The Traod

I must escape. Every single neuron dendrite axion is screaming me so.

One last glance, for there mightn’t be another for a long while. In the distance, perhaps a half-mile away, we spy men at the edge of the leftward beach, the rural wrench of the cove, all turned towards me (or the keep I was in), all with pocketed hands, calmly watching, assessing the conflagration. Unhurried, unharried, they might have been a claval of gentlemen, casual acquaintances passing idly by and chatting one early morning before sputitia. I make out little detail save the overall physical bearing of two: one lean and tall and missing an arm; the other, squat, a full head shorter, wider, older. The mien of command lies with him. Both sport military hats and jaunty angles, covering tufts and wads of gray or white hair. I commit these two to memory, then turn to discover a way for us out of the cell.

But … I hesitate; what else do I see?

Floating in gauzy multihued haze among the bars of smoke and flame are those ethereal, translucent forms … angels …

I shut my mind off from those paths, and whirl on my bootheels.

Before us a wood door, vertical planks reinforced by diagonal stripes of a fragrant type of cedar unfamiliar to me. A forbidding metal bolt. I glance round for something, anything, in the spare room to use as a weapon or a lever. The olive tunic floats from the table; I hastily button it up – paying the price as I force my injured shoulder to move in ways it still denies. For a wink and a nod I seize a shard of the shattered pitcher and clench it firmly in my still-bandaged right hand. It will cut skin but not uniform or armor. It will do.

Steeling myself, I caress the vertical planks, testing for heat or voices beyond. There are neither. I grip the bolt, prepared to throw my whole weight against it, praying I would not reopen my wounds, but to our complete astonishment, the door opens on its own accord, lightly, silently, and I am a free man. With you.

The keep is bustle-thick in motion; blur and panic whirling men and women who, perhaps, have tended me in my stasis. In fact, all ignore me, and I roam room to room, seeking stairwells downward, winding westerly, away from the conflagration in the town. A small squadroon of soldiers pass me in a rush as I slip across a small open courtyard. A solitary gate stands before me. My eyes fall upon, oddly enough, a gripsack with some bread and fruit, unattended on a table. I snatch it but I’m more thinking “weapon.” Or a horse as I note riding gear and posts afar, but in the fiery commotion all those beasts must be at the shorelines.

Surprise yet not surprise at my immediate and unmolested freedom. Post haste we trot down the spiraling stone stalactica down a hilly-hill from the keep, as fast as my throbbing left leg will allow. I know I’m not long for travel so I hope to catch as much distance tween self and town as possible before finding some shelter to recuperate –

And then I see the Traod …

’Twas if I enter another netherworld or another damned dimension. Sounds of warfare dissolve into soft velvet as I stop and sway, entranced, at the sight before me. Animals … sheep and goats, and a stray mutt. When, down the wet-dry sands toward that deja-delighted inland river, the fisherman, returning, nets full and fat, sails puffed and men’s hands straining with oar against the swift current. Pulling the crafts up the sandbar, up to the yellow-grass foot paths, where the animals mull, where It stands.

Was it the Traod? Its left hand holds the banner, too far for fogged eyes to discern. Its right hand held chest high, points out over the bubbling and babbling waters, as It did when It stilled the ways so long ago and so far away.

I feel exposed, ashamed. I can not meet It now, not yet, not in this condition. I scan the closest horizon, I search my surroundings and pray you O gut pull me in the right direction. To the right, the uncrossable river … though certainly a more desirable path beyond. Indeed, strong, high walls of rock and graitte sheltered small glokun huts, interposed here and there within the cleft, and narrow spindizzy paths leading ever upward and ever farther away from the keep. Indeed I trett a man heading thisaways, garbed twinly to me in worn grey trousers and canvas of foods, and the whistling tune carries across the waters, hundreds of yards over the winds which toil ceaselessly to make the fishermen’s lives earned.

To my left lay the single-stoned path to where It still stayed, still transfixed over Its gathered audience, the grimy salt-stained calloused men and the lambs, and though I know the rightward crossing to be the safest for me, in my condition, I have but no choice but cross paths again with the Traod.

Beyond It the gentle pathway grows harsh and veinous, veering crazily but now in an uphill direction, at a greater degree of angleage. Towering pyramids of rock, insane formations that should not be, straddle the path, but I see through them to trees and fields, and lazy, civilized buildings, steepled and rooved and flowered with gardens. Perhaps that’s my destination. But then the insanity stalking me, the siege and the slaughter, crowds out thoughts of pastoral peace. Such is to be short-lived, without Traod.

I tear the bandage round my head and it falls to the ground. Flexing my aching hands, I decide it best to leave their clavings on, as well as those on my shoulder, chest, and leg.

Fool that I am! Wretched fool and wretched sinner! Blood stained hands and mind stained with dark and evil thoughts! Why can’t I remember? Why can I only see a piece here or a piece there? Why is that town down the road calling to me, achingly? Why do I know this man before me, why is he calling me to It?

Suddenly I realize I have no need for bandages. Or rather, I will not, after a piece.

One boot in front of the other. An arrow slices the air before me, or around me, or just past me; it whistles hypersonically and I feel the air suck out of me. I rise afoot, unscathed, and continue, one boot in front of the other.

It turns to me. The fishermen, the oldest first, turn to me, some masked of quizzical disbelief, others with placid lucidity. The animals cease their bleating, and I cease mine.

It turns to me, and I see recognition in Its eyes, followed by a softening compassion. Then, a metalled hand to my cheek, and I collapse into a ball of blackness.