A Mischief in the Woodwork

by Harper Alexander

  It wasn't until I got to my feet and worked out the kinks of sleep that I realized I was wrong. I took a look around me as I stretched, seeking the correct avenue to pick up where I had left off, and that's when I noticed that I had no recollection of my surroundings.

  Brow creased, I waited for my bearings to return to me, but they didn't. On a hunch, I stooped to feel the ground. The most recent tang of history coursed through my palm; these pieces were fresh tumbled from a shift. The vibrations of the turmoil still lived in the grains.

  There had been a shift while I slept.

  It appeared that tracking the madman himself was the simplest aspect of the task at hand.

  Perfect.

  I cast about, frustrated at having to start fresh. Bailin's tracks could be anywhere. Could they even be erased altogether? The bricks that recorded his footsteps buried beneath the layer I now stood on? Experimentally, I got on my knees and dug through the top layer of rubble, until I encountered a crushed deposit of powder. Scooping up a handful, I let it sift through my fingers.

  There were many things in this dust, but nothing of Bailin.

  I moved on, trying again. After three deposits in which I failed to strike gold, I rocked back on my heels, resting with a sigh. My powder-stained hands draped over my knees. The first pangs of doubt ran through me. Who was I really fooling, out here on this quest? I hadn't lived a day outside of my sheltered walls in all of my time. What must they think at home? Surely they thought me dead. I had never failed to return. And here I was, in one foolhardy piece, making them worry. Blazing a ruthless trail in the opposite direction.

  For the first time, I asked the question: when I found Bailin, how did I plan on bringing him back?

  I sank into the rubble, nearly defeated; and I had only just begun. I might have seen the uselessness of my quest and given up then, if a wayward glancing about did not fall on a series of strange impressions in the rubble, making me pause that line of thinking. At first, there were no conclusions ready at hand. One impression in the rubble was as good as another. Only another memory caused me to recognize them for what they were; elephant tracks.

  It can't be...

  I rose to inspect them, coming to crouch by the first of the indentations. They were unmistakable, though, at least in conjunction with how my dream had painted them. And that was really all that mattered, wasn't it? Seeing this manifestation from my dream brought back the rest of it as well, and the most recent one I had had. Aside from tracking through the wreckage, they had pinned my wings to the ground with those same feet. I felt the conviction of it, as I remembered.

  I couldn't just go home. Not with signs like this propelling me.

  There seemed no greater hunch than to start off by following the elephant tracks. They were surely not Bailin's feet, but I was not one to discriminate when it came to leads.

  In the wake of the dream-beasts, I began again.

  *

  My days blurred together in the city. I lost reality, just a little bit, so focused on my scryings that they became all I knew, as good as the air that I breathed, plunging deeper and deeper into the mischief that had become of our world. I became somewhat of a product of it, I suppose, prolonged as I was in its taint. I was always knee-deep, thoroughly dirty with it. Soon, made-over entirely.

  A true Albino now – there would never be any scrubbing all of this from my being.

  There were a few things that surprised me, of course, before I became jaded, lost in the fray. I awoke the second morning to a great ship cresting the rise of the vast canyon I occupied. It overcame the peak of debris and churned down into the impression, sailing past, rubble grinding against the hull. I had seen a lot, in my time, but I could scarcely believe my eyes.

  There was a herd of horses, too. I was crossing an expanse one day when the wreckage began to vibrate, and then tremble, preceding a great explosion of galloping horses coming over the ridge. I could not begin to fathom how their hooves compensated for the hazardous terrain – surely a horse would break every last one of its legs running through this pothole-riddled, debris-jutting ground – but they teemed around me, physical to the touch. I know, because I was nearly knocked flat by them.

  So the horses had not disappeared. They were out here.

  I saw Johnny, too. Perhaps more significantly: he saw me. I looked up, found him on a ridge watching me. The all-seeing Johnny. A witness to my journey. It was comforting, in a way, knowing he was out there. Not that he could save my skin from what I had gotten into, if it proved to throw something un-managable my way, but simply that I was not alone. That I would not die alone, if it came to that, and fade into the scenery, never to be heard from again. He was with me. A witness to what became of me.

  Johnny was gratifying that way. He had the ability to immortalize people.

  I took that as a comfort, and plunged onward.

  I found a clock, still ticking, half-buried. Rubbed the dust from its face to check the time. It was useless, of course; a simple act that repainted some semblance of old. Then I moved on, forsaking one last pastime, and entered the darkest stretch of my journey.

  *

  There was a wind – a desert wind – that began to swirl the powder about my feet. It grew stronger as I went, until it was a steady current, grazing across the terrain and carving away at the corners, the edges, sanding it flat. I stumbled on, my lips cracked, hardly realizing my surroundings had become a respective desert because the effects of such had taken their toll on me. Only the occasional relic from the city protruded up through the sand, remnants scattered across these new plains.

  The wind was constant. It buried and uncovered cities like a child at play, the scenery ever-changing. I simply walked onward, the wind whispering secrets through my fingertips, at first, but then only propelling me forward.

