The Land of Broken Roads

The next thing Dirt knew, it was morning and Socks was still asleep. He and Biandina and now Antelmu slept huddled together, lying on a blanket as close to the pup’s warm belly as they could get. The horse, Boulder, was bored, standing there with nothing to do and unwilling to go anywhere. Socks must have convinced him not to be afraid before he went back to sleep, because he had no fear in him beyond the normal fidgetiness of a prey animal. His human was lying there asleep, and that functioned as a tether.

Just as Dirt was settling in to rest and wait, Socks woke with a start and stood. He lifted his nose to the air and said, -Wake up, you two. Humans are coming.-

Antelmu practically jumped out of his skin, going from a dream about mice to startled wakefulness in an instant. A single heartbeat later, his face filled with fear and he rushed to his horse, making sure everything was ready to go. It was. The horse was less than enthused, and Dirt supposed it was probably hungry.

-We were too tired last night. Dirt was exhausted and so was I. But if you want to come, you cannot bring your horse. It will be too slow,- said Socks.

“Boulder is fast. We won’t slow you down,” said Antelmu, checking the various bags and things draped over the horse. He very pointedly didn’t look at Socks, just continued being busy getting ready.

-Boulder is fast, but only for a horse. My legs are much longer than his and I can use mana,- said Socks. -I cannot see their minds from here, but I bet they are coming to take you back. Choose now. Ride back to meet them, or leave your horse here for them to find, without you on it. I will tell Boulder to follow the trail back until he meets them.-

Dirt gave a sympathetic little frown. Antelmu probably pictured things starting very differently. He loved his horse, and he was probably as skilled as anyone at riding. And without it, what else did he have to offer? Instead of helping, he’d be baggage that eats. Sort of like Biandina, now that Dirt thought about it. That made him smile, which he suppressed before anyone noticed.

Biandina stepped over and placed a gentle hand on her brother’s shoulder, which he tried to shake off. “I don’t doubt you deserve to come with us, but don’t Mother and Father still need you? They lost Prosperu, and they lost me. Who’s going to train the new dogs in the spring, and who will teach Oraziu to ride? I have to go. I don’t have a choice. But you do, Antelmu. Are you sure you want to come? We might never go back.”

Dirt had expected her to tell him to go back, but the girl surprised him. He glanced at her mind, and Biandina did want her brother to come, out of affection. But she also thought it was probably wrong.

Antelmu continued fussing with his bags. He pulled out a feedbag that Dirt didn’t get a look into before putting it over Boulder’s head so the horse could eat.

The bright, icy morning was invigorating. Each breath of cold air sparked in Dirt’s lungs and energized him. His new clothing held the night’s heat in remarkably well, and the cold only touched his face. The sun was blinding, though, unless he was looking at Socks, who was big enough to block most of the reflection. All in all, it didn’t look like the kind of morning that needed to start with a giant flurry of activity. But here they were.

-Horse or us. Decide right now.-

Dirt got the impression that this was a harder decision than coming had been. Looking at Antelmu’s mind, the boy was in serious turmoil. Everything he had imagined himself doing had involved the horse. Fighting monsters, exploring, hunting, other great and exciting things. The boy felt like he was like a hero from a story, but now it was already being cut short.

Dirt said, “I can’t tell you the right thing to do. I don’t know where you’ll do more good—with them, or with us. I really don’t know. I don’t know where you’ll fit in or what you’ll do. We’re only bringing Biandina far enough to send her to the forest for now. Here, you have a family and a tribe you can help right away.”

Antelmu turned around, and from his body language, he wasn’t quite sure how seriously he was supposed to take Dirt, who was younger than him; Socks was clearly in charge.

“I’m not going to turn down anyone who says they want to help fix the world, but the best we can do is promise that we’ll find something for you to do,” said Dirt. “Something important. I just don’t know what.”

The older boy turned toward Socks and gathered his thoughts. “Prosperu always talked about making things better, like by starting a new settlement and growing the tribe, but he just talked about it, and had too much else to do,” he said. Then he paused, chewing on his words.

“What he’s saying is—”

“Stop, Biandina. I can speak for myself. Let me say it,” said Antelmu. “I heard the adults talk about losing more grazing land, and I know about the tornado that ruined that wheat field. The elders told people to just let it go because those areas had too many predators already. So now we just have less food, and no one is doing anything. It’s the most honorful thing I can think of. So I can honor him and let his soul rest in the grass instead of the wind. Coming with you, I mean. I want to come with you.”

