“That’s…” her voice cracked and she realized how thirsty she was.
The mountain air was as dry as the desert. She cleared her throat. Charlie’s reverie snapped. He whipped to face her, his eyes small and black and somehow lost in the brightening room. He seemed to rock in place as he struggled to breathe.
“Didn’t mean to startle you. I’m just… it’s early. Or late. Morning, I mean.”
Why was it so difficult to talk? She tried again but could not find her words. She thrust a cautious jab at the little panicked voice that always lived inside her head. Even that pet demon bit its tongue right now.
Charlie considered the windows. His gaze was entirely vacant. She thought he must be looking past them to the distant valley wall and tunnel entrance. Or he was still lost in his head. That’s where crazy people who hallucinated wild stories went, right? Up in their heads like the rest of us, just deeper and with far more confidence?
“I don’t….” she forced herself to sit up and cross her arms.
The room was freezing. Maybe that was just the story. It had been full of darkness and ice, of people she thought could not be real despite a nagging validity hidden in the details, of loneliness, and a flicker of humanity.
“I don’t understand. That’s a remarkable story. It’s beautiful, really. But what is it?”
Tim shifted his weight on the couch. He was forcing himself to sit up, too, but a knee had locked out and he used both hands to make it bend. He mirrored Eliza, looking from the cold fireplace to their puzzled host to the windows and the new dawn. His eyes were unfocused. He rubbed them with his knuckles, blinked a few times, and swallowed.
“Yeah, I could use some water, too.” Eliza cut her eyes from Tim to Charlie. “Maybe we should go get some.”
Tim missed her hint.
“It’s what he thinks… what he thinks happened. Like, before. His life. He thinks that creature was him. I think.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Eliza’s thoughts still ran like cold syrup. She tried again to wake her mind. This wasn’t just sleepiness. It felt like trying to rouse from a drunken stupor. No, worse. Like she drank a bottle of Benadryl. She drew deep breaths. The air chilled her lungs and forced her heart to beat faster. Her vision focused. She kept drawing deep breaths.
Tim didn’t respond. He made his way to his feet and over to Charlie. Their host did not react. He still rocked in his seat. Eliza thought it must be his own beating heart shaking his body. What scared him? Tim moved around to the side of Charlie illuminated by scant daylight. He inspected a place on the monstrous man’s neck.
“It’s all bruised. Looks like a paintball bruise but huge. Or an infection, but like purple.”
Eliza started to stand as Tim stumbled backwards. He fell into the wall and hit the floor with a thud.
“What the hell, dude!”
He glared at their host. Eliza realized that Charlie had moved first. How had Tim seen it? Charlie’s arm had swung out in a vicious arc. The thud was hand colliding with the stone wall, not Tim hitting the floor. Eliza saw a cloud of stone dust rise from the impact and scattered shrapnel on the floor. Tim had been lucky, she thought, or just faster than she was.
Tim touched a place on his own neck.
“Something’s… something’s wrong with him. Like he’s poisoned or high or… it’s like he’s high.”
Eliza set her jaw. Tim shouldn’t know these things. He was only a kid. That was dumb. He was in college. She had known things like that existed since middle school, hadn’t she?
KnowWhatsBotheringYouTellTheTruthTooPersonalWalkAwayDontNeedToKnow
“The hell was that about, Charlie? You can’t just attack people like that. Stupid bullshit reaction when Tim was just checking on you!”
When had she moved to him? She tried to remember but couldn’t. Her hands shook. Anger wasn’t new but this felt different. There was no hint of control, none of the usual reticence to lacerate someone with her unbridled words, no hint of anything except raw frustration. Her hands were on his jaw. Christ, his skin was rough. She snatched his face to hers.
“I asked you a question, dammit. What the hell is going on with you?”
He tried to face the window again but she gripped his jaw. Shouldn’t this hurt him? Her fingers ached. She couldn’t hurt him if she tried. What was he taking? When had he gotten high?
“Charlie!”
