The walls had always stretched into the sky, casting dark shadows down into the city bellow. Clay had never seen what lay hidden beyond them and wasn’t allowed to find out. The tales spoken in whispers hidden behind hands were enough to scare a grown man away, making it law that nobody should venture out into the wilderness. While the walls were immense and slippery to the touch, unable to be climbed, the hooded men were constantly guarding them. These men had never uttered a sound to Clay as he’d walked past but simply followed his movements with dull eyes.
There was one entrance, or exit, to the city but the hinges were rusted over from age, coated in a thick layer of dust and the trailing limbs of the vines that clawed their way up. It had never once been opened in the eighteen years Clay had been alive and no one he knew could remember the last time it had been. Not that there weren’t stories, but they were gruesome horrors that left the listener shaking and numb in disbelief. Whatever it was behind the walls was nothing but a myth to the ones confined within, all those who may have known deceased or unspoken.
Clay was not one of the boys the girls in the city were drawn to; he kept to himself, never without the feeling of not belonging. The people in his city were content with believing the tales of what lay beyond, never questioning the word of the deliverer, but that wasn’t how he felt. How could he live here and not know why he was confined? He’d read books on knights who ran across deserts, sailors who discovered new land, and explorers who’d traveled across something called countries. Yet the farthest he could run was from the North wall to the South, the lake had dried up years before his time, and the only place he could explore was his backyard. Adventures were not for the likes of his people, but Clay did not believe that that was the way it should be.
The dusk of the night before the summer solstice was dry and warm, not a cloud could be seen in the sky. The rare wind was whistling through the streets of the city; tugging at the clothes of the people still out, beckoning them to join it in it’s hunt for an adventure in the dark. Clay was walking towards his house down a deserted street; the shopping huts in the markets were boarded up and closed off. Normally the shop keepers would have kept their lights on for another hour on such a night, but the summer solstice always came with an odd feeling in the air – most said this was the night that their city was created.
There was one tree that stood out from the others, the one that was planted in the middle of the city. Its branches reached up to the tops of the walls and always seemed to emit a soft glow once the sun disappeared. As Clay passed it he reached out a hand and brushed his fingers lightly on the bark, sending a shiver down his spine. The glowing leaves rustled and the sweet tune of a humming bird rang out across the square.
That was a sound that stopped Clay in his tracks.
A humming bird? There were never any humming birds in the city; only hawks and eagles were known the fly through the streets. He turned back quickly and peered up through the tall branches and gasped. Perching on the lowest branch of the tree was a gilded golden cage and inside the cage sat a small bird, singing away the night.
Setting his backpack down in the mud by his feet, Clay reached and pulled himself up to sit beside the cage. As he did so the birds scrawny head turned and stared right at him and Clay could see the light reflected in the birds dark eyes. For some reason the sight of the bird made him feel uneasy. Slowly its soft singing stopped completely and the bird turned away from Clay. It hopped off the perch and fluttered soundlessly to the bottom of the cage and pecked at the latch on the door. Clay, stunned into silence, reached down and unhooked the door. Before he could do any more the bird had burst out and raced high into the sky.
Clay looked down at the ground and prepared to jump down, unsure of what had just passed when a silver gleam caught his eye. He turned and saw a silver key dangling from the perch of the humming bird. Surely that hadn’t been there before? He reached out a shaking hand and picked it up. Turning it over, he found words shining across the back. For what lays beyond. There was only one thing that could mean to Clay.
Faster than he had ever run before in his life, Clay sprinted across the square and through the maze of the deserted streets before coming to a stop on the outskirts of the city. There was a small field standing between him and the East wall, and only on this night were the hooded men not standing guard. The summer solstice was the one time the walls stood alone, where no one stood to watch.
Cautiously Clay began to pick his way towards the wall and towards the door. After five minutes of dodging bushes and stumbling into unseen walls, he reached his destination. He put his hand against the slick wall and slid it over until he reached the green vines that tangled into the door. Looking up at the shimmering sky, Clay took a deep breath and took out the key. Taking the vines off the door was easier than it should have been and a rusted handle protruded from the old wall, with a clean keyhole shining through it all.
A panicked knot formed in Clay’s stomach as he inserted the key and twisted his wrist. Only because the night was silent was Clay able to hear the click of the old lock breaking apart. Abandoning the key, Clay turned the handle. A small puff of dust broke free as he pulled the door open and stepped out into the blinding light.
He shielded his eyes with his hands and blinked until shapes came into focus again. Clay turned around and saw, in big bold letters, LABORATORY 35; Experiment No. 5, printed against a sandstone wall.
