3 | Round and Round

For the moment, the monsters skittering through the underbrush are nothing dangerous.

He’s seen them before—beady little bird eyes, for whatever is left of birds in this world. They’ll peck away at flesh if they believe they can take their enemy. Humans are a bit too much for them unless they are swarming. Up here, on the thin air at the top of the mountain, they rarely do so. Other than the spare large rat, they’re the largest things up here.

Until a murderous mountain goat showed up.

Still, Eli keeps a momentary eye on the birds until they flitter back into the scant treetops.

Eli sits on the bench alongside the fire—hewn from the trunk of one of the trees he felled for firewood before all the forest had woken—and stares at the dying flames. He feeds it with a dead log, the only type of wood safe to collect. Putting his hand to his chest, is feels the overworked rhythm of his heart, more ruffled than he’d appreciate admitting. Truly, he believes not that the boy and girl would be able to walk any considerable distance in this world. How did Abner manage to get them here? Their Order is broken, and sending a body through space and air hasn’t been a viable option in many a year. Eli can no longer send even letters. Most any skill carved through magic has become twisted and corrupted, unusable. Eli presses his fingers to the strange mark on his palm once more and watches it flicker. Then, he claps his hands.

Round and round, your human mind, you will all die, beware our kind—

What nonsense. Threats with no useful hints. Eli wills away the words which should offer him old talents honed over years and now only spouts gibberish.

He believes the boy to be about the age he admitted, it would be difficult to imagine him much younger, even with his scant appearance. Eli has been out here, upon these mountaintops, much longer than he realized.

Rubbing his eyes until he sees spots, he goes about cooking the meat into a stew. Mushrooms grow in abundance up here, earthy and filled with a flavor he enjoys, he ads them to the water and meat and a pinch of precious salt. Not much else grows with abundance and without harm to humans. Dried, they are harmless and filling. Eventually fruit will grow, and he will pick what has fallen to the ground and can no longer harm him.

Pacing the edges of the tiny crumbling building, he considers what to do and only ends up staring at the patchwork of the walls. He’s mended bits of it over the years, for bitter cold makes its way to these mountaintops early every season. It is perhaps ten strides along each wall, a loft built up closer to the ceiling. Eli likes it. He doesn’t need much. He is one man, after all.

After all, who would be here to visit him?

Abner’s daughter and son.

“Lyra,” he mumbles. “Our grandchildren are here.”

Shaking himself, he checks out the crack in the window. At least the kids have the good sense to stay where they are. Movement in the treetops doesn’t appear to phase them. At least, the girl is hiding behind the boy, who’s acting as if he isn’t phased. None of it is too threatening, at least. In truth, Eli has not left this place enough to know if the world miles outside his own is more or less dangerous. Perhaps the mutation in the Order spread much worse out here and is kept better at bay where civilization lies.

Perhaps it is much, much worse.

Yes, that is definitely more likely.

With a bit of time, sun begins to shorten the shadows. Creatures are just as prone to wandering about during the day as at night but don’t appreciate the direct sunlight at the top of this monastery. Heat puts the world to sleep. Indeed, the sun is mostly obscured in many places, as if the overdone magic can indeed reach its way up and overrun the star. Eli wouldn’t be so shocked by such an event, not anymore.

Likely, it will eventually overcome his mountain, but he will not live long enough for such things.

Going about his usual day seems incorrect with his grandchildren sitting on his porch. What to do with them when they stop being so stubborn? Get a story out of them, certainly. But they cannot stay. Eli doesn’t know what to do with children. He barely knew what to do with Abner when he was a boy and often feels he only got by because the boy was his. He didn’t have to know what to do, he only did his very best and prayed it was enough.

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Perhaps it wasn’t.

His grandchildren don’t appear to care for the idea of him too much, and if Abner has been telling stories, Eli can’t imagine why they would. Such will be a hurdle. Abner told the boy enough things he does not like him, and the girl, though less hostile, certainly doesn’t seem to trust him by name alone. She hasn’t even spoken a word to him. Abner told them stories but sent them to Eli’s doorstep in the same breath.

How?

Perhaps their world is healing.

Thinking of cursing then of praying and unused to speaking aloud, Eli takes the sickle off the side of his wall, turning it in his palms like a comforting trinket. He used to believe it strange a tool made for reaping growing things would not be attacked by the same forest come alive, but he’s long since gotten over the oddity. The new rules to the Order are that nothing makes sense any longer.

