by Jesse Jordan
“Yes, I should say, we assumed it was because you are the War Bringer. Is that not why?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know,” Nack said, drawing even with James. “Of course that’s why.”
“But why would that make me able to do things like that?”
“Because you’re the War Bringer,” Munk said, coming up on James’s other side.
“Yeah, he said that, but I still don’t get it.”
“I’m sorry—how can you not get it?” Nack said. “You can do that because you are the One. You are bringing the War. Don’t you see? The War is everything. Everything. Our whole world is a staging area. We are frozen, and we await one thing: the War. It’s simple math. The War is everything. You are the one who will create it; ergo, you can create anything.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” James sped up as the annoyance worked through him, feeding his blood and waking him once more.
“I have to admit,” Munk said, “I’d never thought it through quite like that.”
“Okay, okay,” James said, “we’ll get back to that. Can I ask you guys another question? It seems like you’re looking forward to the War.”
“Oh, yes,” they said as one.
“Very much so,” Nack added.
“But why? You don’t even know which side you’re on.”
Munk was silent then. He crossed his arms tight and looked off to the mountains.
Nack went behind James and put his arm around Munk. He whispered something to him, but James couldn’t hear it.
“James,” Nack said, turning to him, “you are very powerful, and if you choose to destroy me for my insolence, then that’s what you’ll do, but I must tell you I think it’s incredibly rude and, frankly, cruel for you to throw in our faces that which we told you in the strictest confidence and which is obviously a very sensitive subject.”
These two were such odd little things, and he’d been so focused on Ezra and Dorian, that until now he’d never really considered them fully. They were obviously much older than him—and they knew more than he did. But there was something unmistakably soft and naïve about them. James realized he’d felt a bit better since the moment they’d arrived, and a quick shock of shame ran through him.
James stopped, and when Munk and Nack noticed, they did the same.
“I’m sorry,” James said. “I am really, really sorry. I wasn’t thinking and . . . I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
Munk turned back and unwound his arms. He nodded his acceptance.
“Thank you,” Nack said as the three of them recommenced.
“What I’d meant was, aren’t you afraid? I mean, it’s a war.”
“No, James, we are not afraid. The War will be glorious, and we will win.”
The fact that they couldn’t remember which side was whose made it to the top of James’s throat, but he killed it.
“It’s the reason we exist,” Nack continued. “We have waited and waited and waited—”
“And waited!”
“But no more. This War will bring answers and peace. It will bring an end. Our world is frozen in a single moment. It does not move forward; it does not mature. All of existence waits on this one thing.”
“Exactly!”
“And now it’s here. The War means an end to paralysis and stagnation. It will bring peace—finally, peace! We can all go back to living together, as we used to. Everything can go back to the way it used to be.”
“Or better!”
“Right, or better.”
“Doesn’t that sound wonderful?” Munk said.
But James didn’t answer. He nodded, because what he wanted to say was that he was pretty sure that’s not how wars worked, but it’s never comfortable to dismiss what others are wholly invested in. He felt the eyes of his companions upon him and figured he should say something, but before a response could coalesce, they reached the top of the hill.
James stopped. “What is this?”
“Oh, this?” Munk said. “This is the Great Field. I haven’t been here in . . . How long has it been since we were last here?”
“I couldn’t say. Maybe . . .”
But James was no longer listening. He felt like he was floating out through his eyes, tasting what lay before him with his vision. He’d only felt this once before, a year earlier, when a van Gogh/Gauguin exhibit had come to the Art Institute and he’d taken the train in on a Saturday and waited in line for an hour and pressed through crowds and listened to boring tour guides, all so he could stand in front of van Gogh’s paintings. He hadn’t thought he’d care about Starry Night as much as some of the others, having seen it so often in life. But there, in front of it, he realized he’d never actually seen it before. James stood directly in front of it, then super close, then a bit away; he sat for a while, then looked at it from the right, then the left. Fifty-two minutes he watched that painting, until he felt that he’d physically affected it by the act of looking, that it had imprinted its own living self on him, that he’d somehow consumed it with his gaze, and he was positive he would never forget it. Ever.
That was how he felt as he stood at the top of this hill in Taloon. The field began just below where the three of them stood. On both sides of the road it sprouted, starting sparsely, until, by the bottom of the hill, the ground was a living sea of color. Lush, green grass with blades as wide as butter knives stood shining like cellophane and swaying in a perpetual breeze that blew in the direction the travelers were walking. Among the grass were wild patches of color: red and orange and yellow and purple. Massive, dazzling flowers burst up, standing taller than James and dotting as far as he could see. The field spread out in all directions, and in the distance the splashes of color looked like van Gogh’s heavy swirls. James heard the grass ssssssshhhhhhh-ing like a far-off ocean. The smell reminded James of lilac and citrus, so fresh it made his stomach growl as well. “Beautiful.”
“Yes,” Nack said, “isn’t it? Obviously, some parts of Taloon are more developed than others.”
James hadn’t even noticed. Nothing was shifting or sliding. It was all just so.
“This was one of Metatron and Morning Star’s favorite places,” Nack said. “They took great care in it.”
