Forts: Endings and Beginnings

by Steven Novak

  Chris steadied his shaking. He could feel Owen pressed against the back of his leg and hear the rest of the group shuffling anxiously behind.

  “Nicky. To-Tommy and Nicky.”

  Krystoph’s eyes lowered for a moment as he recalled the events on Fluuffytail’s ship: the youngest child destroying Ochan vessels with the power of his words, and the awful wall of blackness that emerged from the yellow-haired boy’s body which laid waste to all that remained. For the briefest of moments the proud angles on the faces of his own children flashed white and hot across the landscape of his brain. The images were accompanied by the sound of their voices and the unforgettable life in the chill of their flesh when they touched his hand. For an instant he remembered.

  A moment later he forced himself to forget.

  When next he spoke, his voice cracked as much as it was capable. “Your children were powerful creatures, fought bravely. This knowledge should provide you some comfort.”

  Chris’s body jumped. His heart skipped, paused, and then refused to start again.

  “Wait a minute; what do you? What do you mean? Wh-what are you talking about? What do you know about my children?”

  Though he wasn’t aware he was doing it, Chris began moving in the direction of Krystoph and Fellow, a gesture the massive Ochan did not appreciate. Krystoph’s eyes narrowed menacingly and his arm wrapped tighter around Fellow’s neck. He pressed his dagger further into the Chintaran’s flesh, while lifting Fellow into the air until his feet were dangling loose. Fellow gurgled and choked. Chris stopped.

  “Come no closer, creature.” Krystoph growled sternly. “While I understand your pain more than most, it does nothing to change the situation in which we currently find ourselves.”

  Chris could no longer control his shaking arms, no longer rein in the shuddering of his bones or the moisture brewing in the corners of his eyes. Though the enormous green lizard packed with muscles in front of him hadn’t said it directly, Chris was already putting the puzzle pieces of his words together. The inference being made was anything but subtle. In fact, it was painfully obvious. Chris was simply having trouble acknowledging that obviousness.

  His knees went weak. “Why? Why do you keep talking about them like that? Why in the past sense?”

  Kyrstoph’s response was straightforward. “We were met with an armada. We had no chance.”

  Chris’s knees gave way. His body folded and collapsed to the dirt. Whatever reason he had for going on was gone. Everything turned to nothing, and nothing transformed somehow into even less. Three members of the rescue party rushed to his side. Terrified, Owen stumbled backward, tripped over a loose branch and landed on his rear with a thud. Still choking within Krystoph’s grasp, Fellow Undergotten forced back his tears and quickly replaced them with a rage built upon years of frustration. His fingers dug into the flesh of the Ochan’s arms and his legs began thrashing angrily for release. Krystoph, however, remained in complete control. Fellow was going nowhere. No matter how hard he tried or how badly he ached to be free. His anger accomplished nothing. The Ochan holding him was far bigger, far stronger, and would not budge, not even a centimeter, not for anyone. In the end, already struggling to breathe, the burst of feral energy succeeded only in leaving Fellow Undergotten more tired than he’d been a moment before.

  When the legs of his prey stopped kicking and the fingers peeled themselves from his flesh, Krystoph again spoke. “While the male children are gone, I believe the female might still draw breath. A Scarbeak plucked her from the deck before the elder child’s power decimated a thousand ships. If the king chose specifically to remove her, I assure you he did so for a reason. If he were going to kill her, he would have. He wants something. The other child might still be alive as well. We were separated. I can speak on his fate with no certainty.”

  Though he was unsure why Krystoph was bothering to give him this information, it was all that Fellow Undergotten needed to hear. Staci was alive, maybe Donald. Something remained.

  Krystoph’s blade pulled slowly away from the flesh of the fish man’s scalp and a thin stream of blood began to seep like a gummy river. Leaning close to Fellow, the Ochan whispered, “Heed my words: turn around, Chintaran. Leave this be and return to your underground hiding place with the rest. This is the wisest course of action. This is how you survive to tell the tale.”

