Wanderers of the Silent Season (Heartbeat of the World Book 2) Page 21

“I know you, Blessed,” it rumbled. “I have sought one such as you, but for your words, not your blood.”

  “I confess, I would not know how to do you harm, great one.” Kechua shrugged.

  “So it is, but that is what I seek . . . ”

  The beast inhaled deeply, a rattling gasp reminding Kechua of the stone-filled backpack he used to run with. “I know this name . . . Blessed, yet I do not know what you are. I am young yet, born of things I do not understand, yet I know these things, and I know more with each day.”

  “What are you?” the thing asked, its voice rumbling with a mournful curiosity.

  “A . . . human, I suppose,” Kechua answered. “Have you seen no humans?” he asked, thinking of Earth’s Cruelty’s draw to the humans it had consumed within it.

  “What . . . am I?” the thing asked, its words drifting above Kechua’s head, their meaning unclear.

  “An Aspect, I think,” Kechua answered. “That’s the word my teacher told would bear meaning here, does it?”

  “Yes, this word; this branding, I know and feel it. But what am I?” The creature inhaled deeply and continued, “I walk each day thinking to chase the light, and yet I move only in circles.” It rumbled low. “None have come so close but you two. What are you?” The creature’s eye slipped to Wolf.

  “He is a spirit of some kind, a guide of sorts. Not human, not animal. I was told the term to speak was ‘Usher,’ but even that seems wrong to me.”

  “He tastes familiar, feels . . . ”

  “Unlikely, young one,” Wolf growled, pacing behind Kechua’s back. “I am no Aspect, but no more am I what this declarative fool with his stick says.” He gave a punctuating snap as if scolding the very air.

  “I feel you, your steps and stance and skin, small human, and with your willing words, I come to understand. This gladdens me.” The creature’s eye rolled back to Kechua. “With consciousness, those first few moments, I was aware of something inside of me. I feel . . . sad when I think of it. I wish to help it, to understand it more, and yet it simply remains within me each day. With each morning, more understanding of this time and rules trickle into my mind, and each day it becomes clearer that it is a wrong that the being remains within. I try to move forward, try to find help, but I only weave more circles upon the swamp; only fall within my own path once again.”

  “You have one like me within you?” Kechua’s hand graced the larger of the two clubs.

  “I . . . believe so,” it muttered. “Can you help?”

  Kechua leaned back to Wolf, who gave a hissing growl. “Perhaps the one tied to it surrendered completely. The chase should always begin anew with the dawn, however. Something is wrong here.”

  “I think . . . ” Kechua stopped, focusing on the earth below. “Can you stay still?”

  “Not for long. The scales shed and rattle and bite and hurt. I must move, or else they grow onto one another in piling agony. I must move in circles to even out their progress, to shed them as best I can. Already, I feel the needling ache.” A chorus of cracking broke the silence that fell. No plates fell, but Kechua winced as he could feel them growing and pushing against one another upon the beast’s hide.

  “I will climb onto your back and listen. Will you let me do this?”

  The creature’s sphere had the static and unsure taint of the Aspect, but he felt a twinge of its heart within the chaotic noise. It echoed the sincerity of its desire.

  “Please be quick-footed,” the beast rumbled.

  Not comfortable enough to shed his pack, he climbed the ladder of the creature’s eye ridges. By the time he scaled the steppes sweeping behind the beast’s head, its breath stumbled from pain, and Kechua couldn’t help but wince with every strained exhale as he made his way onto the centre of the domed back. The feeling of a tightly pulled metallic cord pulsed through the boy’s body, the tonal feeling of an instrument being wound towards its breaking point. The top of the shell featured a spiraling pattern of jutting spikes, ending in one final crystalline point, like some thinned egg vaguely chiseled from quartz.

  Kechua lowered his hands, trying to push his senses past the groaning and cracking scales. The pinnacle had none of the thickening scales, as the beginning of the spiral only pushed lightly forth, but even that fought his focus into the creature’s core. He recalled the feeling of being upon his Aspect’s back, of reaching down and feeling the innards, and used it as a guide to brush away the obscuring nullness.