Running his finger along the biting sharp curve of the edge, he tucks on his coat and shoulders his way out the door. Thistle and Klia jump, then the boy scowls and folds his arms tighter. He’s stayed out longer than Eli imagined he would, keeping his sister alongside him, out in the danger. But if he is his father’s son, perhaps Eli should not be so surprised. Even with the kid sitting right here, Eli still struggles to picture his son’s face. It’s been a decade and a half or more since he’s seen him, anyhow. He won’t look the same.

Perhaps it was less Abner telling the boy unkind things, and more the rest of the Queen’s court at Monsetyra. Either way, Eli is certain his son hasn’t been speaking kindly of him.

Perhaps he should have expected such. Perhaps I deserve such.

“Have you decided to explain yourself?” he tries.

“I don’t have to explain myself to anyone.”

“You’re sitting on my porch.”

Thistle scoots off the rock, leaning his arms onto his knees so his back isn’t touching the wall of Eli’s house. If he weren’t overwhelmed by the situation every time he thinks of it too closely, Eli would laugh. Even looking at the two of them makes his heart beat quicker. His son does not like him. In fact, Eli has often doubted the presence of any love. One way or another, he sent his children here, even if he made them appear with magic long-unused and that Eli believes impossible.

The magic is weakening. The thought nags at him, and he pushes it aside. Hope is a dangerous thing, often wild and with claws if let loose too soon.

Besides, if everything were well, this boy would not be here to glare knives at him, shielding his little sister as if Eli is the danger. In his heart, he worries things are worse.

Dreading the question even as he thinks it, he asks, “Is your father alive?”

A quick twist to Thistle's expression is all he earns. The girl’s eyes flicker to him before returning to the ground.

Again, he tries, “Boy, is my son still alive?”

This time, he earns brief but unhelpful eye contact, but a murmured, “I don’t know.”

Whatever emotions he’s hiding, he does it better than most of his age. Eli desired not to parse riddles from a teenage boy who evidently likes him very little. For a moment, the little girl tries to sit up, as if she wishes to come around and speak to him, but Thistle puts his arm out, catching her back against him.

“Would you like to say something to me, girl? Your name is Klia?”

“She doesn’t have anything to say to you.” Thistle hugs her tighter to his side.

This will not be an easy battle.

Abner, if you were going to send your children to me, could you have at least told them to listen?

Sighing, Eli glances into the heat of the sun, thinks again of checking his magic for the useless habit he cannot shake, and turns again to check on the watchful little eyes of the devil birds still roosting in the treetops before the heat of the day becomes too much.

Whatever he’s chased off earlier with the stone is gone, but something emerging from the thicket down at the base of the monastery has his heart beating for an entirely new reason.

Sourly, he thinks, all I wanted was a peaceful breakfast.

Eli scowls at the beast emerging from the thicket, wishing for the Order to give him something, anything, about the stalking creature. In the past, it would warn him of things which might cause him harm, hinting at the best course of action. It hasn’t done so in years. Still, Eli hopes. He focuses on the monster’s face, the amalgamation of what perhaps was once a wildcat of some sort now overgrown with ropes of vines and purple flowers the likes of which he’s never seen despite his many years dwelling here.

I would prefer the mountain goat.

Usually, large creatures don’t venture up so far. A goat is one thing, a massive wildcat is something else entirely.

What have those children brought with them?

Shimmering over the creature is the same mess of unhelpful gibberish Eli has become accustomed to the broken magic feeding him.

Suffer, human blood, drown, drown, drown—

That one, again. Eli flinches at the voice, more telling him off than informing him of the creature.

Bitterly, perhaps unfairly, Eli thinks, Abner broke our magic and now sends its monster to my doorstep along with his children.

Ages past, Eli told his son to find him, if he ever needed him, that he knew where he would be, but it has been so many years he hardly believed he ever would.

It is not a fair thought, not when he knows little of the circumstances leading to this moment, less so when it seems impossible these children should manage to be here. Eli may be a bitter old man, but he does not for a moment believe his son would send any child of his into danger, even if Eli had no idea these kids existed until this morning.

“What is that?” Thistle asks, and Eli is satisfied at least the stubborn arrogance has fled, for the boy’s eyes are so wide they barely fit into place, his back pressed to the house, further shielding his sister. Whatever he was expecting or has been told of the world outside the cities: this is not it.

Eli grips the handle of the sickle so tight it digs into his palm. “I’m not certain—”

Cursed Panther | Death Orchid

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