Aster Wood and the Blackburn Son

by J B Cantwell

  I kept moving, all the time feeling as though I was being watched by the other beasts that hid in these mountains. With every crunch of my boot I cringed, waiting for certain attack to spring out of the black. But nothing came for me. Nobody struck.

  I only stopped again when I saw him, a man perched upon a boulder, his eyes bright and staring. Suddenly, all the trust I had felt towards Larissa slipped away like water in a stream sliding over a mountainside.

  Because I had seen this man before.

  He sat twenty feet away from me, alarmingly close. His coal black skin had been hidden by the darkness, and only now that his two eyes had me in their sights had I at last found him. The last time I had seen those eyes, they had been fixed on someone else, Almara as he walked out into the ocean, a determined march towards a watery death, his feet moved only by the puppet strings of those greater than him.

  Gratefully, I gripped onto the staff. It was the only defense I had, now that I had been stupid enough to be led away from the group.

  “You don’t need it,” a voice said. It seemed to come from all directions and none at the same time. “I will not harm you.”

  My fingers tightened their grip on the wood.

  He hadn’t spoken at all. Those black lips had stayed firmly closed in a thin, straight line. I started to raise the staff.

  All at once the world shifted, and I tumbled to the ground. The night dissolved into bright sunlight, just visible through the canopy of pine needles that now sheltered over me. When I looked down at my hands, the staff was gone. Everything was gone except me and the thick forest of trees that surrounded the spot where I had landed. I turned around, searching wildly for him, the Blackburn. I was sure now that this was his name, the one that the traitorous Larissa had sent me to.

  But when I turned, I saw not the chalky black man of my nightmares, but a child. A boy, not much younger than me, stood still and tense, staring into the woods. He wore only pants, his white chest fully exposed, a matt of brown hair, long unbrushed, not quite touching his shoulders. In his arms rested a bundle of rags.

  I froze, unsure of whether or not I should speak, wondering if it was a trick of some kind. I remembered the feeling of walking into Stonemore when I first discovered it under the Coyle’s spell; I had been seemingly thrust into a different world, as now. But here I still had my wits about me. Nothing seemed to be fighting to control my mind as it had been in that falsely colored city.

  “Hello?” I asked, finally deciding to reveal myself. It hadn’t been a link that had brought me here, and I sought to understand.

  But the boy didn’t turn, didn’t show any sign that he had heard anything at all. I crawled to my feet and took a couple of steps towards him, dried branches and leaves cracking below. Still, he didn’t move an inch. Then, as I got closer, I saw what his eyes did, and I nearly screamed out in terror.

  Before the boy, floating ten feet away, was a smoldering black cloud. At first, it looked like nothing more than smoke from a campfire made dense, as if it were being held inside a clear barrier, prevented from escaping and dissipating into the chill air.

  Then, it began to change, and quickly. On the blank canvas of the smoke, shapes appeared, and one after another I watched as the stuff of nightmares was made real before my eyes. Smoke monsters came, one after another, bursting out of the haze, threatening the boy with every worldly beast that might make the bravest prey flee. But he stood tall, never wavering, before the threat of being torn apart. First, a great horned animal with eyes that glowed red behind the haze opened its mouth and roared so loud I thought my eardrums would burst. I clapped my hands over my head, watching it slowly morph into a serpent’s head, long, slick fangs threatening just inches from the boy’s neck. Then finally, the smoke pushed itself back together into a tighter shape, a floating patch of evil, a ghost made black. It undulated in midair before it exploded in on itself, pushing the black vapor to the edges of its invisible prison. Again and again it did this, like a flickering television set, emitting cries of rage into the face of the boy, who stood resolutely still before it.

  “No,” came the voice of the boy, who sounded strong and firm for his age. But the sound had the same echoing feeling of the voice I had heard moments before in front of the Blackburn, and I wondered now if it was coming from inside my own head.

