Wandering to the Raggedy Edge

Wandering to the Raggedy Edge

Paul Mc Cabe

10,311 words

It was mid morning and it was bright and the air was clearer than it had been in an age. The sun had pierced the grey sky and warmed the earth and the things left alive were stirring through the land. But The Wanderer could not tell all this for he was deep down in the ground in a place that let in no light.

All around him were black walls and black ceilings that when illuminated seemed sharp and hard but when blanketed in absence suddenly seemed to take on the quality of soft treacle, dripping through comprehension. When he ran his hands over them and felt them move they seemed to slowly slide away and turn him around and pull him deeper and deeper into the cavern ahead.

But for the moment he didn’t venture further into the cavern. Instead The Wanderer sat motionless at the tiny campfire that he had made using the dusty kindling from his pockets and a few dry cracked branches he had scavenged. He had used the small firestone in his pocket to spring the flames before him and although they gave off only barely the reflection of a proper hearth they comforted The Wanderer all the same. He had spent many a day in dark such as this, and had not seen and heard many of the things that lurked down here. But it had never failed to warm him - a fire, even one as small and as sickly as this one, calmed him. The crackling sparks wavered close to his heart. The flames ejaculated flickers of light up into his face, reaching up for his skin like flower sprouts desperate for some contact, something to feel other outside the dark and the cold and the lifeless kindling. The light showed his age - he looked every bit his senility. The light saw the deep, chocolate skin and the layer of grey cavern dust that clung to him like smell to a dog. His thick but neatly trimmed beard, which although now grey, still had flecks of an old dusky colour peppered through like ash. His short cropped hair was the same and was trimmed too short to show whether or not it had begun to thin. His warm brown eyes sucked at the light eagerly and the thin line of his lips could barely be seen beneath the hedge of his beard. The strong shape of his jaw jutted out against the light and his cheekbones turned into razorblades with every passing tendril of flame that moved across his features like a squid. And the light collected and stagnated in the deep furrows and trenches across his skin, along his forehead, around his eyes. A spider web of age and what came along with age like a bridegroom to infinity. The Wanderer was not long for this world and the light knew it. For neither was it.

The Wanderer looked into the flame and watched it carefully. He could see past the waves of red and orange and yellow, down into the dark beech wood which had been all he could find down here (the remnants of some ancient machine or device that had long ago passed into some forgotten state of heavy misplacement and ruination) and although it did not burn too well The Wanderer could see enough and he was warm enough and warmed more by the ideographic pattern of the wood, the crisscross of wisdom that it possessed deep in the heat of it, and all that it held back from him; afraid of the vulnerability that that came with, afraid of the humanity that that possessed, afraid of the heavy eyes that stared back at it. He had built the fire on forgotten instinct and when he looked at it now, at the shape of the pattern, the swirls and dips and peaks of the wood, it showed him something of what he had lost. It showed him little but it showed him enough.

The Wanderer waved his hand slowly and the flame shifted and the wood bent and wavered and took on entirely new shapes. It writhed to the plunge of his fingers.

A time ago, before this, The Wanderer had been tasked with his last quest – could he find the girl? She had wandered off into this deep dark that populated and sprung up everywhere now and had not returned. That had been only a short time ago. The little girl was small and fair. Helpless. He couldn’t remember her name now. Her parents had acted quickly, sending out a plea for help to anyone left in the world. The Wanderer had heard about it soon enough, the tale whispered to him through the dead roots and leaves. He had been the only one who had answered. He had agreed to go. He had told them he would find their little girl and he would return her to them from the dark. And kill whatever had taken her. He had promised them that and promised himself the other.

The Wanderer didn’t know what to expect down here for there had been little clues to go on. The girl may just have run away after all. But when he had met with the parents, he could tell. He could feel that old ringing in his bones and the dust in them shifting with final movement that told him that something more was going on than just a little runaway. He could feel that pull as he ever had; a little twitch and flick of miasmic fingers. The parents had looked at him with distrust, called him old man, pitied him, derided him, cursed him but they had eventually consented to him. He had followed his old instincts, out of practice though they may be, feeling that pull like a divining rod, and it had led him here. Somewhere down here, in the dark, the little girl waited.

“Have I made a mistake?” The Wanderer asked. His voice was cracked with age and shook a little. He had not spoken in a long time and all that he did speak were now questions even when they were not. Questions which no one could answer. He had always been the one for answers but that was long ago. He was not sure of much anymore besides the ache in his bones and the blood in his piss. His voice didn’t hold anything anymore, not for long, not like it used to – it disappeared like smoke through the cracks – that voice. And yet, it was a nice voice. Strong, deep and long, a voice that caressed syllables like candy, treated them like precious gems and stones. It made people shiver…how deep it was. A woman had told him that once, long ago, back before everything had begun to come loose at the pivot and spiral and the world had softened and slowed to a near dead halt. He looked back through the sawdust of his thoughts and found that he couldn’t remember enough of what had been left in the past. His brain too had come loose, spiralled, softened so much that when he shook his head he could almost hear it slosh around inside the dome of his skull, back and forth and back and forth like a heavy dangling pendulum.

“Do pendulums even exist any longer?” he asked with that same crackly, sombre voice.

A moment of dull, plodding thinking. “What is a pendulum?”

The Wanderer sighed at the fire and, tired of such meagre, difficult thoughts, went to sleep.

***

He awoke sometime later and decided that it was as good a time as any to get moving. The fire was almost dead. He stood up slowly and felt every joint in his body pop like balloons.

“Balloons?” The question slithered across his brain and was gone through one of the holes in a moment.

