The Land of Broken Roads

Frustration just about killed him. He was so frustrated to be caught again that he almost didn’t get up. This was not a place he could live. He never stood a chance.

The brawny green monsters were as surprised as he was, though, and that was the only thing that saved him. They hesitated and desire to live to surged within him and got him back on his feet.

“Good boy!” shouted one, its voice cracking.

“Boy!” shouted two more. The chase was on.

Dirt realized he was running toward Home. Stupid, stupid! He turned to the left and kept running. They could never find that place. Never.

There were more of them out here. Another three goblins ran straight toward him. He turned left again and ran between the two groups, but that quickly proved to be a mistake.

One ran toward him at an angle, holding a bundle of rope. A bone club whooshed past his head, so close he was sure he felt the wind as it passed.

“Meat!” they shouted to each other. “Boy, meat!”

There were more, always more. Fifteen at least. They had formed a wide half-circle with the birds in the middle, and he was now inside that. If he’d turned the other way, he might have made it to a tree and hopped the roots like before, but now the only thing ahead of him was that swarm of birds and the big one they were bringing down.

He had one chance. A stupid one, but it was all he could think of. He sprinted as hard as he could straight for the birds. The big one with four legs still hadn’t reached the ground, but it was almost down.

Dirt had to go under it. He ran so hard his body burned, all of it. He pushed himself harder, then harder again. Every inch of him hurt, begged him to stop.

He didn’t make it. The huge bird-creature finally gave up and fell the last few feet to the ground, where it landed with more of a flutter than a thud. It stood and gave a mighty shriek, high and loud and clear.

Dirt ran right behind it, ducking its long, off-white tail-feathers as he passed, hoping it wouldn’t see him. Panic like fire roared inside him, speeding his feet.

It saw him. A gust of wind lit on his back as the beast flapped its great wings and an instant later, it fell on him and slammed him into the ground.

Face first. He couldn’t breathe. He struggled as hard as he could to slip out, knowing that its beak would be next. It wouldn’t eat him in one bite, either.

Dirt turned his head and sucked in what air he could with all that weight on him.

“Let me go!” he screamed with all his might. Then he tried with his mind, “Let me go!”

Neither worked. From the corner of his eye, he saw the great beak coming down for him. He felt the beast’s hot breath on his cheek, quick, short puffs of air.

“Please,” he begged. “Please.” He could hardly breathe. The thing had him pinned so perfectly he couldn’t even wiggle his shoulders. “Please,” he whimpered. His chest burned from lack of air. He was going to die.

Dirt’s ribs creaked under the pressure and he was sure that was his last breath getting squeezed out. But he was wrong—the beast leaped off him with another flap of its mighty wings. He felt a slight snag on his thigh, but it left him there.

It shrieked again, piercing his ears. It darted down at something only a few steps farther and a goblin gave a scream of its own. Dirt scrambled to his feet just in time to see the beast flinging away a severed arm, club and all.

Dirt instantly raced for the club. But before he could find it, another goblin started coming his way. He changed his mind and ran.

His mind fought against the panic threatening to curl him up in a ball. “Go, go, go, Dirt,” he said aloud. He had to run.

No, not run. He needed to sneak away. He dropped to the ground and started crawling, staying below the ferns the whole time.

The sounds of the fight assaulted him from every direction. Hiding under the ferns, he felt more exposed than ever. Violence and death were everywhere, from every direction as the bird-monster attacked over and over in different places.

Screams and howls. Cracks and thuds. The sounds were so chaotic he couldn’t even picture what was happening. After two days of near-complete silence, it seemed ear-splitting.

Dirt crawled as fast as he could. Too fast. He lost his balance and bit the dirt, then pushed himself up and kept going. He whimpered, keening through closed teeth, unable to stop. Every part of him burned with exertion.

The goblins started to sound more panicked. They screamed wordlessly, raising a cacophony that made his heart tremble. More and more of their screams turned to terror, and soon enough, Dirt heard them split up and start running, howling as they went.