  Less than a second afterward, the grip on Fellow’s neck released and the blade against his head disappeared. Krystoph’s foot kicked him in the lower back and knocked him to the dirt. By the time he turned to face the Ochan, Fellow saw only the forest and the darkness. As quickly as he’d arrived, Krystoph had vanished without a trace.

  His face buried in the grayish-brown Fillagrou dirt, Chris Jarvis inhaled the scent of the soil as tears began to pour from his eyes and slide across the curve of his stubble-laden cheeks. His mind was blank. Fillagrou no longer existed and the ground into which he sobbed was a figment of his imagination. There remained only the words of Krystoph and their ugly, disturbing monotone delivery. Once they had cracked and melted away, there was nothing. He suddenly found himself standing beside a hole leading nowhere, teetering on the edge and slowly leaning forward to fall in. It was in this space that he now existed and would stay for the remainder of his days. Tommy and Nicky were gone. Despite his attempts, he had failed his children yet again. He failed his wife and he failed himself. The weight of these failures had snapped his spine, left him useless and broken and sobbing like a newborn.

  This is after all, what failure does best.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 22

  CUTENESS

  *

  It was getting late and it was getting dark. Staci and Tommy had been sitting shoulder to shoulder against the interior wall of the crudely constructed tree fort for well over an hour, possibly two. It felt like significantly less to the both of them. Staci’s mother thought she was at her friend Jennifer’s, and Jennifer believed she was grounded. In truth, Staci had no desire to be in either of those places. She was exactly where she wanted to be, with exactly the person she wanted to be with. She hated lying, but the lies had served their purpose, and for this reason alone she could accept them.

  Plus, in a weird way she felt a bit uncomfortable admitting that lying was sort of fun.

  Since returning from her adventure in the world known as Fillagrou just beyond the little stream at the base of the tree fort, her parents had instructed her on numerous occasions to stay as far away from Tommy Jarvis as possible. He was trouble. His entire family was trouble. The Jarvis’s were a giant screwed up mess they didn’t want their daughter getting sucked into. They even went so far as to make threats about what would happen if she so much as spoke a word to anyone from the Jarvis bloodline, and they meant every word of it. Staci didn’t care. Something happened in Fillagrou. Something had changed. The way she looked at her blond-haired friend and the things she noticed when she did had shifted drastically. He was different and she was different, and the space between them was thicker and more palpable then it had ever been. There was substance where before there was none. Even their shared silences had become interesting. Tommy was interesting. There was mystery.

  She wondered if he could feel it as well.

  If he did, he hadn’t said anything to her about it. Then again, she hadn’t yet worked up the guts to mention it to him either, and getting Tommy to say anything at all sometimes felt like pulling teeth. Though the in-between and the things left unsaid were proving frustrating from time to time, Staci was enjoying them as well. Feeling this way was something new. The confusion was exciting. The unknown was intoxicating. It made her skin tingle. It made her face warm, and her stomach twist. It was addicting.

  Scooting closer to Tommy, she hesitated for the briefest of moments before slowly lowering her head to the side and resting it on his shoulder. Almost instantly the heat from his body warmed away the dull pink chill that had taken up residence on her cheek. Peering past t
he nape of his neck, she glanced into his lap and watched as his hand moved with remarkable precision over a frayed piece of notebook paper he’d torn from the metal spirals. Ten minutes ago she asked him to draw her a flower, and that’s exactly what he’d done. It was amazing to watch something coming from nothing, to see a single line change into two, bend into three, and then into more than she could count. It seemed so easy for him, like second-nature or an afterthought. It was impressive. Letting her eyes drift away from the paper and the pretty little flower recently penned into existence, Staci looked back in Tommy’s direction and chuckled a bit when she noticed his tongue had moved past his lips and was dangling from the side of his mouth.

  Feeling her eyes on him, Tommy’s pencil stopped moving. “What are you laughing at? It’s not that bad, is it?”

