Sunlight, slanting through gemstone, bathed the tower’s interior with a cobalt glow, lending an ethereal light to the winged figure bent over a large book. Angari was seated in a small antechamber of the tower that housed the Great Bell of Peace. No light was needed, even though there were no windows and the chamber was several rooms away from the outer walls. Built of twenty-foot tall slabs of pure sapphire, the walls were transparent except for the rich blue light shining through them. From outside, the building looked as blue as the gemstone from which it was made.
Two other towers stood equidistant from the first. One, built of emerald, held the Great Bell of Fellowship, while the other, a pure white diamond, was home to the Great Bell of the Angels. Clustered around the towers were smaller structures looking like tumbled glass blocks. Sapphire, emerald, ruby, chrysolite, jade, every gemstone imaginable, was represented in the smaller dwellings.
This was Belcross, home of the three Great Bells of Windfallow; given to the citizens of that world by their Maker and rung each year at festivals to celebrate each bell. The fallowfolk did not know how it was done, but the ringing of the bells somehow strengthened and enriched that for which each was named. No one had known what the Great Bell of the Angels accomplished until at a special festival all three had been rung in unison. At that moment the Alari, heretofore creatures distinguishable from fallowfolk only by their soft brown wings, and the ability to fly, were transformed into the celestial beings they actually were. Shining so brightly they would blind an earthling, they were instantly clothed in white garments and their wings became golden. The transformation lasted only for a moment but since that time there had been an annual Festival of the Bells and each year the miracle was repeated.
Angari was searching through the chronicles of Windfallow, refreshing his memory about events long past. Since the Alari were immortal, he had been present at most of them, but the years did have a way of piling up. Now, he looked for some clue he might have missed during the time when Zach Thomas and his family were sent to Windfallow to help defeat the demon intent on seducing the little planet. Four times the Jackal sent crooks into Angari’s world and four times he had been foiled in his attempt to corrupt the fallowfolk. Unable to enter the innocent world himself, he had to rely on humans to do his work. Finally, the fourth time, the demon had been banished to Outer Darkness, confined forever in a timeless prison.
Wait! thought Angari, It wasn’t just the Thomas’s who could come into Windfallow! Other humans, the crooks, came in through a door opened by the Jackal! If they could get in, then others could as well.
C.2011, Donna Swanson, from The Windfallow Chronicles, Kindle Books
