by Kara Timmins
“There’s nothing left to be done,” the townspeople would say as they wiped the sweat from their brow, repositioned the goods they carried, and walked on.
Eloy, Neasa, and Malatic gathered their things and followed the crowd down the same path they had used to get to the burial hill. Eloy looked up at where they had left Goodwin as the path branched in the other direction, and knew instinctively that they wouldn’t be back. Guilt wove its way through his head at the thought that he was abandoning Goodwin, and even when they reached the joyous mass of people, the feeling squeezed him like a python.
It had been a long time since Eloy had seen so many people in one place without it somehow relating to conflict. Eloy wasn’t paying attention, so when they crested the hill overlooking the valley, it caught him off guard. The swaying grasses looked like a field of soft gold in the evening light. The lanterns were already lit. People streamed down the hills all around the valley to pool at the bottom. He made his way down like the others. Sounds of music and laughter reached him. Eloy couldn’t see the source of the music playing from somewhere inside of the crowd, but the sound of the laughter of so many was music enough—a song that had become exotic to him.
It became obvious that he lingered on the periphery of the party for too long when he noticed Malatic and Neasa, their faces hopeful but also impatient.
“You two should go find whatever it is that they’re cooking that smells so sweet,” Eloy said. “I don’t care if it’s a toad from Valia—if it smells like that, I’ll take one too.”
“You got it,” Neasa said with a half smile.
He waited until they were lost in the crowd before he let his smile fall away. He had no doubt that Malatic and Neasa were dealing with their own feelings about Goodwin, but the concern they had for Eloy emitted from them like mushroom spores. He wanted them to be free of it even for a short while and even if it came with a false sense of a return to normalcy. He didn’t want to, but once they were out of his sight, he felt freed. Anyone who saw him now could just think that he was a sour kind of person. No one he passed would expect him to be anything else.
He encountered a few fighters—who weren’t fighters now—whom he had met at the forest before the marshland, but most were already lost in the frivolities of the food, drink, and music. A few tried to engage in conversation, but Eloy was quick to excuse himself. He thought about heading back to the town to find the little bed made of grass and feathers, but something caught his eye before he could.
A group of children stood in a semicircle with one tall boy with a head of tight black curls at the center. The group of children looked just as lively as their elders, and Eloy wouldn’t have noticed them if it weren’t for the familiarity of the child who had his peers’ raptured attention. He was the performer of their impromptu show. The boy’s arms flailed as he walked them through his tale, punctuating every big moment. The young man with his blur of black hair reminded Eloy so much of Corwin it clenched at his chest. He walked toward the boy to hear the story, sure by the look of the theatrics that his tale had to be about Aerelion. Eloy had seen men and women recite the accounts throughout his travels, always in the periphery of his attention, and they always brought the nostalgic sense of Corwin.
He had heard many. Some told of rescue of the falsely accused set for brutal execution; others spun stories rich with abilities to read minds, crack the earth, or be in two places at once. Eloy liked to catch as much of the stories as he could by eavesdropping, but he always hoped they would tell the story of Voda. He hoped that the young man who shared characteristics with his friend might be telling the same story Corwin had told in the forest outside of the Bowl so long ago. Eloy walked past the group and took a seat on a long tree split down its middle with his back to them. He didn’t want to make it obvious that he was listening in on their conversation for fear they would become self-conscious and stop.
“. . . but he knew he couldn’t kill them all without help . . .”
Eloy was disappointed that the story wasn’t the one about Voda. Aerelion hadn’t killed anyone, which was one of the reasons Eloy liked that story so much. This boy had a way with telling a tale, and Eloy felt comfort in being able to let go of his pressing thoughts for as long as the boy spoke.
“So, he cut down as many as he could,” the boy said. “A heap of their twisted forms waited for the townspeople in the square like a monument to his valor. With the reeking blood of the twisted uglies still on his hands, he declared that he would use the same hands to move the town itself out of the enemy’s reach. And that is exactly what Eloy did,” the boy said.
Eloy kept his head forward and his back to the group with a substantial effort. Heat flooded up through his neck and into his cheeks. He wanted to stand up and run, but he also wanted to hear how the rest of the story sounded.
“Once he was sure all of the innocents were safe from harm,” the boy said, “he and his companions set out to eliminate the threat once and for all. This time, he didn’t need to rely just on his sword. That night, he would send the enemy out in a way that was deserving of their plague on the land. They were an infestation, and we all know the best way to deal with an infestation is to burn it out.” He lowered his voice and slowed down as he finished. Some of the other kids made sounds of concern while others whooped and cawed.
“But the monsters from the dark wouldn’t go out without a fight, and not everyone who went out to kill them made it out without injury . . .”
Eloy stood up with as much nonchalance as he could and walked back the way he had come. He knew what happened next in the story, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the boy’s version of what had happened to Charlin.
