The Fire and the Fog

by David Alloggia

  ‘Is that your answer to everything?’

  ‘No, it’s your answer to everything. I am you.’

  ‘No you’re not’ Dan’r yelled, and he covered his ears as he walked. It didn’t shut out the voice, her voice, but he kept walking.

  ‘Why do you keep arguing with yourself? Are you a man?’ Dan’r’s voice asked, even though it knew the answer.

  ‘I am a man, and you are nothing but a voice in my head!’ Dan’r yelled again, and just as before, only the clouds were there to hear him.

  ‘Well then step up and fix yourself, or I will fix you for you, you moronic inbred bottom feeder. Stop pretending to be a man and be one. What, not drunk enough yet?’

  Dan’r yelled at himself again.

  ‘Stop talking to me STOP TALKING TO ME! I don’t want to hear you. You’re wrong. Go away.’ This was progressing poorly, he knew. He was arguing with himself, yelling at himself. Hallucinations, jaundiced skin, dizziness; he was dying. He wondered how much longer he could last.

  ‘Of course you’re dying, what did you expect after twenty years of heavy drinking? To be an acrobat? A Zeisha dancer? Did you expect to be handsome and strong and sane? Because you’re not. You are fat, old, and useless.’

  His voice was getting the best of him, he knew. He wasn’t sure why he was letting this happen, why he was letting the voice in his head win. Then again, right then, Dan’r wasn’t entirely sure which voice was his in the first place.. Maybe he was getting the better of himself again.

  ‘This is entirely your fault’ He said desultorily. He was losing the battle. He wouldn’t lose this battle.

  ‘How is this my fault?’ the voice asked, and Dan’r wondered himself. ‘Look, you set this up for yourself. You came to me, talked to me, looked for me, so I came to you. I’ve done everything you want me to do. Now stop complaining, and be yourself.

  ‘What more do you want?

  ‘Why do you keep asking me questions? Why not try to answer them yourself?’

  ‘Look at me, I can’t answer anything for anyone.’

  ‘Is it because you can’t, or you haven’t tried?’

  ‘What’s with you. A minute ago you were trying to get me killed’

  ‘A minute ago you wanted to be killed’

  ‘What do I want now?

  I don’t know, do you?

  You’re pretty much the only person that can know what you want. Why don’t you go get it?

  Because it’s hard. I’ve already lost everything I love. I can’t afford to lose again.

  Why can’t you? Why is losing so scary? Shouldn’t you be more scared of not trying in the first place?

  Stop preaching. I just…I don’t want to lose. I lost her once. I don’t want to lose anyone else.

  Then don’t.’

  Dan’r had no idea how long he walked, how long his conversation with himself lasted. He didn’t even really know who won. He guessed that he had to have won, since it was a fight with himself. But that was getting too philosophical for the moment. He just knew it was over, for the time being at least. The voice wasn’t talking to him anymore. The jaundice, the dizziness, they remained. He was sweating, and he could feel his heart skipping and adding beats, feeling like something was trying to kick its way out of his chest each time, but at least there was only one voice in his head.

  But his head…his head HURT, more than it had hurt in longer than he could remember. His hands were still shaking. But his thoughts were strangely, blessedly, clear. He was still walking. He had been walking the entire time, somehow. He tried to gauge the hour, but all he saw in the sky around him was smoke, and clouds. The clouds were rolling in, circling around a cone of smoke. In his newfound clarity, Dan’r wondered and knew at the same time what the smoke meant. Despite his headache, despite the shaking in his limbs, he set a harsher pace. There was a village down there, burning. He had to help it. He would still die, and likely very soon now that his hallucinations were gone. But he would help them first.

  V

  Dan’r was still several hours out from the village, no more than a smoking dot in the distance, surrounded as everything was by hills and fields, when his chest clenched. He had been walking fine for hours, through headaches and shaking that only seemed to worsen, but the chest pain was something else. He sat down on the edge of the road to breathe as his heart skipped its beats. He tried to beat on his chest, he tried breathing deeply, but his heart simply wouldn’t work. He felt everything in his chest get tight as he listened to the rhythm of his heart echoing through his head like the largest drum in the world.

