by Travis Smith
When he heard the sound he’d subconsciously been waiting on all day, Patrick leapt to his feet and flung open his door without even looking through the window. The cat had returned just before sunset and scratched at the wall to be let in. Patrick opened the door with desperate glee and laughed until tears of relief and gratitude rolled down his cheeks when he looked down to find the animal sitting and presenting a freshly killed woodchuck.
10
Patrick pushed the woodchuck inside with his foot and motioned for the cat to follow. “So this is okay?” he asked. “It’s not infected or anything?”
In response, the cat licked its lips once.
Patrick laughed and snatched the weightless creature up to give it a hug. It protested only by extending one paw to keep the boy’s face directly out of its own.
He took the woodchuck into the kitchen and, for the first time since the incident, lit a fire in the brick oven. Placing the catch on a manually rotating spit, he looked back at the cat and said, “Okay, we’re even now.”
The cat waited patiently for the meal to cook, and, when it was finished, Patrick sliced bits of the meat off onto a plate. He then portioned it almost exactly in half. “You deserve more than half of this,” he told the cat, “but I need to eat more. Let’s be honest.”
The pair sat in busy silence and savored the low-quality meat as if it were the dinner of the kings in Reprise. After countless days of corn meal and fouling fruits, the meal tasted better than anything Patrick could ever remember having. He poured some water into a saucer for the cat and sat back contentedly to watch the little huntress enjoy her kill. He’d almost forgotten how it felt to be completely full and satisfied after a meal. For once his stomach didn’t continue to writhe and grumble, eagerly demanding that more be consumed.
“I think I’ll call you Stora,” he said, stroking the cat’s bony back as it ate its fill. “Or Storin, if you’re a boy.”
Stora finished eating long before her portion of the meat was gone, but Patrick left it on the floor next to her water in case she grew hungry in the night. He got up and walked back to his bedroom to avoid falling asleep on the hard floor again. Stora followed and crawled into his bed to curl up beside him. For once the boy was able to fall asleep feeling completely at ease. His stomach was full and content, and it didn’t keep him awake with sharp pains through the night. He wasn’t cowering in lonesome fear and listening for any sound too near his house. For the first time since this started, he fell asleep not with a knife in his hand, but with his friend.
11
Stora left each morning for the next ten days, and on only two of those days did she return without a kill. Patrick reveled in his new ability to remain safely and securely inside day in and day out. He cooked squirrels, birds, and prairie dogs for himself and Stora. Each day he paced the house and wondered and worried that Stora wouldn’t come back this time, that something had happened to her, but each time she came back. The two fell into a peaceful, symbiotic routine that led Patrick to feel a sense of normalcy he had thought he’d never again experience. The routine functioned without flaw until Patrick found that he had only three jars of water remaining.
The skies remained relentlessly blue and cloudless. Each day felt hotter and dryer than the last, and Patrick finally had to accept that it likely wouldn’t rain again soon enough to save his life. He sat up and stroked Stora’s rumbling chin contemplatively until he decided that they would have to make a trip out together to the stream the next day.
When the sun rose, Patrick looked through his peepholes to ensure that no lurkers were around. He filled his satchel with empty jars and a bucket, slid his knife into his waistband, and bent down to face the cat.
“You have to stay with me today, all right? We have enough meat left over to forfeit one hunt. But I need you today.”
Stora stared at him in either neutral acceptance or blank incomprehension.
He sighed and removed the furniture from his doorway. “Come on,” he motioned as he stepped around the table.
Stora never tried to flee his side or even wander curiously away into open cottages along the street. She walked by him loyally until they reached the stream. Patrick darkly scoffed at his previous idea to build a raft. The stream had dried almost completely out. What once was a small, flowing river was now little more than a stagnant, ankle-deep puddle.
The cat looked up at him expectantly. “Well,” he said, “is it any good?”
She only stared.
“You’re supposed to know this stuff without tasting it, right? Drink some, so I know it’s okay.”
Stora sat down stubbornly and looked off into the distance. Patrick bent and picked her up to begin lowering her into the stream. She gave a low whine and started kicking her feet and writhing in his grip.
“Come on,” Patrick pleaded, “just give me a sign if it’s all right to drink.” He dropped her on her feet, and she retreated several steps out of his reach. “So no?” he asked.
After much deliberation, Patrick decided to fill several jars anyway and take them back home for further inspection.
When they reached the house, it was still early in the day, so Patrick said, “Go on. You can still go hunt if you like.”
Stora looked down the street toward the market and glanced back up at Patrick uneasily.
“What is it?” Patrick looked down the street but could make out nothing out of the ordinary. He stood for a moment and listened, but he heard only silence. “Fine, come back in.”
They walked inside, and Patrick re-blocked the door and went to the kitchen to pour some of the new water into a separate saucer for Stora. He contemplated removing her source of fresh water, but what if this water really was tainted? It would be cruel to deprive her of clean water altogether. And if she broke down and drank it and something happened to her, Patrick would never be able to live with himself. He placed it instead beside the saucer with clean water and decided that he would monitor her drinking habits to see if she would ever choose to drink from the new bowl. After all, he still had enough good water to last a couple more days.
