The city needs help, so I am told to go deep into the Endless to find the patron goddess of our past. The board tells me that only she can tell us the predicted outcome of our war between the neighboring cities; it’s how it has been done for years, and so it has to be. It’s only through the glory of her flame that we will survive this battle, and so, as is my duty, I walk deep inside the cave named only “Endless.”
Instead of the usual torch lamp, I am given an old flashlight run by a battery that was taken from some secret stash. “Torches anger the Naiad,” the Board tells me. “She is jealous of anything that also has her powers and will consume itself in rage at the sight of it.”
For miles in the dark, I attempt to distract myself from the anxiousness pooling in my stomach; who knows when this fickle old technology will give out, leaving me alone? I wonder if the Endless is really as endless as I’m told.
The Endless is miles and miles of heavy tubing, able to fit at least four more poor souls like me from side to side. It’s the longest circular hallway in the world, at least that’s what people like to call it. Not like anyone really goes in, what with the constant guard watch and security pass required for entry. Like anyone would really want to step into the unknown, anyway. To pass the time, I play with old phrases my grandfather taught me when I was a child, inconsistently changing them for my needs.
“As I walk through the hallway of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.”
But even the Endless ends eventually.
It’s said that the Naiad swims in a pool of pure, precious Oil, deep in the ground. She silently brews life and power, and gives men her superior influence; if she’s revealed at the right place, at the right time, it’s said you would have everything. Now she is reclusive, private, but when she was younger, she would give you the world if you just asked.
“Ruling the world isn’t as easy as it used to be.” My grandfather used to say nostalgically. I would ask him what he meant, if he was talking about our city, if it was rich before my time. He said only that every man, woman, and child ruled the world back then. You just had to get your fill.
The Endless ends with a lengthy cement ramp, dipping farther and farther into a slant, occasionally turning, but no more. Expectation leaves me always looking around the continuous curve, never knowing when I will discover her. After more than seven complete circles down the downward slope, I find the Naiad in her haunt.
Her pool is not the secret lake or pond that I imagined. There’s not even enough Oil to fill a goddamn bathtub. And there lays the uncertain deity: a fifteen year old girl, stock-still in a half-filled tub of oil. Not possible, this doesn’t seem possible- but I get to work. Some things you just need to look past for the greater good.
The gallon-sized canister gets taken out of my bag (“Do not take too much Oil,” the Board said.“Conservation is key.”), and I try to ignore her face as I dip the container into her pool. She breathes. No response.
“Ignore whatever the Naiad might say to you,” the Board told me before I left. “She is a very fickle spirit, and has been known to trick and twist your mind.” Their advice seems sound, yet the way she looks past everything with her dark oily pupils, no irises, and how she shallowly breaths through her mouth, that seems like no trick— it looks like a fever dream. Screwing the cap, I turned around to place the Oil in my bag.
She speaks.
“I think. . .,” she garbles. “I think it is broken.” What a strange use of words, like they were foreign inside of her mouth, mechanical in nature, unnatural. Stranger still, the phrase reminds me of Claudia, who would grumble and roll around in her bed, holding her stomach melodramatically as she complained, “I think it’s broken.” I know this Naiad wants none of my care, yet I get a feeling for what she is asking of me. With Claudia, I would sooth her by telling her it that it wasn’t really broken at all, that it was just hurting. So I lift her out of her pool and gently set her onto the floor to examine her. Precious Oil soaks into my shirt from where I held her in my arms.
Touching her stomach, I feel sharp points, and as I lift up her shirt, slick and stuck, I see metal. Sticking out of rough, damaged skin are haphazard pieces of steel, apparently attempting to escape her insides. She seems a victim of shrapnel, yet nothing but her guts are spiked. I touch the pieces of steel gently as she stares at the roof with glassy pupils. I press them harder, and still no response. I tear at her skin to see what’s inside; it rips like paper, and there is still no response except for the unsteady rise of breath.
Gears. Gears, and bone, and flesh. Tiny little gears caked in dry oil like stuck tar, with seemingly no order to their placement. A couple tiny gears are imbedded in her intestines, weak and bent out of shape from overuse. I uncover one imbedded in one of the ribs that didn’t shatter; I can’t imagine how quick they must have whirled to do the damage they did.
“Not possible,” she muddles out, reflecting my thoughts. But I don’t think that’s how she meant it.
“What’s not possible?” I ask the fallen idol, slowly removing shards from her flesh. She does not reply. I no longer ask. It’s hard to get the smaller slivers out, but I’ll do what I can.
Smoothing back her tissue paper skin, I set her back in her dismal pool to sleep. The gears are stacked haphazardly against each other, leaving only one still imbedded in the bone. It makes no difference. The damage has been done. I wonder again what she thinks isn’t possible; there are just too many promising possibilities for failure, for false options. False idols - she still breathes.
A little box of matches brought down divinity one day. I took off my Oil splotched shirt, took out my matches, and lit the edge of the hem. A little bit of her instantly burst to life. A critical throe of fate later and the rest of her burned as well. It was not painless; the sounds she made in death could choke the air out of your lungs, sting your eyes, and burn your nostrils. Her last exhale was a shriek, not a sigh. She was ripped out of life on the spot and then left to burn out slowly, to dry up in flame.
So I walk, shirtless and shivering after the heat of her life left my bones. The cement ramp is a constant circular hill as I climb back up to corporeal ideals. I care not about the city, but the sky is all I can hope for now, and so I make my way towards progress. The smoke follows me, chokes me up, but I take my time walking the miles of Endless, even when the battery dies- for as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.
