The Echoed Realm

by A. J. Vrana

  No one dared answer the call until Velizar stepped forward and surveyed his flock. “Our brave hunter should not venture out alone. Who will aid him?”

  Velizar’s rally roused the villagers like fresh liver to the hunter’s hounds. Whispers crescendoed until Jove and Marko, two ruffians several years Pavel’s senior, stepped forward and playfully struck the boy’s arm with their burly fists.

  “We will go with him,” Jove proclaimed, ruffling Pavel’s hair in good humour.

  Velizar relished the sour shame that crawled up Pavel’s face. The moral high ground had always been his sharpest blade.

  Good, Velizar thought. There must be witnesses to the dissenter’s demise.

  Sendoa would tear Pavel to shreds. Jove and Marko would then return to the village and decree that Velizar had been right all along: disobedience was indeed a grave crime.

  30

  Miya

  Miya awoke blind. All around her was a thick, impenetrable blackness. She had no idea where she was. At first slowly, then more urgently, desperate heat ravelled up her spine. Terror shackled her in place. She couldn’t see her hands or her feet in front of her.

  The world was a depthless abyss, and she was lost in it.

  Her bones rattled with cold beneath her veins. Rubbing her arms for warmth, Miya spun and squinted into the darkness.

  “Hello?”

  Her voice rang through the void, and a chilling question resounded in her mind: Who am I?

  She knew the basics: She was Emiliya Delathorne, daughter of Raymond and Andrea Delathorne. She was born and raised in Black Hollow, British Columbia. Her father often travelled for work. Once, she’d wanted to be a journalist, but found university life disillusioning. Her best friend’s name was Hannah. Hannah had moved to Burnaby, and Miya missed her very much.

  Beyond that, it was a blur. She dug deeper, concentrated harder, but discovered only swirls of sable and violet smoke. Somewhere in their midst, she glimpsed a man. His face—a not-quite-dry painting plunged under murky water—invaded her memories. Yet when she tried to pull the painting to the surface, the colours bled from the canvas, distorting the image. All she could make out was his unruly black hair and red-tinted eyes.

  Did he really matter if she couldn’t remember him? From some hidden place within, a tiny voice cried, Yes! But what could she do? Some vital part of her was missing.

  Then, she felt something in her hands. Her fingers grazed rough, thinly woven threads. She was holding the painting she’d tried to fish out of her subconscious. A lump of panic hatched in her throat, barricading the breath from her lungs.

  Who am I? The words pummelled closer to home, but the picture remained unclear. How had she come to hold it? Had she conjured it from her mind—a thought made physically manifest?

  “Man made mirrors to reflect the soul, but only memories gleam against the glass.”

  Miya searched for the source of the voice. A gravelly laugh sang through the endless chasm around her, and she spun to come face to face with a small figure about half her size.

  The boy shed a peculiar light, his shadow flickering around his feet. He was a lantern in the midnight fog. Waxy skin and coal-coloured eyes cinched around Miya’s heart. His luminous blue-black hair reminded her of plumage; it swayed like there was a breeze, yet the air was entirely still. He donned a shaggy cloak that swallowed up his limbs and coalesced with the darkness where it licked the ground. Perhaps Miya should have been alarmed, but she was unfazed by the boy’s sudden appearance.

  “It’s a painting…” she ventured, tilting the canvas towards her visitor.

  He smiled like a wide, curved blade. “Is a painting not a mirror? A doorway to the deep?”

  Miya examined the barely discernable face bleeding over the plaited threads. “This person isn’t me. It’s someone I know.” She looked back to the boy. “Just like you.”

  His smile faded, and he croaked, “Yes.”

  “Are we friends?”

  “Friends…” he repeated as though she’d spoken a foreign language. Then, he sighed, his spindly fingers poking free from his bushy robe. “We are family.”

  “Family.” Miya’s fingers grazed the streaks of colour dyeing the woven threads. “Is he family too?”

  The boy didn’t answer. He stepped closer and peered over her arm, his inky eyes trained on the image.

