Jesse Hajicek

Index post: http://www.livejournal.com/users/gomichan/185409.html




He swam in and out of consciousness while things happened around him. There was talking, but he couldn't make the words make sense. Someone messed with his head; he wasn't sure whether it was Ynyr or blue-guy, because he saw both faces over him in turns. One of them wanted to shave off some of his hair to get at a cut, and the other argued against it, but he didn't know who held which opinion. He tried to explain that he didn't give a flying fuck about his hair but no one was touching any open wounds of his without washing their damn hands in gasoline or something. Later he wasn't sure whether he'd said it or just dreamed it, but his head was bandaged and hurt a lot less.

A delicious smell finally brought him around. He lay with his eyes closed, trying to identify it. Bacon? Not quite. Hot dogs? No, of course it wasn't hot dogs. No hot dogs here. No pizza, no sushi, no egg rolls. No breakfast cereal. No chocolate milk. No chili, no tacos. Their beer's probably not even carbonated.

Oh god, no coffee! I'm gonna die.


Groaning, he pushed himself up on one elbow to see what there was in this silly world that could possibly smell that good.

It was still daytime, still overcast. Ynyr and Blueface were glaring warily at each other across a small campfire. Roasting over the fire, with its head still attached, was a pig the size of a chicken. The rest of the cavemen were gone.

"Hey," James said.

Their eyes shifted to him. Ynyr tried to smile, but since he also seemed to be trying to send James psychic rays about not mentioning the crowbar incident, his expression turned out kind of strange. Blueface just stared.

"I wouldn't mind trying some of that." James indicated the little pig.

"It is for you," Blueface said. "Tarlach's hound tells me you could not hunt even if you were well." He seemed to take a quiet pleasure in the annoyed look the phrase 'Tarlach's hound' brought to Ynyr's face.

"I probably couldn't. Not unless you boys have a gun I could borrow, and those stone spearheads were just for show."

Blueface looked blank.

"Yeah," James concluded, and crawled over to the fire. "So, Ynyr. Just how much of my stuff did you bring?"

"I made a bundle of your coat so I could bring the crowbar and bowl cutter. I brought the light and some circles of music I found in your car. You will be pleased to hear I also brought your instrument."

James gave an incredulous little laugh. "They said you were carrying me."

"Yes. I dragged the rest."

"Uh-huh." Must be a lot stronger than he looks, and thank god I have an anvil case. "What the hell did you bring all that crap for?"

Ynyr looked a little hurt. "I thought you might want it?"

"Aside from the crowbar, which might make a decent weapon, it's all useless. Discs won't make music without a player. Guitar won't make music without an amp. Flashlight might be handy for a little while, until the batteries run out. What the hell are we gonna do with a bolt cutter? Got any bolts here that need cutting?" He snorted. "As for me, well, we can discuss my presence later."

Ynyr just repeated, "Bolt cutter. That makes more sense."

Blueface, watching their conversation with half a smile, took the little pig off the spit and started carving it up.

"Just tell me," James blurted, "is there any chance of my going home?"

"Oh, there's certainly a chance."

"Now?"

"No."

"Soon?"

"No."

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Still, it make his stomach hurt, hearing it confirmed. At least he hadn't said never. "So how does it work?"

"Tarlach can surely open a way. His iron-magics are far stronger than mine."

"This Tarlach guy is your boss?"

Ynyr winced. "No. In point of fact, I am his boss. I cannot comprehend why everyone is so reluctant to recognize that."

"So you'll tell him to send me home, and he'll do it."

"We shall endeavor to make it so."

"That's an evasive answer if I ever heard one," James said sullenly, but Ynyr's look told him not to push.

Blueface handed him a long knife with a chunk of pork on it. There was salt sprinkled on it so heavily that it glittered in places. The caveman was salting his own portion with pinches taken from a leather bag; he was a lot more sparing with his. James opened his mouth to ask to trade portions, but then he remembered about cultures where salt was used as currency. The guy might be trying to do him honor. It might be really mean to reject it or wipe the salt off.

