2015

I Garden
Kain had it on good authority that when the earth was young there had been no bones, and in their place there was a great lake, salty like sweat and tears. He imagined sinking in that great expanse with water filling his ears and his mouth, and started to cry. His friend Andel said that was what his mother had told him, and her mother before her, and Kain trusted his friend Andel. But their teacher told him not to cry. He said that the sea was what it was. As far as they knew, it had never been a lake, and it didn’t matter if it had ever been one. The sea was a white tangle of towering bones, where the wind whistled constantly through an unending forest of bleached coral thickets like a massive graveyard of ancient megafauna which loomed over the slinking creatures which crawled in its depths - which was how it had been all his life, all his mother’s life, all her mother’s life, and for ages uncounted. Kain liked to dwell on such genealogies.
He didn’t know whether Andel kept believing that the sea had once been a great lake, and that huge fish had swum in it, lending their names to the sea-beasts of today. Kain himself did not. He greatly enjoyed Andel’s stories of his mother. She had made sure to instil in her son, to an extraordinary degree, the principles of kindness, optimism, perseverance and compassion. Her sheer level of success was unknown to both of them at the time of her early death, which happened out of his sight because she had already told him to run away. Andel knew when his mother had been killed, he told Kain over lunch, because he had heard a horrible hungry howl rising over the hill, gurgling into Andel’s ears. It chased him far from sleepy Hilltown, all the way to the doorstep of the Coastguards, who took him in – so at least he was assured in the prospect of growing up to hunt those monsters.
Kain was surprised when Andel told him this story, early on in their friendship. He had an overall impression of untainted innocence, with a childish naivety to his manner that stuck long after he turned twelve and was meant to act grown-up. His teeth twinkled when he grinned, which he did very often, and he was an infuriatingly good sport. He also tended to win any fight he got himself into, but he grinned while doing it, which gave him a village-idiot sort of look. He was always happy.
Raised within the walls of the Garden since he had been found abandoned as a baby, Kain couldn’t quite imagine having a mother and losing her. It seemed somehow rawer than his own scabbed-over yearning, like a wound which would have to bleed out openly through your eyes and your voice just - all the time. But ten-year-old Andel related his initiation into orphanhood quite matter-of-factly.
“Did you see what killed her?” Kain asked after a moment.
“I ran before the monsters got into the village, but it was usually walking sharks and big snakes.”
“Walking sharks are freaky as,” Kain observed.
“Yeah. The teeth are SICK. When I find one I’m gonna cut its legs off.”
“Wicked,” said Kain. The sea’s constant whistling roar ebbed for a moment, so he listened to some birds singing in the apple trees. He wondered if he should tell Andel what he had never told anyone – that the guards had found him out to sea, lying in a clear pool of water set into the mist-wreathed sand. The sea was a secret, dangerous place, he knew, and things that were born in the sea were monsters. He could not tell Andel.
The other problem was that the Coastguard’s Garden was too far from the coast for anyone to hear the sea, except apparently Kain.
A couple of months prior to that, Kain had been taking a beating from a kid called Jeth, who was a lot bigger than him, and said he was a freak because he had made the mistake of mentioning the tide-call he could always hear. While Kain was indeed a freak, who hadn’t ever had many friends, Andel somehow had thought it worthwhile to rescue him. Kain had never spoken that much to him before. He was quite popular and hung around with the later arrivals to the Garden. Kain was neither of those.
“I’m okay,” Kain had snapped, getting to his feet. “Thanks.”
“Hey, no worries.” Andel grinned. “Any time you need, gimme a shout and I’ll come running.”
Kain was not amused. “Go away.”
“Sorry, sorry! I mean it though.” Andel looked at him, sizing him up. Whatever he saw must have been good, because the next thing Kain knew he was part of Andel’s gang, and it wasn’t long before he realised Andel had become his best friend.
As the months passed, he helped to administer Andel’s implacable playground justice and he helped him with his book-work. They avoided the girls, who giggled at Kain and whispered that Andel was immature. They practised swords together, Kain marvelling at his new friend’s wildly inventive forms, and shared what little they had with each other. When they were twelve and it was time for them to leave the Garden and try their luck in the great cold outside world, or pledge to train as Coastguard, they took the oath one after the other. The Commander made a speech which tried to impress on the young apprentices the weight of the choice they were making, the terrible danger, the sacrifice, the hardship – but he knew as well as they all did that this was simply their sorry lot.
