Stormchild: Emeline and the Forest Mage

39 Dreamer

"The truest of dreamers are those who dream during the day, those who see another world with waking eyes."

~ Secrets of the Night by Skryse Nuuks (Written in Ashttïg Ewïg's Time, The Season of the Lords)

Erdil

    Since the day of his curse, Avétk's dreams had been haunted, tainted. The innocents he killed would return in Träumenil seeking revenge, and so when sleep did not come easy to him that night he wasn't surprised. Not that anyone could kill him, really, but every night that the Fathers cursed him with a dream turned into a battle that left him wearied.

    For a while he lay staring up at the stars, millions of lights glowing in the pitch sky, and tried not to think about who he'd killed that day or why. But trying not to think of something was the surest way to get yourself thinking about it. The more you try, the more impossible it is. Brushä's young freckled face twisted into a demonic sneer, his fingers clawing at the air. Avétk had been so sure of his innocence, so sure killing him was wrong. Again he looked at Brushä's young face in his memory, the way his eyes gleamed black and soulless, the way his face twisted with a frown too deep and wicked for a youth. Something had corrupted that child.

    Was it the loss of innocence that haunted him, or the potential of a good life lost forever? No, it was that Avétk saw a shadow of himself in the child. That unnatural savagery, that black death. All too familiar, the way the child had lost himself in lust for power or for something he could not name.

    Perhaps Brushä had been cursed, or maybe being cursed was more about your desires and pursuits than any external influence. Humanity took the easy way out, blamed their gods and immortals or curses and bad dreams, but life was seldom that easy. The one to blame lived in the mirror. The one to blame lived next door or slept in your bed.

    A sigh escaped Avétk and he folded his hands behind his head. A breeze blew over the hill where they slept, crisp night air fresh in his nostrils. The starry sky stretched out above him. It seemed so clear and peaceful, a great farce in his opinion. The night held the dark things, the things people feared come the blood moon and celebrated when the old tales were told around fires. Things like himself. Unbidden, thoughts of the night of his curse resurfaced.

    Much of that time slipped from his memory, like a Platanna frog whose slimy skin made it impossible to grasp it. He recalled the dark forest pressing in around him while he curled on its floor weeping and gnashing his teeth against the pain that burned like fire through his body. Sounds that rang through the darkness had scared him shitless, animals and creatures of the night too horrific for a young boy to face. Of course he knew now that those sounds were common in the Grùwoud, but by the Fathers, he'd been terrified back then, and even now, though he knew the truth, those sounds did not sound like animals in his memory so much as demons and spirits of wickedness roiling in the shadows.

    Goose bumps trailed down his arms past his elbows, but he ignored them and counted the stars under his breath. Mother used to say the stars were doorways to other realms, to places where unnatural things were the norm, where houses were upside down and people floated through the air. A short laugh escaped him.

    Mother had been such a great storyteller. He wished he hadn't left her without explaining why, wished he knew she was safe. And if he was honest, he wished again to be safe in her arms, comforted and carefree the way he'd been in his youngest years. Ahh, those were the days. Another sweet and sorrowful memory hovered at the edge of his mind, but a more prominent whisper interrupted. Something was wrong.

    The goose bumps turned painful as spikes, and the hairs on his arms and back raised like a dog's hackles. Something was very wrong. The axe was in his hands before he could register that he'd stood. Sniffing the air, he crouched low. The only smells he picked up were those of wild animals, trees, dust, and something bitter but natural. No human approached. Beyond the hill, the moon's light made the open fields of dust easy to observe for movement.