The Fallen Odyssey

Chapter 6: Sunrise

Justin didn't remember falling over, but his legs must have given out. He sat flat on his backside in the grass, dew soaking through his jeans as he stared up at the two moons. For a long time, he and the tall man sat on the ground across from one another. Neither said a word.

It's a dream, Justin realized. Of course it is.

It was borderline pathetic that it had taken him this long to figure that out. His dreams did tend to be funny like that, though. He never thought to question the reality of a dream while he was in one. It was usually only after waking up that the signs became obvious-sometimes comically so.

The people around him watched with regret in their eyes as the tall man's house burned down. The sky now glowed with the coming dawn, and Justin noticed in the light of morning what he hadn't seen in the dark. These people were all dressed in earth-toned clothes hanging with sashes and sheaths. Many wore hooded cloaks. Some had leather armor, metal helmets, and swords.

Yep, thought Justin. Definitely a dream.

He also saw that they were on the outskirts of an archaic-looking, stone-built town with thatched roofs, windmills, fields of grain, and a lack of familiar fixtures such as paved roads or power lines. No traffic lights. Not a single car. And the fire department, if there was one, never showed up. The person the tall man had saved from the house appeared to be a first responder who had entered looking for occupants to rescue, only to end up needing rescued himself.

Some of the onlookers tried to offer words of comfort to the tall man who'd lost his house, but his only replies were intermittent fits of hard coughing. No one spoke to Justin, though their gazes did sometimes wander suspiciously to his T-shirt and jeans. Meanwhile, the old monk who had called Justin by name just stood quietly off to the side.

Dawn revealed sprawling grasslands. Far off in the distance, a rocky range of gray mountains encompassed half the horizon, cradling green steppes. Their peaks were jagged razors overlapping and resting against one another. It was like the jawbone of a fossilized titan laid to rest with its snow-capped fangs eternally bared. The sun turned the summits white long before it ever broke the horizon.

Justin heard a whinnying sort of sound and saw a farmer on horseback wrangling some of the cattle that had broken loose in the night. But a second glance proved the farmer was not on horseback at all. The four-legged mammal he rode looked like a horse but had an elephant-like trunk hanging from its face.

Must've hit my head, Justin thought as he watched the horse that wasn't a horse reach down with its trunk, rip up a wad of grass, and lift it to its mouth. Slipped on the ice while I was shoveling the driveway and cracked my head. Maybe this'll convince Dad to get the old snowblower fixed.

He grabbed a pinch of the small hairs on the back of his own neck with his thumb and forefinger, got a tight grip, and yanked. He hoped no one heard his resulting yelp.

Well, that didn't work, thought Justin, rubbing his fingers together to let the hairs fall in the grass. Devil's advocate: Let's pretend for a second that this is actually real. Are there any other possible explanations?

"Renaissance fair, maybe?" he muttered under his breath.

He looked up at the two moons in the sky, now fading to white with the dawn.

"They really went all out for it," he said, grinning. But his grin didn't last. He felt a little sick.

The assemblage dispersed as the flames died down, and the men with swords began poking in the wreckage. The tall man didn't join them but instead got up and started scanning the mountainous horizon with a spyglass. His chestnut hair hung shoulder-length, and his rigid features were weathered by many scars-tiny, hairless lines in the stubble coating his jaw. Only now did Justin gain a true appreciation for the man's stature; he was lean with corded muscle and must have stood seven feet tall, which made this one of the rare instances when Justin wasn't the tallest person present.

Justin looked over his shoulder, back up the hill he had come from, but he couldn't see the hut from here. He started to walk away, but the old, bearded monk turned and fixed his gaze sternly on him, raising one bushy eyebrow as if to ask where he thought he was going, so Justin decided to wait a minute longer.

The tall man lowered the spyglass. He approached the monk and grumbled something in a foreign language. His voice was rough from the smoke. Then he walked away.

Justin walked hesitantly to the old man. "Uh, sorry to bother you, Father," said Justin, "but did everyone make it out of the house? No one was hurt, or...?"

The expression on the monk's whiskered face in response to Justin's words was one of such severe disapproval that Justin thought the old man was either about to scold him or smack him.

"Young man, I am no Father," the monk said in an accent was hard to place.

"Oh, sorry," said Justin. "I guess priests are the ones you're supposed to call Father. What do I call you? Brother?"

"Zechariah," said the old man.

"Oh," said Justin. "Okay."

"Follow me," said Zechariah. "We've little time to pack."

"Follow you where-wait, did you just say ****'?" said Justin. "Pack for what?"

"We have an errand to run."

Justin opened his mouth to respond, but the old man named Zechariah was already walking away. He hustled up the hill after him.

In the daylight, the empty plains were not so empty. Livestock in the pastures surrounding the town included black-furred bison, long-horned red cattle, and more of those elephant-trunked horses. In small pens beside farmhouses, flightless ring-necked birds pecked the ground and squawked as children gathered eggs.

"I suppose summer had to end sometime," said Zechariah wistfully as they passed an oxen-hitched plow tilling a field.

"Huh?" said Justin.

"When the Gravelands' farmers start planting the last of the late-season seeds and preparing other pasturages to fallow, it means autumn is upon us."

"Gravelands?" said Justin, but Zechariah offered no explanation.

At the top of the hill, Justin saw that the grasslands stretched out like an ocean in every direction. The town, it seemed, was an island in the middle. And he still didn't see any roads. He took out his phone to check for a signal again, but the screen was black. He tried to turn it on. Nothing happened.

Dead.

His hand trembled a bit as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. It hadn't occurred to him to turn it off.

It's okay, he thought. It'll be okay, you'll see. Everything will be all right.

"It is just a dream," he reminded himself.

"Hmm?" said the old man ahead of him without turning around.

"Nothing," said Justin. "Just a..."

He paused, feeling dizzy. His chest jumped with his heartbeat. He sucked in a deep breath, but it wasn't enough. He blinked rapidly and tried to take another breath, but it felt like his lungs were empty. He thought of his inhaler, still in that strange bedroom in his coat pocket, just as his legs turned to rubber.

"A-dream..." he gasped.

His vision had already gone black by the time he felt his body hit the ground.

"Justin?" he heard the old man say. "Justin!"