Red Leaves and the Living Token

by Benjamin David Burrell

  "Mr. Handers, please. You have to understand. Any loving parent would exhaust all effort looking for something to heal their child. I understand that. You'd go to go to the ends of the earth if needs be." The Doctor stood up to try to calm him down.

  "What I want you to understand is that is not necessarily what he needs right now. That's not what you need right now. A natural part of the grieving process is coming to terms with an outcome beyond your control. The unending quest for new and exotic methods is contrary to that grieving process."

  "It's a desperate attempt to control something that has proven itself to be uncontrollable. Believe or not, the powers of modern medicine are, in fact, finite. We can't cure everything... yet."

  "But...

  "Endless searching will only prolong the pain and rob you of the time you do have left to say good bye. Let us worry about finding the solution. You worry about the time you spend with your son. If your son's last day comes soon, that will not be something you can control. What you can control is how you prepare yourself and your son for it."

  Raj grabbed his coat and slammed the door as he left.

  -

  He found himself wandering out the back of the hospital and down the dark street that led to the sea cliffs. It was the first place that came to his mind when he thought of somewhere he could be alone.

  A steep stair case, cut into the black rock, lead down from the coastal street to the sandy beach below. He stumbled down the steps, holding an arm in front of his eyes to shield against the sand blown off the rocks.

  He'd come here before for the same purpose; he remembered. The same thought had come to him. To come here. To be alone. To think.

  He wandered out onto the wet sand and felt the spray on his face as the dark waves crashed against the beach. Night had come while he'd been in the hospital. Yet the night, with the moon glowing through a thin layer of clouds, seemed to add to the environment he was seeking. He tried to avoid the thoughts that were stirring in his mind, the thoughts of her, of the last time he'd come here from the hospital. It'd taken him so long to forget, to push the memories back far enough that they stopped hurting. He had to. He had his son.

  The moon went dark behind a cloud. A flash of lighting flickered from the horizon, giving a momentary glimpse of the approaching storm. He felt the crushing weight growing from inside, pushing down on him. He couldn't afford this, not now. He had to fight it back.

  He dropped to his knees, digging into the soft sand. The dried top layer caught in the gusts of wind and swirled around him. He looked up into the darkness above him. He didn't know what he was looking for. Sometimes just seeing something above him staring back down was reassuring. He got no such comfort from the black, star-less void above him. The crushing weight increased, almost as though the void above had reached a slender finger down to him and was working its way inside him. His desperation grew to panic.

  "Please," he voiced into the wind. "Help me."

  Another flicker of light flashed across the sky, showing for a brief instant the beauty of the clouds as the lighting etched its zigzag through them. The illusion of emptiness broke. The slender finger withdrew.

  "Please," he begged. "Don't take my son away too!" He called out.

  He turned away from the sky. What right did he have to ask such things? Why should he expect such favors? The proposition was ludicrous.

  He looked up once more. Ludicrous or not, he had nothing left.

  "Please."

  He shifted his weight to move his knee off a sharp rock that had been poking him from under the sand.

  Another flicker lit up the sky. As he looked down into the depression that his knee had left, he noticed a faint trace of light had remained after the lighting's bright flash.

  As the wind blew the trace of light grew into a glow. The sharp stone that he'd felt under his knee was emitting light. As the wind continued to clear away the sand, the object grew in size and complexity. It was some sort of carving, the figure of a small plant or a miniaturized tree! There was something else, something on the tree. He wanted to reach down and feel it, to pick it up, but he hesitated. It wasn't natural. The wind cleared away the sand down to the base of the figure. It had a long bird curved around its thin trunk and a solid round base of roots.

  His curiosity overcame his apprehension, and he reached down to pick it up. As his fingers made contact a Flash of blinding white light filled his vision. His ears rang with a high pitched whine. After a moment, his sight and hearing returned, but he was no longer on the beach. He was standing in the street a few block from the hospital. Directly in front of him, an ancient stone archway rose up out of the ground, completely blocking the road. A stone pathway extended beyond it but not in front of it.

  He couldn't imagine that it had been there long. It would've been blocking traffic, had there been any. He stepped towards it.

  Flash, his vision turned to white. After a moment the color returned, and he was standing somewhere else - outside an old school. He was sure he'd seen it before but wasn't sure where it was. He remembered he'd been impressed by the high stone wall that surrounded the school. In the street beside the wall of the school, he saw another archway. This one, unlike the first, was made of white stone and seemed rather modern. At least the stones seemed almost perfectly cut. Yet, it too seemed completely out of place as it blocked the road.

  His vision flashed to white again. When it receded he found him self again in another place. This time he was on a mountain top in the middle of the day. A meadow stretched out in front of him. At the end of that meadow, a beautiful white structure made of white stone sat, its spires leading his eyes up to the bright sky. The blue burned into white.

  Then he saw his son crumpled on the wet forest floor. A wave of red light washed over him. He opened his eyes, then stood up. The forest blanked to white again.

