The Duelist

by Eric Vall

  The sour shock definitely woke me up, and the crunchy dark-chocolate aftertaste was rich enough to trick my brain into getting my coffee fix, which gave me the will to get everything together for the tough trek ahead.

  “Come on, Roo,” I said and then patted my shoulder.

  The creepy crow-moth popped his golden head up from where he was stabbing the dirt of the cave, and then he blinked his bulbous red eyes. In his black beak was a wriggling nightcrawler that he swallowed whole when he threw back his ruffled head.

  On second thought, coffee didn’t sound very good anymore.

  “Skra!” Roofus said as he fluttered up from the ground and balanced on my shoulder.

  “Good morning to you, too, Creep,” I snorted, and then Roo nuzzled the side of my face, and his golden dust made me sneeze as we left the cave.

  The sun was just starting to crest the peaks of the east ridge, and streams of golden light poured through the jagged crater-looking rim. The fresh smell of the river combined with the brisk wind filled my lungs and made me feel like I could climb Mount Everest if the occasion called for it. Based on the map I was looking at in my hands, it might as well be Everest because our route was nearly vertical all the way up. The map marked the Ruins at the top of the west ridge, and below that was a label that read “Falls Keep,” which was marked with an ‘X’.

  Suddenly, my vision was filled with the color blue as Zoie tied her scarf around my eyes from behind.

  “What are you doing?” I asked with a slow smile as she came around in front of me and slipped the map out of my fingers.

  “It’s early,” she said in a low voice that matched the quiet intimacy of the dawn. We hadn’t seen anyone since our mad dash from the river ferry, and here in the shadow of the wall, it felt like we were the only ones in the world.

  Zoie then took my hands into hers and slowly started to spin us around in a circle.

  “We have time for a training exercise,” she said, and I smiled wider at the sound of the playful grin in her voice.

  “Oh, this is exciting,” I said and drew her closer as we continued to turn. I placed my hands on her hips, and she looped her arms around my neck. “I can already tell you are a fantastic teacher.”

  “A teacher is only worth the measure of their student’s desire to learn,” Zoie said so close to my ear she tickled the little hairs there, which sent a zing down my back and out toward my fingers and toes. Goosebumps erupted all over my skin, and every fiber of my being became sensitized to her proximity with one seductive sentence.

  “You’re like a sexy Yoda,” I rasped as she traced the hairline at the nape of my neck with one sharp fingernail. “I love when you do that.”

  “I don’t know what a yodey is, but I, too, find you charming when you say the strangest things,” she said and then directed our music-less dance to spin in the opposite direction.

  “Well, you can count on my desire being at an all-time high these days,” I said and snuggled us even closer so our legs were nearly intertwined and our hips were flush.

  Zoie snorted a little bit, and I knew my grin was as big as it’s ever been.

  “What?” I teased. “I meant my desire to learn. What did you think I meant?”

  She lightly smacked my chest as she giggled, and I clamped my fingers around her waist so she couldn’t get away when I tried to find her mouth and kiss her.

  After letting me struggle blindly for only a second, she closed the gap between us with an exasperated kiss that pretty much instantly melted into me. It was the type of kiss that was as unhurried as it was arousing, and the comfort of it was like coming home.

  Our spinning slowed to a standstill as we continued to embrace and explore each other’s mouths. I could taste the bright sour flavor of a pappa sweet on her tongue, and the sound of her stuttering breath sounded loud in the early morning silence.

  “Alright, my eager student,” Zoie said after we wound down our kissing. “By now, your other senses are becoming sharper because your vision has been taken from you. In some situations, like with Gul, you will not be able to rely on your eyesight, and must learn to hone your other senses in order to escape danger.”

  “I understand,” I said as I heard the world in technicolor.

  A bird that sounded like a loon warbled out its early morning song, and I could just hear how it bounced off the rim of the crater. By the direction of the ricochet, I knew it was located somewhere to my right.

