He stopped abruptly when a thundering gunshot
rang out from the barricade, stood wavering when a second rang out
a brief second later. The youths, both uncertain and nervous, had
pulled the triggers. They had shot at him.
Dan’r slowly fell to his knees, his face
blanching as he patted nervously at his chest, searching for a
hole, for blood. But the youths had missed him. He would have
laughed, if his throat had not been too parched to do so.
The world was silent as he sat back hard on
his legs and stared, unseeing, at the village.
A minute later, the villagers started
whispering, their hushed voices not reaching Dan’r's ears, and the
youth at the barricade reloaded, but no-one left the safety of
their barricade to check on him. They simply watched him as he sat,
unmoving and unseeing, in front of their hamlet.
IV
‘That was close.’ A voice said to him as he
knelt motionless in front of the villagers’ barricade. ‘Shouldn’t
you do something? Get up, shoot fire at them. You can do magic,
right?’ The voice was taunting, haunting, it chilled Dan’r to the
bones, and held him there, motionless. It was his wife. In every
way, every tone, every variety of inflection, it was his wife,
talking to him in his head.
‘Well, of course I’m talking to you in your
head, where else would I talk to you from?’ the voice answered his
thoughts. No, his wife answered him. But she couldn’t, she was
dead. This was wrong.
‘Well yes, I am dead. You killed me,
remember?’ And he did remember. He remembered pushing her off the
boat and into the raging ocean below before he too jumped in and
ran away from everything important to him, from everything he had
ever known.
His mouth moved, and Dan’r talked to himself
as he knelt, still in the same spot. Why was his wife talking to
him? What was he supposed to do now?
‘Well obviously you’re supposed to do as
you’re told. Now get up, and get moving’ his wife said, and he
could imagine her standing beside him, looking down, with one hand
planted on each hip in mock anger. No, he couldn’t imagine her, he
could see her. She was there.
‘Of course I’m here, now get up’ she said,
grabbing his arm, and Dan’r stood.
***
Dan’r didn’t notice the hamlet at all as they
walked around it in a wide circle, arm in arm.
They walked on in silence for a while, until
they were out of the sight of the village, then his wife turned her
head to him. ‘Why did you push me over?’ she asked, her every
feature as perfect as he remembered every night. She was still
wearing her white dress, damp from the ocean spray.
‘I…I don’t…I don’t think I did’ Dan’r
stammered, and his wife turned angry.
‘Of course you did, don’t try to forget. You
killed me. Why? Why don’t you remember?’
‘I…I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t have. I’m
sorry’
‘Sorry isn’t good enough. Turn right up
here.’ His wife said, pointing an officious, wet arm at a fork in
the road. Dan’r complied.
Dan’r walked, and his wife nattered away
aimlessly. She talked about the friends she had when they lived in
Alta, as if they were still there., as if she were catching him up
on stories he had missed. She talked about her father, about how
beautiful Dan’r’s art was, about how she had been so happy to be
married. She just talked. She never really said anything, but
somehow she seemed to fill every sentence with the pain she felt
that Dan’r had killed her. Even with the guilt that came from her
accusing tone, Dan’r was more than happy to just listen to her.
‘I do not natter on,’ she said, in response
to his thoughts, ‘why would you say such a mean thing?’
‘Because…because you’re not real. I never
killed you.’
‘Yes you did, I ran to you, and you pushed me
overboard.’
Dan’r remembered it. He saw it in his head.
He saw the tears in her eyes as she ran to him, and how the two of
them together managed to stay on the ship, avoid getting blown over
by the wave. He remembered running with her towards the open door
to their cabin, he remembered grabbing her wet hair, twisting and
heaving, and throwing her overboard, he remembered her scream, and
the pain in her face as he saw her fly overboard and disappear in
the water. He remembered how he ran to the other side of the boat
and jumped off, and swam into the distance, and how he woke up, on
a new island, free of all the constraints of Arts, free of his
wife, just free.
He remembered it all, and she smiled when she
looked at him, like it was ok.
‘No…no, I never killed you.’ He said it, and
he was sure. He remembered his dream every night. He remembered
missing her, loving her, wanting her more than anything else.
