by T. Wyse
He stood, face to face with the great creature. “You may have the look of the wolf, the senses, and you may be something close, but I see you. I see something in you, and I know that you are not the icon you claim by your silence.”
Wolf cocked his head, giving a shrewd indication of his rapt attention.
“Might immeasurable and cunning. I feel no harmony within. Your heart is black. Your eyes are alight with fiery rage; with a hate that confuses me.” Kechua narrowed his eyes again, meeting Wolf’s challenging gaze at the accusations. “I could be wrong. The teachings could be flawed. I know I don’t like what I’ve seen of you, and I will watch every single movement you make, even more now that I see you haven’t the decency to introduce yourself with truth.”
To his utter shock, the great creature seemed pleased by this challenge. Its demeanor threatened, but there was perhaps the closest thing to a real smile he could possibly imagine on its visage. “Good.” He closed his burning eyes, making a humanlike nod of approval.
“No, not your wolf; not the trickster god, though linked in a way more intimate than brotherhood. Your people know me well, though. I am ever respected, but never revered. I am known and feared, but always denied.”
Wolf stomped a massive paw into the ground, causing a cloud of silted dust to rise upwards, enveloping them both with a frightening quickness. Kechua held the staff clenched in his hands, anticipating an attack to punish him for his impudence and disrespect.
“Rest now,” the creature growled low, impatient but understanding. “I merely make lines. This will simply help the words I have, show the sincerity and truth, for the lines of the seer can do nothing else.”
Kechua stood there, the staff clenched at the ready, and watched in amazement as the dirt whirled around them rather than leaving into the atmosphere. It came between them, a thick film in a circular disk, its flattened face looking at Kechua. Shapes defined themselves within the sands, forming odd stylizations.
A crescent shape formed the underlying bracket of the screen, and Kechua was somewhat surprised to see subtle colours emerging in those shapes. The crescent was clear to him, shining brown. It was the world itself; the earth below.
“This is your world, shaped by knowledge and fueled by belief. Fear and unknowing ignites your nightmares, causing tales to rise from the ethers of nothingness.” Dull and scattered shapes formed in the sand, forming into humanlike figures. They huddled together in the confines of a hut of some kind. Swirling red beasts howled outside, clawing at the shelter.
“I am Wolf. The wolf.” The crescent shape of the world shifted, creating a map of the world. Oceans separated landmasses, and many minutia of humans and their villages stood separated by the oceans. “I am known everywhere in your world, for I am universal to your people.”
Shapes huddled around fires for warmth and comfort. “I am fear, one of the primal fears created by humanity in the days before the great rebellion. I am the unknown, the wilds themselves. I am that which fights against your civilized ways to ruin your crops and livestock. I am that which keeps you inside at night, fearing the beasts hidden within the darkness.
“Before your people knew the wolf, before they respected it, I walked the earth. Before your world was created, before it was known, my paw prints crossed the ground. I walked with your people before they knew tools, and I watched them grow, flourish, and then scatter.”
“My people do not know you, not in the way you speak of it.” Kechua chuckled, an equal darkness inside him.
“Oh, but they do, they do indeed. I am the fear of the unknown, of the wilds themselves; of the creeping beasts just outside your familiar walls. I tempered your people in battle, and they united against me and grew stronger.”
“No.” Kechua smiled, warmed by the thought. “No, there is no way that they would.”
“Oh?” The great beast stopped, his gaze suddenly curious. “Your people are lost, scattered, and miserable.”
“Lost perhaps, miserable certainly.” Kechua sighed. “Fear, though, is not something we know. Fear is something we have always been greater than. Fear is the reluctance to face the challenges ahead. It is the uncertainty of one’s skills and of the nobility of one’s heart. I stare at you, great Wolf, and feel no fear, only the need to be prepared should you suddenly turn. If I had known fear, I would have run from you. I would have run from your corpse lying dead in the sand.”
He rubbed his hand against the texture of a new tree, taking his eyes away from the paused swirling screen between them.
