Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (18 page)

He didn’t cough and sputter as I did, only stared blankly into space with clouded, white irises. My legs kicked under the waves as I tried to move our bodies to shore. Slowly, we inched closer and closer to the beach until my feet mercifully found the sand beneath us.
 

I lifted my eyes to the cliff above, and as I did so the strange, dark man turned away.
 

I wanted to call out to him, to force him to stop. He had done this to Almara, I was sure of it. There wasn’t much fight left in me, but in that moment I was willing to use what I had left to face him, to battle him, to make him pay for this thievery. The taking of the man who could lead us all to salvation.

But as he walked away, and his head slowly bobbed out of sight, I knew that I was too late. And too weak.
 

The hard knot of resolve that had begun growing when I had first seen Almara, the astonishingly damaged remains of what once had been a great man, grew another layer thicker. With every enemy we encountered, every sadistic ill we experienced, the knot grew, and I saw in my mind, like a broken record, all we had been deprived of.

I would beat them. I would beat them all.
 

The waves pushed us closer and closer in, threatening to knock me down as I all but carried him to the land. But while they battered at Almara, my feet held fast beneath me. When we made it to shore, we finally collapsed in a heap, the water still pushing up over our legs.
 

“Urrrg,” Almara groaned, the first sign from him that he was still alive. I rolled him on his side and a stream of water gurgled up out of his mouth. Now, finally, he coughed, and soon the majority of the salty brine was free of him. His body settled as the racking hacks subsided, and he lay on his side, staring blankly into space, lifeless but for the rattling breaths that came in and out of his body automatically.
 

I lay back, not caring that half of my body was still in the ocean, and stared at the sky above me, letting my frustration and anger and helplessness go for just long enough to appreciate the fact that I was still alive. Billowing clouds floated overhead, slowly bunching together, growing larger, darker. I breathed with them as they slowly joined one another, mixing together, a system of life.

Almara shivered on the shore next to me, and the jolt of his body next to mine brought me out of my stupor. I rolled over and stared into his clouded eyes.
 

“Are you in there?” I asked quietly, but he didn’t respond. His body shook again with a jerk, and soon the shaking began to increase with every moment that passed. What had happened to him?
 

I hauled myself up onto my elbow, looking at the beach around us as my skin slowly began to dry into a sticky, tight sheath. My tongue was fat and dry against the roof of my mouth, but despite the great ocean at my feet, there was no drink for me here. As I rose, I pulled Almara up with me. At first his body resisted, limp and stubborn. But once I had him on his feet, he stayed up by his own power, swaying slightly as the task of balancing from foot to foot was undertaken. I took his arm in my hands, and slowly began guiding him back to our small campsite.
 

I kept my eyes trained on the cliffs as we walked, searching for the dark man, willing him to come back. I dared him to come, to try again. I was a hunter guarding my prey, and I felt my face lift into a snarl so wild it would have shocked me if it weren’t for my resolve. Almara was mine, not to be taken from beneath us again. He was too important to too many, and I would protect him at all costs.
 

His feet shuffled along beneath him, aimlessly following where they were led. His eyes remained unfocused, staring blankly into the distance, his mouth agape and silent.

I had to get him to Jade. Maybe she would understand this strange trance that had come over her father. The knot in my stomach told me that this idea was false, that she would be just as baffled as I was. And worse, that she would be hurt by his actions. But I couldn’t deal with this alone. Not anymore. Almara’s attempt to take his own life, whether of his own accord or from falling to the will of the man on the cliff, meant that our situation was much more serious than she or I had thought.
 

I hadn’t meant to speak to him, but I saw the journey ahead, much longer on the way back with him in tow, and I spoke anyways.
 

“Did you know that when I met Jade she was being held as a prisoner?” His gait did not falter, he betrayed no sign of recognition, and I continued. “She was held in the dark, alone inside a mountain cave, for a long, long time. She was nearly mad when I found her.”

