It was Mikael’s 7th birthday. He hadn’t expected much for the celebration. He didn’t have reason to. For the past seven years, his family has been on the run. On a constant state of escape. They never stayed in one place for more than a month at a time. Mikael didn’t know why.
He didn’t want to ask.
His father never liked to give warnings on when they’d leave. He’d always just pack the bags himself, and they’d always just go, like they were being hunted by a rabid beast who was thirsty for blood. And they were dripping heavily with open wounds all over.
Mikael could never adjust, could never settle. Different places, different people, all the time. After a while, Mikael gave up making friends he would know he’d never meet again. On making memories in places he’d only soon forget.
He was a child, an only child with his childhood robbed from him.
Mikael had no one to confide with. Only Tal, his pet ferret. Tal was special. He got him during his 6th birthday. Not through his parents, though. Mikael never got anything from his parents apart from food, water, and shelter. The things he needed to survive. The only things they ever had. No, he got Tal on his own accord.
Mikael found him perched on a fragile tree branch beside a lake outside a city, a step away from falling. Tal had broken his right leg, Mikael saw. So the boy offered the ferret a hand, which the ferret bit. Mikael recoiled. Pained but not dismayed, he offered the same hand again. Luckily, Tal yielded, and they both shared a drink of the lake’s water.
Ever since then, they grew to be the best of friends.
One time, Mikael’s father mistook Tal for the night’s dinner. He placed the ferret over a pot of boiling water, ready to lower him to his death.
Mikael snatched Tal off his father’s hands, as quick as a ferret himself. Mikael’s father stomped off grumbling that day, muttering something about the ferret taking food away from the family. Since then, Mikael would steal bread and meat from whichever market they’d find themselves closest to, making sure that everyone would have an ample meal.
His parents never questioned where he got the food from. They didn’t have the time to. They were always on the run, always being chased. By something. Something persistent. Something insurmountable. Someone.
Today, Mikael found himself saddled on a horse. He had done this before, but this was the first time he was riding for leisure and not for escape. This was his parents’ gift to him, a peaceful ride on the dunes of the Braga desert.
The sun streaked mightily overhead. Noon.
Mikael kept his sun-crusted shawl tightly wrapped on his head. Tal rested on his shoulder, observing how the wind made the sand dance.
“You ready, kid?” his father asked. He smiled to Mikael beneath his own shawl, beyond his wrinkles and strain. Mikael was glad that his father still had things that made him happy.
“Of course the kid is ready,” his mother inserted. Mikael was between them, his father to the left, and his mother to the right.
Mikael answered with a whip to his horse’s reins. “Let’s go!” he shouted, and Tal jerked upward, surprised by the sudden movement.
Mikael’s horse darted forward, fast and uncaring. It ran so smoothly that its hooves seemingly floated above the sand beneath.
The wind greeted him in stride, as a warm breeze blew straight to his face, making his shawl flap in the air. He was embraced by the desert. Mikael had never seen a desert as beautiful as this. The sand dunes radiated beneath the cordial sun, and the pale orange landscape calmed even Mikael’s shaking soul. Above, the sky held a cool blue.
He breathed and felt at peace.
But only for a moment.
Because even here, he felt like someone was following them. Someone sinister and unforgiving. He couldn’t know who. He couldn’t explain why. But always on his birthday, his senses would perk.
Mikael looked around, surveying the desert. But no one was there, apart from his parents who kept a steady speed a few feet behind him. They smiled and waved; Mikael smiled back.
He rode on, not allowing his suspicions get the better of him. It was his birthday, and the first birthday he’s had the chance to celebrate. No one can get to them in the desert, he assured himself. No one can take this away from him.
At least for today, as far as Mikael was concerned, they were being chased by something nonexistent. Ghosts. And ghosts couldn’t hurt them. Ghosts are ephemeral, weak, latching yet fleeting. He was far more concerned with the living.
The path they followed turned upward, to a hill of sand that overlooked the desert. The sun had moved slightly since they first embarked. The winds had become hungrier though, whisking small sand whirlwinds as far as the horizon.
A river rushed and curved at the bottom of the hill, a striking sign of life in a barren land. Mikael wondered if he could bathe in it for a while to stave off the heat. A drink would be nice too.
There, on the hill, Mikael stopped.
He wished he hadn’t.
Because as soon as he did, ahead, far but nearing with every second, a man in a dusted black coat rode for him. Mikael’s heart skipped a beat, and a coldness creeped upward his spine, like death itself grabbed the back of his neck. Clamping his ability to move.
“RIDE MIKAEL, RIDE!” his father shouted behind him. Without hesitation, Mikael followed. With some effort, he urged his horse onward, away from the man in the coat. As fast as he could, he rode. His horse sloppily careened downward to the base of the hill. From there, he followed the bank of the desert river, with the course of the water as his guide.
