18. Chapter 18:
Chapter 18
I soon came to myself fully, and wondered how Foxglove had managed to get away from the creature, while I had not.
"Foxglove, I thought you could not swim." I asked, trying not to sound demeaning. "I can't. I hid beneath the boat when it had been upturned, and when the creature came to me, it tried to grab me by my waist, but suddenly swam away. It must have been the pouch. Are you sure you did not swallow any water?" She replied, looking over at the sun rising, and the birds singing their mournful songs. I thought about it for a second, and realised that the snails in her pouch must have been the things that deterred whatever the creature was. I realised that it could not have been Foxglove who I had seen being taken under the water.
"I tried my best, and I feel fine, so I think I managed to avoid swallowing any. I thought that I saw you being dragged underwater far away from the boat?" I asked, the confusion growing in my voice every word I spoke. I thought about how It could not possibly have been her, but It had looked like her and sounded like her. I was perplexed.
"I never went out of the boat. I can't swim - remember. I had to hold onto the boat and rely on the air trapped in it until I had the energy and felt it was safe enough to turn it the right way up. I threw a few of my snails into the water where you had been taken in, because I thought It could have helped, and it evidently did. I thought that you were dead when you floated up." I was thankful to her, but I felt as if I had betrayed myself. I could not rely on others if I ever hoped to defeat the witches - I had relied on Foxglove for too long, and too many times. I knew that I had to learn to fend for myself, and that I needed to start as soon as possible.
"I think what you saw was some sort of mirage, I have heard that the Witches can create immaterial beings to trick parents into leaving their children unattended, so it must have been something like that. I assume the fragment inside of you probably made it harder for you to resist." her words reminded me of the witch inside of me. I had forgotten to constantly doubt my thoughts, I had fallen back into the comfortable delirium of trusting myself. I realised that I was stuck in a paradox, unable to trust myself, and unwilling to trust others. I felt lost,just like I had felt when being dragged into the depths, hopeless.
"Do you think you swallowed any?" I asked, trying to make sure that I was not laving the entire responsibility fo care on her. "No. But it did get into my ear. I had to flush it out using some of our drinking water." I remembered that my ear canals had fille with the water as well, and so carefully used my small water skin to flush out any algae, along with green lumps of mucocious algae, a small tinge of blood also left its mark on the water. I was told by Foxglove that I should be perfectly fine, as it did not have too much time ot set in as n infection, I must have only injured the outer layers of my ear. I tried to make sure I could hear by covering different ears alteratively and asking Foxglove to make squeaks of different pitches. Luckily, everything seemed ot be fine.
I was intensely thankful that I had Foxglove by my side, but I doubted that I could ever bring myself to fully thank her. I left thoughts of thanking to a later time, as the island looked only a small distance away. We would get there by the evening.
As the island came within arms reach of our boat, we were swamped with a strange variety of anticipation. It was one filled with both fear and excitement, and I both dreaded and yearned to get onto its shores.
Eventually, we hit the sand on the beach. We hopped off, and pulled the boat ashore. While Foxglove was putting everything in the boat on its place, I noticed something about the beach.
As I knelt down to examine the beach closer, I noticed that the sand was a dull grey colour. I picked some of it up into my hand, and found that each grain of sand, only slightly larger than the usual grains, was made of a type of bone. Some were denser than others, others lighter in colour. Some as dry as a desert, and others with a slimy outer coating. I let go of the bones immediately, almost out of reflex. "This sand is made of bones." I noted, looking over at Foxglove who had come over to see what I was doing. "Bones of the Witches' victims," she said, her mournful sigh filling my head with a more visceral and immediate malaise and dread than I had ever felt so far. It felt as if I was helpless to watch a person dying.
We walked in silence, deeper into the fog, deeper into the island. The sparse vegetation that there was on the island had deep red leaves, their carmine colouration making the island seem like it was made of flesh if looked at from ground level. Each leaf was also fleshy, and had many small protuberances lining the outside. I went to pick one and closely examine it so that I could write about it in my journal at a later point, but Foxglove shook her head, and I went back onto the small path, worm down lightly out of the surrounding shrubbery by the faint footsteps of those before us. The walk was stained with a certain acceptance of our fates, as we thought back on our childhoods, and wondered how those smiling children of years past had come here, to what would very likely soon be their deaths. I tried to think of my past self, but found myself only considering a 'Stuvlok' of years past, a different person who made more of the mistakes I had learned not to make, smiled more.
"We should set up camp." Foxglove said. I was about to retort by saying that every second was precious, and that we should keep going, but a nagging fatigue and my own mind's logic (which I had begun to lose the energy to doubt) told me otherwise. It can all be done tomorrow, it said, and my flesh accepted, and slumped down into my sleeping bag.
