Tread Lightly

I awake with a splitting headache and incredibly blurry vision. Am I dead? I don't know. I hold my head for a few moments hoping the pain goes away, and eventually, it does, even if the reason is unknown to me. As my vision begins to clear and the pain in my head subsides, I realize I am sitting on a bed of Spider Lilies under a moonless sky beside a dark river. But as I gaze toward the river, it pulls my mind deeper like a piece of art, forcing my will to pay attention to it.

The running water is so dark and smooth it's almost like a void, nearly utterly invisible under the dark sky. The only light comes from the lilies around me swaying in motion, reflecting their calming red. So as I follow the gentle river with my eyes further down, I see a line of darkness covered by swaying red.

This doesn't look like the pearly gates of any heaven I know or the stairs to any hell. I know not what to do or where to go. So, I sit for a while to calm my nerves because the last thing I remember was fighting for my life then darkness enveloped me.

But as I think back to the near-death moment or actual death, as I am still not sure, I do not worry or hold the encounter in an unfavorable light. Ma always told me Graves' are always ready to die in a fight, but it still feels odd how apathetic I am to dying. So I guess I got what I asked for, huh?

As I continue to ruminate on what just transpired, I notice a bit of movement on the other side of the sable river. I can't see it clearly at first, so I stand, surprised at how my body doesn't hurt, and walk closer to the river's shore to see across.

When I reach the riverside and squint with my hand cupped over my eyes, I can finally see what is on the other side. It's a wee lass, at most only half my age, with black hair that covers her face, and she appears to be attending to the flowers on the opposite side of the dark waters. I watch her in silence for a time as she picks up a wilted lily. As I do, it comes to my attention it's the only non-blooming flower I've seen. Then the little girl reaches out and sets the lily on the river as it floats away, slowly carried by the river's gentle flow.

I yell across the river to get her attention, my patience and confusion reaching an apex.

"Hey, girl! What are you doing?"

I hope to try and get something out of her about this odd situation, but she does not even react to my yell. I must just not have been loud enough. So, I yell again, even louder this time.

"Lass! Where are we!?"

Still no reaction. Not even a movement from her head as she continues to look through the lilies as though the only thing she hopes to find is another wilted flower. I look around to see if there is anything nearby to grab her attention, but all I see are lilies and the dark river, no rocks, no trees, nothing for as far as I can see. Just an endless plain of red with a river of darkness in the center. Even the other side of the river is the same as where I am standing.

With nothing to gain her attention with, I attempt to see how fast the river is in hopes of crossing it. To do so, I reach my hand into the water, and immediately something touches my hand. I close my hand to grab whatever has touched me and pull back with lightning-fast quickness. After removing the object from the abyssal water, I bring it up to look at it. It looks like a human skull with a beak attached to it.

Perplexed, I spin the skull around to look at it closer. A small crack is on the back of the head as if hit with a wooden block. Ah. This must be the "thing's" skull.

I guess I won the fight, after all.

After having that thought, a small smile creeps onto my face, and I laugh and drop the skull. Then keep laughing louder and louder. I cannot tell whether it's a laugh of relief or insanity as I double over and keep laughing. Once my laughter reaches a crescendo on the riverbed, causing even the moving river to ripple with waves, it appears to surpass the ears of the lass across the dark waters.

She finally looks up at me.

Her attention alone brings me out of my laughter as I feel as though the gaze of a predator is staring at me. Like when I was a young child hunting in the forests with Ma when we spotted a grizzly. The feeling is the same, only magnified a thousandfold.

I finally get a good look at her as she stands up and faces me. The lass is incredibly pale, deathly pale, in fact, with deep red eyes and a slight smile resting on her face. It's just that the smile holds no feeling, just a blank curl of the lip. She wears a black cotton shirt and a wool skirt of the same color. I notice she is not wearing shoes or sandals and is utterly barefoot. I spend only a second observing her before she, too, laughs. Still, unlike mine, her laugh is a high-pitched giggle that sends chills down my spine, making me highly uncomfortable.

Taking another look, she waves at me bizarrely with no emotion, and I see that it looks like she's not looking at me, but instead, her eyes point towards my right hand. As I look down at my hand, everything goes black again, enveloped by inky blackness.

After what feels like an eternity, I awake again, but this time to the sound of faraway thunder and the familiar drop of rain on my face.

Opening my eyes, I see the "thing" rolled onto the side of me, and it looks like it was sucked of all the blood in its body. I feel a rush of adrenaline as I swiftly stand up and move away from it.

It's got to be dead right?

I give myself a moment before I kick the body to check if it's genuinely dead; it just shakes from my solid kick from my left leg. Only then is my attention brought to my leg. Half of my pant leg is missing, and the rest is absolutely covered in blood, but there is no single scratch on my leg or anywhere else on my body that I can see. Nothing even hurts.

