Forts: Endings and Beginnings

by Steven Novak

  In a single swift movement, the king rose to his feet and hoisted the squirming body of Christopher Jarvis into the air by his neck.

  Enraged, Kragamel pulled the man’s face close to his and growled so loudly it blew Chris’s blood-soaked hair back. “I. Grow. Weary. Of. Interruptions!”

  The infuriated Ochan squeezed until his fingers felt spine. He tightened his grip again, until he heard the snapping of bone. Chris’s arms stopped flailing and his legs stopped kicking. His muscles relaxed and his body went limp. With a twist of his torso the king tossed the man in the direction of his son. His body smacked against the rock before sliding downward and spreading awkwardly beside the boy.

  Tommy Jarvis was barely aware of what had occurred. Like his father, the world had long since melted into something without a definable edge. It was far away and getting further with every minute. It was backing away and leaving him alone, its voice just an echo. He thought he could see his father, but he also believed it could be a dream. A dream made far more sense. A dream would have been believable. Something washed out and shadowy dropped into his lap. It was a hand: his father’s hand. Tommy’s heartbeat slowed. His pulse puffed, paused, and turned to something elongated and stretched. Though he wasn’t really aware of doing it, his broken fingers crawled across the sand, up his thigh, and onto his legs. From there they moved like the wobbly legs of a marionette to the blurry appendage of the obscured, indefinable thing lying beside him and wrapped around it tightly. Even through the pain, the touch felt familiar. He wasn’t dreaming. It was his father.

  Ten feet away, the King of Ocha chuckled and cracked the stiff bones in his neck. “How touching.”

  Reaching up, he ran his fingers across the area where Chris Jarvis had opened his jugular and felt nothing. Not even a scar remained. Though the magic had been his for some time, Kragamel still found it a difficult thing to accept as reality. Behind him, the pit of Ocha bellowed, a howl a million years old, angry and resentful and busting at its seams to be let loose.

  The king turned his gaze on the crippled form of father and son. It was a pathetic sight. Holding hands as if the gesture meant something, as if it would save their lives.

  Foolishness.

  He was disgusted with himself for struggling as much as he did to finalize their existence. His eyes remained on their hands, and their fingers coiled together tightly.

  Revolting.

  “You know nothing of me,” Kragamel mumbled below his breath at the broken body of the blonde-haired child and the husk of bent flesh lying beside. “What could you know of my pain?”

  Tommy’s hand gripped tighter on his father’s. It was already cold and getting colder. He wasn’t sure why he continued to hold tight. A part of him wished he would just let go, believed that he should let go. While his head continued to hang low, the boy’s eyes drifted slowly upward and eventually locked with those of the Ochan king. From behind his blood-caked strands of hair, his response was both simple and cryptic.

  “Your pain…is my pain.”

  The comment smacked the Ochan in the chest, wormed its way under his skin and strangled the black heart underneath.

  Before the king could respond, two daggers wedged themselves into his lower back, ripping crucial muscles in two and causing his legs to drop from underneath him. A set of beefy, dark green arms coiled around his neck and began to drag him backward, across the sand and toward the raging fires behind. A familiar face appeared over Kragamel’s shoulder and an even more familiar voice emerged from between tight lips.

  “Hurm. Their life was never yours to take, but yours is mine.”

  Krystoph tightened his grip further, utilizing every muscle in his arms to choke at the king’s neck and stop the flow of blood to his brain. Between them the former general could already see the dagger wounds in Kragamel’s back healing. The blades protruding from the Ochan king’s body had begun to disappear. Soon his strength would return and soon he’d be fighting back. They were still a fair distance from the ravine. There wasn’t much time.

  “Do it! Do it now, boy!” Krystoph screamed urgently over the king’s shoulder in the direction of young Tommy Jarvis. “You must do it now!”

  Tommy watched through blurry eyes as the former general’s head motioned in the direction of the erupting fires behind and he struggled to maintain his grip on the bearded king.

  “End this, child!” Krystoph bellowed again, precious life and remarkable strength rapidly returning to the momentarily injured king. “No hesitation!”

  Though distant, Tommy’s ears heard the cries of the scarred Ochan. Amazingly his cloudy brain managed to not only process, but make sense of them.

  He knew what he had to do.

  When Tommy lifted his arm, a pain shot along his shoulders and into his chest. When he opened his crumpled fingers, a second flash nearly brought forth a scream. The boy ignored it as he always had. It was just pain, after all, and pain would always go away.

  You just have to let it.

  From Tommy’s fingers a beam of light emerged and shot forward. Both the tyrant King of Ocha and his former general looked up just in time to see it. On one of their faces there was fear; on the other, contentment.

  From over Kragamel’s shoulder Krystoph whispered, “We deserve no less, my lord.”

