Far Down Trodden Paths

Across the dipping crevice, Lortun's lengthening shadow swelled. Behind him hung a ripened sun, and below, golden dunes spread from mountain to sea. He lingered in the shade of the craggy tree, its gnarled limbs stretching for neither sky nor earth, but serpentined with the woody vine.

He pinched his boonie hat at the crown and swiped a hand across his brow. Sweat careened toward his eyes as he fumbled a folded paper in his hands and uncreased it across a boulder. He traced his path with a lone finger. Having kept to the shadows as the Maegens had said, Lortun had trailed an ever-shifting path at the base of the dunes.

At last, with sand clinging to the hairs of his arms, his legs, and his face, Lortun had risen to the mesa's edge and looked down. Now here, in this hidden fissure, the broad ancient tree waited as it had for a thousand years or more.

Satisfied, he refolded the map and deposited it with care inside his coat pocket. His canteen, nearly depleted, he returned to his satchel and cinched across his back.

The way into the fissure was narrow, twisting like a worm into the cliff and descending in sections precipitously down. At times, the sun would disappear completely, golden hues and rich burgundies deepening into heavy browns and blacks.

The path into the crevice dipped round the mesa's bottom. Stark cliffs and spires loomed like grand sentinels a short way off. With nowhere left to descend, the dusty path was obstructed by a low rim of rock, stacked with purpose, and ringing a dark hole large enough for a man. No bucket or rope hung above the well, but still the distant sparkle of water could not be mistaken, catching some gleam of sun reflecting off the clouds.

Beyond the well sat a weathered woman, hunched over her work in a firepit, its embers cooling to a smoldering black. When she did not respond to Lortun's call, he lay a gentle hand upon her shoulder. Skin flaked off, leaving his hand bloody with her flesh, sloughing like gelatin beneath his own.

He recoiled, placing a hand to the cutlass at his side, then relaxed. A cutlass would do no good here, nor any blade or point or poison. Instead he hunched down, hands on his knees, and peered into her eyes. Behind her corneas were burned-out husks, as if charred and smoked from the inside out.

A short way on, the trail terminated at the cliffside with only a narrow slot, black with the depths of the world, continuing on. A stout wooden door, no doubt made of the thick oaks and elms of the distant forests, pivoted free and swung tenderly with the air breathing from the opening.

Even barely within, the air grew cool and clammy, as if touched by an unseen clime. Lortun flicked a lighter and a brief flame burst, flickered, and passed away. In that fleeting moment, he spotted a hook where an oil lamp once hung, and a rough stair leading gradually down. Another flick, and he memorized each uneven patch, every irregular angle, ignoring the fickle shadows that undulated in the dim light of the flame before the unsensed wind extinguished it again.

At long last, with stairs and winding pathways behind him, he emerged into a cavernous hall. Here he discovered a lamp and lit it, swinging it round the cave to dispel the dark. The room was lightly furnished with lounge chairs, aged and threadbare. Shelves of books lined most every wall, their thick leather hides etched with titles in every language Lortun knew. In a far corner a fire had been recently snuffed in what served as a fireplace, with streaks of soot lining the stones up the cavern wall to a hidden opening that must serve as chimney. Even now, a thin finger of smoke twined upward toward it, and an acrid smell settled in the cave.

No one was here, no one visible, but he could sense their presence all the same. Here but not here. Entrapped in the other realm, through the filament that divided this world from that one. A world only he, the spirits themselves, and one other could access. As he thought it, he spotted specks of ash floating on the air like dust, breathed in and expelled out, and here and there, little piles of silvery ash that hushed away with the slightest breeze.

He held up the lamp, and darkness that had hitherto remained steadfast now broke with gleaming eyes like fire burning hottest blue. The shadows themselves seemed to move, long thin legs and equally long arms shifted, rising to a full height twice a man tall. The Thin One stepped from the shadows, shedding them as one might a trench coat, and into the hesitant light. Atop the impossibly tall, slender form stood a jagged head, stark cheekbones overlaid with a grey flesh, eyes so deep-set they appeared empty sockets until the blue fires danced within them.

Lortun held his ground, wary but strong. "Thin One," he said at last, and the creature chuckled like a stone falling down a mountain.

"Have we a new deadlock?" the Thin One said. "Your timing is, as usual, most fortuitous."

"I had hoped to reach them before you," Lortun said.

"And I had hoped to finish. We each must nourish our own disappointments."

Lortun licked his lips, biting upon the lower one. "Let them free," he said at last, when the silence had impregnated the air.

The Thin One flourished a long hand. His fingers, three to each hand plus a thumb, coiled around his palm, and his arms stretched the full length of his body, so he could scratch his ankle without bending knee or hip. He raised one arm toward Lortun, who stepped instinctively back.

One touch from the Thin One and he would join the others, no matter his ability to access that other place, burnt to a husk like the lady outside, or worse, to ash like those here in the cave. If Lortun were to take the Thin One, Lortun must touch him first, a daunting task at the best of times with the Thin One's limbs long as the desert day.

