by Jeff Wheeler
After Wick had found a dead robin by the woodshop when he was five, his pa told him that all living creatures one day die. “You go to sleep and wake up in a far-off land,” Benn had said, “and everyone you ever loved is there.” His pa had never mentioned earthbodies or moonbodies or the Far Kingdom, though.
“Why haven’t you gone there, then, to the Far Kingdom, wherever it is?” Wick said.
“I can’t.”
Her head turned to the right and her eyes dropped as she brought her right hand out from behind her. The flesh—although not really flesh—was greenish-black and slimy, each finger like a fat, boneless slug.
Or tadpole.
Parin hid her deformed hand behind her. Wick saw shame in her silvery eyes.
“That’s what happens when you can’t go to the Far Kingdom,” she said. “All of you turns into that, and you wander around that way forever.”
Wick swallowed. “Is there anything you can do? Medicine or something?”
Parin smiled her sad smile. “Medicine can only help someone who’s alive. But my father is a . . . a sorcerer.” She whispered the word.
“He said he was an artist.”
“He is. He doesn’t make paintings or sculptures. He makes other things. Magical things. He made me something called an immanir. It’s like a bottle.”
“The tall black bottle!” said Wick.
She nodded. “It’s where I stay most of the time.”
“Where you stay? You mean inside it, like water or something?”
“Like that. The immanir is what keeps me from . . .” She looked down and to the right again, toward her greenish-black hand. “Being inside the bottle doesn’t stop it, but it does slow it down.”
Wick couldn’t imagine living inside a bottle, magic or not. Then again, the girl wasn’t really alive.
“Father found a spell to help me get to the Far Kingdom,” Parin said. “It’s very complicated and requires lots of elements, like ingredients. All of them are very rare, so it’s taken him almost thirty years to find them all. Now there’s only two elements left. One is why we’re here. Father says the Knuckles is one of the few places you can find it. Some kind of flower called a . . . dragon-something . . .”
“Dragon’s maw.” Wick hesitated, then added, “I found one last year, right after my grandma passed.”
This time when Parin smiled, it wasn’t sad. It was an ecstatic smile, and her body glimmered like actual moonlight.
“Really?” she said, beaming. “You truly found one? You know where it is?”
He nodded. “It was in the woods, not too far from here.”
“I would hug you if I could! Father will be so—”
The front door swung open, knocking Wick forward. He fell through Parin since he couldn’t collide with her. As he did, he felt the same warmth from before and tasted the blackberries and honey, but he also must have passed through Parin’s greenish-black hand. An icy spike stabbed at his chest, and the stench of a rotting animal carcass filled his nose. He could see the robin on the floor as he tumbled forward, exactly as he had found it when he was five: dead and crawling with ants that were eating away its feathers, its skin, its insides, itseyes.
He hit the floor; no dead bird was there. A hand grabbed the back of his neck and hauled him to his feet. The hand belonged to Valden Whitestrand.
“Father, he can help us!” said Parin. “He knows where a dragon’s maw is! He found one!”
“I heard as much,” said the sorcerer. “Is it true, boy? You can tell me where the sirrodel is?”
Wick wondered how long Valden had been listening at the door. Had he even gone out to look for the flower himself, or had he hid and waited, knowing Wick would come back to the cabin? Wick knew he had just been tricked by the sorcerer—and maybe the girl too—but Parin herself was no trick. He believed her, and if he could help her reach the Far Kingdom before her entire body turned into slimy tadpole skin, he would.
Wick breathed deeply, then said, “I can show you. It’s not far.”
“You can take me now?” said Valden.
Wick nodded.
Valden straightened up. “Let us be off, then. As for you, Parin, you know where you must go, only for a little while longer. Once we have the sirrodel seed, this misfortune will nearly be at an end.”
“Do I have to?” Parin said. “I could go with you. Surely it can’t hurt for me to—”
“We cannot risk it. We do not know the true nature of the blight on your hand. It could suddenly overtake you if you are not inside the immanir. You have been out today for too long already.”