Just then, though, something caught James’s eye, something to the right and a little ways off the hill. It was a huge bed of flowers, a liquid crimson like he’d never seen. James stepped from the road, slowly, one foot at a time, and began to descend the hill toward the flowers.
“Uh, excuse me, James,” Munk said, “but where are you going?”
His pace quickened with the descent, he was running now, to keep from falling and also to reach the flowers . . . faster . . . faster! It was as if a supernova of flowers exploded from the ground, this deep-red mass, James felt it pulling him—Stop—what was it? He knew that smell, knew that feeling. Inside those flowers is . . . is . . . Home! That’s it. Home! Real home, before all this! He ran, reaching out his legs and pulling the ground past him. Behind him he heard the echo of someone chasing him, of someone calling after him, but who could pay attention to that? The flowers were a bed; they were sleep itself—No—and James knew that if he could just reach them, then he could throw himself into them and they would swallow him up like a blanket—oh, he could feel it already: diving under a giant comforter in a too-cold room, only your face exposed to the cold as the rest of you is blissfully wrapped in your little cocoon—and then he’d wake up, and he’d be home—real home, not the bullshit horror lie that had been invading his mind. Stop! This is not real! He’ll wake up and Mom and Dad will be there, and Dorian will be home and wonderful, and he’ll wake up and it’ll be his birthday—Yes! Do it! Please!
But then he stopped. Or rather, his feet stopped and he toppled over them. He caught himself, and his hands sank into the soft ground. His face came to rest only inches from the edge of the flowers, and one great crimson blossom hovered less than an inch from the bridge of his nose. He
re, close up, the smell was different. James detected a subtler smell underneath the others, high and sickly sweet, like rot.
What stopped you?
James felt his pulse at the edge of his jaw like a threat. What happened? He’d given in. Some part of him had been screaming, trying to stop him, but even that last stronghold had given way. He’d accepted it. Somewhere deep down he knew the flowers were death or oblivion, that they were the great erasing, but he’d accepted it all the same. Then why wasn’t he lying among the flowers now?
The answer hung at the edges of his mind, just in the periphery, but James did not want to look. He was aware, all at once, that it’d been there for a while. There was a feeling, a churning poison soup within him, which he’d ascribed to his rage over Dorian and his fear of this place, but that he now realized was actually something more. It’d started as soon as he arrived in Taloon but managed to hide amongst all the other trauma.
It was the Pull. Undeniable, now that he recognized it. He turned and looked back the way they’d come and felt the knot within release, if only a fraction. How had he missed it? It was so conspicuous now that he was aware of it. It wanted him to turn around and go back. It wanted him to go to the Pit.
That’s what stopped him.
Someone shook up the can of shame within and popped the top. He’d been willing to quit, to chuck himself into the rapture of fantastical nothingness, and why? Because he was tired and scared and hurt.
James looked back at Munk and Nack, who seemed more confused than concerned. It wasn’t me who stopped me. James figured at first that it was his subconscious, but he could feel the difference now, feel what a lie that was. It wasn’t his subconscious; it was their subconscious—it was the multiconsciousness. It was the terrible purpose put inside him by the consciousness of others. James, however, didn’t care about that at the moment. No, his thoughts veered in one particular direction.
It took less than a day for me to fail her. James crushed the soft ground between his fingers and stared into the Great Field of Dreaming, and there, only ten feet or so from where he knelt, was a leg. It was a sleeper. James was sure the instant he saw it. He stood then and searched, remembering what Dink had said. A little ways off to the left he saw an arm, thin and long, its hand clenched in a fist. Dink said they went in there to dream of our world but some got lost forever, and he felt the cold swirl of fear in his belly. Almost.
But you didn’t. You’re still here, and Ezra and Dorian are still in Selliphais.
I don’t care.
Stand up.
Please—I’m so tired.
Stand. Up.
Please . . .
What about Dorian?
If you took all the sighs that James had ever sighed, from every bedtime and bath time and homework assignment and forced vegetable and disappointment and broken heart, they would not equal the sigh he gave up to the world as he pushed himself to his feet and turned to face Munk and Nack. James walked by them without a word, kicking through the tall grass and flowers, across the field and back to the road, with the pair of them following, quiet as a courtroom.
Later, James could not deny that the blisters on his feet had burst. The road remained a treacherous orgy of misshapen stones, and whenever the way beside it cleared they walked next to the road, but for the most part they were required to traverse its pockmarked surface. Selliphais loomed in the distance, short and squat and still resembling a campfire burning in a dark, dark cave, but now the flame burned brighter and the cave looked like ink-soaked coal.
The three of them had not spoken since the incident at the Great Field of Dreaming, which was perfectly alright with James. His near dream-suicide did wonders for his energy, and he found that the terror of the memory kept sleepiness at bay quite nicely.
