The Land of Broken Roads

Dirt tried counting the goblin minds, but Socks killed them too fast. It seemed every time Dirt made a couple groups of five, Socks killed three or four and Dirt had to start over. The pup was having a great time, jumping from spot to spot and landing claws first. He didn’t even use his mind to rip them apart, preferring to do it directly.

Some he gripped in his teeth and threw high enough that they screamed, inhaled, and screamed again before they landed. Dirt felt the thud in his chest when they hit the ground. Others he gripped and shook violently until they quit moving. His front and back claws were longer and thicker than Dirt’s forearm, and that was plenty to dispatch a goblin.

By the time he was done, his front was bloody from paws to ears, and his hind legs all the way up to his torso. Indeed, there was very little of his darkening gray fur that didn’t sparkle red in the sunlight as he happily trotted back.

Dirt grinned and told him “Now who’s the dirty one! Where are you even going to clean off?”

Socks looked pleased as ever, tongue lolling out and panting from the exercise. He picked up Dirt with his mind and licked him from stomach to eyebrows, leaving him pink with bloody froth. Dirt laughed and twisted in the air, trying uselessly to get away.

-Uh oh. You got messy again. I’ll have to lick you clean,- said Socks.

Dirt squealed as Socks licked him thoroughly, since something about it made Dirt feel more ticklish than normal. “Don’t lick my pants! I just got them!”

-I’m not.-

Dirt kept squirming and trying to shuffle off Socks’ mental grasp, to no avail.

­-It’s more fun when you hate it.-

“I don’t hate it! I love it! Keep going! No, stop!” He laughed so hard he started coughing, and only then did Socks finally set him down.

The humans were too stunned to speak. They looked scared, too, which Dirt found surprising. They were trying to hide it, but Dirt could still tell. But why? What was there to be scared of?

Socks had killed goblins. That was a good thing. And then he’d proven he was friendly by licking Dirt all over. What more could they want? He was tempted to look at their minds again but resolved to figure it out without looking. He’d still have to watch their minds every now and then to keep learning words, but that could wait until they were walking and looking around at everything.

Dirt turned and patted Socks’ nose, never mind the blood. “Don’t fear him. He is my friend. Isn’t he… bonic?” He wanted to say ‘cute’ but the only word he knew that was close was ‘beautiful’.

Hèctor swallowed with a dry throat and said, “Very beautiful. Dirt, pots volar?”

Dirt tilted his head. “Volar?”

“Si, volar. Pots volar?” Hèctor flapped his hands like a bird.

“Volar?” said Dirt, mimicking the motion. “No. I can’t fly. Socks lifted me up. Oh, is that why you are …” He couldn’t think of a fitting word so he stood rigid, eyes wide, trying to look stunned.

He must have looked silly because Ignasi laughed, a throaty, rasping sound that added to his rough charm. “Boys do not fly, in our experience. And wolves are not so big. Però ens hi acostumarem.”

Dirt didn’t catch that last bit, we will something. It was too late to look at his mind and figure out what he meant. But Socks never stopped reading them, apparently, and said, -It means ‘get used to it’.-

“Ah!” said Dirt aloud, nodding. “Si, us acostumareu. Però no puc volar.” Yep, you’ll get used to it. But I can’t fly.

Dirt looked at them, trying to decide if he’d already made a huge mistake. How was he supposed to know what was normal? Did they not have anything where they lived that could lift something with its mind?

After an awkward moment of the human standing there blankly looking at each other unsure how to proceed, Ignasi patted his companions on the back and said, “Come, Marina, Hèctor. Let’s keep going.” The man seemed full of an odd sort of good humor that resonated with Dirt. It felt like the amusement of giving up and letting fate win.

“Through that?” said Marina, pointing at the carnage-filled area just up the canyon.

Ignasi didn’t reply since the answer was obvious. Instead, he gestured to Dirt, urging him forward with a wry, toothy grin behind his beard.

Dirt nodded, readjusting the strap holding the knife sheath under his armpit. He pulled his pants up a little and redid the knot, which was coming loose after being tossed around by Socks.

