing me to shout and back away. “Hmmm,” he said in disapproval. “I’m not so sure he’s cut out to be one of the sputtering candles that stand against the morlish nightfall.”

The monk who had brought me here explained, “Most of our order were collected at a young age, as street urchins and orphans from cities across the South Sea Nations. We were selected for our high pain tolerance. Among other things.”

A man whose face bore infected lacerations tried to pinch me, but I swatted his hand away as best I could with my wrists tied. He too seemed to disapprove. “He would need considerable training. He’s quite old. How old are you, boy? Fifteen?”

“Seventeen,” I said, offended.

“Even worse,” said the man with the lacerations. “How could we possibly prepare him in time? The end times are practically upon us.”

A face with a missing eye said, “Perhaps… He isn’t meant to be like us. Perhaps he has a different role to play.”

Various monks nodded as they considered this. Others scowled.

A man nursing a cauliflower ear said, “Why are his wrists bound?”

“You would know,” said the monk who had brought me, “if you had attended the morning committee meeting. Some of the pilgrims believe he killed the church-assigned guide.”

“Did you kill the church-assigned guide?” said Cauliflower Ear.

“Not that you’d believe me,” I said, “but we’re actually being followed by a morl named—”

“Father Ori,” said the monk who had brought me. “We know. Asuana attended our committee meeting this morning and informed us of what has transpired. She informed us that with regard to the murder, you had no motive and no murder weapon. She believes you are likely innocent. You did, however, pull an invisible knife on me just a moment ago. So perhaps she is less well informed than she thinks…”

The monk with the lacerations scoffed, “Asuana is never uninformed.”

Other monks nodded at this, which prompted me to say, “Wait, do you know her? You’re talking about her like you’ve met her before.”

“We’ve already said too much!” said Cauliflower Ear, spearing the monk who had brought me with a meaningful glare. “And if there’s even a chance he might be a murderer, we can’t risk telling him more.”

“It’s true,” said Face Lacerations. “For all we know he’s one of Father Ori’s shadow mercenaries.”

“I’m really not,” I said.

“I vote we take him back immediately,” said Cauliflower Ear. “Does Asuana even know you took him?”

“I told her I was going to escort him to the shower,” said the monk who had brought me.

“All of this,” exploded Cauliflower Ear, “because someone had a dream about him?” He looked at each of them in turn: Swollen Eye, Missing Teeth, Empty Eye Socket, Face Lacerations, and finally the monk who had brought me. “I demand a vote immediately. All in favor of bringing him back to Asuana, pretending this never happened, and letting fate run its course, say ‘Aye.’ All in favor of going behind our sister’s back and circumventing decades of carefully laid plans, please feel free to say ‘Nay.’”

One by one they answered. Swollen Eye, who had had the prophetic dream voted “Nay,” as did the monk who had brought me. The rest voted “Aye.”

In silence, the monk took me by the arm and led me away. The chanting resumed behind us.

“Wait,” I said, when he led me from the chapel, out into the gloom of the clouds. “Am I special? Am I supposed to do something? If there’s a prophecy about me, you can’t just hide it from me!”

He looked at me with sadness. “My name is Benji. That monk who dreamed of you was the one who dreamed of me when I was a child of seven, begging for scraps down in Seadom. On the day he took me in, he told me that he dreamed I would one day ‘open the door for darkness, so that the candles may shine.’”

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Benji. “Whenever I open a door, I think to myself, is this it? Is this the moment I’m going to fulfill my destiny? Hasn’t happened yet, at least to my knowledge. Or maybe it has, and I’ve done it without knowing it. Maybe the door I opened when I came to get you was the door I was supposed to open. Or maybe it’s the door to the outhouse when I took my last crap, or maybe it’s the door to the kitchen. Or maybe the door is a metaphor for me joining the order so many years ago. See? Does knowing about the door prophecy help me? I mean, the funny thing about prophecies is that it doesn’t really matter if you know about them. They’re supposed to come true regardless.”

“Can’t you just give me a hint?” I said.

He punched me in the stomach, causing me to fold in half and fall to my knees, wheezing. “No,” he said. “But I would recommend you continue increasing your pain tolerance. If a morl ever Gathers you, you’ll need it. Oh, and get rid of that knife. If you’re really innocent, you shouldn’t have something on you that seems like a murder weapon.”

“I keep trying,” I said, catching my breath. “I think Father Ori keeps putting it back in my boot.”

“Hmmm,” said Benji. He gazed down at me with a thoughtful expression. “It sounds like Father Ori really doesn’t want to Gather you.” He seemed like he was about to say more, but then, curtly, he said, “Come on. A vote is a vote. Back we go.”

In silence, he took me to the showers, ignoring my questions (like “How do you know about the Gatherings?” and “What did the other monk mean by ‘behind our sister’s back?’” and “Did you know Asuana before we got here?” and “Why do you all worship pain?”). I stopped asking things when he threatened to punch me in the stomach the next time I opened my mouth. Then he led me back to the guest room where the other pilgrims were waiting. Lilly made brief eye-contact with me and gave the smallest wink.

Although it wasn’t night, I collapsed on a bed in one corner and slept. I dreamed of the monks chanting in an alien language, filling my body and mind. What’s happening to me? I thought, as I fell. I dreamed of a cave and a shadowy form inside. I knew I should run, knew I had come face to face with Father Ori. He struck a candle, revealing his face—the face of a dragon. A mask, I realized, tearing away the dragon’s head. Beneath it was the face of a sea monster. I tore that away too, finding another mask, the face of a panther. Beneath that the face of a bearded nomad. Beneath that, the face of my mother. Beneath that, Lilly’s face. Beneath that, the Wizard’s. Beneath that, my father’s. Then the Fool’s face. The Singer’s. The Mourner with her veil. The Hunter. Then my own face. Then nothing. I blinked as I found myself alone in the cave, holding a candle. Nothing moved save my own chest and the flickering shadows. A hundred masks lay at my feet, all grinning lifelessly up at me.