Slivers of sunlight crept into the shed through the chimney cap, the long awaited day finally arrived. Illus rose, his back popping the whole way up from that barely-padded marble bench. He tossed his pack over his shoulder and stepped out into the full light of day, the ruins in their usual quiet tranquility.
A year it had been of monotonous fishing, eating pears, climbing the mountain, and waiting. Waiting for this very day. Distant voices quickened his pace toward the roses, which parted at Illus’s kind request. The first thing he saw were the dark eyes of Anilee as they filled with tears, which rushed down her freckled cheeks. She raced to him, and wrapped him in a hug.
“Ani- what-” Illus was caught in confusion, happy confusion, but something wasn’t making sense.
Anilee’s gleeful eyes cured his confusion. She gently wrapped her hands around his. “For all I’ve done, for everything I’ve caused…” her tears crashed free like the rivers around the ruins, “all I ever wanted to be was your betrothed. I just want you, so let us go and start anew.”
Anilee took his hand and walked with him down the hill toward the dried river.
“I banish thee, fox!” Ciun’s voice cut through the shimmering hazy world before Illus, his feet at the edge of a cliff where the rocky dried riverbed would surely be his death. What he could see of her expression was heartbroken, impossibly betrayed. “If you so desire her still, then cast yourself into the rocks. I don’t want to see your face anymore. Go on. Our love will never be like before.”
Illus’s mind crashed full of memories. Memories of him and Ciun intimately sharing their days atop the mountain, between the rows of the orchards, in the shed on every rainy day. Grief took hold of him, an overwhelming guilt which tore through him, calcifying his heart in an empty senseless void. His foot stepped forward as his empty expression leaned forward.
“I banish thee, fox!”
The cliff before him shimmered, blue haze clearing into rushing water. Illus was up to his knees in the rapids, about to step to a point which would surely sweep him away.
The hollow suffering he had just experienced quickly faded, confusion overtaking his mind. He stumbled backward and fell, hands trembling, breath lost, eyes unable to focus, mind aching.
In his stupor, he found Ciun over his shoulder, far back atop a pillar, not stepping beyond the maze of roses. The mask interrogated his lost eyes, but her chin was trembling, like the sight pained her.
His head fell into his hands while he caught his breath and Ciun’s voice wafted over him. “That dastardly fox keeps getting you with this one. I’m sorry I couldn’t be faster.”
For nearly two months, this had been how every sunny morning started. Several times she found him at the entrance of the catacombs. A few times about to leap from the mountain’s lower ledge where the poem had washed away. But most of the time, the fox lured him close to the river, rarely this deep in before Ciun reached him.
Illus nodded slowly, his exhausted, strained mind feeling none of the sleep he had gotten. “I saw Ani again. Then the vision broke inside another mirage where you told me to leap to my death.”
Ciun leapt from the column, landing near Illus, the center part of the nightgown askew, showing far more of her chest than usual. Her breath became heavier. “I would never tell you to die for me, Illus, so…” her hands caressed the soft, shiny nightgown on her thigh, “I want to make it up to you, if it’s not too big a fuss.”
Illus’s mind was reeling, the change not making sense at all. Why would she come onto him so quickly, so suddenly? His heart raced, a strong urge to step forward and take her hand.
But he toppled backward, his voice incredibly hoarse. “I don’t think that’s you, Ciun.”
“What are you talking about?” She turned away, peeking over her shoulder at him, fingers combing through her long hair. Her soft voice broke. “I’m me, aren’t I? What’s there to doubt?”
Sultry sensations, unclean urges thrust their way through Illus’s reeling head. Her lithe body, silky hair, soft lips. An idea forced its way forward, begging him to tear away her mask and-
“I banish thee, fox!” Ciun cried out, a hint of desperation behind her growl
The world shimmered with a cackle and Illus’s spinning head caught up to him. He keeled over onto all fours, retching up vomit while Ciun kept watch for the fox. Twice more he heard her banish. Twice more, his head spun with the shimmering world. Slowly, he crawled up the hill with stops to regurgitate all the water and food he had left in him.
With glassy eyes, clammy skin, and a broken daze about him, Illus rose and slogged through the rose wall, as he did most mornings.
