The Land's Whisper (6 page)

Darse nodded. He returned and tenderly
tucked the map back into its box. The folds of it caressed his
fingers familiarly, and he felt another wave of excitement. The man
paused; it had been so long since he had breathed the anticipation
for Massada. It almost made him feel young again. He smiled at
himself derisively before turning to his friend.

“But, Massada?” Brenol’s eyes were wide in
bewilderment. “
You
? And all these stories…”

“History,” Darse replied.

“But the people. Do they speak a different
language? Are they different?”

“They speak like us in most ways, at least
that is what da always said.”

“Ok, tell me again.”

Darse laughed despite himself. He
straightened his frame and peered at the boy. “What do you want to
know?”

“Everything,” Brenol breathed in wonder.
“What do you mean calling you
back?
”

~

The night wore on, and Darse stoked the
flames to fight the crippling chill. He showed Brenol the few
artifacts he had received from his father, as well as the
invitation from the morning, yet nothing could entice him to reveal
his dream and the eerie, beckoning voice of Veronia. He knew Brenol
must not have any excuse to come with him, regardless of whether
the dream contained any truth.

As Darse pondered this quietly, the boy
interrupted his thoughts. His voice was strained and somber.
“Darse…when are you leaving?” Brenol’s jade eyes refused to leave
the floor.

“Morning after next. I will lock the place
up, but you can use it whenever you like. It is yours unless I
return.”

Unless.
The word drained the pink
from the youth’s face.

Brenol clenched his jaw—whether consciously
or not—and spoke again to the floorboards, “Can I…will you show me
the portal?”

Guilt girded Darse like a tight belt, and he
fought to find an excuse, but there was none he could form. Slowly,
he nodded, meeting Brenol’s eyes. In them, Darse perceived much
conflict and pain, and it racked him with doubt.

What am I doing? I think I can leave
him?

He stood, and before making any move to
direct the boy, he pulled him into a tight embrace. Brenol was
stiff in his burly arms, but Darse did not care. He willed the
moment to memory, as if he might somehow be able to inhale its
fragrance when he most needed it later, and released the youth
reluctantly. Brenol said nothing and followed the man with white
fists balled at his sides.

Darse again removed both table and rug.
Brenol watched with wide eyes; the most ordinary items in this
familiar home were transforming to the wondrous. He rarely knew
moments of speechlessness, but this night was filled with an
unending wash of them.

Darse knelt upon his haunches after removing
the silver key from his pocket. He glanced up to Brenol, whose face
was pinched in hungry eagerness, before turning it in the lock with
several melodious clicks. He lifted the grainy door up—just a span
of several digits—and peered down into the darkness cautiously.

“No one,” the man said in a relieved huff.
He now opened the entry fully, stepped gingerly across the pulpy
mess, and waited for the youth to join him on the stairs.

Brenol followed. He creaked down the steps,
his stomach slipping around in somersaults. Before him was no
basement or cellar. It was not even house. Yes, the house stood
sturdily above him, but where a foundation should have been, lay a
pool. It began only a few strides from the base of the stairs and
flowed out into a cavern of darkness. There was no logic to it, and
his mind fought to make sense of what could not truly be.

The boy glanced to Darse, who nodded at him
knowingly. He had felt the same swirling emotions many orbits ago
when his father had led him to this very place. It was an
excitement, a wonder, an adventure, but most of all it made one’s
insides melt into a vulnerable fear. Standing before something so
mysterious, unpredictable, and dark was enough to make any knee
quiver.

Brenol shuffled down the remaining steps and
onto the soil, hearing the gravel rub against the bottoms of his
shoes. His own breathing sounded deafening in the space, for all
was silent, secret. The water of the pool glistened, and unearthly
lights danced upon the surface like floating candles, yet without
tallow or flame. Brenol started at the sound of the door softly
thudding shut as Darse followed, and the thin beam from the house’s
lantern vanished. Brenol’s eyes adjusted after a moment, lingering
upon the lights bobbing atop the dark screen.

