Other Worlds

The Waters, Dividing the Land-1

The Waters, Dividing the LandHyrn stood beneath the dappled eaves of the wildwood and gazed over the sparkling waters of the great river. His heart thundered in his chest as if he – of all beings – were being hunted. Wounds ran through him that no eye could see. The sun was warm on his back and the welcome smells of woodland and grassland filled his nostrils, yet everything was wrong.

Horror had come to his lands, and the world he loved suddenly made no sense at all.

The river's far bank was, of course, invisible. The trees on the other side were many leagues distant, too far to glimpse even when mists didn't veil the waters. The river flowed through the land like a curved spine. It was a great artery, its waters the rushing blood of the world, nurturing the creatures that dwelt within it and around it. The land grew and lived to the rhythms of the river's flow and surge.

But now, as he stood, chest heaving, he saw the waters in a different light. The river could be a barrier too. A stopping place, a divide. The wounds running through him cut through the land as well, and already they ran too deep, too raw. There was no blood to be seen; the harm went deeper than mere flesh. He felt their sting in the tremble of the weeping willows around him, in the shaking of the boughs of the reaching oaks. In the darting, wary glances of the birds as they searched for predators that they couldn't see, and in the bubbling rumbles of the serpents sounding in the river's deepest depths. He felt the wounds and the whole world felt the wounds, woods and river both.

Death was a part of life; new life flowed from death. This was different. This was … wrongness. It had been a mistake to think of people as little more than children. They seemed so recent compared to the wildwoods and the wyrms. Now they used words Hyrn didn't know the meaning of, magic and necromancy, and they wrote down f*******n things in their books. Their king, old in the terms of his people, had changed everything by acceding to his own ritual s*******r; by his death and rebirth, twisted rites taking their effect and the lives of so many others sacrificed in the process. Hyrn had watched the chained lines of frantic victims being led to the palaces. Their blood had been spilled, their lives stolen, and the king had become something else. A thing Hyrn had no word for, a powerful and terrible creature, seething with stolen strength.

It was a death that begat only more death, that denied the possibilities of life. It was the seasons halted in their cycle, twisted out of shape, bent back upon themselves. It was the shadows between the boughs in the deepest of the forests rather than the boughs themselves. The creatures Hyrn watched over and walked among bred and multiplied eagerly and gleefully, a thing he delighted in. But this was a denial of that; it meant lives unnaturally prolonged, fueled by the deaths of others.

He saw how it would go. When a tree fell in the woods, its end meant life for countless others, small and large. Beetles and saplings and worms. This was different. One falling tree would bring down two, and two would topple four. There would be more and more death, until every human was either altered or sacrificed. It wouldn't stop there; other creatures would be drawn in. The whole land would succumb to the horror. The darkness would spread like a canker, curling the leaves to decay, turning wood to rot, the water brackish and dead, and there was little or nothing he could do to stop it.

He could smell it in the air, taste it in the rain. That was what hunted Hyrn. Hunted him and haunted him. This blight. Something coursed through his guts, a feeling like a spreading illness. It might, he thought, be what people meant by fear.

He lifted his antlered head to the blue skies and let loose an agonized bellow of pain and fury.

The world paused for a moment, birds and insects silenced, even the great river seeming to stutter in its flow. He was the land and the land was him, and the voice of every living thing was in his roar, their pain added to his.

He lowered his head. He could change nothing. He was ancient, and yet he was the child. He walked through the green places of the world, and that was all he was and all he ever wanted to be. The world made flesh. How could he become something else?

He could leave. All woods were one wood, and he could walk between the worlds as easily as following a twisting path through the forest. He could depart, leave the living to their fate.

But, no. It would be a betrayal of places he loved. More than that, it wouldn't be enough. The corruption was too potent. One day it would reach across the aether. There were many other worlds, but not one of them would be safe. The blight would corrupt everything in the end.

He had to fight. He was Hyrn the Hunter as well. When the creatures of the woods grew too old or too weak to survive, he would track them down and s*******r them as they fled. Fell them and rip their entrails from them. There was a mercy to it, in a way. He could use that, become the brute some saw him as. And there was a thrill to the chase; the fact couldn't be denied. He would use that too. He couldn't fight the canker spreading across the land with spear or claws or teeth, but he could find other ways to fight. He had to find other ways to fight.

It wasn't what he wanted, but it was what he had to do.

He dipped his fingers into the river, enjoying the simple sensation of icy cold. The waters had been his, too, once. The waters and the creatures that darted within them. Yes. He saw what he had to attempt. Sometimes he didn't kill the wounded deer. If one of its dancer's legs was broken, twisted at a bad angle or blackened by rot, he could save the beast by sacrificing the limb. Sometimes he didn't need to be Hyrn the Hunter, but Hyrn the Shepherd, Hyrn the Mother. A deer without one leg was still a deer. What he had to attempt was simply larger, more terrible, more cruel.

