A Magnificent Man

With his hand upraised and his arm cascading down the hills he led the multitude swaddled in majesty with the fleeting orange blush rising from the other end of time behind him to the blank fields where anguish lived and there he brought the victory that he carried with and inside him.

*****

He arose to the glare of the morning light and the sound of birds. Doves twitched and bounced and crowded above him. With his blanket still wrapped around him he wandered out of the broken sanctuary, passed the charred remnants of the bonfire, and toward the familiar voice of his new friend. Cale stood with his back against him, addressing a curious assembly. He looked a bit taller than the rest of them, who all brought their gaze on the boy as he came closer. Some appeared as children with rounded faces and a brightness in their look while others as old men, bearded and jacketed in tweed. The boy tried waving at them but they would not respond. "Up so early?", Cale said as he turned to face him. "Excellent. We've a long way to go. Gather your things." A thick, wooden bow hung over one of his shoulders.

Gavin recovered his pack and tied the blanket to it before putting it back on. The sword lay on the floor. He picked it up and used it as a sort of cane, prodding at the ground with it as he walked to return to his companion at the edge of the ruins. He met him as he was speaking comfort to his people. Comfort that could not quell the timid worry on their faces. They looked on with stillness and unease as the pair disappeared through the bush.

The road they took went mostly downhill, with the treeline slowly thinning on the banks along with the carved stones. They walked in loose unison with Cale striding in front. Occasionally he would hum a tune and it would put a jaunt in his walk, but otherwise only a purposed silence and pace was between them. Gavin still held the sword from its hilt and the heaviness of it brought him to drag it along the trail. Eventually the noise of the metal grazing the dirt was enough and Cale halted. "That will not do", he said. "Wait here." He unsheathed his own weapon and climbed atop the small bluff on their side where he amputated a vine and brought it back down with him. He asked for the sword and the boy was happy to give it to him. He tied the vine around the blade and fashioned a sling with the tendon and handed it back to him. Gavin draped the harness over himself and checked if it was secure. "Thank you", he said.

Their path dipped and wound to a crystalline river in a reticent valley. Patches of trim greenery daubed muddy and slanted edges of the patient brook. Cinnamon rock walls curved inward to their high tops,  shadowing them as they tread the split earthen tunnel. They followed the current until it forked into an abscess on the side of the canyon; a rounded opening to a cave. Intertwining roots of an overhanging oak on the cliff scaled down the wall and traced the entrance. Cale looked back at the boy and nodded toward it. Before stepping in he readied an arrow on his bow and peered inside.

Gavin kept as close as he could to him as he led the way into the wet grotto. Contoured light from the entry faded into paleness glistening on the moist ground and leading stream. The darkness of the cave enveloped them but Cale ventured on with trepidation as though he knew the trail but hadn't ventured on for a long time. The water hastened into a wider chamber with an opening at the top funneling sun rays down into a crevasse where the current fell. A bridge hung rickety and deteriorated across the abyss. Cale stalled to rest the bow over his shoulder again and nimbly bounced on the rungs with his arms stretched on his sides. When he made it to the other end he said it was safe and the boy took his first step on the planks with cautious judgement. Sweat beaded on his forehead as the wood creaked and swayed with him. He stopped at the sound of faltering support and looked down to see cracks forming where he put his foot down. Before he'd time to say anything the board broke underneath of him and he fell tangling his arms up in the ropes and hung while the rest of bridge moaned in throes of impending doom. Cale dove and crawled on the bridge toward Gavin, who barely held himself on the withering ropes and steps. He stretched flat with just his calves on solid ground. His hand almost reached the child. He told him not to let go. A little more and he'd have him.

Gavin felt a hand clamp his wrist and pull so hard to nearly dislocate it. The pit below him echoed with fervent grunting as the knotted ropes came undone and freed him. Once the boy was out of its grasp it let go and fell into the bowels where it crashed in the consuming obscurity. Cale stood and helped him back on his feet. "Are you alright?", he asked. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine", Gavin meekly spoke while he brushed the dirt off himself. Cale walked and set his eyes on the fallen overpass. "Was that the only way out?", the boy asked him.

"Yes. The only one I know of. No matter. We have to keep going."

Moist walls tightened further and shifted back and forth snake-like until the passage abruptly halted at a circular door with its hinges bracketed into the rock itself. Cale rammed into the vault door and broke it open to a musty and dank catacomb. Dust and mildew painted everything. It was a round hovel revolving around a fire bed and a chimney hole in the roof. Shelves stacked with old tomes and bat droppings outlined the circle. Some of the cave walls and ceiling had rudimentary drawings on them depicting battling legions and travels of a solitary figure in white chalk.

