by K M McGuire
“This is it then,” he whispered, and it seemed sobriety returned to him. “How is it even possible to have gotten it from her?” His eyes yearned for answers, and whatever it was that lingered in his gaze astonished Voden.
“Andar did it,” Voden responded, and Vec handed the elixir back to Voden. “I really don’t know how to explain it.” He looked at Andar.
“I didn’t really do anything,” he said innocently, “I only tried to do what I felt compelled to do.”
“I never would believe it possible,” Vec said distantly, “There must be more to…let me hear your tale.”
Andar began explaining how they had gotten behind the grove, explaining how the door seemed to open to the cube Voden had. He told them of their venture through the cursed wood and the expanse of roots. Vec and Yael held tight to the story, listening intently, allowing for their feelings to be expressed only in their eyes and limiting their questions as much as they could. He began to explain their experience with Blossum, and the visions she shared with them, and finally brought them to the conclusion of how she then saved Andar.
“Perhaps there is hope for this world in you,” Vec murmured, drinking thoughtfully from his jug. “So, you think that elixir will save your city?”
“I would hope so,” Andar responded.
“So, when you make it back to Adetia, that’s it then?” blurted Yael, her question rather blunt, as if she had meant to ask it for a while. Her voice seemed to jump out of her, and she was just as surprised as everyone else.
“I don’t know yet. I’m sure they’re going to want to celebrate,” Voden said, trying to dismiss the question and its implications. “Are you two not coming with us?”
“I’m not,” Vec said abrasively. “I think that would be the biggest mistake I would make in my life.” He turned away from their gaze and continued to drink from his jug.
“Why?” Voden asked kindly.
Vec still tarried without an answer, exchanging a look with Yael. She grimaced but said nothing. Finally, he sighed. “Just do what you think is right.” He rose and stretched. “For now, I think it’s time to rest. Too much booze. It’ll be a struggle to wake. Best be ready to get you home.”
“That hasn’t seemed to be a problem before,” Yael said. She gave him a cruel smile, obviously criticizing his alcoholism.
He shrugged without response then ducked inside the tent. The three sat quietly for a bit, staring at the fire, sipping from their jugs. No words broke the silence. Yael shot Voden loaded glances but continued to hold her tongue, awkwardly trying to give Andar a hint. Finally, Yael spoke up, “There’s plenty of room in Vec’s tent. There are some spare blankets in there for you to sleep.”
Andar furrowed his brow, saw the look Voden had been giving him, and nodded. He muttered a hurried goodnight then made his way into Vec’s tent. It was now just Yael and Voden. Her hand shifted over to his, and his gaze followed. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“Thank you. I missed you. I wish I hadn’t disappeared behind that door,” he said. He felt a throb in his heart, quaking with the twinkle caught in her eye. It seemed it was not enough to express with words. Voden found it difficult to unveil his true sentiments, other than to stare off into her unending gaze.
“Do you want to go to bed?”
Yael gripped Voden’s hand, and with a smile, she led Voden back to her tent. Every thought going through Voden’s head made his heart swell with each beat. Voden ducked inside, instantly filled with awe, gawking at the room magicked within. In the center spun a lazy fire, pushing its heat along the taut walls of canvas, as the smoke drifted through the round hole cut from the top. She had summoned a sort of vanity towards the back of the tent. Its frame was made of the roots of the nearby trees. They formed a two-dimensional egg, spilling a mirror of water from the tips of the radicles, filling a small basin that absorbed the excess back into the ivory roots tangled at the base of the vanity. As they moved into the next section, Voden spotted a stone ward, where its green gem flickered within the solid, and the lines flowed with a dull light, distributing the energy through the tent.
Yael had magicked a bedframe for the section they entered, a rather simple piece, which was covered in layers of furs. “How did you bring all of this?” Voden asked, rubbing his hand along the heavy cloth dividing the tent. “It couldn’t have been light.”
