Chapter 03: Cities and Eyes 01

In this city they had learned to spot the glow of paint-bead eyes in shadows, to pick up the wispy edges of their pointed intelligence in the glittering eyes of passing strangers. And they also saw the void and the weakness of blindness in the distorted reflections of ghosts whose sudden appearance in the dust or corner of a cabinet or mirror made the faintest noise like a warning. Their eyes watched for the brightness of strange lights as men escaped the limits of darkness; their sight knew when the sheer emptiness of death reached out to them in the light of a roaring fire or powerful torches. And now that they had their sight, and they also saw things beyond sight.

Just as it was like drinking from a sudden fountain of sight after a long dry time, so it was with the first sight of this city. And there was no need for walking; they just set their feet into the flow and moved from one place to another, carrying their voices in their eyes. For the things seen through bright eyes and hollow hearts are like seeing the ghostly shapes of lighthouses between the shapes of shadows, with strange lights burning like bright lanterns in darkness. Sometimes they saw their own father, and sometimes they saw their father's spirit moving in the shadowlands of strange sights.

And all of them saw the tall faceless buildings, seeming for them like a thick stone wall that surrounded this place, even though they had never seen a real wall like this before. So they carried their voices in their eyes, calling out to each other with voices that died away into faint echoes like faded echoes. In this city they had also seen the silent spirits of those who had disappeared, leaving behind in silence the things they had seen and seen and heard. Sometimes they heard their own father calling to them.

In the sight of this silent city, all these people of sight and hearing became like shadows, dancing back and forth, moving in and out of the darkest shadows, calling to the lost ones and calling out to those who were already dead, who had passed on to the silent streets. In this place, the spirits of the dead could see, and hear, and speak to the living like the shadows of a new moon with the blue-gray night-gutters and the copper-colored bricks of the buildings, though all the ghosts wore white clothes, and none of the people of sight and hearing wore white.