The Crucible of Logic
by Garret Stirland
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
Carox cracks open the small jewelry box. Inside is a little silver ring with a pearl mounted on the head.
“Your grandmother was a greater scholar than your father ever was.” Grandfather’s voice is thick. “And she...” He trails off.
Daylight strikes the pearl through the window and lights the silver band. Carox touches the box and folds back the lid. In that flashing, in that winking pearl and burning silver, he can remember a smell more than anything, like mint and lime, but also cinnamon and coffee. He reaches in and touches the ring.
Grandfather stiffens. “Careful, my boy,” the old man whispers in the hallowed voice of grief. “It’s the only thing left of her. All impressions, all memory, is tethered to that ring like rocks dangling by a string on a buoy.”
And indeed, when Carox touches the pearl, he realizes it is not his first time caressing this ring, not the first time he’s seen sunlight flicker on its polished white pearl. And yes, the smell of mint and lime and cinnamon, because Grandmother was a baker and, while she baked, she would remove this ring and place it on the counter, and there Carox would sit and look at it and consider the pearl while Grandmother cooked.
Lime and mint and cinnamon and... that was not as long ago as he thought. It was not long ago at all. In fact, had it not been last month that he helped Grandmother home from the markets with a basket full of flour and eggs and butter. Had it not been only a phase ago that the police had pounded on their townhouse door to demand his grandmother be taken? And Father had raged, Father had gone to his study to write a missive to the Domes.
“Grandfather...” Carox whispers, turning the ring over in his palm as the memory of his grandmother floods his mind’s eye. Unlocked by this little silver ring, the torrent of memory bends his face in consternation. Carox lifts a finger to his cheek and finds it is wet with tears. “What... what happened...?” Carox croaks, overcome by the image of his dear, sweet grandmother. How in God’s kindled name had he forgotten her?
She had taught Carox how to read, had taught him arithmetic. But even as Carox speaks, more memories crash into him from the void. Grandmother was arrested, taken by police, imprisoned like father. But she was not beheaded before the Domes. No, something more sinister had happened, something eternally more permanent than death by a headsman.
When Carox glances up at Grandfather, he sees tears shining down those sagging cheeks.
“Where do you think your father got his anti-establishment ideals?” Grandfather whispers in the helpless voice of a widower. “Where do you think he learned to write? From me, a soldier? It was your grandmother who taught your father everything he knows. But she was overzealous with her ideas, and the politicians wanted to silence her. In response to her imprisonment, your father wrote those scathing epistles, sent to every sector and praetor of the Domes, calling for an end to the government. And so the government placed your grandmother in the Crucible.”
His voice swoops thick and low. “Such power it is, this Crucible that they keep hidden. Though I’ve never laid my eyes upon it, oh, how I know its burning touch, hot enough to turn memories to ash.
“Your grandmother told me about the danger of the Domes and those terrible inventions they keep hidden from the rest of us. She thought it was an affront to dignity, to humanity, to erase a person. But it’s the heart of the Dome’s power. They place a soul in the Crucible and that soul is burned, that essence is scrubbed from the face of the world, from the face of all the minds of all who...” — he wipes his eyes — “who loved them.”
“The Crissa?” Carox is genuinely confused. “They told this to you?”
“No, they only sold me that box. That sacred ibu box. There is something special about it, about how it was made, who I purchased it from. Those nightmen who, the Domes tell us, are all faith-blind savages. I bought the box and gave it to your grandmother. She placed her wedding band in there andwhen she was burned inside the Crucible, all things connected to her evaporated too, like ice placed into a forge. All of it, even my memory. Until one day I was cleaning my room, our room, and I opened that box.” Grandfather taps the box.
“Preserved, Carox. The box preserved the ring. Everything else vanished but the pearl. This is what ignited your father’s passion. Which is why he is now faced with her same fate. Which is why the headsman would be a mercy, for then at least your father can live here.” He touches his temple. “And here.” He motions to the room around them.
The memories of Grandmother are flooding back. Why, less than a month ago Carox sat at this same table playing Ja’vyon on their wooden game board, Grandmother watching with pride. “They can’t just make you... forget.”
