Art Pact 239 - Spirit City


Lords and ladies and other things that hunt in the inbetween spaces, observe this simple mirror trick. Hold a mirror close to a light - not too close, perhaps the width of a knife's blade away, so that the light shines back in on itself with but barely diminished strength, then stare sidelong into the gap. There you will see the spirit city of rotted silver domes and empty boulevards. Reach forth into that space with a knife's blade, for I know you have one to hand, and scratch at the window. If the planets sit in their houses that scratch will grow and grow and open into a door until you can reach in a hand, a head, a leg, and step into the bewildering bright gloom on the other side.

You are burning with questions, lords and ladies and other hunters, you are aflame with curiosity, yet wait. Do not do this yet. This is not the trick. Any fool with a mirror and a light and a knife with a sharp point can cut the membrane and travel across into the other city. But once one arrives, what then? To traipse those empty streets is to learn nothing - to learn less than nothing, for the very memories of your own past would be driven from their perches by the eerie silence of that hidden city. Some of you, I know, think that you would welcome such a boon. But as the recollections of bright frost mornings and first kisses, mother's hugs and the crimson blossom around a rival's throat drip careless from your uncasked mind, what will you think then? You are not the unlucky ones, no matter how much you might fool yourselves. That privilege is reserved for the dwellers in niches that fear your claws, that fear your teeth and the shallow pond of stillness beneath the surface of which you submerge your rage. You may not know it, but you have nothing you wish to forget. They are those who you have blessed with memories like swallowed razor blades, thoughts that jangle within their heads, cutting and slicing and healing all at the same time so that each thought that touches upon them is as painful as the last.

No, to drink from this Lethe is no trick, but to find the occupants of that city, those downtrodden, that is the trick. There are no mirrors in the city of domes, so you must bring your own, carry it through the door. Have you fought a mirror? It will fight. But those among you that are lords and ladies and hunters know that any fight can be won with cleverness, or with overwhelming force. I leave it to you to decide on your own methods. Take a mirror, then, through the space that you have carved for yourself. Into a place where no mirrors exist, and for good reason. There you can walk the cold cobbles and think upon your past, fix it in place so that it does not fade away and unmake you while you search. Hold the mirror in your right hand and watch both the mirror and the buildings on your left. It must be that way - to hold your mirror in your left hand is to invite disaster.

For a mile you may walk, as the soft stuff of your life becomes blurred and indistinct, as the memories of killing and eating are plucked away by the air, refracted by the pock-marked silver surfaces of the great domes. You may see nothing. You may take a single footstep, on the other hand, and see in an instant that where there is no door on your left, on your right there is a door. In this place it is easy to deceive the eye, but as every lady knows as she covers up her face, there is no deceiving a mirror at any cost. The mirror will show you the door that is there, and if you walk closer and reach out your hand, so the hand in the mirror will grasp a handle. Turn the handle and walk in. Are you the person in the mirror, or the person in the street? Perhaps there is a distinction, perhaps not. If we who are trapped in the world are real, we show no signs of it.

Through that door and up the stairs, and can you see any difference? Here is the spirit city reflected, but the reflection is merely the left hand of the destruction that the right hand has wrought. You can climb the stairs and turn this way or that, but the result is the same. You will find the inhabitants, those who hid their doors so that they would never have to face visitors. Hunt them in their lairs, lords and ladies and hunters of various lands, for that is what you do. Chase them down until they have nowhere left to go.

Here, huddled in the grey rooms chased with red, here is the true trick, the one reserved for those such as you. You who have already bought the deaths of your prey with your quick knives and your cruel hooks, here you will see where they have run then, here you will find them in the refuge they think that they have paid for with their lives. But the spirit city is no refuge for those who know the trick. Those who cut their way into the spirit city with their bright blades, who brought it with them.

Now you may let your questions lick the walls and catch yellow-orange-red around you. Demand answers from those who huddle away from your light! You have killed them once and sent their spirits running here, but that has not sated your desires. The true death can only come once they are nothing, and even here, behind the mirror, they are something. Raise your knife! Strike! Strike again, and drive them from the life after life. And ask them as you do it: Where will you go now?

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