by T. Wyse
No more rhyme guided the beast’s movement. All reason abandoned the punches flying at the boy. Kechua rolled out of the way, struck dizzy a moment when one of the swings landed. He was dragged back with his still whole leg.
He twirled onto his back again and the creature bit into his left shoulder. After a flurry of tearing, his stinking hair whipped Kechua’s face.
“No! No more!” Kechua’s heart tore through the tired dust, blood pumping out of him, feeding into his arteries and seeping into the ground. He struck at Talah’s eyes, dazing the giant, and at his throat. The bloodied creature reeled back, and Kechua launched the pair with an overexertion of his good leg, landing the giant hard against the rock.
One of the hands encircled his throat, and the other struck at his face; his eyes. Still, Kechua ignored that. He pushed through his waning heart and struck the giant’s throat, his heart; his gut.
The grip slackened slightly, allowing him to suck air. Kechua struck the beast’s throat with his elbow and loosened himself, using his working hand and weight to push Talah’s throat against the rock.
In his blindness, he couldn’t taste the heartbeat or the motions, only knowing they slowed as he held it there, the giant’s eyes closed. His breathing strained more and more and stopped.
And yet.
“Close enough,” he spoke behind a mask of blood and shadow. “Not quite there, but close.” Talah’s red-painted teeth brimmed with a smile encircling his skull, hanging wide and drooling.
“Keep the knife, birthday boy.” Talah shuddered to his feet, shedding Kechua and kicking him back towards his pack. “I was told you’d have an extra sheath for it.”
His ear against the ground again, Kechua heard nothing below or within.
***
A memory washed over as the dark enveloped him. He saw himself as a younger ‘man,’ shivering, broken and bleeding, his form slowly slumping through the black tent’s entrance. The boy slid against the pelts, dragging himself with one arm and securing the plate of cheese and bread with his surer hand.
The boy nearly collapsed from the effort of sliding the plate around the fire. The pot of ash and filth appeared to his left, but for once, the staff erupted from the flames to steady his head. The boy had lost consciousness again and drifted into the heat.
“Your dance went further today,” the old man croaked. In the black echo, he was barely an outline of red beyond the flame. The cheese remained untasted as the man continued, “Tell me, do you remember anything?”
“I don’t . . . ” The boy lurched sideways to fight against a cramp in his healing ribs. “A light piercing my eyes. Blurry and burning. There were two shapes beside it . . . ” He caught his breath. “There was a forest around, I think. I couldn’t really see. Just feel it, sort of. Jagged pieces of stone or something, melting into the ground like ice.” His voice trembled.
To the boy’s astonishment, the old man didn’t chastise him. He gave a pensive grunt. “If Mana and I didn’t know what you are, and if Talah and Anah and all the others didn’t suspect it, you would have passed through that light today . . . ”
“The light burned so much to look at, I had to look away,” the boy probed.
“To pass through that light, to accept its shape and knowledge, is death.” The man nodded. “It is the end of the mortal’s journey. It is where we all face judgment.” He scooped up some of his dinner and munched on it.
“But it felt . . . I know I’ve been there.”
“You have.” The man shrugged. “Indeed, we are always ‘there’ in a way; always brushing up against it. You go there to dream, but the dreams obscure your memory of the place. Everything with a soul feels and knows the Dark Heart of the Wood by one name or another. I’m told it can appear as other things, cliffs, a simple road; a dead end alleyway. It is the purpose and shape that is important: An ending, one that cannot be turned from.”
“I turned from—”
“And you are here,” the old man interrupted. “Perhaps you will gain insight from this. I assume you do not want to return there?”
“No.” The boy winced at the memory of the burning light.
“Then bring balance to your dance or give it up,” the man croaked. “Still, it is a gift to remember it; to return from the place as a mortal.”
