Chapter 37: Where Brothers Belong

Miko:

Maleki and I elected to walk the extra distance to Quavoris as we exited the lower ridge of the mountain. While we wished to stay to see more of the city life, we had another plan. The only thing there for us was a carriage. It was time to go home.

The large stone gates and cut-out culvert for exiting citygoers held a familiar area for inbound carriage drivers that was a sort of holding area while they stayed in the city. However, there was a separate section for drivers awaiting their passengers or soon-to-be customers. They kept the soliciting carts further away from the city gates, but they could be seen further up the road in another cut-out section off the stone path.

As we searched the driver's face for a safer pick, there was a faint sort of heartache as we realized none of them were Kallen. Maleki’s hopes were much greater than mine, though he didn’t speak them aloud; I could see the disappointment on his brow.

We had used the little money we had on food and travel on the way up here, so all that remained was what was left over. The drivers were a man and a woman who appeared to be some sort of carriage-driving duo that used the job to fund their travelling life between the different cities. We chose them due to their passiveness and nonchalance, as if the trip was less severe or certain for them. After we inquired, they looked at each other and spoke about how they had been intending to go to Korvast soon anyway, so they didn’t mind our coin being short.

Maleki didn’t like the idea and wanted to walk away, but I reminded him how our timeline was more urgent and that these people’s graciousness was a kindness we shouldn’t take away from them. The proposition hurt some part of his soul that felt indebted to the world as it was.

I guess I admired that about him, something I wish I dared to possess, but my line of thinking was a callousness that allowed us to survive.

For us, it had been almost two years since we had been in a carriage. We walked every step of our trials. Well, Maleki walked a lot of it, I suppose, but that debt was repaid.

The rocking and swaying on the less structured roads as we left Quavoris’ stone roadway induced a motion sickness that overtook Maleki for most of the journey. It bothered me less, but I certainly understood why he was sick to his stomach. This cart was far less well built than Kallen’s, which he had inherited from his father. This cart sat much better for the front seats where the driver and his partner were, but an uneven post or misaligned wheel created a bouncing effect that plunged away at the gut. You spend enough time riding on someone else’s back, and you tend to get used to a less balanced ride, with constant readjustments.

I was just glad to be moving.

As we passed the moonglow pines and arrived at the lake, which was a full day of travel from our home, Maleki and I expressed a mutual expression of relief. I removed myself from the cart with no help from my brother; if anything, I helped him out of the ball he was in and off the steps of the cart, holding one of his arms on my shoulder until we got to the water.

“It’s been so long since we were here,” he said as he rushed water up to his face, washing his skin in a scrubbing motion. Maleki rested in his wet palms for a moment, pushing away the cart sickness that he had built up since our camp.

“Are you gonna make it back?” I laughed. “Maleki, who braved the trials, died in a carriage.” I waved my hands across as if I were reading the words on his tombstone.

He tried to laugh, but it sounded painful. “I’d almost rather walk back. I’m not sure how you’re suffering through this so easily.”

“I’ve spent many an hour on uneven ground in a cart.”

“Yeah, where is that thing? I’d rather be in that than this piece of junk.”

“First of all, neither of us would fit in that thing now, and I believe it was crushed by a falling piece of rock and currently lies at the bottom of a ravine.”

He groaned as he cupped more water into his hair and face, with a miserable expression.

“You’re almost home, brother.” I slapped him on the shoulder and folded my pants up so I could dip into the water.

Maleki violently shook himself and fell back to the shore, resting in the thick grass that coasted against the water line.

“I keep wanting to say how long it’s been since we were here last, but it feels confusing to say. How do you count the time that you were asleep? How do you count the time that the world didn’t feel?”

“It’s an adjustment,” I replied. “But you can feel it here, two years would have brought us into winter, but it’s still autumn. The moon glow pines have no frost on their tips, and the water hasn’t frozen over. The weather is….”

“Silent.” My brother finished. “Unnaturally so.”

His candor was odd but appreciated.

“It was already broken after they stole the fruits. The primordials allowed the rest of the zones to become habitable. The intense storms are a part of the way people live. I do wonder what effect this will have on society as a whole.”

Maleki laughed. “Society? You’ve met three actual people and two primordial beings. I don’t think you’re the best surveyor of that demographic.”

I tried to laugh, but the weight of it all did steal my consciousness on many nights. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t regret it, but…

No. I would’ve done it again. I looked up at the sky and pushed my foot through the water.

Maleki sat up, sifting through the silence. “Miko.”

I fought the urge to stare at the sky and responded to his voice with my eyes.

“We’re going to fix it. Make it better. Like it how it was.”

“Of course,” I replied, matching his demanding eyes.

“Together.”

I smiled, annoyed he didn’t let me simmer in my thoughts, reconstructing how I could have done things differently. “Together.”

Our short, relaxing dip in the lake was fleeting, and we were back in the carriage.

After almost nine hours, the forest trees became familiar. We promised the drivers it was okay to drop us off on the road as the twilight was nearing, and said our goodbyes.

Our home was only a two-hour walk from here, and an hour carriage ride to where we met Kallen for the first time, the path we would have stayed on if we hadn’t departed from the cart early.

There were no roads to tell us we were home. We had never even been this far as kids, but we knew home was this way.

As the sun dropped through the sky, closer and closer to the rim of what was out of the reach of our eyes, we neared ever closer to our home. Two years for us, six months for them. Would they even recognize us?

A footpath opened up through the trees and overgrown fields that blocked our view of where our home should be. As we surpassed the tree line and walked the path, which seemed to be slowly overtaken as well by a lack of travel, an unnatural shape appeared.

The shape of a building, wood, and stone that coalesced into one undefined shape. Smoke bellowed out of the brick stack near the back of the home.

As we walked further, I felt heavier than ever. It was almost as if my body knew that this place was a representation of rest. Something I longed subconsciously for.

Grandfather’s smithing shack arrived in view, and then, too, the garden my grandmother cared for. Its shape in the twilight was as I remembered it, well-groomed, each blade of grass, every blooming leaf, micro-managed with care.

There in the torchlight, sitting under the weathered wood beams, sat two figures my heart could never unsee. The weaknesses of my callous heart, my parents’ parents. Grandma Kecila and Grandpa Thaumus.

As we approached, they didn’t stutter or move. We weren’t even sure they could see us in the darkness of the fields that had become busy in the wake of Maleki’s departure.

And yet, the torchlight flickered as the silhouettes of my grandparents' shapes moved forward.

Every step we took toward each other felt as vast as a trial. Every pain we endured. Every day of loneliness felt so far away as we grew nearer.

“Boys?” A voice rang out, an older man’s, tired but emphasized with a surge of surprise.

“It’s us, Grandfather.” Maleki’s voice was a low tremble in the valley that held our whole life.

The footsteps in the muffled grass and mixture of stone grew louder in an instant as all four of us ran to each other. Where Grandma Kecila’s embrace was gentle, her fingers cold to the touch, Grandpa Thaumus pulled Maleki in as if he were attempting to hold him there for eternity. Any other person might have died under the pressure of that tight death grip, but Maleki endured, and I think part of him needed it.

Tears flowed from both my grandparents' eyes, even from mine.

Finally, our journey had come full circle.

At long last, we were home.

The End of Arc 1: The Curse of Necessity