The labyrinth 12 - Smoke - Part 2

Smoke Part 2 The figure did not move. But the thread moved through it. Spinning. Measuring. The way a weaver pulls thread through a loom. The way a blade cuts cloth to shape. I saw what the thread was making. A battle. Ships on a sea I knew. The fleet of my city. The fleet of our enemies. Fire on the water. Men screaming. The weight of bronze sinking into the deep. I saw the outcome. Not as a picture. As a knowing. A certainty that settled into my bones like the cold of the stone. The fleet would burn. The city would fall. The thread had already measured it. The cutting had already begun. But I also saw the thread that remained. The thread that ran through the burning ships and the drowning men and the weeping women. It did not end. It continued. Through the ashes. Through the years. Through the voices that would come after me. The figure held it all. Not knowing. Every fate. Every ending. Every thread that had been spun and measured and cut. The men outside asked about a war. The thread showed me the war and everything the war was woven into. The door began to close. The vision faded. The figure receded. The doorway disappeared. The thread pulled back into the darkness behind my eyes. But the knowing remained. The fleet would burn. And the thread would continue. My mouth opened. The words came. Not my words. I did not know the language. I did not know the meaning. The sounds poured out of me like water from a broken vessel. Fast. Urgent. A voice that was not my voice. Deeper. Older. A voice that had spoken before I was born and would speak after I died. I could hear myself from the outside. As if I stood across the room and watched a woman kneel on a tripod and speak in tongues. The woman was me. But I was not inside her. I was watching her be used. The sounds continued. The men outside wrote them down. I could feel the scratching of stylus on wax. The urgency of their hands. The weight of what they believed was passing through me. Then it stopped. The smoke cleared. The presence withdrew. The door inside my chest closed. I was back. My knees ached. My throat was raw. My hands were shaking. I did not remember what I had said. The men outside were arguing. Interpreting. Turning the sounds into meaning. Meaning I had not made. Meaning I would never understand. They would come for me soon. They would help me down from the tripod. They would give me water. They would ask me what I felt. I would not be able to tell them. I was the empty vessel. The one who spoke and did not know what she said. The one who carried the voice and was left with nothing but a raw throat and trembling hands. I was not afraid. I was not anything. The door had closed. And I was on the empty side of it.