The Land of Broken Roads

Socks said, -Do you know what a god is?-

Dirt was too distracted to answer, though, and he stepped back, almost afraid it’d start moving. It was so lifelike he was sure it would, and that made it impossible to look away.

Until he tripped and stumbled backward, falling all splayed out in a big pile of bones and cloth that immediately pulverized and filled the air with thick dust. Then he started coughing and had to get up and move up the stairs to find fresher air, and from there, he didn’t look back again. In the doorway, he pulled the second cord and plunged the area into silent darkness. The smoke from the burning oil lamps going smelled familiar, even though this was the first time he’d encountered it.

He stepped into the corridor and tried to ignore the creeping guilt about leaving that statue there, all alone in the dark. Maybe there was something he could or should have done, but he couldn’t imagine what it might be. It wasn’t a living thing; he didn’t see any minds around except for Socks.

No mind visible in that suffering statue of a god, yet he still felt like it was watching him anyway, begging for relief. Aloud, he muttered, “I’ll come back for you. When I know what to do, I’ll come back. I’m sorry.”

It felt like something important and subtle had changed. Something forgotten had been viewed again, a lost door opened that might have been better left closed. But that was silly. There was nothing moving down there, nothing alive. Not anymore.

Dirt smacked himself in the cheeks a couple times to try and clear his head, and it helped a little. He thought, “Sorry, Socks. I got distracted. But I still have that mana. Which door should I go in?”

-Go in the closest one to the light so we can see it better, in case it doesn’t have lamps like the other place.-

“That’s a good idea. But I bet it’s just full of old bones. I bet they all are.”

-Maybe.-

Socks’ mind showed he was still anxious for his little Dirt, which helped Dirt push the frightful image of the god further out of his mind. If Socks was worried, then Dirt’s job was to cheer up. He sped down the corridor to the first door and said, “Okay, here I go! Let’s see what’s in there.”

Dirt tried the latch and it still wouldn’t budge in the slightest. He surged the mana, strengthening himself from head to toe, and yanked as hard as he could. The latch came away in his hand, tossing him backward far enough to thump his head on the opposite wall.

He laughed, in part because he felt stupid and in part to show Socks he was fine. He got up, rubbing the back of his head. Looking at the latch in his hand, he found a clump of fiddly little bits of decaying metal still attached. When he checked the door again, it swung open easily, creaking loudly on its hinges until they broke. The heavy wooden door toppled clumsily to the ground, just slow enough that Dirt could scamper backward before it fell on him.

The other side of the doorway had a pull-cord for a lamp like the big room and a simple tug was all it took to ignite it. Dirt found that curious, now that he thought about it. He knew that lamps burned oil, and that sparks started the fire, but why were they working when not even the doors did anymore? Maybe oil was like gold, which didn’t seem to decay at all no matter how long it had been.

This was another hallway, not a room, with a series of ornate doors along both sides of its length.

-Wait. Look at that lamp some more. Turn it on and off a couple times. I want to see.-

“Sure!” Dirt looked at the lamp, examining it in more detail. It was enclosed in glass, with a sparker connected to the pull cord—a length of filaments of metal and thread twined together to make a thin rope. The second pull cord pulled a cap over the flame to put it out.

Dirt put out the flame, casting the hall into darkness, and lit it again, watching the sparks dance inside the enclosure. The oil was concealed inside the device, and Dirt didn’t want to break it to show Socks. But he put it out, then lit it again, several more times.

-I think I learned something. Okay. Keep going. Look at that first door.-

Dirt stepped over to the first door on the left, opposite another one on the right. This door was narrower than the ones in the larger corridor, but still about twice his height. It was decorated with a series of rectangles up and down, with circles inside those. In the very center of the door was a metal plaque, which read, O ARMENTARIUS MORTUORUM, GUIDE WELL THE SPIRIT OF CALLIUS EXEGUS NEMETERIUS, A MAGISTRATE AND A SON OF PELATIA, WHO LIES HERE. HE WAS 66 YEARS IN LIFE. HIS HEIR CLOSED THIS DOOR.

-What is that? What are those little things we are looking at?-

Dirt blinked. Of course Socks wouldn’t know how to read. But how come Dirt could? What a silly thing to be able to do, when he couldn’t even remember the name of… of…

A hint of a memory crossed his mind, one of twirling cloth; of long, shining hair, but nothing more. It faded as quickly as it appeared. Had that been a woman, he wondered? Oh well. She was gone now.

“This is called writing. Each symbol represents a different sound, so you can put all the symbols together and the door can talk to you,” thought Dirt. He read the inscription to Socks and said, “There must be an important corpse behind it.”