The echo of the memory finished nibbling at his cheek, and he became aware of the forest around him once again. This time was different, however. This time, the reality of the place was undeniable to his soul. No sense of up or down presented itself. No feeling of the rhythm of his life followed him into the dream world. He stirred and felt a dead shell around himself; a numb putty coating following him and bearing no pain as he shuffled and picked at it. He tore the second skin away and his flesh breathed back to life as it revealed itself in the darkness. He tore it from his face, reaching deep into his mouth to pick the film from his tongue; from its clinging grip upon the roof of his mouth and teeth.
Renewed by this shedding, he found himself sitting in his clearing and staring into the glowing orb, the heat beating against his back. Sand shifted underneath, only showing itself when it trembled within some wind unfelt, tiny grains painting a dirty blue as they poured over one another’s backs. The sand rolled and swayed, ever trembling as if concealing some great drum underneath, or speaker playing a rumbling note too low for him to hear.
The ball of light shone oblong as ever, stretching as if made of oil. Suspended in some unsure liquid, it trembled with an unseen note driving it, but one completely uncaring of the earth below. Scars traced their way across the light and encircled within each of these, a protrusion lurched upwards, like some metallic liquid pulled by countless pinpoint magnets.
He watched as the pulsing beat drove the liquid up, into a hundred points of varying conoidal shapes, perhaps more. Some of the points clustered around one another in a hedgehog’s mess of a back, and in other spots within the scars, thick tubes ending in blunt points reached upwards.
He realized he knew the scars upon the body. The shape deceived him, as it appeared more like some ugly human organ, but the tracing lines were of the globe. Each outreaching point was a tornado whose mouth encompassed the borders of each country.
The lines reached out further, giving the organ the look of some writhing exotic fruit or misshapen sea urchin. They trembled and pulsed with a silent music until they slowed in turn, shrinking, and withering upon their bases.
“It is almost time.” The voice flowed from behind him, the words not echoing in sound, but pulsing red upon the trembling sand with a proud clarity and strength.
“Indeed. Almost time,” another voice said to his left. The red ripples flowed over his circle only as the others finished their egress. The second washed over with uneven lines, many of them headed in other directions, tickling at his skin
A warm set of pulses washed over him, sourced from a speaker to his right. “He has shown respect to his elders, tolerance of the ones who bore him, and a protection of those within his community. I have watched a great, long time.” The lines of the ripples were soft, with a simultaneously gravelly but feminine tone to them.
“He has shown reverence to the rites and rituals; respect for the sacred and secret places. He has given comfort and aid to one with a sacred mission. I, too, have watched a long time.” The proud and strong waves washed over him.
He tried to turn and face the voices as they spoke, but he found himself unable to as he lacked any substance of body. He tried to plea with the spirits; to speak his case, but his words flowed outwards from him, stumbling and puddling within the divots of the trembling blue sand.
“Clever enough, yet not clever enough. I, too, have watched a great long time. He needs proper guidance in these times. Still so far to grow; still unable to answer the questions he has yet to ask. I would walk with him in this time.” The chaotic waves clamored over him with a hint of prickling laughter as they passed.
“I would walk with him.” The clear lin
es flowed across his back. “That he carry the wisdom and glory of his people with him.”
“I would walk with him,” echoed the soft warmth, “that he never forget mercy and kindness, and to lead those in need of guidance.”
From beyond the globe, somewhere far away from the unlit blackness of the forest, came a fourth voice. The sand hurled into the air at its passing. It mixed a glowing wall of blue and drowned within the jagged set of waves, rising well above the ground, with the unmistakable needled teeth of a predator.
“I . . . will walk with him!” It tore at him like a beast dancing up his skin with hooked claws, leaving a lingering, chilling ache as it passed. The voice resonated with a baritone snarl, and the sand trembled in the aftershock of the words.
“I have watched him, felt him; seen him. It is my hand that guided and shaped him to who he is now. Your kindness, your feeling of his intelligence, are illusions. I will show him the truth of this world, and he will remind them that his people are warriors!” The wave of blue flowed over him before the gnawing words, the guttural snarl drowning out his pithy cry of surprise and pain.
