Where Futures End Page 20

  When I went back to camp, our Eldest told me that long-ago times, there had been a stream there where I had seen the Water Nymph avatar, but it had dried up like so many others and filled in with trees and dirt. She said my sighting of the Nymph meant that I had one foot in the Other Place, just as I must have put one foot into that dried-up stream.

  Not long after that we went on our way to the Cold House of Bounty Sanctuary, which is a metal room full of icy-cold foods that sits on a wide gravel bank. It’s one of the best sanctuaries but also the hardest to get to—not only do we have to pass over the mountain ridge, but we also have to be on the lookout for bands who don’t want to share the Bounty.

  We were tired and wary by the time we reached Cold House, but still we sought out the avatar that appears near there quite often who we call the Exhorter. When she appears, she looks right through all of us with her piercing stare and says, “When you finish all of your homework, you can play one hour of Mario. Just one hour, don’t try to ask for more.”

  Then she sits down and stares through our torsos, just stares like she’s watching to see what we’ll do, and sometimes she’ll move her wrist or give a snort of laughter and then watch silently again. We children stand with our hands folded before us, contemplating her words. Finish your work and then play. It’s the simplest of commandments and the hardest to follow.

  But this time when she said her words, it was different. It seemed to me she didn’t look through everyone. She looked right into my eyes. And so I knew her words held a special meaning for me. Finish your work.

  Afterward, I told our Eldest that I knew I had a Special Work ahead of me, because I had seen the Water Nymph that few others have seen, and because the Exhorter had looked me right in the eye when she had exhorted.

  “What is your Special Work?” Eldest asked.

  I didn’t know then but I knew it had something to do with the Other Place, that land of beauty and magic that Dylan first found so long ago.

  I hardly ate the boxed foods at Cold House of Bounty, where we stayed for less than a day and then ran off before another band might come through. I was skinny and weak when we went on to High Tower to shelter from a forest fire, but I climbed the steps to the tallest stacks so I could be alone and think awhile. I thought about the Dream House.

  I thought about how evil could eat up beauty.

  And how that isn’t the work of only mages.

  I thought about what I had seen once from a hiding place in the forest. The look in someone’s eye like there was nothing that could stop him from tearing the whole world apart. The charred and trampled camp.

  After sunset that night in the High Tower, the sky went on blazing through the night, orange-red above a distant line of yellow fire. In the morning, the sky would turn to ash and fall down on us soft as snow. But for now, the forest fire was beautiful against the gray-and-black sky. A world of trees was being eaten up by flames, and from a distance there was nothing terrible about it.

  I decided upon my work.

  “I want to find the Transporting Sanctuary,” I told our Eldest. I thought she would say no, that it was a waste of time and no good reason to put off my coming-of-age. That I was too old to believe in stories of that fabled sanctuary. Instead, her eyes went small, as though her vision were sliding into the past. She nodded her trembling head.

  Why else might the Water Nymph have appeared to me except for the Special Work of finding a doorway into such a world?

  I had gotten very good at going off on my own—I was used to searching for alder bark and shrub berries for my father, who made most of our medicines. So I went off in search of sanctuaries. I made a catalog of the ones we visited and the ones other bands told us about and the ones I found on my own. I kept track of all the avatars in case they might have any clues about how to find the Transporting Sanctuary.

  Our Eldest tells us to pick a certain avatar to hold in our hearts, either for courage or for wisdom or to model ourselves after. The boys all like the Moribund, a man who appears near High Tower far too often, his skin black as he suffers through his death throes. Thankfully he goes almost as quickly as he comes, so you only see him for a few seconds at a time. My best friend, Truley, used to prefer the Melodious, a girl with a bright-painted face who sings about a boy she shouldn’t love, but when I try to sing the song to Truley now, she makes her much-too-old-for-that face and picks up her baby. I have my own avatar to think on, the Water Nymph.

  I would remember her when I was afraid, or just weary and hungry. Always when I was alone in the forest I called her to mind.

  I kept up my work for years.

  Until our Eldest came to talk to me. Our band had welcomed so few babies in the past year, and fewer had survived the winter. A boy had asked about me—Artak, who I guess is a man now, since he survived the ten-day trek along the crevice. Really, he’s no older than I am. Eldest told me it was well past time for my own coming-of-age, when I should travel along the crevice in search of some token to bring back to a husband. Times have happened girls have found bits of gold down in the crevice, revealed there where the earth opened up some generations ago. But Artak would take me even if I failed to find so much as a gold flake.

  “My Special Work isn’t finished,” I told Eldest. “How will I search for sanctuaries when I have babies to take care of?”

  Eldest kept her gaze trained over my head and told me, “Your work will be for your band now.”

  Artak smiled at me for the next three days. He was as nice as any of the other boys in our band. Still had all his teeth. No terrible scars or anything, though his hair had stopped growing along one patch over his ear where he’d been burned. We’d played together as kids. I knew he would treat me nice.

