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

  “Run then.” Wolf shuddered with a hastened crumple, and his face shivered into a more diminutive scowl. “Run, you fool!” he screamed, a warbling mad laughter in his voice as he tore away into the sands.

  Kechua stumbled, glancing between the cloud of dust vomiting up from Wolf’s retreat. The boy’s arms dipped, elbow deep, into light. He backed away, his exhausted calves sending him backwards into the sand, and he saw the corpse of the great beast, a silvered statue of slate.

  The rhythm of the earth changed into a quieted hush, and a slow rumbling rose below. Stone slabs appeared around them, coughing forth from the earth in a gush of red sand. They came one at a time, growing upwards to form a singular rippled wall.

  Kechua reached for the boy and immediately regretted the action. The white light lashed at him, burning and throwing him back into the sand. The boy trembled and his hands moved as if playing some ghostly instrument in his dreams. In that instant, a song cut through the air, a resonance of the growing slate wall. The rippling wall sang a lullaby of some alien tongue, gentle and soothing.

  “Sorry.” Kechua ran for the wall, his clubs in hand. He coughed up the dirt behind him, the ease of the earth’s rhythm drowned out by the mother’s soothing tongue.

  He reached the edge just as the wall grew too tall for him, but he managed to squeeze into a gap just as it closed tight.

  The dome rose, scooping the air out, and the expansion stopped, emitting a rumbling slam as it did.

  Kechua stared, his useless clubs ready and by his side. He gasped for breath and fell to his knees, a cloud of silt biting at his eyes and filling his nose.

  His arms failed and fell to his sides limply. His clubs dipped into the slovenly dirt.

  ***

  Night came to him, his brain blank and his legs too spent to even stand. He had coaxed his limbs into sitting cross-legged at least, with the promise of some food and drink, but even bringing them to his mouth turned into a dragged chore.

  The blackness swallowed him whole. The moon peeked over the horizon and gave not even the faintest shine against his sweat-burned skin or the great dome before him.

  A flickering red came over him as dawn fully faded. Two orbs shone down and held him in a narrow spotlight of concentration. His shadow shrunk inside him as Wolf’s voice flowed forth.

  “Given the clear council you crave, and then you reject it immediately,” Wolf muttered with a growling chuckle.

  “I don’t care for your council right now. Leave me to my thoughts.” The night’s chill nipped at his exposed arms.

  “You believe this a mercy, a kindness,” the voice rumbled low, a whispered warning. “It was not.”

  “I warned you, creature.” There was no fire in him to make the threat seem anything more than a feeble, foolish thing.

  “The moment when the Aspect lies dead, and the Blessed stands before you, is the only time when fate can change; when the spheres can shift. Think of what you could have done with two kingdoms, two thrones beneath you. Think what you could have seen with his eyes added to yours.” A growling huff ended in a reluctant sigh. The massive weight of the creature behind him slumped to the ground. Wolf’s head lay beside Kechua. His slitted and tired eyes gazed into the dark, seeing what Kechua could not.

  “Taking his life, taking his power . . . ” Wolf paused, searching for words and sentiments foreign. “It is a mercy for one such as the wretched creature you saw. The power is a tool, but it is a heavy one, and without taking it firmly, without making use of it, the tool simply becomes a burden.”

  Kechua slumped over, using his pack as a pillow.

  The voice softened, the words warm. “You think these words heartless, but you have simply not lived long enough to see their truth.” The growl almost disappeared, and the words interwove with the echo of Manah’s voice. “I have seen much suffering, so much of it unnecessary and ugly. Sometimes, death is the only merciful choice; the only kindness left.”

  The eyes of the great wolf closed, leaving them in complete darkness.

  “Weak now, young one. I wonder if you will still be spared the jaws come the dawn. I feel your ache. Your arms and legs scream and throb, but there is so much more ahead,” the voice muttered and shifted again. “Your soul still has yet to prove itself, Blessed.”

  Kechua’s consciousness flickered, the glowing orb flashing in front of him. Wolf’s words flowed over him in chaotic pools, somewhere from his left.

  “Perhaps you will find what you need here. We all wait to see.” The tickling voice rippled over him.

