by Mara Duryea
“Will they?” said Zhin in a tone that sent chills up Rilkin’s spine.
“What you mean?”
“I mean what I say!”
Rilkin twisted his tail between his fists, but then he shoved the fear away. “You one Iskerkin. You not lose your powers like Karijin. Whatever you been hiding, we deserve to know.” Rilkin swallowed. “And whatever it is, it must not be as bad as you think, because you still have your powers. Now speak up.”
Zhin pinched his lips. “Fine. As long as you’re willing to listen to a really long story. I’m gonna break it to you piece by piece.”
Why piece by piece? Rilkin forced the sudden anxiety down. “Okay. We go back to the others now.”
Hiking up the crumbling slope, they returned to the Metirins. The four sat in the shade, discomfited and anxious. They gazed at Zhin as he stopped before them.
“I have something to tell you. Let’s go back to the pot in the courtyard. I’ll tell you while we’re eating. Don’t forget the blue leaves.” He started walking, and they followed in silence.
The cooking fire had gone down, and some of the meat burned in the coals. The Metirins had dropped their sticks when Barv had attacked. Some of the meat had landed in the fire.
As Vijeren and Miranel rebuilt it, Rilkin, N’Nar and Sibare skewered new meat onto the sticks. Settling around the new blaze, they waited for Zhin to commence his tale. He watched the dancing flames and began his story.
4
The Underground House
Karijin chucked snowballs at my head. I think I dodged one. The rest pelted me between the ears. The bright sun beamed from an extra-blue sky. A slight wind knocking snow crystals from the trees made the air glitter. As Karijin charged me through the snow, I screamed in delight and ran. I moved an inch before he swept me into one arm and tossed me into a drift. Karijin was twenty at the time, but he played with me like he was seven years old, too.
He didn’t always look like a hairy monstrosity. Everything about him was streamlined. His black hair was tied back, but not tight. He had gray eyes, and his skin was slightly lighter than mine. He wasn’t Visserian. You could tell by his build and how his nose slightly turned up at the tip. If you looked close enough, he even had freckles. He was definitely from Kaleesa. That’s a small continent west of Visseria in the Talit Sea. Nonetheless, Karijin possessed a Visserian name. He had a slight accent at the time.
“Hey!” I cried, admiring his strength and prowess. He was my whole world, and I wanted to be just like him.
Karijin picked up a stick. “Come on, we have to kill monsters!”
I struggled through the snow for a proper monster-killing stick. It was hard to find one. Any beylia branches that fell were too big even for Karijin to hold. The smaller ones were the same color as the snow. We lived in a park of beylias. Spaced far apart, they stretched as far as the eye could see. My dad had dug a home beneath one of the beylias.
Karijin waited for me while I searched in vain for a stick. As I investigated a mound of snow, my foot slid through it and I sank into it up to my chest. My legs were encased in a frozen coffin. Panic gripped my heart as the sensation of being smothered consumed me.
“Karijin!” I screamed.
“Vameet, K’lar.” He yanked me free of the drift and set me in the trail he’d cut out. He often used Kaleesan words with me. Like my dad, he called me K’lar. “You act like you’re going to die.”
I brushed the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand. “I don’t like it. I can’t move.”
Karijin stared at me as if he’d never heard anything so ridiculous. “Yeah, okay. Here.” He reached into the snow and handed me a stick just right for me. “Metston.” Let’s go. He marched into the forest, but not too far. We stayed within calling distance of the underground house. Karijin suddenly crouched down.
I got low, too. “What is it?”
“A retsinist! Are you ready?”
I gripped my stick in both hands. “Ready!”
Crouch-walking, Karijin pushed through the snow to a massive beylia. We looked like little dots next to it.
“Now!” he shouted, and charged the beylia. I scurried after him with stick held high. We hacked at the beylia, hollering as if in battle. I stepped wrong and went down. Karijin rolled with it. “Watch your head, K’lar! They’re coming for you!” He hurled snowballs over my head as I swung my stick at imaginary retsinists.
“I got them, Karijin! But they bit off my arm!”