“You would think I hardly know anything about AD,” she jested, teasing him with a smile. “I used a method called arcane compression. It’s a division of AD that condenses the material as well as minimizes its weight. Basically, there is extra space in objects that you draw out, but the objects must be contained inside a specific container that stabilizes it.”
“Why didn’t you use that during the summer?” Voden asked as they both sat on the plush bed.
“Tibijat is the season to be thankful for less,” she said. “It makes room for something more valuable to move in.” She became quiet, looking at her hands placed shyly in her lap.
Voden suddenly realized something truly significant about her. He couldn’t even fully place it, but it tugged at him on a purely emotional level, fleeting and subtle like the flavor of water. Regardless, he felt it flash along his nerves, trying to whisper its secret to his brain. Whatever it was became flush in her cheeks, vocalized by her silence. She was as mysterious as honey, dripping with the same golden transparency and anointed by the same sweetness. It became his secret he felt sworn to preserve, and it was a new sort of quest he had taken up without being asked. This, he wanted to choose. He looked at her presence, watching the colors flicker with the lacy tongues of fire. He could feel his eyes trying say what his mouth could not, and her eyes shared the same glow. Voden felt his heart, pressing him to come to terms with his silence.
Yael held his gaze. It was then that perhaps she realized much more deeply that Voden could not give up on her. It was her vulnerability she wished to hide, wanting someone to take away the pains of the past and protect herself from the searing pains that could come with the future. Perhaps too, she saw in Voden how he felt, how he pleaded to be her protection, and how he refused to cause her fears to come true. His tremendous fear of being unable to give to her his heart unconditionally no longer existed. He was ready to learn. The silence they shared spoke more powerfully than language could offer to something so ineffable.
A surge of understanding (perhaps it was an essence of love) pushed the thought of each other towards the curiosity of their tandem being. Their fear suffocated their innocence and caused them to linger in stagnancy. Voden felt a compulsion to go further with her, to explore much more deeply, but doubts of morality fought viciously throughout his brain. Yet, she was everything he held as love. The doubt could not change him feeling the enigma. Could love be this easy to grasp? Surely something so pure, so magnificent, was not so easily gained. He couldn’t understand why it made the feeling feel wrong, yet he couldn’t break the thought that it truly wasn’t.
“You know, this won’t become real until you decide to have me,” Voden muttered weakly.
She had voted to explore it. She took her hands, brushing them across his cheek where a rippling of sensation slipped from Voden’s skin into his veins. And the pulse of feeling he had not felt before sent his heart caroling at every stroke of her finger. Her touch was moved by curiosity, as if unsure whether the innocence would be swept away in the excitement. Voden’s heart was in control. He moved his arms to hold her, her neck cupped inside his fingers and her hair draped over them like dark velvet, veiling the embrace. His lips met hers, and every thought of right and wrong became only iterations in his mind, swept away by their passion. The emotions ran quickly through him. He knew it was true for her as well, as they began to dance in the synthesis of what they felt must propagate their union. Her hands ran through his hair, intoxicated by the touch, through their tightly pressed lips, they exhaled breath as one. She held his hair, tugging at the locks, as though signaling she wanted to stop hersel
f but knew she could not resist.
The feeling of the unknown sent them towards one another. The curiosity propelled them further into the whole of themselves. Touch became insatiable, and it was not lust that drove his loitering hands to hold the softness of her bare hips. It was that curiosity they hoped was pure and could fulfill the most primal thing they had been searching for since consciousness concealed the thought. Everything became lost by the dance, and they travelled with one another. Their skin pressed tight together, reaching out with what they could only imagine was their spirits and their minds—and the most loose of which was their bodies—further into that pursuit that stretched well beyond them. They felt so close to finding what resided at the end, and it would be together that answers would surface, to convince them that it was real.
It was then—the rush of their curiosity giving in to the axiom of their union—where she felt the rush of life convulse across the synapses of her body. They returned to themselves filled with elation, euphoria expelling from them in great gasps of air. Their heads pressed against each other’s brow, a union of single thought, willing it to be unbroken.
