"eez lahs is mahd!” Dampy blurted through the fingers covering his mouth.
Loden looked at Dampy in disbelief, then back at Old Sledge. Old Sledge waited for Loden to ask another question, but the leader just stared at him, waiting for him to go on with his story.
"He must have been in the field, when whatever made that path came tearing through. Guess it knocked him over, causing him to hit his head on that rock which, in turn, must have done something to his head innards. He can't remember anything. Now the mayor has him locked away in Center House where no one can get to him. She has given the finders an extra bonus of pieces not to tell anyone about Bourg's condition. I know only because there seems to be at least one westerner who’s not all that keen on the mayor and has volunteered to be a spy for us. We don’t even know who it is, but from the sound of the voice I’m guessing it’s a female. Anyway, she kept her face hidden, bent on absolute secrecy, and I don’t blame her. There's no telling what would happen to her if the mayor should discover what she’s up to.”
“Got her wellkeeper,” Joudier reflected.
Loden sat back down in his chair beside the eating room table. He was deep in thought trying to comprehend what he had just been told and wondering what effect it would eventually have on the rebellion.
At that moment the Hooded One appeared in the doorway. Loden motioned for the others to leave them alone. As they headed toward the door, Old Sledge gave the hooded figure a polite nod. Joudier gave it an animated snarl. Dampy was still clasped in big friend’s hand, and only offered a wide-eyed acknowledgment.
“You’ve heard?” Loden asked in a despondent tone of voice.
"Yes,” the Hooded One answered.
“Buh whuh...?” Dampy started to say just as he was being ushered out the door. Then he vigorously fought his mouth free from Joudier’s grip and called back to Loden. “But what good is a wellkeeper to the mayor, if the wellkeeper doesn’t remember he’s a wellkeeper?”
“Indeed, what good, what possible good?” Loden pondered.
Chapter 12
"This is foolishness. Just what are we supposed to do now?” CB huffed with exasperation, as he scanned the cloudless, blue sky, highlighted with the bright, yellow disk hovering directly overhead.
"Just wait, I suppose,” Wudrick answered, sounding less confident than before, as he anxiously searched the sky above, the well beside, and the sand below them, for anything remotely cold. Finding nothing, he, too, was beginning to feel a bit foolish. The only one showing no signs of feeling like a fool was Brindle, who had now taken it upon herself to tend to young Tyter by applying wet compresses to his forehead.
Suddenly, she let loose with an excited yelp which immediately drew the attention of her two companions, who saw her hunched over Tyter's sweaty body and pointing southward. Their eyes followed the direction of her finger.
On the southern horizon they saw a small whirl of sand being tossed high into the air. This action was repeated many times over, and with each successive event, it grew increasingly larger. Soon, it filled the southern sky with the unmistakable brownish-grey haze of a dust storm rapidly converging upon the center of town.
Within moments it had encompassed the well and many of the surrounding huts, filling the previously dormant air with a whirling blast of fine sand, forcing the vigilant trio to cover their faces, lest they inhale a sand dune’s worth of sand with a single breath.
Brindle swung the hem of her pullover over Tyter's face, while burying her own face in her sleeve. She could feel his fevered breath exhaled between her thighs. But any provocative stimulation this might otherwise have produced was lost in her fear and discomfort.
CB’s caretending instinct was to protect his patient. But before he could reach Tyter, his own face was blasted, lodging infinitesimal grains of sand beneath his eyelids, scraping his eyeballs with each reflexive blink. Covering his eyes with one hand, he reached out the other, hoping beyond hope, to find the small bucket of water they had brought to the well with them. However, in his blind confusion, all he managed to grab hold of was a chubby ankle which jerked vigorously to be free from his grasp. Realizing it belonged to Wudrick, CB had no intention to let it go.
As soon as the sand storm struck, Wudrick had taken refuge against the well wall. Instinctively, if not scientifically, he had pulled his pullover above his head and pressed the opening against the well’s stone wall. This provided a tent about his head which acted as both a shelter and a filter, giving him a large pocket of clean air in which to breath. Wudrick would have been most content staying right there, waiting out the sand storm, had something unknown not suddenly grabbed hold of his ankle.