-Are you certain?-

Antelmu raised the back of his fist to his forehead and did an odd little bow, then said, “Great Wolf, will you please carry me as well?”

-Grab whatever you’re bringing.-

The boy took a pack, a waterskin, a small bow, and a quiver of arrows. Then he unstrapped a spear and asked, “Should I bring this?”

The spear leaped out of his hand all on its own and slid into the pup’s harness alongside the staff Dirt had made earlier. Then the boy himself, along with Biandina and Dirt, flew up into the air and were deposited hastily on the pup’s back. Dirt helped arrange the other two so they could lie down out of the wind and still hold on.

Once everyone was ready to go, Socks told the horse to go back up the other way, largely by associating the ideas of food and warmth with going in that direction. The horse looked around warily, then huffed into its feedbag and started walking.

There was one last thing to do. Socks lifted his leg and peed, a huge amount as always. It melted a bare spot on the dry grass several feet across.

Dirt told Socks, “We all have to pee, too. How come only you get to?”

-Their horses will smell the predator urine and it will be hard to get them to keep following. We’ll stop for you three in a bit, so just hold it.-

“Well, don’t jostle us too much or we won’t be holding it for long.”

-I never jostle,- said Socks, amused. He was tempted to shimmy and give Dirt a good jostling as a joke, but caught him thinking it and refrained. Barely.

Dirt explained aloud for Biandina and Antelmu, and the pup left at an eager run. The snow was denser now, but not as deep, and Socks could run almost normally. He did his best not to jostle, but Dirt couldn’t take it and made him stop only a short time later. Biandina refused any help with her clothing, which she needed since she only had one arm now and the wounds were still painful, and everyone had to wait until she figured it out. Eventually she did, and got her pants tied to her satisfaction.

After they were moving again, Socks sped up more and more, too fast to allow for easy conversation between the humans, so Dirt watched their minds a bit. Biandina’s emotions were mixed, but Dirt was learning that was normal for her. She was trying not to think about all her siblings and how much they’d clung to her when she reappeared, but the poor girl wasn’t very good at disciplining her thoughts and the image kept coming back.

Other than that, she was excited, almost joyous, at the reversal of fortune. Everything had seemed so hopeless only a few days before, but now? Socks had shown everyone a mental image of the forest and Ogena the previous morning, but in her mind, both places had already shrunk down to something she could accept. She was in for a surprise.

Antelmu, on the other hand, just felt worse and worse as time went on. At first he was proud of himself for being hard as iron and not getting sad at all, but the loss of his horse opened the door to the loss of his family and each person added another layer to the lump of grief in his heart. His friends, too, who had been tighter than brothers. They didn’t know yet. He spent the majority of the run suffering quietly, but he gave no serious consideration to turning back.

Dirt had wondered if the boy might be too naïve, but no, it was not adventure and glory he wanted, at least not for their own sakes. Which still would have been acceptable. But Antelmu’s intentions ran a bit deeper than that. In his mind, the end of the tribe was looming close. Dirt supposed that the boy had been insulated from bad news when he was little, until very recently, when all the news of misfortune hit him all at once. He had a sense of urgency that seemed out of scale with what he’d witnessed. Everyone wasn’t going to starve because one field was no longer usable, or because they had to pasture the sheep somewhere else. He seemed to think they might.

But regardless, his general idea was correct—he was joining the strange little boy and the giant wolf to fight against the mysterious gods and monsters that oppressed his people.

They reached the small group of flat-topped mountains before the middle of the day and took a break to dig up the buried meat. Even after a couple days, it wasn’t even frozen all the way through, but the cold had kept it from rotting.

The older children stood close together and asked each other how they were doing and if the ride was too cold, that sort of thing. Dirt didn’t listen in, but seeing them together, it was probably for the best to bring both instead of one. They looked like they needed each other.

Antelmu tried not to look like he was staring at the carnage from the fight, but stare he did. The ground was stained black and red with blood, and bits of flesh and clumps of feathers were everywhere.

Dirt pulled out his knife and started carving. “How much do you think we should bring? It’s gonna thaw out and start going bad if we take too much.”

Socks sent him a mental picture of how much he wanted right now, from the center where it wasn’t frozen yet, and Dirt obliged. He had to take it out in chunks, but it wasn’t a huge amount. Socks’s belly still had plenty from the last time they were here.

They ended up taking six thick strips as long as Dirt’s arm, packed in grass the other two dug up. After that, Dirt sliced a good number of thin slices and seared them with puffs of magical flame to eat for breakfast.

