Wanderers of the Silent Season (Heartbeat of the World Book 2) Read online

  “Kechua, I can see you. I see you moving your fingers; hear your breath once more. Open your eyes. Open your eyes so you can see me again.” The condescending growl poured upon him with an oozing rage.

  Not buying into the ruse, he instead sank into the trick, wallowing in it. He wriggled his toes freely, covered by the tremble of the current, and rolled the bones of his fingers as the tugging pulse of the river gnawed at his legs. Yet the creature hesitated for some reason, the statement of “rules” echoing in the little bit of him remaining in the spirit world.

  With a singular motion, he broke contact with the water and leapt into the circle, grabbing the staff along his way before sliding to a stop at the far edge. Without thought, completely giving himself into the growing drumbeat of the world below, Kechua launched himself from the circle’s edge and into the open jaws of the wolf.

  He forced the staff tip against the lower jaw, wedging it open. They landed together into the sand, where an excited cloud coughed up to veil them. The wolf’s feet sank deep into the earth, but the sand swallowed the boy too. The creature shook the staff loose with a silly spit, trying to gnash around to a better angle.

  The beast leaned forward and snapped, stumbling with the dirt gnawing at is paws. Kechua struck with the staff, but his waking arms and legs gave a tarry resistance, causing the strike to end up too weak to be useful.

  Kechua stumbled back, knees bent, and the wolf leaned into him, held back by the stubborn staff again. He leaned all his weight upon the boy, its hot but oddly scentless breath close enough that he could have licked the boy’s cheek if he so chose. They stood there, the boy locked in a forced kneel; the rhythm of the pulsing breaths mingling with his own sweat into a soaking downpour on his shirt.

  He rocked back and forth on his legs. The wolf pushed too, testing the firmament. He allowed it to go another cycle, and through burning legs, he swam against the earth, moving with the ebb and flow of their struggle. His strike pushed the great beast back. Within the rhythm of the beast’s breaths, the twitches of its eyes; the very shiver of its feet against the earth, Kechua pressed it. He knew the sand, knew the give and sway; knew the pulse of the newborn earth, and he danced lightly along its surface, moving easily beside the sinking creature’s bites. He knew the reach of the beast, every twitch and tone of his snarling gape, and he bobbed and wove within.

  Most importantly, his limbs not only awoke, but they felt alive and truly one with the staff. The song of the wood cutting through the air soothed his bones. Its cracking sound against the creature as he landed probing hits shook loose the grime from his brain, and the trembling singing joy it emitted tickled his heart into a flutter.

  The wolf grunted and snarled, breaking the lazy pattern, it had fallen into. It raised a claw and caught him across the chest, adding a new vertical slash along the band’s logo and tearing out the front along with a nasty gashing path. He slammed the staff into the creature’s jaw again and pushed furiously, slipping beside it, and managed to lock the beast’s head into an inescapable angle.

  He struck at the creature’s neck, finding little purchase against the odd fur coat, loosely shifting with his touch. He found a grip along the beast’s spine and dug into its neck, landing strikes with the sharpened bones of his elbows as he wrenched the staff’s grip ever tighter. Without so much as a final surge of rage, the creature’s breathing ceased, and it slumped down into the earth.

  Shimmering silver blood leaked out as if from unseen cracks in the creatures hide, the sands drinking the sweet gift happily. Kechua lay against it, craning his head against its chest. He listened for any trace of a heartbeat and found none; only silence within the creature in the silt of the stilled world.

  He collapsed, slumping into the same posture he took when visiting the shaman, barely able to breathe, his borrowed time collecting. His head swam in an overwhelming dizziness threatening to draw him back into the light of the dark forest, but he remained awake; alive.

  His heart slowed over minutes, the gaping emptiness of the earth below pouring up and through him, calming the trembling adrenaline fire. The rhythm increased; clawed to a grinding life, and the echoes of things moving within interlaced with the grumbling of the deeper layers.

  His eyes focused once more, and he pulled his mind away from the earth, fearing perhaps he would sink beneath its embrace otherwise. He looked into the sea of infinite blue above. Not a single cloud entered the plane. Not a single bird flew in the pale blue infinity above. No shelter was given from the brooding red of the sun. If anything, time stood still. In fact, it seemed to have crawled backwards towards the morning.

