Here's a short story I wrote. Hope you enjoy it!
Yyehtkomm
By Andrew Kay
I was a young man then, just about to celebrate my 16th birthday. A thin teenager, I was inclined to spend my spare time in the non-fiction section of our local library, or browsing through an antique bookstore, this fact creating the entirely false conclusion that I was unsociable and eccentric. False as it was, it was widely believed, and, consequently, I had few friends. I didn’t mind much. I just kept studying the roots of the French language and the life of Charles Dickens. After living this sort of life for a while, I had picked up French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, German, and a noticeably large collection of rare and out of print books. I went to the library every other day with startling monotony, and lived a life free of adventure, until it happened. What happened is, in itself, a long story, but, I think, is a story worth the telling.
Sixty-two years, five months, and 17 days ago, I happened upon a most interesting book during one of my excursions to the library. How little I knew what that book would do to me, or how it would change my life! There was no call number in the appointed spot on the binding, just a small silver circle containing a tiny, gold tree. It was bound with red leather, red that reminded me of the red in the American flag. The cover was entwined with gilded silver vines that encircled the words, “Klettvvan Uuopevrriz. Hmmm, I thought to myself, I wonder what language this is, and why I’ve never seen it before? I opened it to the copyright page. There was no copyright, only more words in that same language. I opened to the middle of the book, hoping to find a word related to the languages that I knew, but to no avail.
“ATTENTION!!” I jumped up.
“WILL ALL PEOPLE USING THE LIBRARY PLEASE EVACUATE NOW. THE LIBRARY CLOSES IN THREE MINUTES. IF YOU ARE IN THE BUILDING AT THAT TIME, BE PREPARED TO SPEND THE NIGHT!”
It was the PA system. I shelved the book and headed toward the elevator Come. I whipped around. Who said that? I was alone, but for the librarian. I turned around to wait for the elevator. Come. The voice was deep and raspy, clearly not the librarian’s, who was an older woman. As I turned around, I saw something shimmer in distant corner, but as I looked longer, the shimmer disappeared, and I saw nothing but books and shelves. I dismissed the shimmer as the sun reflecting on the metal window frames. The elevator doors opened. COME! I looked around from my position outside the elevator. Still, I could see nobody. I stepped toward the elevator. COME! I whipped around and saw that shimmer again. Something’s up, I thought. I started to walk toward the librarian. NO! said the voice. I started walking toward the source, the corner that I had just left. Yessssss. I saw the shimmer again. It came from the foreign book that I had just put down. I looked, and what I saw is still vivid in my mind today.
I saw that the seal near the bottom was the source of the light. Before my eyes, I saw the tree melt into natural colors and start to move. It was swaying back and forth as if withstanding a heavy gale. The longer I looked, the more detail came into the scene. The silver gilding that had surrounded the tree had dissolved into grass and shrubs. A mountain appeared in the background, and I saw that the light came from something at the top of the mountain. The light burned my eyes, but I could not turn away. Then I saw the hole in the base of the mountain. Come.
As I looked into the hole I saw utter blackness. The hole grew till it covered half the mountain and as it grew it swallowed up all in its path. Come. The hole swallowed up the tree. It covered the whole circle now, but it kept growing. It started swallowing up the books around it. It’s sides bent as if to encircle me. It kept growing and reaching for me. I tried to scream, and found that I couldn’t breath. I was hurled into the utter nothingness that now encircled me. Come. I blacked out
* * * * *
When I became conscious, it did not come suddenly, as such things usually do on our earth. I was first aware of a slight breeze on my face, and soon after, I realized the scent that it carried. It was a cross between a rose and an orange, only much sweeter and lighter. This delightful aroma seemed to have a noticeable effect on my state of awareness, for soon after the beginning of this phenomenon, I started to become increasingly aware of my surroundings. I became aware of faint shadows that suggested human beings, but I wasn’t sure if that’s what they were. I could see only to the extent that one sees when walking from a sunny place to a dark room. Then I saw see the outline of a vase on the stand next to the place where I had been laid, and I was vaguely aware that the lovely aroma was issuing forth from the jar. By this time had regained enough consciousness to observe where I was housed and what went on around me.
My surroundings were unlike anything I had ever seen, heard about, or even read about. The walls of the room in which I had been placed were composed entirely of vines wrapped around each other. Across from the bed upon which I was lying there were two windows cut into the vines, and the view from the windows told me that I was not on the ground. There was no ceiling, but approximately five feet from the top of the walls was a canopy of thickly entwined tree branches. In the wall near my head there was an opening about six feet tall. this doorway led to a hallway constructed of the same materials that my present room consisted of.
