Binarius (14 page)

She was battling extremes within
herself to stay put; all she wanted to do was lunge toward him.
Maybe he would smack his head on a rock on the way down, knocking
him unconscious. Then she could use her spectralin to burn a hole
through his chest — in peace.

The sounds of hammers on soil
became more and more distant. Firinne was still glued to the wall
of the cave. Her eyes were fixed on the air in front of her like
she, herself, wasn’t even there.

Cyneric. Once again, Cyneric, had
made a fool of her. How many damn times was she going to allow him
to do this? She knew that no one else had seen, but the
embarrassment was just as bad. Her face was hot, and her fingers
were ice. The only victory she could account for was that she
managed to save the books, and managed not to tell him a single,
damn thing.

It was dangerous. She hadn’t made a
single noise. No tears. No sobs. She sunk down like a forgotten
marionette — enemy of her strings. She curled up like a child and
squeezed her knees viciously into her chest. She closed her eyes,
and the forcefulness could be seen on her face.

Emotion is not
permitted.

He will not be granted.

She had stayed in the cave, in the
same position, all night. It was too risky to go out into the night
in search of Mabon, and besides, she hadn’t had the will to move.
Now that the dull, blue light of the sky was peeking into the cave,
she rose herself from the fetal position. She reached for her bag
and chose the most palatable of options. She had no appetite but
forced herself to swallow some of the jerky — hastily chewing
through every bite, consciously avoiding the taste and texture. She
almost gagged once which she followed with a punch to her thigh. It
was her, versus the body plagued by emotions. She got through half
of the stick and after thirty minutes of the battle, she conceded
defeat and put the other half of jerky back in her bag.

The air outside of the cave was
crisp; like apples and sage. The ground was sodden with heavy dew
which made it easier for Firinne to move silently down the ravine.
Everything was silent other than the usual morning sounds of the
forest.

She had a mental map of last
night’s deviation from the path they had been on. If she was right,
considering how distorted everything had been, she needed to go
farther east to find the main path. Once she had found the path,
she would retreat a few feet towards the west again and then head
north. This way she would know she was following the path, but she
wouldn’t risk being seen by any of Cyneric’s Desideriums — if they
were still lurking about.

She spotted the path from the
previous night and thanked Fia for her fortune. Before emerging on
the north bank of the ravine, she crawled up to the top of the
other side to inspect her surroundings. She couldn’t hear anything
unnatural, and there was nothing but forest to be seen. The forest
was dense but as long as you knew how to navigate, its denseness
could be used as an advantage. While other things could be hidden,
so could Firinne.

She crawled out of the north side
of the ravine and winced at the stretched feeling of her exhausted
muscles. She had been so numb from the emotion that she hadn’t
realized what a strain last night’s events had put on her body. She
was weak, sore, and shaky. But she had to get to the river and find
her friend. So, she continued to walk, farther and farther away
from the ravine. If she could continue at this pace, she thought
she might be able to reach the river by midday.

Firinne was vigilantly focused on
this undertaking. Nevertheless, she found her thoughts swaying like
the river current sways and swirls around stones during its
journey. These thoughts were vomitus. She felt like they were glued
to her skin. She felt filthy. He had touched her so lovingly. He
had kissed her so passionately. He had pleaded with her so
remorsefully. He had almost convinced her, cunningly. But it was
all fabricated and it was the worst sort of fabrication — the
fabrication of love.

He was so sick, so demented. Who
was he? Really? At what point did the victim in him end, and the
‘emotional assailant’ begin? Was he ever really the victim or was
it all just a part of the plan?

She would never know the truth. She
had to accept that, here and now. Someone like him — no, she would
never know. She had been deceived on an unbelievable level by
someone she thought she knew so undeniably well. What did that say
about her? It wasn’t just a question of whether she could trust
someone else ever again, it was a question of whether she could
trust herself ever again. Yes, there were warnings, but not the
kind that could predict this scale of evil? No, — the only positive
thing that she could say of herself, was that she hadn’t offered
even a taste of her secrets to him. She could easily have construed
that to victory, but she refused to give herself any more praise.
She shouldn’t have put herself in that situation to begin with. If
she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be walking through this forest alone and
wondering to herself whether Mabon had escaped.

It was midday. Behind the rustling
sounds of leaves, she thought she could hear the river. With every
ten paces, the river grew louder and her heart began to weigh a bit
less. There was something else, though. Another sound was fighting
for resonance against the river, but she couldn’t make it out. Just
keep going, almost there.

The sound had now transformed
itself into voices. She was almost close enough to tell what they
were saying. She began walking even more lightly than she had been.
Every time she came up to a tree, she would hide her body behind it
for a short time. More zig-zagging. One tree, across to the next.
Stop!

“
She wouldn’t have gone south!
Yesterday, I tracked her heading North with that beast she was
with. She had to have been headed this way.” It was Cyneric, and
although it sounded as if he was talking to himself, Firinne knew
better. Smart. He was waiting for her, convinced she would come;
she had.

“
We’ve been here for hours,
though. Maybe she isn’t coming. Changed her plans. Too scared. If
she isn’t coming, then we’re wasting time standing here. She could
be headed back to Citrine. ARRGHHH!” He was doubting himself. This
was good.

The sound of his voice left a bad
taste in her mouth.

Firinne pressed her back as hard as
she could against the tree. She was holding her breath.

After another quarter-of-an-hour
Cyneric said, “Alright, let’s head out. Keep your eyes open. We’ve
got our orders.” Then under his breath, “I should have killed her
when I had the chance.”

