The light shining in from the shuttings was ribbed and bright. Fragile awoke splayed out on the floor with a throbbing ache at the back of his neck. He stumbled to his feet, his head pounding.
Wander, her equipment, and all evidence of her habitation had disappeared. The stain he had been working on had dried, along with the water he’d thrown into it. He looked around; then, he went down to the salon, searching for her through its tabled halls.
“Wander?” he exclaimed. “Wander!”
He accost the sets of road people he could find, Larun and Freeman and all the other, stranger ones who were passing through. “I’m looking for someone,” he said. “A high fighter, addressed in words and canes. Have you seen her?” The road people, those who could understand him, shook their heads. The others shrugged him off, frothing and barking at him in Sprak. He found a Rootcliff, a tall bearded man from the North wearing one of Wander’s words around his neck in a clay fixture. The Stringplayer went up to him in excitement, but the Rootcliff pushed him and jabbed a knife in his face. He shouted in his language and The Stringplayer fled in terror.
He found a sympathetic pair of Freemen sitting by themselves in the public room. They listened patiently as The Stringplayer relayed the twists and overtures of his tale. After he had finished talking, one of them lifted up a cut of red meat he was eating and proferred it to him.
The Stringplayer’s eyes searched endlessly for her, but they grew empty, and they found that a diminishing prospect.
At last he struck upon the Salonier himself, and inquired. He pointed at the tithechest outside the Salon as he knit and sew, putting the finishing touches on his blanket. “Gone,” he said in Goalish. “She give price for you.”
“Did she say where she was going?” The Stringplayer asked.
He shook his head. “Gone. Gone To-Sidedark.”
The Stringplayer shuddered and exhaled. “Then that is where I will go.”
The Salonier raised an eyebrow. “Go?” he said. “Gave price. Many days good. I took. In danger you?”
“No,” The Stringplayer replied. “I am… ih. There is something… I must go away.”
The Salonier tilted his head.
“I must,” The Stringplayer repeated. “I’m sorry. Would you be willing to return her gifts?”
The Salonier went over to the wall, and from a stow kept behind one of his weavings, he brought out a hollowed out, gourdish shell. It was filled with coins, and he began to count them out on their table. “I smile for it,” he said. “You hand it to her?”
“I will try,” The Stringplayer said. “But I can’t take all of it.”
He stopped counting. The Stringplayer looked to the hoofs tramping by outside.
-
The Stringplayer and his mount trampled the Southern bounds of Partplant, kicking up waves of snow and dirt.
His stonehoof had a coat that was red like blood. It bucked around and their hair blew in the wind. The Stringplayer grasped the leather straps that bound it until they cut his skin, but he could only loosely guide his mount in any one direction. It let out a neighing scream at him, and he was glad, because it made him afraid, which made him move when he would not.
They went past the illegible white monolith and entered the rounds.
They rode for half a day. When the sun crested the sky The Stringplayer yanked the stonehoof’s straps and begged it to halt. It was not very late, but his legs were burning and had been cut by the riding. Until another mile had past, the hoof would not oblige him.
Once it had, he fell off its back and crumbled to the ground. He was soon forced to jump up, when the hoof immediately began to Wander away. He rushed to it and wrenched at its leads. It whined and knocked its head away, pulling forward.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
His apologies did nothing, and he could not pull it back. It wrestled through the woods for another mile and he followed, clinging to the leads. It reached a patch of snow where shoots of grass had emerged from beneath the white and began to nip at them, enabling the Stringplayer to tie it up to a tree. When it was done, it tugged at the ropes and ground away from them with screams that spat smoke and water, but it folded up its legs once it could find no escape.
The Stringplayer shivered at a distance. He still had no means to make a fire, having relied on The Wandering Star’s expertise for it. When night came the hoof bundled itself up in a nearby bush, and breathed quickly. He risked its fury to sit by it, finding it very hot, and when morning had come again, he had snuggled up against it.
