by Jared Ravens
Bern was not a partisan. He was a person of contemplation and intellectual fairness. He also was not a traveller nor an adventurer, his previous trip to The Hill notwithstanding. Despite this he was being drawn further and further into this mess and he was running out of excuses for avoid trouble. His employer, initially worrying for his safety and theirs, had become more excited at the thought of an exclusive from the rebel. Shayne, hesitant though she was, had taken it upon herself to slowly pack a trunk for her husband. He continued to tell her to unpack it but she continued to swallow his possessions into it as the days went on.
"Just do it and get it over with," she told him. "I know you want this mess to go away but it won't go away on its own."
"I fear it will just make it worse."
"I don't think communication has ever made things worse. Miscommunication has."
Her predilection that this was going to brought to his doorstep show to be true that morning, when a knock came at the door.
Felix’s parents were early, and their appearance when they entered bore out their anxiety. They looked as if they hadn't slept in days. Bern wondered how much longer Taniel and Carmen could keep going.
They sat down at his kitchen table and he handed them the letter they had been waiting so long to read. He could see from the back side of the opened letter that there was not writing. It took Taniel only a moment to read it before setting his head down on the table and handing it to his wife. Her reaction was similar.
"He doesn't remember us," he said woefully. The mother shook her head. Bern had prodded Fairfax into writing his parents. This was the culmination of all of that: a few lines asking for their names and occupations and how they can help him.
"I think his mind is simply not there," Bern said. "Please don't be upset. He might just need to have his memory jogged.'
They nodded but it was obvious how they felt. Bern could not imagine what kind of pain they were going through. Carmen looked up at Bern.
"Would you... I mean, have you considered?"
"No," he said. "I can't consider it. And you shouldn't either, it's too dangerous to go out there."
"He's asked you,” Taniel continued. “I just ask that you consider it for us, for all of us."
Bern felt, for a hard minute, that held all of Sigma and its loyal neighbors wanted him to take their problems in his hands. That he alone could translate the rantings of a surgically altered youth into golden phrases that would ] serve all parties and appease them. He scoffed.
"I'll publish what I am supposed to," he said. "I cannot offer any more.”
Carmen began to weep, her appologies and thanks spilling out of her mouth between sobs. She explained that the entire thing was her fault and Bern softened. He could feel his wife looking at him over his shoulder as she engaged in housework.
As he lead the two out of his house he looked up at her and he knew exactly what she was thinking.
It's not going to stop.
And it didn’t.
Late next day and he was walking home from work. The air was surprisingly clean, with a coolness that lifted the dirt in the air up and carried it away on it on the breast of a heavenly wind. It was enough to make Bern forget everything that was being asked of him. But when he arrived at his doorstep and saw a girl standing there. He knew it was trouble, but he thought it was a known one. He believed she must be there to deliver the next chapter in the nightmare story that Celia was unravelling.
But the girl was not frantic or delusional like many of the others had been. One look in to her milky eyes and he knew something different was going on. She was short, with a lovely hooded cape that had a shiny powder blue sheen to it. Her face was so soft and light that she seemed to be like a porcelain doll rather than a human. When she spoke it was with an odd accent and he wondered if she was acting, and if so, what for end.
"You must be Bern," she said, handing him a sealed envelope. He held it it out in front of him, afraid it might contain some deadly insect that would poison him.
"Celia sends you best wishes," she said as if to comfort him. Of course nothing Celia said directly to Bern would be comforting. He wanted nothing more than to be invisible to all of them.
The girl said she would wait for his answer but insisted that she follow him inside. She stood ten paces from Bern as he sat down at the table to read the letter. He could feel her examining his face from the distance as he read the the delicate and cordial handwriting. It glowed on the page.
I request your assistance in a task of the most private nature. I know you have been in consistent contact with the boy known now as Fairfax. It is of the upmost urgency that we find him, as there is much danger to his wellbeing by those others who would prefer his existence be eliminated. There is at present an army being formed to hunt him down. If we do not engage him and bring him safely in his life will be at stake.
My goal is not to kill him but to help him. My hope is that through change we may all benefit from his wondrous powers. You are the only one that has contact with him. You are the the one that can guide us to him and ensure his safety. Please know that all of your expenses will be taken care of but that discretion is of the upmost importance. Ally will be your constant companion and a voice for me when needed. Your efforts will not be forgotten.
By the time Bern reached her signature at the bottom I was heaving air. He looked at Ally and she held up a bag of coins and shook it, as if money were the issue.
"Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he exclaimed. "She's ordering me to got to the fucking desert!"
His breathing was so hard that he struggled to stand up. Ally drew back in shock. Shayne entered the room from the kitchen and asked what was happening. She saw the girl in the room and me nearly having a heart attack. Bern explained in between breaths that this was a handmaiden that was to go with him to the desert. Shayne looked to the girl and back to her husband several times before he offered her the letter. She read it as she rubbed his back, then pulled Bern to a chair and sat down in front of him. She held my hands in her palms until he calmed down.
