To Ald, the walls of Felsia appeared to be substantially taller when you were on the outside. Nobody spoke as they approached the city. Why would they. They were sleep-deprived, running away from that thing they didn’t even know how it looked or what it did. By Gleur’s description, though, most of them suspected they were better off not knowing the full extent of Wildfire’s nature.
Treld was getting worse with each passing hour, and that worried Ald slightly. He didn’t know the man, but it was his brother all the same. Yet they just had to skirt the wall up to the gates, and then a proper medic could check on him. Yet that was the least of Ald worries. Trust is like steel, he thought. A single flaw can make a blade shatter in the worst of the moments. Yes, he understood the intent of the sages perfectly. Peace of mind was a valuable thing, not worth destroying it for a problem they could, it seems, manage with a little effort. Yet, what else were they hiding? A monstrosity capable of curving fire roaming the outskirts of the city was bad enough of a secret. Yet it begged the question: where did the Ratchet stop? The sages couldn’t know all of the so called masterworks, beings, it seemed, that disobeyed the laws of nature, that bore their own unholy magic. What did it take to keep Felsia standing?
A rosebush creeped up a section of the wall, and Ald hadn’t noticed it before. It had deep blue flowers, and the thorns, thick and long, dug into the white stone, giving the plant support. He didn’t think much of it.
Gleur, instead, wondered why nobody ever asked him to come and take a flower or two during their free time. Did the prelude to the fall of civilization allot no time for gifting flowers?
Yet it was not the time for him to think of it. The hunt had been a failure, only five misshapen remained alive. Two had died due to concussions on parts of the body one would suspect were safe to hit. But deformity respected not internal anatomy. They could have a vital organ inside a leg, or the brain in the tail. In addition to that, the whole group was sleep deprived and hungry. Stopping to eat now was pointless, and doing so before would have been suicide.
Ehavi just wanted to go home and hug the bed. Many of the other soldiers fostered similar feelings. But not Ald. Despite the weariness, he wanted to be of use. To discuss with Gleur how they would proceed before anyone else, if anything.
They didn’t march anymore. They traipsed behind the wagon as Gleur alone pulled it. He didn’t care, it was no burden to bear, and it helped him feel like, even in his old age, he could aid Felsia somehow. Oh, great walls of white whose construction nothing alive but the unkindness witnessed! He wouldn’t see them fall, yet fall they soon would if things didn’t change. What was better, to die after the apocalypse had happened, to see where things ended up after the storm, or to expel one’s last breath under clear skies, knowing the storm gathers on the horizon?
Pointless, ruminating on it was pointless. He had to keep pulling the wagon, he had to catch the remaining tributes. He had to summon father and make things right. Hustle him into reason, maybe. If every Felsian was a demigod when all was said and done, wasn’t it their prerogative to champion their kind by beating terrible monsters?
The gates eventually appeared in the distance, and the tired soldiers broke into a desperate run back home, specially the one spearman who carried Treld on his back.
Ald didn’t join them, still walking besides Gleur.
“Go if you want, we will plan another excursion tomorrow.”
“I will help you take care of the remaining quarries.”
“I have idle troops fit for such a simple task, go home,” Gleur ordered, and patted Ald’s shoulder with his big, wrinkly hand.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
“I have obligations back home, I could never use this time to sleep, if that’s what you mean. Let me aid in this. I already wetted my feet in the swamp waters, why not go waist deep?”
“Waters…” Gleur said, leaving the handles of the wagon go and pacing around a bit. “You just gave me an idea. The river is infested with mostly inoffensive, yet hard to catch, aquatic misshapen. Yet sometimes one or two end up in fishing nets. If you want to help, spread the word amongst the fishermen: that any captured misshapen has to be kept alive and given—”
“Sold,”Ald corrected him., crossing his arms.
“Fine, sold to the army. I’ll arrange for people to retrieve them one of these days.”
“Pay the fishermen fairly.”
Gleur shook his head. “The monetary incentive has to be high enough for them to not throw the things back into the river, but too low for them to take any risks. Beyond the ones inherent to their job, I mean. Fishing in the treacherous waters of the Worldvein, I could never do it.”
Ald shrugged. “Fishermen drown in the Worldvein all the time. More than one will take the smallest incentive as a reason to challenge themselves and try to catch the biggest, meanest misshapen they can spot. Pay them fairly.”
Glur grunted, then scratched his nape. “There’s no accounting for the boldness of our brethren and sistren, eh? But you are right, it’s better not to tempt fate. If I wanted to sacrifice Felsians, I’d use our siblings as a tribute for father. The fishermen idea is discarded.”
“How about I recruit fishermen in the name of the army and we, ourselves, go fishing for misshapen? If…” and Ald looked around to see that nobody was within hearing distance “If Wildfire looks for fire to eat, she won’t find it in the midst of the Worldvein.”
“That’s true enough.” He didn’t consider it for a second. “Yet I don’t consent to it. We are the soldiers; we hunt misshapen on the land unless requested otherwise by these very fishermen. We won’t risk a whole crew of patriots or idiots. There is a reason why I sked for volunteers, and if I am going to risk the lives of brothers and sisters, I prefer to be in my element. Want to be of use to me? Then obey. Go home, meet me overmorrow, we will hunt in the southern plains. Until then, relax, I need all my soldiers in prime shape.
Ald was going to answer, but when he extended an accusatory finger, a raven landed on it. He looked at the animal with curiosity, perplexed at the fact that a wild bird didn’t fear him. Gleur snickered as he grabbed the wagon’s handles and resumed his task.
“Be good with the bird, Ald, she seems to like you. See you overmorrow, boy.”
“With all due respect, I am almost forty, sir Gleur,” Ald stated as if he were spitting venom.
“Toddler,” said the old man, breaking into an ugly laughter.
And so Ald began walking behind the wagon, never averting his gaze from the bird for more than a few moments.
The corvid, on her part, looked at the Felsian with something similar to curiosity. She cawed once or twice, and turned on his finger. As he headed for the gate, Ald put on a broken smile. He realized he was envying a bird, not much different from the chickens he often roasted. They would go past the tall steel gates of Felsia, into the main street of the only city in the whole world. And, once again, Ald would be a satisfied prisoner of his own home, and of his own nature. Birds could fly free, Birds could enjoy the world, even if sometimes they ended up being the meal of a misshapen or two. This raven now traveled on him, but it could, at any moment, fly away. Free from Felsia; free from the corruption of The Celestial Mother. She would have a family, and her children would look more or less like her, and behave like a raven ought to, and they would have children, in turn, and ravens they all would be, with some thinner, with some bulkier, with some dumb and some smart, but all having beaks and wings and black glossy feathers. Ravens sired ravens who sired ravens who sired ravens who sired ravens.
Ald wanted to cry, but avoided doing so because it could scare the bird away, and she had done nothing to him. Maybe it was the weariness, but he felt like the little raven weighed as much as his nature as a Felsian. How to escape from that which has always ran in your veins? The raven had been born a raven, and a raven it would die. But it wasn’t so terrible, was it? To be a raven? It had to be better than to depend on the whims of a deadbeat mother to exist. In his youth, Ald had been perplexed at the family dynamics of the animals he raised, at how parents were also the caretakers of their offspring. Not anymore. It was clear that the world of the beasts he could caress and feed was beyond his possibilities. He wondered if trees, rooted to the ground, victims of their own immobility, also envied animals.
Lastly, when the gates opened, and the bustling main street revealed in front of them, the raven flew away, and Ald stashed his sorrows away. He could come across Kali or a friend at any moment, and he wished not to worry them.