by Matthew Lang
“But you were not talking to anyone else just now.”
“Um… it’s also a camera,” Adam said. “It can take—record—both still and moving pictures for… memories. Keepsakes.”
“Like your tee-vee?”
“I guess,” Adam said. “Just… I use it for personal records.”
“You recorded her so you could remember the experience later?”
Adam nodded.
“So you have other pictures and moving pictures on your… phone?”
“I do, yes,” Adam said.
“Can I see them?”
“Sure,” Adam said. “Just… not for too long. I can’t charge the battery here, so I’ve been trying not to use it.”
It was easier to explain his life at home with the help of his phone, even if most of his apps didn’t work. Adam ended up turning on flight mode to help the battery along, and the built-in clock told him it took two hours to go through the photos of the last several years of his life.
“We should stop,” Duin said, squeezing Adam’s hand.
“It’s all right,” Adam said, swallowing hard. It was a simple photo of his birthday party, with his mum and dad having a barbecue in the backyard of their suburban home.
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t. I just… miss them. And I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again.”
“I know,” Duin said, turning Adam’s hand over and kissing his palm. “We are in the middle of the forest, and I think we should wait until we are somewhere safer before looking through the rest.”
Adam nodded and turned his phone off again before allowing Duin to lead him back to their raised camp to sleep.
THEY REACHED the boundary between the swamp and the forest a few sleeps later, and Adam was surprised to find it really was a boundary. Rainforest turned into a series of overgrown glades and water meadows, with long, tough—and in some cases serrated—grasses reaching up above Adam’s head. This in turn gave way to areas of marsh, swamp, and slowly moving water. Duin’s muzzle extended until it was almost a canine-like snout as he stepped into the full brightness of the reddish sun, and his ears twitched as they took in sounds well above what Adam could hear himself.
“Well, here we are,” Duin said. “I hope this is the right place.”
“Is there a keep here?”
“There are ruins everywhere,” Duin said. “But I think there is one here too.”
“You think?”
“I don’t normally come here,” Duin protested. “The place is full of snakes—and mostly poisonous ones at that.”
“Great,” Adam muttered. “And how about cokudrillos?”
“Occasionally,” Duin said. “But usually the bigger ones don’t venture too far out of the deep water.”
“So if we stay on dry land, we should be safe?” Adam asked.
“Yes,” Duin said. “But that in itself can pose a problem.”
Before they left the edges of forest, Duin had them cut some stout poles of bamboo, and now, dismounting from Zoul’s back, he probed at the ground before them, and in short order found a spot where the pole disappeared down below the surface.
“What the fuck?” Adam swore.
“Most of this isn’t solid,” Duin explained. “The plants grow on mounds of other plants, and sometimes there’s enough dirt for trees to grow on floating islands of… stuff. We’ll need to walk ahead and lead Zoul.”
Adam stared down at the solid-looking ground that wasn’t. “That’s probably a good idea.”
It was amazing how stressful entering the swamp was after having become used to the rainforest. Gone was the protective embrace of the jungle canopy, and instead Adam found he could see for vast distances in all directions, the flat emptiness broken here and there by small stands of trees growing on what must have presumably been higher ground. Higher actual ground. Progress was slow as they inched their way forward step by cautious step, and they had to stop more than once to dry off when Adam missed his footing and fell into the muck. Plunging through the mat of vegetation into the fetid black water below was perhaps the most disorienting thing Adam had ever experienced. The water stung his eyes, and the roots grasped at his limbs, the vegetation and dirt preventing him from reaching the surface, even as he exhaled the precious air from his lungs. Then a hand reached down, grabbed the back of his shirt, and pulled him up enough so he could breathe. Blinking, he saw Duin’s furrowed brow as his lover helped him tear away the roots and decaying matter that impeded his progress.
“Thanks,” Adam gasped when he had finished coughing and spluttering. “Let’s keep going.”