Valden went into one of the cabin’s rooms and returned carrying the tall bottle. Away from the sun, the black glass gave off no colors, although it was still marvelous to behold. A work of art.
Valden pulled out the pearl stopper and extended the bottle to his daughter as if offering her a drink. “I love you, my dear. Now, in you go.”
“Thank you, Wick,” Parin said. “And if I don’t see you again, good-bye.”
“Bye, and you’re welcome,” Wick said. “I hope you get to the Far Kingdom, wherever it is. And I hope it’s wonderful.”
“It is,” said Valden.
Reluctantly, Parin extended her left hand, keeping her right hand behind her, and stuck her forefinger into the bottle. Her body shimmered, like moonlight rippling on a pond’s surface. Then she appeared to liquefy, her hair and face and body and clothes melting into a watery silver cloud that was drawn into the immanir like smoke going into a chimney instead of pouring out. Now, even without sunlight, the bottle began to shine with the same brilliant colors Wick had seen that morning.
Valden stoppered the bottle and took it back to the other room. When he returned, he said, “You’re the leader now, boy. Lead on!”
They left the cabin, crossed the dirt road, and headed into the forest.
“A sirrodel lives for thirteen years, did you know?” Valden said as they walked. “Then it dies, and its single seed is carried on the wind until it falls back to earth and begins to grow. They say only one grows at a time in the Knuckles. Did you tell anyone where you found it, boy? I’d hate to have come all this way if someone else has come along before me and plucked it from the ground.”
“We didn’t tell nobody,” said Wick.
“We?”
“I told Pa. I took him to see it too.”
“So your father has seen one,” said Valden.
Wick felt like he’d tattled. “No sir, not really. He couldn’t see it, but he believed I could.”
“You’ve got a godseye, boy. That gray in your right eye. It allows you to see things only the gods are meant to see, like moonbodies or a sirrodel.”
“Pa made me promise not to tell no one about the flower. He said most people around here know it’s got powerful magic and not to mess with it, but people come from all around to find it and they might try to take it.”
“Your father is quite right,” said Valden. “So why did you tell me?”
Wick wanted to say, Because you tricked me. “You’re going to use it to help your daughter, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s a good thing. I think Pa would think so too.”
Wick closed his left eye and kept the right open. Then he switched, to see if the world looked different through each eye. It didn’t.
“How did Parin die, Mister Whitestrand? Was she sick?”
Wick began to wonder if Valden had heard him, when the old man said, “Some may say you’re too young to hear such as this, but no boy stays young forever. All boys must someday become men, and they must know the harsh ways of the world. The harsh ways of men. My daughter told you of me, yes? Of what I do. What I am.”
“She said you’re a sorcerer.”
“Sorcerer is what most would call me, though I prefer artist.”
“You make things,” said Wick. “Magical things.”
“Yes, and I sell them. Years ago, there was a man, and one
of my pieces was used to hurt someone he loved.”
“Why do you make them if they can hurt people?”
“Well, like nearly everything in this world, my creations can be used for good or ill. Just because they can be used for nefarious purposes doesn’t mean I shouldn’t make them. Take a scythe, for instance. You know what that is?”
“Yes sir.”
“In a farmer’s hands, it harvests crops to feed families, whole villages. In another’s hands, however, it can slice a man open from belly to neck. Does that mean we should no longer make scythes, that they are evil?”
“I don’t know,” said Wick.
“Of course not. But I could not explain that to this one particular man, that I was merely the one who created the piece, not the one who wielded its power for ill. So, to hurt me, he killed my sweet, innocent daughter. Strangled her to death with his bare hands.”
The tadpoles had come back. Wick held his hands over his stomach. Since he was walking ahead, he couldn’t see Valden, but he heard the man sniffle.