I breathed in the sticky sea air as we walked, a sensation that was oddly familiar, though I had never felt it before on Earth.
 

“It took me a while, but I broke her out of that place. When I did, when she was finally free of it, for a while it seemed almost as if she had never set foot beneath the mountain.”

My feet sank into the wet sand as we walked, creating little pools every time I lifted them again. Behind me, the innocent licking of the low waves at the shore whisked the evidence of my passage away.

“I’ve been thinking, though, for a while now, that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I didn’t really free her at all.” The memory of Jade’s deep eyes shifting back and forth between pain and violence stopped me in my tracks. I turned to him. “I think she carries that mountain with her. I think she’s trapped under its weight, still waiting for you to come for her.”

I stooped a little, trying to make eye contact with his deadened gaze.
 

“So it’s down to you now. They’re all out there, the Corentin and I don’t know who else, but they’re there, waiting to strike. We can’t do this without you. We can’t balance the Fold on our own; we don’t know how. So you need to come back. Wherever you are, whatever cave you’re in, whatever weight you’re carrying, you need to come back to us. For Jade. She deserves that.”

Somewhere inside I had been hoping for a response, but eyelids didn’t flicker. His mouth didn’t try to form words. He just stood there, vacant and expressionless, a bag of bones with no life inside it. Suddenly, anger filled my heart, and I lashed out at him.
 

“Fine,” I said sharply, pushing him roughly away from me. He stumbled backwards, nearly fell, but then his body righted itself with rigid automation.
 

I pushed him again.

“You want to abandon her again, do you?” I shouted into his empty face. “Fine, go ahead. But that makes you horrible. That makes you weak.” I pushed, and his feet splashed into the shallow waves. “You want to die, do you? Go ahead! The ocean is right there. Go ahead back in then. You’re going to rip her apart if she sees you like this, so just
go
.”

Nothing. Not a flicker of light in his eyes. Not a quickening of breath in his throat.
 

I pushed again. He stood in the ocean with the water up to his knees and stared at nothing.

“I’m done with you.”

I turned and walked away, left him standing there, partway in and partway out, of the ocean. Halfway between life and death. I headed back to Jade, seething with anger and frustration.
 

It was a few moments before my ears could discern the sound of his splashing footsteps separately from the sloshing waves. But when I did, and I turned to see, to find out if it was really true, it was. Almara was following me.
 

His face hadn’t changed. His eyes were still coated with the white of madness, or magic, or evil—whatever it was that had turned them foggy. But his feet followed mine.

For a moment I nearly cried. With relief. With pride. With hope. But then I got a hold of myself, took his arm in my hands once more, and continued on down the beach.
 

Two hours later we came around the last corner of rock before our campsite, and I saw that it was still abandoned. I knew I was faster than Jade, but I had still expected her to beat us.
 

Almara seemed to know that the journey was over, and his body slumped down to the rocky beach.
 

I stared down at him, his eyes closed tightly against the setting sun. Maybe there was hope. Maybe somewhere inside the shell of the man, the real man remained.
 

As I watched him fall into sleep, listening to the waves burst against the rocks, then slip away, a different sound caught my attention. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but now, in between every couple of waves to hit the beach, I could hear it.
 

Thwack. Thwack.

I stood up and slowly walked from Almara’s sleeping body, feeling sure that he wouldn’t try to escape again, at least not yet. The sound got louder with every step I took. Finally, as I rounded a corner of rocky edge and found a shallow inlet in the low cliff, I saw her.
 

Jade wound up her arm, and then let the stone she had picked up from the beach go with tremendous force. It hit the face of rock, exploding into dust as the sound echoed all around.

Thwack
.

“Jade?”

She bent over, picking up huge stones in each hand, and arched her arms one by one. Obliterated rock burst off the wall again. And again.

Thwack. Thwack.

“Jade!” I said louder. “What are you doing?”

