Beneath Ceaseless Skies #87

by Khanna, Rajan

  “No, thank you,” he said. “I’m used to standing.” And I don’t seem to get tired, he thought, but decided it was better left unmentioned. Upon reflection, however, he added, “My name’s Jack.” Once again she nodded and said nothing, but that was all right. She had shared her fire with him; his name was all he had to offer in return.

  Jack stood, balanced between the heat of the fire and the cold wind that had driven him to it, until long after the girl had fallen asleep. All night he watched the stars—the handful of them he could see through the tossing branches above him—while the wind seemed to blow him snatches of memory: a woman with short, bronze-colored curls and a sudden smile. A place he thought must be a banquet hall, where all the guests were bears. Other places, other rooms, where he sat working late into the night. Even the girl who had allowed him to share her fire, though that couldn’t be right because he saw her in a rich dress, standing next to some sort of wall hanging, and he was certain he’d never met her before.

  * * *

  Jack was surprised at how quickly they broke camp in the morning. He of course had nothing to eat or to pack, but he hadn’t quite expected the single-minded efficiency with which his companion did everything, from packing her things to chewing her food. Before he knew it she’d finished, and their eyes met, and he saw her hesitate for the first time all morning.

  “Where are you headed?” she asked.

  He hesitated a moment himself, and realized he was waiting for the wind to push or pull him in some direction. The air was still, though, and he had to answer, “I don’t know.”

  She frowned slightly. “I’m looking for a friend of mine,” she said slowly. “I’m not sure who you are or where you’re from, but I don’t like the idea of leaving you alone in the middle of the woods. No offense, but I get the impression you could use some looking after. If you’d care to travel with me for a while...?”

  Jack smiled. “Thank you. I’d like that, as long as I won’t be in your way.”

  Her laughter surprised him even more than her efficiency had; nothing about her bearing, or the way she’d held a knife the previous night, had prepared him for that sudden burst of joyful sound. “Be in the way? You walk all day without needing to stop for food or water, you don’t get cold, and unless I’m very much mistaken you don’t need to sleep. How could you possibly get in the way?”

  Jack’s cheeks felt warm, and he realized he must be blushing, but he didn’t know what to do besides mumble “Thank you” again and wait for her to lead the way.

  She hesitated a moment longer, though, and then held out her hand to him. “My name’s Greta.”

  Her skin was warm against his, and soft and tough at the same time, and he felt it again—that flash of recognition. He saw her in heavy red velvet, with torches set into rough stone behind her. She frowned a question at him; he’d held her hand too long, and now he dropped it abruptly and forced what he hoped was a polite smile. “Which way?”

  “North,” Greta said, fishing in one of her pockets. Her hand reappeared wrapped around a small metal object: a compass, he saw, as she flipped it open and waited for the needle to settle. The lid looked like it had either been engraved or badly scratched, but he couldn’t tell which, and before he could make up his mind or get a closer look she flipped it shut and it disappeared back into the same pocket. “This way,” she said, nodding to her right, and they set out.

  They hiked in silence at first, but after a while Greta asked, “You said you were an architect?” Jack nodded. “What did you build?”

  An image: pages of plans; lists of materials; a hand, which must have been his own, ink-stained and steady as he guided a pen along the side of a straightedge. “I don’t think I built things, exactly, so much as designed them....”

  Greta nodded. “What did you design, then?”

  Jack frowned. “Houses, I think?”

  “You think?”

  “My memory’s kind of... fuzzy,” he said slowly. “But I remember houses, and town halls, and churches....” He stopped short at a sudden image of white stone reaching toward the sky, and so many bears working. “The castle,” he breathed without thinking.

  “Were you good?” Greta asked.

  “Yes,” he said, and of this he was certain. “I was very good. My buildings are... lucky. No thieves, no mice, no storms, no fires....” The words had come to him; he knew their truth only when he heard himself say them. He felt her eyes on him, intensely curious, and he mumbled quickly, “Not magic or anything, just lucky.” Lucky enough that the bears had come to him when tragedy struck.

