E07 - Ch 33: Ascent

“Ma, you’re going to need to tell Pa what happened,” I said over our turnip soups.

My mother was so startled by my abrupt comment that she nearly dropped her spoon, catching it before it clattered against the table.

“What… what…” she began, but she knew exactly what I was talking about. She shook her head and gathered herself, putting the spoon down beside her bowl. “I can’t do that, Aelric. Your father wouldn’t understand.”

Her features had turned sad, and it pained me to see it.

“I don’t fear that he’ll blame me,” she said. “I fear that he’ll blame himself.”

It wasn’t my place to play marriage counselor, but the tightness in my chest had returned after the boys had left and my mother had come home. I had no grasp on the situation, and it was plain to me that the old Aelric was still in me, worried to death about everything. The issue of my mother sleeping with the legionnaire’s tax collector was one of the bigger ones that troubled him. I could tell that if I didn’t get a handle on things, I was going to get dragged down by it all.

“Ma, why did you marry Pa?” I asked.

Her brows quirked up at the question, but a smile began to form on her lips. “Many reasons. His kindness, of course… but I suppose what caught my attention at first was… he sees everyone the same. It doesn’t matter what caste they’re from or how they look or how wealthy or poor they are, he treats them all as well as he can. I don’t know why, but that made me realize he was a very special person.”

I smiled at that and found it to be true of my father. He was a stubborn fool at times, but he was a good man.

“He’s someone who can see people for who they are,” I said. “That means he can see the truth of things, beneath all the layers. I believe he’ll see the truth of it when you tell him, which is that both of you need to rely on each other instead of trying to shoulder everything on your own.”

My mother’s eyes widened and I saw tears forming in her eyes. “Aelric…”

“But that’s just my opinion,” I said quickly. “You should tell Chief Clarity and ask for her thoughts too, she seems like a wise one.”

I was never good at the gushy stuff, so I finished my soup quickly and stood.

“No matter what, you’ve got to tell him, Ma,” I said. “Think about it. I’m going to go for a walk.”

✣✣✣

The moon was full and bright as I walked, and before long, I found myself in the forest, standing in front of the old treehouse. It had been where I'd met the sorceress. It was also the treehouse that Brint and I had built together. It was where I’d come when I was feeling low. But rather than abating, the tightness in my heart seemed to grow.

The boy inside me didn’t believe the words that I had told the other boys. He didn't believe that anything could change. He felt weak and hopeless. He couldn't see the way out of his family's misery, and now that his father was injured, things were worse than they ever had been before.

He also didn’t believe in me.

You could say that I’ve always had a positive disposition, and although I still didn’t know much about this world, I was feeling all right about everything. Part of that was because I was happy to be young again, but I suppose another part was because I had plenty of experience to back it up. But the boy in me didn’t trust it. I could tell that he was happy that I was here, but his hopes had been beaten down one too many times. He was afraid of being disappointed again if things didn’t work out.

And there, in that moment, even after a hundred and three years of life, I learned something new.

I'd always believed that you could overcome anything as long as you set your mind to it and put in the work. The people who never got anywhere in life were just people who never set out to do what it took.

But that wasn't true for the boy in me. He was as strong in willpower as anyone I'd ever known. At just seventeen years of age, he'd challenged his bully to a duel and won, gone toe-to-toe against a literal demon, and confronted his father about his manhood.

This boy lacked no courage or will. But despite that, despite his determination, he was stuck in this life with no hope of changing it.

It was one thing to fight a demon coming when it was coming for your life with a big claw or some such.But it was another thing to fight the demons within that killed you slowly.

He didn’t know the way forward, and he didn’t trust himself.

And how could he? How could he be expected to, given the hand that he’d been dealt?

I kneeled and put my hand over my heart.

“Hey buddy,” I said to myself. “I want you to know that it’s going to be alright. I know you’re scared, and you’re afraid we aren’t enough, that we can’t accomplish anything, that the world is against us. But I believe we can.”

I felt strange talking to myself, but it wasn’t the first time I’d ever done it. In fact, I’d done it plenty of times throughout my old life. Whenever I was feeling down and out about something, I’d talk to myself and console the part of me that was hurting or afraid.

You don’t need to be reborn into another body to know that there are different parts of yourself and that, from time to time, they need each other’s love and support.

And they needed each other’s honesty.

