The Land of Broken Roads

The rest of the day was spent quietly. Dirt dug for grubs and baby ferns and ate his fill, then had little to do until dark arrived. And he didn’t really want to do much anyway, because every time he took a step his face throbbed. At least he still had one good eye left, because otherwise he’d probably starve.

Broken. Socks said he was broken and he probably didn’t mean the face bones. Something about dreams. Well, Dirt knew there was something wrong with him, too, and he didn’t know what or why either. So that was nothing new. But even so, it was painful to think about.

It was Dirt’s first and only taste of any kind of warmth, any care or succor, and now that it was absent, he knew how bad he needed more. Dirt didn’t know how close they could ever be, since Socks was a predator and Dirt was prey at best, but he hoped for something. Friendship, or even just regular visits. Something. Anything. He needed it. But maybe Socks would never come back. Maybe Mother would tell her son not to go play with the dirty, broken human anymore.

With nothing to do but worry and think, his melancholy was almost as bad as his injuries. He didn’t want to run around, because that made his face hurt and his leg bled if he didn’t hold still. There was no one to talk to. Nothing to do but wait for dark and the chance to sleep.

His imagination grew to fill the emptiness, but it took effort. He gazed upward into the canopy, so unreachably distant above him, and wondered if things were different up there. Maybe that’s where all the other humans were. No one was alone up there, and they could drink water whenever they wanted. Maybe Dirt had fallen down, and that’s how he ended up here.

He tried to imagine being with other humans, but he had nothing to build on. He knew he was a child, so the adults must be bigger, but he had never seen his own face and his imagination made everyone look like a goblin. From there, his imagination had him chasing through the green skies above to escape oversized monstrosities.

The trauma of the fight kept trying to catch him in its claws and drag him back into terror, but each time it did, he imagined a way out. He had to, or they would overwhelm him.

Goblins surrounded him and he flapped his wings and flew above them like a bird. One caught him, but Dirt imagined himself coated in mud and he slipped away. Another chased him, but Dirt stomped on the branch and broke it, sending the goblin tumbling into eternity. The gryphon came, but he fed it some grubs and it left him alone.

After a while, he dug up some grubs again, but before eating them, he gave them voices. One was a mother, and the other a child. He struggled to think what they would say to each other.

“Hello, mother.”

“Hello, child.”

“I… have some food for you.”

“Thank you, mother.”

Dirt paused, wondering what else they would talk about. He wanted them to become real, wanted it desperately. The need for play seemed almost like hunger or thirst, but he had no memories to draw on. As he sat in silence trying to think of something, frustration rose in him until he was about ready to squeeze both grubs to death in his hands and lick them off.

“Mother, I saw a gryphon today.” Yes, that would work.

“Oh?”

“It was like a big… wolf, but with feathers and beak like a bird. It chased me but I got away.”

From there, he added a brother and sister and father, and had them each tell stories about goblins or gryphons or wolves, about trees and ferns and night and day, over and over. He explained how to hide, and about being careful of making too much noise. When one of the grubs died from being played with too much, he ate it and dug up another one.

By the time night came, his spirit felt much calmer, his confidence higher. He was going to be okay. His face ached so bad he wondered if he’d even be able to sleep, but that was temporary. He’d get better. And he was lonely, scared, and vulnerable, but Socks would come back.

The creeping darkness of night nudged him into his nest, and he carefully curled up in a way that didn’t put any pressure on his thigh or his face. It wasn’t easy, either, since it was the left side of his face and his right leg. The pain kept him up long past when he wanted to be asleep, long enough that the vibrations started again. The sound was soothing, though. A good sound. It sounded right. Important and true. He was fine, and he’d be better tomorrow. He’d lived another day. Just surviving took a kind of strength, and so did having hope. He could do that, too. He wasn’t completely weak.

Hope was the thing that finally carried him off to sleep. It glowed in his chest like a little light of his own, chasing off the last few itching shadows.

He woke several times during the night because he kept moving in a way that tweaked something painful, but not for long each time. The gentle waves of sound passed through him on their way up into the tree, whatever they were. He stayed awake just long enough to remember that he had been dreaming about being a tree again, living in an infinite-faceted world he could not begin to understand with his human mind.