  Suddenly, the boy was raised off the ground as though he were suspended by invisible cables. His body twitched and writhed, and his mouth opened into a silent scream of agony. His flesh was visibly burning, turning red and splitting in several places, like wood long-burned in a campfire pit in the final stages before turning to ash. From his arms dropped a heavy, awkward object, and as it hit the ground I heard a grunt and then a squeal. Something was struggling in the leaves beneath the cloud. Then, suddenly breaking free, a colt emerged, stark-white and wobbling on skinny legs. The horse ran awkwardly from the scene in my direction, and I outstretched my arms to slow him, to try to protect him from whatever was going on here. But when he was within reach, and I tried to place my hand on his heaving chest, my fingers melted through him as though I, myself, were nothing more than a ghost.

  I looked down at my hands. They were solid. I touched my cheek with them and felt the cold, dirty grit of my own fingertips on my sunburned face. I turned to watch the horse, but he soon disappeared into the woods. Then, a loud thump and the crack of twigs turned my attention back towards the wild one.

  The smoke had all but vanished, gathering in one central spot and disappearing into nothingness, like a pile of dust being sucked up by a vacuum cleaner.

  For a moment the wild boy lay lifeless on the ground. His skin had stopped glowing with the orange fire that had enveloped it a moment before, and a gray layer of ash had coated it in place of the flame. With a swiftness I couldn’t fathom considering his injuries, he rolled to one side and got to his feet, scampering off into the woods in the direction of the colt.

  I started to follow, confused, when the world turned upside down again, and I was no longer in the forest.

  I was inside a cave the size of a small bedroom. Outside, a steady rain beat against the surface of the surrounding rock. A young man sat, the skin on his chest a strange dark gray. He stared out of the cave entrance as though waiting for someone to appear. The air was cold and I started shivering, already my clothes becoming damp from the water hanging in the atmosphere. But the man, only half-clothed in rags, didn’t seem to mind the cold.

  Suddenly, he stood, backing up against one wall. The enormous form of Pahana moved into view in the entry, filling the cave with his silvery light. He prowled through the opening, water droplets hanging at the ends of every strand of his fur. In his mouth he held a small, gray pup who hung limply within his jaws.

  The young man approached the panther and quickly retrieved the animal, sitting down onto the rock floor, cradling him, covering him with his exposed torso. Something was wrong with the tiny wolf, but I couldn’t see what it was. Small whimpers of pain escaped him, and he shivered uncontrollably.

  The man’s skin then began to change, and I backed up against the cave wall in alarm. It burned first yellow, and then a deep orange, and as the cave quickly filled with heat coming off of his bare skin, I realized I was watching the same boy who had faced the smoke monster. His skin had the same cracked appearance it had when he had been attacked, but this time it seemed to cause him no pain. He was giving heat to the tiny wolf, who was now nuzzling against him. A moment later the wolf’s long, pink tongue came out of his mouth and he panted. He looked up at the man adoringly, licking the burning arms that encircled him as though he were the happiest he had ever been.

  But now that the wolf was improved, the man didn’t stop. He lifted the pup from his lap with both hands and held him out in front of his face, staring deeply into his eyes. Then he opened his mouth and took in a deep breath, blowing it over the face of the wolf, who closed his eyes as if facing into a hot summer breeze.

  The change happened
first at the very tips of the pup’s fur. The ends of each strand turned first light gray, and then gradually became white, glowing as Pahana’s did in the tight cave as though set alight by a match. The glow spread up each strand of hair until it reached the root, moving its way across the underlying skin until the entire animal was aglow.

  The young man smiled and set the pup on the ground before him. Whatever had ailed him before this meeting had ceased to bother him. The man pet the animal’s head, scratching him beneath his chin. The pup was clearly pleased and made every attempt to lick the man’s face. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words didn’t escape my lips before I was reeling once more, hurtling into the unknown.

  I opened my eyes and found myself somewhere very familiar, perched atop a high cliff that overlooked a vast, rolling sea. Next to me sat the man, much older now, his skin the darkest, deepest black. He stared out over the ocean, and I reluctantly followed his gaze with my own, terrified of what I might see and eager at the same time.

