The Land of Broken Roads

“It was the blood. It’s a curse,” said Antelmu, standing rigidly, eyes wide as he peered around to look for the next threat.

“It’s not a curse and it wasn’t the blood,” said Dirt. “I was just doing the same thing there that I did on the wall.”

“That wall?” said Antelmu, pointing.

Dirt scowled at him. The older boy was completely wrong, of course, but since Dirt had no idea what just happened, it wasn’t an argument he could win.

Biandina said, “Maybe we should get some water and go wash the blood off. Ruin those drawings. I don’t think we can do anything about the wall anymore, but, well…”

“That would be a waste of time,” said Dirt. “But I won’t stop you, if it’ll make you feel better.”

“You sure can be smug sometimes for an eight-year-old, you know that, Dirt?” said Biandina.

He glanced sideways at her. She wasn’t annoyed, not really; she was concerned and scared and completely lost. He knew the feeling.

Dirt thought how best to approach this, which made him miss Socks. There was never any real confusion or misunderstanding between them. Maybe Biandina should learn to read minds after all?

The moment of silence quickly filled with dread as each of them started listening for more laughter. It wasn’t ghosts, was it? Not in the daytime, out in the sunlight. They didn’t like light.

Biandina spoke hastily, almost as if trying to find something to say after she started, not before. “The magic is carved right into the brick now, so it won’t be easy to fix. So I won’t ask you to try and… polish it, to make it gone. And I know you put it on the wall to glow, and I saw the light. I know that’s why you did it. But maybe that’s not all you did. At least, did on purpose.”

Dirt was about to deny it again, since it was ridiculous; but then he remembered what had happened when he fixed the goddess statue. That had been the Eye, though, and this wasn’t. But could he say for certain it wasn’t something similar?

He turned his attention to his mind-sight and looked for living creatures, particularly half-dead ones. Even something tiny. But he found nothing unusual. He found hardly anything at all. Antelmu and Biandina’s minds, their worry plain to see. A few timid mice that were probably surprisingly close. A predatory bird of some kind. Dirt looked up to see it gliding to a perch in one of the upper tower windows.

“So now what?” asked Antelmu, also shifting uncomfortably in the silence. “Are we safe to stay in there, or do we need to go find somewhere else?”

“First we’re going to wash that blood off,” said Biandina. “And you’re helping,” she added, pointing a stern finger at Dirt.

“Fine. What are we going to use to clean it? Water, and what else?”

She froze, but only briefly. Then, as if it had been the plan all along, she said, “We’re just going to cover it up by kicking dirt over it.”

“The ground’s still frozen, though,” said Dirt.

“I thought you were supposed to be strong. Figure it out,” said Biandina.

“Don’t be mean,” said Antelmu.

She glared at him but calmed herself down before losing her temper. “I am not being mean. Dirt, you agreed I was in charge, didn’t you? So just do this, please,” she said, her eyes somewhere between imperious and pleading.

She was right—he’d agreed. And what could it hurt? May as well encourage her. He nodded resolutely and said, “We can figure something out.”

Covering the blood marks all over the paved court was harder than any of them expected. The ground was indeed frozen, and whatever sandy gravel they could kick over the drawings only got them dirty, not covered. They eventually resorted to simply dumping a bunch of snow on it and burying them that way, but that took quite a lot of snow, and the three inches of thin powder that remained were melting into one soggy inch as the sun climbed higher.

While they worked, the three of them kept watch on the gray mound in the distance, as if they expected movement. They also filled the air with pointless chatter or humming, nervous when they let the silence grow too potent. Dirt kept watch for minds as well, despite how that distracted him from the physical world, but nothing came close that shouldn’t be there.

Still, it took forever. The mood they started with was not the one that greeted them at the finish. Biandina said, “Thanks,” but she didn’t have to. Dirt could easily see that she felt relieved. Not completely; she retained an air of wariness. But having done something and letting time pass, pointless or not, had helped.

Antelmu, on the other hand, had grown more sour as the job wore on, stomping and muttering about his hands being cold and giving the shortest answers possible. But Dirt had peeked at the boy’s mind to see what was the matter, and his irritability was fueled by simple hunger.

They hurried back to the tower and hid their hesitation to enter once more. Nothing happened when they crossed the doorway. No weird laughter.

Dirt went right for the deer and ate some liver. Antelmu and Biandina didn’t want anything raw, hungry as they were, and had to climb all the way to the top floor—the supplies were in the new room on the seventh floor.

They came down to find him sooner than he expected, before he’d had a chance to go double check the enchantment that had been tampered with. Antelmu was still chewing. Biandina said, “Good, you’re already here,” even though she knew that. “Have you ever heard of drying meat?”

