A Square of Day

            Mercifully, it got dark within the hour. Milton had thought it was morning when he made his escape, but then again, he had thought he was an hour outside of Reben as well. The Sarona spread out in front of him endlessly – in truth, given his knowledge of geography, it could be thousands of miles before he hit civilization.

            He looked back at the facility. It seemed so small behind him. He had no way of knowing if it had looked that way in the mountains, but actually, the rocks and sparse vegetation surrounding it did almost look like they could fit on a mountainside. He’d heard a theory that there were certain locations that were “shared spaces” – that you could walk into it one way and walk out on the other side of the world – but he never knew it to be anything more than highly theoretical arcane physics, let alone that anyone would actually put the principle into practice.

            The desert was sandy here. It made it difficult to walk, and Milton worried that water was going to be hard to come by. At least it meant there wouldn’t be too many insects. Of course, becoming a mummified corpse wasn’t exactly the alternative he was looking for.

            It was the Sarona, though. He was about eighty five percent certain of that. The sand had rubbed most of the blood off of his feet. Despite the difficulty in walking, the actual sensation of cool sand on his feet was pleasant. He imagined it would not be so when the sun came up. Without water, he wasn’t even sure he would make it to the next sunset.

            Milton was not entirely excited about the prospect of death out in the middle of nowhere a whole continent away from home, but it was better than that cell, and that damned faceless man. He’d resolved to never go back to that place again, but it was clear that he had been insane to try to make it out in the desert. The faceless man was gone. Probably. All that remained in there were the bodies, and those didn’t bother him as much. There could be water there. Or clothing. Or he might even be able to find a way to go back to Narcia.

            He decided to climb the next dune. If there wasn’t an oasis or, gods be good, a town, he would turn back and try the facility again. Just the thought brought back the image of the faceless man to his mind. He strained with it, trying to block the thought out from his mind. As a child, Milton had seen something – maybe it was a horror movie, or just an advertisement for a haunted house for Reap’s Eve festivities – a decayed corpse in a shower. He became convinced that the monster could be waiting for him, so he if he entered a bathroom and the shower’s curtain was drawn shut, he would whip it open to make sure it wasn’t there. He wasn’t so frightened of walking corpses these days but the habit stuck with him. He recognized that fear now, looking back at the facility in which he had been kept. It was like one giant shower with its curtain drawn shut. Only he had seen the monster within, had seen what it could do.

            It took longer than he had expected, but finally he came to the top of the dune. It was the highest for what looked like a long way. And there was a light. It was far away – maybe even miles, the air was so clear that distance seemed to shrink – but he could definitely see it. There was a light, somehow golden and blue at the same time.

            Well, he thought, it’s not an oasis, but this calls for some investigation.

            He plodded carefully down the dune, losing balance now and again, only to regain it before he fell. Despite the coolness bordering on cold, he was well aware of the dryness. His lips were beginning to chap, and his skin felt tight. It took him nearly an hour before he got close enough to see what the light was.

            It was day. There was a square of daytime, standing at the top of a dune. The closer he got, the more overwhelmingly bright it seemed. Around him, the sky was inky black and sprayed with a million stars, but through this square, the sky was robin’s egg blue, and the sand was golden and bright.

            When he reached the square, he noticed that there was something else there. It was a long, narrow log, like sun-bleached driftwood, sticking a few feet out of the ground. There was a piece of paper stapled to it, with flowing but very legible handwriting on it:

            “Great to be outside, isn’t it? Please find the package under this log. I recommend sticking to the Nightlands, but then I do prefer the cold. Either way, do bundle up. Stick to bearing 348, as best you can. –D”

            Milton pulled the log out. Sand rushed into the hole left by it, but with some effort he was able to find a rather large bundle wrapped in a tarp. Inside, he found a large backpack, and what seemed to be a kind of belt-harness with two large bottles of water slung from it. Inside the pack, other than a compass and a cigarette lighter, there were several vacuum-sealed packages with flatbread, hummus, and falafel. He tore one open and attacked it like an animal. It was, perhaps, the greatest single thing he had ever eaten in his life. Either that or he was hungry.

            Finally, there was clothing. The clothes were incredibly light, flowing robes, something he believed was called a thawb, including a sort of headdress, both of which were midnight blue. Milton put the clothes on and then donned the harness and the backpack. On one hand, he felt far more prepared, but on the other, all the weight made his steps even more awkward than they had been before.

            The day-square was just there, unchanging. This seemed to confirm it, he was in the Sarona. The Sarona was filled with weird, incongruous things. He’d heard about the street lamps growing out of the ground on the eastern side, and there was a story he’d heard of a group of office buildings that seemed to have sprung up from nowhere in the north. Milton had always assumed that these were just old Djinni ruins that only looked that way because they were so old, but this… this was no Djinni artifact. This was a square of daytime in the middle of night.

            He hoisted the backpack up, tightening its straps, then turned back once more to see if he could see the facility behind him. He could not – it was hidden by the tall dune he had climbed over – but what he did see was the sun. It had risen, judging from its height over the horizon, about half an hour ago. And yet the sky remained inky black, and scattered with stars.

            The Nightlands indeed, Milton thought. He pulled out the compass and began to walk.

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2012)