Forts: Endings and Beginnings

by Steven Novak

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Owen.” Fellow answered, gently squeezing the pliable flesh of the child’s shoulders.

  In fact, Owen did know what he was talking about; he’d known all along. Fear, however, was clouding his brain and causing him to second guess what something deep inside had been trying to convince him was possible. Though he couldn’t quite pinpoint exactly how or when it happened, at some point in the not too distant past, a tiny, barely there part of him had begun to believe. When he thought about it logically, it made absolutely no sense. Not an ounce. Actually, it was pretty stupid. He was just a kid, after all, and a fairly useless one at that; ask anyone and they would tell you the same. A few years ago, the P.E. coach took to calling him Slowen.

  Get it? Slow plus Owen equaled Slowen.

  Owen had always hated that name. Mr. Machado, however, thought it was hilarious. Turned out that many of Owen’s classmates agreed and it caught on rather quickly. As stupid as the nickname was and as much as he hated it, Owen had to acknowledge the fact that there was some truth in it. He was slow. He was slow, and the complete opposite of tough, and he had no place on a battlefield. The idea that he was somehow a prophet sent to save the universe was idiocy on levels idiocy had yet to tread. Still though, there was this undeniable feeling gnawing at him. Like peanut butter to his teeth, it was sticking, creeping into the tiniest of cracks, and refusing to go away. When Owen attempted to lower his head, Fellow placed his finger beneath the boy’s chin and returned it gently to its original position.

  Pleading yet confident, the tone of his voice was as much a question as a statement. “Listen to me, Owen. You just have to do what you did before. That’s all.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure I can’t. I’m not lying. I don’t know how—”

  “Yes, you can.”

  Owen sighed. “I really wish you’d stop saying that.”

  Moving forward slightly, Fellow collected one of Owen’s hands in his own. Reaching to his left, he placed his own hand onto the shoulder of the noticeably confused Chris Jarvis kneeling beside him.

  Again, Owen shook his head and whispered. “I’m telling you, I can’t.”

  Fellow squeezed tighter. “Yes you can. Don’t think. Just do it.”

  For the briefest of minuscule moments, Owen actually believed him.

  No less than a second later, the boy began to disappear. Inch by inch his scrawny body erased, evaporating into nothing and molding with a blur into the red forest behind. Once Owen had vanished entirely, the nothingness moved onto Fellow Undergotten and repeated the process. Having consumed Fellow, it slid its way across the tightened, more than a little frightened form of Chris Jarvis. In less than ten seconds, the trio had evaporated entirely, leaving the remainder of the group gap-jawed, confused, and scuttling cautiously backward in the dirt.

  From the empty space emerged the steady-calm, bodiless voice of Fellow Undergotten. “Relax everyone. We’re fine. This is how we’re getting across. Each of you needs to grab hold of the person next to you. Come on, we don’t exactly have time to be bashful.”

  One by one the group did as Fellow suggested, interlocking arms, holding hands, or simply placing their respective appendages on the shoulder of those kneeling beside them. The creature nearest the space where Chris had only recently knelt before vanishing—a Chintarian very similar in appearance to Fellow, though noticeably older and more haggard—suddenly felt something touching his shoulder. It was a hand. It was a hand with five fingers. It was a hand with five fingers belonging to Chris Jarvis. When he looked to his side, however, he saw only the dark gray bark of a Fillagrou tree. A moment later, he too began to disappear. Like electricity traveling across a current, the invisibility spread outward until the entire group vanished from existence.

  The emptiness spoke again in the voice of Fellow Undergotten. “They might not be able to see us, but they can hear us just the same. Move slowly, keep low, and keep quiet. If we’re lucky, we just might pull this off.”

  In a connected row, the group stood and began moving through the densely packed trees in the direction of the Ochan invasion force. With every step, the soldier’s voices became clearer. With every inch, the rumbling of the ground created by the thunderous footsteps of the massive digging beasts became more noticeable. With every minute Owen’s breathing increased substantially. Though he could feel Fellow directly behind him with his hands resting upon his shoulders, and he could hear the hushed whispers of the fish man in his ear, Owen was essentially the one tasked with leading the group forward. As they continued to move closer, it was he who moved closest.

