Whisper in the Forge

His chain mail slammed against him as he rose higher up the mountain, lead by the stars in their ancient ritualistic lingo. A language saved for the dead. A language he would one day speak himself. An ember up ahead braised through the cold sweat dripping from his eyelash. The heavy wool draped over his shoulders is not enough to block the chill from nesting into his joints and among the thinnest sheets on his armor. Ian Mcalester. Described as many things. Many things he ignores. The moonlight assists in building him a passageway through the lanky, rotten trees, drooping into careless silhouettes, unable to carry themselves through the winter. Some like arms reaching towards the aging knight.  

     He appreciates the assistance from his environments. Often a herald he can always rely on. He felt that trees can speak when the wind blew when he was a child, though he didn’t care to listen anymore. He had hoped this one time, that the light would take him in another direction.  

     The falling flakes had picked up speed now, the sweat on his face, dripping down his brows and lashes, now frozen still keeping his face more stone ridden than it already was. His eyes hide from the light. He doesn’t want God to see into him or the devil. This is a choice without influence. He does not need to share the blame. He stares straight ahead into his own faith in darkness, guided by the pale blue aura ahead, almost hidden by the flurry of ice in the air.  

  The ice on his fingers, calling him to warmth. Drifting nearby, a scraping wood and a warm yellow fade, piercing through the chilly blue and pulling him toward a brick endeavor. There was a red cloth hanging over the door, burnt to ash at the bottom and rising to a deep amber, swaying in the wind. A wind heavy enough to swing the door in favor of his surviving senses in the snowstorm. For a moment he confuses his footsteps with another and spins around. The woods behind him, darker than he remembered. A stench followed him rotten and full of flesh. It made his nose twitch. 

With no hesitation he enters the small brick foundation, just tiny enough for him to squeeze through the wooden frame barely holding and pulls the heavy red blanket on the door with him. A symbol of his rivals. He rolls the blanket up in his arms, centering it and admiring its ugliness. There is a small forge in the center of the brick cabin and he catches a faint feeling that something is waiting for him in the cold night just outside the door, as if there were no space for him other than this tiny cabin with a tiny fist sized hole. 

From the bag near his hip he pulls out a telescope, adjusting it far into the night, to see endlessly. The telescope circling through the other end, finding its home to rest its own eye upon. It may have found it. 

A hidden cabin, among the lively trees that sit on the crescent hilltop with apples that fall and tumble to a clear river with lively fish and sheep that willfully dance over fences and have no need for a shepherd. Even in the moonlight, Ian Mcalester could see the life beyond the false measurement of the glasses eye, from over 4 miles away. He can see what he’s taking away from someone, so he leaves the telescope in the hole and begins to prepare a fire in the forge. Starting with the flag that carried the horrible stench, the sweat of his enemies, sworn and now tearing. Tearing piece by piece into a nearly flaming pit. Ruthlessly trimming with his smallest blade, a handle with the taste of ivory bone and keeps the rest of the flag to the side, where he can’t see, smell or hear it. 

A match is lit in the fervent night with an accent of sky to fill the rest. The bright yellow shade killing the black, illuminating a room aged by death and the recycling of death itself. Dead maggots lay rest inside of eaten skulls, dead maggots that probably had maggots of their own. Boxes with years' worth of rot and famish lay bask less and plain within this small perimeter. Perfect for firewood though he had not much room to walk without waking the dead. A match is thrown on the flag and some wood, igniting with no wait for breath. Within a few minutes, the knight was warm.  

He threw a thin bowl of steel inches above the fire with his sword to hold it up, warming up a little bit of water. Digging through his bag he pulls out a cloth wrapped around a loaf of bread. He swallows the shallow meal down, saving much of it for later. He grabs a cup of warm water and drinks it slow, approaching the telescope on the wall. Still observing what it needs. The knight peers through the glass and sees that the house he is watching, now has smoke rising out of the chimney. He takes a long sip with the water burning his lips which in this moment, is easy to ignore. He would gladly allow any distraction from the morning ahead. 

When Ian Mcalester had just turned 12, he was handed his first wooden sword. It splintered and weathered his many bruises and weak dashes and mishandling and crises and formulaic excuses and rhythmic obsession and misunderstanding. He grew up not understanding why younger men had to fight and the older men got to live. He questioned often, the choices of those above him, not out of superiority but to pull them out of their own sense of superiority. He felt he was saving them from themselves. Who was going to save Ian Mcalester from Ian Mcalester? 