They downed their ceremonial cups of saltwater with barely a grimace. Kain swiped the back of his hand over his wet chin. The entire population of the Garden was gathered cheering around the group of new Firsts, and all he could hear was the sea. Andel’s mouth was moving and he tried to make out what he was saying until the tide subsided, but couldn’t, so he simply nodded, and conjured up a knowing smirk.
The Firsts all went out to sit on the lawn in the electric-tasting early dark, and yelled, whooped and chattered amongst themselves. The girls sat together a little way away. “No fucking way!” one was yelling, “were you born in the sea or something? That’s just wrooong.” There was raucous laughter among the boys at that; Andel was laughing. Kain laughed too. Then it turned out that Luquen had smuggled in some beer, but it was taken away soon enough along with firm directions to go to bed immediately. They trooped back to the boy’s dorms but all stayed wide awake whispering.
“We’re gonna be guards,” Jeth kept saying, “we’re really gonna be guards. I’m gonna fucking kill the things that killed my mum and dad. They’re dead.”
There was a general approving murmur. Many had lost their parents to sea-monsters.
“I don’t want revenge. The thing that killed mum’s probably already dead,” Andel said, surprising Kain. “It’s been so many years. And you know…nothing’s gonna bring her back.” Someone had lit a candle and raised it up as he was saying this, which cast a bright little blinking imprint onto Kain’s vision. The shimmying fingertip of light highlighted odd ridges in everyone’s faces and Andel’s cheeks appeared impossibly hollow, strange bright marbles set atop them in pools of shadow. Kain would have preferred total darkness. The candle-wax smelled hot and strange.
“That’s fucking weird, Andel, you’re a weirdo,” said Luquen after a moment. “Who doesn’t want to kill sea monsters? Even your freak best mate Kain wants to kill sea monsters.” Luquen had learned some forbidden words from the older kids and was judiciously spreading their use, and he’d called two-thirds of the group a freak at one time or another. Yet Kain felt panicked, shameful heat rise in his cheeks and belly. He didn’t want to kill sea monsters…
“Of course I want to kill sea monsters,” Andel said, like you’d have to be pretty dim to think he could possibly want to do anything else with his life. He was like that. He dismissed revenge with innocent forgiveness, yet didn’t see the contradiction when talking with warm candour to the other boys about all the walking sharks he was going to amputate. To him, Kain thought, the whole thing was a game, and the dazzling intricate sword-forms he invented – they was just playing.
Kain picked up the traditional sword-forms with confidence, but no matter how he tried, he couldn’t match Andel’s technical brilliance. As they began their real apprenticeship to the Coastguard as Firsts, he worked hard at his books to compensate, and received good results in arithmetic, protocol, natural philosophy, history, theoretical combat studies, basic medicine, literature, and sewing – in short, everything. The Coastguard was steeped in a tradition of education and respect for learning. Too bad dusty old history wouldn’t help them survive in the sea, Andel would say, before skipping class to climb trees in the orchard with the other boys, or try and sneak out to visit Hilltown. Kain did not join him on these expeditions, which did not get him any points with Andel’s other friends. Andel’s other friends got along with him well enough, but he knew they thought he was a bit arrogant, a bit weird, too bookish, too distant.
But in theory classrooms as the years went by Kain felt the same thrill he remembered getting as a small child when Andel had told him that the sea had used to be a giant lake. A weird kinda thrill, Andel said. Weird, I suppose, thought Kain. But it was no less real for being strange. Finding out had things had been, like an eerie shock of recognition from meeting someone you knew long ago…the stuff of fairytales metamorphosed into Historical Fact; white light filtered through the windows; the desks became luminous except where leaf-shadows softly shuddered. Open notebooks gleamed white, faces grew hazy, and the sea-sound quieted until Kain could hear the trees rustling outside, the birds crawling in their branches, dragonflies whirring about, former caterpillars writhing in their cocoons, and the faint clanging of swords, echoing through the grounds of the Garden as young guards practiced, echoing through the days, years, history, long ago when the Sea-witch walked the sea-floor with unharmed feet, soaked red in the sorrowful mud - recited Mistress Brindel the history-lover, inspecting chalk packed under her nails – the Sea-witch, pay attention, there! who laughed like bells chiming, quelled the wind’s singing, calmed the sea’s children, had eyes more merciful and solemn than a martyred king. And will one day come again, we know not why.
