by Troy Clem
“I got it,” Theo gritted out as he started to swing himself gently to get a hold with his loose hand.
“Careful,” Losik instructed. “Don’t jostle!”
Theo held the door frame of the carriage with both hands, but the wood was damaged and broke off as Theo tried to pull himself up. He dropped and felt his feet land on the door on the other side of the carriage. He caught Losik’s eye and shared a look of relief—but the door immediately gave way and flung open.
Theo tried desperately to grab hold of any part of the carriage, failing to find a grip. Losik threw his arms as far as he could reach, but didn’t have the distance. Theo felt the cold wind on his back as he plummeted into the ravine. He saw the carriage had gotten caught on the roots of a tree protruding from the mountainside; it had stopped sliding but was getting smaller as he fell away.
Theo’s hip shattered when he collided with the side of the mountain and bounced off. He covered his head with his arms, but everything still went black when he hit the mountain a second time.
Forests of the Sigandar
Theo’s eyes were open, but all he could see was darkness. His heart was suddenly racing. He searched his memory for what had happened. It took him a moment to remember falling down the mountainside, which he then played and replayed in his mind in detail. He should be dead. A pinhole of bright light appeared in the darkness and slowly widened. The light became less intense—his eyes were adjusting—and an image became clearer: a canopy of trees above, and it was moving. The shades of the autumn leaves gradually became more vibrant, and he could distinguish between the reds, yellows, oranges, and browns. Theo could move his eyes around, but had no control of any other part of himself. His only certainty he was in his own body was that he could see the edge of his nose… it seemed like his nose at least. It gave him comfort to see something familiar.
He started to smell the leaves rotting on the forest floor—but, like his vision, his sense of smell came back slowly. There were many smells that were foreign to him, but the unmistakable scent of an autumn forest after a light morning rain was strongest to him. It reminded him of sitting on the North Wall of the palace, looking toward the mountains and watching the leaves fall.
Theo suddenly tasted the moisture in the air. His dry mouth and throat were desperate for the minuscule dew drops that landed on his lips. His tongue was gaining feeling, and Theo moved it around gently, licking his lips. The few droplets of water only left him wanting more. As the feeling in the muscles in his mouth and face grew stronger, so did the feeling in the other parts of his body. However, the more feeling he gained, the more discomfort he felt. Although he was not in tremendous pain yet, he reasoned that it was only a matter of time before it turned unbearable.
When his hearing first returned, it was soft, indistinguishable noise, but the different sounds began to separate themselves and the volume increased as his hearing adjusted. He heard the shrill calls of predatory birds, the rustling of leaves in the wind, and the crunching of leaves as people walked. There were many voices talking quietly—having several different conversations—but Theo still couldn’t move his head or neck to see anyone. The voices were all around him and at varying distances. A few words would pop out to him, but mostly it all muddled together and was difficult to understand. As Theo focused on trying to differentiate the people, one conversation dominated.
“Quiet does the forest seem?” asked the soft voice of a woman.
“Many sounds surround me,” replied the deeper voice of a man.
All the conversations died down and even the birds became silent. “Only sounds are from us,” said the woman.
“Unusual for the forest?” asked the man.
“Depends how long.”
The distinctly slower cadence of an old woman interjected. “Always is the forest quiet before the storm,” she said.
The movement of the canopy above Theo became more pronounced as he felt the gentle swaying of the porters that carried him over uneven ground. He felt his blood rushing to his head when they walked up even the smallest incline.
“Fall did the rains last night,” said the man. “Coming early is the snow, Sha?”
“Riddles she loves,” replied the young woman. “Worse you are than the children. Onqul has rallied the clan you think?”
“Words are Onqul’s gift,” said the old woman. “One of many.”
“Great gifts were bestowed to you, Sha,” said the man.
“No,” replied the old woman. “One gift only I have.”
“The point is what?” said the young woman impatiently. “Worry we should?”
“Onqul will possess what she does not yet have.”
