Eloy's Challenge

by Kara Timmins

  Neasa’s stoic face broke into a sob.

  “Do you want to know more?” the Seer asked. “I don’t have to tell you the details. The future doesn’t benefit or suffer by you knowing either way.”

  “I want to know,” Neasa said. “I’ve come all this way and waited so long. I have to know. I know what it’s like to wonder, and my imagination is worse than the truth.”

  “It isn’t,” the Seer said. “You thought maybe he had a grand ending. He didn’t. You’ve heard about Nicanor and his fighters taking children and using them for their purposes. This was not your brother’s fate. His body, bones now, lies at the bottom of one of the places where the ground rock has eroded to reveal the caves below. You know the area. The hole is lined with lavender flowers.”

  “I know the one.” Tears dripped off the point of Neasa’s nose as she hung her head. “Please, tell me more. I have to know what happened.”

  Eloy balled his hands so tightly his knuckles ached, his breath deep and fast. But he didn’t interrupt, keeping quiet for the sake of the tragedy of what he was hearing.

  “There was a man in your life,” the Seer said. “He was not a stranger. He was a weak man, and his weakness made him angry. He hid it well, keeping his resentment of his family to himself, but he always wanted what his brother had. Your father, his brother, was everything he wasn’t and had everything he didn’t.”

  Neasa clamped her hands over her mouth, tears dripping down her knuckles.

  “Your uncle dealt with it well enough for a time,” the Seer went on, “telling himself that his brother would one day grow weak and maybe then he would be able to get a foothold. But things kept coming for your father. Your father acquired wealth with so much ease, then the beautiful and sweet wife, who cared for him because of a deep and sincere love, then a daughter, strong and smart, but the son who came next coaxed the envy beyond a manageable point. For the son was everything of his father and more—young and kind, brave and personable. And Silvus couldn’t wait for this one to pass.”

  The Seer licked her dry lips and took a few deep breaths before continuing. One of the lizards rose and licked the Seer’s face. Eloy stepped backward and wiped his damp forehead.

  “Silvus coaxed your young brother out of your home by inviting him to pick the blackberries that grow on the thorny vines around the underground caves,” the Seer said. “At twelve years, your brother was at the age when his body was starting to grow into that of a man, and Silvus knew he wouldn’t have the advantage if he waited much longer. He had spent so long hating your father that when he grabbed your brother from behind and slit his throat, your uncle cried tears of joy, thinking about the pain your father would feel. He threw your brother’s body down one of the holes where his bones now rest. Silvus felt the power that only a man like him who has taken a life can know. He was electrified by it, and he thought that strength was a part of him that would translate to the rest of his life, the secret of his wickedness. He went out on the road and thought others, men who knew the power of taking a life, would give him fear and respect. He learned that killing a boy is not the same as killing a man.”

  Neasa’s wail of disbelief made its way through her white-knuckled fingers.

  “That’s all there is to know,” the Seer concluded. “Is there anything else you would like to ask?”

  “No,” Neasa said against the thickness in her throat.

  “Now you both have what you came here for,” the Seer said. “I wish you strength in the difficult tasks to come for you both. Now go. As I said, you’ll not meet any resistance or danger when you exit the forest, but that doesn’t mean you should linger. It’s also wise, for the sake of those who hear, not to give too many details of what you’ve found. For others, it will be impossible to make it this far.”

  They said a final goodbye. Neasa choked out words of gratitude, and they crawled back out of the passage. Eloy led the way out of the glittering cave with nothing but the sliding sounds of the enormous reptiles to fill the silence.

  “I just—” Neasa started to say once they were able to inhale the forest air again.

  “Don’t say anything,” Eloy said, his voice cold and even. “You lied to me. All of you lied to me. Right now, I can’t help but think about all the times I looked like an absolute idiot. Critiko went to you the moment we got to Valia, didn’t he? He probably said something about how he found some fool in the forest who might be able to get you both what you wanted. There I was, sitting in his home like a fool. I actually cared about what you both thought of me—especially your father—like a stupid child.”

  Neasa’s face was firm with defensiveness. The things Eloy had heard about their family were horrible, but he couldn’t find his way around their deceit to find empathy.

  “That night we were drinking and you came in,” Eloy continued, “was that his way of showing you who I was so you could recognize my face?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, Gwyn was in on it too. Of course. He was the one who sent me to you. I guess every person I know in Valia is a liar and manipulator. I’m grateful that I now have a complete understanding of what kind of people you all are.”

  Neasa opened her mouth to defend herself, but Eloy turned and walked back up the hill.

  13

  Eloy stormed off over the hill and trudged through the vines and foliage. His anger propelled him, skewing his carefully cultivated awareness of danger. It came back to him with a jolt when he noticed the rustling of the vines a few strides away. He reached for his sword but stopped when he heard the now-familiar sound of the Seer’s lizards. His body relaxed, and he looked behind him to see if Neasa had followed. He didn’t see her. The glowing hill was farther behind him than he thought, just barely close enough to light his surroundings, as if his anger had given him a boost of speed. A jolt of worry for Neasa cut through his anger and fatigue, but it melted as the humiliation and anger flared back up in him like a blaze, and he stopped feeling bad about leaving her behind.

