Daphne Descends

DAPHNE DESCENDS

I’m sure there used to be butterflies, even at night. Perhaps there are no butterflies in the world anymore.

I live in a small village in Central Crissitian, on the spot they used to call Old New York. There are beautiful rolling hills in my village, stretching as far as my sight can allow.

Everyone in Crissitian farms. There isn’t any reason not to farm. The Leader pays for our crops. He tells us we were feeding the world. I like to believe that.

Today is a beautiful day. I wear my sundress and go visit my boyfriend who lives a couple houses over. My parents arranged for us to have some time to get to know each other before our wedding. His name is Jakkoben, and he is very sweet to me. Sometimes he picks me flowers and gives them to me. He likes to compare me to the flowers. “I’m so glad our parents arranged this,” he would say, “You’re prettier than these daffodils, Daphne.”

I spend my days working on my father’s farm, weeding the vegetable patches. It’s tedious business, but everyone in the family must contribute. My brothers plow the fields in back of our farm, my older sister cooks dinner most every other night and helps my mother with chores, and my younger sister helps out here and there, where she can. She hasn’t yet found a skill that’s useful enough around the house, except for maybe mending clothes. With that, she is exceptionally skilled. I had another older brother, but he has been sent off to war, as there is always a need for soldiers in Crissitian.

We are all currently anxiously awaiting my older sister’s marriage to a local farm boy in town. She is already nineteen, so we are all quite excited. Since I am only sixteen, it’s not my time to get married yet. But soon I will get to start a family of my own. The Leader says we’re repopulating the world. I’d like to believe that, too.

I stop on the way to Jakkoben’s home and spot an unusually pretty flower. I decide to pluck it from the earth and take it with me on my journey. I think about what Jakkoben would think of it. Finally I arrive at his door. He has just come in from working the gardens in back. His family grows flowers, all of them exceptionally beautiful. “Jakkoben,” I say, “I found this flower on the way over here. Do you think it’s prettier than me?” He examines the flower and then looks at me carefully.

“It’s a rare find. Yes, I’d say it is prettier than you.” I thought he might say that.

Tonight, it’s very dark outside. I find myself thinking about the flower I found. I am very jealous of it. Why is that so? A flower does not live long. It is beautiful for a moment, then it dies. I should be glad that fate is not mine.

I look out into darkness, thinking. Most of all, I do not want to think about the night. Most Crissitians hate the darkness. One cannot farm in darkness. One cannot see in darkness. To be blind is to be useless. We are all known for our good health. The sun gives us strength and longevity. It keeps us warm in the winter, when the temperature here dips into the forties.

But what is most feared about the darkness are the Unbeings. They only come out at night. We think they’re afraid of the Sun.

The Unbeings are cruel and grotesque, or so I’ve heard. They’re diseased. A long time ago, when Crissitian was being formed I suppose, all the undesirable sickness and ill-health was put underground. As far as I know, this was for the good of our nation. Long ago, no one was healthy. The world was a terrible place to live, especially the old United States. Then the world was reformed into some place manageable and Crissitian was formed by my ancestors. The ancient cities were buried beneath the earth. Still today, there are ways to get to those ancient places, deep underground. We call that the Under World.

The Unbeings come up at night. They are not allowed to do this, but one fears going out at night, into the darkness—the Unbeing’s domain. If they were to come out in daylight, it would be a very bad thing. They could be shot and killed upon sight. Everyone fears the Unbeings and their diseased flesh. But why must we fear the Unbeings?

Sometimes I do sit at my window, wishing desperately to be able to see an Unbeing, if just for a moment. But the cool, dead air of the night floats around me at my open window, and my skin starts to shiver. I always end up closing my window and getting to bed.

I walk to my nightstand and pick up my small brush that rests on it precariously. I sit by the window and look out into the darkness, trying to adjust my vision to the still night air. There is a slight breeze coming in, but it is a warm February night, only sixty-five degrees outside. I leave my window open to fill the room with night’s exotic scent. Sometimes I imagine what it must be like to live in darkness like the Unbeings. Are they blinded by the darkness, like I am so often, or are their eyes accustomed to it, like a cat’s?

I conversationally ran some of my thoughts by my father once. He warned me not to think about the Unbeings. He said they were a plague to our race, and that they would be better off forgotten. Is it really that easy to forget something exists, especially when one can see them running by one’s bedroom window in the dead of night?