  His sight cleared, and he found himself back on the beach. A stabbing pain registered in his finger tips. He jerked his hand back from the glowing figure. His fingers were bleeding where he had touched it. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around the figure and tucked it into his jacket.

  -

  Rinacht stepped up onto a rock overlooking the beach. He could see Mr. Handers kneeling down in the sand below.

  "Mr. Handers!" He called.

  Suddenly his employer got to his feet, with out seeming to acknowledge him, lifted something in his hands, then wrapped it up and put into his jacket. Rinacht may not have seen it clearly, but it had appeared as though the object he held was glowing. He watched Raj turn and walk away down the beach. He must not have heard his call; he thought. So he hopped down off the rock and rushed over to the stair way leading down to see if he could catch up.

  -

  Raj hurried through the thinly populated city streets. He knew the one he wanted wasn't far. He just wasn't sure exactly which way. He turned the corner and looked up. It looked familiar. He walked around the side of the building to get a view of the open street. There taking up more than half the road was the archaic stone archway. Just as he'd seen.

  He pulled himself back behind the building and hid himself up against the wall, shaking his head. This was not good. To dream about it, to see it in your mind, sure, fine. But to see it there in front of you, awake. That was a problem. He leaned out again, peering around the building. It was still there.

  "How...?" He took a deep breath to calm himself. There had to be some way of making sense of it. He'd have to get a closer look. Perhaps it was a trick of his mind, a latent image of some sort. He hurried up to it. The stones, worn with age, stacked tightly without mortar, gave no impression of illusion. Proximity had only further solidified the reality of its presence. Perhaps to touch it would help, he thought.

  He pushed hard against one of the stones, catching himself in case he fell through it. The stones were cold to his touch and held firmly against his weight. Either this truly was here blocking the entire road or he was simply
, insane. To confound further his dilemma with reality, as he stared through the stone arches, a pathway, made of a large, irregularly shaped rocks stones, was cut into the small and well worn cobble stone road. The pathway extended out the back and continued down the street. He was positive these rocks were not there a moment ago.

  He backed away and circled around to the front of the arches to look at the path from another angle. But now the path was gone! Without a sign of it ever having been there. He took a calming breath. Perhaps this was still part of his previous episode, part of some kind of odd dream.

  He doubled back behind the arch and sure enough the pathway had returned. This would induce a migraine; he was sure of it. He stepped sideways enough to see around the stone pillar. Now he could see through and around it at the same time. The path was clearly both there and not there! Viewed through the archway it extended down the street and into the city. Viewed from outside, it did not exist.

  The illusion was fantastic! His mind began to wander. What would happen if he stepped through it? Would it remain when he tried to step on it, or was it like a mirage, always just out of reach? How good was the illusion, really?

  He took a quick step through to see what would happen. His foot landed firmly on the first stone of the pathway. He stepped back, surprised. Apparently he had become comfortable with the idea that this was just a trick of the eye, and a trick of the eye was not something you were supposed to feel under your feet.

  So this was not an illusion. He laughed to himself. Nether was the enormous stone archway blocking the road. Nether made sense to a rational mind. It looked like he'd have to make a decision, as trying to prove or disprove the reality of this thing was pointless. He could walk a way or walk through. He stared at it, imagining the out comes of both scenarios. What was the worst that could happen? Well, he could die. There was always that possibility. He could be tortured. Several rather unpleasant scenarios played out in his head. And what was the best possible outcome?

  He remembered what had led him to this point, the larger context of the experience, his overwhelming need to find a solution for his son. A moment later he found himself hurrying down the strange and unexplainable path.

  -

  Rinacht turned the corner and stopped behind the building that Raj had stopped at only moments earlier. His employer was in the middle of the street in front of him. He felt the automatic urge to call out to him but suppressed it. Raj had his hands up in the air as though he were leaning on something. Only there wasn't anything there. He then paced back and forth, circling around as though there were an object in the way. After what appeared to be a moment of deliberation he turned and marched straight down the road.

  Rinacht tried to add it up in his head. He found something highly unusual on the beach. Now here he was wandering about the city in the middle of the night, pantomiming in the empty street. The worst had finally come, he feared, as he slipped into the dark and followed quietly behind.

  -

  Raj rushed down the path rough cut rocks, anxious to get to where ever it may be leading him. He rounded a corner and found a heavy stone wall rising up in front of him. The high wall extended a considerable distance in both directions. A little way to his right, it wound around to a large gated entrance. The entrance looked familiar. Then it came to him. This was the old school that he'd recognized earlier.

  If that were true then would he see a second archway? He wondered. His path turned down an alley beside the school wall. At the end of the alley, the path turned again. He raced down the alley way and turned to follow the back of the school wall.

  About halfway down to the next building he found what he was looking for. A large white stone archway stretched half way across the road, making it difficult to go around. He approached quickly, checking behind him to see if anyone was around. The last thing he wanted was crowd. Fortunately there didn't seem to be anyone around.

