by Blaine Hart
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“I am saying that we trust my Ancestor’s Strength. We run.
“What?”
But my master was off like lightening. With long swift strides he raced up along the far end of the bridge. Wendfala turned to me, raised an eyebrow and shrugged. She sped away and by the time she was halfway up the other side Kell had reached the tower.
I took a deep breath and put my fate in the Ancestor’s strength. I ran. I ran without thinking, my legs taking long swift strides while my hands gripped the stays and helped propel me. My toes would barely touch down before I leapt forward like a deer through the woods. As I gained on the far end it became more like climbing but the strength kept me speeding me along.
“Well done,” Kell smiled, slapping me on the back. “We should call you Longo the sure-foot.”
“You should keep a list of all the names people give me.” I said with a smirk.
“You should see this,” Wendfala said in a low and reverent tone.
We turned. The island was a crater. The light streaming up from its smooth sides rose to the purple sky and then splayed out to the far reaches of space. So thick was that light that it looked almost solid. In the center of the light there was an hourglass with no glass.
The sands of time floated down through that light and gathered on a whirling bulb held by nothing. The ball of dust flowed down to a trickling point, where grain by grain the sands dropped to the lower bulb where the stuff swirled in the opposite direction. From there it funneled and dripped to the winds below.
There was a winding stair carved into the crater walls. We hurried down. As we raced, I thought I saw something floating in the bottom bulb. The stairs brought us lower and once we got closer the thing in the sands became a person, a woman. She looked to be swimming in the swirling eddy, straining to keep away from the bottom. The stairs took us to a place along the middle of the huge lower bulb where there was what seemed to be a giant altar set on a dais.
“What is she doing there?” I wondered aloud.
“Might that woman have been the sacrifice?” Wendfala asked.
“That is yet another mystery that we don’t have time to solve,” Kell said.
But even as we spoke the woman in the sand saw us as she whirled by. Her face lit up and she began screaming, frantic silent screams trying to swim against the flow to us.
“I have seen that face,” Kell said. “Could it be – it couldn’t be.”
“Anna!” I cried.
Chapter 6: All We Could Carry
I wept with tears of joy and sorrow. Truly it was Anna, but she was a grown woman. I saw her face as she battled the swirling sands and she was pleading, calling my name. I reached for her but Kell stayed my arm. Anna soon lost her battle and was swept away to whirl again in the sands.
“We must save her,” I cried. “She’s aging. She’ll die an old woman in there and then turn to dust. Master we must do something to save her.”
Kell took up Ashrune. Anna was on the far side. As she spun again toward us Kell plunged the large hammer into the eddy. There was a sudden roar of wind and Anna grasped at the head. She caught it and we could hear her screaming in pain. She suddenly let go, and as she spun away I saw her clutching her hands and moaning. Kell pulled Ashrune out and the hammer head was smoking, covered in rust and pitted. The crater was silent again.
“Curse me for an idiot,” he said. “I should have realized that magic does not age well,”
“What do we do?” Wendfala wailed. “She will surely die.”
“I don’t know!” Kell cried through grit teeth.
But I knew and I didn’t care what it cost me. As Anna wheeled around again I shoved my arm deep into the sands of time. I screamed. It was like plunging into scalding hot water, but the instant I felt Anna’s hands clutch my own I knew that I had to endure the agony. The roar of the rushing wind returned as I held onto my friend for dear life. It took all the strength of my body and spirit to hold her in the torrent. I felt myself being pulled in and I screamed with the pain.
My master and Wendfala clutched me and the three of us pulled with all our might. Slowly we gained ground as the vortex began to give up its captive. My arm was almost all out and the air around was a cooling relief. In a moment Anna’s hand appeared and my heart leapt with joy. Then we had her arm and Kell grabbed it quickly. Hand over hand he pulled and then her other arm was free and clutching us.
Slowly but surely we drew her out, and when I saw her lovely face I was sure that we had saved her. The more of her naked body that the vortex gave up the easier she slid out. The sands finally relented and gave us back our Anna. Grains of sand slid from her body and streamed from her long auburn hair and got sucked back into their home in the vortex.
The moment that Anna set her first foot on the ground, Wendfala let go of me and I felt her rummaging through my rucksack. I paid her no heed as my precious Anna stepped out and hugged me and Kell, breathing heavily and weeping in joy. Then the three of us embraced in a giant hug and she felt so real and good and warm.
“Don’t move,” Wendfala said.
Then I heard tiny tinkling sounds. Kell began to laugh. I looked and I saw that the witch had taken the old goblet from my pack. It was a trophy that I had gathered back in Galth, the lair of Visalth the Bone-Dragon. She was using it to gather up some sand that was streaming from Anna’s hair. When the cup was full, she capped it with her hand and Anna stepped away. The sands were still flying from her as we wept and embraced. But in that embrace my arm was in some serious pain.