“Is drying different from cooking?”

Antelmu said, “You know the meat we’ve been eating? It’s dried, not cooked. It’s different. It lasts longer.” The fur collar around his neck was glistening and dripping with water, which told Dirt he’d dunked his head into the water basin. And probably been smacked; Biandina hated that. Only Socks was allowed to drink like a wolf.

“First thing we need to do is cut all the meat into thin strips. Antelmu can do that. It’s a job that takes two hands,” she said. She nodded at Dirt’s knife.

Dirt handed it over to the older boy and leaned in to watch. First, Antelmu carved the entire skin away in one piece. Biandina had already started the process when she got the guts out. Which made him think her statement that it required two hands wasn’t fully honest.

Antelmu laid the hide across the window where the deer had been, then got to work carving every bit of meat into thin strips two fingers wide, like the supplies they’d brought. He worked with a deft hand, remarking, “This knife makes this really easy.” But even with the ancient blade, Dirt could tell the boy had a lot of practice. There was no hesitation in his movements.

Biandina stacked the dried meat on a cloth she’d brought for the purpose, wincing at the blood that was still leaking into it. Hanging the corpse over the windowsill to drain didn’t seem to have done much after all. The stack grew taller than Dirt expected, judging from how much smaller the meat looked when it was still on the animal.

Once that was done, Biandina said, “We don’t have anything to wash the bones, but do your best to scrape them off and lay them out to dry. Except the leg bones; I need those. Then we need to flesh that hide.”

“Are we going to tan it?” asked Antelmu.

“It sounds like Socks will be gone for a few days, so we may as well try. We have the brains and fat. We can at least dry it.”

“Where are you going to put the fire to dry the meat?” asked Antelmu.

“Outside,” said Biandina.

“No, let’s do it upstairs where it’ll keep the room warm.”

“The room we picked isn’t big enough.”

“Then we can pick a bigger one.”

“Can we just do what I say, please?” said Biandina.

“When you don’t say dumb stuff,” said Antelmu. “Why waste all that heat? I’m freezing.”

“I don’t want the fire to weaken the floor. It’s really, really old wood underneath, remember? What if it smolders and chars and collapses out from under us?” she said flatly.

“Oh,” said Antelmu. His eyes glazed over while he thought about that. Dirt suspected neither of them had enough experience with wood to know either way, and for that matter, neither did he. Most of his experience with wood involved conversations.

Dirt said, “I don’t know about the floor, but I do know that if we put the meat outside, predators will smell it and come for it. I bet they show up anyway, with all this blood. And the innards. Which, are you going to do anything with those?”

Biandina said, “I didn’t think about predators. The last thing we want is a pack of ragnuli.”

“If you want fire to cook with, why not do it here, where the meat already is? I doubt there’s wood under the first floor. That way if something comes, at least we’re inside already,” said Dirt.

The older girl gave him a tired look, but she agreed. “Fine. That’ll keep us together, too. All right, Dirt, come help me get some coal.”

Dirt and Biandina made their way up staircase after staircase, all wide enough for Socks to climb up. Not tall enough, but Dirt wasn’t sure why they’d make them so wide. It made the building look even emptier than it was. So much unused space, and nothing beautiful or appealing about it. Just a really wide staircase. The uniformity of the pale brown brickwork gave a sense of sterility that he found slightly disconcerting. Perhaps it would be different with decorations, as humans often had on their dwellings. Otherwise, he couldn’t imagine anyone choosing to live here for long.

The exact moment they opened the bag to grab some coal, Antelmu screamed, distantly. His high-pitch shriek echoed faintly through the halls and came in through the window. He screamed again and again, each time he could take a breath.

Dirt jumped out the window, filling his bones with mana and hoping it would be enough. He hit the ground before he could count to three and landed hard, hard enough to rattle him despite the mana, but he was fine. He sprinted around to the bloody window where Antelmu was and saw nothing unusual outside. He jumped in ready for war and found Antelmu sitting in the corner, holding the knife with both hands, eyes wide in shock and horror.

There was nothing else here. The deerskin lay over there, and the butchered skeleton, mostly intact, was under the window. Blood was scattered everywhere, but that was expected.

“I-i-i-i-it ta-ta-ta-ta talked. The d-d-d-deer,” stammered Antelmu. It looked like he was so rigid he was having trouble speaking.

Dirt looked at the deer skeleton and there was nothing interesting about it. Nothing at all. Then he looked for minds and caught a glimmer of something strange. A distant mind just retreating beyond his view, with a different feeling than he’d ever encountered. Not half-dead, nor empty. Just strange. How strange, he had insufficient time to determine. Or why. All he caught was a sense of amusement, and then it was gone.