  At some point, the hallucinations began – mirages, I thought they were called, respectively. There was always the possibility that they were not mirages at all, but reality returning, or maybe that all of it was a mirage – had been, from the beginning – and I had simply reached the heart of it, or was walking between the lines of it, or...

  I gave up speculating, hardly letting the possibilities register. I would have thought instead of water, only water, but I could not remember what water tasted like. My thoughts became carved out as thoroughly as the sand-purged hollows of the Dar'on ruins. All that was left were dry cracks, a mind dry as bone.

  When I could not go on, I collapsed. I dug my fingers into the sand, one last possessive ebb of strength, determined to squeeze what life out of it I could. A million grains of secret ground into my possession, and I savored them, before they fell through my fingers. I went limp, basking in it. All of the secrets of the world were broken down here, refined into this golden sand, my deathbed. Secrets were meant to be kept, I supposed. It was my last thought as I let my eyelids fall shut, content, if it was all I could do, to take those secrets to the grave.

  T h I r t y - O n e –

  The Fortress

  Sometime in the midst of my fading awareness, as my fingers dug acceptingly into the ground that would receive me, they encountered something very un-sand-like. A resulting message scrawled its way through the lines of my fingerprints and up into my veins. My eyes flashed back open.

  Forcing my will back into my body, I struggled to turn over, onto my stomach, to better address this other platform beneath me. The wind carved the sand away from it now, sweeping it off the face of a neat brick path.

  Bailin's footsteps echoed in the mortar.

  I raised my eyes to follow the road, as it materialized from beneath its cover. It was impossible to see into the sand-smeared distance, but there was really no need. Bailin had come this way. It was a clear path beneath my feet.

  My body.

  I would have to drag myself back up to follow it.

  With the sentiment that this world was a cruel, cruel place, I put my hands against the road and heaved myself away from my re
sting place. I would not be permitted put out of my misery today, then.

  The wind bullied my weak frame as I stood, but thinned as I made my way down that road. The stirred-up dust began to smooth out, dissipating, repainting a scape of familiar-like rubble around me. Soon, I was following a fully functional red brick road through the terrain of old, the desert land gone behind me. Once again, I felt as if I were in Dar'on, albeit ever deeper, ever farther from my home.

  The road paved its way up and over dunes, down through valleys, and once even took me right through an orderly neighborhood of manors. I had not seen such a thing since the mischief took its tole. No street had been left intact, as far as I had known. These manors were far from untouched – they were a shambles, individually – but they had not been ripped from each other's sides.

  Cheshery Lane, read the sign at the single small intersection I came to in the middle of it. I walked slowly, cautiously, feeling the most like I was intruding upon a ghost town that I ever had. The rest had always been too beaten up to resemble any real place of meaning abandoned. And while this street was left intact, it was not touched by the golden hue I had known since experiencing Ombri's winter.

  I breathed carefully, cautious of disturbing anything here. Tattered curtains billowed softly in second- and third-story windows as I passed, as if that was all it took.

  After Cheshery Lane, the wreckage resumed. I wove through piles of it, deeper into its maze. There was surely no getting back out of this once I found him. How could anyone ever get out of this? I briefly considered granting some semblance of credit to Tanen's theory of dimensions. I did not understand all of the angles that came with such a theory, but I had surely strayed into layers far beyond that of the normal world at this point. There was no way for all of this to exist inside Dar'on, was there?

  I was at least not plagued by the desert elements, now. Good solid city was something I could handle, even if its solidity came in pieces that could never count for anything.

  You had better not die on me, Tanen, I thought, the real cause of my quest briefly returning to me. I had been stumbling blindly on, driven by the clues that possessed me and the elements which sought to propel me. It had been awhile now since I had given Tanen himself a second thought.

  He could not stay fresh in my mind, though, even newly returned to it. For I rounded the bend of another pile of rubble, and discovered myself at the end of my road, and at the doorstep of the great fortress that rose there.

  And, facing it, I was possessed by the strongest wave of nostalgia of all.

  *

  When the initial awe of the place wore off, I stood at its base still. Disoriented by the nagging sense of nostalgia, I roved over it with my eyes, searching for some significance. What was this place to me?

  The fortress was massive, unyielding. The extent of its mystery occurred to me as I realized that it was not ravaged by mischief. Here lay an enduring hold, a smooth-stoned wonder. It was whole. Perfect.

  With a disturbing sense of curiosity, I broke my ground and moved forward, passing between the great tree-like pillars that supported the place's vast vestibule. My eyes swam up those pillars to the ceiling, feeling its heaviness over my head. I reached the arched doorway of the place, where one of the great doors lay open, pausing in the threshold. My fingers dusted against the doorframe, wondering.

  The overwhelming invitation to enter slashed at my mind.

  My hand recoiled, shocked by the strength of the response. A disembodied whisper spilled like wayward smoke through the floral woodwork carved into the open door. I regarded it, but could not keep my eyes from moving swiftly deeper into the interior. A vast, dusty, empty room stood there, lined by pillars that supported encircling balconies.

  Carefully, I stepped through, my cat-like footsteps echoing into the quiet.