He dropped to the ground and curled into a position where he wasn’t touching any ferns. ‘Gods in Glory…’ His mind conjured those words as if by instinct, but he didn’t know what was supposed to come next.

All he knew was more than one goblin was coming in his direction. He held as still as he could. Panic and exertion made holding his breath impossible, but he tried. Gods in Glory, he tried.

One fled past him. Another followed shortly after. As they ran, their heavy feet made dull thumps that Dirt could swear he felt through the ground. The goblins spoke to each other in short bursts of growling and hisses, nothing like words.

Another came up, running on the opposite side as the others. This one was closer. It slowed. It slowed down again and stopped, not too far.

Dirt had no idea exactly how far, and not being able to see caused him so much torment he almost got up and ran.

Terror filled his eyes with tears, which he desperately tried to blink away so he could see. His face curled into a grimace of fear, the muscles tightening so fiercely that his face hurt.

It stepped toward him.

It paused.

The goblin gave a coughing growl that almost sounded like a bark. The others nearby quieted.

Dirt felt a drip running down his thigh. He craned his neck to look and found blood. Only then did he feel the cut, as if it appeared right at that moment. He was bleeding. He struggled to make sense of it in the midst of so much mental terror. He didn’t know what to do. It was bad, and it hurt, but what should he do?

The nearby goblins had gone quiet. Dirt could still hear others farther away, and the bird-beast, too. It sounded like it was still hunting them. But the close goblins, those ones made no sound.

He waited and waited, suffering. “Please go, please go, please be gone,” he mouthed silently.

Maybe they were gone? Not a sound. Maybe he was mistaken, and they—

Dirt heard a shuffle right behind him. He shot up from the ground and bolted, right into a creeping goblin. He ducked under its grasping hands, but it caught his wrist for just long enough to slow him down before he yanked himself free.

Another goblin grabbed him with both arms before he had time to react. It lifted him onto its shoulders and started running. The handful of others nearby gave howls of glee and followed.

Dirt screamed and fought, twisting and flailing, doing everything he could to get away. The thing’s arms were so strong they might as well be solid wood, but it wasn’t taller than he was. It couldn’t win a war of leverage while running.

He twisted again, trying to throw his weight over the goblin’s back. It lost its balance and nearly dropped him, and Dirt saw his chance. He twisted and turned and fought with wild desperation to get away, and the goblin’s grip slipped.

Dirt somehow got his foot under the goblin’s armpit and kicked as hard as he could. It was enough. He pushed himself out of its arms and into the ground.

It spun around and was on him before he could even scramble to his feet. Dirt struggled so wildly that it couldn’t get a grip on him to pick him back up. Two more goblins laughed from close by.

That sparked its ire and its yellow-tinged eyes grew more serious. It stepped in and punched Dirt in the face, full-force. He saw a flash of white and felt himself slipping away into oblivion before he even registered pain.

He forced himself to move. He rolled over and scrambled to his feet, eyes unable to focus. A wave of nausea hit him, but he tried to press on.

The goblin grabbed his arm and yanked him back. Dirt didn’t even see the fist coming before it slammed into his face the second time.

Dirt woke a moment later, laying flat on his back. He fought against the haze and confusion, slowly regaining the ability to think. His hands lifted themselves in front of his face where he could look at them through his good eye.

Pain poured into him then, rushing through him like a torrent. His face was agony. The ground spun beneath him, causing nausea and dizziness like he’d never imagined. He gingerly traced his fingertips over his face and found that one of his eyes was swollen completely shut. The warm, sickly taste of blood filled his mouth, and when he felt around with his tongue, he discovered he’d lost three teeth on the left side—one on top, two on bottom.

Why was he here? Why was he still alive?

His face throbbed with his heartbeats, sending waves of pain all the way down to his collarbone. He looked up at the endless trees, impossibly far above him, but his good eye had trouble focusing that far and everything was just a splotchy blur.

A goblin screamed nearby, but the sound cut off and became a rattle.

Dirt had not been out long. Desperate urgency drove him to roll over and get up on hands and knees, where he nearly vomited. His arms were wobbly and he felt unbalanced, disconnected. But he pushed himself up.