But the Thin One turned heel and stepped the other direction, not attempting to reach Lortun. He also knew the risk. "I wish now only to escape," the Thin One said, as if he were the victim.

"Would that you'd return to the realm from which you came," Lortun said, but the Thin One laughed in response, a thin piercing sound that seemed to make the stones above them unsettle.

"You know as well as I from whence I come. Right here, same as you."

"No," Lortun said. "You are an abomination."

"Words," the Thin One rebuked. "What you call an abomination, others call a halfling. Would you tell a kaethe, giant of the waste and the rolling hills, he's an abomination? For he too is half a man. Or a cafa, half a man in stature, is he too abominable? Or the jenalun, long wispy sprites, stately and regal in their forests and their moors, are they too abominations for their slender forms and long limbs?" He held one pointed finger toward the distant ceiling, nearly touching it, tipping a spiked talon instead to a drop at the end of a stalactite and drawing it down to a stretched, hellish maw. He tasted it upon a gray tongue as if relishing the liquid, closing his fire-blue eyes for a long moment.

"They are of flesh and blood, same as man."

"As am I," the creature retorted.

"Maybe once," Lortun shot back, voice rising. "When the spirits of old lay with our women, and out came the first vyorminshwurz, half human and half demon by lineage, but demon entire by nature. But now even that is of doubt. The likes of you have been all but abolished—"

"Hunted!" The Thin One shot suddenly, lunging, as it seemed, toward Lortun so that he stumbled backward, catching his foot upon an outcrop.

But the Thin One did not pursue. His eyes flashed all the hotter, growing from embers to coals. "Exterminated!" he roared. "By the likes of you and the senseen." He spat out the word.

Lortun composed himself, straightening his coat. He spoke softly now, as if to calm the air itself and draw it back to his side. "As you have hunted us."

"Yessss," the Thin One said, drawing out the essss like the slither of a snake. "Me, last of my kind, hunting those that would commit genocide."

Lortun scoffed. "Genocide! As if it could ever be! Should we ever succeed in slaying you, glorious day as that would be, and if you truly are the last of your kind as you say, what is to stop the Hulini, the Bukiel, the Guenaceri, the Sopiu themselves, or any of the other spirits—nay, demons—in your realms from walking the earth, not as beasts and wisps, striking fear in hearts, but rather charming our men and beguiling our women beneath the blankets?

"And of the senseen, whom you hate with such burning passion, whom you obliterate with impunity, forever trapped in the spirit realm, consumed within their blackness? They can do nothing to you. Only me!" He pounded his chest. "Only I can destroy you! So why torment these others?"

But no answer came, and Lortun realized with sudden loneliness that the shadows had receded back into the walls, beyond the stones. As he'd made his speech, the Thin One had slipped away once again, leaving Lortun alone in the cavern with only the ash of his brethren to fill his lungs.

#

I hastened from that place, pausing only to stack stones upon the woman's corpse and to draw water from the well for my travels. It's true, as some may ask, that the cave called to me, but I prefer baser travels. I do not have stomach for the upside-down feeling I possess post-cave, and am often ill for days. In no small part due to this, I have never mastered the skill required to travel in this manner.

As such, I trekked across the desert, coming at last to a village nearest the desert's edge, the very same from which I'd embarked. Following a brief respite, I continued by mule, by horse, or by carriage from village to village, far down well-trodden paths, meeting several senseen along the pathway, as previously arranged, and arriving after many tiresome weeks to the city of Kydor. From there, I paid my way aboard various vessels, eventually rounding the peninsula known as O'kli, past the Under Isles of which many tales have been told, and sailed up through the Broken Ocean before dropping anchor at the first of many islands of the Essiles that grant this body of water its moniker.

Here on the many islands, I met more of our brethren the senseen, those with unnatural senses, each unique to the individual. While my sense accesses the spiritual realm, others manipulate water, thought, minerals in the earth; others bend wills, others the very dimensions of our world. There is really no limit to our senses granted to us by The Origin himself and the Evacir, most powerful and revered of all spirits.

Naturally, during my nautical travels in particular, I had much time to myself, when not assisting where I could below deck or above, as the crew allowed. On nights when the waves had bedded and the sea had grown serene, I would sit foredeck and stare out at the night sky, the stars so bright out in the endless ocean that you could see the swirls on your fingertips even when the moon had set.

I gave much thought in these moments to what the Thin One had said. His nature had never seemed a mystery, not with all the study I had done upon the subject. Cultures throughout the world and up through time had stories of Dark Men, om'ugenshon, Men of Night, The Long Dark, Shadow Men or the malan lorgose. Invariably in these tales, the creatures fed upon the dark, the night, the shadows. Most spoke of no harm that came to them, through some providence or good fortune, save night terrors or a tingling of the skin.

But other accounts would chill even the most hardened, the most well-read of atrocities that their kin, the Hulini, fallen Evacir, had inflicted upon all sentient beings. Records of whole households burnt out, their bodies falling to dust with a single touch, or of regiments to outer reaches returning with but one or two wide-eyed soldiers, traumatized to their very bones by what they had seen.