Tonight is something different. Tonight, as I sit by my open window, I can’t forget: I see a flash of darkness run against darkness. It must be an Unbeing, I think, my heart racing. It is too large and upright to be an animal. But after a moment, the shock wears off. The flash of darkness is gone.

The next day, I talk to Gidriian, my young friend. We usually walk together along sunlit paths into town to shop. There is not much to shop for in Crissitian. Most of what we need we already produce by ourselves, and the government gladly pays for the food we produce.

“Gidrii…” I say. “Have you ever met an Unbeing?” Gidriian looks at me, her face contorted.

“Of course not, Daphne! It’s illegal!” She looks around us for a moment, but there’s nothing to bear witness to our conversation than the grass reeds along the walkway. “What are you trying to do, get us in trouble? We shouldn’t even be talking of Unbeings.”

“Why?” I say.

“Because they’re a social plague!” she says nearly in a whisper. “They steal our crops at night, they’re dangerous, they’re diseased. They might as well kill you on the spot. Meet one of them and you might not live to tell about it.” She tries to calm down. “Listen, we’re almost at the market gates. Can we please not be talking about meeting with Unbeings? I don’t feel like being arrested today,” she says mockingly. I comply for the time being.

I know Gidriian would never be arrested. Her father works as a state guard, protecting our village at night from the Unbeings who try to steal from us. She is privy to the secrets that the guards hold, which is why I like to learn from her all I can.

Later on, on our solitary journey back to the village, Gidriian whispers about the fate of those who risk life and limb to reach out to an Unbeing: “They become infected,” she says. “And you know where the infected go.”

The infected are forced to live in the Under World, with the Unbeings, in their dead cities.

I never brought up the Unbeings around Gidriian again.

Our conversation had not deterred me from my late-night watching. It seems like I am becoming more curious with each passing day. Nothing can sate my curiosity but knowledge. But knowledge of what? There would be much danger to speak to an Unbeing. Perhaps I’d be poisoned, or the Unbeing would destroy me. Then I think of gardening. I think of my family and of Jakkoben and Gidriian, and I feel that I am drifting toward something else altogether. I am filled with questions, questions that no one here will help me answer.

As I look out my window tonight, I see the dark flash run past my eyes again. I push my head out my window, my heart beating. I want to know. I see the darkness hiding, knowing I had noticed him. I call him over, promising no harm.

The figure comes up to the window, agitated. As I am prepared to note his horrible mutated features that I had surely heard about through television and rumors, I’m completely shocked as to what I find instead. I see illuminated through the light in my room short, choppy black hair and watery blue eyes. He has porcelain skin untouched by disease and, also it seems, daylight. Can he really be an Unbeing? He is so much like anyone, like me, and so young.

“I don’t want to talk here. Come to the edge of the woods where it is safer for me,” he whispers nervously. He has a right to be nervous. Sometimes farmers use their daughters as bait to lure in Unbeings for the kill, shooting them as they walk closer to the house. He is really a brave one. I have to think about it for a moment. I’ll be leaving the safety of my home to go off with an Unbeing. All Unbeings are sick, aren’t they? And deadly. And yet, I trust him. I agree.

I grab my jacket and slip out through my window’s narrow frame. We quickly run out of sight. At the edge of the woods, I have to catch my breath. He still does not smile at me. Perhaps he thinks this is a trick. But then why does he not look surprised that I went with him? Has this happened before?

“Ephiram,” he says.

“Daphne,” I say. He sits down on the ground. I do the same.

“I see you sitting at your window all the time. Most people don’t do that.”

“Some do,” I say in my defense. “For curiosity.”

“Most are not quite so curious as you are,” he says lowly, looking at me. “Would you like to know about me? About the Under World?”

“Yes,” I say quickly. I have no hesitation. I realize I have wanted to know this for a long time.

“Come with me, then. It’s still not safe to talk here,” he says, getting up.

“Okay,” I say. He turns to me again.

“You’re not worried about being infested, are you? Or captured?” I look into his face. He is smiling. It’s genuine. I can’t help but think no harm will come from this.

“If you can handle it, I can,” I say finally.

We go to the Under World.

Underneath the earth lie the ancient cities of old. I know of this from my history class when I was in school. We learned about these grand cities, and how they polluted the world. Now I was returning to one of those cities, walled in by dirt and rock and time. Walking through them, I feel I as if I were returning to the past.

We arrive from an underground passageway at the base of a mountain into an elaborate web of caves. It feels as if we’re walking forever, and I feel claustrophobic. I grab Ephiram’s arm. I can’t see like he can see. I’m blind here. I realize now that if I wanted to leave, it would only be through the help of Ephiram.