  Up close the archway was quite different from the other. The white stone blocks were cut perfectly smooth and perfectly square. The stone gave off a glow like the little figurine he found. Cut into the stone on each pillar were two figures. One on each side, one male, one female. He studied their details. They weren't stooped over in posture like the Zo. Nor where they squat and rounded like the Petra or twisted and stretched like the Botann. They were unusual, to say the least, he thought.

  The pathway beyond the arch seemed to be made of the same white stone. Not surprising, it seemed to be playing the same visual trick. When viewed from the side, the path was the same as the one he was on. From through the arch it became white and glowed.

  The school to the side of him sat on a high point in the city. Through the archway, he could see the street drop off into the distant expanse of buildings and roads. He traced the glowing line of the path as it wound down into the city. He could see it emerge on the other side and disappear into the green line of the forest. Even from a distance he could spot where it peaked out here and there from under the trees, continuing with the forest as it lifted up into the maintain range. He could see it then rising up right up to one of the peaks.

  He blinked as he realized what he was looking at. Without thinking, he'd followed an impossibly thin line across the city, through the forest and up to the top of the mountain. Some how he could still see it. He could see the path leading up to a white building, a building below the mountain peak. He squinted. There was no way he should be able to see a building on the side of a mountain a thousand miles away, at night. This was making his head hurt, he thought, as he turned away.

  Still, he'd come this far. Was this enough for him to reconsider? No, he supposed. He stepped forward through the archway. As he passed, his vision burned to white. After a disorienting moment of blindness, the flash receded, and he found himself standing on a mountain, below the peak where saw the path had led. In front of him was the same white building he had seen from a far.

  The scene burned to white. A moment later he found himself standing in a room with impressively high walls of white stone. He was inside the building he'd just been staring at, he assumed. There were two sets of stairs on opposite sides of the room. One led up, and the other led down.

  As soon as he took notice of them, he felt himself move. In an instant, he was in the upper room beyond the stairs. In the center of the new room, he noticed a large basin of water. He moved closer again with the thought. Below the surface of the water was an assortment of weapons and armor. One long sword he noticed in particular was unsheathed and had a blinding white blade.

  With a flash of white, Raj found himself again somewhere else. Now he stood in an open field. In front of him, a wall of soldiers advanced. He spun around. Another wall of men stood behind him, their eyes fixed on him, with their weapons half raised, waiting. He looked down. Held tightly in his hand was the long white sword with the blade of white. His arms, chest, and legs were covered in armor, white armor.

  With an uncomfortable jar, he felt himself turn around to face the opposing army. Without issuing the command to his body, his arm lifted the sword high into the air. His voice rang out with a horrible cry, and his legs bolted forward. His cry was multiplied into a deafening roar by the thousands of men who followed behind him. An echo of that cry sounded from the hordes in front of him as they advanced from a slow march forward to full sprint.

  He watched helplessly as death approached him. His body refused his panic and flung itself full speed into peril.

  White. The blur faded and he was back on the street standing under the arch. After a moment of disorientation, he stepped back out from under the arch.

  "Crazy!" He muttered. "This is crazy!"

  He turned and stumbled away, down the street and into the city.

  -

  Around the corner, hidden by the wall of the school, Riancht watched Raj back up, turn, and disappear down the street.

  "What did you find, my friend?"

  Lord Valance stared at the Clan Lord Ranth, a short a
nd stubby little man, who was frantically paddling his squat little legs to keep up with the group. He hated the man, hated how much influence he had over the greater House of Clans; he hated that he had to invite him here to his largest, most profitable, orchard just to gain audience with his more powerful friends. It was insulting.

  "Arrg!" The Clan Lord cried as he stumbled over a dead branch. Lord Valance wanted to laugh but kept it in. The site of the man rolling around on the ground, trying to pick himself up, suddenly made his presence here more tolerable.

  An entourage of scientists, administrators, and security stopped to wait for the distinguished guest. The grey of broken, rotting branches had smothered what was left of a pleasant green grass. It was impossible to walk through it without keeping a constant eye on the ground.

  "Why don't you have someone clear these out?" The Clan Lord demanded.

  "We do." Lord Valance answered. "Almost every day."

  After crossing through several rows of perfectly lined trees, the group stopped. Several men and women, wearing light jackets emblazoned with the orchard’s bright red insignia, stopped at the trunk of an gnarled old tree. Its branches twisted up into a dense canopy over them. They waited as Lord Valance and the Clan Lord pushed up from the back of the crowd.

  "This is our oldest." Lord Valance announced to the Clan Lord then rested his hand up against the trunk. "She produces more fruit than almost ten younger trees."

  He followed the Clan Lord Ranth's gaze up into the fruit laden branches above them. The coverage was thin compared to the younger trees they'd just passed through. The tree could easily have held two or three times the count.

  "How quickly is she declining?" He asked one of the men in the light colored jackets.

  "Fifteen percent per year now." He answered.

  "Fifteen percent?" The rate had increased since he'd last reviewed the numbers. "And this is the highest rate?" He asked.