Despite all this, what the Thin One had said stuck with me. Could such a creature of that realm, of nightmares and death and darkness, really believe himself the hunted, the victim, the innocent in all of this? The question appeared ludicrous on the surface, but his sincerity lingered in my mind.

It is because of this that, once firmly upon solid continent again, I forthwith chartered board upon the swiftest schooner I could find, and returned up the coast to Ilstad, city of castles and palaces and towers, wherein the most learned of our world have congregated, so as to confer with the Maegens and Libors on the matter, and burrow into my own studies.

#

Beneath grungy stones, the castle corridors grew stale. A pale glow suffused a space little more than a cupboard, and within, Lortun hunched in his rickety chair over blotched papers. His pen dipped, and his hand flourished. Above him, a thick candle shriveled, morphing with the hours from tall to stout.

The air picked up, as if by draft or open window, unnoticed to Lortun save to lean into his work all the more, preventing its disturbance, until the candle flickered nearly out and a shadow draped across the desk. He looked up then, the shadow a palpable thing, inking across the fickle light afforded by candle. Slender fingers of shadow elongated and stretched toward him.

Lortun started, upsetting his seat with a quick rise, and faced the long, dark corridor behind. The candles which had been lit on the walls had extinguished, but two fiery blue points stood out in the near distance. How far, Lortun couldn't tell, not in the uncertain light.

The shadow which had encompassed him had retreated, and so too now the blue eyes, as if sinking into the darkness itself. A smile flashed, and then eyes and smile alike were gone.

Without second thought, Lortun spun abruptly to his right. The world as it were, of rock and castle and candlelight, ceased, replaced by a hazier, amorphous world. He shut tight his eyes, for they were of little use here, where one must traverse by feel and touch, not physical but from within. From his sense.

He perceived him then, the Thin One, his form shrinking as it moved away, too quickly for his pace. A vague sense of structures rising up and receding again created an unclear background, but Lortun's focus remained on the Thin One until he could no longer, for the creature was gone, like a point growing quickly distant.

Lortun began to run after, but thought better. It might be an ambush. Instead, he turned quickly to his left and found himself once more in the castle corridor wherein he held his studies.

In a hurry, Lortun gathered up his work and shuffled off. The night was still young, and many in the castle bustled about, but Lortun's feet did not waver. Up the winding steps, across the main hall and the inner courtyard, up another set of stairs, down the lengthy ways of the northern wing, and finally to a heavy wooden door, latched and barricaded. He gathered himself and rapped on the door.

A few more knocks and the door hinged inward. A sharp woman of advanced age stepped aside as he burst in.

"Do come in," she said dryly. "You know you're welcome here."

He ignored her tone and fell onto her desk, commandeering her pen to scribble something on one of his own papers. "I saw him," he said impatiently, facing her now.

"You need to see to your manners, if I must say."

He shrugged her off. "No. Libor Insur, you know I wouldn't bother you, but you and Maegen Fynd are my greatest confidants here. You have supported me through good times and bad, and I confess, the bad have been—"

Libor Insur held up a hand. "That isn't necessary, Lortun. Why are you here?"

"Him. I saw him. Here."

She straightened a little at that.

"He could have taken me, but he didn't."

"Are you certain?" With a look, she could tell he was. "All right. Why didn't he then?"

"Because he wants something."

"What does a vyorminshwurz want other than death of senseen, in particular you, Lortun, his greatest threat?"

Lortun held up a finger, thrust toward her, then stabbed it into his papers. After a moment, he relaxed his finger. "I'm working on that," he said with a sigh. "I followed him, into the spiritual world."

The libor's expression grew more intense. "What did you see?" She enunciated each word succinctly, studying his face.

"I … I saw, uh … structures, I think."

"Structures," she repeated. "There is no need for structures in the spiritual world."

"No, but … it often reflects our own world."

"How so?"

"Well, the Thin One … uh, the vyorminshwurz, he's half physical and half spiritual, as you know. He's able to slip readily one to the other."

"As are you, Lortun."

"Well, not like him. For me, it takes a conscious effort, however slight. For him, it's just … it's who he is. I conjecture he exists in both worlds equally and passes between without thought."

"That is the prevailing opinion."

Lortun licked his lips. "So I think these buildings … I think I could determine where he went."

Libor Insur leaned back in her chair. "That could be useful if you mean to track him. Have you thought it may be his intent?"

"Thought it? I expect it. He wishes to meet me on his terms."

"An ambush, then."

"I feared that, and it's why I did not pursue him in the spiritual world. But I do not believe so. If he wanted to kill me, he could have. No, it's more than that, I just don't know what."

"Can you describe the structures? Their architecture, size, any outstanding features."

"I can do one better." He procured the top paper, setting it before the libor. A rough sketch of an ancient letter—one Lortun did not know but recorded from what he'd seen, etched on a sign—lay before her. She peered at it longer than he expected, and he watched as she blanched.

"What is it? Libor? What does the letter mean?"

With a sudden movement, she stood and rifled through books on the shelf, flipping through the pages of one she selected at last. Heavily, she fell into her seat.