  The rhythm of a fortress flowed over him. Rivers of blood, pushed by the tide-mastering heart, thrummed through its body. Each rasping and strained breath roared like a cannon’s blast, and the timpani of the joints cracked against the growing plates, fighting ever inward as though seeking to block his probe.

  “Why are you so concerned with this life?” Kechua asked, forcing his mind into the crystal and gripping it hard.

  “I feel it growing weaker. Every day, it flickers out of life in the evening, and then back into life in the morning. Each day, it fades ever so slightly. I yearn to speak to it, to know it better—know how I can help it, yet it does not speak to me, never. I worry that we will never know each other, that I will drain this being without so much as seeing it.”

  He was unsure of what to say. There was such a difference between this Aspect and the shrill and craven beast that had challenged him.

  “It is there, below where you are.” The creature grunted in pain. “Go and bring it out, that we might speak.”

  “You should begin walking again, great one. I can try again—“

  “No, you must go now! Do what you can. Strike me open if you must.” Its breath caught in a rasping grunt. “Please . . . ”

  And there between the breaths, Kechua sensed the offbeat rhythm. It was a tiny orb within the greater sphere, slow and relaxed, and fading further out of synch with the growing desperate pain of the great turtle.

  “Small one, are you still there?” the creature asked, worried.

  “I am. I feel the life within you, and will do what I can.” Kechua stretched and took a gulp of water.

  His feet tapped at the shell and immediately met with nothing. No sound carried through the groaning grind. He moved into the spiral, trying to find some rhythm for his feet to hook onto, and they fell flat onto the shell.

  The staff made a quizzical rumbling hum, and for the briefest moment, he felt something different from below. The faintest hints of a weakness, not at the sides but in fact, dead into the centre of the plates, glowed faintly upon his perception.

  “Would you do me the honor of joining me this time?” He gave a joking bow to the outstretched staff, which warbled in delight.

  “I think I can begin. Beast, know that if you ask me to stop, I will stop.” He cupped his hands and attempted to project his voice, but the words were lost in the ambiance of the creature’s stilled pain.

  He struck the staff hard upon the centre of the shell and let the song hum outwards, the grinding and growing plates pausing in a curious hush. He tapped it again and again, letting each pulse flow down, and then inwards again before repeating it. He doubled the pace and redoubled it, until the sound poured over the ridged cracks in the fortress, and he danced.

  He added the stamping of his feet, slamming them as the waves passed at first, and then between them when it proved futile. He shifted into the duet, spinning around the staff and whirling from plate to plate, each time giving a cracking strike at the rock below. The ripples fell in a slow rain, and he timed his strikes and stomps to paint the music as he moved.

  The shell rang, audible to his ears, and he increased the pace of the dance. The staff trembled in synch with his pounding heart and head as they swirled around the crystalline peak.

  The shell rang with a noise vibrating in his teeth, and while it lit afire with blue cracks, he struck with the staff tenfold strong. It allowed the symphony to carry itself as he hit with the pulsing waves, stomping between each passing pulse.

  To his relief, bits of the
shell rained outwards, cracking some excess of the overgrown scale away with dramatic blue sparks. The chips shifted and fell onto the hungry ground in a silver hail.

  His joints ached and spine hitched as the resonance overtook him, yet his muscles carried him and the dance overwhelmed him, moving him more than his body or will. Closer, his mind shook away the dust of time. With one final stomp and an explosion of sparks like a set of grandiose fireworks, he fell.

  He slipped slowly, as though sinking with a parachute, and his feet scrambled for the footing that had abandoned them. His shoulders hit the floor with the disinterest of gravity and all the rageful force of a mother slipping a sleeping child into bed.

  His mind reached out through the black, and the feeling of the room grew in a shudder. Paintings decorated the walls, four lamps occupied a single corner of the box, and a lone couch lurked in the centre. A television cast a blue glow that drowned the pithy white of the lamps and painted everything within into a specter.

