The Land's Whisper (2 page)

And this trespass? Who have I to blame
now?

Sim’s head dipped in shame, but he fought to
rationalize.

I have no choice. None.

A cold unrest poured into him at a new
thought.
The Three see me…

He shook his head.
Have I taken their
gods now?
he pondered with a sneer.
Maybe, when they come to
curse me, they can tell me why I was brought here.

Sim could not determine this simple fact.
Orbits ago, he had been stolen from his small home on Alatrice. He
had entered a cave and barely taken two steps before finding the
passage behind him barred. The entrance had morphed to solid stone.
The only way out was forward, through the tunnel. It had been a
trap, but he had never been able to discern its purpose.

He had attempted to find meaning in this
alien land but had been left without understanding. Why was he
forced to remain in this strange world? Massada was so
other.
And while some terrisdans treated his presence with
little more than indifference, something about him rubbed the land
of Selet raw. Once he had found Marietta, it had soured to complete
intolerance.

Marietta had lived in a town curled up in a
crook of the river
,
a young woman of twenty-eight orbits.
She had never traveled, had been happy settled there in the comfort
of the known, eking out her living by fishing and gardening. She
was undeniably loved by Selet, and Sim’s capture of her heart had
bitterly stung the land. Marietta may have looked back wistfully,
but the two moved to the neutral lands of the lugazzi to begin a
fresh life together. Staying was no option. They both knew Selet
would never allow Sim to remain.

How beautiful that life had been! Every day
he had taken her into his arms and cradled her in gratitude.
Massada had never been his home, but Marietta was. His longing for
Alatrice ceased the moment she had become his. The only place in
all the worlds was right there beside her, comforting her, taking
care of her, loving her. Marietta was his bride and would forever
be so.

Sim paused to drink from his small water
sack. He had barely permitted a moment’s rest before now, so the
cool water slid deliciously down his cottony tongue and throat. The
moons, Stronta and Veri
,
were now high, and their light
cloaked Massada in wondrous beauty. He skipped any awed mutterings,
pushed his sack back into his pack, and urged his heels faster.

Marietta,
his head pounded.
Marietta.

The trees along the base of the peaks tugged
at his clothing and scratched his face and limbs. He was not even
in the thick of the forest, but the wood still fought him. He
tripped repeatedly over stone and log and became mottled in mud and
bruises. His knees were black from both soil and blood, but he did
not—no, could not—stop. All that was before him was to continue on
and pray that light would pierce the sky quickly to aid him against
the felonious land.

Selet,
he thought.
I hate this
cursed place.

~

It was nearly dawn when he broke through the
last barricade of trees, with one final peak—Inelt—to bypass before
reaching the lugazzi. Sim’s heart thundered, but he refused to
stop.

The sky abruptly burned pink as the morning
crept forward. His entire body quivered in chill and exertion.

Move,
he ordered his rebelling
muscles.
Move.

Sim drove his body into a grassy, gray field
that stretched around Inelt
.
It wrapped the base of the peak
like a fetid shawl and reeked of decay and night. Dew from the
chest-high ashen blades drenched his clothing, but he noted the
damp and the stink in a detached way. He was practically numb in
the monotonous purpose that compelled him.

But then something stung him back to his
senses, and even made him pause in stride. The tall gray grasses
swayed in the dawn’s breezes as if they were an orchestra following
a conductor’s baton. Back they brushed, forward they dipped. There
was a beauty, a cadence to it all, but it left him with an uncanny
tingle on his neck.

I’m like a wounded antelope limping into a
crouching pride.

He stared dumbly and waited, his spine still
prickling. Adrenaline pushed his eyes left and right in a darting
dance, and his fingers twitched in the cold. There was something
disturbingly askew, even if his dulled mind could not wholly grasp
it. He waited, but the anxiety refused to abate; there would be no
reasoning with fear this morning. Sim sighed and shifted course to
the peak. If he could not circumvent the bluff, he must ascend.

He scrambled up the rocky face using both
hands and feet. As his eyes roved back to the ashy grasses, he
frantically pushed his body higher along the craggy ascent. The
slope was brutally steep and he moved fast, not prudently. He felt
his mortality in every bone. Death whispered to him from those
fields.