  He closed his eyes again and tuned his breathing into a meditative dance, in harmony with his heartbeat and the dirt below. He stole one perfect moment of tranquility; of purest rest without venturing into the darkness again.

  A drink, he thought as his throat protested, the moment complete. Some of the meat this time, his stomach requested with a growing insistence. His arms swung slothfully and his legs shoveled and dragged in the silt, kicking up another cloud. He emerged from the covering and leaned on the staff, only to steady himself, and returned to the firm ground of the circle.

  A little sadness bit at him when he saw a patch of his false forest replaced with a cataclysmic crater. The entire eastern quarter lay scooped out with the grey mass of fur at the end, looking like he had fallen from the heavens.

  He procured some meat and topped off the skin. To his dismay, he found the ever-widening river had begun to slither into the circle. It gave the stones the appearance of a slobbering beast’s mouth, moments from ripping into a fresh kill. He gnawed at the salted meat, finding it easy to chew, even with the tired protest of aching jaw. Puddles formed in the handprints piercing the circle’s edge, where his disrespect and clumsiness had shattered the spell the water respected.

  The water was better than before, crystal clear and flowing out in a silvered blue against the dry earth. Where the river pierced the soil, it soaked outwards a little, padding it into firm and chilled mud.

  He replaced the shirt, thinking briefly of burying the rag, but jammed it in a side pocket instead. He draped the jacket over the pack itself, refilling the gorged skin. The river proceeded down the western exit with a comforting burble, and it was enough to guide his legs. Perhaps, he mused almost jokingly to himself, the shaman would be waiting outside the cliffs for him. Maybe they all were. That would be a nice twist, he thought.

  He hesitated again at the edge of the circle, looking to the staff beside him.

  “What do you think?” he muttered, his feet sticking to the cool and familiar earth of the circle.

  The staff gave a replying tremble, but it felt more like a rattling shrug than any guidance. In the end, another voice broke the spell of stillness from his feet.

  “Oh, are we finally going?” The growl came along with a great weight shifting in the sand and a pouring of the silt into the air as the creature shook itself loose of the taint. Kechua turned towards the voice, staff clenched and ready, but the beast was beside him before he had begun. “You have won my respect for today. No more of that, for now.”

  The creature slumped down. Having shrunk somewhat, its sneer seeming a little less filled with teeth. More derision filled its tone than rage. Without turning to him, it narrowed the visible red eye to a slit, a jagged smile forming on the black gums.

  “So, now you are my guide then?” He focused on the footfalls of his adversary. He watched the rhythm of the claws piercing the sand, reaching into the creature’s form and immediately recoiling away, back to the feet. A kind of swirling static emptiness waited for his sight within the beast, one washing a dizzied madness over him and forced him to focus outwards instead.

  “No, but I could be persuaded to offer knowledge earned. Show me something new; something fierce. Feed me your passion and your rage and I might even help you a little.” The creature trotted beside him, walking on the other side of the stream guiding his
feet. It gave a gentle bow of its head, with a flourishing tilt, and dipped its face just below Kechua’s level.

  “What then do I call you, wolf?” he asked, stopping. He attempted to banish the fearsome visage from his thoughts.

  “You already know, I suspect,” the beast growled lightly, giving a raised brow. “I am simply Wolf.”

  Kechua mused a moment, shrugging. “It sounds like ‘wolf,’ but it’s that and more.” The staff gave a rumbling agreement. It was a title, something very old, whose meaning tumbled around his brain as he walked.

  “Impressed by tiny things. Already disappointing,” Wolf muttered.

  CHAPTER 4:

  Fealty

  “Usher.” The shaman spat from across the fire. Kechua was still a spindly boy. The old man let the word’s weight fall upon the tent around them, though not even the slightest reverence was given to the knowledge by the hanging pelts above. “It is the word I have been told to give you today. Like the others, it is not our word. We would call them spirits, ancestors; demons, among other things. This word, ‘Usher,’ encircles them all. Cruel and kind; wise and foolish. Even The Merciful are within this circle.”