“We have to get it back on!” Picking me up, he high-stepped to the other side of the tree and began digging a cave into the snow. I lay on my back, dying. When Karijin finished the snow cave, he dragged me inside and laid me in the middle of the floor. Taking my stick, he pretended to screw it into my shoulder.
I screamed in pain. “Tell Mom I love her!”
“You’re going to make it!” He stuffed snow into my mouth like it was high-quality medicine. “Swallow it!”
I swallowed, coughed, and sat up. “I’m cured!”
Just then, Dad shouted our names. Evening Sun had set in. The riliths would come out soon. I’d never seen one except in pictures. I wished I could see one in real life. I was seven, so my brains hadn’t grown in yet.
“Keep low,” said Karijin. “Follow me!” He slunk back to the underground house. Our dad waited outside the tunnel entrance. He was a big Hatrin man with black hair, pale skin, and bright blue eyes. Karijin resembled him more than I did. Our dad was a mix of Kaleesan and Visserian, being from the western coast. He waved before slipping into the tunnel.
Karijin stood up straight. “I smell food! It’s time to eat.” Shoving me into the snow, he loped down the trail.
“Hey!” I struggled to get up. “You have to wait for me!”
Karijin chortled and dipped into the tunnel. The pus-bucket was going to eat everything. When I told Dad on him, Karijin would be sorry. He’d bend Karijin over his knee and belt him. At least, that’s what I hoped.
As I rolled onto the path, revenge slipped my mind in the peaceful silence of the snowy woods. Puffing fog from my lips, I watched it dance like a spirit through sun and shadow. Through a bright corridor of beylias, an invisible string pulled at my heart, like someone was calling. Excitement and fear jerked at my insides.
I stepped inadvertently towards it, but Dad called me. His powerful figure towered over the snowy trail. Holding his great hands out, he knelt. The tug pestered like a desperate child, but my dad’s eyes twinkled.
“Come, K’lar. What are you doing?”
Words failed me, so I just said, “Nothing.” I bounded into his powerful arms. He rested his hand on the back of my head.
“Are you all right, K’lar?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“What were you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
Lifting me up as he stood, he headed towards the tunnel. “What were you doing out here all alone, little one?”
“I was killing monsters,” I said.
“What a wonderful monster-killer you are! Are there any left?”
I thought about it. “I don’t think so. I have to kill some more tomorrow. But right now, they have to go to sleep.”
He laughed. “I see.” He ducked into the passageway beneath the ancient beylia. Tired and hungry, I laid my head on his muscled shoulder. I could have remained like that until bedtime. Dad carried me everywhere, if Karijin didn’t steal me first.
The silent voice disturbed me again. Peering up the tunnel, I half expected to behold a figure beckoning from the entrance. There was only snow and dying light.
Dad hauled the metal sliding door open and entered a capacious living room. A blaze crackled inside a grand iron cage on four clawed feet in the middle of the floor. Bright sparks danced up a perforated flue, which speared into the ceiling of roots. Fur-encased chairs and couches faced the fire from various places in the room. We stood on a landing raised three steps above the rest of the chamber.
Adjacen
t to the entryway yawned a circular corridor of roots. The firelight didn’t dare penetrate the gloom. As Dad walked in, I hid my face in his neck. Invisible eyes seemed to stare from among the roots. If I squeezed my dad hard enough, they couldn’t get me.
Dad chuckled. “There is no need to fear in this hallway, K’lar. The little trembling denotes he does not know food is at the end of the tunnel! Can you not smell it, child? A few more steps and we shall be clear. There, we are free of the dreaded tunnel. Lift your face, little one, and gaze upon the spread before you!”
I peeked over my shoulder. Dinner consisted of meat, bread, and four blue-white klosstiss fruit that only grew in winter. Shaped like delicate teardrops, they tasted like sweet ice.
My mother rose from the wooden table and took me into her arms. She was an elegant Hatrin woman with rare pink eyes. Light brown hair shimmering with golden highlights cascaded down her back. The fur adorning her soft pointed ears and fluffy tail was gold. She sported her customary white dress to her feet. Kissing my cheek, she placed me in a chair and handed me a piece of meat.
