This is another installment of Fleirzon. Do enjoy!
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Seven: Locher Pass
Verdeyan sat in the hollow of a tree branch, outside another inn. Gattlin stood over her, carefully working strips of fabric over her wings. She bit her lip as his finger hit the burning flesh of a wound. He’d already shredded an old blanket with his knife to make bandages.
“I’m halfway done,” he consoled her. In her hands she held an empty flask containing the remnants of fruit-brewed whiskey that Gattlin had used to clean her wounds. They still stung from the alcohol rinse.
Her bare back and shoulders prickled with the chill of the wind. In order for him to tend to her injuries, she’d removed her tunic. The garment concealed her chest, draped about her neck like a bib.
He tied many knots in the fabric before binding both wings to her abdomen so that they’d stay folded in place, preventing further damage. Verdeyan finally slipped her tunic back over her head, easing her wings through the gap in the back of the dress.
“I asked a healer at the square what to do,” he explained, “And she said not to let you exert yourself for a week. That means we’re staying here in Locher. Until you’ve healed reasonably.”
Verdeyan sighed, glad that the uncomfortable procedure was over. As much as she disliked Gattlin, she admitted to herself she was glad he didn’t neglect her.
I am bound to you as a prisoner; that is not to be questioned. She thought silently, but what does this mean for me?
“Do you want to come inside?” Gattlin asked suddenly.
“What?”
“It’s raining. Do you want to rest inside the inn tonight?”
Verdeyan nodded, standing back up. Her bandaged wings were sore and she was freezing in the drizzle of cold rain.
Gattlin smiled, leading the way into the lighted doorway.
Verdeyan sighed, blowing on a leaf she clutched in her fingers. She let it go and watched it flutter downwards, slowly disappearing in a curtain of mist.
She felt a hand touch her shoulder, and tensed, snarling, “What do you want!”
The hand lifted, and she turned to see Gattlin standing at her side. “It’s alright, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.
“No, I thought you were someone else,” Verdeyan retorted her voice a mixture of anger and saddness, her arms shaking.
Hesitantly, he lay his hand on her shoulder as she began to cry.
All at once, she began to shake, stumbling forwards, so that she appeared to be collapsing, so he steadied her against his own shoulder, whispering to the breeze “By the heavens above, what have I done?”
For several minutes they stood, his arms pressed tightly about her, while she fairly hung in his grasp, overcome by the world around her. It was Verdeyan who finally broke their strange embrace, saying flatly, “ I don’t know what came over me.”
She tucked back loose strands of fiery hair and began to pace about the platform.
Gattlin shut his eyes tightly, turning his back to her. Verdeyan’s words echoed in his head, reverberating over and over. He wanted to speak, to say a thousand things, but none of these were what he meant.
Words seemed to defy meaning at that moment, as if the world itself had changed.
As he opened his eyes, the sunrise’s light gleamed scarlet off her hair, highlighting the agate-like swirls of blue in her eye. She glanced up at him.
“What?”
He had no reply.
Silently, he began to walk away, motioning for Verdeyan to follow.
The pocket of his shirt felt light; the jingle of two carved amber coin as they beat against one another seemed to call out in search of their brethren, kidnapped by the bony fingers of the innkeeper the night before.
Verdeyan felt heat in her cheeks, the sensation of phantom arms encircling her shoulders; his touch lingered still.
The flesh prickled and a torrent of fiery disgust gushed forth in her mind. She’d fallen into the embrace of her own enemy.
“Come on,” he urged her, “We’ve got a long way to travel today.”
Her eyes narrowed as she replied “Heh, remember, my wings-“
“That’s why we’re walking. Old Locher is in the next tree. There’s a bridge between these two trees, 15 miles long…” he trailed off.
“And beg tell me, you’re walking 15 miles to Old Locher, why,”
Verdeyan cut in, shooting him a look that made his words catch in his throat.
“Well, see, my mother lives in Old Locher—“
“How can you speak of family to me?”
Her words were quiet, yet resonated a thousand times deeper than the mightiest thunder. Instead of replying, he took her arm in his hand, guiding her beside him.
She didn’t resist, but the tension of her muscles and the awkward stiffness of her gait revealed far more.
Each footstep she took thumped in her ears, another stride in the direction of a new misery, a stride farther from the cluster of trees in the Eastern skies that she called home.
They made their way through the town, passing by vagrants with cups for coins, market stalls filled with herbs and bolts of cloth, butcher’s shops with smoked meats hanging from the rafters, notes of music carrying on the breeze as street performers plucked the strings of instruments, fingers dancing over the holes of flutes and pipes.
At one corner, a grimy boy poked out his head, wailing “Miss, a spare coin for a crippled child!” The boy turned, revealing a ragged stump of flesh where his left wing should have been.
“I’ve none,” he said quietly, continuing to trudge along with Gattlin. His grip tightened slightly as they walked.
Verdeyan could feel the throb of his heartbeat in his fingers as he gripped her arm, an alien rhythm that pulsed in staccato with her own.
Adrenaline seared violet in her consciousness as the floor beneath her pitched upwards—then a secure tug on her arm caught her, mid-fall.
Gattlin’s fingers pressed firmly against her shoulders, stopping her from crashing to the floorboards as her boot caught on a protruding piece of wood.
He relinquished her arm, allowing her to steady herself. She rubbed the place his hand had been, as if it were a bruise.
“We’re almost to the bridge now,” Gattlin told her.
Verdeyan didn’t reply, her fingertips twitching nervously.
A few minutes later, they stood at the edge of the platform, looking down into the abyss of clouds that stretched down into eternity in the sky below.
A man reached out, stopping them. “Ho, sir, going to Old Locher are you?”