  But I’d seen his face set in hatred once over what another band had done—raided our camp and taken all our food. A good enough reason to hate another band, I guess.

  I’d seen that look in his eye while I hid—like the whole world was his to tear down. The same as I’d seen on the face of every other man in my band that day when they trampled the other band’s camp and burned it to the ground. When they pulled down some of the men in the forest before they could get away and took home the women they could catch. I had seen what Artak had done to one of the women there in the trees.

  It will be different with me, when I return to him. I suppose it will be different, because we’re of the same band.

  My days of searching for the Transporting Sanctuary are over. I’ve traveled farther along the crevice than any of the others ever did when they came of age. I saw their old campfires along the way, the remains here and there of a shelter or bed. I’ve come this far in the hope of making up for being so late.

  Before I set off, our Eldest gave me a warning.

  She told me some who have traveled along the crevice for their coming-of-age have found more than just gold rocks. I asked her what she meant and she said that my Special Work might even now be ahead of me. “There’s a rare chance,” she said. “But I’ve been thinking for some time that this might be your real work. And I’m sorry if it is.”

  It was possible, she told me, that I might meet someone on my journey. Someone from the Other Place.

  Times have happened that young ones on their coming-of-age journey have encountered such ones. But they never speak about it. They come back and it’s like they’re closed in a cloud of their own air—everything about them dims. They are quiet, sad.

  I thought to myself that Eldest had that sort of look about her. Closed up. Muffled in sadness. I always thought it was because she was so much older than any of the rest of us. But now I wonder.

  Eldest told me that if I should encounter one of the inhabitants of the Other Place, I would have a choice to make. “I can’t tell you what that choice is,” Eldest said to me. “All I can tell you is the choice is yours alone and you are never to speak of it to an
yone.

  “But you must be careful—the evil mages are always on the prowl, hoping to find a way to destroy the Other Place, and they can take the disguise of nobler forms, true citizens of that magical land.”

  “How do you know all of this if no one has ever spoken of it?” I asked. “How do you know I will be given some choice to make?”

  “Because I was one of those who met someone from the Other Place.” The haze of summer heat went heavy around us, like it wanted to close me in her small, sad world. “I made my choice. And I have never been sure since then if it was the right choice to make.”

  The Second Day

  DYLAN

  You have told your story, and now I will tell mine.

  I am Dylan of the famous tales, who first found the Other Place long ago.

  My first visit there was a tour of wonders. I feasted in the golden rooms of the elven palace, explored jewel-crusted caverns, steered a ship with dragon-wing sails to the misty islands. Every corner of the land holds some puzzle or prize: a ruby lodged in the heart of a ghostly tree, an elixir made from ancient salt dried on moonlit banks, a silver scepter held captive by a sphinx. It broke my heart to return home that first time.

  But the queen of the Other Place had given me a golden bracelet that would enable me to find her again, and so I soon went back. On my second trip to that realm, I brought my brother, Hunter. He loved the golden palace, the hidden treasures. He wished to win the Girl Queen’s favor, so he vowed to rid her land of the evil mages who so often caused chaos there, draining magic from fairy coves, muddying crystal streams, and bringing sickness wherever they walked.

  First, Hunter and I ventured to the sphinx’s lair to win a silver scepter of great power. Then we chased the mages all the way to a distant place called the Wasted Wood, where we battled with them and finally used the magical silver scepter to banish them from the land.

  The longer we stayed in the Other Place, the more we loved it. Hunter loved the riches of the palace, the thrill of heroic quests.

  I loved the Girl Queen.

  We soon went home, but I couldn’t help returning again and again. I would think of the Girl Queen and suddenly step right into the woods behind her palace. Then Hunter asked to return, and so I took him with me. But when he realized how many times I’d gone there without him, when he saw how the Girl Queen preferred my company and how I had learned the secrets to unlocking the land’s hidden wonders—he grew bitter. He lost heart for our adventures and went home.

  But I loved the Other Place more than I loved my own world, and I chose to remain in the enchanted realm and never to leave. I made my home in the palace and every morning asked the queen how I could increase her happiness. Her younger brother became like my own brother and wrote tales of my adventures. I quested for treasure, recorded lore, passed judgments, made decrees. I forgot the world I had come from. And I was happy.

  Until I realized that some malaise had struck the Other Place.

  The malaise crept in so slowly, I didn’t notice for some time. How long had it been since I’d seen a forest clearing humming with magic? How long since the drone of fairy nests echoed from a flashing cove? The silver scepter itself lost its glow and its rainbow array of jewels grew dim. No longer could I use it to keep fell creatures at bay. Trolls roamed farther from their dark lairs, mage-crows from their desolate crags.

  I set off to survey the trouble, as far as the outlying lands. I was gone for months, documenting my findings. A black island had sprung up in a distant bay and turned the water foul. A terrible stench rose from crevices and caverns, and poisoned streams and wells. Farmers reported sharp black spikes growing up through their fields. A terrified hunter returned from the forest to say that he had seen more spikes jutting up from the soil there. It seemed everyone and every place was affected but none knew the cause. My mind worked endlessly but found no answers.