"I can't do it," he said Ally.
"Bern," Shayne said.
"You can do so, what do you mean you can't do it?" the girl asked, as if he was being asked to fetch a pail of water.
“Don’t you see? I'm an editor. I'm not an adventurer!"
"Bern" Shayne repeated. "Let's think about this."
"She is asking you to try. Are you telling her no?"
Ally seemed confused that refusal could even be an option.
"Whenever your boss gets involved, people always end up dead!" Bern said, unwisely. "This is suicide!"
"Bern..."
"She offers you protection and a lifetime of good favor. Are you saying no?"
Shayne repeated Bern’s name again and excused him as she guided him into the next room. She spoke to him quietly, soothing him. He covered his face, nearly in tears.
"I don't want to do this for her," He said. "If I can't find him, she'll kill me. If I do find him, she'll let me die."
“You don't know that's her intentions. Not everyone that deals with her ends up in bad shape. You only read the dramatic stories. She can be kind."
“I would be working for her and for Genesee. One of them isn't going to be happy."
“True," she said, taking Bern’s hands in hers. "But don't you think you're being pushed in this way? His parents wanted this as well. It seems..."
"Like I don't have a choice."
She patted his hands.
"You always have a choice."
He swallowed hard.
"I don't want my last days with you to be packing for a trip I was ordered to go on by one of them,” he replied, his voice shaking. "I don't want to be led from my home by them for some futile cause."
She smiled.
"Who says you were going alone."
He looked into her eyes. He wanted to beg her not to go, and he did beg a little, but he knew that he needed her to come. It was a
weakness. He suddenly felt buoyant, as if a weight on his back had become lighter.
When they walked back into the dining room and told Ally that they would do it she seemed unaffected, informing them that they leave immediately. Bern explained this was not possible and, after some debate, she stated she would be back at noon the next day.
Everything was readied in one short night. All the provisions they could store in the back of a wagon was purchased and hauled to their home. They went door to door in the middle of the night rapping on merchants windows to wake them, collecting their supplied one can or bag at a time. Near dawn they fell asleep in each others arms, behind in their preparations but exhausted.
Ally arrived before noon. They had been awake just long enough to finish their preparations. Bern had even managed to inform his bosses what was happening. They were surprisingly excited, noting that there would be an incredible book to sell from when all this was finished.
Bern took cold comfort in this as his wagon rattled through the chaos of midday in the city. He waved to his housekeeper, knowing he had left far more than her and his home behind. Ally sat in the back of the wagon, looking at the road behind us. The powder blue cloak was gone, replaced by a dull brown cloak covering that covered her infatuating eyes.
Eae
His mind mind wasn't cloudy. He would describe it as hazy, not cloudy. There was a difference. To Fairfax, it felt as if a broad, white streak had rolled over his head and left the remnants of words. There were phases describing some memories that was once in his mind but now could only be seen as if they were in the peripherals of his sight. So it was sometimes hazy, but it was always blank.
It felt freeing until the fragments of memories appeared to terrify him.
He remembered Genesee. He knew their faces, staring at him for hours on end from some table in a castle. Phrases and events came up and disappeared in the soupy white water. His mind, in an apparent act of self preservation, simplified everything: what was in back of him was bad, what was in front of him, less so.
He had a lot of time to think about what he did not know. He had flashes of immense, sustained energy that kept him up all night. He would lay on the floor of the desert, staring up at the stars, surrounded by nothing and hearing voices everywhere, conversations he had participated in but could place. People appeared around him and disappeared just as quickly. As soon as he put connections together they drifted away and he was left with the names but not the importance. Martel, Celia, Goetz, Genesee, Spaulding: They all came and went, all of them too confusing to sort out in the short time they moved into focus.
When he did drift off he had the comfort of Orlando, who came speaking some hidden language that floated from her blue lips. He would wake comforted, remembering his school where they told him to ask Orlando to deliver your prayers to the Hill. Only now did he know what that meant. It meant his prayers never went anywhere near The Hill.
He had a visitor, a shadow that appeared at the break of dawn, just as he woke up. It appeared so close to his waking that at first he thought it was Orlando and that he was still dreaming. It appeared on the horizon, soft and glowing, often riding some animal. It stood perfectly still across the blank horizon, watching him before trotting off to the west. He felt no danger from it though he knew it could not be human. He wanted to reach out and ask it to come speak to him, but it was too far and gone too fast, disappearing into the hot mist of sand.
The stretch of land was called the Isorian Desert by some, the East by others, The Eastern Desert by still others or The Shitlands by almost everyone but in languages that made it sound munch more appealing. It was a flat wasteland of cracked ground. It ran from a high cliff in the east that began just after the Alby Woods, all the way to the mountains in the west. It ran so long that the mountains were hidden with distance and haze making any person unused to spending days staring at vacant horizon feel they were walking into emptiness. Coupled with the lack of water or provisions, the Isorian was an impenetrable barrier to anyone that had not grown up in the shadow of the hills to the east of it. Certainly caravans could be loaded and animals trained to survive the intense heat, but why? It wasn't called the Shitlands for nothing.
