Blink Out
The air was abuzz with excitement, reminding me vividly of the time I’d witnessed a demonstration of the new electric currents, the way my hair stood on end and the smell of progress and curiosity.
Paul stood in the middle of a small crowd, a conductor of mysterious forces, readying his diplomatic mission to the new world. They’d set up to one side of the stone arch near the main road and bustled around happily, seeking out his counsel. It was a stark contrast to the anxious and fearful movements of the mayor’s men at dawn. The one similarity was the ineffable presence of Mr. Scridon, this time sitting on a stone bench a good distance away, but still furiously scribbling in his notebook. No doubt keeping things under control for the mayor, who dared not show his face.
I’d almost slept through it. Florin had come over just as I cleared my head of a disturbing dream I couldn’t quite remember. He walked me into town under the midday sun and kept both our minds busy with stories of brave adventurers and local legends, clearly almost more enamored with travel and freedom than I was. What a hard lot for a man like him in a place like that.
We stopped short of entering the crowd, not wanting to disturb Paul in his duties, but he brightened the moment he spotted us and headed our way. As he made his way through, people reached out to pat him on the shoulder or shake his hand. Ancuţa seemed to want to do the same, but instead grabbed him by the arm and wouldn’t let go. They spoke terse words that didn’t quite reach us; he yanked his arm away, and she left in a huff, throwing her hands in the air and muttering.
When he reached us, he was all smiles and anticipation. “Flor! Anna. I was beginning to worry.”
“It looks like everyone in town came to lend a hand. And then some.”
Paul lowered his chin and frowned at Florin. “You know very well half of them are only here to see me fail.”
I couldn’t resist. “Ancuţa?”
“You saw that? No, she doesn’t want me to fail. She just thinks I will. Her family and mine go back generations, a Warden in each of hers and a Walker in mine. They’re the main reason why we haven’t gone out for years, why we never attempt communication. Jumpy startlewrens, all of them. I’m done with it. I’m close to done with this whole town.”
Florin crossed his arms, looking very much like a soldier’s statue. “I think more people care for you than you suspect, but as you wish. What can we do?”
“I need you with me to do a once-over of the gear. I don’t know enough about armor to feel confident. Anna, Eugen is right there by the arch with his Master, and he’s asked for you.”
Eugen waved at me as I approached. Next to him stood a tall man with a long gray braid and shockingly light beard. His beard barely hid a long-tired face, and his skin was lighter than I’d ever seen before. He kept a steady hand on Eugen’s shoulder and seemed comfortable around the young man.
Eugen shook my hand; his was awkward and sweaty-palmed. “Anna! We don’t have much time. Paul is pushing us like a madman. I’ve never seen him so spirited.”
“If he’s not careful, he’ll get voted mayor soon.”
“He’d loathe that, wouldn’t he? Anna, I’d like you to meet Master Artjom. He’s my teacher and one of three Praedictor Masters.”
The Master carefully pulled on the tips of his leather glove and slid it off his intricately tattooed and finely scarred hand, then extended that hand to me in greeting. “Miss Anna. We have heard much about you in very little time. I’m pleased to see you’re as interested in our fate as we are in yours.” His voice was gentle, but his accent had a harder edge to it than I expected.
“Master Artjom, I’m pleased to meet you. I’m sorry to say I don’t know anything of what you do.”
“You might have to learn in quite the hurry. We predict Tides to the best of our abilities, and try to map the movements of the Unspoken.”
“It moves?”
“That…” he glanced at Paul and Florin in the distance; they were laughing like schoolchildren over a slipped strap that smacked Paul in the eye, “…is a long story. I never thought the day would come when we’d have to skip all the history lessons, but it seems our services are in high demand all of a sudden.”
“How can I help here?”
“You’re not actually going inside, so the mapping aspect is blessedly out for now. Luckily too, since this one is miserable at what is, arguably, the truly beautiful and complex art of a Praedictor.”
Eugen rolled his eyes. “I never have the patience to doodle. History and time are far more fascinating.”
“For now, you’re here as an alarm system, of sorts. Paul’s going in the deep, ready to make a new first contact with whoever’s out there. Eugen is supposed to only stay on the shore and study it. Predictors can only be drawn into the Unspoken by a highly experienced Walker, and we’re woefully short on those. As for you, our unseasoned tool, we’re hoping you can act as an in-between, tell us more about the shallows and keep an eye out for danger. Eugen will have plenty of time to explain on the way.”
Eugen gave me his broadest grin yet as he grabbed my hand. “Anna, we’re going to be the first to properly measure and map the edge of this phenomenon. The source of the Tides. And we can’t do it without you.”