Ian was 16 when the king had knocked on the door of the Mcalester home, over 3 miles north of the kingdom itself. He remembers the day. The town gathering, handing him baskets of the freshest apples, oranges, potatoes, almonds, fish of all types, caught with our fathers bare hands. All just thrown at him. He didn’t even need to step off of his horse before his entire kingdom was fed ten times over. Ian thought at that time and even now, it was too much blossoming for a man who could supposedly carry his own. That any king worth his merit would not accept such offers from needy people. Yet he took all of the food that was handed to him, ordering his men to pillage it off the ground before it went rotten from bugs and dirt. This whole extravaganza, before he entered his home. When Ian would walk out of that house, the town would never accept him as their own, so he left with the king and stared at the plains and old village cottages behind him as they grew smaller and smaller and hid from him behind a hill full of dead trees. 

Now Ian is here, in a forge with nothing but a faint and fading memory and a tomorrow he wished would turn away and return another time, when the force of innocence had no play in the game. A note sits just out of reach and he chooses to ignore, unless choosing to ignore it is not ignoring it at all. It isn’t, so he reaches. The king spends a considerable amount of time in this letter, divvying up his forces in favor of a brighter day ahead, forging a plan for conquer and peace in his region of the world. Then a space, handwritten specifically for Mcalester himself. “The child is southeast, about 48 miles worth. A dreadful journey but one worth a lifelong debt. The child is a risk to the family name and must be dealt with in a timely manner, preferably before my wedding day. They live in the green hills of Sage Valley. Please make quick work of this.” He rolled the letter back up and worked to dismiss it in his mind, yet, he couldn't and who could. The letter was not ruthless but in that is where the most ruthlessness shined through. Mcalester had gotten messages like this before from the king and had made quick sorting of these issues a place of high honor for himself. A lifelong dream to serve a country that is, for a young man. He raises his sword and places it over the fire and uses some water to wipe off some residue of blood. A skirmish he had nearly forgotten about until this very moment. Yet another petty war no one will ever hear about. “Foolish.” He whispered to himself. 

“Foolish indeed.” Something answered back in the cold dead of night. 

Ian raises his sword and spins around and points it down to the ground, he raises it to the ceiling, he points it at the telescope, which is now turned inward, pointing at Ian. He holds his breath in the quiet, sword prepared straight at the telescope. Quickly, he pulls it out of the wall and peers into the hole. Nothing, nothing that speaks. Centering himself, he gathers that his exhaustion has spent his minds well being and that rest would come after the cleaning of his blade. The sword is placed gently on the edges of the brick with small grains of rock and dirt crushed underneath and dragged out of its comfort in the man made earth. The flame lights the security around him. He watches in between the crevice of the brick where critters crawl and webs catch prey and prey hunt in the dark. 

He needed to relieve himself and the space was too small for that sort of use, he knew he would need to step outside, if only a few feet. The snow had slowed to a crawl as did the wind, almost completely still now and he was impatient with his body. He takes a few steps out and leaves the door open for the fire to light the area around him. Ian watches the white collect on the fading treetops and some snow clumps even falling from one dead branch to the other. That dead blue light still pouring in, making him feel colder than it actually was. He drove himself into a momentary spiral thinking he was spotting faces among the trees, that would look at him and turn away as soon as he looked at them. He stopped looking directly at them and there they were. Eyes, living in the moonlight. 

Ian shut the door quickly behind him, knowing those faces only existed because he wanted them to because he knew the faces of strangers in the dark was a slight comfort above the things the dark deliberately wants to hide from us. Darkness exists for hiding and light exists to make sure the bad things can’t hide forever. In between the exposure, they are one in one, a force unbeatable, if not divided by the eyes that misperceive. Opposites don’t just attract. They bleed into one another.  

“Mcalester!” a voice bellowed from the smoke that now filled the room. “The bastard child waits for you. He can feel your footsteps haunting in his bedroom already. He may be asking soon whether there is a monster around in his room in the dark. His mother will sweetly tell him no and this time she will be lying. You are just around the corner.” 

The trees around the forge had been dropping enough branches to cover the exit for the smoke in the ceiling, causing it to collect quickly. Ians cough became heavy and expensive. He blew the door open and watched the smoke rise out of the tiny room, blowing it all out with the flag of the impostors (in his mind). The smoke would bend and coil and tether with every throw of the false rag being hurled into the air, some parts of the smoke darker and richer with a creamy texture flying into the air and the flakes of snow burning inside of the black dread that surrounds it. That’s when Ian saw it. Something just outside of the door, where the woods meet the gravel, something moved and shifted the smoke and disappeared in the dark of the forest. 