Then they were off, making their way up the canyon. The fight had taken place in a small, round cavity, a little meadow that looked like part of the mountain had been scooped out to leave a hollow. Socks had made a tremendous mess, one which filled Dirt with admiration. Dozens of goblins had been waiting and now it looked like the area had been painted with them. Bits of innards hung from trees with split corpses underneath. Not a single one remained intact. Many were torn in half at the stomach, connected at surprising distances by thin ropes of entrails. Others were ripped open and then pulled apart, losing arms, legs, or heads in the process. He’d even gone back for the ones he’d thrown into the air, grinding them apart against the ground.

Anything Socks had picked up, he’d shaken violently, flinging blood into even the most surprising places. Under leaves, on the backs of trees somehow. The ground was muddy in places and sticky in others and finding places to step where Dirt wouldn’t get his pants messy was no easy task. The stench of the place was so strong that even Dirt felt the heady rush of too many scents at once. Innards, blood, sweat, feces, rot, fear, and pain, which he was sure he could smell himself.

He grinned widely and told Socks, “It looks like you had fun.”

-I did.-

Marina gagged loudly behind him, trying not to vomit. Dirt turned, confused, to find her and Hèctor looking visibly ill. He glanced at their minds and a wave of nausea hit him. They were so filled with horror and disgust they could hardly walk. Except Ignasi, who was still riding on a rapidly fading wave of good humor. He’d noticed how amused Dirt was and it made him as uncomfortable as the indistinguishable bits of goblin dripping from the trees did.

Dirt was more confused than anything. “Why are you… like that? It is just goblins,” he asked. “Are you not happy they are dead?”

Marina coughed and dry heaved, then closed her eyes and leaned on Hèctor, who fared just as poorly. Ignasi looked pale but collected and said, “This is not an easy sight. I have never seen so much blood.”

Hèctor said, “It’s the smell. The smell is too much.” Talking proved to have been a bad idea and the man gagged and spat out a mouthful of vomit.

Dirt had made another mistake. He should’ve asked if they wanted to go around, and now it was too late. They were in the middle of it and the only way out was forward. But again, how was he supposed to know? It was just blood. They were just goblins.

“Does this help?” asked Dirt. He inhaled a large amount of mana and called up some wind like the dryads had taught him. He waved the staff and made it blow down from higher up the mountain, carrying the scent out of the little divot-meadow and away. “Let’s hurry and then you won’t smell it anymore at all.”

Dirt danced through the carnage to keep his pants clean and led the humans forward while the ever-amused Socks followed behind. He didn’t understand what the problem was any more than Dirt did, but he thought it was funny to find yet another way in which humans were fragile.

The wind helped, though, and Dirt didn’t feel bad in the slightest looking at their minds to know for sure. All three of them were wondering if he’d made the wind, directed it, or simply detected it was about to happen somehow. Despite Socks saving them from having to kill the goblins themselves, the humans were less confident about Dirt than before.

The terrain got rougher after that as they exited the top of the canyon and had to trudge up a steep incline toward the top of the mountain. Dirt decided not to fill his legs with mana and make it easy, out of sympathy for the other humans who didn’t know how. He didn’t want to get too far ahead of them or make another mistake.

Walking straight uphill was not easy, though, and his legs burned. Sweat poured down his face and torso and quickly evaporated in the brightening morning sunlight. Looking back, the humans were having no easier time. Hèctor seemed to be the strongest of them and periodically he helped Marina cross unsure ground or gave Ignasi a hand to pull him up a rock. Dirt hoped they noticed he was tired, too, just like them.

When they finally reached the crest of the mountains, finally able to enjoy the flat terrain between the two closest peaks, everyone but Socks was ready for a break. Dirt wiped sweat from his forehead and chest and licked it, enjoying the salty flavor.

Socks helped him with that by licking him front and back. The big pup liked the salt as well and that was the only place to get any. Then, fortunately for the others, he smelled water and left with a tremendous sudden leap to go find it and wash off. The blood would have worked its way out of his fur over a couple days and in the meantime, Socks enjoyed being smelly. That meant that going to wash it off was an act of consideration, and Dirt resolved to thank him later.

The humans were visibly relieved to have Socks gone, which made Dirt feel slightly affronted. Or maybe just disappointed. But he said nothing. Instead, he smiled and said, “That was hard!”

“We usually like to go around instead of over,” said Ignasi, still breathing heavy.

Marina dropped her pack and sat on it with her head in her hands. Looking at her mind, Dirt saw she still felt sick and couldn’t stop thinking about the gore. He considered trying to nudge her thoughts elsewhere but decided against it. She might notice.

