In retrospect, it might not have been the most brilliant idea to taunt the primeval engine of entropy and destruction. The compost heap of reality.
Still, it gave me the courage to keep moving forward.
I’d unzipped my sweatshirt, taking it off, and tied it around my waist. My boots were off too, laces tied together, so they were around my neck. I walked with fingertips trailing the wall to either side of me.
The cold was bitter, it hurt like an icy fist closing around me, but it didn’t damage me. I wasn’t wounded, I wasn’t frostbitten.
I wasn’t sure if that was due to my particular nature or if it was just this place, only wanting to use the cold to make me uncomfortable.
After walking another five or ten minutes, I felt the temperature of the air drop a degree or two in temperature. Not a cold wind, but even so, the still air was cooler here.
I slowed down.
Steady steps, careful, heel, then toe.
Cooler still. My skin would have prickled with goosebumps, if I were still human.
I wonder if I can get wings after all.
It was a giddy, delirious thought, a little unhinged, as I approached the spot where I no longer had walls on either side of me. My arms were stretched out all the way to either side, and I touched only air.
Heel, toe. It was quieter than tiptoeing, as my heel touched a frigid puddle where a gentle groove had worn into the bridge, and I controlled the way I lowered the rest of my foot so it wouldn’t splash.
I felt the cold radiating from my right, and I very nearly hissed in pain at the sharpness of it. Nearly.
I tried to remember the degrees of cold.
My arms were still extended to either side. I didn’t dare move them, out of a fear that they would creak.
I didn’t breathe. My heart didn’t beat. I was a false person, a doll, a man of branches and feathers.
Another step, another… the front of my foot came down in a way that had the toes touching only open air. I adjusted the angle I was walking, to stay on the path, and I made my steps more careful, until I was more sure.
Five more steps, and I felt the acute cold, sharper than it had been, across my right foot.
I brought my left foot forward.
Same thing.
I shifted my weight, balancing on one foot, and raised my right foot, extending it outward, half-inch by half-inch.
I wobbled, arms windmilling. The branches didn’t creak or splinter.
Controlling my movements, I stepped forward, over the limb that was draped over this narrow bridge.
Raising my back foot over was just as precarious, just as dangerous. If I touched it, I might lose my foot, before it simply got me.
My hand touched something cold and slimy, and I felt another mad birdy fluttering of panic where my heart should have been.
Goodbye.
But my other hand touched something cold and slimy.
The two walls of the tunnel.
I made my way into the tunnel, hands still trailing the sides.
I paused.
“Missed me,” I said, loud enough for my voice to carry into the chamber I’d left behind.
A limb struck the wall, hard enough to make a cracking sound. Cold air blew past me, frigid enough to tear the wind from my lungs.
When I’d caught my breath, I had to resist the urge to laugh.
It was frustrated.
Was I a little crazy?
No. Well, yes, maybe.
But that wasn’t exactly it.
“I’m not so afraid anymore,” I murmured to myself. “For better or worse.”
■
The Astrologer stared at the burning building, tears streaming down her face.
■
I edged above the slumbering greater goblin that served as the omnipresent terror to the small cluster of people on the watermill bridge.
For long moments, I contemplated attacking it.
If I had metal, something that worked as a weapon, and if I had enough courage to simply step from the ledge I was on and plunge down onto its back…
Something told me that in the vision of the future I’d seen, an action like that had been what had started me on my path.
Kill it, share the meat for favor and more tools, skin it, and take the pelt…
In some cultures, wearing parts of the beast meant taking on their strengths. The book Valkyrie had touched on that. Binding spirits into objects, then carrying those objects.
The vision taunted me. The knowledge that I could do this, I just had to decide to.
The knowledge that yeah, maybe I could have wings.
What did it matter? I wasn’t real.
Right?
I remained where I was, debating the possibilities, for far too long. I felt almost paralyzed.
On the surface, it was a dumb question. Of course I wanted to stay human.
But this went beyond the surface.
What was my dream? What did I want?
I wanted peace. To be left alone. To explore, and not be bound to one place.
Ideally with Evan at my side, my friends a phone call away.
Except they weren’t mine anymore. Not in the normal sense.
No.
This was, in part, what that vision had been about. Taunting me with a future that highlighted just what I could and couldn’t have.
I might never get to ride my motorcycle again.
In a way, my heart broke a little with the thought. Owning that little piece of work had been my first real accomplishment. The first real thing I’d bought that hadn’t been for my own raw survival. The first thing I’d wanted to buy.
It was a symbol for me, symbolic of a lot of things.
Now I looked down at the goblin below me, and I saw it as another symbol. The other path.
I touched my sweatshirt, which I’d put back on, and I remembered the Witch’s words.
I’ll keep my humanity.
But, if this even counts as a third trial… I’ll accept this reality about my future.
I probably won’t ever ride again.
I started edging along the ledge, as quiet as I could manage, teeth clenched.