As I examined my surroundings in this state of half consciousness, I gradually became aware of another person in the room. He was well-built man, whom I judged at the time to be about twenty-five. After standing at the door to my room for a few minutes, he came near the bed and lowered his face toward mine until our eyes were about three inches apart. His eyes were nice-looking, but they were cold and hard at the same time, if such a thing is possible. They suggested that he was extremely alert to all that was going on around him, and that he possessed complete authority over all that he observed. He seemed to understand that what he was doing made me very nervous, and I think he found some humor in that fact. He held this position for what seemed to be hours, and then assumed his position at the other end of my bedroom. There were two other men waiting there for him, and he immediately began a conversation with them.
“Welcome, Mohtven” said the person to whom the eyes belonged.
“Enough of that. What of him? Is he another weakling, as I suspected?”
“He is weak in composition, but…”
“But what?”
“He is very learned, and will learn whatever you care to teach him.”
“Learned? I don’t want someone ‘learned’! How many times do I have to tell you that all I want is a warrior. Kill him.”
“Kill him!?”
“I have no use for a scholar.”
“Then what on the face of the earth made you move your precious book to the library?”
“I did not choose the library. The book was found by some bookworm like that sickly thing over there and donated to the library. Kill him!
“But-”
Keep your mouth shut, and kill him! Jonnek! Saddle my horse. Yyehtkomm, I take my leave. I want a warrior when I come back. If I get anything but what I desire, you will die.”
I was just about to ask why I must be killed when Yyehtkomm gave me a look that told me quite distinctly to keep my thoughts in my head. I laid there until Mohtven and his page had left. After he had gotten rid of them, Yyehtkomm hurried over to the bed in which I had been laid and told me to get up and follow him. After obeying the foremost of his requests, I considered what I was about to do. I was going to follow a strange man to...to...who knows where?
“Where are you going to take me?” I asked.
“Why should you care? I know where you’re going, and you’re following me, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? Where would you go if you weren’t following me? Well?”
“I don’t have to go anywhere. Why can’t I stay here”
“If you stay here, they’ll kill you.”
“If I go with you, you might kill me.”
“Maybe. If you stay here your death is certain. If you follow me, you might not die. Make your choice. I can’t wait all day.”
My choice was already made. I would follow him. He seemed to like me more than Mohtven did, and besides, I was smart enough to see that Yyehtkomm knew what he was doing.
“Fine, I’ll follow you.”
“Good choice.”
With these words, he led me at a brisk pace down the hall that was connected to the room where I had been. After walking for a time, I ventured to ask where I was.
“Why do you want to know?” My guide asked in return.
I didn’t have a reason. I remained silent and followed him for a few more minutes until we came to a room that appeared to serve as an armory. There were unsheathed swords hung horizontally on every wall, with their sheaths hung under them at the same angle. Wooden chests lined the walls. Yyehtkomm went over to one of these chests, opened it, and extracted a tunic of forest green cotton, a grayish cape, and a suit of mail so fine that each link, if loose, could not have went around a pencil. He told me to put on this getup, and when that had been accomplished, he grabbed a pearly looking blade from one of the walls, jammed it into a sheath of the same color, tossed it to me, and bade me put it on my belt. Then he walked over to an opening on the far wall, jumped out, grabbed onto a vine hanging ten feet from the window, and slid down. I hesitated at the opening.
“Are you coming or not!” He yelled up to me.
“I can’t jump that far!”
“Yes you can. Just try it and see”
“No way. What if I miss?”
“Your loss”
I could see I had no choice but to jump. I went to the edge and hurled myself out the door with all my strength. I sailed past the vine at high speed, and found myself flying along through space about fifty feet above the ground. I looked down. There was nothing to break my fall but the gnarled roots of the tree. Now I was going down, but somehow, it seemed like I should’ve been going a lot faster. I instinctively put out my feet to land. Twenty feet. Ten. Five. My feet touched the ground. That’s all! My feet just touched the ground! I looked over at Yyehtkomm to see him laughing hysterically. I walked over to him and demanded to know what was so funny. He couldn’t answer, he was laughing so hard. After he had regained control of himself, he told me that I was what was funny.
“What! I fall fifty feet from a tree onto hard, bumpy roots, and that’s funny?”
“You didn’t know!”
“Know what?”
“There’s less gravity here. That’s why we live in the trees. The higher up you go, the more you feel gravity pulling on you. We are perfectly comfortable at heights of between fifty and seventy feet, so that’s where we live. Other tribes have different comfort levels, so they build a different levels. Some are even comfortable on the ground.”
He started walking and motioned me to follow. We walked for a time, and then a thought entered my head. Where was I? He said there was less gravity here. Where was here?
“You said there’s less gravity here. Where exactly is ‘here’.”