Through all of his efforts, the fire grew, and he was frozen. Outside, waiting for him, was something beyond him. His speed, his thought and his preparedness. He was tired, that was for certain, not this tired, he thought. He stumbled backward and knocked the sword off the forge, burning and cutting his leg at the same time. The fire slowing itself down, showing self-doubt. Through the smoke he even hears the slight comforting sound of a kettle and a kitchen and a laughing child, faintly as the fire dies down. He grips his leg, grinning with delirium on his teeth and quickly wraps the wound with the flag of his enemies. He limps with the dagger in his hand, prepared for anything to emerge from the thick of the smoke, but the smoke was clearing now. His shadow on the wall reminded himself of his father and he didn’t like it.  

He points the dagger at his shadow “It’s you motherfucker.” He steps toward himself. “You had a lot to say when I was coughing on smoke.” Ian examines the entire room, his eyes scanning every corner, placing boxes in front of the door, taking one last look at the house across the valley with its chimney still lit and covers the hole with the remainder of the flag. He uses his sword to knock most of the branches off of the ceiling to the best of his ability from the inside. He wants the fire, like any other, to roar in peace. He paces the room now, checking his shadow occasionally, circling the forge like a hawk circles its prey. He knows now, what waits outside. Ian Mcalester, saving Ian Mcalester, from himself.  

The night surrounds him now, he thinks in circles, a woman and child on his mind. Their faint laughter echoing behind and around him and inside him. The kettle steaming and boiling over echoing over the valley. He wished that maybe he would have kept on walking but that isn’t so true. If he wanted that, he would’ve. He didn’t like to be around indecisive cowards. Faintly annoyed even when his own king took too long to decide, always at the ready to decide for him. Now he would have to do the same again. He picks up his sword now that it’s cooled off and places just half of it over the flame to now wipe off his own blood. A voice, a new one, one he had forgotten about rings in his head and through the flame. “It’ll be easier on you and the kingdom to just do this dirty deed and get it over with. I’m certainly not the first king who ordered to slay unfit kinship and certainly will not be the last. Stand!” Ian stands at ready. 

Ian is again at his village. The day when the king came to visit, when food was treated harshly and the young and old were no longer priority and when one man had an entire town on each individual mind at once. My father, vicious to my mother, unfit to raise, unfit to marry and unfit to love and be loved, had laid his hands on her. The king had gotten a hand written letter from me, never thinking it would make it there or even be read but here he is. Here you are. Teaching me to protect, not to... Ian stabs his father in the chest at the dinner table with a king fit to watch and observe this sort of occasion. Violence for him was something to clean up, not ponder on, not for men like this, not then. 

“Dammit Mcalester, you’re too damn sweet sometimes. We should’ve sent the one we all prefer.” Ian throws his head down in minor disgust, mainly at his snarly voice like a snake is swimming out of his nostrils. 

“I think you should’ve too.” 

In the woods, just outside, he hears snow crunching under the heavy footsteps of something else. It quietly wanders the woods and keeps its head low so as not to interrupt the glow of the earth with its quiet and somber cry. 

A voice appearing as floating ash through the flame “Think my light a true shade of darkness and my flame a tongue.” 

The creature out in the dark, somewhere watching, has caught the attention of the stars but still has more attention from the black space in between them. He leaves that space open for a silent wail that travels through the door and into the brick and out into the open air of midnight. Ian Mcalester stands at the doorway, leaving his armor inside, bracing his sword and dagger. Blood waits on the path of any man in his position he always knew that, his path had to be chosen tonight, before the moon made room for its partner. The door begging for an opening, an answer to its only purpose of existence and Mcalester just stands and stares at it. No motion and no drive for motion and a wish for a quicker ending. He is losing the grip on his sword, he knows time is out of the opening, he knows the opening is closing in on him, he knows, he knows, he knows... 

“Mister?” A soft voice carries through the flame. “Hi, me and my son do sure see a lot of smoke coming from that direction. Is everything alright?” 

Ians grip on the sword had never been stronger. What maniac talks to fire? 

“You really don’t have to respond, we understand. We just haven’t seen someone like you come through here in a while. If it weren’t so cold out I’d say you can just come right in and have some coffee or some tea and soup though the soup isn’t the greatest.” 