“That is what?”
“My gift.”
“Someone better than her Onqul cannot stand!” exclaimed the young woman in frustration.
“Waking up he is,” the man interrupted.
“Not possible,” replied the young woman.
“Possible,” said the old woman. “Too risky it would have been to give him too much.”
Theo tried to turn his head again, but still couldn’t see anything but the trees. He was on his back, being restrained to something stiff. The little he could move was painful now, and he was worried about pushing himself too far.
“Give him all of it you should have,” said the young woman. “Give more now to him.”
“No good will little do now,” said the old woman. “And too long it will take to make enough more.”
“Necessity it is to make it to Her,” the young woman said.
“If Her will is for him to make it, make it he will,” said the old woman.
“Her will I know,” said the young woman. “Reality I am trying to ensure it becomes. Survive he must.”
“Chew could help,” added the man.
“Not good enough,” said the young woman.
“Help it will,” said the man. “Close we are.”
“Too much the pain,” the young woman said.
“Pain may be required to make it,” replied the man. “Alive is most important?”
“Alive is most important,” she acquiesced.
“Make it you assume any of us will,” interjected the old woman.
“Negativity from you?” asked the young woman. “Why?”
“Controlled by us Her will can never be,” the old woman said.
Theo moved his fingers, but couldn’t feel his toes. He tested everything just a little, but when he tried to twist his torso he yelped in pain. His hip felt like it had been stabbed by a hundred knives. He remembered feeling the bone shatter. He’d probably never walk again. He had read a lot about falling from great heights when he was first practicing climbing the walls outside the palace. Very few people survived more than a few weeks after falling from those distances, and the ones that did survive couldn’t live the life of adventure Theo wanted for himself.
“Stop,” said the man. Theo’s porters stopped moving before slowly lowering him to the ground. Four Sigandar warriors had been carrying him on a stretcher. He recognized their red leather tunics from a traveling museum that had come to the palace, but Theo had only read about their notoriously unique features. He didn’t find these warriors to be as exotic as the texts described: their skin was pale but not brilliantly white, their hair was no more blond than any other blond Theo had met, and each of them had eyes that were a muted grey instead of a vibrant blue.
“We weren’t expecting you to be up,” said a man as he leaned into Theo’s view. “Bet the pain is unbearable.” Theo recognized the man’s voice from the overheard conversation, but the man was not Sigandar—his skin was a light brown like Theo’s, and he had straight black hair, unlike the blond warrior porters, down to his shoulders.
“I—” Theo started to reply.
An old woman came into view, interrupting Theo, and jammed something into his open mouth. “Chew,” she said. She was every bit the Sigandar he had read about. She had eyes as blue as a clear sk
y, skin as white as fresh snow, and hair that Theo would have never defined as blond—as was written in his books—but could only be described as golden like the sun. She was covered in wrinkles, but she had a vibrancy about her that gave youth to her aged face. She wore a cloak covered entirely in bird feathers of all different sizes and colors. She left quickly, but her image lingered in Theo’s mind.
“That was our Sha, Danaje,” said the man. “Oh, and I’m Dak. Sorry for not introducing myself. Now chew, it will help with the pain. But don’t swallow it!”
It was an earthy and bitter mass of tar and leaves that stuck to Theo’s teeth and hurt his jaw to chew, but the pain in his body became more of a tingle. “What is this?” he asked, pushing the sticky substance into his cheek so he could talk.
“I don’t know,” Dak said. “I’m glad it helped, because we just found it on the ground right next to you.”
“Why would you put this in my mouth?” Theo stopped chewing and froze.
Dak laughed. “I’m just messing with you. I have no idea what’s in it, but the Sha knows, and she is a powerful healer.”
“Is she responsible for my survival?” Theo asked. “I imagine the fall should have killed me.”
“Some scouts from our tribe found you,” Dak replied, “They thought you were dead, but Nagima, one of the Sha’s apprentices, knew you were alive. She bound you up in bandages and now we’re taking you to see the Mother.”