"It's not a letter. It's a word," she said, her voice a husk. "These marks, this flourish, every swirl and tittle hold significance." She shook her head, deep in thought.

"What does it mean, then?" Lortun said, interrupting.

She looked up at him, eyes still afar. " 'House among the conifers', or something to the effect. It's Lanan, the ancient tongue of Eilaicir."

"And?" he said after another moment of silence.

She rose to her feet and began gathering his things, dropped them in his arms. "You must leave at once. You must hasten." She ushered him toward the door. "That's not just any symbol. It represents a school. A school for senseen children, hidden for centuries from … the likes of him. If he knows … if he's there …"

"I may already be too late."

"Find the Maegen. You'll have to take the cave."

#

I sought out Maegen Fynd with due urgency, filling him in as he prepared me to travel. Fynd is a frail man of fiery temper and a heart that has been refined to purest gold by the same fire, and he had much to say on the matter. One thing in particular stands out in my mind to this day. He said, as I'm sitting and calming my nerves, knowing I'm about to be turned topsy-turvy and inside-out: "You hold the final card. Never forget. He fears what you are."

From his words I inferred that I am senseen, and the only senseen who can access the Thin One's realm. Therefore, I can, in theory at least, destroy him. The Thin One is half spirit, half man, so killing either is impossible unless, like myself, one can access both. But we are an even match, so it has been an impasse thus far.

I did not realize until later what Fynd actually meant, and I often wonder why he didn't explain it sooner. Could he have changed what occurred that day? It's one of those questions he would tell me is worthless. "What if, what if," he would mock. "Everything 'what if' instead of just living life."

What he actually said was: "Would it have changed for the better? History itself depended on your decisions that day. On your courage. Would you have made the same decisions had you known?"

I cannot say one way or the other, and I confess it gnaws at me.

Nonetheless, one other thing he said stood out to me, if not for the same reason. He said, "A hero is a hero, dead or alive. The songs prefer the dead ones." He paused, looking at me strikingly. "I don't much like songs," he finished. Then he clapped me on the back, and I was filled with the sensation of the cave—that inimitable draft, followed by a swoosh of innards, a sudden rush of falling, and finished with that indescribable sense of otherness.

For I had left Ilstad far behind, re-materializing in the mountains of upper Hurlushu; where, even I didn't know. Not exactly. One look, however, told me Maegen Fynd had not been entirely successful. Not his fault, this I also knew, for cave travel depended far more on the subject than any third party administrant and I am to this day least of any masters. But before me was no school. I was on the fringe of a village, and it was the dead of night.

Allow me to back up a moment. I had arrived, shall we say, in a cold storage built into a hillside. When I managed to finagle the latch, it is then I discovered the village ahead and below me, visible only by a few candles lit in windows.

In one of these windows was the keeper of the inn, who kept a stable and a hand. I convinced him with sweet words, a tale tall enough to see over these mountains, and a few well-placed coins to transfer me in his carriage up to the school.

Here is where it got tricky, as I did not know where the school was located, and its identity as a school was, in fact, a secret in its own right. So I sketched him the symbol I had seen, trusting the place nearby, and lo and behold, he recognized it and took me straight-forth. First, however, we consumed a hearty meal of cabbage, cottage rolls, and a thick ale the likes of which I nearly required a spoon to retrieve from its mug. This we ate, as well did his stable-hand, the latter of which authored said carriage.

It is in this manner I find myself bouncing up a muddy mountain road in the backs of a carriage at nigh to midnight, with hopes of reaching the school by dawn. I pen these, perhaps my final words, with an inkwell I have all but spilled untold times, so that I must replace the stopper after every dip, and a penmanship that would horrify my childhood syntax tutor, may she rest in peace, I presume, for she was quite advanced even in my youth.

I hope to be in songs one day, it is true, but many years hence. I bid thee well until next we meet.

#

Morning twilight leaked between leaves and needles as the carriage drew to a halt before a stately mansion, a veritable castle of stone and beams, complete with towers and crenellations and an intimidating gatehouse. Lortun dropped from the musty interior into the muddy road, sinking near to his ankles. He lifted one foot and peered at it with consternation, about losing his boot in the doing. With one irritated arm, he waved on the driver to the stables to refresh.

He passed through the gatehouse unhindered, entered a sunroom and stomped off his boots, then walked across a stone floor to an enclosed atrium, gazing at its roof of beveled glass which spread cheer and warmth throughout the broad space. Here the older Maegens, he presumed, were teaching the young senseens. One, a tall man with gray hair, shuffled in his robe to greet him. Lortun introduced himself, and the man, in his soft-soled shoes, looked regretfully at Lortun's still-muddy boots.

"I plead forgiveness for my state and my early arrival. I am most pleased to find you astir."

The man waved off the apology with a pleasant smile. "I am Homylz, Second … uh, here in these halls."

"Second Maegen, I presume," Lortun said, filling in the gap, then realizing the man's ill-ease, added, "I come from Ilstad. Maegen Fynd and Libor Insur have sent me on a most urgent matter." He provided a letter, stamped with the seal of Ilstad.

