Chapter 8

"Floating down in your Wings, having only minutes ago failed your Meek test for being a big fat ugly slob, can you see yourself?"
"Can you hear yourself? Sobbing like a baby you were, all the way to the ground, with only that faint humming sound to keep you company, the one you can often hear when Wings are carrying more that it strictly speaking should."
"Can you taste the salt of your tears? Let's not forget how you were sucking your giant fat thumb all the way down too, the salt of your tears mixing with the taste of a fatty thumb in your mouth. I bet you gave yourself a little nibble along the way, wondering if you'd have to eat people to survive down on the ground."
He can. The fat ugly slob of a man baby is curled up in the fetal position inside the steadily dropping Wings, sucking his thumb while not really understanding why. The young man knows he is Helio, can still feel his Helio existence at what feels like just a short distance away, but also knows that this is not Helio.
"Down, down, dropping down and still there is miles to go, it's a good thing you were sent away because you never could have cut it as an Auxiliary, I bet they were already sending you to the merchants and the money lenders to apprentice."
"If you listen really hard you can hear the sound of the sky, music from a late night recital, the marching drum and simple wood flute. These are the sounds you've heard all your life as you fell asleep, yet now you know this time will be the last."
"I bet you were still thinking about your final meal in the sky, something fat, honey battered and suckling! No one in your classes knows how you manage to get so many sweets and breads but you've always had a nose for things that taste oh so delicious!"
It was such a good life up there, even as the physical education teachers yelled and made fun of him, at least he always had the dorm cooks on his side. Always polite and happy to be of service to them, of course they would slip him an extra morsel or two! Growing up larger than most, they would even give double portions at meals, growing boys need double portions!
"Can you see us yet, waiting below you on the ground, then running toward the cliff when you drift off course? That's where we found you, crying and sucking your thumb with your fat ugly legs hanging over the edge, watching the sun sink below the horizon. In the sky a sunset lasts forever, you can always float higher to see it drop for just a little longer."
"Oh, can you hear me!? I was shouting at you as we approached, asking if you would jump and end your sad life now. Thras told me to shut it of course, said I would ruin the effect, then started up with you himself, asking what crimes you had committed in the sky. None, absolutely none!"
"Can you smell your fear, your sweat? The blood, when he planted the spear against your palm and cut the skin ever so gently? Your hand raised to your face and you smelt the blood like that was the only way you could tell the pain was real. I couldn't believe you really did, you really smelt it!"
The man baby, now sitting on the ledge with tears falling from his face and down the cliff like waterfalls, turns to see four giant figures approaching. Three are covered from head to toe in long spider black cloaks with cackling smiles, while the fourth and largest is bare chested with a spear bigger than the world. Without warning the spear plunges in to the man baby's hand, piercing and cutting the flesh, the smell of blood overpowering everything.
"Thras yelled and threatened, then finally relented, and Glaucon came out to patch you up so you'd talk. Only then did you tell us, of the many times where you had stole this loaf of bread or that cake or those pies, so many times when you had found some dark place to hide and eat your ill gotten gains."
"No more, no more than that, you cried to Thras. You shouted, you screamed, you whined. Nothing more, I never did anything wrong but steal a little food!"
"Your hand went right back to your mouth after Glaucon wrapped up that tiny pinprick of a wound, you were sniffing the bandages like some dog, testing the truth of a strange kindness your eyes might be lying about."
A shadow slinks out from behind the large angry shouting man, shaped like a knife that was hiding in the spear man's back, the knife shaped shadow slashes across the man baby's hand and causes bandages to appear where the spear had left its deep bleeding cut.
"Thras finally was satisfied, he didn't look happy about it but he did induct you, and we brought you back home, to your new home here. We tried to get you in the same tree as Nic or Cleito, but they must have looked just too strange to a new brother like you!"
"And let's not forget, they couldn't stand your constant whining, so gave you a tree all your own to whine in. You were whining and crying all night and we never got any sleep!"
"There was nothing that would please you! Not even when Thras finally gave up and dug up a late night food pellet, you said it tasted like dirt and sawdust! How did you even know what dirt and sawdust tasted like?"
