Omereth, 13-on-Rye, 568

Omereth, 13-on-Rye, 568

In that first week, we did little but maintain our route north and supplement the food we had brought with us. Making sure we didn’t stray from the forest hedge was relatively easy, despite the occasional gaps in its growth. In this part of the world, the only part I have ever really experienced, the land is low and rolling, full of verdant hills and shallow valleys, with only sparse patches of difficult terrain. This made our movement on foot straightforward enough, so long as we didn’t lose track of the hedge.

One afternoon we came upon a series of boulders, their layered and jagged rock an imposing eruption upon the earth. The hedge ran up to them, then stopped, but after we had scrambled our way to the top, the view made it obvious where we should continue. Upon that low summit, even though we were only a few heads above ground level, I marvelled at the world. Toӧr was lost to sight by then. I could no longer see the sprawling stone-and-wood buildings and smoking chimneys nestled against the protective rock face so distinctive of my home. But there were occasional signs of life, to be sure. To the west, I could see a small farm, corralled animals of some sort mere moving dots amongst a distant, static field. To the northeast there stood an ordered array of buildings. Some small village. Dowen, Brae confirmed after seeing me squinting.

Early the next morning when the soft orange glow of daybreak reached out to us, we came upon a deep stream, its water gushing and burbling eagerly. It wasn’t so deep as to make the crossing impossible, but Brae decided it was an unnecessary risk and that we should cross elsewhere and loop back to this spot once on the other side. Was the stream even on the map? I wondered. There was no point in asking; Brae wouldn’t remove her map just to satisfy my curiosity.

As I stopped and stared at this little obstacle, I noticed the abrupt end to the low shrubs several feet before the water’s edge. It was uncanny, as though the plants had taken offence at the stream’s passing, deciding to ignore it and just continue on the other side. Perhaps they had jumped across. I had laughed at myself then, Brae eyeing me with a look that was half bemusement, half irritation.

I pondered a moment longer on this question of the stream, eventually deciding that it was entirely that: an interruption. The stream had come second, languidly driving its way through the hedge at some stage long after the row of shrubs and bushes had established themselves. It must be very satisfied with its work, I thought, questioning just what task it had since set itself. To find an ocean, I figured. After all, that is surely the greatest desire of any stream. I watched its flow, the way the water ran swiftly down and between rocks and off into the distance to the east. I hoped for the sake of this stream that there was an ocean that way, but I couldn’t know for sure.

“Left or right,” I asked, looking to Brae. She chewed her lip, a gesture I favoured second only to the creasing of her eyes. Below, I could see tiny black fish in the clear water, endlessly battling the current.

“I think either, but the left draws me.” Brae had unlooped the metal pendant she kept wrapped tightly around her wrist, letting it swing freely from her right index finger. It was a habit I disliked. The idea that fate could be teased out from the world and sensed through some piece of string. She called it her guidance. I called it her folly. But only to myself. Folly would find me fast enough were I to speak those words aloud.

In the end, after refilling our flasks, we chose the left and soon found a shallower section that seemed safe enough. Our boots removed, leggings pulled up as high as possible, we waded through the current. I would have just left everything on, but Brae had insisted we make the crossing barefooted.

“You don’t want your clothes wet. Especially your boots.” she said. “Wet feet in wet boots. Not pleasant.”

I nodded, wincing as the icy water lapped across my skin. Brae laughed. Actually laughed. The sound of her laugh, the fact that it had been me to elicit that response, both of these things combined to a compact ball of warmth in my stomach.

“That was your first time, wasn’t it?” I said, buoyed on by that warmth and unable to help myself.

On the other side of the bank, Brae stopped and looked at me, one eyebrow raised.

“My first time?”

“Laughing. Not so painful, is it?” I hopped across the last section of the stream and jumped up into the thick grass. Wiping the balls of my feet in an attempt to dry them, I sat down and began to unroll my trousers. All the while, I kept my eyes on Brae.

