Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 36
36
There was a light up ahead, much too low to be a star. Were there even any stars left in the sky? Banno wasn't sure.
He looked up, but the sky was black, and black, and black. There was nothing else. Did that mean the stars weren't real anymore? Did they simply disappear? Maybe they weren't there because he really didn't care all that much. Maybe everything would just disappear one day, and the whole world would be just like the black sky overhead, dark and empty and cold.
Banno half-walked, half-stumbled through the snow, grateful to finally turn his back on that wretched, frozen river and its constant babble. His fake foot was coming loose again, but he didn't care. The cut in his leg was opening wide again, but he didn't care. The cold was working against his skin, burrowing into his eyes, his mouth, his nose, trying to get inside, but he didn't care. None of it could hurt him.
The angle was getting steeper, and the ground was rising higher and higher. The snow came up to his knees in some places, bogging him down, but Banno kept going. He grabbed at branches and pushed off against tree trunks, not even registering the thin layer of frost clinging to his fur, anything to just make his body go faster...
The ground finally levelled out as he reached the top. His feet, both real and fake, kept crunching through layers of dead twigs and underbrush buried beneath the thinning snow. He looked up, his hot breath steaming in front of his face in clouds of white vapour, and met with a curious sight.
He was standing on the edge of a large valley, with the Cora looming to the north. It seemed so thin from this angle, less like a wall and more like a giant, jagged black fang rising up to pierce the empty, starless sky, and at its base was the source of the pale glow that had first caught his attention.
The 'light' was actually hundreds of lights, all smattered together like drops of dew on a spider's web. Those around the edges were few and far between, but there were so many clustered near the centre they almost seemed to fuse into a single, shining beacon.
Thanks to James's knife, the left side of his face was cleaved into a perpetual smile, but now the right side peeled back as well, creating a horribly unbalanced smirk.
The orange glow suggested fire of some kind (either candles or hearths) but the fact that he couldn't actually see the flames themselves, coupled with the way those spots of light were framed in neat little squares could only mean one thing.
Those were homes. Not just any homes, but the same kind he had spent the last few months in, imprisoned by bed and by crutch. Those were houses. Those were Fox houses.
He had found the place James called 'Grovenglen'. This was the place Ander had abandoned his people for. The freak might be down there right now, in one of those cosy little squares of light, living it up with all his limbs intact. But, most importantly, this was also the place those brats were taking Valery.
Banno's mouth dried up at the thought, and his tongue flicked out, slicking his parched lips.
They might be nearby, and if they weren't, they soon would be. He couldn't be sure of where they would enter the valley, but this was it. This was their final destination. Rabbits had their warrens, squirrels had their trees, and those three siblings had this valley.
That's all he needed.
Anger suddenly surged through Banno's skull like a flash fire, igniting bursts of pain just behind his good eye.
Valery. Sweet, innocent little Valery. She needed his help. She needed to be set free. She needed to escape this hellish, dead world, and the only way to do that, the only way to gain eternal life... was through him.
But just look at this place. Filled with monsters, filled with those who did not understand this world because they were incapable of understanding anything. They were dead without even knowing it, just lumps of meat that could move and talk because he, Banno, was alive and real. The only reason any of them existed was because of him.
He's known this ever since he took James's life. He didn't get to taste it leaving his body, but even so, he should have felt something. But he didn't, and the reason for that was simplicity itself.
James was never truly alive.
Banno used to get a thrill from killing deer, elk, even frogs and birds, but that all changed the moment he tasted little Vallah. She had been real. After that, even the biggest, strongest game was nought but ash in his mouth. He had thought it was because he had finally tasted something higher than a simple animal, but now he knew better. Even those that looked alive, even those that pretended to have the same kind of awareness as he did, were only illusions.
They had eyes, but they could not see the truth. They had ears, but they could not listen to reason. They had noses, but they could not divine the scents of ecstasy. They had hearts, but they could not feel true happiness. And, worst of all, they had tongues, but they could not taste life, and neither could they taste death, for they were neither alive nor dead, they simply were, and that would have been the worst torture imaginable, were they only capable of understanding it.
They were down there, and they would do anything in their power to snuff out those who yearned for something more, those who yearned for him. They suffocated those precious few sparks of real life with time, murdering them bit by bit and day by day, until they were just as fake and empty as the rest of them, doomed to die and disappear forever.
He wouldn't let that happen to Valery. She was far too real, far too alive, to be subjected to such poison! To simply fade away, never to know what it means to truly be alive, as part of him...
Almost everything in this world that was not him was not real, and everything that was not real was nothing, worse than nothing. It was unimaginably cruel.
It was evil.
What would happen to her? What would happen to her scent, her flavour, if she were consumed by a fake life?
Banno already knew the answer to that one.
It was the same thing as freezing to death. Or starving to death. Or bleeding to death.
It was being invaded by something that was nothing, something that was not truly there, an absence in reality.
It was becoming a part of everything that was not him, and everything that was not him was not real.
Banno almost felt like crying. Life was so ridiculously rare, why did it have to be so fragile, too?
It was so cruel... but it was also beautiful.
A warm, sticky trickle of puss flowed from Banno's ear as he looked out over the lights of Grovenglen. So beautiful. So peaceful.
He could already hear their empty screams.
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