So they walked. James watched his steps carefully, but the odd angles of pressure created blisters in places James had never before experienced. A little one grew up on the side of his second toe, while one was born and burst high on the back of his foot by his Achilles heel. An especially egregious blister flexed on his right heel. He could feel the shift and liquid of it with each step. Then his right foot lost its purchase on one rock and slid to the side, tearing open the blister, and for an instant his entire foot felt like something else altogether. There was warmth and relief and moisture, but the pain followed, and he felt an odd sensation—happy that it was gone, but sort of missing it, and scared to walk on the paper trail of dead skin, the dirty liquid of healing, and the raw, naked birth-skin below. Of course, he didn’t say any of that at the moment it actually happened. He said, “Ghah! Fuuuaaah!” Then he sat down hard at the edge of the road and pulled off his shoe and sock.
James stared at the mess that was his foot with an amazed revulsion. It was pink, marbled with red, and slick to the touch. James pulled off the matching shoe and sock and saw an appendage very much the same.
“Are you alright?” one of his companions asked, though James didn’t look up to see who.
“Do I look—?” James caught himself. “No. I’m not. How much farther is this place?”
“Oh, far. Very, very far.”
James dropped his head in his hands and let his breath leak out like surrender. Now what? Crawl? He ground his knuckles into his closed eyes until starbursts played across the black screen. I’m so tired, so tired.
James was sure that he would cry any moment, and so he continued pressing hard circles into his eyes.
“Why would somebody build a shitty . . . stupid . . . shitty road like this?”
“Does the road not please you, James?”
James’s head came up as soon as he heard the words. Munk’s wide face smiled down at him.
“What did you say?”
“Does the road not please you?”
James fought off the weight of the thought—half unbelievable and half so-damn-obvious it made him want to cry. He looked down the road toward Selliphais, and he saw the way as clear of stones altogether, and in its place smooth white concrete, broken every four feet or so by clean lines . . . and so it was.
A small, proud smile crept up on James, along with an urge to smack his forehead rather hard. Of course, moron.
“Oooooohhhhh,” Munk and Nack sang in unison as they looked at a perfect re-creation of the sidewalk which lined the south side of Jackson Street in Stone Grove, Illinois.
James looked back to his feet. This, somehow, seemed more daunting. It was not the flexing and molding of a world whose existence he wasn’t even aware of a month ago, a world which often felt like a dreamscape anyway. No, this was the manipulation of his own, cherished, very-very-real self. A cold swell of fear took root in his bowels, but James said his mantra—quietly, slowly—to himself. He spread both of his feet out before him and saw them healed . . . and so it was.
Then he laughed. His feet hadn’t healed, per se. He had not felt any healing, as he’d expected, any kind of warmth or knitting together of skin. Rather, they were torn up, and then they were not.
He made his hand into a fist, flexing and unflexing, savoring the bliss that comes from the fresh absence of pain. The previously dislocated fingers felt newborn.
James kicked his shoes and socks aside and stood up. He stepped back onto the road—or rather, onto the sidewalk for the first time—and peered at Selliphais. Dorian. Ezra. Selliphais looked to James as if it might be another day or two away, though who could tell what a day was here? Who could say how long they’d been walking already?
Time to go. “Come on,” James said, taking a single step. But then he stopped, right foot forward, left back, as though he’d been dipped in ice. Slowly—so, so slowly—he turned until he was facing Munk and Nack. His mouth open, brow down, James could tell he was wearing the realization on his face. “We don’t have to walk, do we?”
Munk and Nack looked at each other for a moment. James’s tone could not be misconstrued, and so it was not wholly without trepidation that Nack said, “Well . . . no.”
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“We thought you wanted to walk,” Munk said.
“For some reason.”
“Yes, we assumed you knew better than us.”
“Being the War Bringer.”
“Right.”
“Though it seemed very difficult.”
“And you did seem very unhappy.”
The annoyance burning through him was doused by his relief. There was a part of him that very much wanted to scream, to rant and stomp and berate his two fellow travelers, but it wasn’t as strong as the gratitude he felt in knowing he wouldn’t have to walk anymore. “I was alone when I arrived here,” James said. “But I didn’t want to be. I wanted someone to come and help me. Did you feel that?”
“Yes,” Munk said. “Sort of.”
“Yes, exactly. Sort of.”
“What does ‘Sort of’ mean?” James said.
“I’m not totally sure,” Nack said. “I’d never felt anything like it before. I felt almost like I was . . . plucked.”
“Yes, that’s a very good word for it. I was with Nack and we were playing a game, and then all at once I heard you and felt you, and it was almost like you reached out and closed your hand around me—”
“Us.”
“Us. Yes, of course, us. Like it closed around us and deposited us here or, rather, back there, with you.”
“So you didn’t walk or fly or anything like that to reach me?”
“Well, as Munk said, it didn’t feel as if we had much say in the method of transportation. But even if we had, no, we would not have walked. We don’t enjoy walking as much as you do.”
“I don’t—” James closed his eyes. He took a deep breath; he did not strangle his companions. “How do you get around?”
“Hm.” Nack twisted his mouth, as if the question itself confused him. He looked to Munk, whose shoulders described an almost imperceptible shrug. “I don’t know exactly . . .”
“You just be somewhere else.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s as good a way as any to say it. You are here—”
“Or anywhere.”
“Yes, or anywhere, and then you simply choose to be somewhere else.”