It all started with a hole on Domala, followed by an avalanche of rocks and mud...and death.
Men, as they call themselves, provoked it. They had been drilling their ground with gigantic machines in search of the black water. It was an accident that I wish had never taken place. A lightning bolt of bad luck. Gharnalli says it was the higher-beings; that they have grown weary of our new ways, of our insistence on questioning their existence. I don't know what to believe anymore. These creatures, these men, live the way we thought the higher-beings lived. They have a world that seems far vaster than ours, way above the Domala. They live in impossibly tall houses, like arms that appear to reach out for infinity. Above them, like a colored dome, lies the most amazing of wonders: they call it the sky. They travel in machines that run faster than Glogalas and others that help them fly, fly! like Gurrumis or Girilis. At first we thought they were the higher-beings. They walk erect, straighter than we do, have two arms and two legs, and their faces, though finer, have a resemblance to ours. But they are not the higher-beings. At least, we now believe they are not. Gharnalli used to say the higher-beings cannot be touched, that their eyes gleam with mystery and that their bodies are translucent and beautiful. Men are warm to the touch -disgustingly so- and their eyes do gleam, but their mystery is not of a divine nature, but probably of an evil one. Men are not to be trusted, that much I've learned in the little time I've spent up here. They are a complex kind, brimming with as much intelligence as greed. Judging by their world, they are an ancient, wise race of beings, probably as old as the higher-beings themselves. Gharnalli says now that it might not be a fantasy to believe these men may have eradicated the higher-beings. I still don't believe it. We were brought up to believe that the higher-beings were the creators of everything that existed, that they ruled over our lands and provided our foods and our destiny. We were taught to fear them and to respect the lessons of their history, and to live our lives in awe and in worship of them. And now he tells us that these creatures may have killed them all. It makes no sense. These men seem to me like animals. Not like Gollias or Ghrotts, that have no mind or purpose, but just like them, or us, in that they are of flesh and bone. And, like them or us, they breathe and eat and have Dhurma streaming in their insides, and can be touched, and surely, just like them or us, these men, too, can die.
***
My name is Gestlam. I am the son of a shaft-builder by the name of Gestlamert. My mother's name is Gelliah, daughter of Ghrussum, a Grogard of the second class, a guard at the castle of the almighty Ybuna Gorza, ruler of our land. My story is not important. What matters, as Gharnalli explained, is that these scriptures exist. He has instructed me to write it all, to write everything that has transpired since the moment the Domala cracked open and all the rocks came tumbling down on our people. From the moment we learned of the existence of men, and of the world above us. He told me to write it all down because only the written word transcends and remains in time, for written history is the only true preservation of the past. How sad, he said to me three Dungels ago, that our history may now be swallowed into the history of men, and we may become but smoke spiraling up into oblivion. He was burdened with grief when he said these things, as if he knew something terrible were about to happen, as if our own eradication, just like that of the higher-beings, were imminent. Sadly, I did not understand what he meant. All I could think of was that this task seemed too much for me. To have such responsibility is unlike me. I am old enough to become a Grogard if I so chose, but young enough to still live with my parents and go as I do to Delani to learn about scriptures, religion, all-knowledge, and everything there is to know about the history of the world and the understanding of both animals and Gloites. Gharnalli says there is no randomness in the ways of the higher-beings, that they, the Gesoules as he calls them, have glimpsed into the future and laid out plans for each one of us; and that my being one of the first to climb onto the world-above may be but a sign from them.
Why me? I asked him. He looked into my eyes, his face still masked by the shadows of concern, and said that out of all the Gloites who dared to take onto the dangerous walls at the ends of Luakr, and out of all those better trained for such a perilous task that could have been there at the right time but were not, it was I, a Delanium, a student of history and a relisher of words, who happened to be there. It was meant to be, he said. And I couldn't shake the feeling that he was somewhat proud, even glad, of that coincidence, of that 'divine designation.'
***
Fourteen Dungels ago I found myself unusually close to the forbidden walls. The ends of Luakr -the forbidden walls- is the area at the farthest spot of the southeastern lands, beyond the swamp lands of Liu, home to Gloite-eating beasts, and even farther than Luargha, the fire lands of the Grunudi, creatures half-beast, half-Gloite, who live among hot rocks, drink Dhurma and make body-covers out of the skin of their victims. I had joined my brother-in-law in his search for Golugas, a hybrid between plant and animal that was generally found in moist areas like the swamp lands or the lands beyond it. Golugas are essential to the health system of Luakr. My brother-in-law, Gisaoh, a health-gloite, is in charge of collecting Golugas for the Gou, and for the health community of Luakr. He travels to the ends of Luakr every one hundred and fifty Dungels, three Dunaos, as the Delaniums call each fifty-Dungel period, in search of the precious creature. Golugas make up for more than half of the ointments and beverages the health-Gloites use against all kinds of injuries and sickness. Gisaoh, a proven path-finder, was chosen to devise a safe route that could be used by a group of no fewer than fifteen Gloites at the same time. It took Gisaoh over ten Dunaos and one arm -we, Luakrums, have four arms- to figure out, not one, but three different routes. He had been young then, not even twenty-three Dualemas old. It was his determination (and both his success and physical loss) what earned him a place among the privileged health-Gloite, a select group of individuals above which only the Gou, the divine professors -the Glavinis, to which Gharnalli belonged- and the first class Grogards stood.
