The Three Feathers - The Magnificent Journey of Joshua Aylong (7 page)

That last part of her thought whispered to him. Krieg’s eyes stung suddenly and he closed them to hide what he felt. It was as if his whole life, all his struggles, the preparation for war, war itself and all the horrors it brought, the time when he was captured and held prisoner, his friends freeing him and his pain of losing them again, flowed like small streams joining together towards a great river. He suddenly knew that his life was culminating in this. Not only that, but each step along the way had been a step toward it. He just never knew that that was the goal all along. Why did he never even have the slightest inclination that he could one day leave all that he thought would limit him behind? Or could he?

He suddenly felt tired. “I’m not so sure I can make it. I’m old and the strength it takes to undertake this might be for younger steeds, more spirited horses, not an old war horse like myself.”

And with that he closed the door that Wind had opened. The sting of regret was easier to handle than the thought to even question his limits. It would never happen. And that was the end of it.

* * *

It began just before dawn the next day. Krieg had just awoken from a deep sleep. He caught the faintest sense of joy when he awoke. It fled from him when he opened his eyes. The sky was clear above him. Wind slept next to him, her ivory coat had a slight glow from the light of the half moon that stood low on the horizon. Suddenly the Pegasus woke. She jumped to her feet as if shaking off a dream.

“The beacon!” She thought urgently. “Come!”

She ran. Krieg had no choice other than to follow her. Her graceful strides, wings half unfolded, captured him and, for a moment, the wish to be like her overcame him. The wish to be free fueled him and let him gain on her until they were side by side, racing through the moonlit meadow and toward the cliff.

Eventually they slowed down and reached the edge. Wind stared intently into the abyss.

“What are you looking for?” Krieg thought.

“Wait,” Wind replied. “I cannot believe I live to witness this.”

There was suddenly a gust of icy wind coming from deep below and going through them. It seemed as if the wind up here answered and another gust reached them, this time from inland.

“It is happening!” Wind could not contain her joy.

“What is it?” Krieg asked.

“Look!”

At that moment the depths below them began to glow. The fog covering most of Hollow’s Gate became illuminated from underneath in golden light. It was a magnificent sight. Then the fog and clouds in the middle of the large Hollow began to move away and toward the edge. Small beams of light broke through the fog until they became one single beam that reached high into the night sky. When Krieg looked at Wind he saw her face reflecting the light from below. He knew at that moment that they were about to witness something extraordinary, something he couldn’t even begin to understand.

“The beacon has been activated. The sky people will rise up into the heavens once more. I thought I’d never witness this again.” She began to weep.

For a while, nothing happened. And then Krieg saw it. More shadows than actual forms, he saw what looked like people, dozens of them. Each of them seemed to sit on a bar that was connected by thin strings to a large sphere that looked like glass. They slowly floated upward toward the sky inside the beacon of light.

“These are my people.”

“Your people?” Krieg asked.

“Will you believe me when I tell you that many centuries ago Pegasus and sky people lived in a city down in the Deep together as equals?”

Both watched as the figures floated up into the night sky until they disappeared.

“Krieg, I do not want you to be in the unknown about your friends any longer. Something is happening here that I do not yet fully understand but I am quite certain it has to do with your arrival.”

“Our arrival?” Krieg asked.

“Yes. And the odd thing is that you, none of you, are mentioned anywhere in any prophecy or scripture or even folk tales. It is as if you were not supposed to happen, that you were not supposed to find each other but you did. Extraordinary things happen when ordinary folk begin to imagine the unthinkable.”

“I don’t understand. We just got here because we were pursued by a pack of hyenas. We almost fell over the edge. I almost got killed by my captures five days past. We were just lucky to be alive…”

“Luck has nothing to do with anything, Krieg. There is no such thing. It is something we invented to keep the power of our own mind at bay. It was not luck that you have found me. It was not luck that the beacon has been activated. I do not know what happened to your friends, Krieg, but I will go and find out and if they are alive I will find them.”

