Authors: Anna Caltabiano
“Anyways, someone has to go,” he continued.
“Then I’m going, too.”
The boy looked up at me for the first time since he blurted out that he was going and I thought he was going to object.
“So be it,” he replied, as he opened the door. “Are you coming?”
I had no idea where the boy was going, but I knew that wherever he went, I would go, too. We rounded multiple corners and walked on many paths, ultimately ending up in front of Gerrard’s
door. The boy didn’t even bother to knock; he just walked right in.
Gerrard and Devonport immediately stood up upon seeing us.
“Good, you’re both here,” the boy said. “I wanted to talk to you two. Please sit down.”
The generals sat at the table, while the boy paced around them, obviously making them feel uncomfortable.
“Nalin just showed me the maps and charts he made,” the boy started. “They’re all nearly done and he needs only a bit more information to complete them.”
“Good, I was wondering when he’d be done,” Gerrard said. “We can send someone to collect the remaining information.” The boy ignored him and continued.
“Instead of sending someone else like last time, I’m going myself.”
Devonport and Gerrard looked aghast.
“Not alone though,” I added. “I’m also going.”
“B ... but,” Devonport stuttered. “What about your duties here? You’re the face of the cause and you’re the leader. You can’t just go.”
“What about our duties?” he asked. “I need a break from them before the war actually starts.”
“And I similarly.” I was quick to chime in.
“The cause doesn’t need us right now. You can function perfectly without us.” Seeing the boy and I were adamant, Devonport went mute.
“Then you two won’t travel alone,” Gerrard chimed in. “We’ll have three guards accompany you.”
“Three?” the boy said. “How will we avoid being conspicuous with three guards trailing alongside us?”
“It’s for your safety,” Devonport argued, a rare agreement with Gerrard.
“It’ll get us killed!” the boy exclaimed. “One guard,” he bargained.
“Two, then,” Gerrard compromised.
“Deal.”
“When do you plan to start the journey?” he asked.
“Tonight.”
The boy’s answer surprised the generals as well as me. I hadn’t expected to leave so soon.
“Can’t you leave tomorrow?” Devonport reasoned.
“We’re leaving tonight.”
The generals looked to me for support.
“Well, you heard him. We’re leaving tonight.”
“Kasia,” Gerrard called out. A girl emerged from the other room.
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
“How are you with combat skills?” he asked. “Particularly one-on-one.”
“Well, I’ve finished my training, sir.”
“Perfect.” Turning to us he said, “Kasia will accompany you on your journey.”
The boy nodded. “Prepare to leave tonight,” he told her.
“We still need one more,” General Devonport mused.
“Elspheth, my assistant, can be the other guard,” I said.
“That will do quite well,” the boy said. “She too has finished her combat training. Why don’t you go tell her to get ready while we find Nalin?”
I nodded.
Upon returning to my room, I found Elspheth sitting in her usual spot by the door.
“Elspheth, we’re going on a trip.”
That erased the scowl on her face, which I had begun to think it permanent. She actually looked pretty without it and I wondered if it would be considered rude if I told her so.
“Where to?” she asked.
“To a place where none of us has gone before,” I said and oddly, she didn’t ask anything more. She simply excused herself to start packing.
Elspheth came back some minutes later. She brought a few belongings tied up in a small piece of Red cloth.
“Is that all you’re going to bring?” I asked.
“It’s all I own,” she said in a matter of fact way and it was all I could do to nod.
Together we went back to Gerrard’s rooms.
Upon entering, the scene before us looked as though no one had moved, but Nalin was there.
“So, these are my explorers,” he said with his usual grin.
“What are you smiling at?” Elspheth growled.
“Good choice in guard,” Gerrard said under his breath. He winked at me and I remembered the first time we met at the former commander’s table.
I wished time could roll back to those days when we weren’t burdened with all the responsibility on our backs. There were people to take care of it for us then, but now we were those
people and we had to take care of the others.
“Well then, we should get going,” the boy announced.
I looked out the window and saw that the Red sun was already starting to set.