-
They took a slower pace that day. The hoof trotted and The Stringplayer’s hair waved in the wind, raven-black. His coldover was dried of all the spit and blood which his captivity had thrown into it. Even with the sun on him and the wind drawing down, the stab in The Stringplayer’s chest tore with their every jerking bounce and a small red trickle began to overrun his binding. Tears came at first, and they kept wanting to, but after some time his eyes could no longer lift them out, and all that was left was a scalding white light that he could only see because it had carved itself into his brain, where an ordinary volume of panic kept its place.
He shit through his mouth, over the left side of the hoof. Its coat and the snow beneath it were sprayed with chunky acid refuse. The hoof bucked and screamed at him. His head fell against it, and he resolved to ask the first person he met if they had the whereabouts of the Wandering Star.
At an icy causeway, where the road traced the foot of a cliff, a pack of Larun nivmen came into view and started to pass them by. Many of them were patched, limping, cut apart, and dragged on litters made of sticks and heavy branches. Some of them were Freemen and some were Goalborn given Western weapons, shaved scalps, and unseeing eyes. Some also were Laruns from the To-Dark place that She had spoke of. He saw a shooting-man, the remains of whose weapon were strung about his back. He clutched his bryst as though it were the only thing keeping him alive.
Believing that he could speak with the fighters, he halted the hoof. Members of the dismembered company - the ones who listened, and did not walk on - tilted their heads at his choking speech.
One of the nivmen, a plumed Larun on a scratched and haggard hoof, shouted, “Why is that Goal on a tithe? Why is that Goal on a tithe?!”
One of the Goalborn spoke up at The Stringplayer. The Laruns took wonder at their passioned exchange, which rose up. The nivman shot his hand down the road and shouted at The Stringplayer. He smacked the back of his own neck and interrupted apparent protest. The Stringplayer and his words shrunk, but he shook further in hoarse, sprinted Goalish.
At last, the Goalborn turned to the rider. “He is looking for a woman,” he shouted.
“What does a Goal want with a woman?” the rider shouted back. “Get him off that tithe. Get him off.”
A pair of Laruns limped up to the hoof and reached for him. The hoof reared and kicked one of them in the face, punching him into the snow and causing the other to recoil. It exploded off past the column, whereupon missiles were shot and chased the two of them. From then on, The Stringplayer resolved to take De’s advice.
-
They went into the Wild, following the Southern road.
When he had first found the Wild, The Stringplayer had been hungry, thirsty, frightened, and alone. He had not seen many places or living people. He had heard the Wild, at that time, call up fighting hearts to hunt him. He had heard it call up air to freeze him, and he had heard it call up stones to throw themselves between his feet, that he might fall down and scrape himself and cry. He was here again, and he knew rounds, and he could hear many different voices. None of them shared timbre with the others.
The Stringplayer and the hoof tramped over a greystone arch above a shifting river. They cut a wrenched, arguing path through a field of thicktrees with their needles flared, where clumps of flowers would one day sprout when the warmth had returned. He chattered to the woods as he had once, and to the hoof, whose temper seemed to cool the more he spoke, the less he pulled and the more it could skip the road and gallop with great license.
At night, the Stringplayer played. His music was swallowed with delight and great hunger by the empty air that the dark provided. They moved from one place to the other, and the Stringplayer’s skin twisted up the winds. The dirt met their frantic rush when they ran upon tusks who could chase them about the forest. His blood cut a path onto the ground and faded through the roots.
On the third night, they set down by a mound of sticks, leaves, and branches. They awoke to the pittering of many feet, echoing out from the dark. Shapes with four legs prowled through the trees with eyes that glowed, and they were barked at. The howls ran up to The Stringplayer and dragged him to the ground and bit him on the leg and arm. After the hoof ran them down, the two of them departed quickly, and they were not pursued.
The road led them across a group of Goals.
