The Danger of Theories

Death In Harmony: Part Six of Twenty-Nine

Death In Harmony is the fifth in the Tales of The Lesser Evil and this is the sixth chapter.

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This is a fantasy series—not quite grimdark, but dark nevertheless—with complicated and believable characters doing their best to survive in a world simply indifferent to their existence.

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The Danger of Theories

The present: somewhere north of The Pit

Flin awoke with a start, blinked, and looked around. The sun had leapt across the sky and she guessed it was nearing mid-morning. She was glad she had managed to sleep, and began to stretch, then stopped, mid-yawn. Something felt off, wrong, and all her nerves were suddenly tingling, senses straining. She realised that the forest was absolutely silent: no birds, no rustling leaves, no branches creaking or insects droning, nothing. Absolute silence.

The baby was awake, staring off into the middle distance, seemingly fixated on one spot. When he refused to stop staring, even when she waved her hand in front of his eyes, Flin followed his gaze, looking closely at the patch of forest that held his attention.

She froze. There was someone standing there, their back to them, unmoving and barely visible against the dappled forest background. She thought it was a man, but she could not be sure, perhaps it once had been but was no longer human: a shade, a ravener, or a slife.

Involuntarily, her hand strayed to her throat, to grasp the small pouch beside her fire-lighting kit and grip it tight, fingers feeling the ring and carvings she kept within. She let out a tiny whimper, before silencing herself and clenching everything hard, as though she could control her terror through sheer strength, willpower, and muscle control, in exactly the same way as she was trying not to wet herself.

If she stood, she’d be seen. If she stayed in the shadows she risked being trapped if the man turned, or the baby made a noise. Moments passed, heartbeats of eternity in which everything that could go wrong frantically bubbled through her mind. One terrifying scenario after another.

Then he, or it, was gone. Flin blinked and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, the one not clutching her pouch. She had been staring so hard, for what had seemed an agonising length of time, that her eyes ached but then the figure was simply no longer there. Just gone. The palms of her hands were wet with sweat, and she could feel a pain in her stomach from contracting too hard and too long.

‘Fuck,’ she mouthed the word, no sound accompanying the movement of her lips.

For another heartbeat she was rooted to the spot, then she broke her wide-eyed stare, uncurled tight fingers from the pouch, and rapidly packed up her meagre collection of objects, stuffing the dried moss into a pocket, all the while trying to desperately convince herself the figure was simply an amazingly good woodsrunner, wearing clothes that blended into the woods perfectly. All the while knowing that was definitely not the case.

She almost whimpered again, the urge to curl into a ball and hide within herself seductively strong.

‘No. It’s just a trapper out to check his lines. That’s all.’ Yet she still only mouthed the words, not daring to utter anything audible, not even a whisper. She reached up to her hair and pulled one loose, slowly and deliberately twisting it, all the while breathing as deeply as she could.

Flin swiftly changed and fed the baby, following every movement of his head, every glance he gave tracked by her own eyes and, with every glance, she could feel her own terror still building, armpits cold with sweat. Once more she forced it down inside her and tried to focus. If it was a living man she had her spear and her knife. If it was a dead man then she had the pouch at her throat. So far, whatever or whoever it was had either failed to notice her or simply did not care she was there.

She could fight and, if needed, fight she would.

Flin knew she had been lucky overnight, barely a noise from the child, but she also knew it would not last. In her experience, babies had a habit of choosing the least appropriate moment to remind everyone within a wide area of their presence. You could not sneak with a baby.

‘Let’s go, little one.’ She still whispered, but it was an improvement on mouthing silent words.

Then they were off, moving somewhere between a gentle run and a fast walk, loping slowly and carefully through the city of the dead. She avoided several sudden, yawning holes, where stones had broken and fallen in, leaving shafts that led to who knew where, dodging cracked and shattered statues held together by ivy, arms pulled apart, suspended above the ground, head missing or twisted around. Nature rearranged all.

The tombs went on and on. There were no other buildings, nothing but graves, ornate statuary, obelisks, mausoleums, markers and weathered stone. Where had all these people come from? It must have been a culture of importance, a place disappeared from all maps and memory, long-dead itself. She knew that in most other cities the dead who were celebrated were those with money and power, the poor masses simply disposed of. It made sense that the long-rotted bodies within the graves she passed would have been of the rich and those with influence, many, many thousands of them.

Flin froze at a movement ahead, but it was only a large bird flitting between branches. Listening, she realised the forest was returning to life, another call here, the buzz of insects there, the crack and thud of fruit falling from a tree. It felt good to hear noise beyond that of her own harsh, fast breathing. Her thoughts returned to the man she had seen and she dared to wonder whether he had been real, or a reflection from the past.

A story Rharsle had taught her flashed through her mind and Flin paused, thinking deeply. In the tale, a young girl kept encountering unquiet spirits, terrifying her each time, making her run away, until she finally realised the dead were protecting her all along, silent guardians warning of living dangers, a falling tree here, a collapsing bridge there, a runaway bull, a rabid dog.

