Aeriondale

Word count: 2,500
Notes/Warnings: None.
Summary: Written for the prompt(s): Create a story about what you imagine a day long journey through one of the following, a body of water, a forest, a desert, a savannah, a city or tundra would be like. Consider the dangers, and what it would feel like to spend that much time alone or with another person.”.


“Keep up, boy! We’re on a schedule, and I can assure you: it’s not yours!”

Huffing and puffing, Devon jogged on a little faster to try and keep up with the sprightly old bastard whose dust he was eating. He wished desperately for a chair and a cigarette—in that order—or that perhaps he’d never started smoking to begin with.

“Not . . . a machine . . . you cunt. . . .” he mutter-panted when he at last drew even with the old man, who nimbly leapt over roots and deadfalls alike, as if he was part mountain goat. Devon stumbled along after, groaning and swearing the whole time.

“Still your restless tongue and save what little breath you have for breathing,” the old man commanded before drawing significantly ahead once more. “You’ll not thank me if we’re still in the Cursed Forest come nightfall. Trust me.”

“Trust you? I don’t know you,” Devon mumbled under his labored breath then yelped when he nearly went arse over tit tripping over a large branch.

Everything in the so-called Cursed Forest seemed to stymie and confound Devon from the moment he woke up under its dark, green-gold canopy, the old man staring down at him and pointing a stick at his right eye.

After a few moments of staring up at the other man and his stick, Devon had moaned and closed his eyes, certain he was dreaming.

It was soon driven home to him that this was not the case.

“The worst possible thing you could do would be to look around too much. Though you’ll want to,” the old man had said after Devon had gone through a brief histrionic spell of demanding where he was, how he’d gotten there and who the old man was. The old man had answered none of these questions, merely ordered Devon to follow him. And Devon, watching the old man’s straight, narrow back get farther and farther away, had done so upon realizing that he had no choice. “Keep your eyes on the Path ahead of you, and for Arrun’s sake, if something calls your name from the thicket off the Path, do not listen to it or look at it.”

Odd advice, Devon thought it, but it was advice that he’d surely heed—especially in the creepy tangle he’d woken up in. It was, in fact, as far as Devon could tell, not following advice that had got him into this mess in the first place. Jenna had warned him not to go through the box of treasures late Uncle Eric had willed him until she or one of his other aunts could be present to protect him.

“Protect me? What bollocks is that?” Devon had demanded, half-laughing, half-offended.

“Bollocks that’ll keep you alive,” she’d said, quite seriously. Then rang off with: “Wait for me, Dev. I’ll explain more when I get back to London, but don’t open that box.”

And Devon hadn’t.

For two whole days, he hadn’t. It’d sat on his coffee table, the old, wooden crate, holding place of pride like an object d’art, for forty-nine hours and twenty-three minutes. But boredom and curiosity—his besetting sins, his mother had used to say before she died—had got the better of him and one crowbar and some manly levering later, he’d had it open.

Inside was, as suspected, nothing but old junk.

Disappointed, Devon had picked desultorily through the junk, laying it out methodically on the coffee table. The first thing that drew his jaded gaze was a strangely shaped silver amulet with a black stone set in the center. The stone was shot through with orange, yellow, and white, like fireworks in a night sky, and the whole affair hung on a fine silver chain.

Under that, lying on its side, was a battered old oil lamp. After rubbing it a few times—just in case—Devon put it aside, next to the amulet.

There were other things in the box, none of them interesting except for a chunk of solid rose quartz the size of a baby’s head and similar in shape, and a folded, hand-drawn, detailed map of a place that’d never existed anywhere on Earth. The places on the thick parchment were labeled meticulously in an alphabet Devon didn’t recognize.

The map had been the last thing in the crate, and Devon had sighed, looking over the junk on his coffee table. The amulet, at least, was sort of cool, and he picked it up, holding it up to the light and letting it spin and flash its fireworks.

“Cheers, Uncle Eric,” he’d muttered, putting the amulet on. It’d hung halfway down his torso, heavy and cool. But it felt . . . oddly right, in a way Devon couldn’t explain and thus shrugged off.

