The witch intercepted Arid outside his room. He hardly had time to ask her to step aside before she demanded he change into something more appropriate from her cleaning cart. To please the wicked woman and for the guilt he felt of knowing what lurked in the bathroom, he selected a plain white shirt, powder blue jeans, and a pair of flat black shoes; he waited a minute before opening the door again, unchanged. He was disappointed to find her waiting there, looking very unimpressed.
She jabbed him in the ribs with her strange cane when he tried to sidestep her approach. Fire swept through his veins. He bent over – a scream of pain caught hard in his throat. A thousand needles pricked his heart. Lava swam in his belly, swashing up mountains of soft flesh.
“No games here, boy! Change or I’ll –”
He slammed the door shut behind him. He refused to cry in front of her.
Ferry sat up on the windowsill, startled. He had been drawing strange shapes on the glass again. Arid couldn’t find it in himself to remain angry as he brushed away his tears.
However, Arid didn’t want to know where his friend had found the inspiration to draw such horrid things. Had he dreamt of something terrible as well? The thought lingered in his mind as he watched Ferry draw a second family hanging from the branches of a tall tree.
For a moment, he thought he saw Elowen in the corner of his eye, her head still stuck to her shoulder. But when he turned, he only saw a painting of four different people, centred in a small clearing with a pond of twilight behind them. He rubbed his eyes, wondering if it was just a trick of the mind. The painting was still there. The wall had been plain before. Each shadowed body was shaded so dark he troubled to find a difference between them other than their different sizes and glowing eyes: the smallest of the four had bright golden sanidines, the burliest a great, deep orange, the slimmest a startling electric blue, and the tallest had hellish ruby slits.
Arid could not meet the red eyes easily. They felt alive, moving wherever he did in the room, observing him incuriously.
Beneath the frame, two sentences read:
Conseil des Quatre - Poing, Glace, Spectre et Dragon.
And beneath in crimson, dark letters:
Les protecteurs contre les ténèbres
He whispered the words. They were of a foreign tongue, even to himself. There were other languages beyond the great emerald sea to the southwest of Orre, where atolls met volcanoes in Hoenn – though he doubted this language originated from there.
It must be from elsewhere, beyond the cloudy mountains at the end of the world.
The outside world looked uninviting and ominous. It reminded him of his mother prattling on and on of purgatory, the land between the pearly castles in the clouds and the firey walls of hell’s many cities. It was a tragic land where no Pokémon could ever remain, lest they lose their minds. That made him quite sad – he didn’t want Ferry to lose sight of himself.
He stripped out of his clothes and left them on his bed.
Glancing at the window, he saw purple smoke racing through a maze of trees shaded chiaroscuro in the early morning fog. The weather seemed to change at a moment’s notice; a minute ago, he saw a large city of sparkling stars through an army of redwoods. Now the city was gone.
When he listened close enough, he could hear someone cackling.
Arid bit his lip and looked at the door again.
Who does that woman think she is? I should have torn her head from her shoulders the moment she touched me. I’m not her family; I have no family left anyway, so what difference does it make to her what I wear? She’s just jealous that I want to dress in my own clothes. I can’t let her stop me again. Yes… I’ll wait for her to leave again.
Arid dropped to his knees and looked under the door.
She was still there.
He had the creeping suspicion she was able to see him through the door, and that she may well have eyes in the room already. He couldn’t help but wonder if she had a master key to the room as well. Either way, it seemed she had cornered him no matter where he turned or what he did.
Jumping out of the window was out of the question. He didn’t trust the pools at all, especially after his terrifying nightmare. If a sip of water had resulted in that, what good would it do to have more in his body?
Arid looked at the painting again, focusing on the small shadow with very… familiar eyes. It couldn’t be the wretched woman. It just couldn’t.
He moved toward the bathroom and steadied himself against the doorframe. He opened the door. It was spotless. He checked the toilet and tested his aching feet on the cold tiles for any signs of warmth; they were cool as ice. It made no sense. He knew the tiles had been filthy before.
“The water…” he murmured.
She did this.
Arid slid the scale through a loop on his jeans. He put on his shoes last, wondering whether or not he should fall asleep again, before opening the door. She stared at him, this time without her cleaning cart towering over her. Somehow – and he knew her shadow had not moved once – the woman had found the time to fill a food trolley and return to his room without making a sound.
