Wolf Iron

Chapter 20 / The Moon Was Full

The window glass exploded about the room and in the reflection of every shard Rodney saw a different memory of the day. 

Booked!

My name is Quinn Evermore...

The scream from Barlow as Quinn upper-handed him...

The man outside Detention Hall...

The waterfall, the fallen tree...

A million infinities stretched out before him, no more possible than the probability of this day happening, no more probable than the logic of its very possibility. And that perhaps it was all a dream. Or perhaps a million dreams all mashed together to create the semblance of woken reality, when in fact it was nothing but separate lines running into each other for the briefest and most chaotic of moments, before they inevitably branched off elsewhere. Into another reality.

He felt a crash topple him towards the hard kitchen floor and a large body over him, radiating a heat that was otherworldly and pure. A small hand grabbed him and yanked him up, shepherding him, a sheep with warm familiar wool, out into colder and more unknown pastures. His ear, after a day full of it, was attuned to her voice.

"Randolph! 

His sight returned.

"Randolph! We must go!" 

For the first time, Rodney saw an intangible fear in Quinn's eyes. A symphony of fear plucked its strings heavily at the heart of her pupils, and Rodney could see that even Quinn, was not immortally unafraid. 

The gunshots had ceased but there was a ringing about the kitchen. Rodney could see the windowpane busted, its lattice all blown apart. Whoever was there, was not there anymore.

"Go! Go! Gather him and leave, Quinn!" 

Amalric was bleeding, on his knees and held a large hand over his ribs. His words were stunted and every breath seemed to cause him great pain. 

"Father! You're injured! I can't leave-"

A heavy groan erupted from Amalric as he arose and grabbed the both of them by their elbows and forced them to the front door. Rodney could hear Quinn, on the other side of Amalric, struggling with everything she had. 

"Wait- no! Stop it, please!"

He slapped her roughly and she fell silent.

Another gunshot blasted out from the kitchen way and Amalric covered the two with shaking shoulders. He seized Rodney by the neck roughly, and planted his face so close to Rodney's that he could feel his beard, feel his fear, his trepidation, his anger. He spoke in a calm voice.

"You take my daughter to the cascade and don't look back." 

Rodney blinked stupidly and nodded. 

Amalric pried the long battle-axe from the door and readied it for combat. Looking back, he said only one word.

"Go!" 

Rodney thought nothing. He felt nothing. He only existed to move. And when he snatched Quinn's hand he felt within her an emotional muteness to him and to everything else. He pulled her as close to him as possible and they barreled through the door to the dark of night. 

Things made themselves clear to Rodney like a salmon going upstream. He knew every step ahead of him without fully knowing it. He leaped over branches and curbs as if his shoes had eyes themselves and the fallen oak tree was nothing but something to be vaulted over, throwing them further into the thicket. 

The moon was full and the crickets chirped a cricket song to their wide-bodied and pale god. It was a joyous stridulation of just being and nothing else. Being something that existed somewhere in a somewhat meaningless paradox that somehow had all the meaning in the world. And so in that one moment, that singular moment that might've lasted a minute or a set of minutes that we call an hour, or even more than that, Rodney somehow became something different altogether.

Quinn made no sound behind him, made no movement behind Rodney that he himself, did not make. But her hand in his hand was warm and their heartbeats matched perfectly the rhythm of the cricket's song around them, and the collective pulse seemed to light the way ahead. 

They did not hear the gunshots ricocheting from behind them nor did they hear the scream of another girl, another one lost in the forest of her own decisions. 

Rodney only had the waterfall on his mind. The waterfall and Quinn. 

He kicked over familiar terrain and began to hear the rushing of water spring forth. They had reached the cliff rock from behind the cascade.

Quinn released her hand from his grip and made suddenly to press herself up against the crack in the cliff wall. He could not see anything but he knew if he reached forward, he would find Quinn's hand.

More gunshots. A raspy voice nearing. A high-pitched girlish cry. 

"Rodney, take my hand." 

Quinn began to murmur to the cliff and the slit began widening around her figure, swallowing her whole until only her outstretched hand remained, clasped on Rodney's. 

He took a deep breath and somehow he knew in every hair on his body that this next breath was to be the most important and consequential in his short life. The cliff wall was cool to the touch and he felt an ethereal pull tug at his senses. The warmth of Quinn's body ahead of him and the warmth of another behind him. The fissure widened and enveloped him completely, sealing his body off in a mossy-stoned whisper, allowing him a glimpse into something that was never there but has always been infinite. 

Memories of the future unraveled ahead of him. Memories of things he hadn't even done yet. They spoke as one to him, in a voice that couldn't be heard but a voice that needed no witness. A voice that said "the moon was full" even when one could look in the sky and see only a crescent floating. A rift of starlight in the darkness. 

Rodney's head was a fuzz when the cliff released him from its embrace. He stood and saw a great waterfall, cascading water from in front of him. Its roar was deafening and though it was dark, the falling water seemed every color in existence. A rainbow in the dark. Heard by no one and seen only by the moon. 

Quinn's hair was wet and lay in strands about her face and the falling jets of water whipped her braid about. She looked at Rodney unblinking and laced her fingers through hers. 

"Are you ready to jump?" 

Rodney swallowed hard and nodded when a straggle of bodies behind him catapulted both he and Quinn through the face of the waterfall.

All Rodney could remember afterwards was hitting the water at full force. And then coming out on the other side.