The pool, upon first sight, was not
altogether very large. It was but a shallow basin meeting seven
steps. Although there were no openings to the outside air, a breeze
tickled gently against Brenol’s bare neck and hands and filled his
flaring nostrils.

The rich scent seemed familiar, though also
entirely new to him. It was a soft fragrance, one of new and
growing life. It tugged his spirits in a hundred different
directions, and many orbits later he was only able to articulate it
blandly:
It made me feel alive. More human.

As the youth breathed the damp, either the
enchantment of the place took effect or his eyesight cleared,
because suddenly he discerned far more. The pool—or what he had
believed to be a pool—was much grander than a simple puddle under a
house. His eyes widened while his vision leaped ahead to the
lengthening canal, and longing gripped his ribs. The tug was almost
unbearable.

Darse gaped in wonder. “It seems to go on
forever,” he whispered in the surreal stillness.

Brenol spoke in a barely audible sigh.
“Thank you.” He peered up at Darse in seriousness and felt the
tight cramping of his chest ease slightly. “Thanks for showing
me.”

“I’ve never seen them before—the lights.
They weren’t here before. I used to come down here and wonder about
this portal, but the pond was always small and dark. It must have
been recent that the lights were lit. With the invitation.” His
voice was quiet. “They will disappear again when I leave.”

Brenol did not speak. He just stared.

Darse glanced down at Brenol, suddenly
frowning. Both his lives stood in the same space: the portal that
had gnawed him raw since childhood, and the boy who had all but
become his son.

How can I leave him? I ache in missing
him already…
He turned his vision ahead to the growing
waterway—although his eyes were fixed upon memory, not scene. He
thought of the transformation he had seen over the orbits from the
maturing boy.

“Bren, I…”

Again, Brenol sighed and nodded. He was not
always capable of seeing another person’s perspective, but in this
moment he could hardly do anything else. For how could someone bear
to not go? To carry this secret for an entire lifetime and not open
it? To tarry and possibly lose it? It was far too grand and
exciting to live without exploring and discovering.

Time slowed as they stood together. Later,
when they spoke of it, they could never quite agree on how long
they had waited with the lights. It was the quiet pondering before
the plunge. It was possibly the last moment in which the two would
be together. It was mystery. It was unknown. The experience held so
much for each of them, and for this reason could never be tallied
into hours and minutes.

Brenol finally left in silence. He was
shaken by the beauty and intensity of all that had happened that
night. He knew there was little sleep ahead of him at his own small
home. He trudged through the damp fields and felt the cool air
press the wet wheat against his legs. He knew only too deeply why
Darse must go.

~

Later that evening, Darse ambled through the
house in a strange reverie. The house, as always, evoked thoughts
of his father and his grief.

Marietta.
The name had fallen from
his father’s thin lips only a handful of times, yet the love behind
it was evident. Sim had been a broken man, changed deeply by her
passing.

What would I see in those green eyes now
that I’m grown? What would I see?

Darse smoothed his fingers across the walls,
wishing for some kind of connection, some response from the wood
that had known Sim’s hands as he had carved and set the planks. But
no—it was as silent as his father’s grave.

“Perhaps in Massada I shall know him better.
Perhaps,” he whispered to himself wistfully, yet even in the quiet
he dared not voice the hope of uncovering knowledge about his
mother. It was an ache too powerful to touch.

Darse paced the length of the floor once
more before turning towards his pallet. He crawled in, bleary in
exhaustion.

As sleep began to loosen his limbs, he vowed
silently to himself,
I will go, I will.

And Bren. Maybe I can make it possible for
him to come later, when all is safe.

Yes. When he is of age. Then I can get him
away from Alatrice and his mother without guilt.

~

Brenol paced his room with the methodical
unrest of a caged cat. His feet rubbed across the fraying cloth he
used as a rug, and his eyes followed the trail marked before him.
It was the dead of night, but he rejected any notion of sleep.