“Did you poison me?”
She shook her head.
“Did someone else poison me?”
“No,” she barked, looking at his hands. “You need treatment. No – shut up. No complaints. Move.”
She walked into his room and leered at the painting. He sat on the edge of his bed while she dressed his burns – first by applying a willow-green ointment over his hands and face, followed by countless creamy bandages, ending only once she deemed she had used enough sterile gauze to mummify him. He felt comfortable with her touch – a mother’s touch, he was sure – enough to close his eyes.
“What is this business with poison?” she finally asked.
“I – I had a moment w-where –”
She pulled the food trolley closer. It smelled divine. A deep hunger seized him. It burned and burned at him until he started to drool. Saliva crept over his fingers. He lifted the first silver dome and tore through a pile of soft meat, squeezing the juice into his mouth. Oh, it was good. Very good.
Ferry shuffled over to them, curious. He tugged the woman’s fingers gently.
“Yes, yes, here.” She handed him a honey sandwich. “Go on, eat. I’ve seen twigs bigger than you.”
“His name is Ferry,” said Arid. “I haven’t had the chance to hunt anything for us… not that I’d know how. I was a fisherman before... everything happened.”
The woman looked at the painting again.
He coughed, embarrassed. “Sorry. I’ve been burning up from the inside since this morning. I blanked out in the bathroom; I saw myself doing terrible things. I felt so hungry I thought death was around the corner. I saw myself killing people for crying out loud.”
“What makes us up as beings can always be seen through the mind’s eye.” She shifted her eyes imperceptibly toward Ferry. “Basic understanding is best found when you don’t balance the choice between the indecency of action and the consequences of inaction.”
Purgatory.
She continued, “You mentioned that you had a moment of something distressing. Tell me what happened. Leave out no detail. I feel quite curious today.”
He told her what he could. However, the feeling of being attached to something maddened grew by the second, making focusing difficult. He could feel it searching for him in the distance, buried beneath thick thistles around the foothills of a mountain called Mortar.
It was in pain… and so hungry…
“I did not poison you,” she affirmed. “I see no purpose in murdering a little child. I had no control over this vision of yours, I promise you that.”
“But it happened after I drank the water you offered me.”
“Many things happen every day.” She shrugged. He found it disingenuous. “Who’s to say that one incident causes another? There is no arrogant man greater than he who overlooks chance. Remember that well, Arid Kellan. The world does not conspire against you.”
Arid stared at her.
“I heard you yell your name last night, repeatedly. And now you wonder why I don’t like guests. You have the desert’s accent, Orre, is it? I often forget the names of barren wastelands. In any case –”
“My home is not a wasteland!” he yelled.
She gave his dragon scale a long look before she met his eyes again. There was a haunting quality to them that left him deeply uncomfortable.
“In any case,” she said coldly, “that vision of yours is interesting, and I may be able to help you. Mt. Mortar’s western range exists thirty miles east of this hotel. But if you wish to go, you must bleed your soul. Sorrow does, after all, sink deeper than any anchor.”
Arid thought of the cruise liner outside Gateon Port’s lighthouse as it sank into a shimmering blue water bed. It hadn’t been sorrow that sunk the vessel nor an anchor, it had been Pokémon. Vicious, bloodthirsty Pokémon with no regard for innocent life.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
His head was starting to hurt again. She spoke in riddles. If Ferry had not been here to distract him, boredom would have finished him off.
“Bleeding the soul is a necessary ritual for those plagued by sorrow. I cannot allow such an act on pure soil. I can, however, show you a place where the bleeding may take place. I will warn you ahead of time, what you carry will fight to keep hold of your spirit. Do not run. If you do, death will follow. That I can promise, Mr. Kellan.”
“Who are you?” he asked harshly.
She grimaced, fighting to her feet. She tapped her cane against the floor twice; a shadow slunk into the floorboards, a dark, fuzzy blur with bright red eyes. Its laugh was deep and shook the room. It silenced all activity outside. The misted hanging families on the window began to swing, performing a strange dance before their heads rolled onto the floor out of view.
He leapt onto his bed. “W-What – how in the – no, no, I can’t – get out –!”
“We can leave now,” she offered.
“Why?”
She stared pointedly at the window, where three corpses hung from icy threads. He didn’t need to look twice to know who they were.