Death’s hand still gripped him, and it inched tighter and tighter. He found it harder to breathe.
“Son!” his mother shouted. The winds that barraged Mikael’s ears muffled any sound. His head started to turn, but then his mother said “NO! WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT LOOK BACK! Son, listen to me! Just keep moving forward, okay! Whatever happens, just keep moving forward!”
Little did he know, that would be the last he would hear of his parents ever again.
Without looking back, Mikael nodded. He thrusted forward with his horse, and Tal moved from one shoulder to the other. He too, didn’t look back. And the river’s waves bashed against the ground beneath.
As his horse bounded, sand splashed in all directions, violently blasted by the horse’s raging hooves. Tal struggled to cling on to Mikael’s shoulder, but he did so all the same. “You’ll be fine,” Mikael whispered. He lied.
Only when he heard a shout did Mikael turn his head. Behind him, the man in a black coat had caught up with his parents, and the man smiled. Coldly, the man in the coat ignored Mikael’s parents, and he went straight for him.
Mikael’s spirit sank. His blood rushed to his head, and his hands turned pale white.
Death came for all, but Mikael decided that it would not come for him today.
The man in the black coat rode quickly, the sound of his horse’s hooves pounding louder and louder, closing the distance between.
With all of Mikael’s strength, he commanded the horse’s reins and cracked it. Weirdly, the world answered. Overhead, the sun moved sporadically, brightening then dimming then disappearing all together. Its light was still there though, but the sun itself was erased from the sky.
The sand rumbled and roared, and the wind swirled in all directions like gravity itself beckoned the wind’s call. Below, the ground quaked, and it took all of Mikael’ power just to stay upright, more so to stay at the speed he went.
Behind, the man in the black coat gained. He was fifteen feet away. On his shoulder, Tal purred. Mikael placed one hand to his head and patted him. “We’ll be okay, okay?” he lied again.
The man in the black coat was ten feet away now. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two —
An explosion in the sky shook the world, making the sand, the dunes, and the desert itself shift. Mikael’s vision blurred and bugged, and everything was in complete disarray. Barely, Mikael could see something in front of him. Something he was hopelessly heading straight towards.
A rift. Keep moving forward, his mother’s voice echoed. And then everything went to black.
***
“Wake up!” shouted a rusty voice. A pair of small soft hands nudged on Mikael’s temple. He felt his throat scratch like it was carpeted in shattered glass. He needed water and fast. Reluctantly, Mikael opened his eyes.
“Tal?” he asked, rubbing the sand off his face. The sand had gotten everywhere. His eyes, his nose, his ears, his hair. Mikael coughed sand; his teeth covered with grains.
In front of him, Tal stood on two legs. “Who do you think? Yes, it’s me.”
Mikael sat upright, trying to process… whatever the hell just happened. Whatever the hell is happening. “You can talk?”
Tal shook his head in utter disbelief. “I’m speaking, aren’t I?”
“You are,” Tal rubbed his ears just to make sure. “You’ve never done that before.”
Tal’s eyes widened. “And here I thought you were just a good listener.” The ferret crossed his arms.
Mikael stood, trying not to let the fact that his pet ferret was now a talking ferret, and maybe has always been a talking ferret. But he didn’t have the energy nor the throat capacity to argue with his friend right now. “Where are we?”
“Beats me,” answered Tal. “But that looks interesting.” He darted away. Mikael tried to follow, but first he needed water. He had a skin of it latched on his horse’s saddle, but his horse was gone. And everything else that went with the horse. Where am I? Mikael looked around, and his parents were nowhere to be found.
He remembered the rift, and how it opened like reality itself cut open. A laceration in the fabric of the universe, bringing him to the middle of nowhere.
The river was gone too, his de facto guide, path, and compass. Mikael shivered at the thought that he was more lost than he would ever come to realize.
But that concern, maybe for another time. First, he needed a drink. Mikael followed the footmarks Tal left on the sand.
It led to a patch of land with grass as green and as lush as life itself. It was circled by trees of all sizes that bent and bowed to seemed to protect that patch of land, like wooden rings of armor. In its center sat a pond that was as pure as the sky. A desert oasis.
It was about as large as stables that could contain eighteen horses, nine on adjacent sides. And it was beautiful, all but for a bony scar that edged its border, where a skeleton of a dragon rested.
Mikael walked towards the oasis, his feet moving from sand to grass. He felt the blades of the grass beneath. It was real. So the water would also be real, it would be safe to assume.
He walked to the pond and stooped. When he was mere inches away from scooping a handful of water, Tal bumped him. “Don’t drink that!”
Hesitantly, Mikael lowered his hands. “Why?”
“It’s poisoned, don’t you know? Well, I do. Once you’ve been in the wild long enough, you tend to have a nose for these things.”
Mikael let out a deep breath. It wouldn’t hurt to trust his friend. Well, maybe it would. It’d hurt his dried-up throat pretty bad.