The figure had been standing looking towards something, gazing back the way she had travelled. She shook her head and started walking again. Just a story, just coincidence. No matter what it was, whether a warning shade or simply a figment of an overwrought and exhausted mind, she knew she had to keep moving.

Flin followed animal trails through the tombs, choosing those that seemed to go as close to north as she could judge. Then, as swiftly as she had encountered the immense graveyard, she reached the end, one moment passing between giant statues of hooded figures, each pouring liquid from vast jars, beautifully captured in stone, and then she was standing on the edge of a tall cliff, a huge basin stretching out in front of her.

‘Oh,’ she said, surprising herself at an unimaginative lack of cursing, adding, ‘well, fuck.’

Her first thought was it looked like someone had taken a huge bite out of the forest, but she quickly changed her mind; the vast hole was closer to the cookies she had baked with her mother and sisters, rolling out the dough and then pushing down the cutter. The edges of the enormous crater followed an almost perfectly circular route, seemingly utterly sheer. Flin estimated that the diameter was an unimpeded afternoon’s walk across, perhaps more. It was difficult to see the other side.

It was outrageous and it was splendid, unlike anything she had ever witnessed, and she had no idea how such a thing could be created. She crept forward and looked down, immediately wishing she hadn’t; the drop was considerable, the trees she could make out below like moss viewed from above.

Something flickered, seemed to flash, from what was the very centre of the circle, then it was gone, so quickly Flin was not sure whether she had imagined it or not. She stared hard at the spot and, for one moment, was sure she could make out a tall tower, then it too disappeared from view.

Far to her left, she could just see where a river tumbled down the edge, disappearing into mist below. She knew the rocks must be porous, or she would be staring at a round lake.

Flin sat on a fallen log, first checking for snakes, spiders and scorpions; it always paid to be careful. Her natural curiosity was strong and it seemed she had arrived at a crossroads, a point where her destination was offered in clear terms.

Assuming she could somehow find a way to descend into the crater, it could be a perfect place to hide for a time, rebuild her supplies, make new clothes and equipment, before moving away again in a direction based on clear, rational and long-term thinking.

‘What do you think, pup?’ she asked, kissing the sleeping baby on his head as she stared down into the hole.

As she looked, Flin could not help but think of The Pit, but she knew that the huge city had been created by the toil of the Talking Races, carved out of the rock stone by stone, the huge open mine turning into dwellings as time moved on, a gigantic spiral heading down into the earth. Legend had it that The Pit had once been full of gems but, as the stones were exhausted and trade routes altered, it had become more profitable to buy goods elsewhere, import and export. Now the city traded with every point of the compass, from the sinuous overland caravans to the south and Gateway and Eastsea to the north, to the traffic making its way from Tah Djolah along the peaty Black River to the east, or the White River and Greystilts to the west.

The Pit was rich, uncaring and dangerous, and she knew she had been lucky to have made it out alive. She chewed at the dirty nail on her forefinger and frowned. No, she was definitely not going to head back south. Again, she pondered finding a way down into the crater but, if there was only one single way, she also feared she might become trapped.

‘What about the west?’ she murmured, kissing the baby’s head once more, before replying to herself, ‘No, I don’t think so.’

Turning to the west would mean having to first head back south to the White River. The people she had fled had extensive connections with both Tah Djolah and Greystilts. She was not sure she was that important to them, but the risk was perhaps too great.

She looked to her right, and the east. The way looked clearer, a wide, well-trodden animal trail following the rim of the cliff, the trees more dispersed and the ground level. To the west the passage was tougher, with wind-fallen trees, thicker brush and obvious cracks in the ground. In some ways perhaps it was wiser to go that way; anyone still following her would presume she had taken the clearer route, rather than the dense trackless forest.

She picked at a loose thread in her sleeve. Her clothes were thin and showed more patches than original fabric, each repair in muted tones, all stitched by herself, a mottled history of moth-holes, catches, tears, rips and wear. One of the holes had been from a knife. She could not remember when she had last worn new clothing.

‘Or maybe they’d think I’d think that and instead take the other way?’ She asked, snapping the thread, but the baby was not forthcoming with an answer. ‘I think right, towards the dawn. Say nothing if you agree.’ He remained silent, so she stood and started walking east.

As clear as the trail was, she was still careful, constantly checking for any sign that the way may lead over loose or dangerous ground, always reading the tracks when she could. Larger animals could present a hazard; here, a number of big ungulates had passed, perhaps aurochs or bison, there, something she thought might have been an elephant of sorts, only smaller than she would expect. An encounter with these should, in theory, only be dangerous if she was not careful and, with such heavy creatures present, the ground should, also in theory, be stable; theories were just that, however.

In theory, Youlbridge had been perfect, right up until the moment it wasn’t.

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