The Three Feathers - The Magnificent Journey of Joshua Aylong (11 page)

“Who are you?” The question suddenly flooded Joshua’s mind and for an instant didn’t leave room for anything else. Grey barked at the turtle, his teeth bared and his neck coat standing up.

“So sorry,” the turtle’s thoughts, now much quieter, reached them. Grey shook himself and calmed down a bit, still not quite sure what to make of this.

“I am thinking too loud. When I slept, it… I remember now… it was hard to be heard by… the others so I had to yell. I think. My apologies.”

The turtle, whose massive head was still only two feet away from them, seemed to sniff them rather thoroughly.

“You could use a bath,” she thought to the wolf. “And you,” her head came down to Joshua’s level looking straight into his eyes, only inches away from him. “You smell like adventure… But wait. You must forgive me. I can’t seem to remember much of what happened, if anything. Ohhh..”

With that she slumped to the ground, creating a large dust cloud. Joshua had to turn away and for a few seconds he wasn’t able to breathe. Next to him he heard Grey sneeze several times.

“So sorry, my young fellows. I’m still a bit weak in the knees… It’s all somewhat hazy, you know. I must have slept… for a… very… long… time.” She yawned. As she breathed out with a sigh, the wind generated from it made Joshua’s feathers bend back. Grey’s coat got a good airing out. So much so that he shook himself several times, while sneezing again profusely.

“I am Joshua. And this is my friend. His name is Grey. By circumstances we cannot explain we fell… from far up at the surface and somehow we ended up down here. Up there we got separated from another companion. His name is Krieg. He is possibly still there where we had freed a Pegasus from the stone before the plateau we stood on, broke off.”

There was a pause during which the turtle’s head swayed from left to right.

“What did you say?” The turtle asked. Joshua could sense her effort to control the volume of her thoughts.

“I said that I am Joshua. And this is my friend…”

“No. I meant… after… at the end…”

“Uhm… I mentioned my companion Krieg. He is a war horse and—”

“Pegasus. Did you say ‘Pegasus’?” The turtle’s thoughts were now just a whisper.

“Yes,” Joshua couldn’t help but whisper back to her.

“Ahh… I forgot most of what happened but it seemed to have some significance. I’m sorry. I’m not much help to you I guess. It will come to me. Give it a few years and I’ll be back to my old self. But for now…,” the turtle lifted her massive body off the ground again, which caused more loose earth and rocks to break off.

“…I may require some water and must make my way to the Lake of Tears. For nowhere, and I mean NOWHERE, will you find better tasting water than there. And nowhere is it clearer and colder. And nowhere can you dive deeper and still never reach the bottom.”

While the turtle turned around, which wasn’t a small task given her size and weight and her massive shell getting stuck in the hills that surrounded her, the melody Joshua and Grey had heard before, continued in the background going from clear high notes to a deep, low humming and then back up again.

“Can we come with you?” Joshua asked suddenly, surprised over his own question.

“Certainly,” was her even more surprising answer. “It might take me a while though. Not sure how long you can wait. I don’t move very fast, as you may have noticed, as long as I’m on land. But give me water. Give me deep, fresh water. And you will see me move faster than anything in there. But you probably want to reach your destination sooner rather than later, am I right?”

“To be perfectly honest,” Joshua replied, “we don’t even know where to go from here.”

“Ah,” she answered, as she turned some more until Joshua and the wolf were suddenly looking at her rear. They glanced at each other, Grey smiling in his thoughts.

“Come on,” Grey thought to Joshua as he jumped up the side of the hill and leaped down on the other side. Joshua flew up and onto the back of the large turtle. From there he flew down to stand before her again.

“If you would be so kind as to tell us which direction to go, we will be on our way,” Joshua told her in his thoughts.

“The direction depends entirely on where you want to end up,” she answered.

“I’m not sure,” Joshua replied, “but I think we need to get into the mountain.

“Porte Des Lioness,” the turtle answered. “There is an ancient entrance. Or at least there was… But you cannot find it, no. Nobody can. The glass is cracked. O I don’t remember. But you must look. And wait. And wait.”

