by Bolz, Stefan
“What do you mean?” Joshua asked.
“I am not sure. What I do know is that no one can look upon the lioness and be the same again.”
Everyone stood quietly for a while following the trail of their own thoughts. Wind walked toward the middle of the room.
“I know what you must do” her thoughts reached them. “Look down here.”
Joshua flew down from Krieg’s back and walked toward Wind.
“I saw it through your eyes. You might not remember. Your glimpse of her was too short. But look right here. Between her eyes.”
Where she stood, Joshua saw that two of the stone tiles were cracked. The shape of it was similar to the crack in the glass.
“You must stand here and look beyond the glass. But not only you. The three of you. The three of you came here. The three of you must find your way deep into the mountain.”
Joshua understood. So did Grey and Krieg. The horse walked over to stand with his front legs just before the crack.
“Can you make it up here, Grey?” Krieg asked.
“I think so,” the wolf answered.
“Do it.” Krieg stood, bracing himself while Grey trotted back ten yards and then turned and charged toward the horse. Just before Joshua thought he would crash into him, the wolf jumped and landed on Krieg’s back.
“Now it’s your turn,” Krieg thought to Joshua. “Come up here, red one, and tell us what you see.”
Joshua flew up and landed on the wolf’s back. In front of Joshua, about 15 yards away, was the west facing window with the crack just below his eye level. Beyond it in the distance the Great Wall extended upward into the sky. Joshua let his gaze rest on the small fracture and then go beyond it. Nothing happened. He tried to switch his focal point between the crack in the glass and the wall in the distance. Nothing.
“I can’t see anything,” he thought.
“Wait, Joshua.” Wind’s thoughts came to him like a whisper, a quiet breeze over fields of deepest green. “Wait and be still.”
And when Joshua forgot for one moment whether he should concentrate on the crack or the wall beyond, when he just let his eyes rest on nothing in particular, a shape suddenly carved itself out of the Great Wall. It was almost as if it sprang toward him. The three dimensional outline reminded him of the head of the lioness he had seen just before. But where the other was still, more detailed and directed inward, this one looked as if it was jumping straight at him. Joshua flew up in terror letting out a crow that echoed through the large dome. Grey jumped off the horse and Krieg went on his hind legs. For a moment the terror went through each of them like a wave crashing against the rocks.
“What was that?” Grey fought his instinct to run in the opposite direction.
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” Krieg answered. “But whatever it was, I don’t think it wants us to come anywhere near it.”
When Joshua looked toward the Wall it was normal again. There was no indication where the head of the lioness had just been.
“I know where we have to go,” Joshua sounded much more certain than he was.
“Where?” Grey asked.
“Do you see the small body of water straight ahead, right at the bottom of the wall?” Joshua looked in the direction of it.
“I can see it,” Wind thought to them.
“That’s where we have to go. That’s where we will find the entrance and the Porte Des Lioness.
Dwarfed against the large window and looking out over the wide landscape below, the four companions stood next to each other in the sun flooded hall. It dawned on Joshua that, as far as they had come and whatever their journey had been up until now, it was only just the beginning.
14. DARKNESS
Deep inside the Ice Forest, high up in a tree, under the dark covers of the night she woke. Her cold dead eyes scanned the darkness around her. Her partially decomposed, disease riddled body held the stench of death and decay. Just before she woke, she had a dream of a large cave and of three feathers that lay on a blackened stone deep inside a mountain. In her dream she saw the rooster and she knew that she could not let him find what he was looking for. Something stirred deep within her and whatever it was it brought her back to the living enough to escape death for a while longer.
“Feed on the dead,” the darkness whispered. “And make me an army worthy of what I am.”
She pushed off the branch, circling the air. Her massive wings easily spanned twelve yards; her talons could hold a grown wolf in them and carry him up into the air so she could feed on him in mid flight. The Griffon Vulture set course toward Hollow’s Gate. She flew fast, close to the tip of the trees and her cries were heard far into the forest and every beast was reminded how close it was to death, how easily its little life could be snapped from it.
She flew for ten days and ten nights and at dawn of the eleventh day she reached Hollow’s Gate from the south east. From high above she saw the rooster and the wolf fall into the deep. She watched the war horse and the Pegasus escape from the crumbling path and witnessed the sky people floating up within the light beam. Her eyes blinded by it, she withdrew and watched the Pegasus and the horse from high up in a tree. And when the war horse jumped off the cliff, she followed him. As he disappeared into the Gate of Time, she hovered there and within the darkness of Time’s Gate where past and future were there with her, she clearly saw the end of the Rooster in her mind. She saw the Pegasus as she hung held by hundreds of thin threads above a black abyss; she saw the wolf fight for the rooster’s life and she saw the war horse fall from high above, inside the mountain, paralyzed by the deep festering cuts of her talons and wounds from her beak. She saw it all and knew the certain outcome of her task. And she was content.