After several grueling hours, Sim managed to
drag himself over the crown of Inelt and feast his eyes upon the
sight ahead. Once he cleared the mount, it was only a
matrole
, maybe two, to the lugazzi. The lovely, neutral
lands spread out from Lake Ziel like an oasis of life. His heart
lifted in hope. Just a few matroles and he would be free of Selet,
possibly forever.

Soon, and so close.

What then? What’ll Marietta say when she
learns you stole them?

“Hush,” he muttered to himself. “It’s
done.”

He dropped to his backside and, with heels
and hands at a slant, began to descend the mountain’s flank. It
sloped down sharply, and he battled at every passing minute to not
become one with the tumble of scree and rubble that spilled down
because of his movements. The wind whistled piercingly in his ear,
and his chest—still soaked through—became a bed of ice. He feared
losing his core heat, but there was no way that he could stop to
dry and build a fire.

Death dogs my heels,
Sim thought
grimly.

“But I am faster,” he mumbled, and he
spurred himself on.

When Sim had progressed about halfway down
the face, the land crumbled beneath him without even a whisper.
Dirt, limbs, and rock fell below into a cavern of darkness. He
heard the awful crack of bone and felt a gruesome pain before
writhing into unconsciousness.

~

When Sim awoke, he could not move. The sun
shone down into his cold hole and cruelly revealed the fate of his
night’s travels: this was more than likely the pit in which he
would die. And with his death, Marietta would be lost forever.

I’ve failed her,
he thought, and
wept.

~

Garriel mopped the brow of the ashen woman,
clucking her tongue in frustration. In her thirty-two orbits as a
nurse, she had never seen such a mysterious decline in health. She
had acted as midwife, herbalist, and bone-setter for the local
community since she had reached womanhood and had grown to consider
herself knowledgeable, yet nothing could have prepared her for the
bizarre circumstances of Marietta.

Marietta had been a vibrant, healthy woman,
with a smile ever upon her lips, offering hospitality to all,
pulling her soumme in for a kiss—regardless of the company. Now,
she lay delirious and thrashing, with chestnut-red locks clinging
sickly to pale cheeks and neck. The skin around her fingernails was
as black as mold. She mumbled madness under a sour breath, and her
gray eyes, listless and unseeing, had begun to lose their color:
streaks of black filled her irises like oil in a pool. She had not
eaten for days, and her skin had begun to shrink up tightly around
her bones. She gave off the stink of muscle devouring itself. Death
had hung his hat and was loathe to take his exit alone.

Garriel arched her body forward to hear; a
low voice issued from the frail creature.

“In a hole. You must send
seal
. You
must. A hole. In the mountain. The mountain has a hole. A hole. But
the fields are gray. He knew and so the hole ate him…” Marietta
continued to mutter deliriously, and Garriel straightened.

Such a pity,
the nurse thought.
She was beautiful indeed
—
a woman of
benere
.

Was?
The morbidity of Garriel’s
thoughts iced her spine, and she hugged her thick frame with doughy
arms.
If only Sim could return in time. She cannot have much
left. Why did he go on this foolish hunt?

Marietta thrashed in the bed, agitated and
restless. “Sim! Get Sim! The hole. He knew. The hole ate him
anyway.” Her arms danced wildly, and her screams grew more
pronounced.

Garriel hushed her and drew close with a
cup. “Drink this, Mari. Drink.” Her voice was soothing as she
spooned the warm liquid and drew it to Marietta’s full lips, which
were becoming even now.

An astonishingly strong hand flicked up and
gripped Garriel’s arm, steely gray-black eyes finding her own.
Broth slopped onto the sheets, and Garriel gasped; Marietta looked
almost like herself in that moment.

“Is this the milk of the tenralily? Selet
allowed it? It isn’t just a tale?” she asked. “You sent seal? What
of the hole and the gray?”

Garriel stared stupidly at the woman, but in
another moment Marietta’s eyes rolled lazily back, and she screamed
before collapsing into her salty bedclothes.

