by T. Wyse
Wolf slipped low and burning eyes turned to Kechua. The feeling cooled as the creature looked to his target.
The creature grew and a rounded body appeared at the base of the neck. A flat shell of black rock braced against the arched back, as if the creature poked up from a trap door in the very earth below.
The rhythm of his heart drove him on, pumping against his throat as he nearly drooled with anticipation. This was his beast; the challenge laid out for him in this time, and he closed in on it with perfectly timed footfalls. The staff kept time with him, digging carefully into the soil ahead. It coughed up only the slightest bit of dirt, which poured along the ground like water, until his trembling passing split it into two rising plumes.
He pictured the future, the creature’s defeat almost inconsequential in his mind. He saw himself running back to Glalih with the bleeding head in tow, mounting it upon the mountain. He saw himself soaking in the knowledge of the books; of pondering Mana’s question. In a few short days, he saw everything familiar returning to him, everyone hailing him as a champion; Anah kissing him fervently and forgiving him for leaving. He saw himself cleaning the house and helping Xatl settle in. He even dared to imagine Talah’s grudging respect.
Closer, the creature resembled a black silhouette against the blue sky’s contrast, but the thing lay still as if sensing his approach. He allowed a trembling smile, curving his path to meet the creature’s face; to present himself as a boastful champion before slaying it. Patterned red, white, and black decorated the bloom, the light shining against it enough to—
“Oasis Gas,” the patterns declared plainly.
“Last stop for one hundred miles,” echoed a smaller sign on the ground at the base of the signpost. “Snacks” and “Maps” were written on the bottom of the sign’s ‘bloom.’
Wolf leapt forward, seemingly growing in stature and fury, and locked his jaws around the pole supporting the banner. He snarled enough to make the scattered gravel on the pavement tremble, and his thrashing made the sign above sway.
“Go! I have its neck! Strike at its shadowy heart. Claim its power!” Wolf roared with derisive laughter, watching the boy stride up the flat step to the pavement level.
Kechua rose to his normal height as he crossed from the sand into the asphalt of the station. The footprint of the place was a neat circle against the sand. Even the signpost, shaking furiously from Wolf’s continuing assault, was snipped off with a rounded flair, “Oasis” being partially consumed in the cutting.
The storefront was indeed a rather shadowy world. No lights were on inside, though he could make out shining food wrappers in the meager light making its way through the overhang’s protection. Though a tank declaring “propane” stood beside the tiny bubble station, the gas pumps seemed to have been plucked up like weeds, leaving only sand-filled holes in their brackets.
Kechua made the circle around the station, feeling the memory pounded within. Yet above the rather slow din of customers and cars, a chill realization trickled up his spine. There were new footprints sealed in the circle, and he circled around the station again, winding tighter towards its epicenter to savor this knowledge. The feet were familiar to the place and paced for thoughtful hours inside the station. They lingered at the windows for long stretches, returning behind the counter to trembling and soft silence. The person ventured out onto the pavement, leading Kechua to a probing handprint in the sand, neatly and clearly cut just as his had been when he first tested the soil.
More thoughtful moments and indecision by the person before they returned to the store, gathered something, arranged things within the back, and finally—
“You are quiet, young one,” Wolf rumbled. “Care to enlighten my innocent ears?”
“You . . . can’t feel it?” Kechua balked. “Can’t, smell it, or—”
“I smell another human; the scent of fear. The stink of gas lingers about this place,” he puffed with irritation.
“I thought you knew me? Knew the things I feel?”
“I know the words of your gift, not the feeling or drive of it,” Wolf confessed.
“I . . . ” Kechua found himself locked into the pattern, not wanting to fight against the flow. He felt the figure finish writing the sign before slapping it against the window. “It can be hard to go backwards in the memory,” he muttered.
“Take what you need, and only what you need,” the sign declared through the glass. It was punctuated with an afterthought, “please,” scrawled across the top in thick and ragged lettering.
