It took a few minutes for the both of them to return, and I stood waiting in silence at the bottom of the steps, pondering leaving anyway. I thought better of it; if Sumac was looking for me, things would end poorly. Basil and Sage came down the stairs soon, wearing new clothing; Basil wore a dark colored cloak and was in the process of sheathing two short swords on his back, and Sage came down in a bright green cloak, the hood down, and he wore all white underneath, and he carried a dagger and longsword on his hip.
“Where are my weapons?” I huffed.
“You won’t be needing them,” Sage said.
Frowning, I crossed my arms and asked, “But aren’t I being chased? That’s why you kidnapped me in the first place. So I should have some form of defense, right?”
Sage narrowed his eyes and Basil smirked, shrugging when Sage turned to him for support. “Couple things,” Sage finally said, kneeling down so we were eye level. I didn’t like that; it was like he was trying to be my father. “One: you nearly killed me when you had my dagger before, so you’ve proved you’re untrustworthy to be near with a weapon.”
Which made me turn pink; obviously he was correct in saying that.
“Two,” he continued, “you haven’t any combat skill whatsoever, do you?” My face grew more rose colored. “My understanding is that you were one of the most unskilled boys to ever train in Persea.”
“How did you—shut up. Fine, I get it. No weapons.”
“Good,” Sage smirked, with Basil chuckling behind him.
“Basil and myself will protect you. Anyway,” he said, putting a hand on Basil’s shoulder, “We should get going now that we’re all ready.”
Basil nodded. “We haven’t got a lot of time, those guys should be getting up by now since you didn’t kill them.”
“Maybe,” Sage shrugged. “I didn’t hit them that hard, but the fact that they just met me should be giving them at least some cause to stop and think about what just happened. To a boy as young as that one, I’m not supposed to be real. His confidence should be shot.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, hopeful for a real answer this time.
“He’s a legend around these parts,” Basil said, his expression one of pride. “Back during the last war between Avocado and Cashew, Sage here single handedly kept Cashew from infiltrating our country and taking over. He took out countless soldiers at the battle of narrow bridge.”
I was sure he had done more than that. After all, being a war hero doesn’t usually net you an empty castle that was more like a prison. Besides, as the prince of the country you would think I’d know who the guy was at the very least; secrets aren’t as common among royalty as most people seem to think.
“Anyway,” Sage drawled, “let’s just get going. It would be best if we got out of the country fast.”
Basil grunted, “Keep yourself in check, you aren’t supposed to be outside, remember?”
Sage laughed airily and said, “Be outside? I’m supposed to not even exist.”
Then Sage picked me up and put me on his shoulders, without so much as even asking if I wanted to be up there, and before I could argue with him he said, “I know you’re a bit old for this, but just stay put. This will make the trip a little faster, alright?”
I was about to say something but I suddenly found myself holding tight to his neck, picking a god and praying. They both moved so fast that we were out into the forest in a few blinks of my eyes, both of them walking in step with each other as if they had done this a thousand times before. “Alright, so where to?” Basil asked to clarify. “We headed north?”
Sage nodded and crouched down into a stretch, despite me still being on his shoulder. “Yeah, Red Bay. Our boat should still be there.”
Basil smirked. “A boat? Belonging to a false man?”
“Yeah, yeah, real funny. You gonna joke the whole time or just until I hit you?”
“Touchy,” Basil laughed. “Fine, I’ll shut up.”
“Good,” Sage grunted, finished stretching. “Let’s get a move on then, shall we?” Then, to me he said in a low whisper, “Hold on tight, kid.”
Then they jumped over the forest.
Now I don’t mean that they jumped over the whole thing and went clear across the country, no. That would be ridiculous, now, wouldn’t it? No, I mean that they jumped over trees and, every tenth or twentieth tree, they would take another step using the tip top of those tall, blue elder pines. The wind was pushing us forward, and it seemed like we were being pulled upward by some tornado that instead of spinning moved in the direction we were going, as if it picked us up and said, “I’m going that way myself, why not come along then?”
The trees would bend each time they stomped on them, creaking from the force of it. At first the whole ordeal sent my body to conniptions, but crazy is relative to experience and soon I became acclimated to flying through the sky atop trees like some sort of wild animal, all of our cloaks billowing in the updraft, Basil wearing that signature smile of his and Sage trying to hide his smile even while doing something that seemed so fun.
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Birds were fluttering right next to us, and I could reach out and touch them if I didn’t think I’d fall over if I tried. The tops of the trees all swam by as if it were the waves of a strange, blue ocean.
After a time, Sage finally called out to Basil and the two came to a halt, perched atop the trees, the trunks bending with unnerving creaks and cracks before settling beneath their weight.
“Why are we stopping?” Basil asked, yelling more due to distance than frustration.
“I remembered something,” Sage called, his voice making my ears ring. “We should visit the Pit before we leave.”
Basil stared back at us for a moment before shaking his head. “No.”
“This isn’t something we should be voting on, Basil,” Sage said. “If not for our own sakes, we should at least show the boy here. He probably has no idea of the Pit.”
He was silent a moment, before shrugging, “Sure, but we make it quick. We’ve already wasted too much time as it is.”
