In a land beyond where the green grass grows, over hilltop valleys and past the late sunset, where stars shiver and align in a whirlwind sky… there lies a worn wooden fence, and across that fence, is a mirror world of strange and uncomfortable things. Down where the waters flow, black ferns erupt beside the banks, arrayed in entangled and corpulent forms, swaying in soft ritual, breathing in the slow death of stars. The land abounds with dirt paths leading astray, down twisting roads each different, each an image of any other through an obscurant mirror, empty thoroughfares exposed beneath the turning sky, normal affairs compromised with insidious changes.
Walk down the hazy misting promenade near down where the fence joins the Southern County, when the stars are yet alight in the purple-golden sky, enter when the birdsong joins with day’s second awakening, and find familiar trees framing the yet familiar river, a largely abiding path where the dirt is still crumbling soil, shades of brown green gray bloom where where one yet expects, ferns in geometric patterns a naiveté may yet take for granted, leaves in mostly measured motion, minute hexagonal beetles in lacquered shells, scuttling out under the eaves of shadowy trunks by the edges of your vision. Hear drawn out echoes of a medium that is not sound, paper tigers springing from the trodden leaves in your wake, walk down a forest path of impalpable contradictions, and stumble into iridescent streams flowing in the tumid air.
The streams are no mere illusion, the striking waters are no more out of place than the leaves on the trees or the soil on the ground. In tracks of cool silver the lucent ribbons snake in place as clusters of temperate air do above desert roads, run a hand through and feel the warm colors against your electric skin. But already your unaccustomed naiveté is recoiling, building up to a disquiet that moves you to draw your hand back, calmly, smoothly, but unhesitatingly.
The disturbance is still subtle near this border of the county. It is only natural, in whatever sense this land makes of it, to continue your path down the river; as if an image drawn from the vagaries of your own instinct, it radiates with the same unerring magnetism. Hold the moment in light embrace and proceed in bliss, and while you walk, admire the fine lines in the birches, breathe deep in the woodsy scents that permeate. See not the leaves swiveling without moving, growing and shrinking in size. Hear not patterns hidden within the entropic forest sound. Ignore that faintly rubbery odor it is, after all, not really all there anyway.
You linger awhile before the last of the flowing streams, touched and vaguely intrigued by their tracks which delight your eyes and evade your mind, sensing within the moment something portentous, the beginning of a long journey perhaps, or the end to old comforts.
The road ahead is carpeted with fallen leaves, skins in all the mottled colors that you have come to expect, one layer upon a canvas of surpassing skill, (a canvas that is warped in places which you do not see). There is birdsong and the river trickle too, joining into the backdrop of continual distant echoes into which all else is subsumed. Beneath your feet, the leaves crinkle easily (The brushwork is wrong). You stop before a dim white flower, close your eyes before you breathe deep in its herbal scents. When you begin again, something in your mind has been reassured by its modesty, the subtle presences of earth and acridity in its composition of scents. You do not notice gleaming black liquid coalescing within the petals as you walk away.
In this scenario, there is no hurry. All things are in truth plain, and there is no sense that anything you see could be any other than that which it appears. There is an unsought freedom within this moment, and an accompanying complacency, arising from forgetting that these things, yourself included, must all march in step with the march of time.
So you are free to roam, but really only on the path laid so naturally before you, keeping close to the waters where it is safer. As so many of your ancestors have before you, you follow the rivers, though of course, you have none of their need, only the guidance of deeply embedded instinct. The forest remains mostly well-lit, your legs are unweary, and as the river walkway stretches before you your eyes become accustomed to seeing what they should, so that for all purposes, the scenario is complete. Down where the waters flow, and black ferns grow.
Except that as you travel down your path, the inconsistencies get only stronger, even as your eyes grow practiced in discernment, and as your eyes and mind near their limit, the breakdowns grow more flagrant. In the brief, furtive sort of way which so often preludes the beginning of an end to order, you notice in your periphery a a pulsing motion to the mushrooms that litter your path that stills as you swivel your gaze to it. Thin branches swaying in the wind arrange to resemble graphemes (even as you think that you should not your eyes cannot help but to try and devour them), and beyond a set of trees you espy a flash of fox tail, cascading after-images like shattered glass.