“We write our lives in stone, Voden.” Yael whispered to him. “We choose our path, and eventually, we look back to see the marks left behind. Regret is the executioner to the future.”
“And what can you do when destiny strips that away from you?” Voden asked, as he stroked her hair.
She buried her head along his chest and closed her eyes. “What is a home if you never chose it?”
∞ ∞ ∞
Voden had fallen blissfully into his sleep, praying time would keep the memories firm in his mind, spinning with thoughts of his blossoming love. As he drifted into the dripping ink of slumber, he felt the dream break the dam of that hopeful reality. And soon, he was tightly wrapped in darkness, the thick ether compounding his throat. A striking flash exposed the expanse in an eerie green glow where particles of ancient plants, and flecks of glinting scales, and anemic flesh moved lethargically, caressing the translucent pockets of atmosphere like an estranged lover. Deep in the void, he felt seduced by the oddly anodyne sensation of languorous sinking, wondering if he would meet the bottom or succumb to the pressures of death. The flash began to subside, and it siphoned the color from his eyes. Despair dawned when he realized the depth of his status. He was slipping towards the trenches of the ocean. Again, the sea was silenced in the aphotic canyon. Voden was trapped by thoughts that drifted up with the fissuring pockets of air, and any sense of physiology was denounced by the crushing black.
And then, he was no longer lost in the ether. He thought little of the transition to this new place, but instead considered the delicate, charred silt that clung frailly to the woven sticks beneath his feet. Ebonized twigs screamed in powdery cracks under Voden’s weight, the slightest pressure snapped and strained the braided wood, crumbling the weakest to remnants of cinder. The woven bowl curled around him, embracing the edge of the horizon. It appeared he was in a nest, either receiving the sun or giving it away.
While he pondered the thought of whether the sun was setting or rising, Voden heard a screech that split the bonds of air, begging for his ears to rupture. His head was subjected to the impulse of his eyes, rushing for the vessel that projected the cry. There, resting amid a mound of silky particles of white ash, sat a bird that would easily swallow Voden without a hint of consideration. Again, it screeched, throwing back its head towards the heavens.
The beast was a beautiful aberration. Its features were cryptic and physically embodied a metaphor, adorned with an aged, epochal youth. The bird was textured in dark, tight patches of wrinkled leathery flesh, blighted by segments of sunken, raw skin that almost seemed transparent. Subtle pulses beneath the surface nearly showed blood coursing through its veins. It appeared to have just been born, riddled with confusion as it continued to weep bitterly out to the heavens that bore unreconcilable stoicism.
It wore a flaky crown of powdered linen draped upon its massive head, which flickered down towards the earth at the slightest turn of the creature’s neck. He watched the creature, entranced by the cascading silt sprinkling through the air, when his eyes met the creatures, their vision now cohering to one another. With its head cocked, Voden knew it could see him clearly, though the eye was masked by an ivory fog that plagued its pupil.
The avian twitched, attention suddenly taken by perhaps an instant recollection, or a fleck that had fallen from the sky, where it gazed, enraptured by the beaming sphere that rested on the lip of the nest. It stared determined, eyes riveted to the sky’s bloodletting, as the horizon transfused the color out of the world, pulling the void above them. Wistfulness was sheltered behind the foggy eyes, where it refused to move. Its anatomy had turned to rock. It watched the sky long enough then abruptly shed the sentiment, bursting into its great reveal. Shockwaves of heat billowed from the core of the creature, and with it came radiant flames, morphing the dull, horrid looking bird, into a marvel of archaic beauty. It crowned itself with accolades of mythical legends Voden had thought to be as dead as those who had created them.
It was collateral to awe that his breath had been captured by this revelation, yet the heat expelled from the phoenix was arguably more potent to his airless lungs. Ash fluffed up at the paroxysm of fire, and the phoenix flared out its wings, erecting its fiery feathers into the air. Confidence belted from inside its chest, now prepared to take to its domain. A great ripple of boiled air beat against Voden, and the phoenix sent its body into the sky, finding its path towards the sun. Never once did it turn to see what it had left behind, soot setting in where the bird had once resided.
