by Kody Boye
When they would get to the top, he couldn’t be sure.
All he cared about in that moment was that they were one step closer to their destination.
The afternoon waned as though a constellation forced to move across the heavens. The sun sinking slowly across the horizon, toward the west and lighting the world with its blinding rays, the clouds moved, shifted and shrouded the world in shadow in some places and then others. It seemed to Odin that once the horse had cleared the harshest part of the incline that they would simply be thrust into shadow, though how he expected that to happen was completely beyond him. Here, seemingly at the top of the world, he could see everything for leagues on end, including the broad sweep of land he had just spent two weeks crossing.
I did it, he thought, smiling, a laugh ready to escape from his throat but strangled before it could escape. I really did it!
There would be no more worries about how he would climb the hills, how he would defeat their sentiments or conquer their heights. There would be no doubt, no worry, no fear or growing sense of escalation that he could not do the very thing he wanted to do, for at that moment nothing but triumph existed, a rising sense of glory within his heart that spread through his throat and up into his mind.
Directly before his eyes and sweeping across the southern horizon were the very hills he would cross for the next week, if not two.
The Whooping Hills, he thought. The place where creatures once lived and then came to die.
There, he decided that it would be best to not only give himself, but his horse a break. For that, he dismounted, grabbed the nail from the side of the saddle, then stabbed it into the ground.
They each deserved a night of rest.
He saw what could have been the most beautiful sunrise atop the Whooping Hills. Much like he had seen at the crux of it all, directly beneath the gargantuan heights of the Hornblaris Mountains, orange and red light bled across the horizon and eventually began to fade into lighter and more prominent shades of pink. Struck with blue both pale and dark, this collage of color seemed to extend forevermore until it eventually struck the parts of the world he knew to be covered in ocean—a large, ever-sweeping plane of blue that likely reflected the very thing he was now looking at.
It’s so beautiful.
Beautiful could not have described the scene. Breathtaking, awe-inspiring and exquisite could have framed this thing upon a wall, but not beauty. No. Beauty was but a thing to be referred to on a warm summer’s day when staring into the eyes and soul of another, for such a word was meant for mortals and not the everlasting world.
Taking a deep breath, then expelling it just as slowly, Odin unbuckled the clasps that held the horse’s saddle in place, then set it on the ground before beginning to go through its contents, pulling from many pockets and satchels the necessary ingredients for the night’s meal. The prop upon which the pot would rest came first, then the support beams that would be speared within the ground. Followed by these items was the pack of flour and the tin of water that he would use to create the night’s dinner.
When he finished and camp was but a moment away from being prepared, Odin smiled and looked out at the fading sunset.
If only you could see this.
A tear slipped from his eye.
Nearly two weeks after his father’s death, he still could not shake the feelings from his soul.
Though he felt as though he would never truly get over the Elf’s death, he knew what he had to do.
Reaching up, he brushed the tears from his eyes, crouched down, then struck a plume of flame into the ground, where it began to glow in glorious light before eventually dying down to a somber, pale white.
Without the company of another, it took all his courage to sleep alone, for anyone or anything could easily come in the middle of the night and kill him or steal all his belongings. For that he forced the fire with all his might to burn and allowed what little faith he held to be instilled within the horse, who would surely alert him to any trespassers who stepped too close to the campground.
Though initially concerned about his lack of protection, he eventually gave in and was able to fall asleep.
In the middle of the night, a bloodcurdling scream thrust him from the peace of darkness. Thrown forward by momentum, he reached down and pulled the black-bladed sword from its sheath in one single, deft move.
What was that?
Ears alert, eyes scanning the horizon and the fine hairs on his neck rising on end, he first looked to the horse who stood no more than a few feet away, then to the distant hills that towered even above the awesome heights he stood upon.
He knew nothing of this area, of the creatures or beings that inhabited it, so who could say that he had not heard the shrill cry of a Harpy or a giant bird of prey?
There are no Harpies here, he thought. There can’t be.
Surely there could be no wicked women, no creatures of avian lineage and cursed beyond compare, for they only existed to the far west in the Dark Mountains, within the heart of Denyon and the passages it held. For them to be so far north would be a tragedy, as that alone would have summoned upon the world a notion of evil that surely should not exist within the lightened planes of life.
“No,” he whispered. “It wasn’t a Harpy.”
It couldn’t have been, for he had not heard a cackle, a cry or a shrill shriek that cut across the sky like a fine dagger being thrown through the air.
No.
This had to be something else.
Pushing himself out of his bedroll and steadying himself on his feet, he sought out the distant horizon and the hills that blanketed the eastern countryside.
For one moment, he thought nothing in the world could have been watching him.
Shortly thereafter, his heart froze inside his chest and his blood chilled to the temperature of ice.
