The Three Feathers - The Magnificent Journey of Joshua Aylong (20 page)

Grey jumped out of the water on the other side and ran straight toward Krieg who was still fighting the first hyena. Krieg saw the wolf pursued by the other two who suddenly lost their footings and fell, tumbling over several times before they stopped moving. Krieg knew instantly what he needed to do and charged toward the creek. The last hyena was hard on his tail when he went into the water. Krieg didn’t bother coming back out. He just ran up the stream until the hyena stopped moving. Whatever was left of her body was washed away. The life that had temporarily been forced back into her was gently taken by the stream and so purified of all that was unnatural to her being. Death could finally claim her and her tortured soul found peace at last.

* * *

Far above them, unseen, unheard, and unnoticed, the vulture circled overhead, her blind eye peering down at them. Her hatred for the rooster intensified a thousand fold and she knew she would not rest until he lay before her on the ground, crumbling and begging for his life. She would take it from him and, in doing so, make hers last forever.

* * *

They stood shaking; the terror still clinging to their exhausted bodies. It was only slowly overtaken by the relief that they survived. Grey finally lay down in the middle of the road and began to lick his wounds. They were mostly superficial, but could get infected later on. Better to take care of them now. Joshua looked at Krieg’s new scars. “The old ones haven’t even healed yet,” he thought, more to himself than to anyone else.

“They will heal, Joshua, as did all the others,” the horse replied. Joshua found himself in awe of the war horse and the wolf and of what they had endured, were still enduring. Is this what friends do? Stay with you until the end? With no question, no complaint and with your safety the sole concern inside their thoughts and hearts? He did not believe it possible that friendship could reach such depths. He was humbled before it. He could not have conceived the riches this brought to him and he could not think of anything he wanted more in his life than this. Even his dream of the three feathers seemed dull in comparison. He thought at that moment that as much as he still wished to find them, if he were to be without his friends, he would not want the feathers, not for any price. He would rather stay with Grey and Krieg instead, wherever that might be.

They decided to rest for a short while. Wary of what lay ahead, Krieg insisted that they might need their strength, and all of it, before this was over. At first it seemed odd to Joshua that the horse did not want to charge forth and confront the vulture head on. But then he realized that Krieg, as much as he wanted to see Wind again, was frightened of the condition in which he would find her. It was an impossible situation for the horse and Joshua wished he could do something about it. Sometimes avoiding ones worst nightmares, he thought, seemed as daunting a task as confronting them.

During their brief rest, the wolf caught a few fish in the stream, Krieg grazed on a patch of grass and Joshua was able to still his hunger on what he found in the soft soil. As they walked out of the old mining town on the opposite side of where they had entered, Joshua considered that, under normal circumstances, the landscape here would probably be worth exploring. He wondered if the large pillars were cut by hand as part of the mining operation or if they had been here, built up over eons and eons of time. He also wondered about the light source and its origin. How had the hyenas come back to life? And the spiders? He had yet to lay eyes on the vulture. Only in frantic images that he received from Krieg had he seen her. Going toward what could easily be his own death was not something he looked forward to.

It was a somber walk through the valley for the three companions as they passed a seemingly endless number of pillars that rose from the ground far up toward an invisible ceiling. The light source receded into the distance behind them and, as they continued to move ever deeper into the massive cave, Joshua suddenly realized that it had gotten significantly darker. When they eventually climbed a small hill and stood on its crest looking forward, it appeared as if the massive cave ahead swallowed the light completely. A relatively small distance away from them, the path they were walking on disappeared into utter darkness.

“Grey, how far can you see into the cave?” Joshua asked.

“Not very far at all,” Grey answered.

“I don’t like this,” Joshua added. The thought of not knowing where the next step would lead was frightening enough under normal circumstances. But they also had to think about the possibility of an ambush at any moment. Before Joshua could fully picture hundreds of glowing spider eyes in the dark before him, the wolf cut into his thoughts, reminding him once again not to go where he was about to go.

“I will be right next to you,” the wolf’s thoughts reassured him.

“And I will be on your other side,” Krieg added.

“Then what are we waiting for?” He thought, looking up at them. The wolf smiled in his thoughts. Joshua took one hesitant step forward and then another and another after that. Grey and Krieg followed, taking their places on either side of him as they descended from the hill and rejoined the path. To anyone watching, it would have seemed as if they simply disappeared into the darkness.

20.
A
WAKENING

His sleep was deep and in it he created worlds beyond worlds and he went far into them and he lost himself in them. For centuries he slept, weaving dreams that spun in all directions. They took him to places of deepest darkness and brightest sunlight. He felt the winds of the plains take him and he flew high above the land and reached far beyond the stars. He sailed on solar winds through the emptiness of space. He watched whole civilizations come and go and rebuild themselves only to be destroyed again. He saw the summit of creation and he felt the depth of despair along with the heights of peace among men. He was free and the longer he slept the further his dreams took him. And he saw places so ancient they had existed before time and he glimpsed futures that had not yet been realized, but soon would come to life. Then he awoke.

He became aware of his deepest core first. He felt his heart beat against his massive chest. It transported his blood through silver veins—blood that was of darkest blue. One drop of it could kill all forms of life within a hundred yards. He began to feel the extension of his limbs, the cold in his extremities, the movement in his scales when air streamed into his lungs. He felt the heat of his breath as it scorned the air in front of him. When his eyes opened, his pupils adjusted to the light, deep green irises contracted into small slivers.

He saw everything at once: the beam of light that pierced the darkness from somewhere high above in the crystalline ceiling; the body of water to his left, its surface reflecting its surroundings in shimmering light; the blackened soil in front of him. He saw the claws in his powerful front talons that could cut into stone; that could carve pillars out of granite. He felt the power returning to his limbs and all the way to the tip of his leathered wings.

