Theo’s Destiny
Worlds of Light and Fire
Paul Otteson
Dedicated to Middle Earth
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Copyright 2010 © Paul Otteson - All Rights Reserved
Smashwords Edition
GODS
Her eyes opened, seen by none, seeing all at once, back through time and across the now. The vision pained; the pain had awakened her—high one, Dionya Miridais Om, goddess, wraithqueen of Light. Dionya stretched energies through planes of mind, dancing the great web, knowing herself again, feeling immediately the damage to the Lighted land of Hoem and those it bore.
Her awareness stretched further to her enemy and brother, Orogarr, who raged at her waking. Orogarr had been bold by Earth across the ages, driving the Edge outward from the lands of Fire, covering the halflands one by one, forcing peoples to death or exodus across the centuries. Now the Edge surrounded Hoem, visible, challenging the mien of mariners, roiling with shadow, a looming blanket of Fired, icy doom surging against Light's realm. Her champion had bound it there a thousand years ago. Her secret ones held the binding still.
But Orogarr had been subtle in her absence, working the Fire of his being through faint fissures in Light's sphere, cutting at the slender leys of power that ran outward from her Heart, taking her children and damning her land. Driven by essential malice he gnawed at the Balance, hoping as always to have dominion at last and forever. His earthly agent he had reawakened, having kept him from oblivion for an age of ages until at last all was ready, steering now his elemental gathering nearly to form.
"Dionya," the cosmos breathed.
The goddess responded, calmly bitter. "You, my other, wake me from the inner realms again to Earth’s agony."
"Perhaps this time you have slept too long," Orogarr taunted.
Dionya did not answer. There was no need. The game was on.
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PROLOGUE
"And there he was! A wee elf, just as I said." Sally told her story again, this time for the elders who had gathered to see the baby. "I heard an old mead thrush chatterin' in Henner's roaldoak—the one across from my door that leans so. That bird were taking on some, and I looked out at the fuss twice before I walked over. And there he was, just as you see him." All turned to regard the child again. "He were put right on what my Hobert calls the 'cold stone,' where he sets his drink to stay cool when he's at work in the patch. Just wrapped as you see him there, he was, and shaded by the oak.
"I say it’s something mighty peculiar," Sally continued, offering her take. "And I thinks we ought to have Bess in, even if she's a trouble. Why, after all, an elf babe! Here in the village like as never before happened! You know 'tis so, Rant," she said, speaking directly to the oldest one present. "You know 'tis so." No one responded. Her words had been unnecessary, and the child had their full attention.
"Will you look at the eyes," widow Karin mused.
"The eyes, yea, the eyes." Rant Geoffen set his hands on the edge of the table and leaned in closer to the swaddled baby to get a better look. "They're not usual."
"Why there's no color at all," Karin continued, "I've not seen the like."
"Nor have you ever seen an elf in Bellford for forty year if a day." The voice was Timothy Henner's, spoken from his stool in the corner of the low-ceilinged chamber. "For all that's ours to know, blank eyes is as common for elf folk as bubbles in beer," he added, earning a chuckle from some.
Karin was not daunted. "I've seen elves! By the lot they used to come to the Midland to trade and travel—as well you know it, Timothy," she chastised. "Weren't a one, ever, that had eyes like these. That's a fact!"
"I've seen elves down to the river," spoke Dan Burt, who usually said little. "And not forty year back neither, but four. This just before they closed themselves into the Westland. Now I don't recall eyes or no, being one who don't notice such in any bother. But—mindin' that I've had a beer or two—I might say that maybe what you've got ain't an elf at all, but maybe from North Karm, where I hear there are them whose eyes is gray-like, or perhaps another mix-breed type such as Karm has aplenty, they say."
"I've seen light-eyed Karmans. Several." Karin had indeed seen a good bit in her sixty-odd years, having lived about and done some traveling in her youth. "Such eyes aren't the like of these. They're washed-like, dull grays and tans, pale for all that. But these eyes—why just look at them!" And they looked. "They're plain empty, new again or such. I've not seen the like. Don't they just seem to call for color?" And they did.
They gazed into those eyes, watching as they searched the room with the unmade curiosity of a baby. Though they could only wonder, the village folk were right in suspecting that such eyes were not common. They had not been seen in fact since prophecy and evil had beset the land in an age gone by.
"We'd best tell Bess," Sally said again. "She'll know what to do."
Henner grunted.
"Yea," Karin sighed. "She'll have something to say."
Again they went quiet, watching the infant in wonder. Old Rant broke the reverie. "Eyes or no, that babe needs a changin' or I'm a goat!" And he wasn't.
Darin and Elda Spale gratefully took charge of the child, being a young pair that never minded hard work, and who had no children of their own. Elda worked days for Karin in candle making and gardening. Darin herded sheep, moving the village flocks from meadow to meadow on the high slopes that rose above Bellford to south, north, and east. Since by the signs the boy was elfin born, old Sage Bess forbade them from giving their adopted son the name of Spale. So they simply called him Thrush, after the bird that had heralded his appearance.
For a time a few of the villagers expected some sign or message regarding the child, but none came. Bess scolded them for what she called 'ambitions.' "Ye'll see naught!" she harangued at the elders. “We're no more than salt here—no one here special but the boy. We're to care and no more. The goddess works by others, and she'll take him when she's ready. Mark me! She'll have him back!" The Spales were not present to hear, and no one had the heart to pass on the witch's prediction.
The issue faded as the months passed, and they accepted the child with little more wonder than that felt for any village babe. So it was with some shock that they woke one day to learn that Thrush had vanished. It happened in the spring, nearly three years after his appearance, and only three from the village ever knew the complete truth. Two departed the very next morn. The third grew crazed and wayward.
"We can not keep him here!" the witch of Light nearly shouted. "Not any longer. We can't be sure—I can't be sure."