Homylz relaxed for a brief moment, taking the letter, then tensed again at the mention of urgency. "Come, come in." He urged him into a cozier reception hall where leather-bound chairs half-encircled a crackling fireplace.

Lortun glanced at his boots, but Homylz prompted him on. "Don't mind those, the stones will clean."

Once seated, a steaming mug of halor in both hands, Lortun leaned over the low table, the warmth of the drink coursing through him, as Homylz read the letter from Fynd. "Tell me, Maegen, have you or the children experienced anything … odd of late?

"Odd?" Homylz raised his eyebrows. "We are dealing with senseen children. Every day is odd."

"Of course. Of course. I phrased my question poorly. What I'm after is a shadow. A shadow that behaves strangely, moving where it shouldn't. Darkness that fills a space in broad daylight. Tiny incongruencies seen in mirrors or out the corner of your eyes."

Homylz upset the gray upon his head. "Are you implying what I think you are?"

Lortun cocked his head but didn't reply.

"Do you not speak of shadow men? Malan lorgose, the vyorminshwurz …?"

"The Thin One," Lortun finished for him, his voice merely a whisper.

"I cannot say—" But the man paused, plainly thinking on some unexplainable event.

"You have, then." Lortun stood up.

"Now, hold up," Homylz said, also standing. "Please, sit back down." He glanced around as he did so, and Lortun followed suit.

"There have been complaints," Homylz began, voice low, eyes trained at the fire. "We didn't place much stock in it, you see. But, well—" he shook his head, looked up to meet Lortun's gaze. "Yes. That is the short answer. Flames that blow out without a draft, every lamp in the castle. Some of the little ones have developed imaginary friends, and we see them, playing as if with their shadows. And little Ufea—" tears welled in his eyes.

Lortun's own voice caught in his throat. "What, uh … what of Ufea?"

"She came down with fever, burning up. We isolated her in the sick ward, and asked her, of course, if she had ingested anything from the forest. What she told us instead—I'm afraid we didn't comprehend at the time. The shadow men have never been here, you must understand."

"They are tales in books, I know. Something I haven't told you yet, Maegen Homylz, and I apologize for the oversight. I am hunting this Thin One. The Maegens in Ilstad believe that I can, uh … shall we say, overcome it."

"Very well," he said, back stiffening with resolves. "Little Ufea, her heart be blessed, told us that the shadow had touched her, and it was hot. If only we had listened …"

Lortun stood of a sudden. "Take me to her. I must see her."

Homylz did not rise in turn. "I'm afraid you are too late. You see, the next morning, we could not find her. The window was locked from inside, and the door as well, the Maegens alone possessing the key. But all else we found in the room was ash."

#

He took me to see her room all the same, among the other third season children. Everything remained as it had, save the ash had been removed and the bed tidied. I asked about her blankets, if they had been charred, and they confirmed they had. A blackened spot remained on the wooden headboard, so tiny I nearly missed it. I scraped it with a fingernail, but discovered nothing.

I offered to remain awake that night as vigil. I could not have slept if I tried. I could sense him here, somewhere, lurking on the other side of the veil. I resisted the urge to look in that shadowy space, for he would hold considerable advantage there. No, I would wait for him here. He would return.

Day turned to dusk and fell into night. I watched the bustle of children diminish and the castle faded from vibrancy to slumber. The chill ebony of night settled, but not with the impenetrable blackness of the Thin One.

I had spoken with some of the children, under supervision of Maegen Homylz and others throughout the day, but discovered little new. Children are apt to exaggeration and sensationalism, and will repeat what they have heard. Nonetheless, I believed the underlying accounts, and grew certain this was the Thin One's work.

As the day grew long, Maegen Lurien, a slight woman of small stature and soft words—one of only three Maegens on site, I was told, for the rest were mere tutors and servants—showed me to the library, whereupon I set to studies, which lasted well into the night and through the sacrifice of several very fine candles. The school had in its possession many unmatched volumes of which I had not previously been privy, and I sank into them with voracity.

One such volume delved into the senseen, both history and theory, practice and potential. Much I had learned prior, as a well-practiced senseen of some skill: how to access the sense, how to channel it, how to control it so it does not consume oneself. This, I will say in passing, was the prevailing thought regarding poor Ufea prior to my own arrival—that she had lost control of her own sense, and in some manner unknown, combusted spontaneously.

The same volume spoke of the Evacir as well, the spirits of old who grew into all the factions we know today, whether Hulini or Guenaceri or the remaining Evacir, providing overviews of many named spirits replete with drawings, no doubt embellished, of known forms they had taken. I flipped the pages one to another, growing drowsy despite myself, as the night dragged on.

Finally, however, as the last of a candle burned bright, one caught my eye. Her name was Iacyin, and she was said to keep to the in-between places, earning the moniker "Goddess of Shade." But it was the sketch of her common appearance that caught my attention: wiry, tall, impossibly long as if stretched out, and her eyes two tiny flames in a sunken, deathly-beautiful skull.