  Staci’s chuckle turned into something much closer to laughter. “I’m not laughing at that, stupid. It’s a beautiful flower. Exactly what I asked for.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  Reaching over, Tommy playfully pushed her head from his shoulder and feigned a smidge of anger. This only made her laugh harder. She found his faux annoyance comical. The way his brow crinkled was hilarious. The way he tried so hard to fight back a smile while pretending to be angry was an absolute riot. Tommy was always fighting his smiles. She’d never met anyone that fought his feelings so much.

  He was always fighting something.

  “Come on, seriously, what are you laughing at?”

  Staci sighed, rolled her eyes, and slowed her chuckling enough to answer. “Fine. You stick your tongue out whenever you draw.”

  Tommy paused and moved his tongue around the inside of his mouth then across the ridges of his teeth. “No I don’t.”

  “Oh yeah you do, just like this,” Staci replied with a chuckle before letting her tongue hang limply from between her lips and bursting into laughter. “You look like a sad little puppy when you do it!”

  A little annoyed and a little more embarrassed, Tommy returned his attention to the drawing in his lap.

  Taking note of the fact that she’d struck a very real chord, Staci attempted to stifle her laughter. “Don’t be mad, Tommy. Really.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Come on, you’re not really mad, are you?”

  Again there was no response.

  “Seriously, I think it’s cute.”

  Immediately after the words escaped her mouth, she stopped herself from saying anything more. She’d said too much. Was it too much? Was it too soon? It was honest and it was what she was feeling, and he did look awfully cute with his tongue dangling from his mouth like a little doggie, but she’d never called him cute before. In fact, she’d never really called him anything even close to cute. He was just a friend. You don’t call friends cute—not guy friends anyway. What would he think? Did she even want to know? Maybe he hadn’t heard her. Maybe there was nothing to worry about.

  Tommy stopped drawing. His hand was lying motionless on the paper.

  He’d heard her.

  Staci suddenly found herself overcome with the desire to change the subject, to pretend the word “cute” and its myriad of implications had never escaped her lips.

  Popping into a standing position, she moved quickly across the rickety floor and to the window at the opposite end of the fort. Once there, she stuck her head through the awkwardly cut opening, closed her eyes and breathed in the impending night.

  Behind her, Tommy remained motionless, his head pointed at the etching in his lap. Though he had no idea how to respond or the necessary social graces to do so even if he desired to, he couldn’t deny that he enjoyed hearing Staci call him cute. It caught him off guard. It made his insides flip, and his brain all mushy. He liked it. He liked it a lot. No one had ever called him cute, except his mother, of course. For a moment he almost thought she was being sarcastic, that maybe she was making fun of him. For the briefest of instances he allowed himself to settle into old routines, to put up his wall and go on the defense. In his heart he knew that Staci wouldn’t do that, though. Staci wasn’t like that. If she said it, she meant it. She wasn’t out to hurt him.

  She wasn’t like everyone else.

  While keeping his head down he peeked in her direction and watched her standing at the window on the opposite end of the room. His eyes started at her feet and moved up her legs. They languished for a moment on her rear before continuing north. A subtle, barely noticeable breeze tossed her hair gently. A billion delicate strands danced a slow-motion suite, spinning and twirling, and sparkling like the stars still popping into existence in the night sky beyond.

  No, she was the cute one. It seemed stupid to call him that with her around. It lessened the meaning of the word.

  When Staci turned around, his heart popped, his chest froze, and he quickly looked away. He wasn’t entirely sure why.

  Overcome with a desperate need to chop into the molasses-like thickness caused by her foolish slip of the lip, Staci spoke up. “Hey, I’ve got an idea.”

  Peering through the stringy hair hanging in his face, Tommy looked up in time to watch as Staci lifted her chin, puckered her lips, and placed her hand on the jut of her hip while flashing her best model pouty face.

  “Why don’t you draw me?”

  Tommy grinned and shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  Staci stopped posing and dropped both hands to her hips. “Because why not?”

  Again he looked away, back to the paper in his lap. “I dunno, it’s weird. What happens if you don’t like it?”