The wild man’s eyes froze, shuddered, and dimmed. When he opened them again, he was staring at her. He was awake. She pushed his head aside to look at his neck. It was unmarred.
His scalding hand was on her wrist. She yelped and tried to retreat but his hot grip anchored her. She started to slap at him but stopped. It couldn’t help. He needed to wake up, too. What was going on?
The door hissed open. A spider on stilts ducked beneath the doorframe and entered. She blinked. It was Michael. Tim scrambled backwards across the floor as Michael passed him. The specter ignored Eliza as he crouched and slipped something small into Charlie’s free hand. Eliza tried to see what it was but Charlie held it close to his face. His eyes shuddered again. She saw tears well at their corners. A spider web of blown red veins filled the sclera around his coal-black pupils.
“Come now,” Michael said. “It is time for you to rest.”
Charlie closed his hand around Michael’s gift and released Eliza. She fell backwards onto the couch. Had she been pulling against him the whole time? She might as well have been chained to a tank. Her shoulder threatened to fall off.
Michael steadied the rising giant. He found his legs and slunk through the open door.
Eliza and Tim sat in silence while they waited. Full morning light filled the room. An icy draft rushed down the chimney. There had to be more to all this than light and dark, ice and fire. She shook her head, trying to rattle the eerie story loose. His insanity was infecting her reality.
She was shivering now and realized her hands and lips were numb. This room was not built for people like her, people who lived in normal ways.
NotBuiltForPeopleAtAllNotBuiltForPeopleAtAll
“Shut up!”
“Who are you talking to?”
Tim was on his feet and staring at her. Her hands were pressed against her temples.
“Nothing. No one. Jesus, I just… Tim, I just…”
The door hissed. Michael was in the room again. Her bowels tightened as a chill rolled down her spine. He waited near the door. She realized he waited for their permission. Did he understand how scary he was? Eliza forced her hands down into her lap. He was just a man. Clothed like a man, albeit one from the Gilded Age, built like a man, albeit elongated to nightmarish proportions. He was just a man. Eliza exhaled.
“Michael. What’s going on? Where did you take Charlie? Is he okay?”
He stalked to a control panel, opened the cover, and fidgeted with the controls. The fireplace draft stopped. The windows opened wider and more sunlight poured in. Eliza heard a click and smelled burned air. Heat was filling the room.
“He oft forgets that others are not as well equipped for this world as he. I should have sent someone ahead.”
Tim collapsed in the chair beside Eliza. The bags under his bloodshot eyes, normally heavier than most people’s, were nearly black. His lips were cracked like hers. He was exhausted.
“Charlie shared his story,” Michael said.
“Something like that, yeah. About some Vikings and this, I don’t know, Bigfoot thing. Tim, what’d he call it?”
“Jernbjorn. But it moved on four legs, not two.”
“What? Oh, Bigfoot. Yeah. Four legs.”
It was like describing a fading dream. It had been supremely, even transcendently, real as he told it. Hadn’t she felt the Grimarsson’s knife stab her shoulder? She knew she had smelled the black wolf’s rancid breath. She had felt the little half-blind girl hug her leg. No, arm. All that reality crumbled into flimsy adjectives and poor analogies as she tried to rebuild the na
rrative. Tim would remember more. He had to. She needed the help.
“You may review the recording if you wish.”
Michael gestured to the control panel. A black lens no larger than a nickel was embedded in the stone beside it. Eliza looked around the bright cavern. More lenses dotted the ceiling and walls. They had seen everything.
“Why are you recording him?”
She should be angrier. It was an invasion of privacy, both his and theirs. They were not experiments. But she knew they had wandered into a world they did not understand. And the data was indispensable.
“Never mind. Just…” her vision wobbled. “What is going on? Is that story real? It can’t be. Like, not even close. He’s schizophrenic, isn’t he?”
“That wouldn’t explain all the physical stuff,” Tim said.
His eyes were focused on the small crater Charlie’s fist left in the wall. Eliza rubbed her scalded wrist. The skin was pink and tender.