After class Kain walked, his mind quiet, his hands in his pockets, his thoughts sighing like little zephyrs on a calm day at sea, through the leaf-scented paths among the white-stone buildings, to the hill overlooking the practice field on which other Thirds were haphazardly dotted. There were Luquen and Kaidrin, Andel with bare feet sparring with Jeth; swords flashed, beat back and forth, cried out in shock at meeting; and the students cried out too, shouts of exertion, of surprise, of terror when one saw a sea-monster in place of one’s friend and forgot one was only practising.
“Come on!” Andel would always say when he was beating you. “C’mon! Ha-ha!” Jeth shook his head, shining with sweat – but he kept on swinging, though Andel moved with terrible quickness, a cocky tilt to his head, a gleaming lightness in his expression, a graceful looseness of sorts in his hard lanky limbs.
“You want a break?” said Kain. “Hey Andel! I finally got out of History. Fight me!”
Kain slapped Jeth on the back and accepted the sword. Andel was panting. “Come on then,” he said with a grin. Kain launched forward, crying out, in perfect First Form. Andel met that with some kind of clunky block which involved holding the foil with two hands, which unfortunately worked – and followed it up with yet more of his invented forms, a few of which Kain hadn’t seen before. He met them with Fourth and a vigorous Oaktree, which went well. Kain was better than most people at understanding what Andel was trying, despite having no clue exactly what crazy moves would be pulled next. All you had to do, he explained over and over, was just watch – watch and think – watch and think and plan - and understand; understand, innately, the signs Andel had just read flitting across your face and stance, and understand what he would do in response to those signs and also prepare for something completely different because he was a nutcase when it came to fencing. In some ways it wasn’t very useful to fight him. They were meant to practice together the forms they were taught because knowing how to fence with a crazy person was not as important to their careers as knowing how to poke a sword at something in general. But Kain got a kick out of it.
Andel spun around with a clang of blunt metal on blunt metal which jarred down Kain’s arm and made his ears sing empty for a moment, blessedly. He fought back in that instant of clarity, fixing his eyes on Andel’s eyes. Fixing his sword on Andel’s sword, against the rising overflow, tasting metal. His heartbeat on his heartbeat. Andel huffed out. Breath on breath. Silent. The noisy tide in Kain’s ears quieted again, stopped. Emptiness. Beat. Beat. Sword on sword. Tongue heavy on the teeth, blood-pulsing. Eyes on eyes; blue like two round holes punched through Andel’s head to reveal the sky behind.
The Sea-witch, Kain thought, disjointed, deep down, clang- clang – clang – the Sea-witch, the Sea-witch, the Sea-witch, the Sea-witch…oh, don’t kill me when you find out what I’ve always been – breath on breath, beat on beat –
The merciless sky seeped into the edges of his vision, implacable blue.
II Sea
The now sixteen-year-old apprentices listened very closely to the briefing. They were to pair off and go out into the sea without supervision for the first time. Testing your sea-legs, Master Luthain called it, because it was not a friendly place, especially in the deeps. Nobody could enter their final year as apprentices without succeeding in the test. To succeed in the test they had to retrieve a single red stone from the place marked by the coordinates given to them.
Andel and Kain looked at each other. “Hey –“ Kain said.
“Wouldn’t want anyone else at my back,” Andel replied.
They drew lots.
“We’re first up,” Andel said with a massive grin, dangling the paper in front of Kain’s face.
Kain was on edge for the entire week before the test. His whole life had been leading up to this. And while he knew that the test had been carefully placed in an area where only small and weak sea monsters were likely to venture, if any, he could not think about the day of the test without a knot of hot blank dread burning in his belly. Andel was no help, at first. He went about sparring practice and so on with perfect cheer, even a thrill of excitement. But as the week wore on, strangely enough, a note of uncertainty seemed to penetrate his enthusiasm, and by the day before the test he seemed able to relate to Kain’s gloominess for once.
“What’s up with you?” Kain asked him.
“What’s up with me? You’re the one who’s been moping around all week. Let’s go again.” Andel gave a halfhearted smile. But Kain easily knocked the sword out of his friend’s hand. They didn’t feel like practising more after that. Both sat back down and fidgeted with their supplies, and the night went by swiftly and sleeplessly.