Ferry hid behind his legs.
“Stop this,” he begged, falling to his knees. “End this, please. I'll do anything you want, anything at all.”
“Oh?” The woman’s eyes flashed. “We’ll see about that…”
----------------------------------------
She patiently waited for him on the other side of the pool, tending to her patch of daffodils and irises. Watching the old woman swim across had nearly given him a heart attack. It almost looked like she had floated. Arid was half certain her dress was dry.
Shapes bent awkwardly across the watery cheval glass; nothing seemed to stay still for very long. The longer he stared into its dark depths, the more he was convinced there was something looking back, waiting for him to be stupid enough to swim across.
He hoisted Ferry over his shoulder and jumped onto a rock covered in slippery kelp. His foot grazed the water’s edge; Arid watched the ripples brush through reeds and rushes – his chest tightened – wondering whether he had made a mistake. The pool remained still. Patches of purple kelp rose to the surface as he prepared for the final jump. Arid felt Ferry tense around his neck.
He took a deep breath and looked down one last time.
Red-hot eyes burned beneath thick, slimy oarweeds. Orange spume spat at his feet, nearly knocking him back. The floating purple kelp suddenly shot under the water again just as a large Pokémon emerged from the darkness.
It was a fallen angel.
Arid brushed away the tears in his eyes. Had there ever been anything so beautiful? Its limbs were slender, smoothened in lilac scales, and its head was covered in a red, leaf-like crest with two straggly antennae protruding from within. Smoke spiralled from its tubular snout and warmed the air. Its large tailfin looked like a late autumn leaf blown from the world’s largest tree; its size was astonishing, though still far smaller than either Crimson Wing he had escaped.
“Don’t move yet,” he said warningly.
Ferry’s claws dug into his shoulders.
The large Pokémon stared at him, and then at the scale tucked through his belt, before sinking back into the murky depths. There was no ripple to be seen, but he felt it was still watching him.
The woman (she refused to give him her name) tapped her cane against the soil. She was surprisingly gentle when handling flowers and plants.
“What Pokémon was that?” Arid asked.
“It’s new to the area. Some Pokémon prefer a silent place to rest; that one is pleasant enough. I cannot say the same for its children.”
“I didn’t see any children,” he said, watching patches of pink and purple kelp surface near the edge of the pool. He had the strange feeling they were more than they seemed.
“You should have swam across. They will remember your fear, Mr. Kellan.”
“How did you swim across, then?” he asked hotly.
Arid inched away from the pool. Red eyes followed his every move.
“It’s a pocket of air disguised as water, so my clothes are still dry. All you had to do was walk across. Large Pokémon love their tricks. That one hasn’t survived here by being foolish. You must understand that the bigger the Pokémon, the smarter they must be. Maintaining strength is necessary for survival, and the larger you are, the easier prey can evade you. This is no desert – it is far more formidable with deadlier rules.”
The assurance was unnecessary. He had lived closer to Relic Forest and had grown used to trees and long, winding streams of cyan blue. He still didn’t know where the water came from… not that it mattered. Everything was gone.
Gone.
He reflected that the journey up was more difficult than the way down. From where he stood, he saw the large honeycomb with its bridges of amber-like stone. Yes, he thought to himself, this place is far different from Orre and not in a good way.
“What is that thing?” he asked, pointing at the oddity over the valley.
“It’s had a few names over the years: Amberlite, Thorned Hollow, Sting Spire, and Golden Heart.”
“Golden heart?” he repeated.
She gazed at it as she had the painting in his room. He could feel her amusement again. She was playing a game with him, and this time he would not be caught off-guard as he had with Elowen. Subconsciously, he drifted further from her reach. That only made her smile.
Her teeth looked very sharp.
“If I wanted to talk to a Chatot, I’d visit the Zephyr Aviary. Speak normally, boy.”
“Fine.” Witch. “Why call it Golden Heart? What does a heart have to do with that honeycomb?”
“It looks like a heart. Don’t bash an old woman’s creativity, it’s all I have left of my old, weak mind.”
He bit his tongue. She started laughing, looking at the fog that seemed to be following them from the Lost Hotel. He thought of the dark shadow that had escaped the old woman’s cane, wondering if it had something to do with the Soul Bleeding ritual.
