Lottery
Sun lowers searing belly behind city walls and will soon sink beneath horizon of Babble. Almost time for last stop. Final punctuation of day before wend way home and find new place to lie among beggarkind.
Self not only one to end day with pilgrimage. Many, many citizens maintain hopeless delusion that lottery will choose them.
Buildings grow taller, more imposing, reeking more of officialdom as climb gentle hill. Avenues widen and traffic dies; pedestrians, all walking in one direction. Climb wide flight of steps and suddenly vast edifice towers over hopeful masses. Self stops, but hopeful rush forward, desperate to cheat chance.
Face of enemy unchanged. Does not age or decay, or suffer in sun or rain, heat or cold. Just is. Blister on landscape that blights city, that destroyed Quill for empty dream, pale reflection. Hope. Bulbous central dome swells with ancient, angry pride above all, looking down on city and inhabitants. Dome squeezed on four sides by press of antechambers, supported by smaller buildings tottering inwards—flanks falling away from ugly mountain. Four turrets stand sentinel above. In fading light vast, blood-red edifice casts great shadow over city. Dark shadow over lives of citizens.
Stands taller and bloodier in sunset light; black windows do not reflect light of sun, just absorb warmth and light, like fragments of void. Library takes and does not give in return.
Masses crowd around gates; not admitted without tickets. Armed guards hold back. Time approaches, dark murmurs fill air.
What beguiles minds of men so? Are not myths of world enough? Why look for false idols? Library of Souls sits in square alien and vast, bigger than idea of itself, bigger than sum of all those, like Quill, who seek glory inside walls. Seek, and yet do not find.
Door opens in wall and frocked librarian emerges. All is now silence. Guards see expectant faces of crowd and finger weapons nervously. Librarian, masked and cowled, steps forward, carrying wooden box carved with words of ancient, forgotten language.
Quill wanted this, gave life to this, tried to make dream become reality. Made ultimate sacrifice. Babble folk beg for living, beg to get by day after day. Richly dressed members of crowd, winners in lottery of life and unused to begging, play lottery of library. Wealth is never enough.
Lid of box is opened and bony hand feels inside for handful of red, numbered papers. Crowd shuffles feet expectantly; expectation is everything.
Feel silver dollars in pocket of robes, sharp-edged and heavy. Slip through gap in closed fingers of wronged hand. Money to buy entrance at city gates tomorrow. Bribe grows heavier as Babble grows. Access granted to fittest, wealthiest beggars. Wealthy beggars. Laugh at thought. Self poorer than Quill but richer in knowledge. Quill deluded by Library of Souls, by stories of books inside, by aeons of lives written up in ink.
Librarian holds handful of tickets high in air and shout rises up from crowd at bounty held in hand, a gasp as though one body, one pair of lungs, rises up above central dome of library, to join with hopeful, expectant sky dreams that brought them here.
Entrance. That is dream of outcasts. Tickets to roam corridors for one day only, to join ranks of privileged council of library deem worthy of entrance to vast store of knowledge. Privileged use knowledge like aristocracy use veneer of etiquette to keep themselves elevated, to suppress those like Babble folk. Keep all for selves.
Tickets are hurled into air. Caught in evening breeze and drift across crowd. Red confetti cloud looks like scabs of ochre paint chipped from Library walls; snatched at and fought over. Masked face smiles at riot created, at hopes and dreams kept alive by fake act of generosity. By such gestures do powers that be suppress weak and empty-minded.
Turn away from fury. Show back to enemy and servants of enemy. Time will come when Library will fall, when store of knowledge will be open to all—or kept from all, destroyed in great conflagration to rival white heat of God’s creation. Self knows. Quill will be avenged.
Time will come. Soon.
“Lottery” was first published in Territories issue 4, edited by Matt Gilbert, in the Summer of 2001.
Colin Brush lives in London where he earns a crust, not to mention the contempt of authors and the public at large, by writing words for the covers of books. He is one of the founders of Territories magazine (an illustrated London “quarterly”) and edited the first three issues between 1999 and 2000.
Copyright © 2001 by Colin Brush.