He stretched his back and rolled his shoulders and tried to stand as straight as he used to. His shoulders stooped a little but his back was as straight as he could make it, like the shattered edge of whatever was left of the world. He was wearing his lose white shirt deeply open at the collar and rolled up at the sleeves for it was very warm in the cavern. The brown leather of his trousers was only torn in one place, across his right thigh, but was still in good condition; sturdy and comfortable. His boots were not too heavy and not too light and when he walked in them they made as little noise as possible. That was good. Around his waist his belt was cinched tightly, the pockets holding a myriad of things, both useful and useless, including herbs, some food, his firestone, small vials of coloured liquids, a length of tough rope and a whetstone. His water hung in a skin across his broad shoulders and a small knife was tied to his right boot. And cinched to the left of his belt, hanging loosely for it sighed with every step, sharpened deadly and sad for it had not tasted life in such a long time, was his blade.

The Wanderer allowed his old hand to rest briefly, softly, fondly upon the pommel of his old sword and taste the bitter eagerness of it through his skin. He felt an awful dizziness come over him for a second and he had to reach out to steady himself on that slinky smooth wall. This had happened before, too often in the last while. He gritted his old jaw and his sword and the moment passed as quickly as it had come on. He released the blade.

The Wanderer took out a pair of worn leather gloves from his back pocket and put them on. Then he necked a small swig from the skin and felt pleased that it was still more than half full. He took one last look at the mathematic system of ash and flames, all angles and sides and order then kicked the flames with his boot. Before the light died and the dark closed in he saw the fire explode into a silent cacophony of marvellous light and speechless sound. Oh how the sparks flew just like they used to, just for a moment, and The Wanderer was reminded briefly of long days before this all and the sun and the stars and all the bright things that had went away when the dark closed in around them. Then it was over and the sound of his own raspy breathing was all that remained.

He set off down the dark.

Absolutely silent. He had always been good at hiding his step. He might’ve been floating for all the noise that his feet made. Walls like these, curved and stone and porous carried sound for miles and each little shift of pressure was borne away on granite and basalt quivers to somewhere deep to whatever might lie there. So The Wanderer was careful, patient in his old age, and his footsteps made not a shake. But the rest of his body betrayed him. It wheezed and creaked every so often like old hard wood slowly slowly buckling. The sound echoed softly away. But The Wanderer heard all this for he was not yet silent in the ears or dead in between and continued all the more.

The ground beneath his feet was a sort of trail, one cut long ago, and the tunnel around him filed down deep into the earth searching for honeycomb, roundabout answers of some such. Gold? Silver? Maybe something far more precious. There were beams and cross-sections of wood along the roof of the tunnel that had been for some time. There was rubble around the edges of the tunnel and The Wanderer was careful not to kick any of it loose for the noise could be his final death knell.

“Good eyes.” He thought softly, “I have good eyes.” This was truth. The Wanderer did have good eyes. But even the best of eyes could not have seen in such a dark as this for the depth it had to it, the weight in every stich of silence and absence. No matter how much The Wanderer squinted he could see nothing further than an inch or two in front of his nose. Whatever was beyond was lost to him. This worried him but he had an option. He brought his hand out in front of him, palm up, and stretched out his arm…

The Wanderer had one of those long sad moments, one of the moments that he hadn’t ever had before the world had turned soft and lay down in the dust. It was as if his mind had reached in to grasp at something that had never been there. Instead it had merely routed around in the sand and come up ever empty. In fact, The Wanderer couldn’t even remember what had supposed to have been there, what he had been looking for or thinking of. He looked at his hand and could feel it right there in his hand…something waiting, practically buzzing with anticipation – a gritty recollection. But when he curled his fingers around it it slipped out and was gone. He knew he was forgetting again and he hated it. He hated the feeling that whatever he had been searching for had been lost forever and that he could never recall it for, as far as he could tell, it had never existed in the first place.

The Wanderer continued on, counting consequence and forgetting and feeling lost.

Time passed, how much The Wanderer didn’t know. Time was different now, slowing and quickening like a fishing reel, intermittently and without warning as if some sly fisherman was far away on one end tightening and loosening as he pleased. Time had some effect on The Wanderer, it always would. But not to the same degree that it had once had. Its power was an annoyance, no longer an absolute, and not something The Wanderer concerned himself with any more. Grandfather Time himself had become senile. Sometimes he would have a passing thought about his age for he had lived very long, long enough to the see the world shuffle off to this final end, and he guessed he may have been over a thousand. Maybe more in fact. But that meant little any longer and the thought passed on quickly and without much fanfare and time tried to eke out contemplation from him like blood from a stone. It tried to tire him, deflate him, but a man robbed of his who did not burden himself with his when. And so The Wanderer carried on for his body wasn’t yet tired and the tunnel went deeper.

He stopped when he came to a wall. The tunnel jerked down and to the right rather steeply. The Wanderer knelt. He unclipped a small pouch on his belt and pulled out a piece of rolled up parchment and a fountain pen. He spread the paper out in the dark and weighted it down with four small pebbles. He held the pen in his lips and hesitated. He couldn’t see anything.

“Well,” The Wanderer said, “What...” He tapped the pen on his chin a few times and then tucked it behind his ear. He rubbed his chin and it made a small whispering noise.

Then, just as slowly as it had disappeared, the lost thought crept back into his mind like a tide returning to shore from a long retreat. The Wanderer held out his hand once again and felt that familiar buzzing grow warmer and warmer. He cupped his hands over his mouth, sheltering something. Then he softly blew and the sound was beautiful. A small ball of light, no bigger than a coin, appeared in the palm of his hand. It threw meagre yet starry light out into the sharp dark and a warm memory came back out of the recess…

He sits in a small glade in a distant land. There is grass of the deepest green all around and a field of bluebells a ways off to the left where a small rabbit bounds up and down between them. Above the sky is so blue and clear that it looks like the giant sheen on an eye and it stretches out in all directions everywhere and far away and looks down at all as a huge thing. The sun shines in rays warm and thick and turgid.