“Is that normal?” He pointed over his shoulder at the fog. “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“I told you the moment you agreed to come with me, what you carry with you will try and stop you from freeing yourself. If you run, you will die. You shall not be the same if you turn around and walk into that mist. Your best chances are to walk forward. The choice, in the end, is yours.”
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He stopped and breathed in the morning air. It smelled rotten, like meat left out to bake beneath a boiling sun. The light from the sun began to wane as the trees bent toward him, casting dappled light over his shoes and over Ferry’s soft face.
A pasty white skull rolled over his left foot. Its eyes were half-eaten balls of pink jelly, its spine slithering behind it like the corpse of a Gorebyss.
It was his mother.
“Oh god – oh god – oh –” He started crying. “Make it stop! Take it away! I don’t want to see it. I don’t. Take whatever you want but make it go away, make it stop!”
The old woman hobbled further down the hill, laughing at the trees like they were talking to her. Ferry followed closely behind.
Arid heard something humming beside his ear. He looked down, shaking, and noticed a trail of blood slithering up his calf, curling over his hip and around his back. He knew the song, of course. It was his mother’s favourite. She used to sing it with his radio during Christmas dinner. He had a very bad feeling he knew where the sound was coming from.
It was on the shoulder where Ferry had been moments ago. He threw it into the nearest bush and ran.
“Wait for me!” he yelled.
Something was running after him. At least, he thought it sounded like footsteps. The harder he ran, the fainter the sounds became. For a moment, he looked in the corner of his eye. His breath came out ragged. A large hairy body with six legs, and just as many arms, scuttled after him. Its skin was peachy… human-like…
Arid found the old woman and Ferry panting heavily near an icy blue stream. He sat beside her, silent, staring at his hands.
“Did you look?”
“Yes.”
“Unpleasant, aren’t they? Death takes on the strangest forms. Before I bled my soul, I saw a wave of skeletons sweep through the trees wherever I went. I sat on this very rock and prayed they would leave me alone.” She fixed him with an odd look. “You don’t pray, do you?”
No, he didn’t. There were so many things to pray to, but it sometimes left him feeling boggled, all too forgetful of why he sought help from a higher power in the first place. He was expected to clean up every mess he saw; he worked hard to look back on his actions without feeling guilty. He thought prayer was rarely effective in Orre, and not once had anyone in Agate Village visited the old church in Relic Forest.
It was seen as suicidal to pray there, in that box of old stone. Arid had long wondered if its insides were ugly and grim; sometimes, rays of coloured light from stained glass would shine brightly on dark nights – when the stars came out in force, and the dark clouds parted from Mt. Battle’s cloudy peak – to shower the ceiling of his bedroom blue, green and red.
It was on those nights he considered praying for an easier life. He regretted considering whether that wish had finally been granted.
“I haven’t in a while, I guess.” He looked far into the tall redwoods. “What good is prayer when nobody ever answers? I don’t know if there’s one god or a thousand. To be honest, I don’t really care. After what I’ve been through, how could any god be good or kind? They’re all bastards.”
“Even the ones that led you to safety?”
He dug the heels of his palms into his thigh. Ferry looked at him, curious, before playing with a patch of green fauna on the marshy earth.
“The only person that saved me that day is dead, and it wasn’t a god. It was a Pokémon. A very… very kind Pokémon.”
She gave him a slow clap.
“Well done, well done. It’s good you’re not so reliant on what you cannot see. But don’t discredit what you don’t know. I imagine more than one died so that you didn’t have to. Or is that you were so well-honed in evading death’s clutches, running from a sky full of sharp rocks and hot flames, that only one died in order to keep you safe?”
Arid remembered Jamie’s pale, panic-stricken face before the boulder crushed her. He remembered how she pushed him out of the way, allowing herself to die in his place. It was selfish of her. She should have let him die. It was selfish of Eagun not to flee with his own life and to allow a useless boy to live instead. It was selfish that Elowen didn’t hang him, letting his legs swing to and fro like the mast of a ship broken against a rocky shore.
The world wasn’t fair. But it seemed it was particularly unfair to him.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “More than one died so that I could live.” He found his voice suddenly full of venom. “And look at where I am now, at what good it’s done me! I’m not even sure if – if this is even real. I don’t know if I died on impact and this is all some kind of terrible nightmare. This is utter and complete bullshit, isn’t it? All of this is in my head while I’m slowly dying.”
