William shuffled over to where he had spread out his cape and sat on it, then he picked up his sword. He grabbed the edge of the fabric, pulling it taut, and started sawing off a strip with the blade. He did not know how long the bandage needed to be to wrap around the wolf, but he knew its fur made it look bigger than it really was; he settled for a meter-long strip to be safe. He cut off another bandage the same size and shuffled back to the wolf’s side. It had been eyeing fresh blood seeping from its wounds but turned its gaze to William as he held out the bandages for it to see. It sniffed at the bandages and its eyes flickered, either with some kind of primitive understanding or with pain.
William pushed the wolf’s head back to the ground and noticed that, where the water had pooled, the dirt had turned into mud. He dug his fingers into it and scooped out a handful. He stared at the mud for a moment then glanced at the wounds in the wolf’s hide. A thought popped into his head. Brushing the fur back from a grouping of cuts, he plastered the mud over them. The wolf’s shivering lessened, so he proceeded to cover the rest of the slashes with mud. When the wolf looked like a swamp creature, he lifted it gently off the ground to feed the bandages under its body. He positioned them so they would cover the mud when he wrapped the two strips of cloth around its torso. After he tied both bandages off, the wolf stopped wiggling and looked up at him with gratitude apparent in its eyes.
William stood up and looked down at the wolf with satisfaction. Wiping his hands clean, he turned his attention to his own wounds. He pulled his cloak off over his head, exposing his pale body to the Sun, and dropped it in a heap on the ground. Seeing the stream of blood that ran down his torso, he sighed. “Should have saved some water.”
William looked at the pitcher on the ground and gasped, finding it full to the brim, the water sparkling in the sunlight. He laughed and bent to pick up the pitcher, lifting its brim to his lips for a long gulp. Lacking the energy to wonder how the pitcher had been refilled, he went ahead and dumped the entire pitcher over his chest. He shivered as the water rushed down his body and washed the blood away. He put the pitcher down then examined the gashes on his chest—each about the length of his index finger, all grouped across his pectorals. Figuring that one bandage would suffice, he sat on the edge of his cape he had already cut from and pulled it taut, then he picked up his sword and sliced off a full-length strip. He wrapped the bandage tightly around his chest and tied it off under his arm.
William pushed himself to his feet and picked up his bloodstained cloak, pulling it on over his head. With all the wounds tended, thoughts of the battle vanished from his mind. He surveyed the horizon to locate the distant bulge and took a few steps towards it before he remembered the wolf had suffered worse wounds than him. He looked at it and saw it looking back at him but showing no signs of moving. He smiled at the wolf. “Let us rest a while. You can decide when we continue.”
William sat down beside the wolf and the energy he had felt a moment before dissipated. He became aware of a lethargy that seemed to radiate from inside his bones. Reclining onto his back with his head cushioned on an arm, he looked up at the sky and saw the Sun hanging at its zenith. He tilted his hat forward to shade his eyes and dozed off to sleep.
***
William found himself standing deep within a prehistoric forest. Oaks towered over his head, their branches interlocked to shade the ground. Vines draped between each limb and ran up their trunks. Ferns spiraled their fronds across the ground to fill the space between trees. Mushrooms lifted their red caps above the leaf-strewn ground. Mist hung in the air, providing an atmosphere of nostalgia for the scene.
William strolled through this solace where Time stood still, no sounds to disturb the peace. He knew this forest was his ultimate destination—a place where no human had tread, where the ground had not been contaminated; a place where he could commune with the forces of Light, with his Father’s essence before it had been perverted with misinterpretations. He gazed with wonder at a line of fungi that spiraled up the trunk of a tree, disappearing above the mist.
William held out his hands to feel the outstretched fronds as he brushed by them, the ground beneath his feet hidden by shade while he glanced from tree to tree overhead. An eon passed by and still the oaks held his heart in rapture; too soon, the trees began to thin out, letting sunlight in to dance through the mist. As he walked out of the forest, he heard a steady roar in the distance. Knee-high grass billowed across the ground before him, stretching to the shore of a shimmering lake. He longed to return to the forest’s shade, but his feet carried him forward through the overgrown field. The roar grew louder as he approached the edge of the lake, reverberating on his eardrums in synchronization with the breeze blowing across his brow.
