Eloy's Legacy

by Kara Timmins

  “You okay?” She didn’t look at him, her attention still on the shadows.

  Sometimes Eloy wasn’t entirely convinced that her perception wasn’t a little bit of magic. “I’m going to see how far away we are.”

  She pointed south, into the dark of the forest. “There’s a tree a little that way that should be strong enough to hold you, and tall enough to see from. It’s not far. Don’t walk more than twenty strides.”

  Eloy fanned the dwindling embers of the fire and threw a few more sticks on it. A small bloom of orange light blossomed in the center.

  “I won’t go farther than I can see the flame,” Eloy said. “I’ll call out if I need help.”

  “Keep an eye out for the spiders, will you? They come at you fast.”

  “I was trying to forget they exist.”

  The tree was exactly twenty strides away from the camp. Eloy poked at the vines wrapping around the trunk with the tip of his sword, then tapped it with the flat of the blade. Nothing moved or jumped out. He put his sword back in its sheath with a sigh.

  He scaled the tree one cautious and calculated grip after another. Once at the top, the world opened to him in a flood of fresh air. The sky was a dusty blue. Night still had a grip on the forest, but morning was just opening its eyes above.

  The black stone was just where it had been the last time Eloy saw it, waiting for him. It looked just as far away as before. The green of the forest wrapped around its base like a wreath. The gray clouds churned and writhed like a pit of snakes, and the air around the pillar looked smudged with rain streaked against the sky. So far, the rain was always falling there, but as far as Eloy could tell, there wasn’t anything growing underneath the cloud.

  The morning was quiet, the kind Neasa liked so much, and Eloy felt adrift in a sea of green. A sadness took him like a wave, a sadness that came with the companion of frustration. How many times in this quest would he have to feel so small? Was there no end to the ways this promise and this world would humble him?

  He was tired. Tired of the walking, the not knowing, the guessing. Hoping for the best wasn’t enough to keep the terrible things at bay. He knew that. Goodwin had taught him that.

  Sitting in the branches of the treetop, Eloy lost himself to a sense he tried to avoid: he wanted to stop. He didn’t want to feel like a ship on the sea anymore, just hoping the storm would spare him. He let himself imagine turning around, building a ship, and going home.

  Then he let the fantasy go.

  The end of his journey was still far away, maybe even farther than he could imagine. But it was close enough to see. Reaching the goal, the dream he had held for so long, was there, right there, and he was going to get to it. He was going to get his answers. He was going to take what was promised.

  27

  The others were all awake by the time Eloy made it back to their camp.

  “Are you okay?” Neasa asked.

  “Yeah,” Eloy said as he crouched to pack up his things. “I’m good now.”

  “How does it look from up there?” she asked.

  “The same. It doesn’t look like we’ve gotten much closer, but I don’t see anything ahead that could be another canyon, so at least there’s that. If we keep heading the way we’re going, we should reach it.”

  “It’s about time I asked,” Niall said. “Reach what, exactly? What are we in this forest for, anyways?”

  “We’re trying to reach what looks like a monolith of black rock,” Eloy said.

  “And why are we trying to do that?” Niall asked.

  “Something I’m looking for is there.”

  “Do I have to keep asking questions,” Niall said, “or can you just go ahead and assume I’m going to follow up with each of your vague statements with a question?”

  “There’s treasure there,” Eloy said. “I don’t know what kind.”

  “And are you planning on sharing this treasure?” Oisin asked.

  Eloy stood up and draped his bags over his shoulders. “If you two can build a ship and get us and the treasure back to Oppo, then yes. Without a doubt.”

  “Then let’s go,” Niall said. “The faster we move, the faster we can see what we’ve got over there.”

  Eloy tried to read how Neasa and Malatic felt about Oisin and Niall knowing the truth, but Neasa gave no indication of her thoughts and Malatic just looked distracted.

