Fairfax

by Jared Ravens

  “You’re very late,” Waring scolded him.

  “I know, but I wanted…. I finished this, and I wanted it published. Or…. Known. Somehow.”

  He handed him a thick set of journals, everything he had written down since he had come on the journey.

  “I wrote it quickly while I was waiting. I think it's important for people to know. Otherwise they will just know what Celia and Genesee tell them.”

  Waring looked at the book in his fingers with curiosity then back and Bern.

  “I will get them somewhere. Somehow.”

  Bern thanked him, then left, feeling separated and empty and complete, all at the same time.

  The water was warm.

  He took her hand and guided her into it.

  Her dress flowed upwards as they walked into it. The rocks on his bare feet seemed like stiff fingers, coming up to caressed his soles. He waded with her, holding her hand. Several times he looked over at her, but she only looked ahead, smiling and sometimes closing her eyes. The mist around them settled onto their shoulders. He looked ahead but he couldn’t see anything but white and grey. He turned his head back. The distance seemed far longer than the amount of steps he took. Around him the crowds of people walked with him, by him, their blank and peaceful faces all looking in the same direction.

  He remembered who he was. Then he didn’t. Then it came to him, then it faded. He let it flow through him like a light river cleaning out the remnants of something old. There was voice and then there was blankness. And then all the people around him came into the mist as a mass, as one thing with many part.

  He couldn’t remember his name.

  The End of Some Things

  Dani slopped through the mud, pulling Sophi behind him. She yelled even as Dani pulled her along and often picked her up. For a moment she calmed, seemingly resigned to her destination and ran along with Dani, though looking back often. Then she would turn and pull at his arm, calling out again, the two sides of her fighting. The battle commenced and they could hear it, the booms and screams.

  When Dani looked over his shoulder he saw the mass of huge bodies rolling over each other. Sophi yanked at him and he pulled back, folding her into his arms and carrying the small girl for a ways. He stumbled along, weak and unfit for the burden that had been placed on him. He felt she was just waiting him out, wanting him to fall over so she could run back to Fairfax.

  When he heard the hoofs behind him he was startled, convinced that both their lives were ended. Then he heard the voice.

  “You trying to get caught out here?” Eryck said from the saddle. “You shoulda been over there!” He said, pointing to the mountains.

  “The cart fell apart,” Dani explained. “And then…”

  He shook his head. Eryck smiled.

  “So it goes son. Get on here, we have an easy ride away from here, away from all that shit.”

  He motioned towards the giants fighting it out. Dani handed the girl up to him. Eryck placed the girl behind him and was reaching out to help Dani up when he jolted suddenly, sitting bold upright in the seat. Dani saw a glimmer off a knife and realized the girl was holding it to Eryck midsection.

  “Back,” she said.

  Eryck smiled nervously.

  “Girl, don’t be doing this.”

  “You don’t know who I am, I am no girl.”

  Sophi’s disposition had changed and she looked fiercely determined as any warrior. Her eyes shut, her jaw set, she waited for a response.

  “You the one that’s in there with that girl, is that how he puts it?”

  “You have said it.”

  “You want me to get off and leave you to die?”

  “You have to guide me.”

  Eryck breathed out in defeat.

  “The fuck I will die, Vivian.”

  She put the knife in harder to his side.

  “You act like a coward.”

  Eryck ground his teeth and pulled the animal back around.

  “Fuck you,” he said. He forced the large animal into a full gallop towards the battle. The forces grew larger and his heart beat faster. He had seen many things but nothing like this. Nothing this large, nothing this overwhelming. He was rushing to the masters of his land. He felt like he was racing to his own death. He wished he was blind. It was easy to be courageous when you couldn’t see shit.

  “What’s up there?” She asked into his ear.

  “Big people fighting.”

  “I can see that.” She didn’t explain how. “I heard arrows fall.”