“Now eat, my darling,” she said. “Fill up your little tummy!” She tickled my stomach until I doubled over laughing.
As I ripped into the meat, Mom watched with a small smile playing about her lips. Dad ruffled my wild hair and then spoke to Karijin. My brother was riveted. Maybe they were discussing toys? I pricked my ears.
“Do not fret,” said Dad. “It is temporary. You remember that we had to perform that for you, too.”
“I remember,” said Karijin, struggling to mimic Dad’s speech pattern, “but I was not so young. It may come as a shock.”
“His will have to last much longer. You were ready, my son. He is not. You will help me, will you not?”
“Of course I will. I would do anything for you.”
No toys. I tuned out. My mind wandered to the ice cave Karijin had constructed. We always invented the funnest games when it was time to go in. Hopefully no giant predator would step on it in the middle of the night.
The tug wrenched my thoughts from the game. With a startled gasp, I whipped my face towards it. Since the dining room lacked windows, I stared at the wall of woven roots and dirt without seeing it. What was this thing calling from outside and yet pulsing inside my chest? It mourned, and I had to comfort it.
Dad rested his hand on my shoulder. “Are you feeling well? You are not catching cold?”
“No.” Hopping off the chair, I marched to the creepy tunnel, determined to brave its unseen terrors. The firelight gleaming from the living room mutated the passage into an orange glowing eye. I halted.
“What is the matter, K’lar?”
I jumped and realized Dad stood beside me. “Nothing.”
He bent, resting a hand on his knee, and felt my head. “You had better rest. I will conduct you to bed and read to you.” He hefted me into his arm.
Mom joined us by the tunnel. “Kiss your mother, little love.”
As I leaned over and pecked her cheek, Mom’s face skewed. It was like a breeze had puffed against an invisible shroud, revealing something bloody underneath. My fur stood on end as the air iced over. I rubbed my eyes, and Mom was normal again. The temperature warmed.
Dad bore me through the hall without warning and I thrust my face into his neck. Tears stung my eyes as the tug’s gloom overwhelmed my little heart.
“We are safely from the tunnel, my silly child,” said Dad. “Do not weep.”
I lifted my head. We were already crossing the living room towards another hallway. I stole a glance at the front door, and then the hall cut it off. Here, the roots in the ceiling trickled down the walls but stopped before they touched the stone floor. It wasn’t freaky here. My toys lived in the roots, waiting for me to play when too cold or rainy days confined me to the house.
We entered my tiny room. It had the same stone floor and root-woven walls. My little bed and a bookshelf, as high as me, nearly filled the space.
Dad sat on the bed. “Fetch yourself a book.”
I nabbed a big red one about the first Iskerkin. My dad leaned on the pillow as I snuggled beside him.
“K’lar,” he said, “did you know that we are descended from this Iskerkin?”
I smiled. “Yeah!” He reminded me every time we read this book.
“Now I will read.” His resonating voice massaged my ears, and I drifted to sleep. A dream crept in, as if sneaking around Dad’s voice.
A Kabrilor man stood in a dark star forest, draped in a long brown jacket. A hood shadowed his face. I knew him, but only in the dream. He pointed to his left, and I followed his sinewy finger with my gaze.
Someone was approaching on kiderrin back. Although I couldn’t make out his face, I beheld shaggy brown hair and a wiry build. He gripped a cord whose end coiled around my torso. He jerked it towards him, and I tumbled into a pile of red mushrooms. Before he could drag me after him, the rider vanished with the rope.
Dad’s voice warbled from the trees in one direction, but the rider called from the other. I turned my head left and right in confusion. I just needed a few minutes to figure out which voice to obey.
“The end,” said Dad.
I woke without him realizing I’d fallen asleep. How could I regain the dream? It was like I’d witnessed a piece of a story and had been interrupted. The only way for the tale to resume was if Dad read a second time.
“Can you read it again?” I said.
