The Semaphore

He was alone. He was naked save for the leather collar clasped to his neck. His skin was shredded, hanging from his body in tatters. Somehow, despite this, he felt very little pain.

He stood shakily and walked the room's perimeter. There were two doors, opposite one another. Neither would open. The air tasted coppery. Antigon could taste it very clearly. It tasted coppery and sooty and warm.

The endless thrashing music was gone. There was only the quiet lapping of flames from the floor.

He paced in circles. It was impossible to tell how much time passed. All he knew was that he never got hungry, he never got thirsty, he never had to sleep. He walked the room's perimeter a hundred times, a thousand, a million and more. He fantasized about killing the man with the long mask in myriad grisly ways. He fantasized about breaking free of this prison and resuming his life the way it had been, wandering the woods enjoying the expressions of fear on the faces of hikers—or even better, back in the desert, shooting and stabbing and burning people in an endless, governless war.

His confinement persisted for years, it seemed, decades even—though it may only have been hours. The fire on the floor never waned, never needed feeding. Antigon took to staring into it, watching its flames dance. He saw shapes in the flames, shapes of all the people he had killed. He saw his own face reflected back at him. He saw other faces, faces he did not recognize, grinning and laughing and weeping.

It was all that was left to do. He stared into the fire, his eyes affixed on its heat until there was nothing else in his vision but heat itself. The fire danced through his eyes and into his mind, casting guttering shadows of his thoughts. He felt the world outside the room—wherever it was—darken into nothingness. He stared and stared into the light, his eyes themselves becoming fire. He thought only of the flames.

He thought only of the flames…

Then a door opened. Antigon could taste the change in the air. He looked up from the fire for the first time in many years, it seemed. But the flames never left his eyes. All he saw was fire.

He turned in a slow circle. There were footsteps on the stone floor. He tasted someone's presence. He tasted their breath and the scent of their gray hair.

"Come with me," said the man in the long mask, his deep voice unmistakable.

Antigon followed him from the circular stone room, flames dancing in his vision, tasting with his tongue as the man in the long mask led him through strange, stagnant woods that tasted like wet soil and roiling mist and animal droppings. They entered an enormous room, its floors and walls insulated with what tasted like thick marble. The man in the long mask led Antigon to a large door. Antigon could taste the old wood of it. The door moaned on its hinges.

Inside was a taste that Antigon could not identify. It was not human, and it was unlike anything he had ever known. Except, somehow, it was also deeply familiar, a taste beneath the taste of everything else. The floor was hard and soft.

The man in the long mask touched Antigon's shoulder.

"We are before Him," he said. "We are before Casshawn."

Antigon listened. He heard nothing, and sensed only himself and the man in the long mask. He did not know who Casshawn was, and he did not know what he was expected to do. He could only stand there, naked, seeing endless fire. He waited for something to happen.

After a minute the man in the long mask led Antigon back out into the marble room and back through the strange, still woods. They reentered the circular stone room, with its fire burning forever on the floor.

"We have His allowance," said the man in the long mask. "Now we get to work."

Antigon heard the same bitter notes from the white thread. Something shifted, and the loud, thrashing music returned. With it, the taste of the cold air of the outdoors and the taste of bark and of leaves dying on their branches as winter approached. It had rained recently, and the ground tasted wet.

The man in the long mask took Antigon's wrist and placed something in his hand.

"We have earned this privilege," he said.

Antigon held the handle of his knife. It felt the same as it always had, and yet longer, more ferocious, its blade honed to an impossible edge.

Then Antigon could taste other people. There were many of them, standing just nearby. They were silent, but he could taste their sweat, their fear. They stood in a line at the doorway of the white tower, and Antigon stood just inside.

"Listen carefully," said the man in the long mask. "We are tasked with protecting Nonk'non, our Granmama, so that Casshawn may continue His glorious reign. This is our chore, and it is sacred. We must perform it with grace."