“The person was inside, waited, and then . . . ” Kechua traced the footsteps into a crater outside the edge of the station’s footprint. An imprint of the person falling into the sand began their journey. A deep and arduous pair of rutted steps headed in a deliberate line out and towards the blue horizon.
“Then he left.” He smiled, placing his hand upon the crater and hearing the memory of a man’s frustrated swearing. Not alone. Not quite.
“Truly a master of the unseen.” Wolf snorted and added, “Are we not slaying this mighty foe then?” The beast lay by the pole, tucking it between his shoulder and neck as if it were some ragged chew toy.
“He knew where he was going. He walked with purpose.” Kechua slipped down to the sand and followed the trail. He dared not trespass upon their sacred guidance and cut a new path beside.
“You choose to follow some unknown stranger?” Wolf grumbled, slinking behind.
“There may be more people. It’s better than nothing.”
The tracks crossed south and met the fledgling river’s progress, the footprints having gathered the water into a cluster of puddles before it continued. He crossed, only to immediately be greeted with two more strangers upon the horizon.
A pair of grey figures hunched over, pointed heads leaning in to one another’s faces as if sharing some arcane and dark secret. Their jagged spines and pointed tips gave them the appearance of pale crones of some kind, and they shivered and swayed just as the bloom had, as if checking to see if any were around to hear them before continuing their profane whispers.
He stepped forth, heart no longer pounding with anticipation, embarrassment chilling his cheeks. He pursued the crones, and predictably, they ceased their trembling movements and settled into a pair of white houses. He stopped in their linked shadow, puzzling at their current state.
The leaning meet was no illusion. Both houses were blindingly white, having black slat roofs upon three proudly tall stories, their bodies fat enough to encompass the schoolhouse and the souvenir shop of Glalih. Yet even with this support, both houses lurched over, not quite meeting. It looked as though they peered at one another, with a pair of windows at the top floor of each, serving as flirtatious eyes.
He circled around the houses, finding the other windows in each had been lapped away like candy, and even the doors of both houses had been included in the spectral confection. He washed away the quiet every day, worn in enough that they rose to slow the newer patterning of steps. Before he lost himself in the recent steps his eyes traced a pair of beaten footfalls in the sand emerging from each of the twin doorways
They walked side-by-side into the memory of the street, framed by standing fences of metal and wood. They were all in remarkably pristine condition, though they missed their gates. Not one other house stood in nearly as good repair as the hunched crones. Some of them were near skeletons, others with windowless walls, but not one of them had a fully remaining roof above. The further out from the conspiring pair he traced, the more shrunken and ruinous the houses became, until any memory of the street fell below the flat and silent earth.
“Wait, don’t . . . ” Kechua began as Wolf strode in front of him, demolishing one of the braided walked ruts weaving about the area.
“Oh? I thought you were the mighty tracker or some such,” Wolf accused drolly. “Tell me, impress me; earn the right to order me where to walk. So far, I am rather bored.”
Kechua raised his hand as if t
o still the beast’s progress at the very least. He returned to the houses, resisting the tugging spiraling current, and made his way to the step of the leftmost house.
His head lowered as the first inklings of the ‘outside’ world flowed over him.
“And what mighty impressions do you have?” the voice growled.
“I thought it would be different.” Kechua sighed, the echoes of shouting and screaming flowing over him. The familiar rhythm of rage, tears, and pain coiled and seeped into the boards, curing, and salting them into a hardened path. “One person here, and another from the neighbor.” He let his attention flow outwards to encompass both houses. “They were both on the top floors when it happened. I can feel them falling, the fear of their known world being warped like it was.
“They didn’t come out at once. I feel them both waiting at the bottom floor, and finally . . . ” He turned his head between the houses. “They met, there.” A choke stifled the next words. Elation mixed with terror in their steps, their words and emotions so alone he could almost make them out against the grinding din of their rutted lives.