“Good point. Michael. Tell us. What’s going on?”
“More than I could explain in a morning or a month, Doctor Reyes. But with your permission, I would like to begin.”
“Permission? Since when has my permission been involved in this rodeo?”
She was on her feet again. It felt better than sitting. Sitting meant lying down and that meant swirling into her goopy thoughts. Standing meant sunshine and air and a working circulatory system. She crossed her arms across her chest. Her back ached.
“You have made your own choices at every juncture, have you not? This is another such moment. There is a world waiting. Doctor Behema assures me you are peculiarly equipped for the work to be completed. That you belong here.”
He looked to Tim.
“That you both belong here. We need your assistance but I cannot ask you to be here. It is, perhaps, dangerous in ways far beyond physical harm.”
“Beyond… why me? Why us?”
The corner of the ghastly man’s eye twitched. Eliza froze in hopes of catching the slight tell again. So at least they were penetrating his façade. He might even tell them the truth soon. But his voice continued with its pristine control when he spoke.
“You have no way of knowing this but you are a singular event in the deep history of the Grupo de Pachakuti. Never has Charlie so quickly and fully connected to another person. I had known the man for a decade before he shared his story with me. You have known him for an evening. Whatever the cause, whatever the reason,” he stared at his own spindly fingers, “whatever the cost, you can help us help him.”
“How are we helping him?” Tim said.
Michael straightened. His arms fell to his sides. Tim began to ask again but Eliza held up a hand.
“He won’t tell us any more unless we’re in, Tim. He’s protecting his friend and the Grupo. Isn’t that right, Michael? There’s a lot more going on here than him just being your friend. But it’s fine. I’m in.”
She turned to Tim.
“I won’t ask you to do this. I don’t even know what’s going on. Behema will probably still honor your course credit…”
“Yeah, I’m in too.” Scarlet grew up his neck as he spoke but he refused to look away.
A wide grin filled her face.
“That’s my boy. Michael, there you go. I’ll sign a teacher’s note for Tim if you need it but we’re both in. What’s going on? That story is… it’s unbelievable but Tim’s right. It’s what Charlie believes. Why would he believe something like that?”
“Come. You have much to learn. Time is short.”
Michael vanished through the door. Eliza and Tim chased after. A railcar waited on the tracks. Charlie was gone. So many questions. Their new host coiled into the railcar. Tim hobbled after him. Eliza looked back to the cavernous room with its sunshine and its warmth and its endless questions. She was excited. They were finally headed somewhere, even if she had no clue where. That didn’t matter. The door hissed shut a final time. She followed them onto the railcar and into the mountain.
CHAPTER 11 - YAGA
“Tell me a story, Old Man Jonah.”
Resting against the tall boundary stone they used to mark the sparring circle, the aging grappler did feel old. He ran a hand along his thigh and found blood. Fen’s spikes had cut him again. It did not matter. There were many cuts before and would be many more. Jonah watched his long sigh curl into steam. It would be a cold night. The shirtless boy did not seem to mind.
“Make fire for Old Man Jonah. Then talk he will with zherebenok.”
Fen scowled at the name as he disappeared from the circle. He returned minutes later with several weathered tree trunks across his shoulders. Jonah wondered if he had ever been able to carry so much at once, even in his youth. Fen was already strong and growing stronger. His frame, though no longer as gangly as it had been when the boy became his pupil five years before, showed room for growth. His mass did not yet match his oversized elbows and knees. The young grappler’s shaved head glistened. At least carrying the huge load was still an effort.
He watched Fen lay the fire as his mother taught him. It was not uncommon for womenfolk to keep consorts like the menfolk did. Leyevi Hemanta Artemia, however, was as uncommon a woman as any Jonah knew. She took to him as she liked, inviting him to her tent for days, sometimes weeks, and then tossing him away for a year or more. Fen knew of their relationship but coach and pupil never spoke of it just as she never asked Fen about his coaching.
