by K M McGuire
Andar paused, flipping his bag around to his front. “Here, this will hopefully do in a pinch.”
“Thanks,” Voden mumbled sheepishly. He took the scabbard and tied it to his waist. Again, they were quiet, following the trail where the only sound was the shallow crunch of debris withering under their weight. It was disturbing, the lack of vitality traded for the decay, having turned nihility into a creature that whispered through the neglected appendages digging at their skin, biding its time to strike. Paranoia was the hermit of these woods. He felt a stronger guilt now, knowing he’d abandoned Yael, whether with intention or not, it was still an action he’d taken. It caused him to stagger a bit, paying less attention to the groping mounds of roots rejected by its own dirt. He muttered a curse at the ghoulish snag and tried to regain his focus.
Voden looked forward to his friend, whose features were now unfazed by the morose hinterland, vigilantly glancing to and fro for any sign that could lead them out. It was then Voden saw a sudden sparkle, glaring proudly against his retina. He saw a bright thin strand of silver draped around Andar’s neck.
“Andar,” he asked, trying to squeeze beside him on the path, “what’s that around your neck?”
“What, this?” he asked, pulling the metal chain.
Attached to the chain was a small, crystal vial that held the only sense of purity, humming with the clear water from the Well of the Will. “It’s the vial Eigan gave us. I had asked Razar if he knew where I could turn it into a pendant. I wanted to make sure I had something to remain close to home, keep it close to my chest. I wanted to remind myself why we’re here.” He paused and looked around, still holding the vial. “Well, on this journey anyway. The journeys in life are never about where you’ve been. It’s about finding a definition for what home is, and how to find it when you’re lost neck deep in the world around it. I like to dream of that perfect day finding home. I hope to find it in a different vision.” He looked up for a moment into the sky.
Voden felt a sudden guilt tighten around his heart. He thought of how little he had considered his family, how worried they had to be. The memories floated up and bubbled in the tide of emotions, and as each feeling grazed his thoughts, he became more ashamed and embarrassed. He knew he had been pressing the thoughts down, forming barriers with new memories he created with Yael, with Septium. He just wanted to distill the pain he had not known he suffered.
“I miss Adetia,” he muttered, the memories pooling at the corner of his eyes.
“Me too,” Andar agreed, his voice bittersweet. It offered a bland comfort, though it was, at least, a comfort.
“It’s sad,” Voden started, as they began descending down a makeshift staircase of dilapidated slate, careful not to snap the thin rock, “the only things I can think of are the stupid things; mostly my mistakes, at least, those are butted up against the happiest things. I wish I had taken time to say sorry a little more. Too often I’ve taken advantage of forgiveness. Always wishing to be in a place I can’t, trying to bandage things that can’t be fixed. I guess if we hide something, maybe eventually it will fade away. It may not be right, but I think hiding in the dark makes me feel safer than being exposed.”
“I think all of us do,” Andar said gently, “when we stand before pain. Sometimes we blame pain for getting us stuck there as well. Without it, though, we could never go places that others haven’t seen. We could never let our eyes see what we thought was made only of dreams. We should remember pain, only to remind us to tread lightly. Really, that’s all it should be taken as: a token of humility. It teaches us to push forward, especially in the times that hurt, because inevitably, there never is time to turn back. Pain is just like pleasure; it will never last.”
Voden bit his lip in thought. “You’re probably right.” He sighed, kicking at the dense fog over his feet. “You remember when we skipped out on our lessons a few years back?”
“Isn’t that when we went to the grotto to go swimming instead?” Andar chortled, his face lighting up.
“Ha ha! Yes!” Voden said. “Your sister tried to follow us there, trying to be like you!”
“Yeah,” Andar responded, shaking his head. “If she hadn’t fancied you, I doubt she would have tried! I don’t think you know how it upset my mother! I swear, I have never seen anything that scary! I think I would rather face a stij.” He and Voden chuckled at the joke. “At least we found her.”
After a moment, he added, “We lived easy lives.”
The trees whispered a crooked note, tearing them from their nostalgia. Soon, the trees grew thin, surrounded now by less shadows, and it was slightly brighter than before. It felt like a fist had opened to hand them a gift. A rather macabre gift, but at least a step better than what was behind them.
