Sharp teeth dug into my heel. I could feel the string, but the pain was fleeting. As by some miracle, a savoir had come to release me from Death’s eternal grip. I heard a howl in the distance, but my tormentor was gone; removed with the darkness that had come and gone. The reddish-golden hue of the sun blinded my eyes for but a moment, and then a serene and quiet darkness fell and I with it, into a deep slumber.
When the light returned, I was lying motionless. A bandage of sorts covered my head where I must have been struck. Little of the nights before came back to me. I heard a familiar bark, and soon I felt the fur of my companion. Orson stood on his hind legs and leaned onto the bed in which I lay. One of his front paws was covered in bandages and much like me, he seemed all the worse. There were patches of fur plucked from the beast and other bits were deeply reddened. When I tried to sit up, I felt as if my bones were no longer in place. Pain surged up my spine and my neck in particular. Something thick was wrapped around my neck so that I could hardly turn my head.
“Orson.” I struggled to let the word out; my mouth was dry but for the bruising on my upper lip.
“Ah, you’re awake!” A strange voice came. I turned but there I felt a strong hand hold my head and pin me in my place.
A stranger’s face looked at me from above. He was skinny, too skinny. His eyes bulged out of his skull, and his nose was long and crooked. He was dressed in some very peculiar clothing, and his hair was trimmed strangely.
“Don’t move. You have been injured, badly,” he spoke.
When I tried to move, I felt the pain surge in me again. “I must go! My comrades…”
“Are likely dead,” he said coldly.
“Who are you?” I asked as I tried to make out his face.
He looked at me closely. “You are quite strong for a young man.” He paused and held a round piece of glass over my face. It magnified his eye as he inspected my face.
“I am the doctor,” he said. “And that’s all you need to know for now. I will treat you to the best of my ability, but you must obey my orders until then.”
And with those words, he pulled something from his pocket. A shiny needle tip glistened against the light that hovered above my bed. I had little time to react when I felt the needle pierce my arm. I reached up with my other hand, but soon, I felt the darkness again take me whilst the whimpers of my companion echoed.
“The sun is setting.” Calliope patted the ground as she looked at me. Her eyes of ember glanced at me; the slits of her pupils narrowed and a smile curved her lips, “Will you sit with me, Auiak?”
I walked to her and down I sat. She was taller than me. Her hair was dark as the darkest night, and her skin fair. She did not utter a word for a while, only staring at the setting sun as it sunk beyond the veils of mountains on the horizon. Those were places that were far beyond our reach, yet the longer I watched them, the closer they seemed. The purple hue of the night began to hue the skies.
“Are you dead?” I asked.
She winced and looked at me with a glare. Then she smiled; a slow, meaningful smile and said, “The world has ended a long time ago, Auiak. The green is now bleached yellow, and blue is tainted green. We are but forgotten whispers in a world that has ended.”
“What of the prophecies, Calliope? What of the world promised?” I asked. I felt a knot in my throat.
Calliope did not speak. She stayed still for a moment then, she looked at the scattered moon in the sky.
It was an eternity of darkness building until all that was left was her scent. And then, it, too, was gone.
“Rise and shine,” the doctor said as he walked to me with a metal tray. There was a bowl on it in which something cooked steamed. It was not a smell that I was familiar with. It was pungent and strange, yet when he brought it to me, I ate. It was a strange soup unlike any that I had ever had.
For days and days, I stayed bound to the bed, my companion was sleep and the occasional bark of my trusty hound. It was not until a week later that he allowed me to sit up, then stand, then walk a few steps. He aided me with a long cane with an under-shoulder pad. That day, he helped me walk outside of the room with the hanging light. When I walked, I saw a wire connected to the end of the light.
“Do you not have those at the farm?” he asked casually.
“Candles?” I asked.
The doctor laughed and patted my shoulder gently. “No, this is a light bulb. It runs on electricity.”
“Ecteliricity?” I asked in bewilderment.