He wished to linger in the moment and absorb the wonder, but that grace did not come. Again, he found himself drifting through a sickly green liquid, painted with roguish detail. His feet thumped against the soggy surface of the ocean floor, blossoming bister-colored mushrooms that grew and decayed too rapidly to be natural. But this did not strike him as unusual. Instead, the murky mountain consuming the foreground stole the attention of his loitering eyes. It sat dormant in the deep, as unshakable as the heavens themselves, which was only part of the reason why he was fixated on them. He could not fight the pangs of curiosity every time a stream of bubbles manifested from it, racing to find sanctity at the surface of the sea.
As the quandary began to swell further with question, he was blinked out of the deep, facing a courtyard of a mighty castle not unlike the ones he had grown to envision while listening to his mother’s fairytales. In fact, it was inexplicably the same vision of them, quaintly set in a landscape he thought appropriate for a stronghold of that caliber. A low garden wall lined the stone path leading through the courtyard, where a young, beautiful princess sat listlessly. She wore a delicate summer’s eve gown, white as snow, blatant against the bounty of nature. She held the scene like a keystone to an arch.
She sat with comfort, focusing on a strange wooden box. Laughter colored her face, drawn to something more whimsical than the gentle air that tickled her hair. Her smile eclipsed the sun. It touched Voden’s heart, surging him into a memory that was faint, but analogous to something that called from another realm. It was like he knew her, though he could not distinguish her features well enough to remember.
All he processed was her focus, directed away from him, and he looked towards the aged wooden box that sat in front of her. He gazed at its side, warped with swollen grains, and began to walk around it. The girl silently laughed at the box. Still, she offered no attention to Voden. This made him more suspicious, and it drew the perplexed emotions tensely, like a readied bow. He tore his eyes from her, staring into the front of the prism, feeling even more puzzled than a few seconds previously.
A window was cut from the box, curtains pulled back and pinned behind its corners with a mild gold sash to discourage the robin-egg blue sheets from interrupting the scene. Poorly crafted cutouts plastered the background, made of unnaturally colored hills and childlike interpretatio
ns of landscape, comically resting behind the tangles of sting and mannequins that filled the foreground. The first puppet was minimally crafted to resemble a knight, bobbing along the brilliant grass, its fumbling head jerking hitherto. He considered the knight’s sword, similar to the Keeper’s Bane, adorned with blue lines that ran along the blade. The warrior cautiously stepped towards (which surprised Voden how well the single effect was compared to the remainder of the show) a billowing smoke dumping out of the cave, the mouth of which showed an emerald green tail curling back inside.
The tail must have sparked a memory again, taking him away from the puppets and the princess and back to the green abyss. Obsidian fragments of wood bumped against him, and streams of bubbles bloomed everywhere around him. He drifted to where the light grew null. Larger shadows of broken hull fell around him, and Voden was left behind to slip further into the deep. He was buffeted by a violent jet of air, vibrating his body. He tried to shield himself, and when it finally let him be, he looked back only to be confronted by glowing, crimson orbs, burning fiercely against his skin.
Perhaps his fear had gotten the best of him. He could still see the eye examining his tiny frame when he again saw the girl, still at her garden wall, leaning against it as she wept inconsolably. The sky had changed where seasons could not explain its color. The sky was soaked in blistering blood. Red wax teardrops streamed across the blood and shadowed horizon. The droplets of dying stars met the earth behind the castle, sending dirt and light into all manner of chaos. The princess still could not look at him even as he approached. She was the only thing that mattered to him. Only her shuddering shoulders had real sadness that mattered, even as the world collapsed behind her.
“What’s wrong?” Voden said, announcing his presence to her. He moved to comfort her, and she began to wipe her eyes, sniffling to stifle her sorrow. “Are you okay?”