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Two Paths




There must be another path for me, I’m destined for more than this….I know I am. Yet here I am, and I’m too much of a coward to leave. The day will come, it will, I won’t have this life forever.

It felt like being bent lengthwise around a pole, as the carpet soared up into the sea of stars. For a time he simply flew around, enjoying the warping sensations that pulsed through his body. After a while of drifting in the void, a darkly lovely city flickered to life beneath him, and then disappeared just as suddenly. This is something new. As quickly as the carpet ascended, it went down again, bringing with it the same sensation, a strange corpereal bending of the body. The city was again nowhere to be seen but directions aren’t necessary in your own head. As he continued plummeting, the city again popped out of the inky blackness. The carpet was still descending at blazing speeds, next to a dark tower hundreds, perhaps thousands, of feet tall. Then, just as a landing was imminent, everything ceased to exist.

“Boy! Get up! You’re oversleeping again!” I stumbled sleepily out of bed at my fathers stoic call, not quite connected with reality, and just laid on the ground for a few seconds. “Don’t go back to sleep, get up!” father said through clenched teeth as he roughly poked my ribs with his ironshod boot.

This is what always happened to me after one of my night time sojourns, though usually not approaching this magnitude. I struggled to get upright, a greater challenge than can be imagined, and pulled on my farmer’s clothes as quickly as I could before stumbling from my room. Everything seemed blurry, and my hampered sense of balance set me teetering on an imaginary see-saw. Again, I fell to the ground and groaned pitifully.

“If you’re that sick, I suppose we can put in a little early, but you need to earn your keep around here.”

I couldn’t help but laugh a little bit before choking it back. This god forsaken farm was definitely one of the last places I wanted to keep at. “I’ll be fine, just….give me some time here now, I…..” I fell silent, not wanting to tell him what left me like this lest I look like a fool.

“…Fine, but see that you’re up and out soon, I expect good hard work from you.” Father grunted. I heard a few powerful footsteps and a door slamming, and then I was alone, face down on the dirt floor of the house. Suddenly a cold wetness on my cheek startled me to a passable level of awareness. My best friend, my dog, stood there looking about as concerned as a dog can. If I didn’t know he was brown, I wouldn’t be able to tell if he was pink or black in my current state, and then the cloud slowly subsided. I clutched my head and rose slowly. Maybe "mind travel" is not worth the consequences. Roy sat there sullenly, his light puppy eyes demanding some ear scratching. I was plenty happy to oblige him before grabbing a bucket and leaving the house.

It was a nice day, the hot sun covered by a spattering of perfectly white clouds. I smiled cheerfully, a whole new person once I left the dingy home that really wasn’t much more than a hut.

“One day me and you are going to leave this place and go on an adventure, you can’t like it here much more than I do.” I said to Roy, fondly scratching his ears.

My body moved automatically to fill the bucket from the well. Doing the same routine day after day turns one into a human machine. As the bucket came up I was in another world. I always dreamed way too much, mostly about meeting other people my age, heck, ANY other people would be nice. It had just been me and my father on the farm for ages, and I couldn’t remember the face of the last person I saw other than us two.

My eyes popped wide open as I felt the burning friction on my hands. Oh no oh no oh no. I futiley clutched after the rope and almost fell down with it. Nooooo… I stood gazing dumbly at the bucket at the bottom of the well for a few seconds, feeling the future lashes of a belt, before slumping down against the rock ring wall of the well in utter misery until I felt something even worse coming on. A panic attack. Oh god I thought these were over. I grabbed the lip of the well and tried to pull myself up, looking for some way to make the fear subside, my efforts somehow granted me merciful sleep.

Not much time had passed, the sun had just begun waxing. I rubbed my head, burning like the bright orb above me, and enjoyed a few steady breaths of air to relax myself. My face was sticky as glue, and Roy was laying by my feet. I patted him affectionately. Atleast I could always trust him to love me.

It took me a minute to realize that I was even more behind in my chores. With the burst of haste I reserved to avoid beatings, I sat up and tried to think of how I could get the bucket out of the well.