“Can I try that knife? How do you keep it so sharp?” asked Antelmu, but Biandina was right over his shoulder.

Dirt grinned and said, “I never have to sharpen it. It’s an eternal blade. Ever heard of those?”

“Nope,” said Biandina. “Can we see it?”

“Sure,” he said. He held it out and Biandina took it first. “I found it in a crypt buried with a dead man.”

She sliced, carefully at first with just the tip, but then her eyes widened and she sliced off a strip of half-frozen meat as long as her arm. “What…?” she said, unable to believe it. “How is it so sharp?”

Antelmu carefully reached in and plucked it from her hand, unable to wait any longer, and did the same thing. He cried out in amazement, then gave a startled laugh. “You got this in a tomb?” he said, eyes sparkling.

“Yep, underground. It was in the ruins of an old city of my people,” said Dirt. “There are probably others.”

Dirt didn’t have to see their thoughts to watch Antelmu and Biandina decide they needed to explore ruins now, just like Hèctor and Ignasi had when Dirt told them where he found it.

Biandina tried to take it back and use it again, but Antelmu held her arm away with one hand then looked guilty when he remembered she didn’t have another one anymore. He sheepishly handed it to her. They passed it back and forth until Socks decided they were done playing. They washed their hands off in some clean snow, which they had to march quite a distance to find, then stored the packed meat in one of Socks’s harness pouches.

Then it was back to running. As the day wore on, trails appeared in the snow. It must have been one huge storm that blanketed everything, and now all the creatures that had taken shelter were starting to come out. The snow was packed densely enough that smaller things could run right across the top.

Birds and foxes and the tops of shrubs gave color to the area, although it was all still mostly flat, with white and blue meeting at the horizon in a perfect line. Before the mountains behind them faded completely from view, new clusters of hills popped up in the scenery and the landscape grew increasingly varied. They even found a copse of trees with a herd of deer hiding underneath, trying to stay out of the sunlight.

Socks stopped to take a nap and Dirt joined him. The other two children stayed awake and chatted quietly, mostly things about home. Then Socks felt like playing more than running, so he and Dirt tried playing tag. It didn’t work, unfortunately, because the snow slowed Dirt down much more than it did Socks, and they had to give up.

Antelmu must have noticed how disappointed the pup was, because he picked up a snowball and said, “Hey, Socks, watch this. I bet your boy can’t do this.” Then he picked up another snowball, and another. Once he had three, he tossed them into the air and juggled. He was actually pretty good at it, and never got close to dropping one. He nodded at Biandina, and she put on a smirk and made another snowball. She tossed it into the mix, and then Antelmu was juggling four. He only stopped when the snowballs started coming apart.

Dirt grinned and picked up three of his own. He tossed the first, then the second, and then had no idea what to do with the third. He ended up dropping all three.

“Here, let me show you,” said Antelmu. “Try with just two first, like this. One, two, one, two. See? Do that.”

Dirt tried with two, toss toss catch catch. It took him a few tries, but he got the hang of it.

“Okay, now, to do three, you just keep doing that, but a little faster so there’s always one in the air. See?” Antelmu said, demonstrating again. He made it look easy.

It was not easy. Dirt went through about twenty snowballs and gave up when his fingers got too cold. “I feel like I should be able to do this, but it’s hard!” he said.

Antelmu gave Dirt a friendly, condescending grin. “You’ll just have to keep practicing!”

Socks decided it was his turn to try, so he picked up two snowballs, and did the ‘throw throw catch catch’ thing with his mind. It wasn’t so bad, so he added two more, then two more. It was one thing to swing things around while holding on to them all, and quite another to toss and let go so frequently. He ended up with twelve, catching six at a time.

Dirt hid his thoughts and moved very, very slowly as he knelt and made a snowball. He stood, very, very, slowly, and hid the snowball at his side. He gripped it with his mind, keeping his body still, and then swung as hard as he could to throw the snowball. It landed hard right on the pup’s forehead, surprising him so badly he dropped all twelve snowballs.

Dirt laughed hard and then tried to scamper away as snowballs began to pelt him from all directions. He reinforced his skin with mana and spun, dancing between them and making himself a hard target. He even picked up another snowball and tossed it, but there was no chance of catching Socks like that twice.

Antelmu made a snowball and handed it to Biandina, who went pale and looked in terror at Socks, with snowballs hovering around him ready to be loosed like a shot from a sling.

