Fiction: The Pillar

The man shuddered, and returned his attention to the pillar in his room. There were small features evident in the otherwise faceless pillar: a slope here, a dip there. He ran a hand along the surface of the object frequently, more often than he raised his self-made chisel to it and chipped away.


He was dressed in ragged clothing, patchy and in some places threadbare. Where there were holes, his ribs showed beneath his skin. When he was still, which was not uncommon, he could easily be mistaken in the dim light to be an upright corpse. Only his eyes betrayed any signs of the fire in his mind.

He had been in prison for twelve years. For ten of those years he had merely stared at the ugly rock that had been placed in his room, to fulfill the one request that he had been allowed and had made.

Guards came and went as the years did. Some mocked him, others questioned him until it became apparent that anything but a few monosyllabic words in answer were rare occurrences. Only one remained, a guard clad in the dirty white uniform that was worn by those that shared both his faith and occupation. He had been stationed in that block of the prison since the day that the man had been imprisoned.

The guard in dirty white did not know if there was anything but coincidence to this.

Unlike his companions, he never spoke to the imprisoned carver. He had concerns of his own, that drew his attention inward and left only enough of him to be alert for trouble among the prisoners. At times, he felt as imprisoned as those behind the bars.

"I call it His Power's Thirty-Fourth Earl." The guard in dirty white whipped his face toward the carver. In the past there were men in other cells in this area of the prison, and in the future there doubtless would be again, but for now there was only the carver, and the guard's companions were elsewhere.

The carver did not look as if he had said anything. He was still staring at the half-formed pillar. It was possible, the guard thought, that he had only heard something from out of his imagination. It was reasonable. The prison was too quiet in this section. But he did not believe that.

"What did you say?" he asked.

The carver, if he heard, did not betray any sign that he had. When several minutes had passed, and the carver moved for the first time in a long while to brush the pillar, the guard in dirty white shrugged to himself and continued his rounds.

Years passed, and the pillar continued to take shape. The words that he knew that he had heard sunk into the depths of his memories, but now and then they would surface in a dream and remain with him for days thereafter. The Earl of Lanterns, of whom the carver had spoken, was the very one that had imprisoned him. Perhaps the carver hoped to curry favor one day and perhaps win his freedom.

Or perhaps the pillar would be a mockery.

The guard in dirty white at last could see vague facial features and half-formed limbs in the rough, ugly stone of the pillar. He could see what could be the beginnings of a resemblance to the Earl, but without those words to haunt his mind he never would have suspected it. And in some places, even in features better-defined, he thought that he could have been forcing a resemblance.

Once, he even thought that he saw a part of himself in the pillar.

Twenty-five years had gone by, and the work of the carver proceeded as carefully and slowly as ever it had been. Not once had the guard heard another word escape the carver's mouth since the first time that he had spoken. But then the carver turned, very deliberately, to the guard and waited, it seemed, until he was sure that the guard in dirty white was attentive.

"Do you think that it knows of me?" asked the carver. The guard could not begin to understand the meaning behind the question, let alone answer it. The carver seemed to come to an understanding of this and looked to the pillar. "I require iron," he stated.

The guard could only nod before he left the man. His expectation that the neighboring cells would soon be inhabited again had been incorrect, and it was several minutes before the sound of other people reached his ears again. He spoke with his companions, went to the warden, and relayed the prisoner's request.

When the warden returned to his office, the guard in dirty white was sent to the residence of the Earl of Lanterns. For several weeks he stayed in one of the many small rooms adjoining the Earl's great library. Here he read and ate, seeing few people and never, despite his questions, learning why he had been sent to the place. After two months he received a letter from the warden requesting his return as promptly as possible, and the guard in dirty white was given a prize horse to make his way back.

They did not ask that he return it after he had arrived at the prison. It was a gift from the Earl of Lanterns, they said. The Earl whom the guard had never seen in all his weeks at the man's great house.

He met at the gate by the warden, who placed a long piece of iron in his hands and then departed without speaking. What would be the reason for the request that the carver had made?

Who was the carver?

Ever mindful of the possibility of danger, he put the rod on the ground and kicked it. It rolled under the bars of the carver's cell, through the space where food was pushed through to him twice a day, and came to a stop before the carver's feet.

As the carver bent down to grab it the guard in dirty white examined the work of his hands. Out of the pillar arose a man. He was similar to the Earl of Lanterns in appearance, from what the guard could remember of the few, distant public appearances that the Earl had made, but the stone man was flawless. For all the hardness of the stone, there was no hardness in its features.

The stone man's eyes seemed transfixed on some distant object. Though he appeared young, he was bald. Part of the pillar stood behind the man, who seemed to be walking out of it as if it were not a wall but a doorway. One hand was at his side, and the other was still moving out of the pillar. His lips were bent in neither smile nor frown, yet the expression of his whole body seemed to imply a kind of satisfaction or contentment.

"It is beautiful," whispered the guard.

"Once I learned to see it as what it was, I never saw it any differently," the carver said, looking at the sculpture. "All my life has been spent in walking the path that would make the stone not what it appears to be but what it is." He turned his face back to the guard. "Only what is real in it is permanent. Only what is permanent in it is real. And all the rest of it is dross to be cast off and forgotten."

The guard in dirty white nodded. He thought, at least, that he understood what the carver was saying. And so transfixed by the sight, and the carver's words, that he was caught utterly off-guard when the crash came. When it came again, a second later, he realized what he was seeing, and with the third crash carver fully shattered his work and broke the rod in two.

While the guard stood in shock, the carver picked up one of the many fragments laying on the dusty floor. Looking at the piece of rubble in his hand, the carver said, "I call it His Power's Thirty-Fourth Count, but its name is History." Carefully, he began to rub the fragment with his other hand. "And the work is as yet unfinished."

It was the last time that the guard in dirty white ever heard the carver speak.

Follow-up: Can I refute myself?