A Hero's Curse

by P. S. Broaddus

  “Wait a minute,” I say. I am standing next to a stunted pine. The rest of the forest has grown up around it, and it doesn’t get enough light to grow. I don’t do it any favors by stripping off several of its boughs. I have an armful before I am ready.

  “Okay.”

  “In here,” Tig directs. I follow his voice, careful not to whack my head, dragging the pine branches behind me. We burrow into the tree and build a nest of pine branches with the roots at our back and only a small entry in front of us. I use a couple of the extra pine branches to camouflage our door.

  “Well, it feels safe enough for the night,” I say. “And if anything tries to come at us I’ll use my magic exploding armor.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Tig says. “I’ll keep watch for the first half, and the second half, we’ll just hope we don’t get eaten since you would probably fall asleep anyway.”

  I poke him in the ribs. “I can listen if you think I should.”

  “No, I was just joking. I’ll watch for a while, and if I think we need to trade I’ll wake you.”

  “Thanks, Tig.”

  “Sure, Ess.” I scratch him behind the ears. A quick drink from our water skin and I am ready for the night. I snuggle down in the pine branches. Tig settles with his back against my stomach, watching the entry. I feel the cold seeping in from the forest and am glad for Tig and the shelter we have. This is the first time we have been above ground at night. I had forgotten that fall was coming. The days will be getting shorter, the nights cooler. I wonder whether we will get to harvest anything this year. Then Chatter interrupts my thoughts. I think of that first meeting, three days ago, when the dragons came stomping over to our overhang. Sure, she had lost her head and brought the dragons straight to us, but then a few minutes later she had offered us her nest. She left her home and led us nearly the entire way under the Gray Wastelands.

  Despite her terrified nature she had done her best to help us. I wonder if I will be able to say the same about Tig and myself someday: that we did our best to help. I can feel my insides grimace. No. We’ve done our best for us, but not to help. Even the moment of Tig describing the daemon’s army marching toward the Kingdom of Mar didn’t change my mind. Not really. It simply cut off our route home. Practically at that point it seemed the best option to try to find another source of help, be that a lost king or a mythical city or a chattering ringtail.

  Now though, in the hollow of an ancient fallen tree, thinking about Chatter’s attempt to help, a tiny spark of something flares in my darkness. It is gone almost as soon as it comes, but it is real, and the ember remains. We can make a difference—I can make a difference. For the first time, I let myself believe it might be true. For the first time, I want to make it true. My mom’s words are the last things playing through my mind as I go to sleep.

  “You have an important part to play in this world of color, Essie.”

  Chapter 19

  The next morning we stop by another berry tree for breakfast before leaving the forest. The mountain would be easy to climb if it were level. Of course, then it would be called “Syteless Plain,” and would probably be rather anticlimactic to heroes trying to find the door to the Kingdom Above the Sun. I could do with a little less climactic.

  My boots earn their keep. I’ve almost abandoned the boots several times during the last two days in the tunnel. They aren’t the most uncomfortable boots I’ve ever worn, but this is the longest journey I’ve ever been on. I’ve found every tight spot in them. Nevertheless, my thin leather shoes would never have protected my toes from the rocks and probably would have been beaten to death on this terrain. As it is, I am able to move with a bit of confidence.

  By early afternoon we enter the clouds. Tig keeps a sharp eye for the entrance, but it turns out it’s not as difficult to find as we thought it might be.

  An unused, winding path built by humans leads to what Tig says is a “not bad” gateway carved into the top of the mountain with ancient letters that Tig can’t read. If Tig says “not bad” about something that he didn’t personally make, it is probably magnificent. I run my hands over a column alongside the enormous opening, feeling the deep groves that make up letters. I don’t recognize any of the words, but some of the letters seem familiar.

  There is no door. Just a cavernous mouth daring heroes to enter. We both hold our breath as we step into the mountain. “It’s huge,” Tig says, his voice echoing off the stone. I can hear that he’s impressed, which is something, as cats are rather hard to impress.

  “From way down there, it must be massive,” I say.

