T.J. Laverne

© Copyright T.J. Laverne

 

Prologue

 

A scowling boy of thirteen walked alone down a narrow footpath through a sleepy forest on the brink of awakening. The sun was just peeping over the horizon, setting the edge of both the sky and the twilit forest aflame in their first minutes of light. It was early spring, yet the trees were still bare, and the forest floor remained open to the sun and sky. All of Erol’s troubles vanished out here in the quiet, and his mind was left to consume him.

 

The rest of the hunting party Erol had left far behind, as always, so that he could walk slowly and in peace beside his preferably silent confidant, Cornelius: a chestnut Welsh Mountain pony. It was true he did not really take part in these hunting trips for the sport, and especially not for the company, but for this solitary moment he stole away from it, when he could breathe and think freely. For some reason his mind just functioned best when he was far away from other people.

 

Interestingly enough, the year was the very same year in which the Declaration of Independence was signed, in what would very soon be the United States of America. But such an event would not take place for another few months, and, perhaps more importantly, in an entirely different country than that of Erol’s. For Erol’s country, as it so happens, was England. But all of this was very far from the contents of the present story, as well as Erol’s thoughts as he walked alone through the forest at that precise moment.

 

As Erol sauntered along the path, gazing up every now and again at the dark shadows of the trees against the reddening sky, his thoughts were firmly placed upon a book he had been reading about the customs of the ancient Mayans before he had gone to bed the night before, as he considered with an involuntary shudder what it may have been like to witness a religious ceremony in one of their temples. After much contemplation, these thoughts then drifted on to some of the stories his elder brother had told him about his latest experiences as midshipman on the Cadogan, certain they were rather exaggerated from the real truth, and thinking with dread on the day when he would be a midshipman himself.

 

Lost in these very interesting thoughts, Erol only very slowly returned to consciousness and became aware of the increasingly unusual trees around him, for they were uncommonly striking, even to a boy like Erol who usually did not notice such things. Thin and delicate, they reached up to the sky as straight as arrows, each and every one of them clothed in the same silvery, smooth bark which seemed to almost glow like the moonlight. They were spaced apart almost evenly, in a friendly, cheerful manner, allowing for beams of the early morning sunlight to shine through the thin canopy above at intervals all around him. Erol appeared to be standing on the peak of a hill, and the sea of these light trees could be seen far into the distance as the land descended on either side of him.

 

Erol jerked to a stop quite suddenly as the sight reached his brain, so unexpectedly to Cornelius that he kept on walking and let out a small gag as the reign in Erol’s hand choked him, eliciting a look of annoyance from the horse to his master in response. Erol turned slowly in a circle as he gaped at the ethereal sight around him, taking in a slow deep breath of sweet air, until he was lulled into closing his eyes up to the growing warmth of the sunlight. In the height of his repose, a most audacious insect of some sort flew unexpectedly at Erol’s face, threatening to make its way up into his left nostril, prompting Erol to give his own face an unforgiving slap which twinged the peaceful morning air. Sighing out heavily, he resumed his walk forward. That would teach him.

 

Erol was vaguely curious, as a scholar, to learn the type of species of the strange trees surrounding him, and why only the one type grew in such a wide area. Yet pretty soon his mind drifted back to some of the Egyptian hieroglyphic characters he had recently studied, and then on to a rather stupid dream he had had the night before in which he was sure someone was playing a lute and another a violin, and he continued on for a long while without seeing much of anything.

 

After some time, Erol abruptly stopped in his tracks as if he had run into a wall, for the surrounding forest had succeeded in pulling his thoughts away yet again. It seems he had reached a sort of cross-section in the trees. The forest which lay behind him was the sunny, open forest he had just passed through, and in front of him was exactly the opposite. The species of thin delicate trees very quickly gave way to gnarly, decrepit giants, which grew almost one on top of the other, allowing for very little, if any, light to penetrate through to the bottom, as if it were the middle of night rather than early morning. Erol had walked only a few yards into this new forest before he felt the change. The air became dense almost to the point of being tangible, as if it physically pressed down upon him, constricting his every breath.