  Niall and Oisin were already walking ahead. Telling them had been the right thing to do. They were risking their lives, and they should know why.

  “Neasa,” Malatic said, “Do you have anything in that bag for head pain?”

  “Ah,” Neasa said. “Coming for the precious contents of my bag so soon?”

  “I humbly fall on my sword and ask for forgiveness for ever mocking its value.” Malatic said with a fatigued slowness.

  Neasa stopped smiling. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” Malatic said, “I, you know, slept on a rock and my head is sore.”

  Neasa swung her bag to her front and started rummaging around. “I have something. Here.” She handed Malatic a dried leaf the size of a fingernail. “It’ll fall apart in your mouth. Don’t chew it. Just let it sit on your tongue.”

  “Thank you.” Malatic took the leaf and kissed Neasa on her cheek before trotting after Niall and Oisin.

  “You don’t have to look so embarrassed,” Eloy said. “After all our time together, I’ve seen you in pretty much every state. I don’t know why you seem shamed by caring about Malatic.”

  Neasa and Eloy followed the others, walking side by side.

  “It’s just strange,” Neasa said. “I didn’t expect it. If anything, it mostly feels inconvenient. It’s not . . . rational.”

  Eloy smiled. “I don’t think it ever is.”

  28

  Eloy lost track of how long they’d been traveling after twenty-three days. The disconnect had started with a simple second-guess: had it been twenty-two days or twenty-three? Maybe it had only been twenty.

  He lost hold of time completely after that.

  The creatures of the forest broke up the monotony of the consistent beat of their footfall from time to time, whether the distraction was something swinging through the treetops or darting across their path, but there hadn’t been any sign of a real threat since before they crossed the canyon. Neasa had been right: the creatures were different on this side of the gap, but that didn’t stop them from being vigilant.

  Where Eloy used to measure time in days, he now measured it through a growing shift between the two halves of his group. Neasa and Malatic were becoming slower and quieter. Malatic took every opportunity to sleep that he could. Gone were the quips Eloy had grown to expect.

  “Do you feel okay?” Neasa had asked Malatic a few days after he’d asked for help with his headache.

  “I feel as good as any man lost in a muggy forest has any right to feel,” Malatic said.

  She asked again a few days later.

  “I’m tired,” Malatic said. “You should carry me the rest of the way.”

  She stopped asking and started assessing. When she wasn’t watching the forest, she was scanning Malatic, searching for something.

  Oisin and Niall seemed unencumbered by any of the internal stresses that seemed to be weighing on Neasa and Malatic. The brothers often walked far ahead, lost in their songs:

  “The serpent of the wild blue deep

  would call from the depths for me,

  caw for the rest,

  croon to the best,

  sing for me to bend and see.

  The monster slithers and waits,

  as it hooks and baits,

  The meat of the man, tasty!”

  Niall and Oisin sang songs Eloy remembered hearing on the Siobhan, where the chants had been little more than background noise. The sing-song words
took on a new, eerie life in the mismatched settings.

  Eloy didn’t mind it, though. The music was something to keep his mind from straying to the darker parts of his worries or memories.

  And it reminded him a little bit of Critiko. Eloy thought back to the first time he’d heard Critiko singing, in the middle of a different kind of forest. Eloy wondered if Neasa had made the same connection and if that was part of the cause of her growing silence.

  “The forest is changing,” Neasa said one evening.

  Eloy hadn’t heard her speak all day, and hearing it jolted him away from his wandering thoughts. “Changing how?”

  “It’s getting wetter,” Neasa said. “There’s more give to the soil. These leaves here . . .” She walked a few strides and crouched to point at a round purple-lined leaf growing out of a vine. “This looks like a bog leaf. The change in the soil tells me it probably is.”

  “Great,” Malatic said. “Walking through a wetland worked out for us so well last time.”

  Eloy wasn’t aware the sting of the comment had shown through his face.