At the opposite end of the chamber was a cloaked blue mass squatting on a cushion. A pile of filthy laundry. Cale approached and put a hand on it and the rags spontaneously filled with motion and the vague formation of a head, torso, and arms appeared beneath the cloth. He gently lifted the top layer and a wild geyser of graying hair shot out in rejuvenation. The boy could make out two eyes and a nose in the midst of the hair. The gray eyes blinked and squinted as the nostrils flared and the uncountable wrinkles dug even further into the patch of flesh. Skin brown and craggy as the land. Below it the iron gray flow parted and a gaping hole broke open with a guttural moan illuminating the moist interior lined with jagged and sparse stalagmites.

From the sides yellow talons began to jut out, followed by fingers whittled to almost bone with a near translucent husk wrought with distended veins and joints swollen to amorphous balls. The hands stretched out and covered the face and rubbed it and flakes of dead skin fell like dirty snow. Cale called for the boy, visibly nervous, to meet formally the disheveled entity. "This", he said, "is the oldest and wisest man in all the world." He put his hand on the boy's back and coaxed him forward.

"Hullo sir." He greeted him with the respect of a frightened great-grandson but he could only think of the elder with disgust. Surely this was not the great and mighty one who'd whisk him back home as he imagined. Not this foul-smelling reprobate with but a finger left hooked to life. Not him.

The elder licked his lips and attempted to spout words with a voice dry and raw as a wasteland. "... I.... I....." His opaque eyes wandered. "...I s-saw you coming Cale. I-In my s-slumber... But not him." A talon pointed at the boy. "Wh-who is this?"

"This is Gavin", Cale spoke for the boy. "He washed ashore. We found him in the forest. Or rather, he found us."

"Yes", the old man said in recognition. "H-he is familiar to me. That name. C-come here child." The elder grabbed him and put one arthritic hand on his forehead. Gavin tried not to breathe in the stench of the man and moved as little as he could. The ancient bowed his head and shut his eyes with the withered fingers still on the boy and slumped motionless for so long that Gavin thought he could have died right there. Leaning against the cave wall behind them, Cale observed pensively. Tension rose. Without lifting his head the elder took his paw off the child. "Th-this boy..." he rasped. "He is armed?"

"He had a rusty old sword with him." Cale said in confusion. "He found it."

"Let him tell me", said the elder. "Did you find a weapon, son?"

"Yessir." The boy's voice was pinched with his nerves.

"Let me touch it."

Gavin removed the arm from its leafy sling and unraveled the cords from it and presented it to the man who used his hands to find it. Caressing the hilt and lightly tapping the blade, he smiled a bit to himself. He laid it across his folded legs. "Where is your home?", he asked.

"Not here."

"And what happened to it?"

The fires burned in his memory. Phantom invaders marching. Windows shattering. "It... it was attacked", he said.

"Yes... I see it. It has marked you. It was war that brought you here and I fear it is for war that you stay."

"Y-you mean I can't go home?"

"No... You cannot leave now. You are here for a far greater purpose. As long as I've lived I have only dreamt of this. Of you. So much time spent clamoring about in the dark. Searching for a ray of light. And now... here you are."

"What are you saying?" Cale took a step forward.

"... Can you not see it?" The elder sounded disappointed.

"You are scaring him."

"Perhaps, but it is the truth. I have foreseen it. I know you have felt it too. You know who he is."

"He is only a child."

"Do not be a fool! Do not blind yourself to the miracle."

"I am not blind. You are."

"Mind your tongue, old friend. You do not want to believe but you cannot ignore it. Do you think it was chance that he came here and met you? That he found the sword? Or that he even survived at all? No. 'Twas fate. And you are apart of it now." He spoke with a straightened vigor that seemed to lift years off of him, no longer did he gasp with senility.

"And what would you have me do? Abandon my home and take him-" He stopped before admitting it. The silence told it instead.

The boy stood in the middle of the crossfire. He thought of so many questions but no words would come to ask them.

"Gavin", the ancient said. "You must hear me and try to understand. This world suffers an evil. A stain of death. Once there was one who came here possessing of great power. He used that power to lead and amassed a following. He held sway over many, including the principalities of the day. They called him high and terrible. They feared him. No one would oppose him... Until he appeared. A heroic figure who wielded a mighty weapon and with it rose to unite the people against the enemy. For years the land was rife with conflict. In the end the destroyer was pushed back and cut down by him. The bloodshed was over."