“That night I saw her,” said Valden. “The other her, as you have just seen her, for I too have the godseye. I had known of moonbodies for some time, had even seen a few others, but I never thought I would see my own daughter’s. Parin told you what moonbodies are, yes?”
“Yes sir.”
“Being killed is what made her linger here instead of moving on, you see. Her moonbody was tainted by that brutal act, and so the gods will not allow her into the perfect paradise of the Far Kingdom. But after this spell, they will welcome her there this very day.”
“Did they hang him?” Wick asked.
“Who?”
“The man who killed Parin?”
“He fled far away after his crime. I tracked him down a few years later, but alas, he had died in his sleep. It was too peaceful a way for him to pass, but who are we to question the ways of the gods?”
After that they did not speak until they came upon the sirrodel. Amongst the towering trees, the single black stalk stood as high as Wick’s knee. The bloom, the size of a man’s open hand, consisted of only two large black petals lined with pointy ridges that resembled fangs. A curly red stamen protruded from the center like flames. The flower did look like a dragon’s gaping mouth.
“Can you see it?” Wick asked.
“Yes, boy,” Valden whispered.
The sorcerer produced gloves and a small leather pouch, a tiny version of the one given to Wick’s parents, and knelt by the flower. Wick wrung his shirt in his hands, expecting the sirrodel to transform into a real dragon and burn both him and Valden to crispy husks. After donning the gloves, Valden held the open pouch in one hand under the flower. Then he pinched the red stamen between two fingers of his other hand and carefully slid them outward until the single seed, black with orange spots, popped out and fell into the pouch.
“Can I watch the spell?” Wick asked after Valden tucked away the pouch and gloves.
“You absolutely must be there,” said Valden.
When they returned to the cabin, Valden sat Wick on a stool by the door.
“Absolute quiet,” the sorcerer said. “Even the most rudimentary of spells requires deep concentration, so you mustn’t do or say anything. The tiniest mistake and this whole cabin could burn to the ground. Not only that, but Parin would never make it to the Far Kingdom.”
Wick nodded.
Valden cleared the long wooden table and spread over it the large swath of canvas that had been on the wagon. Then he brought out the immanir containing Parin and set it in the table’s center. It still shimmered colorfully.
Next he began arranging the first of the elements on the table: powders and liquids in small stoppered phials; leaves and flaky bits of tree bark and a bowl of berries; several candles, some long and thin, others as round as Valden’s wrist; and various stones, both large and small. All of these, though colorful, appeared unremarkable.
Then came the more bizarre elements: a black, shriveled human hand; the pointy, curved tooth of an enormous cat or snake; a curling, hollow horn; and a dried tongue, forked and blue and the length of Wick’s arm.
Then came the jars, which contained the most fantastical elements. One held gray flames—nothing burning, only the flames themselves. Another had a small bloody heart, still beating. In the next, a spider as plump as a field rat clattered its bristly golden forelegs against the glass and hissed. As Valden set the last jar on the table, the square of dark silk draped over it fluttered up long enough for Wick to see a tiny naked woman sitting inside. She had white hair, glowing red dots for eyes, orange skin, and papery white wings.
Finally, Valden took the pouch from his cloak, dropped the sirrodel seed into a bowl, and ground it into a fine powder. Then he stretched his back, which creaked like a rusty hinge. The elements covered the table like a strange feast, and the pulsing immanir was the centerpiece.
As Wick surveyed the many ingredients, he remembered something Parin had said. There were two remaining elements. The sirrodel was one, but the other . . .
“What about the last element?” Wick said. He clapped his hands over his mouth, afraid he might have ruined the spell.
“You know of the final element?” said Valden.
“Parin didn’t say what it was. She said there were two left, but you only got the dragon’s maw seed.”
“She didn’t say what it was because I never told her. She is a good girl, an innocent girl, so I didn’t want her to know. The last element we need is actually the first element, the one that begins the spell. I wanted it to be the man who murdered Parin, but the gods took him already. Instead, they want you.”
“Me?” said Wick.