Ian rests his sword in front of him with the point on the ground and the hilt firmly in his grip. He didn’t need her tea or coffee or soup to warm up right now. His lips stand slightly apart and his jaw clenched downward towards his chest, where he could feel the weight of gravity pulling him to the floor, but he refused it that. 

“Sorry i guess i ramble a little bit. We don’t get to talk to other people much.” 

“Hiii!” a boy shouts through. 

“Venus! That’s rude!” 

Ian chokes on his tongue and his words and himself entirely. He had traveled for miles, encountered grave robbers, ridden on strange horses in strange lands with even stranger men, eaten food he wouldn’t have in a millennium, played games with his own mind that he wouldn’t have stressed a day in his life. His loyalty, his oath, it came first, it always comes first, before the wind and the lightning and the rolling thunder and the bellowing waves of the widest oceans, he was that, a loyal and unconditionally faithful servant.  

“Ma’am I...” He bites. Bites hard, makes his tongue bleed.  

“You do have a voice. How nice to-” 

“Ma’am I think you and your son are in trouble and I think you two should leave.” 

“Don’t be silly me and my son are fine! We’ve been here for say, give or take, seven years now? Moving into eight? You seem on edge mister you big on travelin’?” 

“I am going to cover the fire now. You need to go. Please. They will continue to try to find you. You need to go far away and never look back here. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. You and your son keep each other warm. Please.” His hand trembles as he opens the door and scrapes bits of snow inside. Just enough to kill it. The cold bites his hands as he throws more in. Praying under his breath. He can hear every flake burning in the heat into nonexistence into memory. The sun, far from returning, to save this cold dark end of the earth from itself. Not even a spark or a field set ablaze can save it. He peers one last time through the telescope, watching the house and the smoke failing to rise. I hope for the woman and child to gain speed ahead of you and I hope for my soul to find rest among this wicked place. 

He sits down against the door with the moonlight peeking through just ahead of him. Hours away the sun would rise and it would rejuvenate all around it. The snow would melt and become a stream at the bottom of the valley and the birds would sing to the sun and the sun would replenish their thirst in spades. The trees would speak to each other in their ancient tongue and the roots would be fed and cold and no longer dying but reborn and providing lush to the deep valley beyond this forge and this brick wall. Ian Mcalester would not see this though. The cold has already darkened his vision and overtaken the flooring underneath. His sword is dug into the center of the forge, hilt standing upside, its shadow in the moonlight. A frozen image and a frozen image will never die but it will never live either. He was okay with never seeing the hint of the sun again. He can hear the dark just outside resuming its unlawful presence to all around it, starving the animals and beasts of sight and strength to those who adapted to the dark because when you feel that warm and steady grip from the dark, it would be a complete betrayal to yourself not to stay there. 

Witness1 : A Southwestern Gothic Vignette

New Mexico, 1920s.  

Carefully… he pulls his hand back. An axe drives down through the air. Splitting the moss ridden wood in half, as carefully as he could. Damio never believed in the act of destruction. He would quicker watch a guitar collect dust and spiderwebs than ever play it.  How could he? It was perfect. Like a new land of snow forming on the hill. How could he ever ruin its grace with his muddy footsteps? He also spent many dinners wishing he didn’t have to chew his food. Though, he was lovingly reminded by his mother. “A hawk chews the food for their young and I’d be happy to oblige.” He opted not. So when his father passed, and he had to split the firewood in half, he knew he would have another weight to grieve. Innocence.  

     Boso, his fathers gentle donkey, straggling alongside Damio through his daily rounds. They paced themselves through the narrow hint of sun peeking through the cloudy sky, yet warmth still surrounded them. Boso, dragged with them two dry leather canteens and a neatly threaded straw hat, shielding his aged iris from the sun. Periodically they would stop and Damio would cup water in his hands for the donkey. He was too old to raise his head for a pour. At some point both of them knowing these journeys would have to end. Damio, gives him a kiss on the head, replacing his hat and both forge on, trembling an air of dust behind them for the sun to drown in.  

     When they got to the river, the wind had chosen a violent cadence and unpredictable at that. Gone for seconds, alive for minutes, dead for hours, dreadfully aware of its own breath.  

      “The air must have a… rhythm of its own.” Damio speaks. Words pouring out slowly. “Like a dance or song it plays to move like that.”  

