Eloy's Legacy

by Kara Timmins

  Neasa rummaged around in her bag and pulled out her small shell lantern. Eloy felt a twinge of nostalgia. That lantern had helped guide them through the forest of Valia, and it had kept them alive in the marshland against the Vaylars. He leaned over and pulled a lump of moss off the bark of the tree and handed it to Neasa.

  She took it and examined the wiry lump—her chin tight and pulled up in suspicion—and rolled the moss between her fingers before bringing it up to her nose.

  “I’m not sure if we should use this,” she said. “There’s a moss like this at home that smells similar, like star anise, and the smoke will kill you.”

  “I say no, then.” Malatic plucked the clump out of her hand and tossing it to the side.

  “Leaves, then?” Eloy asked.

  “Leaves should work,” Neasa said.

  Neasa mixed some dry leaves with a lump of animal fat and lit the lamp just as the forest dipped into full darkness. Eloy did the same in his shell lantern. He wanted to build a campfire, but the forest was too hot, and the area was too cramped. Their little flames were weak against the darkness. Things were moving, more than they had in the day, and Eloy had a feeling the lanterns wouldn’t have the same defense as they had in the forest of Valia.

  In fact, the fire seemed to be to be attracting creatures as opposed to repelling them. Bugs with long stick-like bodies and transparent wings fluttered around the light, dipping down to inspect and flying back up to circle the flames.

  Something started crunching its way toward them from their right. The intruder was lumbering and low to the ground. Eloy, Neasa, and Malatic held up their weapons, which hadn’t been sheathed since that morning. The creature moved unabashed into their little camp.

  It looked like a lizard, but its brown and green spotted skin was wet and sticky. Little cups at the end of its fingers stuck to the dry leaves as it continued to amble toward them. The animal was the size of wild dog. The thing started opening its mouth, a hiss coming from behind its sticky and rippling blob of a tongue.

  Malatic moved first. The wide end of his blade landed in between the yellow eyes of the slimy creature with a clack and a twang. The thing snapped its wide slit of a mouth shut and back-walked into the darkness.

  Neasa turned to Malatic, her mouth agape with a smile twitching at the corners. Her laughter melded with the other sounds of the night forest.

  “Didn’t like the look of that guy,” Malatic said. “Shifty eyes.”

  Neasa laughed again and leaned her back against Malatic’s chest.

  Eloy looked out into the forest, scanning for signs of another approaching animal. This jungle wasn’t as dark as the forest of Valia, and his eyes were beginning to adjust enough to see the outline of things. He looked in the direction they would continue toward as soon as light broke again and thought he saw something, the briefest flicker of twinkling starlight between trees. He tried to focus to see what it could be, but the light was always in his periphery.

  Maybe his eyes were seeing what they wanted to see. Man is a creature of light, fed and nurtured by it, and a body will search for and amplify what it hungers for. In all this darkness and unknown, he was certainly hungry for some illumination.

  15

  They didn’t talk about who would keep watch. All three spent most of the night awake, drifting only for small bouts of shallow rest, and never more than one at a time. Neasa kept the lantern going throughout the night, adding pinches of leaves for fuel when it started burning low. They didn’t speak, as if not talking would be enough rest for the day ahead.

  They started moving again when the black of night shifted to a subtle shade of morning gray. They walked at a cautious pace, but rarely stopped. Eloy had to remind himself to scan his surroundings instead of focusing on the terrain ahead. Sometimes he thought he could see a break in the trees, the place Neasa had seen from above, but each time the image slipped away.

  The arrival of evening that day made him want to scream, caught in a loop of endless trees. It defied the logic of distance; surely they should have reached the break by now. They should have reached it by at least midday. And if they hadn’t reached it, that meant the storm was going to take much longer than three days to get to. They were already out of time. He couldn’t say that out loud. He couldn’t even think it.

  Then he noticed a difference ahead. He focused on it until his eyes burned and blurred, waiting to see if hope slipped away again.

  “Looks like the trees are breaking up,” Malatic said.

  Eloy felt relief flood through his body, prickling his skin.

  Neasa started walking faster. “You’re right.”

  “I don’t hear water,” Eloy said. “So it isn’t a river.”

  “That’s probably a good thing,” Neasa said. “Dealing with unknown creatures in a forest is bad enough. Dealing with things living in a rushing river is worse, in my experience.”

  “If it isn’t water,” Malatic said, “what could it be?”

  The muggy air started clearing before they got to the edge, and the ever-present musk broke apart with whirls of fresh ocean air. Eloy huffed it, let himself be energized by it, used it to move faster. By the time they got to a clearer area, where the trees were more spread out, he started running. Part of him didn’t even realize he was doing it. He was lured forward by the unobstructed golden light ahead—a wall of light.

  The ground under his feet crunched against his footfall, the soft padding of leaves and moss giving way to pebbles and rock.

  He stopped in the light. Neasa and Malatic caught up as his vision adjusted to the sprawling image. Even as he was ready to take it all in, his mind was still making sense of it.

  “I didn’t think it could be this big,” Neasa said.