-Can you teach me to hear the door?-

“Of course, as long as I can remember it all. It’s called reading, and I completely forgot it existed until I saw this just now. That’s happening a lot today. Lamps. Corridors. Rooms. Jewelry. I feel like my mind is wearing out from too many new things,” thought Dirt, making a little joke, but once he said it he realized it was true. This had been an exhausting day.

Dirt looked the door over but found no latch to pull it open. The hinges were on the outside, but no latch. This one must have been intended to stay shut. He ran up to Socks to get another little puff of mana and was pleased that the painful burning lump of power seemed to hurt a little less each time. He processed it quickly and by the time he got back to the door, he was ready. This time, instead of yanking it open, he used the mana to strengthen his hands and rip the hinges away. From there, he could just barely get his fingertips in the gap between door and frame and pull it enough to topple it.

The door clattered noisily to the floor, exposing a small room with a single platform inside just big enough to rest a dead body on. From the inscription, Dirt knew it was an adult man, and now he knew exactly how big adults were.

The skeleton wasn’t wrapped in the same cloth as the ones in the big room further down the hall; it had an ornate tunic of blue with wide embroidery of gold thread along the edges. Swirling patterns and shapes wove together with plants and flowers in a rich, unending design. Much of the blue was darkened and stained, probably from when he still had flesh on him, but it was still terribly impressive.

“Clothing. That’s clothes, Socks. I think humans used to walk around wearing those sometimes.”

-Why?-

“I don’t know, but maybe because we don’t have fur?”

-Is that what you named me after? Something like that?- asked Socks.

“No, look, he doesn’t have socks on. Those go on your feet. And now that you mention it, I wonder how I knew that. I must have really liked them. There aren’t very many things I knew about before I saw them.”

-What is that other thing around his middle?-

Dirt looked again and found a handsome leather strap around the skeleton’s waist, still dark with oil and decorated with crisscrossing lines all across its surface. The leather strap held a knife and sheath on the skeleton’s side, where it’d grab with its right hand if it was alive.

“A knife! Oh, wow! Socks, look at this!”

Dirt grabbed the ivory handle and pulled it from the sheath, exposing metal as clear and bright as the day they put it in there, a foot long and curving up to a graceful point. “This is amazing! I can use this! I can really keep this one. It’s like a little claw of my own!”

-What is it for?-

“This edge here cuts. And the point stabs. So if I run into something that’s, oh, I don’t know, goblin size or smaller, I can fight it and cut it up. Or if I want to eat something but the skin is too tough for my teeth, I can cut it open to get inside and eat the soft parts.”

Dirt pulled the skeleton and fragile tunic apart to get the whole leather belt off, then tested it to see if it would hold up. Somehow, miraculously, it was sturdy enough to use. He slung it over his shoulder, since his waist was way too small to use it as a belt, and sheathed the knife.

He was grinning from ear to ear as he walked back out and up the stairs. Socks grabbed him with his mind and lifted him up, pinning his arms to his sides and licking him. Dirt laughed and squirmed, so Socks licked him one more time, then gave him a puff of mana and set him down.

-Jump up,- he said, wagging his tail.

Dirt processed the mana and immediately strengthened his legs for a jump, landing perfectly on Socks’ back, right above his front legs.

-You are already good at that.-

“Yes, but don’t make me think about it too much, because I did that on instinct and I’ll probably mess up next time.”

Socks found that amusing and Dirt could see him considering grabbing and licking him again. The pup wasn’t hiding his thoughts in the slightest at the moment.

-Is there anything else you want to do here?-

“There’s lots more doors, but we can save those for another time. I’m worn out and we did enough stuff for me today. Let’s do something you want now.”

-I want to take a nap.-

“So do I.”

Socks carried them out of the city, past all the ruined footings of buildings and grass-covered roads, away from all the crumbling old bricks and forgotten places and buried dead. He walked quickly instead of running, a calm, easy pace to soak up more sunlight before he found a comfortable spot to lay down.

They left the plateau city and traveled in the direction of the hills and trails that brought them here, down into the little valleys and short canyons where deer ran, and where Brother’s trail was found.

Socks stopped in a small copse of trees, choked with bushes and tangles of vines, and lay down at its edge, part of his body in the shade.

Dirt climbed around to rest by Socks’ neck, near his shoulder, and curled up in the pup’s soft, poofy fur. He sighed contentedly and closed his eyes. “Socks, make sure I don’t dream about dead gods. I don’t want a nightmare right now.”

-Don’t worry. We will walk the dream together like always. And then when we wake up, I want to figure out how to make fire. Watching the lamp gave me an idea.-