by T. Wyse
The staff gave a happy hum of agreement as he tapped the spot.
“Time of creation and all that. Spirit world’s rules, I guess.” He fought his trembling leg and leaned on the staff to stand. “Anywhere you want to try first?” he asked, leaning in as if whispering into the staff’s ear.
To his surprise, the thing lay still a moment, giving a trembling tug towards the northern edge of the ring.
“Okay.” Balancing on his shivering legs, he stole another look at the staff, wherein the tiny figure of his predecessor had called a tree into being. It took all his focus, but he forced the rune to mind and burned its simple prongs into his brain.
“Okay,” he repeated. On unsure legs, he returned to the place where he had tested the soil. Just above the exploratory dot, he etched out the symbol shown; a simple line for the trunk and a meager set of three branches on either side. The dirt swirled into the air in an eager puff, leaving a clearly cut carving in the brown soil. “That look right?”
A weak murmur replied, laced with an optimistic hum, yet nothing happened. After a few moments, the staff made another dowsing motion and steered to his right.
“Oh, of course. One tree does not make a forest.” He chuckled and followed the tug, punctuated with an almost giggling agreement.
He went to work with his quiet companion, on his useless and foolish project. He painted them in haphazard rows, the ancient staff his eager brush. The ache in his shoulder disappeared in the chorus of his tired arms. His calf offered constant pain, but he managed to complete a single row of glyphic trees around him. A trail of dust spiraled up and away, leaving the clean lines in the sand, each of their bases pointing at him.
Nothing. No matter, he mused. Perhaps a line of trees did not make a forest either. Regarding the staff once more, he noticed a further difference in the glyph of the forest. There were three well-defined strands, but in a detail he thought was simply texture, he saw infinite rows beyond those three, waning into dots unto some intended horizon.
Having no other hope or purpose in the moment, he managed to create another line. His leg turned into a protesting and locked limp as he completed the second set.
Yet there was more to be done. He sighed deeply and fell half asleep before catching himself from falling with the staff, resting at the beginnings to one of the etched trees. Though he steadied himself, he found himself sinking with a surprising clip, stabbing down into the soil until his chest smacked against the circle. His hands slapped against the silted earth as the staff slid from a sinking stem and into a withering sprout.
“No!” He scrambled to grasp at the tip, catching nothing but air. The staff burst upwards with a splattering helping of soil, stifling any beginning of despair with surprise. The soil smacked across his shirt and burned at his skin through the cloth.
The staff landed point down and lodged itself with a singing vibration into the earth before standing still.
A low gurgling sputter caught his ear, and he realized it hadn’t been the touch of burning against his back, but rather the embrace of cold. Water burbled from the piercing in the soil, calmly stretching out tiny tendrils to explore its surroundings. It reached out and lapped at the ring of earth pensively before forming a puddle around the contour of the circle’s edge and flowing back onto where it had come.
The stream bled into a tiny lake around the wound and began a new outward path. It snaked around the etched trees, as a slug would to avoid the burn of salt, and worked its way down the horizon. The glistening shine allowed him to trace its path after its width narrowed to an invisible point.
With a tinge of caution, he touched the water. It pulsed up and nipped at his hand with a welcome chill that fought against the aching heat of the unyielding sun above. Shedding his shoe and rolling up his tattered pant leg, he slipped to a seated position and slid his marked leg into the water, numbing the ever-present ache of raw flesh. He wriggled his foot in the wet silt and woke the stilled earth, hollowing it out and bringing clods of the earth to the surface, only to leap upwards and explode in a puff. He hollowed it out like some bemused child at the beach, until its depths lay deeper than his resting leg, and it sat as wide as the space between two of the stones.
He tasted a drop on his tongue, finding it free of rot, sulfur, or the burning green chemicals of COT’s taint. Bolder, he gulped a few handfuls pouring down his throat without any lingering taste, but it cooled the chewing in his stomach enough for him to dress his leg and foot again and rise.
