by Lev AC Rosen
“Do you have bags or anything?” Maria asks. “I can get them for you.”
“Yes. In the trunk. Nick, go help her.” Nick nods and gets up from the bench at the window and walks out of the room. The nurse follows him out to the parking lot, where he opens the trunk. There are three suitcases. Mom’s whole life.
“This isn’t easy for your dad, either, you know,” Maria says.
Nick clenches his jaw, feels a prick of the rage poison. “He acts like it is,” he says, grabbing one of the suitcases with more force than he means to. It leaps out of his hand and falls onto the white gravel. He bends over and picks it up again. “He’s given up. Some doctors start saying Alzheimer’s and Mom can’t remember where her keys are and suddenly she has to move out!” He’s shouting. He doesn’t mean to, but he also doesn’t care. He sits down in the parking lot without knowing why. The stones are sharp on his ass. He probably looks like an idiot. He should apologize for yelling. This isn’t Maria’s fault. Maria looks down at him, and Nick stares up at her, expecting PityFace, but instead she looks unimpressed. Like she expected more from him.
“What?” he asks in a soft voice.
“You know it’s more than that, right? You know what this disease does. You have access to the Internet. You must have googled it, if your parents didn’t talk to you.”
“I did,” Nick says.
“So,” Maria says, “you must realize how hard it is for your dad, too. You should tell him how you feel. He probably feels the same way.”
“If he felt the same way, we wouldn’t be here,” Nick says, standing up. “I told them—I said there are a thousand other things it could be. They didn’t even test her for normal pressure hydrocephalus.”
“Hydrocephalus,” Maria says, correcting his pronunciation. The a at the end sounds more like an e. “There must have been other tests,” she says.
Nick shakes his head. “Not for her. She said her dad had early-onset Alzheimer’s, and everyone just nodded and said you have it, too, now leave your family.” Nick grabs another of the suitcases from the trunk and walks away, his game tucked under his arm. He hears Maria slam the trunk behind him, and she rushes to catch up, holding the last of the bags. He walks faster but then realizes how rude he’s being—childish. She meets him on the porch.
“Sorry I yelled,” he says.
“That’s okay,” Maria says, in a way that sounds sincere. They go inside and start walking. “I’m not going to lecture you anymore,” Maria says. “But if you need to talk—and you don’t want to talk to your dad—”
“Thanks,” Nick says. “But I’m so tired of people asking me to talk.”
Maria nods but doesn’t say anything, and Nick is grateful for that. When they get up to the room, his parents are exactly as he left them, frozen like statues, Dad’s head on Mom’s shoulder, their hands clasped together in her lap.
“We have the stuff,” Nick says, and puts the bags by his parents’ feet.
“Thank you,” Mom says, and then takes a breath, a pause, sounding as if she means to say more, but doesn’t.
“Thanks, Nick,” Dad says, standing and lifting one of the bags up onto the bed, where he unzips it and starts unpacking things.
“Oh, we can do that,” Maria says. “It’s good if the staff knows where everything is.”
Dad takes a few framed photos out of the bag anyway and puts them on the nightstand by the bed. Nick smiles at his dad’s own small peaceful protest, forgets how angry he is at him for a moment. One of the photos is of Mom and Dad before he was born. One is of Mom’s parents, who’d died before Nick was born, too. One is of Nick. The last is of all three of them together.
“You see, Nicky?” Mom says. “It’s just like I’m staying in a hotel.”
“Yeah,” Nick says drily. “Just like that.”
“Don’t be rude,” Dad says.
“I think maybe it’s time you boys leave me,” Mom says. Nick stares at his mother. She’s still sitting on the bed, looking down at her hands. He wants to control her like Severkin and make her stand up and walk out of this place. He knows part of her wants it, too. But she keeps looking at her hands instead. Nick feels his jaw clenching and his hands fold tightly, and for one breath, he hates her for not standing.
“Fine,” he says, and walks out, his heavy footsteps muffled by the blue carpet.