  The boy, a year older that day, felt bold enough to open his mouth and question further but was cut quiet by the staff. The wood merely cupped his lip gently through the fire, sealing his questioning mouth.

  “This word refers to any immortal spirit that mortals turn to as they pass towards the light of The Forest. Any whom the mortal has cherished or feared, sought guidance from or acted knowingly upon, dictated morality are of this creed,” the old man finished, his face crumpling in the fire’s red embrace. “You think you want to meet your ‘spirits,’ but they can be as easily cruel as they can be kind. If you are ever in the presence of an Usher in the living world, know that you are ever watched, ever judged, and you must move and speak with care.”

  “And what did you expect?” Wolf snarled, breaking Kechua out of his trance. The beast paced impatiently around the boy, cutting a sealing circle around him.

  Kechua stood with the mountain at his back, having passed an hour or so, carefully retracing the rut of his daily circuit through the featureless brown void. His path zig-zagged from the spots he knew, the echoes of the tugging circles remaining, though quieted by the stilled earth. Not even one of them stood in the epicenters of their gravity any longer; not a board or fence or garden. No painted white houses pierced the memory of the circle of elders, and the face of Glalih had been flattened and smothered under the concealing layer of earth.

  “Something,” Kechua muttered, glancing back to the mountain. He looked back sadly at the spot where Anah’s family home had once stood. Had she always been so close, he wondered as he arrived back at the pensive memory of the shaman’s house. He glanced between the aggressively mute vacuum that remained a blister below where the black tent had stood, tracing his wispy footsteps and emerging from the space into the house. “I guess I never thought it could feel emptier than it did.” He sighed.

  He hovered over the only curiosity, a red splotch of sand tracing a spiraling circle into a deep indent in the ground. The smattering of alien dirt cut a crater into the memory of the house, perhaps even under his bed by his best estimate. Without any pattern to the crater, it only gave the faintest echo of something popping out like an egg or a wet sore, though he had to strain his sense to even grip that much from the aberrant sand. Had this happened days ago? Sometime while he had been in the earthen circle? He strained to place the timing.

  “Coming back mewling to your little shack. Hoping to feed filth to your mentor again? Beg for some further words jammed into your skull?” Wolf snorted. “Spinning around the house of that gibbering girl. You thought she would burst out from the sands, perhaps? Or did you think you’d find her waiting; that she would race out the door, embrace you, and you could walk through the sands as comrades?”

  “I thought . . . ” Kechua paused, the sentiment hooked in his brain. “I don’t know. It was home, I guess. They were right. It feels too soon, too fast.” He sighed. “I wouldn’t even know that it was Glalih, but I can still feel them all, just underneath.” He placed a palm against the loose earth. He smiled softly, feeling the chaotic tapestry of Anah’s dances, but withdrew his hand as his heart ached. “I guess I needed to make sure and say goodbye.”

  “Fair.” The growl behind him flowed with a softer tone, lacking the sense of barely contained rage. It was almost warm in a way. “They still live in a way, waiting within The Forest. For now.” The warmth in the voice returned to the guttural growl as the slit red eyes reappeared in Kechua’s vision.

  “For now?” Kechua glared from the red pit into the eyes of the great beast. That idea hadn’t been something the old man had shared with him.

  “Move swiftly, decisively, and with strength, and I’m sure you won’t find disappointment at the end of your little journey,” was his rumbling answer. “Though this start has hardly been an impressive roar,” he ended with a tauntingly soft twinge.

  The staff agreed with Wolf, and it gave a trembling dowsing tug away from the centre of Glalih’s memory. Kechua leaned into the crater one last time, and pushed hard, dipping his free hand into the centre of the mass.

  The piercing of the boil felt like gently swished maracas woven with an almost watery bubbling. Pushed further, he could even trace the gentle hiss of the sand falling upon the silt like tiny flecks of hail. Interwoven within, he isolated a sonorous hum moving northward and found his feet guiding him along the path. He ended facing the sheer wall of Glalih’s red mountain. No telltale trail of slime led up the cliff, but he could only guess the hum must have been from the blob of grey.