It stood on the furthest hill watching him with an intensity that could have been considered catlike and iconic. Hunched forward, head tilted in his direction and red eyes burning with an intensity like two handheld lanterns, the creature, doglike in appearance and all respects, began to stalk the hillside watching him with its horrific eyes, then slowly came to stop in midstride as if disturbed by something on the wind. Head held prone, high ears flickering, it tilted its head left, then right. It soon came to repeat this behavior as though mimicking something it had to have seen in a bird, for unless piqued by some higher curiosity canines, or canine-like creatures did not usually exhibit such behavior. It continued to do this for the next several moments, watching Odin in the faint light that streamed from the firelight, before tilting its head back to release the very sound that had torn him from sleep.
If one truly stopped to consider it, the creature could have sounded like a bird dying on a cold night.
“What are you?” Odin whispered, holding his sword steady as the fire began to flicker, waning in spite of the immense hold he forced over it. “What do you want from me?”
The creature turned its head back down to regard him.
No. It couldn’t have possibly heard him, could it?
That’s ridiculous.
Whatever this thing was had to have come across him by accident. He had not drawn attention to himself, and while a fire burned to keep intruders away, it had not been meant to draw others near him.
Maybe he would have been better off in the darkness—alone, isolated and completely cut off from everything around him.
“Go away,” he whispered.
The creature tilted its head back and screamed.
What on the very face of this earth could this creature have been, could be? Surely it was not of the natural world, for dogs did not scream like women. Could it have been supernatural, possibly, or maybe even a magical construct created by someone distant and hidden?
Up until that moment, he hadn’t felt any form of magic whatsoever.
This isn’t magic, he thought.
“This is real.”
The crea
ture tilted its head back and howled.
Odin snuffed the fire out of existence with a simple wave of his hand.
Beside him, the horse whinnied.
“It’s all right,” he whispered, crawling back into his bedroll and sliding as deep inside it as he could. “Nothing’s going to bother us.”
He could only hope.
For what seemed like days following their initial acquaintance the creature continued to follow him. Only by night and seemingly shadowing his every step, its red eyes could be seen bobbing across the horizon and its howls heard echoing across the hills—whooping, some would have said, like a bird strangled and with damaged vocal chords.
At one point—during the day, at a time when the sun was clear and stark against the horizon—Odin began to consider the idea that the creature could have been a Sprite of some sort, as its eyes seemed the only discernible part of it. However, as night once more came and the creature returned, he cast all notions of that aside and turned his attention to dinner, which cooked in the pot before him and threatened to boil over were he not careful.
Does it really matter, he thought, what it is?
Though it clearly didn’t, as the creature had yet to approach or attempt to communicate with him, he couldn’t help but wonder whether or not this thing had a past. He briefly entertained the notion that the Centaurs, once alive and thriving, had once dealt with this thing—had once told their children to always remain inside after dark and to stray from things with red eyes and curdled cries—but that idea quickly faltered as the creature howled.
Once more, he couldn’t help but wonder just what it wanted.
“It probably wants nothing,” he mumbled.
If anything, it was likely it wanted him gone, if only because he was trespassing on territory ancient and considered nothing more than a grand, sweeping burial ground.
Sighing, no longer sure what to think of the situation at hand, he pulled the pot from its rack and placed it on the ground beside him, a smile partially spreading across his face when the smell of warm vegetable soup wafted up and into its nose
Ah, he thought. Food.
After turning to place a pail of water beside the horse, he took a bowl from the saddle, filled it with soup, then spooned some of it up and out of the bowl, where he blew over it until it chilled and placed it into his mouth.
On the distant hillside, the creature seated itself on its haunches and began to tilt its head back and forth.
I wonder why it does that, he thought, unable to tear his eyes from the spectacle before him.
Was, like he imagined, it stuck within a certain frame of mind, forced to repeat choice activities over and over, or was it just curious—fascinated by the lone human and horse that wandered through its territory?
Whatever the reason, he couldn’t dwell on it, otherwise he was apt to lose his nerve and turn back.
He’d spent too much time on the road to return to Ornala shamed and without dignity.
The creature howled.
Odin closed his eyes.
Shivers of unease crawled up his back and spiraled down the center of his spine.
If only it would be quiet. Maybe then he would have some semblance of peace.
No matter how far or quickly he progressed through the Whooping Hills, the creature would not approach him. At times he tried to beckon it forward with simple thoughts and words, if only to draw its attention to see if it really was, in fact, real, but each time he did the creature would only continue to skirt at the edge of his vision, occasionally howling and offering a menacing glare that could easily have been taken for something far sinister had he known its true purpose.
Just remember, he thought. It’s curious. Nothing more.
On the seventh night of his escapade through the hills, he decided without much dignity in his mind that they were to continue on throughout the evening. Despite having stopped only to water his horse, feed it a carrot and to eat a piece of apple himself, he pushed them forward without a doubt in his mind or a flicker in his heart, regardless of whether or not the horse below him seemed to complain with light grunts and ragged gusts of breath.
