Bottled Up

I slept surprisingly well despite not having any idea how I ended up on my cot in my tent. All the walking and fresh air had managed to keep me in shape, so I was in good physical health, but my mental health couldn’t have been much worse. Killing someone in cold blood, knowing my mistake caused even more needless bloodshed, being caught out and lying to my party - I felt the weight of it all grow steadily heavier.

The mood had shifted a bit. It was like the air around the party had changed even though everyone was trying to act normally. Pira seemed distracted, lost in thought while she walked around the campsite gathering supplies. Sometimes she examined a device and muttered to herself. Estelar was… well, he was staying close, almost hovering around me out of concern for my well being. He seemed to think there was a chance that the amphibian hallucinations from the night before might have long-term effects on me. I let him hover, trying not to feel miserable at his misplaced worry.

Andra was behaving strangely, as well. She seemed to have things on her mind that furrowed her brow in thought, and she was also staying closer to me than usual. Once we were back on the road and making our way to our next destination, she kept sneaking glances back at me. During breaks, she would skulk behind me in the shadows, keeping an eye on me even when I needed to relieve myself.

“May I have some privacy?” I pleaded halfheartedly the first time she followed me into the bushes.

“Last time I gave you that, you disappeared,” Andra countered from behind a nearby tree. She wasn’t looking directly at me, but I could tell her peripheral vision had me firmly in her sights.

I sighed, stepping out of sight of our other two companions.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” I asked, hoping to distract her with conversation. “You’ve been acting a bit weird - well, weirder than usual - all day.”

Andra shrugged and looked away, but then her face darkened. “The maid smelled like the prince,” she muttered.

Whatever I had expected her to say, it wasn’t that. “She smelled…? Well I mean, she is his direct servant,” I said. “She works with him a lot, so I’m sure his scent rubs off on her. I can’t really smell it, myself, but I despise anything to do with that sadist, so I can see why you’d dislike that. I would, too.”

“Not like that…,” Andra trailed off, clearly searching for the words to clarify what she’d meant. Her nose wrinkled. “The maid… She was beyond foul. The stench radiated off her. Like the prince on the first day we met. When he smiled and threatened my tribe…”

I tried not to look surprised, but her words caught me off guard. Was Andra’s sense of smell strong enough to pick up on emotions? Nefarious intent? Deception? The thought that she could possibly smell any of that in a literal sense was concerning.

She looked at me now, her face intense. “Even you’ve begun to smell of rot, but it’s faint. Your other smells are overpowering it.” Suddenly her shoulders slumped a bit, and she sounded almost sad. “I know I’m not the smartest when it comes to people and all, but please don’t rot.”

I didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. Any thought of defending myself or trying to argue fled my mind when I looked at her. Her eyes were large and wet, and the unexpected emotion there made something in me finally break. I burst into tears, my body wracked with sobs. Wrapping my arms around my middle, I doubled over with the heaving cries. I felt her hand on my shoulder, heard a few murmured words of comfort, but it was several minutes before I was able to catch my breath.

My throat was raw when I tried to speak. All I could say was, “I’m sorry.”

I was sorry to her, to our party, to the lives I’d taken with my own hands, and also to the lives I’d indirectly had a hand in ending. The remorse was a wave that almost brought me to my knees, and I shook with the force of it.

Through the blur of tears, I realized that I had to hold onto these feelings. As terrible as it all felt, I needed to cling to the guilt, the shame, the pain of it. I couldn’t grow numb to the horrors I was perpetuating. I’d lose myself if I let that happen. A spark of determination flared in my depths as I slowed my breathing and managed to stop crying. I wouldn’t let this world, with its vile prince, corrupt me. It wasn’t an option.

If I wanted to be able to face my wife, my child, or even myself after all this, I had to stay human.

The rest of the journey to the next village was slow. We made our way along the dirt road in near silence, and I tried to focus on the warmth of the sunlight, the pleasant green of the trees. Andra stayed as close as possible to me while we walked; she reminded me of a clingy little sister. I appreciated her presence, and I appreciated that she didn’t say much, but having her innocent kindness so close to me kept the guilt from receding.

It tore at me, but I couldn’t tell them the truth. I knew that for certain now. The maid was watching, and she would definitely take action if I spoke up. The truth would also disrupt the party’s plans; it would hurt them dearly to know what they had been part of, and that could impact the rest of our mission. But above all, I was scared. I was terrified of what they would think if they knew the reality of what I had been doing. What the prince had commanded me to do.

I felt the determination prick me again, deep down. I couldn’t let the fear take over or keep me from doing what was right, in the long run. As I trudged along, I made a compromise with myself. The team deserved to know the truth and I would be the one to tell them, but only after this was all over. In the end, if I was still alive, I would be sure they knew it all. For now, I protected them, and myself, with my silence.

I didn’t feel significantly better, but I did feel as though a bit of the weight had come off my heart. I could live with myself for now. Taking a deep breath, I looked up to the sky for the first time in a long time.

Balloons were flying above us.

I blinked, confused. That’s certainly what it looked like. Dozens of what appeared to be balloons in iridescent rainbow colors floated along in a leisurely path over our heads. Ahead of us, I could see a huge clump of more of the balloons hovering like a cloud over the village that was our next destination.

I supposed this twisted world still has festivals and celebrations like any other. I wondered what they were celebrating.

“Are you the heroes?!” A child of maybe six or seven holding a basket of freshly gathered herbs and berries appeared on the road between us and the village. His voice was high and shrill, and he hurtled toward us without waiting for a response, the basket bouncing in his arms. “Please help!”

“What’s going on?” I asked, caught off guard by the child’s visible panic.

“The jelloons have stagnated over our village for weeks now!” The boy said desperately, rushing up to our group and pulling at my sleeve with his free hand. “They’re scaring away our food and hurting our crops! We can’t survive much longer like this!”

I looked over at my teammates, baffled. They stood still, staring back at me with almost identical grim expressions. I didn’t understand, but their faces made my heart sink. I looked back at the child; now that he was closer, I could see that he was terribly thin, his tunic hanging off his small frame. He looked up at me earnestly. His eyes and cheeks were sunken, but his small face was hopeful.

The jelloons, that was the word he’d used. Shadows dappled the road as the now-ominous floating orbs continued to drift above us. I looked up at the bulbous shapes, the swirling rainbow of color on their surfaces reminding me of something. It took me a moment to put my finger on it, but then it hit me. It looked the way spilled oil looked on the surface of water. Beautiful and dirty.