When dawn came, he paused for a moment before getting up to finally go get some water. He raised his hand and touched the root of the enormous tree and tried to remember the dream. His senses had been too confusing, too varied and subtle, to analyze with his human understanding. But one thought struck him, so surprising it almost felt like an electric shock: If it could dream, the tree had a mind. And it had dreamed. It’d swept his dreams up into its own. That was the only explanation. It was alive and aware.

“Home…” he whispered aloud. Home was alive, alive like a person. A real thing. Not just scenery, but real.

Had he dreamed he was a tree himself? Had that really been what happened? Or was he simply sharing in its experience?

“Good morning, Home,” he said quietly. The root bark said nothing back, of course. The night vibrations were gone and no dreams remained. Home would be quiet until night, and then they could talk again.

He crawled out of his nest and stood, stretching with a contented groan. The morning fog was already starting to lift, so he must have slept late. But he liked the fog, he decided; it was the best way to start the day. Nothing to see, nothing to worry about.

His leg wasn’t bleeding anymore, which was good. When he poked at it, it only stung a little and seemed to have mostly closed up. Was that how fast cuts healed? Just one night? That was good to know. Almost good as new.

But his face was still swollen and he couldn’t open his left eye. Turning his head too fast or leaning forward made it ache, a deep hurt that pressed into his bones. That would take more time to get better. Oh well.

The morning dew tasted sweet this morning, pleasantly cool, but that was probably because of how thirsty he was.

-Hello, Dirt, little human,- came Socks’ voice, right before the giant pup poked Dirt in the back with his wet nose.

Dirt was so startled he jumped forward and shrieked, heart instantly beating three times as fast.

-Looks like I scared you,- said Socks, sounding amused.

“You snuck up on me! You’re very quiet for something so big,” said Dirt, grinning.

-I am a hunter.- Socks sent an image of himself leaping upon an unsuspecting animal that Dirt had never seen before and snapping its neck in his mighty teeth.

“Oh, I know you could eat me in one bite if you wanted. I was just surprised. But I’m glad to see you. Come down here so I can hug you.” Dirt held his arms up, and Socks carefully lowered himself to a squat. Dirt hugged Socks around the neck, burying the good side of his face in the pup’s warm, damp fur. Socks’ neck was too big for Dirt to get his arms all the way around, but he did his best to scratch as much territory as he could reach.

-What were you doing right before?-

“I was just drinking some water. I need a lot, but the only time to get it is in the morning. Do you drink water, or is the blood from your prey enough?”

-You were drinking water off the ferns? Is that even called drinking?-

“Well, where else do I get it?” asked Dirt.

-Keep scratching, and maybe I will take you with me.- said Socks playfully.

Dirt kept right on scratching, making sure he was as appealing to have along as possible. Socks tilted his head around to direct Dirt to the best spots, and he made sure to remember where they were. He tried not to let himself get too excited about going with Socks, but he only had so much mental discipline to spare.

-I was on my way somewhere near here so I came by to see if you were dead yet. Mother thought you might be, but I didn’t think so. I licked your leg so I knew it would get better. She didn’t say how to fix your face.-

“Well, you were right. I’m alive. But only because you saved me. I think I was ready to give up and die before you came yesterday.”

-You are so tiny that it’s impossible to tell what might break you. I am glad you are still alive, because I think you are interesting.-

Dirt smiled softly to himself, trying not to seem too eager. Interesting was something he could work with.

“Socks, can I ask you something? Every night when I sleep under the tree, I hear a sound like this,” said Dirt. He collected a mental image of the vibrations, trying to capture as much of the experience as he could, and focused on it in his mind for Socks to see.

-I don’t know. I’ll have to ask Mother. I sleep with all my brothers and sisters, not under a tree.-

“Did you know that trees are alive?”

-Of course they’re alive, silly little human. They grow. They’re plants, and plants are alive.-

“No, I mean, not like plants. They can dream, which means they have minds. They’re like us, sort of.”

-You didn’t know that? How can something be alive and not have a mind?-

Dirt thought about that for a moment. Why had he expected otherwise? It had never occurred to him that trees might think, but why shouldn’t they be able to?

