Description
The Autarch’s surveyors were crossing a desert of white sand. Black escarpments dotted the waste; the ground was hot enough to fry an egg.
Something was wrong with this world. Was it the horizon that looked close enough to fall off of, or the sinister glow stretching above it? Perhaps it was the darting, multi-colored shadows, or the stars, all shining clearly in broad daylight.
Or perhaps it was the daylight itself. For in that brilliant sky there was no sun…
It is not often we read of people being killed by their own urine. But the unusual is commonplace in that visionary travelogue, “The Book of Leaves”.
The store itself is simple. Someone is fleeing thru a hot, dry wasteland, pursued by a nameless fear. We read of footprints, of flames, and of something wrong with gravity. Death is all around. Yet somehow this tale survives to be placed at the feet of the great stone memnon called Gate-of-the-Wild…
Other excerpts from “The Book of Leaves” include “The Names of Silence”, also published by VIAS.