  “Spears and arrows, they came from the other side and Fairfax hid behind the big woman there.”

  “Keep ridding towards her,” she said. She pulled her bow from her back and notched an arrow into it.

  Celia had just pushed Atrios back and pulled her sword out of some giant on the ground. She loomed large over Eryck, as any mountain he had every seen. Sophi, clicking her tongue to locate the titan, pulled the string back and aimed. Eryck yelled at her to not be so foolish but it was too late. The arrow flew through the air, striking Celia in the lower back. It didn’t stop but disappeared nearly to the other tip into the flesh.

  Celia turned towards the animal manuvering to get out of the way. Sophi was notching another arrow and called to Eryck to turn and face the giant. Eryck had not intention of doing this, but it was too late. He felt a force against the back of the animal and it bayed, flying through the air as Celia’s foot kicked it over. The two on top fell to the ground.

  Recovering, Sophi clicked and felt around as she located her bow in the sand and pulled another arrow from her back. Fairfax ran towards the girl as she launched another arrow, this one in Celia’s side. It did not go nearly as deep, in part because Fairfax grabbed her as she shot it. Eryck was up and and recovered the animal. Eryck sat on the animal, ready to move in and grab both of them when the time was right. But it seemed that time would not come. Celia lifted her foot, ready to come down on Fairfax and the girl, when a gleaming piece of gold came thrusting through her midsection. She dropped the sword to the ground with a tremendous clang.

  Her face turned to surprise and shock. The spear, her spear, twisted in the air as Atrios tried to pull it back out. She turned with force, her giant body pulling the spear from Atrio’s hands. Her face became something inhuman in features as she realized what had happened. Atrios, out of all of them.

  She pulled the spear by its tip through her torso and held it in her hands in disbelief. Atrios stepped back. Fairfax, at her backside, grabbed the Axe from the ground. Genesee called from the ground for it all to stop.

  She could not hear him, nor anyone.

  Surrounded by Curson, Atrios, Spaulding and Fairfax, wounded, hurt, her plans dismissed, she heard one thing, or she thought she did. She thought she heard the voice of Goetz.

  Why?

  You won’t get it, she thought. You won’t have my world.

  Her body suddenly changed. It became something gelatinous and thick. The clothes became stretched and indescribably loose as the entirety of her being became a new thing entirely. She reached out her body skyward into something that looked like a long reflective tube that glistened in the new day light. It moved higher, the distorted imagine of her face and hand reaching out towards the top of the world.

  She felt the pounding of metal against her but it seemed to her to be as flakes of snow trying to cut a piece of wood. Her body was something else now, becoming as flexible as it was in the beginning, when she first began and became the first of everything physical. She left the perception of her body and she let herself flow to the top of the world.

  Her fingers, if one could call them that, touched the darkened upper reaches of the sky. She felt the cold, hard substance at their tips. She let her fingers slip in between them, parting the dome like soft sand on a beach. A hard, black light pushed through and she felt her mind disappear, then reappear, then disappear as the darkness reflected onto and off of her face. It felt both like a coming home and a h
orrifying disintegration of all that she knew.

  Celia, the voice came, like a whisper, neither male nor female. It felt like it flowed from the back of her head to the front with no audible noise. She knew who it was.

  Goetz it is too late.

  Celia, you can have him.

  She froze her hands. She gently removed them from the sky, keeping a single finger outstretched to keep the opening available.

  I don’t want him.

  Whatever you want, don’t end this.

  She stopped, awe struck by what she had heard. Goetz could sense what people were feeling. This would end them all, at least their perception of themselves. It couldn’t see it or hear it, but he could feel it.

  It had blinked.

  The pricking of metal weapons at her feet had stopped. She looked down, seeing the edges of the world at all ends and deep blackness surrounding the fragile looking land. Below was her rubbery, stretched body far above a yellow field with specks of dust standing still below her. She let her body retract, floating down into the existence that she knew so well. The pain flowed back into her, the intensity of her wounds now so clear to her. She could see her bloodied body now forming again and she gritted her redeveloped teeth against the pain. It would all heal. What she received would last forever.