#

Morning light cast uneven long streaks across the library, blazing from atop the eastern mountain and through the hazy glass on the rooftop high above. From his perch at the desk, Lortun stirred, scrunching one offended eye firmly shut against the raging sun. Losing the battle, it snapped open in tune with the other, and Lortun's body followed after, upsetting his nighttime reading across the library floor, which he scurried after.

Hurrying from the library, Lortun darted into the hall to be met by a virtual wall of children, unsettled and boisterous, parting as an afterthought before him as he clutched his satchel. He meant to show the Maegens all about Iacyin and put forth his proposal, clutching the book in one hand, index finger to the page.

When he reached the Maegens, they had all gathered conveniently together, huddled at the front of the dining hall and watching over the children with many furtive glances. "Oh, Nür Lortun!" Lurien said, using the respectful address, her small frame shaking with excitement. "Thank the Origin you are well!"

"Yes, I am, thank you, fine morning, now I have something—" He began to hold out the book, but their bloodless faces made his arm go slack. Suddenly his lips seemed very dry, as if he were out in the desert again, beneath an unforgiving sun.

"Did you see anything, Lortun?" Head Maegen Ogoswe this time, with the other Maegens, Homylz and Lurien, behind him, equally solemn.

He licked his lips and bit the lower one. "Um. N-no, I didn't … uh, did something happen?"

A pit had opened into his belly. He knew what came next, and barely heard as they told him about young Odend, thirteen years of age, found in his room when he didn't show for roll call.

"Dead?" Lortun croaked out, so low he didn't think anyone could hear him.

"Burnt from the inside, we think. He appeared normal at first, when his brother went to shake him from his slumber."

Lortun turned away, holding in dinner from the night before. It is my fault. I was the vigil.

A ruckus arose in the enclosed atrium where some of the younger seasons were holding morning meditations, and Lortun dashed that way without a second thought. Darkness had descended upon the entire vast room, blotting out the sun from the glass roof. Ink seemed to drip from above, creeping down the walls like an invasive vine, oozing from the center of the room like tar and reaching the floor to form a pillar of viscous coal.

"Don't touch it! Don't touch it!" Lortun shouted.

Maegens and tutors ushered the rattled children from the room, single file at a low run, with discipline that Lortun would have admired under better circumstances. The blackness, however, did not stretch for any of the children nor did it shrink from Lortun, but surged on and through the atrium. Lortun ran to the windows in the far wall and watched as the blackness carried on like a cloud of utter nothing across the roadway, through the stable, and into the trees.

"Is anything that direction?" Lortun demanded, gesturing the way it had gone.

He was met with many nods. "The wellhouse," someone said. And another, almost too soft to hear: "The conservatory."

"What was that? Lurien! The conservatory, is anyone there this time of day?"

She nodded, tears brimming in her eyes. "The fifth seasons."

A moment later, Lortun had dragged open the giant outer door and skirted the roadway at a blind run, avoiding the slog of mud. Even from here, he could see the absence that marked the Thin One's location, in his amorphous spiritual form, more over there than here and choosing it over his long bodily appearance.

Lortun ran. Layers of needles and soft loam created a spongy barrier, propelling him forward at times, threatening to clutch his feet at others. The bare, scraggly branches of juvenile undergrowth tore at his skin, but he ran through unheeding. At last, he came to two buildings—one small wellhouse, and beside it, the slightly larger conservatory, built of lumber and lined with fieldstones. He ran up a covered porch and threw open the door. Inside was dark as night, as if a portal into the space between stars. Lortun thrust a hand toward it, and it withdrew just as quickly.

The darkness coalesced into a single form across the room, a slender man-like creature so tall it hunched in the confined space, its talons clacking at the ground, its flame-blue eyes flashing dangerously. Three children huddled, petrified, against the far wall, and another barely dared to breathe, a mere brushstroke distant from the Thin One.

"Children, go," Lortun hissed, not taking his eyes off the vyorminshwurz.

"Ah-ah!" the Thin One said, shooting out an arm clear across to the front wall, barring the way, its talon digging into the windowsill. The girl screamed shrilly, and the boys also in their untrained tenors.

Lortun struck out his own arm toward the Thin One's barrier, rage surging through him, and the creature's arm seemed to disintegrate before him. "Go!" he urged. The children dashed out the door behind him and into the arms of the Maegens, waiting in the forest at a distance deemed safe. Lurien embraced one of the boys, and another woman the girl and other boy both.

The Thin One moved to threaten the boy remaining in his reach, but he was too late, the children had already fled.

"What's your name?" Lortun asked the remaining boy.

"Do not worry yourself over his name," the Thin One replied, his voice snaking around the room. "This one, at least, is mine."

"It will be all right," Lortun said, trying to believe it. "Stay strong."

"Tell me, Lortun, what is it you want?" the Thin One demanded.

"Your destruction."

"Tsk," the Thin One replied. "So negative. I look at this young one before me, and I see a fresh soul, but more interesting, I see what is inside him."

"His sense."