"But why not?" Darin asked, his pain obvious. "Nothing’s changed. No one’s come. You—"
“It has changed, though I'm not sure what. Gods! Gods!" Bess reached out yet again with her mind, grasping at strands of understanding for long seconds, yet unable to come fully clear. She wished she knew more... but she knew enough. "Light is… missing." She hadn't the words. "’Tisn’t full. Not whole. I cannot find it. The Fire is near. It scents. It seeks." She glanced about in fear as though she might catch evil with a quick look. For all Darin knew, she might be able. "Gods!" she spat.
"So?" snapped the young herder, angry and pleading. "It wouldn’t be the first. Fire comes and goes you've said. You've always knit it out, you say. So knit it out again!"
Bess wondered for a moment if she might not do as he asked. But even as hope approached it veered away. Something was amiss; she could not afford to err.
"No!" she refused. "It cannot be." Seeing a young father's misery, she struggled to master the confusion within her. "This Fire does not rend the weave. It… it peers through. It comes as a bare mist. It seeps through as a light smoke then passes away on the slightest breeze. It has no strength, but ‘tis Fire still!" She held Darin's gaze. "And if the boy is touched—if he is seen—he’ll be taken and we’ll be lost. Lost! That much is given me to know." With an effort, she stared at him until he held her gaze. "He must go," she said. "I must send him overway."
"You don't know what's overway!" Darin shouted, trembling to hear himself. "We don't know! None here have been. By your own say, you’ve not been and cannot pass the way. What will you send him to?" he implored.
"I don't know!" she fired back, "but ‘tis my task to try." She continued quietly but with no less intensity. "I am here for him. I live for him; I should be dead years past. If I do naught else but send him, I’ve done the work of my life. This I know, young Darin, like the bell knows the ring."
Darin despaired. "Send him to the elves! He’s elfin, yea? So all say. So give him back. He’ll be safe, and Elda and me’ll see him now and again. We’ll take him things. We’ll show… Bess, he…" Words would not come.
"Do you think I’ve not thought that?” Bess could see she needed to be stern. Darin was no hothead, but he could be stubborn as any when roused. “Listen, oaf—why is he not with them in the first place? Why is he here?" She poked his chest sharply and he sat heavily on the stool behind him. "An elf!" she exclaimed, incredulous. "Here, with a rabble of sheep shearers and dirt scratchers, with not a book in the village!
“And his eyes," she smiled, looking away in thought. "His eyes. Ready to take the color of Hoem when Hoem is ready to give. Think, boy—for you are little more than boy yourself. I birthed you, you dolt! Think and see."
For a moment Darin stared, defiant, but then his will sagged.
"In the end, ‘tis for one purpose alone that he is here." She spoke now with the authority that she held. "We hold knowledge of the overway," she stated. "In all my time or the time of those who came before me, no word has come of any others who know of it. Thrush is here because we are the safest corner of the land—because, here, there is a way out." She would have said more but there was no need.
Darin hung his head. "Elda will not understand," he said quietly. "He is her life. He is our lives."
"If I see, he may be all of our lives," Bess replied. "And give Elda her due; she's a sight sharper than you! She'll see that we save her son by this. She may see him again when the time is right; he will not forget her." She spoke of Darin's wife, but the words were for the young herder as well. "He needs nothing. Bring him to me this eve. I will await you." Her final words were a command, and he knew them as such. He would not disobey.
After he left, the old witch collapsed slowly to the rug, whimpering and pulling at her hair. Was she right? "Gods!" she cried. "Gods, gods, gods!"
That evening, as appointed, Darin Spale carried little Thrush to the highfield, just as he had many times for nearly a year—just as his own father had done with him when he had learned to walk.
Above one end of the upland meadow spread an ancient, rubble-strewn terrace of stone that had once been the floor of a small structure—a temple perhaps, though there was little to suggest that it had ever been walled or roofed. A high outcrop backed the terrace, into which an alcove had been hollowed ages past.
Clouds scudded past, a few of the lower ones catching on the ridge and sending misty fingers down the slopes. Every so often the waning moon glared accusingly from the wrack, adding stark light to the scene. Darin gave the hand of the boy into that of Sage Bess, whom Thrush knew as well as a boy of three summers could. Darin could not watch; he turned away, taking a few steps off into the chill grass. He heard a quick giggle, then a high, sweet voice asking a question. Bess led Thrush onto the moonlit terrace, teasing his wonder. She watched as the boy’s curiosity led him deeper into the alcove for a peep.
A brilliant, soundless flash of light suddenly illuminated the nearer reaches of the pasture and the rocks above. The light lasted only an instant. When it had gone, Thrush had gone with it. Bess stood frozen, gazing at the spot where the child had last been present. So quick. She had expected… what?
The moment his small foot touched the odd, rose-colored stone in the center of the alcove floor, Thrush found himself elsewhere, standing amid different ruins and blinking in the sunlight. He knew not that an ancient will had worked through him—one neither formed nor focused, but knowing in one essential way. The time had come for Thrush to depart; the Fire was on the rise.
When Darin turned, all looked as it had before, save that Thrush was nowhere to be seen. He stood for a moment, unable to see that anything had happened—realizing that he hadn’t really expected anything to happen. Remorse overtook him in a rush. He plunged into the alcove. "Send me!" he shouted. He felt about the walls and floor of the as though to trigger a way through for himself. "Send me after! I'll go, Bess. Tell Elda. I'll go with him. Why didn't we think of that? He's alone; he needs care!" He seized her shoulders and compelled her gaze. "Send me as you sent him!" he pleaded.
"I didn't send him!" she shot back. "I can't send anyone. I led him. He stepped and… he's gone." She sagged before him. "I thought, maybe… But he's gone. Little Thrush is gone overway, and I am done. I am done. I am done," she repeated over and over as she began to weep like a young girl. Darin put an arm around her. They stood for many minutes before he walked her gently down from the heights.