“I don’t understand. But maybe you can tell us where to go from here.”

“Yes. I can certainly do that, my young friend. If you take this road for a while, you will come to a point where you can see a tower in the distance. Or maybe you will only see the upper most tip of it. That tower is Refuge. It stands on the edge of the great falls in the center of the Lake of Tears.

“Refuge?” Joshua asked.

“Yes,” the turtle replied. “It is… a refuge. Nothing more. Nothing less. Oh… I think I… I just remembered something… Hmm… No. Sorry. It’s not… It’s not coming back that fast. I forgot again.”

“Do you remember what it is a refuge from?” Joshua asked.

“No… YES! Wait.” The turtle closed her huge eyes. Her head swayed back and forth, the melody continuing in the background.

“OH YES!… Sorry, too loud again.” And she continued with a whisper, “It is because it usually gets very cold there suddenly.”

“What do you mean?” Joshua asked.

“I recall a deep freeze that happens four times a year. It lasts for six hours more or less during which everything that is outside dies. You must be inside and all the way at the top of the tower… Nothing can survive being exposed to those temperatures…. I think…. Or maybe that was a dream I had. I’m really sorry I don’t seem to make much sense, do I.”

“It’s okay,” Joshua thought to her. “Thank you anyway.

“You are quite welcome, my young friend,” the turtle looked at Joshua for a moment, than her head moved towards Grey.

“And you, gray one,” she looked straight at the wolf. “Do not be saddened. Your companion’s pain left her long ago and she is roaming the ancient hunting grounds free and much contented. Your memory has stayed with her and has not left her for a single moment since. Do not deny her presence within you for if you do, she died in vain.”

When Joshua looked at Grey he saw that the wolf was stunned by what the turtle had just told him. Then the sense of relief flooding through Grey was so big that even the turtle was infected by it. Joshua was sure her laughter could be heard for miles and miles so loud were her thoughts of joy over the wolf’s expression of his.

“Thank you,” the wolf thought while looking up to the turtle. “I thank you. So much.”

“Go now. For it will take you a good while to get to the Refuge and I can feel the cold coming deep inside my bones.”

Had it become colder already? Joshua thought he had felt a rush of cold air before. Better not to waste any time.

“Farewell my young friends. Good luck on your travels and may I devote a song in your honor?”

“You may,” Joshua answered.

“Two Companions in search of their destiny. I like it.” The turtle closed her eyes, changed the melody into a tune with dramatic overtones.

Joshua and Grey walked away from her and around a bend in the road that lead through the hills. Just as they were about to disappear from her line of sight, Joshua caught a small fading thought.

“…Spiders.”

A blast of cold air reached both of them, ruffling Grey’s coat and Joshua’s feathers.

“Did you hear that?” Joshua asked.

“No. What was it?” The wolf replied.

“I heard the word ‘spiders’.”

“Spiders? Are you sure?” Grey asked.

Whatever was left of the thought faded fast.

“I’m not sure. It probably doesn’t matter.” He left it at that and forgot all about it only a few minutes later.

12.
R
EFUGE

They followed the ancient road leading away from the city of light ruins and toward their next destination of which they knew very little. Both stayed within their own thoughts for the most part. Once Joshua received such a clear and strong image of the wolf’s companion roaming the landscape in the ancient hunting grounds beyond the borders of this world that he could not help thinking about his own journey and the path he had taken. Not in his wildest dreams would he have been able to dream up such an adventure. He had been away from his home for less than a moon and already he had seen things that were outside the realm of experience for most of his kind. The hens and other chickens in his pen lived for their immediate surroundings, their life in the flock and mostly for the food. He could not comprehend how he had ever been satisfied with it. It was as if he did not realize what he had missed until he experienced it firsthand.

On the other side of it, he thought of all the times he had been close to death, how many dangers he had already passed through and how many more most likely awaited him on the remainder of his journey. And the outcome of it was still completely uncertain. Even if he found the feathers, what then? It was hard for him to remember how much they meant to him when they appeared in his dream. One thing was certain: if he hadn’t found Grey and Krieg, he would not have come as far as he did. And even more, the friendship between them was what truly made all this worthwhile. It was more than he could have ever hoped to find.