“We have always been able to meet challenges and respond to things in such a way.”
Wolf’s eyes narrowed into burning slits. “And yet those you speak of, your tribes, are scattered and weak; ghosts walking the earth. The Merciful Ones came for them, and they buckled to this new unknown force.”
Had Xatl ever used the term; ever explained it to him? Kechua probed his foggy memories of the black tent for ‘The Merciful Ones.’ A vague recollection, linking it to the shift of the land to the invaders, tickled his brain. Yet he couldn’t quite recall it being spoken directly to him. “That change was the warrior’s bane. A target made of stone is surmountable, but one made of water is not. They came with the aggression of the diplomat, of the poisoner, not the warrior.”
“Your people know me still.” Wolf chuckled. “I speak not of your pithy and dwindling tribes, but of all humanity. What use are your artificial divisions between you to one such as I. I know no borders; no limits to where I can set foot. All humans, everywhere, know of me, whether there is honesty within them or not. Perhaps your tribe knows no fear, but there is more than enough here. It lingers from the dawning of days to feed and endure in me.”
“If you are fat on fear”—Kechua scowled—”what do you get by casting your shadow across my path?” He focused and glared directly into Wolf’s eyes. The aethers of his breath cast a shape of his own into the humming projected sand, scrawling the avatar of a boy with a stick walking upon the earth.
“Curiosity, a satiation of my stilled bones.” His bared teeth bit through the crescent projection of earth, dispersing it. “When you fall, when you falter, I shall be there to punish you. I will show you strength; will empower you in ways beyond your imagining.” His maw chomped at the last lingering figure of Kechua, rending it in half. The hewn figure made a silent scream before dissolving into the winds.
“Four spirits sought to guide me, but you’re the one I got,” Kechua grumbled, watching the dust dissipate into the wind.
“Three. The others would show you a foolish game, or a coddling guidance at best, neither destined for greatness or might. My guidance is that which will lead you to prosperity here, and no other.” Sharpened teeth grinned smugly at him. “You are, and have always been, my pupil.”
No name slipped. No hint was given at the identity of the other voices. Perhaps knowing them would have let him reach to them in the dreaming world. “What are they?” Kechua asked, discarding subtlety. “What are their names? What skins do they wear?”
“Suffice yourself on me, little boy.” Wolf’s grin closed into a derisive snarl. “I am much greater than any of your small pantheon.”
Kechua scowled, yet surrendered for the moment.
“So angry, little one, but I will satisfy you perhaps.” There was a rumbling chuckle from the creature, vibrating deep in the earth below him. “You see the wastes with your own eyes, yet your first question is of my identity?”
“I thought you were watching and listening?” Kechua shrugged. “I was prepared for this. Wasn’t that the point all along?”
“And even in this, you feel no fear?” Wolf looked at him with an oddly sincere curiosity.
“If you really had watched over me, you would have seen me struggle and grow. I tried so hard to earn real guidance from your kind, but I guess you were never really watching?” He sighed. A flimsy buzzing nipped at him from below, hovering in the earth like some digging mosquito. It fluttered away, but
he could reach out to hear it. It was almost musical; almost a hum.
“You claim to know me, but you have to ask me about what I can see and feel?” He glanced at Wolf.
“I knew you before you were born,” Wolf snarled. “I know the Sphere you reside in, but even Xatl never truly probed the expression of your sight, did he? I watched a little boy lost in rhythms, lapped at you while you were immersed in the undertow of fear, and saw you trying to run in place as if that would take you away from it all.”
“It’s not as simple as a song; not as trivial as a rhythm,” Kechua said. “It is the sound of a thousand voices singing in whispers. A chorus of infinite arrays of differences below. The living layer, the sleeping layer, the living lifeblood of the world, and the deepest pits. I couldn’t describe for you a single section of the earth below us, but I can see the vagueness instilled in the larger whole.” He took his eyes off the ground and met a look of sincere curiosity on the creature’s face. The look passed with a moment, and a shaking gesture banished the alien face of Wolf.
