The Elder Origins (6 page)

6

              Their bodies went from one extreme to the other; one side searing hot from the heat of the fire and the other cold from the brisk chill of the air behind them. Madison felt as though the cold were death surrounding the souls of those lying just behind her as she tried to rest on the hard ground. The sounds of their labored breathing had gone quiet from sleep and she found herself wishing that a noise would stir them. The silence was a confirmation that the others were likely dead.

             
She sat up while there was still a light blue haze over the sky from the grey clouds above. The sun was rising, not that she could see it. The bodies of the horses and the companions behind her she had once called her neighbors didn’t move. Their lungs didn’t reach for the more air, and she didn’t feel the immediate need to check them. She would wait for Jamison to wake. Better he rest now rather than try to comfort her grief.

Her limbs quickly began to recover from the stiffness of sleeping on hard grass. She would have thought her back side would be burned from the fire’s warmth as she slept near it, but her skin felt fine as she stood. Not even the cold bothered her as it once had in the cool brisk mornings.

Her eyes skimmed the line of trees far beyond the bodies that lay before her, as if she were searching for the being who took their souls. She saw no spiritual presence, only three strange men on horses just outside the tree line.

             
They stood just before the forest, staring at her… staring at all of them. Their horses were covered in decorative red paint, made to look fearsome. There was some kind of fur draped upon their backs. A headdress of feathers was mounted upon each of their heads. Their faces were dark and hadn’t the slightest semblance of sympathy for what they saw before them.

             
Madison couldn’t imagine what kind of people they were; or what she had done to offend them. The few they had left lay dying or dead and these people had not aided them whatsoever. They watched as she helped pile away their dead and after their small gathering was swept away.

What kinds of people watch
such a thing and do nothing to help?

             
Madison stood suddenly, unafraid of the men who stared upon them from a distance. She cared not if they saw her. She knew death awaited her in one capacity or another. The manner in which it came was the only question at hand.

             
It was then that she felt a harsh wind abruptly strike her petite form. It sent a sharp shiver through her arms and back. For a moment, she thought she understood what was right before her. These men were the true bringers of death, come to confirm their own progress.  Nothing happening was natural. Not the wind, the fires, or the coming of the sea upon their village. Someone had provoked it, or summoned it.

             
She heard Jamison stir behind her, but she didn’t look away from the men who stood a short distance away. Her hair floated behind her along with the tatters of her dress, nearly destroyed from using fabric for slings. She didn’t move, and neither did they. She knew something was being communicated between herself and them, and she hoped that her resilience would show in her stance. All she had ever known had been lost to her twice over. And now she would have to see it all die a third time. She wanted to face death and these men with as much conviction as she could cope.

             
Almost in unison, they turned and galloped away into the dark woods. She wanted to know where they made their own homes. She wanted to know how they lived, what they fed on, how they took their prey, how they survived on this god forsaken land. It was of the utmost cruelty to hide this from people so desperately in need of guidance.

             
Without thinking twice, she ran for the edge of the woods. She didn’t even feel her legs beneath her as she ran. They carried her body with such speed and urgency that she reached the woods in what seemed like mere seconds. Her mind raced along with her legs, knowing that instant that there was no conceivable way that she should have reached the trees that quickly. She stopped at the line of forest and looked behind herself. Camp was a few hundred feet behind her. Everyone still lay sleeping although Jamison looked as though he was about to wake.

             
How am I seeing that far? I could see those men as well? I could see the clothes they wore… the paint on their horses.

             
The thought quickly left her as she heard the men who had taken off on horseback. They galloped away with great haste. Did they know she was coming after them? She didn’t care. She ran towards them, leaping over the forest debris beneath her and following the sound of their horses heaving. She knew they were close, closer than they had been at the tree line staring upon her. She ran again, not daring to look at the ground beneath her. It was moving so quickly that if she were to look down, fear may have swallowed her. There was no room in her mind to even think of how or why her body had moved like that. She could only see the men in front of her. They were not far now.

Without hesitation she was beside their horses, running beside them, and keeping with their pace. She reached up for one of
men who looked down upon her. She couldn’t see his face under the fur that covered his back and arched over his face. His animal skins looked like heavy armor, and it only made her want to hurt him more. The men who destroyed the only home she knew wore armor of metal casting. The sight of the fur upon his body maddened her. She reached for the fur and ripped his body backwards as she leapt forward, landing on her feet. She let the others go behind her as she watched him cascade off his horse. It was as if he were moving in slow motion. His shoulder touched the back of the horse and he rolled off with his feet flying over his head. He crashed against the weight of his stomach and his horse left him there to fend for himself, just as the others had. She stood there staring down at him; ready to leap forward in her own defense should he come for her. He rolled onto to his back and lay there unable to move. She walked towards him and peered down at his face. The head of whatever animal he had displayed upon his head was now off his black hair and lying to the side. And she saw his eyes. They expressed nothing but pure terror.

             
His brown and tanned skin was gashed and broken from his harsh impact with the ground. She swore she could hear ribs breaking when he struck the hard surface. The force of his horse dragged his body at least a few feet before he had stopped moving. Tears and rips on his skin appeared bloody and deep red around his face, neck, and bare chest, with nothing on it other than black and white paint. His arms were painted in black curved yet sharpened designs all along them as though they were sleeves to his torn skin. The blood began to trickle down his intricately painting body seeping new lines upon the mixture of colors. The black and white stripes painted down his face were marked as if claws had slashed the skin. Once having appeared so gallant yet cold upon his horse, was now only a man below her, a man as mortal as she, and just as capable of dying as she and her own people. She wondered how he felt, knowing he would likely die, and knowing that his other riders didn’t stay to help him. Perhaps he knew the anger she felt for having been ignored by him and the people he was riding back to. She resolved in the seconds she spent staring down at him that some men may warrant death. Others warranted the freedom to live merely by surviving it.

