Black Sky

Chapter Eleven

The first thing he saw was the white light that suddenly poured out of the darkness over the tables. Then - downright unreal - the first nettles slid into the field of light. Long, weightless. Pulsating with light.

Silence fell immediately. Everyone was spellbound by the sight of the creature.

"I don't believe it," Jonah said quietly beside Tom. Both young men could only see out through the glass front, as could Marian, Emma, and everyone else present. With the lights off, the white pulsing of the jellyfish could be seen even better: A rhythmic pumping phosporic chirping, like a heartbeat. It had to be about five meters tall, like a truck. And it floated completely weightless through the darkness. Right outside the window. Its meter-long nettles drifted through the air, as if moved by a gentle ocean current.

There was something rapturous, majestic about the way this creature moved. It did not come from its familiar, old world: the creature was in every fiber, in its deepest DNA, a component of its new reality. It belonged to the black sun.

Although Tom felt a fear squeezing his throat at that moment, a sensation of sublime beauty still ran through him. This here was a miracle. They were witnessing a miracle.
He only hoped they would survive long enough to tell someone someday.

A few yards away, Illya asked in a mute voice to his daughter, "Are we in danger?"
"No," she replied, just as silently as he. "They come to collect the dead. They are like morticians. It's mourning. Do you see it, Dad?"

Illya looked at the dead man, who continued to spill his blood in the pale light of the floating jellyfish. All the bandages, all the rescue attempts - none of it could have saved him. Then he looked to the jellyfish. How easily it moved, completely freed from the laws of gravity, of falling, of tumbling. The white-glowing nettles drifted through the air as if they were reaching out. As if they wanted to grab something.

Sadness poured into him at the sight.

"You were right," he said softly. "It's better this way."

For a period that spanned perhaps five minutes - at the sight of the jellyfish, Tom had lost all sense of time - the nettles twitched one last time, touching the glass silently. Then the jellyfish drifted upward, as weightless as a balloon taking off.

When it had completely disappeared (and perhaps five more minutes had passed), Marian said softly, "What was that?" He turned first to Emma, then to Tom and Jonah. "Do you think she could see us?"

"I don't know," Tom said. He didn't care, either. They were still alive. That was all that mattered anymore.
Then he remembered that wasn't true for any of them.
"We should say a prayer for him," he said.
"A good idea," Emma agreed.

At that moment, the pungent stench of urine rose in their noses. They turned briefly, and it took only a moment to find the cause: Her guilty yet ashamed expression spoke for itself. So did the way she pressed her legs together.
Mrs. Becker had wet her pants.