  Below us, the hunched, decrepit form of Almara stood at the water’s edge. The breeze played idly with his long, unkempt hair. He lifted one foot and took the first step into the deep.

  I couldn’t stop myself. I scrambled up and ran for him, leaving behind this weird force of a man I didn’t understand. I picked my way down the cliff, pebbles sliding beneath my feet as I raced to prevent so much as the old man’s feet from touching the water.

  I wanted him back. I wanted to talk to him, to see his face, even if he was still insane. Inside him were answers that I felt desperate to find. But as I hit the sand at last, he was already well out into the water.

  It wasn’t until I started directly towards him that I felt it. Pulling. As if someone held not only my clothing in an attempt to keep me from entering the water, but held every cell in my body. I fought against it, the force of the pull like gravity, heavy and undeniable. Something was trying to keep me away from him, away from the man I so badly needed to see alive again. Each step felt like plowing through thick mud, gaining me only inches with each attempt to reach Almara’s unsteady strides. I pushed and pushed, but made almost no headway.

  I turned back to the cliff, angry and frustrated.

  “Stop it!” I yelled to the black man on the cliff. “Let him go!” I knew it was him up there, keeping me from saving Almara, keeping me from finding a way to rescue him, to keep him safe now while I still could. I would take him somewhere, anywhere, and never let him see that dragon in the Fire Mountains. We would hide, we would find another way.

  But the man on the cliff didn’t respond to my shout. His eyes stared out, just over the top of my head, directly at Almara’s back. His face was frozen in a look of concentration, furious and pained. His skin burned red hot like molten rock. I turned back to Almara again and felt the pulling, the force that kept me away.

  And suddenly I understood.

  The man wasn’t trying to keep me away from Almara. He didn’t see me or know I was here at all. No, the power he was putting out was not trying to prevent me from entering the water after the old man.

  It was Almara he was trying to hold back.

  I dropped to my knees in the surf. On the sand I saw the speeding form of a boy approaching, then splashing into the water, shouting to Almara.

  Me.

  I couldn’t move. I suddenly felt exhausted as I watched myself struggle with the current, save the old man. The man on the cliff rose, his magic lifted now that another had appeared. He gave one last long look out towards the wizard, and turned away.

  This was his memory. It couldn’t be changed. Only remembered, felt.

  The world turned upside down again, and I felt hot tears run down my cheeks.

  I was standing in tall, yellow grass.

  A loud bang, like the sound of a firework echoing off the atmosphere, sent me reeling. I fell to the ground with the force of it. And then I saw her.

  Jade.

  She was standing not ten feet away, the Kinstone, the link with endless power, held in one fist. Her eyes were mad and black.

  She raised her chin to the sky and opened her mouth wide. A strange piercing shriek came from her throat, like a battle cry or maybe even a cry for help. A moment later I saw him, walking resolutely up the hillside to meet her, the man I now understood to be the Blackburn.

  They were just feet from each other now, and her eyes gave her away. She was looking at him like she intended to rip into him with everything she had. But his face was solemn. He hadn’t come here for a fight. I moved closer, wiping the angry tears away. I was no longer afraid of being seen, but both of what I might hear and might miss if I stayed away.

  “Ah,” Jade sneered at him. The voice was distinctly not her own. “I see you still come when you are called.”

  The Blackburn didn’t answer. He just stood there, tilting his head slightly. His long, locked hair hung around his bare, black shoulders.

  “Get out of my head,” Jade shrieked suddenly, pounding one fist on her forehead. “What’s in there is not for you. If you desire to compromise, you may speak in the common tongue.”

  The man still didn’t speak. Instead, from a satchel that was slung over his shoulder, he pulled something from its depths and held it out. Its surface seemed impossibly bright, shining like the sun itself in the stark afternoon light.

  I sucked in a big gulp of air and held it in my chest as I realized what it was. I had seen that rock before. It was the giant chunk of gold that Jade now protected in Riverstone.