The Wanderer is only a boy with a fresh face and this face has not grown hair or tasted a woman or been cut and torn by the world and whatever would be left. For now everything is alright. The Wanderer kneels and looks at the woman opposite him and her smiling and beautiful face and is glad and cannot remember a more perfect moment. She kneels down across from him and ushers him. The Wanderer nods. He cups his hands to his mouth like he is lighting a cigarette then he blows and the whistle sounds out everywhere like a caress. Bright light shines. The Wanderer moves his hands from his mouth and shelters the coin of light. He presents it to the woman. A gift.

The woman smiles.

“Everlight.” She says.

The Wanderer takes the light back to his mouth and blows that soft hymn again. The everlight grows stronger and more beautiful.

He blows again and again and everything is the best it could be and the light is so huge and bright now that they squint and the memory is so hot and dazzling that it burns and the woman smiles again…

The Wanderer lost it. He was still in the dark. The everlight was still only a small penny candle in his hand and that was all it would be any more for he thought too much had been lost in the world for it to be any greater.

The Wanderer looked on, tasting the place where the memory used to be, licking up the crumbs that it had left. He quickly scratched on a steep right turn on the map in his hands then put the pen and paper safely away. He stood and walked on with the light in his hand.

He walked on and on, coming to wall after wall, stopping, sketching on the paper, then continuing. He kept his hand on the wall to trace his way through the deep dark and he could feel the stone moving beneath his fingers like a million tongues. He kept his other hand on the hilt of his blade, tightening and loosening his grip on it moment to moment. He could feel the oppression of him, feel the blade longing to be out in the air once again – he could feel that in every contour and smooth curve of it, every sharp side, every edge- but held back by his own hand like some great dictator. He could feel that bottled fury seething under the skin of his hand. His fingers were manacles of old wrought iron.

The long, straight tunnel steepened and went down and down into the earth. With the warm glow of everlight casting glances at shadows all around, The Wanderer could see the tunnel subtly change. The wooden struts began to disappear and the walls became closer around him and uneven so The Wanderer could feel them above the top of his head hanging low. They crept nearer, now not wide enough to stretch his arms out to the full. The Wanderer felt like a thick blanket had fallen over him, weight everywhere and in everything.

He heard something. A rock falling. A thud. Scuttling. Then nothing. The Wanderer froze and listened and came close to loosing his blade. He didn’t breathe, he couldn’t, the breath was caught in his throat. Then nothing.

The Wanderer held the everlight up and cast it deep into the tunnel. He could see nothing. The noise had come from somewhere deep but close all the same. It had echoed along the chasm web, strummed to him slick with oil. But he could see nothing, just rock and darkness on and on, reeling and spooling out, teasing him, drawing him down and down into the deep.

***

Time passed.

The Wanderer stood leaning against a wall, examining the map before him. He held the everlight between his teeth so his face was alive with light. His eyes were furrowed in thought. The map showed a crisscross of lines and sketches, words scrawled in corners, ways on and on. The Wanderer sighs.

He glanced up at the three tunnels before him. They spiralled out, all going down and deeper but all turning and twisting away. One. Two. Three. The air smelt stale in all three. The heat was in all of them. There was no more light in any one than in the other.

The Wanderer took a sip of the water around his neck and found there was little left and what remained tasted warm and unpleasant. Sweat rolled from his forehead. His shirt was soaked in jigsaw patches.

Then something flapped out from the left most tunnel. Slowly, its wings beating softly like leaves, a small grey butterfly flew towards The Wanderer. It moved through the air in juts and whirrs, almost a cog. When it had almost reached him it stopped flapping and died. The Wanderer saw this all and wondered at what it might mean. Then, he looked down into the left most tunnel and crept down into it.

This tunnel was tall and thin. The ceiling stretched high above him. The walls pushed closer around him. He heard the floor give a little as he walked on through it. Grass? Leaves? By the everlight the ground emerged from the dark covered with the dry crack of millions upon millions of butterflies lying strewn so dense that the ground beneath could not be seen and the ash grey carpet of it stretched out as far as The Wanderer could make out. There was a faint smell of decay sodomising him, forcing itself upon him, making him gag. The Wanderer felt the give in the husks, he could feel the squeal of the bodies as he crushed them beneath his boots. He kicked at the butterflies and heard the sound they made, that rustle, as the most ominous sound he had ever heard. A chill crept up The Wanderer’s spine and he shivered. He walked on into the tunnel and listened. No sound.

The Wanderer moved on deeper down, the walls pressing in on him cage-like. He controlled his breathing, short shallow inhalations through his mouth. He could taste that foul air running across his tongue and could feel the scratch of the walls against the sheath of his blade. He turned side face and kept moving.

Then came a sound. That same thud from before only louder this time, echoing all around and through the thin of the tunnel. The Wanderer snapped his head around behind and saw movement in the dark. Then another thud and the walls all around shook.

By the light The Wanderer saw a small rock, the size of his fist, fall from above and hit the floor and rattle along.

The Wanderer looked at the moving dark once and then ran. The walls and ceiling above collapsed and there was rocks everywhere. There was a thunderstorm of sound all around but as The Wanderer ran further into the tunnel he could make out the thump and shuffle of footsteps behind him. They were light but fast and would catch up to him, despite the cave in. With every step the everlight shocked and stumbled light everywhere. Rocks fell across his vision and he had to jump over and around and his old legs were moving faster than they had in an age but it felt good and strong and right and his heart bumped wildly in his leather chest at whatever the sounds behind him were. All around were rocks falling and falling and the dark getting closer and closer and the sounds behind were almost there. He could feel it on the back of his neck.