  “Dig deep inside for the core of your focus,” Zoie’s hypnotizing voice continued on as she circled around me and placed her hands on my shoulders. “Imagine the stone pit of a fruit. The brittle outer layer lets in just enough light through the cracks so the inner layer can seek out the sun and grow.”

  In my mind’s eye, I pictured the pit of a peach with a shoot of green that peeked out through a crack in its shell. Then I imagined the cracks widened, and the shoot crawled up through the dirt until it broke the dark earth surface and reached for the sunlight. Using this image Zoie painted with her water-color words, I focused on the loon-call again as it soared above the trees.

  My other senses channeled down to only my hearing, and the weird disconnected feeling reminded me of how it felt to call up a time-trance.

  During a time-trance, however, I always felt stretched to my limit as if I was constantly trying to rein in a mustang with a dog-leash. With this, at least, I felt like I had full control and not just like I was at the mercy of a little-known power that was barely kept in check.

  “Now, can you tell which way we need to go?” Zoie asked from over my shoulder, and the fine hairs on the back of my neck stood up as her moist breath dampened my skin in the chilly morning.

  The loon’s mournful wail ricocheted off the trees and the cliffs, but more importantly, I could hear the slight difference when the sound bounced off the towering wall. I grinned as my senses dialed back to normal, and I turned my body a quarter turn to my left so I was facing north again.

  “This way,” I said with confidence and waited for my reward. And waited. “Zoie?”

  I turned around on the spot and reached for the scarf that blindfolded me, but before I could pull it off, a pair of warm hands stopped me.

  “Leave it on,” came Zoie’s lips right against the shell of my ear, and a pair of teeth nipped me right on the lobe. “Come and catch me, husband.”

  A gap of cold air suddenly opened up along my side, and I could tell that had to be the direction my wily wife ran off in.

  Apparently, her teaching methods were “baptism by fire” style, and I had a feeling she wouldn’t be taking it easy on me if I couldn’t keep up with her rigorous training structure.

  “Roo?” I called out with a whistle, and his flapping wings gave me a point of reference. “Go find Zoie!”

  “K-Kree!” Roofus cawed, and I followed the direction of my guide bird.

  At first, it was nerve wracking when I had to run without seeing where my feet were going, but I pushed those thoughts aside and kept the cracks of my focus narrowed down to just the flutter and occasional cackle from Roo.

  I jogged to a stop when the sounds changed, and I turned in a circle when the river’s rushing water branched off in too many directions for me to track with my hearing alone.

  “Impressive,” Zoie said and then slipped the scarf off my head.

  “Did I pass the test?” I asked as I blinked in the dazzling sunlight.

  “See for yourself,” the playful minx said as she stashed away her blue scarf and then handed me the map.

  I took the piece of yellowed parchment as I looked around at where Zoie led us. We were just past the gate’s entrance, and the outline of Gatetown could be seen south through the rectangular gap in the wall. The river that was constantly flowing in the same direction as us suddenly forked, and the frothing waters snaking in two directions was what confused my hearing.

  The stream on the right loped gently downhill toward the ocean, and the pastoral scene looked li
ke it was straight out of a Grimm’s fairytale. Buzzing insects that had jeweled wings like dragonflies flew in the dewy air, and wildflowers of pinks and reds lined the thinning forest on either side.

  The stream branching off to the left, however, was less Sound of Music and more Bram Stoker’s Dracula given how the jagged peaks gouged up through the dark earth like sharp teeth.

  “Too bad we can’t take the scenic route,” I said as I eyeballed the course the map suggested we take. The quickest way showed a red ink line twisting and turning in vicious switchbacks in the direction of the left-branching stream, and what made it even more bleak was the concentration of dark clouds steadily moving in from the west.

  “We’d better start climbing,” Zoie said as she pulled out a cube of sugar and fed it to Roofus.

  He chattered in glee and gulped it down with another dusty toss of his ruffled head.

  Zoie patted him and then gathered him up onto her shoulder. “Where’s the trail head?”