“Can you talk to them?”

-Mother does. I think they are boring.-

“Well, nothing is boring to me because I’ve only been alive for four days, counting this one. But, can you really take me to water? And bring me back here? I think I like this tree.”

-Yes. Climb on and hold tight. I want to go back to something I found, and there is water there for you.-

“What was it?”

-I don’t know. You will see it when we get there.-

Dirt crawled up onto Socks’ back with a mixture of eagerness and trepidation. Something about this made him nervous, but there was no way he was going to pass it up. He lay along the pup’s back and settled deep into his soft fur, getting as solid a grip as he could.

Socks ran. He ran so fast the ferns turned into an indistinct green blur, so fast that Dirt couldn’t lift his head much before the rushing wind started pushing him off. Socks leaped through the air and Dirt found himself laughing with joy and terror mixed.

That just seemed to make the pup more enthusiastic. Socks leaped high into the air several times more, higher and higher, easily reaching fatal heights. Dirt screamed and laughed, body full of sparks. The pup’s balance and control were so perfect that Dirt never once felt himself slipping, or had any fear that he might be accidentally dropped.

Dirt had no way to measure distance or time, but Home was long vanished into the pale distance before Socks finally slowed and stopped. Dirt tossed his feet to one side and slid down, landing more gracefully than he expected.

He still felt like he was floating. He had a grin plastered on his face that wouldn’t go away. It was making his cheek muscles ache.

-Here. This is farther than Mother can see. I know that because I tested it. Now, look what I found.-

Cut stone lay buried in the ground, making a row that led past a series of stone basins. It led a good distance through toppled clumps of stone and overgrown plants, and ended at a massive square ruin of graying stone, overgrown with moss and ferns.

Dirt was baffled, intimidated by it at first. A sense of dread foreboding kept his feet planted as he tried to make sense of what he saw.

It all looked deliberate, completely unlike anything else in the forest. In fact, it was the first stone he’d seen. Not even a tiny little rock, despite digging in all that dirt. He stepped forward and knelt to touch it, tracing his fingers along the rough, hard surface.

He shot to his feet and spun to face Socks. “A building! It’s a building, and that’s a path!” He realized he was talking aloud, and thought, “Sorry, I forgot. But that’s a building! I think humans made this! You are supposed to walk on these stones and they’re called a road. It’s broken in the other direction, but I think it went really far once. And it leads to that building. That’s a place where you can go inside, and… it looks like… I think it’s a temple. It has…”

Dirt’s thoughts trailed off as words came to him that he’d never had in his head before. A road. A temple. Everything out front was probably a garden. He tried to grab on to any of those words, to try and really understand what they meant. What he was looking at.

He stepped onto the road and walked forward, feeling the cool, hard stone beneath his feet and how different it was from bark or dirt. Socks padded along behind him, sniffing everything warily.

Dirt stopped at an old stone basin full of dark green water. He dipped his hands in and brought some up to his face. It smelled odd, unlike anything he was used to. He took a sip but it tasted unpleasant so he decided to look elsewhere before drinking any more.

He heard a trickle and ran at a full sprint toward the source. One of the basins had perfectly clear water, and Dirt could see right down to the bottom where the water came up from a hole. The water filled it halfway, up to a spot where a big chunk had broken off the side. From there it trickled onto the paving stones, no thicker than a stream of urine. It made a second puddle in a dip in the stone, and a little furrow where the water drained off it. He wasn’t sure, but it looked like it had been doing that for a very long time.

Dirt dunked his head and drank until he had to come up for air. The cold water made his injured face ache with throbbing pulses that reached down into his neck, but he didn’t care. “Drink some! It’s so good!”

Socks dipped his nose near the water and started lapping it up with his tongue, and Dirt dunked his head again. The cold was shocking, but the water was perfectly clear and had none of the plant taste that the morning dew did.

When he pulled his head out again, he noticed how much dirt he left behind in the water and immediately felt guilty. He had ruined something special. He might never see clean water again. That might have been the only time, for the rest of his life.

The shame of it made him sick to his stomach, but Socks said, -There is always more water. You are being silly, little human. Don’t feel bad. Come look at this.-

Dirt wondered why he had to think things loudly if Socks could just hear everything either way, but he didn’t argue.

