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"Awakening"
The dreams wouldn't end.
The rare number of healers who had passed their excuse for a village had but added little to his father's oppinion that all he needed was a lot of work and a good bashing from time to time. He regretted the day his father - or rather his father's belt - persuaded him to explain why he screamed every single morrow since he was eleven. It brought nothing good, and his father would often find him an even harder task for the day when he saw his strange stare in the morning.
And so his day started as usual - he woke with a jump, his old blanket tied to knots and wet from his sweat. The boy couldn't remember a thing from what happened in his dreams, all he noticed was the strange effect they had on his mind. The rough wooden house, the small garden patch in the backyard, even his father's anvil which weighted more than a large sack of potatoes - they all seemed unreal, not solid, not in the material world.
Hearing that the clank coming from the blacksmith halted for a moment, the boy was quick to run for the forest. A good, heavy rain has been pouring in the last few days, and none of the handful of families who lived around would miss a good - and free - mushroom meal. For the boy it was a good chance to escape the hard labour in the garden, or - if the apprentice who was prone to illnesses of all kind was missing again - in his father's blacksmith. Being forced to pump the bellows until every cell in his body started to ache, was not his idea of parent's loving, but his father would often say that one has to study a craft if he wants to be more than a peasant who does nothing but work, earning hardly more but his food. The boy frowned at the thought: he was doing exactly that.
His father had fostered him all by himself, after one day he'd found him at his doorstep. Nobody knew whence this child came, they haven't seen a traveller around for some months, and their village was surrounded by thick woods, passable only through the couple of roads that connected the neighbouring villages, the nearest of them at two days walk. Rumours abound of strange deeds with the blacksmith involved, but he nevertheless kept the child, raising him all alone with the harsh love of a man who laboured hard for his living.
When the dreams began, the feelings of the boy towards his father were put to double trial as he found harder and harder to keep his respect for this man, who looked so uncorporeal each morning. This was the reason he also started to stay aside from the few other kids around - how can you talk to someone who barely was there, like a translucent ghost, like a fading memory. With the advance of the day, it seemed that the mode of the world is changing, slowly returning to its comforting solidness, yet the time it took was growing longer and longer each day. The boy feared the day when the feeling will not pass when the eve comes, and he will have to live as a last survivor in a village of shades, until the madness would conquer him and he would at last die and maybe join the other spectres in their uncorporeal realm.
With these thoughts the boy arrived to the mushroom grounds he'd discovered during his highly valued but scarce walks through these woods, and went on collecting the well developed caps in his bag, planning on continuing his stroll after he's done, as he always felt attracted to the calmness of these trees, where sunlight rarely reached the humid ground, soft from the fallen spines, and even rarely another villager would come to disturb his moments of solitude.
Suddenly, a creak and a rapid clapping of wings came from above, and through the branches fell a large black bird. Its beak was like a black finger-sized blade, that could pierce a human skull easier than a sharp stiletto, and the claws were curved as if to tear pieces of meat off its victims. It was undoubtedly a battle bird, like those of the masters in the far north, of which the boy had heard from travellers in the darkness of the village pub, when he managed to sneak in, protected from his father's ire by the heavy shadows and the dimness caused by the ubiquitous pipe smoke.
With nothing to fear the boy headed for the bird, for the most remarkable feature in it was the large arrow that pierced its chest and came out from the back. Considering its length, and the strong muscles of the battle raven (for it looked like a raven, though much larger in size) the archer should either be very, very close or inhumanly strong. The boy headed toward the nearby clearing, for he thought that this was the only spot whence an arrow could be shot in the dense forest, puzzling over the marksmanship of this hunter - to hit a battle bird flying at full speed!
The clearing was a small bald spot, hardly a hundred paces across, situated at the foot of a mighty rock, where many a town boy have tested each other's courage, but none dared to ascend more than thrice his height, for the rock curved outwards there and no cracks were visible for one to hold to. Yet someone has managed to bypass the inversed slope, for at the very top of the rock stood bolt upright a tall figure, a dark spot on the bright blue sky above. The boy gasped - this was no hunter! A short one-handed sword hung from the man's waist and in his hands was the longest bow the boy has ever seen - the dark wood elegantly curving and bending backwards from the force which was applied to the string. And not a second was the boy late to see this warrior in action, for the bowstring hissed, released from the great tension it was put to, and another arrow flew at impossibly high angle, right towards the sun, as if the archer tried to pin it up in the sky, obviously undisturbed by its bright flare.