  There was no way she wouldn’t like it. Staci knew this. She appreciated the fact that he was worried about it, though. It meant something. Her eyes hung on him for a moment, on the way he was sitting with his legs crossed, on his hunched shoulders and the nervous movement of his hand across the paper in his lap. She watched as his tongue poked its way past his teeth and slid across his slightly puffy lips. They were so puffy. She’d never seen lips so puffy. She was right when she said it the first time.

  He was cute.

  “Hey, Tommy.”

  Wiping the hair from his face, Tommy looked up. Staci had a mischievous smile on her face and a jittery grin a mile wide, like it was struggling just to hold back whatever her brain had conjured up.

  “Would it be easier to draw me if I looked more familiar?” She stuck her tongue out, tilted her head and crossed her eyes. “Maybe like this?”

  He responded by throwing his pencil at her.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 23

  FROM ONE EXTREME TO THE NEXT

  *

  Hands of all shapes and sizes continued to paw and pat and pull at him. The hands had only the best of intentions. The creatures controlling them watched as his legs gave way. They saw him topple to the dirt and his body crumple and fold. They held their breath as the tears began to pour from his eyes, and his limbs convulsed and twitched. Many among the group had been in his exact position. They understood his emotions and related to the awful reality he suddenly found himself facing. They too had lost loved ones. They’d felt what he was feeling, and would likely feel it again. They had been broken and left without the adhesive necessary to put themselves back together. As paltry and pathetic as it might have seemed, their hands were all they had to offer him as a means of consolation. Chris Jarvis, though, didn’t care. He didn’t want their hands. Their hands couldn’t take back the words of the muscular lizard man that had only seconds ago disappeared into the darkness of the forest. Their hands couldn’t bring back his children or change the things he’d done or give him an opportunity to atone for his misdeeds. Their hands were hollow and useless and changed nothing.

  After making his way to Chris’s side, Fellow Undergotten knelt beside his tearful companion and added one of his hands to the many. He could feel the man shivering beneath his fingers; feel his lungs struggling to breathe and the emotions
tearing him up from the inside out. His eyes wandered momentarily away from Chris and to the surrounding darkness of the forest. There was no sign of Krystoph. Not a branch was broken or a single solitary leaf bent. It was as if he’d never been there at all.

  That goddamn Ochan. This is all his fault, Fellow thought to himself. Trusting him was a mistake from the start.

  Fellow Undergotten had tried to warn Zanell. He tried to warn her numerous times, in fact. He repeatedly reminded her that the only good Ochan was a dead Ochan, and that sending the children anywhere with Krystoph was a remarkably idiotic idea. No matter what he said, she refused to listen. Instead she smiled and claimed she knew what was best. Stupidly, he believed her. He believed every damn word of it.

  Looking away from the frustrating forest and the reality that this was as much his fault as anyone’s, Fellow turned his attention again to the sobbing figure in the dirt beside him. Wedging his hands under the man’s armpits, he managed to hoist Chris’s limp form into a sitting position. From there, with the help of a few others in the group, they pulled Chris Jarvis across the dirt and leaned him against the sturdy gray bark of a nearby tree. Still the man’s head hung loosely, his chin resting on his chest and his eyes faraway.

  With his right hand, Fellow lifted Chris’s wobbly head. “Hey, are you still with me?”

  The shattered husk of a man did not respond. Chris Jarvis was quite literally gone.

  Though his body remained awkwardly propped against a tree in the frighteningly real land known as Fillagrou, his mind was somewhere else entirely, somewhere where his wife and his children weren’t dead, where he hadn’t let everything he loved slip so easily through his fingers. Off in the distance, he could hear the slightly familiar voice of his new fish friend, Fellow Undergotten. The blue-skinned creature sounded like he was a mile away, like he was trying to scream underwater. Whatever he was saying, Chris had no interest in hearing. He didn’t want to move. He wanted to remain exactly where he was. He wanted to stay in that exact spot forever. The dirt beneath his rear and the prickly tree poking him in the back would be his final resting place, his home for whatever days he might have left. He would have been okay with that. Home suddenly seemed like such a silly word, such a stupid, simple, meaningless, foolish bit of nothing. Home was barely worth mentioning. Home was an illusion, and home no longer existed.