The Spine of the World travelled upwards endlessly and the path around its length travelled with it and at first his legs took the steep slope easily and with each step a hesitant fire in his chest bloomed while over the side of the path the island and the sea around it drew further away as if fearful of his movements yet as the hours passed the easy burn in his calves transformed to something more ravenous and the air he drew into his lungs was no longer sufficient and soon enough he was forced to stop and stretch every few thousand steps to ease the suffering of his body.
As the heat of the earth fell beneath his tremulous steps a sharp cold began to permeate the air and demanded obeisance and he took the clothes from his makeshift pack and layered them on top of himself and plodded onwards gnawing on a cold fruit and the path travelled upwards and eventually disappeared below the vertical horizon of the Spine.
Night descended with an incredible bitterness and despite his worn muscles and drooping eyes he expected sleeping would roll him off the side to sail through the air and dissipate on the land below so he continued walking and as the stars travelled their ceaseless arc across the sky and dawn grew on the distant horizon his gaze grew more clouded and his journey became something felt in the ache of his feet and legs and back and chest and the weariness snaking through his veins and into his skull and all his moments faded into a single vision of pain where one foot was raised and one foot was planted and the path stretched in all its uncaring black ubiquity and tolerated his presence in its alien way.
Then the haze faded in a moment of pain and he was prone and before he could comprehend what was happening his body was gradually rolling backwards and his mind captured the drop growing closer with a crystalline clarity and then the pack on his back caught and he slid to a halt and though the temptation to sleep remained immense the cold closing around him dissuaded him and he rose again and tasted copper in his mouth and savoured the pain in his jaw and spat a tooth off the side of the path and it stood sullen against the backdrop of the land beneath and grew smaller until the shard of bone vanished in the granules of the wind.
Above him the path vanished and several dozen moments later he comprehended that fact and realised that its disappearance signalled the end of its slope and he when he finally overtook it he saw his hypothesis was correct and in a landing wider than the path awaited a small cave in the bone of the Spine and he crawled inside and slept.
Within his dreams the Spine was not crafted of bone but of compacted flesh and in its walls were eyes and mouths and hair and teeth and they spoke a language he did not know and when he woke he felt his body scream its agony and he stretched for a multitude of minutes and when he was finished he felt the walls of the cave with his hands and they were crenulated with small bubbles and it all appeared alive in the manner of a creature from the bottom of the ocean yet it did not flex nor beat and the material was tougher than any he had felt before.
In the darkness of the small cave’s furthest point he found several bags full of desiccated rations and he swapped his own sling for the sturdier craftsmanship one of the packs offered and though he did not eat the dried meat and herbs for they were cold and dubious he kept them with him when he exited and continued walking and around the Spine’s ceaseless bend he saw the path continue upwards and he followed it.
His time was spent walking between the landings and fighting the fatigue accompanying the days-long stretches between them and collapsing within the small caves studded within for long periods of time and as he travelled higher the Spine’s path became more and more intricate as its unfathomable black began to be broken by angular patterns growing along its length and lighter alternating tiles appearing and gemstones becoming embedded in it and though the path was all woven with a singular aesthetic the patterns never repeated and soon enough he ceased looking at the path in front of him and began to stare only at the path beneath.
Yet the beauty was undercut by a growing frost in the air and although a thick beard had grown over his face his skin began to break and turn an unearthly white and he gathered his fingers in his armpits and walked hunched over yet his toes prickled and turned numb and a few blurred moments later they warmed again and he ceased worrying and in the next landing he peeled off his boots to find several toes blue and they were hard and did not respond and though he took pains to keep the rest of his toes safe by stuffing his boots with materials left by the bags of those who had come before they turned black and much later through the endless cycle of days and nights and days and nights the toes amputated themselves without prompting.
He held their blackened forms in his hands and stared at them as he walked and in their ravaged colours he found that they were no longer part of him and he remembered watching a lizard toyed with by a cat and how its tail detached as it fled and in his chest he felt a sudden and inexplicable disgust and at the next landing he found that the pinkie on his left hand had turned hard and white.
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Without several of his toes walking became more difficult and adjusting took him several days and in that deep examination of his own gait he found that it was no longer as easy as it used to be and his head ached at the thinness of the air and below him he saw that the distant blue of the ocean was somehow curved.