Antigon tasted a person approach him. He tasted their proximity, just inches away. He took their hair in his hand, and tasted the skin on their neck stretching as he bared it. He tasted the iron in their blood as his knife opened their flesh. It turned out that he did not need to see the terror on their faces; he could taste it even better. It was purer, more delectable. He felt closer to their death. He felt awakened.

"More," said the man in the long mask as another person stepped forward for Antigon's blade.

"More," said the man in the long mask, standing nearby, his voice echoing up the shaft of the roofless tower.

"More," he said after each death, each one sweeter than the last until, after many hours of it, there were none left.

"Do not worry, my helot," said the man in the long mask. "There will be more for us. It is only the beginning, and Casshawn is generous to those who revere Him. He will take care of me, and I will take care of us."

From then on, every day, the man in the long mask brought Antigon to the white tower where a line of silent people awaited. Every day they met his blade, the taste of their blood filling the air, the stench of their fear and grief filling Antigon's mouth. With every death he loved the man in the long mask, his Keeper, more and more. He took care of Antigon, gave him what he needed and refused to insult his time with superfluity like clothing and sight. All he needed was his knife and lines of warm flesh. He gazed into the endless fire that filled his eyes, and he obeyed his Keeper's wishes, because they were his wishes too.

At night, he stalked the strange, still woods of his Keeper's fortalice, where elk and deer and bears roamed. He learned to track them, sightlessly, using his tongue to follow their smells, his ears to pinpoint their positions. He taught himself to hunt all over again, this time in fire, until he was even more proficient than he had ever been. Eventually, his Keeper gave him a new task; there were interrupters, he said, trying to thwart Casshawn. These people were not as easily slain as those his Keeper willed to his tower. They required more attention, more skill. They needed to be hunted, and Antigon was the man to hunt them.

It was a pleasure to do so. His Keeper facilitated each hunt by spiriting Antigon wherever he needed to be, and Antigon would take matters into his own hands from there. Sometimes he would hunt the interrupters in the woods, other times in cities or towns. Occasionally he hunted them from room to room of houses and apartments. He even hunted in the desert once—a different desert from the one he had hunted before, but it felt nostalgic regardless.

In every case the result was the same. He would catch the interrupters, and he would tear them open. He would taste their terror and the fumes from inside their bodies. And every time, when he was finished, his Keeper would collect him and bring him home. Antigon loved these hunts. They reminded him of war. They reminded him of stalking hikers through the woods of New Hampshire. They made him feel alive. They satisfied his every single desire.

#

But then the green light appeared. It came like a storm into the mountains, and tasted like lightning. When it was near, the flames in Antigon's sight turned from red to green. It moved so much faster than anything Antigon had ever encountered, and struck with the force of a bomb.

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His Keeper sent Antigon to hunt it, to cut it open in the name of Casshawn. Antigon obeyed because he loved his Keeper and because he wanted to put out the green light, which threatened to swallow his whole world. But the green light resisted his predation. It dodged his strikes and out-maneuvered him—Antigon—and when it attacked it broke his bones and rent his flesh so that the only blood Antigon tasted was his own. And after he was broken, the green light cut him down, felled him like a tree, and the next thing Antigon knew he was back in the circular stone room, sitting by the fire, filled with a rage and a humiliation greater than anything he had ever known.

"We have a problem," his Keeper said, standing over him. "We are faced with an enemy that the lust of our blade cannot depose." He touched Antigon's shoulder softly. "There is nothing for us to do out there on the mountain at present. Casshawn has taken matters into His own hands. We will await His victory."

But Casshawn was not victorious.

#

After the War, Antigon spent his days wandering in his grove of stale air and loping elk. He heard his Keeper's shoes pacing through the marble chamber inside the tower, and occasionally the sour twang of his music. He sensed his grief and his anger, and he ached for his Keeper. He ached too for himself; with Casshawn's reign interrupted, Antigon was no longer able to kill the way he wanted. Elk and deer did not expel the same agony. He wished to do something to reclaim the glory of the previous years, but he knew he was just a lowly helot, and that if a God such as Casshawn could fall to the green light, and his own Keeper could do nothing, then Antigon was as useless as dirt on the ground.

