Secrets of Light

The water was cool and clear and plentiful. 

It filled the rock-hollow to the brim, a pool of life-nurturing liquid fed by its source high in the mountains. Kiran knelt by the pools’ lip, dipped his hands into the water, and closed his eyes. 

It was high noon, but little light had managed to squeeze past the lush vegetation of the forest’s canopy. The understory remained cast in a green dimness with few dapples of gold coloring the leaves. Directly above the pool, the tree’s branches had been cleared—an open portal to the clouds—and a brilliant stream of light poured through to set the water below it aglow. Ghostly reflections danced across Kiran’s face as he bowed his head and recited a prayer. When he was finished, he cupped his hands together and brought them to his lips, drinking long and deep. He remained knelt for some time, watching the interplay of light and water before him. He then stood and started making his way down the path back to the village. 

The trees grew close together to either side, their trunks entangled with the creepers of other plants. Insects flitted through the humid air and a bird called from far off. The path led him through a clearing where the first bamboo houses of the village came into sight. He took in the smoky scent of cooking meat as he passed a group of men charring fish over an open flame. Women sorted woven, palm-leaf baskets filled with beans, nuts and berries while children splashed in a stream nearby.

Kiran approached a young man who was carving wooden arrows with a sharp bone.

 “The Source provides,” he said in way of greeting and the man responded, automatic, with, “The current flows strong." 

“Are you ready for the hunt, Rio?” Kiran asked. 

“Let’s see if today is the day you bring home something bigger than a squirrel, eh?” Rio replied, clasping his shoulder.

Kiran laughed. “I’ll bring back something bigger than you this time, enough to feed the whole village!”

They gathered their bows and arrows and set out into the trees. The ground was soft underfoot and all around them were the chatterings of animals and birdsong. They glimpsed small rodents darting through the bushes and a monkey that scrambled up a tree trunk but they were after larger prey. Before long, Rio found deer footprints to track. They led to a riverbank where two different sets of prints diverged in opposite directions.

“I’ll follow one and you take the other,” suggested Rio. “Smaller catch does all of the cooking tonight,” he grinned.

They split up and Kiran's deer took him further into the forest. He almost lost the trail as it cut off through a stream but he picked it up again near a thicket of tall trees. The light was dim here and the forest sounds seemed subdued as he focused on finding his prey. He scanned for any sign of movement. 

There. 

A white tail twitched between the leaves and the animal came into focus. Rio knelt and notched an arrow onto his bow. Just as he was about to let it loose, something glinted in his periphery. The arrow went wide and the deer bolted off into the underbrush. He lowered the bow and cursed, knowing Rio would not let him live down returning empty-handed. He was about to set off after it when whatever had distracted him glimmered again from up in a tree. 

A large bird’s nest was tucked between the branches. He recognized the bright blue feathers that littered the ground at the base of the tree. The eggs of this type of bird were rare and a delicacy among his people. If he brought back some of these, it might impress Rio even more than the small deer. 

He hung his bow across his chest and made his way up the tree with ease. But when he reached the nest, no eggs sat nestled within it. Something else was dangling from a stick near the outer rim.

 He plucked it from the nest. It was heavy for its size, made of a hard, shiny material that he could not recognize as anything he had ever seen before in the forest. It was about the length of his hand, tube-shaped, with a loop of black rope hanging from one end. The other end was wider and the flat, circular face, when he rubbed his thumb over it, smoother than any surface he had ever touched. He studied it for a long time, turning it this way and that, staring into the end he thought resembled the flat, unblinking eye of some foreign creature. 

He knew instinctively that this was not something borne of the forest. It must have come from somewhere out there. Beyond the trees. 

No one was supposed to leave the forest. Out there were only bad things, things that would hurt you. He had learned about them from his elders but had never seen one before or touched it. He should put it back, stay as far away from it as possible. 

But what was it?

 He sat on a thick branch and examined it from all angles. Squeezed it, prodded the smooth surface. He pushed into the other end with his finger and the eye flared up into a dazzling white light, causing him to cry out in surprise and nearly fall from the tree. The thing dropped to the floor, bounced and rolled a few inches away, the beam of light stretching out to illuminate the bark of a tree several feet away. 