“Even now, there is something.” Kechua nodded sternly. “The living layer is asleep, the sleeping layer dreams as it ever did, and the lifeblood below seems hushed and slowed.”
“If anything, though . . . ” The boy stood, allowing the rhythm to pass into his heart, severing the connection and feeling it through the soft soles of his shoes. “If anything, it’s like the static is gone. Instead of a roaring waterfall, it’s a collection of quiet springs. I can feel out further than I’ve been able to before; feel deeper in the earth without even focusing that hard.” He breathed in and savored the connected feeling, the quick air chilling his throat. A flicker of blackness washed over his perceptions, as if for the briefest moment he had drifted into the dreaming world, swallowed by the novel rhythm around him. He shot up and away from the feeling, trying to hide the jittery nervousness of that moment’s touch.
Kechua shook the clinging silt from his hand. “Spent too long here,” he announced, mounting his pack upon his back.
CHAPTER 5:
The Lost
The footsteps of the gas boy ended as abruptly as the paths of the other two. Another swirled crater punctuated the final drumbeat of the unseen stranger’s flight. He cried out in exhausted surprise.
He poked at the lingering memory of the Aspect claiming the poor man, being so bold as to stab into some of the tainted sand with the staff. Humming flowed through the staff, the song in the soil, but the feeling of the creature leaving was faint and in the past.
Kechua turned from the crater, trying to place the path the singer had moved onto, and took a single step away. He watched his leg, careful to not put too much force into the step. He paced again, only to have a sputter of the red sand cough upwards, and a tendril wrapped around his left leg.
Wolf leaned onto his back, claws gripping flesh, hot breath against his ear. “Oops.” The creature chuckled, giving a playful nip at the lobe, tearing it slightly and retracting beyond Kechua’s sight.
The tendril coiled around his leg, barbed needles piercing the cloth of his pants to keep the vine anchored as it carefully slithered its way up like a folding caterpillar. Kechua drew the metal knife, but he held it in wait, his heart throbbing with justified fire. He didn’t squirm or struggle. It coiled upwards, and he tugged only to keep his leg above the earth and judge how much purchase he bought with the piercing pain.
The hum closed in, muffled under the earth. The mosquito tone grew into a buzzing song, complete with a sonorous joy woven into it. “Tasty, tasty. All mine now. Come to give!” the sing-song voice chanted below.
He gave a careful pull of his leg to test the strength of the grip, only to have the creature respond with twice as much force, dragging his leg half into the soil. He slashed at the vine where his leg remained above the sands, just below his hip, and the thing shriveled back with a mild curse. The vine slapped onto his hand as he attempted to free more of his leg, but it snapped easily when he reeled back. Droplets of red dribbled from his thorn-bitten arm, splashing onto the hungry earth.
The ivy bit into his other leg, nibbling at the top of his foot and joyously tugging with a grunting punctuation of its hum. He stabbed at the coils and into the sand, where the nipping pain betrayed the ivy’s grip, but he still sank.
The stinging coil ripped into his cheek, a bite from a third vine making its way up his backpack in secret. He sliced at it in futility, not wanting to hit anything within the pack, and froze in place as a newcomer arrived. A bloom of the creature snaked its way into his sight. An ending stalk of black-barbed teeth set upon squirming earthen worms, half lodged into a glossy flower. The tendrils lapped at his eye, the song merrily continuing from below. “Hello, hello, dear tasty boy! So long, too long, since we last met mouths.”
In a desperate motion, Kechua reached back for the staff. He was only able to swivel his shoulder enough to cut his hand upon the chill of the black knife. He pinched the blade and tossed it into the air, catching the obsidian blade in his weaker hand. He stabbed the investigating bloom through the back of its ‘neck’ and nicked his forehead as a burst of silver sand yawned forth from the creature’s wound.