At dawn, they stepped outside the Garden’s walls. Kain felt the air shiver on his face, his vision swooping down the rough olive-green hills to the sea, as it never could within the Garden, and couldn’t help but smile. Andel was looking over his shoulder towards the town, quiet like the hills.
Together they trudged down the well-worn white clay path which wound towards the sea. Scrubby foliage mantled the sloping dunes on either side. As they walked the wind’s keening howl grew ever louder, until it rose to a screech as they crested the last rise, and the white path before them keeled steeply down to meet the wide brown beach which spread out smoothly like young skin until the first bleached milk teeth of the earth split it open like gums; short little white sticks, gleaming as far as the eye could see. As Kain squinted into the distance he felt as though he might step onto the tip of the first stubby growth, despite the cherry-sized point, and then the next one, and the next until he had walked the sea’s surface to the edge of the world. But he would surely fall. The sea was deep and dark, and its floor sloped down sharply until those who walked its trails could not see the sun or the sky, or hear anything but the mournful wind. Hush, ahhhhhh, hush, the tide sang, drawing close into Kain’s ears and then hissing away – back through the slender waist-height posts of the shallows, the strong saplings after that, then the towering monoliths of impossible height, far out in the deeps - only to whistle up again the next moment, hush, ohhhhh…
The air tasted bone-dry. It smelled of salt.
“This sound is just awful,” Andel exclaimed, startling Kain. ”Did you bring wax?”
“We only block our ears if the wind is too loud to hear voices. Did you ever pay attention in Protocol?”
“Hey, I had to hear your voice before I could judge that! I just can’t stand this sound. It’s getting to me.”
“It’s not that bad. You’ll get used to it.”
Andel squinted out at the horizon.
“It looks completely still, but it’s so noisy…”
“We’d better find the trail,” said Kain. “East along the shore, right?”
“Yeah. Watch the edge.”
They picked their way through the shortest growths, angling towards the deeps but remaining parallel to the dunes. As they were walking, Andel suddenly froze.
“Movement,” he said. “Might be –“
“Doesn’t matter. Come on.”
“It might be a monster.”
“So? Can’t fight it out here in the shallows.” Kain shaded his face with his right hand and gripped Andel’s shoulder with the other. “Sooner we get in there, sooner we can leave.”
Andel was sullenly silent the rest of the way but he was the one who caught sight of the trail, a cleared path among the waist-height growths, and he smacked Kain on the arm and nimbly hopped towards it. He flashed his bright white grin behind him and led the way. He was more cheerful from there on out. They started to sing Guard songs together and their voices were carried away by the tide but it made them feel a little less small. Then, side by side, they talked about whatever was on their mind for a while. Silly things but Kain always liked talking like that. The little things were levelled with the big things when they were deemed worthy enough to talk about, so the big things couldn’t be that bad. But then the wind closed in, blowing stinging dust in their faces and blaring in their ears.
“We’ll be fine,” Kain said to steady himself. “We’re the best of our age.”
“Yeah, of course!” Andel said with a grin like it didn’t bear saying, it was too obvious.
“Well, you’re the best.” Kain shrugged nonchalantly and felt his face burn under his scarf. “Not just in fighting, I mean you’re better than anyone.”
“Oh, I – thanks,” Andel said, sounding surprised this time, his smile widening. “Thanks, man.” He punched Kain on the arm. “You’re not too bad yourself. I know you’ll have my back when the chompers come.”
“Yeah, well…I hope we don’t come across any monsters. I don’t know. I’m not scared, but…“
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you feel like we should just leave them alone?”
“No,” said Andel. “I don’t, really. We’re in here for a reason –“
“But – if you really saw a monster – Luthain didn’t say anything about hunting monsters, he just said to get a rock and get out…”
“Not our fault if they come after us.”
“Not their fault we came in here in the first place. I don’t know, I just don’t want to do the wrong thing.”
Andel didn’t answer – he looked troubled.
“You’re a good guy, Kain,” he said. “You’re a kind person.”
