by Steven Novak
“Behold!” the king bellowed deeply, lifting his hands triumphantly to the heavens in a quite uncommon display of exuberance. “At long last, the Tycarian king belongs to the citizens of Ocha!”
Those who previously managed to stifle their emotions now screamed aloud, pumping their fists angrily as thick strands of spittle shot from between their chilly lips. Another rock slammed into Donald’s back just below his neck; a smaller stone hit him in the shoulder. The expressions of the archers surrounding the boy remained steady, calm and entirely dangerous. Though they were under the strictest of orders not to kill the child unless totally necessary, many among them hoped beyond hope that he attempted some sort of escape. Killing a creature with such power would be both an honor and a pleasure, a story to tell their grandchildren.
Sprawled across the cold stone, Walcott’s eyes began to flutter. What had been black only moments before transformed into a wobbly mass of blurry grays and blues. Slowly the formless shapes sharpened; given form, they were brought forth into the crispness of day. The first thing Walcott noticed in this new world was the round, pink-skinned face of young Donald Rondage. Not yet fully aware of his surroundings, Walcott smiled softly, simply happy to see the face of the smart-mouthed child again. He’d missed Donald. He’d missed all the children. It was good to see him again.
Gazing across the sea of Ochans gathered in the courtyard, the king momentarily ignored the woozy Tycarian and the somber-faced boy, choosing instead to address the masses. “For years, this mongrel, this affront to the very laws of nature, has proven itself an enemy of the Ochan race. The blood of endless Ochans is stained into the contours of its paws: the blood of your children, and the blood of mine! Long overdue, the time has arrived for this awful thing to pay for its misdeeds! Today it learns the true meaning of power! Today it is reminded just who is master and who is slave!”
The roar of the crowd reverberated in Donald’s ears; a few more stones hit him in the back, and one whizzed past his head. The raucous, blood-curdling cheers succeeded in jolting Walcott from his pain-induced haze. All at once, the reality of the current situation settled like the weight of the universe on his chest. Wrapped tightly around his wrists, heavy chains as thick as his legs bound him to the cold stone beneath his shell. Every muscle in his body was inflamed and torn, sore in ways neither he nor they ever thought possible. Above him, soaking in the admiration of the screaming horde, stood the ghastly tyrant king himself. On the ground below, Donald Rondage lowered his head to the dirt as he attempted to dodge an onslaught of stones being tossed in his direction. Hanging from the boy’s waist, cursing at anyone and everything within earshot, was little Roustaf. Though the bones in his hands had been broken for some time, Walcott achingly pulled them into fists. Shattered cartilage audibly cracked and popped, a flash of pain shooting up his forearm. Taking note of the Tycarian’s feeble gesture, Kragamel looked down and smiled.
Ignoring the pain coursing through his body, Walcott tugged at the chains binding him. “Let the child alone, you bastard!” The rattling of steel against stone succeeded in drawing the crowd’s attention from Donald and Roustaf to the action on the main stage once more.
Welts just now beginning to form across his body, Donald peeked through his fingers in Walcott’s direction. Puddles of warm, salty tears had begun to form in the corners of his eyes. He didn’t want to cry. He wanted to do anything but cry, or let anyone see him cry. Try as he might to hold back his emotions, he was failing.
The sight of Walcott whipping like a wild, angry beast at his chains only made things more difficult.
Realizing the struggling was getting him nowhere, and suddenly finding it remarkably difficult to breathe, Walcott relented in his assault against the steel. He needed time to recover, time to think. Breathing heavily, he stared angrily into the black eyes of the tyrant king. “Have you no morals, fiend? He is just a boy; he need not see this.”
Kragamel leaned close enough to Walcott that the Tycarian could feel the warmth of his acrid breath across his flesh. “You dare to speak of the dictates of morals to me, mongrel? We are in this together, you and I, just as we have been from the start. Do not think for a second that your hands are not as stained as mine. How many have you killed in the name of your country? How many of your race has killed in the name of their king?”
