The Boy
I am running with the others, chasing some fireflies in the gloom. Folklore holds that some of them are of the spirits—the aether in particular. I do not really care—I just like the way they glow. We sweep the meadows outside the high village walls, all while the guards watch us with knowing, nostalgic grins. When they look at us that way, I wonder what their childhoods might've been like: all wonder and beauty, like ours? Or something darker, something worse?
Mother tells me of the older days, when we were bound by the Western Kingdoms. Namely, Havenmarchers fled from Catolica during the persecution age. An age that only ended some twenty years ago. I am only thirteen, on the edge of fourteen—young enough not to be an adult, old enough to start worrying about becoming one. Father wants me to forge weapons, like him. I do not like the craft. Metal melts and burns the skin in those cramped forges.
Odd as it might sound, I want to be a royal messenger.
Then, I could chase all the fireflies I want, whenever I want, so long as I'm moving along the Old Road and delivering his majesty's decrees hither and thither.
I wonder what the other youths want to be. Probably knights. Or mancers—they're popular nowadays.
I'm the oldest of our group, so they defer to me when they catch some fireflies, comparing and competing with one another to see who snatched the biggest. One of the guardsmen joins our group huddle, inspecting the top two fireflies as another impartial judge.
"It's probably that one—wait no, it's… hmm. Hobbes! Give this a look, will yah?"
The other guardsman lumbers over, this one taller and balder. "The first," he says upon one disgruntled look.
"It might be the second—"
"The first," Hobbes repeats again, this time more forcefully. The other guardsman, the lanky, gentile one named Locke, sighs.
"Well, you heard him lads. First one it is."
The youngest boy cries at coming second, all while the other snotty brat laughs and jumps, jeering and cheering.
I try settling them down, but they're too ecstatic. I sigh at their raucous behavior—I was always a quieter, more diminutive kid. Nothing like this new, wild generation.
I start doing mental headcount when I realize we have one missing.
"Anyone seen Jonah?"
The children shake their heads. Then, the crying youngest wipes away some of his tears and points to the Brightbriars.
"Saw him go into the briars!"
I share a surprisingly adult look with Locke, who gives me a nod. It's as if he thinks there's some implicit understanding that is between us. I don't understand it in the slightest.
"It's getting late now lads, head on home would you? We'll find Jonah," Locke says. Then, he nods to me again: "You'll take them home, right?"
Oh. That's what he wanted. "Of course," I respond.
"Good. Be seeing you lads."
With that, we go back through the gates of Havenmarch, back into our circular village of wood-thatched roofs and smithers.
I turn and wave at the fading forms of Hobbes and Locke as they disappear into the briars, lost to the darkness of nature.
The next day, neither Hobbes, Locke, nor little Jonah return.
…
Hui Long:
Snow crunches underfoot. I follow a trail of blood up the mountainside. The white cougar and war monkey hide from me, licking their wounds. It's been a game of cat and mouse with this duo for a while now. They keep running. The monkey knows the terrain better than us, so they are able to hide within the folds of this forest. I struck the cougar once last night, when it issued an attack on our camp. Now, the trail goes cold near a small stream, bending around a cave entrance.
Gareth sniffs the air. Snarls. "They are close."
His hands grip those bearded axes of his; he always goes to them when he's antsy.
My hand goes to the scaled grip of the Dragon Blade, feeling the familiar grooves imprinted by my fingers. It has been my most constant friend—unwavering, unstoppable. Raiten used to be your friend too, a voice whispers inside my head. Ever since my homecoming, that voice has been pestering me. Tormenting me.
'What did you do?' Raiten had asked me. And, for that, I could not give him a valid response. How could I explain to him how I never had a true moment of respite? How as soon as I was out of the clan, my life became a hellish grind through the machines of war?
Even still, I am to blame.
"Stay vigilant Hui, it is upon us!" Gareth says. But I am distracted
From the treeline, something shuffles in the brush. We turn to it, Gareth readying his axes, me thumbing the nodachi out of its scabbard.
A white rabbit hops from the brush.
Gareth sighs.
I feel my hair rise. Something breathes ever so slightly above me—my wind spirit intuition confirms so.
With a singular, fluid motion, I draw my blade and curve it upwards, invoking the Dragon of Ice to emerge from the steel and swim towards the sky, jaws snapping.
Gareth looks at me. "What—"
The war monkey and cougar fall in pieces around us, blood spraying like rain, velvet death on white snow. Gareth grimaces as my ice dragon comes back to me, gnashing its bloodied teeth. I run my hand along its slippery jaw before allowing it to re-merge with the blade.
"Tricky bastard was above us," Gareth mutters, looking at the half eaten body of the war monkey, this one tall and fur a mix of orange and white, eyes red. It still clutches the hammer it wielded against the villagers it terrorized.
With a mild chuckle, I say, "Now it's all around us."
Gareth only nods. Then, like a finale to the blood shower, snowflakes pelt down slowly from the sky.
My breath frosts. It will be an early winter then.
"Let's go then," I say nudging my head. Gareth nods, bending down to the half-bitten upper body of the monkey and starts sawing off one of its hands. I stare at him incredulously.
"What? We need proof right. Besides, look!" He smiles in a way that tells me he's about to say something stupid. With a grunt of effort, he rips the arm off with a crunching noise, halfway through the cut. Flailing it around, he says "it's a monkey's paw."