  He found a small spot that was clear of vines and foliage, sat down, and lit his lantern—the glow of the cave now just a haze behind him. A nauseating fatigue hit him as soon as he ignited the moss. The Seer had said so much, and he still had to sift through what it all meant. He closed his eyes and tried to breathe his way to a sense of calm. A small rustling in the leaves in front of him jerked his nerves back into a state of alertness. He held his lantern out in front of him and locked eyes with two little black orbs.

  The animal that looked back at him was a rodentian creature about as big as a fist, with twitching ears, each larger than the creature’s head. Its long pink snout wiggled at Eloy. Deciding Eloy wasn’t anything of interest, the creature turned its attention back to the vines. The animal licked a thin tongue through its narrow snout to grab a perfectly spherical purple berry.

  The presence of the little fruit felt like an unnecessary display of the lies told by the people of Valia that Eloy had believed so readily. The berries looked markedly different from the dried and previously digested ones from Gwyn’s collection, but Eloy was sure they were the same. He plucked enough of them to bulge a tied-off swatch of fabric, which he tucked into the top part of his pack. He wasn’t sure if Gywn had lied about those too, but the power of the thyrethan silk seemed to be true, so the berries might hold some value that could help him get away from Valia and everyone in it.

  The ground underneath him was soft with plant matter, and he curled his body into a tight ball and went to sleep. The hungry rodents and distant movement of the lizards rustling made a white noise that lulled him.

  He woke up to darkness—the only dim light coming from the cave behind him—his mind unable to understand where he was. The dry moss in the little lantern was now ash; the fire had burned out. He grasped for his pack in the dark, found more moss, and ignited a new flame. He couldn’t tell how long he had been asleep, but the creaking s
tiffness in his joints told him it had been a while. The inability to gauge time felt suffocating. He had to get out. He kept his back to the hill, hoping that if he walked away from it, he would find the monstrous tree. He felt a sense of progress and relief when he saw its girth—a gray behemoth against the blackness in the distance.

  He rounded half of the base by the time his body started to feel the fatigue of a day again. With the memory of the creature Eloy and Neasa had faced on the way in, Eloy found a place with his back to the tip of one of the farthest roots. Even with the Seer’s assurance, he didn’t want to tempt anything.

  He built a small fire and took one of the few pieces of dried meat strips left from his bag, wondering if it would be enough to get him through. He was chewing his last bite when he saw a bobbing glow moving through the vines from the place he had come. A rush of fear filled him for a moment at the thought that it might be the acidic floating globular sac from the trip in, but the color was a firelight gold instead of a sunlight white. It had to be Neasa and her torchlight. It moved straight toward his camp. As it got closer, he could see the dark outline of her form in the center.

  “I didn’t know where you were,” she said when she finally reached him. “I went to look for you, and you were gone.”

  “I couldn’t have gone far,” Eloy said. “And as you heard, we’re going to make it out of here without a problem. So, you know, no need to worry.”

  “I didn’t know if she only meant you.” Neasa looked back over her shoulder. “Do you mind if I sit? It’ll save me from having to make a fire.”

  “I’m not going stop you.” Eloy looked up at her from under a firm brow.

  She slumped down hard on the ground and stared at the fire for a long time. Eloy tried to distract himself from the tension that came from his anger and humiliation by listening to the popping of the embers.

  “If it means anything,” Neasa said, “my dad wanted to tell you the truth before we came out here.”

  Eloy glared at her over the fire.

  “There used to be a woman in town,” Neasa went on. “She was like a Seer—not like the one we just met, obviously. She wasn’t great, but she knew enough to make a trade out of it. Chrysander—that was my brother—had been gone for a few years when we asked her to try to get some answers for us. She wasn’t able to tell us what happened, but she did tell us how we could find out, which you heard in the cave. I’ve been looking for the Seer ever since.”

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Eloy said.

  “That’s not what I meant. I gave up hope. I thought I knew what had happened to him. Nicanor’s main camp isn’t far from Valia, and I’ve heard things. I thought for sure they took Chrys. Why wouldn’t they? He was around the right age; he was going to be strong. Valia has an agreement with Nicanor. We grow food for their fighters, and they leave us alone for the most part. But I thought maybe he had wandered away from town and someone came across him who didn’t care about the agreement. So, I made plans. I trained to be stronger so I could find him and bring him home. My mother died not knowing where he was or what happened to him, and I didn’t want that to happen to my father.”

  A sigh caught in her throat.

  “Anyways,” she went on, “when my dad came through my door after his trip this time, he was so excited that what the old woman had said was finally coming true. He had been worried about me going out to find it on my own. I really thought he was seeing the connection because he was looking. Like I said, he wanted to tell you. He said you were a good man and he was sure you’d be willing to help us. I was the one who said to keep our intentions a secret. I didn’t know who you were or what you were here for, and I wasn’t willing to divulge our life to a stranger. Keeping this from you was my idea, not my dad’s. Both my father and Gwyn went along with it because I asked them to. They’re good people, just like you thought they were. I want you to be able to think they are again. My dad likes you so much, you know. I think it’s his way of seeing what it would have been like to do those things, like go out for drinks, with his own son, who should be grown. I think he imagined Chrys would be a lot like you.”

