23. Chapter 23:
Chapter 23:
I felt every second move past me as we sailed across. Hawthorn knew the art of sailing better than the rest us, and so she carefully tilted the sail this way and that as we made out way across the lake. The water seemed less dangerous now, and I felt slightly more safe as we moved across the otherwise still water. At night, the boat stopped, because the wind had died down, and Bloodroot and Hejj began to row with two long, skewer like paddles, which moved the boat along relatively slowly. It was achingly slow. The progress we were making seemed as if it would be meaningless unless we got Foxglove and the children back safely. If we did not, I would never let myself live happily, knowing that my hubris is what led to their being taken. Hawthorn came up to me in the night, before we were all to go to sleep on the deck, the cold not bothering us, and gave me a small salve ground out of Sew Root, which she said would help my hands make a speedy recovery. "Sew root?" I asked. I had never heard of the plant before, and just hearing its name led ot pangs of grief and regret returning to flood my mind, which I fought to keep off. I had to stay focused on the current problem.
"It grows in far off mountainous regions. I've mixed it here with some Talcedony, because it should help to treat any infection or kill any remailing algal particles in the wound. Are you ok? it looks like you are about to cry." She informed me, the last question catching me off guard. "Oh. I was just reminded of something." I said, and broke down there are then, allowing my emotions to release themselves as a deluge that coated my face in salty streaks. I could taste some of my tears on my lips. "Make sure not to bottle your emotions up. That is what Nettle told me." She said. She brought me some water, and then left to go to sleep. I smiled, and went to bed much less stressed than I had previously been.
The next day, the winds were strong, the thicker air providing a greater pushing force on the sail. "Hawthorn, guide us over there!" Nettle told her. I looked over to where he was pointing, and saw a small alcove, which would fit the ship perfectly. It was sheltered by the striking red ferns that covered some parts of the island. In within them, were small, succulent mushroom like plants that bore intense black fruit, that tumble down to the ground when you walked past.
My noon, we had gotten to the alcove, and Hawthorn was tying down the ship, before letting us all get off.
Nettle was the first to get off, having officially assumed the role of leader the previous day. He hesitated for a second, before stepping onto the firm ground, and walking forwards, allowing everyone else to get off. "These clouds do not look good." Bloodroot said. "No. They are hiding something. They cloud my view of what is above them, it seems to me to be some sort of force of some kind, but it is too ambiguous." Fa Raven said, tinting their head up to the sky.
As we walked towards where I had described the ladder being, we rarely talked, the silence of the island and the whistling of the winds was all we needed for out minds to mull over what we were going to do.
Suddenly, Hejj stopped in his tracks. He sniffed the air, and smiled. "I can smell Otter." he said, pointing forwards.
On hearing this, Nettle and Hawthorn also began to sniff the air, and both of them also agreed that they could smell Otter. In particular, they could very faintly discern the scent of Foxglove, and a child. "I can also smell a being like you, Stuvlok." Hawthorn told me. Her sense of smell was particularly strong, because she had to use it often to discern different herbs, and so had trained it to discern smells of intense similarity.
All of us rushed towards the ladder. The scent of rotting meat had before now been ignored by everyone, our minds getting used to it and filtering it out or seeing it as a solid backdrop to our journey. On seeing the now further rotted lumps of meat, we stopped, solemn. The gravity of the situation first hit the minds of Hejj and Hawthorn who, being the youngest of all the group, had not really understood how dangerous of a proposition they were in, but only known. The looks on their faces plainly described the fact that both of them had finally had the realisation wash over them, the deeper understanding fully embed itself in their mind, that what they were about to do was something both important, and intensely risky.
The staircase still glimmered, but its shine did not entice me any more. I had grown as a person. I had changed how I saw the world, how I saw myself, and I was able to control the fighting force inside of me that wanted me to scale that ladder alone, be a hero. I knew that we could only save them if we went up as a team.
"I think I should go up first, you lot follow me. I think Fa Raven and Bloodroot should stay back. You two are very old, stay here and look out for us. Just be prepared for anything, ok?" Nettle said, looking at all of us in turn and holding his stare on the two older members. "We will stay." Fa Raven Said, and Bloodroot nodded slowly next to him. They both went over to a nearby rock, and sat down, falling into an intense discussion that I was not able ot understand.
As nettle began to ascend the ladder, I could see that he was clearly struggling with getting from one rung to another. "Stuvlok. Carry me. I am too small for this ladder, and my paws are too narrow to hold onto it. Hejj, you do the same with Hawthorn." Nettle advised, and I scooped him up, and put him in by pack. Hejj hoisted Hawthorn onto his back, stabilising her with his tail. I began to climb. I climb furiously, yet also very carefully. I knew that I needed to be as careful as possible. Mistakes could cost everything I cared about. Each hand in front of the other, each foot placed on the rung at exactly the right angle and position. We stormed up the ladder, and I tried to keep me mind as clear as possible, I did not want another headache. Once we got halfway, I waited for Hejj to catch up. He was being much more cautious than I was, but I knew we needed to stick together.
AS Hejj was climbing, one of the rungs dislodged, a small sinuous shape coming out of it as Hejj hung onto the one below. It tried ot worm its way around Hejj's neck, but He bit it off and threw it to the ground. He began climbing again. So did I.
Once we reached the cloud, just as solid as ever, and just as deathly-black, I looked around us, seeing the world as I had known it possibly for the last time.
