Ch. 2 – No. 6: The Beacon
Held aloft, overlooking the vast lake and rolling forest, is a refuge for thousands of beating hearts. There is more to the lighthouse’s luminous beacon than meets the eye.
This is the penultimate installment of chapter 2.
Zander grabbed a lantern that hung from the wall next to the stairway and began ascending. Clove followed, passing through another floor that seemed domestic in nature, then three more which appeared as utility and storage, then finally arriving at a sizable hatch in the ceiling marking the stairs’ conclusion.
Zander hung the lantern from a hook on the wall. Pressing his thumb to a latch on the hatch’s handle, he slowly pushed it open and Clove shielded her eyes as a bright light emerged from the other side. She followed him up through the hatch and found herself in the middle of the sheltered, open-air beacon of the lighthouse, crisp night air greeting the two upon arrival. As Clove’s eyes adjusted, she gazed around in wonder. All around the perimeter of the wide circular space were hundreds — no, thousands — of glowing orbs, each’s pool of light merging with the next, while some were situated further from the mass such that they appeared as lonely, earthly stars.
As Clove’s vision adjusted fully, she could now see that some of the orbs were moving. Closer ones could be seen breathing in place, a slow pulsing rhythm that was just barely discernible. An orb sailed directly overhead from one side of the beacon to the other, rustling and settling into the others among whom it landed, a brief wave of motion rippling out from the locus of disturbance.
“Are these…” Clove trailed off, transfixed.
“Glissers,” Zander answered.
Clove looked around a moment more, then to Zander who strode beside her as they took slow, quiet steps across the beacon.
“Bioluminescent birds…” she recalled. “…I’d only ever heard folktales of them.”
“Yes, they are the subject, or otherwise accessory, of many widely-known stories,” Zander nodded. “Do you know of their origins?”
“Utility, correct? Domesticated in this eastern region for their ability to provide light…” Clove was trying to recall anything else she knew about the creatures.
“Indeed!” Zander clasped his hands with a light clap. He too was gazing about with the same degree of delight as one seeing this ethereal sight for the first time.
Looking upward, it was now evident that rows of thin, horizontal wooden beams circled the perimeter of the beacon in a conical fashion, tapering gradually outward with each ascending row, ending just before the edge of the roof. Each row was occupied by roosting birds. Low, wide troughs of grain and seed were distributed here and there, just inside the perimeter of the perches, along with shallow water basins.
The two reached the lowest beam where Clove could observe a group of birds perched at eye-level. Beyond was a sizable lookout deck. A shallow trough in the floor circled the beacon below the perches. Straw, leaves, and other organic material filled the trough, its width being large enough to collect droppings from each row of birds.
Zander gently reached out and stroked a bird which slept before him, eliciting a soft, content trill from the creature. The glissers weren’t terribly small, though not strikingly large. Their size was such that Zander’s large hand covered the majority of the bird’s rather plump body, with its round head and pointed tail feathers protruding beyond his thumb and pinky. Their beaks were somewhat long and narrow, though not significantly out of proportion with their bodies.
Speaking softly, Zander went on. “They were selectively bred to be brighter and brighter. People here in the east kept them for centuries, until oil became a popular and accessible way of producing light…
…The glissers’ utility was replaced, and their people abandoned them.”
The bird that had been pet rustled its wings briefly. For a moment, a silky silence enwrapped the two figures, the placid flock perched aloft, the velvet black waters shimmering below, and Clove suddenly found herself overcome. All at once, she was struck by the beauty of the life she was building here. The eager camaraderie she’d been shown by the people, the dynamic ecosystem of which she was now part, which provided for her and awakened within her a sense of wonder she’d never known but yearned for always. She had heard people speak of their “connection with the land” as though it were an intrinsic, tangible sensation that bordered on holiness and burned in one’s core like a warm hearth amid winter’s tempest. But like the existence of the glissers, this sentiment had previously been a fanciful, fictitious tale to Clove, one that was nice to think about but lived only in stories.
This moment of introspection was punctuated by the slosh of a small wave on the rocky point below.
“Now they have a home,” Clove murmured.
“Indeed,” Zander said softly. “They roam the forest by day knowing that they may return to the lighthouse each night, where they find grain and seed and clean water, and a sheltered roost…
…and company. Glissers, by nature, want to be around people. It’s how they lived for hundreds of years. Now, sadly, most people see them as pests.”
Zander resumed a slow stroll and the two passed through a break in the perches leading out onto the lookout deck which wrapped around the beacon’s circumference. Peering down at the waters below, Clove saw a small vessel skirting around the jutting land upon which the lighthouse perched. Crooning Lake stretched infinitely northward while its distant eastern shores were dark but for intermittent dots of light, and the far-off Saltmarrow Mountains could just be seen over the starry horizon.
“I never tire of this,” Zander murmured.
“Seems impossible to,” Clove replied.
Reference Materials:
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Wednesday September 17, 2025 at 12pm EST
This will be the final installment of chapter 2.
Afterward, a break in publishing will take place (a few months), followed by the premier of chapter 3.
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