Throughout every moment of the day, this was how he lived. His supply of food constantly strained, and water scarcely in him for as long as the sun was up. His ability to spot mirages became more acute throughout the day, but it was always the immediate after waking that crushed his spirits. He spent a lot of time on the mountain during daytime, and while that kept him sane, it also prevented him from fishing, gathering supplies, and nourishing himself. Ciun made up for it by bringing him food, but getting him enough became an issue. Even when Ciun was with Illus, the visions, planted memories, false feelings, sensations, all of them would still break in and attack without Ciun noticing.
Or, as he often wondered, was it Ciun doing it to test him? Was she the maker of the visions? He had no way of knowing she was near, and she would always be there when they broke. But they never happened atop the mountain, where the fox could not reach. That had been his only assurance that he could trust her.
Ciun had been giving him herbal teas to help, but they did little to ease the strain on his head and body. His core never got a break, and his throat always burned. His whole body was constantly sore from heaving. Talking tore. Eating ached. Drinking distressed. Moving marred. Thinking throbbed.
His progress on deciphering the poem hit a sharp halt. Unscrambled, but no sense to be made of. This sunny day, Ciun quietly followed him as he collected food and water, banishing the fox several more times, several more times Illus fell to rise a little weaker.
The thought of entertaining the fox’s ideas floated through Illus’s empty head. His shirt had become quite loose. His gaunt face stared back at him in the reflection of the water, dry lips, baggy eyes, stubble and hair uncared for. All of that could be remedied if he even pretended to believe the fox, if he left Ciun’s side, if he pushed her away.
Those thoughts were the very reason he kept his distance from Ciun. He knew the fox was ready in the brush for her to get close enough that a quick mirage would shatter all the work he had put into disciplining his mind.
Spotting the false realities was as simple as the deviation from normal. He was usually quick to discern mirages of people from home, or instances of the fox luring Illus with Ciun’s image. But the fox created rolling storms that slowly grew overhead, darkening the sky while Illus went about his business, falsifying his safety. Then would come the simple oddities, like a little extra skin from Ciun, a scare of rocks tumbling toward him, or a poisonous water snake creeping up on his fishing spot. With little bouts of stronger emotions, he was the fool to nearly all of them, but never once had he tried to take Ciun’s mask. Illus only ever found himself in harm’s way, another reason for his growing doubt in her honesty.
She silently walked behind him up the mountain, to safety from the jarring visions and reeling emotions. Ciun had been assisting his fishing by luring fish to his hook with visions, but it only served to prolong his deterioration. The climb up the mountain strained him more every time he did it. Gasping for breath, desperate for food, he made little conversation with her most of the time. Often, he slept near the peak of the mountain while she disappeared elsewhere, but today he pulled out the poems in an attempt to make some reason of them.
Ciun:
The
Kill
Top where found,
Tis stone crowned,
‘Neath no ground.
Ciun may kill
Is the thrill,
Fox knows will.
Rise her breath
For mist’s stealth,
Down from death.
Fox:
To
Promise
Stone from dark
Where her ark
Maze she hark.
Trust not one
Her I shun
Life til done.
Lie I do
You know who,
Trust all through.
The short triplets, in saying less, said so much more about how far gone Carmonia was. Reading them like the other poems only created more contradictions and confusion. Ciun: The Kill and Fox: To Promise had become unending frustration for Illus, and Ciun was no help, unable to read them. Her only input came from Illus reading them to her, and then saying nothing because she could not speak about the nature of nearly anything having to do with her or the fox.
Illus lingered on the final triplet, venom in his raspy voice. “Lie I do, You know who, Trust all through. Of course you lie, Carmonia, you’re a mad bloke without any sense of reason.”
Ciun’s gentle words seemed to float on the wind, melding with the soft whirr around the mountaintop. “I told no lie, Illus. I doubt Carmonia has anything more to offer.”
“No, he does.” Illus rapidly tapped his pencil on the journal. “There's a sense to be made of his madness. I see it, but I can’t find it.”
She stepped around in front of him. “Illus, I don’t think you’re mad, but madness only breeds more madness the further you look.”
