Yggdrasil's Elevator

 

          The stranger's looking at me, or rather, his eyes seem to drift through where I stand.  They are eyes of cold indifference, the look of someone who has done his job for so long he doesn’t even remember, doesn’t care to remember, why he does it anymore.  Without a word he silently gets up from his chair then steps out from behind his sterile desk.  Gesturing to the right, he says, “If you have found everything you need, then step this way.”

          “Actually,” I begin, wanting to explain my frustrating situation.  There are many things I want, things I might even need; I’ve found them, and yet…

          Walking down the corridor he had gestured to, the stranger seems completely uninterested in whatever I have to say.  Clearly asking was but a formality, a gesture of courtesy without meaning; seeing as the dark retreating form of a man wasn’t bothering to look back to see if I was following.  Jogging to catch up, I try to get a good look at his face.

          “You’re strangely… Bureaucratic,” I remark, trying to match his stride long enough to take in just how gaunt his expression is.  It isn’t strictly a harsh look, but it is unpleasant, somehow.  The man doesn’t break his stride or show any reaction beyond a slight twist of the lips.  Hoping to get at least a bit of a response, I curtly add, “that wasn’t a compliment.”

          Finally the man speaks, but not as a response to my slight, “We are here.”

          Looking away from his emotionless face, I see an ornately carved elevator.  Reaching out I inspect the grain of the wood with my bare fingers, I’ve never seen a wooden elevator before.  “What remarkable craftsmanship.”  I remark to myself, although not entirely to myself.  Admittedly I have always been one for small talk, or just any talk really.

          A grunt from behind me as the stranger steps past me to stand within the elevator; wearily the man replies, as though a dispirited tour guide, “It wasn’t crafted.”

          “Oh...” I mutter in response, stepping into the elevator without really thinking about it.  I could ask about how exactly an elevator came to be without being ‘crafted’; but it seems like a rather pointless discussion.  Who ever heard of discussing art with a bureaucrat anyway? 

Minutes pass in awkward silence, or at least it’s awkward for me.

          Coughing lightly, I mention, “I actually didn’t find everything I was looking for.”

          Raising an eyebrow skeptically, the first particularly human expression the man has made, he remarks, “It’s a bit late for that now.”  Looking at me warily he adds, as if guessing what I would ask next, “This elevator’s one-way.”

          Which leaves me brooding in silence, contemplating exactly how he routinely took a one-way elevator.  Not really much point in complaining though; you know bureaucrats.

          Leaning on his ash cane, bracing himself against the wall, the man asks, “What does your kind look for?”

          I hadn’t noticed the cane before or, now that I look closer, the white curls which cascade down his back.  Had he walked with a gait earlier?  I can’t remember.

          Again the man asks, for once showing some form of interest, perhaps he had never taken time to consider what his passengers were actually looking for, “What does your kind look for?”

          I ponder this for a while, or at least I try.  But I have this odd habit of getting distracted by the simplest of things, like the way I hadn’t noticed the cane earlier.  What had I been doing before meeting the stranger?  And why was my memory so bad, had it always been this poor?

          Chuckling to himself the man remarks, “Of course you won’t find it, if you don’t even know what you are looking for.”  Then walking awkwardly over to the gate, still gradually ascending, he gazes below.  “I’ve never visited the other gates before… I know it is strange, considering how long I have been a ferryman.”  Shrugging, he again asks, “So what were you looking for?”

          Gates?  Ah, now I remember...  It’s coming back to me, not so much as memories, but rather as impressions and flickering moments.  You know that feeling of being surrounded with an impossible number of people, an overwhelming sea of faces you forget instantly, and yet not even a single one brushes you?  It is a disconnecting, dissonant, feeling; be grateful if you haven’t experienced it before.  With a grimace, I remark, “Everyone said I was too much.  That what they had wasn’t made for someone like me.”  How many gates had I been turned away from?  So many of them; weird how they blurred together, but never truly faded from my memory.  The gatekeepers that told me I deserved better, was it happiness, or was it love?

          Standing straight, looking out into the darkness which was growing in the distance, my companion replies, “No one is inadequate.”

          Numb, still reeling under the frustration I had, still, felt, I murmur, “All I wanted was to find something… a connection, relevance… just something.”

          “Perhaps it isn’t my place to say this,” remarks my companion, “but did you try checking the other floors?”

          “Other floors?”  I ask, bewildered.

          “Well, there are many floors.” he states matter-of-factly.

Chuckling to myself, I wonder exactly why I had never looked up, never bothered to look for something more.  So caught up in finding a gate, I have never looked for a flight of stairs.  Who knows what the other floors had, because now, I was here with this man whose name I would never know.

In reply to my unspoken question, my friend offers what consolation he can, “Not many notice those other floors, although that hardly matters at this point.”  Gesturing to the gate in front of him, he adds, “We’re almost there.”

          Sure enough, the elevator was coming to a stop.  Only now did it cross my mind to ask exactly where we were going, “Where does this lead?”

          “Yggdrasil’s elevator?  Who knows…”

          Stepping out together into the darkness, we begin walking on some unseen, gnarled path; looking below I see, faintly in the distance, the massive crowd--still just an impression.  If someone was to look up, would they be able to see us?  Just the two of us?  Pausing for a moment I try to remember what it had been like, being down there.  Weird how loneliness is…  Gesturing below, I ask my friend, “Look, do you see it?  I think that is the fountain, the one with that giant marble stone that was always rolling in place, the one with the water that flowed over it.”  Smiling to myself, moments come to me, moments of placing my hand on the smooth stone, the feeling of cool water dancing under my fingers; memories are odd, are they not?

          “Say,” I ask, “Do you think a sphere could be happy as a circle?  Could it be satisfied with a circle?”  It was an odd question, I am used to these sorts of questions being dismissed; with such an abstract metaphor, how can I expect any more?  But how can I just say what is in my heart?  To scream out the frustration of being too much?

          I feel a hand silently brush past my ear, leaving a tingle under my skin.  Following where it points, I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before.

          “Sphere?  Circle?  From up here, I can’t tell the difference.”

          I had never noticed that the sphere was within a larger circle; would I have ever noticed, down there?  It was nice to finally have someone who could answer my weird questions.  Well, it wasn’t exactly an answer; but it was enough.

          Gesturing further down the path, the stranger, whose name I will never know, urges, “Keep following the path, this is where we must part.  This is no longer my path to tread.”

          Confused, I ask, “How will I know where to go, if I don’t know what I am looking for?”

          With the first genuine smile I have seen, he replies, “You have a question now; that should be enough.”  Then, pulling an impossibly long rope from the nothingness within his robes, he nods to me, as if passing on something more than the cane he hands me.  Gazing below, he ponders gently, “Who knows what lies on the floors ahead.”

Placing the noose around his neck, my first friend bids me adieu, “Thank you for choosing Yggdrasil Elevator.  Ash to Ash”

Then, like everyone I will ever meet, we go our separate ways.  The world is odd like that, I guess...

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Thank You for Riding...

Reviews

[Delmar Cooper]

Riding the untamed metaphor to distant vistas. I should have said more about this piece of writing. It is excellent in its structure, good sentence variety, good pacing, all that anyone could expect from a top notch writing professional. Well done in all respects