             
Her stomach suddenly began to cramp. Burning penetrated her abdomen blistering her chest like a knife had penetrated her heated flesh. She nearly fell upon all fours from the pain. The back of her throat went dry as if she had inhaled ash and she began to grasp for breath at the sensation. At once she was on the ground, her hands and knees holding her up. She crunched down as if she were an animal. Never once had Madison allowed herself to feel rage for those who had harmed her. She was a woman, and women were to keep their voices silent, and their bodies innocent of any temptation or fervor. And yet, for the first time in days, she felt it come to claim her with a fury. Her vision went black just as she recognized her body’s needs.

             
She was starving.

*
**

             
Madison could feel the solid ground beneath her, and knew immediately that she had blacked out. Her eyes were heavy against their own weight inside her skull. Her entire body weight felt as though she were pinned down to the earth. Although she was conscious of where she was and the fact that her senses were awake, she couldn’t summon the energy to lift her eyes open. She allowed the heaviness to drift her away and only after giving into the pressure was she able to open her eyes. She saw nothing but the sky lit in a pale shade of red. She blinked trying to rid her eyes of the colors she was seeing, but that only led to the soft trickle of more redness seeping into her eyes. Blood was dripping down her face and she knew the sky was not truly this unnatural color. She was seeing things through a dim veil protruding her vision.

             
Twigs began to crack nearby. She tried to move upward to see what was making the noise just in front her.

Did
someone see what happened?

Th
e only men nearby were the natives, those who abandoned their horseman, proving to Madison that everything she thought of these native people was true. Leaving one of their men to a fate unknown was an action she couldn’t bring herself to understand. It seemed the vilest of betrayals.

             
She looked around as best she could, only able to move her eyes. After she blinked away enough of the liquid seeping into her eyes, she saw Jamison. He was draped within the same pale red color that stained the sky.

             
Is he bleeding? Please, I can’t have hurt him. I couldn’t have.

             
His entire face was covered in red, but it appeared blotchy and unclear.

             
He knelt beside her, and brought his fist to his face, holding it at his chin. An expression she had only seen him use when severely distressed. He looked her up and down several times and then looked her in the eyes.

             
I must be dying. That is the only explanation.

Her thoughts were lo
uder than the dry sobs she could hear him letting out.

             
He reached for her and then drew his hand back, almost scared to touch her.

             
Don’t let me die here on the ground. Please hold me. Don’t let go of me.

She could still hear the unsteady breath coming from his mouth as he rocked back and forth, gazing upon her, unsure of what to do. With a sudden movement, he reached for her small frame and surrounded her with his arms. Her body left the cold ground beneath her and floated upward as if she had already died. She wondered if this was what it was meant to feel like. But she still felt the strength of Jamison’s arms beneath her, so she could not have died yet.

             
He carried her some distance back toward the small camp they had made. She expected she would be placed amongst their dead, along the line of bodies that now lay in a perfectly even increment along the ground.

Jamison
didn’t carry her all the way. He laid her in front of a thick tree along the forest’s edge. He placed her right side up and allowed her to sit there with her back to its trunk. Placing her hands over her legs and having them lay atop one another, he handled her gently. She could move her eyes more at this point and the vertical position allowed for much of the blood to drain from them. Finally she could see clearly.

             
Jamison’s entire face and tunic were drenched in blood from carrying her. Madison could only imagine that it was her own blood or the blood of the native man. Perhaps Jamison had tried to help him. Perhaps he had tried to help her once he first found them, before she had awoken. She refused to believe that the blood was Jamison’s.

             
Did the man on the horse hurt him? No, no, he was barely moving before everything went black. But did he wake up?

Her thoughts raced with every possibility, still refusing to believe that Jamison was hurt. The thought of more tragedy finding their small group was more than she could consider
. She could accept her own impending death, but Jamison
had
to survive. He
had
to.

             
Her head was level with the ground and she could now look into his eyes. He took the sleeve of his tunic and wiped the remaining blood from her face and neck. He then looked into her eyes, knowing that she could see him. Madison’s eyes moved about frantically, trying to see where he was hurt, if he in fact was at all. Only when he took his hand to her cheek did she look at him directly in the eyes. She felt as though he was examining her. And for a moment, she wondered if he remained unsure of whether or not she was alive. She moved her eyes so that he would know so, but he was searching for something else within her. She sensed it. He had never looked at a soul this way until now. And then he did something she never would have expected.

He took the thick belt from around his tunic, and the thin rope draped around it. He bound it around her wrists, tighter than she would have thought he would tie someone he cared for. The rope felt as heavy on her arms as her body felt lying upon the ground m
oments ago. He took the belt around her waist and tied her to the tree, buckling it around at the side and then yanking it tight around her chest, assuring that she was unable to move. She let out a groan that sounded more like a growl ripping from the inside of her throat. She didn’t know she could make such a sound. It personified every inch of pain she felt at that moment, and then some. Jamison quickly backed away from her and looked her up and down. Her head fell forward and she was unable to lift it to meet his glaring gaze. If she had, she would have let him see every ounce of treachery she felt inside.