Dad takes a while getting to the car, but Nick waits in the backseat, looking at the game. He runs his hand over the spine of the case, where the plastic wrap had been glued, and where leftover flakes still ripple under his touch. When Dad does get in, he says nothing, but slams the door. Then he pulls out of the parking lot and starts driving home.
“I know this is hard for you,” he says as they pass the mall. There are a bunch of kids Nick’s age hanging out in front, smoking. “But you should have said something to your mother. Given her a hug. She’s going to miss you.” Nick doesn’t say anything but runs his hand over his cheek. It feels rubbery, cold. “Well, you can say something when we visit next week.”
He drives a while longer in silence.
“Tomorrow we should go by Traci’s and get your books for school. That sound okay?”
“Sure,” Nick says. They’re close to home, and he doesn’t want to be talking when Dad parks.
“Good.”
Dad pulls into the garage, and before he’s turned the engine off, Nick is out of the car and up the stairs to his room, where he closes the door and turns on his game console. He slips the Wellhall disc into it, the hiss of the tray sliding shut somehow relaxing his shoulders. He grabs his controller and sits on his bed. There’s not much else in his room—a desk in the corner with his computer, a closet, a few big posters of Chichén Itzá, where they’d all gone together two years ago, before they’d told him about Mom’s misdiagnosis. He’d walked the pyramid steps as Mom told him about the Mayans. He’d touched old carvings, just like Severkin. It had been one of the best weeks of his life. And he’s going to go back there with Mom and Dad, once she’s out. Or maybe someplace else, like Rome. Someplace ancient, where Mom knows all the stories.
The game has to install, which could take a while, and for a few seconds, Nick watches the little percentage bar creep closer and closer to 100. Then, before he forgets, he goes to his computer and checks off box number 4 for his mother—“Confusion with time or place.” It’s the only check on the screen. Dad knocks and opens the door without waiting for a reply when the game’s loading screen is at 76 percent.
“I’m playing my game, Dad,” Nick says without looking up.
“Okay,” Dad says, standing in the doorway. “But if you want to talk about anything, I’m here, okay?”
“Yeah.” He looks up at Dad, who is lingering, holding on to the doorframe like it’s a mast and his ship is going under.
“I’ll just order us a pizza tonight.”
“Good.” The bar is at 98 percent.
“Want anything on it?”
“Olives,” Nick says. Olives are usually Mom’s favorite, but he wants them. The bar is at 99 percent.
“Okay,” Dad says, and leaves without closing the door. If Mom were home—or even if she weren’t home, if she were at work, if things were normal—he’d probably invite his dad to watch. Dad never got into the game as much as Mom, never really understood it, but he would have stayed ten minutes, asked some stupid questions that Nick would have answered and laughed at, and said how cool the game looked. Something about graphics and how it’s like a movie. He would have sat next to Nick on his bed and squeezed his arm as he left, and told him, “Have fun, but don’t go all crazy and start trying to pickpocket people in real life,” or something. Nick would have smiled. Nick wishes they could still do all that, but without Mom there it’s like she’s a ghost in every room, floating between them, reminding Nick that his dad has given up. And Nick feels sorry for him, feels sorry because he knows today was hard for his dad, too, but he’s also so disappointed in him for not fighting harder
. He can’t even look at him.
The bar reaches 100, and finally Nick gets to play the game.
SEVERKIN INHALES deeply. The ship rocks beneath him, and the air tastes of salt and the deep smoky flavor of sunset.
“Are you going home, gray elf?” asks an elderly human woman beside him. He’s seen her a few times since the journey began, but she’s never spoken to him.
“I’m not from Erenia,” Severkin says. “I was born elsewhere. This will be my first time seeing my people’s homeland.”
“Are you fleeing the quakes, too, then?”
“Quakes?”
“In Arrowsrest. My family farm was swallowed by a sinkhole after the last quake. They say it’s the giants, waking up underground. That’s why the dwarves have made peace. They know the giants are awakening.”