  But she kept staring at him, excited, and then she surprised him by asking, “Were you the one who built....” She frowned. “It wasn’t a castle, exactly, and parts were built into a mountain, but—” Her voice seemed almost to catch on the words.

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I ever designed anything like that.”

  But if not, he wondered, then why could he picture rough stone walls, low ceilings, and torches shining off of red velvet, brown silk, and fur?

  “So,” he asked after a few minutes had passed in silence, “what happened to your friend? The one you’re looking for?”

  Greta’s whole body went tense; when she spoke she tried to sound casual, but her voice had an edge to it. “What makes you think something happened to him?”

  Jack said carefully, “You said you were looking for him. I thought he might be missing, or... maybe you just fell out of touch?”

  “Well,” Greta said coldly, “in any case it doesn’t concern you.”

  They didn’t speak again until much later, when Greta stopped suddenly. “It’s noon,” she said. “We should rest for a bit, and eat.” Jack nodded, though he didn’t particularly feel the need to do either.

  Greta hesitated when she saw that he didn’t intend to eat. “Do you know any stories?” she asked.

  He started, surprised by the question, and began to shake his head, but even as he did an image came to mind, and he heard his voice as if it came from far away: “Once there was a girl who had been trapped in an evil witch’s house. It was close and dark and full of candles and mirrors and secret passages, and she was always afraid. But then one day she escaped.”

  Greta had started eating; he thought perhaps she was more comfortable if he wasn’t just watching her. The story was catching him up, though, and words and images came faster and faster as he spoke:

  “At first she just ran and ran, to get as far away as she could, but no one was chasing her, and then she looked up at the sky. Off in the distance she could see a bank of clouds, but they weren’t like any clouds she’d seen before: they made her think of the colors in a pool of oil, or images she’d seen of the Northern Lights, except that they were clearly clouds and not anything else. They felt wrong, but at the same time they were very beautiful, and she couldn’t make up her mind whether she wanted a closer look.

  “What decided her was the wind: she stared at those clouds until the wind turned to blow into her face, and she smelled salt. Now, this girl had grown up by the sea. She would recognize that smell anywhere—that smell meant home—and after being trapped and scared for so long, home was irresistible. Her feet started walking before she realized she’d decided anything, and even though she got hungry and thirsty and tired, she kept walking until the whole sky above her was full of swirling, glowing clouds of all different colors and the ground beneath her turned to pure white sand.

  “At last she came to the sea. The waves seemed sluggish and glinted dully, like liquid pewter. She felt heavy and slow, and a little bit queasy whenever she looked too long at the sea or the sky. The air still smelled clean and salty, though, so she stayed, and crouched down from time to time to run her fingers through the soft, soft sand, and tried to think what to do.

  “Finally she saw another person. He wasn’t actually very far away, but he was dressed like a knight, and the metal plates of his armor reflected the shifting colors beyond a
nd above him so that he seemed to disappear. Even walking toward him she had to pay close attention to make sure she didn’t drift too far one way or the other.

  “She thought at first that he had sensed her approaching and started to speak, but the longer she listened the less sure she was. ‘Always I see them on the horizon,’ he said, ‘but they never sail closer. At first I wanted them to stay away, but I have found Him, now, and the waiting grows weary. Yes, I can see them, on their little ships so far away, crawling like ants over the wooden boards. And I can see beyond them, to my city. Its towers glitter in the sun and the flags and pennants dance like warhorses who know the battle is coming. I will return, carrying God within me, and my people will rejoice, for with Him we will conquer any enemy...’

  “The longer he talked the more fearful she grew, until finally she took a step backward and started to turn away. But she froze when he said suddenly, ‘Wait! Please...?’ And then the knight turned, and the girl stared in horror because his eyes were like holes that had been filled in with twin pools of whatever it was that churned in the sky. ‘When will they come for me?’ he asked her, his voice pleading. ‘I have waited so long—I have found God—when will they come for me? I am ready to return home—’

  “She ran. Even faster than she had ran away from the witch, she ran away from the strange, eyeless knight, so fast that at times she wondered if she was actually flying over the sand...”

