by J. M. Cyrus
in Issue 146, March 2024
She looked down at the last flickering candle, her eyes burning to memorise the flame’s light. She felt the ache in her body and mind, the wincing pain of her shin’s broken bone, and her soggy clothing against her skin. She smelled iron, dust and sweat. She sobbed and wondered how it had come to this. The candle danced, the flame flickering to horizontal then almost to nothing, then back to straight; the unknown breeze like a breath through reeds. She watched her last light and cried. No one would miss her anyway.
Four days earlier.
The group of five paused at the boundary. They stood on a carpet of pine needles, surrounded by a loose woodland of green fir trees. Barking squirrels and calling songbirds filled the air. Before them, the ground segmented with a crack. It was like a seam in the very makeup of the earth, beyond which the soil was dark grey, ridden with black obsidian.
Chunks of the shining, black, glass-like stone covered the mountainside, littering the trail they were to walk, varying in size from berry to boulder. The largest towered over them, glistening and imposing.
“And this is the way we should go, Tenara?” The voice pulled Tenara from her open-mouthed stare at the steep path before them. She turned to the speaker, the leader of the troupe.
She swallowed. “Yes. All tales from the valley said this was the best way to head into the obsidian mountains.”
The questioner was Xanthis, their leader. A muscular woman, she would have been described as tall were it not for the height of another member of the group. Xanthis nodded and her jaw was set with decisiveness.
“We’d best be on the way then. We need to make headway before nightfall.”
“Any chance you could magic us there?” one of the men of the group asked the tallest of the group, a seven-foot woman in robes of dark linen. She peered down at him.
“You know that isn’t how magic works, Keystone! What if I suggested you just carry us all?”
“I could do it!” he laughed, flexing his lithe shoulders. “I could start by carrying you, Oriel!”
Oriel laughed, a ringing, mirthful bell that made all the other members of the troupe smile.
“It’s quite far, Tenara.” Tenara turned to the other member of the group, a man small enough that she could look him in the eye.
“Well, Afit, that way the stories say there’s treasure.”
They began to climb.
That evening, they sat in a hollow between boulders and ate Afit’s cooking around a small pink and purple fire.
“It’s difficult cooking on maj-fire,” he muttered as they ate.
“It tastes absolutely fine,” whispered Xanthis.
“Fine is not delicious,” muttered Afit.
Keystone rolled his eyes, and Oriel shuffled closer to the fire, ready to feed it a little more.
Tenara held her warm wooden bowl of stew and felt the fire warm her in its peculiar way. Maj-fires always felt different to real fires. Usual fires licked and burned the skin in soothing comfort, whereas maj-fires warmed the body without warming the skin first. They were safer, more controlled, but also less alive; and that in itself was not necessarily preferable.
But they hadn’t been able to make a real one on these mountains. There were no trees, shrubs or even grasses; only rocks and sand, with the occasional brave bit of lichen.
“Tell us more about where we are going.” Keystone turned to Tenara.
Tenara swallowed, and wiped her mouth with her sleeve.
“Into the obsidian mountains,” she answered and grinned.
Keystone laughed, as did Xanthis. Afit smirked into his bowl. Oriel looked at the smear of stars emerging above them, a small smile at the edges of her mouth.
“Actually,” said Xanthis. “It might be helpful if you gave us a summary of the tales, Tenara.”
Tenara nodded.
“The peoples of Dusk Valley tell stories of a great beast that lives in the depths of the mountains, that hoards a great treasure and guards the heart of the mountain. There has only been one entrance found, but it’s now blocked by obsidian boulders.”
“Unless you have a maj-user with you,” said Keystone. Oriel smiled.
“Tell us about the treasure,” said Afit.
“That nobody could agree on. Some said gold, others precious stones, and others immortality and knowledge. Some even said an army to do one’s bidding. There were a few that mentioned the chance to redo the past. A couple mentioned a fresh beginning, with no judgement or history. One story even said the treasure was only treasure to the beast, the heart of their last love. Though the person who told me that was promptly shushed by their friends,” Tenara continued.
“I hope it’s gold,” said Keystone. “I’d like to have my own bed and a big house with lots of servants.”
“You don’t like sleeping on the floor?” said Xanthis, with a wink.
“No, Xanthis, I do not,” said Keystone. “I do not!”
“Knowledge would be a great boon,” whispered Oriel. “I could go home, welcomed. I would have solutions.” Her voice wavered on the last sentence, and her fingers glowed a rich liseran purple.
Afit shifted, and grunted. “I’d want the stones,” he said. “No chance of impurities mixed into the coin that way.”
There was a pause as everyone contemplated their choices.
“And you Xanthis?” asked Keystone.
“The army to do my bidding would be fun,” said Xanthis. “Tenara?”
Tenara looked into the flickering lilac flames and wondered which answer to give. She’d known these four people for a year, but they remained colleagues to her, not friends. They didn’t need to know what she wanted, what she wished for.
“Gold,” she said, with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
She returned her attention to the fire, the flickering vivid curves full of life and hope. In the hands of her mind she turned over the potential for a whole new beginning. She’d be happy with that, would settle for that. She didn’t dare hope for a chance to redo the past.
The following morning they were woken by dawn’s full beam hitting their camp. The group continued up the mountain, following the gentle incline of a path Keystone and Tenara picked out.