Might even be sacrilege, punishable by pointy-rock-poking.

"Can I have some water?" he asked politely, resigning himself to a meal of pork-flavored salt. Blueface nudged a gourd toward him with his toe.

Ynyr didn't eat; there was nothing to be had but meat. James wondered if that was some kind of statement on Blueface's part. The pork had a strong taste, not very porklike -- almost like buffalo, in fact. Wild, maybe? The salt wasn't as bad as he'd thought it would be. His body was craving it or something. Only when he was licking the last juice off the knife did he realize that the knife wasn't flint.

In fact, it looked a lot like a bayonet.

He used the tail of his shirt to clean off some of the crusted dirt from the part of the blade near the hilt. He found the word 'REMINGTON' stamped in a little circle, and the number 1913.

"Hey," he breathed, almost laughing at the coincidence -- was it a coincidence? -- of finding something he'd recently obsessed on, here where it didn't make any sense to find it.

Ynyr raised an eyebrow. "It's a beautiful weapon. No doubt an heirloom. Please keep it well away from me."

James looked at Blueface to find the man watching him intently. "Hey," James said again. He offered the bayonet back, but the man made no move to take it.

"Do you know what that is?" Blueface said.

"It's the bayonet from a World War One Lee-Enfield rifle. I almost got one on Ebay for eighty bucks, but I had to fix my car instead. That one was in way better shape than this. Don't you take care of it?"

They both stared at him. Blueface looked impressed. Ynyr looked embarrassed for him.

"What I'm wondering," James said to Ynyr, "is how it got here. You folks make a habit of importing weaponry from the Winterlands? Is there some kind of arms trade going on? Because if people are going to be pointing spears at me a lot, I'd sure like to have the rifle this came off of."

"It was my many-times-great grandfather's," Blueface said. "When my people came to this world, we had many weapons, but over time they were stolen or lost or destroyed. Only this one remains."

"Would that you had a weapon worthy of you," Ynyr said to James, rather stiffly. "But you will have to make do with what I can obtain."

"You think I'll be around here long enough to need one?" James asked nervously. Getting no answer, he offered the knife to Blueface again. "Look, take your bayonet back, I don't know what you were testing me about but it's yours."

"I will trade it to you," Blueface said. He pointed to the crowbar, still sitting in the tromped-down grass near where James had awakened. "You knew its name, which I had nearly forgotten. Bayonet should belong to you."

"You serious?"

"Perfectly. Bayonet cannot be destroyed, not even for the greater good; it has too much history. It has a name. But your bar of iron, well, that would make many arrowheads."

Ynyr stood up suddenly. "James, come. We must be gone. There's no time to buy and sell."

James snorted at him. "What crawled up your ass? It's my crowbar, I can trade it if I want to."

"You have no authority here, Tarlach's hound," Blueface said serenely. "Whatever your kind do to prevent us from getting iron, you may not intervene in the dealings between man and man." When this brought no argument from Ynyr, Blueface turned back to James and stuck out his hand. "I am the Smith of my tribe. My name is Frank Schmidt."

Frank Schmidt? You gotta be kidding me. But James managed to keep a straight face while he shook the man's filthy hand. "James Carver. I'm from Minneapolis."

Ynyr didn't seem to think this was impressive enough, because he added in a pompous tone, "Where the Old Man's River passes Still Water."

James glanced at him. "Yeah, whatever. You still have the sheath for this, Frank?"

"I do. You agree to the trade?"

"Knock yourself out. I mean," he corrected when that didn't seem to go over right, "sure, go ahead, it's a fair trade."

Blueface Frank handed over the sheath for the bayonet and took the crowbar. He turned the tool reverently over in his hands, no doubt imagining how many arrowheads he could make with the steel. James started scraping the crust of ages off his purchase with his thumbnail. It was stubborn filth; he wanted his buck knife for this.