I sigh and grant him a small smile. I know what he's trying to do—what he's been trying to do ever since he saw me after my fight with Raiten. That was the first time he ever saw me as truly… vulnerable. Weak. I don't know how I feel about that. But Gareth is good, has always been good. He is the other constant in my life, my second eternal blade.
And I love him for it.
…
In the far distance looms the Boar Ranges, past the Fickle Plains and the Soul Mountains. Tall and snow-capped, like shards of ice sprouting from the world itself, they are my next destination. I look to them even now, past the smiling faces of the villagers.
"You have done us a great service, Spirit Child. We will not forget this," their Elderly mayor tells us. I accept her hand with a gracious smile, as I've done many times before with countless other village heads, town chiefs, kings and emperors. I have constructed a routine mask of heroism over the last decade, and I understand what people want. They want to believe in something. Something beyond them—some force of ultimate light against the overbearing dark. I am not that. Yet, the least I can do is fake it for them. So I accept their thanks, politely refuse their gifts, and, along with Gareth, head over to my next destination.
We make our way through the open valley, where winter hillocks make way for the last dregs of summer bliss. The air may be cold, but the sun shines bright and high on this cloudless day. We pass by another village, this one by the rock-toothed coast.
Gareth insists we stop for food. I oblige and we end up sitting at a street vendor, who stirs something rich with the scent of seafood in his cozy little kitchen, open for customers to watch while waiting in the stand. The booth itself gives a clear view of the pier, where fishermen navigate their boats past the rock-sharded coast and into deeper waters. Apparently, Netsreach was hit with a tsunami recently, so half of the village is actively being rebuilt and the pier is in tatters. But the fishermen find a way, as they always seem to do.
It is a good village, with good people.
"What's on your mind?" Gareth asks. He speaks in his native language for once; the harsh syllables of Bulberish startle me. It has been a while since I've heard it.
"I am wondering how we can find Basilbane," I respond in shoddy Bulberish.
He nods solemnly. "I have been tracking his scent, but he's a hard one to follow. It diverges, branches off near the ranges. So…"
"Regardless, we must head South then," I surmise. He nods. Looking beyond the coast, the ocean stretches endlessly against the sky, the two planes converging in a thin line in the distant horizon. I wonder what lands lie beyond our quarrels. Do they deal with bastards and beasts like we do?
Sometimes, I wish I was beyond this. I wish I could be in those lands, where the only quarrel is of barley and grain, not of magicks and giants. Snakes and dragons.
Old friends wielding red lightning.
I shake my head. This line of thinking gets me nowhere. Move on. Focus.
After all, you have to avenge your allies. Find this giant.
So, when the food comes, I eat well and good. I challenge Gareth to see who can finish first. I win, but I think he lets me. Still, when I slam the bowl down and wipe the stew from my mouth, I feel renewed. A giddiness takes me like never before—and when I look to the Boar Ranges once more, it is not with dread, but with determination.
"I'm coming Basilbane," I whisper. "And I'll take your head."
…
The Boy:
"Fetch me that spetum, would you?" Father asks, completely ignoring my query. I do as he commands, taking the weird, two-pronged polearm between my arms and setting it on in the forge. Sweat drips off his ashy brow as my father hammers away at the metal, stretching it out with each sparking blow. The fire coils underneath and wedges under the weapon, making hot orange chasms for Father to beat.
"I asked why we aren't helping with the search?"
He doesn't respond, opting to focus on his wares. By the spirits, he might as well be forging metal in the deepest pits of the hells when he's like this—all hard-eyed and deaf.
Deaf to the world around him.
But I'm used to it. I wait patiently until he's cooling the blade in water.
This one cracks, despite my father's best efforts. Which is… odd to say the least. He was focusing on it too—it shouldn't have had any faults. He's too skilled for that.
Maybe he's getting old. That's a thought that has plagued me for quite a while now. I see the grays on his beard, the singes on his chin. He's coming back with more burn scabs than usual.
"We aren't helping with the search," my father begins, snapping me out of my trance. "Because we aren't needed. If the whole village is out in force, we would simply be redundant."
"That's not the point."
"Oh, then what is it?" He looks at me now and cracks a smile. "Eh, you're too much like your mother."
"What?"
"You worry too much about social standing. Trust me lad, there are worse fates than a few whispers from the neighbors."
"That's not at all what I'm—it's Jonah. I know him. He's just a boy."
"And I know his parents, lad. And do you know what they need right now? A distraction. So, while the others go looking for their child, I'll finish his father's order and hopefully, by the end of the day, he'll have his son back and a new spetum to spank him with."
I sigh. This man is impossible; never changes. But, at least he's not just working for the sake of work I suppose.
The bells toll. The searching party has returned.
I run out into the streets, trailed by some worried house-wives and children alike. The men and hunting women of our village file in through the gates.
They do not look pleased.
I squint as they hobble through, a few in the middle line carrying some white-tarped figures over their shoulders.
Adults. Not Jonah.
Two bodies.
Hobbes and Locke.
I see the dried blood matted through the whiteness. It's a surreal sight: the first dead bodies I've ever borne witness too.
Father claps me on the shoulder, startling me. We watch from the higher fences as the wives and children of the two guardsmen come forward.
Their wailing is the blaring horn of hell, announcing its arrival.