A Fable for Larks

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The Architect sat, overlooking a plain of yellowed grass that swayed in the wind. Solitary thorn trees dotted a golden world split by dozens of streams. In the distance, steely clouds rolled closer. Occasionally, the storm’s dark crevasses would glow with lightning shooting into the afternoon sky. Below the ridge where the Architect sat, a city of grey stone rose from the plain.

           

His workers toiled in the hot, humid air. Using creaking timber cranes, they stacked cut granite on growing towers. The canals he planned had begun to take shape, zigzagging the city blocks much like the lightning inching toward them. Cobblestone streets stretched from the geometric city center. It was just as he’d designed it.

           

For the first time since he laid the foundations, he felt content.

           

“That is unlike you,” a voice carrying an unmistakable chill said behind him. “I thought you would have learned to see the imperfection in every design.”

           

“Even your own?” he asked calmly.

 “Even my own.”

           

A woman dressed in wraith-like black sat beside him. Her face peeked out from her hood. She stared at him with eyes of polished silver. Her face was defined by glossy black lips and long, high cheekbones that stretched her almost transparent skin over sallow cheeks. It was a beauty the Architect had seen many times before.

         

And it was a beauty that haunted him.

           

Wind passed over them and carried with it the smell of the savannah below: mud, grass, and plains flowers. The Architect savored the mixture of scents.  Scents that would never again grace this patch of earth.

           

He looked at his companion whose gaze had turned to the valley.

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“Why are you here?”

“I am waiting,” the woman replied, pushing platinum strands of hair from her face.

           

The Architect followed her stare to the workers below. He grimaced.

           

“You have no right to take them,” his tone changed as he clutched the gilt book. “I brought them here for a reason.”

           

“I am not here for them. Not yet,” she said, placing her fist under her chin. “I have come for everything else that still lives. The plants, the animals, even the worms in the soil.” 

           

“I will show them to care for the earth as I have,” the Architect stated plainly. “The land, the animals are not in danger.”

           

The woman seemed to ponder for a moment.

           

“Not intentionally,” she kept to her monotone, “That storm crawling to us is one of many that maintains the delicate maze of life in these plains. It floods the rivers and flushes rich silt into the soil, sustaining the talon grasses and thorn trees the lions and antelope call home.”

           

“I told you, I will teach them to tend the earth.” He pointed to the tents that housed thousands of families working to build the city. “They are settlers, not locusts.”

           

“It is not them that threatens the savannah, it never was. This is your doing. A flaw in your design.”

           

“So, you’ve come to scold me?” 

 

She looked back at him. Her silver irises gleamed in the evening sun. “Never.”

           

She took his hand in hers and ran a thumb over his palm.

           

“When the storm floods the savannah, it drains across the rivers that cut the land. But the city is in the heart of these drainage basins. The dams and canals you have built do not function as the rivers. Quarried stone will not let water pass like the black soil. Damns and floodgates will rise. The floods will drain slower and slower as your city expands. First, the talon grasses will wither from root rot. Then, the antelope will starve, the lions following soon after. The tuskhoof will endure, if just barely. Finally, the thorn trees will decay, waterlogged and putrefied beyond recognition. Thick mangroves will replace these golden plains and I will be here. Until the last thorn tree falls and the savannah is nothing but a memory.”

           

The Architect stared at their interlaced fingers. “I’ve paid far greater costs before. This way they…these people will have a new life.”

           

“In a way and for a time,” The woman took her hand from his. “You can only pay a debt with life so many times, though.”

           

“It’s the only way I know.”

 “Is that why you will leave them to their fate once all is said and done?”

           

“Yes,” he answered in a near whisper.

           

The woman sighed as another breeze sluiced over the grass.

           

“Seborah will come for what you have built here. It may not be today or even millennia from now, but she will come. When she does, this basin will choke with the ashes of her passing.” The woman gestured to the gilt manuscript he cradled. “And even I won’t be able to care for all the bodies left behind. Did you really give them a new life? Or have you merely postponed their extinction?”

           

“Perhaps you’re right, perhaps you’re wrong.” The Architect set the book between them. “Maybe that’s what needs to happen. Maybe when this world is devoid of all that made it rich and beautiful, the madness will stop.”

           

She shook her head. “Countless lifetimes we have walked this earth and the ones beyond. You know that is not the case.”

           

“If it’s inevitable then, perhaps it’s best that someone else carries out the slaughter?”

           

The woman stood, gently stroking the side of his face. “I hope that will never be true.”

           

“Why?”

“Because, even Death needs a friend.”

 

Then she was gone, a small gust of wind the only trace of her being.

           

The Architect gazed where she had been. Beyond, young lions rolled in amber talon grass while their mother looked on. A blast of thunder caught his attention, the storm now minutes from the city of cobbled stone. He cast one last look at the lions as they continued their play.

           

Then he tucked the book under his arm and began his trek into the basin.