Sycamore
I was second of two children, born to the season of frost some fifty-three years ago. My mother and father owned the sole tavern in our small village. At day’s end, I lay to rest in my attic bedroom, listening to the raucous laughter and arrogant bravado of pubgoers and adventurers alike, echoing through the floorboards from the world below. I didn’t understand much of it, but still I dreamt of fierce dragons and dreadful magics when finally I fell into sleep.
When I turned eight, my father put me to work as a waiter during the evening hours. I did not lament the responsibility; I was finally able to converse with the heroes I knew so much of in my dreams. I soon discovered, as all men must, that true heroes are exceptionally rare. Most nights, naught but the regular drunkards were present for conversation, if slurred gossip is worthy of such a title. When “adventurers” did offer patronage to our small establishment, most were nothing like the heroes of my imagination. They were mercenaries at best, bandits at worst. People who would provide unsavoury services for a pouch of gold. They were braggarts, and their grandiose tales were no more than a charlatan’s trickery. They would not sacrifice themselves for the good, so I hated them.
Still, occasionally, perhaps once every other moon, a person of true character would pass through our doors. These people were invariably curious, intrigued by any hint of rumour, and I was happy to oblige them. I told them stories. “Sally has been sneaking out at night recently. She says she’s playing with the fairies.” I whispered to an elf in a cloak of midnight black. ‘Only, don’t tell her parents ‘cause she thinks they won’t much like hearing about it.” In return, the elf told me stories of great cities and ruined empires. We spoke for hours, well past my bedtime, but my parents were too distracted with other duties to curb my curiosity. I never saw the elf again, after that night. True adventurers tend not to stick around. I never saw Sally again, either.
Those of most interest to me were the wizards. All people of magic were intriguing, of course, but the wizards alone could impart some knowledge upon you. On the day of my tenth birthday, after my friends, Holly and Snowflower, had returned to their homes for supper and sleep, an ancient mage ordered a pint of goatsmilk and reclined, alone with a dusty tome, on a chair in the furthest corner of the commons. I bothered him immediately, and I found him delighted to share his knowledge. His name was Bentham; as of that morning he was a retired adventurer, and as of that night I was his student. He built a shack atop a cliff that overlooked our village, and it was to this shack that I made my daily pilgrimage to be taught the basics of magic. He lived in that shack for four-about years, and then he died in his sleep. To his last he did not fear death, though he saw its scythe growing ever nearer as old age wore him down.
There was a small funeral, I alone offered words of grievance, and then the village moved on. In his will, Bentham had left to me his modest collection of magical tomes, as well as his shack should I ever need another home. The books were most-all beyond me, and I was content living and working for my parents. I took the few discernible books I could find and pored over them by candlelight each night. They were a poor substitute for his wisdom, but still I gradually learned. I returned to my role as a waiter, and to my gossip-gathering ways. I did consider, briefly, leaving my home behind to tend the fields beyond the clifftop shack. Bentham had not been successful in cultivating edible produce, be he was tired and weary; I was keen of mind and strong of body. I could have succeeded in that, I think, but I stayed with my parents. I stayed with them, so I could stay with Snowflower.
I spoke previously of Snowflower as a friend, and that she was, but she was also the love of my youth. She was an elf, the daughter of immigrant farmers fleeing persecution from some far away city. She was gentle, she spoke much of the beauty of the birds and the beasts that thrived in the forests we so often walked. She was strong, too. Strong of body, for I never once defeated her in a wrestle of arms, and strong of spirit, for, though she had seen the great evils in her homeland and the mundane ones in our own village, she maintained that one day we would live in a world in which everyone could be happy. However, and of course I did not love her less for it, she was plagued by visions of the past.
