The Eclipse Keeper

Above the crown of QLIPHOTH hangs an eclipse that has never ended. A dark disc sits perfectly over a pale one, and the thin silver ring between them is the only light the tree has ever known. Visitors assume it is simply a feature of the sky, the way mountains are a feature of the ground.

It is not. It is held.

Her name is not recorded, so the Archive calls her the Keeper. She lives in the highest fork of the tree, where the branches are thinner than hair and the wind makes a sound like pages turning. In each hand she holds a thread. One is tied to the dark disc, one to the pale one, and the threads run up from her fingers into the sky so far that they vanish long before they arrive.

Every moment, the two discs try to drift apart. Every moment, she corrects them. It is not hard work, exactly. It is constant work, which is worse.

Once, long ago, someone climbed all the way up to ask her why. Why keep the eclipse? Why not let the light through, and let the tree see itself properly for once?

The Keeper did not look away from the sky. If the light came through, she said, the tree would grow toward it. Every branch would bend the same way. Every root would follow. It would become an ordinary tree, straight and obedient, reaching for the one thing everyone agrees is good.

In the eclipse, she said, there is no single direction worth growing toward. So the tree grows toward everything. That is why its branches fork the way they do. That is why it is still surprising. I am not hiding the light. I am protecting the dark from having only one answer.

The visitor stayed with her until nightfall, which in QLIPHOTH is not easy to notice, and before leaving offered to hold one of the threads for a while. She let him. It was the first time in a very long time that she had a free hand.

She used it to rub her eyes.

Some people say the Keeper has more help now, that there are dozens of threads running up from the crown and dozens of hands holding them. If you stand at the foot of the tree and look up at exactly the right angle, you can see the silver ring tremble very slightly, as one hand passes a thread to the next.