I looked at the leaves on each tree, and thought about if they had ever been appreciated before, I looked at a small pebble balanced precariously on a larger rock, placed there by a wave that would soon come to push it away. I thought about the light I saw now, the sun beaming into my eyes, the warmth of its heat, the strength of its sheer force. I tried to discern the winds moving past my skin from the heavy breathing of Nettle, feel each push and pull on every tiny hair on my face. I breathed in a large gulp of air, tasting it, savoring it. I looked down at the moving water.
I closed my eyes, for a moment and pushed onto the final rungs. I told Nettle to climb out onto my head an go up first, as he was the Leader.
He hopped out of my pack, and then onto my head. Pulling himself up to the cloud, he stood on it, his face incredulous. he tried to touch the cloud beneath him, perhaps test for its strength, but only found it as hard and rough as I had, his fir catching on the many millions of tiny jagged edges it presented him with. I went up after him.
Hejj arrived a minute later. "I can't quite understand." He said. "You don't need to." I replied, and I led them to the tree. It seemed more surmountable with my companions by my side, and I tried to stay positive.
Our walk was silent. The silence almost seemed to speak for itself. A thousand grieving voices, a thousand broken dreams, withered souls were present in that silence. Even the pitter patter of out feet was dampened by the ground absorbing most of the force with which we put our feet down. The sun up here seemed in some way different. The light made me feel sick. It was a sort of viscous, sickly light that came down onto my skin, and cooled me instead of warmed me. The sensation that the sun was in some way not a whole, or not quite the same sun that I had basked in before filled my chest. it felt wrong
The tree was different. it was rotting. it was dying. All of its leaves had fallen by its side, each leaf many times the size ou boat had been. The leaves were crawling with insects that were a mixture of many different traits, and did not quite seem to be physical, not exhibit any of the qualities of naything living. I tried to pick one up, but my fingers passed straight through it, and it seemed to be changing constantly every second. It did not react to us walking over the leaves. It just kept on biting through and digesting the leaf, in straight lines horizontally and vertically across the leaf, creating a matrix of decomposition.
Once we got to the beginning of the staircase up the tree, Nettle began crying. "I do not think I will be able to go in. What will I see?" he said, his face in his hands, and each tear making his matted fur even more matted. I got the feeling that he cried often, the salt on his fur decidedly stiffened it up. Hawthorn walked up to him, and tried to get him up. "It was a long time ago." She told him.
Nettle got up, wiped the tears from his eyes. More tears were coming behind the ones he had wiped away, his eyes looking as if they were bulging before the surface tension broke and one large tear made its way over the fur and down to the ground. "I cannot do it, but I will." He said, and began walking ino the staircase.
Every step we took up the staircase brought back memories. Each step more painful than the last. Everyone else around me seemed to be experiencing the same thing. Hawthorn was sniffling quietly behind me, Hejj developed a face that clearly conveyed a sense of forlorn loss, something I could never quite decrypt. Nettle's face was the worst of all. it had settled ina sort of broken reminiscence, and Just looking at it made me even more emotional.
As we walked, suddenly, I heard a great heaving sound. It sounded like a rusty door being closed, but much, much louder. I looked up to see a large part of the wood of the tree collapsing. It tumbled down, falling much faster than I would have expected it, and almost hit Nettle, who walked on as if nothing had happened. "Nettle, are oyu all right?" I asked. "It does not matter." He said, in a small voice, and kept on walking.
The rest of us hopped over the debris, and followed his lead. Hejj began to look up nervously, likely scouting out for any other falling bits of rotten tree.
As we approached the first floor, We began to hear something. It was quite quiet at first, but it soon got almost unbearably loud. It was distinctly the sound of crying children. Nettle began to bound up, multiple stairs at a time, until we got to the floor itself.
It was no longer the plain, clean expanse I remembered it being, but It had changed, it had morphed into something completely different.
The ground was made up of living, shifting flesh, with rivulets of blood running this way and that on the surface, bulges, black fungating lumps, and the stench that told me it was far from fully alive. In the centre, there was a large depression, that seemed to have something in it.
I began to try and run over to see what it was. When I put my foot on some of the flesh, I found it to be incredibly thin, and it depressed and stretched so much that I feared that it would rip, and take the entire floor with it. I looked to Nettle. "Nettle, I seem to be too heavy for this, I think you should go over to see." Nettle nodded, and carefully walked over onto the flesh. It depressed only slightly for him. The shortsword he had brought with him clutched tightly in his hand, he inched towards the depression. The ground moved under him, this way and that, pulling him often in the opposite direction that he wanted to go. However, eventually, he managed to get there.
The depression was filled with blood, the top layers crystalline in their purity, but the deeper you got, the darker and more malign it appeared to be. In the centre of the pool lay Foxglove, floating on top, seemingly stuck in some sort of trance.
"I will need some help to pull her out." He called, and Hejj and Hawthorn began to try and walk on the flesh. Tey were light enough, and so were easily able to walk over, only stumbling once as they tripped over something that looked like a bit of cartilage.
I watched them lean over the edge of the pool, and pull Foxglove out, her back saturated with the deep crimson. She did not seem ot have noticed what had happened ot her, and I began to get worried. "She is alive," Hawthorn said, "but something seems to be wrong with her. I will need to investigate."
We soon realised that it would be impractical and dangerous to bring the incapacitated Foxglove with us, and so we stood on the steps for a while, discussing. "I do not want to risk waiting for her treatment." Nettle said. "She seems quite stable, her face seems serene, I don't think she is in any danger, nor any pain." Hawthorn said, looking on at Foxglove carefully.
We eventually decided to take her with us up to the first floor, but keep her hidden in the staircase, where Hawthorn could monitor her.
We eventually arrived at the second floor.