“Why else did the gods give you their eye, to see their sacred flower and Parin’s moonbody? Why else would they have commanded the wind to deliver the sirrodel seed so close to your home? Why else would they have led you to the flower or led me to your doorstep or led you to my doorstep, not once but twice? The gods want you, boy.”
Wick slid off the stool. “For what?”
“You wish to help my daughter, yes? You helped her by leading me to the sirrodel, and now you may help her again. With this spell, I will be sending one moonbody to the Far Kingdom, a body that the gods saw fit to keep here. So to appease them, I must begin the spell with an offering—one moonbody for another.” Valden stepped closer to him. “I am sorry, boy, and I will someday pay for my crime, but the gods want you. And compared to my daughter, what are you to me?”
Valden seized Wick’s throat, his thumbs digging into the boy’s windpipe. Wick kicked at Valden’s legs and clawed at the man’s arms and face, which only made the hands clamp down harder on his throat. Almost instantly his head began to throb from lack of air, and his limbs felt as though they were filled with wet sand.
Behind Valden, the immanir was still aglow, though now its color didn’t change. It burned the bright red of a hot coal as it rattled on the table, close to tipping over.
Spots of color, like First Harvest fireworks, exploded in front of Wick’s eyes. Through the color bursts, he could see Valden’s mismatched eyes, the brown and gray irises now surrounded by red. The man was crying. Wick felt his own hot tears, barely, on his numb cheeks.
Wick was certain his pa would charge into the cabin and wrestle Valden’s hands from his throat. That’s how all the stories he ever heard had ended—a life saved by the brave hero. Benn Longwall, however, was still in the village buying another round of the finest brew the Thirsty Thrush had to offer, for himself and a dozen other men. At that very moment, Benn was proposing a toast to Valden Whitestrand.
The fireworks spread, swallowing the sorcerer’s face. For a time, Wick watched the swirling colors. He no longer felt hands around his throat, no longer felt the need to breathe.
One by one the colors disappeared until only silver remained. Then that too faded away, and Wick could see the cabin again.
Outside, the insects and frogs were singing their ev
ening chorus, and no sunlight was peeking in around the drawn curtains. In fact, there was no light at all inside the cabin, but Wick could still see. His grandma’s long table had been cleared of the strange feast. The canvas was gone, as were all the spell’s elements.
Except for one, the first element. His body—his former body, the one Parin had called the earthbody—lay on the floor with its legs straight, arms crossed over its chest, and eyes closed. If not for the purple marks on its throat, it looked as though it was sleeping.
The centerpiece had also been left behind, shattered into a thousand black pieces on the floor.
Already knowing what he’d see, Wick looked down at himself—at his new self. His clothes and skin were silvery white, the color of the moon. He held up his pale right hand and touched his thumb to each fingertip. Then he noticed a small greenish-black blemish in the center of his palm. He rubbed it with the fingers of his other hand, but he knew it wasn’t dirt or food or blood. It couldn’t be wiped off. It would spread. How long that would take, only the gods knew.
Wick didn’t want to stay in the cabin any longer with the other him, the dead earthbody. Where could he go? Anywhere, he supposed. Except the Far Kingdom. He would never—could never—go there. He wanted to see his ma and pa—would they see him?—though not for some time. They would find it here, the earthbody, and they’d be very sad. He didn’t want to see them sad.
He’d go to the sirrodel first, to see if it had died too after Valden stole its seed. From there, only the gods knew. They wanted him, after all. Maybe they would show him where to go.
Wick’s moonbody took a deep breath, although not a real breath since the dead have no need for such things, and stepped through the closed front door.
* * *
You, my friend, have just committed murder. For this crime you will never swing at the end of a rope.
It’s just a story, you say.
It is. All the same, murder is murder.
Me, a murderer? you say. It was the sorcerer Valden who killed the boy, not I. Was Valden, that evil man. That monster. He, not I. Not I.
But it was you.