No, not tonight.

Desires raged within him. The impulse to
steal away pushed hard on everything else and made it difficult to
think. It dulled his loyalty, integrity, sensibility. He felt the
tug toward Massada from the center of his bones.

Brenol paused in his stride to glance down
again at his hands. There, within, rested a warmed silver key. It
was the key that Darse had placed down absently while saying
goodnight. It was the key to the portal entrance. It was the key
that was tearing Brenol apart with desperation.

He had not intended to palm it. It had just
happened. It had been sitting there. It was only natural to pick it
up…

He shoved it down into his pocket but found
he could not release his grip.

~

Darse awoke in the pitch black, sweating and
with racing heart. He did not recall any dreams, but an unease had
settled into his belly sometime in the night. He washed in the
water bowl and dressed, not even trying to fight his way back into
a slumber. There was a piece that he was forgetting, maybe even
missing entirely.
What was it?
He walked the room
methodically, grasping for calm.
What is it?

He shifted through his simple belongings
that he had begun to stow in a pack, checking again for missing
articles. Frustrated, he cast the items out. The unease rubbed down
into his marrow; whatever was awry weighed heavily.

He was striding to the main room with
lantern in hand when his limbs stiffened in a sudden dread.
The
key
. Yes, he had locked the door, but when saying goodbye to
Brenol he had laid the key down on the table. It had slipped from
his mind afterwards…

His eyes strained, but even from where he
had frozen he could see. It was missing. The small table shone
bare.

The front door was closed but unbolted.
Darse knew. He knew what had happened.

Rushing forward, he entered fully into the
room. The door down to the portal was not only unlocked, it gaped
open like a giant, ominous mouth.

He clenched his knuckles tightly, and his
fingernails pierced into white palms.

Brenol had escaped to Massada.

~

Darse did not even pause to pack his small
bag, terrified of the danger that was coiling fast around the boy.
Yes, he feared for Brenol’s mother and the serious trouble she
would meet, but it was the voice of his dream that resounded in
Darse’s head.
Bring the boy
, it had demanded. Darse
shuddered and bounded down the steps.

Be still—the worlds hold their breath in wait.

-Genesifin

Brenol had crept down the same steps several
hours previously. The pool was even more brilliant than it had been
when he had seen it with Darse. It shimmered and sparkled as if in
expectant greeting. He shook with excitement and tried to push
aside any thoughts of Darse.

I’m going. I
have
to go. Darse
can’t leave me
, he thought, though anxiety still churned his
insides.

He stepped down.

“
Come, come
,”
a
voice resounded in his eardrums.

It startled him, and his mind swam with
visions of wolves lurking in the shadows. He peered into the cavern
and shook his head.

“There’s nothing here,” he said to the air,
yet even his words betrayed a prickling doubt. The voice had felt
as real as the gravel under his feet and the guilt clawing his
back. He gulped and squinted down the length of the cavern. It
seemed to extend forever. Brenol shuffled forward slowly.

The water seeped immediately into his
hole-ridden shoes. They felt like bags of sand, but at least the
water was not icy. He stepped back, slid them off, and discarded
them at the steps along with his coat. He moved as quickly as he
could, longing for his conscience to quiet. If he stopped to
listen, all resolve might crumble, and he would be left alone on
Alatrice. It was a fate too terrible to consider.

With determination, he abandoned his fear of
the phantom voice and threw himself into the lucent water.

There was no need to adjust to the
temperature. The water was warm—but not uncomfortably so—and
aromatic. The waterway was about as narrow as a wagon trail,
allowing enough room to maneuver, and along the right side ran a
bank of stone, wide enough to clamber up upon if necessary. The
water was deep enough that he could not stand, but Brenol was an
adept swimmer and kicked ahead in interest.

He now saw that the lights were not upon the
surface at all, but hovered like illuminated bubbles underwater. He
tried to catch one, and as the light escaped his grasp, he was left
with the image of a cat toying with a string just out of reach.