Xanthis frowned and sniffed, smelling the air. Afit came up next to her. “Do you smell it too?”
“I do. Keep your eyes open. We’re exposed here.”
Xanthis beckoned Tenara and Keystone back. “Is there any chance of shelter soon?”
Tenara looked up the steep mountainside, and then back at Keystone, who shrugged.
“If we make it up to the pass over there, there may be overhangs, why?” Keystone asked.
“Afit and I can smell whisperbats.”
Oriel gritted her teeth, tense and worried. Tenara and Keystone widened their eyes.
Keystone looked at the path ahead, and then back at the group. “I can go ahead and scout, if someone else takes my pack?”
The group nodded and his pack was divided between them as he ran off up the path, his gymnastic balance and mountain goat ability allowing him to leap lightly as he climbed.
The group trudged on, following the rough trail onwards. Keystone didn’t return for three hours, by which time all could smell the distinct whisperbat odour. The pervasive mixture of blood and rotting fruit could almost be tasted.
Keystone was a little out of breath, and had fresh grazes on his hands, but his face was flushed and hopeful.
“The cave entrance you mentioned, Tenara? I think I found it. Oriel will definitely need to help get us all in.”
Oriel nodded grimly, watching the empty pale grey sky.
The group continued. The smell got stronger, but Keystone assured them he hadn’t seen any whisperbats this way.
Tenara didn’t know which way to look in fear, behind or ahead. She settled for paying attention to her feet, and looking at the glistening knife blade chips of rock as she passed over them.
“Only a bit further!” Keystone’s remarkable endurance and energy was undimmed even as the rest of them started to lose theirs. But his encouragement and motivation kept them moving. That and fear.
“How much further?” Xanthis asked in a clear voice.
“Not much,” said Keystone.
“I hope not,” said Afit. “The smell is getting stronger.”
As they went around another curve in the path, two things happened almost at once.
The first was Keystone pointed at a large craggy block of obsidian about a hundred feet away, which had a shadow behind it that was a lot darker than a normal shadow.
“There it is!” he pointed.
The second was that almost immediately after his indication Oriel yelped, and the sound of beating leather wings filled the air; along with a crescendoing rush of horrific, indeterminate whispers.
The team had been in tricky situations before. Tenara remembered the vampiric chimaera, and how it had seemed they wouldn’t be able to escape its clutches; and yet they’d finally broken free. She remembered the bright-eyed women of Tatril who’d chased them with blazing eyes and sharp teeth, and how Oriel had fought them off long enough for Afit to set the correct herbs alight to dull their eyes. They’d escaped in the wagon Xanthis had procured, prize intact. And she remembered when they’d fought the lupine volpfoxes of the Dei of Mar, using each other’s strengths and countering individual weaknesses as they came together united.
“Run!” Keystone’s usual good-humoured encouragement vanished in urgency.
Oriel whimpered as she ran, shoved ahead by Afit, aiming for the shadows. Tenara clutched her dagger, and Xanthis held her sword hilt, obeying the words of Keystone who brought up the rear.
Tenara felt a magnetic desire to turn and see what she ran from. When she did, she regretted it and nearly vomited from fear.
Hundreds of whisperbats crowded together, teeth and claws almost impractically long, flapping their torn leathery wings in stained browns, heading straight for them and less than 100 feet away and gaining.
When they were 20 feet away she heard the real reason the whisperbats get their name, and she knew Oriel had been hearing it already from the whining tone Tenara emitted from her own throat.
Whispers of nightmares, insecurities, anxieties and worries filled her ears and mind. Autopsies and vivisections of herself, so much worse than the worst slithering, whimpering midnight thoughts. Horrible memories, fabricated horrors, and reasons to not bother running any more filled her senses. She sobbed as she ran, tears mixing with her sweat.
Oriel had been pushed ahead, and when Tenara arrived at the shadow, Oriel was working her strange magic. She stood, her hands glowing lilac and her tears falling like pink gems, evaporating into nothing when they left her skin. She held her shaking hands before her face and blew large red bubbles from her mouth, the colour of blood and wine. When her hands were full she pushed them into the gap in the stone, doing this two or three times, her bubbles inflating and making the stone tunnel widen before disappearing and melting into the air.
As soon as it was wide enough, Xanthis pushed Afit in, then Tenara and then Oriel. She turned to get Keystone, but he wasn’t with them.
From her vantage point within the tunnel, Tenara watched as Xanthis screamed for Keystone and heard her clutching, hitching sob as the bats screamed in frustration.
Xanthis ran into the tunnel and Oriel blew one final bubble to close the entrance and blew a large gold one to hover about them, illuminating the dark.
Afit, Tenara and Oriel looked at Xanthis’s grief-ridden face.
“Did he…?” Afit couldn’t finish his sentence.
“He used his dagger on himself as they lifted him,” Xanthis answered.
“At least there’s that mercy,” Afit muttered, as they cried.
The ache of the loss of Keystone settled over them like a putrid blanket of decay, combining with the residual, cloying nastiness of the bee-like whispers from the whisperbats. Their heads were filled with the heavy loss of hope, painful dismay and grief.
When they decided it was time for sleep, Tenara lay awake listening to the others. Oriel mewled, her sensitive, magic-riddled body holding the whispers. Tenara heard a few sobs from Xanthis, and then she went quiet. Afit was silent the whole evening meal and night.
