Excerpt: View from Einar's Tower

“Of course it was fabricated!” He reddened in the face again and thrust his fist into the air as before. “It was a story damn it! That is what stories are, fabrications!” I thought he would hurt himself if he angered further.
“The female tells better ones.”
“You just want us to be trapped here telling you stories.”
“As you wish.”
“No, not as I wish. I don’t want to be here.” He rose from his place and took Esiabalie by the hands. “Come my love. We will find a way out of here.” She stood and the two began to go into the void. They walked with feet upon no ground nor floor. They walked away from chair and box until they were again alone in darkness with nowhere to sit. They continued for a very long time until Esiabalie grew tired.
“Please, Mahtan. How do we know we are even going anywhere? How to we know we are not walking in circles?” And to prove her true they saw something in the distance before them. When they picked up their pace to get to the visible thing, there was the window box and the chair. “Look it is as I thought.”
“Everything is,” I said unable to help myself. It was exactly what they needed to understand in order to go back to the place called home. I waited, certain that they would disappoint me and leave. But they did not.
The male fell to crying. “I have failed you Esia, my darling and our little one.” He buckled to his knees. A new vibration occurred in the void. I felt guilt. Why did they not go home? I had told them the way.
The woman spoke aloud. “He asked that you show yourself at the end of his story. Have you honor to do that?”
“I have. I am. I show you all that I am and all that I can. I am this. All around you and in you and you in me and yet apart. I cannot show you more as there is only everything. And nothing.”
The female nodded. “I think I understand. You are darkness.”
“I am thinking stuff unbounded by form.”
Mahtan, the male, turned his head upward again. “We will make a deal with you, whoever you are. We will tell you a story and you give us one key or clue or something to lead us out of here.”
“What sort of key would that be? What clue?”
“You know. You know how we can get out of this black pit of yours and home again. You tell us. Or tell us what it is you want from us!” He raised his voice in anger again.
I could not fathom what he meant since they were the creators of their experiences here. They came upon me. How was I to know what he wanted? Clearly though, he thought I had some means to remove him from some pit he had created for himself … and for her, her inside my void. I could only suppose that a pit and a void were all the same to him as there was only me here where they had come.
So I thought the idea that he would show me what he needed when the time came and would create it himself as long as I agreed. So I did. “I will give you a step in the right direction for each story.” I did not know what else to say, what else to offer. But as they thought to walk out just before this, it seemed quite enough to give him.
“What of the stories we have already told? And a small tale is worth less than a long one. We ought to get two steps for a long story.” He bartered still looking upward to what I do not know.
This was but a bit confusing. That there were degrees of value to stories which were told for a window that would not keep them but only disappear away, made little sense to me. “You are the one choosing the stories and the words to tell them. You it is who chooses the length and meaning and all that goes with it.”
“Yes, I do. But there are simple tales and complicated ones, legends and parables… those are different kinds. They are told differently… some take more thought.”
That I understood for it takes more thought to manifest a thing than to merely have an idea and so I said this to the male to appease his barter. “Then two steps for the long and one for the short for each tale.”
“Done! And you must keep your word this time.”
“Wait, Mahtan,” Esia objected, “How many stories will that be? How do we know how far it is, how much it will take?”
“That is true, Esiabalie, my love.” His face turned up yet again. “How many stories will it take? How many steps in all?”
Another vibration panic and something I did not like at all, anger. “You come here of your own accord. I have accommodated you without violence. I have told you everything you need to know and yet you accuse me and question me. I tell you I do not know your mind, and yet you insist that you do not know your own. Set your terms and stop changing them.”