Dad eased off the pillow and rested one foot on the floor as he tucked the other beneath his knee. “No, you have to rest. I do not wish you to become ill. That would worry me.”
“But I’m not cold.”
Dad cupped my face. “No, my child. You must sleep. The faster you sleep…?” He waited for me to finish.
“The faster I wake up.”
He kissed my cheek. “Yes.” Securing the blanket around me, Dad rubbed the mirilite over the bed until it dimmed. He returned the red book to its shelf and quit the room. His steps receded softly down the hall.
The tug’s sorrow drowned my tranquility, and I burrowed my head under the pillow. Time dragged like an endless black mist. Who could I cry for? It wasn’t my dad, mother, or Karijin. The entity resided in a fog I couldn’t clear.
As I sucked in air, I tasted more than smelled soggy grass. Something had changed. Lifting my head, I discovered a boggy meadow. A massive iyalit tree, or flower tree, towered on the other end of it. Fifteen Kabrilors together couldn’t hug the gnarled white trunk. Curtains of pastel blossoms festooned light green vines. Bluish mist bled from under the flowers.
A man’s voice beckoned from behind, and I turned around. Fog obscured the figure of the rider. I strained to catch the curve of Berivor ears peeking from his hair.
“Where are you going?” he said.
“To my daddy.” I pattered to the iyalit tree. Pushing through the flower-laden vines, I traversed a temple of blossoms. As I commenced deeper into the tree, the petals withered. I faltered and whispered, “Daddy?”
“He’s not there,” said the rider.
I pressed on. “Daddy, where are you?”
“He’s not there.”
The petals shriveled into dead, blackened bodies. They rained on my head until they smothered me in darkness.
Jerking awake, I stumbled from bed and tore down the hall. “Daddy! Daddy!”
Karijin intercepted me from his room, catching my shoulders. “What’s the matter?”
“I can’t find Daddy!”
Karijin pressed my head to his shoulder. “Abbee, abbee, it was just a nightmare. He’s here. Nothing bad happened to him.”
“He was gone. I couldn’t find him. They all turned brown and dead. He said he wasn’t there. I couldn’t see his face.”
Karijin patted my back in silence. He could usually calm me down when a nightmare attacked, but not tonight. The other horrors were false. This one was real. Maybe my brother sensed it, because he carried me to our parents’ room. The door
was slightly ajar, and I heard them breathing. Easing through the door, Karijin stepped to Dad’s side of the bed. He nudged him until he stirred.
“What is it?” said Dad sleepily.
“K’lar had a bad nightmare.”
“Oh.” The big Hatrin sat up and took me on his lap. “I have him now, Karijin. Thank you.”
“Good night,” said Karijin, and left.
Dad pushed his hair from his forehead. “Now, K’lar, what were you dreaming about?”
I hugged Dad’s middle. “I couldn’t find you.”
“I am right here, child. I always will be.”
The words were comfortless. His heart beat surreal against my ear. I glanced at his strange arms around me.
He’s not there. The tug had said it this time. No, the tug and the rider were one and the same. The realization didn’t occur by rational reason, but a feeling in my heart.
This way, it said, this way…
5
The Thing in the Forest
Wake up, said the tug. Follow me.
My eyes opened on knobby roots tangled across the ceiling. Shadow and dim mirilite cut each in half. Mom and Dad’s warm bodies pressed on either side of me. Mom didn’t know about the nightmare. Dad had secured me between them without waking her.
Carefully crawling to the foot of the bed, I slipped to the floor and crept into the hallway. Never in my life had I attempted something like this. Even if it had crossed my mind, I wouldn’t have had the courage to commit. The tug rendered my fears obsolete.
I flitted into the living room and up the steps to the front door landing. Donning my jacket and hat, I stole a glance at the corridor. Nobody had awakened thus far.
Now to breach the sliding door. A thick wooden bar wedged into the door’s track served as a failsafe lock. It weighed a million pounds, but I only needed to free one end. Gritting my teeth, I jammed my claws into the stop and inched it onto the edge of the track. As I pulled it towards me, the wood clunked on the floor. It nearly smashed my feet, but I hopped back.