Ignasi and Hèctor sat on either side of her, resting on their own packs, and Dirt found a patch of dry straw to sit on. The three humans drank sips of water from their pouches and breathed deeply. Looking at their minds, they were trying to wash away the memory and quell their own nausea. Marina had it the worst, since the men enjoyed the scenery here more than she did. Up here between the peaks, with the distant mountain ranges and long canyons, the slopes carpeted in pines, the grand distances stretching into eternity in every direction, every sight was wondrous. It invigorated them and filled their hearts with beauty. But not Marina. She didn’t appreciate it in the same way.

“Home,” he asked the staff in his language, “Can you make some sap for Marina? She’s not feeling well.”

But instead of producing it like he expected, the staff made some tiny white threads like the dryads had used to explore his anatomy. The threads pointed toward Marina, pulsing at her. “Oh, you want to take a look at her insides?” he asked, still in his language. Maybe it was a good thing they couldn’t understand it.

The threads pulsed again, almost eagerly. “Okay. But you have to promise not to hurt her or make her feel worse. And don’t snatch her with root travel. The men would be scared, and so would she.”

Dirt stood and stepped politely over to Marina. In their language, he said, “Marina, this wood is part of a big tree. Remember I told you the tree is my friend? The tree wants you to hold this. Will you hold this? Don’t be scared. Nothing bad will happen. I think she wants to help you. She is nice.” He struggled to put so many sentences together, but keeping them all simple helped. He held the staff out for Marina to take.

The poor woman looked up and gave him a withering look of exasperation.

“I am sorry. I know you feel bad inside,” said Dirt. “It makes me sad. I am trying to make you happy.”

“Just hold it, Marina,” said Hèctor, eyes showing more caution than his voice. “Who knows what other surprises he has for us.” He said sorpreses but Dirt was sure it meant surprises.

“I can’t handle any more surprises,” she muttered. But she took the staff and sat back, holding it across her lap.

“Hands… tight,” said Dirt, indicating how he wanted her to grip it. “Good. Yes.”

Dirt watched her mind to try and see what Home was doing, hoping it wouldn’t cause any pain. Marina noticed the pinpricks, but they were so minor she thought her hands were just sore.

Now that he was learning the words so fast, the stream of her thoughts was easier to read than it had been a few days ago. They flew by in a long, endless thread, accompanied by other parts of her mind that gave the words meaning and context.

She wasn’t happy about the boy bothering her right now. She hated the memory of all that gore and couldn’t get rid of it. She couldn’t imagine how anything could cause that much carnage, or how twisted that boy was not to be bothered. She wondered if it was truly the same tower he was leading them to, if that’s really what he was doing, because she was sure she’d have remembered crossing mountains like these and she never did. How long was she supposed to hold this staff? Her fingers were already getting sore and she was getting sicker. She wanted to lie down. And on and on and on. Humans sure had a lot of thoughts.

A tiny puff of dust spurted out of the staff, right toward Marina’s face. Dirt saw it because he was watching, but no one else noticed. Just a puff of pale dust that swirled in the wind and vanished a heartbeat later, but Marina smelled it first. Then Dirt, then the men. A sharp scent, but pleasant.

Her eyes widened. “I feel better all of a sudden,” she said. “What is that? What just happened?”

Dirt sighed with relief that Home hadn’t done something weird. “My friend the tree made you get better.”

“A tree? This bastó?” she asked, still not quite getting it. Staff. That word must mean staff.

“This staff is part of a big tree. She watches everything. She sees the world with me.”

“This is alive?”

“Yes. Sort of. This is part of a tree that is alive. A very old, very big tree.”

The humans thought that over, and the idea didn’t really fit quite right with them. They knew perfectly well what a staff was, and it wasn’t alive, or still part of anything.

Ignasi idly scratched his beard and asked, “How old is the tree?” Dirt looked at his mind and saw that the man was trying to get him to admit to being a fae or a spirit, which made him grin. He quit looking at their minds, sensing he was about to give it away.

“She is ten… ten ten?” Dirt asked.

“Cent?” said Ignasi.

Dirt counted with his fingers. “Ten, ten, ten, ten, ten… ten ten ten ten cent?”

“Si, Cent.” Hundred.

“Cent cent cent cent…” and then Dirt pointed at his pinky finger, the last one.