  The crackling beam of whiteness slammed into the bodies of the Ochans. It tossed them violently backward and over the erupting crevasse behind. Bending like the surface of a slide, it angled their bodies downward and shoved them into the bellowing flames. The hungry Ochan core screamed and exploded once more, this time with more fury than any coming before. Like a starving beast, the flames blasted upward and engulfed the tumbling duo. Even as the fires of Ocha swallowed him whole and began to burn away his flesh, Krystoph maintained his grip on the king’s neck. He would not let go. He could not let go. Even after the endless scars on his flesh began to disintegrate, curl up and flutter away like burnt paper, he refused to relent. Even when nothing but the blackened, charred muscle underneath remained, his grip remained as firm as ever. As his skull turned to ash and his bones to smoke, he believed he could see his wife. She was standing in the doorway to their modest home, waiting to greet him with her arms opened wide. When they embraced, she did not smile. Her body was firm, her back straight and her arms like steel. She pulled back slightly and looked into his eyes. Her acknowledgement of him was a simple nod. It was regal and honest, and comforting in the omnipresent sort of way he had come to love and respect, and had grown accustomed to.

  It was Ochan.

  After Krystoph’s body had been devoured by the immense heat of the fire pit, the King continued to fall. His flesh burned away and then instantly healed itself. This unending state of destruction and renewal resulted in equally unending pain. It was here, drenched in the concentrated heat of all things, that the tyrant king would spend eternity. Never alive and yet never quite dead, awash in an endless suffering from which there was and would never be escape. This was his fate.

  Still seated against the cavern wall, the beam of light folded back into the fingers of Tommy Jarvis and disappeared. His weary hand dropped to the dirt. Content to feast on the flesh of the Ochan king, the fires boiling from the crevasse across from the boy slowed and settled into a steady, cracking hum. Tommy’s breaths did the same. His gaze drifted to the hand in his lap. Despite the heat, it was cold, pasty like plastic, and oddly fake. He’d held hands like this before.

  “I-I’m…so…sorry.”

  The sound was weak; every grunt and utterance soaked in agony and frustration and regret. Tommy’s eyes followed the arm attached to the filthy, blood-soaked appendage and to the crumpled body lying beside. His father’s eyes were distant, staring simultaneously at his son and past his son at something off in the distance to which only he was privy.

  The eyes were familiar as well.

  Unable to look anymore, Tommy closed his own eyes, stifling a lifetime of emotions, mistakes, and things unsaid. I
nstead, he chose to grip his father’s hand firmer.

  Through barely opened lips he whispered, “It’s okay.”

  Chris’s eyes began to water, though it had little to do with the pain coursing through him. Immediately after, those very same eyes slid up and drifted backward and into his head. Something cold was slowly working its way through him, numbing his pain and spreading outward. It was an odd sensation, both terrifying and comforting. Soon only the warmth of his son’s hand remained. It was here that he chose to focus.

  His mouth opened and remained that way, his words mostly breaths. “So…sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Tommy repeated, swallowing a lump building in his throat. “We did this together. I made it and we filled it. This is all our fault.”

  His eyes closed. He readjusted the grip on his father’s chilly hand.

  “I’ll fix it, Dad. I promise. I can fix it.”

  Chris’s head rolled to the left and his face buried itself in Tommy’s side. His arm fell limp and his clutching fingers slipped away.

  Into the fabric of his son’s shirt he whispered three muffled words:

  “I love you.”

  His chin jittering uncontrollably, Tommy Jarvis lifted his head upward and inhaled the stuffy air of the fire caves. What came next hurt as much as any of the broken bones or lesions he’d suffered at the hands of the king.

  What came next needed to be said.

  “I forgive you.”

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 60

  THE FIRST

  *

  Despite Megan Jarvis peered over her magazine and looked with a smile at the four year-old boy lying on the carpet across the room. He was getting so old. Every day it seemed like there was something different about him, something that wasn’t there the day before. In the last year his features had stretched and refined, changed so much. He wasn’t the pudgy little thing she could hold in her hands and rock to sleep at night anymore. He was beginning to have opinions and formulate thoughts distinctly his own. Suddenly he had his very own personality. Though she knew it was foolish, sometimes it felt as if he didn’t need her anymore. His adventures were quickly becoming her memories and for her, it was all happening too fast. Megan sighed and smiled sadly.

  Her little boy was growing up.

  Completely unaware of his mother’s moment of emotional turmoil, young Tommy Jarvis wiggled his feet back and forth happily and grinned at the piece of paper lying in front of him. Between his little fingers he held an oversized crayon, which he’d been mashing against the pages of his little drawing pad quietly for the better part of an hour. Sprawled haphazardly onto the carpet beside him were eight distinctly different etchings, scribbled and ripped from the pages of the discount pad his mother bought from the grocery store. Most of his favorite colors were worn to a nub. Black and blue were so tiny they barely even served a purpose anymore. He was going through them so quickly that Megan had taken to purchasing packs four at a time rather than make multiple trips to the store. Tommy loved to draw. He loved it more than anything. It didn’t matter what he was drawing, the act itself was important. His crayons and his paper presented possibilities the real world couldn’t; they sparked his little brain and filled his mind with all sorts of images he loved dearly yet didn’t fully comprehend. When his fingers moved he swore he could hear music.