Brae said nothing. Responses other than insults or curt remarks were not her specialty. Brae the Laconic; a fitting title perhaps. She just shook her head. But there, hidden in that movement, one eye twinkled. I was sure of it.

As for food, we each carried our own bundles for the journey to Kareth—dried fruit, hard-bread, slices of salted meats; not exactly luxury, but it had been deemed enough when we set off, provided that we ration ourselves. To supplement this meagre diet, we relied upon Brae’s proficiency as a ranger. As we walked, she would be tracking, noting the way that some animal may have disturbed the brush, left its droppings, marked its path with tiny footprints, or even deposited strands of hair on a thorny shrub. At times, Brae would wander off into an encroaching forest or skulk ahead around a particularly thick patch of the hedge, telling me to stay put. I would wait, patiently, watching for that moment when she would re-emerge, something in her hands.

It was all invisible to me, of course, these signs and disturbances that animals will leave as they move—their spoor, as Brae informed me. I listened with fascination true enough, and I think Brae actually enjoyed it, warmed to it, even. The hint of condescension in her voice dissolved into something verging upon respect at my attitude to listen. Finally, it seemed, I had found something she was eager and willing to talk of.

On the afternoon of the third day, hours before that fateful sighting in the sky, Brae treated me to a demonstration of her hunting skills. Ahead, darting between several bushes, there was a large rabbit. Brae motioned for us to stop, gliding the bow from her back in one smooth action, nocking an arrow silently in another. She knelt, pulling the bowstring taut, pausing, watching, waiting for the rabbit to stop. When it did, she didn’t hesitate. Her fingers released and the arrow thwished through the air, tracing a minute arc in the fraction of a second it took to strike its target. It all happened before I had chance to take breath. The rabbit fell limp, twitching. I raised my eyebrows, impressed.

“We’ll rest here for a while,” Brae decided, indifferent to her own marksmanship, walking to the base of the nearest tree. “I’ll start a fire. You can fetch us dinner.”

I may have protested at that, but it was a rare moment of Brae smiling. With her lips, and at me, with no-one else around for that smile to have been for—no chance of mistakenly thinking it was for me, only to find out it was not. I did not want to come across as some pet, following her every command, but it was impossible to resist that smile. And so doing my utmost to feign indifference, and making sure I most certainly did not skip, I set off towards the fallen rabbit.

I hadn’t really dealt with anything dead before, not with my own hands. I had eaten my share of meat, of course, though in Toör the produce of the land takes precedence despite the grazing sheep and cattle we keep in the fields. But having witnessed something transition from life to then death, that sudden creation of an absence of being gave me pause as I knelt down next to the once-rabbit. It looked almost peaceful, asleep.

The arrow ran through its neck and reemerged halfway down its flank. Its eyes were still open, a dark, glistening red that seemed all too alive. Beneath it, between the thinning blades of grass where the rabbit had taken its fateful pause, I could see the soil was wet. Urine, I realised with dismay. Its parting gesture. But unlike the spreading urine, the idea that the rabbit was now just an inert sack of organs and flesh refused to dissipate from my mind.

“Renn? What are you doing?” I heard Brae shout out.

“Coming,” I responded, not wanting to tell Brae I didn’t want to touch the rabbit, that I was fearful it might still be alive, that when I tried to grab it it would somehow move and I would hear the arrow shaft scraping against its spine. I shook my head. Then I placed my hand at the rabbit’s neck, tentatively at first, then with more confidence, scruffing the fur. The flesh underneath was still warm. “I’m sorry,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Know that you will feed us well. Your final act was in helping others.” Then I took a deep breath, stood and made my way back to Brae, all the while holding the rabbit at arm’s length, some part of me still worried it may move.