Still struggling with his breath, Walcott gritted what remained of his teeth, a low growl seeping through the cracks in his blood-caked lips. “In defense of my country.”
The king’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Call it what you may. Words change nothing. We are not so different, you and I. You feel just in lecturing me due exclusively to the situation in which you currently find yourself. Were the tables suddenly turned, I have no doubt you would chirp a different tune entirely.”
“We are nothing alike,” Walcott growled, trying his best to ignore the pain caused merely by the act of keeping his paws pulled into fists.
The tyrant king immediately smiled. “In this statement you are correct. We are nothing alike. You are dead, and I am alive.”
Jerking upright, the king threw his hands into the air and gazed over the sea of Ochans filling the courtyard of his castle for at least a mile in every direction. With a half-smile, half-snarl he screamed at the top of his lungs, “We shall afford this atrocity no more of our precious time! Split the scum and be done with it!”
Louder than any of the previous eruptions, the crowd burst into a wild frenzy. So raucous were their voices that the ground literally shook beneath their feet, causing Donald to lose his balance and stumble forward. His shoulder crashed to the ground with a thump, Roustaf’s steel cage digging painfully into his kidney. As the tyrant king stepped back from the altar, six Ochan soldiers wielding long steel rods bent at one end similar to a crowbar surrounded the Tycarian.
Walcott knew what was coming.
The grizzly, awful practice of splitting a Tycarian from his shell began early in the conflict between the two worlds. To this very day the landscape of Tycaria remained littered with the empty, hollow shells of the dead.
Of all the things one could do to a Tycarian, this was the most painful; this was the worst.
His heart beating wildly, Walcott’s body tensed and his muscles pulled taut. His limbs began suddenly shaking uncontrollably. His breaths were out of sync, too short and moving too fast for him to ever really fill his lungs. Rolling his head to the side, he stared at Donald in the dirt at the foot of the stone altar. The boy looked feral and disheveled, an absolute mess. Fountains of tears poured from his wide eyes as he sobbed passionately, his frostbitten fingers digging into the frozen dirt beneath his knees. Dangling beside him, a crazy-eyed Roustaf pounded on the bars of his cage screaming, his little voice drowned out by the roar of the crowd. Despite the overwhelming fear coursing through the boy’s form, Walcott noticed Donald’s body begin to jerk upward. The child wanted to help him, even if the muscles in his body had other ideas entirely. Sensing the slight movement as well, the soldiers behind Donald pulled tighter on the taut strings of their bows. If Donald moved again, he would die.
“Stay where you are, lad!” Walcott screamed over the noise. “No matter what happens, you are not to move a muscle! Do you understand me?”
Tears seeping into his mouth, Donald shook his head, unsure of what to say, unsure of anything.
Walcott steadied his voice, trying his best to stifle the anxiety rapidly taking control of his body. No matter what, he needed to ensure the child’s safety. This was priority number one. “You have been given your orders, young Mr. Donald. I expect you to follow them!”
Despite his situation, Walcott’s face was the absolute pillar of strength as he spoke. Donald’s knees immediately halted their shuffling.
All at once, the Ochan soldiers stiffly wedged their steel bars between the connection points of the Tycarian’s shell. The movement sent an immediate, blinding wave of pain shooting through Walcott’s body. His paws opened wide as his fing
ers coiled themselves into awful, open-palmed death grips. His flat toes pulled tight and wide as his feet began to shake uncontrollably. To keep from crying out, he bit the tongue in his mouth so hard it nearly split in two. Weeding through flashes of searing pain, he noticed that Donald now seemed unable to look away. The boy was utterly terrified, confused and emotional in ways one so young could never hope to fully comprehend.
Donald shouldn’t be seeing this. He didn’t need to see this.
As the steel dug further into his side, Walcott cried through a mouth full of blood in the terrified child’s direction, “This is not meant for the eyes of children, boy! Turn your head!”