 

Erol gulped and took a few steps down the narrow, overgrown trail in order to see what lay beyond an upcoming turn, but saw only more of the same looming forest. Cornelius’s ears had begun to twitch in irritation beside Erol, his large eyes filled with fear. He tugged his head in the opposite direction several times, nearly yanking Erol’s arms from their sockets as he stood blankly beside the horse. Almost without consideration, Erol immediately turned around on the spot and hightailed it back to the other side of the so-called cross-section.

 

When he was again in the friendly forest, he tottered on one foot for a moment as he realized what he had done. He looked forlornly back to the depths of the nightmarish forest and he remembered the others of his hunting party. His brow furrowed as he started to feel slightly ashamed of his cowardice. He considered venturing back for just a moment, but he quickly shrugged it off. He did not really care much what the others thought of him, anyway, which was just as well.

 

Groaning at the thought of the distance he had traveled, he decided he needed a short rest before he ventured the return journey. Leading the now calm pony slightly off the path, he seated himself on the dead, leafy forest floor against a tree not too far, but far enough, from the cross-section.

 

While he waited and rested his bones, he struggled desperately to keep his eyes open in the cold, early morning, knowing he would drowse the second they were closed. He settled with leaning his head back against the tree as he gave a dry cough and pulled his cloak in more closely around him. The frigid air had chilled his lungs and airways unpleasantly, and he began to long for a refuge from the open air.

 

After a few sulking minutes, curiosity began to well inside him, and he was compelled to turn his head around to venture another look at the dark forest. Searching up and down the near-perfect cross-section between the two forests, he tried to find a rational explanation, which he so often felt he needed, for the extraordinary split. After much well-thought out deliberation, he reasoned that the forest must have been purposely planted in such a way by humans long ago, though for what purpose he could not guess. Nature certainly would not have been so precise on its own; there would have been no logical reason for it.

 

Breathing out a long sigh, he resumed leaning his head back against the tree, still turned slightly toward the phenomenal cross-section. As he stared, he noticed a small, oblong clearing a few hundred feet off the path. But more remarkable than this, it lay exactly on the cross-section: half on the light side, and half on the dark. Yet it was so small, he was not sure it was a clearing at all.

 

After a moment’s rumination, though he was reluctant, Erol rose from his leafy seat and walked curiously toward the spot, glancing briefly back to Cornelius as if to tell him to stay put. As he walked carefully into the center of the clearing, he turned slowly around in a circle and gazed up at the surrounding trees. Looking to his feet, he saw that the floor of the clearing was completely bare, save for a few sporadic blades of grass here and there, and a few dead leaves. Something about it was eerie. He vaguely wondered if perhaps something had been buried below the surface.

 

No more had this thought left him and the earth gave in beneath him and pulled him into a large hole. He sank abruptly downward a few feet into the soil, and landed with a sickening crunch on something hard. Groaning in pain, he pried his tightly closed eyes open to see that he was buried in rotted wood and dirt. He tested all of his limbs and joints to make sure nothing was broken, but only found them sore and bruised with a few scratches. Grabbing onto anything he could, he gingerly pulled himself out of the hole with much labor, then laid to rest and calm his beating heart a moment on the solid ground.

 

Groaning now in irritation, he twisted his body back to the upright position, and bent close to examine exactly what he had fallen into, digging away at the copious earth and rubble. He surmised that a wooden box or crate had been buried there a very long time ago, but he could not see that anything had been buried inside it. He picked up a grey stick nonchalantly to throw it aside, but dropped it quickly when he realized that it was not in fact a stick, but a bone. He narrowed his eyes more closely at the rubble and he spotted what was unmistakably a skull, though Erol had never seen one in person before, but only in drawings from his science books. Its hollow eyes and grinning mouth stared horrifically up at the morning sky. Sickened, and shaken up in spite of himself, Erol backed quickly away. He had fallen into a coffin. It must’ve been buried there years ago, long before his parents had owned the land. But how long ago?

