Chapter 29

29.

         I could have been lost in the forest for days. I was just walking in circles, every tree just starts to look the same after a while, it didn’t feel even like there was any difference between night and day. That’s probably because I was so tired I couldn’t stop looking at the ground, at my feet, just wandering. Over and over. In the same circles.
         Nobody could find me. At least it seemed that way. For all I knew my father, his friends, they weren’t making any effort. Or else they would have found me by then, right? I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions though. By that point, I mean, I had to be in these woods for days. That’s what it felt like. And I was going to be there for days more. Even the others had stopped bothering to chase me, I think. I wasn’t worth anything, not dead, not as a hostage. I think the worst thing after people trying to kill you are people just ignoring you. Like it doesn’t matter anymore. Like you make no difference.
         It’s almost paralyzing when you get to that point. You don’t want to stay and you don’t want to leave and neither option seems to make any difference. I know I could have stayed in the forest for years and been okay, I can bounce back like that. But I didn’t really want to. Just because people didn’t want me anymore didn’t mean that I didn’t want them. I mean, maybe this was all just temporary and once it blew over, things would go back to normal again. Whatever normal was supposed to be.
         The village, honestly, scared me. I didn’t want to go in. Telling yourself that you’ll confront civilization is one thing, but when you come down to it, it’s not an easy thing. Just because I couldn’t be hurt didn’t imply that I wanted to be. And who knew what these people who do to me? A stranger, dressed the way I was, with all the craziness going on around these people, why would they even want to trust me? Heck, I wouldn’t trust me if I just came in stumbling out of nowhere. And I like to think that I’m fairly trusting, maybe too much so. One day it’ll get me into trouble but I’ve been all right so far. Call it luck, I guess.
         So there I was, at the edge of the village, circling it just as much as I was wandering in spirals in the forest, not knowing at all what to do. How long I would have done that I really have no idea. I would have given up at some point, I think. That’s not really like me, but what else was I going to do? I was living the definition of aimless, and swiftly going toward hopeless.
         That’s why I’m glad she found me.
         In the end, it really made all the difference.

* * * * *

         The man had just taken a bitten off a chunk of flesh from the animal clutched in his hand when Tolin made his head explode.
         “You ask me,” he said, stepping over the star shaped spray of blood newly etched out on the ground, “right now it’s a race to see who is going to get us killed first . . . Valreck or Maleth.” With a distasteful look he gingerly picked up the half-eaten animal, dangling it before his face before casting it to the side with a sharp toss. “Either of them seem more than willing to do the honors.”
         From the other side, Rathas came and prodded the now headless body with one boot. It was hard to tell if the recent bloodstains all over its torn and dirty clothes were from the near past, or Tolin’s thorough execution. “Well, if you ask me,” the other man responded, “the Time Patrol is going to get all of us before anyone else even gets a chance.”
         The two of them were standing in the burnt shell of the house that had been the center of attention the night before. The place was nearly unrecognizable, sporting jagged gashes in the wall, some apparently person-shaped, many larger, the windows all shattered, the marks of soot and fire on nearly all surfaces, the roof essentially gone, the floor beneath their feet completely covered in bodies and debris, former furniture and broken weapons, all discarded like so many toys. Wisps of smoke still clung longingly to the place, and slowly the stink of death was soaking into the land. It was nearly impossible to believe that anyone had lived here within the last few days. Around them, there was only desolation.
         “Lovely place,” Rathas muttered, squinting strangely, absently kicking what appeared to be a severed hand out of his way. “Would I be out of line if I requested we don’t stick around here too long . . . it’s giving me the worst headache.”
         “You all right?” Tolin asked, not looking up from his examination of a series of arrow impaled in the wall. Tatters of flesh still clung to them, looking like tiny flags set out to warn others. At his feet lay a dead man, his body limp but his neck far more slack than it should have been. His skin was puffy from decay. “Not used to stuff like this?”
         “No, it’s not that it’s . . .” Rathas paused, shook his head, looking suddenly pale. Trying to look casual, he leaned against what was left of a wall, leaping a step back when it swayed alarmingly. “A lot of people died here . . . none in a pleasant fashion . . . all those people, when they die . . .” wincing, he massaged his forehead with a finger and a thumb. “It makes things a little noisy, honestly.”