  He left the tugging circles of Glalih behind and returned to the circle of stones, Wolf ever in tow. There he affirmed the humming trail, though the recent activity around the circle drowned out the path in a wide halo around. He washed the clinging red painting away from his probing hands in the fattening stream, finding himself somewhat startled by the glassy water. It reached deep enough for the water’s surface to crease like folded cloth. Sealed pebbles settled a scaly underbelly and glinted in the sun.

  He found the buzzy hum again. It followed parallel to the stream, although a significant breadth away from it, as if the growing warble of the water both fascinated and repelled it. He traced this line, following it through the mountains and beyond where the stream came to a needlepoint stop.

  The hum varied more, the electric buzz almost taking the characteristics of a song. He followed the growingly pensive and nervous song until he reached the outer edge of one of the drilled hands of Glalih. The screeching machines and scraping of earth drowned out the nervous song, even though not a single trace of the mountain or the machines remained.

  “We’re near one of the hands, or where it was.” He glanced back at the stream, the needle waddling slowly beyond the border. “It was a mountain too, but it’s gone now.” He swallowed and glanced around, only to find the horizon utterly flat.

  “Not even a pebble left. Even the green taint the soil had is gone.” Kechua shook his head.

  “Disappointed?” Wolf rumbled.

  “I thought maybe there would be something here.” Kechua sighed, and the staff gave an almost pensive tug to the west. He waited there, at the edge of the hand, watching the silver needle slowly explore outwards.

  “What’s the matter, boy?” A red eye, narrowed and furious, burned into his face.

  “Nothing.” Kechua tried to glare back but found the hot gaze an overwhelming itch to his eyes, and he retreated to the soil before him.

  This was the furthest the echo of his feet had ever dared reach. He could feel the weak and distant gravity of Glalih’s core tugging at his back, and he stared down into the abyss of silence before him where the outside world awaited.

  He took a step, unable to hide the trembling in his foot, sinking immediately into the soil beyond the barrier. He sank to his hip and slammed face first in
to the dirt. The brown dust coughed upwards in a spurt without so much as a gasp, and Wolf’s biting laughter trampled over Kechua’s back.

  The boy fought the gulping silt, like mud or quicksand in its hunger, but merciful because it dissolved and stiffened as he fought it down. He managed to steady himself with the staff, fighting his way onto the slightly firmer soil that bled out from the stream’s trickling progress. The stream, at least, seemed eager to explore the new world.

  “Impressive, O’ mighty one!” Wolf rumbled, laughing. The words cut through the flying soil like knives, separating them into flat clouds that slid towards the sky like filleted meat.

  Kechua shook himself as the staff trembled, and they both shed their coating of dirt. The stuff tasted something like dry clay; of pristine and clean soil without a trace of grit, clinging to the interior of his nose and throat. He fought to banish the taste with water, phlegm, and a spurt of coughing that felt like his lungs were being shredded, but the taste lingered; his lungs stung.

  He stood once again and walked back to the stream. His lungs cooled a little and he tested the looseness of the sand, slow at first, and then quickly. He experimented meekly. He found that slow or fast, the key was to maintain a purposeful rhythm to his steps, and in doing so, the sands merely sunk to his ankles. The moment he hesitated or chose to increase the pace, the sands would gulp his wavering feet up.

  He left the gravity of Glalih behind, falling into a purposed pace, and quickly overtook the silver flow. The dirt coughed up behind him like a locomotive’s steam breath, but he made progress, albeit slower than he would have liked. He managed to keep the pace for a handful of minutes before something shot in his sight to the right, and his feet immediately sunk down.

  A tiny flower pierced the horizon, a slender leafless red stalk supporting a bloom turned away from him and the sun. As he watched it, he slipped to the ground in reflex, his pack’s weight nearly serving to bury him into the dirt. Steadying himself by digging the staff into the dirt at an angle, he watched it with care. His heart fluttered and pounded to life as he watched the stalk tremble and writhe, the blooming head locked onto some point of interest far to the left. He fully expected another creature to approach, but even squinting against the horizon, he could find nothing that interested the beast. Dismissing his blindness to his clumsy stealth approach, he slunk forward.