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

  “Okay! Here goes then!” Two cloth wings sprouted from her back, lapping at the wind suddenly blowing hard against his hair. The wings ballooned into grand sheets of rounded white, and her heart trembled a little as she slipped into the air in a white and blue blur. She shot into the blue, fading into a speck with such speed and joy that even his heart ached a little with envy.

  He turned from there, gathering his bag and leaving the forest with a silly and sleepy grin on his face. Warmth drove his heart as he slipped into the running rhythm of the sands.

  He ran in the flat sands, not leaving a single footprint behind. He ran into the line of blue meeting brown. No shifting grey beast panted beside him, and yet his chest ached. He stupidly glanced to his side from moment to moment, only to stumble from his rhythm, as the surly old man was nowhere to be found.

  He ran through the wastes alone, no staff to joyously whistle as it licked at the wind, and no nagging beast to question and snarl.

  He passed through petrified forests—silent and dead, the remnants of a farmhouse and a wooden bridge half buried, its river or crevasse sleeping with humanity. He travelled through the waning hours of the day and slid into the embrace of his forest.

  On his mountaintop, with the sun setting in the west—bright orange against the empty blue sky—Kechua worked. He drew a circle around himself in the sandy beach of his lake. It was around twenty feet across when he finished. He had used a branch taller than himself, a surrogate walking stick for the moment. Around the circle, he drew the lines of the forest—three rows, then four.

  The ground flattened beneath him, accepting his sincerity, and the rhythm of the earth quieted. He danced there, reaching for the familiar path to the dark forest, climbing and clawing to feel the burning of the two lights against his soul. The darkness hit his mind for a single blinking moment, enough to feel the ripping blue sand beneath his foot before he was back in his circle. He chased this, whipping into a frenzy and beating himself into the exhausted madness of the rhythm.

  The dreaming world flickered into his vision. He embraced it, drawing himself into his place between the two lights, the world, and the burning furnace. He sat once more upon the shimmering and shifting blue sands, and his worldly body slumped down to mimic this.

  “Hello?” his voice rippled out, puddling in the sand, but pushing out enough to pass by the circle of trees. “Are you there? Any of you?”

  “No more of that,” the voice of a man came from beside him. He couldn’t turn, but he could sense a jagged grey beard flowing from his face, shaggy white eyebrows hanging wildly to half conceal his glowing red eyes, and ears that were large, loose, and sagging down. “Nothing left.”

  “Old man, you are cruel, violent, and have a hunger for death and pain,” Kechua said, his words flowing out in tendrilous clouds from his ghostly self. The stream tickled at the glowing orb and wandered to the ragged old man.

  “Yet you come here to chase me; to keep me from my rest.” The old man gave a lopsided and jagged grin. He spoke without moving his lips, the words pouring forth like mist.

  “Because there is something in the four of you. Something—”

  “Three.” The cold mist thrust out in a narrow wave, slicing Kechua’s words in correction.

  “Something worthwhile. If we could just start again, then—”

  “No,” Wolf said, his words slicing through Kechua’s pleading sentiment.

  “Tug on me no more. Let me go. Let us all go.” The jagged grin narrowed, and his form flowed into the blowing mist, fading slowly. “I have seen all you will accomplish already, and while uncommon, I am unmoved.”

  “No.” Kechua raised his trembling arm, and the mere touch brought the man’s form back into clarity beside him. “I want to know why. Tell me that, at least, and then you can go.”

  “Reason?” Wolf chuckled. “Even you know better than to expect that.”

  “You did not act without the kindness of the mother, without the lesson of the trickster, and though you choose to deny it, the sacred path of the divine. Why? Why did you watch me? Why did you walk with me?”

  “Because I have the answer to your question, boy. I have had it on my lips from the moment we first met.” Wolf’s jaw opened wide, the teeth clacking among each other. “The question you are driven to ask everyone you see as wise; everyone you stumble onto in your path. Yet you do not ask me because you know I have the answer.”

  Kechua stayed silent.

  “I walked with you, I taught my lessons hard, because there is a time coming soon. There is a choice, a power to be had, and an answer to your wise woman’s and your people’s woes. Now, seeing the ugliness of the world, seeing the mercy in death, now . . . ” The creature faded. “Now, you are properly armed to choose.”

  Kechua stared into the orb, throbbing with the rhythm of life.

  “Anah?” Kechua bleated in the dark. “Anah?” he repeated.

  The light burned against his back, and the sands shifted in silence. In the darkness, Kechua sat alone, with only the heartbeat of the world washing over him.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I am a shy and rather unremarkable Canadian. In addition to attempting to be an author enjoy online art and even do some terrible doodling on my own."

  Heartbeat of the World is a series of books that are especially important to me, and I’m grateful to BWP for giving me the opportunity to improve and express them. While I have no specific creed of my own, spirituality is a compelling notion to me, and these books are the beginning of the expression of a fictional universe whose laws of the soul are sensical, clear, and just.

  While Heartbeat is apocalyptic in nature and certainly suffering is

  involved, they do not obsessively linger on the bleaker aspects. At its core, this is a creation myth, of the world healing and renewing itself and the laws of gods and men. It is apocalyptia with the narrative logic of a fairy tale.

  My hope is to tell a fun story within this setting, one that’s complex and interesting enough to draw you in throughout the four books and beyond. The series rewards hope and resolve, in finding inspiration within one’s gifts and challenges to face the impossible.

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

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  www.burningwillowpressllc.com

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