Socks led him down the stone path, most of which was crumbling and uneven, and stopped at the building. It was a lumpy mound of pale, dirty stone, decaying moss, and ferns, but some of the square shape was still visible.

Enough of it was still standing that it towered over him, twice as tall as Socks at its highest point. It seemed big, but not compared to the trees. It seemed big compared to little Dirt, standing in front of it.

Fallen pillars lay to either side of a tall opening, full of nothing but silent blackness. Despite all the parts that had collapsed, there was still an opening, with interior space behind it. There was plenty of room in there. He could walk right in if he wanted. Theoretically. He found himself unwilling to go farther as the darkness both called to him and urged him to turn away.

But Socks stopped. He said, -Mother can’t see this far, so she doesn’t know what we’re doing. I want to go in, but Mother said never to go into places like this. But I want to find out what’s inside. Don’t you?-

Dirt hesitated, looking through the opening, which called up the word ‘doorway’, even if there was no ‘door’. He wasn’t sure what a door might be, but whatever it was, it wasn’t there. There was only enough light to see a single step inside.

A temple. A human place. An old, old place of men, right in front of him. The darkness inside wasn’t the comforting darkness of his den under Home, though. It was the mysterious darkness of hidden Night, in which only things that lived without light dared move. But what was a temple, anyway? What was it for?

He asked, “Mother said not to go in? Did she say what kinds of things are in there that you might need to worry about?”

Socks pawed at the ground, hesitating. Dirt could feel his eagerness, though, even without the pup sending it on purpose.

When Socks didn’t answer, Dirt turned his eyes back to the blackness. How much would it hurt to just walk in a short distance, and find out if he could even see in there? Maybe his eyes would adjust to the light, and he’d see what it was like.

A temple was a good place. The word felt good in his mind, even if he didn’t know why anymore. But there was something about how it had decayed, how silent it was, that made him second guess himself. There was nothing here, nothing alive but him and Socks.

This was never meant to be a dead place. It was meant to be a living place. Important, even. He wanted to go in, despite the feeling that the dark old building was watching him as intently as he watched it.

But… “Socks, has she ever been wrong before?”

The wolf pup turned his giant head and fixed his yellow eyes on Dirt. -There is a smell I do not know. But the air inside is very old, and it might be nothing. It is faint.- Socks turned back to sniff at the entrance again. -Mother has never been wrong. That is impossible.-

“Then we shouldn’t go in. I don’t know why she said that, but we should listen to her.”

Socks gave a little whine, sniffing again. He turned and walked in a circle, his stomach brushing right over Dirt’s head. He faced inward and sniffed again. He pawed at the stone several times, then said, -You are right. We should listen to Mother, even if she can’t see us right now.-

I CAN SEE YOU, PUP. BECAUSE YOU LISTENED TO WISDOM, YOU MAY LIVE. AND FOR SPEAKING WISDOM, I WILL CONSIDER YOUR BROKEN PET. BRING HIM TO ME.

The power of the thought nearly drove Dirt to his hands and knees, and when it was over, he felt light enough to float away. Dizzy, he rested his hands on his knees and breathed deeply.

Socks lowered his nose and licked Dirt’s hair a little to get his attention. -Are you okay?-

“I think I’m fine. That was… was that Mother?”

-Yes. I will tell her to be quieter when we get there, since you are very small.-

A sense of subtle fear came across along with the thought, and Dirt realized that Socks looked taken aback. He stood and stepped in to pet the pup’s hanging head. “How about you? Are you okay?”

-Sometimes you can be scared after the bad thing happens instead of before.-

Seeing the enormous beast with his tail tucked and his ears lowered was more unnerving than seeing him with blood all over his face had been. Dirt pressed his forehead into the wolf’s and hugged him around the snout. After a moment, he said, “It’ll be okay, Socks.”

-You have no idea what you are talking about, little human. Little Dirt. It’s a good thing we listened, though. Get on. Let us go and see Mother.-

As they left, Dirt glanced at the basin and wondered if the dirt he left in it would be there forever, or if it would be clean next time he came.