“Giants are an old myth,” Severkin says. “But I’m sorry you lost your farm.”
“Everything is an old myth till it’s real again,” the woman says.
Severkin looks forward to seeing his people’s homeland at last. He’s explored so many ruins, seen so many ancestral tombs and forgotten palaces—but always those of others, never of his own people. He had begun to suspect his people didn’t have a history. But he’ll find one here.
When the sun is half submerged beneath the waves, Severkin feels a slight tremor under the ship. Not like the waves they coast through—something different, like a stone dropping in a pond. It unsettles him. And then it happens again.
“Something is wrong,” he says to the woman. He turns away from her and runs up the deck to where the captain is steering the wheel. “Did you feel that?” he asks. “We need to stop, make landing. Something is wrong.”
“Calm yourself,” the captain says. “We’re just a few hours from our destination, see?” He nods out at the water, and in the distance, Severkin can see what he assumes is Wellhall, a huge gray mountain rising up through the clouds. It glows from within, windows punched in the stone firing out beams of colored light into the darkening sky.
The ship shudders again, this time so strongly that the other passengers stumble. Someone shouts.
“See?” Severkin says.
But the captain isn’t focused on Severkin. He is looking off at the horizon to their right, where a shadow is emerging from the water. It’s dark against the navy sky, but visible: a head with long dripping hair, shoulders like rocky hills, heading for Wellhall. As it moves, it grows, walking out of the water. A chest becomes visible, and stone-tower arms, then a stomach and legs, nothing covering them but shadow. A giant man, easily taller than the huge redwoods of Arrowsrest.
“I told you,” screams the woman who had been speaking to Severkin earlier. “The giants have returned!”
As if he hears her, the giant turns to the ship and regards it. The captain is spinning the wheel and barking orders, trying to turn the ship around, but Severkin knows it is already too late. The giant pounds a flat hand on the water, and a huge wave rises up and flies toward the ship. The froth on the edge of the wave flies over them, blocking out the sky and falling over the ship almost silently. The world goes sideways, suddenly filled with screaming and the snap of breaking wood. Severkin holds his breath and spins wildly about, his world blackness and water.
SEVERKIN OPENS his eyes. His vision explodes in circles of bright white and he closes them again. He aches everywhere, but he’s experienced worse, like the time he fell from the Tower of Kariska, or when he failed to notice the rockfall trap in a tomb beneath Umai. He opens his eyes again, slowly, then stands and takes inventory of his situation. He still has his bow and knives, though they’ve seen better days, and his leather armor is torn but still functional.
He is standing on a red sand beach—if it’s big enough to be called that. The beach itself doesn’t run more than a few feet from the water before it hits a red cliff face. But there’s another beach, a few feet through the water, and another and another, all around him, each beach a ring around a column-like cliff. He feels as though he has been shrunk down and is at the foot of a cluster of small red mushrooms. The mushroom-cliff tops are far above him. Down here, it’s all rushing saltwater and stems—with no end in sight. He doesn’t see any of his fellow passengers, either. He tries calling out, but only the sound of the waves responds.
He needs to get a better view of where he is. He tries grabbing on to one of the stalklike walls to pull himself up, but the rock crumbles under his hands. He’s a good climber, but he can’t do much with a surface like that. He’ll have to find a more solid wall. He starts exploring, wading from stalk to stalk and testing the rock. They all crumble, until the fourth, where there’s a rope ladder suspended from above. He gives it a tug and it holds firm. He climbs up it.
Up here, the tops of the stalks look much like they had from below—small, circular plateaus, with a long drop to the water in the spaces between them. Luckily, someone has laid down wooden planks between many of the mushroom tops. They aren’t very safe-looking and have no rails, but using them would be better than jumping. In the distance, perhaps six planks off, Severkin can see where the plateaus end and a smooth meadow begins. There are no people around. No sign of who’d thrown down the ladder or put up the planks.