  ***

  The dark circle of trees faded in around him, and again his back lapped with burning heat.

  “Anah.” He smiled. It took all his will to touch her arm. His words puddled out and trickled into her familiar silhouette.

  “You conquered again.” She laughed gently, holding out her hands. Within them, the glowing form of a spiked little turtle gazed at him. “Yet you rejected the gifts held out; let another keep them. Was it generous?”

  “Or foolish?” The silhouette shifted, the shoulders broadening, and the words flowed over him with a clacking undertone.

  The figure shrank again, and her palms opened. “Whatever your reasons, it was interesting at least.” She giggled softly. “Now then, go ahead.” She gently tapped the little guardian.

  “Hello, Kechua.” The voice flowed with overwhelming force from the tiny little creature.

  “I confess I do not know what to say either.” The voice withdrew slightly. “I linger here only hoping to speak with the child, free of pain and on equal terms . . . ” The creature sighed, a tiny hurricane of red lines pulsing over Kechua.

  “I’m sorry you died. I’m sorry I killed you,” Kechua corrected.

  “I am sorry too, for forcing the burden of these things onto you. Know that I lay no blame upon you; no malice. You did what you did with the right intent. You acted with nobility, not wrath.”

  The creature’s form flecked with floating embers, nibbling away at its coherence as they found their path to the inferno behind him.

  “Yet we seem to have both committed crimes. We are both with guilt in this. I don’t know; don’t know if it would have been better to leave him inside of me. Even now, I do not fully understand what I was—why he was there.”

  “Then let’s find him,” Kechua declared, the words fluttering forth but dissolving like steam. “We can. Why couldn’t we?”

  Kechua strained to turn his head, feeling a renewed burn upon his cheek from the light behind him for his reward. “We just need to pull to him; to grip at him. You should have some sense of it.” His head made a juddering return to staring at the shrunken turtle.

  “I feel him, but he is concealed. I feel him like I felt you as you passed behind me. I knew something was different, but not quite what or where.” The tiny figure shivered. “He feels different too, afraid where before, he was simply blank. I wish I could speak to him, to reassure him; to say . . . goodbye to him, the boy I never met.” The Guardian’s voice faded further. “All of my power flowed into him when I died. He could have created anything he wanted, and so he created a shell.” The voice faded to silence, and Kechua feared the creature was gone.

  “Focus.” Kechua tried to raise an arm but trembling resistance fought him. “Can you help?” He tried to force his words upon the form of Anah.

  “I could.” She gave a giggle and a dismissive shrug.

  “I feel him through my connections to the power I once had, through the energy of my spirit. I feel him hiding in cold darkness. He is alone and living in a world of fear, believing everything owes him harm; owes him rage. I am not sure how we could have saved him, how we could have perceived his salvation, but our actions have cast him into a never-ending nightmare. One which is more tangible than this black forest around us. I fear that we have saved his life force, but . . . I am unsure of the word.”

  “Cast him into Hell.” Kechua’s skin shivered. He heard Wolf’s screams in h
is head, snarling to kill the boy and take his power. He was so sure Wolf’s words were those of malice, of hate, of taking power for himself . . . not of salvation. Yet Wolf had been right.

  “I am fading, Kechua.” The voice was weak; flimsy.

  The light redoubled its searing pulses on Kechua’s back, and he forced his gaze to Anah once more. “Help us, please, whatever you are.” His words sputtered over her. “Wouldn’t it be worth something? Rare? Interesting to see?”

  Anah merely shrugged once more and closed her palms, and without so much as another comforting echo of laughter, her silhouette disappeared. Kechua again sat before the blinding orb.

  “Is that it?” he screamed, the words rippling out in a slobbering red bubble. “Your guidance leads me to something beyond failure?”

  No voice responded from any of the angles of attack. The silent beating orb of the world did not speak.

  “Fine.” Kechua’s arms slumped down into the sand, shimmering with blue as each grain was disturbed. He threw his consciousness upwards, remembering the severing of the clinging blanket upon the floor of the spirit room. He fought for each step in the sands, not feeling the dark around him. He relived the moment of striding from hiding amongst the stored machines, into the puddle of light in the dirty shack, as a child.