“Thank you,” Anna wept over and over. “You saved me. You saved me.”
We gave her water and she drank as one parched for days. I gazed on her. She was no longer the skinny wiry imp I had known. She was a grown woman and looked all of it. But her wide green eyes and her pointed nose were still the same and her smile could still warm me all over. Kell gave her his cloak and she wrapped herself in it, blushing. She then drank some more water, taking long and deep swallows.
Kell rolled up my sleeve and looked to my arm. I was withered from my bicep to my fingers, my hand was like the claw of an old man. I could barely lift it and it pained me to try. It was agony making a fist.
“There is no healing for age,” Kell said as he fashioned a sling. “I’m sorry lad.”
“This arm has been a curse,” I muttered, “might as well add Longo the withered to your list.”
“Oh my dear Longo,” Anna said, kissing my shrunken hand. “To save me you have lost your arm. How can I ever repay you?”
“It’s just an arm,” I said. “I have another.”
“But how could this happen?” she said. “How is it that you found me here? Where’s my sister? And – and who is this?”
“This is our friend Wendfala,” Kell said. “But stories must wait. The day grows short and we need to get back to the crystal shore before the Pegasus’ leave us.”
“But—“
“Now,” he said
We turned to the stairs but we had not taken three steps when Wendfala cried out.
“Kell wait,” she said. “The sands in the cup are burning my hand. It’s like they want to return to their winds. It burns.”
Kell took the leather pouch from his belt and tossed the coins away. He held it open over the cup. The instant Wendfala took her hand away the sands began streaming back to the vortex. Quickly he capped the goblet and tied it off tight. The sands bumped and beat on their trap. He wrapped the thing tight in a bandage and stuffed it deep in my pack. Anna bathed Wendfala’s palm with some water and we were off again in haste.
It was clear that despite the Ancestor’s strength, Anna was still weak and disoriented so Kell carried her. Crossing the rope bridge with his precious cargo, my master was nimble as a gazelle and steady as a mountain goat. My own crossing was one-armed but this time I didn’t look down. I trusted my feet and felt more than saw my way as I ran like a madman. I could feel the goblet i
n my rucksack bouncing wildly.
On our race back to the crystal shore we never stopped to wonder or question. We followed the path through fields and farms, over gaping rivers of air, through the town with no one there, along the quiet streams and through the grass land all the way without stopping, running the whole way. But when our feet finally crunched beneath the glittering sands on the shore, the Pegasus’s were gone.
I stood amazed. My brain went blank. My mind refused to believe it. Wendfala crumbled to her knees. Kell let Anna slide to the sand and strode to the darkening shore. He peered a moment, and then crying out in a rage that would of scared the hounds of hell. He then whirled the battered Ashrune over his head so fast that it shrieked through the air. And then he flung it away. It sailed far over the ocean of air and was lost to sight.
I wanted to weep. I wanted to weep for the four hopeless stranded mortals, but more I wanted to weep for my master and his final foolish act of despair. Yet I found that in this point in my wretched life I had no more tears. My eyes itched bit, but I didn’t even bother to scratch. I hung my head low and Wendfala did my weeping for me. Anna looked around at the magnificent astral beauty around her, not knowing her doom.
Then I heard a small sound in the distance like a soft whistling. I looked up and there was a speck in the sky. Kell raised his arm and Ashrune landed back in his grip. A moment later I saw soft white and black dots growing closer. Called by my master’s hammer the Pegasus’ had returned.
“We’re saved!” I cried.
“Move!” Kell shouted when the Pegasus had finally gotten close.
The mare wheeled toward me, her hooves barely touching the ground. I grabbed Wendfala with my good hand and leapt a mighty leap. A moment later we were back in the sky, the witch clutching me for dear life, now crying tears of joy. Off to my left Kell held Anna on the steed. The look of awe on the girl’s face was priceless.
I saw little of our journey back to the Island of the Sacred Tree. I was surrounded by the beauty of the Earth’s ocean at dusk. The sun was a glowing ball in the west and before us a myriad of stars sparkled in the the sky. But I was near exhaustion and it was all I could do to stay awake.
In time I felt the mare begin to descend. That lovely delight tickled my loins as we flew lower and slower. I saw the island in the twilight loom closer and closer, and then I felt the mare’s hooves thud, splashing the shore.
“We made it,” I breathed.
“We did,” she said.
I slumped to the sand and saw the sun slide into the sea as sleep overtook me.
In the morning I was the last to wake. Wendfala gave me water, biscuits and cheese. I was happy for the simple fare. Kell was telling Anna our tale. She was still wrapped in only his cloak, but she looked as beautiful as ever, more so as a woman. I joined them and she fluttered her eyes shyly at me, clutching her cloak tighter.