“Electricity. Eons ago, the entire planet ran on electricity. It is a form of energy that allows certain machines to work,” he said and helped me walk outside.
We walked through a long corridor. There were a lot of rooms. When finally the corridor ended, we entered a large room where there was a desk. A woman watched me carefully as I walked. She wore a white gown and a hat with a red cross on it. And all around the room, there were windows with glass covering them. The sun was shining its reddish hue outside on the field of green.
“What is this?” I asked, looking outside at the green field. I had seen green before, but not of that color. Not to that magnitude. This was a realm cared for.
“The garden?” the doctor asked as he led me outside. “Come, come, Orson is waiting for you in the garden. He loves it there.”
There was something strange about the doctor. I could not understand it. As soon as we stepped out of the door, Orson came running to me. He was fully recovered then and the fur on his back and sides began to grow nicely.
“Doctor, where am I?” I asked.
The man looked around, “You are in a hospital, Auiak. This used to be a part of the civilized world a long, long time ago.”
“Are you one of those cannibals?” I asked, looking at him. There was no reason for me to turn back and run. I was tired, certainly, and there was nowhere for me to go even if I attempted to run. There was no reason for him to hide the truth.
“A cannibal? Do you know what that word means?” he asked.
I nodded my head. He laughed and brought a chair for me to sit. I sat down, looked at him, then it struck me. The thing that was strangest about him were his eyes. His irises were unlike mine. Their color was strange to me: they were brown.
“I am not,” he said, then he sat down on another chair. He watched me carefully.
“We are different, but we are not so different, son. Perhaps your people could never forgive my people for what they have done. The sins of the fathers, you know.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He pointed at the sun. “Look, the sun is setting. Perhaps you would let me tell you a story.”
The words were too familiar. I looked at the sun and nodded my head.
“Years ago, we lived on this planet, and we called it Earth. It was green and blue, and warm and cold, we had seas and we had rivers. We had an abundance of food and water which we wasted. We had what scientists of old called a natural order, but we burned down forests, we practically destroyed the planet for our comfort and pleasure. And when we realized that the planet was on the brink of collapse, do you know what we did?”
I looked at him and shook my head.
“We dumped our waste on it and set it all ablaze. We burned our civilization with our own hands, and kept exchanging blame and petty words until there was nothing to do but to witness our own destruction as a race. We invented machines that relied on poison to help us revive the dying planet, and when that did not work, we invented more machines! We traveled to the moon and nuked it to smithereens and when there was no more tide, we invented another. Our inventions were the greatest part of our ancient civilizations and their greatest downfall all the same.
“And when we discovered that we did not function the best way possible, we tried new things. Implants that helped us walk straight and run fast but then our brains grew smaller and smaller. When we realized that our brains grew smaller, we injected them with medicines that helped them grow larger and larger for us to get more intelligent. Meanwhile, nature worked in its own way and began to fight back. When we killed all the predators, we discovered that we were the true predator and nature…nature fought back. No longer were we at war with ourselves, but with our inventions, and nature at the same time. But we have always been just tenants on this planet. Just renting the room for a lifetime.”
I watched him as he continued his story. He talked and talked, spoke of wonders of a world that I had only heard rumors about. I did not once dare interrupt the doctor, much like I could not dare interrupt a storyteller when we sat by the bonfire. He talked until the dark veil of night grew nearer. And then he walked me back to my room. He lay me down, and Orson followed us.
When he was about to leave my room, I called, “Doctor!”
“Yes, Auiak?” he answered.
“What of the Wolven Path?” I asked him.
He stopped and glanced back at me. “Curious creatures, are they not? It was foretold, long before the collapse, that when the trumpets blew, the wolves would dig their claws into the earth, their fur would burn, their skin would be flayed, but when it is all, their bones would be bound to the ground even after the end. Perhaps we all walk the Wolven Path now…”
Written by Amr Abbas.
Cover illustration by Amr Abbas.