He sighed and started to fold the still-open map, and that’s when everything went dark.

The next thing he knew, he was blinking his blurry way out of that darkness to intense green, backlit by golden light. Sunlight. And there’d been an old guy wearing some sort of cowled brown robe, like a monk, staring grimly down at him, pointing a stick at his eye.

“Ouch . . . my fucking head,” Devon had moaned.

“Who are you?” The old man had demanded briskly, in a voice as sharp as the stick he held out like a weapon. “What are you doing in the Forest without weapons and off the Path?”

“Whah. . . ?” Devon had risked the wrath of his aching head and sat up slowly, looking around him. He wasn’t in his flat—not even close. He was indeed in some sort of forest.

And he had no idea how he’d got there.

“To whom do you owe your allegiance?” The old man had further demanded, his white hair standing out in all directions like Albert Einstein’s, his beard bristling with tension.

“My allegiance?” Devon had asked, still gaping around himself. “The Queen, I guess. God save, and all that.”

And that must’ve been a right answer, because the old man had slowly put his pointy stick away and offered Devon his hand. Devon hesitated, but took it and was pulled to his feet entirely without his own help.

“You’re quite lucky,” the old man began dourly, “that I heard you snoring from the Path and decided to . . . investigate. Else you’d have woken up in one of the nine Hells for your troubles. Minus an appendage or two.”

Then the old man’s eyes had flicked over Devon measuringly, doing a double take when they landed on Devon’s sternum, widening even as he took a few steps closer, into Devon’s personal space. Devon took a step back.

“What?” he’d asked, looking down at himself and seeing the amulet. He frowned. “Oh, this? It was my uncle’s. He died recently, and left it to—hey! Don’t touch the merchandise, grandfather!”

Devon whipped the amulet out of the old man’s hand and tucked it down in his polo shirt. The old man continued to stare at him as one gobsmacked. Finally, he shook his head and turned away, walking briskly.

“Follow me,” he’d ordered, without looking to see if he was being obeyed.

“Wait—but who are you? Where am I? What’s going on?!”

Devon, suddenly on the edge of hysteria, received no answer but the continued and creepy silence of the forest.

Realizing, as the old man disappeared around a copes of trees, that he’d get no answers and no help standing around and fretting, Devon had hurried to catch up.

And that was how he’d found himself trotting through this interminable, eerily silent forest after an old man whose name he didn’t even know.

What with all the walking—practically running—through the forest, there was little space for such things as wondering where he was or how he’d got there. Or even, after the sun began to wester, who his guide was. He only knew that as the gold light peering through chinks in the canopy began to slip toward the horizon, turning orange as it went, he began to feel the same urgency the old man felt about getting out of the forest.

Devon didn’t want to be anywhere near this place after dark, either.

“How . . . much further?” he panted after the old man.

“Less than a mile, by my reckoning. Keep up!”

So Devon shut his gob and did his best. But what couldn’t have been more than a few minutes later, a howl—then several—went up from behind them. Devon froze and ahead of him the old man stopped and glanced around.

“Wolves?” Devon whispered, wiping sweat from his brow. More immediately took its place. The old man snorted wryly, but there was fear in his eyes.

“If only,” he replied then came back to Devon, grabbing his arm and propelling him forward. “You must do as I do and walk calmly, slowly, showing no fear. If you run, they’ll chase you, and catch you, and rip you to pieces. The last thing you’ll see is them feasting on you as you gurgle out the last of your pathetic life.”

“Christ, mate—what the fuck?!”

“Walk. Now. Don’t meander, but don’t hurry, either. As long as it’s daylight, they cannot approach us unless we run. We should have enough light left to make it to the borders of the forest, where their territory ends.” The old man kept his iron grip on Devon’s arm as they walked, his voice hushed and tense.

“And if we don’t have enough light?” Devon squeaked. The look the old man gave him was answer enough. “Oh, blimey.”

And so they walked. The sporadic howling followed them, sometimes farther away, sometimes nearer. Once, Devon started to glance behind him to see just how close this menace was getting, but the old man squeezed his arm and shook his head.

