Page 82 of Earthbound

The colours were so subtle, it took a lot of concentration to pick them out as she moved through the cavern. She passed a section of the sanctuary where there was no light at all and the shock of it drew her out of magesight.

Using her own eyes, she realised she was looking at the obeah that surrounded Afa. Once more she glanced at them, but not only was there no light within; the darkness was so complete it felt depthless.

There was no life within them at all.

But how? She had seen them breathing.

She began to walk towards them, her eyes squinting as she tried to pick out their movements. They couldn’t have all just died, could they?

They are soulless…

She was so preoccupied by her realisation that she didn’t look where she was going. Her toe stubbed against something hard, and she went sprawling. Ajax came running.

‘I really am done with falling over,’ she muttered as she looked at the fraedia glowing above. Ajax offered her his horn and she used it to pull herself up.

‘What did I even fall over?’

She looked around for the object of her ire and found a wooden post. It was placed too purposefully for it to be unintentional. She crouched down and ran her hands over the grain of the wood, noticing that there was a word engraved there.

‘Varnya,’ she read. Ajax huffed next to her, pointing out another wooden marker beside the first.

She noticed this was also labelled with a word. ‘Benan.’

Not a word…a name.

She looked around. There were ten, twenty, more…

‘A graveyard,’ she whispered as she began to back away slowly.

‘I didn’t kill all of them.’ The words and their meaning were enough to stop Lettle in her tracks.

She turned to face Afa. He met her judgement placidly. ‘You told me you were alone down here.’

‘I was, most of the time. But about a hundred years after Hady died, I heard voices in the cave above. So I sent stairs to greet them. And down they came.’ He moved his fingers to mimic walking down stairs.

He looked to one of the graves. ‘Davy was the first, he was a wonderful companion.’

‘Did you kill him?’ Lettle snarled.

Afa seemed taken aback by her anger, but she was done being gentle with him.

‘I did eventually. We had some happy years, but then he wanted to leave and tell the world about me. I had spent so long hiding the truth, I couldn’t let him change it all.’

‘What of the others?’

He cocked his head as if remembering. ‘There was a family, two daughters. They lived until they each died of old age. Then there was a soldier who kept trying to kill me, so of course I had to kill him back. Oh, about three hundred years ago, two friends arrived searching for my tomb—’

‘Did you ever let anyone leave?’

‘Once.’ His voice grew wistful. ‘Laral. In exchange for her freedom, she said she would write my story–well, the version of the story I wanted her to tell.’

‘The Wandering Human…’

He leaned forward in excitement. ‘Exactly! I was glad she managed to pen it ere malady claimed her.’

‘You only let her go because she was sick, didn’t you?’

The beat of silence was enough of an answer.