At the city gates, there is a vat of water. It looks clear and clean and I drink from it hastily after having walked so far. Ephiram looks at me for a moment, but then disregards my actions. He sticks two fingers in the water and then touches his head, chest, left shoulder, and right shoulder. I don’t understand.

Ephiram pushes the wire gates open. We walk inside. There is no use for guards here, he explains. No one from the Above World would dare to come down here. Not even the army.

We walked through the streets—long, concrete and dusty, ever extending onward and onward. There are many people in the streets. I can’t even take note of them first. What I see are massive buildings on huge plots of land as big as fields, rising up into the cavernous walls. I’m gazing admiringly at their structure, breathing in the stonework.

“Not everyone here is sick,” he explains. He doesn’t say anything more. We walk around the city, and I take note of the people. Some have metal in their faces, and their hair is colored and spiked. I see women in long black robes wearing similar necklaces, and walking silently to a large building down the road. “There are all sorts of people here,” Ephiram says.

I think that I must stand out like a sour thumb. I’m so different from everyone here, and yet I feel like we are all the same. My chest hurts at the thought, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

We walk past a man and a woman. They’re kissing, but not in the way I know. They’re more like devouring each other. “Excuse me,” I say. “What are you doing?”

They just look at me and smile and turn away. Ephiram tells me they’re “in love”.

“Where’s love?” I ask, very confused.

“It’s not a place,” Ephiram tries to explain to me. “It’s a feeling. Like being sad or angry. Or scared.” I frown. I don’t like feeling scared. Perhaps they are holding on so tightly because they are scared. I tell him my thoughts. He says in response, “Perhaps they are.”

Ephiram wants me to go see the church in the middle of the city, where he says those ladies in black were walking to before. Inside the building, there is chanting. I look around. There are a dozen children on a large step dressed in red and chanting. It’s not necessarily chanting, but I don’t know what to call what they’re doing now. I ask Ephiram. He says they’re singing songs of praise to the Lord. So they’re singing. This is singing. I listen to them and something inside me wants to cry. I start to cry, and I cry not knowing why. I’ve never cried before. I’ve cried once or twice when I cut myself tripping in the garden and stumbling over a stone, but never like this. I cry because something has hurt my heart. It is something I can’t see or even feel. It’s something beautiful like a flower, but I can’t see it. It’s something painful like a garden rock, but I can’t feel the rock. It is just here, around me. I feel like falling.

Ephiram helps me to one of the seats, which is called a pew. A woman is crying as I was in front of a statue of a woman and placing candles at the statue’s feet. “That’s The Madonna,” Ephiram said. “She is praying to the Madonna to keep her healthy.”

“What does it mean, to pray for something?” I ask.

“It means…” he says, finding words, “to communicate with God.”

“Who is God?” I ask.

“He is the creator of the universe,” Ephiram says with a smile, as if remembering something grand. It is hard for me to imagine someone creating the universe. It seems impossible. But later, I’m walking down a main street with Ephiram again. I see different people. I think that somehow, all these different people had to come into being somehow. They couldn’t have just come from nowhere.

He takes me back to my home, it is getting very early now, and the sun will rise soon. It is getting very dangerous for him to be outside. “If I see you again at your window, you’ll only need to wave me over, and we’ll go back, if you want.” I tell him that I’d love to go back; I still have so many questions about everything, but it’s apparent I can’t ask them all tonight.

Before I go to bed this night, I remember what Ephiram told me about praying to God. I sit on my bed and close my eyes, and do what that woman did at the statue. “Dear God, I say, help me understand.”

I think of many things today while I am gardening. I think about Jakkoben, and about our date tomorrow, and what I am going to wear. I think about love, and if Jakkoben is in love with me like those two Unbeings in the Under World last night. I feel like he might not be. Somehow, I’m sad. I’ve never known what it’s like to be in love, and even if it is something terrible, I feel sad. The thought of not knowing this feeling is excruciating. I feel miserable.

That night, I wait at my window again. My chest pinches as I see Ephiram from off in the distance. I know it’s him. My eyes are slowly becoming accustomed to the darkness. We go back to the Under World again.

This time, we go to a “club”. People here dance. I’ve never danced before, and no one in the Above World has time to dance. Down here, there is all the time in the world. Ephiram shows me how to dance. I feel so happy, and I laugh as hard as I can. My chest hurts from laughing so hard. This feeling is infectious.