Illus shot up and Ciun leapt back. He paused and held his head down, scratching his neck, then walked to the other side of the peak. “He’s speaking of these things and places, leaving hints, but it feels like all the words are jumbled, out of place. Maybe I put it back together incorrectly, but what other order can the lines be put in?! What-”
A vision of Ciun appeared before him, pausing his rambling. Her hands gently rested on his arms, her mouth trembling as she spoke. “Illus, please, rest. Your mind is not well.”
He knew it was a vision, and despite the wave of calmness, the fact that it was a vision infuriated him. Through the arm he walked, heat rose in his chest as it shimmered into blue haze.
“Enough of these falsehoods!” His furious eyes locked on Ciun, who cautiously stood at the other side of the mountain. Tears broke from his eyes as he lost control of himself. “What reason exists in your mind that you think I’m happy to have you forcing my head every which way?! Why, after everything the fox does to me, do you think I want you toying with my head too?!”
She clenched her hands in front of her, voice solemn. “It’s the only way I can.”
“Is it?!” He threw his arms out, his voice cracking and creaking. “Can you not just leave me to my peace for a moment’s respite?! Can I not be afflicted by you and the fox’s lies at every which way?!”
“I do it to help you, Illus.”
“Do you?!” His feet took him forward toward Ciun, stopping three strides away. “Or do you do it because you think I’ll break?! Because you’re bloody terrified of me?! Is that it?!”
She had one foot out, ready to leap backward off the ledge. “That’s not true.”
“Another lie.” Illus’s voice shattered, falling to monotony. “I know you’re afraid, Ciun. I am too, probably far more than you.”
Illus fell backward, limply laying on the ground. “There I go again, falling into the fox’s rhythm.”
Then a thought occurred to him, and he fell into a fit of giggling.
Ciun’s head fell. “Illus, please…”
“Right you are, Ciun, as right as the stars are to the moon.” He sat up, a smile growing wider across his cheeks. “And sure as I am to hate or love, I must take a leap from above. The fox has shown me the path, all I need to do is the math.”
Ciun slowly stepped away, voice breaking. “I’m sorry I gave you hope.”
“Oh, no!” Glee held his voice. Illus’s toothy smile sprawled across his gaunt face, wrinkly eye sockets stretching his eyes wide. “Tis so! The fox’s maniacal verse, the key to my curse.”
“Where are you going, Illus?”
He took off in a fit of cackling, “Insane!”
Seeing him in that mad sprint down the mountain, bounding legs and that awful grin, her spine shivered like she’d just seen a death. She stepped toward the ledge and unclenched her fist, then retreated, droplets of blood and tears dotting the ground next to her empty space.
Stumbling in a tear down the mountain, Illus rushed to the cave where Ciun could not hear.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Where are you, fox?! I know you wish for talks!”
The blue and black head of the fox poked out of the catacomb’s darkness. “A change of heart? I knew you were smart!” It dashed to Illus, rubbing against his legs and hopping happily in front of him.
“The poems, they know your rhythm, but why such an algorithm? Why not speak as we know and talk as we say so? I feel I am on the cusp of knowing, but her lies keep my thoughts from flowing.”
Pity took the fox’s face. “Oh this blasted verse, all her insanity’s curse. But I see in such madness a gift, all it requires is a small mental shift. Think as one who sees ‘tween beginnings and ends, one-handed each, each their hand lends. Every stone begets a pebble, every kingdom will see a rebel. Every ceiling in time builds walls, and that wall, in time, it falls. If you wish to retain your youth, accept that there is no truth. What her truth is, differs from his. Nothing is sure, your mind is impure. You have only lived a score, but I have seen all the more. My verse will teach you right, so let me be your sight. Release your will, make your mind still.”
The fox cackled, its gaze locking with Illus’s agape eyes. He breathed deeply, slowly, his mind finally connecting the dots. “Even the most elusive witch will her bones be cast to the ditch.”
The fox shook its head. “What you see is ‘neath her knee. Her vessel all faux, her spirit will go. Bound to me, in immortality. The mask is her power, a boon stolen for her cower. Not of her make, so you must take. Her strength stripped away, then I’m free to the day.”
“I am terribly sorry, my foxy friend,” Illus hung his head down, “for not trusting you at first day’s end. I see her schemes, her wicked themes. She speaks in lies and accuses you so much, but all good she claims is yours such.”
