Rusted Memory: A Wanderer's Tale Page 8

  I can’t explain what happens when I die.

  In fact, I cannot even be certain I am dead when this otherworldly force collides with my body and wrenches my soul from its vessel.

  I return to this world without memory of that place beyond the agonizing certainty I was elsewhere and the abundance of indescribable pain that wracks both my bod and my awareness once they are forced back through the paper-thin veil between this world and the afterlife.

  I come to awareness, but only just, my recollection of those last excruciating moments as I bled out in the grassy hills above Lothanslur still lingering. Rust’s blade is gone, and though little more than a strange, puckered scar remains as evidence he yanked me from this world the way a physician might extract a bad tooth, I can still feel the pain of it when I touch my fingers to that place.

  I gasp. Wincing and hissing as I attempt to lift my head and then decide it is better to just lie here.

  The pain will linger, the scar will stay once it’s gone. Both a ghostly reminder of the punishment suffered for my own brevity.

  My own great-great grandson, one of only a very rare few to even walk this world, I think, and he cut me down in hopes of sparing himself a fraction of the curse that plagues him due to his relation to me.

  We should have celebrated one another’s company, and I suppose in some small way we did during those scant few hours we shared in the tavern… before he pushed the jagged end of his blade between my ribs.

  There’s no sense dwelling on it. What’s done is done, but I will never forget him, nor will I forgive myself for passing on this curse to those who surely did not deserve it.

  I do not wish ill will upon him, but I do hope death finds him swiftly. Not out of vengeance, no, but mercy.

  I do not want him to suffer the long road as his feet continually drag him away from the one place he longs to be more than any other: home.

  I turn my head, the dew-damp grass soaking into the sweaty locks of my hair. I need not lift my gaze to see I am wearing the very same clothes I wore the day this curse was cast upon me. On my back beneath an endless sea of stars, the calming constancy of crickets all around me feels like both a blessing and a curse.

  I’ve no idea where I’ve woken.

  It is always the same.

  I reawaken in this world dressed in the same clothes I wore the day I was cursed, and beside me in the grass are the only two things I had in my possession: the lute Master Regulus gave me when I was apprenticed to him the day I turned eleven and this journal I’ve spent the centuries recording within the pages my hopes, fears, secrets, dreams and adventures.

  I don’t rise immediately, for what’s the point?

  There is no urgency in my soul.

  No place I am obligated to be.

  I have all the time in the world, and I always will.

  There is no end to my days, no last chapter in the book of Morovio.

  There are only words, music, wine, women and an endless road before me, and none of those things are going anywhere. They will wait until I rise to find them again.

  When the rain starts it’s only slow droplets splashing onto my cheeks and forehead. They dribble down my cheeks, shiver against the crook of my neck before soaking into the earth beneath my head.

  It cools the fires of hell from skin and so I lie there in the darkness and let the rain wash away the sweat of dying and the pain of rebirth.

  I stare up at the faded stars, the cover of cloud moving in to hide them and try not to think about Rust.

  It’s impossible.

  I still see his face when I close my eyes. The torment, the anguish of his expression. I still hear the desperation in his voice.

  “I… I just… I want to go home.”

  Don’t we all?

  Only I’ve been wandering so long, so far…

  I wouldn’t know the first thing about going home anymore. In fact, if offered the opportunity to settle down and make a quiet life for myself, I’m not even sure I would take it.

  There’s no need for me to settle down. I’ve got everything I need right here, and the only person I can always count on is with me everywhere I go.

  Rusten will figure that out soon enough, and at least he has death to look forward to if he doesn’t.

  That’s a lot more than I was given.

  And I don’t complain about that… often.

  It is during this self-pitying reverie I hear the distinct but distant sound of shouting. At first I think I’ve only imagined it because the night answers with crickets and the calming croak of frogs from a nearby stream.

  I lift my head from earthly pillow, cock an ear in the direction I thought it might have come from and wait.

  Several seconds pass before rumbling voices call again, definitely shouting, but far enough away that I can’t make out the nature of the aggression.

  And then I see it.

  Flickering torchlight, burnt orange and yellow gold, far enough away that it could almost pass for blinking fireflies were it not for the consistence of the light. Waving in strange patterns, the arm that holds it flails as if panicked, or rather, as if searching for something in the stalky shadows of the field.

  I sit upright. There are three torches, and they are all coming toward me.

  A sudden and unreasonable tightness seizes my chest that can only be described as panic.

  I don’t know why, but I’ve the most dreadful feeling it is me they search for.

  Did I fall from the sky like a shooting star?

  Was I seen reentering this plane of existence from the endless, deathless place that spat me back out?

  Yes.

  Panic.

  The heart that should not beat is like a fish flopping on the shore, frantically thwapping fins upon the stone, knowing it is only moments from the gasping end.

  Only I just came from the end, and I can tell you with grave certainty ‘tis not a place I wish to return with any great haste.

  I reach for my lute, grab up my journal and scramble to my feet. I want to run, but I don’t know which direction to take so I remain firmly planted on the dew-slick grass like a startled deer in a hunter’s sight.

  I don’t know what to think of this strange new curse that keeps me from moving, but as I stare into the distance and watch those torches bob and dance against the night, I listen and soon learn it is not me they’re searching for.

  “Delahna!” A man’s voice echoes loud enough to reach my ears. “Delahna!”

  “Come out, girl,” another joins the chorus. “We ain’t gonna hurt ya. We just wanna talk to ya.”

  I don’t know who Delahna is, but I’ll think she’s a clever lass if she remains hidden.

  I’ve lived long enough to know there’s never been a person who meant the words, “I just want to talk to you,” while they were chasing through the fields at night with torches.

  What? You think that doesn’t happen? I’ve seen it more than once, I tell you, and it rarely ends well for the one being chased. No one screaming through the night with a torch has ever wanted to simply talk.

  I start to scan the shadowed field, looking for a place to run, somewhere I might be able to hide myself, when an unexpected tug on the sleeve of my tunic nearly wrenches a scream from my throat.

  I turn into the source of that tugging and once more it is all I can do to keep the horror from escaping through my vocal cords and drawing those men with torches right to me.

  The ugliest wraith I’ve ever laid eyes on stands at my back, staring up at me with one twisted, yellowed eye that glints eerily golden in the absence of light. Skin the grey-blue color of ash, her black braids are discolored and matted with clods of dirt that drip down the front of her torn and soiled white dress. There’s a wreath of dried flowers twined into her hair, and I think, despite the hideousness of her appearance at present moment, she once made a beautiful bride.

  When she turns her head I see the other eye socket is empty. Maggots wri
ggle and crawl through the dense shadow, writhe along the rotting skin of her cheek, toward a rotting, toothy rictus grin.

  She lifts a bony finger to those thin, decaying lips as if to shush me, but there’s no sound.

  “Delahna…” That voice is sing-song in the most menacing way imaginable, striking chills upon my flesh in the form of rising gooseflesh. “Come out, Delahna.”

  And I realize I have found this girl, or rather, she found me, and together we must run.