A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 31

The Fortress

Sometime in the midst of my fading awareness, as my fingers dug acceptingly into the ground that would receive me, they encountered something very un-sand-like. A resulting message scrawled its way through the lines of my fingerprints and up into my veins. My eyes flashed back open.

Forcing my will back into my body, I struggled to turn over, onto my stomach, to better address this other platform beneath me. The wind carved the sand away from it now, sweeping it off the face of a neat brick path.

Bailin's footsteps echoed in the mortar.

I raised my eyes to follow the road, as it materialized from beneath its cover. It was impossible to see into the sand-smeared distance, but there was really no need. Bailin had come this way. It was a clear path beneath my feet.

My body.

I would have to drag myself back up to follow it.

With the sentiment that this world was a cruel, cruel place, I put my hands against the road and heaved myself away from my resting place. I would not be permitted put out of my misery today, then.

The wind bullied my weak frame as I stood, but thinned as I made my way down that road. The stirred-up dust began to smooth out, dissipating, repainting a scape of familiar-like rubble around me. Soon, I was following a fully functional red brick road through the terrain of old, the desert land gone behind me. Once again, I felt as if I were in Dar'on, albeit ever deeper, ever farther from my home.

The road paved its way up and over dunes, down through valleys, and once even took me right through an orderly neighborhood of manors. I had not seen such a thing since the mischief took its tole. No street had been left intact, as far as I had known. These manors were far from untouched – they were a shambles, individually – but they had not been ripped from each other's sides.

Cheshery Lane, read the sign at the single small intersection I came to in the middle of it. I walked slowly, cautiously, feeling the most like I was intruding upon a ghost town that I ever had. The rest had always been too beaten up to resemble any real place of meaning abandoned. And while this street was left intact, it was not touched by the golden hue I had known since experiencing Ombri's winter.

I breathed carefully, cautious of disturbing anything here. Tattered curtains billowed softly in second- and third-story windows as I passed, as if that was all it took.

After Cheshery Lane, the wreckage resumed. I wove through piles of it, deeper into its maze. There was surely no getting back out of this once I found him. How could anyone ever get out of this? I briefly considered granting some semblance of credit to Tanen's theory of dimensions. I did not understand all of the angles that came with such a theory, but I had surely strayed into layers far beyond that of the normal world at this point. There was no way for all of this to exist inside Dar'on, was there?

I was at least not plagued by the desert elements, now. Good solid city was something I could handle, even if its solidity came in pieces that could never count for anything.

You had better not die on me, Tanen, I thought, the real cause of my quest briefly returning to me. I had been stumbling blindly on, driven by the clues that possessed me and the elements which sought to propel me. It had been awhile now since I had given Tanen himself a second thought.

He could not stay fresh in my mind, though, even newly returned to it. For I rounded the bend of another pile of rubble, and discovered myself at the end of my road, and at the doorstep of the great fortress that rose there.

And, facing it, I was possessed by the strongest wave of nostalgia of all.

*

When the initial awe of the place wore off, I stood at its base still. Disoriented by the nagging sense of nostalgia, I roved over it with my eyes, searching for some significance. What was this place to me?

The fortress was massive, unyielding. The extent of its mystery occurred to me as I realized that it was not ravaged by mischief. Here lay an enduring hold, a smooth-stoned wonder. It was whole. Perfect.

With a disturbing sense of curiosity, I broke my ground and moved forward, passing between the great tree-like pillars that supported the place's vast vestibule. My eyes swam up those pillars to the ceiling, feeling its heaviness over my head. I reached the arched doorway of the place, where one of the great doors lay open, pausing in the threshold. My fingers dusted against the doorframe, wondering.

The overwhelming invitation to enter slashed at my mind.

My hand recoiled, shocked by the strength of the response. A disembodied whisper spilled like wayward smoke through the floral woodwork carved into the open door. I regarded it, but could not keep my eyes from moving swiftly deeper into the interior. A vast, dusty, empty room stood there, lined by pillars that supported encircling balconies.

Carefully, I stepped through, my cat-like footsteps echoing into the quiet.

The place had a dormant feel about it, but maddeningly familiar, as if I had been the one to leave it that way. The ache, as well as the denial, of betrayal was inside me. But I failed to understand it. I had never been here before.

I moved into the room, walking slowly along its edges. Willing to accept the consequences of a second attempt, I trailed my fingers over the cold curve of a pillar.

The vision that came to me was of a girl, turning the pages of a diary. I recognized the room that surrounded her from Manor Dorn. It was me, with Lady Sebastian's diary in my hands.

Coming to the next pillar, I gave it an equal caress. Pages fluttered through my mind.

A dawning canniness swept eerily through me.

The others showed me more profound nuances. A butterfly-shaped wind taking flight from a chimney. A ripple running through the rubble like dominoes being toppled. Debris being stacked like blocks, by invisible hands. A distinctly motivated ocean-like wave, underground, racing under the city to send shockwaves into the rubble piles, scattering the pieces of wreckage like loaded dice. Loaded, because they landed just-so, and created something that could only be intended.

It was here that a fortress began to form.

I reread that diary more times than I could remember, more times than I ever would have suspected had the record not been set in stone here in this fortress. My obsession with it became clear – as did the evidence of some higher power at work, as visions began to show me blazing through those pages faster than anyone could possibly read.

Every time, a great butterfly effect was hatched, which rippled out over the land and added something to the fortress being built. It evolved until a masterpiece had been crafted out of the rubble, a great reborn spirit of structure, strong and seamless on the stilts of its new and enduring roots.

And this, the room I stood in, only the antechamber.

Incredulity hovered somewhere just beyond my capacity, for I could not fully withstand the implications just yet. It couldn't be...

I wandered a moment longer, turning about, keenness forsaking me in my state of disbelief. For a moment, only the lonely echoing of my footsteps answered the questions that clamored and shushed themselves inside me. Then I turned about again, and my gaze darted to the form that materialized at the corner of my vision.

She stood in the center of the room, an ashen woman that matched the gray of the stone all around. Her hair fell in powder-musty dreadlocks, and her cloak was in stormy tatters about her form. She was covered in the ash of my dreams, it seemed, every bit of her from head to toe. Her lashes, her lips, the cracks of her fingernails – all saturated.

We regarded each other, the mysterious woman and I, and then she opened her gray-dry lips and said to me, simply,

“Welcome home, Avante.”