Stora eventually did drink from the new water, and nothing bad happened to her as a result, but Patrick woke the next morning to find himself unable to act upon that revelation.
12
Patrick awoke and went to the window to check the streets before letting Stora out for her daily hunt. What he saw took his breath away and stunned him to his knees.
The street was flooded in every direction with lurkers. He’d previously seen no more than five or six passing by his house at any given time, but now it seemed that the entire city had migrated to this street.
He closed his eyes and composed himself before whispering to Stora, who was waiting by the door as she did every morning, “I’m sorry. You can’t go out today. They’re everywhere.”
Patrick checked the windows more than twenty times that day, but each time he paced nervously through the den with his knife in his hand and stopped at the window to peer out, it seemed there were somehow even more of the things outside. None of them seemed particularly interested in his house, but the sheer volume of people made an exit impossible.
When he woke up the following day and the day after that and even the day after that to find the situation the same, his hope faded swiftly. His nights again became sleepless. His days dragged out, spent pacing through the dark house and jumping at every nearby scratch or scuffle. Even the company of Stora ceased to set his mind at ease after a while. Stora herself grew restless and out-of-sorts. Because she was forced to go the bathroom in the corner of the house, the entire place soon reeked. Patrick considered just quietly opening the door so she could squeeze through and escape. She was small and spry and would be able to outrun any of the lurkers, but her absence would make his life unthinkably more insufferable. So he selfishly kept her inside and under his watchful eye. The food and water supplies lasted five more days before running out simultaneously.
P
atrick lay in the floor with his face buried in Stora’s growing belly as the setting sun vanished beyond the horizon outside. The lurkers would continue wandering around this area through the night. He’d found that there was no time of day or night that there weren’t enough of them directly outside to ensure he’d never get out alive. He lifted his face to the kitchen counter where there stood rows of spare lamp oil containers he’d salvaged from the abandoned houses long ago. His stomach growled once sharply. It became clear that there was only one thing left to do.
“I’m so sorry, girl,” he whispered into the purring Stora’s fur. Hot tears burned his eyes, and he made no effort to hold them in. “We came so close to making this work …”
The Cave:
Part 3
The Stranger blinked repeatedly. Despite the absence of any discernable light source, his vision was improving. He lifted his leg gingerly, expecting it to be stiff and sore, but it moved just fine. His body, as blank a slate as his mind at this moment, felt fresher than it had at any time in his adult life. He took one step, his hands outstretched like a blind man. Then a second. And before long, The Stranger was walking confidently through the cave without any heed to his visual impairment. He seemed to create his own path in front of him, to illuminate his way from within. Could this be a sign? Could this effortless path that seemed to flow forth from his mind be the final stretch in an ageless quest?
“Yesssss,” whispered a sinister, serpentine voice in his ear.
The Stranger wheeled around, but no one was behind him. Only the stony cave path along which he’d just travelled.
“This is the end for you, friend,” the voice whispered.
“Who’s there?” The Stranger croaked. His voice echoed throughout the cave startlingly loudly. Was the voice inside his own mind?
“You will never find your son.”
The Stranger swiveled in a slow circle, inspecting every shadow behind every rocky outcropping he could find, but they all seemed to dance and sway in the darkness.
“You cannot kill Bernard and avenge your family.”
Anger flared inside The Stranger. “Like hell I can’t.” His voice could have travelled for days. “I will find him. And I will kill him, just as he killed my mother and father. Just as he killed the king. Show yourself!”
As soon as he made the demand, a vague shadow clouded his minimal vision. Then it was gone.
“Your soul is as black and damned as his, Stranger.”
A fleeting wisp of darkness in the corner of his eye. He turned his head, but nothing was there. “I’ve made my choices. My soul is my own to bear. I now have but one purpose, and I will suffer my consequences when my time is done.”
“The time is nigh,” the voice hissed, dragging the final word into a quiet chuckle.
The Stranger’s eyes darted back and forth. His head turned spasmodically as he struggled to follow the puffing shadows that moved and disappeared around him.
“Your quessst is dessstined to fail,“ the hissing whisper cooed. “You must swear off your quest. And accept your imminent defeat.”
The Stranger nearly made out a small troll or demon standing behind a rock no taller than his knees. Baleful green-yellow eyes stared dimly at him from the shadows. Then they were gone.
“Forget your son. Forget your wife. Forget your kingdom that was.”
The Stranger closed his eyes hard. He found that he was forgetting all of those things. He could scarcely recall the image of his lost son’s face. His quest had lasted longer than the time he’d spent with his son since his birth. Even the image of his wife, Laura, was slipping from his mind. Images of his family. His friends. His enemies. Those he’d met since the start of his quest.
“Please, let me remember my son as he was,” The Stranger whispered.
“Your memories serve you not in this place.”
“What is this place?” he demanded at once. “How do I get out of here?”
“You cannot escape your dessstiny,” the voice tittered.