  They were all still, the army and her family. Curson propped himself up on his arm, a pool of blood under him. Atrios sat, his sword laying on his lap, bloodied with her blood, as he had been hacking at her base as ferociously as he could. Every soldier knelt. Genesee looked at her with a quiet, defeated look.

  “We heard it,” Genesee said.

  She looked from him to Fairfax. He knelt, looking at the ground, the axe beside him.

  “Is it true?” She asked.

  When Fairfax didn’t answer, Genesee spoke for him.

  “Yes,” Genesee said. “If it… resolves this situation.”

  Fairfax still did not look up at her. He was panting. She looked to the girl, whose blank, closed eyes seemed to seethe at her from behind their lids.

  “Her too.”

  Fairfax suddenly looked up but Eryck put his hand on his large shoulder before he could say anything.

  “Yes,” Genesee interjected. “Yes.”

  Celia thought a moment. She picked up her spear from the ground, its handle slick with blood. She stood, frozen for a moment, her eyes trained on the two of them. Fairfax couldn’t keep his gaze on hers. Celia’s face, crusted in dried blood and dirt, did not waver from him.

  She extended her free hand, its length about half the size of Fairfax’s body.

  “Come,” she said, “with me.”

  Fairfax stood. He moved forward. Then he stopped, standing straight up, his face froze in shock.

  Eryck plunged the knife into his side again and again. Fairfax fell to his knees before Celia could even react. She cried out as her prize dropped to the ground and Eryck took his sword and cut into his chest. He looked up at her, putting his sword back, Fairfax on the ground like a slaughtered animal.

  “You don’t get him,” he said.

  Eryck spread his arms out at the gold tip of the spear plunged through him, eviscerating him in one swipe. Sophi screamed, pulling up a spear from the ground a thrusting it weakly at her unseen target. Celia’s spear came for her, but because she was so small it missed most of her and cut deeply into her side. She fell to the ground. Dani rushed to her, and looked up to see the spear coming for him. He turned and rolled but it cut him across his back. He fell on his chest, bleeding, unable to move.

  Celia looked down on them. A gasp had come from the crowd around her. She hadn’t heard it. The world around her had become a large, vacant vacuum. She watched Sophi and Dani breathe shallowly, and then stop. She turned around to see everyone that was able to stand now up, glaring at her in shock.

  “Now,” she said. “We can go home.”

  Bringing Up the Bodies

  She turned so she did not see two of the bodies slowly swallowed up by the earth, sinking gently down into the ground, soon covered up with sand.

  Waring held them in each of his hand like dolls, looking at the cuts across the girl’s side and the man’s back. Deep, but they were not cut in two. He sat down with his needle and thread and ran stitches across the girl. As he did this he pumped her chest very gently soothe blood would continue to flow through her. With his toes he massaged the man’s chest, hoping that he would survive but less concerned.

  He took a jar and pulled sticky substance from it that glowed yellow and white. He pressed this into her chest, letting it flow easily into her. At first it didn’t go so well and he had a moment of anxiety about it. But he coached it in and set her body gently to the side. He looked down at the other and began to do the same thing.

  He wasn’t good at healing. Martel would have done a much better job at something like this. But he felt quite proud of himself at what he was able to do. He felt a bit of affection for the two of them and thought about keeping their sleeping bodies down here for them to heal, then putting them up top.

  No.

  Just put them up there?

  Yes.

  All right, he thought. They had to fend for themselves. Somehow. They had one brief chance.

  He crawled back up on the pile of rocks and upwards until he could find the holes that he had dug. One by one he delicately slipped the bodies upwards through the sand, using his other hand to stop the flow of dirt to keep them from coming back again. Once they were up top, he put a small piece of wood to seal the two holes.