When Tenara eventually fell asleep by the orange and pink maj-fire, she had tumultuous, miserable dreams of past mistakes and present regrets.
When morning came, Oriel blew a bubble like a tiny sun, intended to mimic the sunlight as it was outside. Her face was pained, and her fingertips remained dusky pink.
Tenara, Afit and Xanthis felt a touch stronger, sleep having diluted the residual whisperbat echoes in their ears.
They walked into the mountain, following the bright sunshine replicated in the bubble, the light shifting as if with passing clouds. The tunnel was lined with obsidian formations, and they reflected the light back at them, lighting their way further, shining visible even in the shadows.
But beyond that, beyond the reaches of their light, the tunnel was deep, dark and silent. Occasional breezes came from both directions, passing on their way elsewhere; bringing smells of minerals and things they couldn’t identify.
“Do you think they left a body to burn?” Afit asked Xanthis in the echoing quiet.
Oriel winced, the sun orb flickering, making the tunnel’s shadows dance.
Xanthis paused, Tenara could hear her choosing her words.
“Yes,” said Xanthis. “Whisperbat interest is purely with the living.”
Afit nodded and Oriel gave a hitching sob.
Tenara felt the burn of memory, remembering other pyres and other mourning periods. She tried to ignore history, focusing on the tunnel ahead.
They came to a narrow section, too narrow for them to fit through comfortably. Oriel widened it with her red bubbles, and once they were through to a wider section she let the tunnel narrow again, the pressure eased.
When the colours of Oriel’s fake sun started to shift to orange, they set up camp. The familiar pink glow of the maj-fire reflected pink smears in the obsidian around them.
“What do the stories say about the tunnels, Tenara?” asked Xanthis.
Tenara cleared her throat.
“The tales of this point, of which there weren’t many, generally agreed. Once in the tunnel, one has to keep walking into the depths of the mountains. However, they don’t agree on time. Some say days, others say weeks. None mention potential danger.”
“So we’re on our own,” muttered Afit.
Oriel whimpered and the fire flickered.
“Are you alright there Oriel?” Xanthis asked, her lips tightened into a line.
Oriel’s shoulders curved with emotion.
“Sorry! Sorry. I’m trying to keep it together. But the whispers, the whispers!”
Xanthis, Afit and Tenara exchanged glances. The anxiety-ridden whispers of the whisperbats had tormented them for at least 18 hours after they’d entered the tunnel. But now, after a little more than a day had passed, they merely felt bruised and emotionally sore. They were now only grief-ridden.
Tenara leaned towards Oriel.
“What do the whispers say, Oriel? You know the bats exaggerate and focus. You’re an intelligent woman, you know that.”
“They knew! They knew! I’m broken, so broken, and they knew it and they knew I couldn’t control it and they knew it was all my fault. My fault. My fault,” Oriel muttered, not listening to Tenara. As she spoke her fingers turned a bright fuchsia, and a small amount of rainbow froth gathered around her mouth.
The maj-fire flickered and danced, as if in a high wind.
Tenara’s stomach dropped. The maj-woman had been affected by the whispers. She’d heard tales of what happened when thaumaturgically-inclined persons lost control of their inner magic. What would happen to them within the belly of a mountain, what happens if the fire goes out, what happens if the froth at Oriel’s mouth turns into something more?
Afit was the one who got through to Oriel. He rummaged around in his bag and pulled the last of the dried figs out. Their sweetness had been rationed to the team so carefully. He rushed to Oriel’s side and pushed a whole one into her hand.
“Oriel. Oriel! Concentrate on this. Can you do that for me? What’s the texture? Can you feel the ridges and the stem? Yes, like that. And can you lift it to your face? What’s the smell? Well done. Yes, use your hands like that.”
The fire evened out its flickering, and Oriel’s hands returned to their normal deep brown. Her eyes held sadness but her mouth was normal as she obeyed Afit, and chewed on the seeded sweetness.
It must have been morning when Tenara woke; but the fire was low, and there was no sun. The shadows licked close.
She looked at the tiny washed-out periwinkle flames. She pulled herself to sitting and looked to where Oriel had been sleeping. The robes were bunched and strangely shaped.
With her stomach tight, Tenara shuffled over and unwrapped the linen.
The bundle of robes were empty, save for a fist-sized phlegmy frothy mass in the hood. Bubbles floated on its surface, emerging and popping in the disintegrating gristly lump, as it visibly shrunk before her. Tenara screamed.
The echoes were terrifying, reverberating and ricocheting from the tunnel walls.
Xanthis was awake, at her side, had seen what had happened to Oriel and was going through her pack for candles before Afit was beside them.
“Oh, spirits above and below!” he exclaimed.
Xanthis lit a candle with her flint just as the fire winked out in a final fizzing pop.
“What now?” asked Afit, his frown of worry exacerbated by the dancing candlelight.
Xanthis’s face was serious.
“We clear Oriel’s things to the side. We search her pack for anything that might be of use, and we continue.”
“We’re still going? How are we supposed to succeed at anything now?” said Afit, his voice wavering with fury and uncertainty. “We don’t know how far we have to go, we don’t know what lies ahead, we’ve lost both our strongman and our magic, and you want us to continue?!”