A wisp of darkness. A flash of green eyes. A twinkle from a slick white fang protruding from a mouth as black as death.
“Just as you cannot kill The Baron …”
“Enough!” The Stranger roared. At once, the shadowy dance ceased, and the cave pulsed with non-existent light, as though an imaginary flame were flickering in the wind. A squat green troll was frozen in place a short distance away. His black, greasy hair sat lamely atop a round face with glowing green eyes like a demonic cat’s. His teeth were thin and spaced and dreadfully long.
“I’m only telling what you yearn to hear,” the thing grumbled squeakily. The ominous, teasing whisper had vanished.
“I’d hear none of it!” The Stranger countered, but the creature disintegrated in the dim light. A puff of black smoke remained for a moment before dissipating and blending into the darkness of the cave.
He heard a thin, toneless whisper. The sound could have been the soft sough of the smoke as it spread throughout the cave. Or it could have come completely from within his own head.
“You will never escape …”
Chapter 7:
Eugene’s Elixir
1
The Stranger stood atop a small sandy hill, not quite—but almost—a dune. The winter sun shone down to battle the cold winds that whisked around him. His tattered, dirty clothes whipped in the chilly breeze, as did his gray-flecked beard, which had remained un-groomed since that fateful night that Bernard finally caught up to him and his family. Then, it had been only stubble.
“Give us the boy!” a man called gruffly from the base of the loping hill. “We want but the boy, and ye c’n be on yer way!” The man stood at the front of a large crowd of belligerent soldiers, all armed with those impossible, sleek, black flintlocks that The Stranger hadn’t seen since he was confronted with one in his attempt to assist Bernard with the ogras peddlers.
The Stranger turned to look behind him at the horde of people standing with him. Many were also armed with those strange black firearms, some with short muzzles, and others with long, thin barrels that were held with two hands. Beyond the crowd, a prison silently burned on the horizon, belching up great gobs of thick gray smoke into the cloudless sky. A prison that signified his new life of captivity. He had been reborn on that island, only to walk from one cage to another and another and yet another. He was born into captivity, and his quest had suffered sorely.
Turning back to face his accosters, the boy stepped up to his side and looked up at him.
“William,” he gasped, unable to breathe. The boy, considerably aged, gazed at him sadly, his adolescent mop of blond hair blown to one side by the wind. Tears burned The Stranger’s eyes. “How did you get here?” he struggled to stammer.
A shot rang out and echoed across the dry land. The boy’s eyes closed as a small hole appeared in one side of his head, then the other. Jets of bright red blood followed the high-caliber bullet as it exited his skull. The Stranger choked on his words, his bray of dismay. “How did you get here?” he tried to repeat.
“How did I get here?”
He closed his eyes as the boy collapsed at his feet. A wave of unreality washed over him, and he swayed, repeating, “How did I get here?” in a monotone whisper.
His eyes opened in a dark room, his mind was lost in the act of lovemaking. The memory he’d chosen must have been that of his wedding night with Laura. The night that William was conceived. He’d transported his mind back to that night to retrace his steps and answer his question. But to relieve this whole nightmare …
He opened his eyes in the dark and moaned as he climaxed, “Oh, Laura …” His mind was lost in the ecstasy. When his eyes met hers, he started and rolled off her. She glanced at him uncomfortably.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Who are you?” The Stranger asked. “You’re not Laura.” He closed his eyes and rubbed them, exhausted.
He opened his eyes to a dark night sky. His beard was now three tim
es what it previously was. He stared into the sky, sparkling with bright lights and explosions and flashes of lightning all around him. Suddenly a cold, dead hand reached up out of the mud beneath him. Its fingers weaved their way into the beard and pulled his face to the side, pulling and dragging him headfirst into the ground. He screamed and clambered to stand upright and escape the creature’s grip, but nothing was working. His face submerged under the wet dirt, and he held his breath.
He landed hard upon his hands and knees and gasped a single time to catch his breath. He heaved in choking, sobbing breaths as his mind raced with these miseries.
“What have you done to me?” he demanded.
He looked up to see the old man sitting in a rickety rocking chair on the other side of the bars. The man rocked in silence, merely observing The Stranger’s torment with a soft smile touching the corners of his thin lips.
The Stranger attempted to stand but collapsed against the bars. He reached through to seize the old man, but he was well out of reach. The man chuckled sadistically.
“I have to find my son!” The Stranger roared. The ghostly image of the dying boy resurfaced, and frustrated tears sprang from his eyes.
The Stranger felt his mind tearing from within.
“Why are you torturing me?” he sobbed. “Why are you doing this?”
2
The Stranger rocked slowly among the trees inside his net. His neck was cocked painfully to one side, pressed against the thick meshing, and his entire body rested uncomfortably on top. Both arms were pinned in the net, so he couldn’t have freed himself even if he still had his sword.
You cursed fool! Why would you put it on the ground?
He struggled to glance around as the blood began rushing to his head. What fiendish barbarian had laid this trap for him? Given his angle, his range of motion and sight was dramatically limited. The net slowly turned as it hung, and he waited impatiently to see who or what would approach him.