“They moved together then, into this house and then that one, their feet becoming heavier as they did; less sure. Preparing.” He nodded. “They stopped in this house, at the bottom floor, and their feet were slow; tired.
“Then, this new path starts.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Louder, closer to now. Only one of them now, and it started when . . . ” He traced the feeling upward, but he couldn’t make out the path of the other steps. They had gone into the part of the warped house and never returned.
“When one murdered the other?” Wolf interrupted almost hopefully.
“No, not murder; not even theft. This was running, in fear.” Kechua followed the steps out beyond the fence to meet the paths in the absent street. “The one from the station meets her feet here.” He pointed, having decided the lighter of the meeting pair was female. “They weren’t together though. He was following her path, separated by hours, I think.” It felt wider somehow, but he couldn’t place the timing.
The echo of the girl’s running steps slowed, her rutted path growing deeper, featuring silhouetted cuts into the sand until her path ended in a fattened silhouette in the earth where she had fallen.
He stopped as the man from the gas station did, peering into the dugout. He noticed something else; something that ambushed him with a jarring yell. A road lay beyond the crater. Packed down earth lay within the clearly cut borders, but it was rough, as though marched on by a tiny-footed army of some kind. The soil was of a deeper hue than the rest of the sand, as if solidified by some giant slug passing over it. A feeling of revulsion struck Kechua with the mere sight of it. He felt the passing of hundreds or thousands of feet; a flow of padded runners stamping the ground, but the numb feeling that filled Wolf was interwoven with the discolouring, preventing him from pushing his sight into it.
The girl seemed just as terrified by its presence. She ran from it, her path snaking and unsure over the dark road. “This . . . whatever this is, it was chasing after her.” To Kechua’s further astonishment, another mark upon the earth followed in the mad chase. Red-soiled cuts emerged in the soil as he followed the road and the two pairs of footsteps. A smaller and much quieter road writhed underneath the earth below, drowned out mostly by the stamping army. It emerged to meet and turn away the girl’s progress as she careened far from the padded earth.
“Something else was here, not human. Underneath the soil,” Kechua reported. “It came up to force her path straight; to keep it pointed away from the houses. She stopped here.” He arrived at the edge of a rounded boil cut out of the earth. The same spiraling red sand traced an eventual path into the centre, but the crater was larger than the one he had found in Glalih. More menacing, however, was the gravity of the feeling; the memory of the scream. The clawing struggle as she was dragged downward threatened to swallow Kechua in the mere echo. He stumbled backward, but the staff caught him with a concerned chirp. “Stopped here,” he repeated, trying to shake the feeling.
The flow of the darkened road curved around the crater, as if respecting the claimed domain of that dying moment. A thick line of the silent sand lay between the two paths. “There were two things; two different creatures. One took her, and the other moved on.” He traced the path of the road, which careened off towards the horizon.
“He was here later. He saw what we see now.” Kechua followed the confused steps of the gas station boy as they spun around, trying to grab understanding from the arcane lines in the sand.
“Not going to follow that path?” Wolf snarled with an almost sad twinge. “I’m sure it would be thrilled to meet you.” He gave a jagged grin.
Kechua thought about it for a moment, even daring to approach the road, fighting against the almost rancid feeling in his mind. No, it felt wrong. It felt undeniably alien to him, where the spiraling grip of the crater felt familiar.
“I don’t think that’s mine to chase.” Kechua followed the remaining human prints to the south.
“Oh, come now, what narrow thinking. What boring thinking,” Wolf grumbled. “Think of the glory and power and . . . ” Kechua picked up his pace, trying to tune out the words.
The walker found a strand of trees—old and thick of trunk—but paler than any he could recall. The gem-leaved trees of Glalih were spindly creatures at best, and he always enjoyed the thought of the thicker and ancient wooden behemoths. He came to a massive specimen and agreed to his quarry’s resolve to rest by its trunk. He let the pack slip to the ground, drinking sparingly while investigating the find.