His wife shimmered and disappeared, and Dan’r
was alone on the road again, alone with the voice in his head.
‘You’re right.’ Dan’r’s voice sounded to
himself. ‘Not bad. I almost tricked you, but you saw through it.
I’m impressed.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Me? I want what you want. I want to rule
everyone, kill everything. Why won’t you help me?’
‘I won’t do that, I can’t. Never.’
‘It’s causing you more problems than you care
to admit. You’re too nice. The church, those thugs, those
villagers. Everything would be better if you just killed them all.
Don’t pretend you don’t have the power to. You know you can. You
know you want to.’
‘Is that your answer to everything?’
‘No, it’s your answer to everything. I am
you.’
‘No you’re not’ Dan’r yelled, and he covered
his ears as he walked. It didn’t shut out the voice, her voice, but
he kept walking.
‘Why do you keep arguing with yourself? Are
you a man?’ Dan’r’s voice asked, even though it knew the
answer.
‘I am a man, and you are nothing but a voice
in my head!’ Dan’r yelled again, and just as before, only the
clouds were there to hear him.
‘Well then step up and fix yourself, or I
will fix you for you, you moronic inbred bottom feeder. Stop
pretending to be a man and be one. What, not drunk enough yet?’
Dan’r yelled at himself again.
‘Stop talking to me STOP TALKING TO ME! I
don’t want to hear you. You’re wrong. Go away.’ This was
progressing poorly, he knew. He was arguing with himself, yelling
at himself. Hallucinations, jaundiced skin, dizziness; he was
dying. He wondered how much longer he could last.
‘Of course you’re dying, what did you expect
after twenty years of heavy drinking? To be an acrobat? A Zeisha
dancer? Did you expect to be handsome and strong and sane? Because
you’re not. You are fat, old, and useless.’
His voice was getting the best of him, he
knew. He wasn’t sure why he was letting this happen, why he was
letting the voice in his head win. Then again, right then, Dan’r
wasn’t entirely sure which voice was his in the first place.. Maybe
he was getting the better of himself again.
‘This is entirely your fault’ He said
desultorily. He was losing the battle. He wouldn’t lose this
battle.
‘How is this my fault?’ the voice asked, and
Dan’r wondered himself. ‘Look, you set this up for yourself. You
came to me, talked to me, looked for me, so I came to you. I’ve
done everything you want me to do. Now stop complaining, and be
yourself.
‘What more do you want?
‘Why do you keep asking me questions? Why not
try to answer them yourself?’
‘Look at me, I can’t answer anything for
anyone.’
‘Is it because you can’t, or you haven’t
tried?’
‘What’s with you. A minute ago you were
trying to get me killed’
‘A minute ago you wanted to be killed’
‘What do I want now?
I don’t know, do you?
You’re pretty much the only person that can
know what you want. Why don’t you go get it?
Because it’s hard. I’ve already lost
everything I love. I can’t afford to lose again.
Why can’t you? Why is losing so scary?
Shouldn’t you be more scared of not trying in the first place?
Stop preaching. I just…I don’t want to lose.
I lost her once. I don’t want to lose anyone else.
Then don’t.’
Dan’r had no idea how long he walked, how
long his conversation with himself lasted. He didn’t even really
know who won. He guessed that he had to have won, since it was a
fight with himself. But that was getting too philosophical for the
moment. He just knew it was over, for the time being at least. The
voice wasn’t talking to him anymore. The jaundice, the dizziness,
they remained. He was sweating, and he could feel his heart
skipping and adding beats, feeling like something was trying to
kick its way out of his chest each time, but at least there was
only one voice in his head.
But his head…his head HURT, more than it had
hurt in longer than he could remember. His hands were still
shaking. But his thoughts were strangely, blessedly, clear. He was
still walking. He had been walking the entire time, somehow. He
tried to gauge the hour, but all he saw in the sky around him was
smoke, and clouds. The clouds were rolling in, circling around a
cone of smoke. In his newfound clarity, Dan’r wondered and knew at
the same time what the smoke meant. Despite his headache, despite
the shaking in his limbs, he set a harsher pace. There was a
village down there, burning. He had to help it. He would still die,
and likely very soon now that his hallucinations were gone. But he
would help them first.