He made his way through groups of guffawing men and women and around dancing couples. The merriment of those who surrounded him seemed far more infuriating than it had before. Hadn’t they all lost someone? Why didn’t they suffer as he did? How could they laugh and drink as if the battle had been won without casualty? The desire to find solitude went beyond being just a passing thought and became a sense of nonnegotiable need.
“Leaving already?” a voice called after him just as he was about to begin his ascent out of the valley.
The voice was female, but the timbre was one he recognized. All other sounds seemed to dim around it, their absence amplifying it to cut its way to Eloy’s ears. He didn’t know the voice, but he knew who spoke.
He turned to face the woman who walked toward him. She swayed as she moved, her hips rounding from side to side almost comically under the control of someone unfamiliar with the anatomy. Her auburn hair swished in an opposite reaction with every move. As she got closer, Eloy saw she had a wooden cup half filled with an amber-colored liquid.
“You know,” Eloy said, “I think I’ve spent years waiting for you to talk to me. I think I’ve expected it every day since the last time you and I talked in the salt flats. But not today. It didn’t even occur to me that it might be today.”
“Maybe that’s why it is today,” Amicus said.
“Of course you would say something like that,” Eloy said as he turned to leave.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry that it’s been so long, but it had to be that way. Plus, I did get through to you recently, in a way, didn’t I?”
Eloy stopped, turned around, and walked back. “That doesn’t count.”
“It doesn’t? I had the opportunity to help and I took it,” she said as she took a heavy drink from her cup.
Eloy gave her a sweeping, scrutinizing look. “Are you . . .?”
“Technically, I’m not,” Amicus said. “She is. But this is a celebration, right? Big important things happened—things worth being excited about.”
“There’s a lot not to be excited about too. Everyone seems to have forgotten about that.”
“They haven’t forgotten. Here, take this and sit down.” Amicus handed him a full cup of an amb
er beverage that Eloy hadn’t seen her pick up and pointed him to a mound of grain sacks. “They haven’t forgotten because their loss is their new reality. It’s not something they can dwell on and find a solution to. They have to deal with the hollow spots for the rest of their lives. These people know this existence. They’ve lived in loss for as long as Anso and Nicanor have been struggling to claim what was never theirs to fight for. These people know their pain will come to the forefront at unexpected or quiet moments forever. They haven’t forgotten the people they lost; they’re trying to survive it by taking the happier moments when they come.”
Eloy looked around and saw the crowd with a softer perspective. Their laughter no longer looked like callousness, but coping.
Eloy nodded. “But I can’t do it the way they are. I can’t go out there and not think about the fact that he’s dead—that they’re all dead.”
“You saved far more than you lost.”
“What difference does that make to the ones who died? Or the ones who will miss them, for that matter?”
“It means everything for anyone who takes the time to think about it.”
“If they really take the time to think about it, I am pretty sure they’ll come after me with torches.”
“Why would they do that?”
“People need someone to blame when they lose someone. Why not the person who ushered their loved ones to their deaths?”
“Ah, I see. Is that what you see when people pass you? Is that what you hear? Blame?”
“The tone of your questions and our history together tells me you already know what I’ve seen and heard.”
“Well, if they don’t blame you, why should you?” Amicus took another drink.
“Because the feeling is there whether I try to think rationally or not—which is exactly why there’s no point in talking about this anymore.”
“Okay. What would you like to talk about?”
“Why are you here now?”
“Because it’s a celebration that this area hasn’t seen in a very long time. Because I’m limited in my abilities to speak with you, and I want to take advantage of this moment. Because that’s the course of how things happened. And I’m here because we need to have a conversation. Simple. We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“Is that not what we’re doing?”
“We are,” Amicus said as she lounged back into the sacks of grain, her knees spread out to create a hammock of her dress between her legs. “But we don’t have to keep at it. It’s up to you. It always has been.”
“Yes, I remember you saying as much the last time we spoke,” Eloy said as he reclined, sitting shoulder to shoulder with his companion.
“A lot has changed for you since that talk,” Amicus said, “but that is still the same. You have the advantage as well as the burden of deciding what you do next.”
“Do I? Sometimes I wonder.”
“If you doubt, choose now what you’ll do. The door that belongs to that key of yours is still waiting for you to unlock it. It’s yours for the taking.”
Eloy touched the stone at his neck and felt its warmth through his shirt.
“I just feel so tired,” Eloy said. “I can’t see the other side of this. It’s endless, and I’ve lost a lot to try to get there. I still have more to lose—a lot more. I’m not sure if it’s worth the risk.”
“Then don’t do it. What will you do now, then?”
Eloy thought about Corwin and Francena. He would go back and curl up in the warmth of their presence and never leave again. But then he thought about what he would say to them when they asked about his story. He could find the right words. He could tell them about Goodwin and how the death of his friend had shifted his perspective. How his quest seemed silly after seeing so many people killed at Anso’s camp. How he was tired of the betrayal of those like the tute, whom good people trusted. How his own desire to see his destined path through to the end made him feel just as deceitful.