The trickling of the river grows unnoticed to a roar, and your head grows light in the scenic yawning. The conscientious voice bound and gagged within your brain begins to come loose, and you wonder for the first time, where it is you should go. Though the path leads forwards, whether it could it be your target does not, if you should first explore your surroundings or forge ahead heedless; whether you should find where you came from, if you came from anyplace at all; or even that you should rather stay precisely where you are, where all is as it should be and no harm has befallen you, as nor any harm will. (Indeed they are reasonable thoughts, and small concessions beside, but here where the pull is strongest, the tolerances are the lowest, so it is unfortunate that even those cannot be allowed).
You feel a sleep entering upon you from a foreign gate, blossoming within your soul and seeping into your bones, your lids grow heavy and legs limp, and as you fall to your knees your arms fall forward and you come to dragging on all fours in uncoordinated fashion, crawling, (if it be called even that), in vague semblance of your original direction.
When you finally awake, one half of your face is buried in the toes of some huge splayed feet.
With other eye, you trace the figure along great shaggy white limbs to the sky, from where an oblong blurry monkey-face gazes down at you. He, you realize, is crouching, and his hands are held out above you.
Within his left hand lies a short skinning knife, whose blade curves in a wicked grin, edge glimmering with sinister scarlet light. An opal pendant, wrapped in fine coils of silver, rests in the other. Trapped within the abyssal jewel, wisps of light reveal irregular shapes formed of slow cimmerian mists. Such is their unmistakeable perfection, their quiet inscrutability, that you find the full of your attention drawn inexorably into this single choice. You survey both items once again, shivering a little at the naked menace of the blade, but invariably find your gaze drawn to the abyssal depths of the opal pendent.
Unthinking, your hand reaches forward and enfolds around its cold silver coils, clasps it tight to your chest.
A gutteral cackle rends your reverie. When you glance up again, the creature is gone, disappeared into the forest, laughter sending ripples ringing through the hollow night.
After a while, you find your feet and continue down the river path. The light grows a little stronger, the birdsong a touch harsher, your limbs swing with greater force. It is as if something had been lifted. Quietly, inconspicuously, the greater part of your senses return to you, hunger, fatigue, unquiet, the beginnings of each settling quietly into place as the forest too recovers some sense of time and reality. Distant memories of a different forest bubble at the edge of your conscience, triggered by the familiarity of the present vegetation and scents - a scragglier forest, situated midst long hills of rolling heath, strewn with copper-hued wood and asparagus green, inseparable from the mists and the distinctive scent of the earth. And yet, despite your memories and the pleasantness of this forest, peace eludes you. There is a strangeness to the birdsong, to this deserted riverside trail which keeps you feeling uneasy. It is only for lack of a full meal and a decent rest, you tell yourself, let us follow this path for a while longer and see where it takes us. It is as good a plan as any for now.
After what had seemed an everlasting afternoon, the gossamer light streaming through the leaves begins to lessen. The path narrows at a congregation of boulders, where the forest beyond grows swiftly darker, and you come across a narrow tunnel opposite the river. Peering in, wisps of light gather on the far wall. You step in to investigate, and find that adjacent to the far wall, the tunnel opens into a narrow walkway between an archway of long thin trees. At the end of the path, beyond where a few trees obscure it, there is the gaunt outline of a street-lamp, from which shines an inconstant light flickering atop within its steepled cage, bathing the darkened walkway in its wavering coppery hue.
You step out from behind your cover, the mottled canopy opening up to a dark indigo sky. Where the street-lamp stands, you find a dirt road wide enough for two horses abreast. All alongside, copper light spills out in regular intervals, pooling beneath identical street-lamps. You hear the sound of a low clatter coming from the left. Several lights out, a horse-drawn cart approaches.
The foliage on the far side of the road appears much the same as that which you’ve been walking through, though tall dog-weed ferns decorate far side of the road. The light pools On your left, you see a traveller approaching
It stops before you, and a woman steps out from the back. As she approaches, she pulls at the hood of her cloak, revealing grey-streaked hair tied back and a small face which must have once been beautiful, worn with unmistakable lines of age.
