Roots - Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen: Departure

The sun was just beginning to rise over the trees when Alyce slipped into the small room. The lump on the bed remained motionless as she prodded it gently with a wrinkled hand. Her gray hair hung limp and frail upon her soft features, warped into a gnarled, frown. Concern lined her forehead and shook in her voice as she ran back to the master bedroom and shook awake Hondur. He jolted and turned to look at his wife slowly.
“What is it Alyce? Why have you awakened me so early?” He sat up slowly.” Are you okay? Is something the matter?” He studied her features curiously and caressed her hand. She pointed back to the small room and began to cry great crocodile tears in small gasps of air. Her thin frame shook and quivered beneath his touch as Hondur stood and held her close.
“What has happened?”
Alyce sniffed her nose and looked up into his deep eyes. Her trembling lips mixed up the words in a scramble until Hondur sat her down on the bed and stroked her hair, calming her weak heart which beat all aflutter.
“Now, my dear, what is it that has upset you so?”
A last tear fell from her ailing eyes to her lap as she hung her head in shame before speaking quietly under her breath in hardly more than a mutter:
“He’s gone.”
***
The chill wind of the fast approaching winter stung at Aldon’s face and chest like hornets defending a nest, throbbing and stretching with every step until he was sure it would tear with a sudden give. His mind wandered away as he passed through the campsite Town had become; ducking under tent posts and weaving in and out of the teepee style enclosures. A man and his watchdog passed ahead of him without a moment of notice as he hid between two of the few houses left. This was his new life. To remain unseen. His entire life he had wished for this, wished to remain invisible to all those who shunned him for his race; because he was different.
But now, it would be because of his disfigurement. Something, once again, he had no control over. If he could have stopped that scorching blade and fire driven farm he surely would have in an instant. But life was not his to control so now his would be. His life would be permanently altered by the strings of fate; a puppet. He let his feet fall where they would as he instinctually passed beyond the watchmens’ fields of vision and into the blanket of shadow that layered the land. The storm still raged around them but had since flowed down the valley and placed the camp directly into the eye of the storm.
This moment’s reprieve had given Aldon the perfect opportunity to escape as everyone else fled to catch a few winks before the storm hit again. The silence that had come with it left Aldon’s world seemingly small. He felt there was nothing beyond this campsite for him to find, that the world surely must have ended when that farmhouse exploded. He kept looking around expecting the world to stop at any moment and simply cease to operate. But the world kept spinning.
“And so does my mind.” He said aloud to himself.
“What was that?” A gruff voice whispered. “Someone there, boy?”
The man and his dog peered around the corner, prepared to strike, to see an empty archway where a particularly large tent swelled out near the top like the mouth of a shark coming down on him. The faintest outline of two boot prints were passed over by the man’s mere human vision as he raked the scene with his pupils for any sign of danger.
“Smell anythin’?” He asked the dog. “Yeah, me neither.”
He turned and leaned against the support beam of the large tent and struck a small match. In the brief flash, he could have seen Aldon’s pale, scarred face just behind him contort as he kicked the beam out from under the man. The tent collapsed with a series of knocks and the man fell within the folds hollering. Instantly several men tramped over to the bewildered man and inhabitants nearby. The people inside bustled out and struggled with the buttons to remove the shelter from them.
Aldon swept past them and trekked out of the campsite to the open plains without a single soul to stealth past. He made quick work of the open area to avoid being spotted and slid down the far side of the largest gully to rest.
Nearly gone, nearly gone from their staring and accusing eyes. I want nothing to do with the judgments and harsh words they are surely wielding against me. No longer shall I face their trials, but trials of my own. I will become the man, no, the elf I want to be. And hold myself to my own code and morals.
He travelled in silence the following morning as the troop of inhabitants continued their search for a new suitable stretch of land to begin anew. Aldon listened closely for any sign of his name whispered but heard not a single iteration of it.
“Hondur must agree with my actions.” He mused to himself as he watched the caravan of townspeople and livestock blaze a new trail down the leagues of wheat and prairie grass. He felt a pang of sorrow for the children who walked along the cows, the smallest riding atop them. Aldon stared at the water jugs and canteens that hung off the cow’s side, jostling with each step back and forth, back and forth.
A sudden flash clouded his eyes and drenched his mind in the past. He was tied up again, hanging from a thick pole as the dark-skinned men carried him over the dead fields of Town. The motion of their walking swayed him side to side, back and forth like the bubbling ocean of acid in his dream.
Aldon was suddenly sucked from his vision, the ground rose up to him and hit him hard across the face. The grass was forgiving here and only a single crack in his charred flesh appeared. He sat up and retched a few feet away on his hands and knees, quivering and waned. He sat back against the gulley and closed his eyes for a moment to clear his mind.