  Beat.

  Beat.

  Beat beat.

  Silence.

  Beat beat beat

  Silence

  Beat.

  He lay down and stared at the steadily darkening sky above him as his fist clenched hard over his chest. He was lying there in the dirt, sweating and trying to decide if the feeling in his heart was pain when the convulsions hit.

  As Dan’r lay there, unable to control his body, his limbs and head flailing in the dry dirt road, he wondered if this was the end. Wondering if he would die of a fit on a dirt road, if his life would end so pitifully. When the fit ended, he rolled over onto his side and curled in a ball, coughing at the tears that rolled down his eyes. He wished he wouldn’t die alone, so far from home.

  Even if he stood, and got to the village, what could he do? He had lost his cloak and his supplies, back when he was shot at. What was he supposed to do? He was powerless.

  Somehow though, Dan’r stood. Something about the conversation with himself made him stand. Nothing had changed. His hands still shook, his head still ached. Somehow in the course of his fit he had bruised his left elbow, and reopened the cut on his right cheek. He bled again as he started to walk once more.

  Ten minutes later he could see rain. Thirty minutes later, he was in it, and it drenched him completely. But it also washed away weeks of dirt and grime. And somehow it seemed symbolic as well. Dan’r almost felt like the rain was washing away years of failed life, of making the wrong choices. He thought he could hear music, faint and thin through the downpour. But it couldn’t be, it was only rain.

  He thought it might have been late afternoon when he finally made it to the village, when he finally stepped onto its cobblestone streets and started to make his way between its burnt and broken buildings. There had been a barricade at the entrance to this village, just as in the last one, but this one had been moved aside, the guards still there, lying in the road with their throats slit. Their deaths would have been silent.

  He started noticing bodies all over. It looked as if all, or nearly all, of the town had been slaughtered. But as Dan’r walked slowly through the streets, as he blinked the cold rain from his eyes, as the haunting notes of a dirge blew through the wind over the town, carrying the rain, Dan’r saw that much that had occurred was intentional.

  Not just the violence had been intentional, it almost always was, but that the horrible nature of it had been on purpose, not just an afterthought. Many of the villagers had died where they stood. Silently. But then Dan’r started noticing posed bodies. One naked woman, her clothing cut away and her body placed as if she had been raped then killed, yet she’d been dead long before her clothing was cut away; the deep cuts on her arms and stomach had not bled.

  It was difficult. Dan’r fought with his headache, distracted. He fought with the rain, blinking it out of his eyes while it tried to wash away any evidence. But it was still there. Days ago, Dan’r would never have found it, he would have assumed bandits had gone overboard. But his mind was clear. This wasn’t bandits. This was planned, deliberate, designed. It was wrong.

  Only then did Dan’r start noticing the music. The haunting melody, the black dirge that floated through the town, giving rest to all its people. They would have no funeral but the song that floated over them, and Dan’r couldn’t help but feel that it was right. There was something about the song, something about the w
ay the notes carried meaning, almost carried life.

  He closed his eyes and listened, just listened to the song in the rain, and he could see them in his mind. He could see the people of the village, could see how they would have been alive. They went about their day, shining in the light, happy and good, always. He felt it, and he knew this was no hallucination, no addled alcohol-brought dream. The song, the music that drifted over the town made it so.

  Dan’r started to walk towards the sound. Then to jog. Awkwardly at first, each footfall sending a jarring pain piercing up through his head. By the time he reached the edge of the town, he was running at a full sprint, ignoring the stabbing pains in his head. He couldn’t believe it. No-one in this gods-forsaken land could write or play something so beautiful.

  He slowed as he saw the large tree looming over the hill, slowed as the song got louder and louder. As he walked closer and started up the hill he could see a child sitting against the tree, swaying as he played, his head down, his eyes either fixed on his instrument, or closed.