She regards you suspiciously. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”
You think back to the bewildering encounter with the monkey-beast, your slow recollection of self on your journey up the river this past afternoon, and the darkness which shrouds everything of your self before that. Twinges of scattered memories and impressions impinge upon your threadbare psyche. What sort of person has knowledge but no memories, a will but no name? A dream? An empty vessel?
Tasting ash on your mouth, you reply. “I… don’t know. I woke up beside a river earlier, and I followed it all the way here. I barely remember anything beyond that.”
Her face hardens. You remember that you have yet to find food and shelter, and more words spill out.
”But I must have them, I swear! It’s only like I can’t find them. I get bits and pieces sometimes, but its all broken, scattered. None of it is helpful."
"Please,” you try, “help me. I don’t know where I am. I don’t know where to go.”
She stares at you silently, taking in your gaunt physique, your clothing scored with dirt from crawling in the forest, your fair and anxious face. You look into her grey eyes and find them conflicted.
At length, she speaks. “This road leads through Helot. It is a large city in these parts, where merchants go to ply their trade. I am headed there myself.” She hesitates, “These woods are known for being treacherous. Perhaps you’d like to travel together?”
Unexpectedly, your eyes well with tears. You stumble in from the heavy rain. With a concerned cry, she rushes over, pulls at your drenched clothes, wraps yours around a hot bowl of soup. You thank her fervently. She seems a bit uncomfortable, but leads you to the cart and ere long the two of you are seated in the back, dipping in and out under the warm glow of street-lamps as the horse-cart ambles down the road to Helot beneath the cold and callous stars.
”Tell me about these memories of yours,” she says.
What is there to say? You have so few answers yourself.
”Tell me anyway” she insists.
You sigh, look away to the empty road drifting away behind you. At last you find yourself speaking.
”They come as strange visions, mostly. A fireplace in a vaulted stone room, a meal beside a hearth, voices, a-and a forest, different from this I think. I don’t know where they come from - I don’t even know if they are real.”
The woods blur around you as you run beside her, neck and neck in pursuit to of some impromptu wager. Suddenly, the ground spills toward you, your foot caught. Already you are scrambling but already it is too late. The forest whirls, light careening. A darkness seizes you, a desperation that pushes you to take the only path left to you, and your hands fumble for the rock that tripped you. You feel its heft in your hands, and as she slows to look for you, you throw.
A gasp tears through your throat. For a moment you are afraid that you are betrayed. Your eyes dart to your companion, but she only looks back patiently, showing no trace of alarm.
Heart pounding, you claw through your scattered memories. From whence had it come? Had you truly been a murderer? At last you find it - the impression is markedly different at the end. Out from the woods she comes barreling, you mere seconds behind her. The two of you fall to the crumbling stone wall, wheezing with laughter.
Your mind wheels. It had been benign after all. What, then, had caused that heinous vision?
”I may have an idea about what happened to you.” Her voice is cautious, measured. “Remember you said you woke up with nothing on or around you?”
You nod.
”The closest town isn’t for miles. With no horse, no provisions, no human could have come so far, least of all someone in your state."
"The only sensible explanation is that you were robbed by bandits. That would explain your missing possessions. You likely lost your memories too when one of them hit you too hard."
"Given where I found you, they might still be nearby. There’s not much on this wagon, but there’s no telling what they’d do.”
For a moment, you had felt an intimation of dread, shadowy and awful, but quick as it came, it has drained away with nought a trace. You suspect all is not as she claims. Having no grounds for this however, you feign concern, and agree that the two of you should make preparations for the eventuality.
From a large chest at the front, she pulls out some weapons: a bow and arrows, and two iron staffs, one of which she hands to you. The two of you fall to discussing plans, from which the conversation then inevitably drifts to other topics.
You learn that she is a herbalist, and she shows you her book, full of detailed sketches, many drawn from her own garden. You listen, rapt, as she regales you with tales about the various clients she served over the years and the plants she recommended.
As the night wears on, your story comes up again. “It’s strange they left you there in the forest. If you hadn’t found this road and met me, you would have had little chance, miles away from civilization in just your ragged clothes."
"I wonder why they did. If they’d been charitable they could have left you by the road. Otherwise they could have killed you and been done with it.”