         “Hm,” Tolin replied, pulling an arrow out of the wall with a hard yank, “what’s that like? I’ve heard about it, but I can’t say it’s happened to me.”
         “Well, you know that exercise they used to make us do, where we’d just listen to everyone’s thoughts? And I mean everyone’s, in as wide a range as we could manage?” Rathas glanced over his shoulder sharply, as if expecting someone there. He kept blinking over and over rapidly, acting like tiny insects kept buzzing near his face.
         “That’s the one where if you listen long enough you start to hear all these voices, right?” Tolin asked, running his thumb along the point of the arrow. He strolled around a shattered doorframe, now clogged with rubble and tightly wedged bodies and into the shell of the next room. “I remember, you couldn’t really make any of them out, but it was definitely weird . . .” He paused, glancing back at the other man. “I don’t remember it being that bad, though? You getting sensitive in your old age?”
         Rathas shot him an irritated look. “No, but try imagining being jammed in a room not much larger than yourself, with ten times the people talking as that little exercise . . . and everyone is just screaming.” Shaking his head with a quick jerk again, he added, “I guess the good thing about being dead is you have no lungs to run out of breath with. You can shout and shout and shout.” There was a nervous quiver to his voice, which he warped into a weak laugh at the last second.
         “You don’t have to stay here,” Tolin said from the other room. He was bent over the nearly pulverized pieces of a table, its fragments scattered around at random. His brows furrowed and the pieces suddenly leapt up to reform the table as best they could, instantly rearranging themselves. There was quite a bit missing. “I can certainly get by on my own here. It’s only later that I might need you.” Shrugging, he let the pieces fall out of their stationary state, dropping to the floor with a rapid series of clatters. “And even then . . .”
         “Well, I’m not really keen on being around Valreck at the moment,” Rathas admitted, following Tolin into the next room. “Especially now that he’s king of the ghost village. And considering what my other options are, why, Tolin, my boy, you’re looking downright joyful to be around.”
         “Charming,” Tolin replied neutrally. The two of them stepped over another body, its arms still frantically trying to hold its guts in place. The smell over here was particularly ripe, since with part of the room gone the sunlight had found a way to sneak into this part of the house. The heat was already noticeably different. “What exactly did Valreck do to these people?” Spotting a faintly shivering form buried underneath a pile of bodies, Tolin bent over, averting his face from the stench as the intertwined corpses heaved and fell over, revealing the twisted person trapped on the bottom. It was a disheveled, broken man, his eyes open but unseeing, his arms wrapped around his chest, the hands gnarled and almost shattered in their rubbery appearance. Tolin grabbed the man’s head with one hand, wrapped his fingers around the face. The man made a soft, pathetic noise, but made no other motion. Near their feet the floor was sodden and stained. Rathas stood nearby, frowning as he stared into the air at various points.
         The man suddenly gave a liquid sigh and relaxed. Tolin let him go, allowing the man’s head to flop limply to the floor. “They’re shutting down,” he said, a curious note in his voice. Rathas glanced over at him, a question written on his face. Tolin looked up at him, his fingers still spread on the side of the man’s face, as if drawing energy from him. “All of them, their thoughts are breaking down. This one here . . .” tapping the now dead man’s face, “. . . just went and forgot how to breathe.” Tolin inhaled shallowly, slowly getting to his feet. “Rathas,” he said, crossing the five steps to the man with a deliberate pace, “what the hell did Valreck do?”
         “That’s not what you want to know,” the little man replied evenly, stuffing his hands into his pockets. Spinning on his heel, his strode a few steps away, hopping over a pile of debris that used to be a wall. Fresh air and sunlight greeted them at the edge of the ruined home, and it was with some relief that they expelled the house’s foul, ruined air from their lungs. “It’s not,” Rathas said, not facing Tolin. He stole a glance over his shoulder, if only to make sure the other man was still there. He was. “You want to know if he can do the same to us.”

* * * * *

         It’s weird walking around a place full of people and praying that nobody notices you. Right out in the open like that, how can they not? And honestly, I’d hate for people not to notice me. That’s probably weird considering a lot of people were after me at one point but that was a while ago and didn’t have all that much to do with me as what they thought I represented. But when people don’t see you, don’t acknowledge you it’s like you’re not worth their time, beneath their notice, when they just move around you and on the side of you instead of looking right at you, or kicking you, or bumping into you, something isn’t right then. I wanted someone to come up to me, to say, aren’t you lost, do you know where you’re going, even you look suspicious. But no one did. No one cared. It’s hard, that feeling. I can’t turn invisible but I think I did. I don’t want to. Not even.