He returned with the staff and began into the third line of trees, hoping for some unseen mercy preventing him from having to go further. The third line presented itself as a set of runty saplings, their lines unclear and ending in points from his refusal to leave the comfort of his little sphere.
The reach of the task brought sweat from him, and he wobbled on the staff before falling to sit once more at the lake. It had since grown in width and its trickle had become a burbling stream.
His leg pounded, cramped, and trembled as he stripped it again, but the chill water soothed it. He stole another moment of rest, his belly aching a little from the water.
The light of the day faded as if some black storm had arrived to blot out the sun, falling deeper still. He only realized he had fallen unconscious when he noticed the staff no longer accompanied him on his lap. He muttered something, lost to even his understanding, and the words trickled down from his mouth like dumbfounded drool.
The forest was different again, evolved, and reshaped. Between his circle and the shadowy unseen trees, leaves shimmered between azure and emerald in the dual lights of the place. His three strands of trees poked from the soil in a hurried and trembling growth. They each grew in the sequence they were created; each matured from seed to sapling to thick-trunked elder as his consciousness touched them all. Even the furthest row of them stood jagged and misshapen, yet proud of their new life.
Something lurked in the darkness, moving without feet and rustling the trees as it squirmed between them. He caught glimpses of it, slick and oily; writhing and long, just beyond whatever reaching perception he could grasp.
The trees shivering at the touch of the stranger grew upwards, sprouting tumorous blobs. Boughs and branches creaked low as he caught sight of some black nub tail. The trees grew into a wall and allowed only the briefest hints of a glowing red eye glinting between the thickening walls.
From beyond the orb, another creature stepped over the protective grove, shifting white fur arcing over the treetops like a ruffled cat. He saw only the blur of its movement, and it landed neatly behind the still-present orb of the sleeping world, obscuring its form.
“I am Wolf,” the creature announced. Its great red jaws flowed over him and nibbled at his skin with iced restraint. The voice came from high above, and the sense of two red eyes burned down on him even in the muted dream. “I have chosen to”—it paused, the jagged red pulses hissing into unsure smoke—“help guide you through this time.” The cloud regained its clarity and nibbled at his back, lingering in his ears.
“Are you a spirit guardian then? One sent to protect and guide me?” He focused as hard as he could and willed the words outwards. They flowed with a tinny, gaseous pulse.
Still, they arrived.
“No.” The condescending snarl surprised him. “No one sends me. Such things are . . . beyond us both.” The chomping settled into a pensive nibble.
The other form shuddered in its unsure pacing, moving outside the circle and into the darkened forest. The shadowy trees felt nothing in its passing, but he could feel it moving within the blackness.
“Accept his guidance,” a voice whispered directly into his spirit. No ripples delivered the words to him, but there was an undeniable warmth to them; a rightness about the sentiment.
“Do you accept my guidance willingly?” Wolf asked, though it clearly bore the weight of a command, that he would do so.
“I will,” Kechua answered, seeing beyond the light into the two r
ed stars above.
“We, too, will watch, Kechua.” The two pulses came from his right and left, their forms unseen. Joining in late, the clear red lines of the voice behind him said, “I, too, will watch.”
The darkness faded away into light, the troublesome bobbing presence shuffling between the trees.
He woke again, the staff giving a greeting tremble. The day waited for him, and the river stood barely wider than before. His legs dangled carelessly within the growing current, being softly tugged.
He felt something tingling in the back of his skull, forcing his gaze and twisting his back to look behind. Nothing but the jaw of the red mountains gnawing against the blue sky greeted him, and yet he could place the tingling nothing feeling somewhere upon them. His eyes fluttered, tracing the waving until he landed upon a single black fleck; one causing him to squint against it as if gazing into the sun, his head immediately filled with an aching ring.