Then he was out in the open falling to the floor. He heard a shriek from behind then there was a whump of dust as the tunnel behind caved in and nothing was left of it. A wall of rocks stared back at him. Whatever had been behind him was gone.

The Wanderer sat panting, sucking in air through his cracked lips. He stared at the tunnel behind and listened to all the rock settle on one another all around with rattles and sighs. The Wanderer listened as all the sound slowly died away and he was left in silence once again.

The cavern was now low ceilinged but broad, the size of three men abreast. There was yet more dead butterflies littered on the floor.

The Wanderer was tired, worn out. The adrenaline had fallen away back into his blood and the dust had returned to him and his joints hurt with a dull throb. Without meaning to, for he was now feeling his age and time acutely and it was all so silent just now, The Wanderer laid his old head down in the butterflies and fell into a deep sleep.

***

The Wanderer is a boy once again wandering now in a huge sprawling city. Pale yellow walls and red roofs of houses are everywhere multiplying and multiplying and all the city is made of the warmest colours. The city reaches out like a discus on the green grass of the country and all the busy cobblestone streets intersect and criss-cross like millions and millions of worms small and big and turn around a huge castle in the centre that runs off far into the sky. Everything shines in the sun and the windows sparkle like hundreds of stars. People are all around. Happy faces meet happy faces.

The Wanderer strolls through the market amid a chorus of yelling and shouting and waving hands. People argue loudly with vendors. Bottles and scarves and hats and jewellery and trinkets all hang from the stalls all around and there are blacksmiths and bookshops and alchemists and pawnshops and bars and brothels and restaurants and prices are everywhere and The Wanderer is lost and amazed in the middle of it all. His head spins and he gasps at everything around. He waves at the people and gives them his smile and they take it and laugh and give him a coin or two or pat his head. There is music building upon each other and The Wanderer can hear the strings of a lye or a violin and drums and the thrumps of a trumpet and the whistle of a flute or tin whistle. And The Wanderer listens to this all and he listens to the people and how they speak and the words they use and the pitch and tempo of it all excites him.

“Boy?” someone shouts. The Wanderer snaps and shoots round but can’t see anyone for the bodies rushing everywhere around him.

“Boy?” the shout comes again and this time The Wanderer can see a head coming towards him from the bustle. The face is all dark with pale skin and black hair and moustaches. A broad head. Broad shoulders and big arms and hands. Tall. Angry.

The Wanderer doesn’t move for he knows there is no point. He has been caught and his fun is over.

“Come.” The man says and grabs The Wanderer by the scruff of his neck and lifts him high through the crowd, “I told you not to wander off you little fool!”

The man drags The Wanderer through the crowd and they leave the market all behind. The crowds start to lessen. Then they across a wooden bridge and a large river that rushes and stampedes below them. He drags The Wanderer on and moves through the streets and the people open up before him with a sign of deference. The Wanderer watches as the buildings become higher and more ornate and murals of dragons and monsters and knights and kings and queens and quests spanning from here to eternity appear and disappear. Heroes living in paints. The yellow walls become peppered with bright red brick and the roofs are tall and slanted scarlet tiles warm in the sun. Clotheslines are strung like webs above where great birds which are white and bright rest and squawk. There is none of the dust and the dark that would come and wipe away all the rest.

Then the buildings suddenly fall away and the castle is all that close, right here, thrusting up into the sky. Up here now The Wanderer can see the strong bricks and mortar in the sun and the glimmers of the windows and the hubbub of conversation that echoes out through the walls and into the city. He can see the people in the gardens, laughing, men and women in long ornate robes in deep conversations. Ladies and lords walk this way and that and look at him. Somewhere he can hear the clang of metal on metal. The man drops The Wanderer in the grass that is all around them. They look at each other and something passes between them.

“How many laps?” The Wanderer asks. The man holds his gaze for a while.

“As many as it takes. You’re a stubborn lad. It could be hours yet.”

The Wanderer stands and brushes the dust from his knees.

“I almost had you that time Bliss. It took you a while to find me again.”

“But find you I did. You have duties here and I’ll whip you into shape yet. I’m your quartermaster and I’ll be damned if I let a boy like you beat me.” Bliss looked off into the sun for a while which gazed a deep orange over the horizon. “It’s getting late. Almost sundown I reckon. You better get started.”

The Wanderer looked off into that low sun again. Then he set off at a quick jog, his little legs running off around the castle.

***

Another tunnel and they were all the same now, all cloistered limpets set deep in the earth, hidden away. The Wanderer jogged along quickly, the everlight thrust out ahead of him, dragging him along. He had a deep cut on his face and another raked across his chest. Both bled thick, lumpy blood. He had lost his length of rope, his firelighter and most of his food but he still had weapons and water and that was enough for now. The Wanderer wiped a hand across his brow then wiped the blood and sweat and dust on his trousers before gripping his sword tightly.

Something had been chasing him for days now, just behind. It hadn’t yet been seen but The Wanderer could feel it almost upon him. A sister had told him once that in a hunt you could feel that judder, deep in your blood, when you became the prey. It wasn’t natural she said, for mankind, it wasn’t in our bones to be hunted.

The Wanderer felt that now, the compression of the trap around him, and he thought about it and that thought consumed him. He could feel the edge of it, the lines of it, and he thought that if he could just get his head around it then he could escape. But with each second of thought, the tunnels went on and the trap tightened.