         Everything was so normal, walking in the streets. The sun was up and the day was active and people were just strolling along, going about their businesses. All those people. And me. It’s not my world, it’s not my home, I don’t want it to even by my fight. Someone else started it, I don’t remember why and I don’t remember when but oh God I think I’ve been fighting since the day I was born. My mother died and my father died and they’ve been out to get me ever since. Everyone is just leaving me, and I’m standing here. They’ve left me now, to find my way from this place. All of them. It doesn’t matter who. The faces just change and the places change but the goal never does. And it’s not fair. I was born and I’m sorry but I never wanted to be part of anyone’s plans. I don’t care what bigger things I was planned for but it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over. It’ll never happen again. And I don’t think anyone listens when I say those things. They don’t hear. They don’t notice. Again. It’s not fair. If I keep saying it they have to hear eventually. Right? But he won’t. He said he’d never come back. He told me. They all did. Stood in a circle around me and said to get out, to go, and to never come back. That’s why I’m here, because nobody cares anymore. Fine, then. I don’t want them to. I don’t need them to. I never did. Right? Isn’t that right?
         The weird thing is that I complain and I complain about all of this and when something does happen I don’t act like I’m supposed to. What am I talking about? The woman. Of course. You know. The one who put her hand on my shoulder, out of nowhere. I remember her grip being warm. Warmer than the sun. It surprised me, I must have been getting more used to the invisible stuff than I thought.
         So I turned and she was standing there. Looking right at me. At me. Right at me. Her eyes were blue and she was far prettier than I was, standing there in my torn clothes all covered in leaves and dirt and God only knew what else. I felt like some bum dragged in from the country and dropped into the middle of the world’s busiest city and now I had no idea what the heck to do. I thought she was going to tell me to get out. I thought she was going to ask me all sorts of questions that had nothing to do with me and make me feel even dirtier and grimier and more hopeless than I already did. People do that and it’s so easy. I’ll do that to someone, someday. I know I will. And it bothers me. Because I can’t understand why we do these things we hate if we know what they do to someone. It’s a common thing, they tell. We can’t help it. I hate that. I don’t want it to be that way.
         I wanted to say those things to her. To tell her to stop before she starts. But her head was weird. I could see it. It was strangely beautiful. As open as the sky but freer. Everything was gone, everything that could hold her down. I didn’t even care where it all went. It didn’t matter. My brain felt cluttered compared to all that. A dusty shelf about to fall over from its own weight. It was wonderful. I wanted that.
         I didn’t say to that to her. I didn’t say anything. She spoke first.
         She said, I think you want to come with me. I think we can help you. I think you want the help.
         That’s what she said. To me. I didn’t even really hear it that well. Already I had decided. I just the first thing that came to mind. The natural thing. I wish I knew why.
         I ran away as fast as I could, in the other direction.

* * * * *

         “It’s a legitimate concern,” Tolin said, keeping his eyes fixed on the shorter man. Off in the distance he could see two other men, barely clothed, hitting each other against a tree. They were taking turns. And laughing. After a minute, both fell down and didn’t move again. “Nobody thought he would do this to these people, what’s to stop him from doing it to us? He doesn’t need us and what better way to cover his escape than to turn us into drooling idiots and leave us for the Time Patrol to find?”
         “It won’t work that way,” Rathas replied, moving a little away from the house. His voice was faster than usual, his sentences coming in brief spurts. He put a hand to the side of his face to cover a twitch. “The people . . . they had no defenses, that’s why he was able to get away with it . . . to people like us . . . he’s not strong enough. Unless we let him, he’d have no chance.”
         Tolin looked skeptical. “And how do you know this?”
         Rathas smiled, an expression that made him look only marginally healthier. “Would you believe he told me?” He let a second pass without comment from Tolin before shrugging. “No? Your loss, then. If it helps my argument any, the only person who was able to do it right was Mandras. Which should tell even you something.”