We grabbed what little we could bring and packed it all in much the same way as Elspheth had packed her belongings. Our main concern and most of what we actually packed, was food for our
journey. Everyone carried his or her share by somehow attaching it to him or herself. I attached mine to my dagger’s sheath and buckled that around my waist. In a short time, we were all
ready to go.
Since we did not intend to be out exploring for long, our goodbyes were quick. I gave the two generals my blessing to act in my stead, as long as they both agreed on the course of action. Of
course, the people would think that they were acting in the boy’s name. With that, we started our descent down into the real world away from the Trigons and the humans and away from the Red
cause.
C
HAPTER
16
It was an odd thing, being back on solid ground again. I had forgotten the heavy push of gravity upon my shoulders and the opposite push the ground gave me. The earth was much
softer than I had remembered and seemed to welcome us with open arms.
The boy had brought a smaller version of one of the maps Nalin had drawn. He examined it before pointing in the direction we would walk. “We have to head straight in that direction, until
we get past a hilly area. Then we’ll know that we’re there.”
We walked, until it got too dark to see our own feet. Our footsteps became blind and we lost all attachment to our bodies. We stopped for the night in the middle of our tracks and I was so tired
that I don’t even remember falling asleep.
Morning came on the skirts of a Red mist so thick it seemed that the world around us had melted into Red. The mist was neither hot nor cold; it had no state of being. It was just there.
We kept walking forward and at around midday, we finally crept free of the mist and reached the hilly area the boy had mentioned the previous day. We must have been close to The Pure One’s
city, as the Red grass in the area had dulled to a pale pink.
“We should start writing down what we see,” I said. At my words, everyone unpacked the notebooks, which Nalin had given each of us specifically for this purpose, and we
dispersed.
I didn’t know exactly what to write. Not having a clue if any one thing would be helpful to Nalin, I wrote a few words on the sparse hills and the pale grass. I just wrote about whatever
caught my eye.
Eventually, we came together again to eat. We each unwrapped a portion of our food and sat in a loose circle. The guards remained silent throughout, so it was only the boy and I supplying the
conversation.
“It’s nice to get away sometimes,” he said.
“But eventually you’re going to have to go back and face everything you left,” I reminded him.
“That time will come when it comes, but we might as well enjoy this for now.”
Looking behind us, we could no longer see the Red tops of the Ever Forest. It was close to a sense of abandonment. We were away from the only home-like place we knew and, even though we carried
a map, we were effectively lost.
Day after day went by in much the same way, with the guards following us mutely, while the boy and I tried to live as we did before we joined the Red cause. We took notes on everything we
observed, and we took pleasure in the journey we had grown to miss. It might have been the sense of moving that we enjoyed, of leaving something behind for something else.
“We should spread out to log different information,” the boy said one morning. We agreed, distributing ourselves among the flat space of the land.
The mountain range to my right had caught my attention and I was logging it into my notebook when the boy called out to me.
“Where did Elspheth and Kasia go?” he asked. “I thought we would settle down for some lunch.”
I responded that I had no idea, but that I would gladly join him for lunch.
“I’m glad you came,” the boy suddenly said as we ate.
“I’m glad too.”
“It’s just like old times, isn’t it?” He grinned when I agreed.
It seemed like we were picnicking instead of surveying for a war. The thoughts of Red versus White were blown out of our heads by the faint breeze about us. If I could have felt an emotion, I
guess I would have felt happy; whatever that is.
“Well, we should finish up logging here and then keep moving, so we can retire for the night a bit early. I’ll go find Kasia and Elspheth.” The boy dashed off in the opposite
direction.
I took out my notebook and pen, as I tied up the remains of my food in the Red cloth and reattached it to the sheath at my side. Once everything was sorted, I went back to logging.
There was a ledge nearby and below it was a small brook of trickling Red water. I stepped down below the ledge to look at the water. It was light Red in color, not as dark as the Red river.
