They’ve brought a friend to him today, a young girl with a nervous expression and short red hair that stands up in tufts like she just got out of bed. The girl is shy at first, her gaze flitting anxiously around the room and never staying in one place for very long. She’s wearing a dress that’s too big for her and faded besides, and she’s clutching a tattered teddy bear. Trying to be friendly, he shows her how he can make the toy soldier appear out of nowhere—and now he can make it walk by itself, or dance in ways its joints wouldn’t seem to allow—but she gives him a frightened look and retreats.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her, making the soldier disappear. He holds out a hand but she won’t go near him and after a while they come back and take her away.
He’s not sure how long he’s alone after that but he gets bigger and heavier and the toy soldier is boring. Instead he creates armies of plastic green men and sets them skirmishing across the floor of his room, watching their battles endlessly. He’s watching them when they bring him another girl, older this time and much more outgoing.
When she kisses him he doesn’t know what to do; it’s nice and it’s something different but it makes him feel awkward and stupid, especially when she rolls her eyes at his clumsy attempts to return the gesture. He blushes and turns away but she turns his face back, impatient, and tells him to try again. He doesn’t know the point of this but he keeps trying, until they’re both flushed and breathing hard.
She’s called out then, leaving him confused and more than a little frustrated. Suddenly playing with the little green soldiers is boring, nothing more than the actions of a child. Instead he spends a lot of time lying on his bed and daydreaming, hoping they’ll bring her back to see him again.
They do, a few times, but just when he’s beginning to see a pattern in her visits, they stop bringing her. He asks why but they don’t answer and after a while he goes back to playing with the plastic green men, though the enjoyment he used to feel has paled now. He begins to watch them more closely and to wonder what’s out there beyond his sterile white room. He begins to wonder if he can get out and find her.
The sun was in his eyes, so blindingly bright that it dazzled him. He raised a sluggish hand to shade his face, blinking rapidly in an attempt to clear the white spots from in front of his vision. He could feel sweat trickling down his spine and something scratchy against the back of his neck; humidity made him feel like he was breathing through a wet blanket of cotton. From somewhere far above him a bird sang out, answered by another a few feet away, and he could hear the buzz of insects.
His vision finally cleared and he found himself looking out at some of the biggest trees he’d ever seen, surrounded by jungle foliage. Something rustled in the nearby bushes and a small chocolate-coloured pig trotted across the path in front of him. It paid him no more attention than it did to the towering trees or the dirt path. He brushed his hair out of his eyes to take a better look at it and it glanced at him without much interest, then disappeared back into the undergrowth.
He pushed himself up, feeling wobbly and stuporous in the sodden heat, and wondering if he was still dreaming. There was something clenched in his fist and he carefully opened it to reveal the world sphere he’d found beneath him on the bed. He was still wearing the same clothes and the cuffs on his wrists and ankles, but the chain was gone. He looked around him for a moment then punched himself in the arm to see if that would wake him up.
It hurt enough that he was pretty sure he wasn’t still dreaming. Rubbing his shoulder he started walking, picking a direction along the path and hoping it would lead him to people or at least a proper road. As he walked he began to hear the sound of water, starting at a trickle and soon growing to a roar. He rounded a corner and found himself in front of a huge waterfall gushing down an almost sheer cliff face; rainbows shimmered in the air where the spray bounced up from the rocks at the bottom.
He made his way through the rocks—some as large as a house—jumbled between him and the fast-flowing river the waterfall spilled into. The spray felt good on his overheated skin and when he kneeled down to drink from his cupped hands, the water tasted sweeter than anything he’d ever had. He looked around then stripped down and waded carefully into the clear water, ducking down to rinse the dirt and sweat off his face and out of his hair. When he was clean and much cooler, he climbed out and found a clear spot to lie down and dry off.
He was reluctant to put the same clothes back on but it was that or walk naked. Once he was dressed he climbed to the top of one of the bigger boulders and looked for anything other than jungle stretching out all around him. A wispy grey finger stabbing up into the clear blue sky caught his attention and he squinted at it for a few moments before recognizing it as smoke. Hoping he wouldn’t lose the direction in the shadows of the enormous trees, he climbed down and set off for the smoke.