He took a gulp of water for his thirst. Little left now.

Something shivered along his spine, a fleeting feeling, a boat cutting slickly through water, and he remained motionless. He held his breath and listened to the feeling creep along his skin. He could taste blood in the air. He could hear whispers.

He glanced warily behind him and then stopped dead and frozen.

He looked off deep into the tunnel and could see it just barely. Something black looked back at him. A thing constrained; a body, bound in slick rubber, arms tied about it, a face writhing about beneath, screaming with a mouth suffocated. He could see the tendons and muscles and sharp bones jutting out from under the latex like a body made of needles. The creature’s face and its tongue pressed and wriggled against the rubber. The creature stepped forward on shaky, twisted legs, contorted and in pain. A Sick Figure.

The Wanderer made no move. The Sick Figure took another step. There was all black behind The Wanderer and the everlight was easily seen. There was no room to run. Flat ground, no advantage of higher ground. Thin corridor and no shield to stop it up and hunker down. The air was thick all of a sudden with the stench of the creature. Sickly sweet. Foul and rotten.

The cogs of The Wanderer’s chest tightened until he could feel his ribs about to crack. His muscles seemed old and worthless and when The Wanderer looked at the Sick Figure he felt sad and afraid that he would die right there without ever finding the little girl and he asked himself…

Was this it?

Then the creature sprang and shrieked as it flew, coming at him like an eel. The Wanderer moved a second later. No time for the sword. He dropped the everlight and kneeled. The Sick Figure was on him agape and wide but the knife came out of The Wanderer’s boot and sank into it hard and fast. The creature screamed and straightened around the blade, spasm running through it, and fell away from him. The Wanderer fixed it to the floor with the blade, one hand around its throat, and watched the face beneath bubble and cry and the tongue thrash and the body and the pain go on for a long time before it slowly stop moving. With one last broken howl it ended.

The Wanderer leaned forward over it, breathing heavily, his heart yammering too fast in his chest like it was about to explode. He closed his eyes and took shaky breaths. His hand was still clenched around the creature’s throat. The everlight sat a way back and when he opened his eyes the light shone and disappeared into the creature and by looking at it The Wanderer was almost sick. He roughly pulled the knife from its chest and grimaced as black blood oozed from the gash in thick clumps. He sat back and watched the eyes and the mouth but nothing moved. He stood up and retrieved the everlight and it was only then that he vomited into the corner. But there was nothing to come up and The Wanderer was wracked with hoarse dry heaves until his eyes bulged in their sockets and all that he could cough up was a few drops of sandy blood.

His face was pale now. He stood breathing for a long time, waiting for the Sick Figure to stand and come at him again. When it didn’t he wiped his knife on his shirt and when he saw the black blood on the white cotton he tore it off at the sleeve. Then he stared at the body some more as he removed a small pouch from his belt. He opened it and looked inside and poured the contents out into his hand. Black powder flecked with small white spots. Iron Grain, it was called. He moved it around in the palm and could feel how smooth it was, metallic and cold to the touch. He walked over and gently sprinkled it over the creature. He stepped back. Nothing happened for a few seconds and then thin tendrils of smoke started to lift up from the body. Blue flames burst from the creature and consumed it. The Wanderer stood watching.

“Rest deep.” He said.

After a few seconds there was nothing left but ash.

The Wanderer, unwilling to look at the creature any longer, walked away back into the tunnel. He wiped the blood away from his brow but it was already drying up into deep rivulets along his dark skin. His eyes looked a little unfocussed and sweat rolled off him. It was now hotter than it had been before, the walls themselves like boiling pans to the touch. They hissed like snakes whenever his skin brushed against them.

As he moved deeper along the image of the Sick Figure fell out of his memory.

He pulled out the pen and map from his pouch and studied it but the mass of lines and contours had long since stopped making sense and had descended into a nest of pathways and corridors. He had no idea where he was but only knew he was deeper down, burrowed into honeycomb past the layers of dust and sand and heavy sunken earth and the soil and the green, growing closer and closer to the red hot metal heart that was dying too. The Wanderer, shuffling the paper and pen back into the pouches, instead removed a long, thin stemmed pipe whose neck curved outwards to a hard bulb at the end. He tapped out the bulb into his palm then he pulled the pipe between his cracked lips and sucked in through and heard it gasp clear. Then he retrieved a small brown herb from his belt and thumbed it gently into the bulb. He sat down at the wall of the cavern and closed his hand around the everlight and it went out. He stayed there in the dark for a while then moved his hands up around the pipe and felt the heat and the flame and brought it to life with the taste of it and with the tiniest, thin shard of him and the pipe flared up around his face and he began to smoke.