The fox jumped up and down in place, pride overtaking him. “I feared the sorceress would steal this war, but in came a white knight with such valor! You know not her goals, but she will pay our tolls.”
Droplets of foam fell from the fervent corners of Illus’s mouth. “I’ve seen her strengths and all she does, I’ll take her mask softer than a bee’s buzz!”
The fox lowered his gaze. “Stay away from her grip, lest your sanity slip. She desires an empty-minded clot, to do all that she cannot. And should you think you’ve seen her hand, know winners do not show until all bets are land.”
“She has more to her?” Illus waited for the fox to answer, but the fox carefully eyed Illus, as if trying to discern something, waiting to pounce.
“She will keep you from my aid, then stick you with her blade, my visage the carrier, her goal the barrier.”
“Oh, it was all such a blur. Now I am enlightened, if not a little frightened.”
The fox smiled greedily as Illus finished his rhyme. “So what shall become of Illus, is her end worth the fuss?”
Illus shook his head. “At the moment I say no, there is more strife in her I’ll sew. But I wonder of you during all my climbs, what do you think of Carmonia’s rhymes?”
A serrated, toothy smile stretched the fox’s cheeks beyond what any fox should be able to smile, its eyes wide and hungry like no animal Illus had ever seen. “Oh, I yearn for ointment from all his disappointment. Such blatant, boring truth, and riddles all uncouth. Of course Ciun is a wretch, no need to make it a wall sketch.”
Illus stepped out of the cave, so he was out in open air. “Fox, you can read?”
“That I cannot.”
“Then how do you heed?”
The fox bared its teeth, a short burst of growls toward Illus. “What is this haught?”
“Is there something you spot?”
It’s growl broke to a wrathful smile. “A fly I must swat.”
“I banish thee, fox!” Ciun’s voice rang out through the cave and Illus watched the fox’s furious face fall away.
Illus gazed up at Ciun who muttered something beneath her breath, then looked back to the fox, who warned Illus. “She manipulates, a plot!”
The fox bounded forward to Illus’s side. “Run, your survival is not shot!”
“I banish thee, fox!” The fox dissipated into a burst of blue haze, and the world shimmered around Illus.
Atop the entrance to the cave, Ciun whispered something yet again and cast her hand toward Illus.
He took off in a sprint, reality becoming false floors and strange shifts in the shimmering terrain around him. If he could make it back to the shed, he would at least have a shot of surviving, but the world around him became violent, horrifying.
The gully walls were skeletons dressed in Anilee, Sator, and Tyza’s clothes. Their shrieks screamed out, begging him for help, to save them from the fox. Twelve of the fox appeared around Illus, circling like a pack of wolves, each lunging to throw him off of his feet.
“I banish thee, fox!” The false world shattered, shimmering to nothing as Illus fell to the ground, sweat adorning his spinning head, but he held strong.
After a few moments, he turned to Ciun, atop the bridge watching him.
He simply laughed. “You think you’ve won, have you?! Oh, how I will bloody stain all your blue!”
Ciun said nothing in response, instead turning around and disappearing into the treeline, like a final goodbye, a final save from the fox.
And yet Illus continued laughing on his whole walk back to the shed. Not a mind paid to the cries of “I banish thee, fox” from every which way and cries for help outside the shed. Not anything else existed, as his mind fell transfixed on those poems, the fox’s rhyme. In a dismal cackling spiral, clarity engulfed Illus.
----------------------------------------
Streams crashed down their respective valleys, where at the chin they met.
Transfixed on the words of a raging madman, Illus’s mind began to rot.
From a dismal day of rain, here nor there he perceived not a threat.
But the words made as much sense as jangling keys, or so he thought.
No cries of the fox begone, only the silence of pattering rain.
Out into the dredge he took, chills of warm water caressing his face.
He couldn’t control how his body shook, how the shivers seemed to resonate pain.
Answers had become like a well undrawn, too deep and no bucket or vase.
Where had Ani gone when she promised so much, without a word of goodbye?
Illus had no place to belong if not with her, where in the shed she was a day before.
Why with the rain did such grief occur? Why did his friends go when there was no sky?