  He hops up on my shoulders. “Mmm . . .” he says, “that didn’t make much difference at all.” I shrug him off my shoulders.

  I’m not quite as wowed as I can’t see the grandeur, but I do feel the smooth stone floor, worn by hundreds, perhaps thousands of feet. The cold air rushes out of the depths of the mountain, swirling my hair around my face. I tuck it back under my bandana to keep it out of my mouth. Our echoing footsteps in the hall confirm what Tig has already said: This place is big. It smells old. And undisturbed. I feel like an intruder, and with every step I expect our presence to be challenged, but several hundred feet down the huge aisle the only things we have disturbed are a few small bats.

  The first change is up a smooth set of stairs and through a regular-sized door. By now any light from the entrance is gone completely, and even Tig is having difficulty seeing, which is a bit eerie. There aren’t a whole lot of places where Tig can’t see. Even in the tunnels under the Gray Wastelands he could make out enough to see blurs and shapes. Perhaps it is the stone the mountain is made of, but something has obliterated almost all traces of light.

  Tig describes a circular courtyard. “There are arched doorways leading off in every direction,” he finishes, in an odd, distant voice. I raise my eyebrows and feel an all too familiar worried prickle run up my spine.

  “They—are—decorated,” he continues, “strange symbols around the border . . . images and pictures . . . kingdoms . . . there’s light coming from most of the symbols around the doors . . . I think those symbols are moving!” he says in an excited whisper. “This is it, Ess! There is something happening here. This is where we’ll find what we need!”

  “What are you talking about?” I say, keeping my voice calm, but my heart is racing. I don’t like this room at all, and I like even less how it’s affecting Tig.

  “Take this door,” continues Tig excitedly, “it looks like—” he pauses and I hear him pad off a few feet to my right, “it looks like this door leads to a future where we’ll be heroes, Ess! Rulers in a kingdom, awards bestowed, grandeur, glory, power—” He continues speaking so rapidly I can barely catch his words.

  “Tig, what are you talking about?” By this time I can’t keep some of the alarm out of my voice. “You can’t read—”

  “That’s not all,” Tig interrupts as he trots over to another door. “Each door is different. This one is healing! Anything is fixed, Ess! There are cripples and plagues,” he pauses, and I don’t interrupt this time, “yes, here’s blindness—it’s all here, Ess, you’ll be able to see!”

  I feel a little dizzy. I take a small step toward Tig and his happy growl. “Another one, this one makes you rich . . . oohh . . . that looks pretty good. This is why it’s such a secret, Ess. It all makes sense! And we found it!”

  I hear him trot again to my right and behind me. “Ess,” his voice is strained. “Family, Ess.” I think of Mom and Dad. But how could Mom and Dad be through that arch? “All family. Think of your family, and—” He is silent, and I hear him issue a long low yowl—“my family, too, Ess. They’re here. It’s all in the pictures.”

  I step over to Tig and feel his tail brush against my leather armor. My heart is beating a crazy rhythm against my chest. I feel Tig step away from me toward the arch. “This is it! This is what the king was looking for. He found what he was looking for, and now so have we.”

  Maybe Tig’s right. Maybe thi
s is what the king was looking for. These doors might save the kingdom, reunite me with my family, restore my sight . . . But then I smell something. Not much. Far off. Out of the hole in front of us. It’s old and rotten. I falter and pause.

  Tig yowls. “Come on, Ess.” But I don’t move. My senses are kicking in again.

  “Always trust your senses,” Tig trained me. “You can’t afford to ignore them.”

  “Do you smell anything?” I ask.

  “What?” he asks, bewildered.

  “Do you smell anything? Something rotting?” I breathe again, opening my mouth slightly to help taste the air. “It’s meat.”

  “Essie, there’s nothing to smell in here.” Tig grabs my leg with a paw and pulls. “It’s just rock in here. Just the picture images, and you can’t see so—” But there it is again. Rotting. Rancid. Distinct.

  “No,” I say, sure of what I smell through the door. “Something’s dead in there, Tig.”