After I had been sent on another short errand to gather some herbs Brae had spotted a little way back along the path, Brae cooked the rabbit on a small fire. The rabbit tasted good, tinged only by my mind’s insistent recollection of its death. We had robbed it of life, for our own necessity. Such thoughts didn’t seem to affect Brae—she ate eagerly, though she maintained a characteristic poise I couldn’t help but admire.

“It’s good,” I said, picking some meat from between my teeth.

Brae flicked a bone into the embers of the fire and shrugged. “Not bad.”

I nodded. Once more, apparently it was up to me to try to spur on the conversation. “Who taught you to shoot an arrow so straight?” I asked.

The day’s light was beginning to fade and a slight breeze was taking the edge off of the season’s heat, blowing several strands of Brae’s hair into her eyes. Fingering them away and back behind her ear, she smiled. It was a wan, lost smile.

“An old friend,” she said. “He taught me when I was young. I’ve had long enough to practice since then.”

It felt unwise to press this, though I almost caught a glimmer of desire from Brae as she looked at me, as though she did want me to ask further. I hesitated, considered for one moment actually pressing the matter, but instead I said, “Will you teach me?” And then I found myself adding, “I could fetch your dinner each day. Our dinner, I mean.”

Brae shook her head, laughing slightly to herself. “Maybe someday.” She paused, dropping her gaze and frowning. “If there is time.” The fire cracked, as though in protest. Brae poked it with a stick, spreading the burning wood. “Get some sleep, we’ll start walking again after dark.”

Aside from interruptions from streams and boulders, and the occasional loss of trust in exactly where the path was meant to be—peppered, of course, with my unceasing ability to fumble my words—the going was easy. Brae’s decision had been to walk in regular shifts, regardless of daylight. Two, maybe three hours sleep, then we’d be back on our way. I didn’t mind so much. Sleep had never been something I was overly fond of. Wasted time, that’s how I felt about sleep, an attitude my father seemed to share. A few hours seemed to suit me just fine, and to my delight this had earned significant respect from my travelling companion.

And so Brae’s internal clock governed our movements: when we walked, when we rested and when we woke. Each time the last ended, I would spring eagerly to my feet, packing up my thin bedroll and making sure I was ready first. It was another silent game I played. One that I usually won.

Desuen, 12-on-Rye, 568

Desuen, 12-on-Rye, 568

The forest hedge meandered a long way north, a natural marker upon the land. In places it was scant but trampled scrub, interminable sections of barren grassland making you question whether you had lost your way. But no, if you looked carefully, if you stepped back upon your perspective, you could always see it, always find it. In other places it was a rigid, literal hedge. Not the well-kept and manicured hedge of some lord’s manor, but a hedge nonetheless, sprawling but defined, like it had been planted deliberately and then let run wild, undergoing the occasional loose trim.

I had studied enough to know the main reason for this, or at least a scholar’s premise. The large shrub dominating the majority of the hedge was sensitive to the magnetic drift of the world. In this region at least, running north there was some sort of magnetic seam. If the hedge grows too far outside of this seam, it withers. Perhaps the roots garner nutrients from it somehow. Some sort of conversion of energy. Perhaps it is pulled along by it, like the way flowers somehow turn toward light. In any case, I have no idea, and I doubt anyone truly does.

Over time, the hedge and all the associated plants that like to entwine along with it have spread in an uncanny route that runs a rough path north. This is no trade route though, no place where an established path has been forged or demarcated through the trodden boots of time. Too remote here, after all. But the hedge is old. Tirelessly old. Old but unwavering, making it an ideal natural guide.

Of course on maps, like the very one Brae carried folded in her belt, the hedge was a solid line.

A simple, easy-to-follow, easy-to-spot, magical black line.

Hah!

“No cartographer has ever walked this,” I’d said with theatrical disgust to Brae on the second day of our journey, the day before we saw the meteorite. After seven hours of walking, we rested against the trunk of a large oak, sharing sips from one of our water flasks. We were unlikely to run out—there would be enough streams on our journey and we carried three flasks each—but with Brae you did things by the book. You took precautions.