But the despair did not last long.

"We are having a guest for dinner," his Keeper told him one day. "A special guest. We will not like it when we see who it is, and we will want to hurt it. But we must listen carefully to the plan. We will have our chance."

Antigon tasted the lightning in the moments before the guest arrived in the fortalice. When the fire in his eyes turned green, his instinct was to attack, to lunge and swing his blade, to push his strength and speed past their limits and outdo the green light. But his Keeper had provided careful and strict instructions, and he always obeyed his Keeper. He stood aside and allowed the green light to enter his Keeper's tower unmet.

Antigon listened while they spoke. They spoke about many things, about the past and about the future. His Keeper shared secrets and regrets and longings, and laughed with the green light. Antigon knew it was all a ploy. He waited for his cue, standing against the wall of the marble chamber, partially concealed behind a column—"Not to promote suspicion, but to provoke passivity,"—his knife stowed carefully inside the pocket of flesh he had cut in his thigh. He listened for many hours to their conversation, which went on so long that Antigon began to wonder if his Keeper had changed his mind.

Then he heard his signal.

"…and forever hereafter…"

Antigon stepped out from behind the column. The green light had changed. No longer did it turn all the fire in his sight green, but was now concentrated in one small spot, faint. And the taste of lightning was gone. In its place, Antigon tasted a person—flesh and blood—sitting at a chair at the long table, its back to Antigon. He tasted the proof they had consumed, and the roasted elk they had eaten. He heard laughter, and a drunken slur of speech. He felt his Keeper will him forward.

He stepped silently on his bare feet, tearing his knife free from the skin on his leg, ignoring what little pain it summoned, and drove his blade down into the skull.

The knife went into the spongy organ beneath the bone, and blood geysered. Its coppery odor filled Antigon's mouth. He shivered from the heat of it and twisted the knife deeper. It was, in so many ways, the most delicious kill of his life. He felt liberated and vindicated. He felt useful and he felt whole.

After that he expected for things to return to how they had been. He expected for his Keeper to send him out to complete his righteous chores, and for Casshawn's reign to resume. But nothing was the same. The green light and its allies had imprisoned Grandmother Nonk'non. Until she was freed, Casshawn would remain decommissioned. His Keeper insisted the setback was temporary, but Antigon would need to be patient, because it might take a long time to undo.

And it did.

#

Years rolled into decades, decades into centuries, and the centuries blurred by one after another after another.

Antigon tried to be patient—there was nothing else he could do. His Keeper spent his days in his white tower, working out of earshot. Antigon wandered his grove, killing elk and deer and bear. His Keeper kept him shackled, his collar fastened to a white thread that led off somewhere Antigon could not reach. The truth was that Antigon had come to find comfort in the shackle; it was a reminder that his Keeper was present, a constant tether between the two of them.

On the rare occasion that Antigon ventured into the tower, he would find the concentrated green light, reduced to faint flicker, always on the back of the same chair. The one time his Keeper asked him to dispose of it, it had burned his fingers and sent a stabbing pain deep into his arm. So it remained where it was, never moving, never brightening, but never going away.

Antigon came to learn that the passage of time was a strange thing. When every moment was identical to the last, it was impossible to know a difference between them. One day may have been the next, and the one after that a day weeks or months before. Antigon could go many years, it seemed, without interacting with his Keeper. Sometimes he worried that something had happened, that his Keeper had left and abandoned him. But then he would remember the thread, his shackle, his tether, and was reminded that he was not alone. In this way he found a bit of peace, and he hunted the game in his grove to keep his skills honed, waiting and waiting.

Until, after so much time had passed that the very idea of time was folded and morphed in Antigon's mind, his Keeper emerged from his tower and into the grove, and called Antigon to him.

"We are needed," he said, his deep voice inspiring Antigon to lower his head. "We are needed once again to procure flesh. Bring our blade."