“Klettvvan”
“Klettvvan?”
“Exactly.”
“Where is Klettvvan?”
“Right here.” He pointed to the ground.
“Look. Why am I here? Where is ‘here’? What happened in the library? Why did you give me a sword? What’s all this about Mohtven wanting a warrior? Who are you, even?”
“All those questions shall be answered thoroughly in good time. For now, be satisfied with the answers that I am going to give you, incomplete as they may be. You asked why you where here. You are here because I want you here, and Mohtven didn’t murder you for that same reason. You are here singularly because of me. What happened in the library is a question that only you can answer in its entirety. I can tell you my side, but only you can tell your side.” Here he paused for a minute.
“Well, are you going to tell me your side?”
“In good time. Give me a minute to think first.”
I waited for more than a minute before he finally said,
“What I am about to tell you will amaze, if not shock you. You are not on the earth”
“Am I on Mars?” I had heard the theory of ‘Life on Mars’ but I had never put much thought into it. Now I wished I had. Here I was, on Mars, talking to an alien whom I had been claiming as non-existent since I first read about the theory. I had read that they were smarter than us and had the ability to communicate with our thoughts, which would mean that he knew that I had been scorning his race for as long as I could remember! I moved my hand to my sword hilt.
“You are not on Mars.” He said. “You are not in the solar system.
Not in the solar system?
“You are not in your galaxy”
How...
“You are not in the universe as you know it”
Not in the... “Am I in another world!?”
Not just another world. You are in another universe, another time, another dimension. Your distance from the world as you know it cannot be measured in units of length, or even units of time.
“If it’s so far away, how come I didn’t die while I was traveling? I mean, to go that far would take millions of years!
“The concept is simply explained by a phenomenon known as uuopevrrizz. When this phenomenon occurs, space is bent into a u-shape and when the edges come close enough to each other, a connection is formed between the two sides. I bent space so much that the two locations, your earth and Klettvvan, were almost touching, and then I constructed the stem between them. What you saw in the library was one end of the stem. The blackness that surrounded you was the stem growing. That’s what the book is for. There is always a thread of a stem there. When we want someone from your world here, we just call you over to the book and open the stem. (Author's note:The picture at the top illustrates this concept.)
I took a moment to ponder this bit of information that had just been bestowed upon me. As I was doing so, we came to a hole in the ground. My guide jumped in and pulled me in with him.
We fell so long that I lost track of time, and fell asleep. When I woke up. It was by these words:
“WILL ALL PEOPLE USING THE LIBRARY PLEASE EVACUATE NOW. THE LIBRARY CLOSES IN THREE MINUTES. IF YOU ARE IN THE BUILDING AT THAT TIME, BE PREPARED TO SPEND THE NIGHT!”
It was the PA system. I shelved the book and headed toward the elevator 'Come.' I whipped around and while doing so, caught a glimpse of the librarian. He was a young man about twenty five, and as he looked up at me I caught a glimpse of his eyes. They suggested that he was extremely alert to everything around him, and that he possessed complete authority over what he observed. I looked again at the librarian, but he had disappeared. 'Come.' The voice was deep and raspy, clearly not the librarian’s, who now appeared to be an older woman. As I turned around, I saw something shimmer in distant corner...
* * * * *
That is my story. I have been trying to figure out the meaning ever since this started happening to me. For yes, it is still happening, and when it will stop I don’t know. It happens at least every week, but sometimes I barely get back into the library before getting sucked away again. And yes, every time it is the same. Every time Yyehtkomm is told to kill me, and every time he runs away with me. I have never learned to not overshoot the vine, and every time Yyehtkomm laughs at me. I always ask the same questions. I have tried asking others, but I am incapable of doing so. However, I do have complete control over my mind while I experience this phenomenon, and here are some things I have deduced:
The librarian was, is, and always will be Yyehtkomm. He somehow falls faster than me, and goes behind the desk every time. I have also brought friends to the library with me when I hear Yyehtkomm’s call, but they always pass out when I start towards the book. They stay there until I get back, but they said they never see Yyehtkomm fall out of a hole in the ceiling. They never even see a hole at all. Actually, they don’t regain consciousness until I get back. I have asked bystanders if they saw me fall into the stem of the uuopevrrizz, but they claim that they have never even seen me. I asked the librarian once and he shot me a glance that distinctly told me to keep my thoughts in my head. The only time I get to talk to Yyehtkomm of my own will is while we fall. I once asked him when all of this would be explained.
“Someday in the not so near future, all will be made clear”
When he said this, I was twenty-five years old, and had been to Klettvvan no less than 1,095 times. Now I am going on eighty, and have been to Klettvvan no less than 8,152 times. He still hasn’t explained himself.
Someday...
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