They couldn’t see into the distance and light was scarce. It was like plunging into water with your eyes open. The Garden was meant to train the claustrophobia out of you and this was the test. A dusky pall blurred the edges of objects, they wavered and appeared further away or closer than they were, grey and huge. As they tramped through the dust eddies, which they were protected from by their clothes, scarves and light tough boots – all made of monster skin, burned grey by sunlit afternoons in the Hilltown tannery with children playing around – Kain’s mind seemed to float in tremulous circles with the wind whipping around his ears and rattling in his skull, drifting back to those same afternoons spent reading, leaning against the cool shady white walls of the only home he’d ever known. The bones reached above his head, now, cool white – he touched one, and sparkling dust came off on his fingertip.
As he examined the white flakes he heard Andel make a surprised sound. Kain’s mind was still lost in Hilltown, the memory of those treasured excursions when Andel slapped him on the arm. “Wake up!”
He made ready to fight but nothing jumped out of the shadows. The light filtered cool and gloomy through the tall white branches and flickered bright on Andel’s eyes, Andel’s head twitching this way and that like a cat’s.
“There really is something this time,” he said. “Watch.”
“Okay, okay –“
“Shhh…”
Kain looked where Andel pointed. His gaze locked with a cluster of bright little eyes a few metres away. They all blinked at once. Kain could not blink, only stare, at the little fish rat with its eight gleaming eyes and its whipping bald tail.
“Just a fish rat,” he croaked, all the moisture gone from his mouth. “Andel –“
The sea monster interrupted him - made a noise – or rather, yawped out a rattling shrill cry that set Kain’s very bones shuddering, his stomach churning, his ribcage straining out of his chest and his heart beating to a foreign rhythm, like the strange bells of a distant religion echoing in his breath, in his blood. He clapped his hand to his mouth as a mighty surge of bile threatened and the rat tilted his head – hello - and he looked straight back at it.
He felt Andel’s steady hand on his shoulder. “Hey, hey – Kain?” Andel breathed.
Kain grunted through the hand on his mouth.
“It’s okay. I’m pretty freaked out too –“
“Shut up,” Kain barked, jerking away. “I’m not scared, okay?”
“Quiet!” Andel cried in dismay.
The fish rat had vanished when they turned back to look.
“Kain, I wanted–“ He cut himself off abruptly and looked glum, as far as Kain could see under his grey scarf and hood. “Look, it’s fine, this place is giving me the creeps too.”
“I’m not scared, it was…“ Kain gnawed his lip – “Whatever. We scared it away. Not much of a problem for us, was it? Let’s keep walking and just worry about the angry ones.”
“Well, every monster from here to Capital should know we’re here now.”
“Too bad, I guess.”
“I guess. Maybe it’s good.” Andel started walking. His sword was in his hand. “Three hours to the clearing, then a short walk to the checkpoint. Then we’ll be heading home. C’mon.”
His footsteps thudded damply, then as Kain followed, started to squelch. They were getting into mud territory. Soon they were walking in sync and the wet fall of their boots formed a beat, sounded a tempo that underpinned the howling noise and made it sound a little like grand and awful music that echoed with Kain’s heartbeat which had already surrendered with the call of the fish-rat to the rhythm of the song he’d always known. And perhaps he was imagining it but as they walked, occasionally checking their compasses and maps, ducking under awry bone-growths, weaving past steadily fattening bone-trunks that towered higher and higher over their heads, other footsteps began to sound, out of sync with their own, quietly - heavy with unease. He realised as time dragged on - as the shadows grew greyer, as Andel’s face when he turned to look at Kain grew less and less visible, until he could barely pick out the features from the formless grey of his head, just the glisten of his pale eyes – that there were many, many of those accompanying footfalls, that there were great thudding booms from further out where they couldn’t see, and closer by the scurrying and chittering of numbers unknown. There were monsters closing in. The realisation filled his mind. There were monsters coming; they were coming for him. For him.
“Andel, do you hear –“
“We just have to reach the clearing,” he said firmly.
“No, this is all wrong,” Kain snapped. “We have to go back. There shouldn’t be so many sea monsters.”
“And they definitely shouldn’t be following us.” Andel turned back, turned on Kain his sharp bright gaze and squared his shoulders. “Trust me. Come on.”
“We are not prepared for this. We’re not even Guards yet.”
“I know. We just have to keep going.” He was determined.
“We have to go back,” Kain said.
“We can’t,” Andel said simply.
“We have to go back,” Kain repeated.
“Come with me,” Andel said, then turned back around and kept on going on to the clearing with all the monsters following them and Kain followed him.