“I guess we may have found an end.” Andar smiled.
They continued with their heads a bit higher, stumbling along the deteriorating trail. It curved down a hill, and the ground became harder; the air grew colder. Voden felt his teeth chatter, and he searched his bag for his cloak, his breath turning to quick blasts of frosty air. Decaying bushes encroached the trail as the trees grew sparse. They weaved through the briars, and their vexations were expelled with nearly every breath, as the warped claws snapped at them, hoping to latch onto Voden and Andar. Finally, they broke into a clearing, covered by heavy outcroppings of stone that crowned a deep crag, gorged into the earth. The land seemed to fear the pit.
“Great Beyond,” Andar said, staring out over the bluff. “What is this?” he asked, and his face turned to Voden, hoping it was his eyes lying to him.
Voden approached the cliffside, a solicitous expression stole over his face as he tried to understand Andar’s bewilderment. It was quickly solved when he was able to stare across the hole that stretched for what looked to be miles. It was shaped like a grave dug for a giant, one that belonged to a world much larger than their own. Its sides fell violently down to a dizzying depth, filled with bistre masses. They were like serpents, their breadth abundant, entwined with one another in an endless dance that wove across the chasm.
“Are those…roots?” Voden gasped, unconsciously following the knit of radicles.
“I can only imagine,” Andar breathed. “Look!” he cried suddenly, directing Voden’s attention. “It’s the man in white!”
And as Voden looked, he found among the knotted roots a harrowing sight. The white robe was now soiled with clusters of soot, resting half in the roots, and the body was bent at angles that contorted and broke against the twisted roots. The anemic man—no, what made him was no longer present, just his body. The eyes were sunken back into the skull, milky and listlessly staring towards the sky, jaw hanging like loose thread, gawking at the shrouded heavens. The mouth then twitched, and then again at unnerving intervals, each causing Voden to tremble with disgust. He could not break the curse that had made it nearly impossible for him to pull his eyes away, no matter how painful each spasm stung his brain.
The knotted roots surged slow and methodical, groping for the unfortunate body. The first limb touched the skin of the corpse, and soon the others wrapped the torso, crushing the ribs as they tightened. The cracks of bone were thunderous before the robe burst with a nova of red, and a moment later the legs slid down to the unknown depths between the roots. A shoot wiggled under the robe and pierced the remains of the ragdoll body, suspending it in a heinous purgatory that stared off into the sky. The only sound that came outside of the binding twists of slithering roots was a low hiss that seemed to lurk through the tangles, like a smoldering fire burning the remnants of the soul. The root that held the body quivered as if ecstatic, while the oozing gradients of red painted its victory along its surface.
But the scale of the horror grew as Voden tried to look away, prying his eyes from the body but unable to focus outside the baneful pit. It now felt as though his heart was snared with the visage of the massive necropolis. Tattered rags littered the roots, like flags of surrender from every corner visible, l
ike tiny flecks of ash falling just outside the firepit, but even that was mild compared to the deformed wooden statues of sentients that had been transformed into the tendrils, where the tarnished white flags marked them as a shameful joke. Immortalized in pillars of writhing roots, lost in time by the cruel embalming of a false dream of ascension, locked forever with the broken jaw of remorse.
The desolation dawned in fevered palpitations, unsettling Voden’s chest, as if the roots below had found a way to bind his lungs with their plundering grip.
“Do you—” Andar choked, stifling his emotions and perhaps bile. “I think this is part of the Zemilia,” he finally stammered, his lips dry, voice stale and bitter.
The excruciating acknowledgement descended on Voden’s voice, silencing the words that moaned to be spoken, but the woods somehow forced them to be unspoken. The feral land breathed insipidly across Voden and Andar, rippling with the words whispered to Voden’s mind, instilling them like etchings inside his skull.
You will see I alone am worth worship.
“It spoke to me,” Voden blurted out, hoping to drown out the chanting inside his head.
“What?” Andar asked.
“I heard the Zemilia speak,” Voden reiterated, then fell quiet, as a cloak of embarrassment surged over him. He studied Andar’s face, eager for an affirmation. He felt this vulnerability sapping his soul. Awaiting Andar’s response made the cavern he felt grow.
