Into the Stone Land

by Robert Stanek

  Tall’s mouth opened in a silent scream. He started running as fast as he ever had before to get away from the smoot and the madness. When the clouds parted and the light of the moon shone down, he got his first real look at the smoot that night, and what he saw would haunt his dreams for the rest of his days. It was the smoot and the specter. They were one somehow.

  The smoot called out after Tall. “When you lose your way—and you will—remember this…. Wav’erh’n cluster is close. Outtrader villages. There’s one who will help you in the third village. Ray’s in the stone land. Without you, he’s lost…”

  Tall said nothing. He kept running. In a low voice, the smoot added, “…as are we all.”

  Chapter 6: Beyond the Loch

  Tall was thinking he couldn’t possibly lose his way when he realized he had done just that. He was lost, completely and utterly, and no amount of trying to find his way back to the smoot helped. Weary from the long day, he paused, telling himself it was only for a moment. That moment turned into many hours.

  The sun was midway in the sky before Tall stirred. He stared and blinked up at the sky for the longest time before he stood. A foul, rotten taste pervaded his mouth. A thick, chalky film covered his lips and tongue. A heavy dried drool stuck to the side of his face. Sometimes when the adults celebrated too much with fermented nectar his father would complain of headaches and throbbing and dizziness. That was how he felt. His head ached and throbbed. The world spun and made him so dizzy he had to sit.

  Sitting, he crushed something wet and slimy that popped under his weight. That was when he noticed the thick carpet of dead suckers and buzzers all around him. Their bodies were bloated, heavy with blood—his blood.

  Vaguely, he recalled the smoot feeding him crushed scatter bush seeds. The seeds were poison, he knew that well enough. The poison in his blood must have killed the suckers and buzzers. But he suspected the seeds had some other property he didn’t understand.

  He groped for his pack. In one of the pockets he found what he was looking for and pulled out a handful of the long, green-blue pods. The seeds inside the pod were plentiful and small, about half as big as the nail on his little finger. He crushed one between his fingers and put it to his nose. The scent was overpowering, beyond horrid.

  As an experiment, he touched his tongue to the crushed seed. Almost immediately the spinning world slowed and the throbbing in his head eased. Taking this as a good sign, he ate the crushed seed. He had scarcely exhaled when the spinning stopped completely and all pain eased. He saw them then—the lines of white fire that shouldn’t exist connecting everything and all. The tethers told him where the hatchlings were, where the yearling and mare were, and more, so much more. The biggest surprise was a thick line leading away from the loch, for it seemingly pointed the way to where he must go next.

  Tugging his pack into place, Tall followed the ribbon of white fire. The hatchlings, the yearling, and the mare followed. He felt and saw them, but with his mind and not with his eyes. It was as if a door opened and he now walked through it into a new, interconnected world.

  And this world that existed behind his eyes spun with thoughts and images. There was one image he couldn’t shake as he made his way from house to house. It was the image of a girl with long, brown hair and a golden flower tucked behind her ear. With smiles in her eyes and lips that were thick and pouty, she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. She did not know he existed, but he knew her. Her name came to his lips. “Ellie,” he whispered.

  “Keene’s gone on, the great fool took the long journey in my stead. However will I live? This guilt… I’m the boy who was supposed to die, not to live. And now I’m supposed to find Ray so he can save our people? Save our people from what? What do I know of anything? I couldn’t even prove myself properly. Choose a companion. One, not twelve. Return to the village a man, failed that. Win your circle, failed that too.”

  “Why her?” Tall thought to himself. Of all the girls in the village, she was the only one who never paid him any attention. So why couldn’t he stop thinking about her? Their only real interaction happened years ago. She’d probably forgotten. But he hadn’t, and knew he never would.

  It was during a bad time. Her mother had journeyed on during the coldest winter anyone could remember. She was numb with loss and she’d go behind her father’s hut, break down, double over as her body racked with sobs. No one, Keene included, seemed to notice, but Tall did. He watched her cry and never said a word, until one day when he could watch no longer.

  Her father was a gatherer, and Keene was off with him that day beyond the cares of the village. Without a mother, Ellie became the family’s caretaker. Her duties of preparing, cooking and cleaning never ended. That day, he expected her to go back to her work. Only she didn’t. She didn’t do anything but sit in the mud behind the hut and cry.

  Tall was mortified. He supposed now that she was locked in some dark world of tears, but at the time, all he could think about was that he had to get away, that this was something private, that this was none of his business. And yet, his feet wouldn’t move. He could only stand and stare as her raw pain spilled into the mud.

  Many times previous he’d made a promise to himself that he’d tell her father and Keene about the fits and sobbing. He wanted to and yet couldn’t. He had no right to interfere. But he wanted to. She couldn’t cope on her own. A girl should never have had to do a woman’s work and deal with such heartache alone, and yet that was the way. Other families in the village dealt with the loss of a father or a mother or a son or a daughter in the same way.

  He’d grown up in a family with both parents and without siblings, and so he had no idea how to help anyone through such a thing. The hopelessness and sense of loss she must have been feeling, he could only grope at back then. He wanted to understand, but the sight of so many tears was making him less understanding. He thought it must have been the same with her father and brother, if they knew anything of her tears.