  She made to grab the stone, but the Blackburn pulled it easily away as if it weighed no more than an apple.

  “You must trade,” he said, his voice hoarse and raspy. I was surprised at how non-threatening it sounded. I had been expecting a screech.

  Jade took a step back, her eyes still fixed hungrily on the gold, a treasure of unimaginable wealth in a land where gold had ceased to exist.

  “What do you want in exchange?” she asked in a hiss.

  “You may not kill the boy,” he answered simply.

  She stood still for a moment, staring at him. Then she thrust her head backwards and cackled as though she had never heard anything funnier.

  “Of all the champions in all the worlds that you could take for your own, you choose the powerless one from Earth?” she howled.

  He didn’t respond. Only held the gold out again, waiting patiently for her answer.

  She looked back and forth between his face and the treasure he presented to her.

  “Nothing else?” she asked, her face suddenly wary.

  He only stared at her with bright silver eyes, eyes that invited her to take his offering.

  She held out her hand and then paused as it hovered over the gold, still deciding. But the draw of the powerful rock was too much for her to resist, and as she finally grasped it, the atmosphere surrounding them exploded outward, pushing Jade, me, every blade of grass flat to the ground.

  When I looked up again, the Blackburn had turned and was walking silently away down the hillside. His skin burned red, splitting like the embers of a fire. I wondered how he could move, how he tolerated the burning. Gradually, as he faded into the grass, the red coals of his being cooled, transforming his skin once again into a sheet of ashy black.

  Jade stood, surprise and anger mingling together on her face. Then she seemed to remember what it was she held in her hand, and her face cracked into a wide, nasty smile. She stared at the gold, turned it around in her palm, and then raised it above, making it hover in midair.

  This time, the world did not turn upside down, but simply dissolved. I stood in the dark, rocky gully. The Blackburn had left his perch and now stood directly before me, as tall and mighty as Erod the giant. Twenty minutes ago I would have fled from him, certain of his betrayal, of his evil. Now, though, my eyes met his, so pure and bright, and I understood that I was looking at someone who had never done anything but aid those who desired good to prevail.

  I opened my mouth to speak, b
ut then found that all of the questions I had were stuck in my throat. Only one bobbed to the surface, demanding to be asked.

  “The horse,” I said. “You saved that little colt. Why?”

  The Blackburn looked at me, furrowed his brow for a moment, clearly surprised by my question. Then a look of great satisfaction came over his face.

  “I see I have chosen rightly,” he said, his voice just as rasping as it had been in the visions. He stared for another moment, and then spoke. “I protected the colt because there was not another to do so.”

  “But the cloud, it burned you,” I protested.

  “Yes,” he answered. He looked as though he wanted to say more, but he didn’t.

  I reached out, unable to contain my curiosity, and touched the skin on his arm. I had been expecting it to be crusted, hard like the burning wood it had so closely resembled in the visions. Or maybe for it to blow away like chalk dust in the wind. But it was only warm. Human.

  “And all this time,” I said, shaking my head, trying to form the thought clearly. “You’ve protected others, too.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “And it burns you,” I continued. “It has burned you all these thousands of years.”

  Burns him black.

  His bright eyes were sad and resolved at once.

  “It is my place,” he said.

  “Why did you choose me?” I asked. “I’m no champion.”

  “It matters little who the champion is,” he said. “But they cannot touch you now while they hold the gold. It is impossible for you to be killed at the Corentin’s hands. And the girl. You have the best chance of reaching her.”

  “Who, Jade?” I asked, confused. “How am I supposed to reach her?”

  “Someone must,” he said. “She of the rock power is the last hope for our worlds. For your own.”

  “But why?”

  “That, you will discover in time. She holds the knowledge within her. You must convince her to release it. She is lost inside,” he said, watching me, “tormented again by the visions of misery that the Corentin inflicts upon her. Her only relief is the gold which I gave. When the time comes, she will not let it go easily.”