The Last Summoning---Andrew and the Quest of Orion's Belt (Book Four) (24 page)

Every now and again, Tavron would glance
behind him as if unsure about his decision.

“Wait!” a woman’s voice echoed behind them,
growing louder and louder. “Wait! Please! Tavron you mustn’t
go!”

Tavron set his face, and marched ahead,
trying to ignore the voice behind him pleading for him to stay.

A woman with a sooty face and long, stringy
hair that probably was blond at one time, but now was gray,
suddenly burst through the trees. “Please,” the woman cried
grabbing Tavron’s arm and pulling him back. “Don’t go. Please, you
will die. I love you Tavron. You cannot go.”

Tavron shook his head and kept marching.
Though, by his face, Andrew could tell the woman’s words caused him
pain. “I’ve already made up my mind, Stella. I’m leaving this place
for good. I have decided. ”

The woman stepped away from the man, her face
stricken. “But you will die.”

“There are worse things than dying,” Tavron
whispered, pulling the woman into a tender embrace. “Goodbye,
Stella. I will always love you. But I must do this for the both of
us.” He pulled away from her and left her standing where she was,
teary eyed and weeping.

On he went, with Andrew and the others,
leaving the woman far behind.

With every step he took, Tavron’s steps
gradually grew slower, and his steps more halting

“Just a little further, and I’ll be out,”
Tavron murmured in a shaking voice, gripping Andrew’s arm like he
would never let go. Andrew stared at Tavron and gasped. Tavron’s
hand was withered and old. His hair had become snow white and
patchy in places.

“Tavron,” Andrew breathed. “You’re so
old.”

Tavron glanced at Andrew, and nodded. His
strong face had grown thin and wrinkled. The skin around his eyes
sagged, and his hands had become spotted with age, and skeletal.
“Don’t look so frightened. We’ve only got at little further, then I
will be out of this cursed land. Free at last.”

“But…” Andrew said, “Maybe that woman was
right. I don’t want you to die. You look so old, so feeble.”

“Yes. I am old,” Tavron said, a firmness
growing in his old voice. “It’s something I should have been a long
time ago. But I have made a decision. I will not go back.”

On Tavron walked, with Andrew for support.
With each step, his fingers grew older and more boney, his back
more bent, his skin more wrinkly. He grew older and older until all
his hair had fallen out, and he could walk no longer. He cried out
and fell to his knees.

“Tavron,” Andrew cried, helping the old man
to his feet. “Let me take you back. You must go back. Please.”

“I have made up my mind,” Tavron murmured
trying to step past Andrew. “I’m not going back!”

“No!” Andrew said barring his way. “Go back,
Tavron. You have done enough.”

Tavron’s eyes filled with tears. He wept into
his withered hands. “I have never gone this far. It feels so good.
I’m not a middle man anymore. I have finally made up my mind. Let
me go farther. Let me die.”

“No. Not like this. You have proven yourself,
Tavron,” Andrew said, gently helping the man onto Freddie’s horse.
“Now I will take you back.”

“But I don’t want to go back there. I have
finally chosen. Would you deny me my victory?”

“I would deny you nothing. The important
thing is that you made a choice. You have freed your mind, which no
one but you can do. You must let us finish the last of this journey
for you, so that you someday can. We will destroy The Fallen, and
destroy the curse. Then you will finally be free. ”

“If you must take me back,” Tavron’s old,
wavy voice murmured, “then try the other way. Let me be the one who
has seen both ends of this curse, so that I may know of myself. To
say that even I, Tavron, the Inbetweener, am an Inbetweener no
more. ”

“Okay,” Andrew breathed, “We will try the
southern way. But only for your sake.”

Tavron looked happy and excited, on the back
of Andrew’s horse as they moved southward. Even though his face was
shriveled with age, the determination in his eyes had concentrated.
Here was a man with conviction.

“Thank you, Andrew,” Tavron gently
murmured.

“For what?”

“For giving me a choice. Before now, I didn’t
know there was something to choose between. Now I know that there
is. Even if I cannot go forward. In my mind I have decided. Perhaps
with time I can convince my people to do the same. So that they,
too, will be prepared when you have destroyed The Fallen, and the
curse is no longer upon us. I see perhaps, now, that leaving was
never my destiny. But to choose was enough. I am to prepare my
people. Yes, for if they were to be free, and their minds were not,
they would still be prisoners, unable to leave this place.”