A few times he got turned around and had to climb something to reorient himself, but eventually he stumbled into a clearing in the undergrowth, soaked in sweat and feeling dizzy. The clearing looked as though it had been cleared by people and the smoke was coming from a hastily damped fire in a firepit. There was no sign of the people who had put it out and he dropped down to sit on the grass, feeling defeated. His head pounded in the heat and he was desperate for a drink but he was half-convinced that if he tried to find the river again he would drop dead of heat stroke before getting more than a few steps.
He sprawled out on his back and tried to catch his breath, closing his eyes against the sun. For a while he dozed, dreaming in fragments of Jones, while the sun slowly crossed the sky. When he woke fully again it was beginning to set and his exposed skin felt tight and painful. Wincing, he pushed himself up to a sitting position and closed his eyes against a sudden wave of dizziness. His throat felt full of sand and glass and it hurt to open his eyes fully even though the sun’s light had mostly vanished.
It took a few tries for him to pick himself up and when he did he only stood there for a few minutes, head hanging. He wanted to lie down and go back to sleep but instead he made himself walk, hoping he would stumble on the river again so he could drink.
He was so dazed that he walked right into the ambush and suddenly found himself face to face with a loaded rifle. He put his hands up automatically and sensed people stepping out from the twilight shadows around him. Someone pulled his hands down and behind his back, tying them together, then pushed him stumbling along the path. The person with the rifle went ahead and he focused on their back to keep himself going.
They came out into a broad expanse of cleared land set at the base of an immense cliff. Wooden cabins were dotted around the land and he saw a few campfires with the shadows of people around them. Near to where they had come out of the forest he saw a laundry line with clothing still hung on it and a small pack of dogs came racing up to bark and growl at them.
Andraeon was herded towards the biggest of the cabins and pushed inside, blinking in the light. A tall woman came to greet them and his captors explained how they’d found him. To his surprise she took one look at him and immediately started scolding his captors for not even giving him a drink before dragging him through the jungle. She took a knife and cut the rope around his wrists then ushered him to a seat and brought him some water.
“Drink it slow so you don’t puke it back up,” she said, handing him a small glass. “Your face is all sunburned too. What were you doing out there?”
“I got lost,” he said truthfully, once he had cleared his throat with a mouthful of water. “I followed the smoke, then I fell asleep.”
The woman gave the men behind Andraeon an annoyed look. “Well... You weren’t supposed to see anything, but I’m glad you’re not still wandering around out there. Think you can eat a little something?”
He nodded, drinking more water, and watched her cross to the stove. She ladled out a bowl of soup and brought it back over to him, then drew the men aside to the doorway to speak quietly with them. Looking chagrined, they all nodded and left the cabin.
“So, what’s your name?” the woman asked. “I’m Elsa.”
“Drae,” he said around a mouthful of soup. “Do you know someone named Jones? Taller than me but skinny, has dark hair and an attitude problem?”
She laughed a little. “No, I’m sorry. Is that why you’re here? Looking for him?”
“I need to find him. I just don’t know where he is now.”
“Well, finish your soup and you can go sleep on the pullout couch. I’ll see what I can find out about your Jones while you sleep.”
He pushed down a feeling of suspicion at her willingness to help and smiled instead. “Thank you.”
“No problem. Here, I’ll show you to the pullout.” She got up and led him into the small living room, where the pullout couch was already set up as a bed, and rummaged through a dresser until she found a pair of pyjama pants. “You can wear these. I’ll get you some cream for your sunburn as well.”
She left the room and he changed into the pants, then curled up on the bed. Exhaustion quickly claimed him and he never heard her come back. When he woke again it was daylight and he felt much better, though when he sat up his muscles were stiff and his face still hurt. He looked around for the cream Elsa had said she would bring him and froze as he saw he wasn’t alone.
The dark-haired man sitting in an armchair by the pullout gave him a small wave. “Welcome back to the land of the conscious.”
“...Thanks. Who are you?”
The man held out a hand, smiling. “Nice to meet you. My name is Shiki.”
No comments:
Post a Comment