It seemed like time had nowhere to be as Andar allowed for the words to soak in before he finally spoke. “I can’t imagine it was pleasurable.”
“No,” Voden agreed, glad Andar had not questioned his sanity. “It was bizarre hearing what no one else heard.”
“I wonder why you could hear it.”
Voden inadvertently looked down at the cube in his hand. Why had he always forgotten about it? He felt it throb as if in response to his thoughts, the octahedron slowly spinning inside. He could not explain how it moved inside the solid cube, and he found no way to explain how he felt, but he somehow knew there was blame to place on the crystal. He squeezed it a moment in his hand and cast it as hard as he could out across the pit. It shimmered as it spun through the air. He swore for a moment he saw it form an eye, staring back at him as it drifted through the sky, peering at him through the dimension trapped inside the box. But the moment was gone too quickly as it lost itself in the sea of umber roots. They looked out across the crag, the forest of unending fog, and the bent curls of trees. It was a land of oppression, smothering the unspoken cries of those who now rested there.
A strange noise cracked through the trees, disrupting the reign of staleness that hung over the forest. A black mass rolled up from the trees behind them like a thick cancerous cloud, shaking the calm from their bones and from the dreary pine needles. As the mass grew closer, Voden could not shake the feeling there was something hiding within the layers of blackness.
“Come on!” Andar whispered hastily. “Being unwelcomed guests bares little reward, especially for those who know of the deep secrets they weren’t initiated to know.”
Voden nodded, unable to find his voice as they fled from the churning chasm while the eddies of fog eagerly snapped at their heels. They hurdled over fallen trees and scurried over slate, accepting slaps and scratches from the wayward branches, moving as far away from the darkness as they could, unknowingly entering the darker depths of the forest.
It hardly mattered if the fog had caught up now. It could have fallen over top of them and they would not have noticed, nor could they discern any difference in the trees, each stitched with the same desperation that rotted their bark. The moss was brown, and everywhere they looked appeared closer to the bottom of the ocean than any forest Voden had experienced. And it was loud with silence.
They stepped cautiously among the haunted sentries, exchanging hard stares with the enigmas. The trees bent low, sloping over top of the interlopers, mocking the stares that Voden and Andar gave them. The knots taunted them with wild, manic smiles, and the branches tugged at one another as if chuckling at the lost boys. They trailed along the blighted earth, and time made it feel like an endless cycle of trudging onward, wishing for it to break open to an escape, waiting on answers they knew would not come from the heckling trees.
Hours seemed to idle causelessly, as though they had never a desire to come or leave, not wanting to waste themselves on such a barren land. Lantern-like mushrooms hung limp on the felled trees whose spores, Voden imagined, would only further the state of confusion.
The more they walked, the more the forest seemed to thicken with withering vegetation and a darkness that sapped the energy for them to go on, pulling out of them a heavier frustration. “If there was a place the Great Beyond could not see,” Andar said, “this place would be the first I would turn my eyes from.”
Voden hadn’t the mindset to disagree. Andar plopped down on a log where the one end was swallowed by the spongy earth.
Voden joined him, peering into the fingers of the canopy. The forest tessellated with each passing moment, matching the gear of the unchangeable sky. Voden tried to huff out his irritation that he now wore like a cursed broach. Andar nodded his sentiment, weary of the cursed place as well. His head hung low to his chest, shaking it slowly back and forth. Voden suddenly felt an ache of pity for Andar, shocking him as it welled behind his eyes. Never had he felt it for his friend, and it began to almost solidify when he started to realize his own selfishness had never allowed for him to truly grasp what was at the core of his friend. He never had a consideration of the smallest fragment of Andar’s mental mechanics, or even graced the notion to glance at the vulnerable flame that furnaced his soul deep inside his heart. It was never given a prudent second of thought.