      Boso laid at the bank, his body down completely, allowing himself to gorge a mouth full of water. The dry leaves a top floating beside his drying lips. Straw hat dipping itself into the river causing the school of fish to flurry. He looks up, just as a bottle tips his hat and pulls it into the river. Boso, too old to swim, spits at it moving away, like a betrayal happened upon him. Damio leans on the nearest branch, grabbing the hat and scooping the bottle with it. He drops the bottle in his hand and throws the hat on for wear. Letting the cool water run down.  

     “What do you think this is?” He looks at Boso, for some reason, expecting an answer.  

     Damio sits on a nearby log with a tobacco pipe, making a poor attempt at lighting it with the wind dancing about. He gives up after the second match had gone to waste, sparing his lungs from a clogged breath. Ceasing to destroy the world around him and ceasing to treat himself the same way. 

      The bottle sits beside him on the log wavering in the thickening air. Thin branches snap off of dry trees and collapse around them. The sun goes further into hiding, leaving a red hue hurling through the grayness. Rose accented cacti blossom across the water, bees collect in a hive nearby with the scarlet tint praising its worth of honey. A buzz of excitement that even Damio could hear and the wind never settled. He reaches behind him, grabbing the bottle with a piece of stained paper. Stained in black. Stained in a black he had never seen himself before. He stares at the bottle, the red hue bouncing in and out of it, fragmenting into subjects of paralysis. His eyes dilate, letting the light in. The wind now causing the water to move, a partner in a daring performance. Seeing a reflection of himself in the bottle, darkening, twisting, clawing. A shadow of his face staring back at him through an uneasy cloud that contorted his chest. His lips moving. No words escape.  

     The bottle begins to smoke from the top when his eyes return to form, his hand unable to let go. The heat sealing the glass to his skin. He dashes for the water and submerges his hand and the bottle. A surge of bubbling heat blasting to the surface with the violent rhythm of the wind and the waves. Crashing into the cliffside across and peeling the cactus away from the ground. The beehive buzzes out of sync with each other like they don’t remember how. The red light has escaped now, into the bottom of the bottle.  

     When he removes his hand out of the river, he ignores his bleeding agony. He does not look at his hand. He keeps his eye on the pale horizon and on Boso who is pacing in the distance, staring at him or something near him, from afar. Damio swears in his mind, that Boso and his shadow are out of step with each other. The wind now strong enough to push has him struggling to wrap his hand, he can feel it swelling. Now he steps back to admire the strangeness of the moment. He questions what was in that tobacco pipe.  

     Damio begins to walk to Boso who is now crying over a landscape of flying tumbleweeds. There is a loud ring in his ear. Tracing him to a place. Pulling him back into a moment, a warped sense of solitude, a grace with it. He sees now a freeform shadow, following him on the ground. Hiding underneath a rock. Peeking around the corner at him. He walks backward quickly and trips. The bottle sitting beside him, neatly, with the skin of his hand hanging on with a firm grip. Now he feels the pain, what's missing. The wind charges through him, blowing dirt in his eyes and burning his nostrils. Boso yelling for him in the distance. Damio stands and throws the bottle into the log, and it shatters as do basic principles.  

     Damio freezes. Boso stands on his hind legs and wails to the sky for mercy. The trees stop waving, the shadows for every rock and every branch, contradicting each other. Shadows with no sun. Shadows with no reference. Shadows with a pulse. 

     All is silent. The wind fading into memory, a frozen scent, the temperature can’t be felt. The river had frozen just as it was, Damio, trapped in a photograph. Unable to move. He hears his inner voice, calling to his father, calling to his mother, his abuela, himself. The clouds overcome the bright and hunch over the landscape as a starving beast who casts fear for sport. 

     He looks back at the rock with the hidden shadow, no longer seen, no longer peaking. With the overcast it may never be seen again. With that thought, Damio knew, he and Boso had very little time to contemplate.  

     “This is no song, and I am the instrument.” He whispers to himself.  

      The river, frozen still, cracks from underneath. A deep bellowing hurdles beneath the hell beneath him. Then                                                   

A Glint 

Floating 

Down 

Swaying 

Back 

And 

Forth 

Catching  

One 

  Final 

Dance 

  From 

         The  

                   Wind 

Spinning  

Down 

          To 

Safety.  

     The piece of paper falls into Damios hand. No more wound, no more damaged wrap. Healed.  

     Boso lands on all fours, walking back towards Damio. His shadow remains, standing in place.