  The canyon was at least fifty strides wide from one side to the other. Eloy inched up to the side of the canyon and looked down. The trench was deep, at least ten times deeper than Eloy was tall. The edge wasn’t a complete drop to the bottom, but the descent was steep enough that they would have to move slowly and carefully if they wanted to get to the lowest point.

  And the marvel of the canyon wasn’t in its size alone. The amber light of the setting sun bore down on the wall face on the other side, amplifying the array of colors stacked in the stone, one upon the other. Ribbons of varying shades of brown, with thinner lines of black, stretched from one side to the other. The snaking river at the bottom was now little more than a trickle of the once dominating force that had been strong enough to cut such a commanding gouge into the earth and rock.

  The view was a wonder. The obstacle was a problem.

  “What do you want to do?” Malatic asked Eloy.

  Eloy kept staring. It would take a good part of a day just to get down to the bottom safely, and even then he didn’t know if they would be able to climb up the other side. He couldn’t turn back, but they were also out of time.

  “We’ll set up camp here for the night,” Neasa said. “It’s a little more open here, and being backed up against the canyon will help us keep a better eye on things. We’ll get better sleep tonight, and we can build a fire. Maybe we’ll know what to do with some rest.”

  Eloy felt a bit of the pressure lift. A little more time. He just had to think.

  “I’ll go collect some wood and look for something to eat while there’s still some light,” Neasa said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Malatic said. “Eloy, you coming?”

  Eloy sat on a rock near the edge of the canyon. “I’ll stay and keep an eye out.”

  “You got it,” Malatic said. “We won’t be long.”

  “Be careful,” Eloy called after them as they walked back into the forest.

  Neasa glanced back over her shoulder. “Always.”

  16

  The night was quiet next to the canyon, quieter than Eloy thought it could be with the forest so near. Th
e burbling sound of the little stream below was calming and, before long, Eloy was reclining on the rock, his mind absent of thought, wiped blank with fatigue. A nagging anxiety scratched at him, willing him to think of a solution. But just like the night before, his body sought rest.

  The gnats were back, or maybe they had never really left. They were so small, Eloy lost sight of them if the direction of light changed. He stopped trying to bat them away after a few minutes. It didn’t do anything to ward them off. He closed his eyes and accepted them as tiny companions. They didn’t hum or buzz. They weren’t a disturbance. With his eyes closed, Eloy forgot about them completely. If they landed on him, they were too light for him to notice.

  He started to doze, a luxury he didn’t have. Even if things seemed a little safer with the quiet and the space, they weren’t. He sat up and looked around. Evening was coming. The light on the rock face slipped away, the band of sun shrank from the bottom up.

  And then Eloy saw it again: the little lights in his periphery. But now he was sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks. They were more than just a few pinpricks of illumination. Now they were blinking all through the canyon. The more the light set, the more there were, and they were no longer just in the distance but blinking right in front of his eyes. The little swarming bugs bobbed their dance around his head, tiny lights blooming in the setting sun.

  Neasa had been wrong: these were nothing like the standard gnats of Valia.

  The insects seemed to be culminating in the canyon, perhaps drawn by the water below or maybe just each other, but together they were a spectacle from which Eloy didn’t want to look away. Eloy glanced over his shoulder, hoping Neasa and Malatic were on their way back so they could witness this too. How would he describe the magic of it? Like flakes of starlight? Even that didn’t seem adequate.

  When the lights shifted, he was worried they were moving on. But they weren’t.

  Little dots of light crowded in together, the other side of the canyon now a shadowed backdrop. Eloy focused on the pieces, trying to make sense of their formation. But it was only when he stopped focusing in on different parts, he was able to see the whole.

  He saw himself.

  Or at least an outline image of him, in light form. He stood up from the rock. The light version of him stood up too. The gnats were mimicking him. He held up a hand. The massive version of him rose its hand too. Eloy waved and, in a way, it felt like the little creatures were waving back at him. Saying hello.

  His laughter echoed through the canyon. He couldn’t help himself. He looked over his shoulder again, hoping this time Neasa and Malatic were on their way back. When he turned back to the canyon, the image had changed.

  There were more outlines in this image, and Eloy immediately recognized their forms. He saw himself again, and he was standing next to Malatic in front of the base of a large tree. Neasa was beginning her climb up the trunk.

  Seeing a moment from his life from a different perspective and without sound was unnerving. He watched as he and Malatic looked up and then jumped backward as the spider fell from above.

  The lights shuffled around again. As it came together, Eloy tried to remember what moment it could be, but it soon became clear that he wasn’t seeing an image of something he knew. There were too many people, forms he didn’t recognize.

  This image was more beautiful than the last. The little creatures to the left moved in waveform to give the appearance of ocean hitting the shore. The men seemed to be relaxing in the sand in very much the same way Eloy and the others from the Siobhan had when they landed. The ship portrayed with the lights was pulled in tighter to the shore than the Siobhan. The form of the front of the ship caught Eloy’s attention. He was looking at the Merrow, he was sure of it. What he was seeing was a moment captured, remembered somehow, from eighteen years ago.