The host of born bled out in thin columns from the trees, some leading animals and riding hoofs, carrying jabbers and bulked bags. The Stringplayer supposed that they were born, given their flowing black hair, jagged blades, and clothing; their overs wove together light and earthy colors outside those of rock or a daylight sky, which he had come to realize the Laruns preferred. Many of the Goals sang and called out to the Stringplayer, and he ignored them. So two riders diverged from the movers and rushed their hoofs alongside his. They began to chatter.
“We are friends, born one,” the first said. “We are friends. What are you doing without yours? By what way have you passed out of them?”
“I am just a moving one,” he said.
They smiled. “If you are moving, then where is your kind? Your creators?”
“I am moving to someone I know.”
“We are friends for you here,” the other said. “You look like you are dried out, grabbed from eating and good water. If you tell us who they are, we will send these into you, and some can carry you that way.”
The Stringplayer thought of De’s words, but he was very tempted. “The one I know is a fighter,” he said, “and she wears two canes.”
“What is her name?”
“From where does she come?”
“Is she an Under?”
“A Changer?”
“A Grain-Catcher?”
“I know her,” The Stringplayer said. “She wears two canes. She leads a stronghoof.”
“What is her shape?”
“What are her words?”
“Who are her friends?”
“She has many words,” The Stringplayer replied. “They are all good. Her shape is great. It is very good. She has many friends, and I have met them. They are kind ones of every place. She is someone I know.”
The Goals were tired of his breathless whispers, and of his eyes, which had fallen from both them and the road, and were beginning to resemble bowls of milk. “Where has she come from?” they asked. “Tell us that, for all that is good.”
The Stringplayer lit up and said, “A place called Shamkat.”
“Shamarkat!” they cried. “A Shamar outman!” they cried.
“Yes,” The Stringplayer said. “It is a wonderful place. I have its words.”
They frowned. “You should not be with an offman,” they said. “You must be affected, or in something wrong.”
More Goals rode up. “Who is this one?” they asked. “Is he coming with us?”
“He speaks wrong,” the riders said. “He speaks of a friend. An outman friend.”
“That is wrong.”
So they threw him off the hoof and tied him up.
“You will be our friend now,” they said, carrying him South. “Do not worry. We are in much need for it. So you will be given plenty. That is right.”
-
The Stringplayer was abducted by the movers.
They travelled West in a column, full of men and women and children. For a while, they would not let him out of his bindings, which stuck him up by the legs and arms and mouth. He was hitched to a hoof and sat at the fire with them when the night came, where they cooked for him and spooned their food into his mouth. They brushed and tried to water the hoof, who kicked at them and screamed. It bucked even harder at their work than it had at the Stringplayer.
A fireworker, dressed in a black leather over that the Stringplayer found memorial, went down by the fire and stripped him with a group of Walls. Then he inspect the marks and cuts and boils that the Stringplayer’s body had collected from the Wild. A solution was prepared in bowls and applied to grainy sheets of tissue and a meatbearer’s dried viscera that they fixed to his wounds with binding sap. As they burned shut the wounds that needed it, he screamed and cried loud shivering sobs and trembled without abate, and he would have bit his tongue in half if it were not for the leather ball that he was gagged with.
On the third day, the movers took residence between a group of trees. A stool was put down and one of their Lodges, an old woman, sat on it, and The Stringplayer sat before her. The Walls assembled around her.
“We should not let him out,” one said. “He is still shaking. I see that he has forgotten ways, if he ever knew them.”
The Lodge shook her head. “We should be kind, Fixer. Now unhitch this gasping heart, and give him what he ought to have.”
They cut apart his bonds and pushed him on his knees. He hugged his arms, shivering.
“And now, braidman,” she said, “will you respond, and cry as you did before?”
“I-I will not.” The Stringplayer spoke with a face and a shaky smile.
“That is right.” One of the Walls brought him a drink of water, and the others surrounded him and tapped his body with their canes. “And now you will go to the Chewers. They need a picking one. We have kept you from the rulers, yon; you do not know where you are, and you cannot walk on your own. That and everything should keep you here. If you leave us you will fall to the ground and eating will be lost to you. You will be eating for more Wild hearts. Do you agree?”