“Mil.” Thousand.

“She is mil, mil, mil. Three thousand.”

Ignasi nodded sagely. He said, “How old is the wolf?”

Dirt grinned and said, “A hundred days or so. He is still little.”

Ignasi’s eyebrows went up. “Un cadell?” He gestured with his palm low to the ground, indicating something small.

“Si, un cadell. Un cadell petit i bonic,” said Dirt. Yes, a puppy. A cute little puppy.

All three humans jerked at that and looked at him. He didn’t need to read their minds to guess what they were thinking.

Dirt said, “He is a little puppy. He will get much bigger. Much, much bigger.” He smiled inwardly, imagining what they’d think if Father suddenly appeared. They’d probably fall over dead from surprise.

Ignasi nodded, trying to hide his disquiet. He asked, “How old are you?”

Dirt said, “I am only… One, two, three…” he counted on his fingers, not knowing all the numbers.

“Eight,” said Ignasi.

“Yes, eight. But I have only been awake for half of a hundred days. I can’t remember anything before that. I have never met a human before you.”

From their body language, Dirt wasn’t sure any of the three believed him. They tilted their heads back slightly, almost peering at him out of the corner of their eyes. It was subtle, but it was there. Dirt suspected that he could tell because he’d been practicing watching Socks, whose emotional cues were even more subtle.

He tried not to show that their disbelief hurt him, but that little clump of sad regret was growing, becoming truer by the hour. What if no humans ever accepted him? He loved the dryads and wolves, but it stung to be rejected by his own kind.

He asked Home for sap again and this time she produced it. The humans turned it down for reasons they didn’t feel like giving, and which Dirt understood without being able to explain.

But despite having so much happening already, it was still morning and there was plenty more walking to go. Looking down the other side of the mountain they were on, they would have to cross deep down into a gulch and then right back up another mountain just as big. How many more after that, he couldn’t tell. Socks’ swift legs could swallow such a journey in a matter of minutes, but it’d take half the day on human feet.

He stretched and said, “Water?” He held the staff forward and the humans let Home refill their waterskins. Hèctor even said ‘thank you’ to Home and did a fair job of not looking like he felt silly doing it. Dirt hoped that was a good sign.

Halfway down the mountain, Dirt got tired of going around the brush and started making it move instead, bending it all out of the way like he did with the ferns. He didn’t have a lot of practice with things like bushes and the ideas were different for parts of the plant that weren’t normally flexible, like the solid branches. But it was close enough. The minds of the plants were honest and clear and Dirt figured it out.

The humans discerned what was going on fairly quickly and whispered furiously amongst themselves. Dirt couldn’t resist peeking at their minds for just a tiny second and saw that they were wondering if they needed to run away because they still didn’t know what he was. Ignasi wanted to stay, but Marina and Hèctor were ready to make escape plans. Dirt almost turned around right then and yelled at them, ‘I am a human! Just a human boy!’ But that would have given away that he could read their thoughts or hear like a wolf, and neither of those things would have helped.

His indignation didn’t last long either, because it slid out of him like water off leaves leaving only that growing sense of regret. He was too different from them. They could hardly understand each other. Dirt didn’t even know what they considered normal and the only way to learn was to mess up and get it wrong.

An idea struck him and he turned. “Do you know any…” songs, he wanted to ask, but he didn’t know the word. He hummed a tuneless melody and waved his hands like a little dance until they got the idea.

“Cançons. Música,” said Marina.

“Yes! Music. Do you know any?”

The three of them regarded him nervously, wondering if this was some new trick.

“Please?” he begged. “I have never heard any music. Not even one… cançon.”

“Cançó,” corrected Marina. She had a hint of pity in her face.

“Not even one cançó. Please?” Dirt leaned slightly toward her, pleading. He gripped Home and held her close to his chest. “Please? I am trying to be… normal boy. But my friend is a wolf. I eat bugs. I catch birds and eat with my teeth. I live everywhere.” He gestured all around. “No people. No music. I am the only one. Just me. Please?”

Ignasi grinned slyly behind his beard and whispered, “Maybe we can embruixar him instead.”

Marina almost chuckled, but swallowed it. He could see he was winning her over, and his heart leaped within him.

“Please?” Dirt begged again.

The other two looked at Hèctor, and the man shrugged and cleared his throat.