The Land of Broken Roads

Dirt screamed as he watched the trees shrink below him, flailing his arms and legs as he tried to grab hold of nothing. Nothing but air. The wind had to blow with tremendous power to move him at all, but once it got him moving, he moved.

He panicked, watching as his worst nightmare came true. He was going to be thrown into whatever the sky was made of, falling upward forever. The ground below him would fade to nothing and it would be like the Void all over again, except this time he’d starve to death and his body would never come back down.

Dirt rolled to look at the forest instead of the sky, but he could still feel the sky lurking behind him, drawing him upward. Adding to that, he saw how far he was above the ground, with the trees now shrinking into a carpet of green below.

The wind didn’t carry him in any sort of smooth flight, either. It tossed him like a leaf, first one direction, then the next. It flipped and spun him before suddenly letting him drop a hundred paces, then blew him in a different direction. Each time it dropped him, Dirt was sure it was the last and he was about to fall.

He couldn’t focus in the slightest.

“Stop!” he shouted, screaming uselessly into the roaring wind. His arms and legs froze and refused to move. His heart beat so fast he could feel it in his neck.

The wind rushed merrily along, playing with him like a child kicking a ball. It tossed him high again, straight upward, higher than thunderclouds or birds. At least it felt that high. It hadn’t been summer-warm to begin with and it got colder very quickly, which surprised him. He thought it would be warmer all the way to the sun. It blew him even higher than that, then higher again, and faded into nothing, leaving him floating.

Perhaps the trees kept themselves warm all year long, and now he was out of their influence where it was autumn again. Whatever the explanation, it was the coldest he’d ever been and he wished he was dressed. With shoes, even. His toes stung.

Strangely, other than the temperatures, being this high up was less scary. At least he had a moment to think. There was nothing for him to run into, so high up he could see the edge of the forest in two directions, and it helped him calm down enough to concentrate.

Then the earth pulled him downward again, faster and faster. He did his best to ignore it.

The elemental’s mind no longer remained constantly nearby, choosing instead to race the great distances her wind covered, stopping only briefly to check on him. He saw himself in her perception, a tiny speck in a space otherwise unhindered by obstacle or restraint. She tried to speak with him periodically, but he couldn’t respond.

Dirt could guess what had happened. He’d told her ‘freedom from restraint’ in a way that made her think this was what he wanted, and until he said otherwise she might just keep tossing him around. So now what? How many words for ‘stop’ could he remember?

He closed his eyes, ignoring the physical panic it caused him, and tried to gauge what she intended. As before, her mind was vast and active. But despite all the treetops and other wind and layers of temperature and everything else she felt all the time, most of her perception was in the world of magic.

“Hello?” he shouted, and the word made only the tiniest ripple in her awareness. She paid it no attention.

He didn’t dare open his eyes yet, in case he panicked. The ground was getting closer, but he felt like he was floating now, no longer accelerating in his fall. He decided what magic words to try—they’d been part of a spell to put out a fire. ‘Diminishing,’ and ‘terminating at the completion of a process.’

Although… now that he’d had a moment to calm down, was it really so bad? It was almost fun. He opened his eyes to enjoy the scenery for a moment. The sky still looked far enough away that he wasn’t about to fall in, if he was honest with himself, and the ground below looked smaller even than from a mountaintop. How many chances would he get to see something like this again? He stretched his arms and legs as far as they could go to slow his fall, and in response, another gust of wind lifted him upward again.

A crosswind came and blew him closer to the edge of the forest, which made him more nervous. The trees couldn’t catch him if he didn’t fall where they were. But it opened up more of the landscape, and below he saw the vast grassland he’d crossed early in the summer, and far beyond that, the deep, clear river. And there, the basin. It was a lot closer than he expected.

There were other ruins down there besides the basin, but not many, and nothing he recognized. They might not even be visible from the ground, just patterns and shapes made from shadows in the grass.

The far side of the forest was distant, even from up here, and Dirt was pretty sure Mother’s den was in that direction. There was no telling how far away it was, but it took Socks the better part of a day running at top speed to get there.

It had never really bothered him before, but now that he thought about it, shouldn’t he have some sort of map to know where everything was? He’d never cared to pay attention to distance or direction, since Socks was the one who decided everything as the owner of the feet that did all the running. But what if he wanted to explain to another human where the forest was, or how to find Ogena?

The Duke had a map, but it looked nothing like this. It didn’t look like the real world at all, just a few straight roads with little drawings showing you what you’d walk past if you took them. Perhaps the schola had a map he could use. And maybe he should start paying attention to what direction Socks was running when they went from place to place.