  He rose against the darkness, his very soul shivering; his knees cracking and trembling to near buckling. He stood still, propelled by his own rage and will, and the forest held its breath around him.

  He felt the warmth of the crisscrossing light upon his skin, the memory making it flicker with shadow. That day would be different. He reached and focused on the boys cowering behind him, the feeling of fear; their heartbeats melding together and staining the boards of the forsaken shack, with the stink of their repeated and collective fear.

  He could smell it; feel it somewhere close. Yes, today would be different.

  He stood, holding his hands in the narrow beams of light, ready for the misshapen ogre to burst through the door. In the spirit world, he stood.

  The world shifted, blurring around him as he called to the feeling. He placed himself in that memory, aligning with the very core of that day. The door opened, bathing him in blue light and yawning over him.

  The scene projected itself with sentiment rather than eyes; graced his sense of the earth rather than the feeling of his skin.

  The boy sat on his couch, bathed in the blue light; bracketed by the falsified walls, but that time, he turned to Kechua. He knelt up, the couch and paper stacks a shield between them. The cords wrapped around the runic blanket again, but the boy’s arms bulged through the fabric, gripping the couch’s top.

  “I saw you . . . see you out there.” The boy’s voice flowed through the air with unsure lightning, moving and splitting jaggedly, then reforming to hit Kechua in the chest. “I saw you talking to The Guardian.” A pale rune-coated nub pointed towards the television, lingering white light pulsing faintly through the fabric.

  Kechua forced his head to the television but only saw fierce, trembling blue. Flashes of black-eyed humanoids nodded to one another, overlaid with trackless images of the silent wastes.

  “He didn’t see you. He wanted you to know he was sorry.” Kechua forced the words out, and they trickled confusedly upon the illusory floor, slipping through the pillars of papers and climbing the mountainside of the couch before flowing into the boy’s ears.

  “I heard him. I heard you.”

  “Why didn’t you speak to him?”

  “Can’t talk to monsters. Can’t be near bad things. Need to be safe, need to know, need to stay here where it’s warm and calm.”

  Kechua had missed the return of that feeling, the sound of papers rustling outside the false walls of the place. Chill arrived at his back, licking at his ear with a newly-renewed chill that poured into his ear with a setting molten lead. The rustling feeling trickled up his arms, gently nipping at his buckling knees. “Listen, listen. Know, prepare,” it whispered wordlessly.

  “Dirty out there. Just last week, boy died from infection from just a scrape,” the voice hissed.

  “Still missing, that girl, taken away only ten feet from her house.” Kechua felt the breath of something behind him.

  “Saw on the news, avian flu. Can’t go out, can’t let you out.” More of the blackened numb lightning connected to him like growing webs.

  “Can’t move, can’t get up. If I step into the darkness, the bad things will get me. The things we can’t see; the things we can’t know.” The boy’s eyes drooped.

  “We need to go, to get you out of here.” Kechua snapped his hands free from the trickling chill. He stumbled to the pile of papers and lay a trembling hand upon the boy’s shoulder, having to lean against the writhing touch of the paper stack to do so. The darkness shrieked, the mantra seized into a whirling cacophony. There were a thousand cold claws, their subtlety shed, tearing him backwards.

  “Bad man! Monster!” the voices shrieked.

  “Come with me!” Kechua’s words leapt through the air, stumbling against the couch’s top. “This isn’t what you want! It’s not going to end!” He tried to squirm, to fight, but his limbs merely writhed like some untested newborn. He was snapped back, the boy not even attempting to meet or stop his outstretched hand.

  “I know.” The boy’s eyes lowered and his face sank. “It’s Hell, and it’s not going to end. But I can be safe, as long as I stay in the light.”

  The statement doubled the strength and grip of the darkened claws, and Kechua whipped backwards and out of the cage. He locked his eyes upon the oasis of false light, even as the trees of the forest clustered around him into another wall.