  From behind him came the steadied voice of Fellow Undergotten: “It’ll be okay kiddo. Just breathe. Keep calm. Breathe deep.”

  Less then fifty feet from the marching army, Owen came to a sudden stop. Behind him, the group halted as well. There were so many Ochans, each with swords strapped to their backs, knives attached to their belts, and various other dangerous looking weapons hanging from straps across their muscular bodies. The armor they wore was nearly as black as the surrounding forest, which in turn made them seem strangely invisible as well. With Fellow still gripping his shoulders, Owen watched as a group of fifty or so marched past in perfect formation, long torches rising up sporadically from the mass and crackling with angry yellow-red flames. Their every step was in perfect unison. The resulting sound proved terrifying in its preciseness. As they moved past, continuing onward into the darkness of the surrounding forest, Owen looked further to his right and spotted another titanic digging beast off in the distance. Though its head disappeared somewhere high above the dark tree line, he could hear the great beast roar from up high. The monstrous wail caused him to jump. Fellow, of course, did his best to hold the boy tight and keep him from breaking down entirely.

  Gently nudging him with just a hint of urgency, Fellow stated in a hushed whisper. “Now Owen, go!”

  In front of him, Owen saw only empty space. This was the opportunity Fellow had mentioned. This was their chance. The gait of the digging creature, though, was massive. In a matter of moments the opportunity would have disappeared.

  Again Fellow nudged the boy forward. “You can do this, Owen. Go!”

  Breathing deeply with a nervous sheen of invisible sweat pouring down his face, neck, back, and soaking his equally invisible shirt, Owen Little did just that. What started out as a brisk walk forward quickly turned into a full on sprint. Before he knew it, he was moving so fast that many among the train of would-be rescuers found themselves struggling to maintain pace. Invisible footsteps left far more noticeable prints in the dirt. The group as a whole kicked up a small cloud of dust as they plowed their way through the underbrush. Invisible bodies shoved aside trees, and invisible feet snapped twigs while stomping the leaves of reddish-purple plants. Had it not been night, and had they been any closer, they would have undoubtedly been spotted despite being invisible. After reaching the center of the path of crushed trees and uprooted soil created by the Ochan army, in mid-stride Owen glanced to his right and saw that the digging monster was moving faster than his friend Fellow had likely anticipated or decided to mention.

  A moment later, it was directly overhead.

  A flat foot the size of a truck smashed into the ground in front of Owen, as another passed directly over the heads of the group behind. Above him, the massive hanging stomach of the gray beast rumbled like a living, angry house of stuffed leather. Again it roared, this time so loudly that Owen briefly lost his footing. Wrapping one of his hands underneath the boy’s armpit while keeping the other firmly attached to his shoulder, Fellow lifted Owen up and kept him from falling on his face.

  “Go! Move, Owen!” The Chintaran screamed over the incredible boom of the monsters’ footsteps and the growlish-huff of its head high above the trees.

  Fellow’s words were hardly necessary, though. Owen was already moving. His feet reacted before h
is brain, and within a matter of moments he was bolting forward with the nervous group linked together behind. Just as the creature passed overhead and continued onward into the forest, the last among the rescuers scurried into the dense foliage on the opposite side of the path. The invisible train continued running for another five minutes before finally coming to a stop, unlinking from each other, and turning visible once again. Out of breath and more terrified than he’d ever been in his young life, Owen leaned over and placed his hands on his knees.

  Noticeably tired as well, Fellow gently patted the boy on his back. “See? I told you that you could do it. Easy, right?”