William stopped beside a boulder which jutted out into the shallows of the lake, blocking his view to the right. He looked to the left, tracing his eyes along the lakeshore; across the lake, a stream flowed out across the field and weaved through the tree line into the forest. He could not discern any source for the roaring, which now seemed to fill his entire being.
William turned to the boulder and reached his arms up to grasp onto its slick edge. Pulling himself on top of it, he stood to stare into a mist which dampened his face. A meter before him, a waterfall plummeted into the lake from a cliff far above his head, the foam refracting the sunlight into rainbows. He stretched his arm out to grab a handful of water, and it pounded against his skin, splashing into his face. He closed his eyes against the spray.
***
When William opened his eyes, he no longer heard the roar of the waterfall, no longer saw its radiance. He looked up to see the wolf licking his face. He wished he could have lingered in his paradise, but thoughts of necessity came rushing back to him. He sat up and pushed the wolf away, which whimpered as he pushed himself to his feet. Picking up the pitcher, he took a swig then dumped the rest of the water on the ground. The wolf lapped at the puddle while he wrapped the pitcher up with his shorn cape and tied it into a sack. He straightened his hat on his head, lifted the sack with one hand and grabbed his sword with his other. He scanned for the bulge on the horizon and started walking towards it, the wolf chasing after him.
As the grey earth flowed by underfoot, William felt a new bounce in his step—a lightheartedness that had been instilled by his dream. The glory of Nature had refreshed his mind, pushing away all thoughts of Death and replacing them with thoughts of Life. The dreamforest really did exist before the rise of humanity—before they tore it down with their bulldozers, before they burned it to the ground with napalm. The thought of what had once been and what could one day return—if the spark he carried could be nurtured into fruition—made his heartstrings thrum as he jogged across the plain. No longer did he dread his destiny with each step; his Father had won his consent.
The wolf could sense the change that exuded from William’s stride, the sense of purpose clarifying as the land faded behind them. It loped by his side with its tongue lolling out of its mouth, noting that the air no longer carried the acrid taste of decay but the sweet taste of growth. The Sun had careened halfway down the sky before them and William increased his pace, fancying that they were racing it to the horizon.
An hour passed as William and the wolf played off of each other’s momentum to never slow down, never look back. The wounds on his chest burned more painfully the further he jogged, but he refused to let that slow him. I am the master of my body. He looked down and saw the wolf had started to lag behind, so he came to a stop, panting for breath. It walked up to his side and he patted its head. “I should not have pushed us so hard. Sorry, boy.”
William stabbed the sword into the ground and unfolded the sack, setting the pitcher on the ground and watching, mesmerized, as water filled it to the brim. He drank deeply from it and offered it for the wolf to lap from. After he dumped the rest of the water on a clump of grass and wrapped the pitcher up again, he pulled his swor
d out of the ground and continued the journey at a walk, the wolf at his side.
He kept his eyes on the bulge on the horizon, which seemed to have doubled in size; an opaque haze still floated around its peak, but it had taken on a clear, jagged outline. That is a mountain. As the Sun started shining under the brim of his hat, he noticed a blur rising up from the plain in the near distance, which grew clearer with each step. The blur solidified into a squat rectangle that glowed silver in the sunlight. What is that? The mystery enthralled him as the distance shrunk, as the landmark grew taller. When he came within fifty meters of it, he noticed several gaps that divided the rectangle into separate objects: a grouping of pillars, each five meters tall, that reached up from the ground like the fingers of a fallen god.
