Janus did hear Felix, though whether the person currently trying to beat this pig to death with bare hands was really Janus or not, even Janus himself did not know.
It would be wrong to say he wasn’t in control of his body—it was more like he was an ox pulling the cart of his body and someone else was holding the reins. He couldn’t remember ever being in a fight with another human let alone a huge pig, but his fists and feet shot out with such each it seemed like he had been doing it all his life.
This must be it, Janus thought. This is what happens when I black out. Whatever this is takes over.
There is was: the other thing Janus had tried not to think about earlier that morning. During his time as a scribe, there had been two or three occasions where he would lose track of where he had been and what he had been doing for hours at a time. Back then he hadn't attributed these episodes to bad meat or his poor sleeping habits, but they had probably contributed to his decision to look for answers about his missing year at the monastery. Then he had gotten caught up in the excitement of his upcoming adventure to the East and the smaller instances of memory loss didn't seem like such a big deal after all.
But once he was actually on the Pilgrim’s Road, the problem reasserted itself. He had only gotten as far as Burgundy when his fellow travelers started to mention him making snide comments that were completely out of character for him, things he was certain he had never said. By the time he reached the Alps, he would occasionally wake up to find himself with a completely different traveling party than he had been with the night before.
By the time he reached Bulgaria, he stopped asking about how he had gotten where he was on any given day. Janus had never been religiously instructed as a child, but for the first time in his life he began to pray to whatever god might be available to keep him from forgetting himself altogether.
Now Janus had his answer, or at least a good theory. Whenever he was in physical danger, this other driver took over his body. It made so much sense: he was a small adolescent boy who had been surviving on his own for years now, and yet he couldn't remember having to defend himself even once.
But was this how it always worked, and he would just forget at the end of the fight? No, that wasn’t it. Something was definitely different. Whatever this was, it was his first time being along for the ride.
This was probably not a good thing, Janus realized. It probably meant something was going wrong. He could tell that whatever was holding his reins was struggling. Fists and feet were not the ideal way to fight an animal, and it didn’t seem like there were any other instincts inside him other than for punching, kicking, and grappling. Janus saw a long-dead but sturdy-looking branch a few inches from his face after the boar had slammed him into a tree and knocked him to the ground. He considered reaching for it when a voice inside his mind spoke to him.
"That won’t work. You’ll break it before you do any good with it."
“How am I doing this?” Janus asked the voice.
"Don't worry about it.
“I don’t think I’m going to last much longer. It hurts.”
"That boy will come back. He can help you. This is his test after all."
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“How do you know that?”
The voice did not answer.
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The forest to the north of the moss-covered rock was thicker than the rest, part of a more massive forest that had probably been here before the area around the city was cleared for farming thousands of years ago. His uncle had taught him to notice such things, though Felix hadn’t understood why at the time. Eventually, he realized that his uncle wanted him to train his eyes to see the deeper truths behind ordinary reality. This was what a poet did, his sacred duty to God and his fellow man. Uncle fancied himself a poet, not a mere singer, and he wanted Felix to be one too.
But all that was over now.
Felix had been sprinting away from the fight, and now he leaned against a tree with one hand, gasping for breath. He should have been disgusted with himself. He should be calling himself a coward for abandoning Janus. He should be cursing himself for giving up on his dream of singing in the greatest city in the world. Instead, all he could think of was the riddle of the test he had just run away from. Because there definitely was a riddle he was supposed to solve in that situation, he was just too stupid to do it.
How was he supposed to beat the monster boar? Because that was clearly impossible. Janus had suddenly turned into Roland and it still wasn't enough bough. And what did fighting a boar have to do with being a singer in the first place? Then there was the boar itself. It was more like a chimera of a pig and bull and a elephant than a boar. But in spite of its monstrous appearance, it fought like a human. There was something like a song here, but he couldn’t see how the notes fit together and it was maddening.
Before Felix had fully caught his breath, he heard a crunch in the underbrush. It was close, maybe ten yards away behind a particularly large oak. Without knowing why he did it, he crept behind another tree to get a better look while remaining hidden and saw a large man with a thick brown beard sitting cross-legged against the oak. He wore gray trousers and a peasant smock, and though his eyes were open, he stared into the middle distance as if transfixed. Every few seconds, he would shift his weight or jerk his arms from one side to the other.
A pipe. Felix could barely see it in the brush, but there was a neatly-carved pipe wooden pipe at the man’s side.
Why does this feel familiar? Felix thought.
His uncle had told him stories about singers who could soothe attacking animals or charm them into following their orders. Could that logic be taken even further? The man seemed to be in a waking dream, twitching and jerking every few seconds without moving his gaze. Without thinking, Felix picked up a rock and threw it so it didn't pass in front of the man’s eyes but landed close enough that he definitely should have heard it.
No reaction.
Cautiously, Felix crept over to the man, ready to flee the second he showed any sign of noticing him.
“Hello?” Felix said softly, walking directly in front of the man.
No response. He waved his hand in front of the man’s eyes. Still, nothing. Felix would have thought the man was dead if not for the occasional violent twitch.
What if this guy is controlling the boar? Felix thought.
It shouldn't be possible because magic didn’t exist, but there were so many things about this test that made no sense without it. He was used to navigating forests from home, and he knew how to keep himself going in a straight line. The woods this close to the city just weren't big enough to get so lost in—he had foraged for berries and mushrooms in this one just weeks ago and it hadn’t given him any trouble. Then there was that sense of nausea when the Dame had played her song as they entered, a reaction that made no sense. It was a good song—why should it make him feel sick?
Why am I standing here, staring at this guy and trying to figure out a riddle? Felix asked himself. I’m supposed to be running away like a coward.
No matter what, this big guy was definitely with the Dame given the instrument at his side. That made him Felix’s enemy, or at least his opponent. Without thinking, Felix took his lute off the strap on his back and lifted it over his head.
Please just go down, Felix thought. There was no way he could fight a man twice his size even if he got the drop on him. Please don’t break, he added for his lute as its base crashed into the man’s forehead.