One after another, the Ochan guards pushed down on the steel bars. Slowly and yet oh, so violently, they had begun to peel the Tycarian king’s shell apart. The process was more a marathon rather than a sprint, every moment agonizingly drawn out, every second bringing with it a world of untold horrors. Behind Donald, the archers pulled tighter on the bows pointed in his direction. Overcome with emotions, he was finding himself unable to look away, despite wanting more than anything to do exactly that. Walcott’s body began to thrash wildly, pulling into ugly contorted angles as he was literally ripped in two, slimy discharge spurting from the newly formed cracks in the sides of his shell. Fighting with every ounce of energy he had, Walcott refused to scream. He was unwilling to give Kragamel the satisfaction. The king would indeed beat him this day, but he would not see him beaten. As one half of his shell began to peel away from the other, however, remaining silent became impossible. The pain was simply too blinding, too incredible, and far too much to bear, even for a king.
Thrashing his head from side to side, Walcott’s eyes opened wide, his face an angry grimace of emotions so ravenous and untamed words could never truly do them justice. Donald was still watching him, watching, and crying, and seeing things he’d never forget. Donald needed to look away.
“Close your damn eyes, boy!” Walcott’s voice was husky and crunchy, as if his throat was filled with gravel and shattered glass.
Horrified, Donald immediately dropped his head to the dirt. Placing his hands over his ears, he pressed with all of his incredible strength against his skull, hoping beyond hope to snuff out the horrifying sounds. Below him, the frozen soil was stained with his tears and sweat. Around him, the crowd continued to roar, getting louder by the moment. Beside him, Roustaf dropped to his knees, defeated. The little man’s fists were bloody from beating on the steel containing him. Deep crimson purple welts had already begun to form. Unable to bear seeing anymore, he, too, looked away.
For the king of Tycaria, the world slowed to a crawl. The ungodly pain had reached its apex; from this point on, thankfully, it could get no worse. One by one, various parts of his body slowly slipped into a wonderful, relieving numbness. Warm liquid now flowed openly from the split in his shell, bathing the stone underneath in a warm, sticky green, the only warmth in this entire awful world. His head and arms went limp. Fighting was pointless now. The soldiers tearing him apart had gone too far, and there was no coming back. The world around folded into something softer and whiter, more blurry and manageable, something he could hold onto and something he could make sense of. Perched atop this strange new bridge between the living and the dead, the cold gray Ochan clouds suddenly resembled those commonly filling the Tycarian sky. He recalled his youth and fondly remembered his childhood love, smiled as he was returned to the day he was crowned king of his people. His mother was so proud of him, so confident he would grow to be the king all of Tycaria deserved. In this instance, Ocha and its king, and the madness Kragamel brought to his race, ceased to exist. Years spent fighting a war that claimed those he had loved and the place he called home, split into particles too small for the eye to capture and disappeared. What remained was something entirely different, something warm and comforting and familiar. What remained was the end, and the beginning, and whatever might come next.
What remained was a revelation.
Lifting from the empty husk of his shell, these newly-formed unseen particles that once made up the creature calling itself
Walcott Shellamennes caught the breeze and rose softly into the clouds above. Absorbed into the atmosphere, they again changed shape, transforming into something entirely different and wholly unexplainable. With time, they would return as a cold Tycarian rain, drenching a world unaccustomed to anything other than black snow.
Walcott had missed the rain. Oh, how wonderful it would be, to feel it one last time.
In the end, the moisture would tell his story; the rain would deliver his message. On this day, the universe bid adieu to a king among kings and returned him to his rightful place among the clouds. This was the unalterable cycle of things. This was the beginning, the end and the often-bashful, bittersweet beauty hiding between the cracks.
Walcott Shellamennes, King of the Tycarian people, the holder of the sacred cup of Peladrov, the keeper of the great Mud Chalice and the leader of the New Tipoloo rebellion, was dead.
So be it.
*
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CHAPTER 61
SLIDE
*
Tommy Jarvis had always loved the cold. In winter everything became smooth, clean and sterile. There was a beautiful slickness to freshly fallen snow and frozen ice, something slippery and sparkling and concentrated. Molded by the winds, when untouched by the hand of man, winter was pure, honest and real.