He nodded, and they gave him a place within the column.
He stole away from his tent in the seats that very night, collecting his bag and clutching his three-string like an infant. He crept among the fleet of hoofs and pack animals and found the one he knew. It snorted and inclined its head.
He leapt atop its back, and he did not need to pull its hair before it issued a roaring scream and crashed them through the Goalish camp, stomping over fires and pounding up sparks, pushing out into parts unknown.
-
The Stringplayer had lost his way, and it felt destroyed. However long they searched, the road had given out, and gave him back to the wilderness. It was looking treacherous now. They passed through dense fleets of wood and beneath ridges that dangled curls of white, and columns of ice that dripped. The hoof hung its head and trudged, and The Stringplayer did not know where its hate had gone. He wondered if he would find his way back – to people, to buildings, to what was fixed, or to Wan
He felt as though he had been about to push a person or go to a forbidden place. He wrapped his arms around the hoof’s neck tightly, and it cooed.
The horizon wobbled and shifted like water. An isle or a glacier could have pushed out from the wave of it, but instead there came a woman, picking over the rolling plain they had started to work across. She was pregnant, and her skin was weathered by the cold and wind. At her hip she carried a cane of whipped coolwood, which had no metal. She had wrapped herself in a light over for a warmer season, which wound about her legs and shoulders and lined her silhouette with the color of violets. Her eyes were bright orange.
The Stringplayer was perplexed by every piece of it, and he was not sure if was again consumed by isolation in the way he had been, before his rescue by the Star. He decided, however desperate he was to reach his aim, he would not speak with her, out of fear that this might be true.
They passed by one another without event. The Stringplayer strained his eyes away as they passed and tried not to think of her as he headed on to the next step and the next. A pale, jointed rod stuck up out of the snow where it pointed his eyes, giving way to a series of bleached curves and severed hands which marked a swerving path into the dark forest.
A cry sounded. “Stop now, born of Goal!”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
The Stringplayer pulled on the hoof’s ropes and turned in exhaust amazement. The woman watched them from far away, and raised her fist in anger.
“Are you so beyond ways?” she shouted. “Are you so beyond ways, born of Goal? Are you so beyond ways, that you have passed out from the ones of your creators? Are you so beyond the naming and lodging of like? Are you so beyond the rules, given you by Day-Sayer, and by Stone-Sayer, and by Rain-Sayer, who you adore so much, and whose call will smile on your shape? Are you so beyond ways, born of Goal?”
“I-I was born of men, eldwoman!” he exclaimed.
He could not make out her expression. “Throw in your meaning!” she called.
“I was born of men,” he said. “I was born of one named Peak. I was born of one named Beam. They carried me.”
She paused before she replied. “What gifts can you give?” she asked. “I have been beaten and eaten from. The hunger could send me away.”
“I have nothing for eating, eldwoman. I too have been beaten, eldwoman. I am escaped, eldwoman. I could not gather for you; I do not know picking, eldwoman.”
“Then come here, Yonman Key,” she said. She threw forward her hand and snapped back it back. “Down here, Yonman Key. I will eat of you, and the voice you have.”
He blanched. He descended the hoof and left it as he went back to her. Her features resolved, producing a curved jaw and a small face. “What has given you that call, eldwoman?”
“I have your name. I have the lines, Yonman Key.”
“I wish you would not call me that,” The Stringplayer said. “It is a call I had once, but now I do not, and I would not retrieve it.”
“The call cannot be moved, Yonman Key,” she said. “I have lines of a born kind. It is a gift I was given from Day-Sayer. It is written in the lines; it is written in the where you are.”
“I know one who rules the sun. I do not know how one would say a day, eldwoman.”
“You do not have the lines,” she replied. “Why are you in my place?”
“I am looking for a fighter,” The Stringplayer said. “She wears many canes. She leads a loaded hoof. Have you seen like, eldwoman?”
