Smack, smack. Perfect, once again.
She would be here soon, and then she would die, perfectly. He was nothing if not a perfectionist.
Smack, smack!
~
Talbot was squatting on his haunches when Lucy returned. He had enough dignity not to question her red-rimmed eyes or the streaks of washed away grime that ran down her face in two straight lines. All he asked was, “Ready?”
She swallowed the last gulp of crying and nodded her affirmation.
“All right, put this boot on,” he said, holding out a right boot to her. The accompanying one, held in his left hand, was obviously for himself.
Made from thick, animal leather, the huge boot fit easily over her trainers. The leather, a dark chocolate brown, was covered in dense, knobbly ridges, like raindrops in concrete. She had no idea what creature possessed such tough skin; she just hoped she would never meet one.
“What is this for?” she asked.
“It’s a boot. It is for walking.”
She gave the faun a cold look until he smiled and continued,
“It is the right boot of a pair of seven-league boots. I have the other one.” He placed one hoof in the boot and stamped it down. “One step and you travel across seven leagues. This is about the only way we can cross the desert. Well, actually, we could hire a giant eagle to fly us, but they charge outrageous fares and only use worms as a currency.”
He lifted his booted leg and hopped in an ungainly manner to face the direction he wanted.
“Now, we want to take two steps to the edge of the desert. Be careful not to take a third step. Take a third step and who knows where you’ll end up. That’s why we have one boot each. If you’re going to take an extra step use the other foot.”
The spell in her chest rejoiced at her moving on with the quest. It bubbled with happiness: on with the quest—to the Falls of Wanda.
“Let’s go,” he said and stepped forward.
There was a vvvvvvrrrrrrruuuuuuuupppppppppppppp sound. For a split second, a Talbot shaped hole appeared in the air, like the ghost after image left by staring at the sun, and then he was gone.
Ready?
This isn’t going to hurt, is it? said faint-hearted Conscience.
She ignored him, braced herself and took a step.
~
Left on his own, Ravel Magi heard the two vvvvvvwwwwwwwhhhhhhhop’s of the seven-league boots as they disappeared. What now? He waited. Then he began to cry. The world was slowly dying around him; he could feel it fading. There was so much he wanted to say to that little girl—to explain to her. Even so, he was not allowed, and he cursed the fact that he was not allowed.
He wanted to take the burden away from her; it wasn’t fair to expect so much. It was done now. He was entangled, and he was cursed for it.
Cracking tears rolled down his cheeks, mixing with the tears that were already there. Tears and tears, tears and tears. Blood from the tears and salt water from the tears. Tears and tears, tears and tears. But which was which? Ah, that was the question.
He pondered for a moment, reflecting on everything he knew. He had lived for a long time and, at the same time, he was reborn with every blink. He had lived forever as far as he was concerned, and yet he could not remember the last second. It was a conundrum.
Shakespeare was wrong. The question was not: to be or not to be. The question was more fundamental than that.
The question was: which was which? Tears and tears, tears and tears. How could he tell?
Ah yes, the answer was both obvious and unsatisfactory at the same instant. It answered all the questions, and it answered none of them. And he knew that Lucy would have to find it before the end.
Three in one—which was which? Ah! So much pain, so many sacrifices, such suffering.
He cried. Cried for the fact that he could no longer help. Her adventure went on, but he was no longer a part of it. Did he even exist at all, a discarded character on the back of a page in a book?
The tears mixed with the tears, forming a bloody, salt water mess, which streaked across his face like a witch’s brew.
The world was fading.
“Come, pretty humming-birds, come down to see me,” he shouted at the vultures.
The carrion birds, like black rain clouds, sank lower and lower on the thermals. Great, expansive vultures as broad as his vision circled down and down.
Ravel Magi had his answer. He laughed. Gasping, choking, death rattles of laughter ejaculated from his body. The pure joy of it, an answer, finally, unutterable pleasure.