When she flew out of the blackness, gliding through the air high above Hollow’s Gate, she heard the eagle’s cry close to the Wall. Ayres, the Guardian of the Gate came toward her. His speed could match hers. His size could not. She killed him instantly, her beak feeding on his flesh before she dropped his remains into the deep. She landed eventually at the bottom of the waterfall, close to where Joshua and the Wolf had been only a few days past. The hyenas, six of them, were in different stages of decomposition, a foul stench of decay lay over them like a blanket. She resurrected them all, not to what they had been before but to something else—creatures of darkness, starved, poised to attack, shrieking in wrath and allowed to feed only on what they would bring back to her, their master.
The hyenas and the vulture went around the city of ruins unable to penetrate the light shield. They felt the cold claws of the ice reach for them from deep underground when they made their way toward the Refuge. But the ice had no power over them for it could only take from the living and not from the dead. When the spiders died on their way to the Refuge, the vulture brought them all back. She brought them back to serve one purpose: To hunt down the rooster, to capture the Pegasus and to kill and feed on the wolf and the war horse. Such was their purpose now. The hundreds and hundreds of spiders the ice had left to die followed their master into the holes inside the earth from whence they came.
When the ice withdrew, the remaining spiders searched for their kin, unable to grasp what had happened. They went back the way they came, up the small path through the trees and egg shaped boulders and into their holes that would lead them deep underground and to their home. They never reached it. Their brethren, no longer recognizing their own kin, killed them and they joined the ranks of the army of the dark. And then they waited.
15. ALDA
When the four companions made their way down the massive staircase of the Refuge, Joshua thought about what they would encounter outside the tower. He still held the gruesome image of the spider’s bodies in his mind as they lay scattered, some floating in the lake, others on the path across it. But as they stepped into the sunlight and onto the small platform, there was no trace of them anywhere. The surviving spiders had probably taken care of their own, carrying them back deep underground acc
ording to their custom.
They crossed the narrow walkway from the Refuge to the shore. With the ice gone, Joshua could see far down into the deep blue, crystal clear lake. He remembered Alda telling them that it had no bottom and the thought of it made him shiver.
“Do you hear that?” Wind who was ahead of him on the walkway stopped.
“What is it?” Krieg asked.
“It’s a melody,” she replied.
“It’s coming from the lake,” Krieg stopped as well.
Now Joshua could hear it too.
“I know this. I have known this…” Wind turned toward the lake. “I have known this melody since I was still a foal. How can this be? I don’t understand—”
“TURTLE!” The wolf’s thought reached them at the same time as, about fifty yards out, the massive turtle broke through the surface of the water like a huge wale. Her jump was accompanied by a crescendo of the melody she created. At the moment the melody stopped, she crashed back into the water, the impact creating a tidal wave that rushed toward the walkway with immense speed. Grey ran the remaining distance to the shore and just made it before the wave washed over the walkway. Joshua jumped up and avoided being taken by it. Krieg and the horse didn’t move but the water wasn’t high enough to have an impact on them.
“My friends!” The turtle’s thoughts were loud as thunder as she swam toward the shore. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so loud but I am very excited to see you again. There is the wolf and my red friend. I see that you made it safely to the Refuge. I hope my thoughts about the spiders reached you. I just wanted to let you know not to be afraid of them and that they would not harm you.”
The turtle was just about to reach the shore when she saw Wind. She stopped her movement and floated in the water only a few yards from the walkway.
“Is that you?” Her thoughts were but a whisper now. “Wind, is that you?”
“Alda? I thought my eyes betrayed me when I first saw you.” The joy spilled out from Wind and onto the others. She went on her hind legs, her wings spreading wide as the turtle moved her massive head forward and toward her.
“Alda.” Their heads were now close together and Wind rubbed her nose on the turtle’s. “I’m so glad to see you again!”
“The last thing I heard was that you went to the surface and into the Ice Forest. That was…that must have been after the beacon had been destroyed.”
For an instant Joshua thought he saw shame in Wind’s eyes. As if whatever had happened was connected to some wrong doing on her part. But a moment later her lightness came back.
“I have missed you. But what are you doing here and how do you know my friends?”
“How much time do you have?” Alda waved her head slowly from one side to the other.
Joshua heard a soft melody in the background. It reminded him of something that he couldn’t quite pinpoint.
“I have known Wind from when she was a foal,” the turtle’s thoughts sang out to them. “There were at least a dozen foals in my care at any given time. Wind was one of the brightest. I was there the day she got her wings.”
“Alda, this is Krieg. It was him, together with Grey, the wolf and Joshua, the rooster, who freed me from the stone.”
“I did not know you were captured there and I was not aware of a way that once you turn to stone you can be brought back,” the Turtle’s head turned toward the horse.
“It looks to me that your friends have been true to you from the beginning. Krieg, I do not remember you as a foal and I don’t think any of the other Pegasus were left alive. It seems that you have fought a different kind of battle in a different place and time. It takes years of preparation for a horse to learn to fly. Whatever you did in the past must have prepared you for it somehow. One never knows when one is ready to break through, to reach beyond the little self and to cross the threshold into a bigger world.”