The spear man kicks the man baby in the stomach wearing a large and evil grin, and the man baby falls from the cliff, falls and falls beside his waterfall of tears until he hits the jungle floor far below, falls and lands atop a big bed shaped stump. A frog sitting beside where he falls jumps in fright, landing on a nearby stump where a rat is napping, and stays there. The spear lands seconds later as the man baby rights himself atop the stump, the spear becoming a brown roasted chicken that falls to ashes as the man baby picks it up.
"Must have been a few days after that, wasn't it? When the girls clan chief came to the camp and you saw her? She was there for her pussy … cat!"
"There for her pussy, ha, good one! Was that the first sister you'd seen up close, I wonder? Was her voice like velvet on your ears? Or was it raspy from the smoke?"
"Did she smell half as nice up close as you always hoped a girl would smell? Or could you smell the real her, the burning smell of fire and brimstone?"
A goddess appears from the sky, looking a bit like Meek sister Timothea and floating down an angel of soft smiles and warm breath. Her hair is flame, golden like the sun and never still, waving in a heavenly wind and setting the branches alight. Everything she looks upon burns to the ground and is reborn from the ashes, even the man baby; in being reborn, he is made fully a man and is a baby no more. The goddess smiles, pleased, and a small kitten jumps into her arms to be petted. She pets the small creature, and is pleased more.
"She walked right past Thras, remember? Came right on over to you and just stared like you were a present to be opened. I bet you she's waiting for a guy to Quicken with a diamond dick, if that ever happens she'll finally have someone to steal at the games!"
"Bird brain shouted for her to back off, yelled for you to get away from her, but maybe you couldn't hear him. She definitely wasn't listening. I bet you she just, wait for it, wanted to get her rocks off! … Diamonds are like a rock, right?"
"You guys are going to ruin the story, stop it! So, can you smell the blood boiling inside you? Smell the stink of your burning hair?"
The goddess leans down and whispers burning poetry into the new man's ears, or perhaps her breath itself is what is burning him, his hair catches on fire and he is reborn again, and again, each time stronger and larger than the last. A tiny bird wings through the air above, shrieking dire warnings that can't be heard through the crackling flame and suckling roasted pig smell.
"Just like that you had Quickened! You became this giant boar, with tusks under your jaw a foot long each and short curly brown hair all over your body. I tell ya, I was excited! Finally someone that might be good in a fight, not like bird brain Charmantides!"
"She laughed at you then, but tears were falling too, and she started to walk off. So you charged, and gutted her right there! Which was pretty stupid but its not like you could have known. She walked off laughing and you ran off squealing!"
"We chased you all through the forest, making sure your burning fur didn't catch any trees on fire, and the smell of sizzling bacon sure made it easy to track you!"
The goddess smiles warmly as the man becomes a gigantic boar, she opens her endless arms to welcome him into her embrace and he leaps for her, passing through her ethereal body in a splash of fire. This time the man who was a boar is reborn as an angry boar. The pain is everywhere and so everywhere is where he must run to escape it, dashing through gaps in the greenery to escape the pain, to escape the spear man and the three cloaked and smiling story tellers who follow him.
"How long did we follow you? Must have been a whole day at least, until we found you in the middle of a small clearing, in the middle of a big flat stone that curved upwards at the edges. I'd say it was shaped like a cooking pan in fact! Your fur was blackened and crispy, but already new fur was growing over the old damaged stuff and making you look spotted and diseased."
"So we took you to the old man, and boy was he angry at the girls clan chief! He yelled and yelled when she said that teasing you like that was all in fun, the old man got so angry he told her to leave his house. Then he just stood over you, where we had dropped you in his main hall, and said over and over about how bad it looked for you."
"He did his best, applied stinking poultices and warm dry bandages, but you never stopped smelling like you had been burned. The smell was awful, we were camped around the old man's house for days and we could smell your stench every time we went in."
The boar finally comes to rest inside a medieval stone castle, where an old and wizened grandfather appears from thin air in a puff of acrid smoke to poke and prod him. The spear man offers him more roasted ash chickens if he will get better and fight along side him, the knife shadow bandages him in every way possible, the frog, rat and bird chatter together in a small cupboard. The tellers dance around the boar, their cloaks swishing and sweeping the floor clean as they laugh and sing.