         Tolin only grunted, turning away. Bowing his head, he took a deep breath, while Rathas watched him silently. The gutted shell of the house stood before them, all battered walls and disremembered lives. From here there was a clear view of the now wasted farmland, its soil torn and barren, plants sliced and scattered, the animals missing or mutilated. The village was nowhere in sight, even the compressed chatter of its percolating thoughts was now silent. It was possible to believe that it no longer existed.
         When Tolin spoke, his voice had a measured calm to it. “Fine, I believe you. Valreck’s not our biggest problem at the moment and if we need to deal with him, we will.” The question of whether Tolin wanted to deal with him, or what that dealing would entail, was left open. Turning sideways so he could face Rathas, he asked, “Did you get enough air? Because we need to go back in and see if we can figure out which direction those people went in.”
         Rathas looked uneasily at the house. “Are you sure you need me?”
         Tolin shrugged. “Up to you, but it would go faster. Especially since you were in there before it all went to hell.”
         Rathas chuckled to himself, though in response to what was unclear. “You’re tossing aside your obvious dislike of me to work toward a common goal? Tolin, quite simply, I’m touched. I didn’t know you could be that magnanimous.”
         “Once in a while, the mood strikes me,” the other man said dryly, already stalking back toward the house. Rathas lingered behind for a second, then darted forward to follow, his face composed, as if steeling himself for what lay inside. “I have an idea that may help us find these people, or at least give us a better idea of what we’re facing.”
         Having been outside for a while, the rancid burnt stench of the house struck them immediately. Tolin let slip a sharp breath, but only rubbed his nose and continued forward. Rathas flinched as if startled by something unseen but drew his cloak tighter around himself and moved to catch up with Tolin.
         “But who are we facing,” the little man asked as he stood over the other man. Tolin was standing in what used to the archway just outside might have once been the kitchen, running his fingers along the soot and ash covered floor. A man lay nearby curled in a fetal position, his head crushed beyond recognition. “What brings you here in particular, Tolin? First you were chasing after the girl, then you were attacked by someone else and now you’re here searching for neither.”
         “Moving targets,” Tolin said with a knowing smile. “Keep changing what they expect and it’ll keep them off guard. Right now these people are bracing themselves for an assault by Valreck’s new breed of madman . . . not us. That may be enough.”
         “And if it’s not?”
         His face hardened. “We do what we can, okay? I’m not about to lay down and surrender, there are too many things I’ve got going here that I just can’t abandon. We didn’t spend all this time building new lives so it could be all taken away by the first hint of force that comes by.” He pressed his fingers to the floor, his face growing briefly vague. “Now that’s an interesting . . . definitely not human . . .” he muttered in a low voice. If Rathas heard, he made no acknowledgement.
         Instead the other man scraped his foot along the ground and said, “Ah, so I guess things are patched up between you and the wife?”
         Tolin blinked, the sentence not sinking in completely at first. “Wife . . . oh, yeah . . .” he shrugged distractedly, “we talked it out, I think we understand each other better now, it happens every so often, you take one another for granted and it just starts breaking down.” He grinned fleetingly. “But things are good now. Maybe better.”
         “Hm . . . that’s good,” Rathas said distantly, his eyes following a path that appeared invisible. He took several steps past Tolin, one hand tracing a line in the nearby wall, his fingers sliding around the holes and charred marks. “I imagine she’s like a new woman now, eh?” His other hand was in his pocket, and in the light it seemed that a bulge was pointing toward the other man. A delicate whining sound gently settled on the air.
         “Oh yes, definitely,” Tolin replied, with the barest hint of knowing sarcasm. Rathas gave him a curious look, and then had to back up suddenly as the man rose abruptly to his feet. Tolin’s hands pressed against the air, seeming to shape the dust saturated atmosphere, his gaze traveling to a spot far above his head. “Damn, that’s big.”
         Rathas took both hands of his pockets, ventured a step forward. The whining sound had disappeared. “Yeah, it was. Not quite what I expected to see. Who knew the Time Patrol recruited aliens . . . though I suppose that’s just my bigoted view of things. Their way makes better sense.”
         “If you say so . . . ah, there we . . . geez, you ever seen anything like it before?” Tolin asked, the dust in the air swirling, seeming to form a vague impression in three dimensions of a gigantic man. Only the head was unclear, its features lost in a broken storm. He stared up at the shifting form and said in a hushed voice, “I can see the threads but I can’t put them together into anything coherent. Weird. Damn weird.”