Dirt smiled, realizing how relaxed he was becoming. For now, he was safe, unless a hungry gryphon flew up here out of nowhere. Each time he fell far enough, the wind lifted him back up, high enough for it to get cold again. He let himself enjoy it, soaking up the sights. But after three more ascents and falls, he decided he wasn’t safe after all; the cold was feeling serious. His fingers didn’t want to bend as freely anymore, he could hardly feel his toes, and there was nothing fun about it anymore.

Time to try and get down with all his bones intact. He wasn’t over the forest now, but neither was he far enough from it to be concerning. It would be a short run. In fact, that might even be better, since he could stretch and let the sun warm him up. So how much would the grass cushion his fall?

Dirt closed his eyes again and turned his focus to his mana body. The chill seeping into him, the wind rushing all over him and filling his ears with a roar, and everything else about the situation made the required concentration beyond difficult, but he had to hurry or he’d get thrown back upward again and find out what ‘frozen’ meant before winter arrived. Needing to hurry, it turned out, didn’t help either.

No, he was being silly. Dirt forced everything else out of his mind by sheer exertion of will. He’d kept his wits in front of the Mother and Father of Wolves. He was not a person who couldn’t control himself.

Dirt watched for the elemental’s mind and waited until she turned her attention to him again. Near the elevation where she’d grabbed him the previous times, she returned and Dirt saw her operate her will in the world of magic, drawing complex sigils to manifest it into reality. It was as easy for her as flexing his toes.

He sent her a mental image of gratitude, just the feeling of warmth and appreciation, to make sure he had her attention. When he did, he drew the signs as carefully as he could, ‘diminishing,’ which he organized in the proper form alongside the word for ‘wind’, and closing it with ‘terminating at the completion of a process.’

Once he’d drawn those, just to make sure she got the idea, he sent a mental image of himself as that little spot in the sky slowly descending. ‘Diminishing,’ he repeated.

She drew another sign over his, a new one that tugged at his memory until he recognized it as ‘slowly’. Right. Avitus had known that one, too. He mirrored it back to her. ‘Slowly.’

Then, in preparation for catastrophic failure, he filled himself with mana and reinforced his insides and outside as much as he could. He stared intently at the ground, ready to try and float right or left to avoid any rocks.

He did not descend much farther, though. Instead, the wind carried him more slowly and didn’t lift him up as high. She tugged him along with her in the direction she’d been going anyway, no longer tossing him playfully about. Just enough force to keep him bobbing along in the sky.

They crossed over the river and Dirt watched in increasing worry as the trees grew smaller and smaller in the distance. The further they got from the forest, the faster the wind was at ground level. It massaged the tall grass in massive swathes that rolled across the plains like ripples in yellow-brown fabric.

Her mind stayed nearer him for now and she kept trying to speak to him in words of magic that he hardly understood. He could only barely feel them with his mana body in the first place, almost like tracing his fingers over etchings in stone to read. When he didn’t reply, she’d switch to something else, usually too fast for him to even grasp the entirety of the previous thing.

This wasn’t going to work. He needed way, way more practice with her first. So he tried something different. It had worked on the trees, after all. Dirt sent her a mental image of himself as she perceived him, a spot in the sky that the air passed over, the shape and feeling of his skin. Even the ripples and twirls that arose as it passed behind him.

He drew the ground for her next, watching to see how her immense hands drifted over the grasses as she passed. He coupled it with the feelings of affection and relief, then watched anxiously to see if she understood.

The wind decreased, so much that Dirt wasn’t sure it was even still blowing; the air rushing from the fall made it hard to tell. That falling sensation that Dirt always felt in his chest whenever Socks jumped filled him now, pushing him back into terror as he plummeted.

With very little time left, he glanced at the elemental’s mind and saw that she had withdrawn and moved her attention elsewhere. Glancing at the grass below, he could tell a slow breeze still blew, just not as much as he hoped. Or needed.

He stopped feeling the fall, further acceleration stopped by the regular air and soft breeze pushing gently back up at him. A scream escaped his lips, a short burst of sound that helped his ears pop like when Socks ran too fast down a mountain.

Dirt must be under the height of the canopy now. Only seconds left. He was going far, far too fast to land safely, plummeting straight down so he couldn’t even try and roll.

In a last-ditch panicked effort he threw all his mana into calling a breeze like the dryads had taught him, and did his best to direct it upward at himself. He felt the mana leave him but the frenzy in his mind kept him from watching to see how well he’d done.

He slowed. The wind was pushing upward and slowing him down. Thank Grace, thank the gods! He hoped it was enough. He inhaled mana again the instant before he hit the ground.