If he wanted to maintain some semblance of sanity, they would have to leave the hills as soon as possible. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could take listening to the sound of screaming.
Shaking his head, then reaching up to adjust the hood of his cloak, he drew an arm close to his chest and sighed when he felt the wind come up.
Like they were famed for, the sound of the wind whipping along the hills seemed to create an affect air would have had when pressed to the ground at high concentrations of speed.
Such a weird thing, he thought.
His thoughts eventually led him to fantasize about what the Centaurs must have been like when they’d roamed these hills. He’d yet to see any animals that they could hunt—wild cow, goat or otherwise—so what they would have eaten he couldn’t be sure. Then again, if humankind really had led them to extinction, who was to say that the animals in the area had not gone along with them? The hills could have been described as ghostly, ethereal, maybe even haunting, which only led him to believe that the thing pursuing him along the hills was an apparition.
Sometimes, they said the spirits of long-dead creatures could continue on to take watch over the living, mortal world.
Knowing more than well that it was better not to chance thinking about the possibilities, Odin raised his head and sighed when he saw what appeared to be the first sight of the hills lowering.
It would not be much longer before they crossed into the Great Divide.
The night swallowed with it the hopes and dreams of men and beasts as clouds shadowed the sky and hid the moon behind their folds. At first intimidated by the aspect of a lightless night, then discouraged by the idea that he would not be able to see anything but the apparition’s beastly red eyes, he considered the idea of pushing the horse for yet another night, but realized—with pure, utter horror—that should he continue pushing it, he was likely to run it into the ground. For that, he dismounted with fear in his heart and unease coursing through his veins, arranging camp, then feeding both himself and the horse.
When he went to bed at night without a single glimpse of the thing on the far hills, he believed himself lucky and praised by whatever higher powers that could possibly exist.
However—like most things, the peace and silence came to an end.
Stirred from sleep by the sound of the horse whimpering and the disturbance of dirt being kicked up from one of its massive hooves, Odin opened his eyes and trained his attention on the darkness that shadowed the outskirts of the campground. Wary, unsure and disturbed by the idea that something could be hiding and waiting to capture them, he drew the black blade from its sheath and held it steady as he carefully rose into a sitting position, the light from the fire catching the dark metal and reflecting flashes of grey back into his eyes.
At his opposite side, the silver sword began to hum.
Shortly thereafter, the hilt of his own sword began to shiver within his grasp.
What in the world?
He was not able to finish the thought, for the figure appeared from the darkness and drew all source of sanity from his mind.
The apparition that had been following him for the past week-and-a-half stepped into the campground with its head held high and its red, glowing eyes fixed directly on him. Its body huge, emaciated, ribs peeking from its chest and its stomach hollow and seemingly without life, the dog—if it could be called that, for its ears were much too long to be any dog he had ever seen and its snout too short and stout for it to be considered something of the canine variety—took a few steps forward and extended its elongated neck toward the glowing fire.
At first, Odin thought it would simply shy away.
However, when the dog’s snout touched the base of the flame, the world went dark.
The horse screamed.
Odin threw himself from his bedroll and
grabbed his father’s sword in one single thrust.
The creature before him, now only visible by its glowing red eyes, took several steps forward and approached him with ease Odin found almost impossible to comprehend.
“What are you?” he asked, desperate to draw his father’s sword but unsure if he should. “What do you want from me?”
The creature tilted its head back and howled.
On the distant hills, several more pairs of glowing red eyes appeared from the darkness.
What in the world could I have done to summon this upon me? he thought, shivering, the air growing deathly cold and every fine hair on his forearms rising on end.
To say that he had done nothing would have been an ignorant, bold-faced lie, for this entire journey was toward a venture that could have been described as hellish—agonizing, some would say, for its purpose and deviant need. He wanted to do something that the highest courts of magic had deemed illegal. To summon the dead, they said, was to curse oneself beyond any reasonable measure. Elves had once attempted to bring the dead back to life, then were thrust into madness and distorted beyond repair. Human men, they argued, were not capable of using such magics, that their minds would simply be rendered and they reduced into bubbling throes of madness, but what comprehension did that regard when mortals were capable of wielding such powers for the greater, grandest evil? Did that mean that even the most skilled of human mages would be thrust into infinity and torn from their place within their minds?
I’m not doing anything others wouldn’t do.
No, of course he wasn’t. Anyone in his position would have surely ran away from their kingdom and abandoned their king for a quest that would likely result in his death or eventual, lifelong imprisonment, would have defied the odds and, for reasons unimaginable, what could have been considered common good nature to pursue madness and evil itself. Anyone who suffered as he had would blindly do such a thing, for to wander in the dark with only a single flame to guide one was considered to be the grandest thing possible in the minds of many and the hearts of every.