  Jack fell silent, staring with his mind’s eye at the strange seashore, and after a moment Greta asked quietly, “What happened next?”

  Jack blinked, and the images of the story faded to be replaced by the forest; Greta’s hands, empty of food now; Greta’s frown. “I don’t remember,” he said slowly. “It’s been a long time, since...” A new image appeared before him, one of the woman with curly hair. Her hands darted like birds as she spoke, and her eyes glittered with the story she told. He started to say a name, but he couldn’t remember. All he could do was say again, “It’s been a long time.”

  He could feel Greta’s eyes on him, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn and meet her gaze. At last she said, “I heard a storyteller perform once, before... but it’s been a very long time for me, too. You remind me of her a little, though.” She paused, and then added casually, “I’d be curious to hear the rest, if you remember it,” before rising to her feet. “We should get moving again.”

  “Yes,” he said, but after that neither of them spoke, just concentrated on walking.

  He knew there was more to the story he’d told Greta. Not just later, not just the forgotten ending; he had vague memories of a reason the girl had been trapped, reasons her captor was evil that had nothing to do with her being a witch.

  And he kept seeing the strange knight’s face hovering before his own, terrible and sad. He knew that if the knight returned home there would be war and bloodshed and that whatever madness had seeped into his soul was not God. But even when he had been telling Greta the story he had heard a woman’s voice behind his, and it was the heartbreak in her voice that told him that the knight was lost and that he should pity the poor man who must never return home.

  And perhaps because of the knight’s face, or because he was remembering the woman’s voice, he pictured her again. She wore deep brown silk cut with a blue that brought out her eyes, and she looked straight at him and said, “She has no idea, and if he keeps on like this I’m afraid—” But then she turned and smiled at one of the bears, and never finished the sentence.

  It took Jack a moment to realize Greta had stopped. She was consulting her compass, and he asked, “Did we get off course?”

  “No... just making sure.” But she was frowning at the little piece of metal and glass.

  Something made him reach out a hand. “May I?” he asked, and after a second’s hesitation she handed it to him. It took him a moment to decipher the markings, but then he read: A— In case you lose North, and something he decided was meant to be a heart, and then G.

  “Is G for Greta?” he asked at last, confused why she would have the compass if it were.

  She nodded. “It was a joke,” she said. “It took me forever to find my way around, and he couldn’t figure out why. Finally he realized that I couldn’t just tell which direction was North and know from that where I was, so then I showed him my compass. It fascinated him so much that I ended up finding something to carve that with and giving it to him. And then he— and the compass and I got left behind.”

  Jack watched her as she spoke, saw the smile tugging quietly at one corner of her mouth and the light that came on in her eyes when she spoke and disappeared abruptly when she stopped. He looked once more at the compass and then handed it back to her.

  They were both quiet the rest of the day. Even setting up camp and building a fire they barely spoke except to say “Goodnight” when Greta crawled into her sleeping roll. Jack sat, his back against the largest log they’d found, and closed his eyes—not to sleep, but to remember.

  Immediately he pictured the woman again. A different memory this time, if it was even memory—he couldn’t be sure. But he saw her standing at the top of a hill, bronze curls dancing in the wind and a worn maroon shawl wrapped tightly about her body. She’s too thin, he thought, her shoulder blades shouldn’t stick out like that—but then she turned and for a moment he couldn’t even think around the joy of seeing her again after so long.

  Only for a moment, though. Then he noticed the faint creases lining her forehead and the dark circles under her sky-blue eyes. Fear struck him as suddenly as happiness had, and he knew that he should know why she was so thin and tired and sad, but he couldn’t remember. He tried to step backward, but his legs refused to move, and he knew all at once that they’d been turned to stone, and it wouldn’t be long before he was stone all over.