         “No, I can’t say I have,” Rathas answered, pacing around behind Tolin, his eyes never leaving the back of the man’s head. “Chalk it up to my sheltered existence. My parents never thought to tell me about such things as aliens. Unfortunately I think it’s only served to make me ill-adjusted to function in these troubled, open times.” His words were carefully measured, directed right at Tolin, who only appeared to hear about half of them.
         “I saw some, back in the camp,” Tolin said, walking around the dust shape until he was behind it, his features obscured and hazy, his figure seemingly about to break up and dissipate. “Not this but those bug things we were supposed to be working with? Comouts, I think I heard someone call them. They had me escort a team to meet them in some barren place in the middle of the desert, I remember it being hot and damn hard to see . . .” his fingers dipped into the figure, causing ripples of dust to move across it. “There was this tremendous noise and this thing just dropped out of the sky, I could barely make out the shape. A few minutes later they came out like ghosts. One of them did all of the talking, the others didn’t come anywhere near us. I didn’t even recognize the language, it was . . . harsh and stunted and jagged and there were just no reference points at all. I couldn’t even guess at what they were talking about.” At his feet, something reached for his ankle, shuddering as it did. Without glancing down, he kicked it away, causing a lumpy object to break away with a wet snap and bounce deeper into the shadows. “You would have thought it was people in costumes, honestly. I did.” Stepping around so that his back was once again to Rathas, he looked the shape up and down and said, “So I tried to read them, just a quick peek, for my own curiosity.” A smile slashed his face as he shook his head. “Not a bright idea . . . I can’t even . . . describe what I saw in there, just from that glimpse. Nothing that made any sense.” He snorted. “Aliens. Whatever. I wonder whatever happened to all of them.”
         “The aliens?” Rathas asked, strangely close. Tolin glanced over his shoulder to see that the man had taken several steps nearer.
         “No, no, everyone else. At the camp. Everyone we knew . . .” Tolin said, his expression pensive. “Don’t you ever wonder? What happened to everyone? After we left?”
         “Not particularly,” Rathas replied, sniffing. Swaying slightly, he balanced delicately on what he prayed wasn’t a head. But he didn’t dare look down. It just wasn’t smart. “I didn’t really leave behind anyone I figured I’d ever want to see again. If they succeeded . . . well, great for them but they could have all died for all I care.”
         “Honestly?” Tolin asked, sounding genuinely curious.
         “As honest as I get,” came the answer, sent with a sly smile.
         “Hm,” Tolin said, clasping his hands behind his back and looking down. He said nothing for a while, just stood there with the dust phantom looming over him, looking ready to crush him with transient arms.
         Without looking up, he said, “So . . . answer me this then . . . when were you thinking of actually going through with killing me?”
         Rathas didn’t blink. Shifting his position so that he was at an angle to Tolin, he said casually, “Oh, I figured the chance would present itself eventually. You know me, don’t do anything if you can’t do it with a little flair.”
         Tolin gave a brief laugh, not much more than a soft expulsion of air. “You reek of it, you know. I don’t even have to look at you to see it.” He fell silent for another minute, as if waiting for something. Rathas stared at him but didn’t move. Finally, Tolin said, “Should we do it here? Just get it over with and do the Time Patrol’s job for it? Would you like to? Now?”
         Rathas replied evenly, “Now wouldn’t be the best time, I imagine. Unless you’re all for it . . .” he let the sentence trail off, his tone darkly hopeful.
         “No,” Tolin said abruptly, “not now.” Turning to the other man he added, “But I want you to know, for whenever, for later . . . you’ll get one shot, one chance. Make it count.” He held Rathas’ gaze for a moment, daring the other man to take the first step and end the quietly simmering tension. Behind them the dust man rippled and swayed in the soft morning breeze. Somewhere far away a man was screaming. At the right angle, it sounded weirdly like a child.
         Breaking off his stare, Tolin turned away without an immediate word. Stepping away from the shape hovering before him, he made a slow circle through the remains of the house, an autopsy from the inside. “We should try to finish this and get moving,” he noted, speaking as if the previous conversation had not occurred. “It was just the alien and this guy, right?”
         “That’s all I saw,” Rathas said, staying planted in his spot, watching Tolin without looking directly at him. Before him, the dust thing swayed again, a breeze threatening to tear it apart. “The alien didn’t seem anything special, as aliens go, but it’s hard to tell, I imagine. We probably shouldn’t make any nasty assumptions.”