  Eloy was looking at dead men. They were eating, laughing, sleeping, all in lights, all in memory.

  The image shuffled again. In the jungle this time, the group of about thirty men were walking single file through the trees. There hadn’t been thirty skulls on the beach. Something had happened to these men in the jungle at his back.

  He wished he could hear what the men were saying to each other as they moved. They seemed relaxed, far more than he and his companions earlier that day. Eloy was looking at them and their surroundings from the side, and so he saw things they didn’t see: the little rodents darting into holes, the reptiles lunging for the little animals in their retreat, and a few of the giant moths with their fern-like antennae rising and lowering their wings on the ground.

  He saw the mound of something in the foreground. Something crouching. Something waiting. Its back was rounded, its coarse hair rising and falling as it took deep breaths.

  The men moved on. The creature stood, and Eloy felt sick. It stood like a man, but it could never be confused for one. Its arms were too long, dangling down past its knees. The fingers were elongated too, as if something had taken hold of the appendages of a normal man and pulled it like gummy tree sap.

  There were no similarities between mankind and this thing’s face. Its features protruded out, rounded and bulbous, like a tumor. Eloy saw it in profile, glad that he couldn’t see any details as the animal pulled back its lips and bared its many teeth. The sharpest teeth, the canines, were enormous and looked dagger sharp on both the top and the bottom.

  Another creature of the same kind lowered itself down from the tree above the first. Eloy hadn’t noticed it there until it moved. The two creatures moved in behind the group of men.

  Eloy wanted to look away as the two predators made their move on the group. There were so many of the men and only two of the creatures, but the beasts were hunters and the men were from the sea. They fell quickly. Their mouths gaped soundlessly in re-creation of their slaughter. Eloy was grateful, now, that there wasn’t sound.

  Only one man seemed to fight with any kind of knowledge. His blade cut the arm of one of the creatures as it lunged at him, saving himself from being pulled into the thing’s gnashing teeth. It moved on to easier prey.

  The men were running, scattering away from each other. Eloy wanted to scream at them to stay together. They were better together than apart, but the moment was done. The man who had landed the cutting hit with his short sword looked around at the scattering others. He turned and ran deeper into the forest and out of the gnats’ image.

  There was something familiar about the man’s shape and movements, but Eloy couldn’t place it. It scratched at the forgotten corners of his mind, but the lights didn’t give detail to the faces of those they showed.

  The creatures were eating now, and Eloy turned his attention to the ground. He couldn’t watch anymore.

  When he looked up again, he saw that the image was different. It seemed brighter, somehow.

  The forms in the new image were two he recognized. He was looking at Neasa and Malatic. They weren’t searching or collecting supplies. Neasa was leaning against a fallen tree, her head tipped to one side as she listened to something Malatic was saying, something that made her laugh. Malatic leaned in and ran the braid draped over her shoulder through his hand, lowering his mouth to hers, her chin tilted up to meet it.

  Seeing them in the forest made Eloy feel intrusive, dirty for seeing something he wasn’t meant to see. He wished the lights would pick another scene. Shame made two patches of heat spring up from his cheeks. He moved to look away but saw something as his eyes were making their way to the ground. To the right of Neasa and Malatic, something shifted. Something familiar. Something Eloy had just seen.

  The creature stood up. It was slightly thinner than the ones that had attacked the men of the Merrow, but it had the same gangly limbs. It had the same protruding mouth. And then Eloy saw the second.

  He didn’t need to see any more. Eloy ran back toward where Neasa and Malatic had gone. He didn’t know when this imag
e had happened. Were the gnats showing something that had already taken place? Was Eloy already too late?

  “Neasa!” Eloy yelled as he dodged through the trees.

  He chanced a look over his shoulder to see the wall of light shrinking with every step. He thought he saw the two figures react and look off toward something.

  “Malatic!” Eloy shouted.

  He didn’t know where they were, and he didn’t know how far they’d gone. His beating heart, the product of the panic rushing through his body, made breathing difficult. It didn’t matter. Anything his body needed it would have to figure out, because he wasn’t going to slow down until he found his friends.

  “Eloy!” A voice, to his right.

  Eloy shifted his direction so quickly his foot gouged a mar in the underbrush down to the dirt.

  He couldn’t tell if Malatic or Neasa had called out to him; his perception of everything was too distorted. The details didn’t matter. The image he had seen in the canyon was from the present. He could still do something to help.

  His sense of direction became more unsure with every stride. Everything was a blur of green.

  A battle cry cut through the confusion. The voice was Malatic’s, and it sounded close. Eloy ran faster toward it.

  Finally, movement: Neasa and Malatic had their weapons out. The red of blood on Malatic was a shock of color against the green, even in the darkening forest.

  Eloy didn’t see the creatures at first, and he skidded to a stop three strides away from one. Their likenesses made from the little white lights weren’t enough to prepare Eloy for the horror of their detail.

  The two creatures were as green as the moss on the trees, and they reeked like rotting sea sludge. A depiction of their faces could never do reality justice. Their gaping mouths took up most of the space. Eloy started into their black eyes, barely visible over bulging jaws.