When Darin returned home he found Elda hurriedly packing their belongings. She began to speak as she worked. "We can't stay. I won't stay. We'll go south to the coast to start again. Aran and Netta are there, and my cousins, and my mother is closer there than here. You'll come too. You can't stay; it'll kill you. I need you too. We'll leave in the morning. I've told all who matter. Henner's nephews are old enough to tend the flocks and they want it. Keeps them out of other work…"
In the midst of departing the room to fetch another item, she froze in her tracks and went silent. Darin felt certain she was about to give in to the pain and fall to heartache—he had seen it before. She surprised him. When Elda Spale turned to her husband, her face was calm, and there was light in her eyes.
"It's all right, Darin," she said. "We won't have him, but he'll be back in his time. He won't forget us, and we will see him again. He told me so. His eyes flashed and he told me so." She smiled. Darin was shocked to hear a choking sob come from his own throat. He grieved then and she held him.
1 – THEODORE GARFIELD
'You idiot!' Theo thought when Topper's spitwad streaked over Michelle Weber's head and hit Mr. Bernhart. As though hearing his friend’s thought, Topper flashed a furtive and fearful glance in Theo’s direction before assuming his best look of innocence.
Ted Bernhart's chalk froze on the board, leaving a minus sign where a plus was needed. He stifled a sigh, consoling himself with the thought that only two weeks remained in the school year. With exaggerated care, he reached behind his neck to remove the saliva-dampened hunk of paper. Regarding it with a slow shake of his head, he carefully unfolded it then turned to face the class, a dangerous smile on his face. The surreptitious closing of Topper’s spiral notebook was the only movement in the room.
"This belong to anyone?" he inquired, as though trying to return a lost mitten. He scanned the silent students for a moment then strolled casually over to Topper's desk. "Look familiar, Bramble?" he inquired, using the given name Topper hated and speaking just above a whisper. Ted Bernhart set the wet scrap carefully on the desk where Topper's downturned eyes could see it.
'You idiot,' Theo thought again. Topper couldn’t hide anything from anybody. Whenever he tried to lie, his body twisted and turned, his eyes looked everywhere except at the person he was talking to, and he picked and pulled at his fingers.
"It wasn't me," Topper mumbled as he turned in his seat, his eyes darting around the room and his fingers pulling and picking.
Mr. Bernhart stood still as stone for ten seconds then bent slowly over Topper’s desk until his face was inches from Topper’s own. "I don’t like getting spit on, Mister Bright."
Theo could almost feel Topper’s guilt. The tableau held for several seconds more until the teacher passed judgement.
“Consequences, Mr. Bright. That’s too many times lately for you. I think there will need to be a phone call after school.”
Topper lost it. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I wasn't aiming at you, I shouldn't have done it, I know, I'm sorry. Please don’t get me in trouble. Please don’t call my mom. I'm sorry Mr. Bernhart, I just… I'm sorry, I—" And then he started crying.
Theo winced as his best friend Bramble Bright’s throat caught and he began to blubber away in front of the whole math class. He heard the snickers from around the room. Even Mr. Bernhart looked embarrassed.
"All right Bramble, take a walk," the teacher ordered. “You were warned.” He scrawled a note and pressed it into Topper's hand. "Principal's office."
Topper lurched up and stumbled out of the room. Theo heard Richie Vonhof's sneering whisper in his ear. "Hey Garfield, aren't you gonna go with crybaby and wipe his nose?"
"Shut up, Dicky," Theo returned.
Those who watched Topper's exit jumped in their seats at the sound of Mr. Bernhart's pointer smacking the table. "Okay, show's over—and don't let me hear about any of you giving Bramble a hard time. It could have been any of you. Even you, Richard," he said, eyeing Richie. "I seem to remember some soggy eyes after your little slip on the steps a few weeks ago," he added, giving Richie a knowing look as he returned to the board and completed his chalk work. "Let's get back to variables, shall we? Get ready for Algebra next fall maybe, you think?” he said as he took up the chalk to complete his writing. “We'll start again with the painfully simple equation on the board: X+9=21. Who can solve this one for us? Theo?"
But Theo was no longer listening, for just as Mr. Bernhart had uttered the syllable, "pain," Theo had spotted the creature. Perched in the sun on the roof of the firehouse across the street from Lincoln Middle School, it peered this way and that, cocking its head as though listening. Theo knew the creature all too well. It had awakened him from sleep every night for nearly two months, entering and shattering even the sweetest dreams, or simply weaving a nightmare of its own. This time, though, he was not asleep.
A low moan drained from his lips and he stood, knocking over his front row desk. Everyone stared at him. "Theodore?" Bernhart asked in concern.
An eerie composure settled over Theo. Somehow he felt ready for what had to come next. He spared a brief look for Mr. Bernhart, flashing a half smile that his teacher would never forget, and then fled.
Theo raced through the hall, plunged down the stairs, rounded a corner and slammed heavily into Topper, who had been trying to get control of his tears before facing the school secretary. Both boys hit the floor.
"What was that for?" Topper gasped.
"I have to go now," Theo answered in controlled panic. "I have to go, now."
"Are you sick? Did Bernhart throw you—" Topper stopped. His eyes locked with Theo’s. He knew the look in those colorless orbs; he had seen it before. "…The creature," he voiced with brother-like insight, suddenly afraid himself.
"Where?" Theo hissed, flattening himself against the wall, his head turning from left to right to scan the hall.
"No," Topper whispered quickly, "I mean, is it the creature?" Bramble Bright knew all about Theo's dreams. Nearly every morning on the way to school, he had listened to tales of his friend's nighttime terrors—tales that Theo could relate all too vividly with the same look of the eyes that he had now. "Were you dreaming? …But you weren't asleep."
