An hour or so into sleepy-headed hiking, Slate came to a break in the Blue Forest. He was happy to espy the forms of a town in the clearing, which a signpost confirmed for him was Mearror.
Though Slate had been quite young when visiting the town before, he remembered well the novel two-story buildings, the street performers, the running water, and the sounds of the horse carts in the cobbled streets. Thoughts of warm food and conversation overtook his weakness, and he managed a run toward the gate.
When he came to the guard post, the sun’s blinding rays that had been obscuring his vision were halted, and Slate could see the town more clearly. Only it was not the place he remembered. The buildings seemed derelict. There were no carts running through the streets, no music wafting out of the cafes. There were no guards at the guard post. In fact, it didn't seem like there was anyone in Mearror, either.
Slate walked warily down Mearror’s main avenue, which lead in a straight line to the town’s center. He moved past peeling, pink-gray houses, and windows framing games of half-finished chess and open books. At one corner of an intersection sat four, small café tables underneath the faded red awning of what was once a bistro, still set perfectly for no one.
In the silent city square, rows of statues glared down at Slate. He began to feel pressure pushing against him on all sides. He turned from the square and ran.
He broke free of the dead city and didn’t stop running for some time, not until he was deep in the Blue Forest once more. Slate had no idea how to get from Mearror to Airyel, but didn’t want to stop moving for fear that he’d never start again, that he’d seize up like one of the statues in Mearror’s city square. He figured the path he was on had to lead somewhere, and that somewhere was better than nowhere.
Walking sadly along, he came to a fork in the dirt trail. A faded signpost at the intersection pointed to Alleste and Mearror in the direction he had come from, the Blue Bridge in another, and Arvest in a third. Slate had dreamed of visiting Arvest as a boy, of seeing its famous armaments and monuments to the Gocci Invasion. But the prospect of another deserted city did him no good. It would be wiser to head south, for the Blue Bridge. All roads led to the Blue Bridge.
Slate walked for hours, with little to stop his mind from wandering. In fact, he would often walk off trail when he got too lost in his thoughts, wondering if his brother or father had taken the same path he was on. If they had been as frightened, or felt as small.
The trail sank deep into Alm, where the soil never thawed and little grew, save for some strange, stringy-looking plants. It then climbed up into fern-covered, cleft hills that Slate made a game of climbing, rolling his pack up over their tops and grabbing it up again on their other sides.
After a long day, as the sun shared its last light with the trees, Slate found a pond at which to rest. The pond was murky, but clean enough to wash in. After his bath, Slate set his shoes and his pack into the barrel of a fallen snag, then propped himself up inside it. Eventually, the peace and serenity of the forest overtook his troubled mind and he nodded off to sleep.
There was rain during the night, unbeknownst to Slate in his warm tree trunk, and it gave the air the next morning a fresh and invigorating smell. The forest's wildlife greeted Slate with their chatter and activity.
After an hour or so more of hiking, the Blue Forest appeared to break again in the distance. A crescendo of noise rose as Slate approached the end of the trees. When the forest finally opened, onto a rocky, surf-battered beach, he was staggered.
Slate had never seen anything approaching the immensity of the ocean before, apart from the sky. Lake Mhio, where he had spent countless summer days floating with his brother, was now a pond, a thimble-full of water compared to the vast, unceasing gray-blue before him. Staring out into the panorama of fiery white sun-glints dazzling the rolling waters, Slate’s periphery was clear for what felt like the first time in his life, interrupted only by wisps of falling clouds. He took in deep breaths of the ocean air and his head swam.
He stopped to take off his shoes before setting out onto the beach. When he came to the tide line, Slate dipped a cautious toe into the water. He shrieked in surprise at how frigid it was. But the smooth stones comprising the beach felt good on his blistered feet, and so he decided to continue along the edge of the water and enjoy the sunshine.
He found a shaded place to rest when the mid-day sun grew too hot to bear, a stand of banch trees. He dropped his things and sat on the mossy floor, to stare out at the ocean and let his imagination run free.
