The 16 circles

Four weary travellers walk along a sandy walkway underneath an arched sandstone bridge. This spanned across an alleyway footpath lined with golden brown irregular stones on either side. They were dying for water and replenishment. It was neither hot nor cold and it wasn’t damp or muggy. It was nothing normally described.

Marty, Paula, Armand and Edith eventually were silent as they walked into the seemingly unknown. After walking for lengthy hours, dead giant trees, ten metres high, grew on the other side of each wall and impeded light from whatever the source was. Tree roots wove their way through, and were either embedded within or obstructively arched above, the non-descript dust which singed bare soles. There were a thousand trees for every thousandth step.

After many kilometres, of intermittent walking and clambering over the arched hollow roots, there was an obstruction that spanned the width of the alleyway. A large, robust, trunk-like root had pierced through the left hand wall over the centuries with stones scattered. The extent of the spread was through the right hand wall, where further roots divided and vegetative growth created an unwieldy obstacle of roughly two meters in height. Marty, Paula and Edith were the first to climb over, carefully identifying foot-holes within the branches of varied rigidity and uncertain robustness.

‘We’re at the end!’ said Marty in a coarse, weary and breath inhibited tone after he had successfully reached the other side ‘I can see a doorway!’ He then helped Paula over before Edith. There was a sense of hope within the group, which was a stark contrast to the previous hours of the journey.

Armand was the last to clamber over, through the spreading roots, and reached the summit of the obstacle.

‘Give me your hand’, said Edith who was hurried to help her fiancée out on the way down. However, just after he had turned to face the wooden wall to come down, his left foot slipped and he fell off the top branch narrowly avoiding a fracture or sprain at the bottom. However, Armand wasn’t quite as fortunate as they all first thought.

‘AHHH!! I think I’ve been stung by something!’ Armand exclaimed as he came into a seated position. Marty had a close look at his right leg. A sharp thorn, from the vegetation they had crossed, had been implanted left of his knee which was bleeding heavily.

‘I think I can pull it out’, Marty replied quickly ‘It doesn’t look too bad’-. Marty then pulled the thorn out before Armand cried out with the sharp pain felt. This seemed to have solved the problem; however Armand and his friends were concerned about a bubbly type skin condition that surrounded the laceration in the hours that followed. Marty had seen, roughly 100 metres in the distance, a grand arched opening inside a dome like building of jagged carved sandstone. Although they were all relieved, they felt uneasy about this strange, unknowing journey they all were in the midst of. They had walked for eight hours without sleep, food or water.

Four lost travellers, bewildered, enter underneath the grand arched opening into a slightly flattened dome shaped room. The distance from the entrance, to the opposite side centrally positioned at the base of the dome, was half a mile. This was an expansive open space. Light shone in from a cut out square section that was perfectly at the very top. The floor was hard, but caked in thick dust that was slightly moist to walk on. As they explored inside, echoes bounced back off the jagged inner enclosure of rustic rock. This created a pattern of yellow, grey and long triangular shadows. Four large, rectangular and blue stained-glass windows are positioned centrally to allow the light in from each wall. They trampled the dust, gazing above and around in awe, whilst this place haunted in its echoic stillness.

They wandered further in when it happened. In a certain distance away from where they found themselves, it was Armand Morey who was the first to notice ‘Look! Edith! I can’t believe it!’

Through the dust, almost like sparks, the four weary travellers noticed twelve shadowy figures which became twelve people; clothed in weather worn shirts, mudded sweatshirts, sweat drenched jeans, shorts and ragged skirts. There were four young women and eight young men, and they had accumulated supplies of strange fruits, odd vegetable like objects and several bottles of lukewarm water. Their eagerness to offer these, almost immediately, indicated that this larger group was something that required the extra members. It was a frantic scene of handing out supplies. A Scottish man of mid-thirties, Joey Peterman, with round spectacles and dishevelled dust-covered hair explained that 16 circles were at the centre of the dome.

‘There are two minutes left before the walls cave in, and the light from the four windows burns the ground and opens up the earth! We must run to the 16 circles and stand on each! The columns will take us through the apex! We have little time!’