Theo's reply froze on his lips. In the seconds since he'd spotted the creature, his mind had been quietly working on how he might escape his nightmare come to life. Now the answer came to him. In a voice as quiet as a breeze he shared it with Topper. "I'm going to die," he said. "In a few minutes, I'm going to die. No matter what I do, I'm going to die."
As if on cue, the boys heard the faint screams of children who had suddenly seen something they should never have had to see. Theo knew what it was.
"No!" snapped Topper. "You're not going to die. Let's go; let's get out of here. We can go… We—"
"Where can I go? There's nowhere! I dreamed this fifty times. Every time I run, and there's nowhere, and it gets me." He shuddered at the memory and the shaking didn’t stop. He began to panic. “I can’t believe it’s real. It’s real! I can’t believe… Oh god oh god.”
"Stop it, Theo! We have to go, " Topper insisted. “We have to try!”
"Not you," Theo answered. "Not you. It's not looking for you, it wants me."
"I'm going with you," his friend answered back, emboldened by his cartoon-like concept of danger and death.
He had no time to think more on the subject, for a great thump sounded out in the direction of the school’s front doors, followed by the junkyard shriek of ripping metal. Doors and posts crashed to the ground. Hurled and beaten glass smacked and shattered, accompanied by shrieks and shouts.
"Jeez, it's really here! What’s it like?" Topper asked, his curiosity refusing to be frightened off.
The intercom speaker above their heads crackled to life with a hurried announcement, the words unintelligible but the urgency obvious. Vice Principal Moran appeared in the hall shouting directions. Students and teachers came pouring around the corner toward the two boys, heading to the side and back exits, fear and confusion on some faces, panic on others.
Topper pulled on Theo's shirt. "Come on!" he shouted. "Let's go!" Theo hesitated for a moment then ran, heading for the back door with the crowd. A vicious thud echoed through the halls, followed by the sound of concrete hitting concrete. A rolling wave of screams accompanied the shaking of the building—like an amusement park ride gone badly wrong.
Somehow, a hundred fifty kids squeezed out a pair of double doors without anyone getting trampled. A couple of teachers tried to line their students up on the basketball court as though for a fire drill. Others led theirs on a wild rush to get as far away from the building as possible. A large group raced madly toward the football field to reach the woods beyond, a teacher in the lead screaming, "Hide! Hide!"
Theo ignored them all. Instead of leaving the scene, he turned and crept quickly along the edge of the building. Hugging the walls, he sped all the way around to the front where he could get a view of the entrance.
"Are you crazy?" Topper whispered, incredulous. "We have to get out of here! Why are you going this way?"
As Theo pressed against the bricks and peered around a corner, he felt the building shake again. The creature blundered about inside. But Theo knew that—following smell or instinct, or something—it would break through the exit that they had just used and pursue him, no matter where he went. Steeling himself and oddly certain, he made up his mind.
"Run!" he ordered and set out across the parking lot. Topper followed. The boys dashed furtively through the rows of cars then sped across the street, over a footbridge and into the park. There they raced over the wide lawn that sloped gently upwards, climbing the north side of the valley that held the small community of West Glen and little else. Theo made straight for the nearest grove of trees, thinking to stay hidden from seeking eyes.
"This is crazy," Topper said between breaths as they ran. "There's nothing. Up here. Nothing. Police. We should get the police!"
Theo ducked behind a big willow then turned to peer back the way they had come. He could see the street but trees masked the school, their crowns just starting to fill out with new spring leaves. He listened intently for several seconds but heard no screams or sounds of destruction. For a moment he entertained the barest hope that he had escaped.
Topper had no such thoughts. "Theo!" he said urgently, chafing at his friend's delay. "Why here? The police have guns; they could shoot that thing. Or they could take you away fast in a police car. Or… something!" Theo continued to stare back toward the school, his hope growing. "Did you really see it?" Topper asked, curiosity competing with fear. "What does it look like? Is it—"
A rending screech lacerated the quiet.
"Run!" Theo hissed. They dashed on through the grove and into a picnic area. Weaving among the tables, they nearly collided with a worried mother, who took their flight as a further sign that it was time to go. She grabbed her infant and headed for her car.
Theo and Topper raced on through the playground and up a gentle slope toward the wilder end of the park. Seconds later they plainly heard the reckless approach of the creature as it savaged the foliage of the grove in its pursuit.
"Trees won't stop it," Topper said, more to himself than to Theo, who seemed possessed by the course he had chosen.
Theo left the manicured part of the park and plunged into the woods along the official nature path. "Eastern Hemlock," Topper mouthed as they raced past one of the signs that identified species to interested hikers. Topper had been such a hiker before. 'Eastern White Pine?' he wondered vaguely as he neared the next sign. 'Yes,' he thought, but that was the end of the diversion.
Without hesitation, Theo veered from the nature path and down an unofficial but well-known side trail. In a few seconds they came to a broken fence, hurdled it without breaking stride, and returned to kept lawns and stately oaks that sprawled sedately in the morning sun. Now, however, they had to make their way among the stones that marked the final resting places of the town's dead.
Topper followed doggedly in near disbelief. "No, Theo," he gasped. "Not here."
"There's something," Theo returned. "It's this way but I don't… I can't think…" He stopped, head turning this way and that, seeking what, he didn't know. "It's this way, but we aren't there yet. It’s stones…" He bolted again, weaving among the cold, silent markers like a hound on an elusive scent.
A searing wail stopped them cold, rattling headstones. The boys wheeled about and saw it—the creature. Topper's mouth fell open—it was just like Theo had described, only… only real. With a body twice the size of a big man, it looked like a rusty, over-muscled bat with awkward wings and tyrannosaurus teeth. Arteries and veins pushed to the surface, lacing the beast's hairless skin with lines of blood. Its tiny, flat eyes showed no sign of intelligence—only of a raw and leering hunger. It stood where it had landed, slowly orienting itself for its next leap.