Only a few steps away, the great bird-beast tore open the chest of a goblin to get at its heart and lungs. Two more quick snaps of its beak, and the snack was gone. It lifted its head and spun its neck all the way around, looking straight at him without moving its body.

The beast’s shoulder was higher than his head, and it gave off an aura of indomitable power that made Dirt tremble in his deepest parts. Its sharp yellow beak was as long as his torso, each of its yellow talons as long as his forearm. The off-white feathers on its face and legs were bright red and spattered with gore. Its eyes stayed fixed on him with perfect, predatory focus. One twitch it didn’t like, and it would kill him without the slightest effort. Only having Socks up close yesterday kept him sane now.

Dirt found he had no fuel left for fear. He simply turned around, slowly, and started shuffling away. Let it come eat him if it wanted. Let a goblin catch him. He was done.

He stepped on a bone club, a hefty thing as long as his arm. He paused, then reached down to pick it up, quickly imagining all the things he could do with it. It was the first and only tool he’d found.

But he heard a jolting motion from behind him and he turned back to look. The bird-beast still had its eyes fixed on him, its body language taut and ready to kill. Dirt quickly dropped the club and stepped backward, then again. He lifted his hands to show they were empty, and he angled his face toward the ground instead of the animal.

The beast gave a huff then moved a few steps farther into the ferns and ducked its head down, likely to rip open another goblin corpse.

Dirt had survived. It wasn’t after him. Maybe if he’d been alone, it would have eaten him. But there were other things around, things that were trying to kill it. Dirt wasn’t one of those. He wasn’t a threat. That must have saved him. All that, and he didn’t have a lot of meat on him in the first place.

Relief flooded him, but strangely, it didn’t make him feel any better. In place of fear came another tumbled mess of emotions.

“The world is rejecting me,” he muttered wretchedly. “I don’t belong here or anywhere. I shouldn’t even be alive.”

He wanted water to wash his bloody mouth out, but there wouldn’t be any until tomorrow morning. His leg was still bleeding, but he didn’t have any idea what to do about it. None at all. Hopefully it would stop soon, because blood was necessary for life. He remembered that much.

Every footstep jolted his swollen face and made the whole thing ache and sting. Each step, over and over. The pain put pressure on his heart, too, which was already aching. He felt more and more miserable, inside and out, and soon he found himself crying softly, more snorts and gasps than anything.

He hated it, and he couldn’t stop. All it did was make his face hurt more, make water run down his cheeks and remind him he was thirsty, make his throat tighten up and burn. It got hard to see, and that was already hard with one eye. All the sparks drained out of him and he wanted to collapse right there.

No, not right there. Not yet. He’d collapse in his hole under Home. He’d rest there, in the dark, where it was soft and warm. He’d wait for night to come, and then morning, and then… hopefully he’d just be dead.

“I’m only three days old!” he yelled in complaint to no one. The sound was muffled and lost in the ferns.

The walk back stretched on for ages. The forest was quiet again, except for his muffled sobs. The eternal trees took no notice of him, silent and unmoving. The ferns tickled lightly against his skin in a way he almost never noticed anymore, and sometimes a stray leaf got into the cut on his leg and dragged through it.

He had no idea how long it really took, though. Nothing changed here except for him, and for him, things just kept getting worse.

-Dirt? Little human?-

He turned to look for the giant wolf pup, and he had to turn farther than normal because of his swollen eye.

Socks approached him gingerly, nose down and sniffing. The wolf sent Dirt a flash of pity, a burst of emotion with no words.

“Hello, Socks,” thought Dirt. “I—“ But then he couldn’t think anymore, not clear and loud. Instead he started crying harder, his sobs rising in volume and shaking his chest. It just made his face hurt more.

-Get on, little human. I’ll carry you back, and then we can lay down for a while.-

Socks lay down and Dirt climbed up and collapsed along his back. He gripped the soft fur with his fingers and toes, buried the good side of his face in it, clutched with all his remaining strength. The wolf pup rose and left with such perfect smoothness and grace that Dirt only barely felt the motion.