William’s jaw dropped open as he approached this new obstacle and realized the pillars were not set in a straight line but circled backwards. He took a firmer grip on his sword, expecting a foe to be lying in wait within the monument. His nerves pleaded for him to be cautious, but the wolf loped in front of him to sniff at a pillar. It lifted a leg to mark then moved onto the next one. William’s face hardened as he came to a stop in front of the foremost pillar. Directly in my path… Part of him wanted to bypass the monument and continue on his journey, but he felt that it had to be a test.
William stood a while in contemplation of the pillar. Its smooth surface shimmered as if it had absorbed the sunlight to produce its own glow. Notches could be seen here and there, where a chisel had chipped a flaw into the stone in the course of shaping it. He set his sack on the ground and brushed his palm against the pillar; an intense chill shot up his arm, his heart skipping a beat. Out of shock more than pain, he jerked his hand away and saw red splotches across his palm.
Waving his hand in the air to bring feeling back, William wondered what this energy portended. Could these pillars be another manifestation of the plain, a vanguard it set in my path to thwart my quest? He doubted the plain would have used tools to shape a pillar. The imperfections proved it had been shaped by hand, but by whose hand? Surely my Father would not put an obstacle in my path. The answer struck the breath from his lungs: the monument stood as testament to humanity’s existence, a symbol of what he was fighting for. Why does it exude such frigid energy? What became of humanity to pervert a monument to itself? My Father molded me as a human, but the light within me courses through my body with warmth. A dawning awareness rose in his mind of how he could redeem everyone, how he could create the neo-human.
Maintaining his grip on his sword, William turned and started walking around the circumference of the pillars. The wolf finished marking one as he passed by and followed after him. Each pillar was a replica of the last—smooth, opalescent and without decoration. A half-meter gap separated each of them, through which he could see ten meters of earth stretching to the other side of the monument where a gap opened to the plain beyond. Perfect symmetry… When he completed the circuit, returning to where he had dropped his sack, he still could not fathom the monument’s purpose.
William knew he would have to enter the circle to unravel the mystery. Since he had not seen any threats, he dropped his sword to the ground, but he hesitated for several moments as he stared at the gap before him. Before he could act, the wolf padded forward and squeezed between the pillars, showing no signs that it felt the frigid energy. With a soft pop, it emerged into the interior of the monument… and disappeared. William blinked his eyes a few times, staring at the space the wolf had occupied a moment before, but it failed to reappear. He acted without thinking and started squirming through the gap.
TWELVE
The chill burned into William’s exposed flesh as he squeezed between the stone pillars. He exhaled and slipped through, his vision clouding over as he stepped into the middle of the circle. The whir of machinery filled his head, and when his sight returned, he found himself standing in the middle of a tropical jungle. The squawking of parrots and the hooting of monkeys filled the air with cacophony, the trees looming around him looked stunted and gnarled, and sunlight streamed down through their waxy leaves to bring the air to a boil. Dark smoke drifted through the branches, wafting in on a breeze that carried the odor of burnt flesh. William’s stomach heaved and his head spun. Bending his knees to brace against the weakness, he glanced down and saw the wolf cowering in the decaying leaves.
Where am I? Had he been transported to the plain’s past, before Death had conquered it, or had he been transported to another planet? A monument of humanity had brought him here, so he wondered if this was where they had lived. Why am I here? Was he meant to cleanse the jungle of its perversion, to make it assume an appearance like the forest in his dream? He doubted he could do anything to help; besides, his task awaited him on the plain, not in this simulation. He wondered if he had been sent here as witness to whatever had corrupted humanity’s energy-signature. How can I escape this terrible place? He took a few steps backwards, hoping he could slip back out of the circular monument. Nothing happened. He felt trapped, and, no matter how hard he thought, he could think of nothing else to do. Have I made a mistake? He hoped his Father would not permit that. If this had been a trap without escape surely his Father’s hand would have stopped him.
Fear bubbled in his stomach while William crouched in thought, but he managed to get a grip on himself by settling on the concept of destiny. He had no choice: the monument had been set in his path, so he would have to overcome whatever faced him. Defenseless, he kept his eyes peeled for any approaching threat. His nostrils flared with the stench, which told of a fire raging nearby. What dread magick caused this destruction? He looked down at the wolf and patted its head. “Everything will be all right,” he said, mostly to comfort himself.
