The Sentinel Gate
by Subodhana Wijeyeratne
Metavi often dreamed about the world outside the Walls of the Labyrinth, but questions always stood in the way of his imagination. Questions like, ‘Is it possible to leave the Labyrinth at all?’ ‘Can one think of there being an ‘outside’ to the Labyrinth?’ ‘What if it’s infinite?’It was difficult to scale the smooth blackness of the obsidian Walls of the great maze - they were hard and featureless, with no give or grip for the hand of a person, and immensely tall. He often sat on top of a jug on the back of a broken nymph statue in one of the empty spaces, under the blue sky with the fractured moons in it. Here the wind caressed his face gently and tickled his hairs. They stood up on end and he’d try to rub them down. Always, they came back up.
His mother was a weaver, his father a cook. They grew a small collection of vegetables in their Space, a big one for the family of a cook, theirs because their family had once produced writers and Builders. The Builders were the second most holy of all people; by their craft they changed the eternal reality of the Labyrinth and redirected the flows of consequence. This they accomplished with wooden planks, harvested from the carefully cultivated groves tended to by Builder-Growers. No more than six soaring trees were cut a year; a man would pay his entire year’s wages for a single flat piece, and then would watch with pride as Builder-Makers defined his own space for him.
There were books in the settlement too, dusty old tomes hidden under oilcloths. The Librarian family had guarded these since the time when the moons had been just one moon, and a round one at that, Metavi was told. These books held secrets and told cryptic stories in archaic languages. Some were bound in black material, strangely hard and soft at the same time. Metavi once drove his nails into this material, and saw the dull crescents his cuticles formed fleetingly on their surface. But then they disappeared, and Metavi could not make any mark that lasted for more than a few seconds. The pages inside, made of the same substance as a tree, were covered in script, something none but the Librarians could now make or read. He sometimes watched them, sneaking away from school with some intention of mischief on his mind that boredom soon destroyed. They leaned over the floor in their dusty shawls, using sharp sticks to carve symbols in a sandpit. Then, with great reverence, they struck it all away. They would do this over and over again, as diligently as they guarded books no one could read anymore.
One Librarian, Judith, was an old woman with a lazy eye and scraggly hair like a discarded pile of cobwebs. She was kind to Metavi, and sometime unbearably brilliant. Some--Metavi’s own father, for one--said she was sacred, like the Labyrinth itself, that she knew the secrets of the black Walls, that in her youth when she was beautiful she had travelled far beyond the Gates and learnt many things. She spoke of none of this to Metavi, and he never asked; instead she made him cups full of warm grass-tea, which he gratefully drank on cold nights. Above him, the stars glittered mutely as the odd couple, an old woman and a teenage boy, sat against a Wall and talked.
‘Tell me, Metavi, have you pondered why you are called Metavi?’
‘I haven’t, Judith, no.’
‘Never?’
‘No, never.’
‘The stars follow orbits that deny them freedom; perhaps it is the case with your name. Now, what question might you ask in response to such a statement?’
‘You implied that there is something inherent in my name that denies me freedom.’
‘Yes, good.’
‘And so I would ask you the meaning of my name.’
‘Indeed, though by your tone that is a question and not a statement. I suggest you replace the ‘and so I would ask you’ and repeat it.’
‘What is the meaning of my name, Judith?’
‘Ah.’ Judith shuffled a bit, and coughed gently. The space they were sitting in was small and warm, but dark. He could not see her expression, but was sure that it was empty.
‘Your name, Me-ta-vi, is a corruption. But in its essence it means finder. Perhaps even seeker. I must consult the books on this matter.’
‘Which books?’
And so they talked until the stars were covered with clouds and the gentle patter of rain hitting the floor of the gallery distracted Metavi. He went home and slept in his corner, his sister fidgeting and sometimes hitting him drowsily. This was on a good night; on a bad one, he would feel wet warmth against his back or leg and know that her contorted body had voided its bladder all over him. On nights like this he would get angry and perhaps pinch her. Sometimes the pinches left marks.
Metavi was in love, or, as Judith often pointed out, believed he was in love. The object of his affection was an elfin girl with silver hair, high cheekbones and skin the colour of Metavi’s nails when they were allowed to grow. She was one of the Lute-Minstrels, an elite caste; her fingers were long and narrow, and with them she would pluck on the strings of her lute at gatherings at night. Her name was Xuyún, and it was by the drawings on her alabaster face that Metavi was most enraptured.