One day, Snowflower and I decided to climb to the peak of the great mountain beside which our village stood. We hiked all the day and some hours into the night. It was freezing, and we would have had to turn back had I not, by that time, mastered the art of conjuring quaint fire by uttering the binding words of my late teacher. When we reached the peak, we saw the stars like never before. So dreadful was the beauty, Starflower wept in joy upon my shoulder for, perhaps, the smallest of eternities. We spoke by firelight; the world soft and silent beside us. Eventually, wary of making the return journey in the dark, we slept. It was dawn when I awoke to her screams, though it felt I had slept only minutes. I hastened to her side, desperate to save her from all-everything, but she could not see me for myself. She was lost in a dream of torment-gone-by, and I could not reach her.
She clawed at me when I drew near; at herself when I did not. As the sun rose to crest the horizon, in that place long detached from the world of mortal responsibility, where the people of our town were but ants scurrying about a score of smokestacks, I witnessed beauty reduced to terror for the first time. She fought uncountable unseen battles atop the mountain, and I could do nothing. Still, eventually, as all things must in the end, she returned to the world of reality. She saw my blood on her nails, and she cried and begged my forgiveness and only then, finally, could I offer some comfort. She told me of her past, shaking all the while, and I listened. I will not do her the indignity of repeating her tales here, and anyway you will be better for not having heard them. We descended the mountain with the setting sun, and, having decided that the intimacy of the trip could only be discoloured by further expedition, found our lives at an equilibrium of peaceful joy.
A spring passed, and then another, and with each passing year I became only more certain that I wished to take Snowflower as my wife. I was of twenty years. My father had grown sickly and, with my mother attending his bedside in night and in day, I took over management of the tavern; now it was Snowflower who waited table in the evenings. She worked for a pittance. My brother had, in the course of time, left to find adventure for himself, but still it was my work alone that supported our family of three, so I could spare little coin for the most deserving of all. A travelling cleric examined my father, and, though the cleric said he would pray for my father’s health, confided in us that he would likely die before the year was done. I thought he should see my marriage before his end, if I could believe such a dream to be possible.
I had bartered a ring of ironwood from a passing druid, and soon it was the eve of my proposal. The inn was quiet; a minstrel had chanced upon our village and was regaling the regulars elsewhere. Alone, in the same corner chair Bentham had sat many years before, sat a veiled woman rolling dragonbone trinkets atop the table. I, in my natural curiosity, approached her, and I learned that she was a diviner. “All of the futures that can be have already been realised, my dear.” She spoke in a hoarse whisper. “As servants of the gods, we can only ask them to guide our awareness towards the existences in which all people flourish. Tell me, sweet child, do you fear the goodness of a choice you must make?”
I replied that I did, that I wished to be joined in marriage with my dearest friend, but that I did not know if she would accept me. I was not stronger than most, neither was I more intelligent. Neither was I more beautiful, and she, of all persons, was deserving of beauty. The fortune teller, chiding, told me that one who doubts of such things is surely, after all, possessing of the greatest worth of any. She offered to ask the gods if my proposal was right, claiming to already know they would give their blessing. I implored her to do so, and she rolled her carved bone instruments a final time. She inhaled sharply.
“Woe”.
We stood in silence for a moment. I was somewhat disappointed that the “gods” had only offered a single word. She regained her composure momentarily. “Listen to me, child. You must not go through with this proposal. I cannot tell you why, but that action can only lead to the despair of yourself and your beloved.” I had seen many a “psychic” before, and they were most all fraudsters and racketeers. Though the gods did appear to generally do their good through the divinely blessed, I had yet to encounter a genuine cleric who was predisposed towards parlour tricks. Still, even though I no believed celestial power to be at play, the advice of a charlatan often holds more than a little wisdom when appropriately sifted through the lens of reality. I assured her, lying, that I would not propose, and a pallor lifted from what of her face I could make out beyond the veil. We spoke pleasantly for a while longer, and then she departed.
I proposed on the morrow. Snowflower leapt into my arms, reassured me that she could not be happier than with me by her side, and we were to be married before the moon waxed anew. I thought no further about the veiled woman’s prophecy; Snowflower’s joy was proof enough that my fortune had been of no true power. Snowflower mentioned that her dreams had been growing worse, and I consoled her as best I could, but she said she didn’t wish to poison the atmosphere with such gloomy talk. The weeks leading up to our wedding were the happiest of our lives; it seemed to me that we could remain in such a way forever.