Carefully, he walks the planks to the meadow. There in the grass lies a large stone; carved into it is the word BRIDGEFALL and an arrow. He wonders how many shipwrecks had happened here before they’d set this system up. He looks out over the horizon—he could go anywhere. But he needs to get new equipment, more arrows. He heads in the direction of Bridgefall.
The sun is high in the sky by now, nearly noon, but it has a paleness to it that Severkin finds disturbing. It doesn’t feel warm. The plains stretch out in front of him like a wasteland of green. There’s no road, just patches where the grass has been worn thin and sandy. He had thought somehow that his people’s homeland would be more welcoming than this—that it would feel instantly like a long-lost home, the sun a roaring hearth, the grass whipping at his ankles like embraces from family. Instead, he feels as though he’s experiencing it from behind glass, as though he isn’t really there. Then again, the welcoming committee had been a giant.
He’s only walked a little way when he feels the ground shake. He instinctively takes a combat-ready position, his feet wide, his blades drawn. He grips the ground through his shoes, feeling his toes wrap around the dry soil. In the distance there’s a cloud of sand coming toward him. It fades, then explodes out of the ground again, closer to him. And in front of the cloud of dust is a shadow, a person running toward him.
Severkin looks around for higher ground or something to hide behind, but the best he can see is a large rock, barely taller than himself. Still, it’s something. He runs for the rock and leaps up on top of it. Then he crouches low and draws his bow, focusing on the shadow and the dust cloud rising behind it.
He can see that the dust cloud is a creature, chasing someone. It looks to be the size of an elephant, and it sometimes dives into the earth as though it’s water, popping up again to the surface a few feet farther along, as it chases its victim. The dust obscures the monster’s features, but Severkin can see that the creature has a long, sinewy tail, like a giant rat’s, and huge claws in front that it uses to dig into the earth. Its victim is easier to spot: a dwarf in leather armor, with a huge sword that he sometimes swings at the beast. But the beast is too quick for him, so the dwarf runs on, trying to gain some ground, some advantage.
Severkin considers letting the beast kill the dwarf. He doesn’t like dwarves. They’d been his enemies for ages, tucked away underground, only sometimes popping up to lob explosives at him or at other overworld dwellers. He’s raided more underground dwarven keeps and labs than he could count, whispering through the darkness, bow drawn. But the dwarves are the overworlders’ allies now. He knows he should help.
The dwarf and the beast come close to Severkin, and he can see the monster’s form—part rat, part mole—with its two huge white eyes like c
urdling milk, and a mouth made up of tentacles, pink and dripping with saliva. It claws at the dwarf, who dodges out of the way again, and Severkin lets fly an arrow at one of the beast’s milky eyes, hitting it dead center, causing it to burst like a wineskin.
The beast rears up on its hind legs and lets out a sound like a dying horse. The dwarf sees his opening and takes it, hacking at the creature’s front legs. Severkin reaches back for another arrow to find his quiver empty. Damn. He must have lost most of his arrows when he washed up on shore. He hooks his bow around his back and draws his knives, leaping down from the rock.
Severkin dashes to the side, trying to flank the beast, but it turns and smacks him to the ground with its tail. He rolls to his feet, but now the creature has him, its fleshy tentacles sloughing mucus, its breath a thick fog that smells of carrion.
The dwarf dives in front of him, sword aloft and swinging at the tentacles. The beast makes a sound that’s both a shriek and a snarl, and backs up.
“Thanks for the assist there,” the dwarf says.
“We’re not done yet,” Severkin replies evenly.
The beast charges at them again, but now Severkin is on his feet and ready. While the dwarf swings at the creature’s mouth, Severkin rolls below its chin and, rising up, slashes with both knives at its belly. The skin is as soft as fine leather and cuts open easily, pouring ichor and blood down on Severkin. The monster coughs, then screams, and Severkin thrusts his hand up through the open wound, striking his knife where he thinks the heart is. He feels the creature begin to die, its muscles clutching at its last heartbeat, its last breath. The beast begins to fall on Severkin, but the dwarf pulls him back in time to watch the thing topple forward.