“Although I think we can change everything, help our family, help our village, and get out of this mess, the truth is, I’m not certain of it. This place is new for me, and I don’t know all the rules, how things work, or what kind of trouble we’ll find along the way. So I’m not going to lie to you, because what’s the point of lying to myself? The truth is, just like you, I’m full of doubts.”

For a moment, I felt the tightness pause, as if listening, hearing my words, waiting.

With sudden force, it reacted, the fears pulsing through my body and mixing with my own, for it knew what I was going to say next.

I smiled then, feeling the challenge that was to come.

“So how about we murder those doubts?”

There was silence.

Then, for the first time, from the recesses of my mind, I heard a reply.

Yes.

✣✣✣

There are many secrets to climbing. But the first thing you have to do, the most important thing of all, is you've got to visualize your success. You've got to visualize getting to the top. You can't always see your entire path upward, but you work with what you can see. You plan the route. See yourself moving through it. In many ways, climbing is as much working out a puzzle as it is a test of dexterity and strength.

I had no clips or lines, but I borrowed the well rope from my neighborhood (and I sure hoped no one needed a nighttime drink from it while I was gone). It was a long sturdy one, and I triple-checked it for any weakness, but it seemed good as new.

I felt like a damn fool once I got to the base of the tree, if you could really call it a tree. It was more like a doggone skyscraper. But I could tell that it was going to be an easier climb than a cliff. The moon was brighter than a spotlight, and there were plenty of swirling grooves in the strange tree. They say the bark of a world tree is hard as stone. No one mines them for materials because of superstition, but it meant the grooves made for reliable handholds.

In any case, I figured it’d be bad mojo not to climb the thing after I’d already given a damned rousing speech about doing it to myself, so I got up on it and began scaling its trunk. And once I was on it, once I was moving up with my body and working the climb, visualizing my next moves, searching for footholds and grooves where I could get strong grips, the world began to fall away, and all I knew was the climb.

My fingers found purchase on a jagged piece of bark, and I pulled myself up, pressing my foot into a shallow crevice. I felt the roughness dig into my fingers as it held my weight, but the pain kept me focused. I reached up for the next deep groove just beyond my hands, and with a grunt, I kicked off and caught it, hoisting myself higher.

Upward I went, moving a lot faster than I ever had. The climb was not particularly difficult, just risky the further up I went. Luckily, there were plenty of branches that stuck out from the tree, even this low on the trunk, and at forty feet up, I tied my rope around a sturdy one and the other end around my waist.

Then onward I went, my feet finding holds on branches most of the time, but every now and then there’d be a stretch that was all trunk. That was the most dangerous, and I made sure I was roped for those.

Once I climbed the extent of the rope, which was probably about forty feet or so, I incanted “Chop Wood!” and a yellow axe shot out of my fingertips and sliced it at the tying end so I wouldn’t lose too much rope each time.

I laughed with delight when the rope split and fell loose. I’d used real magic for the first time, and there was nothing like it. Never had I had an experience like that. Magic was like this thing inside of me that could extend out into the world and obey my command as it did to make a thought a reality.

With the rope loose, I pulled it back up and retied it to the nearest branch. Then upward I climbed until I reached the end of the rope again. My arcavoir was out, but I’d brought the chit I’d earned from Sapper Khom. I drew the arcana from the chit into me and repeated my spell, cutting the rope again at the end, and pulling up the rest to retie to a nearby branch that would hold my weight.

“Aelric,” I said with a big stupid grin on my face as I made the knot. “I think we’ve just invented a new kind of sport for this world.”

✣✣✣

Feyna woke early and felt the cold and the crushing of hay beneath her as she turned. The ceiling was unfamiliar to her, and like the morning before, her first thought was to wonder if she was in a bad dream.

But then she’d remember everything that had happened and find her sister asleep next to her.

Outside, the roosters were calling, and rose, stretching herself on the bed, trying to ease out the knots that she’d gained over the night. Then she gently nudged her sister awake.

“Come on, Feyla,” she said. “Sun’s just about to rise.”

The light outside was still blue, but they still had to make the trek from Elder Rush’s home to their own, where their chores would begin.

For breakfast, Mino, Elder Rush’s wife, gave them each a chunk of cornbread with a slice of butter in the middle, which they washed down with mugs of water.

Then they said their thanks and headed to their farm, where they’d meet their parents, who were staying with Elder Keen for the time being until their home could be rebuilt.

As she walked with her sister under the slowly brightening skies, the day’s worries began to fill her mind. There was still plenty of sorting to do in the rubble of the house. They still had not found Feyna’s only doll. But for the early morning, they’d start with threshing the wheat that had been harvested.