  Yet upon rising carefully to his feet, Kechua realized the paintings floated upon nothing, only hanging above where the squared light of the television’s glow ceased to reach. He slipped his hand carefully behind one of the paintings, finding a chill tone outside, yet no resistance. Even a false door and window stood upon the wall—a tower of locks, sliding, deadbolts, bars, and even one wedged against the floor—decorating its face like a deviant teen’s piercings.

  He could sense columns beyond the reach of the jagged blue pillars that sang of the Dark Heart, yet no leaves grew upon them; no canopy or ceiling. He found a wall of the things braced against the back of the couch, stacked low enough as not to rise above its back. They felt like newspaper, but they writhed at his touch. The ink upon their faces reminded him of trickling and writhing blue runes, printed upon grey hide and reflecting no light.

  The colours streaked around as if he were in the dreaming spirit world, and yet the room felt very much real as well. The dull confusion of the Dark Heart cupped his face, wriggling at his ears, and he felt the leather touch of the couch’s back as he traced his way around it. The back of the seat rose tall enough to obscure his vision, and even when he reached the side of it, the arm and stack of papers stretched and warped to wall him off.

  He shifted around the fortress of ugly paper and leather to find a larval creature planted smack in the middle of the gigantic seat. It sat straight up, a fattened maggot of a body bent twice to form with the leather, the tail end melting into a flat puddle flowing outwards onto the floor. The creature wasn’t some hollowed monstrosity waiting to ambush him with blackened eyes and piranha teeth. The head of a young boy popped out of the cocoon. Even the pale maggot’s body was a blanket wrapped around the boy, though the blue and unsure runes shone all over the off-white cloth. Cords spiraled around the outside of the cocoon, adding the bulging ripples to the illusion of the grub. The boy’s eyes glowed blue, and his face bore a transparent layer of the flickering paint of the television’s light.

  “Hello?” Kechua spoke. The words flowed out with a mingled cough of blue lines but also very clearly in speech as well. Even the surprising clarity of Kechua’s words didn’t get a flicker of response from the boy. He did blink and move with breath, and the living heartbeat of his circle was clear, but even when Kechua waved his hands to interrupt the hypnotic clutch, he gave no response.

  Kechua glanced at the television, finding it a biting blur whose light forced his eyes and spirit to squint. He could make out figures within the blur, of pale-skinned and black-eyed humans sitting and speaking to one another, flashes of the wastes intertwined. He stared with fascination, seeing vague hints of structures rising from the sands; of the feeling of ruins and mountains and lakes.

  Something tickled at Kechua, breaking him from the hypnotic blue, and he glanced over his shoulder towards the surrounding forest of stored newspaper. Something stalked in the stacks beyond, never quite coming into the light, but he could see the pillars tremble and hear the rustle of paper being brushed against, and each of these gave a queasy pinch in his stomach.

  The pillars bore no canopy, and a quick glance confirmed the reality of the entrance from when he had come. Casting his eyes from the light, back into the dark world pinched just behind his confused eyes and soul, the nauseous bite of a migraine rushed in and settled.

  “Okay . . . okay.” Blue tendrils floated to itch at his head. He shoved the boy gently, but even that got no response. He tried to tug at the blankets around the boy’s neck, but it squirmed at his touch, only snapping back around his neck. “Okay, we need to get you out of here. This place isn’t good. I don’t know if you can hear me or understand me, but . . . ” The paper rustled, low to the ground and just behind the couch. “Something’s not right here.”

  He sheathed the staff reluctantly, grasping and raising the boy. He hung limply in Kechua’s arms, locked to the television’s embrace. “Can you hold on?” He tried to find the boy’s arms, but the writhing runed blanket retained its shape.

  “Okay . . . okay.” He looked at the circle of blue above, the stacks of newspapers rustling on both sides, edging slowly closer with a faint gurgling whisper. With all the strength of his arms forced into clasping the wrapped boy, he leapt upwards, only to fall again. The pooled blanket clung to the floor and snapped them back like an elastic. Kechua heard the whispers and felt the cold upon his legs, and without sparing thought to the words they spoke or even daring to look anywhere but up, he kicked the clinging blanket free of the floor and jumped again. His leg cramped from the strain as they rose in the ethereal gravity of the place, the clawing and clammy chill taking one pair of swipes at both of them as he rose. They floated upwards toward the light and pierced through the jagged hole into the red light of reality.