The black fleck wobbled and yawned slowly, a tiny cavity against the bloody teeth. Kechua squinted against the increasing ache, a rising overwhelming ring in his skull. Was it just a trick of his exhaustion or did the shape grow as it slipped down the mountain like an emergent black slug?
He doubled his focus on it. The ringing went away just a little as the form slumped onto the ground, becoming more of a grey dome shape. Its skin shone against the high sun, crying out its reality.
The grey blob drew his attention so, crying for his scrutiny, his judgement, and he found himself searching for some reference, as if he held chisel to wood.
The thing approached slowly, and when he turned to raise his feet from the engulfing stream, he froze.
Beyond the circle; beyond his marked forest stood Wolf. No longer large enough to hurdle ancient trees, the thing stood as tall as a horse and wider, with more bulk. A raggedy coat of grey—tinged white—wrapped around him, save his face where it shone with clean clarity. His ears lay folded low, and his wide black-lipped mouth sat slightly open, lips raised in a passive and lopsided snarl.
The creature regarded him in still silence, burning red eyes closed to slits, their ancient flames casting a halo around them. A silent sneer spread from one side to another before he lowered his head and trotted towards the circle. Even with the leisurely pace, his wide paws tore at the ground, and the stilled earth evaporated into a thick cloud of brown mist that swallowed the beast’s back half.
“Hello!” Kechua shouted, wresting his numb leg out of the water while attempting to meet his guide on his feet. The creature stopped, the curtain of brown embracing it like steam, only to shy away with a sharp turn of its head. Framed by the last flecks of rising sand, the wolf twisted its head in the direction of the blobbed intruder nipping at the back of Kechua’s skull.
The boy tried to fight his legs to life, but they remained within the water, enabling him to only steal a glance towards the creature behind. Rather than a constant cloud of earth rising behind it, little red tendrils sprouted from its sides, rising upwards like lazy steam to snap back like elastics onto the earth beside it. The thing grew closer and larger, and Kechua turned back to the beast before him, a question beginning in his throat.
Instead, he caught his benefactor in mid-leap, landing with tooth and claw into Kechua’s wounded leg, ripping him into the soil and pinning him down. An explosion of brown coughed forward, stopping in an invisible bubble before the circle of stones, concealing his legs from his vision.
Kechua gasped and flailed blindly with the staff into the brown silt cloud. He caught something within the obscuring curtain, but it only summoned an engulfing set of jaws and red tongue down upon his throat.
“What are you doing?” he asked, fighting the words out with the last of his draining air.
“Guiding you.” The wolf gave a rumbling snarl through clenched teeth, rearing back with a strip of dripping red flesh in its jaw. “A worthy first lesson!” It laughed, returning to his throat.
Bits of reality flashed against his fading mind. His arms fought and snapped away from him. His legs were wrapped and tugged as if embraced by some feathery and barbed ivy.
With the last drops of consciousness, his confused mind thought of pill bugs, of centipedes, of worms and beetles; the world of evening beasts crawling under the boards of the old man’s house, their tinny rhythm reaching for him as he faded into sleep in his tiny nook. As darkness embraced him, and he was tugged in two directions by these strangers, the thoughts of the crawling creatures mixed together into a rotted wood carving.
CHAPTER 3:
Wolf’s Lesson
Dying was less of a shock than the feeling of confusion and betrayal. His consciousness woke again to the darkened forest. A putty layer surrounded his skin, filling his mouth and ears. First, he cracked the fat mitts of his hands, each washing and ripping at one another until they were free to perform. He scooped it from his mouth, needing no breath, but finding it alarming upon his spirit. He then worked on peeling the remaining film from his mouth and tongue, picking at the layer of his teeth.
Freeing his eyes allowed the illusion of sight within the circle, and to his astonishment, he felt somehow further away from the orb of light. He tore the second skin from his back and the older light’s heat beat against his exposed spine, tickling with a crawling numbness.
No voices spoke to him, and no shapes moved beyond the continuing forest of surrounding warped trees.
