A Mischief in the Woodwork

CHAPTER 44

The Irony of Fate

Strangely alarmed, I went back to the waterside to test the current again. I had not felt Tanen's presence in it, the first time. As I knelt at its edge, I was once again invested in what precisely had come of him, because now I was confused. The significance of the bridge and its completion had suggested I had actually succeeded – hope had actually planted itself in me once again – and, running my hand over the balustrade, the visions had all but confirmed that victory. Even up to Tanen crossing that bridge himself.

Until he fell, halfway across. What could that mean? Surely he couldn't have come so close only to lose his way half a dozen steps short of completing the journey.

I plunged my hand into the water, drank up everything it had for me. There was the sweet taste that was Ombri's spirit, the taint that was the mischief being carted out of the city, the fresh identity of the cloud this rain had hailed from, the smooth flavor of each drop being polished by the sky. I felt everything in the water that I had felt in the rain, all of the meaning and purpose – but where was that taste I knew all too well; the taste that belonged to Tanen? I knew for a fact (the visions had become as much to me) that he had fallen in, so where was the evidence?

Thoroughly washed downstream, it seemed.

I rose and tried a ways farther down. This time, beneath the surface, there was the hint of something that might have been him, at one point, but in such a ghostly form that I would never go as far as to bet my life on it.

Farther still, and I found it. A trace. And no wonder I hadn't been able to pick up on it near the bridge – it was washed so far downstream at this point, and –

Not on the surface.

Suddenly the water felt icy, strangling. I faltered, shocked by what the awareness implied.

Tanen, what have you done? I was torn between running farther down the bank and approaching at a much more hesitant pace, not sure I wanted to find what lay at the end of this rope. But I couldn't just let it go, so I followed the scent until the bridge was a far-distant thing in my wake, my hand dripping from frequent dunks.

Traces of Tanen grew stronger and stronger – yet still faint, and alarmingly so. Before today I had let his fate go, but learning of this after experiencing a renewed surge of hope... I couldn't help it, he was back in my interests.

I followed the Ravine clear to the edge of the city, where it grew shallower, wider. And there, on one side, was a collecting pile of debris, snagging as it aspired to glide past that point, beginning to clog the waterway. And caught in it, half-buried in it, entirely under the water – was Tanen.

I was not prepared for the pangs of shock and woe that came over me, coming upon such a sight. A sorrow unlike I knew I could feel on his behalf pierced my heart, bruising my chest as I tried to look at him and breathe at the same time.

Oh, Tanen...

His image was warped beneath the surface of the water, but I could see that he was still, and blue, and just as gone as Ombri had been.

Another death, so soon after the first – and so significant – was no easy thing to accept. Nothing could have prepared me for the impact, for the utter, wracking failure that overcame me. I stood on the bank, struggling to cope, thinking I'd recovered from Ombri – or at least found peace in her passing – thinking I'd let Tanen go, accepted whatever would become of him. But now, seeing it...

Gods, had both of them had to die? Just like that? What had the whole thing been for? What had my insight, and Ombri's brief presence among us, and any apparent progress on Tanen's part been for?

This was truly the end game of all that?

I trailed forward, when I could bring myself to, and slogged into the shallow water. Sloshing to Tanen's side, I splashed to my knees, beginning to dig at the rubble that pinned him. Some of it was heavy, and I struggled with it, heaving, using leverage to pry it away.

A memory of Tanen hoisting the piece of rubble tied to my shackled ankle came back to me. Of him hefting it down the road on my behalf, carrying the burden for me, all the way home.

An unexpected tear slipped from my eye, adding itself to the watery mess splashing all about me.

Another piece of rubble, another memory.

Tanen smiling in the summery afternoon, the field as his backdrop. Hoisting his bow and loosing an arrow. Both of us, searching for lost arrows in the weeds. Him guiding me in the motions of loosing my own arrow.

Another heave. Another flash of memory broken loose with the rubble.

Tanen poised in the dark hallway upstairs, arrow ready. Helping to rescue Victoria from that master-bedroom prison.

A second tear. A piece of rubble. The next reminiscence in the series...

Glass raining around me on the porch, a wardog pummeling me against the front door. Tanen falling from the sky to aid me, wielding glass like it didn't cut deep on both ends.

As I worked to free him, they just kept coming:

Tanen holding an armored corset in his crafty, bargaining hands.

Tanen coming in from the city, a caged bird offered as one of his prizes.

Tanen trying to scale the wall of a fortress to get to a nest on the rooftop...

Explaining the concept of dimensions to me, offering to help me cut vegetables in the kitchen... Propped up on his cot shirtless in the dark when I went to him, kissing me in the privacy of the little room off the kitchen, there...

Standing for the first time at the doorstep of Manor Dorn, come all the way from Cathwade. A stranger at the door.

I freed him at last, unable to say, at that point, if the wetness on my face came from tears or the splashing of my efforts. Into my arms I gathered his cold, dead form, hauling him up, stumbling through the clogged shallows of the river as I dragged him to the bank. My fingers confirmed he was gone, but what was I to do? Leave him pinned under the water?

Beyond dragging him onto the bank, of course, I didn't know what else I could do. I couldn't carry him to any 'greater resting place', and there was no Ravine or Ambassador for the Angel of Death, anymore, to carry anyone to, even if I had the heart and strength to heft him.

I let him down onto the dirt and plopped down near his shoulders, exhausted from my efforts and this new wave of grief so soon after the last.

The second thing that was imparted to my touch was one of even greater dismay – for it confirmed that Tanen's crossing of that bridge had been significant, he had been ready to cross it and the metaphoric bridge it stood for, and had merely slipped in the rain due to nothing more than slippery conditions and well-worn boots. It had been no failure of the two month mission undertaken on his behalf that had stricken him from that crossing.

The irony was terrible.

Any ill feelings I might ever have held toward Tanen slumped into sorrowful reprieve there on the bank. As I cradled his head, I wanted to tell him I hadn't meant any of it. I didn't mean it, I didn't mean it, I wanted to pour into him. But I had. I had meant all of it. The real issue here was: How could I?

And we had done it... We had succeeded in diverting his fate – in changing him. How could he die still? It was so very cruel. Suddenly everything I had thought I had come to terms with met with resistance in my mind. This could not be the gods' idea of justice, of tying up what begun between Tanen and the rest of us. It was a cruel joke at best. It was a cruel joke, and I wanted to tell someone as much. Wanted to shout it to the heavens, demand that this grievance be revoked.

But all I could do was cradle him as I'd cradled Ombri, and rise at last to begin the painstaking task of dragging him back through the city. Where was I going to take him? I didn't know, but I couldn't just leave him there. I would drag him until I couldn't, any longer, or until the rubble began to shred him, and then I would be forced to give it up. Forced to...

Forced to what? Leave him there? Collapse at his side and stay there, defeated, until I wasted away as well, at long last?

There was no end game to my determination, really. It was just that – determination. Raw and mindless and driven.

An end game on my part was not what fate had in mind that day, however, and so in the end it mattered little.

As I was dragging Tanen through the outskirts of the city, tired already, the ground beneath the rubble began to tremble.