  “I feel so lost. I’m scared that I’ll never find my way back…” she trailed off, her breaths growing shallow. Back to…what, exactly? She didn’t even know what she was meant to go back to, but there was no path forward, either.

  The boy grasped Miya’s wrist. Although the movement was abrupt and his skin cold to the touch, she recognized the gesture as one of commiseration.

  “Gavran.” The name came off her tongue like muscle memory.

  “Look again,” he commanded, nodding towards the painting.

  Miya’s eyes trailed from the bony fingers gripping her arm to the piece between her hands. The man’s face was now clear.

  “Kai.”

  She knew him; she knew his name, but beyond that, there was nothing.

  “You said the painting’s a mirror. Does that mean he’s part of who I am?” she asked.

  The boy’s cheeks puffed in displeasure. “He is not needed. You are lost and found without him. You are whole without him. But,” he hesitated when she bore into him, “he stood by you on all four paws.”

  “He supported me,” she translated.

  “Yes,” said Gavran, though the admission struck Miya as a bitter one. “Put that down.” He tugged on her wrist. “It won’t help you find your way.”

  “Then what will?”

  “It’s not the first time you’ve been lost.” He swept his cloak back as he turned and retreated into the darkness.

  The asphalt-coloured mist parted around his faintly glowing form, and up ahead, Miya caught the silhouette of a towering tree. Its base was as wide as a truck and sprouted high into the would-be heavens. If there was a sun or moon in this place, Miya was sure the leaves could caress it. There was only one species she knew of that approached such a mammoth size.

  “Is that a redwood?” She craned her neck.

  “It’s the Red Knot,” he answered in confirmation. “Come,” he beckoned, “sit with me. I will tell you a story to pass the time until the fog clears.”

  Miya stumbled forward, following the dim light curled around the boy. As worry spooled around her body, she yearned to return to a simpler time—one of bedtime stories, when fairy tales drew magic onto life’s pages. She knew that magic was close. All the wonder she’d ever wanted was hovering nearby, waiting for her to snatch it back up.

  Having reached Gavran, she could see the tree more clearly as it loomed overhead like an ancient guardian.

  “We’ll be safe here,” Gavran assured her, then sat under its protective limbs and patted the spot next to him.

  Silently, Miya joined him and was startled to find the earth warm and mossy against her palms. “What’s this story you wanted to tell me?”

  Gavran clasped his milky hands together, clapping in delight. Despite his momentary lapses into child-like jubilance, there was something deathless about him. “The story of the Hollow.” He swayed closer, his breath tickling her cheek.

  “The Hollow? Do you mean Black Hollow?”

  “Yes, yes!” He leaned against the redwood and pressed his ear to the bark as though listening for whispers. “The Hollow…and the gods that turned it black.”

  Miya too rested against the tree’s massive bole. “I thought Black Hollow was named after the dark green forest surrounding it.”

  “Names have more than one meaning,” Gavran chuckled. “A hollow in a black wood, and a hollow that is itself black. A god deep in the Hollow, and a god that is deeply hollow.”

  “The gods of the Hollow are hollow?” Miya raised an eyebrow.

  The boy’s teeth glistened like broken pearls as he pulled himself free from the voices insid
e the tree. “Shall I tell you how they became that way?”

  Miya wavered. This didn’t sound like the kind of bedtime story her mother used to tell her as she hung dried lavender from the handles of her bedside drawer.

  This story sounded like an omen, a doorway to a dangerous world.

  Miya knew her heart was waiting there. That vital core that eluded her would not come calling. She would have to find it.

  “Tell me the story.” Miya pushed aside her doubt. “Show me what I’ve forgotten.”

  Gavran raised his arms in revelry, his feathery mantle erupting around him like wings. Poised as the keenest of storytellers, he began his tale:

  “When a babe was born without breath, the people of the Hollow believed the child’s soul was lost. Wandering too far into the dreamscape, it became unmoored from its earthly form. But all souls must find their bodies at birth, or life is little more than a dashed hope.

  “A newborn’s soul is curious, easily lured away by spirits’ mischief. Thus, when a babe is born breathless, it often remains so. And yet, every so often, a raven will find the child’s soul meandering to its plight. The raven snatches up the soul and flies it back to its rightful body. Reunited with itself, the child lives.”