Arid smiled at his reflection’s tears. He watched two Misdreavus imitate him on the opposite side of the stream; ten red gemstones, five on either Pokémon, glistened like large crimson smiles through the mist.
“This is quite real, Mr. Kellan. Quite real indeed. We are all to die someday. You seem more alive than the ghosts following us. You certainly look alive to me. They all want what you have – especially those hiding beneath your feet. Life isn’t supposed to be simple. If anything, life prepares us for death.”
Arid pulled Ferry back by his furry collar when he nearly fell face-first into the calm water. He still had doubts anything in the area was safe.
He thought of the moonstone tower once they set off again. He had a nasty feeling she was referring to its ability to make one feel like there was something lurking far beneath it. When he asked her what she meant, she laughed and told him to keep all that she had close to his heart.
----------------------------------------
“We’re going to Smithwork Alley?” Arid asked, kicking a stone into a puddle.
“Playing your part in naming the lands, King Kellan?” she said, giving him a very strange look.
“King?”
He didn’t like that at all. Arid’s lip twitched, but he couldn’t think of anything to rebuke her. Orre had kings once… and it had all ended with all royal families being dipped into a river of molten gold. Thereafter, those of royal blood were called Gold Hearts.
What had she called the giant honeycomb? He could not remember, but it made his chest tighten. All he saw in his mind was that ugly creature with three heads, six arms, six legs, and a body stitched together with an enormous black ribcage. It had looked a great deal like a mutated Ariados.
“Never mind that,” she said tersely. “Come. We must begin soon.”
The old woman could climb far better than he ever could. Arid struggled to manoeuvre through the first alley, kicking old buckets out of his way when their bail wire handles hit his shins. He first ignored the woman’s complaints; she told him not to kick things at random, warning him against angering the resting spirits nearby. He only stopped when Ferry pointed his paw at a bony finger crawling toward him.
Arid counted thirty-two bottle ovens in various states of disrepair. The worst were those to the east, where hundreds of timbered roofs had collapsed. Ironworks were scattered beneath, creating specks of silvery light he could see from afar.
They moved deeper into Smithwork Alley.
“Are you sure you know where we’re going –?” She poked him with her cane, this time beneath his ribs. “Can you stop that!”
“Of course I can.”
Arid grumbled a curse under his breath. The old woman looked from left to right before leading him to an old forge. It was clean compared to the others and had a sweet scent to it, like ripe pears freshly picked on a farm.
Inside, it was warm. Now he was away from the mist, he suddenly felt far more invigorated and alive.
“Is this where it’s going to…” His voice trailed off. A bright red sword caught his eye.
“Fancy it, do you?”
The old woman set Ferry on a large forging table, humming a song to herself. Ferry found it pleasant and bobbed his head to the tune – one of his paws reached for a lump of steaming coal, only to retreat under Arid’s reproachful look.
“Yes,” he replied, keeping his eyes on Ferry. “It’s a strange sword. How long has it been on that wall?”
“I forget,” she responded.
“Do you own this place? I really want it. I think it looks easy to handle. Are there any scabbards nearby?”
She laughed.
“What?” he said.
“You’re a foreigner… you must understand that walking around with a sword is not allowed. It would look especially bad for someone like yourself to have one, and no one else in Indigo. You don’t have your license yet, do you? I doubt you’ve even managed to find an Indigo League Registration Office. There are laws here, Mr. Kellan, and they must be followed.”
Arid’s head started to spin. All he wanted was the sword; he had no intention of running around hurting people.
“Remember this well, Mr. Kellan. Unity is strength, and strength is unity. Say that and it’ll please whoever is to sign your damned papers. The sooner you forsake your old identity, the better. It won’t help you here… I can promise you that.”
He grabbed a cold coal, drawing black lines over his palm. “My identity? Do I have to get a new name or something?” He gulped. It was as if someone had dropped a bucket of ice over his head. “I’m supposed to meet a few people… they told me about registrations and all that stuff. Shit. I should leave –”
“They can wait,” she said brusquely.
The red sword fell from the wall, clattering loudly against an old anvil. Arid nearly leapt a foot into the air. Something cackled in the mist outside.
“How did that fall?”
“It’s an old wall.”