To the south, a rough patch of hedge was visible; to the north, nothing but tall grass.

“Look at this,” I said pointing down to the map, the cloth parchment sprawled in front of us on the ground. I hovered my finger (hovered, not touched; the latter mistake already made) over where I felt confident we were. “Solid line, Brae. Just a solid line.” I stood up and turned, making comparison gestures with my hands towards the north and the south.

“Sit down, fool. You’re not even close. We’re here.” Brae placed her finger on the map’s surface, tracing a line from where I thought we were to where she thought—knew—we were. The silver ring on her right index finger, a plain but polished band, flashed briefly as it caught a band of sunlight streaming through the oak’s thick canopy.

“There’s no tree there though. This oak is probably a thousand years old. There should be a tree there.” I said, looking at Brae and waiting for the creases. I caught one, just a hint near her right eye. One was enough. Like a morsel of food, that would keep me going for a while.

“Cartographers don’t draw trees, dimwit. Not unless there’s a whole bunch of them together.” She pointed off to the east where the landscape swelled to a series of low hills, each carpeted in thick forest.

I pictured a bunch of cartographers sat together, each of them taking turns to try to draw a single tree. I refrained from sharing this image.

“Hmm, fair point, fair Brae” I said, scratching the top of my head. Was I really a dimwit? Looking down, I could see that Brae was quite right. East of the point on the map where she had indicated we were, depicted quite clearly by concentric lines, were the hills that lay off to my right. Sketched between these lines, in a rudimentary yet neat fashion, were a strand of trees. Pashelback forest was written below. I’d never heard of it.

“Come on, we’ve wasted enough time.” Brae started to fold up the map, but not before she traced her finger a fair way further north, to a point where a tiny fleck of ink smudged the map’s surface. She tapped it twice and made a short clucking noise in the back of her throat. Then she continued folding the parchment, with all the due care that one would use to handle a kitten. I watched her as she did this, as her hands moved with such dexterous motion. Despite her strength and profession, those hands were delicate and the skin of her palms soft. Well, they looked soft. Let me stress that. I couldn’t know for sure, not then, how they actually felt, given the only time those hands had touched me had been within a glove. Throttling my throat. After I made a remark about her father. That had been back in Toӧr, and at the time I was rather proud of that remark. But Brae had felt otherwise. It was a stupid thing to say, I realise that now.

Finally, with one last careful fold complete, she pushed the map through two loops in her belt, securing it in place. Shouldering her satchel and bow, tying the waterskin back in its place alongside her other two, she caught me watching.

“What?” she asked, her amber eyes blazing in the afternoon light.

“Oh, nothing,” I said, smiling. “I just like the way you fold maps. It’s very calming.” I stared longingly at that map, folded neatly into her belt.

But Brae said nothing in reply. She merely huffed and walked on, without looking back.

She knew I’d follow.

And so I did.

Feshen, 11-on-Rye, 568

Feshen, 11-on-Rye, 568

The meteorite—if that is what it truly was—came three days after leaving Toӧr. It burned bright in the sky, a corona of cool blue cloaking a heart as fierce as ember. It was beautiful. Then it winked out, leaving us motionless in the dark, the rest of the night sky re-emerging in dim jealousy.

I looked to Brae. My mouth parted in readiness, lips trying to find the right shape. But no words came. Just an unusual silence. Brae shuffled, stones crunching underfoot, eyes squinting toward that point on the horizon.

Then came the explosion. Or something like an explosion, for there was light but no sound. Just a strange light I will never forget. It spat forth from the horizon, insistent on its escape, illuminating the sky with a narrow prismatic jet. Then that too was gone, lost to space.

We waited, still too stunned to move, expectant of the sound that never came. There was no rumble of the ground, no shock-wave. If we had been asleep, we might never have known of its passing.

Perhaps.

“What?” I said in dumb whisper, the lone word finally finding itself.