He led Antigon to the circular stone room—which he called the mantle—and played a set of sour notes, and for the first time in an eternity the room changed. Antigon tasted the air, the breeze, the leaves on the trees and the soil underfoot. It was summertime, and they were in the woods in the white tower—the one his Keeper moved about at will and called his outpost. There were people nearby. Antigon could smell them. They lined up at the tower's doorway, ready for his blade. Antigon opened his mouth and protruded his tongue to taste their flesh, their confusion, their fear.

It was as if he had never stopped. He cut them one by one, severing their heads from their bodies per his Keeper's instructions. Sometimes he sliced their necks in single clean blows. Other times he hacked at them slowly, savoring their suffering. He placed the heads and bodies on a pile in the middle of the tower. His Keeper instructed him to leave one alive, a witness.

When all but one was dead, his Keeper stood over the pile of heads and bodies and played his bitter music. Nothing happened—or nothing seemed to. His Keeper instructed Antigon to kill the witness and carry the heads and bodies to the room behind the big white door in the marble chamber—the room his Keeper called the chancel—where once they had stood before Casshawn Himself and Antigon had tasted something both strange and familiar.

Fifteen times they performed this chore, and fifteen times the result was the same. Antigon would decapitate the line of people, leaving one alive, and his Keeper would play his music. Fifteen times Antigon killed the witness and carried the bodyparts to the chancel, where a mountain of putrefying flesh grew.

Then, on the sixteenth try, something different happened.

When the Keeper played his music Antigon tasted something. It was a taste he recognized from long ago, when he had stood before Casshawn in the chancel. Both strange and familiar. A taste that may have always been there.

His Keeper spoke, addressing Grandmother, and something spoke back. But it was not exactly speech. It was a quiet rush of sound, like pebbles cascading down the side of a mountain. It was the sound of a faraway place, Antigon thought, and all the noise associated with the things that lived there. It crackled and hissed, and then it was gone and with it the taste.

His Keeper took the witness—a girl—to the mantle and made her look into the fire. Then he instructed Antigon to do as he always had: take the heads and bodies to the chancel.

Five more times his Keeper erected his outpost; five more times Antigon decapitated entire towns and villages; five more times reserving a witness—a child in every case; and five more times his Keeper's music produced the taste of a life that Antigon knew but had never acknowledged. They were doing it, his Keeper said. They were freeing Grandmother—slowly but certainly—and soon Casshawn Himself would reawaken and the world would resume its natural course.

Then there was an incident. Two people managed to enter the fortalice and slip past Antigon. His Keeper quickly disposed of them, and that seemed to be the end of it. But one day soon after there was commotion outside the outpost in a city in the woods. Someone was screaming, one of the cityfolk. Antigon had never heard anyone utter a sound while they waited for his blade, and he went to investigate.

Green fire filled his vision. At first he was confused. He had cut down the green light. It was dead for hundreds of years. There had to be another explanation.

But within a minute it was clear: this was the green light. The same green light that had broken him on the mountain all those centuries ago. It moved faster than him, and struck him with thunderous force. He remembered his Keeper's words: An enemy that the lust of our blade cannot depose. Still he fought it—harder than he had ever fought before. Briefly he thought he might be victorious; the green light was weaker than he remembered it, more sluggish and disorganized. But even in this weakened state it bested Antigon. It tore his tongue from his mouth. Without it, his body could not navigate his fiery world. His last feeling was one of rage, and humiliation, and a burning desire for retribution.

Then he was back in the mantle, staring into the fire.

His Keeper stood beside him.

"History repeats itself," his Keeper said, his voice grave. "We are tormented again by an interruption from our past."

Antigon envisioned disarming the green light, extinguishing it, and peeling the skin from the person inside it in long, slow strips.

"But this time I am ready," his Keeper said. "And there will be a role for us as well. For you. I chose you for a reason. Perhaps I had even more foresight than I knew at the time." He placed his rough hand on Antigon's shoulder. "Prepare, my helot, for war."