  Malatic seemed to see it. “Sorry.”

  “You’re right to be disappointed,” Neasa said to Malatic. “It’s not good. It’ll slow us down, and we’ll have to look out for different threats.”

  Neasa stood up and scanned the area, looking for something specific. “Here.” She walked over to a plant with thick blades of grass at its base that fanned out into wide leaves. The leaves sagged at the ends and curved back in on themselves, creating cups. The waxy surfaces made droplets of water roll down their centers and into the cups. Eloy knew the plant well. They’d used them for fresh water since Neasa first pointed them out after crossing the canyon. This time, she snapped two of the leaves off at their base and handed them to Eloy.

  “Everyone should keep two of these just in case I’m right,” Neasa said. “If things get as wet as I think it’s about to, we might be walking in it for a while. These’ll keep our feet dry.”

  She stripped the plant of all of its leaves and handed two to each of her four companions before folding the last two into her own bag.

  “Hopefully I’m wrong,” she said.

  She wasn’t.

  29

  They didn’t start seeing real signs of change until the next day. It started with a slight dip in the ground, and Eloy’s nerves prickled when he heard Neasa curse to herself.

  As the ground got muddier, the bugs got worse. There were no more songs from Oisin and Niall. In their place were grumbles, curses, and slaps at the biting and buzzing insects. The land of glowing gnats was far behind them. Their kin in the bog were hungry.

  The five wrapped their feet in the waxy leaves, just like Neasa said for them to do. Already, Eloy noticed the white, soggy skin starting to form on his otherwise tan feet.

  “You got anything for these damn bugs?” Niall squeezed at a pinch of the skin on his forearm, causing the bug feeding there to pop in a small splat of blood.

  Neasa scratched at her neck. “No, and believe me, I’ve been keeping an eye out. It’s too risky to take something I’m not totally sure about and wipe it on our skin and into open wounds. Even if they are the size of a bug bite.”

  “Well, you just keep looking out,” Niall said.

  After a few more days, the water was at their ankles, and they had things other than bugs to worry about, things that might live under the surface. Every splash or gurgle in their periphery put them on edge. They moved close to one another, and spent more time looking down than up. A few times, Eloy saw flashes of something sliding around in the muck, something slick and armored with scales, but never so close that he could assess it completely. Much like what was beneath the membrane of the ocean surface, what lived under the water in the bog was a mystery.

  Neasa stopped at a soggy and decrepit fallen tree. Half of its girth was underwater, and gloppy clumps of algae stuck to the sides and fanned out around it. “We should stop here for the rest of the day.”

  The algae clung to their legs like the stringy inside of a squash.

  Everything about the fallen tree and the things growing in and around it reeked of stagnation and rot.

  Eloy knew the alternative, if it could even be considered that. The fallen tree was a lot of things, but it had two valuable characteristics: the girth was big enough for all five to sit or recline, and the surface was dry.

  They were stopping early, but the bigger fallen trees were few and far between in the bog, and Eloy was more than willing to sacrifice the rest of the day of travel for a dry place to rest.

  As soon as Eloy put his hand on the damp bark, a black beetle scurried across his hand, its blackness so stark it made the brown of his skin look almost pale. He didn’t react. Noting his lack of motivation to flick the insect away somehow made him feel even more tired.

  Once hoisted up, Eloy looked around at the cracks and crevices for signs of danger. He saw a few abandoned spiderwebs. Some were blowing in the soft breeze like tiny silk garments on a drying line. Eloy walked to the far side of the tree, the tapered end that had once reached closest to the sky, and sat down harder than he had anticipated.

  Neasa did a more thorough inspection of their new island camp and seemed to come to the same conclusion as Eloy. The fallen tree wasn’t going to be comfortable or pleasant, but there didn’t seem to be anything dangerous.

