2 - Fablemyr

2

Fablemyr

On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell,

A shadowy land has appeared, as they tell;

…The golden clouds curtained the deep where it lay,

And it looked like an Eden, away, far away!

Gerald Griffin

With shock and bewilderment, Justin examined himself.  He was draped in an oiled leather duster, walnut brown.  The rainwater was beading up and sliding off his shoulders.  He felt windstrings hanging around his neck and took off the hat to examine it.  A Stetson?  A real cowboy hat with a band of braided horse hair, which wrapped around the base of the crown.  The band had a silver Concho star on the front.  The hat was the same walnut brown as his duster.

                Underneath he was wearing a white tombstone shirt with a tan vest and sandy frontier canvas pants.  Around his waist was a tough cowhide belt, lined with silver studs, top and bottom.  The buckle was a large silver oval with a white longhorn atop a deep brown leather.  The belt had three silver crosses, one on each side and one center of the back.

                Looking at his feet, he saw oiled leather boots, silver plated with shiny spurs – sharp and glinting.  The cuffs of his duster were bracers, silver studded with a silver cross on each.  Fingerless gloves adorned his hands.

What in God’s green earth was going on?  He replaced his hat without thinking and looked back over his shoulder.  Behind him, a sheer cliff face rose up in jagged outcroppings.  Up and up it went, into the sky, up and away towards misty mountaintops far above.  He was on the edge of some kind of valley.  The snow-capped mountains encircled the forest like a jagged bowl.  Rain continued to pelt off the brim of his hat. 

“That tree branch must’ve hit me harder than I thought,” he murmured. 

One thing was for sure, this was not East Lansing.  This wasn’t even Michigan.  Michigan had no mountains.  So if he wasn’t where he should be, the only logical explanation was that he was dreaming.  But… he could smell peppermint, feel the cold wind, hear the rainwater pattering off the rocks and muddy trail.  He could see clear as day the valley before him.  So he couldn’t be asleep.  He had to be hallucinating.

That was it.  He had come from a party and someone must’ve put something in the beer, or at least one of his drinks.  Yeah, that was it.  Something in his drink.  Otherwise this craziness might frighten him.  But he wasn’t scared at all. A sure sign of a hallucination… or that he was still drunk.

As he approached the foot of the sludgy trail, thunder crashed above, echoing across the gloomy sky.  A large hulking oak tree, gnarled and twisted, rose menacingly before him.  Despite its grand size, the tree looked sickly.  It hovered before him like a diseased monstrosity, on the verge of shivering to life and seizing him with knotted limbs.  He stayed back a few paces, eyeing it warily.   Nailed to the trunk, a weatherworn sign read:

North Lies Dreyton

               

A single word was smeared across the sign in dark stains, which looked disturbingly like dried blood.  It read:

Cursed

His eyes fell from the sign to the trail that disappeared into the shadowed wood.  Alright, if he was hallucinating, this was a pretty convincing hallucination.  He had no intention of going back to the party right now anyway, so he might as well entertain his delusional mind by wandering around for awhile.  Who knew what other insanity might await him?  He cast one last glance at the darkening sky, squinting under the brim of his hat and started forward.

               

                Pale white elms spiraled up like pillars of mother nature.  Elms did not grow this way, nor this color – but the bark and the leaves were without a doubt, elm.  So curved and looped were some of the trunks that he could see clean through some of them, especially the ones that looked like pallid tendrils twisting up out of the earth.  The pallid trees pulsed with soft light, setting the whole forest aglow.  Nestled between the elms were odd looking silver maples, which glistened and sparkled as if covered in dew.  The smell of peppermint was strong now.  Moss and lichen of varying shades of green covered the tree trunks and large rocks embedded in the earth, brightened by the glow of the white elms.  This place was amazing!  Absolutely surreal.  Beyond the white elms and silver maples, thick broad oaks towered like dark wooden sentries, massive and gnarled, ancient watchers of an ancient place.

                The winding path wove its way through the majestic dreamscape, hidden occasionally by lodged boulders and tall brush.  He rubbed his throbbing temples groggily as he walked.  Hallucination or not, his headache was real enough.  The heavy scent of mint, the thick mist and the glittering trees created an environment that dazzled and disoriented.  His balance was off.  He felt light-headed and winced with each throb in his head.  He stopped to rest for a minute and noticed one of the white elms had a hollow in its trunk. 

A childhood memory struck him of just such a tree.  When he was a young boy, he had played a computer game called The Black Cauldron.  In the game, there had been a tree with a hollow.  Inside the hollow was an item.  He couldn’t remember what.  Before he even realized what he was doing, he walked over and stuck his hand in it.  He fished around for a moment but only felt dry leaves and dirt.  What a dumb thing to do.  He pulled his hand out and his fingertips brushed something smooth and cold.  He eyed them to see if they were wet, but they were not.  Mildly confused, he reached back in, dug near the entrance and removed the object, examining it in the glow of the trees.