Fairfax was aided in his journey by his condition. By day three or four, at the point when most journeymen could see the foothills appear, most would begin hallucinating and wander off in the wrong direction, or give up entirely to the dry, burned thoughts in their own mind. Fairfax was so dazed he could barely connect two thoughts. Wandering into a barren wasteland was no more disconcerting to him than being anywhere else. His body, though breaking down, was more resilient than any common person's could possibly be. Bulky and heavy, it operated as much like an organic machine as it did a human body. He could go further than nearly anyone without water or food. And when he did wander upon the odd caravan that had been abandoned he thought nothing of eating or drinking the unthinkable remains. Rotten flesh and putrid water graced his stomach without out any apparent outward effect, though he had to lay down more than once over the next day to wait for nausea to pass.
He thought about what kind of a creature he was, or what kind he had been. It came back to him in a a multitude of answers from a variety of voices. He found that all of these, like signals from every being that wanted to control him, could be turned down, as if covering his ears as an orchestra played. Whenever the thoughts of his ordeal were fading those same voices would come back to him. Their attempts at manipulation kept him at bay, and made his desire to move eastward even more pressing.
The closer he got to the mountains the dimmer the signals penetrating his brain were. Rising from the sandy foothills and onto the trails his mind became so clear of the other's thoughts that his head was nearly blank. He wandered through the cracks in a hillside and found a fortress that seemed, based on the men wandering outside of it, to be a monastery, and he quickly made his way back another way. He wanted no adherents to any belief, no probing questions or those looking to convert him. He made his way through the cliffs, his only guidance the red sky which became darker with each new turn. He looked to find emotions in hazy state and found nothing. There was relief inside him, and nothing else.
And then he saw the creature.
It was a furry thing, four legs and one head with a face on each side of it. It seemed to be bearing teeth at him but it might have just had an overbite, for it had no claws or way to fight. It twisted its light yellow body, trying to see him with both its faces. Fairfax could sense something in it, and knew a single motion would sent it running down the slopes into the canyon.
The motion he employed was so quick that it took no thought. It poured forth from an emotional spout that needed release, an anger that came upon him without reason. It was an energy that took hold of him. The huge ax that lay dormant on his back for so long flew into the beast and it was cut in half before he could blink. He wondered what had happened, how the axe had moved itself. Yet he was standing, teeth clinched, hands outstretched on the handle of the axe that embedded itself into the corpse of the animal and into the ground beneath. There was a shaking of the ground like an earthquake and rocks tumbled nearby.
He cooked the carcass, his thoughts scouring for a narrative that fit his actions. The thing that they had wanted him to become he was now becoming: an instinctual creature. Something inside of him was burgeoning, but he had no capacity to analyze it.
He ate nearly the whole thing, mindlessly filling his stomach until he was bloated and nearly throwing up. He laid on his back for an entire day even as people walked past him on the road and stared at his body. He prayed they would not attempt to steal anything from him, not because he was incapable of defending himself but because he knew he would.
By the time he reached the town of Eae he had a deep desire for emotional contact but no way fo expressing it. He had been nearly mute for weeks with the exception of screams when he killed something. He needed contact but was frightened of what might come from his mo
uth or what action his body might take when the wrong thing was said. So he hid most of his belongings and walked into the place that could not easily be described as a town. It was a series of huts and wooden structures that blocked out the blood red and black sky but offered little protection other than that. He glanced at people who stared at him and his thin dirty shirt and trousers. He attempted a conversation. The old woman he tried speaking with simply stared at him and walked away. She did not speak his language.
He found a trough of water and all his other desires faded. He dipped his head in and drank, feeling his body fill up from his feet to his shoulder. It was dirty but cleaner than anything he had drunk in weeks. He felt exhausted and sick. The pain in his abdomen was intense. He stopped for a moment and looked at his reflection in the brown water. A rough skinned man with a thick, round face and uneven facial hair stared back at him with dark eyes. Didn’t recognize the face. He looked for something familiar in the visage and came up blank.
He felt nausea coming infiltrating his overfilled stomach. He vomited once and then stumbled into a home. He was unaware of any people around him as he lifted himself onto a table. He lay there, feeling his back crack and straighten, his stomach slowly emptying of water. It was the most relief he could have asked for.
When he woke he was aware of someone else in the room. A woman turned to him and came into focus slowly, her worn, leathery features and bird like body becoming clear. She stood with a knife in her hand and a closed eyelid, with her other eye examining Fairfax's face. She clinched her jaw, and it occurred to him that she was wondering if she could win this fight. He had an urge which, under other circumstances, he would not have been able to control, but he was still drowsy so he let it pass and only clinched the sides of the table.