And simultaneously he noticed that the Spine was no longer as thick as it used to be and that it was growing gradually thinner and the path was growing less wide even as its form began to become more and more intricately beautiful and as he stared at it he passed a strange break in its filagree and in spite of his own wishes his body stopped to stare and found it was the desiccated remains of someone who had been laying there for a long time and he watched it and in the next cave broke from his fugue to notice he was accompanied by the reposing forms of the dead.
He noticed them and continued walking upwards and the air grew less welcoming and the winding of the path grew more and more rapid until suddenly it ended and he walked atop the Spine and the winds beat at him and his legs wobbled and he kept his footing and at the very centre of the Spine of the World’s peak was a blinding light and he grew closer to it all his aches and pains vanished and a warmth grew in his body and he broke through the radiance and saw a ray of glittering stardust and with his eyes he followed it upwards.
The golden particles twisted in two branches around itself like a ladder woven from starlight and journeyed into the firmament of the night sky and it spread away from the world beneath into a tree with branches and roots weaving throughout the universe and as he watched he saw sparks travel across it at blinding speeds and he caught them in a moment within his mind and examined them and realised they were creatures and some were human and some were not and he knew that to step into the light’s folds would become untethered from the world and to ascend to a universe of limitless exploration and untold majesty.
He looked at it. He looked at it for a long time.
Carrion birds picked at dead flesh. Burgeoning in his limbs and torso and arms and skull and his missing extremities a sensation grew.
He stepped away from it and walked back into the ceaseless cold. At the edge of the Spine’s peak he stood and stared, leaning against the wind. Though his eyes were not equal to the task he saw that down there was his home and everyone that had died and everyone that still lived.
The curved earth below was their payment. For their lives. For all their struggles and all their pain and all their loss and it continued like a chain of agony that bound every man’s life until he could finally find a time and a place to die and then they would be forgotten. For what. For what.
A thousand years ago, he had walked through the ashes and through his broken teeth he had made himself a promise. To that ends, he had met comrades and made allies. Somewhere along the line, they had become friends. He had made promises to hundreds of people. He had made enemies. The archipelago had heard him speak, and eventually he had become noticed by the one he hated most.
He had freed them.
He had freed them.
Everyone was gone, except for him.
He had always had words but there were none, now. No language or artifice of man could capture the savage suffering that wracked him. The kind seen in a broken-winged bird gazing at the edge of a butcher’s blade. His words could not comprehend how enormous his failure truly was so he felt it with the contours of his body and the labyrinth of his brain; felt it course through the material of his being and erupt outwards in a hoarse scream like worn leather and the winds of the altitude snatched it away and froze the tears as they rolled down his face.
He threw his voice from the Spine as if it would fix the world’s problems but much like anything else he had done it couldn’t. He had fought and sacrificed for his home to be returned and the price had been within his means but now he knew how dearly it had cost him yet despite everything there were no second chances; there were only yesterdays.
And in his wails there was no absolution and there was no healing and the pain was not cowed and in his mind’s eye he saw a great emptiness in the world and he held the weight of all that nothing and he cursed it and he mourned it and he cradled it close to him like something infinitely precious.
He looked back and saw the light and saw what it offered and he saw what it would take. He turned away.
As he descended his body ached and fell apart and in his dreams he carried everything he had ever known behind him. The path grew less intricate and the Spine less thin and he walked steps he had taken before yet now the pain of it all was raw and fresh and new. More fingers fell from him and though he had the pilgrim’s abandoned rations to stave off hunger he weakened all the same. Above him the heavens became more distant. Below him the ocean grew closer. He slept on the landings and awoke in pain yet his chest felt lighter, as if a thick rot had been ejected from his lungs.
After some time he could no longer walk. He slid instead, and the smooth darkness’s decline supported him as he steered himself away from the edge and the path blurred by with increasing speed and the edge grew closer and a monumental fear seized his body until the path spat him at the bottom of the Spine.
He looked at the heavens through the forest’s canopy and heard birdsong and rustling trees and the distant barking of a dog. He felt the dirt beneath him. And though he covered his eyes with the back of his forearm and tears blurred the darkness of his vision, the world remained imprinted in his mind – fearful and beautiful and painful, cast in unflinching precision and clad in his own fingerprints.