***** ***** *****
Inside Center House, Pentalope was unaware of the phenomenon taking place at the well. She had just come down the steps and was staring at the huge, burly male on her sitting room couch. He looked so out of place among her fineries. As his fur covered face turned slowly towards her, Pentalope was struck by how plainly his eyes betrayed the emptiness of his mind. She had always thought he was stupid, even by male standards. Now, she was sure of it.
“How nice of you to come visit me at this crucial moment when the very life of our beloved little town is being threatened with asphyxiating rebellion,” Pentalope greeted him in a pleasant tone of voice upon entering the room. Then stopping near to him, but not too near, she awaited his response, but none was forthcoming. Bourg just rose to his feet and studied her up and down. His eyes gleamed more with confusion than awe, as, ultimately, he bowed his head in submission.
Fleetra, who had been standing by the window, approached Pentalope, purposely turning her back toward Bourg. "Ma'am, I don't think he knows who you are,” she said in a low voice.
Pentalope's face furrowed with indignation. "What do you mean, he doesn't know who I am? Everyone knows who I am!” Pentalope looked past Fleetra at the filthy face of the male humbly postured in her sitting room. He had been her wellkeeper since she first came to be elected mayor of Nuttinnew and moved into Center House. Pentalope looked back at Fleetra, with an uncharacteristic expression of confusion, waiting for an explanation.
"I don't think so, ma'am. He has known me since I was a child and he doesn't recognize me at all." She bent forward and whispered, "I don't think he knows who he is."
"What?” Pentalope couldn't believe it. She brushed past Fleetra and moved closer to Bourg. "Do you know who I am?" she asked softly and sweetly, as a broad, contrived smile spread across her face.
Bourg's dark, blue eyes looked at her nervously, then glanced over at Fleetra, then back at Pentalope. He felt confused and weak. He searched his mind for some recollection. Yes, yes he knew her. That is she looked somewhat familiar, but he couldn't remember anything about her, not really. So, no, no he didn’t know her - didn’t know her at all.
All he knew was the present. And at that very moment, the powerful bearing of the person standing before him crushed down upon him, like a grinding stone crushes a veget pod. His legs buckled beneath him and he fell to his knees in submission to the unspoken will of the radiant one standing before him.
"I - I'm not sure who you are. But you must be a very important person,” he surmised.
Pentalope could hardly believe what she was seeing and hearing. "This is too good to be true!" filled her very being. Her mind went into full gear, as she quickly evaluated the situation, and soon formulated a plan.
"Fleetra."
"Yes, Ma'am?"
"Not a word of this to anyone!"
"Yes, Ma'am, but...."
"Leave us alone, now! Double the guard! Make sure the perimeter of Center House is totally secured! Wellkeeper Bourg has much to remember, and I'm just the one to make sure he remembers everything correctly." A sinister sneer spread across Pentalope’s face, causing the skin on Fleetra’s back to quiver down her spine.
Fleetra dashed from the room. But instead of fulfilling the mayor’s orders, she first sought out Mardrith. She wanted to be h
eld; to be warmed from the eerie chill that had frozen her from within. However, she found Mardrith engaged in a verbal skirmish with the people of the east who had come, hoping to get hold of the western wellkeeper and take him back to the rebel leader.
Fleetra stepped close behind her lover and pressed against her body, causing Mardrith to jump away with a start. Turning about, she glared at Fleetra, too oblivious in her own anger to notice her lover’s disquieted manner. "Don't do that in front of all these people!" she scolded in a harsh whisper. “Do you want the whole town to know about us?"
The sting of rebuke pained Fleetra’s heart and even in the midst of the crowd of angry voices, she felt desperately alone. If only, like the wellkeeper, she, too, could forget who and what she was.
