James and the Changing Red

by J W Cotter

  The Fifth Forest

  Union

  As the waves rolled in faster and higher he moved along the small cave to the usual ledge and with great strain hoisted himself up. The rocks were wet and the moss wasn’t the greatest for gripping but somehow he always managed to get up, as did the rats. At the beginning he would have to fight for a sliver of space to evade the increasing water, now only a handful of them scurried around his bare feet. He felt somehow most of them knew that now they had a better chance of survival in the water as in his hand was a heavy rock and with one swift movement he smashed it down on the biggest, brownest bunter he saw. It made a most horrid crunch and the rodent stopped moving and almost instantly he and the dead rat were all that remained on the ledge.

  When he was first thrown in the cavern cell he was fed, not generously but his stomach never rumbled and at least he had some company every so often. From the commencement of his sentence he made scratches on the wall to count the days, he was now on his two-hundredth and fifty-sixth day. On the eighty-third day there was an extra mark, a scribble. That denoted the last day he was brought food, the last day he saw another living soul. Ever since then he was on his own, the dark damp cell that was no larger than the average horse cart was his home. As he wasn’t too fussy, food was abundant and the stable diet of rats never ran dry, even if they had to be eaten raw, the taste wasn’t too bad and after vomiting a few times when he first ate them, they now went down without a second thought. On the rare occasion he managed to catch a few crabs or sometimes a fish would get caught as the water was receding and he would eat well that day, feeding the rats the leftovers. Water was plentiful every day but it was salted and left him thirstier then before and with no possible way of starting a fire to boil water he started licking the walls. Unsalted and refreshing with a hint of moss, it sufficed.

  If their idea of isolation was to punish him or somewhat break his spirit they were entirely incorrect. He liked being alone, it was when he was most happy and at peace, even if he did have to eat rats and lick the walls. Well in truth he didn’t have to eat or drink, he wasn’t going to die, but he would become weak and frail and that would simply not do, he after all knew what was on the horizon that others did not.

  There was taste of fish off the rat as he munched his way through it, licking the wall to help the pieces glide down the throat. This one must have had more than its fair share of the fish that was caught two scratches ago. As he picked bits of grizzle and fur out of his teeth he waited to discard the rest of the carcass until the water receded and the rats returned to their tiny crevasses, sleep wasn’t an option as they got vicious when he slept and in packs they would attack, killing one as soon as it got near normally scared the rest away again for a couple of hours. Nevertheless he was exceptionally tired for some reason, perhaps the good meal he had just eaten had swelled his stomach so much he needed to sleep it off and so unwillingly he slowly dozed off, his eyes popping open every few seconds to look for rats until they couldn’t open anymore.

  His body suddenly shook and he woke with a fright, no there weren’t any rats attacking him and the water had receded. The six or seven feet of water that had been swirling around him when he dozed off was nothing more than a mere puddle and pieces of seaweed now, something he’ll use as vegetables for his next meal. No, a noise woke him, a known but sadly rarely heard one; footsteps.

  “Come on come on open up the bloody thing, we haven’t got all night” the familiar voice ordered and slowly the stone door slid open and in she walked, dressed completely in furs, her head covered in white fur dotted with black opals. She hadn’t changed one little bit since the last day he saw her, the day Thom died. “Ugh, the smell in here, how do you stick it?” she asked as she lifted her hand to cover the lower part of her face.

  “I guess I stopped smelling it after the first hundred scratches” Alyn replied coldly, coming down from the little ledge and although stumbling slightly he regained his balance and stood tall opposite her.

  “Scratches?” she asked confused prompting Alyn to point to his calendar wall. “Goodness has it been that long, the time is flying by”. Moving forward toward the prisoner she kicked the carcass of the rat by accident. “You didn’t like your meals?”

  “When I got them they were fine, haven’t been getting them in a while”

  “Really, that is terrible” She genuinely sounded surprised that Alyn wasn’t being fed, but she had a remarkable ability for acting.

  “Why don’t you just get to the point, you want to know what I’ve seen for you since her death?” Alyn said folding his arms and glancing at the Mother with all the disdain he could muster.

  “Well I was going to see how long we could keep up the small talk but no need to beat around the bush, so tell me what you see”

  “Nothing, I haven’t seen you in any vision since the fifty-fourth scratch, I take it that’s when you had her killed?”

  “What makes you think it was me who had her killed, good heavens it happened hundreds of miles from here”

  “And your hands can stretch a thousand miles further”. She smiled at that response and casually leant against one of the walls, dampening the furs in the process but she didn’t seem to mind.

  “So you haven’t seen me in any of your visions, that is the best news I’ve heard in a long time” she closed her eyes and just smiled. Her shoulders seemed to drop a few inches and her body relaxed. Alyn watched as her mind seemed to drift away with her thoughts and his eyes wandered to the exit that remained opened. He could take the chance and try and escape, lose the guards in the vastness of the cave. After coming to grips with the taste of rat he could survive a few more months hidden in the dark corners, at least he would be able to come and go as he pleased. One foot moved almost independently and the other followed but the sound of dispersing water opened her eyes once more. “Good, you’re ready to get going” she smiled moving away from the wall.

  “Going where?”

  “You haven’t seen the next stage?”

  “I told you, I haven’t seen you or anything to do with you in any vision for a long time” he replied quite angrily.

  “I see, so my idea won’t lead to any misfortune”

  “Not that I’ve seen”

  “Fantastic, guard let’s go” the Mother beamed as a guard entered the small cave. He wasn’t one of her close personally conjured guards, he was simply a soldier dressed in brown leathers with a simple spear as a weapon. “After you dear” she said and the soldier took Alyn forcefully by the arm and led him out of the cave, passed the white girl and along a dimly lit passageway that in turn led to a set of spiralling steps. As they climbed the walls went from natural to man-made and soon Alyn was standing in a crow’s nest of a small tower built on the cusp of the cliff above the caves. Night had fallen and the sky was clear of any clouds and the moon was no where to be seen while the stars moved fast across the black canvass in an array of colours. The sea was calm and scarily inviting while the wind blew soft and danced a thick smell of smoke into the atmosphere. Curious Alyn looked over the edge and down below there were ships, many ships floating like a small town mere meters from the beach. Each of the ships had a ring of fire circling it, no doubt in a bid to scare away the monsters that lurked beneath the black surface. There were forty maybe fifty ships with hundreds of people scurrying around on the decks and in the middle there was the largest ship, one that looked like a floating palace. It could easily house hundreds of people on its own and its circle of fire was somehow a magnificent blue while another greener flame burned atop its masts. That was the Mother’s ship.

  “Beautiful isn’t it?” the Mother asked as she too arrived in the suddenly over crowded crow’s nest. Alyn didn’t reply but continued to look at the ships and all the people rushing about working. “My dear boy those are truly wonderful ships, but that isn’t the beautiful sight” she said taking him by the shoulders and walking hi
m to the other side of the nest. His heart sank and his eyes suddenly filled with tears. The smoke that had been filling his nostrils and blackening his clothes wasn’t coming from the ships; it was coming from the forest. Fires raged as far as the eye could see and the thousands of tall trees that stood for centuries were snapping like twigs and crashing to the ground changing the fifth forest from a well insulated haven to a baron wasteland.

  “Why did you do it?” Alyn asked, his voice quivering with sadness and anger.

  “Dear boy you didn’t see this in your visions. It is a good omen, we will move onwards with no option but to succeed or die trying, we have nothing to return to” the Mother whispered into his ear and she returned to the top of the staircase. “Come along Alyn, we have a journey to make”.