There is more sadness in her voice than you expected. Looking over, you find her gaze fixed a million miles away.
”My son came this way several years ago."
"He left to take on a clerical post in Helot. As we sent him off at the gates, he promised to send letters.” Her voice breaks. The implication is obvious. You look down, not trusting yourself to speak.
”When I first bore him my arms I was still a young woman - imagine! I must have been drunk on hopes and dreams."
"Even as I shivered holding him in my frosty room, it was like I burned with determination inside. I said to myself, he was going to have everything I could give him."
"It’s only what every mother wants for her child, I suppose” Her eyes glint in the copper light. “But oh! Winter’s rage had nothing on his cries."
"Did you know, when he was just a child, he tried to set free the lord’s own cart-horse? I saw it once when I took him to school — it nosed at the gates as he passed by and I gave him a slice of apple to feed it. He started bringing apples to school with him after that.”
A gentle nickering calls to you from behind the gate. You smile, as a mousy brown head pokes through and you reach out to pat its snout, feel warm vapor dance on your fingers. With your other hand, you reach into your bag for your lunchbox.
”Then his sister comes home one day and tells us about how the manor mistreated its animals.” She shakes her head. “I never expected that he would go so far - but he always did have a tendency to underestimate what he took on”
A line of guests, parked carriages around the boulevard, glowing fountains. Revelry coming from the windows.
”The house had a party.”
The groundsman took ill.
”The groundsman was absent for some reason.” She pauses, to recall. “He stole away the horse under the cover of night. But as he led the horse away, there came a disturbance. He told me later he saw a vast shadow across the sky - to this day I don’t know what he saw.” She shakes her head.
”The horse spooked, and whinnied loud enough to alert the house. The laird came running. There was a search, but he came back safely. Thank god he did.” She smiles, “I held him tight in my arms as he cried that night, held him till the morning.”
Crouched in the bushes, vision swimming with tears, you hide as men search the grounds. Near the steps, two men are speaking. The taller one hands the other his rifle, telling him in a tone almost regretful, that it was getting old anyway.
Something strikes you as deeply wrong. Your own preoccupations approach a point to which you can no longer bear to listen to her tale any longer. Could such memories have been fabricated? You cannot imagine a process that could have produced such a cohesive collection. Alone you might have settled for this, true, but too much corroborates with what you have recently learned. Ineluctably, you find yourself driven toward the resolution that your memories are not your own. By some dark art they could only have been copied or transferred from this woman’s unfortunate son. Or stolen, a nameless voice whispers.
You feel your psyche shifting under strain, large chunks breaking apart, smaller pieces falling like motes of light into a yawning abyss, from which emerge hitherto unseen continents gliding smoothly into places, and black mists that lap at the fissures, fill them with promises of sustenance and power. Voices sound from every corner: angelic chants of boyish bravado, piteous cries oozing with misery and desperation, voices of reason wheeling precipitously… and down in the darkest reaches, an aeons-old voice laughing in unbridled glee.
There comes a shift in the wind, a deathly sweet scent that perfuses the midnight air, quickening the malevolent blood of shadowy beasts lying in wait. The cart-horse nickers nervously, trapped between frail globes of copper light leading a wavering path down the valley of interminable darkness. It is futile - a dark blur rushes out from the invisible forest, a gargantuan snarl of matted fur rippling in monstrous grace. The cart crashes on its side, the bow and arrows spilling to the ground together with a couple books and herbs, while the trunk hits the road with a dull thud, splintering wall of the cart beneath it. Your pendant presses against your breast, searingly cold. To your left, your companion is dazed but alive. You clamber to your feet, staff still in hand. Your attention turns beyond the cart, where rises a towering figure on fours, arms like pylon dangling from its thunderous chest. You are shocked to find its form the same as that great monkey who had stood over you earlier this morning, differing only in its black fur and the inhumanity of its gaze, which possesses none of the amusement its predecessor had maintained. Without that single element of humanity, the whole mien of the beast is transfigured, toward a terrifying bloodlust unbound by the laws of nature.