She looked out over their fields as she arrived at the barn where they kept their harvested wheat. She hoped Trader Lorek would come soon. He was even later than he had been the season before, and her parents complained he was biding his time, hoping for a lower price. She hoped he had not heard about the legionnaire’s raised taxes, for that would only make the villagers more desperate for his purchases.

They rolled out the wide threshing mat and then laid sheaves of wheat against it. It was still too early in the day for them to use any spells to help with their chores. Their arcavoir had yet to recover from the previous day’s use, and so they picked up their flails and beat the sheaves, releasing the grain like tiny drops of rain.

As she worked, Feyna’s thoughts turned to the two boys she loved, as they tended to do when there was time for her mind to wander.

One boy had left for an uncertain future and was likely never to return. The other boy she could not share a future with, and never again would they be lovers.

When they had begun their romance, she had not thought about the future. All she knew was that she was happiest when she was with Aelric.

It was a simple love. They never spoke of complicated things. But the world was not simple, and unlike Aelric, Brint understood its complexities and was prepared for it.

She shared a different connection with Brint. She knew him just as well as she knew Aelric. They had all grown up together, and they were nothing alike. Brint was brooding, quick to anger, and thought himself above everyone else. But beneath his cold exterior, though no one else saw it, he was someone who was thoughtful and sweet.

Her older brothers had long left to start families and run farms of their own in faraway villages, but still her parents seemed to never pay her any mind except for when there were chores to be done or when they saw her with Aelric. So, when Aelric had challenged Brint to a duel, she had felt excited. She had felt desired, and her parents and all the village were there to see it.

Even when Brint named his price, she thought that perhaps it would not be a bad thing for Aelric to leave the village. Perhaps he would find a better future in town where he might learn a craft and—

“Feyna! Look! Look!”

Feyna had gotten lost in the rhythms of her work and only now realized her sister had long stopped flailing the wheat.

She sighed as she glanced at Feyla. The sun was starting to come over the horizon, and her sharp-eyed sister had likely spotted a rabbit or one of the farm cats catching a mouse.

“What is it?”

“There’s a giant monkey in the world tree!”

That was not the animal she was expecting. She looked up into the distance of the giant tree. For a moment, she did not see it. Then, about two-thirds of the way up, she saw a small figure moving upward against the dark trunk. It was so small that it was difficult to see, but there was something about the figure that felt strangely familiar. And there was a patch of white on its head.

The flail fell out of her hand. “That’s not a giant monkey… that’s… Aelric!”

✣✣✣

I wanted to quit. Halfway, I did. But I knew it was in my power to get to the top. I’d always been a climber, and now I was in the strongest body I’d ever seen, let alone inhabited. But I was still as scared as the first time I ever scaled a cliff. I was high up now. Terrifyingly high.

But I focused on the movements of my body and the strength of my grips, and I told myself not to think about how far I’d gone and how much was left to go. Each time the fear came, I remembered the words I said before I began the climb. The words I told Aelric and Sam, that I told all of myself, even the parts that weren’t named.

We’ve got a big, difficult goal that we’ve never done before. One that will require resources we don’t own, allies we haven’t met, knowledge we don’t know, and years to achieve.

That’s okay. All we’ve got to do right now is prove to ourselves that we’re capable.

And we’ll do that by doing something else that we’ve never done. Something also big. Something also difficult. With enough risk that it’s scary. But one that’s within our power to do this very moment.

Because once we’ve done it, once we’ve achieved it, we’ll feel at the top of the world. We’ll have proven to ourselves that we are worthy of anything.

There will be danger along the way. There will always be danger. But that’s okay too. Because it’s worth it. Because to stay where we are now is unacceptable. Unacceptable, damn it!

So we’ll take advantage of the one good thing we have at the bottom—there’s only one direction left to go.

Up.

I climbed and I climbed.

The trunk was growing thinner now. Leaves whipped past me.

I felt the light touch my face.

Only then did I really look.

I saw the valley of the forest below. I saw the golden fields across roving hills. I saw the mountains that I never knew existed.

I saw the rising sun.

Heleric was its name in this world. First to rise, last to fall.

It was the dawn of a new day, it was the dawn of a new life.

I grinned at the warmth of its infinite potential.

And then I continued my ascent.

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✣✣✣ END OF EPISODE SEVEN ✣✣✣

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