“You’re crazy, man. You’re crazy, they’re going to attack us when we get there out in the open. They just want a look at us before they kill us.”
“We have to get the red stone.”
“I don’t give a shit about the stone, we have to go back. They’re going to attack us.”
“If they attack us we’ll defend ourselves. We can take them.”
“Us versus every monster from here to Capital. Sure, we can try.”
“Yes, we can,” Andel said without fear or sorrow or regret.
Kain laughed. He wasn’t sure what was happening anymore.
“We’re just not ready. Not even Master Luthain –“
“It doesn’t matter.” Andel walked at a brisk pace.
“I don’t understand,” Kain begged.
Andel did not reply and still Kain followed and all of a sudden the open sky burst upon them like the top of a well, the top of a deep narrow pool of which they were at the bottom, pale blue and shivering in the wind. Andel stopped abruptly. The dust scurried by. The air moaned and the thudding of feet in the dust hummed closer.
“Okay, we made it to the clearing. Let’s go, let’s just find the stone!”
“No,” said Andel, clear and strong, the Sea-witch, Kain thought, “there’s sea monsters coming and I’m ready for them.”
“Andel –“
“I am ready,” he repeated, looking Kain in the eye, beseeching. “I’m sorry, I am, but I’ve been ready for ages and ages. I’ve always been ready – all my life –“
“I don’t understand,” Kain said, terrified. “I thought you were different from the others, you didn’t want revenge.“
“I don’t.”
“You know you can’t bring your mother back, don’t you?“
“I do.”
“Well why are you going to fucking kill yourself, then?” Kain shouted.
“I’m not going to die,” Andel said.
“Then stay. I’m going to complete the task and get the hell out of here.” Andel wouldn’t really stay. He’d come with him. Kain started walking again.
“Kain,” Andel called out. “Stay here, okay? I’m sorry, I’m - just please stay!”
“I am fucking terrified, Andel! Why the hell should I stay?”
“Because I’m not leaving. I would – I want you to help me fight them.” His blue eyes held a fervid sorrowful shine from the moonlike reflected glimmer of the bones on his gentle wet face.
The air hissed from Kain’s lungs like it had been knocked out of them with a fist. He felt his shoulders slump and his hand go to his sword. He looked away silently but he settled into a fighting stance as the gleam of countless eyes appeared like stars in the half-light and the first walking shark scuttled into the clearing on six legs.
It had seven eyes. There were some missing and there were great shadowy gaps below that where some of its teeth had been knocked out. Kain tensed. The shark, however, stood still and quiet, eyes bright and steady.
He blinked and for a long moment tried to force himself to move, to yell, to stab, but the shark wasn’t moving, the shark wasn’t hurting him, the shark, he knew as he looked in its blank eyes, wasn’t going to hurt him.
“Kain? Kain!” He heard Andel dash towards him. Seized by sudden fear, he swung his sword wide and the shark folded to the earth, its seven eyes remaining open but emptied of their starry light.
The spray of wet fish blood shocked him and pooled at his feet. He couldn’t quite understand what he’d done but he knew without a doubt that contrary to everything he had ever believed he should not have done it. His sin lapped at his boots.
“KAIN!”
He was shoved aside roughly, and there was another fleshy wet sound as he stumbled. Two halves of a sea snake twitched, spurting. When had it arrived? He looked up; Andel’s sword practically vibrated in his hand. His face was lit with an eager, flaming joy. Kain felt himself vibrating, too. He tried to stop, he tried to let go of his sword, but he knew from years of training that he mustn’t. He tried to step out of the acidic blood of the shark but it didn’t happen. There were monsters all around them, now. The wind shrieked, so loud he couldn’t think at all. His shoes sank into the thick mud. Don’t stand in the blood, he remembered a pockmarked lecturer saying – you’ll need your feet to run…
Andel wasn’t running. He was a whirl of lean limbs and steel, in the half-light like a many armed deity bringing vengeance in each hand. Kain attempted again to raise his sword, to go to Andel’s aid. But the blood drying on the blade in violent patterns seemed to curse him, scream with a red iron tongue that he had done what he should not have done, what he’d known was wrong, yet done it anyway…And Kain knew that Andel couldn’t ask this of him. He could not kill another living thing that had done him no harm, a thing that was, he knew, just like him…
He sheathed his sword and, carefully slipping his feet out of the doomed boots, backed into the shadows.