  “This is what the Hollow’s people believed?” Miya asked.

  The boy nodded, his eerie grin never faltering. Crossing his legs and clutching his ankles, he rocked forward and back, then continued, “And so there was once a girl. A girl who had been born twice. A girl whose soul was returned to her by a clever raven.” He drew close and cupped Miya’s cheeks, his hands thin and cold as buried bones.

  “A Dreamwalker.”

  31

  KALI

  Milena’s hair was the colour of a burning sunset. Even now, when her tawny skin had turned wan, her long, wispy curls seared red with life. It was somehow dissonant, unsettling. The dead weren’t meant to hold such colour.

  Beside her, Lana sobbed quietly, and Kali finally allowed her gaze to drift from Milena’s beautiful hair to the second figure lying in a wooden casket atop the pyre.

  Decebal.

  Kali drew her arm around Lana’s shoulders and pulled her close. Dark strands clung to Lana’s wet, ruddy cheeks, and Kali pressed her forehead against the grieving widow’s. Together they’d survived famine and disease, love and loss. Lana had been there for Kali when her parents disappeared, devoured by the woods. She’d been there when the other children teased Kali and the adults shooed her away. Kali’s father had been a poor hunter, and her mother frequently suffered from illness that would leave her bedridden for days. The Hollow hunters said her parents didn’t contribute, though they simply hadn’t been allowed to contribute in their own way.

  Some said her parents’ absence wasn’t from a blundered hunt. Some said they’d deserted.

  They’d abandoned their child to the village’s paper-thin charity.

  “I’m s-sorry, Ekaliya,” Lana stammered, pulling back. “I don’t mean to fall apart like this.”

  Kali managed a weak smile. “You have every reason to fall apart.” She glanced at Decebal. “He was your husband.”

  Lana pressed a hand to her stomach, and Kali’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you with child?”

  Lana shook her head. “I don’t know. We’d been trying, but my womb has always been disagreeable.”

  “Perhaps it’s for the best,” Kali said softly. “Some women…hate the reminder.”

  Lana stepped away, her expression torn between hope and dismay. “Have you seen it?”

  Kali hesitated, Milena’s fiery aura prickling the edge of her vision.

  Milena. The Dreamwalker. She’d been with Decebal, hunting the beast that terrorized the Hollow. Her wounds were cleaned and sewn shut, but Kali glimpsed dabs of blood staining her pristine funeral garbs. Would she be allowed into the Silent Place with them?

  “Now and then,” Kali went on, “I walk into widows’ dreams. Some mourn the loss more deeply when they see their husbands. And after they awaken, they have nowhere to put their sorrow, so they raise a hand on their child. They don’t realize what they cling to.”

  Lana grabbed her hand. “You must tell Bartha. Milena is dead. Without a new Dreamwalker, the Hollow’s doomed. We’ll have no means to find the Viyest in winter. The sky already darkens quicker; the season of the dead looms only three moons away.”

  Kali curled her long, dainty fingers around her friend’s. “Bartha already knows, and he knows I won’t take up the mantle.”

  “But why?”

  Kali’s voice quivered despite her resolve. “This village drove my parents to their deaths because tradition was more important than compassion. I won’t enable the beliefs that orphaned me.”

  Lana’s shock rushed from her wounded expression and travelled down her arms until Kali felt the jolt against her fingertips. “You would doom us all because of your personal grudge?”

  “It’s not a grudge,” said Kali as Lana dropped her hand. “It’s principle. The Hollow ostracizes anyone they deem unfit for the hunt, but why must everyone be born a hunter?”

  “To contribute to the community,” insisted Lana. “It takes all of us to hunt the Viyest.”

  “Can’t you see the Viyest is part of the problem? Insisting on the hunt drives the Hollow’s cruelty towards its own people!”

  “Not everyone in the Hollow is cruel,” Lana rebuked. “What of the nights I stole cured deer and wild barley from my own family’s table so you wouldn’t starve in your parents’ ramshackle?”