         “We won’t,” Tolin said, sticking his head through a hole in the wall, his voice muffled and strangely warped by the insulation. “I doubt they went far, probably away from the village. It’s a damn shame that Valreck messed these people up, we might have been able to rip out a glimpse of them running away and get an idea of the direction.”
         Behind him, the dust form rippled and leaned forward, toward Rathas, who took an involuntary step back, his hand reaching for his pocket. It swayed back immediately after, leaving Rathas to curse himself internally for letting a stupid cloud of dust spook him. A house full of silent screaming dead and it’s the harmless that he was concerned with. That wasn’t right.
         “I might be able to focus on the alien’s signature, its thoughts are weird, I can see them all around, like glowing points of radiation and strangely enough they look vaguely familiar, there’s something I recognize in them . . .”
         Before Rathas’ eyes, the shimmering cloud of dust and dirt took a step forward.
         “. . . I don’t think I can put my finger on it. It’s a kind of . . . humming I guess, the kind where if you try to focus on it, it sort of disappears. I really can’t explain it. Can you hear it, or are you still having trouble because of all the other noise?”
         “No, no it’s still there . . .” Rathas said, his eyes wide as the cloud plodded toward him, hazy arms sweeping around the room. There was a peculiar buzzing also filling the air. “But, ah, Tolin, if it’s, ah, not too much to ask, could you . . . turn off your little alien effigy there . . .” He backpedaled a few more steps, feeling that whatever this was, it couldn’t at all be a good thing. “Please?”
         “What are you talking about, I discharged that a couple of minutes-“ Tolin broke off as he turned around, seeing the thing for the first time. “What the hell?” he whispered, moving toward Rathas. He didn’t seem all that worried, although he didn’t take his eyes off it as he cut across the room.
         “It’s not right,” Rathas said, as Tolin reached him. The little man was pale again, his hands twitching uselessly at his sides. “It’s . . . I can hear it, it’s . . .”
         “What’s it saying?” Tolin asked piercingly, just stopping himself from shaking the man. “What do you hear?”
         “It’s not . . . it’s not dead, the other voices,” Rathas gasped and dropped to one knee. The air was getting thick and difficult to breathe in, a wall of dust before them and beginning to settle around them on all sides. “It’s drowning them all out it’s . . . ah, it was better before,” he winced, now actually covering his ears and tucking his chin into his chest. “Now it’s just . . . it’s the softest screaming it’s . . .”
         “What is it saying?” Tolin demanded, mentally preparing himself for a teleport. “Rathas, I swear if you-“
         ”Hugakttet ujga iutkhgiip! Fjttiifgha lkoi!” Rathas suddenly screamed, in a voice that wasn’t his, in words that weren’t meant for his throat.
         Tolin felt his eardrums pop, as if in a vacuum. The air seemed to tense, straining and rippling, like something was trying to break through.
         “Gjfuttqry! Fjaooo pooooeapeq!”
         It was growing bigger. It couldn’t be. It was. Tolin felt a sharp pain in his ear, felt something wet trickle out of it. He put his hand there and it came away glistening red.
         Oh no, he thought, his head going light. No.
         “Fahpp!”
         With an imploding roar, the cloud exploded, filling the room and choking the air, sending it all away, sending it somewhere else.

* * * * *

         None of it was right. That’s the problem with stories. If you’re not there, you have no idea what actually happened. But I was there and I know exactly what happened. I don’t know how I got there or how long I was there but I know how it went. Even when you are there and you see things it’s not clear sometimes what you’re seeing. Or what is happening. I was there and I don’t know. I stood there and it happened and I know. Because when sometimes happens unless you’re not paying attention you have no choice but to see and when you see you have no choice but to be there and if you’re there then you know. It’s that simple. It has to be.
         How long was I at the house? I don’t know. I just know I was there. That’s all that matters.

* * * * *

         The buzzing cut all other sounds to ribbons.
         A choking grittiness soaked the air, threatening to burst it.
         Inside the house it grew dark, the sunlight shying away from whatever lay inside.
         Stillness pulsed, shuddered, twisted.
         The air shivered, rattled like death.
         An explosion ripped through the side of the house.