  Glancing briefly over his shoulder, Tommy looked at his mother sitting on the couch and smiled. She was staring at him in that way she sometimes did: sad and happy mixed with something else he wasn’t quite so sure of. She was pretty. The prettiest person he’d ever seen, the very definition of the word.

  From the doorway on the opposite end of the room his fathered entered, slid onto the couch beside her, tossed his arm over her shoulder and pecked her softly on the lips. Tommy turned his head. Kissing was gross. He couldn’t understand why his parents felt the need to do it. The fact that they did it so much was even more disconcerting.

  Megan sank into the crook of her husband’s arm and gently lowered her head to his chest. She felt lucky to have him. Sometimes she wondered if her friends loved their husbands as much as she loved hers, if they shared the same sort of closeness or enjoyed having each other around as much as she and Chris. She didn’t think it was possible. Her husband was a good man. He wasn’t perfect, but he was the best man he could be and he was perfect for her. Reaching up, she rubbed her hand along the day-old stubble on his face. He didn’t like to shave on the weekends and she didn’t mind one bit. She liked a little stubble.

  “Nicky asleep?” Megan asked, wrapping her arms around him and sinking further into the folds of his shirt.

  “Out like a light,” Chris responded as he softly placed a kiss on the top of her head. “We should drag that kid to the park to wear him out more often. Maybe a toddler marathon or something…those are real things, right?”

  Megan smiled, more at the stupidity of this joke than anything. “Don’t think so, no.”

  “Well, maybe we should start one. Make a few extra bucks.”

  Lifting her head from her husband’s chest, she placed her fingers on either side of Chris’s head, pressed her lips to his and held them there. He had such full lips, soft and curved and pink, manly yet feminine. They were the first things she noticed about him when they met. They were the reason she leaned in for a kiss on their first date, despite the fact that as a whole it had been a bit “ho-hum.” Even if they never saw each other again, she had to taste his lips, just once. She’d always loved his lips.

  When Megan finally pulled away, Chris grinned brightly, reached up and began to run his fingers through her hair. “What did I do to deserve that?” His hand slid down the side of her face and cupped the warmth of her cheek.

  Leaning forward, his wife pecked him once more on those beautiful lips before whispering with a grin. “It wasn’t for you.”

  “Ew! Stop kissing,” their young son interrupted with a groan from his spot on the carpet.

  After a chuckle and another quick peck on the lips of his wife, Chris Jarvis stood and walked across the room where he proceeded to muss the cotton-white hair of his son with his palm.

  Immediately afterward, he pecked the boy lightly on the head as well. “I guarantee you won’t be thinking it’s so ew in ten years, kiddo.”

  Tommy groaned again, mashing his hand against the top of his head in a vain attempt to wipe away the aftermath of his father’s smooch. A moment later, Chris was jogging up the stairs on his way to the office on the second floor. Still grinning at the exchange between the boys in her life, Megan’s eyes moved across the room and to the bay window on the far end. It was getting dark already. Before long, winter would sweep in and the town would turn white. She was looking forward to it. She’d always loved the wintertime. With the sun continuing its gradual decent below he horizon, the sky was transforming into a mash of warm reds, oranges, and purples. It wasn’t quite night, but not exactly day either—wedged somewhere between dusk and twilight. For Megan there simply was no word to describe it, and trying to find one felt inherently wrong. It was what it was, and that was all it needed to be.

  Sometimes words just muck things up.

  Caught in the quiet simplicity of her moment and her nameless sky, Megan barely felt her son slide onto the couch beside her. His lower half sank into the groove in which she sat and his upper body leaned into her side.

  “Mommy, look-look.”

  His voice was anxious and excited. The paper in his hand whipped back and forth in front of her face before he mashed it against her chest.

  “Okay, okay, hold on a second. Settle down,” Megan chuckled, wrapping her arm around the boy and pulling him close.

  Her other hand snagged the flailing piece of paper from between his little fingers and lifted it to the air. In truth, it wasn’t much to look at; a sloppy, jangled mess of multicolored lines that sort of, kind of occasionally resembled something she was slightly familiar with. Still, it was a very prett
y jangled mess. There was a harmony to the colors. They danced and played with each other the same as the sky that she loved so very much. More than that, she could see her son in the lines. The anxious, excited strokes were distinctly his. The manner in which they were laid to paper said more about her first-born than anything else. He loved what he was doing and he was happy when he was doing it.

  Megan’s finger fell to the paper and ran across the slightly raised, oily-textured crayon before coming to a stop on a big red tree in the background. At least, she thought it was a tree.

  “What’s this?”

  Tommy answered with a wide smile, his anxious underside digging further into the folds of the couch. “Tree.”

  Megan’s fingers moved to a set of black stick figures underneath and surrounded by a bunch of wild red lines she guessed were bushes. She started on the far left, already enjoying the game of back and forth with her proud little boy. She loved these moments and was going to hate to see them go away. “Who’s this?”