The Children of Libertalia

Each day, when the sun above Libertalia reached its afternoon height, halfway between high noon and the horizon, a blade of light fell upon an opening a few hands wide at the foot of a great clock tower. There the light remained for four minutes and three seconds. A mirror inside caught it and bent it up, striking a second mirror, which sent it up again and out of sight. A fraction of a moment later, the beam reached a chamber deep inside the tower, and vaulted off the final reflective trampoline to strike an odd glass tube attached to the stone below it by a rod which let it hang like scales. It was the size of a finger, and curved at each end in ways that boggled the mind. On one side, dipped down by the weight of its contents, sat an unimpressive gray liquid upon which the light was at last angled. It left its heat in the liquid before refracting into an iridescent rainbow. As the minutes passed, the liquid began to bubble, then steam, and imperceptibly shift to the other end of its container. The condensation slowly tipped the balance, until at last the tube tilted fully and struck a thin plate with a melodic ting.

This was only known to the people of Libertalia when the chain reaction set ball bearings spinning, ropes drawing, and heatless bellows pumping, and at last the morning was born with the thrum of the great bronze bell atop the tower. All across the city, houses sparked to life even as lamps were extinguished by opening windows. With the ringing, the tower shed a great coat of resting doves, their minds less tidy than their nests. Only one took her time - gray, inexplicably large. After a moment's preening, she trotted forward and leaned gracefully into flight.

The stories Libertalia told celebrated her kind. The doves were a sort of mascot of the city, and it was said only one that big lived at a time. Faces began to slide out of their homes and onto the cobblestone streets, and a few pointed when she flew low. The city was split into districts, and as she traced them the world seemed to jump from one of brick to one of wood, then to one of metal, in no particular order. The gray dove nearly fell out of the sky when she saw a perfect clone of herself flying upside down below her. A moment more revealed the doppelganger was her reflection on a polished silver roof.

Today, the city streamed not towards work or school, but to the great stone walls which surrounded Libertalia. There had been music and festivities scattered throughout the city overnight. Come morning, those who had been asleep had donned their brightest garb. On days of merriment, bread crumbs were uncontained and sweetmeats unguarded, so the dove followed her stomach, which in turn followed the flow below her. They shuffled into what had been gatehouses before the city closed its doors. This play-fort was one of the few haunts of the warriors of Libertalia, all glinting armor and fluttering crimson kaftans. They were relaxed, as they had been for years, but a perceptive observer could see sharp eyes hiding behind their helmets. An ornate brass elevator ferried folks to the upper ramparts a dozen at a time, and deposited them overlooking their brethren below. The wait was hours long, but the Libertalians did not complain. The gray dove was reminded of her luck to have wings, and after only an hour of crushing boredom at the slow pace of the strange ants of the city, her eyes eventually turned out to the sweeping expanse beyond the walls.

The city of Libertalia rested atop a great mesa. The land fell thousands of feet off the side of the parapets. The sunlight illuminated an otherwise bleak scene: a ghost town wrapped like a scum ring around the mesa. The ruins stretched for miles, until at last the wave of buildings crashed against a wide river and turned back from the desert. Libertalia wasn't the only city in sight; at the edge of the horizon sat a ring of glittering metropolises, their size and splendor hidden, or perhaps magnified, by the distance. No one had left or entered Libertalia in a very long time. The people across the valleys, if there were people behind those walls at all, were of no importance. Not even the great gray dove could fly that far.

The battlements of Libertalia were little more than streets, although that would betray their grandeur: limestone highways. Only the dove knew that they were wider than any street in the city proper, for only she had the height to see it. The wide steps leading to the western side of the city (which was slightly elevated by some quirk of geography) had become spillways for civilians and a steady stream of soldiers joining what was rapidly becoming a parade.

The westernmost wall of Libertalia didn't reach the edge of the mesa like the others. An outcropping of rock jutted up into the air like a nose, such that its tip was higher than the wall. A bridge led out to a platform at the end, from which a shadow drifted over the city. The gray dove had grown tired, even resting on the currents above the sea of faces, but she couldn't come to rest on the ground, so flooded with feet as it was. Instead she turned up, climbing until the shadow had at last passed, and she at last sat on the head of a great white statue.

At the summit of Libertalia stood this great white statue, its form seemingly molded like clay from a towering block of ivory. It was an impressively intimidating woman draped in silk robes. She held a torch to the sky with one hand. The flame had illuminated the city without break since it had first been built, although the dove had never seen it refueled. The other hand clutched a sword, its tip sanded dull. On her brow sat a laurel crown, upon which now sat the dove, preening herself shamelessly, for she knew the town was hers, and the shouting of a man with a spyglass down below merely confirmed this. At the statue's feet, a golden crown, broken in half. Her bright ivory smile was at odds with her warrior image, made all the more frightening by the size of the statue and the way the sun's reflection painted her eyes crimson at dusk.

At this lady Libertalia's front sat a shrine of sorts, small in comparison to the behemoth above. It was guarded by a pair of stone sentinels, a male and female figure, both bearing crossed polearms which formed an arch between them. They were draped in translucent paper streamers and sapphire jewels which seemed to cascade off the woman's chiseled form when the breeze blew through, but they remained eerily still on the other statue. His streamers were deep, fiery crimson, hers a mesmerizing shade of ocean blue. He smiled warmly, but she scowled with the intensity of a leopard on the hunt.

The altar of Libertalia was the right size for a human sacrifice, but such was a forgotten sight in Libertalia. Instead, a menagerie of baubles and trinkets, some cast of fine gold and others mere toys, had been placed atop and around it, illuminated by old candles made bright by the fading light. The glinting of the offerings drew the gray dove's eyes. She could always use nest lining, and an oddly dressed figure had stepped up to the altar, leaving plenty of room as the crowd respectfully slid back.

From the head of Libertalia the dove parachuted down, landing softly on the altar after an exhilarating free fall. The pickings were plentiful: a straw doll adorned with beads, a sapphire necklace, a match with a sparkling tip. She picked up one, then the other, unable to choose, a child in wonderland, until her reverie was shattered by a gasp from behind. The dove turned to the wide eyes of the Libertalians, and to the silhouette in the sunset who stood now between them and her.

This shadow wasn't cast by stone, but by a priest of Libertalia. He wore an alabaster robe woven of spider silk. His head was hung with an explosion of feathers, gray like hers, and the same size, too. His face hid under a blanket of eerie shadows cast by his headdress, and while the Libertalians stood in awe, he stepped forward. The dove shivered. Under his glare the jewels of the altar lost their shine, and as he stepped under the arched spears of the marble altar guardians, the temperature of the air seemed to plummet, the molecules freezing, crystallizing, and shattering as they struck the ground around his feet.

The dove of Libertalia was frightened for the first time in her life. The priest seemed to lock her onto the altar with his invisible eyes. His outstretched hand slithered towards her, grabbing her stomach as his other hand snapped jaws around her back. This priest, this snake in robes of white, raised her into the air. Her life dripped out onto the marble below. The snake-in-human-skin opened its maw, slowly, until at last its whetted white fangs were clear.

And in an instant, his skin fell away, and his milky eyes were revealed alongside a clattering as his headdress struck the ground. He had always been a man. His face was ridged and grooved like the tablelands beyond the walls, and his hair was as silver as the dove. The same reverence radiated from his soul as it did from all the others. He plucked a feather from her tenderly held body as though she were a relic. If his tear ducts still worked, it seemed, the priest would cry with joy. He turned to the crowd and released her into the air with a shout, and as the dove's wings mushroomed around her body, the people of Libertalia let out a cheer.