         Like a boil being lanced the wall crumbled, bursting open to eject two small figures, one tightly clutching the other. In their wake a cloud of dust vomited from the hole created by their passage, a swarm of imitation bees emerged, seeking to smother them. The dust filtered the sky, causing it to grow oppressively dark. Perhaps it was only illusion. It was coming right for them.
         The two men hit the edge of a hillside hard, and rolled.
         Tolin recovered first, tossed Rathas aside with barely a glance at the man, allowing him to roll some ways further down the hill. Meanwhile, Tolin scrambled to a crawling stance, using friction to halt his momentum, hugging the side of the hill and clambering his way back up until he could get a decent view of the house.
         A wall of dust hovered in the air, howling with a strange whistling cry. Tolin’s eyes narrowed as he focused on the dust cloud. Behind him, he could sense Rathas slowly crawling up to join him. A quick probe showed the man’s thoughts as fragmented and scattered, a mix corrupted by the intrusion of a foreign substance. It would take some time for him to get his equilibrium back. Good. The wind began to rise as Tolin caused two cross breezes to intersect. Junyul had taught him this trick, when they had first come here. It was one of the few times she had spoken to him. A shame, really. They had a lot in common.
         The cloud barely had a shape anymore, just a vague splotch on the air, a smear coating the landscape, threatening to darken everything. It was far bigger than before, but moved with a sure swiftness, barreling toward them in a churning cloud. Tolin increased the weight of the wind, slashing across the clouds width, trying to tear it into two pieces. Nothing could hold together for long. If you removed the center, it would all crumple. That’s how everything was, including people. Just the right push in the right place and it all came apart.
         A whistling in his ears indicated something was happening and indeed the cloud was warping oddly, almost forming a corkscrew shape as a tornado of air circled it, pulling it in several directions at once. Tolin tried to find a mind guiding the cloud but didn’t see anything. Even the air was clear, free of stinging, choking particles. It didn’t make sense. If this was an attempt to kill them, why did he not feel like he was in any danger? What was going on?
         A mote struck his eye, causing him to flinch as his eye watered and driving him back to the present. Resolved, he increased the force again, hearing the structure of the house groaning under the pressure. Let it all come down, then. The people there were dead anyway. Memory meant nothing if there was no one to recall. And the only memories the house held were bleak and bitter. Let it go. Let it.
         Come on, don’t make me teleport, dammit. Not with him.
         In the air, he sensed a string snap, a breaking point passed.
         With no fanfare, the cloud simply fell apart, turning the ground and plants in the immediate area a brownish-grey as the dust coated everything. Tolin resisted the urge to sneeze as the old, moldy scent struck him hard in the nostrils. It gave him the opportunity to release the breath he had been holding. What the hell was that?
         “You okay back there?” he asked Rathas, twisting from his position against the hill to face the other man. Rathas looked none the worse for wear, although his face had a strangely worn cast to it, giving his eyes a sunken, red look, and his clothes were rumpled from all the tumbling. Otherwise he appeared fine. Still, the sardonic twinkle that normally inhabited his eyes took a long time to return, and even then it was barely an ember.
         “Yeah . . . yeah, I’m all right,” the man said, wiping sweat from his brow, looking at the slickness on his hand as if belonged to someone else. His voice had an edge of hoarseness to it, like it had been injected with static. “I . . .” he gave a snorted giggle, which was either humor or an odd release of muffled tension, “. . . that was different, wasn’t it?” He looked at Tolin, as if trying to convince him it was the same man. “Certainly not what we expected.”
         “No . . . no, it wasn’t,” Tolin said distantly, pushing himself up to a sitting position, looking further down the hill and into the knotted expanse of trees that stretched out from the bottom and onwards. Aha. “Any idea what caused it? Or what the hell you were shouting?”
         “I was shouting?” Rathas asked, giving Tolin a quizzical look. For Tolin it was impossible to tell if the little man was lying to him or not. He was too much of an expert at it for Tolin to tell. “I don’t even remember . . . it does explain why I feel like I’ve gargled something caustic,” he said, giving a little cough and rubbing his throat.
         “Yeah, it didn’t sound like it was meant to come out of your mouth,” Tolin replied sourly, stretching out his legs and brushing dirt off his pants. “That was a trap, I can see the strings now that it’s been set off . . . it was triggered by our probing the area, that’s how it was designed.”
