Yesteryear Fiction

Light and Darkness
By Hoss Gordon


The royal geologists referred to the thing as “the box of light.” They didn’t know what it was, what made it tick, what made the light inside burn cold and blue night after night without oil or tending. Meetings were called, priests brought in whose magicks fell short in the presence of the thing, flickered and died like butterflies caught in web. Gypsies and sorcerers of the highest caliber worked their wonders near the thing, but they too paled as their efforts failed under the cool glaze of the box. There was some speculation that the box was demonic, that it housed an evil spirit, but the notion was quickly dismissed as superstition. When at last the box was given to the master of clockwork in charge of the royal palace’s mechanical automation, the poor fool spent days with the thing, trying to understand it, until at long last his wit failed him and he smashed the box with a hefty iron wrench.

That’s when we learned that the box was a prison, that it kept the light which had sheltered us all for so long. When the light leaked from the broken box, the darkness moved in to fill its place, and our kingdom has never been the same since.


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Hoss Gordon doesn’t believe in biographies.