The Wanderer’s thoughts turned now the state of the world like it was some great magnet and it made him sad and nostalgic. He missed the beauty of the lost things, things that had died or decayed since the Breaking of the World. Since then so many had been lost, so much beauty had withered in such a short age. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been with a woman and for the first time in a long time he felt that young tightness in him and he smiled around the pipe. He puffed in and by the small glow of the pipe he breathed out even streams of white smoke. And he watched the smoke and in it it was almost that he could see everything that had happened to turn the world this way. A war, a man and a mistake. And now the consequences, a world no longer functioning proper coming apart, laws that once were resolute now like tissue – he had once seen a man age ninety years and die senile in a day and then witnessed his corpse rise the very next morning. Things like that, impossible things, became normality. And horror became common. Things they had been so sure of, earthly sciences, literature, history, became lies or stories to be told at campfires. Most of the population had been shuffled off the edge. Dead. So few of them left now after all these years that you could go through your entire life without meeting another person. So little people, so little brothers and sisters. So few births and so many deaths. The collective was destroyed and humanity had been broken down into singulars, individuals with no sense, no understanding of anything but themselves. Kindness and selflessness were almost gone, bastardised by a cruel circumstance and a wild world. The grass had died out, become bony white and vapid and dry, the soil became chalky and thirsty, the sky became grey and the sun became unforgiving. The seas had boiled in some places and had frozen in others. Entire towns had disappeared in the blink of an eye. The birds had vanished. But that had all come later. The magic, that hot, broiling blood of the world had been first. It had rotted from the inside, undercut and undermined itself and when that shining bedrock had finally collapsed it spread all out through the fringes like black talons, consuming everything. All the strength, the power of the world had been burned away and all that remained were pitiful parlour tricks. But they could have survived, remained steadfast, remembered all that had been good about their world, the bonds they shared, the love they had – they could have rebuild it all, harder, better than before, not given up, lay down and done more than just crawl over each other in the dust. But they hadn’t and instead had blinked in the face of their destruction and presented themselves to fate for mutilation. All that remained were the worst of all things. The Wanderer had seen it all happen and had failed to stop it and had been torn away by the guilt of all that. Living so long, seeing the sodomising of the world that he had once loved, had taken its toll on him and he was not the man he might have once been. Now he was a dusty shell, a broken law.

The Wanderer hadn’t quite realised but he was crying now thin tears. They fell down his hard cheeks and into the dark of his beard. He sucked in a mouthful of smoke and pursed his lips and exhaled surely. The smoke twisted and turned then tossed over itself and squeaked. A grey squirrel appeared in the air before him, its head cocked to one side, sitting on a branch of smoke. It stared at him with wide, clear eyes and squeaked again.

The Wanderer resumed smoking but there was lights in his eyes again.

The squirrel moved and bounded about in the smoke, hopping and The Wanderer couldn’t help but smile. The tears gradually lessoned and he stopped thinking about his lost world. He sat there for a long time, smoking and watching the squirrel, not thinking about anything.

“Parlour tricks you old fool.” A voice said. The squirrel froze and its tiny head swivelled madly. The Wanderer didn’t move and continued smoking with his head dipped.

“They will not help you here.”

The squirrel looked nervously at The Wanderer and squeaked once more and when he didn’t move it ran to him and perched on his shoulder. It hid beneath the dark of his skull.

Then the voice spoke again and the voice was deep and low and long like a chasm, “Ignoring me? Why? I know you can speak?”

The squirrel shook in terror and buried itself in The Wanderer’s silhouette. The weight of the voice made everything very heavy all of a sudden and the light of the pipe dimmed to a small spark.

“I can extinguish that light on you old man.”

“You are interrupting my smoke.” The Wanderer said. He lifted a hand and gently stroked and soothed the little grey squirrel. Then he waved his hand and it disappeared. “You are the one who took the girl?”

“Yes I am.” The voice replied.

“Why?”

“Why not?” The voice came from all directions all through the walls and deep in them, down both ends of the tunnel, above and below The Wanderer, “I am a hungry creature.”

“Is she still alive?”

“Yes.”

“I am making her last. There are so few little girls left anymore. I might not see another ever again.”

The Wanderer seemed to think about this for a moment, “You are right. You will not see another.”

A deep pause then a chuckle, “A threat?”

“No, an invitation. Give me the girl.”

“A sword and some tricks will not be enough. You don’t have much magic man, not anymore.”

“And neither do you demon. It’s too late for either of us now. But the girl will live to see the last of this place.” He replied.

There is another pause, this one fat and greedy, and then the earth took a grumble of a breath. “You are close” The voice said. It began to fade down into the tunnel ahead, “It’s just this way. Come and claim her.”

The Wanderer stood and tapped out his pipe and the light went and there was a moment of darkness and in that moment the ground disappeared and The Wanderer fell. For a few seconds he could feel the wind rush but he couldn’t see anything. The walls were close around him. It was so hot. Then he hit water and the heat extinguished. He hadn’t swam in a long time but flapped and sprawled and broke the surface. Then he cupped his hands and grasped tightly to everlight. He was in a tall, wide cavern filled with water. Stalactites hung from the ceiling. Bats fluttered around above. Ahead of him was a small, grey island, no larger than a few metres across. On it the body of a young girl rested.

The Wanderer splashed and pulled himself through the water. The body didn’t move and the only sounds were the bats above and the stretch of his arms through the water. He reached land and stumbled toward the girl. She was pretty and young like he had been told but was pale, icy to the touch, and beneath her thin skin he could almost hear her heart gasping. There was a series of cuts along her wrist and both arms are covered in blood up to the shoulder. She was not breathing but he could feel a weak pulse. He needed to get her out of here. He removed a small vial from his belt and waved it underneath her nose. Immediately she awakened, took a breath with a start and started to scream.

“Hush, hush its ok. Everything’s ok now.” The Wanderer said. The girl looked at him afraid and shaking, “I’m here to get you out of here little lady.”

The Wanderer took the skin from around his neck and offered her the last of his water. She quickly snaked it away and gulped it down.

“Where am I?” She asked. Her voice was quivering and bit with fear, as if each word was sharp and ragged in her mouth.

“Underground. But it’s ok, we’re leaving now.” The Wanderer looked past her and saw a shallow path through the water and a tunnel leading out of the cavern, “Are you fit? Can you stand or do you need me to carry you?”

The girl stood up shakily then fell and vomited.

“It’s alright, don’t worry I’ve got you.” The Wanderer said as he took her up into his arms. He started toward the tunnel.

The little girl looked at him. She bit her lip and asked, “Who are you? Are you a knight?”