  “We need to take the path upstream, and somewhere there will be a white stone that marks the trail head up to Falls Keep,” I said and then double checked to see how accurate my memory was. I was trying to get into the habit of memorizing a bit more of the map every time I had to pull it out to consult which way to go. If anything happened to the map, I wanted to be prepared to backtrack by memory.

  Thunder rumbled overhead like a slumbering grizzly bear, and I kept half an eye out for lightning as we followed the stream that kept flowing from the north-west.

  The altitude began to change as we trudged up what started as a moderate incline but soon changed to a grade steep enough that I was using my hands as well as my feet to push and pull myself forward. My ears crackled and popped like Rice Krispies, and the top of my chest felt like it was being constricted by a belt because it was getting tougher to breathe through the thinning air.

  Just before I suggested we stop for a second, the incline flattened out into a small plateau shaded by a tree that reminded me of a weeping willow.

  “I think this is it,” I panted and gestured to the white marble-looking stone that stuck out from the stream.

  It had a slightly odd shape to it, and if someone didn’t know exactly what to look for, then it would probably look like an interestingly hewn rock formed by natural erosion. But if you were looking for a secret trailhead marker, the white stone was shaped like an arrow laying on its side. It seemed to be pointing west toward the willow, and when I brushed the long, viney leaves aside, I could see a dimly lit forest glade with the start of a trailhead.

  Roofus clicked his beak and dove into the forest glade, and Zoie and I exchanged glances. I checked the map one more time just to be sure and led us after the gold-seeker moth.

  “Roofus?” I called out as my eyesight adjusted to the dim light filtering through the thick canopy.

  “Krr,” the crow-moth purred and landed back on the top of my pack.

  The path was narrow, and the trees of the forest were dense on all sides. It almost looked as if we were traveling through a tunnel of arching and entangled branches.

  “Wait a moment,” Zoie said and dropped her pack to the ground so she could root through it for something.

  I also took a moment to take my pack off so I could find the both of us something to snack on. I was able to find a wrapped parcel of dried jerky meat, and that plus two woot fruits, and it was the breakfast of champions, or as good as.

  “What’s that?” I asked her as I placed Zoie’s breakfast at her knees where she was on the ground assembling a rod like device.

  “These are torches,” she said and showed me how the three cylindrical wooden tubes fit together like a telescope. The wood reminded me of bamboo because it was hollow inside, and at the bigger end, Zoie stuffed some of this brown scrubby moss inside like she was packing a large tobacco pipe before she struck her flint against it.

  The torch caught fire and illuminated the shadowy glade. Not a moment too soon, either, because the second the bright light filled our surroundings, it seemed to visibly chase away something just on the fringes of our bubble of protective light.

  “Handy,” I remarked as I ignored the sounds of scurrying feet and took the remaining three pieces of wood so I could assemble the second torch. I fit each smaller end into the larger, and the naturally tapered ends helped to nest the pieces together like a set of Russian nesting dolls.

  “Now, moss,” Zoie instructed, and I tore up the brown Brillo-pad moss at my feet so I could stuff it into the larger end of my bamboo-like torch.

  I caught a whiff of something and brought the torch up slightly so I could try and figure out what the smell was. It smelled a little bit like the ammonia cleaning agent I used on Leary’s shop floors. Whatever was making the moss smell like that was strong, and it was no wonder the flint barely had to spark before it burst into flames.

  “These will last us two hours, and if we keep our current pace, we should be able to reach the switchbacks by then,” Zoie said as she finished off her dried meat and bit through the skin of the tough fruit so she could drink the inside.

  I nodded as I polished off my meager meal as well, and then I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth when I’d finished. I normally would have discarded the leathery husk of the woot fruit after I sucked out the insides because the skin was usually too bitter to eat, but maybe if I dried it, Roofus might like it, so I folded it up and put it into my pocket.

  “It’s hard to believe it’s actually daylight,” I said as we walked through the eerie shrouded forest.

