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Deborah Walker

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How many stories can be told in a narrative that spans billions of years to the End of Eternity? This is the power of The Night Land, the vast imaginings of a story where humanity clings to existence, moving forward into the depths of almost inconceivable time. It is such a tale of hope to think that humanity will be there, millions of years into the future. And perhaps, even there at the very End of Eternity.

The Night Land is populated by dark mystery, by fantasy. In the Night Land our internal fears, the worst of us, have been transformed into the monstrous abhuman, ourselves made malevolent. The Night Land is populated by the monsters of humanity's imagination, ancient fears made real into slow watching malevolent flesh. I wonder what forces are working on me, outside the scope of my understanding, less visible, more dangerous than the Watchers.

Time, which changes all things, has changed the people of the Night Land. What stories do they tell, these men and women altered incrementally along the slow generations and by the need to defy the forces of the Night Land which seek to consume and destroy them? In this time beliefs that have reoccurred through many civilisations have become manifest and accepted. The people of the Night Land may dream the past or future, remembering their past lives on the wheel of reincarnation. They might knowingly live their loves and despairs time and time again through the generations. In The Night Land the wealth of civilisations' experience is piled up in the Monstruwacans' libraries much like our own memories, misremembered, fragmented but treasured.

I think their stories can tell me what is essential about humanity. I think their stories can tell me what is might be enduring about humanity. I think their stories can speak to me right here, right now, in these Days of Light.

I think that the Night Land tales sung in the dim red light of a dying sun, sung on a world under a cold black night where the end of times is known and approaches inexorably; I think these songs can shine a light on my own understanding. Right here, right now.