"The old man gave you and us a week to stay under his care, but when the week was up you still hadn't come back, still hadn't regained your human form. The fur had grown back, you weren't spotty any more, but now you acted like a big pig as much as you looked like one. Actually, come to think of it, was that any different from how you were normally?"
"The day came when we were sure you were no longer human, you stopped rooting around in the old man's good food every few hours and started rooting around in his garden. You snorted, you bellowed, the old man shrieked and threw us all out but not before pulling Thras aside and telling him that you were definitely too far gone to come back."
"Did those turnips taste sweet to you? Did the roots smell strongly through the soil, could you sniff out their scents even buried in the dirt? Or was there something still human in you, that caused you to run from us when you smelled Thras' anger?"
Something is missing from the man boar, the man is missing, yet still the boar continues living without those man shaped thoughts and memories. The boar even seems happier now, rooting through the grass and loam like a boar will do, rolling in mud to sooth the heat and nosing around for truffles. The spear man appears with his spear tip sharpened, and knowing slightly what he intends the boar is off and running again.
"You'd had some time to learn how to run and jump by then, how to charge through brush and wheel around for the counter attack. But you were up against Thras, and Thras never loses in a fight. He ended the battle on the beach sands, where you couldn't run as well and couldn't get around behind him."
"But it wasn't a fight, it was a hunt! The spear bit you and you squealed in terror, the spear stabbed you and you roared in anger, the spear killed you and you made no more sounds."
"The smell of your blood was strongest that time, then was beaten by the smell of your death, but then the smell of you cooking made all other smells vanish before it. We feasted long into the night, singing songs of what little of your life that we knew, and in the morning we feasted some more."
The boar runs, all the whole way to the white sand beaches at the end of the world, but the spear man's spear is still longer than the world and the aim of his strike is still true. As human light once faded from the boar's eyes before, so now does the light of life as a great fire is started on the beach by the three dancing tellers, and the spear man roasts the boar on the spear spit. The spear man and the three tellers sing songs through the night as they tear pieces from the boar's flesh, war hymns and battle chants that shake the earth. The bird flies away, the frog leaps into the ocean and only the rat remains to help them finish the beast.
Helio stands, physically shaking himself out of the waking dream that felt so strongly like a hypnotic trance. The three men across from him, sitting beside the tiny well kept fire that sends shadows long into the evening gloom, grin in unison and stand as well. The middle one, Lysias, is the first to speak, no longer using the hypnotic tone that all three had taken when telling the story.
"Did you enjoy the story little brother?"
Helio grimaces, "I can't say I enjoyed the sensation of having my flesh torn from me and eaten, but the rest was certainly entertaining. If you don't mind telling, how did you do that?"
"Simple really." Lysias takes on a sing-song voice as Polemarchus and Euthy begin humming, "You can see what I say," then he begins humming too.
The one on the left, Polemarchus, stops humming to chime in next. "You will hear all the sounds between my words," and he then rejoins with Lysias as Euthy on the right stops humming and goes last.
"Smell and taste, my voice it causes these." Their humming sound reaches a crescendo with all three together, then with a wave from Lysias comes to a swift halt. Helio frowns.
"Brothers, that doesn't explain how I could feel the pain."
"You must have a good imagination little brother." Lysias looks left and right, as do Polemarchus and Euthy. "My guess is, having tricked three or four of your senses, your final sense was tricking itself just to keep up."
"I wish I could fool the touch sensation," bemoans Polemarchus, "do you understand how absurd it is to make people hear the things I talk about? I might as well make the sounds myself!"
Euthy joins the complaining Polemarchus, "And who cares about smells? What am I going to do, make a man gag to death from the worst smells I can think of and successfully describe?" The two look angrily at Lysias, who shrugs sympathetically.
"Little brother, big brother, without such fine brothers as yourselves aiding our efforts my illusions would seem absurd. Together we have power, apart we would each truly be useless." Polemarchus and Euthy smile and nod to each other and Lysias winks at Helio. "Now then little brother, if there is ever any more stories you wish to to experience, if not exactly through first hand but as close to that wondrous ideal as can be had, you know where to find us!"