I fell asleep to the unearthly fog that settled over us, making each breath moist with the water held up by the air.
I dreamed that night.
I dreamed of seeing the world only as a pastiche of greys and blacks, of shaking and the smell of baking bread, the sound of a laugh, then the sound of a cry. I saw sadness physicalised, a person falling to the ground and screaming. They could not get up, their arms collapsing under them every time they tried to pish themselves up. I saw the woods, in the dark, the scent of regret reaching eve my tiny nose. I saw a muscular creature bite me somewhere, the reassuring jolt of pain, and then nothing but the swaddle of a blanket soiled by mud and blood.
I saw a strange dog-like creature, just like the one on the Sphere I had found, carrying my in its maw, It did not breath, and its skin had cracked like that of clay pots. I dreamed that it had bright glowing red eyes that were the only hints of colour I could see in my world of greyscale, their colour was more an emotion than a colour. The sound of its pounding feet thudding across the ground, kicking up dust, There was no moon. I could not see the sky, but I knew it to be the case.
The creature had stilt-like legs, thin but not fragile, elegant in a terrifying way. It seemed not to have any emotions, felt no pain. The blood from my body flowed into it, and something of its entered mine. I felt small and vulnerable, but I could not do anything.
Suddenly. Stopped. The howling of the wind stopped, the thudding slowed to a stop.
Light. Warmth. Something was there. Dropped on the ground. Confusion and dust.
I could smell the trees, I could see a man, picking me up. Young. Slightly sad, but worried.
Picked up.
Walking through the woods, the slow embrace of sleep. The blood on my arm had congealed, ad I was soon out of the woods, I could hear laughing again. Music. the pitter patter of dancing feet. Crying
I was crying. I awoke at dawn. Foxglove was still asleep, jostling around constantly, restless and confused. A few syllables came out of her mouth that made no sense to me. I heard a squeak or two. I shook he slightly.
"Morning." She said, almost describing out situation. She yawned. "I had a dream yesterday." I said, expecting a barrage of questions. But the air was brittle, and it seemed that both of us did not dare break it with long questions or answers. "Witches?" She asked, packing away her items. "Maybe. I Think I saw myself being taken." I followed her lead, packing everything away into my pack, and beginning to walk. Our water had run out, and we needed to find a safe source of water soon, or we would not be able to keep going.
"I had a dream." she said sadly. "Did you see Witches?" I asked carefully, trying to understand her fraught expression. "It was like I was in the body of myself years ago. I saw one of them passing over me, the same one. I was stuck in my dream. I realised that it was one, but I could not do anything about it. It was horrific." She said, saying nothing else for the next half-hour.
Foxglove heard the sound of running water, and so we walked towards it.
"I think the water on the island does not have any algae in it, as far as I am aware, but It might have other things in it, so be careful," she told me as I ventured over a small rock to see where the sound was coming from.
I soon found it to be coming from what seemed to be a large beetle. The beetle had its carapace up to the air, on a small ledge that made it so that the beetle was draped in fog. The carapace had small beads of water condensing on it, which were collected in small channels in the beetle's body, and dripped into a large plant that held the water just like a bowl would, only it was roughly the size of a hot-spring. "Look! There is some ice near the beetle." Foxglove told me. I looked towards where the beetle was standing, and noticed the small crystals of ice growing on its body. It was cold, but not that cold. I reasoned that the beetle must be somehow cooling itself down so that water easily condensed on its back, then collected this water in a plant of type it was currently using. I reminded myself that I would record all of this in my journal once I was able to.
I snuck carefully over to the plant, and dipped my water skin into it, watching the bubbles glug out of it as the water flowed in. I did the same to Foxglove's, and began to walk away when I noticed that the beetle moved. I looked over, and saw that it had begun to move towards me. I grabbed a small rock and threw it at the beetle, which tumbled over into its own water, and managed to walk on top of it. Realising that I had no other option, I ran for it, hoping that the beetle would not follow me - I doubted that a beetle of that size could even fly.
Once I got back to Foxglove, we went back to exploring the island.
The rare trees that we saw dotted across the island had the same blood-red leaves as all of the other plants, but what differentiated them were their tiny trunks. Each tree was about the height that I was, and I wondered why the trees on the island were so small. We once stumbled upon a tree that was taller then usual, and realised this was because there was a large deer corpse embedded in its trunk, slowly being broken down as it grew. it seemed that the plants on this island did not quite grow in the same way as those everywhere else. I wondered about the carnivorous plants here, and whether they had ever fed on any of the travelers that had come here before us, and whether they would eventually feed on our corpses.
As we walked to the centre of the island, something began to materialise out of the fog.
It was a ladder.