On the eve of our joining, Snowflower committed suicide. Her parents found her at break of day, limp body still clutching a handful of the poisonous berries we were so warned against as children. Beside her bedside was a note, reading only:
I’m sorry. I can’t get past this.
I didn’t believe my mother when she roused me from my slumber to break the news, I didn’t believe Snowflower’s parents when I saw them huddled and in tears. I believed Snowflower, though, when I saw her brilliant face drained of all strength and spirit. I don’t remember what happened after that. I think I yelled a lot, and cried a lot, and cursed all who would listen and all who would not. I found myself, at the end of it, screaming at the universe from atop the great mountain beside which our village stood, cradling the body of my departed fiancée. As the sun fell behind a void horizon, in that place so detached from love and compassion, where the people of our town grieved for two persons, one dead and another broken, I buried Snowflower in the snow.
Time passed. How much, the gods only know. I certainly would have died too, atop the mountain, but I sustained myself with magical power. I was unmoving, uncaring, in my vigil. Eventually, another person joined me, there at the peak of the world. The same fortune teller, still veiled, shivering from the cold. She sat down beside me; she spoke. “You did not follow the divine will.” I gave no reply. She continued “I saw what was to come, but I knew not how to prevent it. I am sorry for my weakness.”
I spoke with great difficulty; I was unaccustomed to my voice. “Will your divine offer guidance once more? There is something I must know.” She replied, croaking in her manner “Yes, child. Once more, whatever will allow you release.” She withdrew from a pouch the tools of her trade, carved cruelly from the skeleton of a great behemoth, and set them upon the bare ice. “In a world without Snowflower, I cannot again be happy. I must know if, in my life, I am yet able to provide to others the joy that has left me forever. If I cannot, then I will join my love in death.” Without a word, without a sound, bone spun upon the ice.
“Weal.”
“The gods bless you, child. You will wreak great joy before your long day is done.” With that, she stood. I only watched as she hobbled her way down the mountain and out of sight. Still there, laid upon the ice, were the bones that sealed fates. Later that day, I descended in the diviner's wake.
I did not return to my home. I did not return to my village. I had found clarity beyond grief, and I knew I was guilty. We had been content, in those days that were now but a dream. We had been happy. Why had I, in my arrogance and youth, deigned to risk all that I had upon some superficial ceremonial joining. Though I had believed myself to be doing right at the time, in my actions I had killed Snowflower. What more didn’t I know? What more misery could I accidentally induce by allowing myself to return to society? I returned to the shack left to me in the will of the wizard Bentham and set to work preparing the fields: sewing magically derived seeds in supernaturally fertile earth. I lived in that shack for thirty-three years.
For whatever reason, not once in those thirty-three years did a person from the town approach my abode. Perhaps they had declared me dead, and the house haunted or cursed. I gave them no reason to suspect I yet lived; I worked through the night, by the faint light of a magical fire that produces no smoke. I became a hermit. On occasion, I observed the villagers going about their lives. The faces were familiar at first: my mother, and her friends, and my friends, and all the others I knew from working the tavern. Never my father, for he was bedridden and then later, I presume, deceased. As time passed, new faces emerged. Immigrants from far-off lands, and children born to those who were children themselves when I was grown. I saw my mother grow old, and then, after some time, I no longer saw her at all. The village doubled, tripled in population. My family’s little old tavern was demolished, replaced by an establishment so ostentatious and vulgar I was forced to board one side of my window so as to prevent myself from glancing at it by chance. My generation, the people of yesteryear, grew tired, grey of hair and slow of movement. The lifeblood of the town was young, vigorous, and alien. No longer did my shack overlook a small village at the base of a great mountain; now it oversaw a bustling suburbia, ever growing further from the place I once called home.