But he imagined their faces, the confusion they would undoubtedly feel, because those he loved the most would know him well enough to know what he was really saying: he didn’t want to do it anymore because it got too hard. Maybe that was a justifiable reason to turn back. No one would fault him because few even knew that he had a task to quit. Everything would go on without him trying to obtain the dreams that had been made by a child.
He let himself imagine what it would look like—a life without the weight of the stone that hung like an anchor around his neck—and he felt relief, but the reprieve was sickening and hollow. It felt like a compounded loss. In the overgrowth of the vinelike bleak thoughts that wrapped through his mind, one thing sat at the center: he still wanted what was promised. He still had more story to live.
The woman’s smirk revealed that Amicus wasn’t waiting for an answer to the question.
“Why do you even ask these questions when you know how I’ll respond?” Eloy asked.
“Who said I did? Some questions are meant to lead to other questions. Sometimes the things one asks is just one end of a rope that the asked is meant to follow on their own.”
“The whole thing, this whole life you’ve given me, makes me feel like I am on your leash.”
“That’s your perspective on the situation, and it’s your choice to see it that way. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that isn’t how I see things.”
“How do you see things?”
“You have been given very little to go on, and you have accomplished very much. That’s yours. No one forced you to make the choices you have.”
Eloy wanted to see his situation from a different perspective, the way Amicus did, but a stubborn part of him held on to his beliefs.
“Are you ever going to tell me who you are?” Eloy said after a while.
“Maybe I don’t know who I am.”
“Do you?”
“I know myself to be a lot of things, so I don’t know what you want to hear. I’m not a person like you are. I can tell you that much. I’m not transporting here from a solid form in another place. This is me sitting here next to you just like it was me who saw you when you were a child and sat with you at the salt flats—it’s just me with a little assistance. As I’m sure you suspect, there are answers waiting for you on the other side of the locked door you seek. You’ll find some of the answers to the question of who I am. Maybe by then you won’t even want to know.”
“I doubt it,” Eloy said.
“You’re probably right.”
“Don’t you know these things? Don’t you always know what’s going to happen next?”
“I don’t know. Just because I knew the possible outcome of what was to come for you in the past doesn’t mean I know now. Things have gotten too complicated.”
“So, you don’t know if I’ll make it or not?”
“Nope. I never really have.” Amicus pointed to the drink in Eloy’s hand. “What’re you waiting for? Drink your beverage. I may not know what will happen, but I can make a good guess that you aren’t going to get much more of that in the future. Best to appreciate it while you can.”
Eloy looked down into the golden liquid for a pensive moment before he gulped down half of it. He didn’t want to repeat the sickness he had met the day with, but he appreciated the drink with the gratitude of someone who was about to say goodbye to it.
“Your friend Goodwin was a good man,” Amicus said, “and he was drawn to you because you have those same characteristics. It makes sense that the two of you found value in one another, and it’s a terrible thing that he isn’t with you going forward. Your world is at a deficit at his loss. And I’m sorry that you have to miss him. You’ll always miss him, and while that is a burden for you, it’s your gift to him.”
“Thank you,” Eloy said as he swallowed at his sadness.
“I’ll do my best to look
out for you in what’s to come, but even if I can’t, I know you have the strength to find your way through difficulties. You’ll find your way through this one too. Good luck, my friend. You and I will speak again.”
The woman sat up straighter and looked at Eloy as she blinked away the daze. She looked down into her empty cup and frowned.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “were you saying something? I must have dozed off.”
Her voice was far softer than Amicus’s.
“I was saying what a nice celebration this is,” Eloy said.
“Yes . . . yes. We haven’t had one like this since I was very little. I’m sorry. If you don’t mind, I’m going to find some water.”
“Of course. It was nice talking with you.”
Eloy watched her go, her movements looking more stable under practiced and proper control, but her footing was still a bit wobbly from the drink. She disappeared into the crowd of people, some with arms over each other’s shoulders, swaying back and forth, others play wrestling, and some telling stories.
Eloy realized after thinking back on the conversation with Amicus that Eloy hadn’t asked what he was meant to do next, just as Amicus had predicted during their conversation at the salt flats. Eloy still didn’t know—his level of knowledge hadn’t changed—but he no longer felt the anxiety and urgency of having to know everything at once. Everything the Seer had said to him had come to pass, and he trusted that the last bit of it would be true too: the way forward was clear now that Nicanor and Anso were gone. No one would hold him back from finding what was his to find.
But he didn’t need anyone, magical or not, to tell him that what he was looking for wasn’t in any of the places he had been. As he sipped at his drink, which got sweeter every time he brought it to his lips, he made a mental declaration that he wouldn’t go back to any of the places he had been before. He had made a habit of lingering, and if he was ever going to get back to Corwin and Francena with his found bounty in hand, he had to be more aggressive about moving forward.