Jonah knew Fen’s thoughts. The relationship had nothing to do with him. Only when Hemanta vanished on a long fall hunt and never returned did the man and the boy speak of her together. That was the winter before. Jonah licked his lips and tasted pending snow. Almost a year now. She would not return. Wild things like her belonged away from humanity.
The twigs crackled. Fen fidgeted with the fire for another minute before seating himself across from his coach with his incendiary creation between them. They watched the fire offer a tornado of embers to the waiting evening sky. The sun would set soon and then the stars would outnumber the peoples of the earth. It was their favorite time.
“You owe me a story.”
Jonah looked down. Fen warmed his hands by the fire as its light flickered from the bony growths around his wrists. Jagged grey-white peaks rose up to an inch from the scarred flesh. They had no pattern. Some grew in daggers towards his elbows. Others formed a gnawing crown of thorns around his wrist. His knuckles carried their own rough growths, not spiky like the wrists but coarse like stone.
The grappler thanked the gods he did not believe in that the bones did not emerge from Fen’s fingertips. Talons like those would mean the end of their training. Many grapplers already refused to accept Fen’s challenges based on his skill and the bones. If many more refused, it might mean the end of his young career.
“Where else do bones grow?”
Fen gestured as he named each aberration.
“My knuckles. The tops of my toes. Some places where my flesh was cut, but as a kind of scale like the salmon instead of spikes. And…”
Jonah hooked an eyebrow.
“My ribs feel different. You broke them in the spring.”
His knuckle turned white as he pushed a finger into his unyielding ribs.
“Body make armor. Is good. Is evolyutsiya. Is time for little Fen to hunt, no?”
The boy shook his head, flashing his grey eyes in warning. How many times had the elder man seen that same look frighten a challenge? He chuckled.
“Is good, yes. What story does Leyevi Fen with no name want?”
As during so many fireside conversations before, Fen’s face remained blank while he thought. The entire first year of the boy’s training passed before Jonah understood that Fen was actually thinking when his face turned to a mask like that. He only recognized it after watching the boy’s mother do the same thing. She considered her son too thoughtful and not physical enough to be much like her, and he thought much the same, but the remaining two Leyevi were more alike than eit
her realized. The trick here was to be silent. They would speak when ready.
“Where do you come from?”
“Ha! Is old story, yes? Story of Darumbull. Fen not ask before. Why now?”
He expected Fen to pause again but was disappointed. It would have bought him time to find a way out of telling the story.
“Hemanta is gone almost a year. She will… she will not return. I do not know about her family. My father would not speak about his.” Fen stared at the flames he had created. “You are what I have, Darumbull Jonah Balerion. I would know your family.”
He raised an open palm to his forehead and closed his eyes in the sign of respect. Jonah sighed. The boy’s stoicism made him incidentally dramatic.
Jonah ran a finger around the fresh cut on his thigh. The skin already grew taut and tender. He needed to clean it before it infected. How many times had Fen’s bony wrists cut him? He tried to count one day but came to the end of his numbers and stopped. A thousand white scars kept grim tally of their sparring sessions, studding his muscular torso, arms, and legs. Only his neck and face remained untouched.
It did not matter. The womenfolk loved him all the more for the scars. But his leg ached. He held up two fingers dripping with his own blood. Fen’s face returned to its blank mask. At least he was still thinking.
Jonah decided to tell the story. It was already a withered memory when he met Fen. He would have to make it live again, for a little while. He would tell it in his mother tongue. The boy knew more than enough Russkiy. Jonah could not tell the story of his family using the borrowed, ever-changing stew that was the common language of the Steppe. These strange people with their strange mutations changed the meanings and sounds of words as often as a flock of sparrows changed direction.
Yet the people here, far east of his home, understood each other more, not less, as his own understanding died. They would hear the word, think for a minute about how the person spoke it, and then nod or spit. Jonah lost track as even simple words like “boy” lost their meaning. Jonah rolled his mind and then his speech into Russkiy. It was good to speak the language of his family again. The boy would keep up.
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