“Do you have any other suggestions? You want to just pack up after all of this?”
Tenara had been rifling through Oriel’s pack and her own.
“I have ten candles between the two of these,” she said.
Afit paused, seething, and looked through his own.
“I have another four,” he said.
“And I have four others,” said Xanthis.
“Keystone had the lantern,” muttered Afit, then sighed and looked up to the ceiling with a sigh. Pulling himself together, he continued. “Each candle lasts three hours,” calculated Afit. “That means we have 60 hours worth more or less. We’ve already been travelling in here for two nights, so -“
Xanthis interrupted. “We need to be able to get back out,” she said.
Tenara remembered the cave entrance Oriel had resealed back to narrow, and she remembered the tunnel that had been widened for comfort. She wondered if they’d even be able to exit the way they’d come.
“So, we give it today,” said Afit. “And if we don’t find anything we go home.” His expression was grim.
“Yes,” agreed Xanthis. Tenara nodded.
They walked close together, taking it in turns to hold the candle. When it was her turn Tenara was glad of the distraction holding it gave her, the care she had to maintain in holding it just so, so the wax didn’t land on her hands. And she was grateful for the warmth and comfort of the tiny dancing body on the wick.
A few hours passed and Afit said nothing the whole time.
They came round a bend and the tunnel changed.
A cavernous edge yawned on one side of the six-foot wide path. Xanthis knelt at the side and threw a stone. It took several seconds to hit the bottom, the echoing sounds of thunks returning to them.
The three walked on in silence, the open space beside like a shadow wound.
When they stopped to change candles, Afit grunted and tutted at Xanthis. Xanthis almost dropped the candle when he nudged her, and she turned on him, her teeth bared.
“Is there a problem, Afit?”
He grunted, his anger visible like a shadowy mask on his face.
“Please tell me what your issue is, Afit,” Xanthis spoke calmer, but her voice held knives.
Tenara instinctively backed away. Whenever these two fought it frequently came to blows.
“We should have turned back already,” Afit finally said.
“We’ll turn back in a few hours if we don’t find anything,” Xanthis said.
“We shouldn’t have come in the first place.”
“The lure of treasure called you as much as us!”
“You should have protected them!” he shouted.
Xanthis’ body language slumped. “I know, I should have. But we did our best, and they were as responsible for their own bodies as I!”
Afit scoffed.
“What’s the point,” he rolled his eyes.
“Are you doubting my leadership?” Xanthis came in close to him, the candle dangerously near his face.
“Now Xanthis! Afit!” Tenara approached them, took the candle from Xanthis’ hand just as Afit shoved Xanthis back, knocking into Tenara.
Tenara landed on the rocky ground with a thud, holding the flickering candle up so it did not fall, hot wax falling on her hands and cooling instantly into pearls on her skin.
Xanthis hit the ground with a grunt. She stood again, rolled her shoulders broad and charged at Afit as he skulked in the shadowy edges of the candlelight.
She pushed him against the wall with another thud. The cavern echoed, and there was a shake in the rock with the impact.
“Tell me!” said Xanthis, muscles on her forearms visible as she held the man in place.
He spat in her face.
Xanthis threw him on the ground.
He lay still for a moment and groaned as he slowly made his way to sitting.
“I feel poisoned,” he whispered, his expression shifting to worry from anger.
Xanthis’ face softened as she contemplated his words. Tenara crawled to sit next to him.
“Afit?” she whispered, holding the candle aloft to see his face more clearly, his head in his forearms.
“There must be something in the air,” Afit whispered. “I don’t feel myself.” He kept opening and closing his hands, balling them into fists and then loosening them into shaking open palms.
Xanthis sat on the other side of him.
“The whisperbats must have affected you more than you thought,” she said. “Or perhaps it is this tunnel. It doesn’t feel right.” She looked around them.
Tenara looked at her remaining teammates. She wondered why she merely felt the normal residual ache of her existence. Why didn’t she feel more?
After a few minutes, they stood and kept walking.
They’d been walking for another half a candle when the silence was broken.
A yammering laugh, too high to be sane, sounded. Its source was indeterminate, the echoes confounding its direction and distance.
The three backed into a circle together and watched the shadows. Xanthis held the candle high. Tenara felt the tension in Afit as he started his own mutterings. She heard “fault”, “shouldn’t”, “home”, and “sorry”.
The cackling laugh echoed again, combining with gristly sounds that could have once been words. Tenara’s stomach felt coated with hot oil, and she tried to keep control of her breathing in her fear. She wasn’t successful. She felt Afit tremble next to her.
The sound got closer, louder, more triumphant; and Afit bolted the other way.
“Afit!” Xanthis and Tenara called as he ran out of the glow, back the way they’d come.
They heard his feet scuff in the dark silence.
Then there was a wet crunch and snap.
Tenara and Xanthis collapsed into each other as there was a single scream in Afit’s voice, suddenly extinguished, and the loud sound of chewing came from the shadows.
Silence returned, and Tenara and Xanthis clutched at each other in the flickering light, breathing heavily.
“What was that?” whispered Xanthis.
“I’ve no idea,” sighed Tenara.
“We should go and see,” Xanthis said, standing, her face grave.
Tenara said nothing, but stood to follow Xanthis who held the candle.