"His sense. You call him senseen. Even this term, an insult to me."

Lortun cocked his head. "It's descriptive. Not an insult. Has nothing to do with you or your ilk."

"Oh, do you still not know, dear Lortun? You are not mere marvels of humanity, sensing where others sense not, as you, I suppose, sense our spiritual world, the Ulga d'laitaum—such a more beautiful word than yours, don't you think? You and I, Lortun, we are the same coin. You occupy this side, I occupy the other—most of the time, and we can peer into each other's perspective if only to say hello. We play at this dance, round and round the same coin, you claiming one side and wishing to keep me away, but unable to prevent yourself from leering. From, shall we say, intruding. Do you not see it?" The Thin One smiled an awful, terrible grin filled with impossibly long teeth.

"That is not it at all," Lortun retorted, not sure of what he said. The tremor in his voice gave him away, and the Thin One laughed.

"Let us play a little game," the Thin One said. "If, as you say, you know what you really are, you can save this child from his fate. But you must accept it first. If not, he will be mine, like all the others."

With a shove of his little finger, the boy hurtled across the room, falling to his knees before Lortun. He lunged for the child, gripping him beneath the arms, but already the Thin One's touch had begun its work, rippling from the boy's back and into his blood, surging through his body. His eyes turned pink then red as he looked up at Lortun, pleading, until he became hot to the touch.

Lortun gripped him all the more, drawing from the spiritual world, seeing in his eye that celestial place, the blazing white that permeated everything until he closed his physical eye and saw with his own internal spirit. It was as daylight-bright, calm, intensely perfect, this world so close to the Origin. He wished to stay here forever, to bask in its beauty, in its overwhelming happiness, but the physical world dragged him ruthlessly back.

His own arms were charred where the boy lay slack, smoke seeping from his pores, eyes burnt-out husks. The Thin One saw his moment, slashing out with a slender arm like a snake and latching onto Lortun's arm. It burned instantly, and Lortun howled in pain, but at the same moment, having anticipated the stealthy attack, Lortun had whipped around with his free arm and latched onto the Thin One's limb in simultaneity. They stood as embraced in this bizarre dance, rotating around the conservatory, each grasping the other's arm.

The Thin One's eyes seemed almost manic, flaming blue, flashing intense green and flaring in ecstasy. "It is her," he was saying. "It is her !"

Lortun could not make sense of what he said, but his arm numbed, and when he looked, it had begun to flake away, first the limb itself, then working down his right side, toward his leg, and inching across his chest. Soon, at this rate, he would take his last breath.

The Thin One seemed not to notice, victory in his eyes and rambling on his tongue. "It has been so long! I have searched all these years!"

Inspiration struck Lortun in that moment, even as he felt himself withering, burning, dying. "Iacqis!" he shouted.

The Thin One regarded him with naked astonishment, then, with a look that would have broken a heart under other circumstances, muttered, "I have found you." His eyes had grown soft and his grip, hitherto deadly locked upon Lortun's flesh, slackened.

Lortun dared not show mercy in this moment, however. With a conscious effort, he tugged on the Thin One's arm, catching the vyorminshwurz off-kilter so that, in one horrifying moment, the entire creature was upon him, flailing limbs striking every boundary within the conservatory.

At the exact same instant, Lortun returned to that other place, the spiritual world—that space of utter light within the Origin's sphere, and not the outer crust of darkness where creatures of night like the vyorminshwurz resided. He did not require an adjustment period, not this time. In a second, he was present, perfectly acclimated, and had dragged the Thin One with him.

The vyorminshwurz shriveled in the light, seeming frail, alternately whimpering and screaming and curling his protracted form into a ball, but he could not keep out the light. Here, there were no shadows, nowhere to hide, to escape to, to feed upon. His own blue-flame eyes dimmed and extinguished in the pure white light of this realm, absorbed into the light that is all light.

Lortun, by contrast, felt whole here, not half-destroyed by the Thin One's touch, but full and complete. For the briefest of moments, his eyes met the Thin One's, and again he almost felt pity for the creature, wondering at the advent of this incongruent sensation. The Thin One, in turn, despite his obvious torment, did not seem angry or sorry, but behind the pain appeared content, as if he had, at last, found what he'd been seeking.

He let the Thin One go, and the light filled the creature, fragmenting him into prisms that further fragmented into diamonds and ultimately into a fine dust that floated away on the breeze, one with the Origin once more. With him went all the souls, the spirits of those mortals whom he'd claimed in all his centuries, released from his grasp, free to become one with The Origin again.

Lortun spun to his left, and he was back in the conservatory, dim and dull compared to the spiritual realm despite the bright morning sun. His whole side from shoulder to hip had turned to coal and ash. He could feel it falling away like shed skin. The shock struck his system, and he fell to his knees, then his face, lost to the world.

#

The three Maegens of the school helped me as they could before transporting me—by cave, of course—to Ilstad. I spent many weeks in my head, oblivious to the waking world. When I returned, my side had been reconstructed, but my arm remained a stump, protruding from my shoulder like the first growth of spring.