The longer Slate stared at the ocean, the more mysterious it became. Thinking of all that could be lurking beneath its surface filled Slate with a sense of dread, and despite the fact that he was far up the beach, he couldn’t help but think of drowning, of how helpless he would be against the crashing, unceasing waves. He thought of the story of Captain Lanya from the Legend, and how his entire crew and ship were swallowed whole by a tentacled sea monster. It was terrifyingly beautiful, that something so serene and calm under the sun could have the potential to be so deadly. A small part of Slate hoped he would never have to travel the ocean, that he would never have to face the fear of what might lie in the depths beneath the surface.
After the sun had started to set and the heat of the day began to wane, Slate ate some of his small food reserve, put his shoes back on, and continued toward the Blue Bridge.
A weathered signpost along the edge of the beach told Slate he was near the crossing, not half an hour after starting his morning hike. With all of the history surrounding the old bridge, the myriad stories, he couldn’t help but feel excited. How many summer afternoons had he spent dreaming about crossing the ancient bridge? For at least the immediate moment, all other worries were as far from his mind as he was from home.
The beach grew more narrow, and then evergreen forest overtook the shoreline. Flutterbys whipped about in the shafts of light that fingered their way down through the trees, and redbirds called to deep echoes from the bay. Slate was buoyed up and covered quick ground, reaching the Blue Bridge in no time.
Here might have been the edge of his world. The Blue Bridge was as far as his knowledge stretched. His thoughts began pressing against the limits of his imagination, grasping at what the rest of his island, and more, the rest of Alm, might be like.
The mist in the bay that the Blue Bridge spanned was so thick that it prevented view of the structure itself. Slate discerned its entrance though, a winding stone footpath that lead up to a stone battlement.
As he climbed the footpath, a wind blew through the bay and the bridge became visible. It was much different than he had imagined. The legendary crossing looked to be no more than a worn suspension bridge. A discomforting creak sounded from its crusty ropes whenever the bay winds would flutter. It looked far from the picture he had held of it in his mind. In fact, Slate questioned if the bridge was even safe to use.
At the top of the stone footpath, he came to a wooden door. He pushed hard on the door, to no effect. He then seized a knot of hent tied to the door’s thick handle and pulled. This caused the door to groan encouragingly, and so Slate took the knot in both hands and braced himself on the silty ground. He pulled as hard as he possibly could. The door jerked twice and then finally broke open, sending Slate falling backwards. He got up, adjusted his pack, and with a deep breath, headed through the doorway.
An open atrium revealed itself in thin, blue light. The space was sparse, decorated with little save for two trees, one hull and one banch, on opposing sides of the entrance to the creaky suspension bridge.
Slate swallowed hard and stepped out onto the first plank of the bridge. It groaned under his weight, but held. Slate took another step, then another. The fourth plank snapped beneath him when he stepped over it, its shards lost to the mist. Not letting this dissuade him, Slate gripped the side ropes of the bridge tight and continued forward. Before he could remember to breathe, he looked back to see the embankment fading away. He focused an
d continued on.
The rickety bridge swayed and jerked so much in the wind that it made progress slow. Slate clung desperately to the rope as whipping ocean gales forced their way over the narrow bay and through the sheer cliffs of the waterfalls that tumbled down the shore. Brief breaks in the wind afforded Slate short spurts of movement.
After a long, confusing time, whipped back and forth in the churning mist, he saw the other side of the bridge. Slate raced over the remaining planks and leapt onto a stone mount, where he was greeted by two smiling statues. He smiled broadly back at them and then hopped down a short staircase onto solid ground, the black soil of eastern Aelioanei.
Thrilled at his success, Slate bounced down the path from the bridge to a split where two signs were posted. One read “Adantals-sub-Aislin,” and showed an arrow to the north, while the other showed an arrow pointing southeast, toward Haijoor. Which direction would take him to Airyel, Slate had no idea. But he did know that Aislin was one of the largest cities on Aelioanei. If he were to find anyone anywhere on the island, he figured, it would be there. He finished the last of his cider and headed north.
Chapter 3