"Ynyr, where's my jacket?"

"I dropped it when I first sensed the humans following us. I thought they might be distracted by it and leave us alone."

"Where?"

Ynyr pointed in the direction the running-water noises were coming from.

"Go get it," James told him.

The elf looked shocked. "You may be accustomed to giving orders in your own home, but --"

"You owe me. You want to discuss why you owe me right now?"

Ynyr glanced at Blueface Frank. He shook his head. He trotted off into the woods.

Once he was gone, Frank chuckled. "I think there's more to you than meets the eye, Carver."

James plopped down again, raising an eyebrow. "You all of a sudden sound a lot more normal."

"Oh, we talk like they do when they're around. And we don't tell everything we know, either. For instance, we'll spread a rumor about you like he wants us to, and we'll pass on that bullshit about the Old Man's River and Still Water, because they listen for that kind of thing. But amongst ourselves we'll say Minneapolis. One of our ancestors came from that city. And I sure as hell know what a damned crowbar is. Why's he trying to make you out to be some kind of great warrior?"

"I don't know, and it makes me nervous. So this whole caveman thing is an act?"

"We don't live in caves," Frank said, baffled.

"I mean, the smelly furs, and the mud, and --"

"This is how our warriors distinguish themselves from other people. We're feared by humans and Bloods alike. We are the tallest and the strongest and the fiercest of all men of Iron." He said this proudly, but then his voice dropped a notch. "But the lore passed down from father to son tells us of a time when we lived in the Winterlands, and possessed weapons that could destroy armies in the blink of an eye. Is it true, do weapons that powerful exist?"

World War One... they must've been talking about machine guns. And artillery, and those rail-mounted mortars that could launch a shell seven miles... yes, of course that would turn into a legend. "Uh... yeah. Problem is, when both sides have those weapons..."

"I know. Our forefathers told stories of the most terrible war ever fought. They were lured to this place by a promise of peace. And peace we could have, but at a high price. Rather than be slaves, we choose to live like animals."

"The most terrible war..." James looked at the bayonet again. Someone had fought with this. Some soldier. And then come here rather than face what had become of his world. "There was a worse one after that," he said hollowly. "At least one worse one, depending on how you count worse."

"Really?" Frank looked more intrigued than horrified.

James didn't feel like giving him a history lesson. "So this was your great-grandfather's."

"Many times great. Ten generations have passed since our forefathers came here."

"Ten?" James did the math in his head, then frowned and did it again. He couldn't make it line up. "But that was only ninety years ago."

"We don't have the knack of counting years; that magic, only the Bloods have."

"Oh. No seasons? Ynyr thought it was always winter at home... well, but... ten generations? You sure?"

"Of course I'm sure," Frank said sharply. "Now I have a question for you. What are you truly? Anyone but a fool can see you're not a slave. You're taller even than we are; the enslaved ones are tiny. You really are fresh from the Winterlands, I don't question that. I just want to know why you were brought here."

"I wish I knew," James said.

A crashing in the undergrowth made Frank lay a hand on his spear, but it was only Ynyr, lumbering along with James's guitar case in hand and James's jacket gingerly held by the lining. He dropped both items beside James with a barely concealed sigh of relief. "We truly must go," he said sternly.

"Where?"

"To Tarlach's keep."

"Which is how far?"

"Please, James. We've wasted enough time here."

Sighing, James got up and put his jacket on. He found the yellow plastic flashlight in the inside pocket. It was turned off, and when he checked it the batteries seemed fine. He used the carabiner from his keychain to attach the bayonet sheath to the waist strap of his jacket. "Where's the bolt cutter?"

"You said it was useless," Ynyr protested.

"Yeah. It's useless. Fine. Maybe Frank's folks can get some use out of it. Still over there?"

"Yes. Take your instrument case and --"

"You carry it."

Ynyr's mouth clamped shut and his lips went bloodless.