Being of a family of Lute-Minstrels who ranked above even the Builders, Xuyún had her face painted when she was a baby. So from her temples to her chin, there were swirling crimson lines, delicate black circles and graceful purple arcs. Her left eye, the left side of her forehead and her left cheek were unpainted. Metavi would have liked to have planted a kiss on that left cheek, or several. She smelled unlike anything else in the Labyrinth, and also unlike anything else in the world; of this Metavi was sure. Though often he wandered to the uninhabited spaces of beguiling ruins and broken pots, where he smelled new things and saw new things, none of these were like Xuyún. Once she came with him to the chamber with the broken statue of the nymph and the pot, and there, he was about to tell her of his love. But she spoke first.
‘I have decided to bond myself to Hayarús, Metavi.’
And with that, Metavi resigned himself to loving her in silence. He considered telling this to Judith, but thought better of it. She would try to persuade him his pain was irrelevant when placed against the nature of the relations between the moons, or somesuch. Metavi stayed home for days, lay in his bed at night, and hoped his sister would not urinate on him.
The Labyrinth was eternal and stretched in every direction forever. Thinkers, Librarians and holy women did not deny the possibility that there were other Peoples out there, nestling as their own did between its black Walls, growing their vegetables and raising their children and perhaps trying to climb the same walls, but they thought it highly unlikely. Furthermore, it was irrelevant when placed against more pressing questions. Where, for example, did walls begin? Some Walls ended; they joined other walls, or provided a division between two parallel passages which both joined another passage at right-angles. Librarians argued that the end of a wall could also be considered a beginning, and also that a wall that begins need not necessarily have an end but could continue on forever from that point. This gave rise to the legend of the Eternal Wall, one that neither began nor ended but went on forever. Some Librarians believed that if one were to follow this Wall from any one point along it, for as far as one could go, the journey would become metaphysical and one would attain transcendence along the way.
The region in which the People lived was defined by the Sentinel Gates. Metavi once travelled to a Gate; it took him three days of walking in the scorching sun and sleeping at night wrapped in his blanket and shivering. When he finally reached the gate it was closed and imposing, faded red like crusted blood with myriad esoteric carvings that seemed to imply a story, or perhaps just the ideas of one. In the middle was an inscription:
Beyond here lie answers
Metavi was elated by this, because he increasingly believed that everything that mattered (except his mother and father and sister and Xuyún) lay beyond the Gate. But he did not know its meaning, so he took a rubbing of it to Judith; who, upon hearing of his travels, commented on the multitudinous explanations and meanings she could discern within the four words:
‘There are different inscriptions on each of the Gates, and no-one has seen the opposite side of any of them.’
‘Perhaps there is nothing on the other side, Judith. Why would there be anything there?’
‘I don’t know,’ this was something she said very rarely, and it always excited Metavi when she did, ‘but I believe there is something, because the sentence itself is dynamic and changing, and it would make sense for this dynamism to be connected to some outside influence.’
‘How is it dynamic? It’s only four words.’
‘Consider the word “lie”. This could mean that the answers are situated beyond the gate, or that beyond the gate, the answers are untruths, in which case there is no point searching for things outside. But we cannot determine this until we hear what the outside has to say on the matter. Would you like a cup of tea?’
Metavi lay one his side one day, listening to Xuyún play the lute in a garden which was rarely visited, though it was in the centre of the region his people inhabited. The greenness there was lush and vibrant and organic; the grass felt dirty yet pure at the same time, defying the harsh black stone that hemmed it in, cheekily growing right up to the walls. It was peaceful, like time itself was growing sleepy. He thought of Judith’s strange musing, and doubted if all of it made sense. Perhaps she merely strung words together to see what they sounded like out loud. Maybe that was a kind of brilliance of its own. There was no reason for him to try to pass through the Gate, and several reasons for him to stay. Soon he would have to decide what profession he would enter. Being a Builder was appealing, but he knew that choice would raise many bushy and aged eyebrows, and set many tongues wagging between wrinkled cheeks. The family of a weaver and a cook trying to regain its glory, they’d say. Such presumption; what made this child think he was worthy?
