Walking

Summer pulled herself to her feet. She shielded her eyes from the awkward brightness that filled the world. For a moment, she dared to hope that she was waking up, back in the school…

But the brightness began to dim, and she could see the world around her. The sky above was a strange swirling mesh of colors too hard to identify. Ahead of her and to both sides the world stretched on to the horizon. Behind her, a range of brown mountains with an unearthly green tint loomed. The grass beneath her feet was a strangely healthy yellow. To her left, a human figure lay prone, its stretched arms gripping something that looked like a box.

“Seth!” she cried out, running over to the body. He rolled to either side slightly, but remained face down. His arms contracted a little to bring the box towards him. She collapsed to her knees next to him and forced him to roll over. His arms contracted all the way to his chest, and he began hugging what Summer now realized-or remembered?-was a book. It rose and fell slowly, with his breath. His eyes were shut; he looked like he had passed out.

“Seth,” she whispered, touching his face gingerly. “What did you do?”

He mumbled something through his sleeping mouth, and his head rocked back and forth. Summer stroked his hair kindly, worried. She looked around again. The light that had stained her eyes had almost all faded now, and she realized that it was night. She looked upwards, to the unfamiliar stars. She watched them for a minute, surprised by the fact that they seemed to almost literally be doing some sort of cosmic ballet. It was entrancing.

Something rustled nearby. She shot to her feet and drew the dagger that Toraphrate had given to her. She turned slowly all around her; there didn’t seem to be anywhere that the rustling could have come from. She didn’t put the dagger away, but she returned to crouching next to Seth. She continued looking around intently, turning sharply, careful not to hold the Bovate Dagger above her friend. Every couple of minutes, she would whisper something along the lines of “Wake up, Seth…” and other worried, frightened phrases. His breathing continued to be deep, but he seemed to be rolling around more with every passing moment.

Suddenly, what Summer thought was about twenty minutes after she woke up, Seth shot to his feet, still clutching the book to his chest, screaming pure terror. She stood too, and pointed the dagger threateningly in the direction that he was staring. She could see nothing but an open expanse of grassland, stretching away from the mountain range directly behind them. Seth’s scream began to fizzle out and fade away after a moment. He collapsed backwards again, still clutching the book, but this time panting. He looked up at Summer, who had dropped her dagger and was now approaching him quickly again.

“Are you alright, Seth?” She said meekly.

“What the fuck?” He squeaked in response.

“What happened to you? No, wait, calm down…” She whispered and stroked his hair soothingly. He began to catch his breath, but whimpered squeakily the whole time. He continued to clutch the book tightly. Finally, he opened his mouth to speak. His voice was very quick and high, but Summer was used to that from him.

“When Merlin was chasing us the book fell open and I knew that if I didn’t try something he was going to kill us so I just read the page that it fell open to and I didn’t think that I would be able to,” he took a very deep breath, “But I read it and there was this red light and I was unconscious but I wasn’t just unconscious I was in his brain for a few minutes and I saw something…” He hesitated. “I don’t know what I saw,” he admitted. “But he wants to kill us. I remember, he wants to kill us.” Summer stopped smiling when he said this. She had been so happy that Seth was awake and seemed to be okay, but she felt that Merlin was not the kind of wizard that you wanted to be on any side of, especially not the bad side. Seth looked directly into her eyes.

“We have to get out of here,” he yelped urgently. Summer looked around cautiously and sighed.

“Whatever you read in that book, it definitely saved us. We’re somewhere else than we were before.” She looked around some more. “But I don’t think we’re safe yet.” She reached over and grabbed the dagger.

“You’re right.” He turned and pointed to the mountains. “We have to get through those.” Summer grimaced.

“I was afraid you would say that.” She stood up, and offered her free hand to help him to his feet. He took it and pulled himself up. “Let’s get going,” she said. They turned to the mountains and began walking in silence.

“He can’t find us,” Seth said what they both thought was about ten minutes into the walk. Summer’s watch was frozen, so she couldn’t tell. It was also unusually warm. Seth never wore a watch.

“You mean Merlin, right? That’s good news, if you’re right. But, how would you know that?” Summer looked around nervously again, her knife at her side at the ready.

“I don’t know. The spell I cast, I think that it connected me to him. I can get a feeling, but it’s only the one way. He was very happy for a few minutes.” Seth didn’t mention that Merlin had felt yellow through this connection; he had no idea what that meant at all. “But then he was angry and worried. And just now, he felt like he was giving up.”

“Seth, are you alright?” Seth nodded in response.

“We’re both alright, for now. But I don’t like it here. Let’s get through those mountains.”

They walked for what may have been an hour. The sky began to become darker even than it had been. Summer’s stomach growled. Seth’s did too. Seth yawned loudly. Summer did too.

“Food and shelter,” Summer said suddenly. Seth stared at her as they continued walking. She looked at him and smiled. “We need both.”

“That might be trouble,” Seth said. He looked around the darkening landscape, and could not see anything resembling an edible wild animal or crops or a house. Their stomachs grumbled in harmony.

“It feels warm,” Summer said cautiously. “We may be able to get by without shelter. But we need food, for sure.” Their stomachs growled in harmony an octave lower than before to emphasize her point.