“Yes,” Andrew agreed, listening to the man’s
wisdom, with wonder. Andrew felt a strange feeling of sadness,
mixed with respect for the man. The man who had before seemed so
wishy-washy, was now full of conviction, fire, and
determination.

To honor Tavron’s wishes, they tried exiting
the forest through the south end. The farther they went southward,
the younger Tavron got. The wrinkles and gray hair fell away, like
brown leaves on a tree. Soon, spring came to the old man’s face and
he became the middle aged man he had been before. Then, gradually,
he grew younger and no longer wanted to ride on the horse. As he
walked, the faster his pace grew, the more youthful face his
became. A young man gradually replaced his scruffy hair and rough
features. He ran faster, growing shorter and shorter, and more
youthful, until he looked no more than Andrew’s age.

“Perhaps you should stop,” Andrew said
looking down at Tavron. He looked so different than he had only
moments before. His youthful features were full of hope.

“Would you try to sway me now?” Tavron asked.
“I will keep going, until I cannot go any further. That is my
motto. I want to see where this road takes me. I have already made
up my mind. For the first time I feel happy. For the first time in
a long time, I feel FREE! Even though I doubt the curse is broken.
Still, there is always hope.”

“Yes, but…”

Tavron stopped and pointed in the direction
of his village. “To live in that hell, where there is no
distinction between night or day, good or bad, right or wrong, is
far worse than whatever fate may have in store for me. To be
undecided, for all of eternity, yields no true satisfaction or
remorse. To be burning, not burnt, to be living, yet not alive, to
be stuck in continual indecision is like standing before a great
precipice, gazing below, fearing the fall and dying a thousand
times. Where one half of you believes that if you jump, wings will
appear, while the other half of you pulls away, and you are split
apart in the middle, becoming good for nothing.”

“That must feel awful.”

Tavron nodded, running ahead. “You don’t know
how awful. But now I will have fulfilled all that I have set out to
do. I will have seen both sides to this curse.”

The further south they went, the younger
Tavron got, until he was no longer a man or a boy, but a toddler,
then a helpless newborn.

Andrew had to pick him up and hold him. The
babe, Tavron felt warm in his hands. His old clothes had all but
fallen off. Tavron’s baby blue eyes looked up at Andrew, and he
cooed. The baby grabbed, Andrew’s thumb and squeezed.

“I think we should go back to the village,”
Andrew said, staring down at the baby. “We have tried both ways.
And still, the curse remains.”

“Yes,” Freddie agreed. “If we go any further
he might turn into a tadpole.”

At those words, Tavron began to wail and cry,
thrashing about in Andrew’s arms.

“Here, Andrew,” Ivory said, “let me take
him.”

Andrew gladly gave Tavron over to Ivory. She
quieted him, holding him next to her, comforting him.

“What should we do?” Andrew wondered aloud.
“We can’t take him any further. Either way, the curse remains.”

“Oh, I don’t want to take him back,” Ivory
pouted. “He’s so cute, and sweet. Sweet little baby Tavron.”

“If we don’t,” Freddie said. “I’m sure there
won’t be much of him for you to take care of. He’s getting younger
and younger every step we take.”

Ivory stared down at baby Tavron. Her eyes filled
with sadness. He did look very young, almost newborn. “Oh, Tavron,
we have to take you back. I’m sorry. You did your best. You really
did.”

At those words, baby Tavron began to cry
again. His woeful voice filled the forest, with loud, tremulous
wails.

“We have to go back,” Andrew said, “Tavron
may have decided, but this curse has to be broken some other way.
When The Fallen is destroyed, he will be free.”

They turned back and went through the forest,
towards the village, until they found the woman who had called
after Tavron when he had first left the village.

When she saw Andrew and the others, her eyes
lit up. “Tavron?”

Ivory handed screaming baby Tavron to the
woman.

The woman’s eyes filled with surprise, and
disbelief. “Tavron?” The second the baby spotted the woman, he
stopped crying.