The first vulture landed on his skinny, cadaverous body, its talons ripping great, gaping holes in his chest. Its curved beak was yellow with a red tip. Its bald head, the pinkish colour of diseased flesh. Stench radiated from the filthy carrion eater in nauseating waves. It gave him a pitiless, avian stare and made a choice. It changed, transmuted, folding in on itself, distorting space and time and reality. Its head retracted into its body, becoming a pulsating feathered ball. Potential crackled from it in blue, arcing, Tesla-sparks.
The feathers burst apart as it sat on Ravel Magi’s chest. It became a raven, black and ugly like a picked scab.
“It’s all ravens and writing desks, Lucy,” he chortled, as death jabbed and pecked at his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all ravens and writing desks.”
~
The first step nearly knocked Lucy over. The wind in her ears was a hurricane of noise and pressure. The G forces on her body squished her internal organs into pate. She felt the need to urinate as the squeezing excesses milked her bladder.
Then, she was standing in the desert with Talbot by her side. The sand stretched out in every direction, a flat arid wasteland of nothingness. No shack, no trees, no water, just horizon all around in a vista as empty as a blank page.
“It’s all right; I’ve got you,” said Talbot as he caught hold of her arm.
She could feel Conscience squirm, but he kept his mouth shut.
She stepped forward again before her stomach had time to tell her she was going to throw up.
Vvvvvvvvvvvwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhop.
She did throw up a little pile of stomach contents, weevil bits and cracker.
She looked up. She still stood in the desert, but the edge was in sight. The desert’s end stopped in an unnaturally straight line matching its beginnings. At its edge a rich, verdant, deciduous forest sprouted as if the landscape were a patchwork quilt. The oak and birch trees reminded Lucy of the ones back home in England. England where her mother must be waiting and worrying and…
The spell in her chest rumbled its disapproval of unquest matters: on with the quest—forget about that—on—on to the Falls of Wanda.
Talbot was beside her. He stoically ignored the pool of vomit.
“Ah, there it is, the Forest of Angbah. On the other side of it is the market town of Marsh. We’d better take the boots off.”
“Can’t we just use them to get straight to Marsh or even better, straight to these Falls of Wanda?” asked Lucy. The faster the quest was over the sooner she’d be rid of the spell in her chest.
“No, you’d splat into a tree, or a rock, or something like that. You can only use them in broad, flat country like a desert where you can’t run into anything. These boots just make you travel fast; they don’t make you pass through things,” said the faun as he undid his boot.
See, said Conscience, I told you that.
Told me what?
I told you physics was the same and so is chemistry. It’s just the biology that’s wacky here. You can’t run through things, but you can have birds eating nothing.
“Follow me,” said Talbot. He hopped with an ungainly stride to the edge of the desert.
Lucy followed suit, sat down and undid her boot.
Talbot took it from her and put both into a small, wooden hutch at the desert’s edge. On top of the hutch was a little painted sign, which read: Seven League boots. Two steps to cartwheel. Please replace aft
er use.
They wandered along a sparse dirt track, which snaked through the tall tree trunks. The world was alive with rustling sounds. Small birds sang from their nests, leaves dropped from branches, and Talbot’s hooves clopped on the hard dirt.
“This is where I was born,” said Talbot, indicating the woodland.
“You were born in this forest?”
“Yes,” he said, “not very far from here, I think.”
“Do you want to find the place? You know, go and see your parents?”
“No, why would I want to do that?”
“Don’t you get on with your mother and father?”
Lucy, he’s a faun, said Conscience, they probably don’t work in the same way humans do. Remember, biology is strange here, maybe he was hatched from an egg, or grew out of a painting, or something. You don’t know anything about him.
“We fauns don’t have the social groups you humans have,” said the faun as they wandered through the forest. “We live in herds. You have one male and lots of females. Once the young are old enough they leave the herd. If they are a girl they join another male’s herd; if they are a boy, they try to start their own.”
See I told you it would be weird.