“What do we do to find food?” Seth asked. He had never been a boy scout. Neither had Summer, though she had sold Girl Scout cookies one time. She shrugged.

“Keep walking?” And they did.

About twenty minutes later, this plan began to show promise. As the mountains grew larger, and the sky grew darker, a shape appeared on the horizon. Ten minutes later, the shape had grown into a couple dozen shapes, and soon reconciled themselves into a grove of bushes bearing something that looked suspiciously like suspicious berries. The two humans tittered and ran towards the grove.

The bushes came up to the middle of Summer’s torso, though the bushy part began around her knees. Beneath that it was a knobby brown trunk-like structure. It was comfortingly familiar. The leafs, too, were a surprisingly earthly deep green. The berries themselves were disconcerting, though; although the bushes were all the same shapes and apparently the same breed, there were four different colors of berries: Yellow, Black, Blue, and Purple. Each bush bore only one color, which slightly offset the discomforting variety in the grove.

Summer was willing to ignore all this and just eat some berries. She pulled out her Bovian knife and prepared to cut loose some yellow berries.

“Wait!” Seth said. Summer pulled back her knife and stared at him, trying to pout. It wasn’t a very attractive pout, especially not to him, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her. Instead, he continued with what he was going to say. “We don’t know what kinds of berries these are. Some kind might be poisonous. And this is… some sort of fantasy world. There are probably Feys and Sprites in these bushes.” He looked meaningfully into her eyes. “Wait until…” He hesitated. She began to put her knife sadly back into her belt loop. “Wait until we think of something or are too hungry to wait anymore.” She still fingered her knife nervously. “I think we’ll be safe for now.”

“Okay. But I’m going to have to eat soon. I haven’t eaten since…” She remembered the last time she had eaten. “Well, you know. Since before we got here.”

“How long ago was that…?” Seth asked idly. Their stomachs rumbled fiercely. They sat in thought for a few minutes.

Seth abruptly thrust the book in front of him and sat cross-legged. He opened it to the first page, and began trying to read the symbols. Seeing them was of absolutely no difficulty; the book emitted light, though an unusually black kind. Comprehending the symbols as intentional thoughts, however, proved to be difficult. He sat for about ten minutes, staring at the first page in its black glow. His stomach stopped growling.

Summer’s stomach did not stop growling. She became unfocussed, and pulled out the knife. She began spinning it by its hilt and stabbing it idly into the ground. Her stomach growled more intensely with every passing minute. Because of it, and the distraction of the knife, she did not hear Seth murmuring.

He wasn’t sure what had happened. After about ten minutes of staring at that page, the symbols had suddenly seemed to him as representations of syllables that he hadn’t been able to pronounce before. Now he was reading the entire page aloud underneath his breath… He got to the end of the page.

The dark glow silently burst forward, slamming into his body. He yelped, and began to emit a strange sort of moan-scream. Summer turned and leapt to her feet, knife at the ready. She stormed towards the book, but Seth held up a hand distractedly to tell her to stop.

The dark light that was flowing from the book began to focus itself into a beam, right into the center of Seth’s forehead. Black light pulsated through it, directly to what neither of them realized at the time was his pineal gland. Ultraviolet light did the same, unnoticed by either of them. Summer gripped her knife as Seth began to convulse.

And just as quickly as the light had burst forward, it stopped. The page was no longer glowing, though Seth’s eyes were, with that same dark light. He caught his breath slowly, and turned to Summer. His eyes glowed, but besides that had not changed. Summer sighed in relief, dropped her dagger, and clutched him tightly in a hug.

“I’m fine,” Seth giggled. He pushed her away gently. “I’m better than fine.” He looked her up and down; her wrist glowed with infrared light. Her brain pulsated ultra-violet. Parts of her that Seth didn’t want to think about had a strengthening yellow light. The dagger that was stuck in the ground beside her had an extremely faint blue glow. Her hands were a clearly dark blue. In her chest, in the middle of a heaving yellow patch, there was a flare of angry orange. Her nose had a faint purple to it. And he understood all of that. He smiled at her; she smiled back, relieved. He swallowed, and the black glow vanished from his eyes, though it was still there with him in some way. She smiled in even more relief, not understanding that the glow was still there, just that it was now invisible.

“You’re really colorful,” Seth giggled. Summer looked up and down herself. She couldn’t see any of what he had seen on her.

“I am?” she asked in bemusement. He nodded; then he turned to the book. The whole thing pulsated, in his eyes, with that black light. It flowed from the book, and beneath that black light, though in the same place as it, was a rainbow of nine other colors of light, including white, ultra-violet, and infra-red. He reached over and shut the book, and stared at the front cover.

“The Kinginomicon,” he read aloud. To Summer, the cover was just inscribed with a bunch of funny symbols still. “The book of the laws of the game, or, how to gain power and influence the universe.” He opened to the first page, which was now blank except for a heading at the top. He read it, despite the page no longer glowing. “To read magical scripts,” he read, and nodded.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Summer asked worriedly. Seth smiled at her.

“I can read the symbols now,” he tittered. “I’m a real wizard!”