  “No?” he asks, incredulous.

  “No. Read me all the doors.”

  “Okay. There are five doors: royalty, healing, riches, nothing, family, in a circle, in that order, not counting the entry we came through,” snaps Tig. “I read them to you once already.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Right, nothing, just a plain arch. The pictures don’t form anything. They are swirling and don’t focus like the others. We don’t know what’s through that door, Essie.”

  “Where is healing?”

  Tig pads off to my left. I follow. “Right, you could go through, get your sight, and then come back. We can go through, get our families, and then come back. Get riches. And then go save the kingdom through the kingdom arch. It must be a puzzle to figure out which one to go through first. Here’s healing. Let’s get started.” He butts his head against the back of my leg as we stop in front of another arch.

  “Sure wish Chatter was with us now,” Tig says. “Remember, she said the king knew which door to take.”

  “The king thought he knew which door to take,” I say as the hair around my face stirs and shifts. I don’t blame Chatter for bolting at this point. This whole place gives me the creeps. The air around me is moving slightly into the hole in front of us. I can’t smell anything coming out of the darkness. Could I really get my sight back? I reach out my hand toward the arch. Then the draft on my back momentarily ceases, and I hear something that causes me to jerk my hand back as if I’d been bitten.

  I spin to face Tig. “Did you hear that?” I say, taking a step back.

  “What?” He asks, deep suspicion in his voice.

  “It—it was, they were, that is, someone screaming?”

  Tig is silent.

  I ask him to take me to each door, so we go around the room. Tig is convinced I am hearing things, smelling things, feeling tingles that are imagined. But they are real or nothing is real. In front of the arch with the images of award ceremonies and royalty and kingdoms I smell the musky odor of something living. I lie down on the floor and listen and can hear what sounds like a long slow breath followed by a silence that lasts too many seconds, and then another long slow breath. I am shaking as I stand. “Something big in that one. Really big.” It takes me a long time to decipher anything in front of the arch inscribed with riches. I sit on the floor and listen, I taste the air, I even press my ear against the floor, feeling for any kind of tremor. What I can feel is Tig getting antsy next to me.

  “Well?” he asks, impatient.

  I push myself up off the floor and shrug. My hand finds a loose chip from one of the stones. “Maybe,” I say, my tone grudging. “Can you see through the arch?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says, in an exasperated voice. “I can see in all of them except the arch with no images.”

  I finger the chip in my hand. “Tell me what happens,” I direct. I toss the chip through the arch with the images of wealth. I don’t hear the expected clatter. I turn to Tig for explanation and raise my eyebrows.

  “It, uh . . . fell through the floor,” he says. About that time I hear the tiniest distant clink that is my stone fragment finding a bottom somewhere.

  “Whoa,” I breathe. “Find me another rock.” Tig doesn’t argue this time. He rolls an even bigger rock to me, and I toss it after the first one. I count seven seconds before I hear the clatter.

  “It just dropped right through. But it looks so solid . . .” mutters Tig. As I scramble back to my feet I realize I am covered in a cold sweat. I hate these doors. I want to leave and never come back into this mountain.

  We stop in front of the blank doorway. A warm draft, barely discernible, washes over just my feet. Something that could have been music plays, but my own breathing is too loud, and then it’s gone before I can determine if it’s real.

  “Well, anything?” asks Tig.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  “Maybe good or maybe bad?” he asks impatiently. I know he’ll be upset. I am, too. But the other doors aren’t right. “I can’t see anything in this door,” says Tig.

  I nod. It makes sense to me. Syteless Peak. I find another shard and toss it through the door. It clatters onto a stone floor. “That can’t be it, Ess,” Tig says. “I can’t see the floor where it fell. It is just a wall of darkness.”

  “I think it is, Tig.” The ember deep inside glows as if something is blowing on it. This is a hero’s door. Heroes don’t seek wealth or honor or even insist on healing or family. Those are the things they sacrifice. Uncle Cagney’s voice echoes through my head: “That’s what makes a hero.”