“And now,” Kell said. “What of you? Tell us your story?”
“I can’t say much,” she said. “Gavial was nice. She told us stories and she sang us songs. She was nice. For a while. Then one day she got this weird look on her face. Then she just stopped talking. She just sat there like a lump. She wouldn’t talk, she wouldn’t do anything. In time Anna even poked her and she didn’t even do anything.”
It was strange seeing Anna as a woman and yet hearing a child.
“We thought she was sick or something. We didn’t know what to do. Then she suddenly jumped up and shouted ‘No’! Anna and I didn’t know what to do. Then this huge sword just appeared in her hand and she jumped up and out of the shrine. Then there was all kinds of thunder and lightning above us. Anna and I, we raced upstairs and we saw Gavial fighting with a – with like a storm.”
“A storm?” Kell said.
“Yeah but – but it had a shape, like a monster. It had tornados for legs and they were tearing up all the gravestones and it had arms made of clouds and lightning and it had lightning coming out of its fingers and Gavial was fighting the lightning with her sword and it was so scary.”
“Go on.”
“So then, so then the big statues started to crumble and Gavial was screaming like she was in pain. I think she got hit by the lightning because she was staggering back. Then a big chunk of statue fell and I jumped out of the way and I didn’t see what happened to Anna. And then the whole place shook as the Angel fell to her knees and started yelling in some strange language. Then the world around me seemed to whirl, and it was like I got sucked out of the grotto, and then it got really weird.”
I was hanging on her every word, trying to imagine the horror.
“It was like something was pulling me,” she went on. “Pulling me up and up and up until I was floating. And I really was floating in space because I could look down and see the whole world below me. It was kind of cool in a way. But then it got real creepy and I got pulled down and down by this big light and then it got even weirder.
“It was like,” she said scrunching her face. “It was like I was nothing. I was floating in the light and it was as if I was the sand. I whirled around a while and then I sort of fell, drop by drop, and when all the drops had gathered in the whirlwind I became – I became a baby.”
She told of how she watched herself slowly grow in the sands from an infant to a child. When she reached her real age she started to remember everything and then she began to grow older. She realized what was happening. She had tried to break free, but soon learned it was futile. I had finally resigned myself to the fact that I was going to grow old and die in there.
“I’d become dust,” she said with a faraway look in her eyes. “And then I’d fall to the world and that would be the end of me.”
She was silent a moment. Then she shuddered and shook herself.
“But that didn’t happen,” she said smiling. “You saved me. And now it’s kind of cool being all grown up. Kind of cool indeed.
“Gavial rescued you,” Kell said. “By flinging you into the charm of the astral sphere, she hid you in a place where the demon could never find you.”
“But, but what of my sister?” Anna asked. “You tell me that the demon has her and Gavial. Do you think there’s any chance for her?”
“Who are you?” a mysterious voice challenged suddenly.
I looked about and we were once again standing on the trunk of the Tree of Life. The little angel boy guardian was there with his arms folded looking at Anna.
“Who are you?” she replied.
“I asked first.” he said.
“I am Anna.”
“No you’re not,” the boy said. “You’re the Other Anna. How stupid can you be if you don’t know your own name?”
“I am older now,” Anna said. “So I get to be Anna.”
“That’s so dumb.”
“And you are a brat.”
“And you’re so stupid. You’re all wrapped up in a heavy cloak. Don’t you even know the sun’s out?”
Anna cocked her head and opened the cloak. The boy’s eyes near popped from his head for a moment and he turned beet red and shut his eyes.
“Ewww!” he squealed.
“Enough,” Kell said. Anna closed her wrap. “We have followed your wishes and we have brought back our treasure.”
“Okay,” the boy said opening his eyes. “Give it to me.”
I slung my pack and Wendfala reached in and drew out the wrapped goblet. But even as she held it for the boy we all looked and we gaped.
“Kell?” she said.
There was a small burn in the bandage. She held the goblet by the stem while he quickly unwrapped it. Beneath we saw that the leather had been stretched and it too had a small hole. The boy started to laugh. Carefully my master undid the leather and looked inside. There was not a speck. Desperate, we searched my pack, but there too we saw the tiny burn hole. Bit by bit the sands had escaped.
“You can’t even hold onto some sand,” the boy mocked as he danced and laughed. “You guys are the stupidest mortals I’ve ever
seen.”
I stood speechless. Anna fell into Wendfala’s arms.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
“It means your whole stupid world’s gonna drown,” the boy jeered.
Kell grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Longo, look at me!”
I did, I was frightened and I began to sputter and apologize. I believed that he thought it was all my fault and I felt crushed in his probing stare, but he hushed me. He kept peering at me, ignoring the taunting child.
“Longo,” he said, “forgive me for what I must do.”
“What must you do master?”