Theo stared, petrified. Yet he did not run—perhaps because he could not, though through his terror he felt an odd thread of calculation, as though a part of him was taking the measure of this enemy. Enemy? Death was more like it. One of Theo's eyebrows raised a touch, as though to say, 'well, let's see what you've got.' For a bare instant Theo saw it—the beast feared him! Then it attacked, launching itself with an explosive thrust of wings, jaws of death open wide.
Topper found himself flying, slammed backwards by the glancing blow of a massive wingtip. His last glimpse as he flew was of teeth closing on Theo's torso like a great white shark seizing a penguin. Then light burst in his skull and he hit the ground.
…But he was still awake, and alive. Pushing himself up on his elbows, he blinked away the aftereffects of the violent green flash and took in the scene. There stood Theo, his face a mask of shock. Around him lay scattered the steaming, seeping hunks of a horrible corpse. One particularly large piece twitched spasmodically. Others slowly sagged as fibers relaxed and fluids drained away. The beast… had burst.
Trembling, Topper stood and walked unsteadily to Theo, wincing as his banged ribs reacted to movement. "What was that?" he asked. "How did that happen? It's dead!" Topper's words flooded out. "Are you okay? Look at that thing—it's blown up! It's… it's destroyed! And you did it. I think it came from your eyes, like a laser or something. It was about to eat you! Do you smell that? Ugh! That thing reeks! And it…"
Topper gagged. With a shudder, he turned and threw up on a gravestone. Collapsing to his knees, he threw up again and again until his overcharged frame had spent its wayward energy, then he rolled to his back, exhausted and stunned.
Theo hadn't moved. He knew full well what he had done—or rather, what had happened, for he hadn't 'done' anything. …Or had he? In those final seconds he had given up. All his frantic ideas of escape had evaporated, and he had surrendered to the certainty that he would die. But then a flicker of a memory had entered his thoughts, and he had acted. He had killed the creature—not with a beam from his eyes as Topper had suggested, but with a wish. He had simply thought, "kill", and the creature had burst apart. Or so it seemed to him now.
But there had been words, too, yelled in his head, fast and loud in Theo's own voice. Where had they come from?
Other memories pushed into his consciousness, vivid but scattered. He saw faces and trees. He heard the sounds of voices and little kids laughing. If it truly was memory and not imagination, he now recalled people and places from his own past. But while his memory could stretch only ten or eleven years back, the people in his memories seemed to be from another time and place altogether. The image of a man's face appeared, smiling, and then a woman, and he called her 'mama'. Her face momentarily froze in his vision, and he studied it before it dissipated.
Theo knew that he had been adopted. It had never been a secret; he never thought about it. He mused for a bit but was jolted back to the present when he casually placed a hand on a grave marker and it landed in a puddle of Topper's puke. "Gross!" he exclaimed, quickly squatting to wipe his hand in the grass.
Topper shivered a bit but appeared to be recovering. He stood. "Let's get out of here," he said weakly. "Let's go home."
With long looks at the remains of the creature—bloody hunks of hide, meat and bone that still smoked and seemed almost to be cooking—they headed straight for Theo's house. They quickly passed through the park, taking a more direct route to Theo's street, Hastings Place, which met the park four blocks from the school. Topper tried to converse as they went, but Theo seemed distracted. Twice he slowed as though uncertain of the direction, only to speed up again, breaking into a run.
Exiting the park by the entry road, they came again to Main only short yards from the corner of Hastings. There, Theo stopped altogether. Topper glanced at him then looked about. He could clearly see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles down Main Street by the school. At least three sirens blared as other vehicles sped on missions undoubtedly related to the creature's appearance. Still Theo didn't move. Topper looked at him again.
"Uh, Theo, there's no cars."
"I'm just going to leave a note," he muttered before bolting across Main.
"What?" Topper asked, following quickly, "What did you say?"
"I'm leaving them a note," Theo yelled back over his shoulder.
"About what?" Topper replied, knowing Theo meant to write some message for his parents.
"I'm going back—up to the hideout."
"What?" Topper asked, thinking he'd misheard his friend.
"The hideout," Theo repeated. "I'm going up to the hideout."
"You should be going to the police station, or you should call the FBI or something. Or at least tell your parents what happened."
"No!" Theo responded vehemently. "No, Topper. Not the police or anyone."
"Why not?"
Theo came to an abrupt halt on the sidewalk. "Because the creature was only the start!" he said with a hint of panic. After a pause, he finished lamely. "There's the laughing, too. The guy who laughs in the dream."
"Well, yeah okay," Topper allowed, "but how do you know it isn't just laughing? It might not be somebody; it might just be laughing."
"No," Theo said with certainty. "No. This is just the start of something. It's… Look, you remember what I told you about the dream, don't you?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I should be dead!" Theo stated with force. "I should be dead. I should be like that creature, all crap and…" He eased off. "But now I get all the rest of the dream, because it wasn't just the creature. There are all those faces and places, like I told you. And the laughing guy is real. The dreams were dreams, but they turned out to be about real things. Didn't they?"
"Yeah."
"So…"
"So all right," Topper said. "But what does that have to do with going to the hideout and not telling people? I mean, okay, if we have to do it, we have to do it, but I don't get it." Theo looked up at this. "Yeah, me! I'll go with you—I am going with you."
Though he neither showed nor understood it, a wave of relief washed over the creature’s would-be victim. "Well,” Theo tried to explain, “I'm going to the hideout because… because…"
"Because that's where you have to go," Topper finished, feeling very strange.
Theo stared at him. "There's something up there," he said. "A treasure, or a thing—like a light. Or, no, like something pulling me like a string in my brain. Or…" His frustration got the better of him. "Jeez, I don't know!"
"This whole thing is extremely weird, Theo."
Theo nodded in agreement. "But I think that's where I was going when the creature chased us," Theo said quickly, as though it explained his decision to go there now.
