Heoldel By Melia Kootnikoff

The people of Heoldel were precociously superstitious. They knew to cover their mirrors after sunset so as not to be pulled in and replaced by their mimicking reflections. To not gaze upon the moon when with child, lest it be born wolfish or malformed. And to hide and hang iron above the doorways of their homes, fortifying their houses against the deceivers that may sleep beside them. Even with all their charms and effigies, they were not prepared. Paranoia ate through families at a dizzying speed. Neighbours turned on neighbours, priests turned on laities and eventually, even mothers turned on their children. No one was safe from the shooting finger of accusation. Warm homes turned cold, their fireplaces bare and windows barred with crudely affixed planks of splintering floorboards. If only they could somehow hermetically seal their homes to protect them from the bad air. But it never worked; the bad air always found a way to seep through.

I: The Beginning

The sprawling city of Heoldel once stood proud, planted on a jagged cliffside. It spiralled high into the tops of the mountain and plunged low at level with the sea. The undulating sea was where Heoldel was born, deep in the thick twisting waters where no light would penetrate the idea of Heoldel bubbled up to the turbulent ocean surface. The Crimson Sea breathed life into Heoldel. The sea would grasp boats, loaded with fine silks and fragrant spices and carry them to the city’s shores with its waves. It would nourish the gnashing mouths of Heoldel and fill them with salted eels and herring. The sea was the fount of Heoldel’s success; the people knew it and the Church ensured that they would never forget it. 

Heoldel was most proud of its cathedral, which resided in the upper reaches of the city in the same ward as its imposing ebony clocktower. The clocktower may have been taller than the cathedral, but what it lacked in verticality, it made up for in grandiosity. The eminent cathedral was crafted with an ornamental flying buttress that allowed for its large stained-glass windows to pour red-tinted light onto the devoted knelt within. Its pointed arches were encumbered by grotesques whose warped faces relayed a stony misery. Outsiders were not permitted into the upper reaches so their sinful eyes would not rot its blessed architecture. Only those enlightened to the machinations could pray in the cold embrace of Heoldel.

One tiny figure walked along the spine of Heoldel—Lavinia. She was nine when it started. She was born to a loving mother and father and had one younger brother. They were a perfectly dull, ordinary family. Her parents attended the monthly Giveance like everyone else. However, during one of the months of her ninth year, Lavinia did not give. Her hand was too sore from having fallen earlier. She had sheared off the top layer of her palm, spilling her warm, ruby nectar, and left it puddling on the alley’s cold cobblestone floor. 

That evening, after her nightly prayers, Lavinia was almost asleep when her brother slipped into her room like a sickly shadow. His diminutive stature stood at the edge of her bed. The bedframe cut off his lower body and his head resembled a cabbage sprouting from the ground.

“Why didn’t you give, Lavinia?” 

Lavinia sprang up and squeaked, “What are you talking about? I don’t know what you mean!” her brother’s nose began to bleed. Somehow, she knew it was her fault. 

“I saw you—you coveted your blood. Mommy says we will all be punished if we don’t give.” Blood trickled down his placid face.

“Okay…” Lavinia admitted. “I cut my hand and it hurt too bad to give. I promise I’ll give two times next time—just please don’t tell anyone! Please, please, please!” she begged. Her brother wiped his nose, painting his pale face with red streaks. He turned, and his cabbage head bobbed out of Lavinia’s quiet room.

A few days later, Lavinia noticed the first signs. Heoldel was sick, not only the people but the city itself. She found some of its walls were slick with a viscous slime that smelt of decay. The next day, her bosom friend didn’t show up for their usual day of play. So, Lavinia decided to go to the market and quell her growing worry with a treat of a pickled egg. The market had a festering smell lingering above it. And many of the merchants wore gaunt faces. On her way to the stall, Lavinia eyed the old man who held his sign that warned against the Giveance. She wondered if he didn’t give, and if he did not, perhaps she needn’t fret so dearly.

 Later at dinner, her mother remarked that the butcher was unusually closed and her father grumbled about it being a good thing, considering the butcher was a non-believer. The following morning, there was a thickness in the stale air of their home. Lavinia’s large, dark eyes peered behind the archway of her brother’s room. The smell was overwhelming; it was a raw, sweet scent that hung heavily in the senses. Lavinia’s father was kneeling on the ground, swaying back and forth and muttering an old Heoldian prayer. The room was red, coated floor to ceiling in steaming and sticky blood. Her mother’s wails sang louder than the morning thrushes as she desperately cradled the exsanguinated body. The condemning eyes of judgment locked onto her mother. 