He flushed. “It wasn’t weak a few moments ago.”
“It is now.” Her voice was strange. “Odd how things that seem so strong for so long can just… fall apart. I imagine if you hide the sword and don’t take it into public, it should serve you well enough in the wild. This year may be more deadly than any other, for Pokémon and trainer alike.”
He assumed she owned the sword and grunted a brief thanks, ignoring the rest of what she had said.
Arid lifted it into the air. It was as light as a feather buoyed in a gentle updraught. Where the steel had been folded and hammered, a strange stone with mauve highlights had been carefully centred in the fuller. Sunlight seemed to phase through the blade rather than reflect onto the ceiling, but found difficulty near the blade's centre. He waved it playfully, watching faint mauve spots shoot up the wall.
He pointed the light at Ferry, who chased the spots in lazy circles.
Curious, he rubbed his knuckle against its surface. It was smooth despite looking like it had rusted from a lack of maintenance. He checked twice – just to be sure – before hitting it with his open hand. The sword sang for a moment, the vibrations passing into his arm, before it fell silent once more.
“I guess I’ll call it Scorch.”
“Naming lands and swords… how fast you’ve grown.” The old woman smirked. “I play, I play. No insult was intended.”
He doubted that.
Outside, she warned him not to hold the sword for too long, for risk of damaging his bandages. Arid was willing to listen when she threatened to turn around, having caught him swinging at the first branch low enough for him to reach.
It pained him greatly to hold Scorch for longer than a minute, which forced him to sheath the sword inside its black leathered scabbard. The burns still ached him and would do for some time; that was one thing the old woman said that he found to be truthful, though even then, he found it difficult to trust anything she said.
“Through here,” she said quietly.
He saw a thick inky cloud floating within a dome of red bricks. Three trees guarded the entrance; they were black and dead, but he could see something slimy beneath each that made him doubt that they were decaying naturally.
Inside the dome, the floor was made up of cracked cobblestone and tattered red carpets. Small statues with long cloaks surrounded a simple table with two old wooden chairs, whereupon two large lotus motifs had been carved deep into each backrest.
On the table was a small box.
“What’s inside of that?” he asked.
“The last person here must have left it behind. It’s not uncommon for the elderly to kill themselves here –”
“No.” He pushed the chair back into place. “No – no – no! I’m leaving this hellhole before –”
His father stood beyond the archway of red bricks, his wife’s head clasped between his hands. A noose dropped from somewhere above, landing beside his father’s scabby toes with a loud thunk. Slowly, he knelt and wrapped the rope around his throat.
Arid rushed forward blindly, ignoring the old woman’s yell and grabbed the noose as hard as he could. “Take it off… please… come inside, come with me. You –!”
His mother’s head began to roll like a ball of dough, the bones crunching and the flesh squelching on his father’s hands. She started laughing – it was shrill and unlike anything he had ever heard before. Her teeth rolled down her golden tongue and turned into dust beyond the roots of the closest tree. She licked his father’s palms until the flesh melted away, pouring silvery blood onto the steps next to Arid’s shoes.
“Why did you kill me?” his father asked kindly, placing his hand on Arid’s cheek. It was frigid. “Why do you always fail? Why did you not come back in time? You were always such a pathetic disappointment. I hated you the moment you came into this world, you vile little bastard. You should have died in our place… just look at your dear mother. She suffered awfully before she died!”
Arid tried to pull away but his legs wouldn’t move. They had turned to jelly, shaking so hard his knees clattered together. He had only yet to fall because of his father’s vicious grip.
“Please!” he begged. “Please, I meant to save you –” His father’s hands closed swiftly around his throat. “I – CAN’T –”
Elowen’s fiery green eyes stared at him through his father’s gaunt cheeks. His father’s mouth opened, cracking and popping like the pipes warming the Lost Hotel. Arid saw a thousand strands of hair and just as many eyes inside. Some were red, while others were blue and green; they burst into black powder under rows of razor-sharp teeth.
A wave of madness hit him. He released his hold on the noose. Faster than he thought possible, Arid unsheathed Scorch and drove it into the powdered deathtrap. The thing howled. Something – a pale hand! – grabbed the blade, followed by another. Soon, there were twenty fingers inching along a crimson carpet of shimmering steel.