Silence fell and the prickles upon the globe settled, their wide tornado mouths sealing and dissipating into the air.
And then the world was calm.
***
He woke with his ear to the ground once more, his heart rumbling to life as his breath flowed. The faintest spark of life in the drumbeat below renewed itself.
The familiar songs began as a whisper and came back with a shrieking newborn’s cry. The drum of the forest, of Glalih, and of the world itself sung with a tinny chorus; a new and silent drum forming a stifling layer upon them all.
The staff lay nestled against his face and gripped under his looser, outstretched arm. Though it felt he might have been asleep for a lifetime, night had not yet arrived, and rolling up to the sky with his blurred eyes confirmed the sun hanging lazy and red high above.
The pulse rose to the earth’s surface and echoed again below, repeating and bringing him back to life, shaking the dust from his eyes. He rolled back to his side, his eyes confirming the change.
The damp circle of earth, padded down and not encroached by a single leaf, lay below him. It echoed and amplified the earthen song; lingered on with the dank smell and cool lick against his skin. The stones sat around the circle and gleamed in the sunlight like polished trinkets to be sold in the tourist shop.
Beyond them rose nothing but red, flecked with texture and shadows, but not a single tree breaking his sight. He turned and wallowed in the cool earth, finding the bite upon his calf and shoulder, to enjoy the reprieve from the throbbing state where his flesh mended. He gazed at the wall of proud stones on that side, finding them with the backing of red.
He rose, realizing the simplest fact, yet driven to deny it. He tried clearing his eyes, dismissing it to exhaustion and pain, but when they opened again at the urging of the waking drumbeat of the world below, the picture gouged itself into his brain.
Beyond the sentry stones and their gleaming runes; beyond the face of the drum where he sat, there lay nothing. A blank canvas of brown lay painted between his little dot and the enclosing walls of the red mountain. Not a single tree stood; not a single seed cone or gemmed leaf so much as lay scattered near the circle.
He tried to rise, but the wound in his calf bore too much of a grudge, so he gripped the staff. It happily helped steady him as he rose. His shoulder screamed too, but it functioned well enough to sate him.
Nothing, simply nothing. His head swayed and bobbed, struggling to turn around him. While he recognized the red mountain’s contours along the horizon, even noting the two breaks marking the exits, there was nothing.
“Another world?” he muttered, limping and walking with the stick. The staff trembled gently, giving off a pensive hum, but walked willingly beside him as his crutch.
He pet one of the stones, running his hand upon its smoothed back. Every contour remained along its surface, and the shining polish did show a different tone upon the backs where the moss once clung.
“No, same world,” he muttered, closing his eyes and feeling his own fool steps upon the smothered drum of the forest. The echoes of his footfalls traced from the west entrance to the east, the clacking of stones happily urging him on. Even his fight with Talah still murmured underneath the fallen tarp of earth. The staff gave a soft tremble as he leaned over the edge of the caked circle and into the soft brown outside.
He sunk the staff down into the new earth and found it strikingly malleable. The staff passed with an almost giggling and warbling glee, swallowing half of the etched history before the soil bothered to offer any notable resistance.
“Looser than sand,” he muttered, retrieving the staff. To his surprise, the staff not only shed the loose soil from its crevices, but the dirt took flight almost like smoke rather than returning down to the earth. He watched the narrow beige snake float curiously into the new world, fluttering along the winds without losing any sense of its shape, before it shrunk beyond his comprehension.
The staff gave a cleansing shake and a second, fatter child of the dirtsnake fluttered along the same path as the first, perhaps hoping to catch up and explore as a duo. He watched its progress, tracing its path to beyond the mountain’s crack and into the world beyond.
Fair enough, he mused to himself, slumping into a cross-legged state from the protests of his mumbling calf muscle. Perhaps the forest tested him. He rested his eyes in blackness a few moments, fully expecting some great deer or perhaps a rabbit to materialize in front of him.
