Chapter 10When Night Came

"Seriously, things felt way worse now. Before this, besides freaking out that night when I lost the Time Machine, I'm not gonna lie, I had this hope I’d eventually escape. But these new discoveries totally shook that up."

I thought I was just dealing with the childishness of these little people and some unknown stuff I just needed to figure out. But there was this whole new thing about the Morlocks - it was totally inhuman and evil. I just felt disgusted by them.

"Before, it was like falling into a hole: I was worried about the hole and how to climb out. Now, I felt like an animal trapped, waiting for its enemy to attack. "The enemy I was scared of might surprise you. It was the darkness of the new moon.

Weena had planted this idea in my head with some confusing comments about the Dark Nights. It wasn’t that hard to guess what those Dark Nights meant. The moon was shrinking: each night was a little darker.

And I finally understood, at least a little bit, why the little Upperworld people were so afraid of the dark. I wondered what messed-up stuff the Morlocks were doing under the new moon. I was pretty sure now that my second guess was totally wrong.

Maybe the Upperworld people used to be the fancy rulers, and the Morlocks were their worker robots: but that was long gone. The two kinds of humans that had evolved were changing, heading towards a totally new relationship. The Eloi, like those Carlovignan kings, had become just pretty and useless.

They still had the earth, but they didn’t really own it. The Morlocks, who had lived underground for generations, couldn’t stand the sunlight anymore. And I figured they made the Eloi’s clothes and took care of their basic needs, maybe because of an old habit of serving.

They did it like a horse stomps its foot, or like someone enjoys hunting animals - because old, forgotten needs had become part of them. But things were definitely changing. The downfall of the delicate ones was speeding up.

Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, humans had pushed their brothers out of comfort and sunshine. And now that brother was coming back - changed! The Eloi were starting to learn an old lesson again. They were getting reacquainted with Fear.

And suddenly, I remembered the meat I’d seen in the Underworld. It was weird how it popped into my head - not like I was thinking about it, but almost like a question from nowhere. I tried to remember what it looked like. I had a vague feeling of recognition, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

"Even though those little people were helpless against their mysterious Fear, I was different. I came from our time, this peak of human history, when Fear doesn’t freeze you up and mystery isn’re scary anymore. I at least would defend myself."

Without waiting any longer, I decided to make myself some weapons and a safe place to sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could face this weird world with some of the confidence I’d lost realizing what creatures I was exposed to every night.

"I knew I couldn’t sleep again until my bed was secure from them. I shuddered thinking about how they must have already checked me out."

"I wandered around that afternoon along the Thames valley, but nothing really caught my eye as being impossible to reach. All the buildings and trees seemed totally climbable, especially considering how good the Morlocks were at climbing, judging by their wells."

Then I remembered the tall towers of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the shiny walls - they looked amazing. That evening, carrying Weena like a little kid on my shoulder, I hiked up the hills toward the southwest. I thought the distance was seven or eight miles, but it was closer to eighteen.

I’d first seen the place on a damp afternoon when things look closer than they are. Plus, the heel of one of my shoes was coming apart, with a nail poking through the sole - they were comfy old shoes I wore around the house - so I was limping.

And it was already way past sunset when I finally saw the palace, silhouetted black against the pale yellow sky.

"Weena was super happy when I started carrying her, but after a while she wanted me to put her down, and she ran alongside me, occasionally darting off to pick flowers to stick in my pockets."

"My pockets always confused Weena, but eventually she figured out they were like a weird kind of vase for flowers. At least she used them like that. And that reminds me! When I changed my jacket, I found..."

The Time Traveller paused, put his hand in his pocket, and silently placed two dried-up flowers, kind of like really big white mallows, on the little table. Then he went on with his story.

"As the quiet of evening settled over the world and we climbed over the hill towards Wimbledon, Weena got tired and wanted to go back to the house of grey stone."

But I pointed out the distant towers of the Palace of Green Porcelain to her and tried to make her understand that we were looking for a safe place there from her Fear. You know that quiet moment that happens right before dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees.

To me, there’s always a feeling of something about that evening stillness. The sky was clear, far away, and empty except for a few lines way down in the sunset. Well, that night, that feeling matched my fears. In that still darkness, my senses felt super sharp.

I could almost feel the ground hollow underneath my feet - I could practically see through it to the Morlocks down in their tunnels, moving around and waiting for the dark. I was so hyped up that I thought they’d see my invasion of their tunnels as a declaration of war.

And why had they taken my Time Machine? "So we kept going in the quiet, and the twilight turned into night. The clear blue in the distance faded, and one star after another appeared. The ground got dim, and the trees turned black. Weena’s fears and her tiredness grew stronger."

I held her in my arms and talked to her and comforted her. Then, as the darkness got deeper, she put her arms around my neck and, closing her eyes, pressed her face tightly against my shoulder. So we went down a long slope into a valley, and there in the dimness I almost walked into a little river.

I waded across it and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a bunch of sleeping houses and a statue - a Faun, or something like that, but without a head. There were acacias here too.