  He looked down at a long faced man, who looked blankly up at his boss.

  “Let’s hope for them,” he said.

  They were all walking westward, driven by Celia’s determination to make it back in short order. She was desirous to be home quickly, but she wanted to keep an eye on this broad. Her authority was new, and she needed to keep everyone in line. She was anxious for them to try her way.

  When Sophi woke, she didn’t know her name. She didn’t know much of anything. She couldn’t see but she could feel, and it was hot and painful. There were two words that came to her head, both seemingly the same one: Burn, as in the burning of the desert, and Bern. She didn’t understand the second one.

  She sat up. Almost as soon as she did she could hear someone speaking. Her hearing seemed incredible, although she didn’t know what she was comparing it to. She touched her hair, head, face and body, feeling the thick stitches in her side. Her body was covered in sand that seemed damp compared to the dryness around her.

  “What’s she doing?”

  A soldier said it. Celia turned around, but she wasn’t sure who he was referring to. The small girl was standing up and looking around, but in the wrong way. In back of her someone stood with folded hands. The girl didn’t seem to notice her.

  “Vivian?” Celia said.

  Sophi turned around at the name. Was that her name? It didn’t seem right. She walked around in a circle, confused, and hearing something roaring in her ears. She felt her body loose, like a costume, and something pushing around in side of it.

  “Mother,” Vivian said, standing some distance apart from the girl. “I can’t watch any more.”

  “Then come with us, back to home, back to The Hill,” Celia said. Vivian didn’t move. “I know you’re angry, but come, now. It’s a new day.”

  “Mother,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  Celia stiffened her back.

  “Sorry for what? It doesn’t matter now. The world is right again. All the problems are dead now, you can come home.”

  Vivian walked forward and picked up a spear and held it defiantly at her side.

  “You must not have control,” Vivian said, her voice nearly shaking. Her eyes were moist and her breathing was unsteady. Celia walked towards her and glared down at her.

  “You cannot take up arms against me lightly,” she said.

  “I know,” Vivian said. “I won’t live in a world like this.”

/>   Vivian moved thrust the spear but Celia snatched her before she throw it. She held her lightly in her giant hand, restricting her arms.

  “Vivian, stop!” She called, heartbroken.

  Vivian closed her eyes. Sophi immediately straightened up, as if a marionette had been pulled by its strings.

  “Vivian, what are you doing?”

  “I’m sorry, Mother.”

  “This is futile. Why do you make me do this to you?”

  “Here,” Vivian said, “the questions will end.”

  Sophi’s eyes opened. She could see, impeccably, for once. There was a figure in front of her, huge and daunting and instantly recognizable. She understood it, even though the blood and trauma that covered it.

  It was the one that killed my wife, Bern thought.

  You have one shot at this, said the voice. But it's a big target.

  She felt a surge of energy. It came from multiple angles, tingling up her body and jerking her muscles out. She was straight as a board for a moment, then she began to run forward. It felt as if she was being controlled by rage. She grasped the bow from the ground as Celia moved towards her. She had the tight strings pulled back, further than was physical possible. The air dangled in the slot. Celia’s eyes furrowed. She aimed upwards. It was released, straight into the air, with a velocity and energy that seemed impossible.

  The spear when up.

  Over.

  Over the heads of everyone.

  Over Celia’s head.

  It climbed straight up, into the clouds, and disappeared.

  The tip hit the top of the world, and a defining blackness and cold silence ripped across everyone.

  A single sliver of multi dimensional nothingness shone down into Celia like a knife. Her body contorted and moved in various shapes, flickering in and out of reality. Shapes and colors moved, but only where she she was. There was smoke, and the briefest sounds of yelling. Her body shrank with each passing flash of light until, at last, as soon as it had started, it ended. The wound in the sky closed.

  And on the ground, where there was Celia, there was now a child. A little girl, sleeping in the sand.