A human scream, full of agony, pierced the air. William jerked his head up and froze with terror. The scream stopped as abruptly as it had started, leaving in its place the knowledge that he was not alone, that a life-destroying force still stalked through the jungle. He heard the crunch of leaves and trembled; the monster approached, cloaked by the smoke and the trees’ shade. He turned on his heel to flee, but his foot caught against a root and he sprawled to the ground. An unintelligible jumble of voices floated through the air. One phrase registered in his mind: “This way, I heard something over here.”
The voice came from behind a tree a few meters to his left. William leapt to his feet and turned to face that direction; the sudden movement startled the wolf, which yelped with surprise. The jungle around him exploded with shouts, and he spun around, knowing he was surrounded. He saw the first face emerge from the shadows around the side of a tree, its features camouflaged with dirt and grime. A green helmet rested on the head, the lips were drawn into a grim line and the eyes were locked upon William. The body it belonged to wore an outfit splotched green, brown and black. William locked eyes with this man—neither speaking, both wondering who the other was. The wolf growled at the intruder, who glanced down at it. “He’s got a wolf!” he called.
The rest of the soldier’s squad emerged from behind trees, leaves and branches crunching under their feet as they fanned out around William, aiming their guns at him. The wolf stopped growling and cowered back to the jungle floor. Behind him, a soldier barked, “Who in God’s name are you?”
William turned around to face the speaker and found himself staring at the barrel of an M-16, which glinted in the sunlight that penetrated the jungle’s canopy. He had never seen such a thing before, but the way the soldier held it told him his death was at hand. He took a step back and the soldier barked, “Don’t make a move! Answer my question: who are you? Do you speak English or are you one of them god damn gooks?”
William shook the haze from his mind as he grasped for a response. He tried to swallow his fear, but his voice squeaked when he said, “My name is William.”
The soldier laughed and lowered his weapon. “Well, William, whoever the hell you are, today’s yer lucky day. I
f we hadn’t come by, the gooks woulda found you ’n then you woulda been dead meat. You obviously ain’t one of them. I don’t know what yer doin’ out here, but you better come with us. We’re just headin’ back to camp now.”
William blinked a few times, trying to wrap his mind around the turn of events. What a strange land, where the ones who kill can also show mercy. Thinking about joining the soldiers, he glanced down at the wolf. The soldier followed his eyes and grinned. “Well, I’ll be! Is that yer wolf?”
William nodded. “The wolf is my companion. I would like to come with you, but only if it can come too.”
The soldier thought this proposition over for a moment. “Never heard of a wolf getting along with people. But I’m innarested to hear yer story… I guess if it gets along with you, can’t be too bad. It’s a deal, but make sure it don’t bite any of my troops. Is it trained?”
“It is a wolf.”
The soldier guffawed. “Whatever that means.” He turned back to his squad and barked, “Formation!” The troops formed into two lines behind him (who, William realized, was their leader), and the sergeant turned back to William. “You walk by me. I want you to tell me ’bout yer mission.”
William stepped to the sergeant’s side as the squad set off on its path through the jungle. He whistled and the wolf followed after him, walking beside the lines of silent soldiers.
***
Sweat had soaked through William’s cloak by the time the jungle thinned out and gave way to a charred clearing. Dozens of men were bustling about between tents and tables that were piled with weapons. The murmur of conversations flowed around the camp, and calls rang out for food, clean clothes, ammunition and other necessities. William stood transfixed as he tried to digest the assault on his senses, and the soldiers ignored him for the most part, though a few stared at him then whispered to whoever was closest to them. The sergeant gestured for him to follow, so William walked into the middle of the camp and saw rows of cots laid out along the far edge of the clearing under a canvas canopy, from which groans and cries of pain could be heard. The sergeant marched away shouting orders while William wondered how the soldiers could ignore the aesthetic void as they chewed on bits of food and prepared for battle.
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