Dirt landed feet first but off-center and immediately crumpled. The collision knocked all the air out of him and for a straight count of fifteen he couldn’t inhale at all. Enough time to regain his wits and gingerly try moving his fingers. They moved. Then his spasming diaphragm relented and he gasped deeply. A moment later, he relaxed into the ground like a puddle.

Dry yellow grass as tall as he was waved above him, hiding most of the sky. He lived! He didn’t smile yet, though. Not until he carefully sat up, making sure every bone was intact before he tried moving it. Arms, chest, legs.

Dirt jumped to his feet and cheered, raising both fists into the air. He shouted and danced and turned in a circle as every last bit of fear dripped away and evaporated. He was still cold, his toes still numb and his hands still stiff. He was stiff everywhere. It was too cold up there, at least in the autumn.

But it had been so fun! At least in retrospect, now that he knew he survived unharmed. It had been mostly terrifying before that. He sat down, suddenly thirsty, and sighed. He summoned four lights with a snap of his fingers, changed them all into embers, and curled up while they floated overhead, baking him like a lump of dough in an oven.

He watched for the elemental’s mind to return, but she never did. Far away, he spotted a few that might have been little ones, and wondered if they were her children. But they never came near. A gentle breeze slowly moved the grasses, waving their dry tufts back and forth. He felt the aftereffects of motion as he lay there, a phantom dizziness that rolled through him as his body imagined itself zipping this way and that.

His body warmed up fairly quickly and fortunately his fingers and toes seemed fine, although his face felt a bit sunburned, along with several other spots down his sides where the cold wind had rushed past. Rising to his feet, he jumped high enough to see, trying to figure out where the forest was, and it wasn’t hard to spot. It sure wasn’t close, though. Farther than the basin had been.

Dirt stretched, smiling to himself. Last time it had taken well over a day to get back. Not this time. Not after running with a wolf. He inhaled mana and fed it to his legs, then ran. The grass whipped his face, forcing him to run with one arm forward to push it aside, but he could switch arms.

How long would it be until Socks was ready to come get him? A few days? Dirt ran faster and faster as he thought about all the things he needed to do. He needed to organize the scrolls better and read the important ones. He needed to make furniture for his villa and maybe change the opening so Socks could get in and lay down in the atrium. He needed to practice talking with the elementals, and he had a bunch of questions about that for the dryads.

Such as, were there other kinds of elementals? Stone or water or fire or lightning? How many kinds were there? And how bad of an idea was it to try to talk to them? Air didn’t seem that dangerous, but look what’d happened to him.

What else? He wanted to ask the dryads how they’d made the cloth they were wearing. Callius said he’d demonstrate it later.

Speaking of clothing, he wished he had his right now. Pants, at least, because the grass whipped him as he ran. Finally he decided to slow down just a bit and use mana to protect his skin before he got a hundred welts for the dryads to fret about. That fixed it. He didn’t need the pants after all.

What else did he want to do? He needed to learn how he’d broken the world. Something about surviving flying around in the sky higher than stormclouds made the prospect of uncovering his own ancient guilt a lot less intimidating.

The dryads had mentioned once that there was a skin over everything in the world of Law, and that it had been damaged. Somewhere in all that preserved text should be some clue about what he’d been up to, if not a full account. Prisca had known. Perhaps she’d written some of it down.

When he got to the river, he jumped right in and immediately regretted it. The water was frigid and it shocked his system so bad he feared he might drown. But his flailing arms dragged him to shore and his trembling lungs let themselves fill with air. He rolled onto the mud and stood in a hurry. It had been so cold he had a headache now, and he shivered despite the sunlight.

That was not fair at all! Who knew water could change temperature like that? When he stopped shivering and rubbed his wet skin enough that he was sure it wouldn’t freeze, he knelt on the bank and used his cupped hands to drink his fill, not daring to dunk his face like usual.

He paused and scanned the area for minds, looking for anything unusual. This was a big river, so did it have its own elemental? He found plenty of mice, and a vast sea of grass minds. Some bugs nearby, close enough for him to find their tiny pinpricks of light. Some odd things that took him a moment to recognize as fish, swimming down there in the river. But no elementals. Nothing big or complicated. Not any goblins, either, thank Grace.

Dirt stood and made a running leap across the river, strengthening his legs with mana. He almost didn’t make it, since the mud slowed him down just a bit.

No sooner had he landed on the far side and resumed running than he felt himself yanked with root travel, blind to the world for an instant until the bright autumn field was replaced by the somber greens and dim lighting of the forest floor. Twenty dryad faces crowded him, all anxious.

“Hi, everyone. I’m fine,” he said.