At the last words Alda had turned her head toward Joshua. “Where we came from does not matter,” she continued. “Whatever our confines have been in the past they have no meaning now other than what our own belief bestows upon them.”
Joshua felt her thoughts resonating in his mind even though they made him uncomfortable.
“There are no limits to what you can do, my small but mighty friend. Remember this when doubt seems to cloud your mind. You can reach far beyond yourself. You can and you must. For there is more that hangs in the balance here than you and I can see. I can feel it in the deep, far down at the place where all the water in Hollow’s Gate is connected. I will return there in due time. But for now, who’s up for a ride on the lake?”
They glanced at each other. The thought of standing on the turtle’s shell and swimming over an abyss of infinite depth made Joshua’s skin crawl.
“I don’t… know,” he thought.
Krieg moved slightly backwards as well. It was Grey who jumped onto the turtle’s massive back first. He was followed by Wind.
“Come,” she thought to Krieg. “You will not forget this.”
Krieg thought about it only for a moment before he jumped onto the turtle’s back.
“Come on, Joshua, there is still plenty of space. I once carried thirteen foals across the lake and I was only half the size I am now.”
Joshua looked at his companions. He didn’t realize until now that he hadn’t considered Wind to be one of them. Looking at her standing next to Krieg, he felt the depth of her connection to the war horse and Krieg’s growing fondness of her. But he also felt their inclusion of himself into their bond and he felt Grey’s undying loyalty to him and his strong sense of protection toward him and the others. And somehow in jumping onto the back of the turtle they all agreed to welcome Alda into their circle of friendship as well.
Joshua flew up and onto the massive shell. The moment he landed, Alda pushed away from the shore and swam a few strokes backwards. Joshua crouched down for fear of losing his balance. The surface of the shell was rough with petrified growths dating back centuries. For an instant Joshua grasped how old Alda must be, how many lifetimes she must have walked this earth and swam the lakes.
“You must know these lands well,” Joshua thought.
“I do. I did,” the turtle answered while turning and pushing away from the shore and into the open water. “Slowly but surely it all comes back to me. Still much is in the dark but I can see glimpses here and there and those are enough to help me remember. There was a time when everything seemed to be in balance. When the sky people and the Pegasus lived in peace together at Hollow’s Gate. That was the time where my memories are the most vivid. But when the mines were opened and it became known that this place held treasures no one could even imagine, the balance shifted and it triggered an avalanche that, once in motion, could not be stopped. The pendulum reached its tipping point and stopped. The beacon was destroyed. The Pegasus that weren’t killed fled Hollow’s Gate. And times grew dark once more.”
As Joshua listened to Alda’s story and followed her trail of thought he felt the breeze in his feathers and the mist of the gushing water in his face. From here Refuge looked even more majestic than from inland. It towered high above them, its glass top reflecting the sun light and the clouds in the sky. From Joshua’s point of view, in the middle of the large lake was what looked like an indentation in its surface. He remembered from back in the tower that the water disappeared there into a large round opening, like a funnel. Joshua suddenly felt uneasy, as if sensing an invisible pull toward the center of the lake and one that could not be escaped.
“Do not be afraid, Joshua,” the turtle reassured him. “The gravitational pull is minimal. As you might have noticed, the natural laws of Hollow’s Gate are different from the ones on the surface. I will not let any harm come to you.”
Joshua didn’t see any reason not to trust Alda. However, there was a small part of him that wasn’t certain, that still thought it needed to stay alert and ready.
“Alda, I would like to go back into the city,” Wind’s t
houghts brushed against Joshua’s mind. “I have many questions and I wish so much to stand inside the great city of light once more.”
“I will accompany you,” Alda answered. “We shall go there together. I’m sure our three friends here have to continue on their own journey.”
“We have to find the entrance to the mountain, the Porte Des Lioness,” Joshua replied. “I was hoping you could come with us and help us find it.”
“If you need help, you will find it there, my feathered friend. For now, I shall accompany Wind into the city. It will help us both remember more of our past.”
Wind stood close to Krieg, her forehead touching his neck. “You could come with us. It would be a great joy to show you the place I was born in, where I grew up.”
“I would love nothing more,” Krieg replied. “But I promised my little rooster friend to try to help him find what he is looking for and I think I should keep true to that promise.”
“I understand. And we shall meet you at the entrance to the mountain afterwards. For I wish to help him as well.”
They rode quietly for a while, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Wind thought about the places of her childhood and some of the memories that, so long buried deep within her mind, began to creep up into consciousness. They were only images, incomplete at best but nevertheless part of a whole that, given time, would all come to the surface. But some of those memories were not filled with light and laughter and a carefree childhood. There were darker ones pushed even further down that rose with the others. It would take a while for her to allow them all to arise and then sort through them. She was certain that going back into the city would help her with that.
“You have been quiet of late, Grey,” Joshua looked at the wolf who lay across from him. “Is there anything that keeps your thoughts occupied?”
Grey held his gaze for a moment. “Since I have seen the face of the lioness up at the tower, something has changed.”
“It has to do with your companion?” Joshua asked.