She took the baby up in her arms and cradled
him. “Oh, Tavron. Come, we will go back to the village, you and
I.”

Andrew watched as the woman carried the baby
back with her. With each step, the baby grew, and soon, a young boy
was walking hand in hand with her towards the village.

The woman suddenly stopped, and Tavron, the
boy, glanced behind them at Andrew. His eyes were pleading, and
filled with deep yearning.

“Just a little further,” Tavron’s voice,
echoed in Andrew’s head. “And we will be free.”

The Debate

Gogindy drummed his fingers on his pet footprint
rock, staring off into the distance. The evening was drawing near.
Shadows were beginning to lengthen. Clouds were gathering in the
east, as if readying themselves to drop snow. The land before him
was brown, and blotched with dormant trees whose naked branches
shivered in the chilly wind. Tired-looking hills rose in the
distance, covered in rocks that looked just as weary and old as the
hills. The land seemed to speak to Gogindy of long ago, of memories
of past times.

The land reeked of ancient times, so much so,
that Gogindy felt like it might be rude to sleep, as if his snoring
might disturb this elderly spot of land. This place felt old, wise,
and weary, as if it was the grandfather of lands, where many
secrets lingered, and where life was not measured in moments or
days, but by character, and by tried and true experiences. Gogindy
was sure that this land contained vast stores of knowledge, and if
given a voice he was sure it would speak volumes.

There was a chill in the air, but Gogindy
didn’t feel it. His heart swelled with the warmth of the newfound
hope he had acquired. Where it had come from, he did not know. Only
that it was there, guiding him, taking him onto new paths he would
have never taken, had he been full of fear. This hope guided him
on, through snow, wind, sleet, and darkness, day after day, until
he thought of nothing else except ringing that bell, and of finding
the tower.

“It won’t be long,” Gogindy told his
footprint, stifling a yawn. “I’m sure of it. I can feel it; the
bell tower is near.”

The footprint made no answer.

“Well,” Gogindy growled. “You’re a talkative
one tonight, aren’t you?”

Another long pause.

“What? You don’t have anything to say?”

“Figured as much. You haven’t uttered a word
since I found you. Not one little squeak.”

He stared at the stone for a long moment,
then tossed it on the ground. “Well, what do you have to say about
that? Huh?”

Still silence greeted him.

Gogindy kicked the rock, and howled in pain.
“Oh, that hurt. You hard lump, you. Still you sit there, so
content, so inert. Why do you seem so happy, so…serene, like you
don’t have a care in the world?”

Gogindy turned his ear to the rock and then
huffed. “Oh you don’t? And yet you are happy?”

“But why?” Gogindy howled. “You should be
miserable and very unhappy, because you’re just a rock. You can
never eat a nice red berry, or scratch your back, or drink a cup of
cool water. There you are, just as contented as if you owned the
world. A rock. A piece of history, a frozen footprint, probably of
some miserable soul. Content to be a rock. How is it possible? Just
as a spider or a flea shouldn’t be happy to be such an ugly
creation of nature, you shouldn’t be happy to be a rock. I am not
happy you are a rock. You should be a real friend, someone who can
talk to me.”

Gogindy waited, listening in the silence.
When nothing answered, he picked up the rock, and cuddled it to
him. “Oh dear, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to kick you…er…maybe I
did. But I am sorry. Truly. My journey has warped my thinking. You
are, after all, only a rock. And a rock is only a rock, just as a
fool is happy, not because he is a fool, but because he has never
been anything but what he is, and has never sought to be anything
more. He is fully satisfied in his foolishness, and rightly so,
because he has never been anything else. Had he been wise or
lordly, or kingly, once, and then brought down to a fool's level,
his happiness perhaps would have been thwarted. But he has never
been any of those things. So you, dear rock, are happy because all
you will ever be…is a rock.” He sighed and let the rock rest in his
knapsack. “But I…” he murmured, “I am the bell ringer of Conroy.
What does that mean? What does it mean I must become? What will I
have to do? That is one of the unanswerable questions of the
universe. One I will only find the answer to when I am faced with
the bell, and the task of ringing it. Will ringing it change me
somehow?” He paused and stared at the sky, watching the clouds as
they gathered together in tight knots, like a swirling stew,
bubbling with ice and snow.