“Shhhhhh. Don’t fear, Mari. I’m right
here.”

“It is
inside
me. I can’t make it
leave. Why won’t it leave?”

“Hush, Mari. Hush.”

“Take it
out. Please.
I didn’t
realize when it asked to come in what it was. Make it leave.”

“Mari, shhhhh.”

“But Sim?” Marietta persisted. Her eyes
flicked back in another moment of lucidity.

“Take this, child.” Again she offered the
spoonful of warm medicine.

Marietta refused. “Is this from Sim? The
milk?” Her eyes darkened further, and she moaned.

“Yes, yes,” Garriel lied. “Sim is resting in
the next room. He brought this for you. We made the tenralily
milk.” The words burned in the nurse’s chest, and guilt flushed her
cheeks.
Am I so base that I utter lies to a woman in her
coffin?

The mollified Marietta relaxed and closed
her eyes, finally allowing the broth to pass her lips. Her body
eased into the sheets as the drugs began to act upon both nerves
and pain.

Before the narcotic had fully taken effect,
though, Marietta’s lips pulled back over her teeth into a snarl,
and her eyes snapped open and bore darkly into Garriel. The dark
pools had nearly overtaken the gray. “Your lies are poison. And now
we’re all dead.”

She spat up into Garriel’s face. Garriel
wiped the hot, putrid mucus from her stunned features and stared
stupefied at her fingers.

But she’s crazy. The sickness has taken her
sense… She needs the medicine. She’s out of her mind.

Three, help me…

Garriel ignored her fretting stomach and
spooned more into Marietta’s mouth.
She doesn’t know what she
says.

The narcotic took hold. Marietta’s limbs
sagged in sleep, and her face drooped to the side, finally resting.
Her calmed breaths rose up and down in her thin chest.

The movement and new lull served to allay
Garriel’s doubts.

Sim will return soon,
she reassured
herself
. He will be back for her.

~

Sim called out in the breeze to her, to his
Marietta. It sounded more like a strangled whisper than words. “My
dear, I am here. I am here. I know you can hear me. I am here. Send
seal, send help. I am trapped on Inelt. My legs are both broken. I
have your tenralily pods. I have your health! Save me, and I will
save you too.” He kissed the air and prayed with his whole being
that she could hear him.

She can hear me. I know she can. She
can.

He unclenched his jaw—the pain of his legs
was nearly unbearable—and yelled again.
There must be life
outside of this cursed land somewhere. Wolves, humans,
juile,
anyone.

Selet rumbled. Its anger was hot beneath
him, but clearly mixed within it was a gloating laugh. It jolted
terror through his person.

A slithering sigh came up from the hard
soil:
You should have left.

Sim screamed, knowing his end would come
soon.

~

Garriel unfolded the black lace sheet upon
the motionless bed. Dawn shone in with a yellow, unfeeling light as
she gently pulled the delicate fabric over stiff legs, blackened
fingernails, cold chest.

Before shrouding the face, the nurse bent
down with a tender kiss. Her tears fell upon the smooth skin, and
she shook as she stifled her grief.

The face was gaunt and white as milk, yet
the now fully black eyes peered accusingly at her. She remembered
how her brother had tried to scare her when they were children:
“The dead know. They know and remember.” Garriel swallowed and
hastily closed the eyelids. She swept the dark fabric up and
covered the wavy auburn hair. She crept back and lowered herself
down to both knees before the bed and black lace.

“Your life was bountiful, may death’s reins
only lead you to greater heights.”

She rose, hugging her own body. Her limbs
felt cold, despite the warm seasonal air. The boy in the other room
wailed, hungry. She washed and rushed in, scooping him into a close
cradle. It was a comfort to hold him in the storm of death, but her
palate was dry and bitter; he was motherless and his father was
without a soumme.

“Darse, Darse, Darse. Shhhhhhh,” She rocked
and drew a bottle to his delicate lips. He choked back and cried,
piercing the air with cries for his mother’s breast.

“No more, dear one. No more. She’s gone.”
Her sobs racked her as she walked the room trying to soothe him to
sleep. “No more.”