Without waiting for Topper's reply, Theo jogged on the last few yards up the street to his home. As he had expected, the driveway was empty of cars. Even if his parents had both immediately heard what had happened and started home from work, it would still be a few minutes until the first arrived. Theo didn't want to try and explain to them what he could not even explain to himself. He unlocked the side door and leapt up the short steps into the kitchen. "Hurry," he said to himself as much as Topper.
Theo raced upstairs to his room and grabbed his old school backpack from the back of his closet. With little thought as to whether or not he'd actually need any of it, he stuffed it with a warm shirt and water bottle. Back in the kitchen he added a bag of Oreos. As Topper finished talking to his mom on the phone—pleading, reassuring, and promising—Theo scrawled a note for his parents. ‘I'll be home for dinner,’ he lied hopefully, knowing in his bones that his fate would be quite different.
"Let's go," Theo ordered, driven by a sense of urgency he did not understand.
"I was going to make some sandwiches."
"Let's go," Theo repeated, heading for the door. Topper followed.
Since it was the fastest path to what they called the 'hideout', the boys retraced their steps down Hastings, across Main, back up through the park, and on into the cemetery. They slowed to a walk as they neared the site of their encounter with the creature. They saw no one else. The police must not yet have been told of the existence of strange body parts lying around the graveyard.
Morbid curiosity led the boys to take another look at the scattered pieces of corpse. Topper hung back a bit, content to see wisps of steam rising from a couple indistinct blobs of meat a few yards away. Theo went straight to the creature's head, brutally torn from body by the power that Theo had somehow unleashed. It lay where it had fallen, an eye skewered by the American flag marking the resting place of a war veteran, its gaping mouth poised as though to bite into the grave in pursuit of a bony meal. Thick fluids still seeped from the ragged stub of its neck. A whiff of fume stung Theo's eyes and he stepped back a pace.
"Very impressive, boy.”
Theo whirled about to face the source of the voice, only to be struck still as death in fear. He heard no laughter, but he knew whom he faced.
“You destroyed my gragor." The ‘r’s growled raspingly from the newcomer’s lips.
The tall figure stood beside a mausoleum, looking as though he might be there to meet a friend. Dim lines of a papery face disappeared back into fathomless eye sockets, shadowed in the depths of a stiff hood, sparked within by two bare glimmers of sucking evil sight. A sinking, brown smoke spilled from every opening in his heavy robes and even through the charred-meat brown of the fabric itself. He stunk like the burning of brakes and hair.
"So, shall we battle?” asked the man, the words spilling like blood. “You and I?" A smile climbed his gray cheeks as though pulled by marionette strings.
Theo stood dumbfounded. Battle? How could he battle this smoking man with eyes the color of infection. He had never been more scared. His mouth hung agape. A tear rolled down a numb cheek.
"No?" the smoking man said with seeming sadness, "I suppose not. You have no mastery—and I am no fell gragor, boy! Your accident of Light is useless here. Dionya has left you to me. She erred, I think." He smiled again, this time sneering enough to expose the tip of a yellowed tooth. "It is time to die," he stated simply. Theo stared at that tooth as he might at a distant marker warning against entering the cavern mouth of the road to hell. The smoking man raised his arms.
Topper's first rock hit him on a kneecap. The second glanced audibly off the side of his head as he bent over in pain at the first. Theo sprang away as though shot from a bow, startled from his paralysis as if the rocks had hit him instead of this new enemy. He was already disappearing into the trees when Topper turned to follow. They fled through the forest like panicked rabbits, followed first by curses, then by the devil's own onslaught.
So long had the wizard lived by Fire that he had forgotten the pains of the mundane. 'Rocks!' he spat inwardly. “Rocks!” he howled then, quite audibly. Recovered, he hurled a spell after his quarry, setting a swath of trees to burn from within, acids erupting from wood and leaves like pus from boils, and then set out after his prey with awkward, uncanny speed.
Fortunately for the boys, their new enemy had no concept of how fast scared thirteen year-olds can run. Theo and Topper heard the wood sizzling away behind them but spared not a moment for a glimpse. They soon departed all tended land, racing now along wild paths that climbed the side of the valley. They ran until their lungs burned, and then ran on still.
For a change it was Topper that had trouble keeping up with his shorter, slighter friend. Though they fled an enemy whose very presence was fear, Topper sensed that Theo ran toward something as well—where more than one possible turn presented itself, Theo chose without hesitation. He shot right by the tiny path that led to small pine grove and overlook they thought of as the 'hideout'. They began to climb more steeply, slowing a bit as the ascent wore them down.
"Why up here?" Topper wheezed to Theo's back. "Why? I thought what you wanted was at the hideout." Getting no response, he filled in with his own reasoning. "Because it's high up? I don't think that guy will have a problem coming up the hill. Are we going to the ruins or all the way over? Is that what? That we're going over and down into B-ville? Are we just going to keep going?" Theo kept running and said nothing.
In minutes, they reached the site of a house that had long since burned to the ground. Known as ‘the ruins’ by the more adventurous youths of West Glen, the site had been repeatedly assaulted over the years. Graffiti decorated every eligible surface. Broken beer bottles sparkled in the rubble. The town maintained the road that wound up to the place just so the police could raid the clandestine parties held there. The boys had not arrived by the road, but via the paths that laced the forested sides of the valley.
"What?" Topper tried again as he bent over and rested hands on knees in an effort to catch his breath. "Do you want to hide here? You don't want to hide here, do you? What can we do here? I can't just keep throwing rocks at him. Did you hear what happened to those trees behind us? I felt it too." Topper straightened and peered suspiciously back into the trees. "Maybe we lost him."
