The Great Rift (79 page)
"It is," Dante said. "I'm just tired. This is the first time I've been able to slow down in months."
A warm breeze carried the smell of pollen and pines. The sun was sinking, its gauzy rays piercing the shield of needles. Crickets chirped and whirred.
"Well, it's too early for sleep," Hopp declared. "How about we pass the time with a story?"
"All right."
"Good. This is the story of Davran. Do you know the story of Davran? Good. Davran was a norren who lived long ago. Hundreds of years. He lived in a small town on one of the small rivulets that led into the great river. When he was young, he was kindly. Adults adored him. Many young women did, too. But the only woman he could see was a girl named Yoren.
"Yoren was beautiful. Have you seen the glaciers in the mountains? The water they feed to the lakes? Yoren's eyes were as green and vivid as the water of the glaciers. She could fight, too, with sword and bow. Her nulla was in the weaving of rope and the tying of knots. Unusual, but so was she. Do you know how much you can do with a good knot? Even a bad one can hold something fast for the present, or confuse the most cunning of men. And Yoren tied Davran into knots, too.
"With his tongue so knotted, he couldn't speak to her. Every time he saw her, and couldn't speak, that pulled the knot in his heart that much tighter. Davran's nulla was wooden carvings. Small ones. Itty bitty models of people and animals and places. To say to Yoren what his knotted tongue couldn't, Davran set to carving. He carved tiny pines and tiny deer. He gouged a streambed out of a plank, and when he smeared the stream's tiny banks with bear fat, it could even carry water. From bits of wood as small as a pea, he carved birds, and perched them in the pines. He carved himself, happy and hale and adoring. And lastly he carved her. On the final piece, he spent weeks of patient labor, shaving away the splinters with a razor until he captured each curve of her cheek and muscle of her arms. The carving was beautiful. Stunning. So real that when Davran looked at it he fell in love with it just as he had with Yoren.
"All this time, Davran had lived in retreat in a shack in the woods. When his little world was finished, he returned to the larger world. And discovered Yoren had married.
"He went back to the shack. He smashed the world he'd spent months creating. He lit a fire and smiled as the statue of Yoren burned."
Hopp paused to smile and drink from a wineskin, which Dante gratefully accepted. It tasted like pears and was strong enough to sting his eyes.
"Once his little Yoren had burnt down to cinders, Davran raged and wept and pounded the trees with his fists. He carried his anger for years. Longer than he'd even known Yoren. In time, he cooled, just like all fires do. He began to create again. Carving little trees. Little birds. Little people. He carved and carved and carved. Locked away in his shack, he built whole worlds to keep him company. Then again, he had all the time in the world, because in the depths of his anguish, he'd vowed never to see another person again, believing they were good for nothing but pain. And he stuck to that vow. And he carved and carved and carved. He built new shacks to host his world. If you'd seen it, you would have clapped and cried. Yes, even you. They were that wonderful. If you looked at them from the corner of your eye, you'd swear the little wooden birds were chirping, the young girls were laughing.
"As we all do, one day Davran died."
Hopp stopped. Dante looked up. "Then what?"
"Then nothing. Because he didn't know anyone. He died. And because there was no one to see them, his little worlds died with him."
Dante frowned. "Then how do
you
know about it?"
"Because Josun Joh saw. How do you think?"
"What I think is that this is one of those stories with a moral. Are you trying to teach me something?"
"If I were, do you think I'm stupid enough to think you'd listen?"
"I don't know. We can all be pretty dumb sometimes."
They were silent for a time. Shadows dappled their arms as they drank from the wineskin. Hopp pointed to the dragonflies wheeling above the cattails at the edge of the pond the clan had camped beside.
"See the dragonflies? The way the light glistens on their wings? Aren't they beautiful?"
Dante looked. They weren't. They were as scaly as dead lizards. Their eyes bulged. Their mouths clutched at lesser flies, shredding, grinding, casting away their prey's wings and sticklike legs. They were hideous. Monsters of nightmares.
"Blays is gone," he blurted.
Hopp's face fell. "Dead?"
Dante shook his head. His eyes blurred. "I killed Lira. I didn't want to, but I had to. They would have married some day. I killed my brother's wife, and now my brother is gone."
Dragonflies gleamed and soared. Fish broke the surface of the pond and disappeared without a trace. The sun sank lower every minute, flagging, drawn helplessly to the parted jaws of two hazy mountain peaks. Its failing light did nothing to drive away the ghosts. He knew they would always be with him.
About the author
Hello readers! Thank you for making it this far. This was a big, big book, and the next volume will be even bigger. To pass the time between now and when I finish the final book of the
Cycle of Arawn
, please consider leaving
The Great Rift
a review
by clicking here
. Reviews can be a huge help for authors like me. They help guarantee I don't starve before I type "THE END." I don't literally type "THE END," but you know what I mean. Thanks.
To be informed of new releases, or just to drop me a line, please email [email protected]
Cover art by Char Marie Adles. Map by Rhys Haug.
Ed lives in LA's South Bay, where he works as a movie critic for
The Tri-City Herald
and has sold twenty-odd short stories to magazines online and in print. Though he studied literary fiction at NYU, he found most of it had far too few explosions and turbocharged death machines.
He blogs at http://edwardwrobertson.blogspot.com
MORE BY EDWARD W. ROBERTSON
NOVELS
The White Tree: The Cycle of Arawn, Book 1
-- Epic fantasy
Breakers
-- Apocalyptic sci-fi/thriller
The Roar of the Spheres
-- Planet-hopping space opera
NOVELLAS
The Zombies of Hobbiton: A Martian Love Story
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
The Battle for Moscow, Idaho & Other Stories
