The quiet in Coire na Fòghnaidh was not emptiness; it was a presence, enduring. It carried heaviness. Devon sensed it on his ears pressed against his flesh. Yet it was the silence's connection, to time that unsettled him.
They had been inside the glen for what seemed like moments. Glancing at his watch brought a sense of discord. The digital readout blinked, moving forward one second at a time. The passage of time seemed deceptive. The gaps, between each tick appeared to elongate, pause then quickly contract again. Croft trying to gauge the surrounding noise using an instrument looked at the display perplexedly.
"It's not showing zero decibels " he whispered, his tone lost among the moss. "It's showing… numbers. It's like the instrument expects a noise that never arrives and registers that anticipation, as a shortfall." He raised his gaze, his weathered face drained of color. "Time and sound are linked, Duncan. Here they both seem… exhausted."
Then the draw commenced. Not like a power but, as an intensifying harmony. Devon's own heartbeat, a solitary tempo transformed into a remote burdensome exertion. Every beat was a strain he felt compelled to complete for a body he was gradually detaching from. His thoughts, a hectic assembly started to recess. Gradually worries quietly exited the hall. The case, Flavio, the manifesto—they didn't disappear; they diminished in importance. They turned into displays in a museum he no longer wished to oversee.
He observed Croft lower himself to his knees not suddenly falling, but descending slowly and gracefully. The don's eyes remained open focused on the calculus etched into the stone. His shaking had ceased. A deep tranquility erased the creases from his visage.
"It's… incredibly… refined " Croft whispered, every syllable an offering he appeared pleased to give. "The debate… resides in the location. No requirement, for… interpretation."
This was allure. Not peace promised,. Peace exposed as the fundamental condition. All effort was the anomaly. Here in the corrie the anomaly ended. It was a return, to a home he hadn't realized he'd departed from.
Devon resisted it. He held tightly to the photo in the tree a point of distinct memory amid the overall stillness. He concentrated on the coldness of the air a feeling. He attempted to remember the sound of his niece's laughter. The memory was mute like a silent performance, behind glass.
Time maintained its pattern. He would. Realize the illumination had changed, not slowly but with a sudden leap as though the sun abandoned the notion of gentle changes. He attempted to approach Croft to rouse him yet his own arms and legs felt weighed down by a lethargy. Every movement demanded a struggle, against the pull of inactivity. It wasn't a burden; it was a summons to rest.
A segment of his intellect the center witnessed this with impersonal dread. This is the Sleeper's Tithe. It is not a ceremony. A setting. A state of pause. We are not, under assault. We are adapting.
He glanced more at Croft. The elderly gentleman rested on the moss his hands clasped over his chest. His eyes remained open gazing at the grey sky. A slight pleased smile appeared on his lips. He was not unresponsive. He was fulfilled. He had traced the geometry to its origin. Deemed it satisfactory.
Panic, the remnant of the past era glimmered within Devon. He parted his lips to scream to shatter the quiet with a name. Yet his vocal cords denied the crudeness. Only a whisper emerged, a noise that faded inches, from his face.
"Croft…"
The don's gaze moved gradually in his direction. There was no sign of threat, a gentle empathetic interest. "Why… resist?" The phrases were separated by relaxed silences. "The… equation… evens out… here."
Indeed it did. The reasoning was flawless. The quiet was not emptiness. An answer. The ideal answer. To oppose was not bravery; it was a lack of comprehension.
Devon's knees gave way. Not due, to frailty. As if allowed by some force. He settled onto the moss. It was gentle, inviting. The coldness around turned into a sharpness. The heaviness of his body a load he had borne for forty-two years started to seem… voluntary.
He gazed at the rowan. The picture was a smudge of hues. The affection it symbolized seemed intangible a concept, from a hectic louder world. Simpler to release it. Simpler to relinquish everything.
This was the draw. Not of enchantment. Of pure natural logic. The corrie presented a case than Flavio ever had. It did not talk about peace. It embodied peace.
His eyelids became droopy. Not, from tiredness. From the deep comfort of finishing a book. To cease reading. To cease existing as a character. To transform into an element of the page the border, the space.
Right when the final strand of his resolve started to fray a noise broke the quiet.
It was incorrect. A steady mechanical click-clack, click-clack. It didn't belong to the glen. It was an intrusion.
Devon's head drooped to one side. Felisca Fleur positioned herself at the boundary of the circle. Her gaze wasn't, on them. Instead she fixed her eyes on the earth below her expression marked by age-old focus. Clutched in her hands were two slabs of slate.
She was snapping them against each other.
The noise was terrible. Harsh, senseless, meaningless. It lacked any tune. It was fierce racket. A kid's disrespect, to the silence of the cathedral.
Click-clack. Click-clack.
Each impact was a violation. A tiny, violent rebellion against the weight of the world.
With every clack, a piece of the quiet fractured. With every clack a segment of time's stillness resumed a steady rhythm.
Click-clack.
Croft's eyes fluttered open returning slowly and uncertainly.
Click-clack.
Devon noticed a muscle in his jaw spasm. A neglected reflex: annoyance.
Felisca locked eyes with him her gaze alight with a wisdom that was not submissive but intensely guarding. "This place loses memory " she declared, her tone slicing through the silence, like slate. "It loses melodies. It loses tales. It loses time." She snapped the stones more a resolute beat. "I have come to make it remember!"
The enchantment dissolved, not through a counter-symbol but through a rhythmic flaw. A human pulse, within the core of the eternal.
Devon hauled himself upright the moss reluctant to let go. He staggered to Croft. Took hold of his arm. "Stand up. We're moving out."
Croft let himself be pulled to his feet his face reflecting a man pulled abruptly from a dream into a stark fluorescent-lit space. He gazed at the calculus stone with yearning then shifted his eyes to Felisca with emerging, thankfulness.
They stumbled away from the corrie Felisca's foolish click-clack, click-clack guiding them a steady lifeline cast into the quiet ocean. The further they moved, the more the usual sounds of the world surged back—the breeze, a far-off bird their own uneven breaths—not, as noise but as a roaring magnificent orchestra.
They did not speak until they reached the Land Rover. The corrie's seduction had been too intimate, too logical, to put into words. They had not faced a monster. They had faced a better answer, and had chosen, with help, to cling to the messy, painful, noisy question. It was not a victory. It was a narrow, shameful, glorious escape.