All that remained of their colleague was a single pack strap. No contents, no clothing, no blood. Xanthis walked closer to the path’s edge and held the light to illuminate down, but there were only shadows and sharp glittering edges.
“Shall we continue?” Xanthis asked.
Tenara looked between them.
“We don’t have many candles left,” she said, “Afit is gone with his pack.”
Xanthis opened her mouth, and then a different noise came from the way they’d come, the forbidding sound of cracking rock.
“We shouldn’t go back that way,” said Xanthis.
Tenara shook her head and they continued walking.
At some point during the next candle, the precipice cavern rose up beside them, levelling the ground out again. Tenara was glad to have two walls.
They came to a hollow that held several tunnel exits.
“Which one?” Tenara said as they looked at them.
“Well, we can’t go back the way we came,” said Xanthis, “Shall we try for one that could head towards an exit?”
They stood beside each tunnel, watching the candle flame for any movement that might indicate air coming from outside, choosing one that made the flame buck and tug.
However, after walking for a few minutes, the tunnel began to narrow. They had to hunch, then crawl, and then the gap was too small to go any further. They returned to the hollow, selecting another.
The initial uphill changed to a steep downslope after an hour. They heard rushing water.
They emerged into a space that felt large. The light from the candle didn’t go far, but the space echoed with the sound of water, the air felt cavernous. Xanthis and Tenara kept close together as they walked towards the water.
They had to weave through boulders and stalagmites standing to attention; a forest of stone.
“I feel so disorientated,” said Tenara.
“Me too,” said Xanthis. “We should rest.”
They found a space that was as good as any, and Xanthis said, “You rest first Tenara. I’ll take the first watch.”
Tenara unrolled her bed roll and lay down, too tired and emotionally worn out to speak.
She was woken by Xanthis shaking her and the sound of rumbling, cracking rocks. Xanthis sat beside her, her face panicked as Tenara sat.
“Sounds like something is giving in somewhere. I can’t work out where, this damn echo-“
A gigantic stalactite fell from the ceiling squarely onto Xanthis, crushing her. A piece crumbled off, hitting Tenara in the leg, who screamed as she felt skin and flesh tear and bone break.
The candle, thankfully, had been a few feet away, perched between a group of stones, and it merely flickered in the movement, narrowly avoiding being hit by bouncing stones.
The dust settled, and Tenara wept in agony; alone, maimed and helpless.
After a few minutes, she looked about her, trying to catch her breath and assess what she remained with. She wasn’t trapped beneath the rock, it had bounced off. She couldn’t see much through the messy tear on her trouser.
She knew she had one candle left in her pack, if she could get to it. She could see what she thought were the edges of Xanthis’s squashed pack beneath a large stone, glittering with minerals, completely unreachable. Large chunks of the same stone now surrounded them. She could see one hand and some of Xanthis’ hair beneath the pile.
Tenara tried to push herself backwards, but her leg screamed in pain. She stopped, slumped against a rock, a cold, fearful sweat coating her. In a presence of mind she didn’t realise she had, she tied a strip torn from her bedroll around her leg.
She listened to the sounds of rushing water, the gentle settling of dust, and felt the pain in her leg burn so much she almost couldn’t feel it anymore. She saw the shadowy dark liquid beneath her leg slowly spread.
The tears came and kept coming. She cried for the trials of the past few days. She cried for her lost teammates. She cried for her life that she’d tried to restart, and she cried for the life she’d left behind. She cried for a life long since over.
She watched the candle burn, and she dozed in her agony.
When she came to, the sudden jolt shifted her leg and made her almost vomit. The candlelight was fluttering down.
Her pack was just out of reach. She grunted and cried as she reached for it, managing to lie on her side and twist her body to grab it with her outstretched encrusted fingers. The few centimetres felt like miles.
She found her last candle, and lit it, holding the two wicks together. The old candle went out, and she saw her final hours represented in wax.
She thought of everything that had brought her to this.
She had joined the group one year ago, after a year of solo exploration. Before then she’d been a different woman, leaving a life that had nothing left for her.
Her life in the small village had been happy, peaceful, and boring in a nice way. Then the blue bone pox had gone through her life like a sword through warm butter. It killed her husband, her small children, her friends and her family. All but a handful of her world were no more. She’d looked about the remaining dregs of her life, and left.
She decided to run away, to reinvent, and to start anew. There was nothing for her there anymore.
She’d travelled, sleeping under trees and seeing different towns. She found she had a gift for chatter, and when she found Xanthis and the rest, they formed a group that filled her days. There were worse things to do than look for treasure.
She settled into a routine, ignoring life beyond the next story, the next rumour.
The whisperbats’ poison may not have lingered in her because she’d already been through so much worse than they could whisper to her.
Or maybe because she’d felt so close to death, the potential of it didn’t affect her so much.
As tears trickled down her dusty cheeks, she watched the candle flame quiver and morph. It flattened and widened, twisting and bending; its oval shape growing and breathing, so much movement for it and she was unable to move.
Who would be there to miss her when she died in this mountain?
She held the stub, wishing for it to comfort.
She wondered what would kill her first. The leg, the lack of water, the lack of food, or whatever festering things lurked in the dark.
She stared at the candle as it ebbed and flickered, close to the end of its wick. She tried to commit the final lazy dance to her memory, burning it into her eyes as the last light she would see, to keep her company in the dark.