 

Intending to get away from the spot as quickly as possible, he began to throw the dirt back upon the grave, when he spotted a silvery metal object. He bent further forward and immediately recognized it as the hilt of a sword. Narrowing his eyes as he examined it, he saw that it was made of silver, inlaid with the clearest aquamarine gemstones which almost appeared as glass. He brushed away the rubble to reveal the length of the long blade. It was clearly very old, for it was severely tarnished and discolored.

 

Undaunted, Erol curiously reached to pick it up. Yet no more had his fingers touched the hilt, and he was hit with a sudden searing pain in his abdomen so strong he was oblivious to anything else: sights, smells, or sounds. The pain was so great, his ears began to ring unbearably with the strangest sound he had ever heard. Yet simultaneous with the pain in his abdomen, was a profound feeling deep in his chest unlike any pain he had ever felt before. He thought he would rip apart with the torrent of agony which rushed through him. It seemed to last an eternity, but as abruptly as it had begun, it stopped.

 

After a long, gasping moment, Erol warily opened his eyes to see, once again, the light forest above him. He found he was lying on the ground alongside the sword, and knew at once it was a miracle he had not fallen upon it. A hint of pain in his stomach still lingered, but Erol was unsure if it wasn’t just the sour memory of it. But more than this was the ever lingering feeling of sorrow and grief, more terrible than he could ever remember feeling in his life — which admittedly had not been very long.

 

He grasped his stomach worriedly and eyed the sword still lying on the forest floor suspiciously. Very tentatively, he reached his hand back toward the hilt of the sword. He grazed the metal with his fingertips, then, when nothing seemed to happen, he slowly wrapped his hand around it. Starting to feel foolish, he lifted the sword in front of him in a sweeping motion and examined the length of the blade. Directly beneath the hilt he discerned what was most likely an etching, but it was illegible beneath the bruises of its many years of aging. Erol scowled deeply and looked up at the forest around him.

 

After a long moment, he decided that what had happened was nothing more than indigestion, or, at the very worst, the stomach flu. The memory of it all was fading as rapidly as does a dream the morning after, that he almost began to wonder if it had even happened at all. He unsteadily attempted to rise to his feet, but the pain in his abdomen lurched suddenly violently with the effort. He doubled over in agony, squeezing his stomach in a lame attempt to abate the pain. He began to wheeze and splutter, and as he lifted a hand to his mouth, he heaved up a torrent of blood. In his horror, he could only stare at the shaky, blood-covered hand before his face. His whole body was trembling violently, yet the rational part of his brain told him that this was not the time to panic. He laid himself down upon the hard forest floor, still doubled over, the sword lying beside him, and waited patiently for the approach of the others.

 

After what seemed centuries of lying there on the ground in agony, he began at last to hear the thumps of many hooves, and to feel the vibrations beneath his face. Shortly after came the sounds of voices as they simultaneously raised in alarm. Erol hardly had time to sit himself up before his father had jumped off his horse and come running to his side. Many frenzied inquiries were thrown his way, which he ignored, as two men lifted him onto a horse. Through the crowd, Erol caught the ecstatic look of his elder brother, Edwin. He could see tears beginning to form in the corners of his eyes already. Gritting his teeth in pain, Erol simply pointed to the sword. Edwin gave Erol a concerned and confused look, then wordlessly obeyed.

 

Ignoring a sudden stab to his stomach, Erol held his breath as he watched his brother stoop and touch his hands to the hilt of the sword. Evidently unaffected, Edwin lifted the sword easily before him, and merely gazed upon it in a sudden daze. As the men began to hasten back along the trail, Erol watched as Edwin shook his head as if to wake from a sudden dream, and saw him carry the sword to his own horse, just as the group rounded a corner of the trail, and the scene was erased from Erol’s sight.