I had a routine. Every day, when I woke, I would roll the dragonbones across my table one-hundred times. At first, I prayed that some god would provide to me the guidance that I was lacking. I received no response. Later, forgetting the prayer, the act devolved to habit and superstition. The trinkets varied in size and shape, and each was inscribed with a different symbol for each of its faces. The symbols appeared to me meaningless: lines, but not pictures or words. For each time I rolled them, I recorded the symbols that were displayed. For thirty-three years, I did this, and for thirty-three years, I was unable to decipher any meaning in the results. Every roll was different, beholden only to brute chance,
I spent the rest of my time tending to my crops and studying the collection of spellbooks left to me by old Bentham. I began to understand greater magics, though my progress was inexorably slow, and I became an adept farmer in my own right. The harvests of my summers would likely have sustained me through my winters even had I not been magically affecting the crops so as to allow them to grow through the deepest frosts. I was self-sufficient, alive, and if not happy then at least content with my melancholy.
Today, at dawn, I rolled the dragonbones one hundred times, and the same symbols showed in every instance. I felt no guidance, was allowed no divine augury, but in observation I had found a sign. I rolled them a dozen more times to be sure. Identical. With magic, I created a reflective surface by which to observe myself. My hair ran down to my waist and was matted and grimy beyond anything I thought possible. My eyes were hollow, my face wrinkled and tired. I recoiled from myself. Snowflower would have laughed, taken me by the hand to some secret grotto, and shaved the hair herself. I thought she would have, at least, but I confess I could remember very little of her. I could no longer recall her face, nor the sound of her voice, nor what those flowers were that were her favourite. It had been so very long.
After so very much time, something was different about today. The curious behaviour of the dragonbones proved as much. For the first time in thirty-three years, I left the immediate vicinity of my shack. For the first time in thirty-three years, I climbed the mountain that overlooked the village I had once called home. With my magical abilities, the climb took minutes rather than hours. At the summit, I clawed through the snow. I dug with strength instead of magic, until my fingertips were blue. After some time, I found her.
Snowflower, body preserved by the cold and the ice. Beautiful. Dead. Memories of my youth returned, one after another. Her smile, and her voice, and a thousand other long-lost details. With all of them, guilt. But also a thought. Whatever I believed, Snowflower would not have considered me guilty of her death. She would tell me, then, that I was being obstinate, and then she would laugh and ask if I knew how the birds knew to sing. There, on that very spot, a fortune-teller told me I could still bring happiness to others. Hadn’t that been her dream, too? Didn’t she believe, truly, with all her spirit, that a day would come when all people were joyous in life?
I looked upon the city below and saw it in flames. I threw myself down the mountain, magical energy barely keeping me intact. As I drew nearer, I saw the scene in terrible detail. Bandits torched buildings, stole children from their mother’s arms, killed any persons who attempted to retaliate. So many died before I reached the shack that overlooked the flames of what once was my home. I had not purposed magic for violence before, I had sought divination and cultivation, not destruction. For every man I killed, I asked myself “will the world be a happier place if this soul is destroyed?” and then I incinerated him. The bandits were numerous, but weak in the face of my power. They wilted as hay to the bonfire.
The people of the city were thankful. More than that, they thought I was a divine incarnate. My shack was, apparently, the source of much superstition. Not knowing my true name, they referred to me only as “Sycamore”. The name I once bore only reminded me of things long lost, so I found myself readily convinced to adopt the fresh persona. I was unaccustomed to the social contact and must have seemed a gibbering fool. I retreated as swiftly as I arrived.
I asked myself if my living as a hermit could eventuate in the happiest possible future; I answered “Of course it could not: there are more bandits such as these, and perhaps even greater threats. I must be the one, or at least one of the many, to put an end to them. I will make the world a place of happiness alone. I will make the world Snowflower believed in, even if she cannot be there to see it.”
I packed all I could carry into my largest backpack and set out to be a hero.
Submitted May 22, 2019 at 07:46PM by Tentahawk http://bit.ly/2HxgQmV
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