Xuyún had no such issue, plucking absentmindedly at sweet sad notes that spilled out aching loneliness. The Lute was her soul, and Lute-Minstrels were known to die when separated from their instruments; a feeling like being dismembered, like having their senses taken from them. Xuyún played a soft, four-note progression; it echoed shyly off the walls and slowly faded away.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she sighed. ‘A Lute-Minstrel can’t marry a Librarian. Such things are…wrong. My father wouldn’t like it.’ Hayarús was a Librarian, a brilliant one at that; people whispered about how he not only read books but intended to create new ones.
‘What does it matter, Xuyún? He is your choice. You will one day be Practine of all Lute-Minstrels, and then no-one will comment on how you married a Librarian.’
‘You are wonderful, Metavi.’
But if Metavi was so wonderful, why was it that she did not love him? Why did those red lips not rest on his own every now and then? Xuyún had the strange eyes of a purebred Lute-Minstrel, her iris bright blue shot through with gold, her pupils vertical ovals the shining silver of her hair. Metavi stared at them as they stared at the grass, and then closed. As she slept, he plucked blades of grass out of the ground one by one. When she awoke, he had uprooted two hundred and twenty-nine blades, and they lay in clumps next to his outstretched arm.
Xuyún’s parents denied her love. The day after the choosing of professions, Metavi strode through the Labyrinth, his head held high, to the courtyard of the Builders. People glanced at him briefly as they hurried up and down the busy corridors, sacks on their backs, children in their arms, pigs at their heels. And then, as he rounded a corner, his nose held so high that it might touch the sun, he crashed into her. Her tiny frame fell backward and down with a gasp. Hayarús was with her, and lifted her gently to her feet with his big, dark arms. Metavi stood still, half-horrified, half-jealous, consumed by the medley of emotions.
‘We are leaving, Metavi. We are going beyond a Gate. My father had told me he will drown me if I stay with Hayarús.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘Do you think we know that?’ asked Hayarús.
‘But we need your help. Take us to the Gate you described; I think I may open it.’
Metavi knew he shouldn’t, and that he didn’t want to, and together, that was nearly enough to stop him. But he told them to meet him near the broken nymph statue with what they might need for the journey, and then led them to the gate. He did not speak to either of them, and when Hayarús took Xuyún by the hand Metavi turned away and looked at the perfect grass that neither grew nor died, or the perfect Walls that neither cracked nor changed.
After the second day, when Hayarús was away looking for firewood and some food, Xuyún said, ‘Why will you not speak to me, Metavi? Say something.’
Metavi did not trust himself enough to speak. He was afraid that once the words came they would bring pain with them, as sometimes happened to Judith when she turned a page in one of her books, frowned in surprised recognition at what she read next, and wept. And besides, Metavi thought, Xuyún sounded just like a spoilt Lute-Minstrel princess, arrogant and cruel and imperious.
Xuyún gave up trying to talk to him after a while and then they reached the Gate. She stepped forward and played three notes on her lute, thick, luscious sounds that hung in the air long after they had been played.
The gate creaked, perhaps in the wind. But then it swung silently open, and beyond it a Wall towered above them. It continued to their left and right, identical to every other wall in the Labyrinth, but to Metavi, it was breathtaking. It was beyond the region, it was outside a Gate, and it meant that even beyond the Gates, the Labyrinth continued.
‘Thank you, Metavi.’ Xuyún kissed him, once, on the cheek, and made to say something more. But Metavi did not move or look at her, and soon Hayarús hustled her on. A minute later, there was another creak, and the Gate swung shut. In the instant before it closed, Metavi tried to glance at what was on the opposite side of the door; there was an inscription there, but didn’t have time to make a rubbing.
Metavi thought for a long time on whether he should mention the incident to Judith, but thought the better of it. No one appeared to have seen him leading the wayward lovers away, and it was widely presumed they had become the first of the People to successfully scale a Wall. Or perhaps that their dead bodies lay somewhere in the settlement, or were eaten by the voracious pigs that were kept in a narrow corridor by a particularly mad family of farmers. The family denied everything. Xuyún’s father, insane with grief, blasphemed and struck a Wall. The Librarians, blaming him partly for the loss of one of their own, declared that blasphemy against the Labyrinth was an eternal and absolute sin, and that he should be punished accordingly. But the people had more sympathy for the beautiful strains of the Lute-Minstrels’ music than for aloofness of the Librarians, and so fined him an ounce of hair, and spoke no more of the matter.