  “This is a place where it is easy for the darkness to play tricks on our vision,” Zoie said in a hushed voice, and her ears were on a constant swivel for any creak or snapping twig. “Make sure we don’t become separated or turned around.”

  “Do you have any more badass warrior tips for situations like this?” I asked in an equally low voice. A rustling noise had my head whipping over my shoulder, but there was nothing behind me.

  “Try not to let the feeling of eyes watching you become a distraction,” she said, but there were no further words of wisdom, so I made sure to huddle close.

  Even Roofus seemed afraid of leaving our little cocoon of light because he split his time between either mine or Zoie’s packs or shoulders.

  I didn’t blame the crow-moth because even the trees in the forest were huge and menacing as they stared down at us like giant sentries the further we walked through the glade. Every so often, hoots and shrieks could be heard off in the distance from creatures I didn’t know the names of, and Zoie’s advice of not being distracted by the constant feeling of unseen eyeballs crawling all over me was easier said than done.

  The sensation was starting to gain an intrusive hold on my focus the more the darkness encroached around us like a tiger waiting to spring.

  I tried to stay as stoic as Zoie, but every now and then her own footsteps faltered and her breaths picked up just like mine did as the suffocating forest closed in around us.

  Zoie slowed, and I immediately stopped as well. Her ears flickered and perked, and her wide saucer eyes peered into the dim trees with pupils so large only a rim of her blue iris remained.

  “What do you hear?” I whispered with barely any breath and then visualized the seed pod that was my focus. I widened the cracks to let more of my hearing in, but it was difficult when my eyes kept darting to every flicking shadow.

  “There is a pack hunting us,” Zoie said and raised her head to sniff the air.

  “A pack of what?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Something I’ve never scented before, but there are at least six of them,” she said, and then she turned her attention to me. “We need to go. Currently, we are upwind of them, but we need to find the falls entrance quickly.”

  “We are almost at the switchbacks,” I said as I consulted the worn map. I cataloged thirteen of the sharp twists and turns and vowed to keep track once we hit them. “Let’s go.”

  Breaking out of th
e claustrophobic forest was like coming up for a deep breath of air, and I didn’t realize I copped a chill until the sunlight warmed my skin.

  “Now, for the hard part,” I said as I craned my head back to look up at the sheer cliffs in front of me.

  “Keep up, won’t you?” Zoie teased with a cheeky smirk over her shoulder, and even though we had a pack of Somethings after us, and we were now trying to get into Mordor the Hard Way.

  I didn’t think I’d ever been in love with anyone more in my life.

  The realization hit me like a thunderbolt, but in a way I was utterly unsurprised by. It had been coming on for a long while, this grand emotion that always took me by storm whenever she’d catch me off guard by flirting with me even though she was new to expressing that side of herself. It was a privilege to see what was behind the regal mask she wore for the world, and I took it for the honor it was whenever she let me in.

  So, I jogged up and tweaked her soft silky tail, which made her yip, blush, and mock-hiss at me in that order.

  I crowded into her space and put my finger under her chin as if I was guiding her up to a kiss, but at the last moment, I went up and nibbled one of her suede-like ears.

  “Race you,” I rumbled low right into that sensitive ear, and then I jumped back as she tried to swipe at me.

  She stalked forward, and I walked backward just like a dance of actual cat-and-mouse, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Keep up, won’t you?” I mocked with a wink.

  “You will be sorry, if I catch you,” I heard the playful growl in her voice, so I smiled wider. “You can consider this a ‘course crash’ on evading an enemy because I have a feeling we will need to do this soon and often.”

  “Yay, training part two,” I said as an excited thrill bubbled through my veins, and my heart pumped as if I’d just mainlined Red Bull. “You ready?”

  Zoie’s sumptuous toned legs tensed as she crouched in the sexy skin-tight battle outfit she favored. It made her look like a sleek jaguar ready to pounce, and knowing I was this wild cat’s prey made a spike of arousal sizzle through my blood.