He shows me a library after. I had never heard of a library, except only in history class, where large amounts of books were supposedly kept. No one really knew for sure. No one reads books any more, unless they were trade books. There wasn’t any time to read. I am amazed at the sheer amount of books in this building. There must be millions of books here.

That night and similar nights after, I have gone down to the Under World and have seen many things. I feel different than before. I realize now that not everyone below is diseased and cruel. Why had Leader lied to me, and to everyone in Crissitian? I asked this to Ephiram the night before. He scoffed at me, and said: “Your leader has lied to you. He means to blind you from the truth.” I asked him what he meant. “Tomorrow, he said, I’ll bring you to someone who can answer all your questions,” he said.

I have to tell someone about this. I need to speak to someone up here. I want someone else to understand what is going on. The world isn’t the world I had woken up to a few weeks ago. It is a different world altogether. It is a meaner world, full of lies. I don’t know where I am anymore.

I feel like I have to tell someone. I decide that someone should be Gidriian.

“Gidriian,” I say. “I need you to listen to me,” we are making straw hats outside on the side lawn of her home. My voice shrinks to a whisper as she listens close. “I have done something very strange, but very wonderful. I have seen the Under World!” Gidriian smiles at me and giggles.

“Wow, I haven’t laughed like that in forever.”

“I’m serious,” I say impatiently. Why won’t she believe me? Is it such an asinine thought, that I should do something so dangerous and so deadly and illegal and live to tell about it?

Her smile fades. She is confused. “What are you saying?” she says.

“I’ve met a Unbeing. His name is Ephiram and he—”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done!” says Gidriian loudly. “You’ve ruined everything, Daphne! You’ve been contaminated! What if you die? What if you infect me?—What you did was so illegal! You can’t do that—”

“Listen, Gidrii, I know that it’s bad, but it’s not so bad, you must believe me. These people…they’re not Unbeings, they’re people. They’re just like you and me. And some are dying, and they don’t need to be dying.” Gidriian is getting up and knocking over her straw hat. I get up and follow her. “Gidrii, it’s not that bad! Gidrii, they’re real people!” But she doesn’t hear me, or doesn’t want to hear me. She turns to face me and says, sadly:

“I don’t know how to help you, Daphne. You’re digging your own grave. I’m sorry.” And then she walks into her house. I walk away.

Tonight I wait at the window impatiently for that pinch in my chest. Ephiram comes, and I descend once again into darkness.

Along the way I tell him of my fallout with Gidriian. Ephiram stares at me coldly, with fear stuck in his throat. “You must be careful who you talk to. Not all of your friends in Crissitian are actually your friends.” I want to defend Gidriian, but her recent behavior has left me at an odd disposition.

We enter the gates again. I make the sign of the cross now, when I enter.

We walk to a derelict stone building on 51st street. There is a woman in the doorway smoking a cigarette, her body leaning against the door’s frame. She doesn’t have hair, but I still find her very beautiful, and I feel a little rage for her when she embraces Ephiram for a moment familiarly. “Come in,” she says to us.

“My name is Jolean,” she says. “What would you like to know?” she motions for us to sit down on the couch in a small office-like area, the walls rimmed with books.

“Everything,” I say, wordlessly. What would I like to know? Is there really a limit to one’s knowledge? I want to be filled to the brim with it. I want to know everything. I think. “A couple nights ago, I asked Ephiram why the Leader would lie to us, because it is obvious that not everyone down here is sick. Even if they were, medicine exists. Why the lies? He told me that Leader is trying to blind the Crissitians from the truth.

Jolean leaned back in her chair and smiled, pulling that smoking paper from her lips again. “Ah yes, your Leader. The infamous Leader of Crissitian. We only get a vague inkling of a name down here. But yes, as you have realized, we are not all sick. The lie was meant to blind you from the truth, and to prevent you and everyone in the Above World from communicating with us. Instead, he has made you afraid of us. In actuality, are danger comes from our intellect, and our ideas.” I don’t understand. She went on. “You see, even at the beginning, things were corrupt. Many centuries ago, when Crissitian was being formed. Perhaps it was necessary to have all the lepers live in these polluted cities, so that they would die out and wouldn’t infect the healthy. Disease had run rampant. People were dying, the birth rate was dropping. Everywhere there were natural disasters, the return of the plague, civil wars—complete chaos.”

“I was taught this, in school,” I say.

“Yes, your schooling. Isn’t it a funny thing. You know, thousands of years ago, people used to go to high schools and colleges in this country?”