The woman stepped forward. “Have I seen such a kind. But what sends you that way, Yonman Key?”
“I am sent by-” The Stringplayer faltered. “By- ih…”
The woman watched him search for his answer. “Do not try too hard,” she said. “I have the lines. I have a voice. I can speak about my sight.”
She went up to The Stringplayer and held his head in her hands.
“It seems like you are gone away now,” she said.
His eyebrows bent to the sides. “Eldwoman?”
“Yes. Go on this way, and disaster will come. You will not recognize yourself,” she continued. “You will be lost from rulers forever. You will be lost from the shape of your creators. Your every word will be twisted until it is not itself. They will be turned out for an other’s; that is the born condition.”
The Stringplayer balked, wrinkled his brow and contract his face. “I cannot see its disaster,” he said.
The woman frowned. “To leave out your kind – what else does this put in your eye?”
He looked ashamed. “I have always been that way, eldwoman. I- I found a kind.” His brow lowered. “Yes. I found a kind, like I had not before. And I… that is what sends me.” He shrank and hung his head. “That is what sends me.”
The woman looked at him fidget. Then she pulled in The Stringplayer, and embraced him.
“Ih – you, who are my son,” she said. “Ih – I, who am your daughter. I know that you will never leave me; you will always be in the places I am, and a word should not break you from them. I wish you will go to your brothers and sisters, heart I adore. I wish you will bring them your new spot. Then they will not slide out from the other. And I will have friends.”
He was speechless. She laid a hand on his mouth and on his stomach, and he was struck by a feeling of wholeness that did not abate. When he felt that he was about to burst, she turned away from him.
“If you follow the bones,” she said, “the thing you seek will take you.”
She walked on. The Stringplayer watched her move through the sweet, drifting snowfall. Her shape appeared to fold into the distance.
“Eldwo-” He started to call out to her, but an overwhelming pull descended on his chest, whose work suppressed every safety and filling piece that he still entertained. His knees buckled and he held himself, sobbing noisily. Tears broke with the surface of the snow.
-
The stonehoof walked past the trace of calves, arms and skulls. The ground began to swell with dark and twisted spots of dust and rubble, cut across the soil in growths of squalid gray, and Fragile realized that they were nivmen.
They tramped over muddy hands and corpses, drenched with snowmelt and pierced by missiles, their heads broken by rock and the swing of sticks. Their path dipped down into a thick plot of bushes, filled with half-budded biteleaves where the heat swirled around and made them forget the cold. Chill was lifted from The Stringplayer’s chest, and a network of green islets could be seen poking up from the sea of sweltered foam. They gave rise to a bright cloud that dwelt over the place they were, obscuring what came after and keeping out the light.
The hoof navigated the fog at a trot. The Stringplayer’s eyes drooped with fatigue and held its ropes loosely. His thighs ached; the movers’ patches had begun to tear free.
His head nodded without his word and he blinked. In the distance, the shadow of a person had been produced by the mist. The Stringplayer’s eyes widened and he yanked on the hoof. It grunted at him.
He slid off, yelping as he did so. He clung to the stonehoof and widened his eyes at the shadow, which was short and long-haired.
He turned to the stonehoof and tried to touch its face, but it jerked away. “Please stay,” The Stringplayer said. He released his hand from its lead, watching for a sign that it might rear, flee, or protest. “I’ll be back. I hope I will. I need you to stay. I only need you for a little while longer. Please stay. Please stay until then. Please.”
He let go of its bindings. The hoof looked at him and exhaled, pushing his face with wet air.
He stepped away from it and faced the mist. A moment of sweat and breath; he walked forward, extending his hand and moving one foot after another. He kept his eyes on the darkness.
The crystal swirl paraded around him and the ground crunched and cracked and splashed underfoot. The watcher moved closer as he advanced, matching The Stringplayer’s step. He was not addressed.