Duin shook his head. “No, we have to get you dry. The last thing you want is to be wandering around here in wet clothing and shoes.”
“Why not?”
“Your feet will rot,” Duin said simply.
Adam paused and stared at him. “How do you know that? You don’t wear shoes.”
“I used to,” Duin said. “So did the others who were exiled with me.”
“Others?” Adam said. “What happened to them?”
“Not here,” Duin said shortly.
“Right,” Adam said. Suddenly he didn’t feel like continuing the conversation.
They struggled on until they found a stand of trees and constructed a small sleeping platform high enough to get them away from the insects that scuttled over the ground, and a fire to dry out Adam’s feet and boots. Unfortunately, the clouds of mosquitoes that inhabited the swamps followed them everywhere incessantly. Smoke kept them at bay for some time, but the moment Adam stepped outside of the smoke column, they attacked with a vengeance. Adam spent a fair amount of time slapping ineffectively at tiny bodies. Duin, being furred, had less of a problem, and simply rolled himself in some thick mud to keep them off, and Adam was tempted to follow suit, but he was worried about gangrene. Once the insides of Adam’s boots were dry, they went hunting, eventually finding a small cokudrillo in a shallow pool. With the ease of practice, Adam distracted it until Duin could jump onto its back, hold its jaw down with his bamboo pole, and dispatch it via a blade to the brain, then jumping clear as it spasmed in the throes of death, tail and all six flippers thrashing madly and throwing up clouds of silt.
They had then cooked and eaten cokudrillo tail steaks, and Adam had been able to use the fat from the creature as a form of insect repellent. It was amazing that it worked, but it did. Zoul had then crunched through the rest of the carcass, looking very pleased with himself. Adam wasn’t entirely happy with the smell of the raw fat, but given the options, he was happy not to be constantly scratching at his skin. Of course, the biggest problem Adam found was that the cycle of rainfall he’d become used to in the forest didn’t happen out on the bog. There was certainly some rain, but overhead the clouds blew west toward the distant mountains without a drop of water falling, and as such, the sky never became so dark that he felt comfortable sleeping. He tossed and turned on their sleeping platform next to Duin, trying to catch a few winks, but for the most part, sleep eluded him, and he grew increasingly irritable as they continued onward through the marsh.
It was some sleeps later that they finally came to a larger expanse of solid ground, and Adam caught his first glimpse of the ivy-choked keep, only about half of which was still standing, the rest long having crumbled in upon itself, looking as if it had been demolished just as told in the tale, by a great beast falling into it and disappearing beneath the ground. It was with some relief that Adam stepped onto the first large expanse of truly solid ground they had traversed in a long time.
“Is this it?” Adam asked.
“I don’t know,” Duin said. “It’s the only ruined keep that I know of in this swamp, but I don’t even know if it’s the right swamp.”
“But is it a peat swamp?” Adam asked.
“Dig into the turf and see?”
Adam did as Duin suggested and soon hit a solid brown mass of compressed vegetation that had a rich, earthy smell t
o it and a crumbly texture.
“I sometimes come here to get fuel for fire,” Duin said. “I keep a store of it hidden in the territory where I usually live.”
“And where’s that?” Adam asked, lifting a sizable chunk to take with them.
“Off toward the north light,” Duin said, gesturing vaguely east. “Many sleeps into the forest.”
“What were you doing all the way out at Aergon?” Adam asked.
“Foraging,” Duin said promptly. Too promptly. At Adam’s sidelong glance, he eventually added a further explanation. “I was… bored. And sometimes I go back to see if they’ve thrown someone else out.”
“Xavier said it happens regularly.”
“Yes,” Duin said. “But I don’t know when, and sometimes the children… not everyone is suited to life on the surface.”
“I see,” Adam said. The pained look on Duin’s face made him change the subject. “Let’s find some shelter and then water.”