  After almost a year, I journeyed back toward the palace, sick and weary from my wanderings. The land turned bleaker. Even my carriage began to molder, the silk lining turning black and falling away at my touch. I stopped at meeting halls and taverns along the way, eager to learn what had befallen the land in my absence. I heard tales of trees growing brittle and shattering like ice, crops failing and food growing scarce.

  When I reached the palace, I saw a face that sent a shock to my spine. A face I had all but forgotten. I searched my mind for who that face might belong to. Could it be . . . ? My head filled with memories that had slipped away long ago. No, not slipped—that I had pushed away. As if I’d shoved them all down into some deep place and now they were crawling out again.

  Here at the palace was Hunter.

  “Brother!” he cried, and smiled at me. But in his eyes I saw the same bitterness that had driven him to leave the Other Place long ago.

  “You’ve forgotten about me,” he said. “I had to find the way here on my own.”

  He opened his palm to show me a tiny jewel, gone black with age or ruin. Then he reached for the gold bracelet on my wrist and turned it to expose the empty setting from which the jewel had fallen. “A bread crumb,” he said. “I found the jewel in our own land, and it led me here to you.”

  Unease slid into my heart. I learned that Hunter had been here in the Other Place for some months but had done nothing to combat the spreading miasma that covered all. I suppose there was nothing he could do, but it angered me to learn that he feasted while others starved, that he courted the queen’s attention while the stench of death hung in the air. To him the Other Place was a game, a child’s plaything. I don’t think he believed it was all quite real.

  I busied myself in my work, testing out theories that had been offered by the sages in the outlying lands. I sent scouts into the crags to see if the mages had somehow returned, sent spies to watch the ice giants on the far side of the mountains. I applied balms to the sick, said spells over foul wells and withered crops. But the land continued to decline.

  One day I was visited by a sage I had once sought council from as a boy. He came to the palace and stood in the receiving room with his dark eyes like smoldering coals, his body so frail I feared the pounding echo of the fountains would knock him down. “You have known what the trouble is,” he said to me. “You have known it since you returned from the outlying lands, but you will not face it.”

  I assured him that I had no such knowledge. “If you know what plagues us, it is your duty to reveal it.”

  “I do not know,” the man said. “I know only that it is something so terrible you will not let yourself discover it.”

  I had him escorted away, thinking he had grown too old to know his mind anymore. But what he said haunted me. Whenever I saw my brother’s face, I felt the sage was right, but I couldn’t understand why I should feel that way. I wanted above everything to discover what plagued the Other Place—why should I not let myself discover it?

  My brother grew restless in the palace, impatient with the queen’s agitation. I tried to make him understand what danger the realm was in, but he would not listen. I realized he had fallen into a deep disappointment, that he had returned to the Other Place in the hopes of finding ease and happiness, but that those things had eluded him. After the sage’s visit, he became convinced that I could heal the land but would not.

  “See how pale he has become?” Hunter told the queen. “How sickly? He grows worse as the realm does. It is some spell he has cast in order to drive me out.”

  “I am only weary from searching for answers,” I said.

  “There is a look about you of evil magic,” Hunter said, and the queen admitted that it was true.

  Her suspicion stung me, but at last I had to admit to myself that the sickness I felt was more than exhaustion. I hardly ate anymore, and a terrible pain throbbed in my arm. Something lay deep within the flesh there, something I had kept secret for a long time.

  Once long ago
my brother and I had sought to rid the land of evil mages, as you will remember. We had chased the mages all the way to their camp in the Wasted Wood and done battle there. The mages were terrible men. Not even really quite men, but shadows of men, as you said, Quinn. They had turned the wood into a foul place.

  When Hunter and I had met the mages there in battle, we saw . . .

  The wood was full of terrible things.

  I’d all but forgotten, but now I remembered. Their dark magic had driven all the animals rabid so that the creatures had gored the trees with tooth and claw, and the stench of rotting wood was thick in the air. The wood nymphs stalked us like we were quarry and slavered for our blood, and we only eluded them by cutting down trolls and tossing them the carcasses. The putrid sap that covered all claimed our boots and cloaks. But at last we drove the mages from their dark hiding places and defeated them with the silver scepter’s magic.

  Afterward, Hunter and I could barely crawl away. We made camp outside its boundaries, where I discovered that a fell creature no bigger than my hand had latched on to my pack. It was completely black but for a cluster of milky eyes, and covered all over in sharp bristles. We had lost our swords in the wood, and we could find nothing sharp enough to pierce its bristled hide to kill it.

  The sage I spoke of earlier had his warren nearby and, seeing our fire, came to find out what we were doing in those parts where few ventured anymore. We showed him the little Bristle Beast and he told us what we must do: Return it to the Wasted Wood, where it would feed on the dark magic there until the wood was cleansed of it and the beast died of starvation.