She must have been a witch. 

She must have been blasphemous.

Perhaps she was just mad.

But someone had to be punished and her father lit the pyre. 

Lavinia didn’t say anything, but she knew it was her fault. If she wasn’t so scared of inconsequential pain, they would have received her blood and wouldn’t have needed to ring out her brother as recompense. Lavinia couldn’t take the shame, so she ran. She knew she must return what she owed. She quietly dragged the cupboard and the chair that leaned against her front door, barricading the outside mists from molesting their sacred haven. Once outside, she gagged on the coalescence of burning ash and rotting flesh. It was hard to see through her blurry tears of revulsion. No matter, Lavinia had her quest and persevered past the pungent perfumes. She dashed in and out of the familiar alleys of her city, newly decorated with slumped figures that hacked and oozed until she finally made it to the water.

 Lavinia fell to her knees and gawked at the pristine night sky. She wept and she prayed, screaming until her lungs crackled and her head throbbed with exaltation. The young girl rose, twisting her head to steal a final peek at the city where she was born. Heoldel reminded her of a candle. She smiled and dove into the sea.

Lavinia’s body floated in the icy water; her limbs tingled as if hundreds of needles burrowed in and out of her skin. She exhaled and began her repentant descent. As she sunk deeper into the freezing churning waters, she was suddenly captured by a warm light. It hoisted her up and she penetrated through the surface membrane of the Crimson Sea. Her body continued to ascend above the docks, above her house, above even the ivory clock tower until she limply hung suspended in the sky, her head bent toward the moon. Her dark, unblinking eyes slowly turned white and Lavinia was gone. Instead, what remained was a divine instrument of the new age. 

II: The Hollow Man

The sky was starless. The moon radiated a cold light that shone through clouds that tangled over Heoldel like tentacles. Once bustling and buzzing with commerce, the docks are heavy with the loudest silence. There was a time when barrels were stuffed with slippery eels, ready to be shipped to distant seas or delivered to the market square, where a young boy might slip his hand through a hole and help himself to a salinated snack. The merchant would never notice; he was too busy shouting and waving his hands at the thumping sea of potential customers. The marketplace was the city’s heart. Its arteries extended and twisted through each block delivering sweet succour to citizen’s homes. Now, most of its arteries were severed and lay hemorrhaging. The ones that have remained are changed. They are blackened and fetid ― spreading a miasmic ichor to the doors baptized in goat’s blood. 

One man stood wandering the desolate maze of the market. Each lonely footstep echoed throughout the vacuous square. He stepped over detritus and filth as the city undulated under his weight. He knew it would lead to this. He had smelt it coming. Heoldel dove too deep into the unknowable and they all must atone. He went by the corner where, in times past, he fervently gripped his sign that prophesized the city’s entropy. He would beg, preach and grasp at the nameless figures that scurried by and refused him acknowledgement. If only they had listened to his omens regarding the Giveance. Its indulgent debauchery could never reward such an immoral population. Heoldel’s foundation was bloated and cancerous since the day of its perverted conception. 

Now, all that remained in his old spot was a warped yellowed crate excreting a green sludge. The man’s isolation was accompanied only by vindication. A man can survive on vindication alone for a time. But eventually, he will wear down. His translucent skin will stretch tightly against his naked bones. And the gnawing feeling deep in his belly will start to eat itself until he is hollow — a hollow, priggish man subsisting on self-satisfaction. 

The man made his way to the docks. He was drawn to them; he convinced himself it was in case a rusty treasure washed up on the pebbled shores. He travelled over pitted roads without even a rat to keep him company. He made it to the water, a reprieve from the acridity that permeated the city. It was always unspoiled and pure by the sea. If he was lucky, a wave would come crashing and cleanse him of the city’s putridity. He loved the prickle of the salty spray. 