There was a pause where she looked at him.

“I should go now.”

With that she walked back from the edge.

“Now?” Krieg asked.

“I need a hundred yards,” she said.

“Wind, how do you know that you can still fly?” Krieg asked.

“I don’t.” She replied. “But there is only one way to find out.”

She went back further.

“Don’t you want to wait a little longer? Just to be sure?” Krieg realized that his concern was not only for her. What about him? What if she didn’t come back? There was no way for him to get down below. He was also concerned about what Wind would find down there. Whatever was left of Joshua and the wolf, if there was anything left. He felt trapped.

Wind was about a hundred yards away from the cliff when she turned around to face the edge.

“Be careful,” he told her.

“I will be. Will you wait here until I’m back?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”

She looked at him for a moment.

“I think you do,” she answered.

And with that she jumped forward, both front hooves in the air, then raced with powerful strides toward the edge.

“Your limitations, Krieg,” he heard her in his thoughts as she approached the edge. “They only exist in your mind. Free them and be free.”

She jumped. Krieg followed her and watched her jump off the sheer drop and disappear. When he reached the edge she was already far down. His heart stopped for a moment out of fear for her but then he saw her wings unfold and the upward winds take her, transporting her almost back to his height. She pushed her wings down and flew past him only to dive again. He could sense her immense joy.

“I remember!” Her ecstatic thoughts told him. “I remember it, Krieg.”

He stood at the edge of the sheer drop, looking down and he felt something that he had felt only once since his days of the Great War: It was fear. It paralyzed him, made his mouth dry and made his heart beat against his chest.

“Be free!” The faintest thought reached him while he watched her disappear into the clouds. “Be yourself and be free…”

He looked down into the deep for a while longer letting everything that he felt wash through him, take over and envelop him completely. Then he trotted about a hundred yards back from the edge and turned around. This was it. He would do this or die. The thought of the inevitability of his choice let everything around him quiet down. Without hesitation he jumped forward and began to gallop, concentrating only on his hooves racing over the ground carrying him toward the edge, toward either life or death. Thirty yards to go. He had reached his maximum speed. His powerful muscles pushed him further and further. Twenty yards. He could see the edge clearly before him coming ever closer.

Ten yards. He reached the point of no return. There was nothing stopping him. And with that thought he jumped.

He fell much faster than he had imagined he would. He had no frame of reference for falling this deep, this far. Back at the waterfall he had gotten a small inkling. But this was a five thousand foot drop.

“Just let it happen,” he thought to himself. “Just let it happen.”

Having reached terminal velocity at fifty four yards per second he had the strange sensation of hovering even though the sound of the wind was deafening in his ears. He could not see anything and part of him waited for the inevitable crash when he would hit the ground. Then he broke through the clouds and for a split second he saw Hollow’s Gate far below him and its beauty took his breath away. And then everything went black.

9.
E
AGLES

Suddenly the ground beneath them gave way and, at first, Joshua thought that Krieg and the Pegasus, together with the cliff behind them, moved away from him. But then he realized that he and Grey were moving away from them! At that moment he knew what the cracking sound was. A large part of the plateau on which they stood was breaking off, taking him and the wolf with it and disappearing into the depth below. And then he fell.

His immediate concern was for the wolf. “Grey!” He thought frantically as he saw the wolf try desperately to hold on to something and then slide off the breaking rock and fall. Joshua knew at that moment that there was nothing he could do for the wolf. He would never reach him even though he tugged his wings in as much as he could in an attempt to somehow get close to him. The wolf’s weight made him fall much faster than Joshua. He saw him for an instant far below and Joshua thought at that moment that his heart would break. Then the wolf disappeared into the fog and was gone. Out of the corner of his eye Joshua saw the Pegasus break free and the path they came on beginning to crumble. Suddenly there were large rocks flying toward him and his only choice was to unfold his wings and fly, moving away from the falling rocks.