Surprisingly, or possibly not surprisingly, clean water had been the most difficult thing to find in the marsh. Adam and Duin had taken to boiling their water each time they made camp, but after the constant rain in the forest providing a near endless supply of clean water, Adam felt as if he had never been dirtier, smellier, or more dehydrated. When they had some dry land, they dug into the ground to allow the sand to filter the water, but that had provided mere mouthfuls at best. There had also been fewer trees with boughs full of succulent fruit to bite into, and all in all, Adam found himself yearning for the convenience of the rainforest.
“Do you think they’re here?” Duin asked as they trudged up toward the still standing battlements.
“I don’t know,” Adam said. “You’d think if they were we’d have seen some evidence of their passing by now.”
“Maybe we got here first,” Duin suggested.
“Possibly,” Adam said. “You’re the one with the directions in his head. Do we wait and hope, then?”
“For a while,” Duin said. “I’m not sure this will be the safest place to stay if the dragon does patrol here.”
They entered the keep by clambering across the fallen outer wall, where the big blocks of stone that had been used to construct the keep had toppled into the once-filled moat, which was now dry and choked with grass. The drawbridge of the keep had probably been lowered, but now it was just a few rusted chains hanging from an empty portal, the planks long having rotted through. Adam fancied he could see lengths of the twisted metal that had once held the planks of the drawbridge together lying among the grass. They found themselves in the middle of an overgrown courtyard, with the main buildings of the keep mostly intact against the far wall. The courtyard itself had once been paved with flagstones, but a large section of it had collapsed into the ground, with a massive triangular-shaped section of it a gaping hole, mostly filled in by the resulting rubble, fallen wall blocks, and the occasional twisted tree that thrust its way out of the debris.
Unlocking the main doors of the keep proved unnecessary, as they had already been cracked open. They did have to strain to push it open wide enough for Zoul to get through, as the hinges had long ago rusted stiff. The shriek as the hinges gave was worthy of a horror film, and Adam and Duin were overwhelmed by the smell of guano, sitting in large reddish brown mountains that covered the floor of the once great hall. They ducked back outside as the noise echoed around the hall, rousing the bats that roosted far above in the ceiling, some of which came swooping out the door in their bid to escape. As the shrieking mass of leathery wings fled into the sky, Adam wondered if the bats in this strange land even used sonar, given that there was always light for them to see by.
When the shrieking and flapping ceased and the last stragglers exited the lair, or decided the strange sounds weren’t worth leaving the roost for, Adam and Duin tiptoed inside, only to cause another flurry of egress as they brandished their makeshift torches of sap-laden tree root to light their way. This time, they ducked inside rather than out, shielding their heads from the bats that scurried overhead. Zoul, for his part, was happy to grab the occasional unwary bat that came too close to his toothy maw. The flames lit up the vaulting of the great room for the first time since people had fled to the dubious safety of the Aergonite caverns, and Adam marveled at the stonework and the tall ceiling, as well as the great fireplaces along one wall that would have warmed the room with a cheery heat. On the other side, there still remained stained traces of frescoes painted into the walls and the tattered, moth-eaten remains of what must have been richly embroidered tapestries.
“This place is amazing,” Adam said, his voice only slightly muffled by the rag he had thrown over his mouth in an attempt to filter out the worst of the bat smell. “And it’s so long. Easily as long as a footy field.”
“A what?”
“Never mind,” Adam said, treading carefully around the edge of the room to the other long wall to stare at the painted frescoes. “I wish I knew what these pictures were—they have to mean something.”
“It’s the Leaving of Selune,” Duin said, pointing at the central image where the sky changed suddenly to red from blue, and a stylized depiction of dragons sweeping down from the sun on wings of gold and peasants fleeing from their fields to the sanctuary of the keep’s walls.
“And look before it,” Adam said, moving toward the left. “See, I told you.”
“What’s that?” Duin asked.