Why did Illus feel so out of touch, his eyes breaking and his chest tightly sore?
Fishing and cooking was always such fun, his best friend Sator always by his side,
And on walks with Tyza he could confide, with Ani he would lay in the sun.
His old friend from home hopped around on one, lost it to the war, Clyde,
That funny bloke who was one-eyed, and knew how to tell a good pun.
The sorceress had deemed Illus unfit, for his servitude was not sufficient.
In his search for a reason to persevere, he found his friends begging for freedom.
Ciun despaired when he did not revere, and his friends suffered when he was deficient.
Her despair paled to Illus’s festering wit, abhorring the omniscience atop her kingdom.
But slowly the world began to make sense, since his perspective had been perfected.
No longer was he subject to Ciun’s constant gaze, but he knew well that she heard.
He met the fox at the entrance to the maze, a grueling task for which he was selected.
Every day the two plotted a pretense, for which Ciun’s trust might be blurred.
Words became as fleeting moments,
Free of all longing and laments,
Where love pervaded,
Where pain faded.
Bulging bones beneath his skin,
Disappeared with a grin.
Fits of vomiting and retching,
Were all healed by him stretching.
To stretch reality
Simple as a body,
Or so Sator said
When Illus pled.
Through night Illus slept
With the fox at his side,
For that close friend kept
Him from Ciun’s chide.
Ciun the witch, the sorceress, the evil goddess.
Her blue dress, that lich, that conniving snitch.
She said to all ‘round that Illus was a coward,
A man she reviled for his attempts at theft,
Yet no attempts were made for twas bereft,
So now a plan to steal her mask he scoured.
The mountain?
She could kill.
The rivers?
Water’s no thrill.
Kill?
Thrill?
An intense jolt of pain scorched Illus’s brain. Pressure behind his eyes as his sight was slain. The rhymes reminded him of Carmonia’s carving. The grumble of his stomach reminded him he was starving. The shimmer of sunlight reminded him of the cackle. And suddenly Sator was by his side like a shackle.
“The winter passed without any strife.” Sator chuckled.
To his feet Illus knuckled. “I’m only lucky to have my life. That cruel witch cuts my mind with her knife.”
“Her falsehoods are rife. There are no places to hide even with the fox. You can see her from the mountain she stalks.”
Anilee grabbed Illus then. “She wishes to do us all harm! Please stay close, Illus, my good luck charm.”
Illus clutched his panging abdomen. “I need food, Ani. I’m running out of energy.”
Ani’s foot sank into the fen. “Save me, please! She’ll suffocate me with ease!”
Illus fell to the ground, a visceral gagging sound.
Day finally broke and Illus’s mind was clear. His body was completely malnourished and exhausted, but he spotted that usual sliver of glowing sun peeking through the chimney cap. He rose from the painfully stiff bench where he had been sleeping for… how many weeks? Months… he had completely lost track. Last he knew, it was near the end of spring. About nine months since he arrived.
The canopy beyond the fog had grown thick and lush. Eternal summer in the ruins was a pleasant survival experience, but it was growing tiresome to avoid the fox every which way.
That fox always seemed to appear. Always ready with some kind of trap. The only place Illus could stay without struggle, the place Ciun didn’t want to see him anymore- at the peak.
But despite the fox’s plan to use him and despite Ciun’s wishes to control him, his mind finally made it back. His agency seemed to have returned out of nowhere, or perhaps because of something? He racked his memory, but it was completely deprived. It was as if his mind had been overgrown and obscured by brush.
Illus sighed and pressed forward thinking that even if he had nothing to go off of, no memory preserved, he needed to seize this lucky day.
And then a brush of soft fabric. As fearsome as the fox made her appear, Ciun’s presence always brought him such a strange comfort. Something still wasn’t making sense, though. Something that he couldn’t place. His eyes met the mask, as they had many mornings before when Ciun had visited him. At least he remembered that.
“Illus, it’s time to go. We need make haste or the fox is going to catch on.” She opened the door and beckoned him to follow, but he tarried.
“Wait, Ciun, what are you talking about?”
She lightly clenched her fist. “I don’t know how to say this other than the fox has been tampering with your memories. I’ve been here every day trying to bring you back, so please, just…” her voice carried desperation into Illus’s ringing ears.