  On that day, though, just when he thought his feet would never stir to action, he found himself standing before Ellie. He didn’t say a word, but she must’ve heard his approach. She looked up with her beautiful green eyes. He reached out, helped her to her feet. “Don’t cry, Ellie,” he said, his voice coming out as a coarse whisper. “I miss her too. She was always kind to me.”

  Her look at his touch and words seemed to say she didn’t know whether to be offended or pleased. She stormed off without a word just as the rains returned. Tall found himself stumbling away through the mud. Ellie’s place was at the far edge of the village, so he had to go through the square on the way home. One of the old women was trading wild flowers. He took one, ran back through the rain and, pounded on the Ellie’s door until she opened it.

  There was a clatter in the hut and he heard someone screaming. Ellie’s father had returned with Keene. Tall gave Ellie the flower as he made his way to Keene. There was no exchange between him and her—not words, not looks. Her father was yelling, “The food is not prepared. The hut is not cleaned. Your clothes are muddy. Why?”

  He talked with Keene. Keene was excited about the day’s gatherings. Ellie never even glanced his way as she went to her work, but he watched her. Later that day, she said the only words she’d spoken directly to him then or since, “Go, eat with your own.”

  By the time Tall reached home, walking through the rain, he was wet through. He put his clothes to dry at the fire, crawled into bed, and then fell asleep thinking about Ellie. He thought her ungrateful and unkind. It didn’t occur to him until the next morning that he had no reason to feel that way. But he dismissed this. At the least, she should have thanked him for the flower. Why hadn’t she? He couldn’t explain his feelings.

  He ate breakfast alone the next morning and headed out to the market where his mother and father waited. It was as if summer had arrived overnight. Hot dry air. Not a cloud in the sky. In the market, he passed Ellie, her eyes were puffy and red. She was with her father an
d didn’t acknowledge him in any way. But as he went to his father’s market table, he found her staring at him across the marketplace. Their eyes met only for a heartbeat, then she turned her head away. Tall turned away, embarrassed, and started helping his father hawk his crafts.

  To this day, Tall remembered the way Ellie looked at him across the market. The golden flower he’d given her was tucked behind her ear and her expression, lacking its usual pout, was almost cheerful again. He realized then that even the littlest kindness mattered. Something small could affect big change. He saw the world differently after that. He began to see through other people’s eyes, and he let them see through his eyes. The village was stronger together. Hope could be given just as easily as it could be taken.

  More than once, he turned in the marketplace and caught her eyes fixed on him, only to flit away. He began to feel like he owed her something. Undeniably it was he who should have thanked her and not the other way around. He thought about doing just that on occasion, but the opportunity never seemed to present itself. And now it never would. Because he was headed to the stone land and might never return.

  “Too late now,” he told himself. “Someone else will have Ellie’s circle before I do.”

  Tall planted his staff, pushed off hard as he jumped. He looked back as he landed on the other side of the crossing with a thump. The yearling and the mare were keeping pace at his side. The hatchlings were swimming along in a thinning channel. It took only a few steps for him to realize something was wrong. Some of the larger houses didn’t shift much beneath one’s feet, but they always shifted a little. This house didn’t shift at all and there were hints of an old path leading into the weed-grass. A clear sign the house was occupied—or had been at one time.

  He pushed his way through the tall grass and came upon a thick stand of scrub trees. A wall of prickly tangle as thick and high as he’d ever seen was beyond this. He was pushing his way through and under the tangle, trying to avoid the long spikes, when he slipped down a steep incline.

  The unexpected slide initially took his breath away. Of course, he has never been in such a place and immediately felt trapped. Surely the high ground on either side of him must be closing in on him. If he didn’t know any better, he would have sworn the land was trying to tell him to stop, to turn back, to go home.

  The hollow, cut deep into the land, had a channel running through it. Tall walked to the water’s edge and looked into the flow, following the shifting waters with his eyes. Something about the fast-flowing water was frightening. Somehow the flow to his right must go back to where he just came from, which meant the opposite direction was where he wanted to go.

  The position of the sun seemed to confirm this. He turned to follow the flow away. No sooner had he taken a step than he felt himself being ripped back around almost as if giant, unseen hands had him. Soon he found his arm and leg movements were restricted.

  In the village they played a game with vines, but he always managed to slip out of the bindings eventually. Not so now. The harder he struggled, the tighter the invisible bonds held him. He relaxed, tried to work the bindings down his body.

  Somehow it all came back to growing, gathering, and the trades in the village. The vine game was a gatherer’s game. Vines held gathered goods and the knots had to be tied in just the right way. Perhaps the bindings that held him had knots he could slip. He tried to work the bindings with his hands, found only air.

  Tall knew there must be more than air holding him. He moved his left arm up, wiggling slowly, methodically until his hand touched the pocket of his pack. He worked with his thumb and forefinger. It took many long moments to slip open the corner of the pack seal, many more to reach in and grasp one of the long pod sticks.