Yet nothing of the sort did. No great animal guide accommodated the fantasy. Nothing arrived to afford him at least some satisfaction.
Still cross-legged, he fished out his water skin, glad to have filled it before leaving. He took a sparing sip. Looking between the berries, meat, and bars, he decided on the berries and welcomed the muggy sweetness to wake his mouth. They tumbled into his belly, but they passed without gratitude. The gnawing in his stomach sourced elsewhere.
He sat and waited, a brew of frustration and sadness fermenting into anger as every moment passed in the empty promise of the new world.
He gripped the staff from its standing pole position, giving it a proper look for the first time. The figures no longer trembled and moved, but their shapes displayed a level of craft that humbled him enough to quell his anger.
He rotated the staff in his hands, gazing at the etchings of the people and following their path from the narrowed beginning at the base. Few people flowed out at first, standing tall and confident in the beginning of the world. Towering hunters felled terrible beasts and mischievous spirits watched, hidden behind trees, rocks, and even people. To see the hidden spirits, he had to bring the staff to his eyes and tilt it to peer onto the sides of the carved figures. The details within the hidden layer were intricate and needlepoint, and the thought of etching them without a fine drill gave him a nervous pause. Each of the figures bore information about them—the spirit who watched them; the totem they carried within their hearts at that very moment. He recognized some of them, though they lay in cruder strangeness, but these figures only presented themselves upon the outer layer of the staff. The inner beginnings of the staff bore nothing but warped humanoid shapes and unknown spirits.
The outside of the staff divided itself into four distinct eras from bottom to top and four further vertical slices. They each were new eras, marked with new tools and the disappearance of the old figures of leadership and myth guiding them.
Frustratingly, the carvings of the lower level of the staff seemed every bit as intricate, as if the secondary level could rotate, yet the thing was unmistakably a single piece. Even with the overhead sun blaring down between the outer carvings, he could not discern anything of this underworld. He made out the same progression; the four eras separated by leaders and myth, and yet the angle forced a vagueness to the totems and magic depicted.
To his shock, he noticed som
ething along the very bottom edge of the staff. Where the two paths met, in their shrinking stage, was a trim he had taken as a simple flourish along the edges of the thing. By bringing it directly to his eye, he made out a set of etched glyphic shapes.
The tiny story began with the shape of an empty world and a figure shielded within a circular halo. Spirits walked beside him, no longer hidden, and he made changes in his wake. Trees grew at his beckoning, mountains bowed before him, and rivers flowed at his desire. He fought beasts too large to fit meaning within the compressed world, only displayed by narrowed and hateful eyes. He walked with a parade of sculptures behind him and came to a gate, wherein the little story ended and the story of the outer world grew and coiled up the staff.
With a cold chill, he wound his way up the staff with reluctant hands and found another pinprick flourish upon the tip. His shoulder trembling, surely only from lingering pain and ache, he roused it to his eye.
Nothing. Only a simple etched ring that stretched.
He fumbled with the staff and raised it again to his eye, his stomach dropping into the soil. There lay a single fine-pointed etching; the figure of a man—or perhaps a boy, sitting in a circle—with a pack, a knife, and a staff his only companions. The circle of stones dotted around it, each of their runes not only matching the physical ones surrounding him, but his position among them.
He numbly let the staff rest in his lap and gazed into the wastes.
“I . . . will walk with him!” The biting roar echoed in his mind. “So where is he then?” Kechua muttered. “Do you know?” he asked the staff, only half joking.
The staff gave a rolling tremble, but neither sang nor groaned.
“Mana said . . . she saw me alone. Alone, and that the spirit came from the trees,” he pondered into the carvings. “But . . . right.” He rolled the staff again in his hands and found the depiction of the beginning of the world. “Well, I guess it’s worth a try. What do you think?”