It’s not that weird. It’s like the deer back in my world.
Yes, but it’s deer that can talk to each other and have feelings—a whole society based on a harem situation? I doubt that can work for a large population.
Some humans do it, she answered, Mormons and some Islamic groups believe in polygamy.
Yes, but most of you don’t. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m saying on the whole, humans don’t do it.
“What are you doing here? Why are you on your own?” she asked.
“I was earning riches to attract some females—to try to impress them.”
“Ooooh,” she sighed, “what were you trying to earn: gold, rubies?”
She tried to think of all the wondrous things that could be used as a currency in a world full of magic.
“Gold? Rubies? Why would I want those?” asked the faun in confusion. “No, no, I was trying to earn flints.”
I told you—weird, weird, weird.
“Your currency is flints?” asked Lucy incredulously as the two of them entered a small glade of trees.
“Yes. Why would you want gold? You can’t eat it. You can’t use it. Flints make fire to cook things, to keep away creatures at night. Fire is the mark of civilization, and flints are the means of fire. Let the dragons keep and hoard their gold and jewels. Who cares?”
“Well, it seems stupid to me to have a currency based on flints,” she said.
She turned to face the faun, attempting to confront him on the issue. As she did, the throwing knife zipped past her neck, cutting the amethyst key from its leather thong—and her throat.
Chapter 9 Attacked in The Woods
Come, come you soft-mouthed rabbit,
come to the edge of my blade.
Your blood is mine; your life is over;
all your friends stopped running today.
From “The Song of the Ega,”
Year After Ice 19399
“Retreat is not necessarily defeat. Retreat does, however, strongly smack of defeat.”
General Thrax, Year After Ice 11958
Lucy touched the ragged cut at her neck. The crinkled skin at the edges felt like an opened letter. A hot, sticky liquid like runny jam blubbed over her fingers. The world was all heat to her—a fiery, flashing, inner and outer blood flush.
Her focus was infinite, and yet, she couldn’t seem to relate to anything. It was as if she were in a dream. She noticed the knife still reverberating in the bow of a tree. She pulled her hand away from her throat and stared at the blood forming a hoarfrost gore spider-web between her fingers. The world went runny at the edges like a knifed fried egg. All she could hear screaming in her head, was Conscience.
Oh God! Oh God! You’re hurt! What’s going to happen? What will happen to me if you die? Where will I go? I don’t want to die!
A black coffee darkness dribbled and percolated into the world’s corners. Nothing mattered, she had failed. The world was far away. The gash didn’t even hurt.
She stared down to see her own blood running in sheets down her front. The amethyst key lay at her feet in a spreading pool of rusty, iron-coloured blood, a small purple plum island in a growing, claret sea.
Talbot dived, hitting her about the midriff and knocking her to the ground. His gruff beard scratched her face, and she could smell his earthy, goat sweat as he clutched her to his chest.
The second knife zipped over their heads at the height her heart had been.
Talbot grabbed her by the shoulders, and they rolled into a bramble thicket at the clearing’s edge.
Pain returned to her throat in a sharp line of searing agony. The world’s colours sprang back from the faded pastels they had been a moment ago.
The faun lay on her pressing her to the ground, his flesh against her blood-soaked clothes. His hands were at her throat, almost cutting off the air in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
“I think that’s the Ega,” he gasped. “The damned Ega is after you!”
The Ega? Conscience squeaked.
Who’s the Ega? she asked.
The greatest hunter ever born. Come you widows weep and mourn. The Ega came in from the storm, to kill whilst you were sleeping, recited Conscience. If he’s after you, we’re as good as dead.
Lucy didn’t feel very dead; she seemed more alive now than ever before. The world was filled to overflowing with bright colours and sharp sounds. The pain in her neck scorched, like a fire brand, but it felt very real.
The calouses on Talbot’s fingers scratched her skin as he tried to staunch the arterial blood flow. It seemed to be slowing—stopping and clotting.