Joshua was so deep in his thoughts, that he didn’t realize the landscape had changed almost completely in the last two hours. Despite the significantly colder air, the land before them was lush and green. It felt almost tropical. Behind a hill in the distance, the upper part of the Refuge was clearly recognizable as a cylindrical structure reaching high into the sky. The visible upper part was almost completely made of glass.

The path they were on went steadily up hill and was dotted on both sides with large egg shaped boulders. Thick dark green moss grew on them. In between the oddly shaped rocks stood several trees. With their stems broad and short and their thin, long branches thickly layered with moss and algae, their bizarre shapes were reminiscent of extraordinarily large…

“SPIDERS!” Joshua’s thought must have startled the wolf as he, letting out a yelp, jumped to the middle of the path and away from one of the trees. As they both looked at the trees they had to admit that there was a very close resemblance in their shape to actual spiders. Some of the trees were half buried in the ground with only their branches sticking out like thin long legs.

“They look like attack spiders.” Grey’s thought provoked more than mere discomfort in Joshua. In fact, he had to muster a great deal of self control in order not to follow his instincts and begin to run. As they walked past the eerie looking trees and equally disturbing egg shaped boulders, they reached the top of the hill. From here they had an unobstructed view of the Refuge. It was embedded in a magnificent landscape. With the sheer five thousand foot high wall that extended high into the sky as a backdrop, the tower, built into a massive boulder, sat near the center of a large, tear-shaped lake. The sun hitting its surface brought out the deepest cobalt blue that was reflected in the upper part of the tower which was almost completely made of glass. There was a second, similarly shaped lake behind the first one. Joshua saw large openings in the middle of each lake where the water disappeared. The path toward the lake lead through a lush green hilly landscape that was dotted with the now familiar egg shaped boulders interspersed with the strangely shaped trees. In the distance, where the land met the massive walls of Hollow’s Gate, they could see what looked like tongues of ice that had crawled halfway up the sheer cliffs.

As they began their descent into the valley the wind increased, bringing ever colder air from the lakes toward them. The force of the wind gusts was so strong at times, it felt like something was pushing them back, unwilling to let them come closer. When they were half way down the hill, Joshua looked back. What he saw made his skin crawl.

“Look!” He thought quietly to the wolf.

When Grey turned around, he let out a low snarl. The coat around his neck stood up. Joshua could sense utter terror in the wolf. From here, the trees looked even more imposing, like huge spiders that were crawling out of the ground and toward them. But what they didn’t see before when they walked down the hill were the small openings covered by grass and soil from one direction but now visible as holes in the ground. The holes were about six to eight yards in diameter, covering the landscape as far as they could see. There were hundreds of them.

“Joshua,” Grey thought.

“Yes,” Joshua answered.

“We should hurry.” The wolf turned around and began to trot. Joshua had to make an active choice to turn his back to what he was looking at. Fear spread inside his chest as he started to fly and run down the path and toward the lake. The further they came the colder it got. Joshua’s eyes began to tear and when they reached the shore of the lake, he couldn’t feel his talons anymore. They saw a small dam built into the lake that spanned the distance between the shore and the large tower. They had about 300 yards before they reached the large boulder and then up what looked like stairs built into the rock leading to a small platform and a massive door.

Joshua heard the noise when they first stepped onto the stone dam. It was the sound of cracking ice. The lake began to freeze. The cold air suddenly hit them full force. Breathing became difficult for Joshua as they made their way across the narrow dam. He saw the edges of the lake turn into ice and the ice moving in their direction from all sides. The area where the dam met the shore was also already completely iced over and when Joshua turned his head for one second he saw that the ice extended up the hill from where they had come.

And then, suddenly, the sound of the freezing water was overpowered by yet another sound. It was the sound of hundreds and hundreds of feet crawling over a glassy surface, creating a wave of noise of otherworldly proportions coming from behind them. This time it was Grey who turned his head. What he saw was beyond anything he could possibly describe.