“The mother?”
“The Sha is powerful, but the Mother is a god. She’ll save you. She saved me.”
A young Sigandar woman in a colorful cloak grabbed Dak’s shoulder. “Go now we will,” she said before disappearing as fast as she came into view.
“That was Nagima,” Dak said, fading from view as the four Sigandar warriors picked Theo’s stretcher back up. “That’s who you owe your life.”
As Theo was lifted on the stretcher, his body shifted, and it felt like his hip shattered all over again. “Stop!” he screamed through his clenched teeth. “Stop moving me!”
“You hurt because you’ve stopped chewing,” Dak said. “If you don’t keep chewing, you might lose a hand before we get you to Her.” Dak put his arm in front of Theo’s panicked face. His hand was missing at the wrist. “The Mother saved me but… I stopped chewing.”
Theo chewed furiously.
Dak had to muffle his laugh. “I’m kidding, man! Some piece of garbage took my hand. Sadistic bastard killed my whole family.” Dak pulled his arm back. “You’ll be alright though, don’t worry. The Mother took good care of me.”
“The mother couldn’t repair your hand,” Theo managed to get out, despite feeling every bump.
“She gave my body all the energy it needed to heal itself, but there are some things my body just can’t do. I owe everything to the Mother,” explained Dak. “Chew, it may get rough.”
Theo tried to fixate on chewing, but the tingling sensation was only masking the pain. The path got more uneven and rocky. Theo shifted around a fair bit, gritting his teeth through the pain until—finally—they came to a stop. Everyone went quiet. Theo could only hear himself chewing and his heart beating.
A wrinkled hand covered Theo’s mouth, squeezing until he stopped masticating. Suddenly even his heartbeat was silent. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach just before he was dropped to the rocky ground. Theo watched his warrior porters scatter into the forest around him, unsheathing their blades. The makeshift stretcher carrying him splintered when it hit the forest floor, and Theo felt a sharp pain in his side; he screamed, but his wailing was drowned out by the clashing of swords.
Dak leaned over Theo as arrows flew overhead. “I’m sure this is going to hurt. Nagima has to pull out the, uh… the tiny splinter in your side.”
Theo could feel her hands touching his sides as she pulled out the nearly foot-long wood shard and tossed it through Theo’s field of view. He wanted to chew, but couldn’t help but scream.
“There seems to be a minor situation,” Dak stammered. “Nothing we can’t handle, but we’ve got to pick up the pace. Just a bit.”
Nagima cut Theo from the splintered wood stretcher and quickly rolled him onto Dak’s shoulders. Each inch of Theo’s body was in excruciating pain as he was transferred, but, once he was settled and chewing continuously again, it was manageable. Although cut from the stretcher, Theo was far from being completely free: his arms were bandaged to his body, from his shoulder to his fingertips, and his legs were both splinted up to his hips and bound together. He could bend at the waist and move his head, but not much else.
Dak had wide shoulders and big muscles, and moved quickly through the rough mountain terrain. Although he only held onto Theo with one arm, Theo felt secured. Theo moved his head around—thankfully his neck wasn’t in much pain—but he still had a limited field of vision. Mostly he saw the lower half of Dak and the moving ground. Dak deftly maneuvered the terrain in very worn leather shoes. As he kicked up the dirt, Theo saw the thin leather sole was from a different animal than the body of the shoe, indicating it had probably been replaced. Around the ankle, an extra layer of leather was flapping up and down as Dak ran. With each flap, Theo could hear a soft clacking: something must have been sewn inside the edge of the leather fold.
As Theo’s eyes scanned up, he saw that Dak was not only missing a hand on his left arm: Dak’s entire right arm was amputated from just above where his elbow would have been. Theo’s eyes fell back to Dak’s shoes, and he couldn’t help but wonder how Dak kept them tied so tightly with no hands. Theo couldn’t image how Dak did anything. If he survived, he would never take his hands—or any part of him—for granted again.