"Hey, I took a pretty serious blow to the head. I shouldn't be carrying heavy stuff. Which way are we going?" He watched Ynyr's eyes, and started in the direction they flicked. "Bye, Frank. Good luck with that crowbar. You'll wanna forge it as hot as you can get it, and watch out for it turning brittle, that type of steel doesn't handle reheating well. Later."

"Wait!" Frank called after him. "You're a Smith?"

"Engineering student, actually," James countered, and waved over his shoulder. "Bye!"

He didn't make it far before Ynyr caught up with him. The elf was obviously steaming mad, but he didn't say a word for quite some time. He forged ahead, following some path James couldn't see -- or maybe just cutting cross-country like an idiot. James didn't try very hard to keep up. Obviously Ynyr wanted him here badly enough to commit sacrilege, so the elf wasn't going to let his pet human get lost in the woods. Besides, his head was hurting again. He probed at the bandage, and found a big nasty lump on the left side of his head a couple inches above his ear. It throbbed dully with every step.

They walked through the woods for hours. The trees were mostly ancient oaks, and there was very little undergrowth. Just moss and thin grass and the occasional patch of flowers or berry brambles. Those brambles were interesting; they had flowers and fruit at all stages of development. James picked a raspberry to look at, sniffed it, considered eating it... thought of stories where if you ate something in Fairyland you had to stay... wondered if that was just a warping of the Persephone myth... remembered that the pig had come from around here too, even if a human had given it to him, and popped the raspberry in his mouth. It was sour.

The clouds thickened overhead as time went on, and the air began to smell of rain. His feet went past tired to numb, and his stomach knotted up with hunger; the pig had been a long time ago now. He wished he'd thought to ask for a doggie bag. It started to drizzle. Still they trudged on.

The character of the wood began to change. There was less grass and more moss, and pools of stagnant water steamed slightly in little clearings. Vines and moss draped the vast oaks. The brambles were more thorn than fruit. Roses, oddly, began to make an increasingly frequent appearance; climbing roses with long, vicious thorns, their blossoms in shades of creamy green-white or deep blood-red. He was sure he saw something surface in one of the pools, something far too big for a little pond like that, but when he looked again he couldn't even find the pool, let alone the thing that had breached its surface.

Thunder rolled overhead. It was distant and intermittent at first, but gradually the air cooled and the thunder became constant. He saw a dead tree here and there, and the next time he emerged from his thoughts he discovered he was seeing more dead wood than live. The sky turned purple, so that he thought night was falling, but it didn't get any darker than that.

He finally broke the silence. "When are we going to stop for the night, Yn--"

"Hsst!" Ynyr snapped around to glare back at him, and James found he couldn't speak.

He tried. He could open his mouth, and he could make sounds, but they got tangled and choked him. He stopped, hand to head, beginning to panic.

Ynyr walked a few more steps, then turned again to roll his eyes at James. "No, your brains aren't scrambled. It's a spell. One must be very careful what one says here. Now come. Only a little longer, but we must not stop." Beckoning urgently, he set out again.

James considered balking. He was so tired that the wet black tree roots and slimy moss were looking like a nice place to curl up for a nap. But he supposed a creature as lazy as Ynyr wouldn't be pushing the pace this hard unless there was a reason for it. He sighed, and forced himself to walk again.

It wasn't much longer before the sky opened up and icy rain poured down.

Still they trudged onward, through what had become more swamp than forest. The rain fell so thickly it was hard to see more than a dozen yards in any direction. James zipped up his jacket and turned up the collar, but he still got soaked to the skin. His jeans stuck to his legs and made every step an extra effort. He could feel his socks slowly getting wetter and squishier inside his boots as rivulets ran down in there from his legs. There was a cold streak down his back where his hair was dripping inside his collar. His nose was numb. The bandage on his head got heavy and started to sag; eventually he got tired of pushing it back, and let it rest on the corner of his glasses and push them skewed; not as if he could see anyway, what with the rain sheeting down the lenses.