Although the routes figured out by Gisaoh had been traveled for many Dualemas already and were relatively safe, they were not totally free of danger. That's why Gisaoh had said no when my father asked him to allow me to go with them. But he insisted, my father, my Gomonto, that it would make me forget about scribbling and about the whole Delani idea if I went, if I experienced the Duada, the journey, as they called the trip to the ends of Luakr. My Gomoto had never agreed with the idea that I became a Gloite of words and history, and all those useless things. He has always wanted me to enter training for becoming a Grogard, a warrior, which would elevate the honor of our Guamaga, our family. When Gisaoh said no again, and my Gomoto saw in his eyes that it was definitive and inexorable, he stared into the depth of his Dialsas, without blinking even once, and said calmly and with utmost solemnity, it is my Mulka. And that was that.
In Luakr, every Gloite has the birth-right of being granted a wish once they grow of age, which happens when they reach their sixteenth Dualema. This wish, which is sacred and unavoidable for whom it has been requested, is called Mulka. Very few things escape the reach of Mulka: to save a Gloite's life once proven to have committed murder, for example. To request to become part of the Gou -the elite ruling system and its royalty- To request a Glassia in marriage if that Glassia is already married, or if she has already been requested as Mulka by another Glosso. Or to have a Gloite killed if he or she has not being found guilty of committing a crime against the Mulka-bearer.
So when my Gomoto told my brother-in-law that it was his Mulka that he take me with them in the Duada, Gisaoh had no other choice than to nod. And I, who was still young and living with my Gomoto -although I was of age to have used my own Mulka, but knowing that it would be a stupid thing to do- had no other choice than to pack what Gisaoh instructed (Gimbula's skin to cover myself from the extreme cold of Dungels, a sharp Drasid, and a Duado, for water where found) and to go with them.
That's how that Danikel -the opposed time of Dungel (total darkness), when a suffused glare, a constant dimness, wraps around all animate and inanimate things- when the Domala was cracked open from above, and it fell down in chunks the size of shafts, and ended the lives of most of the Gloites that I was accompanying in the Duada, I happened to be as close as the forbidden walls as anyone has ever been. At first, as Gisaoh and the others kept their positions, stealthily gaining proximity to a horde of Golugas by a small Lafula, whose waters murmured among traveling rocks, I stayed behind as previously instructed. I was tired and anxious at the same time. After almost one Dunao of travel in which a Glosso by the name of Gur died by the poisonous touch of a long-tentacled plant that no one seemed to know existed, and two of our partners lost an arm each in a fight against a hungry Gsulato, a beast that lives in caves it digs itself in the soil and whose strength surpasses that of twenty Gloites, and so many Danikels and Dungels of hunger and thirst in which I honestly felt that I would die, I was happy to stay behind and enjoy the sense of mystique and history the place evoked. According to Diatrianima, the ancient legends of the Gloites before us, it was here that the great detachment occurred, when the world was cut in half by what the scriptures say was another world, and the higher-beings, noticing the potential for life, inseminated the ground with their life-energy, their Uralda, thus creating the first dwellers of the physical world, what they then called Natiala. The old scriptures read the poetic passages of Giomo and Gugul, who tell of the beginning of the world, what they called Terrana, and of the origins and evolution of the Natiala into other species. They also tell of the lands at the ends of Laukr (which went through different names, such as Nurate, Fraga, Funicia, and Troyla) and that what is now called the forbidden walls is probably one of the remaining halves of the great detachment.
As the Gloites scattered, running and screaming like crazy with their weapons and nets in hand after the blind and furious Golugas, I let myself be carried away by my thirst of knowledge and by my insatiable curiosity. Looming in the distance, the humongous forbidden walls rose infinitely. It was said among the Gloites in town that the very Ybuna Gorza, the most powerful among all powerful Gloites, could not climb them. I felt my respiration cut off intermittently. The awe, the incredulity of witnessing such an overwhelming and humbling sight was almost too much to bear. And yet, even drowned in amazement, I kept walking towards it, oblivious to Gisaoh's command of staying put, indifferent to the fact that every step took me farther into rows of full-grown plants, most as tall as me, through paths which I would later not be able to remember. Entranced, I crossed the great distance from where I had been told to stay to the very foot of the wall. The forbidden walls. The very end of Luakr. Adjectives cannot quite describe my feelings upon seeing such breathtaking a view. The wall's width reached as far as my sight could, and so did its height. It did not help that in Luakr there is no clarity. Light (a term I just learned from the vocabulary of men) is virtually non-existent. The only brightness we get to see is the one emitted by Durba, a substance found in Lafulas and Swamps (Lofis) and Fire, which we call Dur, and which is not too common. That's when we all heard the greatest rumbling noise of our lives, and I saw, my back to the walls that not even the mighty Ybuna Gorza could climb, that the world had broken in a hundred pieces of solid rock, and was falling down on us. And then, before I could even scream with fear, I saw something else, something even more amazing than the fall of the world: a quickly now-here, now-gone stream of the most intense form of Dur my eyes had ever experienced, which blinded me for as fleetingly long as it shone. It was but an instant, and then it was swallowed by the rumble of rocks the Domala had become, and then, just as suddenly, it all got quiet.
For a few moments, I was still, as still as the dead bodies of my partners under the tons of rock and dust rained from above. My Druma beat so fast in my chest that it felt like it would give up at any moment. And then I saw it again, right on top of me, far, far above me, where I could swear the forbidden walls began. It was fire, I thought, because I didn't know better. But now I know. It was the Sun.
