She found him sitting by the same moonlit lake. He was watching the fish glimmering beneath the sway.
With no easy way to instigate such a sensitive subject, she just crouched next to him, and said, “Look, if you miss your mother that much, then why don’t you try and see how all of this turns out?”
Trying to appear unruffled, William smiled and said, “My mother…? What do you mean…?”
“One of those truffles gives you the gift of foresight, does it not?” she asked.
William said nothing, because he honestly didn’t know. In fact, he wasn’t sure what kind of spells those truffles embodied, because he was never told. He was merely using them willy-nilly.
Knowing that she was onto him, he sighed and said, “How do you know about the truffles?”
“Everybody knows the legend, William,” said she. “We have all read about Mysun and everything to do with him…including the incantations of those truffles. Not to mention how you were raving on about them the night of the Brownies. And we also know that one of them allows you to see ahead of time. So, why not try it? It’s really as good a time as any; provided you choose the right one. When else would you require such magic? The outcome, I imagine, will always be the same. But it’s up to you. Your choice.”
With no point in denying his sadness, William felt around in his bundle until he found the box. Taking it from his pack, he placed it on his lap; contemplating as to whether he should or he shouldn’t, or what was to happen if he chose the wrong one, thereby spoiling perfectly good magic. Suddenly his mother, once again, dawned in his mind, the thought of which urged him all the more to try.
“Okay!” he said, opening the box quickly, so as not to reconsider.
Kneeling beside him, Wren shuffled closer to observe the whole process.
William shut his eyes and allowed his hand to guide the way. All the while acknowledging that, during the choosing of his first truffle, he gave it barely any thought, and the result worked well in his favour, so why change the method? His hand hovered left to right over the truffles, until finally he snatched one from its pocket. Before he could reassess, he unravelled the foil and, to his delight, it was the right one.
He read it aloud.
Eyes of Time
If there are times you wish to see,
Eat this truffle on one knee.
Then gather the bones of something small,
Scarlet life and that is all.
Mixing these two things together,
Close your eyes, asking clever.
Then what it is you wish to know,
Shall come to be through blood and bone.
It was a poser, no doubt. But be it a poser or not, the longer William pondered, the faster the magic faded, thus pressuring him to think faster.
Thinking aloud, he said hurriedly, “Okay, okay! So I have to get on one knee. That much is clear. Now, um, scarlet life? Scarlet life?! Scarlet life?! Scarlet life?!”
“Blood…?” Wren deduced, but she wasn’t sure. “That gives life…and it’s red. And it says ‘blood and bone’ at the end, so…”
“Blood! That’s it! It has to be. You’re right!” William praised. “Do me and favour and grab some o’ those fish bones that Khrum left after his dinner! There’s still some on his plate I think?! Bring the plate too, actually. We haven’t got much time.”
Wasting not a tick, Wren scrambled back to the camp, where she made search amongst the after-dinner mess.
“HURRY!” she heard William calling out.
“What in blazes are ya at?!” Khrum squinted through his bruise, and the others were just as curious.
“I’m looking! I’m looking!” she yelled in a panic, ignoring the leprechaun. “Aha! Found them.”
She rushed back to William and handed him a plate cluttered with tiny fish bones.
William grabbed the sharpest one he could find and pricked the tip of his thumb. Wren quivered and turned away, but it wasn’t all that gruesome. Strange to say, it is apparently a lot more tolerable to slay a pack of Devil Hounds than it is to watch someone jab his thumb with a tiny fishbone. Very curious.
A droplet of blood swelled upon William’s finger, of which he squeezed a few drops onto the bones.
“You done? Can I look?” Wren asked, one eye shut.
“Yeah. You can look.”
“Thank God! Now, think about your question,” she said, caught up in the moment.
Closing his eyes, he chewed on the truffle and, in his head he spoke to himself, What happens in my future?
He could’ve elaborated. He was just so flustered over the time. But it wasn’t altogether vague, and there was no turning back now.
