Tenashar’s father held his hand on the circular glass doors to close them to silence the sounds of people talking in the distance, the strange sound of flying things and dogs barking as if they were being threatened somewhere in the distance. There was a deep shadow cast across the house they were living in from a tower or some other structure that wasn’t there anymore. This shadow didn’t seem to be threatening as the shadows would disappear. In this suburb of forest and hills, as the Senetha called it, Tenashar and his father felt comfortable before they lived in the village. Here Tenashar learned to observe unseen things that few people could see, the loneliness of the deep mountains was flourishing, and there was a natural purity. This is what Tenashar’s father considered influential in his son’s first formative years of life. Tenashar held these early days in his memory, especially in times of life’s storms; other memories of holding hands with his father brought calm and peace to him.

Tenashar’s father had looked across the valleys that surrounded their home at this time when Tenashar was a small child. They lived almost secluded from the village that wasn’t too far away. His wife passed away when Teanshar was a very young child, and he heard voices as if her spirit was talking to him, but he ignored this. Tenashar’s father knew it was coming from far away in the densely populated trees of the other valleys. In those days, the home that Tenashar lived in had large circular and triangular windows; his father closed one of the circular louvers that opened on a central bar that opened and closed the glass louver. He knew that the sounds his son heard were not suitable for him; they could lure him outside, never to be seen again because this had happened to some of the children in the valley. Sanashei, Tenashar’s father, knew something that wasn’t supposed to be there.

Years pass by in a mythical world, and a son and his father have come to live near an area where the mountains are deep. Something has been hidden there for years and forgotten because the people have died and moved away. Few reside in a suburb that has faded. On the wall of houses, stains of strange images appear; perhaps they are scenes from the past that unfolded near the mountains. Something lives there to communicate things, appearing on a wall as stained ink, a big thing, or perhaps a wise man of that culture who is a child holding a sphere or cube to observe far or unseen or to invite them to partake of something. This intelligent child wants them to know or to experience something unknown. A wise man or wise child is like a being with extraordinary powers; could she be a community as one person, alone without others? She only speaks to others through the cube. Does the cube indeed hold the people that once lived there? The cube is a world, and people for generations don’t know they are in a cube. The child never talks; she only communicates with father and son with pictures that form as stains on a wall.

As a tiny child, this is where Tenashar had lived; he began to communicate with this wise child through images. This was never mentioned in the story. Tenashar was a conventional image-maker. He had to draw something for them to appear. He never learned the technique of creating images from a distance, although he wished to know this. Tenashar never saw the significant something in the mountains, and he never encountered the wise man or wise child holding the cube; he wanted to know what the cube was and how it worked. The Senetha were known to communicate through images appearing from nowhere, although only a few of them understood this technique. This type of communication is far superior to electronic communication because it uses telepathy. There is no external power source; the power comes from the communicator’s mind and something unknown, never explained by anyone or the ancient texts. But who is this wise child? Was she some device made of light, or an artificial life form, perhaps a Sharzeen? For many reasons, some people have said that the cube controls the wise child, but Tenashar’s father dismissed this as the only gossip of the villagers.

Robert J. Matsunaga