Descending Road - SPIRALS UP OUT OF SOUND by Dana W. Paxson

SPIRALS UP OUT OF SOUND

1563 4D

I am the kharshfainh, the kharsh. The Zashinhalh, the ones Andrew calls aliens, never find me when they search — the dimensions fold so deeply, and I know all the ways. I sing; they stand entranced, forgetting their appetites and their games and their hosts, and seek me with their hungry, perradiant, hypercrystal eyes, and stare through me as I wrap them in music’s truth.

I become joyful and mischievous then, and I tease them with unspending solitons of rhythm, laughing in a thousand octaves and atonal smears. They leap through the jungled axes after my fleeting sounds. I nestle and warm myself by the anth-flame in Andrew, my host. Even Turiosten, Turhnushthenh her folk called her, passes by me as she moves through Andrew‘s least aspects, my presence haunting her like whiffs of attar from a far wind.

My fragrance caught the senses and the instruments of another human, and captured him; Arlen was his name. From the caldrons of his vats I snatched a tiny strand of life, and planted it in one named Jeddin. It caught, and now it spreads like the flood of stars. I laugh.

Arlen burned in the caldron of my aroma, and his sentattar vanished like water spilled in solar fire. Few can hear my music and go on. For Andrew‘s sake, I sing in ways he cannot hear.

Now — this word I sing means always-now — the Zashinhalh gather in one tiny buried place, the underground room their hosts call the Hall, to sing and make their hanhorhn; their hosts await them, flies hanging at the edges of the web. The song of the Zashinhalh spirals up out of sound into the shiver of atom and atom; they join and part a million million times, every cluster of them, until their new ones step through from emptiness in pairs, to shine and race away, freed from the husks of bodies.

For here they begin and end, here they close a great uneven geodesic loop in a hard and long and twisted range of the innermost space. From this place they exploded outward and back through time, to a new sheaf of worlds; to this place they gather again, to explode once more. All but a very few: the renegades.

A child with ancient eyes, Andrew called me. The Zashinhalh call me the kharshfainh. If rhythm is creation and extinction, and notes are different shades of hate and love and rage and ecstasy, and chords and timbres the knotted slow tears of knowledge and meaning, that means “the singer.”

I sing this story.

Story List	SURPRISE ME	Author Page
USER SURVEY	PUZZLE ME	MAKE ELM MARK

HOVER Lucida Bright BARE	HOVER Lucida Bright FULL	HOVER Palatino Linotype BARE
HOVER Palatino Linotype FULL	HOVER Times New Roman BARE	HOVER Times New Roman FULL
PAD Arial BARE	PAD Arial FULL	PAD Lucida Bright BARE
PAD Lucida Bright FULL	PAD Times New Roman BARE	PAD Times New Roman FULL


	SPIRALS UP OUT OF SOUND 1563 4D I am the kharshfainh, the kharsh. The Zashinhalh, the ones Andrew calls aliens, never find me when they search — the dimensions fold so deeply, and I know all the ways. I sing; they stand entranced, forgetting their appetites and their games and their hosts, and seek me with their hungry, perradiant, hypercrystal eyes, and stare through me as I wrap them in music’s truth. I become joyful and mischievous then, and I tease them with unspending solitons of rhythm, laughing in a thousand octaves and atonal smears. They leap through the jungled axes after my fleeting sounds. I nestle and warm myself by the anth-flame in Andrew, my host. Even Turiosten, Turhnushthenh her folk called her, passes by me as she moves through Andrew‘s least aspects, my presence haunting her like whiffs of attar from a far wind. My fragrance caught the senses and the instruments of another human, and captured him; Arlen was his name. From the caldrons of his vats I snatched a tiny strand of life, and planted it in one named Jeddin. It caught, and now it spreads like the flood of stars. I laugh. Arlen burned in the caldron of my aroma, and his sentattar vanished like water spilled in solar fire. Few can hear my music and go on. For Andrew‘s sake, I sing in ways he cannot hear. Now — this word I sing means always-now — the Zashinhalh gather in one tiny buried place, the underground room their hosts call the Hall, to sing and make their hanhorhn; their hosts await them, flies hanging at the edges of the web. The song of the Zashinhalh spirals up out of sound into the shiver of atom and atom; they join and part a million million times, every cluster of them, until their new ones step through from emptiness in pairs, to shine and race away, freed from the husks of bodies. For here they begin and end, here they close a great uneven geodesic loop in a hard and long and twisted range of the innermost space. From this place they exploded outward and back through time, to a new sheaf of worlds; to this place they gather again, to explode once more. All but a very few: the renegades. A child with ancient eyes, Andrew called me. The Zashinhalh call me the kharshfainh. If rhythm is creation and extinction, and notes are different shades of hate and love and rage and ecstasy, and chords and timbres the knotted slow tears of knowledge and meaning, that means “the singer.” I sing this story.