Artjom reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a little glass sphere encased in gold. Inside the bauble, thin clocklike hands jiggled in every direction. He shook it once, then allowed the hands to settle into a stable position.
“We have to wait seven minutes, just to be sure there’s no Tide now. There was one forecast, but with a very low chance. After that, we’re clear until dawn tomorrow, and you can be off.”
I had a strange sensation in the pit of my stomach. It was like I was a child again, called out to answer at a lesson I hadn’t listened to and wasn’t prepared for. It must have shown on my face, because Eugen then said the one thing that could have made me even more nervous about it all.
“Don’t worry. Nothing can go wrong.”
* * *
Dangerous things are often beautiful, and I was looking at something that was clearly both.
Eugen and I stood side by side, carrying a bulky square box full of measuring equipment between us. Two large copper tubes that powered a recording device occupied most of it. A needle moved up and down on a slowly rotating wax cylinder, leaving a series of dots and scratches that were, for sure, very meaningful to the Praedictors; they spelled nothing intelligible to me, however.
My role was to be a sort of measuring tool, myself. The way I saw the edges of the Unspoken, the way they reacted to me, apparently all of it could prove pertinent because I was untrained and a stranger. Artjom called me ‘raw’.
Paul smirked, licked his lips, and called me ‘steak’.
He walked ahead of us, testing each tread gingerly before taking it. We were only a leisurely walk away from the crowd of onlookers – and the mayor’s relentless spy – hanging back safely behind the arch, and yet it seemed like the atmosphere was that of an entirely different world.
The air was cold, colder than even the cover of lush blue-green pines could justify. Master Artjom had dressed us in thickly padded leather jackets sewn with silver string. “For protection against things both physical and unphysical,” he said. That was all well and good, but none of my meetings with Whispers so far made me look forward to the prospect of needing protection from them, and the cold still seeped through and made me shiver.
Ahead of us, shimmering strands like dew-slick spiderwebs hung among the dark trees, lit up by an eerie brightness of their own. They cast lines of light across the waxy needles and reflected in so many little shards it was hard to tell what was light and what was shadow. I asked Eugen about them, but he could see nothing out of the ordinary, nor could he, apparently, feel the strange chill.
“It means we must be nearing the edge. Only a Walker like you or Paul could find the entrance, and even then, only with a lot of training. I just see a forest that feels…weird.”
Artjom was right, there was a lot to be learned by sending in a trained Walker, an untrained one, and someone who was immune to the effects altogether.
“Is this the border, then?”
“Not yet. As Paul crosses over, he’ll fade from our view. First from mine, the moment he leaves our world. That’ll be our border. We’re guessing there’s a neutral zone, and then he should disappear from your view too when he’s properly entered the Whispers’ land. That’s where we will mark the Unspoken border.”
“What would happen if we kept moving forward past that point?”
“Perhaps nothing. We can’t follow him properly. But we might also never return.”
“Right. Keeping to our side, then.”
“Don’t worry. We’re barely going to wade into the waters at all.”
Our armor was Warded; we were staying well away from danger. Paul had parcels of offerings tied around his waist, which he was to drop off as soon as he fully entered the Whisper territory, then return and call it a successful initial diplomatic contact. I knew they had packed trinkets, hand-crafted tools, and some sort of herb-cured meat he had high hopes for. We were on an exploratory mission that, including the time it would take us to get to the border itself, shouldn’t last more than an hour or two. And yet, I couldn’t help but feel like we took a lot of precautions for something that they insisted would be easy.
Paul moved along slowly, testing the air ahead of him with his fingers, the grass with his toes. He disturbed shimmering strands where he passed, and sometimes seemed to push them to the side like curtains, revealing the woods behind them to be darker still.
The air was thick, almost watery, and my movements felt slow. I even heard water rushing past my ears, but it must have been my own blood echoing inside my body. Flakes of golden light floated to the ground around Paul like luminescent dandelion fluff.
Engrossed in the image, I jumped when Eugen shouted “Stop!” seemingly straight into my eardrums, and I almost dropped the box on our feet.
“He’s gone, I can’t see him. Can you still see him?”
“Yes.” I rubbed at my right ear, hot and popping. “There’s a white film over his body, like he’s draped in gauze, but he’s still there, touching the air.”
“I knew it! There’s a neutral zone. That was my theory. I’ll never let them hear the end of this.”
He set the box down and I barely had time to do the same to my end. Scribbling furiously, he took note of the little markings scratched into wax by the ever-accelerating needle. I briefly wondered what I was doing there and whether it was too late to turn back.
“I was right. I can’t wait to show them. Anna, keep watching Paul! Don’t let him out of your sight.”
A useless request seeing as I was unable to look away. The more he advanced, the more his motions resembled a fervent dance. He searched left and right for pathways only he could fully comprehend, delving deeper into darkness on every step.