The snow did not lie, the snow simply was.
The previous night brought much of what the young boy had come to love so dearly, so much in fact that it caught the quiet little town he called home unprepared. With school closed for the day, Tommy and his little brother bundled themselves into thick winter jackets, snagged the flat circular sleds from the shed behind the house, and headed to the hill by the Fergusons’ near the end of the block. With snow came sledding, and Tommy liked that too. Though she was feeling both nauseated and sleepy on account of the medication, Megan Jarvis followed close behind her children. In a few days she would be admitting herself into the hospital for an extended stay; her doctors believed she couldn’t afford to wait any longer. She had delayed the inevitable long enough. Megan needed simple moments such as these now more than ever. Far too many times in her life she’d let them pass without fully acknowledging their importance. While she regretted many things, this stood alone atop the list. Moments were like snowflakes, so plentiful, it was easy to take them for granted. No two were exactly the same however, and missing just one meant missing it forever.
Snowflakes offered no second chances.
Pulling the hood of her jacket over her head for warmth, Megan smiled brightly as she watched Tommy push his younger brother down the modest-sized hill on a circular sled. Spinning like a top, Nicky lost his grip near the bottom and was thrown into the fluffy whiteness face first. Despite the awkward fall, she knew her son wasn’t hurt. Though his head was half buried, she could hear his muffled laughter from beneath the drift. Rushing to his brother’s aid, Tommy hoisted the smaller boy into the air, both children giggling wildly as flakes of white continued to fall around them.
Nicky turned toward his mother, his face soaking wet and red, his smile wider than she’d seen it in some time. “Mom! Mom! Did you see me? Oh my God, Mom, did you see that wipe out?”
Lifting her hand to her mouth, Megan laughed into the fabric of her wool mitten and nodded her head in the direction of her younger child. He looked so much like his father, more so with every passing year. Many times since his birth, she’d seen glimmers of her husband in his eyes, a childlike reflection of the things she had come to love so much about Chris. This made her happy.
Starting up the hill once more, Nicky yelled in her direction, “Mom! Mom! Watch me! Watch me, I’m going again!”
“I see you, bubby! I’m watching yo—” An uncontrollable coughing fit stopped Megan mid-sentence.
At times, it seemed all she did was cough anymore. Her throat had been raw fo
r months; the pounding in her head was so constant it had become the norm. Every day she grew weaker. With each passing hour, even the simplest of things seemed worlds harder. Just living was rapidly becoming an obstacle. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could go on this way, and there were times she wondered if she even wanted to.
As Nicky trudged carefully up the hill, buried to his waist in snow, Megan’s elder son approached her timidly. Unlike Nicky, Tommy had taken note of every aspect of his mother’s physical deterioration. Like the wood on the deck in the back yard, or the rusted tricycle by the shed that hadn’t been used for years, she was falling apart. Every day she seemed different: smaller. Everyday her smile faded just a bit, replaced by something false, something pretend.
“Are you all right, mom?” Tommy asked, his face sticky-wet and bright red, pillars of hot breath puffing from his mouth with every word.
“Yeah, I’m fine, hunny, totally fine. Go play with your brother, I’ll be right here watching.”
Looking in Nicky’s direction, Tommy noticed that his little brother was only halfway up the hill, struggling with the mounds of snow as he lugged the oversized sled behind with one gloved hand. Turning his attention back to his mother, he watched as a jittery smile crept its way across her face. In stark contrast to her happy grin, beads of moisture had begun to pool in the corner of her eyes. Her skin had grown so pale in the last few months, now nearly the tone of the cascading snow above her head. Reaching up, she used her mitten to wipe away the tears. She wasn’t sure why she was crying. Realistically it could have been any one of a million reasons, maybe all of them.
Biting her lower lip, she smiled down at her son, nudging him gently in the direction of the snowy hill. “Go on, Tommy. Go help your brother. I’ll be fine.”
Tommy held his position. Something was scratching at the inside of his skull, begging and pleading on bended knee to be asked, something he’d avoided until this very moment.