Illus rose from his seat. His stomach rumbled and churned, still sick. Wrenching over in anguish, he tried and failed to cut his writhing short. Gazing at Ciun filled him with a sense of purpose, and though it may have been a mirage to dispel the pain, it was a welcome respite from the vertigo.
Ciun took off and Illus kept pace. Following from afar, he kept his mind keen in the case of a stray whim. Past the mosaic and beneath the bridge, they stopped before the catacombs where Sator had been hurt at.
“Ciun, wait.” Illus’s mind became consumed by the fear of being buried. “Will we have time? Are you sure this is safe when I don’t have enough oil to keep my lantern lit? Are you sure this is how break your curse?”
“Please, Illus.” She reached out like she wanted to pull him along, but her courage wasn’t enough to grab his wrist. “I thought I had your trust.”
Illus’s mind racked with uncertainty, indulging all of his fears. “Will delving into darkness not open my mind to worse?”
Unsure of it herself, she uncomfortably shifted her feet. “We will be safe as long as we are quiet. If the fox can’t find us, we’re safe from its rhyme.”
Thus they descended into the corridors of bone. Ciun ahead of Illus, she beckoned him forward with her voice. Popping like what she made by the riverside when she had nothing to say. Suffocating darkness enveloped Illus and his mind raced. What else was down here with them? Was this all a hallucination, a mirage?
He glanced back, still able to see a faint speck of sunlight from the entrance. It seemed so small, so miniscule as his boots cracked bones and stirred up dust. The darkness was becoming unbearable, so he lit the lantern. Skulls watched like a silent crowd, waiting for Illus to become one, for Ciun to lead Illus into their grasp.
“Be careful, Illus, we can’t have you knocking skulls with your wide gait. The more noise we make, the closer we are to joining them in the dust.”
They traipsed on. Time seemed to halt in the darkness, and yet Illus continued following Ciun with his eye behind him on that little speck of sunlight. They had been traveling in a straight line, but Illus still suspected something was off. A brush of wind passed and the lantern’s flame flickered.
Ciun spoke in a grim tone. “If the lantern dies and you lose me, follow the breeze. It will guide you out.”
Illus glanced around, noticing that the walls and floor had become moist. The hollow eyes and rotted jaws seemed to smile in a distorted way. Illus’s steps took on a frightened haste. Then the floor disappeared from beneath him and the lantern slipped from his thumb. With a splash of water the light died and Illus lost all courage.
“Oh, my precious pawn.” Ciun’s usually soft and gentle voice became more like a sinister semblance. “You picked the wrong mask to follow.”
Illus stopped in place, wondering why he had chosen Ciun to trust. In what rational world would he follow in turn? But, he thought, if he could follow the light to the entrance, then survival would still be in his clasp.
It was gone.
Alone in the catacombs, darker than any night. All light cutoff. Through the halls, bones snickered.
The musty stench of mold and stone,
Behind his hand rough grind of bone.
Drops of water like the “pops” she made,
Brought him comfort in the dust he laid.
Engorged in darkness and reverberating silence,
He was completely cut off from sight’s sense.
Seeing no hand in front of his face,
Nor a light to leave any trace.
Shadows darker than pitch took to his eyes
Whether open or closed, twas all in disguise.
Was the fox near or was it simply his head
Losing to a fear that he would join the dead?
Through the corridors, hand on the wall,
In a panic he sought to scream and call.
He ran and he fell, he slept and he rose,
The void said not if day flies or slows.
Anilee’s screams cried from the darkness
But Illus did nothing, his spirit in distress.
Tyza before him, a decaying carcass,
Bile expelled straight out of Illus.
Sator running through this catacomb,
Weeping and screaming to be home.
Illus fell to the ground, clutching his ears,
His mind raced as he broke down in tears.
How many times had he fallen to slumber?
Why did every move seem to encumber?
How many times had he called them?
Ciun, the fox, whoever would save him.
How long had it been?
His body now so thin.
Had he sat so long,
That he couldn’t move on?
How long had his parched lips gone without water?
How long had he been rocking in a terrified totter?
How many times had he risen and dropped?
How long until everything simply stopped?