The monsters kept coming, out of the bones, out of the shadows, more and more, ten, twenty, thirty…Kain looked each one of them in the eye as it approached, and as each one approached, Andel cut it down. In his gleaming eyes and face there was no longer bright glee but brutal calm. Awful poise.
Kain started forward. “Come with me! Andel!” he yelled. “We need to leave. Stop fighting!”
Andel kicked a monster and ran it through.
“STOP!” Kain shoved him hard.
“What the - Get off!” Andel was bewildered. Kain grabbed him and he struggled.
An ape-thing came shambling up, clawed fingers outstretched. It was thin as a rake with soft grey mottled hair on its body and black mournful eyes. When it saw him, its face flexed in recognition and it grunted and reached out.
Andel’s face spasmed. “Come on! Get it!”
Kain bashed the ape’s temple with the butt of his sword. The ape thing staggered, grunted and fell.
“That just knocked it out!” Helpless rage.
“They’re just animals, Andel,” Kain said. “Dumb creatures. They weren’t going to hurt us. We’re the ones wearing their skins.”
“They come out of this godforsaken place just to hurt us, damn it, what are we supposed to do?”
“I feel like there’s more to it than that,” Kain wanted to say.
“Why didn’t you help me?” Andel cried.
Kain grabbed for his compass and gripping Andel’s arm, headed towards the place where the red stones were.
“Because you’re doing the wrong thing,” he said.
The blood of countless chompers squelched under his bare feet. How long had he been watching Andel? It seemed there were hundreds of bodies strewn across the grey clearing. Monsters clustered watching them at a safe distance with solemn eyes. The whistling of the wind seemed to pass through the twitching lungs of the newly dead. It hurtled wailing through their ragged bones. It soared in Kain’s breath.
Andel shook himself free. “Let me walk,” he said reproachfully, “you’re doing a terrible job dodging the blood.”
It slopped around Kain’s ankles as he stepped in it, thick and cool. He could smell it. It was like sweat and metal and water. Familiar smells. He wondered if Andel had seen yet, if he’d figured out that the blood wasn’t hurting him. They walked through avenues of curving bones like crescent moons, like ribcages, the only sound the wind. And in the distance, at the apex of reality, mirage glimmered – quiet light on clear water, it seemed…a glitter of seas. The earth grew dry as they walked towards it. It shone less and less as they came closer, appearing to draw the faint light into its black depths. But unless Kain’s eyes were deceiving him it rolled with an undercurrent of red like the glossy black skin of a cherry.
“This is it,” Andel said. Kain didn’t reply.
Red pebbles, black water, between them a tangle of white limbs, shuddering hair, a long, pinched face. There was a naked boy curled sleeping at the bottom of the pool.
“He looks like you,” Andel said in a high voice. “Is this part of the test?”
Kain reached into the pool and grabbed the boy’s arm and tugged. Andel came forward and helped him. The boy’s eyes opened and looked straight at him. They had a mournful colour.
He erupted streaming out of the pool and they dragged him to land. He grunted, shaking the water off his body. Then he looked at Kain and yelped. He looked at Kain’s bare feet, red with sea-blood and fell to the ground, ululating in a language that Kain knew like his breath and his bones.
“Hello,” said Kain to the wailing boy.
“Okay,” Andel said, “okay, I’m sorry, can we – just grab a stone now? And leave? Who is this kid? Is he lost?” His sword was drawn, Kain saw. He drew his own, longing for silence. Be quiet, he thought, just for once, give me some peace…
“Don’t be afraid, Andel,” he said. A dare.
Andel bared his teeth. “Afraid,” he hissed like a cat, eyes dark like dark marbles set in a fiercely lined face, “who’s afraid? I’m not afraid of the sea. Or fighting.”
He looked at the boy. “Or monsters.”
And turned slow, dark eyes on Kain. On Kain’s feet. Red with mud.
“I’m not afraid of you,” he said.
The strange boy was silent. The pool was still and silent. Kain looked up at the distant circle of sky, which was silent. The sun was ever silent. The bones creaked amongst themselves. The world became as still as glass. In that still world Kain slipped into the little pool, causing barely a ripple, swam to the bottom, and retrieved a red pebble. He felt washed clean in that water, cast back to a time before life or memory, a silence.