And then, suddenly, they stopped.

James struggled up beside Ynyr to see what the holdup was, and found that what he'd taken for a line of greenery was actually a vine-clad wall of blue-black stone. Ynyr handed him his guitar case, and this time James didn't argue. Ynyr pressed his palms against the wall, then, little by little, his whole body, until he was welded to the stone as if to a lover, whispering softly to it with his eyes closed.

It seemed to soften beneath his hands like ice cream. First his hands sank gradually into shallow depressions, and then it bowed beneath his body like a heavy curtain. Finally, it melted aside, leaving a hole: the entrance to a tunnel.

"That little yellow torch would be useful now," Ynyr said, dusting his hands off.

James got it out and shone it down the tunnel. The walls of it were smooth, organic looking, and quite dry. He wasn't fond of enclosed spaces, but getting out of the downpour was delightful. It was warmer in here, too. Not that he was happy about the way the entrance closed itself behind them with a sucking, grinding sound.

He couldn't guess how long they spent in the tunnel, but by the time he saw a light that wasn't his flashlight, his vision was swooping and veering with fatigue. He could hardly put one foot in front of the other. Ynyr, far from looking tired, was having obvious trouble holding himself back. Finally, when the light was close enough to reveal itself as a door onto a paved yard, Ynyr gave up waiting for James, and ran.

James shut off the flashlight and put it away. He took a deep breath, shifted his grip on the guitar case, and forced himself to walk that last little distance.

He emerged into a rain-drenched courtyard between a high, towered wall and a building that looked like someone had tried to stuff a skyscraper in a garbage disposal. A pair of arched doors at least fifteen feet tall stood open to warm yellow light, and just before them stood a white-haired man dressed in black. Ynyr rushed toward this man, then slowed to a more dignified pace just before reaching him. James thought Ynyr would embrace the man, but instead he stopped at a formal distance and inclined his head slightly. The man bowed back, a little lower.

"My lord, it would have been wise of me to give up hope, but I could not," the man said in a voice that was deep, musical, and choked with emotion.

"I cannot abandon our cause until the war is won, though the whole width of the Lands of Iron bar my way." Ynyr sounded, to James's surprise, as if he were about to burst into tears.

"We will celebrate your return as if it were the birthday of the world. But I think, my lord, you would prefer to rest first."

"I would, General. Thank you."

James was now close enough to see that the man was another elf. His hair wasn't white, but a very pale blue, and his skin was the translucent bluish-white of Chinese porcelain. He was impossibly beautiful, but in a chilly, inhuman way that, however perfect, wasn't attractive at all. His clothing was dark blue, soaked through so it looked black. His blue eyes were fixed on Ynyr's face like the whole rest of the world had vanished, and Ynyr was gazing up at him just as fixedly. Obviously it was taking all the strength they had not to throw themselves on each other and bawl like babies. James wondered who the show of restraint was for; he couldn't see anyone else around.

He came up beside them, but they still didn't seem to see him. He dared to go a little past them, out of the rain, and look inside. He saw a Gothic-arched hallway of the same bluish stone, paved with slate tiles. It ended in a stair. He looked back at Ynyr and the blue elf he'd called General, but they were still busy staring at each other. He cleared his throat.

"My home is your home, Child of Iron," the blue-white fellow said without taking his eyes from Ynyr's face. "We will speak later." He crooked his arm. Ynyr rested shaking fingers lightly on his wrist. Together they swept past James, down the hall and up the stairs.

James forlornly watched them go. When they were out of sight, he said to the empty air, "You could at least give me directions to the kitchen."

After a little while he sighed, picked up his guitar case -- which weighed at least two tons now -- and lurched off down the hall. Just before the stair, he discovered an open doorway that led into a room with a crackling fire and a rug. He barely glanced around to check that he was alone, then sprawled out on the rug and went to sleep.