V
Dan’r was still several hours out from the
village, no more than a smoking dot in the distance, surrounded as
everything was by hills and fields, when his chest clenched. He had
been walking fine for hours, through headaches and shaking that
only seemed to worsen, but the chest pain was something else. He
sat down on the edge of the road to breathe as his heart skipped
its beats. He tried to beat on his chest, he tried breathing
deeply, but his heart simply wouldn’t work. He felt everything in
his chest get tight as he listened to the rhythm of his heart
echoing through his head like the largest drum in the world.
Beat.
Beat.
Beat beat.
Silence.
Beat beat beat
Silence
Beat.
He lay down and stared at the steadily
darkening sky above him as his fist clenched hard over his chest.
He was lying there in the dirt, sweating and trying to decide if
the feeling in his heart was pain when the convulsions hit.
As Dan’r lay there, unable to control his
body, his limbs and head flailing in the dry dirt road, he wondered
if this was the end. Wondering if he would die of a fit on a dirt
road, if his life would end so pitifully. When the fit ended, he
rolled over onto his side and curled in a ball, coughing at the
tears that rolled down his eyes. He wished he wouldn’t die alone,
so far from home.
Even if he stood, and got to the village,
what could he do? He had lost his cloak and his supplies, back when
he was shot at. What was he supposed to do? He was powerless.
Somehow though, Dan’r stood. Something about
the conversation with himself made him stand. Nothing had changed.
His hands still shook, his head still ached. Somehow in the course
of his fit he had bruised his left elbow, and reopened the cut on
his right cheek. He bled again as he started to walk once more.
Ten minutes later he could see rain. Thirty
minutes later, he was in it, and it drenched him completely. But it
also washed away weeks of dirt and grime. And somehow it seemed
symbolic as well. Dan’r almost felt like the rain was washing away
years of failed life, of making the wrong choices. He thought he
could hear music, faint and thin through the downpour. But it
couldn’t be, it was only rain.
He thought it might have been late afternoon
when he finally made it to the village, when he finally stepped
onto its cobblestone streets and started to make his way between
its burnt and broken buildings. There had been a barricade at the
entrance to this village, just as in the last one, but this one had
been moved aside, the guards still there, lying in the road with
their throats slit. Their deaths would have been silent.
He started noticing bodies all over. It
looked as if all, or nearly all, of the town had been slaughtered.
But as Dan’r walked slowly through the streets, as he blinked the
cold rain from his eyes, as the haunting notes of a dirge blew
through the wind over the town, carrying the rain, Dan’r saw that
much that had occurred was intentional.
Not just the violence had been intentional,
it almost always was, but that the horrible nature of it had been
on purpose, not just an afterthought. Many of the villagers had
died where they stood. Silently. But then Dan’r started noticing
posed bodies. One naked woman, her clothing cut away and her body
placed as if she had been raped then killed, yet she’d been dead
long before her clothing was cut away; the deep cuts on her arms
and stomach had not bled.
It was difficult. Dan’r fought with his
headache, distracted. He fought with the rain, blinking it out of
his eyes while it tried to wash away any evidence. But it was still
there. Days ago, Dan’r would never have found it, he would have
assumed bandits had gone overboard. But his mind was clear. This
wasn’t bandits. This was planned, deliberate, designed. It was
wrong.
Only then did Dan’r start noticing the music.
The haunting melody, the black dirge that floated through the town,
giving rest to all its people. They would have no funeral but the
song that floated over them, and Dan’r couldn’t help but feel that
it was right. There was something about the song, something about
the way the notes carried meaning, almost carried life.
He closed his eyes and listened, just
listened to the song in the rain, and he could see them in his
mind. He could see the people of the village, could see how they
would have been alive. They went about their day, shining in the
light, happy and good, always. He felt it, and he knew this was no
hallucination, no addled alcohol-brought dream. The song, the music
that drifted over the town made it so.