Metavi was told over the next few months that he was on his way to becoming a fine Builder indeed, and was taken at the end of the third month to a grove. There the spaces between the Walls had become overgrown with all kinds of plants, larger and wilder and dirtier than the manicured lawns of the settlement. He was introduced to the seven kinds of tree--mahogany, cherry, apple, ironwood, oak, chestnut, and ebony--and taught their individual strengths and weaknesses. He suggested that perhaps if this were all scripted in a book and kept in their own library, it would be easier to remember. He was reprimanded for mild blasphemy and sent home with a dunce cap on his head.
But despite his interest in his work, and the excitement of being allowed to touch, handle, and shape the wood, but in his free moments he thought mostly of Xuyún and the inscription on the opposite side of the Gate. He had less time now to sit and stare at the sky, or to visit the space with the nymph. He went once, after it had been raining, and found the stones slick and cold and the jug full of rancid water. Within a minute of being there, two hunchbacked water carriers scurried in, covered from head to toe in their red garb, only their eyes showing to the world.
‘What are you doing here? Are you stealing the water?’
‘No. I was just sitting here.’
‘Enough lying! You’re that Builder-boy, aren’t you?’
They tried to beat him with a stick, but he ran away. The next day, he found that they had complained to his father and his teachers, and wanted him tried and punished for coveting the water. His father was furious, but not at him; the water carriers were a particular hatred of his, worse in his eyes than the reprobate and indolent artists, who claimed to create yet created nothing. Nothing came of it, but he did not go to the nymph again.
Judith began to teach him to read, and after about six months, gave him a book. It was a small one, written in a strange, archaic language, about a girl who slept in a bear’s bed, and another girl who was nearly eaten by a wolf, and another girl who fell asleep after eating an apple. They were silly stories, he decided, but Judith disagreed.
‘You must learn to appreciate that the words on the page are not the only words in the book. There is hidden knowledge in the actions and the thoughts of the characters that go unwritten. More than that, these are merely micronarratives in the greater narrative of the universe.’
But the stories remained silly to Metavi, and their reading was only part of his plan. During the day he learned to become a Builder, but at night he learned his mother’s skills at weaving, and his father’s ability to cook without the meat of slain animals. When the sun rose, so did he, and bent his back over the project of a small cart. In the evenings he read with Judith, or wove a knapsack, or practised cooking the plain but filling rice-cakes mixed with fried grass.
And slowly things came together, until a year later he had read of the movement of the stars in the sky, and had completed his cart and varnished it, and had assembled a kit of travelling gear, and could cook as well as his father. Then he went to see Judith.
‘I have never been where you are going,’ she said. ‘The inscription is a lie. You should not go.’
‘I’m going in search of answers, Judith.’
‘Have you learned nothing from these hours by the fire? All the answers you seek are here. You are going in search of that Lute-Minstrel girl and her wayward boyfriend. You will find nothing out there.’
‘If you’re wrong, I will return to tell you.’
‘Do that. I will write of you in the sandpit, whilst you are gone.’
Metavi filled his bag with rice and some other food, and placed it on his cart with its well-oiled hinges. Then he committed the act which he knew belied his promise to Judith, for having done it he would never be able to return to the region–-he stole a Lute. Not one that had been assigned yet–-as easy as that would have been, he could not bring himself to cause the death of a Minstrel. But still the instrument felt heavy like a child in his arms, and was exquisite; he fancied he was like a pig eating the delicate food of queens, carrying it around in his rough sack.
After three days he reached the Gate and attempted to play Xuyún’s notes; he tried for an hours before he finally got them right. The sun beat urgently on his back, as if warning him, telling him that enough is enough and that he should return to the shade of his space. But the door opened, and with his nose in the air and his eyes closed, he stepped beyond it. A little while later there was a creak, and he opened his eyes and turned around. The door had closed. There was a gentle wind, touching his face with the softest of touches, playing with his hair with lethargic disinterest. He eyed the Gate, and deciphered the inscription on it:
Beyond here lie questions
It was disappointing, and for a second, Metavi furrowed his brows. Then he turned around, the wind to his back, and walked away from the Gate, from Judith, from his home, and from all his questions.
Subodhana Wijeyeratne was raised in Russia, Sri Lanka and the UK. He works in Cambridge. His writing can be found at blog.suboworld.com.