  The hands let go of him, letting him back into his circle, the two lights waiting along with Anah’s figure. She smiled and spoke, but he didn’t pause; didn’t hesitate long enough for the words to wash over him. He tore from the circle again, and his feet stomped pulsing blue as he ran, creating his own guiding rhythm. Streaking points of light pricked curiously around him like newborn stars, becoming blurred streaks as he chased the lingering feeling of that square, an infinity away.

  He sensed bewilderment in Anah’s surrogate, even curious delight that seemed happy to chase in his wake. Not good enough. He drove the rhythm faster, pushing himself beyond what his mortal heart would take. A single iridescent white hand gently clasped his right shoulder, slipping down to give him an almost playful nudge forward. The woods parted before him, joining the furious blur of movement and the darkened square grew within his vision.

  The logic of a dream be damned, the uncertainties of his mind be slain. He would not stop.

  The square yawned reluctantly closer, and Kechua leapt, leaving the forest and the stars behind, glowing streams of laughing warmth wrapping around him and nudging his flight on.

  He crashed into the darkened wall, sifting through clouded mire. He clawed through loamy soil and the biting, dragging claws, tearing back at them with savage desperation.

  A final beam of purest white kicked him through the darkness, sending him flying into the room, rather than running. He sailed over the couch and snagged one of the boy’s wrapped hands firmly in his, only to hover there, stopped. The boy stared at him with disinterest, and though he held his hand up, he sat there like a leaden weight.

  “Look at me! Look at the wall behind!” Kechua’s words shot. The hands of the darkened grasping creature were visible in the contrasting light of the world outside of the box. The hands moved towards him, slowed by the light. They pushed onward, their mantra a croaking fury, burning in the light of reality.

  “I can’t, it’s bad out there.” The boy was dreamy, his eyes seemed pierced by the foreign light.

  “Look at the wall behind!” Kechua used all his strength to turn the boy’s head around, to see the shattered piece of the wall. “You aren’t in the light! You aren’t safe in here! You are in the dark, in a cage!” he screamed. The boy lightened, his head snapped back with a gawking
surprise.

  “I see it . . . ” the boy whispered, his voice taking a new, strange tone of pure awe. “I see it.” The cloth around the clasped hand melted away, and they locked grips. The momentum of the flight faded, and Kechua arced onto the floor of the spectral room, landing hard upon his knees.

  Kechua leapt up, focusing on keeping their hands connected, and smashed into the door of the room. The boy trailed behind Kechua, flying through the air with all the weight of a ribbon, the cords and blankets evaporating like burning ash.

  They landed in a neutral space, a sort of mockery of the silent world, brown and empty all around. Blue sky intoned itself somehow in the blackness. The air blew cold but free. No trees surrounded them, though the light burned at Kechua’s back.

  The boy stood, the blanket shuffling to his knees. “This is it?” His words pulsed forth with a trembling reluctance, and yet they flowed, woven with the foreign feeling of reality again. He scoped the blank horizon of the empty world and glanced down at Kechua, who sat with his hands dug into the silt, his heart pounding from the shock of their arrival.

  “No, but it’s like this. For now.” Kechua fought the words out. “It’s sleeping; waiting.” Kechua panted, his words sucking back into his mouth, and out in a weak cloud of brown. “Everyone you know is still alive, somewhere.” The second cloud puffed against the boy’s head, wrapping around and dissolving.

  “But there’s nothing here.” The boy sighed with a pyre of white, the tips of which flowed downwards to the crumpled blanket and pinched it like a yearning claw. “It’s cold. No light, no hope. It’s just another box.” Flecks of piercing white hung about his ears, his eyes, and his fingertips.

  “We need to be hope, we need to be strong.” Kechua’s breath gathered, but the words trickled out of him in globs of tired mud.

  “No hope . . . no hope,” hissed the voices of the sinister specters from somewhere in the darkness. “No strength left in you, no more fighting.” The hands were upon him again, the squared light shimmering back around the boy.

  “No!” Kechua screamed, the words trickling down like soft snow. “No, come with . . . with me . . . ” His words puddled across his chest and slipped uselessly into the ground. The edges of darkness closed in once again, the discarded door slipping back to where it had been, the piercing holes of light sealing themselves up.