  The child looked up as Dan’r started to climb the tree, looked up and looked straight at Dan’r. The child was young, his hair light blonde. His left eye was a startling blue, light and clear as the sky on a perfect day, but his right was closed tight, scabbed over under a long red cut that ran from the boy’s forehead to the middle of his cheek. The boy cocked his head to the side, as if confused, but his left eye betrayed no confusion, no emotion. It looked as dead as Dan’r felt every morning.

  The boy stared at Dan’r, never slowing or stopping his song as his fingers played expertly across the lute in his arms. Dan’r looked the boy’s right hand, bloody, and with pieces of fingers missing, when his chest clenched. Then it tightened. Then Dan’r fell.

  It was happening again. Another fit. As Dan’r’s body flailed wildly on the ground, he wondered if he would make it out of this one alive, wondered if he would be able to help the boy. As his vision faded to black, the boy’s song carried on

  On Waking

  I

  Dan’r woke slowly. Very slowly. He woke from a sleep that had held no dreams. Even before waking, in the dark semi-haze just before consciousness, he knew that he hadn’t dreamt of his wife, of the ship and the storm. The sleep had been deep, cleansing. Painless and pure. Almost. As slowly as he woke, he was slower realizing he was awake.

  He knew he had not dreamt while asleep. The feeling, the wonder of a dreamless sleep faded as the awareness of wakefulness gained ground. By the time Dan’r knew he was awake, all thoughts of dreams were long gone.

  The first thing his conscious mind chose to notice was that his back was warm. Warm and dry. Very warm in fact. The warmth presented large contrast to his front, which was wet.

  The warmth was not bad. Not too hot, like the embers of a fire, or weak, like trying to get warmth from a candle in the middle of winter. It was the kind of warmth that made one want to lie down somewhere in the middle of an afternoon, and sleep; the kind of warmth that washed away all aches and pains and cares in the world, and just felt right.

  And then Dan’r sneezed, and noticed the wet grass in his nostrils, tickling him. Annoying. There was grass all around him. He clenched his eyes together as he came fully awake, and memory flooded his head. He had been sick, shaking, maybe dying. And there had been a storm, and music, and a boy.

  His eyes bolted open as he remembered the boy, but all he saw from where he lay was the grass, emerald waves of grass stretching out over low, rolling hills.

  Dan’r groaned as he lifted his front slowly off the wet grass, lifted his weight up onto his elbows, his head hanging down between his arms as he breathed heavily. He remembered a time when waking didn’t take nearly so much effort, but he was young and healthy then. Now he was old and slow, and there was no haze of alcohol to mask and dull his pains.

  He grunted as he pushed with one arm, rolling himself slowly onto his back, the sun warming his chest almost instantly. His eyes closed quickly, reflexively against the day star’s bright flames, and then blinked slowly open, squinting through the sunlight. That moment was perfect. The feeling of warmth ran through him. The sun had warmed his back, soothed his muscles. He didn’t hurt. He couldn’t remember the last time his back hadn’t hurt.

  The sky above the grassy knoll was blue and beautiful. The sun, the blue expanse, the few pure white wisps trailing lazily through the stratosphere, they made his hand itch. His hand twitched slightly, grabbing at nothing, and for the first time in years, it was not reaching for the nearest bottle. He was reaching for paints and brushes he was not sure he still had, for parchment he now knew he needed

  ‘They’ll have to wait’, he mumbled to himself, low, under his breath, breathing deeply. So low even his own ears were unsure if he had spoken at all.

  His head didn’t hurt; his arms didn’t so much as shake as he pushed himself slowly off the ground to stand. His chest wasn’t so tight either. Whatever had been plaguing him, rest had done him some good. Dan’r muttered something about sleep curing all ills as he stood.

  The tree from earlier was not far away. The great oak stood thirty feet off or so, far enough that Dan’r had not been sheltered from the rain under its awning branches, or from the sun. But it was close enough that now, in the light, he could clearly see the boy lying slumped over in the grass, his body fallen at an awkward angle.