“Day,” Adam said, pointing to the sun that moved across the sky in the idyllic pastoral scenes of hunting, jousting, and medieval-like farming. “And night,” he added, indicating another scene that showed stars in the night sky as flocks slept peacefully in the field.
Adam fumbled to pull his phone out of his bag to take some pictures. No one at home would believe this. Assuming he got home. He would get home. Pushing aside the cycle of thinking that would send him into a tailspin, he focused instead on Duin, who was regarding the images with a strange expression on his face.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Adam asked.
“Hmm?”
“What are you thinking?”
“Oh. I just… I always thought it was made-up,” Duin said, staring at the image of night. “Look, there’s a haerunwoln—thylacine—in the moon.”
Adam raised his torch to light the large painted globe, easily ten or twelve feet in the air above them. “So there is; look, it’s curled up and sleeping on its forepaws.”
They shared a smile and walked back along the wall, looking at scenes of a man, who must have been Fernando, forging a sword and doing something magical in an arcane-looking laboratory with strange-colored flames and liquids in misshapen glassware. Then the largest panel showed him confronting a great dragon, standing dramatically on the edge of the keep wall as the dragon reared before him, great fangs gleaming and a curl of flame threatening to burn the prince to a crisp. The last panel was… empty, although flecks of color in the mortar of the plain wall suggested a scene of feasting and revelry.
“They never finished,” Adam said.
“Well, if Prince Fernando died fighting Khaled and they had to leave, they wouldn’t have.”
“But they finished the previous panel?”
Duin shrugged. “You’ve met some Aergonites. Maybe they figured they couldn’t lose and finished it in advance.”
“Or hoped they wouldn’t lose,” Adam said softly. “Living on hope. Seems like a thing here.”
“Yes,” Duin said with a sigh. “It must be nice. I wish the moon was still around.”
“Come on,” Adam said, ducking again as a bat winged its way just over his head. “Let’s go see what the rest of the place is like.”
By unspoken agreement, they went upstairs rather than down, forcing open the doors at the top of the great stone stairs, and found the interior of the castle had withstood the elements much better than the great hall. The windows had remained protected by their heavy wooden shutters, although the linen in the windows looked like it would crumble
to the touch, and in some cases had been eaten away by moths. Adam had initially expected to find beds and couches ravaged by mice, but the rooms were completely devoid of bedding, and the carved hardwood furniture was amazingly intact, if somewhat uncomfortable. Still, it looked inviting after spending a fair amount of the last few sleeps on rude platforms up trees in an attempt to keep out of the reach of whatever biting bugs and snakes slithered along the ground. Only last sleep, he had awoken to Duin pinching ticks from his chest hair, and Adam had wanted to return the favor.
“Have you seen how much fur I have?” Duin had said. “Wait until we get into the keep proper.”
“We don’t have the stone glows,” Adam pointed out. “Even inside we’ll need fire for light, and that’ll cause you to fur up.”
Duin shrugged. “Yes, but less so than out here.”
“How do you cope when you don’t have someone to groom you?” Adam asked.
Duin smiled. “There are hot springs near where I live. I soak in there for some time and the old fur and ticks just float away.”
Adam snorted. “The original spa experience! I like it.”
“Spa?”
“I mean the natural version of your baths in Aergon,” Adam said after a moment’s thought.
Now they pulled together a makeshift bed in the middle of the room, using a number of benches to create a platform, although they weren’t able to find much for padding, other than the luggage netting they had used to carry their belongings. Then they found some candles left at the bottom of a cupboard and lit some for light, and used ancient metal candle holders that Adam half expected to fall off the walls at any time.
“Where did all the beds go, do you think?” Adam asked as he sat crossed-legged on the floor, inspecting Duin’s body for signs of any blood-sucking ticks.
“They probably took them when they left,” Duin said, sighing contentedly as Adam rifled methodically through his hair.
“Portable beds?”
“Well, ours were,” Duin said, grunting as Adam pulled a bloated bug from the back of his neck and drowned it in a small cup of water.