It was old, very much so, its trunk wider than perhaps three of his outstretched arm’s lengths. It was as it had been in the normal time, though not a single bud of greenery sprouted from its branches. It was as if the forest had been locked in a wintertime seeming more like a baking desert than anything else.
They pulsed faintly of life; tugged at him gently, the giant being the easiest to feel the pull. Kechua focused, his palm flat against the great tree. He could feel the living rhythm of the roots sprouting downwards, searching for water, of the tree growing outwards. It seemed as if the tree waited for some signal, only audible to itself, some warning or begging request. Everything about it shouted of the potential of a crossbow pulled taut; of a trap set on a feather’s weight trigger.
The staff gave a trembling sigh as he leaned it against the tree, like some cold puppy finding rest within a pile of its siblings. “What?” Kechua grumbled, finding a narrowed scowling eye sliding up to burn his cheek. The slitted eye rocked a little as the creature scrutinized him without further clarification.
Kechua gnawed on some of the berries, the muggy taste somehow harmonizing to an ugly note with the remnants of the clay dust in the air. “Girl and a boy met in those houses, after years of pining for one another. They prepared to leave, got food together, had a plan, maybe somewhere they’ve always wanted to go.” Kechua swallowed another berry before sealing the bag. “But one of them disappeared in that house. Maybe from the Season, maybe not. The girl went running from whatever it was; ran as fast as she could and wanted to get away from whatever she saw in that house.” He paused and glanced at Wolf, who responded by remaining silent. “She met something out there, something different, and kept running, but it wasn’t enough.”
“Two monsters, you think. Interesting,” Wolf mused to the air. “And what is your guess of what chased them?” the creature asked, but there was at least some spark of interest.
“The old man said the word to use was ‘Aspects.’ Demons, dark spirits, personifying fear and anxieties.” Kechua bobbed in place as if he were the child sitting at the fire once again. “They worm their way out from the spirit world now, from the Dark Heart of the Woods because the line between the material world is weak. He told me that they are bound to ones like me, that we ‘Blessed’ are born to fight them.”
“All the more reason to give chase!” Wolf’s cutting growl ret
urned.
“He also said I would know my adversary, that it would feel familiar. The padded road did not feel familiar. It felt wrong. The crater . . . that’s something I know well, though I’ve never actually seen it.” He squirmed against the tree, closing his eyes. “Are my observations worth some nugget of your guidance then?” he asked bitterly, flicking a stubborn berry seed from between his teeth.
“Oh, have you earned my unbound wisdom then, with a single besting of combat? With a few meager observations and some regurgitated words from an old man?” Wolf gave a grim chuckle. “Surely your great spirit guardian would not babble endlessly like some little bird.”
“You may be a spirit of some manner, but you aren’t the kind I have heard stories of. You aren’t the kind who guided—”
“I am precisely the kind who guided those of your people. I guided them for millennia. You cannot see this and yet you think yourself worthy of what wisdom I have to share? Hah.”
“How about an introduction then? You know who I am. Tell me who you are. Maybe I’ve earned that much.”
“Why, I am Wolf. The one you have learned of. Am I not majestic? Did I not meet you in your spirit realm?” He gave a low growl, as unassuming as he could be, it seemed.
“Never met a wolf, but I’ve heard of them, seen pictures; been described their ways.” Kechua gnawed at a sliver of the darker meat. It had a sweeter tinge to it and a much tougher consistency. Still, it bolstered his heart a little as he bit into it hard enough to make his jaw ache. “You are big, certainly. You are strong. I know that from experience. Wolves are strong, but their strength is in subtleties; in wisdom and cunning, not in brute force. Wolves can seem cruel, and the stories of the wolf are the trickster; the shrewd teacher, but not the merciless monster. You are something different, Wolf. The more I look at you and walk by you, the more I see it.”