The trees grew to the edge of the rushing waters, trailing their fingertips into the flow to set up angled lines on the surface. He had to sacrifice this whole half of the land. The woods and mountains on that bank were already lost. The realization was a physical blow, sickening him. The process would take time, but he saw the inevitability of it.

The people had uncovered the ways of death, and now death would snuff out life, as thunderclouds blotted out the sun. And when lightning struck a forest fire into flame, there was nothing in the whole world that could stop its fury. Except one. The only way to protect one part of the woods was to form a gap too wide for the flames to leap. A temporary act of desecration. One part saved and one part left to burn. Life would return eventually, if there was still life to return.

That was what he had to do with the land. And to do it he needed the help of the river serpents.

He waded into the waters, the hard cold climbing up his shins, his thighs. Strange how his form in those days was so close to that of the creatures that now threatened everything. Once he had run through the woods on four legs, a wild beast, barely thinking, barely considering the future. Now, as often, he strode upon two. He couldn't recall precisely when that change had taken place. The land and its inhabitants dreamed him, dreamed the Hyrn they wanted and needed. And when the dead horrors began to imagine their Hyrn, what would that make him? What twisted abomination would he be turned into?

He waded farther, the water a shock of ice on his bull's balls, on the soft flesh of his belly, on his chest. A few more steps and the waters lapped at his chin, touching him on the lips. The surge of the river pushed at him, as if it wanted to sweep him away to some unknown distance. He opened his mouth and drank, feeling the cold gush down inside him.

Closing his eyes, he dipped his horned head beneath the waters.

Far out in the unknown depths the great serpents swam. He felt their thundering calls through his bones. Had they been there before him or had he seen them born too? Had he summoned them into existence? He couldn't recall. He had lived in the now for countless years. Perhaps they were like him: spirits and guardians of their realm. He walked in the woods just as their flowing bodies rolled through the deep places of the river, just as the wyrms soared through the skies. Yes, that sounded familiar. The river serpents were shepherds, too. Except now they also would have to learn to be something else. Hunters. He needed to reach them, talk to them. And if they wouldn't hear or couldn't learn, then there was nothing and no one that could stop the blight.

With a gasp he emerged back into the air and the light. The serpents were huge, but distant. He was only wading in the shallows, and they were creatures of the deeps. He needed to reach them in their own domain. There was a place he could go, the island in the quiet of the river. Yes. But first there was a task he needed to carry out on that bank. A task for which he would need other help. That was the urgency.

He waded back towards the overhanging trees, water rushing from his flesh as he emerged. There were those among people he could turn to that might understand what had to be done. The great bridge that spanned the river was the trouble; he had no use for tools and buildings and made things. Stone was not his to control, and the river could be crossed by walking the length of the bridge. A few birds flew between the banks as they chased the warmth, but the distance was too far for the wyrms or any other large flying creature. Running water sucked out their strength, and always they had to turn back.

The bridge and the boats. Given time he could reduce the bridge to rubble, send roots and tendrils spreading between its stones to pull it apart, but there was no time for that. People had built the bridge at some unremembered time in the past, and those who survived might know how to destroy it. He would help where he could. There were tunnels too, secret ways beneath the river, but there at least he held dominion. The tunnels opened out on his island, among his woods, and he could close them and seal them by simply willing it to be so.

He walked into the trees. He knew who he needed to talk to, the woman they called Black Meg. She was young to him, but old and wise as her people reckoned it. She would hear his message. He found where she was, hurrying somewhere with fear clouding her own heart. She knew what had happened, too.

With a wave of his hand, he sent a white stag leaping through the woods to find her. The creatures were rare, shy, almost never glimpsed by people. Black Meg would see the significance of it. She would follow it to the hidden place in the woods, the clearing where they could talk without fear of being overheard. He would show her what had to be done, impress upon her the brutality and the urgency of it, and hopefully she would follow.

A demonstration, he thought, would be more powerful than mere words.

Later, when it was done and Black Meg had left, Hyrn walked away from the clearing and the two deer: the one standing on trembling legs and the ruined one lying in its own pooling blood. Black Meg had understood. With the help of others she might be able to destroy the bridge, cut the two halves of the land off from each other. That left only the boats that sailed across. The boats and the serpents.

He strode away, knowing he might never return to the woods on that bank. Weaving between the trees, he followed shifting pathways only he could see. The track soon led him among other trees, to the island in the middle of the river, the island that none but he and the birds visited. By long understanding the serpents kept boats away as they shepherded travellers from shore to shore, navigating the currents and avoiding the storms.