***** ***** *****
Having begun in the south, Keyshi continued swirling around and around, faster and faster in ever increasing patterns of lazy eights until a gritty, brownish-grey haze enveloped the entire town as far north as Center House and as far east and west as the outermost huts. Then, climbing high into the sky, Keyshi drew up the lighter dust particles and deposited them into a layer of undulating air currents, which, due to a complex meteorological phenomenon, either by Fate or fortune, happened to be hovering directly over the well.
Reversing direction, Keyshi twisted itself into a tight spiral and dove directly into the shaft of the well. Down and down it went past stone layer after stone layer, all the while feeling the cold air from below rising, infusing, as if to welcome it to its icy tomb. Keyshi shivered through and through, partly from the cold, partly from fear.
Approaching the grotesque stone face at the one hundredth level, it slowed considerably, and found itself amidst the sound of gurgling water. Upon closer inspection, Keyshi discovered an underwater opening in the well wall just below the stone ledge. The movement of the water in and out of the opening was making the sound.
Despite its fear, Keyshi’s curiosity rose to the occasion. Drawing out a portion of itself as thinly as it dared in its cooled state, it waited until the water withdrew from the opening. Then, at the moment the water receded, Keyshi quickly stabbed its thinned portion in and out of the opening before the water swept back, refilling the hole. It happened so quickly, Keyshi had to re-examine its memory molecules to reassure itself it had actually seen what it thought it saw - a dark, smooth-stoned, underearthian chamber.
Keyshi gave out a chilled, hushed cheer. If it was right, this seemingly innocuous underearthian cavern may well be exactly what it was looking for: a gateway to Underearth. Perhaps, its curiosity had finally paid off.
By now Keyshi had lost a goodly measure of warmth and decided to ascend to the surface one more time before actually venturing into the chamber. It felt confident it’s scheme would work, but there was one, major, obstacle: the small opening to the chamber was going to be a bit of a problem. Although, Keyshi was sure an angry underearthian blowhard would have no problem splashing through the well water, Keyshi was only a summer breeze and, as everyone knows, summer breezes can't swim.
CB, Wudrick and Brindle were just finding each other in the sandstorm when Keyshi soared out of the well. The trio remained huddled together over Tyter as the chilled summer breeze zoomed about the town, warming itself and tossing more and more sand into the air. Until, it was eventually, ready to return to the well and put its plan into action.
Down again, down into the dark, dank tubular tomb, Keyshi dove. As it descended, it thinned itself into a long, thin stream and listened carefully to the ever nearing gurgling sound below. Its timing had to be just right. It must shoot through the hole while the water was at its lowest ebb, and be completely inside the chamber before the water level rose again. It dared not get itself saturated with the cool water molecules. Too much humidity would make it sluggish and not fast enough to out-race an angry underearthian Gatekeeper.
With perfect maneuvering, and nearly perfect timing, Keyshi shot around to the underbelly of the protruding stone and slipped through the chamber opening. However, nearly perfect wasn’t nearly good enough. A portion of its trailing essence became saturated by the returning water before it was completely through.
"Blast!” Keyshi cursed and shook its trailing end, much like a creature of the forest might shake out its wet tail. However, Keyshi's concern with the moisture was short-lived as a cold, grumbling sound came out of a deep crevice in the far wall of the chamber.
"I found what I was looking for, hee, hee.” Keyshi attempted to console itself with reassurances. Just then the grumbling through the crevice in the chamber wall grew louder. Keyshi wondered if it was the Gatekeeper to the underworld, vigorously cursing the dreaded presence of warmth invading its domain. “Hm, maybe just being warm is sufficient to make this old blowhard angry enough to want to destroy me at any cost - even to follow me to Upperearth?”
It was an uncomfortable reassurance, at best.
***** ***** *****
On the surface there was much confusion. Despite the difficulty in seeing, speaking and even breathing, the people of the east and the people of the west began to angrily gather at Center House. Tempers exploded as the misery of being sandblasted multiplied the hostilities, filling the air with heavy, dark molecules.