It was just then when the boy noticed the target of the man - a flock of battle ravens, circling at a distance, which the boy thought to be impossible to reach by arrow, let alone hit a mark at. Yet it was exactly what the warrior achieved, as another bird was detached from the flock, only to fall like a rock from its breathtaking height. The other birds, learning from their unfortunate comrade, retreated even further, obviously afraid to attack their deadly foe. They didn't fly away either though, like spies commanded to keep their eyes on their target until a greater reinforcement arrives.
Suddenly a chill came down the boy's spine. He realized that the archer, even at this notable distance, looked to him no less corporeal despite that it was still morning. What's more, he was even solider, as if the whole world around him was unreal and he was the only point where reality entered this plane, inhabited only by ghosts. His features, the boy started to perceive them in much finer detail than the distance possibly could allow, were not quite human - the ears were pointed, and curved backwards, almost like leaves. His lips were tightly pursed in a grimace of concentration and dedication, his eyes, but slightly slitted against the bright disc of the sun. In his upright posture, bold and proud he stood, while his muscles in a constant cycle of tightening and losing kept on delivering deadly bolts to the battle ravens, however distant that they were.
To the boy it seemed that this person was like a viaduct between the real world and this disconnected plane, and that reality was pouring through him, applying another layer of solidness over the ghostly objects here. Suddenly the sun was no longer in the midst of his rise, but was nearing it's set; the rock was transforming its old gray surface to black volcanic obsidian, and the wind, no longer a calm draught, had no little bushes and patches of grass to play with. In the distance, to where the merge of the two worlds hasn't reached yet, a black cloud appeared, bringing around it another patch of realness, changing the tranquil azure into the dark crimson of a sunset.
As the form came near, it appeared to be a dragon, a huge beast of black scales and bat wings, moving so fast that no other detail of it was distinctive. The archer, aware of his new foe, bent his bow even further than before, the muscles of his arm tightened with great strength, yet not diverting from the hideous target. Hiss! He let go his arrow with such strength that it ignited in the air and traced a blazing fiery line straight to the dragon. With a quick dive, the beast avoided the bolt and, almost idly flapping its wings, hovered in the air, above and north of the archer, preparing his assault. The boy let out a cry of fright, seeing that the last shot was so mighty that it had torn the bowstring. Hearing him, the warrior had a quick glance at the boy below him, and with a slight half-smile hurled his quiver onto the rock. Then, not minding the absense of his string, now but short remains fluttered by the wind, he took his previous posture, his left arm still holding the bow and the right tightened up, as if from pulling the unexisting string. His eyes narrowed to a tiny slit, his chin raised in proud challenge, he shot.
Visible or not, the arrow apparently met its mark, for the dragon, with a cry of pain lost his rhythm and started to fall towards the trees below him. Half his way to the ground, the beast started to get thin, to loose colour, just like the things in the morning and, almost reaching the dark treetops, disappeared. Still stunned by the quick pace of the actions before him and a bit dizzy from the way the world shifted around him, the boy started to realize that these two adversaries were not from this world, they've but shortly come here for a test of each other's strength. He felt that there had been a lot of skirmishes like this, clashes of scale and steel, strength against agility. The dragon, having lost this round, would meet the archer somewhere else to deliver his revenge, on and on until someone of the two fell.
But why am I witnessing this scene, the boy thought? These are not creatures of this plane, why are they here, solid and real, while everything else around them is shady and uncorporeal? He almost jumped when the hand of the man fell on his shoulder. He had apparently climbed down the huge rock, already a complete mass of obsidianic black, not a hint of it's previous gray texture.
"Son," - the man said - "I've come for you".
Suddenly the boy knew that whatever happened in his dreams was becoming reality.
Портал за почитателите на Толкин - връзки и новини
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