He picked at his scalp pensively, attempting to move, but instead felt himself sliding towards the light. The burning bit at his back. It seared his sightless eyes through the back of his head. Just as he could feel its embrace singeing his back, the feeling of being flung forward overtook him. The circle and the forest left in a streak upon his consciousness.
In that moment, a strange feeling of recoil and rewind overtook him and his eyes shot open, his lungs tasting the acid air of the wasted world once more.
“Better, boy?” the wolf snarled. The weight of the creature shifted upon the earth and landed hard against his chest, deflating his waking gasps into a whimper.
Kechua’s shoulder bore no further grudge for the wounds, and his leg ached as much as the other. His arms tore up to intercept the jaws before they reached his throat. It was a reflex, however, and the angle held no leverage. The beast clamped down on his fingers and sliced into them.
“You said . . . ” Kechua choked on the words through withered lungs. “You said you would help me; guide me!” he croaked with the misery of betrayal.
The wolf’s muzzle inched downward with utter inevitability. “Help you?” The face inched backwards in a roaring laugh. “Guide you, perhaps. Now learn, change, earn your footing.” It tore into his throat once more, and Kechua returned to the strange darkness.
He felt only flashes of the dreaming world; of being encased in a drying mucus before he returned to the living. Yet he woke immediately with the red maw already wrapped around his head, the teeth clamping down and piercing his skin. His arms wriggled in futility, not even managing to touch the creature’s face before he slipped back into the dark.
The feeling of streaking motion; of passing through miles unseen in a blurred streak of nothingness ran across Kechua’s back once more. Again he shed the sense of the tangible whole, and the sticky clay coated his body.
The light approached, unseen hands of camaraderie leading him away from the pain of the world. Though it was the perception of his back that faced the source of the light, as it burned into him, he could almost feel the vague pair of shapes within the heat.
So close, they seared away the coating film around him, dripping off his skin and pouring from his mouth like molten wax. He could almost make out the finer details of the figures, not of the light, and yet standing so close to the source that they surely should have been burned.
“Hold.” The soft waves traced a path to him, trickling beyond the clearing and lapping at his toes. With a single declaration, the light froze. The dragging hands and burning on his back eased.
“Dead again, alive again.” The chaotic ripples gave a light chuckle, and he slipped back towards the orb of the world.
“This is a lesson no longer. This is raw gluttony.” The clear lines washed the remaining sting from his back, knocking his eyes and mouth clear of the resting sediment.
“Wait and feel. We will help.” The soft waves finished the chorus, taming his hair with lapping warmth. “It is time to live again. Know it, feel it, but do not move.”
His heart beat again in his chest, a startling thing in this numb world. The rhythm flowed out against the darkness, unimpeded by the aversion to sound. The razor-thin ripples of the rhythm pulsed across the sand, which trembled and jumped happily at its touch.
“Remember to feel, but do not flinch.” The laughing voice stifled its merriment, and as its voice passed over him, he could feel his fingers and toes again.
“Know again, but be clever. This is all that we give.” The clear lines flowed over him, and his mind returned to him, his blood grating against his skull like merciless lava.
He lay there, allowing himself to slowly and subtly come to grasp his body once more. The warm, soft air blew upon his cheeks, and the sun beat red through his clenched eyelids. The river yanked at his numb legs, its growing power threatening to drag him off. He lay there, the soil’s cold touch needling into his back, stretching his mind out into the sand and earth. He felt the presence of the great wolf, a weight upon the circle beside him. He would be ready this time.
He allowed himself less subtle breaths, slowly rousing himself from the dust of the dream world. He wriggled his toes, moving his fingers with such subtlety that even the granite once standing far below his feet would envy him. He allowed his tongue to move inside his mouth but could not suppress a single swallow.
He heard the voice once more; felt the pulsing growl through the earth itself. His ears still caught in the act of subtlety.