"So far, I hadn’t seen any Morlocks, but it was still early in the night, and the darkest hours before the old moon rose were still to come."

"From the top of the next hill, I saw a super thick forest stretching out wide and black in front of me. I hesitated. I couldnn't see any end to it, either to the left or the right."

Feeling exhausted - my feet especially were killing me - I carefully lowered Weena from my shoulder as I stopped, and sat down on the grass. I couldn’t see the Palace of Green Porcelain anymore, and I wasn’t sure which way to go. I peered into the dense woods, wondering what it was hiding.

Underneath all those tangled branches, you wouldn’t be able to see the stars. Even if there weren’t any other dangers - dangers I didn’t want to think about - there would still be all the roots to trip over and the tree trunks to bump into.

I was really tired after everything that happened today, so I decided to just spend the night on the open hill. "Weena, thankfully, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and sat down next to her, waiting for the moon to come up."

The hillside was quiet and empty, but from the woods, I could hear things moving around. Above me, the stars were shining, because the night was really clear. I felt a little comforted by their twinkling. All the old constellations were gone from the sky, though.

That slow shift - which you wouldn’t notice in a hundred lifetimes - had long since rearranged them into unfamiliar groups. But the Milky Way, it seemed to me, was still the same faded stream of stardust as always.

Southward (as far as I could tell) was a really bright red star that I’d never seen before; it was even more amazing than our own green Sirius. And among all those sparkling points of light, one bright planet shone kindly and steadily, like the face of an old friend.

"Looking at those stars suddenly made my own problems seem tiny and all the worries of Earth disappear. I thought about how far away they were, and how slowly they were drifting through time, from the distant past to the unknown future."

I thought about the huge cycle the Earth's pole makes as it slowly turns. Only forty times had that silent shift happened during all the years I’d been traveling.

And during those few shifts, all the activity, all the traditions, the complicated organizations, the countries, languages, literature, aspirations - even just the memory of humans as I knew them - had been wiped out.

Instead, there were these fragile creatures who’d forgotten their amazing ancestors, and the white Things I was so terrified of. Then I thought about the huge fear between the two species, and for the first time, with a sudden chill, I understood what the meat I’d seen might be. But it was too awful!

I looked at little Weena sleeping next to me, her face white and glowing under the stars, and quickly pushed the thought away. "Throughout that long night, I tried to keep my mind off the Morlocks, and passed the time trying to spot familiar constellations in the new patterns."

The sky stayed really clear, except for a few wispy clouds. I probably dozed off a few times. Then, as the night wore on, a faint glow appeared in the east, like a reflection of some colorless fire, and the old moon rose, thin and peaked and white.

And right behind it, catching up and overflowing it, came the dawn, pale at first, then growing pink and warm. No Morlocks had come near us. Actually, I hadn’t seen any on the hill that night. And with the confidence of a new day, it almost seemed to me that my fear had been silly.

I stood up and found that my foot, with the loose heel, was swollen at the ankle and really painful under the heel, so I sat back down, took off my shoes, and tossed them away.

"I woke Weena up, and we headed into the woods - now it was green and pretty, not dark and scary. We found some fruit to grab a quick bite. We ran into some other cute girls, laughing and dancing in the sunshine like they’d never even heard of nighttime."

And then I remembered the meat I’d seen earlier. I was sure now what it was, and honestly, I felt bad for these last few people left from humanity. Way back when things started falling apart, the Morlocks’ food must’ve run out. Maybe they were eating rats and stuff like that.

Even now, people aren't picky about what they eat - way less picky than even monkeys. It’s not like we have a deep-down instinct against eating other people. So, these messed-up descendants of humans - ! I tried to look at it like a scientist.

After all, they were less human and more distant than our cannibal ancestors from thousands of years ago. And the smarts that would’ve made this situation awful were gone. Why should I even worry?

These Eloi were just like fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks kept and hunted - probably even bred them. And there was Weena dancing beside me!

"Then I tried to protect myself from the scary feeling that was coming on, by thinking of it as a really harsh punishment for how selfish people used to be."

People were happy to live easy lives, depending on the work of others, taking ‘Necessity’ as an excuse, and now Necessity had come back to bite them. I even tried to be all snobby and judge them, like Carlyle would’ve. But I couldn’t pull it off.

"Even though they weren't that smart anymore, the Eloi still looked too human not to get my sympathy, and to make me feel like I was stuck with their bad luck and their fear. "At that time, I didn't really have a plan. First, I wanted to find a safe place and make some weapons out of metal or stone.

That was super important. Next, I hoped to get fire, so I’d have a torch - nothing would be better against the Morlocks, I knew it. Then, I wanted to figure out how to break open those bronze doors under the White Sphinx. I was thinking about a battering ram.

I figured that if I could get inside and carry a torch, I’d find the Time Machine and escape. I couldn’t imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far. I decided to bring Weena with me to our own time.

I was thinking all this over as we walked towards the building I thought would be a good place to live.