It dawned on Voden how strong Andar must be: to bear the weight of understanding those surrounding him so well that even the closest ones to him forgot he was alone while he held the rest above himself. But he was also strong enough to never burden those already burdened. He had always spoken things Voden knew to hear, but Andar could not find a real way for Voden to ever truly listen. Again, revelation developed, whispering to him that he had never seen Andar weak. The sense of pity filled the cavity of his chest, and the fool he harbored wished to beat against it. To beat it numb was always the folly of Voden, the great fool, who should have known all along it was always his fault he never really took time to listen.
The trees swayed eerily, as though the weaving branches were wafting the melancholy that slipped from Voden’s lungs, sniffing at it with relished creaks of wood. Voden tried to ignore the thoughts.
“You know,” Voden said, trying to share a bit of comfort, “you don’t need to always be the hero. Maybe it’s better to leave that burden alone.”
Andar drew his head from off his chest, bringing his eyes out of the seemingly deep well of pensiveness.
“Maybe,” he said quietly, “but I would think then every story we heard that granted us hope should be closed, cover to cover, and the reactions of our heart to be disembodied from ourselves.” He looked out through the bitter twilight clenching his jaw. “This world must have a better narrative.” He leaned back, placing his hands along the gritty moss, now staring beyond the cavernous sky. “When we find ourselves in the world without hope, we should look to the subtleties; those are what truly reign supreme. It’s something so small but potent enough to birth the impossibilities, even the events of perfection becoming obtainable. Hope is meant to wish and act on dreams. The little good we see is enough sometimes to say it’s not so bad, and the Will is the dance all things join in when it all learns its place.”
“I think you miss our great limitations,” Voden said. “We find no hero in hope.” Andar’s eyes almost seemed to cup Voden’s face with sadness. The trees loomed closer, intent on sapping their insecurities.
“I suppose this is why we write stories,” he began. It seemed he was speaking to encourage himself rather than speak to Voden. “We create the hero
es we want; those who will change the world, where we cannot. We cry so deeply for change, yet we just pass around our tears and collect them in jars, drowning the heroes inside. We expect they cannot exist. We want that good we cheer for in the tales we read. No one plans to make it real. It’s too farfetched for any real rational thought! But, until someone does, we all suffer. We were never meant to be saviors, only heroes: champions of brothers. We remember how we became teardrops but never look further to see the rainbow deep inside the prism.” He sighed, staring blankly up, his eyes glassed over. “Just rainbows trapped in teardrops.”
“Maybe it’s just our own selfishness that creates heroes,” cried Voden, deepening Andar’s curious expression. It slightly angered Voden, and he was unsure as to why he felt that way, but he continued, “How can we say the pursuit of heroes is worthy? It’s a vicious quest of nobility wrapped in dreams of personal grandeur! It’s hunger to be better than all the rest. It’s a heart driven mad by morals no real person can hold! It’s maddening how impossible it is to obtain it! One foot falls back, and down the cliff we fall! Of course, we wish to be them! Of course, we wish them among us! I realize we can never achieve it, and perhaps its selfish to think otherwise!”
Andar remained quiet, which was oddly satisfying to Voden. He wanted the moment to continue, he wanted the win against Andar. He wanted his argument to be the last, but disappointment came as Andar responded.
“You might be right.” Voden snorted at the comment. “I don’t know how to best respond, but you must understand the nature of hope and selfishness. Selfishness is hope’s shadow.”
“How does that make sense?” Voden nearly yelled with exasperation.
“Selfishness has no depth,” Andar began calmly, ignoring Voden’s anger. He stretched his arms into the air tracing the dull expanse. “Exactly like a shadow, it goes as far as the darkest shade, flat against the surface. It is all only surface, hiding from the light. It silhouettes the shape of hope, only in the fact that it is put in the outline of the object of self, where the hope of possibility rests alone in the individual. That is why it can only fall further into darkness. The darker it becomes, the more it flattens. It moves further away from the real depth that is found only in light, in love and in hope. Its variation is only itself. There are no textures beyond its shade, it just deepens a void of illusions. In its twilight, monsters stir in the mirror shaped like you, reflecting spoils and crowns, and so, you begin to believe in the lies they whisper to you. When your eyes watch the shadow behind you, you start to chase it, running around in circles, unable to grab its edge, forgetting what had cast the light in the first place. When your eyes lose focus on the path, the monsters come out of hiding to lead you to their mouths.”