He slowly opened his eyes and peered into the plate. It took a second or two for something to happen. But when it did, it was rather disturbing.
The blood fizzed. A mild simmering at first. But the more it sizzled, the more the plate bubbled with dark-red human blood. The acrid stink and pink froth made Wren feel sick to the gills, but she couldn’t stop watching. The bones hopped about like mad in the steaming heat, churning and flicking. The next thing William knew, an image had forced its way through.
He had to squint to make it out. But then it was as clear as squeegeed glass; however, the import itself remained a mystery.
He distinguished a canyon path, leading through the heart of a gorge. Not long had that image manifested before it dwindled to the sight of young William himself in the centre of that same gorge, surrounded by high cliffs. This induced grave worry, for he noticed that his other-self was neither healthy nor happy. He looked to be in awful pain. With worry pinching his gut, William then heard the sound of galloping, like that of a powerful beast was thundering after him through the chasm. He could not see what it was. Closer and closer it got. He was struggling to escape its clutches. Before the monster could close in on him, a new image of a shrouded skull with sharp, bloodied fangs melded through, and it was cackling right in William’s face. The skull of death itself.
Then another countenance took its place. A dark, twisted face. That of a large hybrid with awry horns and an axe. It was he, Valstarius, and to the echo of his failing shriek the premonition forced itself through to a scene of stars in a sea of night. They were shooting off to a hidden location afar, and a familiar voice echoed, “Once the twins fall.” Everything went dark again, and nothing was left but three droplets.
William slumped against the trunk; detached and reticent through the reoccurrence of those distressful feelings which had all but been healed of late. He cupped his face, hopelessly. This vision proved far from uplifting. And because he’d come so close to coping with that last mountain of burden, this new nightmare nearly had him in tears.
His only small sense of hope came from Redmun’s voice. He didn’t know why it bestowed promise, it just did. But it still couldn’t expunge the image of the skull or Valstarius. He omitted this impulse to cry. His mind somehow meandered past it, into a bleak vacuum. For only meaning could be contracted from this forewarning. Death.
“Well?! Did you see her? Did you see your mother?” Wren asked.
A burning perplexity creased William’s expression.
“William! Did you see her?” she implored.
A magpie, much the same as the one from Làn Chùrdal, flapped down from the branches. It rawked madly, and was hopping about, beating its wings. Wren shooed him away with a hard swipe of her hand.
“Go on! Get! Shoo!” she barked, and the bird retreated back into the trees, then she said again, “William! Talk to me! What’s the matter with you?”
Eventually he came around, stared at her briefly through hollow eyes, then murmured, “No…no, I didn’t see her.”
Weakened past all measures, he teetered back to camp, leaving her alone with no clue of what he saw.
- Chapter Six -
Friend’s End
With provisions packed and most enthusiasms restored, Stell guided them back through the swampland. But because
Erfor’s fen was relatively flooded, it took them two further days to make it out. Crosco nagged every two minutes, because it was he who was made carry the meat upon his shoulder, and it was causing him to sink slightly into the marshy muck beneath his already weighty soles. But it was all that they could think to do. He was the strongest, and they otherwise had little room to spare in their own compartments for such supplies. Still, they managed to get out of that fen easily enough in the end.
Stell vowed to show them to the eastern borders, then he’d be on his jolly return to Ewval’s Bastion. A generous offer. Yet over his brief period spent with his newfound companions, the Elf had grown quite fond of their company, and the same went for them in return; particularly William, who was always glad of an extra helping hand. But he, as of recently, had been a little less talkative than usual. Not that such behaviour could be avoided, what with that morbid vision of his.