That night, as he stood on the beach, he had company for the first time in months. His old, crooked back creaked as he looked up at the opalescent mass that drifted down from the sky. Its abundant appendages glistened in the light reflected off the waves. The man had never seen anything so heartrendingly beautiful and a devoutness started to fill the hollow man. It began in the tips of his fingers and spread slowly up his arms and into his heart. Warmth coursed through his atrophied veins. His white breath was visible in the brisk night, but he felt warm — like he had returned to his mother’s womb. He no longer needed to be alone if he just let Her in. She wanted to love him if he would have Her. The man desired Her like he desired nothing else. All that he had to do was let go. Let go of his ego, let go of his indecision, let go of himself. He let go and She came in. A hollow man stuffed with something other than himself left the beach. He was no longer alone.

III: Deliverance

The Church was the last to fall. They tried to claim responsibility for everything. It was said that every non-believer was smote, their blood having been boiled from inside, forcing it to erupt from its vessel like a geyser. The church’s plan worked for a while. The few survivors believed they were more righteous than their sinful neighbours who succumbed to the blood plague. The remaining populace was not the same as they once were; some had grown long yellow nails. Others had their teeth turn a reddish black and slowly fall out. One man’s arm had grown fur and began scheming against him. His mother had to tie him down and chop it off with a blunt axe. None of this seemed odd to the people of Heoldel, they carried on. And when it came time for the now weekly Giveance, they would creep through the empty, blood-stained streets of Heoldel with their heads hanging low. They were eager to leave the festering lower city whose wounds befouled the ground. Collapsed houses and shops that reeked of spoiled meat lined the road up to the cathedral. The city watched the procession of sunken faces skulking towards its upper reaches. 

The pinnacle district of Heoldel was less affected as its rotting lower levels. However, decay still crept upward, grasping at its walls with a gangrenous hand. The congregation arrived at the grand staircase that led up to the divine cathedral and began to ascend. A palatial door protected the inner sanctum. Carved on the door was a holy scene: at its base, the ocean, wild and twirling. Above was a chalice pouring an ever-flowing waterfall of crimson into the salty sea and at the top was the stark moon proudly looking down. The doors rumbled open and the dusty inner air leaked into the crowd’s nostrils. The ritual was beginning and everyone hurriedly took their seats.

 Dim sputtering candles were scattered around the spacious room. At the far end was a raised platform with a lectern. Behind it, forty candles stood melting, casting large shadows on the red stained-glass windows that stretched to the high ceilings. Standing tall at the lectern was the high priest with outstretched arms waving wildly in the air as if he were a conductor guiding the symphony of his sermon. More priests bled into the room, carrying bowls and knives for every member of the flock. The religious instruments were handed out to the audience and they all began to sing in his symphony. Suddenly, the doors slammed open with a rushing wind. The candles were extinguished and smoke filled the darkening room. The only light that remained was the blinding ray of the moon that sliced into the cathedral hall. 

A hollow man filled with devoutness walked up the stairs and stood in the archway of the ornamented doors. His head lolled upwards and his arms slowly rose from his side. He proclaimed, “Your Gods are false; they purloin accolades from the Lady of The Night Sky and adorn your praises onto themselves. She did deliver us into this new age and on the rotting grave of our misguided grievances, we will be reborn. Never shall we mistrust one another and idly watch as an accused soul’s body is consumed and eaten by fire. Nor will we ever be lonely, forced to shun a man for his oddness, leaving him to wander in isolation. What blessed Gods would damn a people for their sins? Rather, let the Lady have dominion over you and demonstrate how to be pure. We will all be joined as one under her beautiful smile in the night sky.”

His blasphemous words rung out into the shocked silence of the cathedral. The disfigured crowd shifted in their quiet seats. They stared at his glowing frame. The light of the moon outlined his figure, giving him an appearance of cosmic authority. A loud thud snapped the red and yellow eyes of the audience back towards the archbishop. He had collapsed onto the floor and blood pooled under him. It flowed down the platform like a waterfall.

Sweet, lingering death hung in the streets of Heoldel. The once proudly laid brickwork of the city now sits bulging, concealing putrescent murk under the cracked gray clay. The moon stands naked in the sky demanding reverence. The wise and the fearful prostrate themselves under the piercing spotlight of her beams. Pious prayers slip from the mouths of the truly devoted, few in numbers to start but the mumbles begin to infect their bowing neighbours. Soon, the entire crowd moans and writhes in communion. They are loved and she loves them so purely.