  Oisin, Niall, and Neasa rummaged around their bags and found morsels of food. The salted fish from the beach was long gone, but Neasa had managed to find a few things that kept them going. But those were running out too, and she had yet to find anything in the bog that she was sure was safe.

  She held out a withered lump of fruit to Malatic. His eyes were already closed as he cradled his chin in his cupped hands, his elbows digging into the thighs of his crossed legs.

  “Here,” Neasa said.

  Malatic opened his eyes, recognizing the tone she reserved only for him. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You haven’t eaten much today,” Neasa said.

  “Then there’s more for you.” Malatic closed his eyelids again.

  “Should we make a fire?” Oisin suggested.

  “Make a fire?” Niall said. “We’re on a dead tree.”

  “It should be okay, actually,” Neasa said. “The wood is pretty soggy. It shouldn’t catch. If you’re okay with the bugs it will attract, I’ll build it. Everyone want a fire?”

  “Sure,” Eloy said. It had been a few days since they’d been able to have one, and even if he had to deal with the biting bugs, he wanted the light.

  Malatic grunted in approval, his eyes still closed.

  “You all stay,” Neasa said. “I’ll get the supplies. There’s no need for all of us to tromp around.”

  Eloy was glad for the unanimous decision. Something coaxed at his anxiety. It had started earlier—he hadn’t even noticed it at first—but the nervous jitter in him was growing. Like a whisper from over his shoulder, urging him to notice something.

  As Neasa sloshed back over, Eloy grabbed the cause of his discomfort like a fish in a rapid. The world was too quiet. Silent.

  Neasa pulled herself up back onto the fallen tree and started setting up the little fire in the center of the group. Eloy scooted closer to her.

  “What’s going on here?” Eloy whispered.

  “Which part?” Neasa asked.

  “The quiet.”

  “Ah,” she said. “I don’t know. Things have been getting quieter as we’ve been moving through the marsh. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  Eloy nodded.

  She manipulated a clump of leaves and moss into a little mound. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” she sighed, “but in this case I think it might.”

  “What?” Eloy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Neasa said. “It’s part of the reaso
n why I haven’t said anything about it. I don’t have anything I can show you and say, ‘This is the problem. This is what we should be looking out for.’ It’s not like that. It’s just a feeling. Unsettled, like something is watching. Maybe with a hunter’s eye. I can’t say for sure.”

  “Your sense is just as real as a sign I can hold,” Eloy said. “All we can do is what we’ve been doing, which is to stay careful.”

  Neasa finished making her preparation for the evening fire and locked eyes with Eloy. “Thank you.”

  Eloy and Neasa spent the rest of the late afternoon looking around. Eloy noticed every bulbous red mushroom growing out of the side of the surrounding scrawny trees. His eyes caught every long-legged spider that flitted across the surface of the murky water. He focused on every plop of something meaty dropping into the bog in the distance. But nothing stuck out as being the cause of his nervousness.

  Malatic slept, and while Eloy didn’t know what was going on to cause the change in his friend, he had a twinge of jealousy at the ease with which Malatic achieved such deep rest in his uncomfortable position.

  Niall and Oisin reclined and murmured to one another. Eloy had no interest in joining their conversation, and they didn’t seem inclined to invite him in, either.

  Even they stopped talking as evening came. Malatic opened his eyes and sat up. There was something primal about what was going on. They didn’t need to say it. The thing in them in charge of survival was awake and pressing them for vigilance.

  Stay aware, it seemed to be saying. Stay ready.

  Neasa cracked the flint above her tiny pyre. The embers caught, creating a light to fight off the cloaking threat of darkness.

  They didn’t need to decide who would take which part of the night watch. All five were on self-appointed duty.

  The night didn’t usher in chirps, coos, and clicks like it had so many nights before in this strange forest. Eloy realized he’d been holding onto hope that it would.

  He had his sword on his lap with his hand on the hilt and was resigned to the idea that he would sit coiled and ready until the sun broke through again. The others seemed to have the same idea.