The Truth of Things Unseen

The Whole World, Green on Blue, and the Dragons Swirling Silently Above

I lay on my back in amongst the smashed timber. The Sintarael crouched over me, elbows bent, leaning in.

Its face filled my whole world, green as moss, smooth planes and corners, the joints articulated around the neck and shoulders, the cheeks and chin, sharp with layered angles. I felt it looking into me, looking through me, out the back of me. Its gaze travelled over me, assessing the wrists and knees, the pelvis, the eyes. I was an anatomical specimen spread beneath it. It weighed me, deciding what to do first, what would be most aesthetic.

Above, the rag dragons curled in the pale grey-blue, breathless as smoke, shifting and swirling. Churning around and between. Their mouths were ragged lines, their eyes were pale and bright.

My good iron knife was lost somewhere down amongst the mess of fallen branches. The shortbow was strapped to my back beneath me. The knives I had gathered from the boat were stowed in my pack. What could I do with a knife anyway? It was a monarch, a creature of ages. An impossible, perfect thing. I was a toy to it, a momentary diversion. My body was a puzzle to be unpicked. My death was a speck of pigment in the corner of a masterwork.

The flies buzzed about the serried corpses, a whole village full of corpses, impaled on the trunks of broken trees, dead hands reaching for nothing, gripping their wounds, trying to hold themselves together.

I noticed there were several unoccupied tree stumps nearby.

The wall, that had stood forever, that had survived Layonidel and the Shadow war, was broken. Beyond it, like sunlight through clouds, I glimpsed the garden. An outside inside Fen had called it. A broken-off piece of world, no longer bounded, spilling out in a cascade of sunlight and banked up eons.

And still the creature crouched over me, face so close now. I reached up and touched the armoured cheek. Brushed the cheek like a child reaching for its mother. My hand was so small against it. It was the moon, it was the whole world, green on blue, and the dragons swirling silently above. I lay still, calm. Whatever it did to me, I had had this moment. I had touched glory.

Beneath my back, the ground began to shudder. The broken wall began to swell in the place where the gate had been, and then people were coming through. Half a dozen men in dark leather armour. They carried clubs and daggers. They stumbled in the broken timber. They blinked in the sunshine.

The creature crouching over me looked up, and for a second, its gaze left me.

I scrambled and rolled. I crawled beneath it, down the length of its body, through the branches. The splinters sliced into my hands and slid beneath my nails. I kept crawling, down to the legs, out between the feet, and then I was running.

The men had formed a circle, blades out. A wyrm curved down from the blue and snagged one of them by the arm. He began slashing at the tangled feet. The creature dropped him. He fell, tumbling into a pile of sharp branches. I didn't see him get up.

A shadow fell over me. I skipped to one side. A wyrm passed close by me, curling in the air, skidding and jerking its body around for another pass. I changed direction, heading right for the wall.

The green Sintarael seized two men, one in each fist. They writhed like maggots beneath the fisherman. It pulled at them, stretching and twisting, wringing them until they stopped fighting. I heard the small sounds of breaking. Then it flung them away into the forest behind. They sailed over the trees, tumbling, and were lost.

I put my head down and sprinted. An armoured fist slammed down in front of me. I vaulted over it, my toe touched the thumb, and I jumped again, crashing down hard into the tangle. The wyrms were swooping around the men. One of them broke from the group and tried to run. He was lifted up, up into the air, dropped and caught, dropped and caught, then dropped again. A second wyrm passed close, feet like scythes, and his body came apart in the air. A slab of organ meat slapped down next to me like sausages on a block. A spattering rain of blood speckled my forearms.

Still, I ran, looking ahead for the clear path between the trees. The wall was very close now. The breach was a ruined thing, a ridge of broken mirrors. I saw my own face looking back at me a thousand times, a thousand expressions. The other Sintarael still stood sentry. I felt the weight of its gaze fall upon me, it’s head turned to track me, and there was nothing I could do, no possible way I could outrun it. I was an ant, crawling beneath its gaze. All it had to do was reach out and crush me beneath its thumb, but in that moment the clouds parted, and a shaft of sun lanced down, dazzling bright into the clearing. It was illuminated grey-gold in the sun, a goddess from another age, proud and tall, bright as legend. It stood straight, basking in the brilliance. I felt the heat of its gaze leave me, and I passed by.

It was as though the world became patchwork and I thought I saw the shape of the weave. Then I plunged into the breach, and all was broken.

I swam through it, feeling my way, pulling my body through it towards the brightness and the garden, and then I was through, lying on the grass where once Fen had stood over me.

A fool I was to have run from her, to have fled away. Her bright face, shining in the darkness, a mouthful of wine by the fire, her climbing on the rocks, muscles working, shoes and summer dress.

There were bodies everywhere on the grass, stuck with arrows, cut in pieces, broken open, scattered like spilt luggage. In the distance I could see the ship, a shining figure at the rail. The Caer Llandrell was a shattered ruin hidden in a cloud of dust that swirled, and within the cloud, something was stirring.

I opened my pack, picked a dagger, unslung my shortbow and began to sprint, shoulders hunched, fists pumping. The grass snagged at my feet. I felt I was running in a dream, running against a current, as though the world were flowing against me and narrowing before me, as though the world, no longer bounded by the wall, were trickling away, and I were running against it as the light faded.

I was so close.

I was so close.

I was so far away.