But she didn’t hear. In the short moments it took me to cross the beach to her, two more stones met their demise against the cliff wall.
 

I grabbed onto her arm, shaking her a little.
 

“Hey!”

She struggled against my grip, trying to bend over again for more of the sea’s cannonballs. Her stared ahead, wide and wild. I gripped harder.

“Hey, knock it off!” I shouted, shaking her in earnest now.
 

She struggled for another moment, and then seemed to come to. She looked down at my hands on her arms and then up at me.
 

“Huh?” she asked, confused.
 

“Are you ok?” I asked. “What are you
doing
?” A pile of rock dust three feet high sat at the base of the cliff. How many rocks had she destroyed?

She held out her hands, studying them.
 

“I just—” she trailed off, lost in her head. “I couldn’t find him.”

“So you decided to destroy the entire beach instead?” I asked. “What’s with you?”

“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, I guess I was frustrated.”

The wind played with the top layer of dust in the pile, swirling it upwards in a peculiar swirling fashion. I didn’t like the look on her face. I had been hoping to tell her what had happened out there. I shivered again as I remembered the man on the cliff. Instinctively, I looked up at the low cliffs above our heads, suddenly certain that he must be there now, watching. But the cool evening breeze played with the grass at the edge, and no figure appeared.

“Ok,” I said carefully. “Well, I
did
find him.”

“What?” Her voice was slow, unsure.

“I found him on the beach. Come on before he takes off again.”

Thankfully, Almara lay in exactly the same position I had left him in, completely spent from his adventures. I shivered.
 

“Hey, can you make a rockfire?” I asked. “I’m freezing.”

She stood frozen on the spot, her eyes wide as she took in the scene.
 

“Jade?”

She spoke in a daze. “What’s—what’s wrong with him?”

I would have guessed that he was asleep, except that every few seconds his arms and legs would twitch with a jolt. The movement made him look grotesque and frightening, but it was when his eyelids opened slightly, revealing the whites of his irises, that a small scream escaped Jade’s throat.
 

“Aster?” She moved towards me and hid behind me, only her eyes peeking over my shoulder at his rigid body on the rocks.
 

“Listen,” I said, shivering. “We need heat. You have to make a rockfire.”

She was still staring as if it was a great monster lying steps away from us, not her own father.
 

“Jade, please. Rockfire.”

Slowly, she nodded. Without looking or even a touch of her hands, she gathered the stones into a small pile before Almara. In moments they burned red hot, as though they were the last, searing embers of a dying fire.
 

I sat down, inching my body up as close as I dared to the pile. The sky continued to darken, but no rain fell. I motioned for her to join me. She hesitated, but soon she sat, staring at Almara all the while.
 

“What happened?” she asked, never breaking her gaze. “Where was he?”

“He was in the ocean,” I said. “I saved him.”

This brought her out of her stupor.
 

“You saved him? From the ocean? How?”

“A big branch of driftwood.” I lay back onto the rocks, exhausted. “I used it as a sort of float.”

“You mean…you swam?”

“Sort of.” I yawned wide, but I would have to try to stay awake. The mess that had been made the last time I had fallen asleep was still strewn all about me like pieces from a car crash. But I was so worn out. The hazy sleep from earlier had refueled my body only for a short time. Now, I was spent. I had to at least rest, if not sleep. The threat of another escape kept my eyes wide.
 

“Hey,” I rolled over and looked up at her. “I need a rope. Do you have anything like that?”

“What?” Her concentration flitted back and forth between me and Almara. Slowly, my simple question penetrated her mind. “Yes, I have some from the ship. The rope Erod used to dangle me over the side.”

She walked over to our things and pulled out a long strand of the fine, strong cord from the boat. She dropped the loops into my waiting hand.
 

“Thanks,” I said, relieved. I crawled over to Almara and tied a strong knot around his wrist. His too-thin wrist. Then, I looped the cord around my hand and bound us together. It would have to do. I couldn’t stay awake forever.