He scowled. “What did it say?”

“I-i-i-i-it said it was c… c…”

Dirt looked at his mind and found the boy in a dazed state. He had a string of clear thought, but couldn’t turn it into real awareness or get control of his body. Awake, but not in control of himself. The terror had shaken him completely out of his wits. He stared at the deer skull, expecting it to move again and hoping with all his might that it wouldn’t.

“I puuuuut it over the… the uh…” said Antelmu.

Dirt knelt and tried to get the boy to look him in the eyes. Antelmu leaned to one side to keep staring at the skeleton.

“Antelmu!” shouted Biandina, faintly. It sounded like she was still only halfway here.

Dirt waved a hand in front of Antelmu’s eyes and the boy’s terror began to crack. He sent him mental puffs of calmness and reassurance. Just little ones, lest he overwhelm the boy or cause him to catch on. Just enough that he thought it was himself. A puff of courage.

“Hoo, wow,” exhaled Antelmu. “I’ve never been so scared. Uh oh…”

He leaped to his feet and tried to hand Dirt the knife, but dropped it from his stiff and trembling fingers. He raced to the window and vomited loudly, almost tipping over and falling out before Dirt grabbed his belt. The water and dried meat he’d eaten splashed noisily on the ground and Dirt decided he didn’t want the rest of the innards after all.

Antelmu was still leaning out the window, whole body going rigid in jerks as his stomach forced out everything it contained, when Biandina finally burst into the room. She held a lump of coal in her hand, raised and ready to smack something with.

“Antelmu!” she shouted.

“He’s fine,” said Dirt. “Just got a little scare. Okay, a big scare. A big, big one. But he’s fine.”

“What happened?” she shouted again, even as she rushed to the window and pulled him back in. Fortunately, he was done vomiting by the time she reached him. She kicked the deer skeleton away so he wouldn’t trip on it and led him to a clean spot of floor to sit down.

Antelmu slumped down like an empty bag and exhaled in relief. “Wow, that took a lot out of me.” He forced a chuckle.

Dirt responded with a friendly grin, but Biandina insistently repeated, “What happened?”

“Hold on, let me wash my mouth out first,” he said. He stood on wobbly feet and walked out of the room with a determined air. Dirt and Biandina followed him, right out of the tower and toward a nearby section of field where the snow hadn’t been touched. With it, he washed his face off and ate some to cleanse his mouth.

Biandina gave him her most impatient scowl and he finally relented. “I hung the deer skeleton over the window so I could clean it easier, and the front half came alive. It turned its head and looked at me and said, ‘Put my skin back on, I’m getting cold.’”

Dirt sent the boy another mental puff of confidence and it helped. Antelmu looked toward the tower and swallowed nervously, but chose to walk back inside.

“What do you mean it came alive?” said Biandina.

“I mean, it turned and looked at me. It even moved the eye that’s still in. The front legs pushed against the wall and it turned its head and said what I said.” The older boy tilted slightly and said, “Uh oh.”

He fell to hands and knees and vomited again while Dirt and Biandina stood by uselessly. Poor Antelmu retched over and over, even after his stomach was empty and there was nothing left to expel.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life!” he said weakly. Biandina helped him to his feet again.

“I’ve been so scared I peed, but never so scared I vomited,” said Dirt. “And I’ve even seen a moving skeleton before. Except mine tried to kill me.”

Antelmu washed his mouth out yet again, then stood. Biandina tried to take his arm to help him walk, but he shook her off. “I’m fine. I think that was the last of it.”

Dirt looked around for minds again, just to see if whatever it was had come back to see the results of its prank. And to his surprise, he found one. A large one, human-sized, close enough that it might be standing right beside them.

He did his best to give no indication, choosing instead to watch it carefully to see what it was. Even so, he inhaled mana in case he had to punch it. He wished he hadn’t left his knife on the floor.

It wasn’t just one. There were others, at least three, a bit farther. Or dimmer, anyway. As he peered into their minds, he recognized the same strangeness as before. It was the same creatures, he was certain. And as before, they were amused. Laughing, even. They were speaking to each other, but made no sound. It was as if each of them was both dreaming and awake at the same time. The minds themselves felt like something from a dream. Living dreams? Watching the waking world?

The closest one was walking beside Biandina. No, walking was the wrong word. It was dancing. But the mind was all there was—no movement, no sound. It didn’t even stir the air as it moved.

Dirt burned a bit of mana to suddenly leap over and take a swing with his fist. It passed through empty air, right where the thing should have been, judging by its visual perspective. It laughed, and the others joined in, and only when Biandina and Antelmu froze did Dirt recognize that the laugh was audible.

The sounds retreated toward the gray mound off in the distance, and the minds faded and vanished.