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 14

  UNTIL WE CAN’T SEE LAND

  *

  Slowly moving out of the darkness and toward the mouth of the cave, Tommy Jarvis stopped momentarily at the water’s edge. Wedged between a pair of gray moss-covered rocks inches from the tips of his shoes floated the partially burnt remainder of Captain Fluuffytail’s ship, the ship that brought him to the little scientist named Crumbee. It was Crumbee that showed him the particle, and it was the particle that introduced him for the first time to everything else. In a world covered with water, the tides led him to this exact spot, to this tiny bit of land hidden among the endless ocean barely more than a speck of dirt against the landscape of blue. The odds were impossible, improbable even. This was no fluke, no bit of happenstance or odd luck. There was indeed a reason he drifted to this place. His mother had shown him that much at least, and the particle only reiterated her cryptic words. Luck was an illusion, an easily processed answer to a question that had no interest in being understood. Luck was a myth. Thanks to the particle, Tommy could see that now. Thanks to the particle and the things it whispered to him when they touched, he understood as much as he was capable of understanding, and as much as it wanted him too. Thanks to the particle, he knew what he had to do.

  “The doorway back to Fillagrou…could you find it?” Tommy asked calmly, his eyes remaining firmly on the blanket of water beyond the silhouetted mouth of the cave.

  Watching the child from the shadows near the rear of the cave, Arthur Crumbee swallowed before answering. He was still having trouble processing what he’d just seen, what the strange child with the light colored hair had managed to accomplish. The boy’s actions spat at the laws of physics and the whole of science in general. He decided that whatever this yellow-haired creature was, it was in fact no simple, unassuming child, and referring to it as one was not only stupid, but dangerous. The creature standing before him was something else entirely. It was something he couldn’t begin to make sense of and something he previously doubted could exist. It was intriguing and terrifying, and different and irresistible.

  Reaching up, he straightened the tattered remains of the necktie dangling from his neck. “I-I don’t know. It’s been so long. Years. I suppose. Maybe. I mean, I could surely point in the right direction.” Moving his hand from his tie, he began to scratch one of the rolls of fat that made up his neck. “Using the stars as a guide. I guess…maybe. Yes, I believe I could find my way back to the doorway.”

  From the mouth of the cave, the silhouetted form of Tommy Jarvis remained motionless. The slowly rising tide caused a small bit of water to splash onto his jeans and spread across the slick rock beneath his feet.

  Confused by the silence, Arthur felt the need to speak up. “If you don’t mind me asking: why do you want to know if I can find my way back?”

  Tommy’s response was to the point. “Because that’s where we’re going.”

  The confusion Arthur felt moments ago was nothing compared to what he was experiencing at that moment.

  Shrugging his shoulders, he sighed, plucked the monocle from his eye, and wiped it clean with his sleeve. “Far be it from me to point out the obvious, but unless you’re hiding a vessel of some sort just outside the cave, or you’re a far better swimmer than your anatomy would suggest at first glance, how do you propose we make the journey across Aquari?”

  Staring down at the husk of shrapnel banging against the rocks near his feet, Tommy extended his leg forward and poked at it with the tip of his filthy shoe. A day ago he might have thought it a miracle that the tattered plank had carried him so far. He might have believed himself lucky to be alive. Things had changed. The world seemed different through his new eyes. While it remained as complicated as ever, at the same time it felt a little easier to deal with. Luck suddenly seemed silly, and miracles far sillier. Again the tiniest of waves crashed against the stone beneath his feet and splashed onto his pants. The salty-cool ocean breeze smoothed its way against the flesh of his face, across his neck, and down his shirt, where it proceeded to flap the torn and frayed edges gently. It was all beginning to make sense in such a way that it made absolutely no sense. There were answers in the unanswered, so many beautifully false truths. Tommy was beginning to understand.

  Turning toward the little scientist, Tommy moved in Arthur’s direction and stated very matter-of-factly: “We won’t be needing a ship.”

  Once past Crumbee, he stopped alongside the clear glass casing housing the particle. Inside, the tiny speck of light continued to hover and hum to itself. Lifting his hand, Tommy placed it once again against the glass.

  “Wait a minute. What’re yo—what’re you doing?” Arthur piqued from a few feet behind.

  “She’s coming with us.”

  Taking a couple steps in Tommy’s direction, Arthur scratched the top of his sweaty head. “She? Wait. What’re you talking about? Who is she?”