The candle went out. It had reached the end of its wick.
Tenara was ready with a gasping, sobbing, hitching sigh, her body hollowing and concaving with the expectation of the imminent dark.
But the sigh got caught in her throat when the world about her burst into glorious, vibrant colour.
What she’d thought was a dusty floor of obsidian chunks and sand, a cavern merely of minerals, rocks, stalagmites and stalactites were illuminated from within in all gem colours she could think of and many others she couldn’t have conceived.
Shining crystals, quartz and precious stones replaced all the browns and blacks she’d been seeing in the candlelight. Right from the tiniest pebble through to the boulders that were double her height. Her vision was filled with the luminescent, iridescent intensity of colourful light. A galaxy of gems.
But that wasn’t what caught her attention.
The beast caught her attention.
A gigantic pale white reptile-like creature balanced along several of the rock formations a little more than ten feet away, out of the reach of what had been the candlelight. It looked to be about fifty feet long, excluding its coiling, tapered tail, with a smooth head and large eyes the colour of emeralds. It tilted its head as it examined her.
Her mouth gaped in surprise; her face wet with tears, smeared with dirt, blood and dust; her leg useless. She was incapable, and at its mercy.
They looked at each other for a few moments or minutes. Its expression was inscrutable, but Tenara thought she saw patience.
“You will die,” the creature said, breaking the silence. Its voice was smooth, deep, rich; but unfamiliar. It wasn’t the voice from earlier.
Tenara blinked, unable to speak in shock. The salamander-like creature’s tail flickered and wrapped around a stalagmite, uncoiled, then wrapped itself around another in a hypnotic, dancing movement. It tilted its head the other way, as it waited for her to answer.
She swallowed, and managed a “What?”
“The injury will surely kill you. If nothing else does.” It shrugged, its movement more suited to a conversation about the weather than Tenara’s chances at life.
Tenara gave a tiny, slumping nod.
“I can save you,” the beast said, moving to place its head within a foot of her own, its large eyes reflecting her dirty face. It balanced its legs on rocks, bending itself to look at her.
Its smooth skin shone in the glow of the stones. Tenara could see the tiny scales on its skin, the size of a newborn baby’s fingernails. The skin’s pale opalescent colour was streaked with light greens from peridot to jade in lines from between its eyes all the way down its back to its limbs and its tail.
“The mountain can save you,” it whispered close.
Tenara tried to shy away, but couldn’t, her back already against a stone, and her useless leg a dead weight. She gasped with a painful whimper.
“I must be dreaming,” she said through sharp tears.
“You are not,” the creature answered, raising its head up to a benevolent, judging pose. “What is your answer? Do you want to live?”
It breathed through its nostrils, the muscles tightening and loosening the tidy almond-shaped holes. Its breath was hot and smelled of boiling water poured over stone.
Tenara nodded, breathing shallow.
“You will need to exchange yourself,” the creature said, as it picked up one star hand and reached towards hers, not quite touching.
Tenara wondered what that could mean, but she knew her chances. She felt her broken leg, and she saw the body of Xanthis beneath the glowing rubble. She remembered the sound of Afit as he ran into the dark, the sight of the bubbling mass remaining in Oriel’s robes, and the last view of Keystone’s serious, earnest face before he was the last outside the mountain.
She thought back to the open sky and hearing birds sing. She remembered what had left her.
She nodded.
The creature landed between the rocks with a thud, slotting itself into the gaps in an unexpectedly elegant display of athletic elasticity for something of its size.
“I want to live,” she said in a strangled whisper.
The animal slunk closer in a liquid-muscled movement. It coiled and sat, curvaceous wrinkles forming in its sides as it sat beside her.
Tenara watched the shine on its skin undulate as it moved, the gentle rise and fall of its ribcage as it breathed, and the fire in its eyes as it met her gaze. It licked its lips with a thick pink tongue. When it next opened its mouth she saw short, flat, square teeth.
“What’s your name?” it asked.
“Tenara.”
“Do you, Tenara, agree to stay on the obsidian mountains, to serve the mountain forever in exchange for a life to live?”
“Yes.” She felt the grasping need to live within her, the ache like fluttering birds, and a lightheadedness of hope.
“Very well then.”
The beast used its large hands, easily ten times the size of her own if not more, to gather together small shards of the gems and precious stones. It arranged them on the floor between them into a small, colourful circle. Tenara watched, her breathing getting heavier, conscious of the soggy, sticky patch beneath her leg, visible in the light. The leg had long since gone numb.
When the small circle was completed the animal picked it up. Though she hadn’t seen any way in which the stones would be held together, it was united into a piece of elegant, astonishing beauty. It was complete, a glorious coronet.
“May I, Tenara?” it asked, its voice gentle and kind.
She nodded, curious.
It brought the circlet to her head, and placed it on her crown.
As it placed it she recalled an aching flash of memory; a crown of spring flowers that had been placed on her head a decade before. A sunny day, open fields, flower-scented breeze, a full feast table, the taste of apple cyder and the dancing music of a lute; a man’s laughing eyes and warm, calloused hands; and her body so young, and a future so wide and so broad.
The weight of the stones was not as heavy as she expected. She felt it weigh down her hair, a gentle pressure on her scalp.
Her body began to glow in a white opal shine, heaviness departing. She heard the sound of cracking bone and tearing skin in reverse.