He dared not blink. There was something trying to tear its way out of his father’s throat. It was slim, no larger than a child, but it was so strong he nearly lost grip on his sword.
But Arid would have preferred the sky to shatter into a thousand shards of glass rather than allow himself to be disarmed. So he pushed the blade deeper. He felt his fingers numb. It wasn’t enough. The thing's head was slithering out, coated in something thicker and darker than wax.
Long straggly vines whipped him from above, blocking his view of the outside world. He looked up.
Jamie’s body hung upside down, and her feet were hooked to a metallic peg. She smiled at him with red teeth, her eyes sewn shut, pointing at a long message carved onto her forearm:
Halloween Whispers [https://see.fontimg.com/api/rf5/zrmyG/ZDNiMDc1MTdkYzMzNDMwYTg4ZjllM2U5MzEzYWI1NTQudHRm/RG8geW91IHN0aWxsIGxvdmUgbWU_/halloween-whispers.png?r=fs&h=26&w=1000&fg=671818&bg=F6F6F6&tb=1&s=26]
He was outside the dome. The old woman’s warnings came back to him in waves:
“What you carry with you will try and stop you from freeing yourself. If you run, you will die. You shall not be the same if you turn around and walk into that mist. Your best chances are to walk forward.”
“Do you want it?” the ghostly Jamie asked.
“Your love?” he replied dumbly.
“Our seats in paradise. It’s very hot down there,” she said, pointing at the ground. “Everything is made of brimstone. I’ve saved you a seat right by the fire where its nice and warm, overlooking the Pit of Sacrifice. All you have to do… is take my hand… and we can be together again, in true paradise.”
He gaped at her. Even if the ghost was Elowen, he thought, I never told her my last words to Jamie. How could she know? It must be in my head, there’s no other way it makes sense. How do I even know if this is Elowen playing games with me and not the old woman?
“Take your hand? Will doing that kill me? I –” He looked over his shoulder, unnerved, hearing a strange chanting voice through the fog. “Ferry will be all alone. I don’t want him to be left here to defend himself. He means something to me.”
“You don’t love me,” she replied coldly.
Arid looked at his feet and breathed in the cold, rotten air for what he felt was the last time he would ever be free. And then he shook his head. “No. I don’t love whatever you are.”
The hook holding Jamie’s weight caught her skin, slowly stripping it as one would the skin of an orange. Her bones were splintered like wood, and the longer he stared at her body, the closer she seemed to get. Her arm was still outstretched – it didn’t look as much an invitation now as it did a demand.
He couldn’t find it in himself to vomit. But he drew his shoulders in protectively, shuddering, waiting for the worst. Prayer seemed his safest option. So he prayed. And then he prayed some more, feeling damp, straggly hair brush against his nose, along with the smell of a rotting corpse coming closer… and closer…
The pain in his palms made him whimper. He dropped the sword with a strangely silent clang.
Thump.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
An oily hand roamed his calf, almost amused. Another tugged at his hands – they were slimy and troubled to grab hold of his bandages.
“Leave,” his voice wavered.
“Don’t you love me? I thought you did. How many nights did you think of me in bed, Arid? I know you wanted me. Everyone wanted to fuck Jamie Hen. Sometimes, I thought of letting them in, but they were so boring that I never let them do more than peck my cheeks. You never made a move on me; that’s why I’m doing this – because I want to worship you. Stay out here. Let me – let us – help you. We’re good for you.”
“We?”
“Look down.”
He knelt with his eyes closed and searched blindly for his sword. It was in one of their laps, he was certain, and they were just playing with him. Everyone was playing some kind of game, and Arid had had just about enough. Marshalling his courage, he opened his eyes and felt something burn in his chest.
“Elowen?”
There was no mistaking her identity: bright green eyes, a broken jaw, a wide-brimmed Breton hat, a long ring of bruises around her thin throat, and her now-torn Ranger gear barely clinging to her body. She was covered in a thick ooze of swampy peat.
“Arid Kellan,” she greeted playfully. “Figured it out yet?”
He felt a strange sense of pity when he saw her face. She had no visible wounds, but her eyes were so sad it made him feel strange inside. Carefully, as to avoid Jamie’s glare, he replied, “I don’t know what’s happening anymore. I don’t want to die but I don’t… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. This ritual that old woman’s doing – is it… is it dangerous?”