Cyneric, along with the Desideriums
and Demogorchians, resumed the path towards the south. As they
walked up to Firinne’s line of sight, she shifted herself like a
cog, around the trunk of the tree so that her back was now facing
the opposite direction. She stayed there until she could no longer
hear them. Then, she cautiously peered out from the tree. They were
gone.

She decided that it was safer if
she waited just a few more minutes before she ran, full speed, to
the river.

The river was full and strong. The
water was clear — rippling glass. She filled up her flask and took
slow sips of the water. Without hesitation, she flung herself into
the river as if it were her salvation. She submerged herself
completely. She imagined the filth and darkness detaching itself
from her flesh and drowning in the river — their remains claimed by
water, forever floating down the river.

She heard the crack of a branch and
instinctually dived behind a boulder that was embedded in the
riverbed. Something moved one of the willow bushes that lined the
riverbank — it was something big, and dark.

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

Black
Scabs

She had a
relentless habit of picking at the calloused skin on the corners of
her fingers; right next to the end of the nail. She would pinch the
hard skin with her nails and tear it off. They were pieces of
herself or — the ones that got knocked against everything simply
because they were the skin on the top of her fingers. Maybe that
was how fate was? You got knocked against life simply by
circumstance or was it design?

Firinne had been sitting there by
the river, completely absorbed by the other world in her head for
far too long. Mabon nudged her on her shoulder, snapping her out of
it, and she could no longer remember what she had even been
thinking about. She felt like she lived in the world of fantasy
more than she did the real world. Constantly engulfed by internal
thoughts, scenarios, fears, and riddles. Maybe this was the
beginning of madness, that point you can’t return from because you
enjoy it so much — being separate from reality.

“
I’m glad you made it, Mabon. That
was a close one wasn’t it?”

There was one thing she couldn’t
figure out. Why was it that she seemed like such an important enemy
for the Mist of Blacken to defeat?

Surely they — it — whatever it was
didn’t zero-in on just anyone on Fia with a Castle, did they? The
assumption had been that as long as the people of Fia remained
silent and obedient, they could live their lives in relative peace.
She didn’t know why the Mist had sought Citrine, or why it was
hunting her. She had escaped, but what was it afraid of her doing?
She had no army, nor any allies. She was alone, other than Mabon
and he wouldn’t qualify in their eyes as a threat. Was it just
Triphosa and Cyneric over-exercising their power? Had they hated me
that badly all of those years? It couldn’t be that. Cyneric seemed
so defeated when she had managed to escape. He was almost panicked.
He had failed the completion of his orders.

It wasn’t safe to camp at the river
tonight. Cyneric and/or the Desideriums would probably circle back
again. It was already late afternoon and therefore, they had no
choice but to walk in the dark. Maybe that was better anyway — for
now.

She looked in her satchel to see
how much food she had left. The books were still there too, and
thankfully they didn’t weigh too much. She doubted she would have
been able to escape with them around her neck the night before. She
pulled one out and examined the map. After the river, the forest
went on for a while longer. She couldn’t remember what came after
the forest, but before the mountains. She had never been past the
river. She doubted that Auralia or Imphius had ever told her what
lay beyond the river; there wasn’t need to.

Most of life at Citrine revolved
around Citrine, the woods ahead of it, and Archen’s town. She knew
of the mountains because that is where Auralia had told her the old
ones lived. Hadn’t she mentioned that they would need to send
someone for seeds? Now, these mysterious books were telling her to
seek the old ones as well. Everyone in the past who had traveled to
the mountains was sworn to secrecy. Firinne remembered when she was
younger, she had tried to interrogate one of the guards after he
had returned with seeds.

“What was it like? What were they
like? The mountains! Are they pretty?” The guard would smile as he
shook his head. “Sorry little Queen, can’t say. They’ll cut out my
tongue if I do…blarrrghhh!” Then he chased her down the corridor
with his tongue hanging out like a dog.

“
I guess we’ll find out, eh,
Mabon? We better get going.”

Firinne was sucking on jerky. The
woods were blue now and the light of the sun dying behind the
horizon was ultraviolet. Everything that was white in the forest
glowed like the moon. The aspens that were all throughout the
forest looked like skinny ghosts — the black scabs on their trunks
like the last bits of flesh rotting away, giving way to the
ethereal world. This hallucinogenic alternate world. It was like
this forest had two lives within one — like twins — one that shown
brightly in the light of the sun, one that became a shadow of its
twin as night approached. All of their arms — boney and rigid,
reached out towards each other forming a line of sharp netting.
Interweaving locks of bones enhanced by a wild dance of entrancing
color. It was a ceremony, and she could see them watching her from
far off in the distance. They haunted the endless pits of her
soul.

She could hear wolves calling out
in the distance. Perhaps they had caught the smell of their prey,
or perhaps it was a call to danger? The forest grew darker and
darker as the minutes passed. It seemed that it was always that
way. The days would linger on forever, and you could barely tell
when the Sun moved, but at dusk the Sun would drop like a ball
being thrown into a lake. Within minutes, everything was dark, so
dark that is was hard to believe that there had ever been any light
to begin with.

And yet, we always knew that the
Sun would come back the next day.

She hoped that they would clear the
forest before midnight. She could smell a storm coming; one of
those heavy spring storms, and although she longed for those
raindrops to beat against her skin, she knew that they needed to
find shelter before it came. Maybe that was the call from the
wolves? —