  “In fact, I know this is the door, Tig.” I speak with such confidence even I’m surprised. “This is what we’re supposed to do. This is why I’m here.” I smooth my blindfold and tuck a rebellious piece of hair behind my ear. I know Tig wants to argue, but I think seeing the rock disappear through the floor has shaken him. And we have been a team for so long—I’d like to think he trusts me.

  “Alright,” he says, “we’ll try this arch. I can’t see a thing so this is the part where you earn your keep. If you let us both fall off some ledge or we get eaten by an ogre or we die of starvation I’m going to resurrect you just so I can say ‘I told you so’ and throw up hairballs on your pillow.”

  “Tig, that’s disgusting!”

  “I’m glad you see how serious this is. And if this is a dead end, we come back and try the arch with the images of family,” he adds.

  I hesitate before agreeing. Silently I vow we had better not come back. Stepping through the door feels pretty normal. The rock floor feels the same, walls line both sides of the passage, and the floor is worn smooth just like the aisle into the mountain.

  Tig is blind. “Essie,” he says in a subdued tone, “please put the string on my neck.” He’s never asked for the string. As I pull it out of our pack and loop it around his neck, a part of me wants to tell him this is how I feel all the time. I think a few days ago I might have. But here at the top of Syteless Peak, just inside the blackest arch, where the darkness is so real we can touch it, I catch a glimpse of red. Only this red isn’t the red dress. It is mine, the ember deep inside again.

  I rub Tig’s ears. “Come on, old man.” I stand and turn into the tunnel. “Let’s see if I can finally earn my keep.”

  Tig gets up and blunders into my legs. “Well, it’s about time,” he says in a voice that sounds like he was right on the verge of feeling sorry for himself. I grin into the darkness and lead the way down the winding hallway. After a short walk the hall leads to stairs, which lead to more stairs, which lead to more stairs, which . . . well, there are a lot of stairs.

  If I start to think about it, it makes my head hurt. We are at the top of a mountain, going up? I mention this to Tig. He grunts in response and hops up another stair. He has been quiet for a while now. My legs start to burn, then ache, then they feel like each one weighs an extra hundred pounds. Tig continues to follow along behind, letting me lead through the inky darkness. It feels weird being in the lead with him bumping against t
he back of my legs. But I have practice with this game.

  In a large way it was Tig who prepared me to take this role. He taught me to appreciate the night. When the sun dips below the horizon the advantage that was the world’s is taken away, and it’s others who trip over uneven ground I can stalk with confidence. It’s at night when the dust of the day that mutes sounds and smells fades, leaving the air clear and sharp—air that carries news. I can’t count the number of raids I have followed behind Tig, barely making any more noise than he makes, hearing the rustle of dry grass and the whisper of small feet. Of course he points out that my weight gives me away to smaller creatures, so I’ve learned to stalk with agility that even Tig admires.

  I guess I’m just surprised that Tig still used his sight so heavily. During our coaching sessions I think I always assumed that he was at least partly blind in the dark as well. I’ll be the first to admit that this darkness is different. It presses in on all sides. Our footfalls and whispered voices bounce weirdly off the stone, echoing where they should fall flat, or rebounding off the walls in an eerie imitation of mocking laughter.

  I have lost track of time again when the stairs finally end. I gave up counting steps a long time ago. We walk into a huge cavernous space. The echoes bounce out around us in such a wide pattern I can’t tell how big the room is. I would like to follow the sides, but I feel the smooth stone trail lead out away from the walls.

  “Can you see anything?” I ask Tig.

  “No.” He sounds irritated.

  “Hear anything?”

  “I can hear you asking me dumb questions.”

  “I’m hoping you have something helpful to contribute—” I cut myself off in the middle of my sentence, listening hard. “Did you hear that?” I ask. We both hold our breath, listening. We haven’t been quiet. Our breathing has been loud, and even our whispered voices are noisy in the quiet of the mountain. I’m sure if there is anything in here it has heard us coming. I hear Tig take in a breath to hiss something back at me, but then he hears it, too. A scrabbling in the dark.