  The place had a dormant feel about it, but maddeningly familiar, as if I had been the one to leave it that way. The ache, as well as the denial, of betrayal was inside me. But I failed to understand it. I had never been here before.

  I moved into the room, walking slowly along its edges. Willing to accept the consequences of a second attempt, I trailed my fingers over the cold curve of a pillar.

  The vision that came to me was of a girl, turning the pages of a diary. I recognized the room that surrounded her from Manor Dorn. It was me, with Lady Sebastian's diary in my hands.

  Coming to the next pillar, I gave it an equal caress. Pages fluttered through my mind.

  A dawning canniness swept eerily through me.

  The others showed me more profound nuances. A butterfly-shaped wind taking flight from a chimney. A ripple running through the rubble like dominoes being toppled. Debris being stacked like blocks, by invisible hands. A distinctly motivated ocean-like wave, underground, racing under the city to send shockwaves into the rubble piles, scattering the pieces of wreckage like loaded dice. Loaded, because they landed just-so, and created something that could only be intended.

  It was here that a fortress began to form.

  I reread that diary more times than I could remember, more times than I ever would have suspected had the record not been set in stone here in this fortress. My obsession with it became clear – as did the evidence of some higher power at work, as visions began to show me blazing through those pages faster than anyone could possibly read.

  Every time, a great butterfly effect was hatched, which rippled out over the land and added something to the fortress being built. It evolved until a masterpiece had been crafted out of the rubble, a great reborn spirit of structure, strong and seamless on the stilts of its new and enduring roots.

  And this, the room I stood in, only the antechamber.

  Incredulity hovered somewhere just beyond my capacity, for I could not fully withstand the implications just yet. It couldn't be...

  I wandered a moment longer, turning about, keenness forsaking me in my state of disbelief. For a moment, only the lonely echoing of my footsteps answered the questions that clamored and shushed themselves inside me. Then I turned about again, and my gaze darted to the form that materialized at the corner of my vision.

  She stood in the center of the room, an ashen woman that matched the gray of the stone all around. Her hair fell in powder-musty dreadlocks, and her cloak was in stormy tatters about her form. She was covered in the ash of my dreams, it seemed, every bit of her from head to toe. Her lashes, her lips, the cracks of her fingernails – all saturated.

  We regarded each other, the mysterious woman and I, and then she opened her gray-dry lips and said to me, simply,

  “Welcome home, Avante.”

  T h I r t y - T w o –

  Quarry

  “Who are you?”

  There was never any help for that question, I suppose. It was always the first thing on my lips, needing to be asked. It was necessary, to make any sense out of anything.

  “I have been the keeper here,” she said, her voice husky and uncanny. “For you.”

  I glanced about, my expression quizzical, as if there might be answers in the architecture that I could find before shaming myself with more ignorant questions.

  “We have been waiting for you,” the woman informed me, drawing my eyes back to her.

  “We?”

  Her gaze glanced up, and she gestured around her. The tatters of her robe hung long and limp from her wrists. She made no other comment, as if the gesture explained.

  The fortress, then. As if it possessed some soul.

  “And another,” she added, almost as if she could hear my thoughts. “He is waiting for you too.”

  Bailin. “He is here?”

  She inclined her head, her dreadlocks looking heavier the farther she bent. I feared for a moment she could not bring her head back up, but she dragged her locks back into compliance. They were mere weights over her shoulders now, a burden she had carried for a long time.

  I was about to inquire as to where my quarry was hiding, but she keenly pulled me up s
hort;

  “You will have to find him yourself,” she denounced, almost teasingly. And of course, how could I expect things to be that easy?

  But he was here, somewhere in the architecture that had fashioned itself from my doings. “I built this place?” I inquired like a babe, my eyes traveling the unfathomable reaches of the ceiling.

  “With your bare hands,” she confirmed. Whatever in the gods' names that meant, for I most assuredly hadn't.

  “And where do you come from? That you would keep this place for me?”

  A small smile cracked her lips then, and I could see the fissures of red through the ash caked there. “Alas,” she said. “For I am one you shall not put a name to.”

  It was just as well. I could not find it in me to desire touching this one, so as to find out. Better to let her be. “Will you remain?” I wanted to know.

  “My duty is done, for the successor has at last arrived.” She raised her hands toward me in some gesture of acknowledgment, or coronation, as a druid might hold his hands to raise a figure from the dead. “It's all yours now.”

  Then she was gone, almost without even vanishing. A gentle billow of ash stirred across the floor where she had been.

  All mine. Without warning, I was faced with an unfathomable inheritance, abandoned to it as surely as one who's predecessor has dropped dead, leaving no instructions for his heirs. Not a map of the layout, or a soul in the world to consult.

  Not a soul, that was, except my quarry, hiding somewhere in my fortress. Hiding somewhere in the sick joke of a trap I had inadvertently built. It felt almost like some sort of test, the irony of placing him here. But really I should find it a convenience; I had built the place, hadn't I? It couldn't be that great of a puzzle.

  I started off, realizing there was nothing else to do, no use dithering. If I was to exploit him from the recesses of this place, I had best get the territory figured.