  “But you would have me take part in the very thing that spurs cruelty?” asked Kali.

  “For the greater good.”

  “We are a dozen villagers in a forest that stretches to the edge of the world! How would we know what the greater good is?” Kali challenged.

  Lana was shaking as she gripped the edge of Decebal’s casket. “You’re being selfish.”

  The words corroded what little patience Kali had left. I’ll show you selfish, she thought, then spun on her heels and left Lana alone by the pyre.

  As Kali stormed past the red maple at the mouth of the Hollow, a voice, smooth as silk, lilted from behind, “You must forgive her.”

  Kali turned to find a stranger standing several paces away. “I’m sorry?” An uneasy shiver spidered up her spine.

  “Your friend.” He offered a taut smile. “She is an ordinary woman. Such folk need something to adhere to—something to make meaning of chaos. To give life order. The Viyest fulfills that purpose.”

  Kali regarded the stranger—a tall man with cold yellow eyes and a dark mane. It was tied back, barely contained by a blue string. She wondered if he’d tolerate a single hair out of place. “I too am an ordinary woman, and Lana is my friend. We may disagree, but she is no simpleton.”

  The stranger chuckled. “It doesn’t matter if the dove crawls through the mud. It’ll always have wings to fly with.”

  Kali narrowed her eyes. “I don’t quite follow your meaning,” she lied.

  His smile widened before he dropped his head, like his disguise had slipped. “You shouldn’t go into the woods,” he warned. “The beast that murdered your predecessor lurks there.”

  How had he known she could walk dreams?

  “Maybe that beast only wished to be left in peace.” Kali’s words dripped with venom. She lingered just long enough to see surprise flit across the stranger’s golden eyes.

  Satisfied, she turned her back to him and wandered into the woods.

  The world dimmed as Kali left the village. While the sun touched the cleared earth of the Hollow, the woods were a labyrinth of shadows, fluid like water and nimble as a sprite.

  Kali had never learned to hunt, but she had a way with the forest. Though she occasionally bartered for leftover rabbit or the drier cuts of cured meat, she mostly survived on edibles from the land—the best of which could be found in the untrekked parts of the forest. With a stygian wolf on the prowl, fewer people dared journey so far for a
basket of berries or mushrooms.

  Now, with her only friend angry and an entire village frothing to preen her as their next Dreamwalker, Kali found herself aching to meander farther, to risk getting lost. If she knew where she was, she would find her way back, and if she found her way back, she wasn’t truly free of the Hollow. Her escape would remain fleeting.

  No matter how much she enjoyed teetering on the verge of disappearance, Kali was spiteful by nature. She wouldn’t vanish like her parents did, if only to deny the villagers the satisfaction. With nothing better to do, Kali reckoned she’d gather some willow branches to weave herself a new foraging basket.

  She wound through the dense woods with ease. Looking for a challenge, she set her sights on a gulch, slung an arm around an aspen, and pulled herself up the ravine. Hiking up her raspberry skirts with one hand, Kali dug the other into the earth for balance and climbed like a child racing towards a prize. By the time she reached the summit, the village was far out of sight.

  Kali descended the other side of the gully. A stream of clear water cascaded over a rock bed, and she followed its path as it gashed through the landscape, bending stone and soil alike. Through shrubbery and undergrowth, Kali caught a glimpse of a small thicket with a white oak enveloped in paper birch trees. The white oak’s leaves were as red as Milena’s hair and shuddered like flames in the wind. Kali wondered if her spirit rested there—if perhaps it was a doorway to her home in the Silent Place.

  When she finished admiring the sunset foliage, Kali ventured farther. The woods grew heavier again, then tapered into a glade where daylight sparsely punctured the shade. Wisps with emerald petals swayed through the still air.

  A willow tree unlike any she’d ever seen was nestled in the gloomy crevice. Slender branches laced together like a sprawling curtain. The willow’s bole was as wide as a chariot, the world beyond it completely obscured from view. Kali’s breath caught as she reached for its fluid limbs. They ran through her fingers and caressed her palms, and beneath her feet, she felt the willow’s roots breathe life into the earth. They were pulsing with sentience.