Ariya's Path

They Will Come

Everything has a story.

Everything, I mean.

From the drops of rain to the sands of time, from the worms that trail the earth to the birds that kiss the heavens.

When it dawns on you, you realize that God should be the greatest storyteller, and life, the greatest story ever told.

Hush reader! Pay close attention to every word and every event as none will repeat. For I do not preach this day, nor succumb to the braces of time.

My tale is a tale of two but a tale for many...

"Ariya" daughter of EImali and Sethuka Nkemathu and twin to Njaka, was a noble soul and a very gifted one at that. She was of some sort, a creature of her own, thriving more in solitude than in the socials of the world. She was noble true! But a curious cat she was. She would pry open the tiniest of ant holes if she so believed the ants had something to hide. If she were so inclined, she would have a mountain removed just to see if it had roots like a tree. She was a child's spirit and a princess of her kingdom.

Need I tell you, this was a time when myth and superstition governed the laws of the now-blinded world. And Ariya had her part to play in this mystery. She had one gift that made even the wisest of men toss their pride in the dust and crawl to her for wisdom, she could read. But read what? You might ask, some said it was the future, and some called her a witch. Truth be told, she simply always knew, knew what should happen because her curiosity kept her miles ahead of others.

She was known by many names at just fifteen years old: wanderer, seer, the gifted one, the white-haired witch, and princess of the sun (as the sun signified wisdom in those times). But she was none of these things, she was simply a curious child, and a very curious child indeed.

Her twin brother Njaka, prince of Nores and heir to the throne, was, however, an opposite reflection, not just in gender but in character. Though suffocated in duty and shortsighted in reasoning as he was, he shared but one thing with her, other than blood; their love for each other.

He had a name he called her whenever she came around to take his sweaty clothes for cleaning or put breakfast on the table.

"Crystal locks" he'd call and receive a bashful smile from Ariya, which he thought was priceless.

A sweet tale isn't it? You were told to pay close attention.

Ariya had seen the beasts, the things of myth and folklore. They were men yet they were not. Some said they spoke the tongues of old and the tongues of men. Some said they were the breath of lost men clinging to the sands of the living. But in all, they were called the "Crimson Scythe", a name that fit well so for the horrors that followed their existence.

The myths were told the same way:

Once every year, a river appears in the forest and flows a steady trail down the hill; through rocks and pebbles, it flows, but everything that touches it goes dead as a stone.

A river it was, a river of crimson red, as blood's colour
but hot like the fires of hell.

It steamed a thick fog like a thousand boiling kettles and hissed a spiteful hiss like a snake in a hunter's trap. The river's trail never to be followed, through the forest and down the hill, for at the end lay the bones of all that perished from its touch, bones of birds, bones of mice and bones of men.

And at the end live also, "the Crimson Scythe".

And so is the myth, that when one follows the river's trail and when that one sees the Scythe, a life will be lost on each day and each night till a person is given at the river's edge.

It had appeared this year, and where others feared to tread, Ariya trailed beside the river, through the steam and hisses, the crimson along its banks and down the hill.

It's beautiful, she thought.

But a fatal beauty it was.

The hours had passed, and night was due just when she reached the river's end. And then, she stopped, and there, she saw; a pile of bones, two piles and three. A graveyard she saw; a graveyard filled with a silence so pure it deafened. Upon it lay, the bones of birds, bones of mice, and the bones of men. A fog so thick that it clung to her clothes, engulfed the place in a minute. A fog so thick, the devil would need a lamp.

She heard voices in the deep that whispered in a tongue she couldn't understand.

Suddenly, it appeared before her; the figure of a man cloaked in a hooded shroud from his head to his feet, which seemed not to touch the ground that lay beneath them.

"Excuse me, baba," she softly called, reaching for the cloaked man before her.

Suddenly, she felt it, a fear so heavy that it pulled her lips apart. And there she stood with eyes so wide, you'd swear they would fall.

Just then, against her hopes, the figure turned to face the intruder. That was when she realised that this was no man.

Underneath the hood was a darkness so thick it escaped into the fog in smokey veins of black, wavering just long enough to be noticed before disappearing into the grey. Within the darkness of a face lay a pair of eyes so red they seemed to bleed.

All senses in her seemed to go quiet. All but her sight. She couldn't speak, even as her lips lay divorced. She couldn't hear anything save for the silence of the grey. She couldn't breathe for her breath was paused like a gag within her throat that seemed to choke her in a whimper so faint, it was silence.

The thing in front of her from underneath its shroud, stretched forth slowly, a hand of bones and sand towards her. Her skin seemed to fold on her bones as if fleeing from the devil. Her body shrunk backwards like a leech from salt.

Suddenly, it whimpered like a dying man, then screamed like a thousand maidens.

And there she was, gasping for breath, dashing through the forest and on her way home, with no recollection of how she had come this far. From the taste of fear, her legs had grown a will of their own, sending her stumbling on bones and rocks, then into thorns and thickets; through mud and grass, from the grey into the night sky. She definitely wasn't running, this was flight but on two feet.

Is this the purity of fear so heavy? she thought. It was a thing she'd never known.

The myth is real, and tenfold what they claim.

She had reached the castle walls and fallen to her knees at the gates before realising that she had not breathed a single wisp of air since she had seen. She stormed through the streets screaming all the way,

"They're real! The Scythe are real!" But no one lay in the streets.

She had reached the courtyard before she finally saw people, but she kept her flight towards the palace, screaming and shoving through the crowd until she barged through the palace doors to see everyone else gathered in and before the throne. There, the priest stood with Njaka, who was to be crowned king of Nores, for their father had just passed away.

She had interrupted his coronation, pushing through guards, peasants, and nobles, towards him.

"Crystal Locks," he said, "Is anything the matter?"

He went on his knees as she fell at his feet, exhausted.

"Speak, love," he compelled.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry," she muttered.

"They're real and they'll come... The Crimson Scythe will come..."