  Working the pod to his mouth was even harder than getting into the pack. Not willing to chance losing the pod, he pushed the pod against his lips and bit into the entire length. The case surrounding the seeds was even more awful tasting than the seeds themselves. But it was the seeds that blasted open his mind, creating a swirling blend of the here and now and that other place he had almost been lost in. Second sight, the smoot had called it, and it was.

  Tall saw the source of the bonds. The tethers of white fire connecting the world were not the only ones. Underneath those, almost hidden, were others. Some were transient. Most, faint and pale, were ephemeral.

  The tethers that held Tall were ice blue. He knew their source. They flowed alongside his own tethers. Just as he had connections to those he’d bonded, they seemed to have connections to him. Perhaps it meant the link worked both ways. Whatever the truth was, Tall didn’t see how it would help him break free.

  Then he thought that if the tethers could hold him, the tethers could also guide him to freedom. He struggled to turn around, to take a step toward the source of the tethers. The first tiny, tiny step was almost impossible. The second tiny, tiny step less so. By the third step, the bonds no longer restricted his movements.

  Across the link he called out to the hatchlings, the mare and the yearling. This much of the link he understood. He simply had to yearn, to want them to approach. In his mind’s eye, he felt a tingling where there had been only absence. He waited and yearned. At the last minute, he remembered to spit out the remnants of the pod and seeds.

  For the first time, he got a good look at the other place. It was as if someone fashioned an inverted world and then attached rings around it. The rings were connected to the world only by the faintest of lines. These faint lines bridged the gaps between here and there. He felt like he was going to die.

  Only he didn’t die. Instead, he suddenly realized that he had collapsed. He hadn’t felt anything of the fall. He knew he was lying on his back only because he found himself looking up at the heavens. This problem was small compared to an even bigger problem. The sun wasn’t where it was supposed to be. It wasn’t a mid-morning sun, a mid-day sun, or a setting sun. It was a dawning sun.

  Something else he realized as he lay in the dirt. It was that the channel couldn’t possibly be. He had been on the far side of the deep loch. He had pushed through weed-grass, stalked through scrub trees, and crawled through prickly tangles. He had fallen down into a sunken hollow. What was missing in all this? The towering walls of stone.

  It could have been some play of perspective, but the stone wall had disappeared. He was sure of this, as sure as he could be of anything. Another thing he was sure of was that whatever kept licking his face had better stop. The dry, coarse tongue dragging across his forehead was driving him absolutely bonkers.

  He got the surprise of his life when he turned his head. He expected to see the yearling or the mare perhaps. What he saw instead was the oldest, largest slither he had ever seen, with its broad hood raised and its enormous fangs glistening in the morning light. He knew enough about slithers to know this warning. The slither was about to strike, and sure enough as soon as he thought this, he heard the death rattle.

  Only the largest slithers can make their rattle tremble so deeply. It was called a death rattle because few who heard it ever lived.

  Tall’s father was particularly fond of slithers. When they went out in search of goods to craft, his father’s slither would rattle or hiss rhythmically. The songs, as his father called them, communicated signs and warnings and thanks. Not every slither’s companion was treated with such respect. But his father was. Whenever his fathered journeyed beyond the village, other slithers would gather and follow. Sometimes those wild slithers would sing for him too.

  Alarm fled from his eyes. The sound of the rattle changed. It became something oddly comforting. It was almost like having a piece of his father with him.

  He tried to stand, felt what shouldn’t be. The tethers. They were wrapped around him so tightly he could scarcely breathe. He took a step, then another. It felt like he was walking through water. He heard the smoot’s voice in his ears. “Careful. You’ll burn yourself out.” Then more quietly he heard, “If these bonds break, you’re
doomed, doomed. They’ll turn on you.”

  The world started spinning. His head throbbed. On his knees, he groped for his pack, found the scatter pods. He crushed a seed between his fingers, chewed it. The white fire of the tethers confirmed his fears. He had bonded with the slither, just as he had bonded with the others. But the connecting lines were all stretched thin and they were pale, more like ice blue than white fire.

  Tall tried to think. He didn’t remember bonding the slither. He only recalled that he had reached out to the others. His head throbbed. He crushed and chewed a second seed. The tethers regained their former radiance.

  He reached out with the yearning, calling the hatchlings, the yearling and the mare. Across the link, he told them of the bonded slither and they were less afraid. He started walking, following the channel away from the loch. The beasts of his brood followed.

  Chapter 7: The Long Road

  Thoughts of the smoot weight heavily on Tall’s mind. Second sight gave him an entirely new perspective on the world. He knew he had a tough path to follow. But he was no longer merely a boy who ran and hid or took desperate measures. If the loch beast broke through the trees right now, he wouldn’t flee, he’d hold his ground, give the beast something to remember him by so that it’d never return.

  But first, he had to get some strength back in him. It wasn’t that he was hungry. He had plenty of foodstuffs in his pack for the long walk. Rather it was that he felt drawn out and weak. Almost like he was stretched too thin. The seeds helped. They gave him back some of himself, but two seeds were no longer enough. The more he exerted himself, the faster the edge the seeds gave faded.