“Don’t hit them in the face, or his testicles,” warned Dirt. Then he threw another one, aiming for Socks’s side. The pup jumped out of the way and slid sideways to dodge the next one.

-I know.-

It was three versus one, but the children got hit a lot more than Socks did. Only the fact that Socks was such a big target and was trying not to get hit at all kept it from being a one-sided massacre. That, and he didn’t throw them very hard. The humans could fall into the snow to be safe, and Socks couldn’t.

They kept the game going for quite a while, adding things like barriers and specific targets to lend some variety, and by the time they were done, Socks wanted to rest again instead of running, so they prepared to stop for the night.

Dirt summoned a few warming embers to hover near all the cold human fingers and warm them up, then melted some water to drink. The evening meal was seared meat again, and they stored it in the snow to keep cold overnight.

Night came and it got truly cold, and the humans huddled on blankets right up against Socks’s belly again. The three of them didn’t fit very well on one, so Dirt had his own and the siblings shared the other. They lay on their backs for a while, shoulder to shoulder, whispering quietly to each other. Dirt snuggled in against Socks’ fur and summoned a few warming embers, which he shared.

“How far to the wolves’ territory, do you think?” asked Dirt, aloud, for the benefit of everyone.

-Just a few days. Maybe three or four. It depends on how fast we go.-

“I hope they’re happy to see us.”

-We will see. Good night, little humans.-

Antelmu and Biandina said their good nights, then kept talking to each other. Dirt couldn’t hear it, and decided that was fine. Let them have some time to each other.

Finally, Dirt asked Socks mentally, “What do you think about all this? I feel like we do too many things for me and not enough for you. I wish you could spend more time with your siblings and Father.”

-I do not regret it. I am having fun. Visiting the new wolves is my thing, and we are doing that next. And I am still the strongest of my litter,- said Socks. -I do miss them, though. I want to roughhouse without worrying I will hurt someone. And Father teaches us different things than I am learning with you, things I need to learn. You cannot teach me how to be a wolf. But I am learning other things that my siblings cannot learn from each other. Someday, Father can teach me the rest, and I will know two sets of things.-

“Do you think it’s a bad idea to keep fighting the Eye? We don’t even really know what it is.”

-It’s too late to think something like that. You have two humans who have joined you expecting to fight.-

“That’s true. I just want to know what you think, since we haven’t talked about this aspect of it.”

-I think that if we can ever find a way to get rid of it, we should. And I hate it. I want to kill it and I will fight it every time I see it.-

“Good. Me too,” said Dirt. “I wonder how things might have been different if these were the first humans I found instead of Marina’s party.”

-Well, what if the first one you met was the guy who shot you with an arrow?-

“True. That really hurt, now that you remind me.”

-It would have killed you if I wasn’t there to lick it.-

“Also true. You save me in lots of different ways.”

-You saved my life, too, remember. And we learned things together that saved my life other times, which I would not have learned alone.-

“Oh, I know. I’m just saying thank you.”

-You are welcome, dear little Dirt,- said Socks. He didn’t feel like actually moving, so he sent a puff of affection and an image of licking Dirt’s face.

Dirt smiled and returned the puff of affection twofold. Then he said, “You know what I wonder, now? After Biandina offered a sacrifice, and then we saved her life and killed the birds? I wonder if the gods are still listening. I wonder if they guided you to me somehow. Things like that.”

-Who can say? Father and Mother don’t seem to think the gods matter anymore.-

“I remember Father saying he was less free when the gods were still here. So I worry about two things, sort of. If the gods are still around, are they mad at me for breaking the world? Will they want revenge someday? And if they came back, what would happen to your kind, and to the trees? Do you think they’d put the trees back to when they were ignorant and small?” said Dirt.

-I think,- said Socks, -that the gods are probably gone. But if not, Father is on my side, and the forest is on yours, so even gods would have to be careful.-

“I’m just going to say, so you never have to wonder in the future, that if fixing the world means hurting the wolves and the trees and the elementals, and maybe all the other wonderful things we haven’t met yet, that I won’t do it. I won’t,” said Dirt.

-I have not said so before, but to me, the world is not broken. It is a paradise. Everywhere is open, everything is free, and the world is stuffed full of enemies and prey and new sights and wonders. The fact there are some little humans in it just makes it more wondrous. I love it. I love being alive. And I love you, my own little Dirt, and I am glad you are with me.-

“I love you too, Socks. I’m glad I’m with you, too.”

-What should we dream of tonight?-

“Let’s take Biandina and Antelmu and see what’s on the moon.”