“Yes,” he replied, “yes I am a knight little lady. A very old knight.”

“I’ve never seen a knight before. Where is your armour?”

“I lost it a long time ago. Before you were born.”

“And your sword? Did you lose that too?” she asked.

“No. I have my sword right here. To make the monsters go away.”

The little girl stared down at his sword and reached and touched the handle and The Wanderer thought she might have felt some of the power and danger of it for she took her hand away like she had been struck.

“Best not to touch it little lady. It’s a dangerous thing.” He said.

He was only halfway to the tunnel when he felt the pressure change in his ears. Then the air grew thinner as if it was all sucked up into some great flame and the water boiled around them. Steam filled the cavern. The Wanderer turned but couldn’t see much. He closed his eyes and concentrated for the longest time and the pressure grew immense in his chest. But the everlight grew brighter like a tiny eye ablaze. It shot light out and thick. The Wanderer saw the creature. The little girl screamed.

It was tall, twice the size of The Wanderer though it stooped on huge arms, and thick like a tree with knots of rocky muscles. Its body was that of a man’s but covered in black, like ink, from top to tail and its arms and legs were twisted meshes of bone and sinew and its hands were the size of saucepans topped with jagged, rotten nails. It was all in dirty, bloody white rags. Its long rope of a neck slithered from the shirt and balanced a huge head, dome shaped and covered with scars. Its thick pendulous tongue lolled out of his jagged mouth over rows of soiled teeth. Its eyes were huge, white and as smooth glass.

The creature thrust and bobbed his tongue over his teeth grotesquely. Somehow it formed sounds and the voice, that death rumble from the cavern, wormed up from deep within it, “You will not take the girl from me.”

The Wanderer paused before replying, “You are the one then.”

“Yes. I have been watching you for a while now old man. You should not have come down so deep.”

The Wanderer looked at him unblinking, “I have not seen a creature like you before. What is your name?”

“Dasiel,” it said, “the Forgotten.”

“We are all of us forgotten now Dasiel. And you…you are dying like the rest of us. Slower than most but you can feel it now, can’t you? Right at this moment?”

Dasiel stared back, moving its heavy head with clicks, “The girl is mine.”

The little girl started to cry against The Wanderer’s shoulder. He rubbed her back and tried to calm her.

“If you try and leave with her I will tear your bones from your meat old man.” Dasiel said. He leaned forward on his hands like a great ape, “I will guzzle your blood. I will eat every last scrap of you.”

“I don’t think I will taste very good.” He replied, “But nevertheless, you will not have the girl.”

The Wanderer gently placed the girl on her feet and took out the crumpled map and thrust it into her tiny hands. He motioned for her to go. She still cried. She grabbed onto his shirt but he pushed her away, “Go, little lady. I will keep him here.”

She didn’t move, “But please…I don’t know my way out.”

“You will find it. You will be safe I promise.”

The girl sniffed and cried but shook no more. She grasped the map in her hands.

He smiled an old smile, “On my word as a knight.”

The girl took one last look, remembering those words, feeling them deep inside her as something old and forever alive in an age long past. Then she, still crying, ran off into the tunnel behind. After a few seconds she was gone and not even her cries remained.

The Wanderer turned back to Dasiel.

“These tunnels go on for miles. She will not get far before I catch her and drag her back.” Dasiel said in that ink voice.

“Not when I skewer the heart out of you demon.” He replied, placing the everlight in a small ring on his belt. It still shone all around.

Dasiel laughed and it echoed around the cavern, “You are an old, weak man. I am strong. Hungry.”

The Wanderer paused and then closed his eyes, settled his hand on the hilt of his sword and drew. The blade left the scabbard for the first time in years and sung and rang loudly like the peal of a bell. It cut off all noise with that sharp shring of steel. The long blade practically quivered in anticipation. The steel shone and a thin strip of darker iron ran up the length of it like a vein. Something in an old tongue was written near the cross guard. The Wanderer stood with the blade in two hands, pointing it up towards Dasiel, saying nothing.

Dasiel moved not an inch. “True? A knight then?”

The Wanderer said nothing.

“A beautiful sword. Old…sharp…”

“Thorn.”

“A blade with a name?”

The Wanderer said nothing.

“Still an old man with a sword is still just an old man.” Dasiel grinned. He crouched low and his tongue trailed along the ground and his teeth were wet with saliva, “I will keep your Thorn knight to pick my teeth…”

Dasiel leapt and a pit opened up in The Wanderer’s stomach. He ducked and Thorn came up and clanged off of Dasiel’s talons and Dasiel sailed over The Wanderer and crashed into the wall behind him. It crawled to its feet, unharmed, and sneered at him through the dust. Its claws came up and The Wanderer rolled. He backed away slowly, already out of breath. It had been so long.

The Wanderer could feel the pressure in the sword, the need, and he was useless as a conduit. Too old and too slow a tool. Thorn cried out and vibrated in his hands. The iron and steel hissed without end.

The blade wanted blood.

Dasiel jumped again and The Wanderer barely knocked him aside. The talons came up and raked across the blade and Thorn screamed out. The light didn’t stretch far enough and he only saw the last of Dasiel when it moved. The Wanderer was too hot with war heat, sweating and making his hands slick against the hilt. Blood ran down from the cut above his eye. The Wanderer feinted left and struck out but missed. He spun and stabbed low and missed again. Dasiel swiped and only just missed his leg. It pushed on and Thorn roared over and over again, making flashes in the everlight. Everything was just a second too quick, a fraction too close, and The Wanderer could see the fight open up before him like a map and he could see that the end was too close coming.