She put her glowing hands up to her head to feel the circlet, and felt it melting. A thick sticky syrup covered her head, trickling over her scalp and forehead. When she looked at her hands, they were covered in a glowing oil that glittered and fragmented with ripples and shards of leaf-like pigment.
Scratches and scuffs on her hands healed before her eyes, closing over with smearing golden ink that left her skin clean and even. She saw a scar on her wrist from a cooking fire rise and smooth. She saw her leg clear and healthy through the tear in her trouser.
She felt rejuvenated, and she wept into her unmarked hands.
When she had no more tears, the animal touched her shoulder with one hand.
“Tenara?”
She looked into its green, fiery eyes.
“Thank you,” she whispered, no longer able to taste blood. She wiped her face and brought her knees up to her chest, relishing the movement.
With a sigh, Tenara stood. She looked at the crushed body of Xanthis, the pack of her only belongings and her stained bed roll.
“Come with me,” the creature said.
She followed its slinking, careful movement. Despite its size, it did not disrupt, it wove between the rocks with ease, pebbles and even the dusty floor remaining unscuffed and undisturbed. She felt heavy-footed in comparison.
The animal brought her to the rushing water, and encouraged her to drink.
“The mountain water will sustain you.”
She dipped her hands into its clear moving surface, smeared with reflections of the colour around her. She brought handfuls to her mouth. It was so cold it made her teeth ache and her throat seize, but it was delicious and welcome. She drank deep enough to make herself gasp.
She looked at the waiting, sitting giant and its calm eyes.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
The creature paused.
“I don’t have one.” It considered its words for a moment. “I must have done, once. But I don’t remember anymore. I have been here for a very long time.”
“What do you call yourself?”
“I do not call myself anything.”
Tenara looked around the space, full of glowing gems and colourful crystals.
“And I am to stay here?”
“Yes. Anywhere on the mountains.”
She wiped her chin with the heel of her hand, the water drying on her skin in a glitter.
“Can you show me the way around?”
The beast showed her through glowing tunnels further into the depths of the mountain, navigating through the maze of unending riches of gems. As they walked, Tenara felt the mountain settle into her mind, the twists and turns becoming as familiar as her old scars had been.
It showed her echoing caverns of gold, walkways lined with stalagmites and stalactites meeting in pin-drop union, and cavernous depths lit from below in craggy quartz. She saw shadows far ahead, moving further away.
There was also a storeroom of sorts. Items abandoned, objects left or things that had accompanied those who had perished filled it. The creature had organised them by type. There were piles of folded clothing, the oldest crumbling into dust when held. Bed rolls had become a home for pale white insects. There were weapons, rusting blades amongst those that still shone. There was also stale bread, stained linen parcels of indeterminate brown lumps, and shrivelled fruits, decayed almost to nothing.
Tenara remembered what had been left by the others.
“What shall I do with the bodies?” She didn’t mention she only knew where one of them was.
“The mountain will take care of them,” the creature answered.
In her wanderings through the mountain, Tenara lost track of time. She followed her body’s impulses and instinct, sleeping when she was tired, drinking when thirsty. She found she didn’t get hungry, and didn’t know what to make of that. There was no sunlight to tell her how to organise her time, and she found no other exit than the one she had come in by.
She wondered what she would do if she did find an exit.
The beast was a calm, considerate companion.
“I need to give you a name,” she said to the creature one day. “I need to have something to address you as.”
The beast shrugged.
“If that would make you more comfortable.”
“If I am to spend extended time in your company, yes it would,” she answered.
She paused and looked at it.
“Are you male or female?” It blinked its emerald eyes at her. “Or neither?” she added.
If it could smile, there may have been the hint of a smile on its face. But she definitely heard a smile in its voice.
“I am male,” it said. Or we suppose now, he said.
Tenara looked around for inspiration for a name, but of course there was not much in the caves of glowing rocks beneath the mountains.
“Stone? Mount? Obsidian? Dust? Sand? Geode?”
She looked at the creature and its pale body. She wondered whether it was her imagination or was he smaller than when she had arrived? His thirty-foot length was impressive and imposing, but he used to be bigger than this.
It looked at her, and she could see a shadow of a smirk about its lips.
“How about Ode? From Geode. We could say that you are the geode within the shell of the mountain.”
He nodded, looking out of the side of its eyes at her.
One day, Tenara asked Ode to come with her to the exit. Ode hesitated for the length of a heartbeat, then agreed.
After retracing their steps back to the cavern where they had met, Tenara saw Xanthis had perished, leaving torn, empty clothing and clean bones visible beneath the rock. Tenara was confused by how much time had passed. How long did it take for a skeleton to become clean?
Ode helped her lift the rocks, and Tenara put Xanthis’s bones into a pack. Ode picked up Xanthis’ pack, Tenara’s and her bedroll.
In the deep hole beside the path edge, Tenara found Afit’s remains, scattered bones and scraps of stained clothing. She packed all these as well. There was no sign of the yammering predators.
“We heard voices,” she said.
“A lot of things live in the mountains. They will not bother you now.”
Ode helped clear the rock fall that blocked the tunnel, and they came across Oriel’s clothing and pack. Tenara added those to their luggage.