“I need to go to the woods, and find Briar,” He recounted to himself to set his brain straight. “But it’s been several days longer than the twenty four hours he had given me to decide. I must seek him out and ask if the offer is still good. That is my first priority.”
He reached out and grasped the edge of the cliff he sat beneath and pulled himself gingerly to his feet. The forest sat a few leagues away, to the north west of the caravan’s main body.
I’ll have to travel by night and sleep during the day to get past them without notice. These people will not tolerate any more alarming occurrences after what they have suffered.
Aldon moved away from his vomit and laid aside the thickest grass, rolling them over his gangly frame as snug as possible before drifting uneasily into restless dreams once more.
“Aldon.” A cool voice whispered, silky smooth like some metallic liquid sliding over the rocks. “Aldon, come to me. Come to me, Aldon, I need you here.” The voice continued in its trance inducing tones. “You have it, Aldon. You have what I need. It’s there, right there in your hand. Could I have it?” The voice cooed, becoming slightly louder. “Closer, Aldon, closer. Bring it to me so I may thank you personally. Aldon?”
Aldon shifted in his sleep, a tingling in his head. His arms grew in chill bumps and the hair on his neck stood on end. He gripped the grass stalks wrapped around him tighter until they were uprooted. The snap of the iced over soil giving way jolted him physically and mentally.
The voice seemed alarmed and louder now than before. “Where are you going, Aldon? Bring it to me so I may see you once more. Please, Aldon, come here now. Aldon, I need to see you and your special gift. It will help you as well, you know?” The voice pleaded, almost a yell.
A small voice in Aldon warned him he should not be here, that he should leave at once. But his body remained frozen where it was; a prisoner of his mind and will. Sleep held him fast, bonds slowly breaking as the locks of fatigue were opened.
The raised voice remained pure and seemed to flow in a more powerful current than mere explosions of sound. “Aldon, it is nearly time, you must come to me and fulfill your promise; their promise. Aldon? Aldon, no. Aldon come back. Come back. Come back!” The voice screamed in a sudden bellow, a torn sound with multiple voices speaking together in a harsh scraping of noise like claws down the side of a mountain. The chill terror reached into Aldon and gripped his insides. The clenching on his heart and stomach became unbearable as the air was pressed from his lungs and the blood rushed away from his heart.
He kicked violently and flailed about in the grass, struggling for air. The world around him darkened into a faded shadow of its former self. Ghostly pale and translucent like a coating of glass. Throttling his brain for some reasoning, for something to take blame for his world going such and his body going its own way; he struggled to achieve any kind of thought more than that voice.
“If you will not come to me and I cannot come to you, then you will stay here with me forever! I shall have you, boy, in your life or in death!” The world began to shimmer like ice, scintillating and enthralling. Aldon stared at it until his lungs were devoid of air and his eyes closing like the lid on a coffin. The life seeped out of him until all was dark and flat until he was convinced he was staring at a black wall. A copper taste spread from the back of his throat to his mouth and warmth dissipated from his extremities to his chest.
Then the forest began to shake. It shivered with the force of a thousand winds and rocked Aldon back and forth upon the earth. He bit his lip and tongue numerous times and struck his head against the ground. His eyes were completely closed now and held tighter as the quake continued. The pain began to slowly disappear and replace with strange warmth embellished with calm. The inner peace grew until he was unaware of what was going on around him.
Then it broke.
He was lying on the ground gasping for breath as his lungs burned with the cool air. His eyes flung open and shied away from the light. His brain suddenly spurred forward and ran through the multitude of thoughts he had attempted before at once.
What’s going on? Who’s there? Am I dead? Are they dead? Where’s Briar? Will I see Muren? Is the earth awakened?
Before long his head was throbbing and his lips stinging just as they should. He looked around for the source of his salvation but found nothing. In fact, he didn’t even see the tree line or the gulley.
“Where the hell--?”
“You’re in the Brosco, sir.”
Aldon whirled about on his foot, surprising himself he could even stand, and looked down upon a small man. He was no more than thirty with a small, pinkish face. He had bright red hair that curled from beneath his pointed hat. His nose was very prominent and pointed down like an eagle. But his eyes were bright and a shade of green. The top of his pointed hat barely surpassed Aldon’s knees.
“My name’s Took and yours is Aldon right?”
Aldon stared at him dumbfounded. How had he come here to a place he had never heard of with a small man who knows his name without being told.
Aldon stood tall and braced his feet in the dirt, ready to run at him or away from him. “Hold on, where am I? What is this place and how do you know my name?” He demanded.
“This is the Brosco, a large secret forest within the forest you spent weeks in, and because I told him.” A deep bass boomed. “Any more answers you require?”
Aldon knew that voice. It was a voice he had grown up with and never thought he would hear again.