E07 - Ch 28: Waking

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✣✣✣✣✣ EPISODE SEVEN ✣✣✣✣

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✣✣✣✣✣✣✣✣✣ "The Climb" ✣✣✣✣✣✣✣✣

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I was screaming.

I had woken up early, reaching for the bed remote with a mind not only to raise the bed but to fix the air pressure. The bed had lost all support and was lumpier than French onion soup. But the remote wasn't on the nightstand because there wasn't a nightstand. Then I noticed the bed didn't feel like my bed at all.

Although it was still dark, morning blue was coming through the window, and I could see that I was in a little room. The timber walls were made of stacked logs with dirt pressed between the gaps.

For a moment, I thought I was still dreaming, on a mountain trip in the Rockies from my younger years with Lucy when we’d stay in cabins and go skiing. But Lucy wasn’t there with me, and the room was far too small for any cabin that I would have stayed at.

Then I pulled the blanket from my body and saw two tree trunks jutting out from under me. They were my legs.

That’s when I started screaming.

"Is everything alright?" came Mary's call. She slept in the room next door in case anything was amiss, and I'd woken that poor girl up countless times upon waking from my dreams.

But then I realized the voice didn't sound like Mary's. In fact, though I understood the words, it wasn’t even in English. The voice belonged to—

My mother.

"Sorry for waking you, Ma. Just a bad dream."

That was my voice. It came out of me naturally, in response to a fear of her getting up and checking on me. The sun hadn't risen yet, and she and my father would usually sleep for another half a chant or so.

I have parents!

Of course, I'd always had parents. But I hadn’t seen mine in over sixty years since they’d passed. And yet when I thought of the woman in the room next door, I knew her to be my own mother. Same with the man who was still in the care of Elder Calm at his cabin down the village road. The new memories were flooding into me now, the village and all its citizens. But the memories weren't actually new. Rather, I experienced them as knowledge that I'd always had.

I had to get up, I needed to get out of this room. If this was a dream—

I clocked myself against some beam in the hay ceiling and I let out a holler of pain, dropping back down on the straw mattress as I held my head. I'd risen far faster than I'd intended. But more shocking than that, I realized as I began to stand again that I was tall. Far taller than I had ever been, even when I was young and not all bent and shrunken down with age.

"Holy mackerel," I whispered under my breath.

"Is everything alright?" came my mother's voice again.

"Yeah, just, uh… heading out for a walk. I'll be back in time for my chores."

My voice sounded nothing like me. It was boyish and youthful, but I could feel it reverberating in my chest and exiting my mouth with my breath.

Has it finally happened? Have I finally lost my marbles?

I stumbled my way through our small dining area and pushed the door out into the open air.

Wheat fields surrounded me as far as the eye could see. Some were freshly cut, and others had yet to be harvested.

In the far distance, past the hill line, I could see the bank of dark trees that belonged to the forest. And beyond that, a giant tree stood above all the others, reaching outward into the sky. It was impossibly big. Bigger than any tree I'd ever seen, and I'd seen the very biggest. But that was back on Earth.

"Holy sweet Mary and Joseph."

I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to take away my diapers for this experience because I was pretty darn close to losing bowel control.

For some reason, somehow, I’d woken up in a new body, in a new world.

Then my legs were carrying me forward, picking up speed, and I was running. Actually running. I felt the wind in my hair and the ground beneath me drawn away below as my feet pushed off the ground with every glorious stride.

My footfalls carried me up a hill and down again, and then up another, even taller one, and not once did my legs buckle or shake. They didn’t even make any grumbling cracking noises as they bent and elongated. In fact, now that I thought about it, I didn’t feel any pain anywhere, except for maybe a touch in my stomach.

The scenery changed as I ran, and I saw little houses in the distance, and I knew them all and who lived in each one. I knew their families, the names of the children and even the animals. I saw places where I used to play as a boy with Brint and Feyna. Brint who had left the village, and Feyna who no longer wished to be my sweetheart.

I sprinted towards the lake, the early morning light casting long shadows over the path. My heart pounded not just from the exertion but from the sheer unbelievability of it all.

I headed into the forest and toward the direction of the lake, and though it was still dark, the sun only now just peeking over the horizon, the shadows beneath the trees were sharp and clear to my eyes.

And I could hear in a way that I had forgotten was ever possible. The forest was alive all around me. For so long my life had become silent except for when someone was speaking to me or when I had the TV on, and that was even with the help of hearing aids. Now the world was alive with all sorts of noises. The rustling of leaves overhead, the sounds of birds chirping and lifting off from tree branches, the wind sweeping past my ears, and even the sound of my clothes as I ran.

The lake came into view through the trees ahead, its surface a mirror reflecting the brightening sky above. My feet carried me down to the bank and I skidded to the water's edge. I had run for so long, and my breath had quickened, but I was still breathing lighter than the last time I collected myself off the toilet.

The reflection staring back at me was unrecognizable yet familiar to the different parts of my memories. The face was youthful, with sharp angles and a strong jawline. White hair fell over dark bronze skin, and eyes that were a striking green looked back at me.

I reached out to touch the water, and the reflection rippled away. When it settled again, the young man was still there, tall and strong, and youthful.

The entire experience was akin to waking from a long dream. Back on Earth, I’d often dream of my youth, and in those dreams, I wouldn’t remember the long life I’d lived afterward. In those dreams, I’d be young again, climbing mountains or building my company, and I would only know the existence I had in the dream. But then, upon waking, reality would flood back into me. I would find myself old and deteriorated, teeth missing in my jaw, body aching and slow to rise. The nightmare was not the dream but wakefulness.

Now the same experience happened again but at a much greater scale. I had lived a dream of seventeen years as a farm boy without the memories of my past. But now I was awake, truly awake. The memories, all of them, felt true, as did the body that I now inhabited. I had been reborn into a new world, and somehow I knew this was the way it was meant to be. This was not the dream but the reality. It was my life.

I held out my hand and saw the little blue sphere that appeared at the tip of my index finger. No, my command finger.

This was a world of magic. I remembered my duel against Brint and our confrontation with the Ascendant. I remembered selling flour for chits of arcana at the market with my father. I remembered my childhood and my upbringing in Village Aldin. I had the weakest arcumen of all. For all I knew, perhaps the weakest in all the world.

I shook my head, staring at the glowing orb at my finger. “Out of all the bodies I could have been put into, I sure got the short end of the stick, didn’t I?”

A chuckle bubbled out of my chest, and that grew into a laugh of pure, beautiful joy. I fell to the ground and laughed until my sides hurt.

Because it didn’t matter that my magic was weak or that my family was poor.

My birthday wish had come true. I had a clear mind, a healthy body, and most important of all, I had the greatest resource in existence. A resource that was often overlooked, too often misspent, but more valuable than all others combined, even magic.

I had time.