  Neasa sighed and looked into the fire as the muscles in her face went slack from exhaustion.

  “I’ve spent so much time not knowing what happened to Chrys,” Neasa said, “wondering where he was, if he was okay. Maybe he was somewhere cold and hungry or beaten and hurt. But the Seer was right. Even with all the daydreams and fantasies, I knew. Deep down. It became too much. I had to know for sure. I would’ve done anything to know. I guess I’m getting around to saying that I’m sorry for not telling you the truth. I did what I thought was best. I wish I had the words to make you understand what it’s like not to know what happened to someone you cared about the way I cared about Chrys, but I can’t. I’m not in a place to ask you for anything, I know that, but I hope you can forgive my dad and Gwyn. I’m the one who deserves your anger, not them.”

  She didn’t have to explain how it felt to wonder what had happened to a loved one lost. Eloy knew exactly what it felt like. His anger burned off like night frost in the morning sun, and the only thing left was humiliation. He wanted to hold on to his anger and sense of betrayal. Anything was better than the embarrassment. He thought of Francena, and he imagined how it would have been if he heard about her what Neasa had just heard about her brother. Eloy was sure he wouldn’t have the same amount of composure she had.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” he said.

  She looked into his face for the first time since she sat down and gave him a weak and sad smile.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Eloy handed her a strip of dried meat. He watched as she ate it and noticed how different she looked to him. Her appearance hadn’t changed, but the fearless grandiose forest explorer she had been was gone. The person in front of him was someone new, someone who had elements of the woman he had come to know but was now a more complete image. It would take some effort to forgive the lie, but he understood her motivation, and he found that he wanted to give this new person, the real person, a chance.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  The question felt silly.

  Neasa gave a weak shrug. “I know it’ll be better in the long run to know, but right now it doesn’t feel like I thought it would. I thought that even if I found out he was dead, there would be some kind of calm. Any scenario I thought of through the years would’ve been better than this. I remember sitting on Silvus’s lap as a child. I remember the sound of his voice when I put my ear against his chest. How could he have done this? If I had heard the story from anyone else but her, I wouldn’t have believed it. How am I going to tell my dad? What if this kills him? He puts flowers on the grave of the man who killed his son every time he comes back from the road. It’s too much. It’ll break him.”

  “What’s the alternative? He’ll want to know what you learned. You can’t lie to him.”

  Neasa shook her head. “No more lies.”

  Eloy felt a growing relief from the tension between them as they spoke.

  “You’re right,” Neasa continued. “He needs to know. I thought I would be eager to get out of the forest after so long, but now I feel like I want to take my time.”

  Eloy looked up at the dense forest ceiling. “You’re on your own in that.” He tried to give her a smile, but the weight of it felt too heavy. He thought of Critiko and his easy laugh and silly songs. And in that image, Eloy found he could give Neasa what she had asked of him; he couldn’t be angry at Critiko. Instead of resentment, a hollow ache of sadness now surrounded the thought of his friend. Eloy didn’t want Critiko to feel the pain they were about to deliver either.

  “I can help you if you want, you know. Be there when you tell him.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate it, especially after not telling you the whole truth, but this is something I have to do on my o
wn. He and I will survive this. We have to.”

  14

  In the following days, Eloy and Neasa heard skirmishes in the distance, and they wondered if the sounds were the large reptiles following and protecting them just out of sight. The two never talked about the things the Seer had said to either of them. Eloy could see it weigh against Neasa in the silent times, and he understood the look on her face. He let her have those moments, never trying to pull her thoughts away from it. He knew better than anyone he couldn’t. He wished he could clear it away from her mind the way Midash had with the dark memories of Eloy’s past, but even then, the relief would only be temporary.

  They collected various leaves, stones, and bark from the deeper parts of the woods until their packs weighed down uncomfortably. Their collecting helped ease the anxiety of their travel and occupied their conversation. Eloy learned a lot from her explanations.

  They both cried out when sunlight finally made its way through the thick canopy of leaves and touched their faces. They leaned against one another—Eloy with an arm draped over Neasa’s shoulder and her with an arm around his waist—and laughed with the intoxication of the fresh light like two friends after a few drinks. It had been so long since they felt warmth that didn’t come from the humid trappings of dense foliage or fire. It felt clean and replenishing. Neasa closed her eyes and slowly filled her lungs through her nose.

  “Sometimes I forget that sunlight has a smell, but it does. It’s subtle and easy to miss, but it’s there.” She opened her eyes again and sighed. “We should be back in Valia before the sun sets.”

  They started walking again. They separated but stayed close. Eloy matched her step and kept his attention down as he crunched the sun-dried leaves under foot. In the appreciation of the sound, he noticed an absence. He paused and held out an arm to stop Neasa too.