“Don’t. Not unless you want enough to fuel your nightmares for the rest of your life,” he whispered, urging Devon on just a bit faster.

*

With the setting of the sun, Devon and the old man reached an area where the forest had begun to thin out. The canopy above wasn’t nearly so dense and the howls from behind them were getting more frequent and more urgent.

As the last of the sun’s honest light slipped below the horizon, they could just make out open grassland and gently rolling hills, beyond which lay a tall city of white stone, the likes of which Devon had never seen before.

“Whoa,” he said, slowing as he stared gape-mouthed at the beautiful city. The old man paused with him.

“Aeriondale,” he said softly, with definite relief in his voice. It was the sound of a man who has, at long last, reached his home. “We’ll enter its gates by moonrise if we don’t slitter. And if we’re still alive.”

“Wha—?”

“Run!” the old man screamed, glancing behind them and taking to his feet with alacrity.

“Oh, fuck me!” Devon, too, began to run as the howls from behind them grew alarmingly closer and somehow hungrier. He dared not glance behind him to see just how close doom was, for fear he’d trip and fall and they’d—whatever they were—be on him.

He simply ran. As fast as he could, and faster than he’d ever had to run in his life. The white city in the distance seemed to grow farther away, as did the visible end to the forest. The Path he traveled along—little more than a worn, but grass and vegetation free trail in the undergrowth—however, grew more definite.

“Run, boy! Run!” the old man called from ahead of him, and Devon found, from somewhere, an extra burst of speed and halved the distance between them. He could all but feel the hungry creatures behind them getting closer. The howling became low growls and heavy breathing that seemed to be coming from directly behind Devon. He didn’t want to look. He didn’t want to take his eyes off the oft-times treacherous path—he really didn’t.

But he had to.

Still running, he glanced over his shoulder and saw, at a distance of a mere three meters away, a . . . thing. A creature made of nothing but amorphous darkness, glowing green eyes, and more mouths with more teeth than Devon was comfortable with counting. It did not run on the Path, but hovered slightly above the ground alongside the Path. But it was closing the gap between itself and Devon quickly, and not far behind it, were more of the same.

I am so fucked, Devon thought, looking ahead once more to see open land, and the old man standing in it, bowed over, hands on his knees, panting, as his frantic eyes watched Devon’s progress.

There were but twenty steps at most to the edge of the treeline, and Devon struggled toward it, feeling the nearness of the creature behind him, and its everlasting, nightmarish hunger.

It would have him, Devon knew, and so, with nothing to lose, he leapt at the clear space ahead. . . .

In the eternal seconds his body traveled through the air, he could see the old man’s eyes widen with fear, and flick to the space beyond Devon’s right shoulder. Devon didn’t bother to follow his gaze. He knew exactly what he’d see: open mouths, jagged teeth, and greedy darkness.

As Devon reached the apex of his parabola, the old man reached into the folds of his brown robe and withdrew his pointy stick, which was glowing an urgent, electric blue, and in that moment, Devon realized: It’s a wand, not a stick! Holy shit, the old man’s some sort of wizard!

Then Devon was hitting the ground hard, on his feet, just within the shadows of the trees, his left ankle going up in a white-hot burst of agony as he fell and rolled toward the old man, who was chanting and waving his wand like a conductor in a symphony.

A sudden white light burst from everywhere and nowhere, temporarily blinding Devon, who continued to crawl toward the old man, and safety. He heard howls of pain coming from just behind him and something sharp and jagged scored the back of his left calf, muscle-deep.

Screaming, Devon scrambled to his hands and knees, and kept moving forward, even as the white light pounded through his closed lids like a juggernaut.

Under Devon’s hands and scraped knees, the worn Path became cool grass and the howls behind him changed from hungry, to cheated and despairing. Ahead of him, somewhere, the old man laughed triumphantly and stopped chanting.

Devon, panting, immersed in the dim, light-grey afterimage that was all that remained of the white light, collapsed to the grass face first.

He was safe.

TBC