A shudder wound over the ivy, and the stalk of the wounded face shivered and fell as if deflating from the pouring silver. He tore free of the clinging ivy on his cheek and the staff replaced the two knives in his hands. He lunged forward, gaining his legs back in the frenzy, but the creature held onto his ankle and twisted with a firm crack. He whirled around with a helping strike of the staff against the sands, managing to land on his legs. He tugged at the thick base of the ivy and resorted to a quick and careless slash of the black knife to free his leg. The cut caught the top of his already throbbing foot, spattering a red line across the brown and silver sand. Little sprouts of green and black dotted up to lap at the pools before slipping under the earth.
“A gift for me. So, kind.” A probing tendril wrapped around the staff as he slashed, having locked it around his left arm for support in his efforts. To his surprise, the staff lurched and twisted, and he leapt backwards with the full strength of his remaining leg. Landing in the padded divot, he shed his pack, his pants peppered with holes and dashed with lines of red and silver. More tendrils poked from the soil outside the crater to lash out again, aiming for his feet.
Locking the wrapped staff under his arms, he stabbed at the stems of the two that returned for his legs. The song sputtered a moment.
“Owie, ow! Cruel and tuggy, sting and hurts,” the thing whimpered below. The reaching vies withered and burst into silvered sand, leaving a decorating spiral of raw cut.
He lurched back, both hands on the staff, twisting as it gave a rumbling growl. The pricks on his legs split further, pouring onto the sand and mixing into wet, red clay. He pulled like a fisherman, reeling back, and feeling the pounding of his heart in his chest. The thing whimpered, complained, and muttered angrily, but the hum came closer. The vine grew thick around the staff, enough that branches with tiny mouths were along for the ride, wrapped and held helplessly in a tiny mewling chorus. They reached for his arms, getting a few nibbles before the staff coiled them in the reel.
The drawing ivy became thick as his arm, and he needed to lean back with his full weight just to make any further pull. A lifetime of rocks, running, and measured blows against a giant was not enough to stoke his body, and he felt his will and endurance slide. His heart pounded fiercer, abandoning the rhythms, and moved his body on raw passion; on hunger for so close a prize.
The sand stirred and rumbled. Red silt coughed up in an obscuring cloud, and the song left the earth to come into the air.
“Here I am, just for you, tasty boy. What now? What can you do, my delicious one?” A swarm of larger mouths burst from the red cloud, the spined worms thicker than his fingers, each bloom larger than his head. Yet, Kechua smiled.
In one motion, he yanked back on the coiled ivy to embrace the counterpull of the creature’s demonstration
of power. He launched into the cloud, slicing through the stem not whirled on the staff, and a cloud of silver burst out as red dust assaulted his eyes.
He landed on a hard surface and ran as best he could, using the staff as a third leg to balance his swelling and complaining foot. Even through the clumsy and careless pace, he felt a glimmer of the creature’s rhythm below him; felt its dimensions and strength.
“Tasty blood, so sweet; so near, all upon my skin!” The thing laughed, the searching mouths shooting after him, blind in the cloud. He spared a jump upwards as one of the tendrils tried to strike him. He answered with the staff, with all his weight, onto the surface below.
“Ouch, ouch, and ouch again! Too much ouch for even a tasty boy,” the thing whined, tendrils striking at him in unison again. He leapt upwards, staff ready.
Yet he struck dirt, not the hard surface. The red cloud shivered down like quivering snow, and one remaining set of the mouths cocked itself curiously at him, its tendril hunched but withdrawing into the sand. He swung desperately with the staff, hoping to wind it again, but it shivered away with a giggle.
“A treat for another day.” The tendril slithered down and disappeared, the hum fading away.
“No! Come back! Fight me!” Kechua screamed, tearing at the earth. He struck at it with the staff in useless rage, only serving to give a farewell of dirt to follow the fading song. He tried rising to his feet but was swallowed by the sand, his pants gulping soil that grated against his jabbed and bleeding legs.
In the end, he writhed back to the crater and slumped against the pack, arms trembling and legs slothful, enraged with burning.
Drinking was hard, a rattling rock in his throat nearly choking him with every desperate gulp. The berries helped to dissolve it.