He trudged quietly along behind the group. And if he was ever approached or asked a question, he would almost try too hard to seem okay. This he did in vain. They could tell that something was amiss; together with many tentative notions as to what might be the cause. It could also be said that Wren herself, even after their recent moment, was finding William’s moods more difficult to fathom. She, nonetheless, remained by his side lest he should, at any stage, muster the desire to converse. In the end, nobody took it upon themselves to confront him about it. They knew that if he wished to tell them, he would do so in his own time. That’s not to say that they weren’t concerned; watching him as he plodded along with his eyes down whilst trying to overcome these curious, innermost troubles of his. Perhaps they would have overlooked their pities, had William’s instances of bona fide wellbeing not been so few and far between.
Once they’d regained sight of the mainland, it looked to be a very charming evening. They’d arrived at the edge of a cliff, but it didn’t faze them much as there was a very pleasant view. So there they lazed in the grass, while Icrick went about testing the wind, in addition to figuring out some bizarre navigational equations. This he managed through counting his paces and balancing flat rocks on top of one another, a procedure which looked sort of inventive and nonsensical all at once. The others didn’t take much notice of him, nor did they offer to help. Well, none other than Stell, of course, who was extremely intrigued by the Grogoch’s unusual methods. The rest of them were far too sluggish and too exhausted from hiking to be bothered about it at that stage. Not that they had any clue how to assist him anyway, for it all looked so problematical and weird.
The sun was turning in behind the canopy of western pines, which flooded in from the dales of the east, right up to the base of the cliffs below. Mountains couldn’t much be seen; narrowly at best, for the highland trees were obstructing much of their view. Even Ewval’s Bastion couldn’t be spotted anywhere, of which Stell wasn’t entirely comfortable, but he got on with it.
You see, he had indeed promised to show them to the darklands, and that’d be that. Only now he was questioning their course, due to a minor tantrum thrown by a certain Grogoch. What had happened was Icrick had grown a trifle temperamental over him not resuming his role as guide, so he threw a bit of a frenzy for himself. Nothing major. He was just a bit sulky and short-fused. So Stell (who had much time for the Grogoch) stood back and accepted his input with absolutely no argument of any kind. Jumping at the chance, Icrick stepped up to what he felt was his rightful duty. But by doing so, their course collapsed into a thousand shards of mess.
The poor chap fell a tad disorientated without his maps and tools, but reliable as he so longed to be, he said nothing of it. This led them vaguely off course, enough to get them well and truly lost. To everyone’s relief, I’m happy to say, Stell soon found out that they hadn’t strayed off track that much—only into wilder countryside—so it wasn’t a drastic setback after all, and nobody fussed. Besides, they could tell that the unfortunate Grogoch was beating himself up over it, ever shuffling with his head hung in shame, unwilling to communicate with any of them.
Taking up the obligation of steering them true again, Stell resumed his place on point. But from that moment henceforth, he never failed to include Icrick on his navigations, always running things by him and so on. This made the Grogoch feel important again, which was just what Stell sought to do. For as you well know, he already felt badly for taking the Grogoch’s position as guide, and yet he couldn’t very well let them stray into unknown territories either, only to get seized by enemies in some God-awful place. It just wouldn’t do.
The roving lands soon became more familiar to Stell, and it wouldn’t have been long before they were back on the straight and narrow again. It was just a matter of locating a certain trail, which our Icrick insisted on doing alone as a way of rectifying his recent blunder.
“I’ll do it!” snapped he, and everyone else backed off.
The sun brought the afternoon to a close, and the birds were flocking home to the comfort of their nests with reports of the afternoon and wriggly things for supper. William sat there, picking at the grass. If only it could be that easy for him; to just pick up and leave that place to find his home exactly the way he’d left it. He could see the bright log fire crackling in front of his big, cosy chair, as it invited him to sit. Beside it, a jam-jar of sugary buttermilk. Cold droplets trickling down the sides. He could picture it all so clearly; him settling into the warmth of the cushions, and getting lost in some epic novel about mighty fleets and black sorcery. But night was quickly arriving now, and William wasn’t at home anymore. He was someplace else. Somewhere unknown to him. Over his bare knees a cold breeze flushed, sweeping from where the wolf’s howl praised the onset of nightfall. He was back on Lythiann.