What the hell just happened? Did killing it heal me? Still in my right hand is the Blooming Spider Lily, and I look down at it for answers, but nothing comes from it. That place with the river has to be related to the Lily, right? Or was it just a dream? I can't be sure, but there is no way it is just a coincidence. I open the cylinder of the Lily and go to remove the spent casing but pause when there is nothing in the cylinder at all.

I search around the porch to see if I can find a spent round, but there is none. Unable to find what I'm looking for, I gather the remaining rounds for the Lily left by my father.

The Lily came with five rounds within the box, and now I'm down to four. Unwilling to endure another scenario of having an unloaded gun, I load the remaining four into the Colt, having the ready-to-fire chamber as one of the two unloaded. I remember Ma telling me to keep one round empty in case of a misfire or accident, and I always paid attention to her whenever she spoke about Hunter-related things like guns.

Once I prepare the Lily for the future, I investigate the monstrosity I killed a bit closer. It looks so desiccated and dehydrated. The fur is basically all gone with the wind, and its skin is a dark gray and so deeply pulled it reminds me of an old lady. Pushing aside my disgust, I look closer to see if it left behind anything to give me answers to my many questions. Like, where did it come from? What is it? Is there more? It spoke with a "we"; what does that mean?

But there is nothing on its body except for the fur that covers it; I guess it didn't need clothes. I consider cleaning up the porch covered in my blood. However, after I hear thunder in the distance, I throw away that idea. The monster said something about my father being gone getting confirmed. Does that mean they showed up because of Ma's passing? Will more come? Probably.

Afterclaps are often times worse than the first strike. So I better get to Elderfield as fast as I can. The sooner I become a Hunter, the sooner I can protect myself from any stray God's plans.

I harden my resolve and quickly pack my belongings before the storm arrives. I take a few sets of clothes, a blanket, what little coin we have, and three days' worth of rations. Elderfield is not that far, so this should be enough. After getting the necessities, I quickly run out to the stable where the family's horse, Butter, is. Or I guess... now just mine.

Only after reaching Butter do I realize he's been left alone all day long without any food. So I feed the old Quarter Horse and comfort him. He might not have been through as much as me today, but I'm sure he is stressed from my yells, the gunshot, and the storms. Once I feel he's ready, I bring him out of the stable and get ready to ride as far as I can before the storm hits. I don't want to get ambushed again in the rain, and I'm pretty sure staying in place guarantees that.

I leap onto Butter right outside the house I grew up with. The small porch was now covered in blood, and the stairs to the said porch were broken and splintered. I gaze at my childhood home for a long moment before turning away and riding toward the east. A single tear falls out of my right eye as I leave the only home I ever had. As much as I wanted a life of adventure as a Hunter, I don't think I would have ever been prepared to begin it like this.

**********************************

My night ends cold and miserable as the storm catches up to me right after I decide to make camp. I only brought a blanket to shield me from the cold. Water soaks both me and the blanket thoroughly. Thankfully, Butter and I made enough distance to reach the woods a few dozen miles east of my house, so there were trees to blunt the rainfall.

I wish I brought a tent in my haste to leave. Had Ma still been around, she'd have ensured I'd brought a tent and extra supplies to be comfortable during the cold. Whenever we went to town together to sell the produce from the farm, she'd spend hours preparing for a simple two or three-day trip and spend even longer making sure I was comfortable on the way there.

While recalling years past with Ma, I stare blankly for a few minutes next to Butter. Eventually, he huffs and puts his muzzle against me.

"I miss her already, boy."

I mutter mournfully as I pet him, lay down next to him with my back to a large oak tree, and try to sleep. However, after spending a while in the cold, I cannot fall asleep, so instead, I just sit awake in the cold and watch the surroundings in paranoia of what may come. While doing so, I attempt to glimpse anything that may be chasing me. Eventually, I fall into dreamland with my back against the tree facing Butter.

I open my eyes at dawn with a muzzle on my face as Butter snorts at me. My back is screaming as I slept in probably the worst position possible. But first, before I do anything else, I go to eat and feed Butter.

I give him some dried apples and let him eat some grass while I devour my rations. I'm so hungry from the cold that I eat two servings worth of rations before I realize that I also ate my lunch.

Good thing I brought extra food in case I got lost on the way. I wait for Butter to finish grazing before I saddle up and try to make the final leg of the journey to Elderfield. Yesterday I rode until nearly midnight, so I am probably only a few hours from reaching the town.

While riding eastward through the oak forest, I don't have to ride that carefully as the trees in the woods, while quite extensive, are sparse and leave Butter plenty of room to navigate. This allows me to admire the nature and oak forest around me. I observe the world around me for a while.

Eventually, I grow concerned as I cannot find any animals around me. Even an hour into the forest, I still have not seen a single sign of life.