But even as he says this, he does not believe his own words, for Grandmother’s life continues to trickle into view. How had he believed that Grandmother had been dead his whole life? How on earth had that happened?
It was Carox’s turn to run fingers through his hair. “The Domes can’t do such horrific things!” Carox returns the ring to the box, gently shutting the latch. “It’s wrong and evil!”
“Careful what you speak, my boy. The Domes have more power than either of us can imagine. All generations come, and it’s the Domes who choose who is remembered and who is pruned away. They decide the martyrs, they decide the symbols that we cling to. They are shapers of mankind. They decide what is evil.”
“We must stop them.”
“Tell that to your father.”
“People must know!”
“Must they?” Grandfather asks pointedly, and he leans forward on the table. “Tell me, my boy, what do you remember about your mother?”
“She died before I was...”
A quiet spans the dinning room, spans the townhouse, spans the entire curvature of the world.
“Before what?” Grandfather urges his grandson softly. “What were you going to say?”
“Born... before I was born,.” Carox shakes his head. “But that’s illogical. She must’ve died on the birthing bed.” He feels a sudden stab of panic, a lack of breath. “Tell me, was my mother recently taken too? Was she placed in the Crucible? Grandfather, tell me!”
Grandfather only shakes his old white head. “I cannot say, my poor lonely boy. I don’t remember her. She must’ve perished before your grandmother and I moved to this city to be with your father. But the doubt, you feel it sharply now? Like a tooth missing in the front of your mouth, like a gaping, smooth hole where there should be pain but instead there is nothing. What else is missing?”
“And if they do this to father?” Tears are welling up in Carox’s eyes. “I won’t remember him, either? How can we stop them? What if they burn him?!”
Grandfather’s eyes suddenly grow wide and urgent, “Quickly now, go. Take your father’s eyeglasses. Bring them here, to this box, and let us hope that the pink ibu wood will preserve his eyeglasses as it preserved your grandmother’s ring. Let’s hope it is enough so that we can remember him forever even if he burns.”
Carox stands, and the chair screeches. He sprints upstairs to his father’s bedroom and there finds the eyeglasses beside the candle and Father’s recent book. How many times has Carox walked in while his father was reading, the candlelight flashing on his glasses, his brown-eyed gaze turned down into the pages of ink and concepts and innovation.
Carefully, Carox lifts the eyeglasses from their place, the brass and crystal so delicate in his hand. Gripping the railing as he flies down stairs, at the last step he exhales. He can finally draw a breath. His heart rate finally slows and he feels slightly better. What, after all, was he so wound up about?
Grandfather is pouring another cup of brandy at the table. The wooden box is open again. He is peering at the silver ring with mist in his eyes. Carox approaches and stands at the edge of the table, watching the pain and longing in his grandfather’s wrinkled face. Yet all that suffering turns to curiosity as grandfather blinks, then glances up at his approaching grandson. “My boy, what’s that in your hand?”
Carox glances down at his hand, he looks at the strange glasses there and their scratched lenses, their flimsy brass frame. What does he need with glasses, after all? His eyes were perfectly fine. Perhaps too much brandy; it isn’t good for young minds. “Nothing, Grandpa.” He tosses the glasses aside. “What were we talking about?”
Grandfather’s brow furrows in thought. He looks at the box. “I... can’t remember. I’m getting too old.”
“Grandfather,” Carox says, sliding back into his seat, “will you tell me again about the time you had to burn down the forest to flush out the twileen raiders?”
Grandfather shuts the box, sliding it aside. “Of course.” A sip of brandy. “Your grandmother and I, we had just migrated here to Ann Vossar. So that your grandmother could be closer to the Domes. She always wanted a child, you see, but she was barren and we could not conceive. So she devoted all her time to study. The Domes were her life. Her child.”
“One day I’ll study there.”
Grandfather smiles warm and familiar, reaching out and squeezing Carox’s hand. “I do not doubt, my boy.” Running fingers through his old white hair. “And the Domes will be lucky to have you.”
“I’ll make enough money to move us to an actual house.”
“Of course you will.” He sips his brandy. “You and me, my boy, it’s always been just you and me.”
Copyright © 2024 by Garret Stirland