Instinctually, you know your only chance is to disorient the beast, to instill in it a kernel of fear or confusion more than it bargained for, and hope for the intrinsic cowardice that lies at the heart of all animals. You begin to circle round, careful to stay out of arms length, so that when your companion recovers you and she might conduct an assault from multiple sides. It revolves to face you, waiting. Before its looming bulk and wild murderous gleam you are faced with the dreadful knowledge that your chance is small indeed. Ere your resolve falters however, from some unlocked primal depth a rage wells within you to match. You grip the iron staff with white knuckles, and strike with desperate abandon. The tip sinks into giving flesh. Loosing a deep guttural snarl, the beast lashes back. You throw yourself back, the paw stops millimeters short of ripping your face off.
Against your breast, you feel the pendant radiating, colder than ever before. Energy nigh unendurable flows like mercury in your veins, from your chest to every extremity, as the iron staff grows light in your hands, as you taste the swill of sweet death on your tongue, and your vision gains in otherworldly clarity, each tooth and limb and hair of your enemy stark to the last detail.
You move to strike again. Your staff blurs when you swing it, lands on upon its flank with a solid crack. When the beast lunges, you step back and parry. Round and round the pair of you exchange blows. You catch a swipe on your arm and blood pours out in thick rivulets. You land a strike upon its throat and it begins to draw breath in haggard bursts. You reach to strike again. Suddenly beast and fur melds in a blur and your blow falls on thin air. Your balance is lost - overhead it looms and readies to pounce. As it surges, like a star from the heavens a silver arrow sails through the dark and nicks its thigh, sending it stumbling. But the figure behind the cart is too slow to duck. With frightening speed the black beast reaches across and grasps her arm. There comes a terrible crack of bones splintering - then you are shouting and raining blows upon the beast again, forcing it to fend for itself, snarling and enraged, reeling from your battery. As the fight drags on you find your feet dancing quicker, your blows landing harder, your blood burning colder. Step by step you push the beast back, until at last you catch it in an untenable position. You put your strength into the thrust. This time when the staff connects, it ruptures skin and sinew and parts ribs; emerges ensanguined and gleaming. Finally it keens, cowed. The beast turns to flee down the road - too late, within the confines of your juddering soul a monstrosity equal to the beast has emerged ascendant. Already your arms are moving of their own accord, sending your staff unerringly after the departing shadow. A bloody silver bolt streaks through the air, death flying on silent wings, and pierces the beast clean through its skull, pinning it to the ground.
A deep joy fills you.
You remember then, that your work is yet unfinished. You make your way over to the cart, where your companion lies slumped against its splintered sides. The pendant hangs limply at your chest, emptied.
She draws back a bit at your approach. You find yourself looking at a strange face, the aging mask of some frightened animal.
You bend down, to check if she’s okay. Her arm hangs limply at her side. You reach out to squeeze it, and she cries out, recoiling. You reach for her face, but she twists and turns, wriggling like a fish. She’s making this awfully difficult. You begin to ask her what’s the matter, but then realize that you don’t much care.
There is a pressure in the air, like a storm waiting to fall. You think you hear your river in the distance.
You stand there, trying to figure out what you should be doing.
The air swells.
Your breast begins to itch. You feel like it has to do with this woman.
And swells.
memory
And swells.
”Mother?” a voice of a youth, confused and horrified.
A soft weeping, haunted by hopelessness and regret.
At last it gives. In your vision, the darkness looms in. The trickling of the river grows to a roar and your head grows light in the scenic yawning. Bravely the copper lights flare to keep the darkness at bay. A million voices erupt within your convulsive soul. Cracks race within the mists of the hungering abyss. Then it splits, and the false picture breaks into a million cacaphonous pieces.
You remember your true self. The taste of all those you consumed.
She struggles but you easily overpower her. The silver chains feel cool in your hands as they enfold around her neck. The motion feels so familiar and easy, like pulling at spiderwebs.
And over it all, reigns thunderous laughter from the ageless deep.
And down beneath, the small screams of young men gone to insanity.
The forest is silent once more, peaceful beneath the pallid moon. Down the road lit by wavering copper lights, a shadowy simian form races toward Helot.
Before you a purple lilac basks in the warm sunshine and in sure pencil strokes your hands record it for posterity.