But Brae had said nothing. She breathed several deep breaths and motioned me forwards to continue our journey, stepping up her pace as she moved. Though the moon’s waxing crescent was thin, yielding just enough light to see the mossy way below our feet, Brae lit a torch and held it high as we walked. The light struck the myriad tree branches lining the path, casting each leaf and twig into darting shadow-shapes that leapt at us. Somewhere nearby came the low snort and rustle of an animal. Jackhog, most likely. Scavenging in the night, we must have startled it with our footsteps and flame.

In truth, if I am to be honest here, Brae’s sudden insistence on the safety of fire had unnerved me. We had walked with the moon’s silver guidance for hours, so why the change? What significance had that celestial body brought?

“Why the torch?” I asked, words echoing thoughts as I brushed aside a low branch.

“Would you rather I put it out?” she said, her first words in over an hour. Those words carried something strange. Something out of place, even for Brae.

I could have answered. I could have set forth a series of questions. With Brae, that was what I did: ask questions. And receive no answers. It was a game I played; a game I’d always played. And despite her silence, I knew when she favoured my words. It was in her eyes, in the way they creased, as if her face were trying to smile without her lips knowing. That was my hope, at least.

But this was no time for such a game.

Instead I shrugged, though I doubt Brae could tell. We had reached a larger clearing and she had taken the lead, sweeping the torch in what I felt were unnecessarily wide arcs until she caught sight of the forest hedge again. “I don’t care if you put it out or not,” I said, forgoing my own silence. “I just don’t see why we need it. There is enough moonlight. Why waste a torch?”

“Waste?” Brae stopped, whirling to face me. In the flickering torchlight, her hair flared a shade more crimson than usual.

This was not going well. I held up an appeasing finger. “Not waste.” I kept my finger there, like a banner pole bereft of any actual banner. “A flame at night, waste no light, drown the ghost, appease the blight.” I spoke the charm in my best lyrical tone. “Yes, yes, powerful and true and all that.” Of course, Brae was superstitious. I just didn’t see how that superstition fit with what we had just witnessed.

She said nothing back, staring instead at my unwavering finger. Finally, I let it drop. Her eyes in turn shifted to mine. They were deep set and cold, entirely devoid of creases.

“Brae,” I said coolly. “What was that? What did we just see?” The meteorite already seemed like a distant memory—like a dream, something that may not have actually occurred.

Brae continued to hold my gaze, inspecting me as though I were an outsider.

“I don't know,” she said, dropping her eyes and slumping her shoulders. “I don't know,” she repeated, her voice drained of any power. And then, in a moment of honesty that felt distinctly juxtaposed to the impervious Brae I had spent so long trying to crack, she added, “but it is not the first I have seen.”

Not the first.

I wondered deeply on those words that night. I wondered at their meaning, at the fear writ across Brae’s face. At what may lay ahead. Everyone has seen meteorites. Especially night rangers. Those that wander unseen in the cloak of dark.

It is only with the silent passage of time, with deep regret, and with my own slow stupidity that I caught her true meaning. No, it was no meteorite that we saw. It was something far more profound. Something intangible, even for me now.

Brae shook her head, as if ridding herself of some unseen insect. “Let’s move,” she said. “The night is still upon us, and we have a ways before camp.”

I had almost protested, stopped her and demanded some answers, or at the very least set upon her some questions. But instead I let it go, motioning an as you wish gesture with my hand.

A decision I have forever had to live with.

A journey begins

Well, this is it. A place to force myself into a regular writing schedule. Somewhere to dump and edit my thoughts in public for anyone who cares to find them.

I've been toying with writing for a long while now, unsure of my own ability but desperate to let some sort of creativity flow from my fingers, for better or for worse. There's a couple of things I've been working on, but this blog will hopefully reveal a short story, one post at a time. It may suck. It may not. But at the very least I'm going to try and work on this regularly from now on.

So, I thank you for your time if you're still reading. Let's set this going...