Sage called out, “Thank you,” and then before we started going he muttered to me, “Overbearing monkey, ain’t he?”
I tried not to laugh because I felt like I wouldn’t be able to hold onto him, but I did giggle a bit.
“You have anyone like that?” he asked me.
“What, someone overbearing?” Sage nodded to me. “Uh,” I said, thinking. “You.”
Sage replied with a cachinnation that scared the birds away. “You wound me, boy! But I see where you’re coming from.”
I wasn’t sure how to reply to that, but silence made me uncomfortable, so I asked him, “What’s the Pit?”
A smile tugged at his face. “I figured you didn’t know. The Pit was a very important place to travelers leaving Avocado, at least it was when I was younger. I’m not so sure it is anymore, Basil tells me it’s all but forgotten despite its size.”
“Is it large?” I asked, reaffirming my grip. It seemed like he was moving faster and faster, and the trees were becoming wider apart, giving me a severe sense of vertigo. Looking down became a bad idea.
“Yes,” he nodded. “It’s nearly bottomless, and it’s an ile wide in diameter.”
I knew that that was large, but I hadn’t actually seen anything so large in my life up to that point, so there was no way for me to really quantify what he was saying. He realized this and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll see what it’s like soon enough. It’s a religious experience for travelers like us.”
Traveler’s like us, he said.
It was beginning to get more difficult to think of them as mere kidnappers.
♣ ♣ ♣
By the time we made it to the Pit, the sun had nearly set completely, which was still ridiculous due to the amount of distance we covered within that time frame, running across half the country at a full run—or jump, I suppose—within a span of half a day, no breaks. I was exhausted and I wasn’t even doing all the work, I was just holding onto Sage’s back like a fly, but even that was taxing on my shoulders and upper arms especially. Sage and Basil seemed to be doing alright, Basil more so than Sage but that was in no large part due to Sage being bedridden a mere day beforehand and recovering from a stab wound; he could be forgiven for breathing a little heavy from a day like this. And even through my exhaustion, both mental and physical, I could see that I needed to stand tall and take in what I was seeing.
It certainly was a pit.
The ground seemed to just stop, the trees dissipating around the pit like the area was under quarantine, the few trees that were there small and almost sickly looking. There was no grass, there were no rocks, there was only the Pit. I didn’t need to be very close to see down it, due to the size, its area taking up my vision almost entirely without even trying. The ocean’s emerald coastline was far away from where we stood, and it seemed as if the Pit went on for as long to our left and right as the sea did. Sage had said it was nearly bottomless, and though I didn’t get close enough to check, I believed him.
We stood about ten steps away from it, myself wrapped in my cloak in an attempt to warm myself up from the travel over, as the windchill had made my skin go frighteningly cold. Sage stepped closer until he had gotten right on the edge, then he sat with his feet underneath himself, his hands on his knees, the wind blowing his hair all over the place, blowing so hard I thought he might teeter over and fall in.
He exhaled slowly and then, with practiced hands, drew one hand to his face, index finger pointed at his nose, and his other hand was held straight up over his head, palm facing out toward the ocean. I looked over to Basil to see what he was doing, but it seemed he wasn’t going to participate and instead he watched from my position, his eyes darting back every so often to see if we’d been followed. Paranoia was his prayer.
No one came, though. Basil and I stood together in an awkward silence, only the wind sounding its silent call in the background. When Sage got up for us to leave, the sun had set completely and the blues of the foliage darkened to near blackness.
“You take too long,” Basil said, jesting while yawning.
“Yeah, yeah,” Sage said, looking beat. “Tradition is good for you, though. Helps keep the mind clear when things are looking wild. You could use it, you ask me.”
“I didn’t,” Basil scoffed. “Let’s get going right now before they catch up.”
“I don’t see why you’re so concerned,” I said. Both of them stared at me like they’d forgotten I could speak. Smiling, I said, “Look, I’m just saying Sage blasted them pretty hard back there and at this point they’re probably too busy trying to get things under control back at Persea to worry about me.”
Sage sighed and came over to pick me up, and Basil shook his head. “Look,” Basil said, serious for once, “if you were just a prince they probably would give up, and if this was just a simple coup for land then sure they’d stop. But they’re going to chase us until we lose them completely and fall off the face of Longan without a trace.”
Narrowing my eyes, I asked, “What do you mean?”
We jumped then, and I had to shield my eyes and hang on tight to Sage, but he said simply to me, “A coup leads to a war, but there is no army. We’re being attacked by small groups of assassins, nothing so great as an army or anything. The citizens of Persea most likely have no idea that anything has happened.”
The gears turned in my head and I realized that this meant both Basil and Sage believed that my mother was in on what had happened. When I mentioned this to him, he shrugged and said, “That could be the case. But we aren’t sure; it’s entirely possible she could be being held against her will.”
After a few moments, he added, “Don’t worry, you’ll see her again no matter what, right?”
Though it was cryptic, and I felt he meant it as both a good and a bad thing, I nodded and said, “Right.” And while I hung on for dear life to his shoulders, I daydreamed of what I’d say to her, and what I wanted to ask her. No matter what, these daydreams had me hugging her, and Sage’s cloak was hot and wet that night.