The clouds shrank back. The figure’s image rolled up to him, assembling liquid between the waters of the mist, constituting itself of the total volume which resided past his own. It gained its form, enabling The Stringplayer to look at it in full. His eyes widened, and he shivered, but; after they had gazed at it long enough, his brow moved up, and his mouth shut itself. He felt the warmth.
The figure put out its hand. The Stringplayer took it.
----------------------------------------
The stonehoof charged onward, turning ragged violence on the ground as it slung them headlong through the Wild. The Stringplayer lashed its ropes and it bucked, shrugging him loose. He hugged its neck.
“Please hurry,” he said. “Please hurry. Please hurry.”
It screamed again and again, but it answered his plea.
The country swept by, and their speed kicked up snow. The Stringplayer’s face became cut and scored by debris; the wind blew up snowflakes and drove them through his cheeks. Parts of him began to turn a shade of blue. His hair blew back into a rolling wave, and without his notice, his twin braids were thrown apart by the gallop, and dissolved throughout the rest. He could not make out anything on the road in front of him, and his eyes were closed.
The ways had passed and they reached the slope of a tall hill, after breaking from the trees. The stonehoof slipped and skid and stopped as they met the bottom. The great momentum finally threw out its rider at last, tearing The Stringplayer’s grip free and detaching him from his post. He and belongings were catapulted out from their spot, a flailing mixture of straps and strings and limbs. They were all propelled to an ignominious death on the road.
The Warrior arched her knee forward and launched. She roared through the air like a loosed bolt, hooked her arms around him, and wrenched him back from the ground.
They rolled into the snow, landing upright as the haze settled. The Stringplayer’s effects tumbled down into a smattered heap upon the pavement.
He panted and looked up at her. The Warrior looked down at The Stringplayer, whereupon her jaw loosened. Her eyes ran over the scars and blotches on his face, arms, and legs.
The stonehoof released a scream of liberation. The sun shone on all its colors. It galloped off the road and across the plain, towards the hills in the distance. They watched it disappear into a small red speck, until it could be seen no more.
The Stringplayer’s hands gripped the fabric of his coldover.
“Quiet Feet,” The Warrior said.
“S-star?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I - egh-h-” She realized that she could feel the bone in his arms. His mouth tremored and his eyes shook.
She loosened her grip and released him. He gasped and clutched his biceps, which The Warrior’s grip had left throbbing.
She crouched down. The Stringplayer shivered. “You- you left,” he whispered.
“Yes,” she said.
“I did not know – where you were.”
“That was my design.”
He dropped his gaze.
“Did the Salonier let you leave?”
The Stringplayer nodded.
“Then I misjudged him.”
She put a hand to her chin. “Come,” she said, turning back to the Stronghoof. “I will guide you back. It would be dangerous, otherwise.”
She headed back to the stronghoof, but after a few steps, she had heard no movement from The Stringplayer. She stopped and turned; he had stood up, although his knees quivered violently. He was holding back tears.
She returned to him. “Quiet Feet,” she said, “what pain makes this? What has brought it to you?”
The Stringplayer blinked back tears. “I’m sorry,” The Stringplayer whispered.
She frowned.
“I’m sorry I was a burden on you,” he said, looking down. His water hissed as it met the snow. “I know you would spare me this pain too. But I should have it. You have spared me everything. You have provided me with every care, and every gentle good. I am not hungry because of you. Because of you I smile. I feel like there is nothing drags me.” After he said, his expression twisted up. “But I still tried to stay with you.”
He put his hands to his face and struggled to keep his voice steady. “I cannot ask for your forgetting. I should not receive it. I have already taken too much.”
The Warrior watched him carefully. He turned around and began to walk up the road.
The flensed spots on The Stringplayer’s legs ached and protested at the pace of his retreat, but he was caught in the anguish of it, and ignored their complaints. His burned gait led him over a stone, and as he wiped his face, he tripped.
As he stumbled, a thick glove reached out and gripped the hood of his coldover, holding him in place. He struggled against it.
“Where are you going?” The Warrior asked.
“S-star?!” he squeaked.