  In several quick strides, Dan’r was at the boys side, kneeling. He was shocked when he touched the boy’s neck to check; the boy was unconscious, but still breathing.

  The boys light blonde hair was spattered with drops of blood at the front, and was cut short enough all around that Dan’r could clearly see the red, bloody gash across the right side of the boys face. With the dried blood covering most of the boys face, Dan’r could hardly tell what the damage was, or what had caused it, though the cut looked straight at least.

  The eye was certainly bad, Dan’r thought as he pulled the boy off of his side, and lay him out on his back beside the tree. Under the boy lay a lute, its neck broken, probably from when the boy fell over. As beautiful an instrument as it might have been, it would make no more music.

  The boy’s face looked bad, and if it were any indication, his hand would be bad as well. Dan’r left it, bound tightly in blood-stained cloth, two bloody fingers and a thumb sticking free of the wrappings.

  And the boy was young. Dan’r was old, certainly, and had little to no experience with youth, but the boy looked to be no more than fourteen. Young, to have been so badly hurt.

  Young, to play such beautiful music.

  Still, Dan’r could do nothing for him here, under a tree in a large field. He would have to move. The boy’s life was in danger, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, Dan’r had some purpose other than alcohol. He would save the boy. Somehow.

  ***

  An hour or so later, the high noon sun found Dan’r grunting and sweating as he pulled a wooden cart back towards the village, with the boy in the back. He had found the cart easily enough, it was under a pile of crates blocking the entrance to the town, but it took longer to find a building standing in good enough condition to act as shelter.

  The cart bounced heavily along the cobblestone streets, and a light pall of smoke and death still hung on the air. The boy had been limp and mumbling when Dan’r lifted him to the back of the wagon. Exhausted, fevered, the boy was sick. He had to be taken care of, but here was no-one around to do it; no-one but Dan’r.

  So he trudged on, the cart behind him trundled, shifting from side to side as the wheels rose and fell unevenly over the city’s old cobblestone streets, till he stopped in front of the building he had chosen for shelter.

  The church was large, solid. Its heavy wooden door and thick stone walls were mostly intact and, while the insides had been ransacked, they were in much better shape than the rest of the village. The only other suitable house was the large stone manse at the top of the hill, and Dan’r hadn’t wanted to climb that alone, much
less pulling the wounded boy behind him.

  So the cart rolled to a stop in front of the church, and Dan’r put his hands to his knees to breathe. His head was clear for the moment, his hands recovered from their shaking, but his lungs were still old, tired, and out of practice. He sucked in air rapidly, wanting to lie down on the road and rest. He couldn’t allow himself the luxury though. If he did, who knew when he’d persuade himself to rise again.

  ***

  Dan’r left to look more thoroughly through the streets and houses of the little town. He searched for useful things left behind, things left unbroken; things left un-charred by the fires. There were surprisingly few. He had covered the boy, left him in the dark while he went out to search. There had been nothing he could do for the boy without supplies, and now he had a nearly full sack on his shoulders. Candles, a water-skin filled from a clean trough, some bread and cheese found in a pantry, a miraculously unbroken bottle of spirits from what must have been the village inn.

  More than supplies though, Dan’r made his way back to the church with thoughts. Something was wrong here. There were too few dead in the village for the attack to have been by raiders, or slavers. Very few old or infirm were among the dead, and raiders generally left them behind. The attack had been organized; had started from inside the village. A vague trickle of hazy memory from his walk through the village in the rain told him he had noticed this before. But now, out of the rain, in the light…it was easier to see. Easier to know that there was something else going on.

  ‘Whatever it is, I’ll deal with it later’ he thought to himself darkly as he pushed through the wooden church doors.

  ***

  It took him much less time to go through his supplies than it had taken to find them. He lit the candles, spread them out throughout the church for light, and comfort. He managed to trickle some water down the boys throat, used the rest to wash the scabbed blood away from the boy’s eye and hand, then he daubed the spirits over the sharp cuts, to stave off infection.