But even as Topper calmed, Theo grew more agitated. He hadn't completely ignored his friend, mumbling, "no," or, "I know," at the appropriate junctures, but his mind was on his search and he knew he was close. "Wait here!" he snapped suddenly. He walked a few feet from Topper and climbed the broken steps to what had been the front door of the house. There he stood, cocking his head as though trying to feel a breath of breeze, or to discern a tune played far away, at the edge of hearing.
Once upon a time, the place had almost become the most remarkable house in Cayondaga County. The favored niece of a steel magnate had commissioned it to be built after seeing the site on an outing. The design incorporated a low cliff that featured a small alcove hollowed out of its face. The owner had envisioned the cliff as the towering back wall of a great room, the flat-floored alcove serving as a grand fireplace. With a snap of moneyed fingers, she had set the project in motion. The fireplace, however, had never been finished, and the woman had never spent a night in her home.
A special contractor had been hired to bore through a section of the cliff to create part of the chimney. Delayed by a previous commitment, he hadn’t begun work until much of the house was already completed. As he told it, the spinning bit of his borer had no sooner touched the rock than it sent a shower of sparks in all directions. Examining his suddenly dulled hardware, the puzzled driller noticed too late that the sparks had kindled some dried grass and sticks. Everything went wrong for the builders and firefighters who tried to quell the blaze. In the end, they watched from a safe distance as nearly two years of work burned to nothing.
Theo looked out over a debris-filled pit from atop the steps. While a substantial remnant of the old foundation walls still described a ragged, mansion-sized floor plan, the woodwork and floors were all but gone. The stone landing where he stood now rose above the scene like a small Mayan pyramid. The alcove soon drew his attention. 'That's it,' he thought. "Topper, that's it!"
Just then, the forest behind him erupted with a sound like a train full of watermelons hitting a lake of boiling oil. The heat of it nearly scalded Topper’s back.
"Aaagh! Theo! What do we do? He's here!" Topper dashed up the steps as he spoke and joined his friend. They looked back together and saw him—the smoking man. He stood in a rain of dissolving foliage, his body fuming as though about to explode, the hatred on his face as jolting as a stab. He lifted his arms. The boys jumped. A roaring jet of acid shot over their heads and began to dissolve the stonework to their left.
"This way!" Theo squeaked. Frantically, they scrabbled over the stones and trash. "Up!"
A shriek sounded behind them as they reached the floor of the alcove. Looking back, Topper spotted the smoking man atop the steps. He heard the first retching syllables of an eerie, ugly language. He saw baggy sleeves swinging back as though blown by a sharp gust, but no hands were within—only swirling blood-brown spume ready to waste his flesh. Bramble Bright opened his mouth to scream. A hand took his own and pulled. There was a flash of green, then silence.
Ghantos stood amid the ruins above West Glen, radiating a venomous aura of hot rage. "So, boy," he snarled. "You show your power again." The wizard knew he could not follow. Here, he could use any portal, but in Hoem they were divided—many for the Light, one for the Fire, and that hard won. But that would soon change. The passing of the Balance neared.
But the boy… Ghantos howled his fury, frightening residents who lived near the forest a half mile below, and who had already been spooked by the news of the day. ‘Dionya is in this now,’ he mused. His master had not told him. His master told him little. The boy… They would meet again. Goad would draw him and he would fall. But Ghantos did not like defeat. The boy would pay—later, yes, but now as well. Almost, the wizard smiled. Ruler of thousands and wielder of Fire, he had not forgotten the pleasure of small murder.
2 – ELVEN SORROWS
Morning light streamed through the high windows of the council chamber, casting images of the arched frames low on the western wall. A dim wash reflected from the stones and illuminated Sunnandir, elven king, where he sat at the head of the great roaldoaken council table, his face buried in hands that worked to rub away fatigue. His herald stood in the shadows nearby. No one else was present.
A sigh fled the king's lips as he heard the patter of light, running footsteps approaching the chamber. He knew what was in store and did not wish to face it, though such was a father's fate that he could not escape. The great double doors would have burst inward had the hands that opened them been those of a warrior. Instead, the weighty slabs opened reluctantly, as if in keeping with the king's mood.
The princess Alaira stood in the doorway, breathing hard, her face a mask of ire—though her eyes betrayed her, revealing deep hurt and confusion. In the past her father would have smiled inwardly at the sight of the slight figure and her show of temper, but her girlhood was behind. That which divided them now was more than a match for his wistful remembrance.
"How could you?" princess accused king. "How?"
Profoundly sad but undaunted, Sunnandir refused the bait. His pain cut two ways, the fury of his daughter but one. "Alaira, if not for the son of Lord Deol your brother would yet live." His voice came even and calm, though his heart felt ready to break as he spoke.
Alaira swallowed hard, suddenly desperate to show reason. "Father, that is not fair. It was Tannador that chose to try the river. Arjin—"
"Your brother, Tannador!" the king shot back, anguish slicing to the fore despite his intent to stay calm.
"My brother, yes!" Alaira answered with heat, her reason gone in a flash but the desperation remaining. "I loved him too, father."
The story of it cycled again through his mind. "My son is dead by young Deol's taunting!" Sunnandir shouted, shocking himself with this sudden burst of fury. "Your beloved is hothead and fool! Tannador followed blindly—stupidly, it is true. But he did so to answer the goading of an irresponsible braggart! Arjin Par Deol may be counted among the mighty in swordplay, but his disregard for my son has cost everything!"
Sunnandir breathed deeply, mastering himself. "Deol has failed me at every turn. He failed your brother altogether. He is banished from the Westland. He is six days gone downriver and east. It is done."
Alaira's tight face trembled as if to burst, but she controlled her tongue and answered with care. “And you did not tell me.” Silence. "He is a good man, father." A stare was her answer. "Please," she begged.
"He is not a man at all. You would see that if you did not love him so."
"But I do love him!" she retorted. "And I say you know less of him than you pretend."
Sunnandir showed his exasperation with a sharp sigh. "Daughter, I cannot spend the day in discussion of this, and I will not rescind the order. Deol is lucky to live. He has his chance to prove whatever he chooses by true service in the east."