What is going on? There usually is a lot of life within this forest. I consider getting off of Butter to investigate on foot, but I feel a gaze on my back. Turning to see behind me, I see a shadow of a movement behind a tree. Whatever that was, it was moving fast. So with monsters potentially chasing me, I urge Butter to move fast to stay ahead of whatever is behind me.

Keeping my head on a swivel to ensure I don't get snuck up again, I continue my journey with more paranoia and speed. After another minute, I see another glimpse of movement, but this time it's on my right. I shift the direction Butter is facing to the left and continue, careful not to let him trip on a branch or root sticking out.

Within just a few seconds of seeing the second movement, I hear a third on my left. I'm surrounded on at least three sides. This realization causes me to have Butter slow.

If they caught up to Butter at nearly full speed, it would be stupid to try and outrun them any longer when whatever is chasing me has already caught up. So, I hop off of Butter and put my back to a wide trunk of an oak tree while drawing my knife and the Lily.

I only have a few bullets total, so I must conserve my bullets. That means I'm gonna have to use my knife. The logic goes through me as I spin the cylinder to a live round and pull the hammer which causes me to grimace thinking how useless my knife was against the last monster. I try to calm my breathing and focus. I'll have to do better this time. I search for whatever is chasing me, to not let them get the drop on me like last time.

My heart drops as I fail, a screech above me as a monster that looks nearly identical to the first drops down on top of me, throwing us both to the ground. As we tumble to the ground, I stab one of its legs with my knife and try to flip it beneath me while we crash into the dirt.

I barely manage to get this rat-human-like thing with a beak beneath me, even with a knife in its front left leg, but in the process, it leaves a gash on my arm with its claws. Knowing there are more of these Ratbeaks, probably running at me right now, I need to kill this one quickly, so I put the Lily against its chest and squeeze the trigger.

It's my first time being conscious while the gun is being fired, and for a moment, I am stunned in amazement. No gunshot rings out. Instead, I clearly hear a petal falling through the scuffle, and then the Ratbeak goes still. I stand up from the Ratbeak and notice a ring of Red Spider Lilies around me, and an almost invisible dark stream flow from the Ratbeak into me as the Ratbeak begins to shrink and become dehydrated. I feel rejuvenated like I just took a whole day sleeping.

All my weariness from the cold night is gone. And I look at my forearm, where I had just been scratched, and see the cut rapidly closing.

The Lily can heal? I guess that makes some sense. Otherwise, I would have died to the first Ratbeak. Unfortunately, this revelation only makes the remaining three shots that much more precious as I finally notice that there are two more Ratbeaks just outside the ring of flowers, unwilling to enter.

"C'mon, you rats! Come get me!"

I yell in a burst of courage and energy caused by the shot from the Lily.

This provocation causes both of the Ratbeaks to charge me simultaneously. Shit. I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe I was trying to scare them off? All my potential thoughts are forced out though by the threat rapidly approaching. This time, however, I want initiative as I, too, charge at the Ratbeaks yelling.

Within a second, the first one is upon me, and knowing that the Lily can heal me, I am much more reckless than I would be otherwise. I lower my left shoulder as I slam into the first one, letting it claw my chest as I thrust my knife into its furry side. Unfortunately, our tackles cancel each other out, knocking the wind out of me. Struggling to breathe, I try to keep the Ratbeak in front of me between me and the last one. However, while I try to keep my distance, my distraction earns me a gruesome peck into my gut by the Ratbeak I'm entangled with, and I can feel the warmth leave me immediately.

Realizing that I've been hurt pretty bad, I try to bring the Lily's barrel up to the Ratbeaks body, but the last one finally is close enough to join the scuffle and slashes my left arm that holds the Lily with its claws, making me drop the gun. My heart instantly sinks. I am now being attacked by both at once. I back up, holding my stomach, trying to keep my blood in me as the Ratbeaks press me together. In my panic to retreat, however, I trip on a root and fall backward.

The first Ratbeak takes advantage of this and immediately pounces on me.

My panic rises further, but it is pushed down by the massive levels of adrenaline flowing through me. The Ratbeak claws at me, tearing up my clothes and flesh alike. Still, I am not idle even while pinned to the ground. My knife is frantically jabbed into the Ratbeak, and with my other arm, I am doing all I can to redirect its beak from my eyes. This exchange only lasts for a few seconds at most until I feel my knife hit something hard within the Ratbeak, and it goes limp.

I must have hit some core organ or its heart for it to die so quickly. There is still one left, though. I push the bloody and torn-up body of the dead Ratbeak off of me, and I attempt to stand, but one of my legs betrays me, and I fall back on my ass onto the bloodstained dirt.

Unable to stand, I try to prepare for the last Ratbeak to attack me as I realize it has a blood-red arrow in the back of its head and is tumbling to the ground.