  Frantic, he looked around for some clue, but all he could see was the sky, shadowed now by the pain in his love’s eyes, and then away below them a partly finished building—a castle, he realized suddenly, made of glittering white stone, and just as he recognized the castle he knew that the tiny figures working there must be bears....

  He turned back around, but the woman had disappeared, and he woke with a question, half-formed but unasked, melting away to nothing on his tongue. Only one small sweetness remained, but it made the dream and the question bearable: Nancy, he breathed when he first opened his mouth, and smiled a small, quiet smile to himself. Nancy. He remembered her name.

  Greta cried softly in her sleep, and Jack moved automatically to comfort her. His body was too stiff, though, from having sat on the ground all night, and the rustle of leaves as he fell sideways was enough to wake Greta. Her eyes snapped open; Jack thought they glittered strangely, and he heard her breathe in quick, shallow gasps, but she blinked rapidly and her breathing slowed and by the time he righted himself he couldn’t be sure quite what he’d seen or heard.

  Still, after a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Strange dreams,” she said, frowning absently. “I saw him... he was sleeping, and I tried to wake him up, because if I could wake him up then everything would be all right. But he wouldn’t wake and he wouldn’t wake and the wax had turned red and kept growing, like a wound, but he wouldn’t wake up....”

  “Who wouldn’t?” Jack murmured, but already he was thinking of a young man with some strange, waxy substance that poisoned anyone it touched growing across his chest—a young man he had first met as a bear.... The wind was playing with Greta’s hair. She tucked a strand of it behind her ear, but the wind tugged it out and tossed it in her face again almost immediately. “Who couldn’t you wake?” Jack asked.

  Greta opened her mouth, but no sound came out. At first Jack thought she simply couldn’t decide how to answer, but then anger swept over her features like a sudden storm and she muttered a string of curses too quiet for him to follow. Finally she spat out. “My friend. The one I’m looking for. But it was just a stupid dream, because I wil
l find him and I will make things right.” More quietly—quietly enough that he shouldn’t have been able to hear her, except that the wind carried her voice to him—she added, “Even if he doesn’t forgive me, I can at least make things right.”

  Jack thought again of Nancy’s eyes, and the shoulder blades sticking out of her too-thin frame, and he wished that he knew what it was he needed to make right, let alone how to go about doing so. He pictured her again, wind playing with her shawl and hair, but through the memory of Nancy he still saw Greta: packing up her sleeping roll and getting ready to travel, and all the while tucking her hair behind her ear just in time for the wind to pull it free again.

  “What’s your friend’s name?” Jack heard himself ask suddenly, not entirely sure why but knowing that the answer was somehow important, if only he could make it make sense....

  Greta glared at him for a second, but then she seemed to recognize him again and her expression softened a little. “I can’t tell you that.”

  What was it? He felt like he was grasping at dust motes and dandelion seeds that he couldn’t even see. “You can’t tell me?” he asked, “Or you won’t tell me?”

  “I can’t,” Greta said, “though I’m not sure I ought to tell you even if I could.”

  Jack frowned, ran a hand through his hair (and felt a sudden shock of memory at the gesture; it seemed his old habits were coming back to him along with his memories), and sighed. Frowned more, and took a long, slow breath. There. He knew that smell. It was the north, and stone dust, and berries and hazelnuts and the occasional raw fish with baklava for dessert, carried to him by the same wind that had carried him Greta’s words, had led him to her in the first place, had forced him out of the scarecrow... had brought him Nancy... had brought Greta her friend?

  He had heard rumors, when he was working for the bears, that their prince had fallen in love with a human girl, and that she had been the one to betray him. The prince, the young man who should have been a bear, was the reason why the castle must never fail, the reason why Jack must never speak. Who knew what the girl might do next, or who might be helping her? And with Bernadette, next in line for the princedom, itching to take over and lacking only the proof that Auberon was human or dead to make herself prince instead of regent....