Sitting a couple feet in front of me, was an empty bucket.

I lifted an eyebrow in confusion and rose to look into the well. I blinked a few times to make sure my eyes weren’t tricking me, and then took what they showed me as truth. The bucket I had dropped in the well, was no longer in the well.

By god, I knew I’ve been going crazy.

Carefully, I drew a bucket full of the crystal water from the well, and after stealing a few sips for myself, took it towards the barn. Between the well and the barn was a sea of beautiful green grass, fenced in to keep animals from getting out. As I passed the chicken pen, I peeked into the coop to see how much feed I needed to get for the chickens. Their bowls were full to the brim.

I guess father must have done it.

Perhaps he was sympathetic with me for once, and saw how tired I was. More likely he was annoyed by my latency and did it himself to keep the chickens healthy. Looks like there might yet be a belt in my future. I sighed and went on with my bucket to the barn.

The barn contains everything we deem important enough to lock. The windows are too small for a man to fit through, and the door definitely would not yield to the battering your average robber would give it. Inside was our whole stock of cattle and much of our farm equipment. Another sigh escaped my lips as I slid the key into the lock, cows got anxious if they did not always have water. I ghosted in and snuck over to the troth, better to get it filled all the way before they noticed.

But pouring my bucket into the troth only rewarded with a peculiar wetness seeping through the worn leather of my shoes.

The troth was full to the top, and the water I was putting in was coming right back out.

Something was definitely not right now. I looked around myself nervously, as I backed out of the barn.

The barn had but one key, and it was entrusted to my buttery fingers. We had two buckets, but one had a nasty leak and could not be used. Even if the troth had somehow been filled hours ago by father, atleast some of it would have been drunk by the cows.

Something was not right.

My mind raced, trying to find a solution when I heard a voice behind me, “Hello.”

I jumped higher than I ever had, and got a new patch of wetness on my clothes from the surprise. Behind me was an oddly garbed man holding a book.

“D-d-d-did you d-do my c-c-chores?” I slobbered out, still saturated with fear and surprise. This was the first outsider I’d seen in over four years.

He gave me a reassuring smile and answered, “No, you did.”

I just stared dumbly.

The smile faded from the mans face, leaving a determined look. “You seem to have some aptitude for the arcane, if you know what I’m talking about, this is why I am here.”

I shook my head, completely dumbfounded.

A cold wetness on the back of my hand made me leap sky high again, but it was just Roy. Odd that he wasn’t barking at this stranger…

“Do you have any business here that you need to finish? Or I should ask first, do you want to see the glory of the world, achieve heights of power only the great can reach?”

Then it hit me, I was being offered a new life by this quirky old man. Had he been watching me? How did he even know I existed?

“No, I wasn’t watching you. I could feel the aura of magic radiating from you, quite strong for someone that just blossomed the previous night too.”

I stood silent, he had definitely just read my mind.

“Yes, I did! And you can learn to do it too! Now are you going to continue standing there like the cows you tend or say something? Do you want to learn magic?”

Magic? “What about my father? Don’t you want to talk to him about it?”

“You can discuss it with him if you wish, but it is completely your choice.”

I nodded, strengthened by my hope that I could leave the farm forever. “I want to go now, if I can take my dog, Roy?”

“Of course you can take the dog, what’s a mage without a familiar?”

I was feeling friendly towards this robed old man already.

“We leave immediately then.” He said, and then pounded his oaken staff on the ground three times. The amber orb on the top flared blue for a moment.

Roy whined briefly and then transformed smoothly into a sleek black horse. I was horrified.

“Roy!”

“Oh stop yelping.” The wizard said. “I suppose it was wrong of me not to tell you what I was doing though. The spell is only temporary so don’t worry. Sorry to scare you like that.” He said, emphasizing how very deeply sorry he was by nonchalantly shrugging. “My horse is down that path a little ways, if we go now we might make the Foxtrot inn before it gets too late.”

Chapter 2(clicky)