“All right, you know how I said it would be a bad idea to see what that gray hill thing is?” said Dirt, pointing at the mound. “I’m going to do it anyway. Something over there is playing with us. I won’t get too close, but I have to go see.”

“I’m coming,” said Biandina. “Antelmu, go back and wait in the—”

“I’m coming too,” he said. “I feel better now.”

“You are not! Look at you, you’re shaking!”

“I am not!” he protested, but when he looked at his fingers, they were trembling. “Don’t make me go back alone,” he said quietly.

“Come, then. We’re not getting that close anyway. Just close enough to see what it is,” said Dirt. In his mind he began measuring the landscape, looking for places to make a stand to give the children time to run away. There really wasn’t anywhere like that. This was a bad idea. But neither could he leave himself and the other two at the mercy of whatever those things were.

They walked with eyes wide and ears stretched to listen. It was a long walk—several thousand paces—and Antelmu stopped shaking long before they got there. The strange gray mound revealed itself only slowly, and there was little to see. Just a pile of something gray in a featureless heap about as tall as Socks at the shoulder. The snowless ground around it was the only thing that made it stand out at all.

About halfway, Dirt noticed a flower, a little red one, growing out of the snow right beside the path. Then another, and suddenly there were dozens. Just as quickly, they faded. A dozen paces later, a giant hole appeared in the ground, right where Biandina was about to step. He grabbed her shirt and yanked her off-balance to stop her, but it was too late and her foot landed on empty air. Except it wasn’t. The hole vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“What?” she said, turning to give him a wary look. “Don’t do that.”

“Did you not see the hole?” Dirt asked.

“What hole?” she said.

“Never mind,” said Dirt.

“I didn’t see it either,” said Antelmu.

Visions changed the landscape as they walked, and the other children sometimes noticed before Dirt did. Sometimes they saw different things at the same time. One time, the snow became grass. Another, the road filled with snakes. Something tugged Dirt’s hair, hard enough to sting, and he swatted empty air with his arm. The mysterious minds were all around them now, but their numbers kept changing. Sometimes there were three, sometimes four, sometimes seven or nine.

Biandina and Antelmu were both struggling to keep their sanity. Only the fact they’d have to run back alone seemed to keep them moving forward. They held hands and walked so close their shoulders touched. Dirt walked beside them, worried that if he took the lead something would happen where he couldn’t see it.

The mound stayed featureless, but the landscape around it didn’t. Some of the changes were permanent, like tufts of green grass that stayed after being stepped on. Most were not. Nothing harmed them, though, and Dirt grew more and more convinced that whatever these dream-creatures were, they were unable to cause any harm during the day. Or hadn’t yet.

They kept approaching, much closer than Dirt had intended. But the constant tricks and lies and pinches they were receiving made turning around without answers increasingly unacceptable.

After getting within fifty paces, Antelmu was the first to make it out—a ring of alternating mushrooms and purple flowers encircled the mound. He pointed and Biandina saw it as well.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

“What?” Dirt asked.

“I think that’s a fairy ring,” she said.

A voice whispered in Dirt’s ear, so close he felt its lips. “Come, sweetling, come and greet us. Gather delights and wonders. Fair friends and honey we offer, and gold and enjoyment. Come, come, come, dear youngest. Your friend Socks is here with us and bids you come.”

“Don’t move!” shouted Biandina. “It’s all lies!”

“You heard that whisper?” asked Dirt. The swirling air around him made him feel dizzy, like he was slipping into a daydream. He shook it off.

“I’m hungry, and they have my horse,” said Antelmu. There was longing in his voice, and he didn’t sound fully awake.

“It’s a lie! They promised me that I could meet Prosperu again, and say I’m sorry,” said Biandina.

“That seems cruel,” said Dirt.

“Yes,” said Biandina. “It is. I should lie down.”

Dirt looked at the other two and recognized what was happening. They’d been lured here, drawn far closer than he intended. And now the other two were at risk of sleepwalking right into that fairy circle. That didn’t seem desirable.

He sent them both a stern mental shock to wake them up. A good hard one, enough it might be painful. The dreamy minds around him sensed some part of it and recoiled. Many of the illusions swirling around them vanished, leaving nothing but empty snow and dead yellow grass, interspersed with gravel and cracked paving stones.

He reached for the closest dream mind and attacked it directly, sending the same waking shock. It fled and disappeared, and soon after, so did all the rest.

Biandina and Antelmu stepped backward, suddenly eager to get away. Dirt nodded and said, “Let’s go. We found out what it was.”

He gave one last glance at the gray mound and finally made out what it was--an enormous pile of ancient bones, gray and brittle from exposure.