  “I think . . . ” the great voice boomed, slower than before; weaker than before. “Please, let me see the creature.” The creaking pace of the Aspect nearly stilled. The great voice trembled and lowered to a bare whisper that chilled Kechua’s exhausted muscles.

  His pack replaced at his back, he glanced at the boy, who squinted in a catatonic silence, not even squirming in the world’s light. He scooped the boy up again, his legs numb enough to be silenced, and made a stumbling progress down the shell. The creaking and groaning was smothered into the feeling of dead twigs trembling in a soft wind, and the cracking pebbles came down in rain so fine, it fell like snow.

  Kechua lost control near the head, sliding on his knees down the creature’s neck, though he managed to land with only the lightest knock on the vacant-eyed passenger against the soft earth. He limped the final stretch, into the angle of the beast’s view, the breaths fading into shallower rasps.

  “Let me see the child who I have hurt. Little ones amongst your kind are children . . . yes?” The thing made a trembling movement of a toe but gave a sputtering gasp for the effort, and nothing more.

  Kechua moved the child, eyes reflecting a blue pallor, but the sun shone on his skin and dimmed the blue runes on his blanket. He shifted the child into the eyeline of the beast, and Wolf regarded him with sideways curiosity.

  “Can you see him? I don’t think he will talk, but he is alive at least, not in pain as far as I can see.” Kechua tugged at the wrapping cords, but he couldn’t get so much as his fingers beneath the tightly wound bonds.

  “I can . . . thank you.” The creature sighed. “What is wrong with him, is he . . . harmed?” The creature’s voice was weak but concerned.

  “I’m not sure. I’ve seen others swallowed by another of your kind, and they seemed fine in the end. This might be normal. I think it took time for them to ‘wake.’”

  “I do not believe . . . I have time.” The creature sighed, its eyelid slumping down, and a ridge of rock spilled over the lid, weighing it further.

  Kechua tossed water in the boy’s face, slapped him gently, tried to untangle the mess of blankets from him desperately. The breath slowed, the faint snow thinning in the air. Kechua drew the black knife
, ready to slice at the cables and hope no inadvertent wound would linger on the boy.

  The boy’s eyes opened, the blue glaze clearing, and his arms shot sideways. The blankets unfurled, allowing him to reach into the new air.

  “Where am I?” the boy screamed, and his eyes shot around frantically. Kechua sheathed the knife before it could be seen.

  “Oh?” The great beast stirred, though its eye drooped into a blind slit. “He is alright then?” The voice smiled.

  “Outside? Where am I? I can’t be out here. It’s not safe!” the boy shrieked, his arms thrashing free of the unwinding wrap. He landed into a crawling position in the dirt. “Where is the screen? I can’t see!” His head tore about, trying to get some bearing.

  “Hello, child,” the voice boomed, and the boy looked up slowly. He trembled, frozen on all fours and half wrapped in his blanket.

  “It’s alright, little one, you are safe now. Do not be afraid . . . ” The great creature let out a final sighing breath and was still.

  The boy’s knees buckled, and he stared at the creature.

  “Kill him now!” Wolf reared up, his fangs in a snarled rage. “Kill him!”

  “What?” Kechua scowled at the beast, moving between Wolf and the blank child, his clubs at the ready.

  “Kill him and have his power, take him and take his throne! Only you can kill him! Only now can it happen!” Wolf screamed, sounding strangely more human than his growling verbosity.

  “No.” Kechua scowled at Wolf, his clubs clutched tightly in his hands.

  “Do it, now!” Wolf roared, seemingly growing more malicious with the word. He grew to twice his size, his shoulders hunched and more powerful. His jaw became crueler, more craven. “More strength behind you! More land! More power! Are you not more deserving than this dull whelp? Are you not the one who won this prize?”

  “Step back, beast. You will not touch this boy,” Kechua snarled, stepping forward. His arms trembled with the lighter clubs, and yet they would not falter. The boy collapsed, face sideways in the sand, and his hands shimmered white.