That shouldn’t be happening. If her throat was cut as badly as she thought, then she should be bleeding to death, not clotting. She should be fading, as she had been, not attentive to the world of colours and senses. She should be shutting down, instead she was more alive than usual. What was going on?
“What did you do?” she croaked at the faun, as he took his hand away from her throat.
“I haven’t done anything. It just stopped bleeding on its own.”
That wasn’t normal. Throats didn’t stop bleeding once they were cut. The ragged tear was a gaping chasm. It should be pumping her blood in great spurting gouts. It shouldn’t just clot. She should be dead.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Run away!
“Come on, we have to get going,” said Talbot, echoing Conscience’s words. “This is not a place to make a stand against the Ega. I’ll have to stitch that wound at some point, but for now, we’ve got to go. Try not to reopen it.”
Yes, don’t open it up again. Retreat is the better part of valour, as they say. So, let’s make like a tree… Conscience gibbered in terror.
Talbot was already crawling through the dense brush, concealed by a thick cover of bracken, cycads and ferns.
Lucy crawled after him but stopped almost immediately as the spell in her chest went into overdrive, bounding up and down on her rib cage like an angry genie wishing to be set free. The key—the key—we need the key.
The key? She reached to her throat and found only her bare skin and a gaping, sucking wound. The key was still in the clearing in the puddle of her blood.
She watched, with growing horror, as her hand reached out from her dense brush cover. Like a blind spider, her hand groped wildly, snatching at twigs and leaf litter. The spell in her chest beat out a steady rhythm: must have it—we must have it—we must have it—have to use it—have to have it—must use it.
Her whole body lurched forward as the spell forced her to make a grab at the pendant. She broke cover pulled by the spell to the clearing’s centre.
Her fingers closed around the amethyst key with a soft squish. The blood squirted between her f
ingers, and she lifted the key out of the puddle. The spell fell away in her chest, back to its normal, quotidian rhythm—use the key—on with the quest—to the Falls of Wanda.
Lucy found herself left alone in the clearing after the hijacking of her body. She’d been turned around by the episode. Which way was Talbot? Where was the killer? She was exposed. Her heart thumped faster. Adrenaline stampeded through her veins. Totally exposed. She imagined the Ega taking aim at her heart.
We’re out! We’re out! Get back. Hide! Run! Conscience gibbered in terror.
“Lucy!” cried the faun. His hand shot out from a thicket.
She grabbed hold of it, and he hauled her through the foliage.
Another knife stabbed the ground where she had been standing. Its blade glinted a wicked shine of pure malevolence.
Then they were running. Talbot took a small lead to show her the way through the dense trees and thick underbrush. They dodged dogwoods, circumvented cycads and avoided alders. She could hear the wizz-smack of a projectile. She didn’t have time to check what it was as it zipped past her shoulder and buried itself in a tree just in front of her.
~
The Ega was annoyed. The girl had escaped.
He couldn’t believe it. It was inconceivable! That amount of luck! He’d hit her in the throat, but she was still alive and now running away, actually running away.
Pulling his knife from the ground, he wiped the mud from its blade. Then he retrieved the two blades from the tree bow into which they had embedded. He shrugged the crossbow from his shoulders and cocked it. The girl could run, but she couldn’t get away.
The crossbow was a mighty weapon, made from oak, matured in ram’s blood and bound with heavy iron. Patterns of snakes, worked in gold, coiled up its body, entwining at the bolt end, with the bow arms cut into a dragon’s gaping maw.
He held a bolt in his hand for a moment to check its weight. He had wanted to use the throwing knife to end the child. It would have been neater. Cut the pendant from her throat, kill her and scare away the faun all at the same time. The only problem was that it hadn’t worked. The faun hadn’t run, the child was not dead, and she’d even had the presence of mind to pick up the cut pendant. So now, it would have to be a crossbow bolt in the back. An ignoble end, but an end none the less.
Ravens and Writing Desks: A Metaphysical Fantasy Page 9