“You should not travel through there,” she said. “It would hurt you again.”
“I’m- I’m-”
“And you have cuts. Those will get worse.”
“I can- you do not need-”
“Quiet Feet.” The Warrior turned around and took him by the shoulders. “To what aim do you see my leaving?”
The Stringplayer was a very long time in answering. He could not meet her gaze. “I-I see no aim,” he said. “I see none. It is our arrangement. There was no need for you to stay. I do not say it.”
“Then why have you come back, and hurt yourself like this? What would you have from me?”
He said nothing.
The Warrior had not blinked in quite some time. “I have made many works,” she said. “I have stabbed beasts. I have cut apart a gathering. Leaving you was taller than most of them.”
A fresh wave of feeling rolled through his head, and its reason was lost on him. This made him angry, which made more feeling. “Why?”
“Because you are a Goal. I want you safe. And the only way that can be is if you are somewhere I am not. I am so commanded.”
His brow wrenched itself down. He covered his face again.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I…” The Stringplayer shook his head. “I do not think I should say.”
“Tell me.”
He looked down. “I did not know what it was to feel safe,” he said, “until… until I met you.”
A dim stirring churned around The Warrior’s stomach, which she suppressed.
“But I know now that was virtuous,” he continued. “I know that now.”
“Fear is virtuous?”
Tears poured down his face. "F-for - like a person who has destroyed their kind. That is the good way."
The Warrior was given pause.
She cradled his head and ran her fingers through his hair. “I’ve never met someone like you,” she said.
The Stringplayer looked up at her. “What do you mean?”
The Warrior what she meant. “Someone with… wide eyes.”
He blushed. He turned himself, and something came into him which turned up the corners of his mouth, cutting apart the moist streaks of blood and water. The feeling of it produced some agony in him, and he did his best to force back this unjust light.
The stirring jumped up into The Warrior’s chest. She pulled him closer, yanking out a gentle exhale. “Wande-?!”
He bit his tongue when he realized what he’d said. She watched his expression of surprise give way to horror. “Fragile,” Wander said. “I do make you smile. Do you know why?”
Fragile was shocked and he did not say.
“Because I want your smiles,” she said. “I want them all.” She pushed her glove between his fingers and touched his lips. “I want this one.”
Fragile’s head had grown light. Wander’s heat had put a fine sheen of sweat on his brow, and he said something that brought up her hand. It wrapped around a lock of hair that had fallen between them, and brushed it aside.
Wander lowered down her face and put it to Fragile’s. His eyes closed. The spots of blue on his cheeks bloomed and extinguished. His knees gave out, but she held him up.
A meandering crimson beast cut its way back over the snow. The Bell poked her head out from her bag and watched the stonehoof sit itself down nearby, off the shoulder of their encounter. It nibbled at a patch of grass.
-
“You must promise to never put yourself in front of my blade again. No matter what she or anybody says.”
“I promise.”
“You must promise to consider my word if there is fighting, and if I see something that may hurt you.”
“I promise.”
“And you must promise to go, if I say you must go.”
He hesitated. She was about to rebuke him, before he spoke again. “Yes Wander. Yes, I promise.”
The place they had decided to break was covered by thicktrees beneath a cream-colored gravel slope. The ice on the branches there, which dripped water from the canopy that began to run down and form a gully aside their bags, began to go hard and sharp; the warm air was passing out of Goal and to the East, toward the spot first named Hubun, where it would stay for a little longer, until the fire there deigned its return.
A fire of their own burned before the foreigners. They sat next to it, along with the stronghoof and the Bell, who lay wrapped about the stronghoof’s head and legs. The stonehoof padded around in the shadows, keeping its distance.
Wander and Fragile faced each other on their knees as Wander delivered her conditions. When they were finished, Wander turned toward the fire and sat.
“If we are to remain travelling companions for a while longer,” she continued, “I think it is needed that I hand something to you. I have hidden it until now, because it isn’t safe to have. Are you willing to take it?”