There didn’t seem to be any life in it. There was something strange about it, but I couldn’t seem to put my finger on what it was at first. Then I realized that the brook had nothing in
it at all. It was devoid of life and everything else except for its waters. There were no pebbles or plants. There wasn’t even any dirt on the bottom. It was just a brook filled with
water.
I was writing this down when I looked up to see the brook’s water discoloring before my very eyes. The Red color was fading into White. My first thought was of the last time this happened.
I knew the White had to be somewhere close. Pushing myself under the ledge to avoid being seen, I huddled as small as I could physically make myself.
Like the last time I had a close encounter with the White, I tried to listen closely to whatever was happening above me. For a while, I couldn’t hear a single thing. Then there were
voices.
“What did you do to them?” The boy’s voice broke out of the silence first.
“We did to them what we’ll soon do to you.” The unfeeling’s voice was unmistakable in its sardonic tone.
I resisted a shiver.
A cry pierced the air, I recognized it instantly the boy’s voice. I instinctively sprang up out of hiding to try to wrestle him out of the unfeeling’s grasp, but I was immediately
knocked down. Hitting my jaw against the ground, I tasted blood in my mouth, but I felt no pain, not even the slightest sting.
I was quick to rise to my feet again, but the sight of the boy stopped me in my tracks.
“Every swing you take, the boy suffers more for it,” the unfeeling next to me sneered.
I was able to see at least five unfeelings. They wore armor of transparent glass that was soundless even when they moved. What they wore underneath was as formless, shapeless, and colorless as
their eyes. They must have come on horseback, as an equal number of White horses stood in the background. The unfeeling before me had the boy’s neck in his grasp. The grip wasn’t tight
and the unfeeling wasn’t choking him, but the boy’s coloring visibly drained out of his body and into the unfeeling’s hand, which was wrapped around his neck.
“What do you want from him?” I asked.
“We were thinking ... maybe his life?” The unfeeling holding the boy let out a deep chuckle. It sounded forced, and each of its fellow creatures echoed the sound.
“I’ll give you my life in exchange for his.” I didn’t know where the voice came from, but it seemed to come from my mouth.
The unfeelings laughed.
“And who are you to offer your life for his?” one of the unfeelings asked.
“The leader of the Red cause.” I don’t know what made me say it, but somehow I knew that was the only way they would take me and leave the boy.
“Well The Pure One would like to see this ...” I heard one of the unfeelings murmur.
The unfeeling that was gripping the boy flung him to the ground and reached for me. He roughly grabbed me by my shoulders and shoved me on the back of a horse behind another unfeeling.
“Don’t you dare try any trickery.”
Just as I managed to gain my balance myself on the horse’s back, we set off at full speed. I assumed we were going to The Pure One’s city, but I had no idea where or how far away it
was, so I tried to make the most of my time while the unfeelings were occupied. Thinking it would only be a hindrance later on, I tossed away the bag containing my food supply. I figured that even
unfeelings had to eat sometime and it wouldn’t do them any good to have me dead now. I also managed to hide my blade under my shirt before the unfeeling in front of me noticed.
The motion of the horse under me was so smooth it was disconcerting. The horse felt like it was barely moving, but the scenery was a blur of White, an absence of color in the mortal world around
us. Everything looked perfect and somehow unreal. Nothing looked transient, as everything was still. I would have called the world around us dead, but it would have had to have been alive first to
deserve that title of tranquility. As we continued farther, the color around us turned paler and paler until it was pure White.
We stopped suddenly and my body pitched forward into the unfeeling before me, who sat as impossibly still as the other unfeelings around me. I looked up to find that we hadn’t stopped just
anywhere, as I had previously thought.
The completely White scenery in front of us was a large wall that went straight up without stopping. There was no way to see around the wall or even the sky above it. It just kept going.
A set of gates in the wall swung open unexpectedly and a clamor of voices rushed out with the air. We rode into what looked like a kind of market place. Unfeelings were selling and buying
strange looking goods at stands. No one paid any heed to us and we rode right past them to the opposite wall, where the unfeelings dismounted and I was helped down from the horse.