Theo tested the limits of his body, and found he could turn his neck enough to see Nagima and Danaje trailing behind. Nagima’s cloak, while less ornamental than Danaje’s vibrant bird feathers, was made of multiple garments stitched together, and just as colorful. She carried a bow and a quiver of arrows on her back, and above her a golden eagle flew at the same pace as she ran.
Running next to each other, Theo could tell that the two Sigandar women were related: they had the exact same lustrous and brilliant white skin, piercing blue eyes that almost glowed, and shiny golden hair—practically reflecting the sun. A few Sigandar warriors in their red leather tunics and apprentice Sha in their ornamental cloaks chased after the women. Other warriors aimed long-range bows from between the trees a hundred yards away. Nagima was too focused on escaping to notice Danaje was falling behind.
Suddenly Danaje stopped, faced the oncoming Sigandar, and plucked a red feather from the hood of her cloak. She jabbed the quill into her arm and dripped blood on the ground. She swirled the feather around in a spiral shape in the air and the blood-soaked dirt swirled up from the ground and all around her. She abruptly stopped swirling and used the feather to fan the attacking Sigandar with a cloud of blood-red dirt that spread out and multiplied, engulfing everything in sight.
Nagima caught up with Dak and finally glanced behind to see Danaje about a hundred feet back. She stopped, the golden eagle landing on her shoulder, and shouted, “Grandmother!”
“Time I give you,” Danaje yelled back. “Go! Her will is needed!” Nagima ran, the eagle lifting off in perfect time with her, and didn’t look back again.
Mark of the Koyash
The slums of Kuun smelled like piss, but the stench brought back fond memories for Tess. The homes—made of straw, mud, and sticks—were mostly destroyed this far from Ironhead. The nearly ancient houses that managed to still stand were propped up by the rubble of the buildings around them that hadn’t lasted the test of time. Even the ones that did have structure remaining had holes in their walls and thatched roofs.
Tess stopped walking and turned to look up at her cousin. “Bring back fond memories for ya, Squally?” Tess was a petite young woman; she could easily be mistaken for a child in a crowd.
Pasqual stopped walking to answer. He was twice as tall as Tess, even with his hunched posture
—buildings were never built for someone his size. “No, I like Ironhead.”
Tess and Pasqual saw a few signs of life through the windows and doorways, but the slums were far emptier and more run-down than only a few years ago when they’d lived there. Those worst off seemed to have either fled to find a better life with everything they could carry or died with what little they had in one of the homes that were collapsing in on themselves—adding to the putrid smell for which this sewerless part of Kuun was already famous.
By contrast, the fortress, which provided them warmth and food these days, was much more pleasant to the senses—but those aesthetics came at a price. “I’m ready ta be free again, Squally. Don’t ya remember what is was like ta be free?”
“Yeah.”
“Take a sniff with me,” Tess said, taking a big whiff of air. “Ya smell that?”
Pasqual took a big whiff and immediately plugged his nose. “I don’t like it.”
Tess grinned. “Smella the real world.” She patted her behemoth cousin on the side and chuckled. “Soak it up while ya can. After the contest ya might never gedda smell it again.” Pasqual chuckled a little, but only because Tess did. “But if ya don’t win, we’re comin’ right back ‘ere.”
“Tessie,” Pasqual hesitated. “I don’t wanna.”
“I’m jus’ kiddin’, Squally. We don’t ‘ave to come back ‘ere.”
“No, Tessie. I don’t wanna fight.”
Tess grabbed Pasqual’s hand. “Remember when we made this plan?” she said, craning up to look at him in the eyes. “Ah, kneel down. I’m tired of lookin’ up at ya.”
Pasqual knelt down. He had a round face and soft features. He may have looked intimidating in size, but if anyone looked at him eye-to-eye they would see he didn’t have a warrior’s spirit. “I do.”
“Ya told me ya didn’t wanna be scared anymore. Remember?”