                It was a key.  A dark bronze key.  The end was ornately designed with circular wiring, forming perfect patterns.  It looked Celtic, oddly enough.  He pinched it between his fingers for a moment then he pocketed it.  Why not?  It obviously opened something, perhaps even a thing nearby.

                He became aware of  the sound of rushing water – a faint roar.  He now realized how thirsty he was – not that he’d drink from a pond, but maybe a stream if it was clear.  Clear water meant it was probably okay to drink, right?  His alcohol-dulled mind didn’t seem to think anything was wrong with putting it to the test.  He quickened his pace.

He passed a large boulder that jutted up like a giant spearhead, covered in evergreen moss, and stopped to gaze through the trees.  He could see the edge of a small lake, calm and clear.  The surface of the water sparkled under the stars like a shimmering blanket of diamonds.  A circle of taller white elms ran along the edge of the lake, like columns of marble.  A thin set of waterfalls dashed down from a slick set of smooth stepped cliffs, spilling down into the lake.

His eyes moved to a figure that sat at the lake’s edge.  He stepped forward, squinting in the pale moonlight.  It was a girl, with long dark hair.  Her head was in her hands, her shoulders sagged and shaking.  She was weeping.  Something about the scene made the hairs on the back of his neck rise, his heart pounding in his chest.  But slowly, the longer he listened to the weeping, the more relaxed he became.  He started to wonder if the hallucination was wearing off and he had now found someone, like himself, who had run here to escape her sorrow.

As he approached, nervous and wary, he could hear her sniffling.  Her voice was fair and echoed strangely, as if they were inside a cavern.  That’s weird, he thought.  Her hair was impossibly long, spilling down all around her, like a draped sheet of night pooling around her knees.  Her skin was white as the moon and her face hidden in her small hands.  Still she wept, seemingly unaware of his presence.

Lingering behind the last of the trees on the edge of a lake, one hand resting on a boulder, he moved to step forward.

“Are ya cracked?!”

His heart launched into his throat.  He jumped backwards, nearly choking.  Standing on the boulder where his hand had just been, a tiny figure stood with arms crossed and head cocked - six inches tall, at best.

Justin stared with an open mouth.

“Ugh,” the little man uttered with disgust, “Daft - by the look ‘o ya.”

The miniature figure was clothed in bits of dry leaf.  His skin was muddy brown and a shock of orange hair was atop his head, pierced by two little goat horns.  Disproportionately big round ginger eyes narrowed with suspicion.

Justin was completely at a loss for words.  What did he say to a… um, whatever this thing was? 

“It’s a trap,” the little man said matter-of-factly.  “Meant for muppets like you.”  He stabbed a finger at Justin.  “Even brownies do not go near her.”

Brownies?  Justin blinked stupidly.  This guy didn’t look like the little dudes from the movie Willow.   

The brownie snorted, glaring at him with indignant disbelief.  “Ya haven’t got a clue where ya are, do ya?”

Justin felt the overwhelming urge to unload his current dilemma to this newcomer, but then realized he was talking to a six inch faerie.  So instead, he muttered, “No.”

The brownie shook his head and sighed.  “This is Fablemyr Forest, lad, oldest wood in Athyria.  Ya’ll be calling me Twig.  Really we aren’t supposed to talk to the likes of ya - I’ll have the worst of an argument with Eolande just for lettin’ ya see me.  But many’s the fool that wandered witlessly to her aid.”  He gazed sourly at the weeping woman.  “Upon my word, you’ll get the price ‘o yer trouble for seeking to help that one… spiteful wench.”

Justin eyed the weeping girl who seemed to be trying to compose herself.  “She doesn’t look spiteful.”

“Well why don’t ya saunter over there and find out, then?” Twig snapped, stomping his foot.

“Fine,” Justin retorted, “I will,” and he started to walk.

“No, ya moron!  That was a rhetorical question!”  The brownie scowled impatiently.  “Are ya trying to meet yer end tonight?”

Justin looked back to the weeping girl, but now there was no one there. The air about the lake was quiet once more.  “Hey - she’s gone!”

Twig looked around warily.  “Small drop ‘o comfort.  She’s a frightful spirit, she is.  Ya have to use yer ears.  It’s the only thing that gives her away.”  He tapped his pointed brown ear.

Justin thought for a moment.  “The echo?”