Fynd came to me when he could spare, and Insur as well, along with others, bearing well wishes, merry drinks to numb the pain—both physical and mental—and myriad inquiries, the likes of which sped me along my healing, contrary to certain opinions. Lurien came, bearing the book I had been clutching that last day. In my endless time following, I've traced Iacyin's entry onto my own thick-cut paper, recording every mark and shade, which I fold into quarters and keep with me even when I cannot hold up a book.

Naturally, I explained to Fynd and others how I'd read about Iacyin, and linked this female spirit, as it were (spirits were without gender, being non-physical by nature, but they often preferred to claim one or the other for their own purposes), to the Thin One. The linkage was difficult to misinterpret, and I wondered by what providential hand I had come to discover it, buried in an obscure volume in a hidden school high in the distant mountains. The spirits work in manners us mortals cannot comprehend, and what if—?

But there I am again, playing the "what if" game, and Fynd here to box my ears. I had decided that this Iacyin of old was the progenitor of the Thin One, and it was mere conjugation in the old language, with some rudimentary knowledge of their language, to determine his name in turn. And once said, I could command him, if only for a spell. It worked, perhaps better than it should have, but then I have lived with greater fortune than most, my condition notwithstanding, for many others have died while I yet live.

Ensuing years I spent at Ilstad, having all but retired from my world-hopping ways, both due to my own deformity and the fact my target had been eliminated. Senseens thrived in these years, having only basic mortal prejudice to fear. Eventually, my hair lined with gray and my face creased in unexpected places, I made my way across the continent at my own leisure, concerned neither with senseen nor Maegen, neither book nor spirit.

During this time, I lounged outside an inn with the sweet breeze of the adjacent inland sea in my face, sipping my froth of fruit and cream and jhovin, an impertinent spirit (I should clarify, I refer to the distilled beverage in this context), with my legs crossed and my hair playful in the wind.

I felt yet in the prime of life, with all my limbs or not, and I meant to enjoy myself. Lo and behold, in this frame of mind, I cannot be blamed for allowing my affections to turn toward a pretty young woman sitting opposite me, across the way, who kept smiling most alluringly, lifting a foot to cross and uncross her own delicate, slender legs. She bid me come, and obediently I did, drink in my only hand. Her eyes were a smoky gray around the edges and bluer than the sky itself, and her hair a thick black sheen of desire fulfilled.

I bedded her that night, gloriously, and I must confess I was smitten, thinking on the life we could live and the exotic locales we could visit. In the morning, however, she had departed, and while the feeling she instilled in me did not immediately dissipate, it would with time. Despite her unceremonious recusal from my affairs, dashing all my hopes, my mood continued unabated, and I felt as one rejuvenated. Some more days I lingered, and upon my departure, I gathered my things into my satchel.

I should say that I often studied my traced page of Iacyin in these days, admiring her startling appearance, but more importantly, with an unknown nagging at me. With the traced paper in hand, creased for storage, I withdrew it from the satchel, for something had caught my eye. A hole had been burnt through the page in an oblong shape. I flipped over the page, and my blood ran cold. Thereupon I found the shape of her lips, unmistakable (for I felt, even now, their memory on my own lips), outlined in red on the plain paper, with the space between charred through. Below it, she had signed her name, which I realized now, in my infatuation, I had never asked.

Iacyin.

It all hit me, everything I had been missing, which had nagged at me all along. I recalled things I had learned but forgotten, things the Thin One himself had alluded to. How no spirit, even halfling spirits, are confined by linear time like mortal beings. They travel hither and thither as we might travel the world. They experience all moments at once in time, in whatever order they choose or no order at all, as we might experience the biting cold of the wind and the burning embers of a flame at once with our backs to a roaring bonfire in a wintry night.

I recalled that which I'd learned as a youngling, a senseen student, orphaned and raised in Ilstad by the Maegens and the Libors and the Structors: that a senseen is created by a fragment of spirit within, whether by the destructive splitting of Evacir to create the D'fasad, or by a gift from the spirit itself.

Last of all, I pieced it all together. Iacyin had gifted me, nay impregnated me, creating the senseen that I had always been. I, in turn, impregnated her, creating the vyorminshwurz I had always hunted: that whom we called the Thin One.

The conclusion staggered me. Time is not a line and it is not a circle, it is a living breathing world much like our own. I remembered again the Thin One's final words, its final heart-rending expression which it had set upon me. My heart, hardened before, broke, as I realized he was, for better or worse, a part of me. He was my son, and as timeless as the spirits themselves, he may still be out there, somewhere, seeking the fragment of his mother sensed within me, his father.

THE END

Bio: Luke D Evans has published fiction in TQR, with Muse-It-Up Publishing, and at Pulp Corner, as well as poetry at Dual Coast Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, and The Pedestal. Raised in Maryland, he now lives in Colorado and works in the well water industry. He enjoys scenic mountains, pit beef sandwiches, and a good dream. Find him on Underside Stories at lukevans.substack.com

E-mail: Luke D Evans

Comment on this story in the Aphelion Forum

Return to Aphelion's Index page.