"I will not marry another."
That stopped him. Sunnandir had loved his son, but Alaira owned his heart. Born twenty summers earlier, two years after Tannador, she was now his only child. She had the beauty of her mother, but she also had a special spark and brightness that had drawn him to her at a very early age. He looked into her eyes for a long moment, seeing in them the years of his own life, then said the only thing he believed he could say.
"So be it."
She shook her head as she stared at him, lips pressed, then turned and stalked from the council room. Sunnandir watched her go with a strange confusion. He thought briefly then found its root. He, too, loved Arjin Par Deol. Tannador had loved Arjin as a brother. Auralynn thought of him as a second son. Alaira loved him forever. Too much loss.
Sunnandir fought off the emptiness that threatened to waylay him. His was not the only pain in the land.
"Time, Orcara?"
"Past time, lord."
"Call the council."
"Yes, lord."
A single bell sounded a few moments later. Soon, wise old elves began to arrive. Some talked quietly, others headed straight for their appointed places about the table. Lost in bitter brooding, Sunnandir felt no inclination to hurry the process. Eventually the room settled to silence. The king stirred.
"Report," he commanded absently. But as by protocol the councilor of the Baan began her recitations on road repair, the king came alive.
"Hold," he snapped. He took a deep breath and sat up. "Thank you, councilor, but we have business more pressing. What of the east? Councilor Sellar?"
"Given up." Sellar spat the words as though expelling a sour vapor.
"By agreement!" Taron of Kolmm cut in. "It was agreed."
"I never agreed!" Sellar returned. Silence followed. No one wished to restart the angry discussion of previous meetings that had led to the decision to retreat from the region beyond Kolmm, thus vacating the last of the lands east of the river.
"Continue your report, councilor," Sunnandir admonished.
Sellar sighed then read halfheartedly through his notes. "Orderly retreat. All accounted for. Animals and valuables retained. All elves back west of the river save East Kolmm garrison, scouts, and couriers sent to warn the hill peoples. Hill peoples to be invited into Westland. Hill peoples told to come west via the south coast. Couriers to return in haste save one sent downriver to south coast to warn settlers… and one sent by order of king on to seek succor to the east. End report." Sellar—his land surrendered and his report given—sat back in bitter resignation.
"Kolmm?" Sunnandir continued, disinclined to offer sympathy or thanks to the disgruntled Midland councilor.
Taron cleared her throat. "Kolmm reports that all is secured. Lord Toralin has the garrison of East Kolmm at five times strength. Scouts are well afield and report that the scrodes continue to move. All the border hills are theirs, though they've made no push into the riverlands." For a moment it seemed she would say more, but she fell silent.
Indeed, the entire room fell eerily silent, the council poised at the moment when preparation for the unknown is at last complete. A swallow landed briefly on the stone sill of an open window then fluttered away. The silence had stretched to nearly a minute when Sunnandir suddenly stood, making an unconscious attempt to launch an answer to the impotence that threatened to consume them. Opening his mouth, though, only a curse emerged.
"Gods!" he shot. "Gods would wreck us and we can but stand and be wrecked! Is there nothing?" he implored. "Nothing we can do?" No one responded. "Then we shall go over it all again, obscure reference after obscure reference, vague scrawling after vague scrawling, until we are certain that we do right—as certain as the gods," he added with no little sarcasm.
"Now," Sunnandir began, "what do we know about the passing? Of what are we sure? New thoughts and stale, all come to this table." His queries placed, he sat back to listen. Gradually the discussion picked up, the councilors at home with the topic. Yet even as the interchange gathered speed, it veered from any helpful course until lost in irrelevance. Sunnandir attended closely at first, but as the minutes passed his mind wandered to his son, and to the fate that had him presiding over what seemed now to be the final collapse of elvendom. He took bitter satisfaction in the thought that none would be left to condemn him.
He was wakened from his dark reverie by Orcara's timely cough—a signal he'd learned to recognize over the years. The talk around the table had wandered too long.
"…But Gonwind of Terramin clearly addressed that in his four oratories," asserted Beorl of Solarrand. 'The Edge is of air only,' he spoke, 'and does not sever the waters.'"
"I must disagree. I believe Hamer wrote those words, and while teaching at the Academy, not in Terramin." Errol returned.
"I said, 'of Terramin,' not in Terramin. And you are wrong about Hamer, who never wrote to the Edge, though he spoke on it, referring to Gonwind." Beorl looked to the king. "But of course, neither spoke to the passing of the Balance."
"Then why recall this here!" Sunnandir snapped in frustration, slamming hand on table as he took control once again. Beorl quickly sat down as the king carried on. "All morning long I've heard naught but digression, reminisce, and an unquiet wandering of mind that has no place at this council. The scrodes move! They are stirred by a mage, you say. The passing comes, you say. In a thousand, thousand words you say this and little else while we race hours closer to our doom!"
The king had their attention. His shows of anger were rare and not to be ignored. "I prepare to kill elves," he said with loaded calm. "By my orders, they will die. Your sons and daughters will die," he said to drive the message. But he had no sooner said it than his mind left the room and attended a vision of his own young son—bold but not gifted, gentle, slow to smile, his mother's son. Gone. The others in the room knew well what had distracted their king. Nothing could have made his point better.
After a long silence councilwoman Glays spoke, having kept quiet all council. "Shall I try? Very well then." She took a slow breath then astonished nearly all. "Dionya keeps us dumb. As I see it, our fate is in the hands of others, and there is nothing we can do about it." A clamor arose at this, but she pushed forward. "The chief events of recent days, I believe, were the crossings overway of an agent of Fire, and of another. We say no more on it because we know no more. Yet none have crossed overway in ten years, and none before that in living memory—and, as I have learned it, the ways were never open to the Fire."