As he sat there, encumbered by lonely thoughts, a sudden reassurance befell him. In that, the more he reflected on these tales of old, the more he could relate to them. He remembered how he always used to envisage places just like Lythiann, as a sort of mental retreat from his sporadic bouts of boredom back home. He often dreamt of a day when he would star in his very own tale. But it wasn’t ‘till now that he took a moment to actually understand those heroes in their times of desperation, for, back then, he already knew that they would prevail by the end of the book. They had to. They were the heroes. But now he was seeing things from their perspective, which made them appear all the more heroic and determined. How alone they must have felt, and how he admired them all the more for it. Then he wondered if the reader would worry about him during his own trying days. Or would they just read on in the comfort of knowing that William Muldoon would prove victorious before the end.
The lad’s fears were stolen away by the romance of that idea just then, and he was comforted by an innermost warmth. Above all else, it helped him to forget about those intrusive fears of premonitions, and sorcerers, and curses. And even though he was exhausted, sad, and sometimes on the verge of tears, there was one little thing, from that evening on, that resided deep within his heart and never came undone: A buried grain of golden hope. Sometimes it was hard to find, but it was always there, somewhere.
Soon the stars were twinkling through the complete cover of nightfall and, like an ocean of gem-attired seraphim, they watched over the countryside, free from any such adversity that country itself was forced to bear. With those hours passing into darkness, they each had a generous helping of cold rabbit and berries, then Icrick finally came up with something.
Pattering back to camp from being a stretch away, he yelled, “I think I’ve found the path! Come on then, have a look!”
Whether he’d uncovered it or not, it appeared that the others had no hope of moving, because Wren had already gathered some wood for a fire, and the rest were all lying about gazing up at the stars, with Ifcus on the far end, already sound asleep.
“It’s not like the lasht fantabulous path ya led us on, is it?” Khrum joked, his hat down over his eyes, as he tried to catch a wink. “Pathway ta the divine realm o’ ‘where in the name o�
�� Nanny Nuala’s Nauseatin’ Nipples are we’?”
“Oh, flip off with yourself, Shiner!” blushed Icrick. “I’m making up for it now, aren’t I?! Why don’t you go and see if you can find a Pooka’s Claw for yourself or something!”
“Now, now…no need ta go bringin’ up old shtuff, Phynnodderee!” chuckled the leprechaun.
“Listen,” said Icrick, taking a calming breath, “I’d like to point out, once and for all, that I am not a Phynnodderee. Phynnodderees are from the Snow Islands, and they are Hobs! I, on the other hand, am a Grogoch! Big difference you know.”
Turning his back to Icrick, Stell displayed a rather amusing look of liability at that remark, seeing as it was he who’d branded him ‘Phynnodderee’ in the first place; albeit he only meant it as an act of light-hearted camaraderie.
But Icrick wasn’t having a go at the Elf just then. It was the leprechaun to whom his irritation was more so aimed, for making an undue remark about his recent slip-up.
Setting alight the kindling, Wren said, “Take no notice, Icrick. He’s just trying to get a rise out of you. Anyway, it doesn’t seem too bad here where we are, under the stars. So we might as well just get this fire going and try to get some sleep while we can. We could use the rest. We’ll venture a look at your path in the morning, how’s that?”
“Oh, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” whimpered the Grogoch, pinching the air between his fingers and rubbing them together.
“We’ll be fine. Come. Lay down beside me,” said she, patting the grass. “We saved you some rabbit and berries. Here, let you eat this, and then we shall all get a good night’s sleep.”
“But, it’s about to…”
Before Icrick could say what he wanted to say, the heavens opened up and it began crashing down with blinding rain. Terrible, violent rain.
“…pour!” cringed the Grogoch, who was already soaked to the skin, with his hair sagging like a wet mop.
The Other of One: Book Two Page 16