"Who was he?" The boy asked in wonder.

"Legend and myth surround him now. Some say he descended from the heavens on the backs of angels. Others say he was the brother of the cursed one. But when it was finished he was gone, leaving nothing behind save the sword. There are many now who scarcely believe he or his adversary were real at all."

"Did you know him?"

"My memory is faded. The tales they've told and the man himself have become one and the same. But I did see him. When I was a much younger man. I remember him touching my shoulder..." His voiced weakened as though he'd forgotten what he was saying. "... Th-they said he would return. So did I. We all believed in it so. That if the great deceiver were ever to show himself again he would come back and claim the sword." He lifted the piece of garbage with both hands. "This sword."

"B-but he was defeated." The boy was transfixed. Cale turned his back and sulked by the bookshelf.

"Yes. As much as one so powerful can be. Both of them left as suddenly as they arrived. But the memory of the battle never left. It was a dark cloud always present. Coming and going with the ages. Whispered fear that he was still there. Somehow... Now I know it was no fear. It was truth. Rumors of war and death are abounding in the land as they did then... But our hope has come back. It is you."

The child said nothing. He heard what the man said but could give no thought to what he meant. He could think only of the words themselves and their impossible relation to him. The hoarse creature's enunciation attempting to weave a vibrant tapestry around him. He could could barely look at it, let alone comprehend. It was an alien tongue to him. A mystery without an answer. If only it wasn't for him. Then he could fathom the storied beauty of it all. He looked up to see the elder sheathing the sword in a cracked leather scabbard and handing it to him. "Let no one take it from you", he said. "No one. It is yours forever."

Cale approached with the heaviness and sullen disposition of a pallbearer. He patted his hand on the boy's shoulder as if to offer condolences. "Have you anything to say?", the elder asked him.

"I... I have no choice, do I."

"It was for this purpose that you were ever born at all."

"What am I to do?"

"Guide and protect him with your life. Until the end. Your people will be safe. I'll see to it."

Still cradling the weapon, the boy looked at Cale. "What are we doing?" He asked.

"We're taking a journey. To face our enemy."

"I'm supposed to-"

"You must destroy him", the old man interjected. "As surely as you live so does he. You must go to the wastelands where he dwells and end him for all. Only you can do this."

"I don't wanna kill anybody."

"If you do not he will conquer this land. So many more will die if he is allowed to live. He is evil."

"So I would be saving people?"

"Indeed, my son. More than you could ever know."

"And after I do it, can I go home then?"

The elder paused. Cale shot a narrow glance toward him. "... Yes", he said. "When it is over... your home will find you again."

He reached for a knobby and curved walking stick leaning against his mat and began shifting the lower part of his body. Concussive pops and cracks of the ancient's joints moving under the dingy shroud followed him as he braced the stick and hoisted himself up and hobbled over to a beaming hole in the wall. He whistled a scratchy call and a bird appeared of a pale blue color like his rags. He spoke to it some muffled commandment and it dashed away through the rays of light. "Go to the northernmost forest", he said. "The beings there will aid you. You remember the way?"

"Yes", said Cale.

"There you will find the old maps and routes. They've kept hidden there."

"They won't trust us. Even with your word."

"Give this to their leader. He will know its worth." One of his hands let loose of the stick and straightened out before Cale and clenched itself under the frayed sleeve. When he opened his hand an alabaster stone with a black mark was in his palm attached to a silver chain. Cale took the stone and put it around his neck.

"You're not coming with us?" The boy asked.

"No, my boy. I believe the road is no longer fit for me. I shall remain here and watch over this place. But you musn't be afraid. Know that my confidence goes with you. You've given me new purpose."

He shuffled over to an indention in the cave wall and pressed his hand on it. Though he put no real force behind his push the indent fell through and opened a short tunnel back to the outside. "Here", he said. "This is the way out."

"You cannot spare us any supplies?" asked Cale.

"You will find aid where you're going. Move swiftly. They will be looking for him as the enemy moves."

"Who?"

"Everyone. Tell no one of him or his mission. Stay hidden. Do you understand?"

"I do." Cale said. He went to the opening and waited for the boy to ready himself.

"You can accomplish it. You will."

The old man stood inert as the boy put the sword and his bag on his back. Gavin started toward the opening and without warning felt a jolt through his body from the bony, antiquated hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see two gray marbles leaking tears in a half-crazed anarchic mess of hair. "Go now", the elder croaked.
"It is a glorious day. For I know now I will live to see your triumph." The boy walked out of the chamber with those dusty words echoing in the cave and in his mind.