***** ***** *****
"Is this why we brought the lad to the well - to be buried alive in the sand - hot sand, at that?” CB choked as he huddled with Wudrick and Brindle over Tyter's body, forming a human shelter from the storm. He was angry with Wudrick for believing the young female's impossible story. He was angry with Brindle for propagating something even more impossible - hope. Wudrick didn't venture a response, for, at the moment, he wasn’t sure they were doing the right thing, either.
Even Brindle fell into self-doubt. Surely, she had spoken with the little summer breeze, hadn't she? "Breezes can't talk!" the practical side of her brain argued. What if she was wrong? What if her heart just wanted Tyter to live so much she had imagined everything? She’d spent so much of her life living within the make-believe parameters of her own mind, imagining the unimaginable - maybe she could no longer tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Maybe in trying to save Tyter, she was really killing him.
Cloistered between their bodies, Tyter continued thrashing about, thus, not all the sand could be filtered out. Several times he gagged on the dust, while CB did his best to keep his mouth washed out even as the fine granules crunched between his own teeth.
The question on all their minds was: "What do we do now? Should we stay put and wait for the supposed miracle, or retreat to shelter and wait for the lad to hopelessly die, but at least to die in piece?" It wasn’t an easy decision.
***** ***** *****
There was no question of what to do in Pentalope's mind, as she molded the pliable memory of the wellkeeper of the west. Since he had no memory of the past, she recreated one for him. Of course, it was one filled with half-truths, false interpretations, misrepresentations and self-serving fabrications designed to work to Pentalope's advantage - and work very well, it did. After all, the wellkeeper had no reason not to believe her.
Of course, Pentalope didn’t know how long this lapse of memory would last, and so, decided she’d better take full and immediate advantage of her good fortune. Quickly, she ran him through a series of questions and answers. First, she gave him the questions, then she gave him the answers. Satisfied his mind was sufficiently corrupted, she called for her ambassadors and ordered them to assemble the people of the west for a march to the well. Being informed of the horrendous sandstorm outside laying an assault upon Nuttinnew, only heightened the intensity of her resolve.
As Fleetra dressed her, she was surprised to hear Pentalope humming a children's rhyme. Pentalope never hummed.
***** ***** *****
Perhaps more from curiosity than courage, Keyshi decided to investigate the small crevice on the far wall. Leaving the greater portion of its consciousness in the confines of the entrance chamber, it stretched a lesser
portion of itself into a thin stream to easily maneuver in the stone breach. Unsure what to expect, it didn’t want there to be any confusion about the way out, should a rapid retreat become necessary. Keyshi was curious - not stupid.
The breach went on and on, twisting and turning through the stone as if designed for deception. Because it was seemingly never ending, Keyshi was overwhelmed with a shiver of disappointment when it suddenly ended in a stone cul-de-sac. Then it realized that it was shivering because it was being infused with a steady, though minimal, flow of chilled air. Following the air flow to its source, it discovered a minuscule crack in the otherwise solid stone.
Although this was heartening, Keyshi didn’t rejoice with much ado. It was already shivering uncontrollably with a pretty good chill, and wasn’t sure if it even had enough warmth to investigate this final avenue. Still, it had come so far and just had to know if the source of this chilling air was the guard station of a Gatekeeper. So drawing up all the warmth it dared from its rear portion, it thinned itself to barely a breath and slipped into the hairline crack.
Instantly, its vision misted over when its relative warmth moved into the icy cold beyond. At the same time an unimaginable pain stabbed through Keyshi’s consciousness. Stunned, it could barely think to retreat - yet somehow managed to slip slowly back through the crack. Then, just when it was about to clear the inner wall, its vision cleared.
There, at the far side of the chamber, whirled the most fearsome sight the little summer breeze had ever seen - the fog filled, ice chilled essence of a Gatekeeper. Keyshi shivered mercilessly in its thinned state. If it didn’t leave Underearth soon, it would never leave at all. If there was ever a time to act, it was now - but how? Before Keyshi could think, the chamber was filled with wind voices. Something else had entered the room.
Pieces: Book One, The Rending Page 33