         “Rather clever,” Rathas noted, “though really simple, now that you mention it.”
         “Not if you don’t suspect it. Which we didn’t. We walked right into it, like fools. Are you sure those two weren’t like us . . .”
         “Positive . . .” Rathas said with as much certainty as he could muster. “If anything the fight against a thousand of Valreck’s oh so effective minions should have cleared that up. No, it was someone else.”
         “Ranos,” Tolin said darkly. “It has to be.”
         “He’s here?” Rathas asked, with some surprise.
         “Yeah, I saw him. Actually, he found me. We struggled and Maleth took him, but he must have set traps before he attacked me . . .” he trailed off, his eyes on somewhere other than Rathas. The other man looked to have a question, but kept silent. Tolin elaborated no further on the fight, it not being one of his favorite recent subjects anyway. It wasn’t Ranos’ presence that had disturbed him so much as the other man with the glowing sword and the barbed mind. His impressions still left a palpable bruise.
         “But we can ask him later,” Tolin said suddenly, breaking whatever sentence Rathas was about to form. “If Maleth has him he won’t be going anywhere for a while. If that woman knows one thing, it’s prisons. He’ll be caged without even knowing it.”
         “Hm, that is one of her more charming tricks,” Rathas said in a neutral tone. “But what are we going to do now? I don’t think the house is going to tell us anything more.”
         “It doesn’t need to,” Tolin told him, sliding down the hill, leaving a cloud of dirt behind him that looked no more benign than the last one they had encountered. When he reached the bottom of the hill he laughed, landing in a crouch and looking up at Rathas, who was halfway down and staring at him with a strange look.
         “Whatever happened to those people back at the camp,” he called up to Rathas, “I think they won, eventually. Because that destiny crap is the only thing that can explain this stuff.”
         “What are you talking . . . oh,” Rathas said as he reached Tolin, skidding to a halt and looking where the man was pointing.
         Footprints marked the exterior of the forest, scattered on the ground. Many man size prints had churned up the ground, turning it into a weird soup of dried mud and chopped grass.
         But there was a significant number that were shaped like a man’s but seemed far larger. With a slow grin, Tolin reached down and placed his hand in one of the depressions. It fit with plenty of room to spare. Following the pattern with his gaze, he saw them stretch toward the forest and deeper into it, surrounded by what might have been smaller, normal sized footprints.
         Still down on one knee, he glanced up at Rathas and grinned widely.
         “Now this is the kind of destiny I can live with,” he pronounced quietly.

* * * * *

         Into the house I came alone. At the edges with the doors and the windows I was lurking because I didn’t know what to do. They put me in this village after my parents died and nobody wanted to take care of me. I was a problem, they said without words. I couldn’t stop being a problem. And so I was at the house because I went to the house and it wouldn’t let me in except through the door that I came through. Why I stayed outside for so long I don’t know. It’s not important. Only being alone was. I had to stop the feeling of loneliness. The house was never alone. I had watched it for years. It never made me feel welcome. I walked right in, just like I always did. Because the first time I was alone. I always have been. I can’t bleed. Nobody will let me. It’s destiny you see. Because I’m the child. I’m what you’re all looking for.
         And I came into the house because I had to come alone and I walked in the empty furniture and I tried to find out why there was no one there. And people were there of course because everyone is always here, like they’ve always been. I saw them but they didn’t see me because I was hiding because I was alone and I didn’t want to stay that way.
         I could have stayed like that forever in the house hiding with my loneliness away from all the people who might help me. I was stupid. I realize that now. Everyone knows what’s best for me better than me. The reason I’ve done nothing is because I’ve let myself make my own decisions and it’s always steered me into places that weren’t the house.
         Nobody saw me. I was so close that she might have seen me had I wanted her to. Everyone knew where I was. Nothing is really a surprise. Not anymore. Not here. Not in this place.
         And I was trying to decide what to do and hoping that I didn’t tell myself what to do anymore and get myself into more stupid trouble with my dumb ideas when she spoke to me. I listened, of course. What else was there to do.
         And she said.
         And she said to me.
         And she said to me, with preamble, without farewell.
         She said, Why come in, Kara, dear child, there’s no reason to hide. We know you’re here. And you’re always welcome.
         And I was. And I am.
         I think I’ll stay for a while.