“No.”
“I thought –”
Elowen poked his chest again, sending a roaring fire through his veins. “That what? I wouldn’t want to see you go? I was playing with you before. I don’t care for playing games when there are… things on the line.” She turned to Jamie. “Is that the expression? I’ve been dead for so long…”
“Yes, it is.”
“Thanks! Anyway,” she turned back to Arid, “you should know that this little play doll – Jamie, was it? – is just a bunch of flesh and bone I put together for fun. I found your memories of her while you were asleep under the Elm Tree of Ecruteak, and I wanted you to see her again. I know, I know. Where were my manners? But, to be honest, if you saw the real me, you would have died then and there, so it had to be done quietly.”
“What about my mother and father?” he demanded.
“Oh, just finishing touches. I had to scare you enough to stop you from running back in there,” she spat, pointing at the now glowing dome. It was as bright as the sun.
“Well, it worked.”
Elowen picked up his sword, looking at its shimmering edge with an unreadable expression on her face.
After a beat of silence, Jamie said, softly, “I know you don’t want to listen to me, and I can’t blame you for that, but I want you to understand why Elowen shared your memories with me. I am not the girl you were friends with but you should know… it’s okay to feel sad, it’s okay to feel annoyed with everything. You loved Jamie, but you must accept that you can never see her again. I don’t think it would do you any good if you did. Think of it like a puzzle: random pieces with different shapes and sizes are made to rarely, if ever, fit together; that doesn’t mean that they cannot exist and love one another. It just means they will never be able to be together. You loved her as she loved you. I played my part in ensuring you didn’t run; now I want you to be all right… to be comfortable with yourself and what I must tell you.”
Arid looked at his fingers, clenching and unclenching them. He remained silent, respectful.
“You killed Jamie’s soon-to-be in the chaos around Agate Village. You could not have known. If you did not fight, if you did not strike him, he would have killed you instead. I’m sorry.”
In the corner of his eye, at the edge of the forest, he saw a tall, shadowy figure looking at him.
Arid felt the wind leave his chest. He was a murderer. A killer. For the sake of himself, he had killed someone innocent. Damned the reasons behind it – he felt sick to the stomach. Then he thought back to what the old woman had scolded him for and felt an awful pain bounce around his mind:
“Well done, well done. It’s good you’re not so reliant on what you cannot see. But don’t discredit what you don’t know. I imagine more than one died so that you didn’t have to. Or is that you were so well-honed in evading death’s clutches, running from a sky full of sharp rocks and hot flames, that only one died in order to keep you safe?”
“Does she know?” he whispered.
Elowen gave him his sword.
“I maintain peace in these lands, Arid. I can’t say who was involved. Remember: I saw your memories, but that doesn’t mean I can explain everything that happened without sounding biased. I know, to some extent, things you have chosen to forget. Memories are like trees in need of a good trim, or roots plucked as they rot from fighting to survive where they should not exist. You are not weak – you are… human. And I think that is something you have to remind yourself.”
The chanting grew louder. Golden chains clinked over the forest floor, moving steadily toward the ghosts. Wisps of purple smoke whipped into the air around their bodies. Arid felt no pain. When he looked at Elowen, he could see her sad eyes glisten with tears.
Heart hammering, he asked, “Was it you that led me through the trees in my dream?”
She tilted her head and hummed. “I can’t touch dreams. I’m a messenger; I’ve carried messages for over five hundred years but can only do it in person. Even ghosts have limits.”
“But I saw someone. It felt like they were trying to pull me out of my dream, or at least lead me to safety. I think it was a woman in a silver sequin gown. She was slender. But before I could see her face, I woke up. Did you see any woman like that around me or that tree? I’d like to… talk, I guess. She was trying to help me, after all.”
“I only saw you, that little Teddiursa of yours, and the dragon. There was nobody else there.”
Arid could almost see the face looking at him now. The longer he thought of her, the blurrier the memory became. When he opened his eyes again, Elowen was gone, the golden chains had vanished, and Ferry was waving a thin scalloped paper in front of his face with the location of the Indigo League’s Registration Office scrawled across its back.
On the front, written in fancy handwriting, read:
Adieu, Votre Grâce. Jusqu'à ce que nous nous retrouvions sous la tempête aveugle de glace.
Prenez garde à Mahgogany.