  The instant Tommy’s hand came into contact with the glass, the tiny sphere of light responded. It hovered forward, pressed easily through its transparent casing and into the palm of the boy’s hand. After sliding through the wrinkles in his flesh, it disappeared.

  His jaw hanging so low it added yet another roll to his very stacked, very pancake looking chin, Arthur Crumbee could only rub his eyes in disbelief. With a subtle smile, Tommy moved past him once more and toward the mouth of the cave. When he reached the water’s edge, he stopped. Lowering his head, he closed his eyes and inhaled the tangy-crisp air. As he extended one hand out in front of him, his fingers began to glow. Rapidly the glow spread outward, then bent back in. With eyes so wide they looked almost out of place on his face, Arthur watched from six feet away as Tommy’s feet lifted at least ten inches off the slick surface of the rock beneath. Now hovering in the air, the glow from his arms curved under and over him in every direction at once, before connecting behind and enclosing the boy in an absolute perfect circle of light. The movement was slick and mechanical and practiced, and yet so undeniably alive. It was unbelievable. For a moment Arthur considered retrieving his notebook and documenting what he’d just seen. Then he realized whatever he might write would scarcely make sense. How would he explain this? He couldn’t. None of it made any sense; and yet, there it was, staring him in the face and swatting away the dictates of logic with a grin.

  The crackling ball of energy in which Tommy floated spun slowly on its axis until the boy was facing the pudgy purple scientist behind him.

  With his free hand Tommy motioned for Arthur to draw near. “Come on. I’m supposed to follow you. I need you to lead the way.”

  Arthur inhaled. When he tried to exhale, he failed. His legs refused to move.

  Again Tommy gestured for him. “It’s alright. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to come with me. This isn’t where you’re supposed to be.”

  Still Arthur’s legs would not budge. He’d spent so many years in this cave that at some point it had become his home. It was here that he watched his wife die. It was here that he gave her to the sea and set her adrift. It was here that he always assumed he would die as well. Every muscle in his body felt stiff and unresponsive, not a single part willing to cooperate.

  “I don’t—I mean, I can’t.” Arthur answered back, searching for a reason, fishing for some bit of logic that would afford him an excuse to remai
n exactly where he was. “I’m not even sure I can find the doorway anyway. I mean, it’s been so long. It was dark. So much has happened. We could get lost. I could get us lost.”

  Tommy grinned. “You won’t get us lost.”

  “But how can you be so sure? You don’t know me! Though I’m a bit ashamed to admit it, my memory isn’t exactly what it used to be! I’m getting older. Things are getting hazier. We could die out there!”

  Tommy lowered his free hand and dropped it to his side. Slowly a bit of the light bubble surrounding him opened up, transforming into something slightly resembling a doorway.

  Again the boy extended his hand. “We could die in here. I need your help. My little brother and my friends need your help. If you don’t come with me, they don’t stand a chance. Please. I can’t do this without you.”

  Turning briefly to look behind him, Arthur gazed into the dense shadows of the cave and the empty glass container just feet away. Moments before, it had held the whole of his life’s work and the only reason he’d found to continue living after Tamara’s death. Now it was empty. Whatever it was that resided inside lived now within the yellow-haired boy floating behind and beckoning him forward. Whatever was in it had somehow found the strength to move onto the next stage of its existence.

  Maybe the time had arrived for him to do the same.

  With a heavy sigh, Arthur nodded subtly to the square of glass one last time then turned to face Tommy Jarvis and his incredible sphere of light. Cautiously he began moving forward. Barely a foot away, he hesitantly reached forward and grabbed hold of the boy’s hand. Tommy helped pull him into the swirling circle of light, and the open doorway closed shut behind. Instantly Arthur noted how warm it felt inside. It was the absolute perfect temperature: inviting and comfortable. Maybe even safe. Looking through the light from the inside out, everything seemed different: a little hazy, as if the whole cave had been encased in some sort of living, breathing fog. He touched the nearest wall with the tip of his pudgy finger. It sparked like electricity. Not the least bit painful though. In fact, it was strangely pleasant.