Thorn came out in wide sweeps and in sharp stabs but never hit black flesh. The Wanderer was pushed back again and again, by the swish of claws or the snap of teeth. His footwork became sloppy and tangled. His thrusts were wild, amateurish. His parries were desperate, angry. He was coming ever closer to the edge of his life.

Suddenly there was a cry of anguish and a clatter and when The Wanderer looked down Thorn was gone from his hands. Dasiel skulked towards him, wet gagging sounds coming from him. The Wanderer strafed slowly. It was too close now. One leap. His hand went to his belt.

Dasiel moved in the blink of an eye but met a handful of Iron Grain. It screamed as the powder bore into its face. Its eyes started to foam and smoke and the blue flames appeared all around and it writhed and twisted and ripped at its skin. Then it dived into the water and there was a hiss.

In the reprieve The Wanderer scrabbled for Thorn but he couldn’t see it. That had been the last of his Iron Grain and now all his pockets were empty. No tricks left. Then Dasiel emerged from the water, the steam rising from its shoulders. It looked at him with ruined eyes and all The Wanderer could see was a huge mass of boiling knots of muscle. It snarled and then screamed and spittle flew everywhere.

“I can still see you old man!” It screamed, “I can still see you!”

It lunged and it was all The Wanderer could do to pull the knife from his boot and knock aside the claws. He kicked Dasiel hard in the mouth and he heard teeth give and it stumbled but when he stepped forward its tongue came out and struck him hard across the face. He fell, felt something break, and lost the knife into the water.

Dasiel was lurching to and fro madly. The skin around its face and neck was bloody and bubbling and its eyes were swollen and bulbous but intact. It was grinning and its mouth was a jagged half a face and its tongue obscene. The Wanderer crawled to his feet and felt the hot pain of a broken collarbone. He grasped at raggedy, agonising breaths. His left arm hung uselessly.

“You fuck.” Dasiel murmured. Its head was fixed on him, “My eyes…I’m going to rip you apart. I’m going to make you feel all of it…every fucking tear! Then I’m going to fillet that little bitch for years and you’ll be to blame. All that pain. It’ll be your fault.”

The Wanderer stood hunched and broken as a raggedy old knight, a lost thing, a forgotten man. If only he could’ve saved her, that would’ve been enough for him. Not the world just her. The monster moved to end it and suddenly he felt the pull of the blade. Right. Behind. Thorn sucked the everlight’s gaze toward it and The Wanderer could see the pommel and the hilt and the cut of the blade itself, even in the deep of dark as this. He moved, just the way he did when he was young, and his hand found Thorn and pulled it to him.

The Wanderer could feel Dasiel behind and above him, and smooth as liquid silver, he turned on his heel. Thorn came up alive and roaring with the sound of a thousand clashing bells. The everlight flared suddenly like an explosion. All Dasiel saw were two raggedy eyes; torn, old, cracked but unbroken, as he felt the blade screaming through him and stopping his entire body with a jerk and killing him before the breath left his chest. He stopped, frozen in space. Then he slid off the blade with a thump and rested dead in the dark.

The Wanderer stood there for a long time, his breaths coming unevenly, Thorn resting and satiated in one hand. Then he collapsed, falling for the final time, and the everlight died.

***

In the tall white hall the ceilings are high above and rarely seen for the black. The darkness is kept near to remind them all of what is important. The marble columns are laced with gold and strike high out into the darkness above. The stained glass windows hum in the presence of the flickering light and the colours splash everywhere out. Drapes hang from the parapets above like huge wings. The carpet is red and lined on either side with great gold fire pits and furnaces that roar and ejaculate spits of bright orange flame up and out into the dark and the embers rise high like red hot stars. The only noise is the sound of the storm which is so close now that everyone present can feel the moisture and the pressure in their skin and bones. They do not know yet what form the storm will take but they know that it is coming and that they must be there to meet it.

They are all present and this would be one of the last times that they all would be. Twenty of them. Good men and women. Knights of the White. They all stand resolute and their faces are young and bold and pretty and grim and sad and not yet old and broken. They stand in a semi-circle before a raised marble altar with their swords at their hips and their garb white and pure. Above them on the altar stands The King and Queen. The King is a tall man. Old. Square featured with white hair and a white beard. He wears a long white coat and a red cloak and a shining crown. The Queen is younger than him by many years. Beautiful. Porcelain faced and serene with clear skin and sparkling blue eyes and a dress like glitter and snow. Together they whisper with the knights in a soft susurrus of weight.

Then they all stop.

One by one the knights are called up to the altar. They receive a kiss from The Queen and then The King grasps them by the shoulder and briefly thumbs a symbol into their foreheads. Then they moved along and kneel back into the circle. Nineteen knights go by like this until only one remains.

The last knight is tall and broad shouldered with dark skin and bright eyes. He smiles at his King and Queen before him and can feel the weight of his brothers around him.

“Ser Mallory.” The Queen says to him. “Come.”

Ser Mallory walks forward and straightens himself like a sword in front of his Queen. Her eyes do not come level with his chin but he can still feel the power and strength in her. He bows his head and she kisses him. Then he raises himself and smiles at her and she returns. Then he takes a step to his right and finds his King. He can feel the test in his King’s gaze and the thunder of it deep in his chest pounds against the walls of his resolve. But he doesn’t blink and the King smiles.

“Mallory, my friend.” The King says as his thumb runs the sign over the final knight’s forehead. Ser Mallory steps back and kneels with his brothers. The storm outside thrashes. Then all The White moves their lips in unison and the words rustle off around the hall and out into the dark and Ser Mallory feels the light in and around him as butterflies.

“Fight long. Die right. Rest deep.”