“Eugen? You need to hurry.”
“Hmm?”
For a second, I only saw dark pine needles and shafts of light. My heart fluttered an odd staccato until Paul reappeared, stepping out from behind a shadow.
“Eugen, we need to move. Now,” I said.
Something in my voice must have rung the alerts in his body. He stood up like a startled hare. “What’s wrong?”
“I lost him for a moment. I’m not sure if it was a trick of the light or…I don’t know. I see him now, but it’s like looking across a hot spring where the steam moves all the objects behind it.”
“Okay, I’m done. Let’s catch up. Keep your eyes on him.”
We rushed ahead, still carrying our gear between us. Paul blurred for a moment in a way that made my eyes water, but the image steadied as we drew near. It scared and fascinated me, but as the fear of the unknown increased, so did my desire to be part of it. I checked behind us, but there was nothing to see except trees and brown needle-covered ground. The town was out of sight, and we’d lost track of time. I had no idea how far away we really were.
“Don’t lose him!”
“He’s there. It’s fine, Eugen. Breathe. We’re near enough now that he’s a lot clearer. How long do we think this neutral zone is, anyway?”
“Not a clue. We had no proof it existed. I’d deduced it from old secondhand stories past generations of Walkers left us.”
“He’s moving faster now.”
“What does it look like?”
“Like there’s more shadow and fog across him than there is around him, if that makes sense. He’s touching the air, and every step makes him look more like the woods around him.”
“That’s good. Keep going.”
“He blinked out for a second!”
“Do we stop?”
“No, he’s there again. Slowing down now.”
“Match his pace. We might be very near.”
“He’s there, right between those trees. Almost stopped now.”
“Still searching?”
“Yes. And he’s—”
I expected it fully, but still gasped when it happened. He took one step forward and just winked out of existence like he was never there. Then, a moment later, I heard rustling.
“I can still hear his footsteps, but he’s gone! Does that count?”
“We’re strictly forbidden from moving any farther once he’s gone. Artjom would flay me alive. And Ancuţa.” He shuddered. “This is it, we’re marking this as their border of the Unspoken. You can have a rest now. I’ll just take the notes I need and we can wait for him to return.”
Eugen sat on a soft mound of needles with an “Oomph” and splayed some equipment around him. He slipped into his notes almost immediately, humming all the while. I supposed he was happy.
I took another step or two and leaned against the trunk of a tall black pine surrounded by a carpet of fresh, tiny grass shoots. It struck me, again, that there were no animals here. This forest should have been filled with birdsong. Instead, it was eerily bare and still, like the no-man’s land between front lines in a war zone. I was grateful for it, though, as it allowed me to hear more of Paul’s movements and perhaps track his progress a little farther.
I thought I could almost see the imprint of his boots in the grass ahead, but that might have been an illusion. I heard him take a few more steps, then stop. I wondered if calling out to him to let him know we were still here would disturb him and thought better of it. It was beyond me to even imagine what he was doing and the mental energy it took to do it. Would he even hear us at all?
Soft rustling and the clinking of metal came from his direction. That must have been him unbuckling the belts that held his parcels. I checked back on Eugen, but he was deep in his notes and his relaxed posture calmed my nerves too. Once we were done, I’d ask him whether he’d heard anything. It would be interesting to discover if even sound obeyed Walker rules.
There was a thump low on the ground. Perhaps Paul was setting down our signs of goodwill.
Suddenly, a rumble shook the very earth we stood on, lifting little clumps of dirt and pebbles from their resting places. A quiet gasp and shuffle followed, and I cried out softly, “Paul?”, unsure whether I did more harm than good. Eugen looked up and half rose from his seat, but before he could rise all the way, Paul screamed. His footsteps rushed toward us, but a heavy undeniable thud chased close behind him and made me jump.
Eugen was on his feet, trapped between wanting to help Paul and not knowing what to do. I took four steps, then stopped again as strange flutters tickled the inside of my collarbone and blocked my breath. Paul blinked into view, then out again, and his face was contorted in fear and anger.
Behind him, something slithered. Only the mark of his feet in the grass told me where he was.
A growl like falling mountains rushed through the trees. His footsteps were gone. A spray of blood washed over us, drenching my clothes, my face, my lips. His parcels dropped from thin air. Then, all was quiet.
As though in a dream, I crawled to the bundles on the ground, unsure of what I wanted other than to somehow save them.
My bloody hands reached down and felt the wet squelch as they lifted the bundles.
Copper-tasting air coated my tongue. Something in my hands moved a little.
I opened a button on the side of the canvas pouch and lifted the flap.
A beating human heart.