The Other Side | Short Story

6

The horse carries me through a dead village. 

The cobbled streets are empty. The roofs of the buildings have long caved in. The well is overgrown, and drooping vines crack devious through the walls and buildings. A door squeaks on a single broken hinge, and past that door I see only the dust and the dark.

And then we are galloping.

The horse snorts and shakes its head and races us down the open road. In the far distance I see another village — a town, a city — sprawling wider than I thought cities could sprawl. But I see no chimney smoke. 

I see no gulls or birds. No sound is carried to us from over the wind.

The barred gate, when we arrive, hangs rusted over our heads. The streets are cracked by weeds. The windows of building after building are fogged grey with dust or shattered entirely, and I see broken things like barrels, like wagons, left on street corners.

In the city square is a fractured bell. Pert white flowers peek from the splinter lines. 

Stone statues of men with shields loom around the bell, and I think — as the horse circles the ring of statues — that the progression of them is telling a story.

There is a man with a sword, and a man with a staff. Smaller statues gather about them, and clash against each other. I see the image of the dark stone furnace. I see figures of men and women climbing into the lit furnace and then coming back out the other side all wrong.

"Where is everyone," I ask the horse, the wind, the dust. "Why are the villages and cities dead," I ask.

The horse stamps its feet and circles the statues again, and then it turns back to the road. It trots past the bell and the street corners and the blown-out windows. It is taking me back to the tower.

I will get no answer, because everyone from the Other Side is gone. Everyone from this world is dust. Blue is alone. Blue is all alone. He is the only monster of his kind left.

And even monsters get lonely.

*

"I can steal you more friends," I say. "There are better drawers than me in the village. There are singers and dancers, too."

Blue is sprawled on the floor. He watches my mouth move, and says something. That something is always like water. I say, "Give me a couple of days, okay?"

I say, "I'll come back with someone that won't scare easy. I'll make sure they're good drawers, too. That way, you'll be able to talk lots, and laugh lots, and learn lots."

Blue closes his eyes and falls asleep. I imagine the sound of my voice — burbling like his — is easy to fall asleep to.

*

I leave in the morning, before Blue comes up for breakfast. 

I leave for him a series of drawings to explain that I am going back to the village, but that I am coming back. I try to explain in the pictures that I am going to find him more friends, better friends, better than I can be. But I am not a very good drawer. 

I do not know how much he will understand.

It takes me only half a day to reach my village. Nothing has changed. I am not sure how much time has passed, not exactly, but it does not matter.

The villagers have already noticed me. Their eyes pull wide. Their hands forget what they are doing. I say to them, "Hello, I'm back," and it strikes me. They can understand me. I can be heard.

Blue has no one like that, not anymore.

The elders gather me to them and ask me question after question. I tell them a bear found me in the cage and tore it open. I escaped. I lived off the goodness of the forest and the kindness of strangers for weeks upon weeks.

They ask me why I did not return home right away, and I almost say: I was home. I say instead, "You locked me up and left me to die. I was angry."

They believe me.

I am allowed to return to my hut, my little mud hut. Already I miss my mattress and its many cushions. I miss my colourful quilt.

I miss Blue's cooking. I miss Blue's voice.

While I am looking at the dust and dirt around me, a girl peers inside the hut. 

She is one of the kids I was thinking of stealing, the ones that can dance and sing, and draw better than I. She examines me up and down and says, "You look so clean."

I say, "You can be, too."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I can show you. I can take you to where I've kept clean all this time."

"Weren't you traveling the whole time?"

I shake my head. "There's a place," I say, "in the forest."

She squints. I say, "But you have to promise not to tell anyone."

"Why?"

"Because, only people like you are allowed to know."

"Why?"

I scowl. "Because. It's a secret, alright?"

"My parents tell me we shouldn't keep secrets," she says. She says nothing else, then turns and leaves.

*

I am bound in cloth and tied atop a pyre of sticks and tinder, because I had forgotten that children tell on other children. I had forgotten how afraid they all are, all the time, of monsters and sides.

You've returned a stranger and a tempter, the elders say. 

We know you've been speaking to the other children, they say. 

Your soul has been corrupted by the Other Side, and not even the moon and the stars can cleanse you.

Only fire, they say, can cleanse you.

So they light the pyre on fire. Smoke wafts up from my feet. It veils my vision grey.

On the horizon I see a monster, charging down the hill.

It is all limbs and oil and fury, fury. I try not to scream. It has been a long time since I've seen Blue like that.

The others have noticed, and screaming catches them from one to the other like wildfire. They toss up their arms and wail. They scatter. They trip and scrape along the dust, and Blue does not stop. 

He barrels through the open square and screeches. It hurts like metal on metal.

He clatters up the pyre even though it is on fire. He wrenches me free from the stake with his many, many limbs. He tosses me onto the ground and writhes down after me. And then we are fleeing.

Some of the men have returned with throwing spears. They bare their teeth and hurl the weapons at us, and the weapons clatter past us. I do not stop. 

I can hear Blue clicking behind me, so I keep my eyes held on the far horizon, at where home is.

I do not stop.