Kiran’s heart thumped hard in his chest. He descended and stood at a distance, marveling. He was afraid but also excited and curious beyond anything he had ever felt before. The two emotions warred within him, one telling him to run away as fast as he could and the other urging him closer to the light. The latter prevailed. When the object did not do anything more, he knelt beside it poked it with a finger. He picked it up and passed his hand across the beam of light, breathless. Was there a tiny fire contained within the tube? But how did it not turn the whole thing to ashes? The point from which the light emitted was warm to the touch but not hot like a fire. Pressing into the softer end extinguished the light and clicking it again sent it forth once more. 

What was this thing? Who had made it and why? How was it possible that he had come to hold in his hands his very own piece of the sun?

These questions consumed him as he and Rio returned to the village to skin and cook the deer Rio had caught. Kiran was teased the whole way back for returning from the hunt with no meat but he didn’t even care. Rio didn’t know that what he had taken back with him must be something far rarer and more precious than any meat or egg in the whole forest.

 That evening, Kiran kept the sun-tube hidden and took it out again only when he was alone and far from the village. He spent a long time watching the light paint otherworldly shadows against the ferns and rocks. He felt exhilarated and like he was a part of something greater than the forest. As if the tiny tube of light had connected him to whatever unknown and unknowable forces lay out there.

   At the same time, he felt ashamed for his actions. If anyone from the village knew, they’d surely cast him out for keeping the thing. The Source provided everything they needed here in the forest. The world out there—they should have nothing to do with it. But… had any of them held the sun in their hands? A thought came to him, slipping into his mind like a wasp struggling into a fig.

What if they were wrong? 

They hadn’t seen the sun-tube. Maybe they were just scared, like he had been at first. Yes, maybe if he only explained things, showed them what he’d found, they’d understand his fascination. If no one else, Rio would understand. Maybe he’d even help him convince the others to see that not everything out there was bad.

 The next morning, he found Rio alone by the prayer-pool. He smiled as Kiran approached. “The Source prov—” he started, but Kiran cut him off.

“I need to show you something,” he said and held out the sun-tube before he changed his mind. Rio examined it without taking it from his hand. 

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“I found it in a—”

“You shouldn’t keep it.” Rio took a step back. “Get rid of it.”

“But I think it’s important. I don’t know how it works but I have to show you—” He clicked it on, sending a stream of light towards Rio. The boy shrieked and jumped to the side, stumbling. 

“No, it’s okay,” said Kiran, passing his hand back and forth across the beam. “It’s just light.”

Rio shook his head and cupped his hands together at his chest. “Source above,” he whispered. 

“I don’t know what it is or how it works but isn’t it amazing? Like a tiny sun!” He switched the light back off and on as he spoke. “I think it came from out there,” continued Kiran. 

Rio said nothing. 

“You know, beyond the for—”

“You need to destroy that thing before it dooms the whole village,” he said, pointing at it. “Nothing good comes from… out there. That doesn’t belong here!”

Kiran’s face fell. Maybe telling him was a huge mistake. “But it’s not bad,” he whispered. “It didn’t hurt me.”

Rio was breathing hard, his eyes wide as he stared at Kiran as if he’d just told him water was poison. “I don’t know where you found that thing but put it back where it came from or throw it in the fire!” he yelled. He backed around Kiran in a wide circle, as if even getting close to it would harm him, and fled down the path.

In the silence that followed, Kiran studied the water in the rock-hollow. He held the sun-tube in one hand and covered its beam of light with the other. It turned his fingers red with its mysterious energy.

Was Rio right? Should he destroy it? 

The light filtered out through the spaces between his fingers and Kiran thought about how light is like water in that it spreads out into all of the space it can reach, filling in every crevice of its surroundings until it meets some barrier to contain it. Water with a weighty, settling quality, not so easily displaced. But light! It comes sweeping in in an instant, all-illuminating, revealing what before could not be seen and yet remaining weightless to allow space for what is yet to come.

Beside the prayer-pool, a tree leaned at an angle, partially uprooted. He sat on a thick root and studied the sun-tube. Near the end with the loop, a ring ran around it and when he pulled at it, the tube came apart into two pieces. A tiny circular disc fell into his palm. He put the end piece and the disc down and set to work at taking apart the rest of the tube. When he was finished, and the sun-tube lay disassembled before him like the picked-clean bones of a bird skeleton, he put it back together. 

With time, he hoped to dismantle its secrets.