Fragile’s foot shivered and squirmed. He nodded twice.
My arrival to this place was not by chance. I asked to be sent here. To the Wild. To Goal.”
His brow furrowed, and he nodded again.
“The Freemen who came to your home carried signs. Do you remember their shape?”
He thought back to that day. He searched among the dark, the faces, and the people who had gone. He grew tense and his neck bent, and Wander was about to stir him when his eyes opened.
“A shot,” he said. “A shot? It looked like that. A shot and a stick.”
A log on the fire hissed and split apart, rolling up a fume of sparks. “The shape is claimed by a man,” Wander said. “When I was young, he was a fighting Larun. Now he guides them here. What the Freemen did to your home, he did to mine.”
Fragile considered this, hugging his legs tightly. “Have you come to cut him?”
“Yes. I have.”
The fire snipped and bit away. He shifted in place.
“Knowing this,” she said, “do you still wish to follow me?”
“I would help you do it.”
She put her gaze on him. “Do you want to hit another?”
“No.” Fragile thought a moment and shook his head. “No. I feel bad when that happens. I feel bad at any hurting. I am hard pressed to hear it. I can see myself have it.” He paused and looked up. “But it is a need. And it was made by others.”
She was still.
“If you cut apart this man,” Fragile said, “will you become untroubled?”
“That is my aim.”
His grip tightened. “Then let us bring it to him,” he said.
The lines by Fragile’s mouth and eyes softened and his pupils grew as he looked into the fire, but he did not recant. Wander watched it happen. “If you want it,” she said, “then we cannot remain as travelling companions.”
Fragile’s introspections were disrupted. He opened his mouth and arched his brow.
She turned herself to face him fully, and loosened the glove from her right hand. “If we are lined up in this way, and kept of like aim, our gathering must be a pointed one. And we have become a unity.”
“‘Unity’?”
“It means that we attend this work in order to lift each other,” she replied. “It means that we are joined to the same spot by this need. It means that we will offer into its department and speak about it, and discover the speediest path to its closure. We will do that until its end; until it has disappeared from Ourland, or until the warmth has passed, and the cold has come back, and I must go away from this place forever.”
The glove fell away and revealed a large black welt at the center of her palm. She held it out. “A unity.”
Realizing that there was some expectation of reply, Fragile held out his hand straight toward her. She guided it to her wrist and grasped his. He understood what was needed and his fingers snapped shut around her forearm. “A unity,” he declared.
A slight tremor went through Wander at the unexpected impact. Fragile saw it and tried to release her. She stopped him with her other hand.
He held on to her again.
-
“...the forest will freeze and the trees will freeze; the waters will freeze and the fish will freeze. Their bodies will collect in the soil and make it rich, and time will make it grow old. The clouds will come down from the stars and settle on the land. All will be forgotten before Ourland remembers itself again.”
The night, and home, had come again. The mottled domes of Trethbiekilon, along with their golden sprawl protruded from the grass and country toward herself and her wiser. Wander felt stronger than she had been.
She could feel a breeze from afar. The smoke of the place, sent up by pots of fire, poured out from it and doused her chest. It let her move her arms and lips and she shaped them in her own way.
“And then we will freeze?” she asked her wiser.
“Yes.”
Wander looked up and saw her. Her arms wrapped around Wander’s chest, clad in rust-swept braces. Her face was hard, spotted and sun-baked. She was smiling. “And then we will freeze.”
“What happens then?”
She looked down on her daughter and her mouth fell. “Those are old words,” she said. “They have been said before the Secondpeople. They contain us all.”
“What happens?”
Her wiser stroked Wander’s hair. “A moment. Dirt will rise up to meet you. Your skin will open to the small and helpless things of the world. It will nourish the trees and animals. Then it will become room for a people, a land and a living, all your own.”
“What happens then?” she asked. “When will I return?”
“It is like I said. You have become the land.”
She took Wander’s hand. “In time, you will learn to remember yourself.”