Twig’s ginger eyes widened.  “Yer more clever than ya look.”  Then he frowned.  “But that’s not sayin’ much.  Ya look like a muppet.”  He turned and pointed back towards the trail.  “Don’t go wandering off the foot path.  Yer more than likely to get yerself killed.  There’s goblins about.”

Justin laughed.  “Are there lions and tigers, too?”

Twig snorted.  “Idiot.  I’d like to watch ya laugh when a tree wyrm wraps its coils about ya and squeezes the guts out of yer skin, or stumble over a patch of Gortha grass and hear ya shriek as it devours ya.  But ‘o course, we wouldn’t want ya dying before ya do what yer meant to do.”

Justin examined the brownie curiously.  “What do you mean meant to do?”

Twig waved his little hands impatiently.  “Akralon only brings people from yer world when they are meant to do something.”

“Akralon?”

Twig spread out his arms to indicate the land around him.  “This world.”

“I thought you called it Athyria.”  Justin was surprised he even remembered that.

“Athyria is the realm, what ya might call a country.  Akralon is the world.”  Twig was tapping his dirt-caked foot with growing impatience.

Justin’s head hadn’t ceased throbbing and he found he wasn’t feeling very patient either.  “How do I get out of here?”

The brownie grimaced.  “I know what’s running through yer mind.  Yer not imagining me.  Ya aren’t dreaming, neither.”

Caught off guard, Justin eyed the brownie in bafflement.  He could think of nothing to say.  Then he glanced at his oiled-leather cuff, water beads still clinging to it.  “If this place is real – why am I wearing these clothes?”

“The world decides that,” Twig said matter-of-factly.  “Ya aren’t the first, ya know.  They’ve been coming from yer world for centuries.  Most of ‘em think they’re piss drunk or completely cracked.  I wouldn’t be bothered to care, but… there’s something about ya, stranger.”

“The name’s-” he started.

“Never use yer real name, moron!”  Twig snapped.  “Ya must take a new name – an Akralon name.” 

Examining himself again, a little more studiously this time, Justin wasn’t sure which was more ridiculous, the fact that he was wearing cowboy clothes and thinking of an alias, or that he was standing in a sparkling forest talking to a faerie.  He decided both were equally ridiculous.  Then he decided he’d always liked that Clint Eastwood movie, High Plains Drifter.  So, without much conviction, he uttered, “Just call me Drifter.”

“Quite suitable,” Twig nodded with satisfaction, “Considering yer wandering round witlessly.”

Justin’s swayed has his head spun uncontrollably.  Despite his intense dizziness, he somehow knew, deep in his gut, he wasn’t dreaming.  Everything was too real.  He could feel the cold misty air on his skin, the dampness of the rain, the rumble of distant thunder in his bones.  He could smell the peppermint in the air, hear the crashing waterfalls.  Also, nobody ever questioned reality in a dream, no matter how insane or impossible the scenario, you just  blindly accepted it.  If you were walking down a street and a pod of giant purple alien whales swam in front of you, you simply waited for them to pass before continuing on.

He turned back to the brownie, but now he too was gone.  Justin was alone again.  He looked at the lake, watching it and feeling uncomfortable in the eerie silence.  Then he returned his gaze to the muddy path.  He exhaled indecisively. 

If this wasn’t a hallucination, then how the hell did he get back home?  Maybe there were other people, like the brownie said, from the real world.  Maybe he could ask one of them.

Trudging reluctantly back to the path, he sullenly followed as it wove its way through the shadowy forest, as if directing him deeper and deeper into a dream.  He tried not to think about the fact that if he was lost, he had virtually no survival skills.  He grew up in the city.  He’d probably starve if he didn’t find someone or someplace soon.  He also tried not to think what kind of wild animals might be roaming the woods at night.  Michigan had no dangerous animals, save perhaps some snakes that bit.  The forests were mostly full of deer.  Who knew what lurked in the trees in this place...

A brook wound down from the high ground to his right, dashing over flat stones that jutted out like steps.  The forest floor leveled to his left and the waters swam quietly on their way.  Across the stream he could see where the path started up again.

                The occasional gust of wind would set the high branches moving, offering glimpses of the night sky.  With a weary sigh, he stepped forward and plunged his leather boots into the brook.  The icy waters spilled over the brims, dousing his feet and chilling his toes.  Damn, he shivered.  This water is friggin cold!  He heard his own teeth chattering as he waded across.

                On the other side he found a tall white elm where the ground was fairly dry.  There he knelt and removed his boots, emptying out the chill water.  As he tugged them back on, he caught the faint scent of smoke. There must be a town or something close by.

                The mucky path narrowed to a trickle, making it difficult to find at times.  When the land began to slope upward, he caught glimpse of a flickering light to his left.  Half-turning, he peered through the trees.  The light was golden and was reflecting off the trees and rocks, brighter now, dimmer now. 