When his wings unfolded and he flew away from the cliff, he saw the Pegasus and Krieg running along the path as it broke off underneath them. They made it just in time to the second path that lead upward. For a split second Joshua considered flying back toward Krieg but he realized that he would never make it up there again. Then the fog enclosed him and he didn’t see anything anymore. He could hear the wind under his wings but as he made small adjustments, he sailed in almost complete silence. In the distance he heard the rocks breaking off the cliff in an eerie sound as the path to the waterfall crumbled. Then this too quieted down until there was no more sound at all. For a while, Joshua felt suspended as if in a no man’s land feeling nothing but the wind under his wings.

Then he broke through the fog and as he looked down he saw Hollow’s Gate far below. It was unlike anything he had ever seen. From up here he could see shades of green interspersed with dark indentations. There was a large area to the west that looked like ancient ruins, geometrical patterns of dark color within the shades of green. He saw two great lakes to the southwest that looked like tears of deep indigo, and a massive ice formation reaching up the sheer cliffs in tongs of silver. Just as he began to wonder why he couldn’t see any sign of the falling wolf, everything suddenly went black.

* * *

…And then there was nothingness. Joshua felt as if he was suspended in complete darkness. He wasn’t even sure if he was still flying, so still was the air around him. He experienced himself as both tiny, no bigger than a grain of sand, and simultaneously stretched out and completely encompassing the whole world. It was as if his mind expanded many fold in all directions reaching deep into the earth and far into vast space. He knew at that moment with absolute certainty that there was more to him than feathers and skin and bones. But before he could even think about this and as suddenly as the blackness came, it went, and Joshua found himself back in the air over Hollow’s Gate.

After reorienting himself, he decided to fly as close to the cliff as possible. Maybe there was a fighting chance he could see the wolf somewhere. Part of him was horrified of finding his friend and wished he would be spared having to look at him. He wanted to keep Grey in his memories as he had known him, not as he would see him with his body broken somewhere at the bottom of Hollow’s Gate. Another part wished he would still be alive somehow but that option seemed completely impossible right now.

It was strange to fly along the massive cliff that spanned from the surface high above all the way down to the bottom, a straight five thousand foot drop. The rock was smooth and had almost no cracks or indentations of any kind in it. From here Joshua could see the cliffs stretching in both directions meeting in a perfect circle far in the distance. The sheer size of it was stupendous. He couldn’t escape the feeling that the circular shape was not a natural phenomenon and that this place was in fact created, formed by something other than what natural laws would allow—a force more powerful than anything he could imagine.

Eventually he landed. Where the ground met the straight cliff wall, it sloped upward in a gentle curve until the soil touched the stone. It was as if the earth here had been pushed toward the cliff and up at least fifty feet. When he found his bearings, Joshua decided to walk along the cliff for a while, hoping to find his friend and at the same time hoping not to find him at all.

As he walked along the massive wall, he couldn’t help but feel smaller and smaller, almost insignificant, as if everything he had done and everything that he was amounted to nothing in the end. He had lost his new found friends almost as soon as he had found them. He was at the bottom of an abyss that seemed to hold no hope for ever getting back to the surface. And even if he were to reach it, what then? Emptiness spread within him and he could not remember ever having felt so alone. He walked for hours and lost all sense of time, his thoughts caught in an endless spiral of despair from which he could not escape. That’s why he didn’t hear it at first.

So deeply immersed was he in his own world that it took him a few moments before the eagle’s cry reached him. He only started hearing it when he heard the second sound: the howling of a wolf. It couldn’t be that far away. It sounded eerie at first but then, before he saw them physically, he saw them in his mind. And what came with the image was the sound of laughter. It was laughter that brought with it the glad realization that the wolf was alive, and Joshua couldn’t help but jump up and fly the last distance before he came around a large rock and saw them.