“I’ve never heard of a high school, or a college,” I say, embarrassed. I feel as if I should already know these things, if not just to impress Ephiram.

“That’s understandable. There’s no reason for you to know. Knowing makes you dangerous in your world. If your government and your precious leader knew you know as much as you do, you would become no better off than we are, living among us.”

“Why?” I ask.

“To know why, you must know the past. After this country was re-founded by the Leader’s predecessors, certain changes went into affect. People were told they had to work to rebuild the country to what it was, what it was meant to be. Learning and books became secondary. They also weren’t needed in order to make a complying public. Why do you think that even as we speak, the sons of the people of Crissitian are dying across the sea to help other governments force their demons underground? There even has been a plan in effect to kill us off. It wouldn’t be difficult. There isn’t much oxygen down here. They would only need to spread an air-borne virus, and this civilization as we know it would parish.”

“That’s terrible,” I say. “They can’t do that.” Jolean smiles at me.

“And why can’t they, darling? They can do anything they want. Your Leader forced us into the ground to begin with. I came from a good family, but I was diagnosed with some unknown disease that is still unknown, even to me. They said I would die anyway within a year, back when I was twelve. Interestingly enough, and by some bizarre twist of fate, I’m still alive to tell you this. If you’re sick, you might as well be dead. If you’re sick, you don’t exist to the Crissitians, and you don’t belong in the Above World.

Likewise, if you’re brilliant, or a social deviant, an intellectual, or even knowing of the world around you, you might just disappear one day, and there’s no such thing as love in your world. There’s no one who would argue for you. You’d exist one day in the light, and spend all the rest in eternal darkness. Many of the children here have never seen the sun. Can you imagine a child never seeing the sun? But they sing the praises of the sun in Church like they’ve known it all their lives.”

“Why does the government have to exile so many people? Everyone in the Above World thinks the sickness from down below is highly communicable. They think they can get a disease just by touching a Unbeing.” Suddenly, as I say that word, it hurts my chest. “But…Ephiram told me that you can’t catch diseases like a common cold. Like when I was in school, we were taught that AIDS could be spread if the infected person touched you. Ephiram said they just said that so we wouldn’t go near an Unbeing and learn the truth. And then with the brilliant people, why don’t they allow them to work with the government, instead of in opposition? I’m sure it could do a lot of good for the Country, and perhaps there wouldn’t be so many wars.”

“You have a good heart and mind,” Jolean says to me. “It’s sad, but I know exactly how the Above World thinks; I used to be part of it myself. Even Ephiram was born into darkness. Perhaps the brilliant people could have worked with the government. But the government doesn’t allow this for the same reason they don’t allow institutions to teach you over a certain level of schooling. They want to keep you dumb, so you’ll obey orders. They want to keep you uninformed, so you won’t care about sending your sons to war. And then, finally, all who have power fear to lose it. And certainly you can see now why there is no religion in your world, no love, no laughter, no real joy? It’s to keep you working. There’s nothing to distract you from working and working, and working your lives away. There’s nothing for you to question, or to truly be upset about. All marriages are arranged, everyone has their own land, their own family, their health. Everyone is perfectly content to not feel, because then at least they wouldn’t be in pain.”

We leave Jolean in her study later, and we walk back to the Above World in near silence. “They won’t spread a virus down there, will they?” I ask. Ephiram looked at me and smiled.

“Don’t worry. Jolean is forming a movement, a rebellion. We’re forming a plan to take over government and overthrow the Leader. Then at least everyone will be free.” I smile, too. Something about Ephiram always makes me smile.

We walk back to my home. I open my window carefully. “Thank you for taking me to see Jolean,” I say to him in a whisper.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. He leans to me and softly touches my lips with his. “Goodnight,” he says hastily, and turns around. I smile and lean through the window back into the house. There Gidriian is sitting on my bed, with Jakkoben and some of my family.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I had to tell someone. It was your own fault.”

Outside, I can hear yelling. I turn to the window and scream Ephiram’s name, but I recieve just a muffled reply. My father captures his retreat in the front yard.

I’ve been sitting on this bed for the longest while. The world seems to have gone gray. This morning, father has shot Ephiram right in front of me, as a lesson. Confident I would not try and escape again in my sadness, he has left my window unguarded. He must really believe I am stupid, or else Jolean is right, and he is the fool.

I’ve decided I will join the resistance moment. I move though the window frame once again and descend, for the last time, into the world in which I was meant to live.