When he turned to look back down the path, the pale-faced girl was standing ten feet in front of him.

He froze, everything but his heart, which pounded deafeningly in his ears.  Damn she was creepy!  Her eyes were white and stared straight ahead, as if unaware of her surroundings.  Dark oily tears stained her cheeks like ink.  He couldn’t move a muscle, not daring to rouse the statue-still figure, gowned in white.  He was even afraid to exhale, lest it draw her attention. 

He could see now that she was too pale.  Her skin had a bluish tone and her hair, though long and dark, wasn’t silky but soaking wet.  There was a puddle forming around her pale feet.  Oh god, he thought, is she...

Her head snapped up and she screamed so loudly that his eardrums felt like they would burst.  He clamped his hands over his ears and staggered.  Translucent veins bulged in her throat as her rotten-toothed mouth reared open further than what should be possible.  Her eyes were wide and white, devoid of pupils.

The shriek intensified so greatly, his hands doing nothing to soften the painful pressure growing in his skull, that his vision blurred and shook like he was suffering a personal earthquake.  He nearly passed out, staggering a few paces.  The movement renewed his vigor and with every last ounce of strength, he ran as fast as his legs would carry him, straight into the forest.

He ran until he could hear nothing but silence.  Then he ran some more.  His nose was bleeding and he thought maybe his ears were too, but it was too dark to tell.  He only knew that the world was spinning and swaying, like when a person spins themselves around repeatedly and then tries to walk straight.

He staggered from tree to tree until the ghostly tone ringing in his ears began to fade and he could breathe easier.  The flickering light he had originally seen from the path was much brighter now.  He hadn’t noticed it while he was fleeing for his life, but he hadn’t really been focusing on anything other than not dying, either. 

Unsure what else to do, and most certainly lost beyond hope, Justin decided that following the flickering light was pretty much the only thing to do at this point.   He found that he had walked an impossibly long distance without seeing any kind of source.  It always looked as if it were shining just ahead, but when he got there, there were only more trees and boulders.  He followed it still, determined that he would figure this out.  He had no idea how far he had gone, or in what direction, but eventually he found himself standing between two marble columns, one broken halfway up.  Ivy crawled up and around both.  Through the columns he could see what appeared to be some kind of ruins.  The area was in a small clearing.  Along the circular edges, the columns rose to different lengths.  Most were broken low near the base, but a couple rose to their full height of ten feet.  Inside the circle, marble littered the earth.  There were shattered archways, broken pillars,  crumbled and overgrown walls.  Near the center, a dried up fountain sat alone, with a unicorn rearing up on its hind legs.  Its horn pointed straight to the night sky. 

The tall white elms around the ruins made a patchwork domed ceiling, allowing many slanting rays of silvery moonlight to dapple the ruined temple.  He guessed it was a temple, from the way the columns appeared, but really he had no idea.  Behind the unicorn was a another statue.

The cold stone gleamed under the starlight.  The figure was garbed in flowing robes, intricately designed bracelets hung from his wrists.  A spire-like crown adorned his head.  Long hair spilled over his shoulders and sharp ears rose up to the top of his crown.  His hands clutched a great sword, the hilt at his chest and the tip of the blade at his feet.  Two crescent shapes, shining like silver, adorned both ends of the handle, forming the pummel and the hand-guard, a design Justin recognized as Celtic.  The blade itself was a golden, translucent crystal.  Even in the moonlight, the golden crystal shimmered with yellow light - like the reflection of water on a cavern ceiling.  He was mesmerized.  Clearly, this sword was not marble like the rest of the statue.  One thing was certain, the amber blade was the source of the glimmering light flashing in the trees.  The light bent and slithered over the surface like golden syrup.  Even still, it made no sense that the light would bounce off the trees and reflect all the way to the path where he’d seen it.

At the base, where the statue’s pointed boots were planted, there was a slab of marble with writing engraved on it.  The language was unknown to him, but the letters flowed like liquid, spilling across the stone in perfect dips and swirls.   It read:

A findias tucadh claidhim nuadad.

Ni thernadh nech uadha.

O dobetha as a intig bodha.

Ni gebtha fris.

                What it meant he could only guess at.  Perhaps it was a poem about the statue.  Or maybe a riddle to win the sword?  It obviously had some importance or no one would’ve bothered to carve it there in the first place. 

The drumming of running footsteps and rustling brush sounded nearby, rousing him from his stupor.  The forest seemed to distort the sounds, making it impossible to tell which direction it was coming from.  He tensed, not knowing what to expect, glancing about and wondering if he shouldn’t find a safe hiding spot.  But before he knew what was happening, someone exploded from the brush and crashed into him.