“Look,” said Tal, pointing to the dragon skeleton. “He tried to drink from the pond. See where it got him?”
“Yeah, yeah,” answered Mikael. It was true, he saw. If the poison was strong enough to kill a dragon, it’d make quick work of Mikael. Being a skeleton was far, if at all, on his birthday wish list.
“But I did find something while you were knocked out.” Tal scurried hurriedly to the trunk of a bent tree, and moved deeper into the tree’s branches. Mikael followed.
Eerily enough, the trees bent in a way like it was being pulled by something. He felt that something’s pull too. It nudged at his heart ominously, and he felt his feet move on their own towards it. Mikael had a feeling that’s where Tal went too.
He was right.
In the middle of the trees, in an enclave of branches and leaves, lodged at the heart of mighty tree trunk, a red ruby settled. It was magnetic, possessing its own charismatic gravitational pull. It was alive.
It made the oasis, thought Mikael. It made the oasis what it is.
“Do you have any idea what this is?” asked Mikael.
Tal shook his head. “No clue. But it looks cool, don’t it? And you can feel it too, right?”
Drawn by it, Mikael moved his hand to grab the ruby from the tree. But it was embedded deep within the trunk; it was elusive. Confined. Impossible to get.
It was small, the size of a coin with the shape of an eye that stared deep into Mikael’s very essence. It saw things no one else can see. It knew things that no one else dare to know.
“It’s a trap.” Mikael paced. “This stone made this… land. And it got what it wanted, I think.”
Tal followed. “So, the grass and the trees were the net.”
“And the pond is the poisoned bait.”
“What was it trying to capture then?” asked Tal.
“I think you answered your own question a few seconds ago.” They both looked at the remains of the late great dragon. “And I think that dragon has answers.”
They walked to the mouth of the dragon. Its giant teeth bared on the open desert. Its might gone, but its glory still vaguely remained. The tooth nearest to Mikael curved, a fang. He looked at it with intent.
The tooth itself was weathered and rugged. It has been here a while. That, or whatever made the dragon a skeleton hastened its unnatural corrosion. Still, he clutched the tooth with his hand, his hand that was too small for it. It was weathered, but still Mikael could feel the dragon’s strength within it. Still…
Mikael kicked the tooth down, to no avail. “Will you help me?”
Tal squeezed in between some of the dragon’s teeth. “This better not eat me.” Then he started gnawing on the dragon’s tooth on its base. “Don’t stare at me while I do this, okay? Get a rock or something and help me out too.”
And so Mikael did, and they both nicked at the tooth until its base cracked. Only then did Mikael try to kick it down again, and down it went.
The tooth fell on the grass, and Mikael grasped it. The tooth of a dragon, he thought. This should do.
He held the dragon’s tooth with both hands, neared the red stone, and plunged the tooth to the stone’s edge. The wood caved, the tree cracked, and the stone flew, uprooted from its wooden abode.
“Wow, I didn’t think that’d actually work,” inserted Tal.
Mikael shrugged. “There’s a reason it wanted the dragon dead, I suppose.” He walked to place where the stone landed and knelt beside it.
Its pull was still there. Stronger, mightier, now untamed. More violent. Mikael feared the stone’s malicious power. But he needed it, he knew, if he were to see his parents again.
Mikael picked the stone up from the ground and the world ruptured. Rifts formed in the bloodred sky, and the landscape rocked violently. Reality distorted, and above, the rifts formed and closed and reformed and closed and shattered the heavens itself.
Beyond the rifts, Mikael saw worlds of fire and pain and torture. He saw the sun burning clouds and sending stars to cities in light of a madman’s wrath. He saw cities and nations of great technological prowess challenge gods themselves. He saw a wizard die atop a perilous mountain made of glass. He saw the man in the black coat, and he saw him smile.
And then the rifts closed, and the sky turned normal again.
Panting, Mikael held the stone on one hand and the tooth on the other. Tal hid inside his shirt, shaking. “I do not want to see that again,” he quivered.
“Me too, buddy.” Then he placed the stone in his pocket. True to his assumptions, the oasis started to lose shape. The trees wilted and the grass receded. The pond in its center sank to the sand beneath, leaving nothing, nothing but the bones of a long dead dragon.
But, from the pond rushed a familiar river. It curved and bent its way through the sand, making its own trail. A trail he’s followed once before.
Tal peeked over Mikael’s shirt collar and bounded for the river. “Dibs on the water!”
“There’s plenty for both of us!” He tried to follow but the stone vibrated.
Happy birthday, he heard a voice say. It came and went with the wind. The voice of his father, strained and contracted. Mikael peered to the horizon but saw nothing. Maybe it had been nothing.
Mikael wanted to believe it was nothing, but he knew better. He knew that death came for him, and while it did, he can know no peace. Not until he got his parents back.
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