Gattlin nodded “Going to my home.”
“Not flying, my man? Why?” The gatekeeper queried.
“She can’t. She’s with me,” he returned, reaching into the pocket of his shirt.
“Hurt wing, eh? Pity, she looks as if she’d be a fancy flier. Not a local, are you, girl?
Verdeyan narrowed her eyes, locking her gaze onto the stranger, who awkwardly glanced away.
“She’s with me. So. How much must I pay you for passage?” Gattlin’s voice was brisk.
“Two johls. This bridge has to be kept up by someone.”
Reluctantly, Gattlin handed him the two pieces of carved amber currency, then lead Verdeyan down onto the bridge.
The boards shifted underfoot, jiggling on the ropes that suspended them.
The structure swung slightly in the wind, and Verdeyan shook, frozen in place.
“Come on. As long as you don’t jump off, you won’t fall.”
Gattlin’s mouth twitched slightly in a facsimile of a smile when he saw the relief in Verdeyan’s face at his words.
“No, I don’t plan on jumping off anything right now…” she muttered, managing to laugh.
………..
The wind bit into his flesh, stinging the sides of his face. He shivered, wrapping his feather cloak about his shoulders. Verdeyan, two steps behind him, had raised the hood of her tunic, her arm hugged tightly over her chest.
The sun peeked through the clouds, sitting atop the breast of the sky. Gattlin sighed looking into its light that danced flippantly between puffs of cloud.
The thud of Verdeyan’s footfalls haunted him like a specter, a gloom that dulled his anticipation of being home.
“It’s cold enough to freeze the fire in a dragon’s stomach,” he grunted, vainly trying to fill the hollow sounds of wind, footsteps, and the groaning of rope and wood.
Verdeyan only blinked, shrinking from his gaze.
The journey wore on, an eternity comprised of icy wind and bitter silence between the two young Fleirzon as they trudged along the steep wooden walkway suspended in the middle of the sky, Locher Pass.
It was midafternoon by the time they reached Old Locher. Verdeyan’s legs and back ached, her muscles twinging from the strain of climbing hundreds of thousands of feet over the rough wooden bridge.
“A little farther,” Gattlin told her, attempting a tired smile. Verdeyan stared on, her countenance as blank as the pale gray sky.
Around them, the landscape of an ancient tree unfolded, the wood so hard with age it had petrified. At her feet grew small ferns and mosses, tiny flower buds poking up like tiny beads of orange fire.
Branches hundreds of feet in radius soared upwards from the trunk. There were no platforms built into the tree; it was so massive, the surface area of its limbs provided ample space to build.
Gattlin pointed towards a house on a branch several limbs over.
“There, is where we’re going.”
Verdeyan watched the blue smoke spiral up from the chimney, imagining the warmth of the flames.
They wove through a series of walkways to the house Gattlin had pointed out.
A tall woman leaned out the open window, bellowing to someone within.
She hurried to the door, wiping her hands on a soiled red apron.
Her features were sharp and angular, yet still attractive. Narrow yellow eyes glowered down from her brow as she called
“Gattlin! Late like thunder, you are!
What have you to show for your littler adventure?”
When he paused to reply, the woman turned away with a toss of her long black hair, going back into the house.
“It’s good to see you, Jonalla,” he called.
Presently, voice from inside the dwelling implored “Gattlin, come inside.”
Verdeyan walked ahead of him, her mind set on the thought of the heat of the fire.
He followed.
By the fire sat an old woman whose skin was wrinkled and brown like a dead leaf.
White hair fell in tangles at her sides, smoke-grey wings poking from the folds of a heavy cloth wrap.
“Gattlin! My son, com here. Jonalla, come see your brother-“ the woman coughed…
Jonalla complied, a look of suppressed annoyance betrayed by the twitch of her brow.
“Yes, now, Gattlin, tell us of your travels, and who is this,” she continued.
“We just came from New Locher, on the pass. And this-this is Verdeyan, who, eh…” Gattlin’s voice dropped lower and lower as he spoke, ever-aware of the four sets of eyes that watched him.
He fixed his gaze on the fourth pair, wide brown orbs rimmed in lashes that fluttered like the wings of a fledgling. He stooped down, opening his arms to the toddler who came wobbling over from his seat at the hearth.
Verdeyan now noticed the tiny boy who had rushed to Gattlin, and turned away, trying to hide the tears that slid down her face.
“Fine, Gattlin, Jonalla, go ahead. I know you want to get back to your urgent activities-but you girl, stay with me.”
The strange woman at the hearth dismissed the others with a flick of her hand, then turned her weathered face to Verdeyan.
In the firelight, she could almost hear the woman’s thoughts as she studied her, taking in every detail like buyer choosing their purchase.
“So, what do you think of this place?”
Verdeyan stared silently, the stifling quiet flooding her consciousness as her arms began to shake.
“I suppose you don’t have much to say. Well, I’m Asabet, mother to Jonalla and Gattlin. And you are Verdeyan, correct?” Asabet broke the silence, her eyes still fixed on Verdeyan.
“Yes. I am.”
“You’re a charming girl,” Asabet continued.
“What!”
“You miss your home, correct?” Asabet’s eyes reflected the flames of the hearth, creating a menacing glow about her irises.
Verdeyan’s mouth formed a hard line.
“Yes, I do. But what do you want from me! Surely, you can’t imagine what I feel!”
Her voice rose in pitch and volume, making her statement sound all the more derisive.
For a scant handful of seconds, silence again prevailed before Asabet replied.
“Oh, an old woman like me has seen many things that you wouldn’t imagine, either.”
Asabet smiled faintly, a look that made Verdeyan’s mind reel.
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Thanks for reading! Reviews are most welcome.
-Voxina