But something was wrong. He could not name it until he heard it. It was just a whisper at first, then two, then five, then a dozen voices murmuring, sighing in an ever returning rhythm. The whispers slowly turned into sounds, indistinguishable at first until they became small feet on charred ground, hairy limbs rushing against each other. The light. That was what was missing. It was too dark in here. The light source in the crystallite ceiling on one side of the cave was completely blocked. When his eyes looked up he saw them. And before he could command his powerful legs to push him off and to burn them into oblivion with his fiery breath, they descended upon him.

The spiders came and while they overtook his stirring body they wove their web and covered him with it. He fought them. He pushed off with his hind legs, extended his wings far to either side. He lifted off but only for an instant. From afar it was an image of terrifying beauty. In the semi darkness of the cave, the massive dragon fought for his life – fought to lift off the ground. But there were too many. The more that fell off of him, the more that jumped onto him from the ceiling. In the end he lost the battle and was soon covered in a web that left him no choice but to watch what was about to happen.

He saw the ivory coat of the Pegasus before he could see what she was. And when he did, when he saw the spiders carrying her while others built a web in the air between two pillars; and when they lifted her lifeless body up and fastened her to the web that spanned easily a hundred yards across; and when he saw her beauty in the beam of light that gently rested upon her he also saw the deep and dark red markings, the inflamed and festering cuts all over her body. When he saw it all he wept for her. And where his tears fell to the ground, penetrating the charred soil, small flowers began to grow in the darkness underground. And if someone would have visited the abandoned cave only a few years later she would have seen a sea of flowers covering the dragon’s den and the area where he had slept.

But now there was only death. The dragon, who could no longer distinguish between his dreams and the lives before he slept, thought he remembered the Pegasus as they fled deep into the mountain a thousand years since passed. They were freed in the mines by a small group of sky people who had no choice but to seal the caves forever. He knew then, in an instant, the whole of Wind’s past, what she thought was her betrayal of her own race and her subsequent choice to be petrified in stone until the mountain would take her or the elements would diminish her into oblivion.

And he saw her gaining her freedom, born out of the sheer pain of the war horse for her imprisonment. He saw the rooster and the wolf and through her he saw their companionship with each other. And what he had dismissed many lifetimes ago in exchange for an existence in solitude began to stir deep within him and thoughts of friendship and of the hope it brought came to him through her and it lifted his heart high above, even though his body was bound to the stone.

And he knew that she was alive. That the poison of the vulture had only slowed her heartbeat to a point of seeming death but that she still was there, faint perhaps and not for very much longer, but still alive. He held on to this thought. Lying there, tied with thousands of threads, held tight against the floor, he felt a surge of power coming through him. He thought that he would let it build up until he would no longer be able to contain it and then he would free her and himself, and his fury would know no limits.

At that moment the vulture landed in front of him. And when she looked into his eyes he could not help but see his own death and the shattering of all the hopes he ever held inside. And even though he could feel the life of the Pegasus slowly leaking out of her, he could not muster the strength to oppose the vulture’s glance that told him unmistakably of his demise. But that was not what he was afraid of. What he feared the most was just one thing. And when he allowed the thought of it to come into his mind he knew it could not be undone. He knew the vulture saw it clearly within him. She would not kill him. She would leave him here in the darkness, alive. But she would take his dreams from him and she would exchange them for nightmares that would last for an eternity.

21.
T
HE
L
ONG
D
ARK

The night came silently, overtaking Joshua and the others slowly as they walked along the path and into the blackness of the cave. In the beginning, they could still see the landscape around them. But soon all they saw was shadows within shadows. And then, from one moment to the next, all that was left was darkness. The wolf was the only one who was able to make out the faintest glow of the path ahead. Joshua and Krieg were blind, wrapped in darkness so complete, Joshua decided to close his eyes as it did not matter whether they were open or shut. He felt the coolness of the air around him and the warmth of Krieg’s body beneath him. He heard the horse’s hooves on the soil below and the wolf’s slow trot but the sounds seemed to dissipate somewhere into the vastness of the cave.

Joshua was glad he had decided to fly onto Krieg’s back when it was still light enough. It would have been impossible for him to do so now. Feeling Krieg’s warm body under his talons gave him comfort at first, but then he began to feel the horse’s nervousness. Not being able to see was something Krieg had always feared and Joshua received images from him of large crevasses ahead into which they could fall without warning. It began to make Joshua himself uncomfortable. Grey tried to reassure them that even though it was just a faint shimmer, he did see the path in front of them. But being told something and experiencing it were two completely different things. There was nothing to do but to trust that Grey would see where they were going. They walked in silence along the darkening path until the rest of the light was swallowed up as well.

“I can’t see anything anymore,” Grey thought quietly to them. “Not ahead and not behind me.” There was no warning in his thoughts. Just the simple recognition that they were now completely blind to their surroundings. “I just hope that whoever else is in here won’t see anything either.”

“Can you still sense the path, Grey?” Joshua asked.

“I think so. The ground seems to be getting sandier though. Soon, it will be hard to find the path at all.”

The wolf’s thought trailed off leaving them with a void that was soon filled with the dread of what lay ahead. From now on, every step brought with it the fear of it being their last. They walked for close to a day and did not want to stop even though they were exhausted, for each minute they spent in the dark without moving was a minute more that deprived them of the light. At some point they just couldn’t walk anymore. They lay down and slept right there. When Joshua opened his eyes a few hours later, he was disoriented at first and sure he had gone blind.