When Tenara stood at the tiny exit, she looked out at a landscape both familiar and strange. She had thought of it often, in the tunnels before she had met Ode and since. It had been her last glimpse of the sky, and she’d once thought of the view from the tunnel entrance as symbolising freedom.
She didn’t need to cover her eyes from the grey sky’s sun’s glare; the intense gem glow within the mountain had kept her pupils small.
It looked as barren as it must have done before; a bleak, lifeless, colourless mountainside. The obsidian shone like black mirrors, punctuating an insipid world that contrasted with her glorious new home.
“I will wait here for you,” said Ode. He still seemed very large, though he fit in the tunnel here. Tenara wondered whether he was changing shape, his head a little less extended, or whether it was daylight playing with dimensions.
The exit was suddenly not so tiny, though she didn’t see it change. The mountain released her into its outside.
Her walk in the grey light didn’t burn or shock. She merely made her way through the crunching rocks, searching.
It took several hours for her to find Keystone’s remains and his pack. She gathered his bones with the others in a shelter between two large rocks. She built a tower of stones before it. She didn’t know if she did it for herself, or for them.
She sat before the marker, feeling the open wind and smelling dust and not much else, and cried. She felt she was saying goodbye to more than just the people who had perished.
She sighed up at the grey sky, and faced the mountain trail heading down and out of the obsidian range. She wondered if Ode would stop her if she made for it.
She stood as if to do so, and she felt a sense of dread and nausea as she took a few steps. Her mind ached and her blood congealed with the contemplation of leaving. Her bones felt rooted to the mountain’s depths.
She knelt on the floor, and wondered whether she actually wanted to leave.
She tried to remember what a life with fields and taverns and people was truly like, and she tasted bile. She’d left the woman who wanted all of that behind when she entered the tunnel. In fact, that woman was probably back in a sunlit village with a family, chickens, a meadow breeze and a bed made of straw and feathers.
Her skin ached with the thought of a rhythm she was no longer suited for.
She looked at her hands, and saw her skin shine from within. As if her blood, or the water in her body, was made of the same glowing stones the mountain was. Like she was herself an opal.
She stood, bid farewell to down mountain and walked back towards the tunnel.
When she saw Ode waiting for her at the entrance, something in her felt glad to see him again, relieved to be finished with the outside. He took Keystone’s pack from her, to add to his load.
“You came back,” he said.
“I did,” she answered.
“Did you do everything you needed?”
“Yes.”
In the storeroom Tenara found some writing materials. She wrote all the tales she’d heard of the mountains, including the true real one within them.
Ode sat beside to watch her. Tenara knew he was smaller, he was just over double her height now.
“Why are you writing them down?” he asked.
“Recording the stories gives me closure,” she answered. “A catharsis to close that part of my life.”
Ode looked at her, he tilted his head in thought.
“You have had to do that before.”
“Yes.”
During washing one day Tenara found she had a long tail. It coiled like a white snake, opal scaled skin with faint blue markings along it. She looked at her hands and body again, and saw the opalescence within. As her hands had shown outside in the insipid sun.
She flicked her tail experimentally through the water. She felt disjointed from the body part, but as she watched it, it felt more like hers. She felt relieved.
She coiled the tail around her belly and redressed.
When she found Ode again, she said to him, “We are changing.”
He looked at her and nodded. He was now 9 feet tall and standing upright. His body held the hints of humanity in its musculature; thighs, chest and legs reshaping beneath the scaled lizard outer layer. His face had smoothed and flattened, his eyes still wide apart, high cheekbones and small ears. He was hairless too, markings over his skull like those on the back of the giant beast. But he was a far cry from the fifty-foot crawling creature she had met so long ago.
“Do you know why?”
He shook his head.
“Does it bother you?” he asked. His voice was unchanged, rumbling, rich and kind.
She looked at her reflection in the plane of an amethyst, its shining facet providing a rudimentary mirror in which to see herself.
Her hair had thinned, her eyes separated to sit wider, and her cheekbones had come forward. She saw speckles of scale clusters on her forehead. This face was not the face she knew from memory, she was no longer human. But something in her felt suited to this face, pride at it being her true chosen face.
Ode came up behind her. He had started to wear some of the clothes from the storeroom, but still went barefoot. She found she preferred to as well, discarding her leather shoes for the feeling of rock on her soles.
She went towards the exit tunnels less. Ode had shown her many of them, but she found she had no reason to go. She enjoyed the inside breezes and the starry display of crystal far more.
One day he asked her, “Do you regret coming?”
And she turned to him, to face him in their lying embrace on the floor beneath the galactic display of stones and gems, nourished by existence, in a time that stood still for them.
She cupped his opalescent cheek, looking into his emerald eyes, full of fire, kindness and love.
“No,” she answered.
© March 2024, J. M. Cyrus
J. M. Cyrus is a speculative fiction writer living in London, England. She writes whenever there is a chance, and reads even when there isn’t one. She holds a master’s degree in Reception Theory and wrote her thesis on the reader’s journey. She usually writes short stories, but poetry occasionally strikes. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in anthologies from Improbable Press and Patchwork Raven, the magazines Flint and All Worlds Wayfarer, and online on AntipodeanSF, Medusa’s Kitchen, Sci-Fi Shorts, Orion’s Beau, and previously in Swords & Sorcery. Say hello at jmcyrus.writer@gmail.com.