Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Pay Attention, part 9

[froodle]

"At the dawn of the world," the raven says, fluffing it's feathers in the warm glow of the campfire, "The whole earth was a forest, and the forest was full of wonderous, magical things." Dash snorts, but Harley is entranced, laying on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, staring at the raven. His feet are in the air, kicking slightly to the rhythm of the raven's voice. It makes him look much, much younger, and Sara Sue feels a deep hollow in the pit of her stomach that has nothing to do with missed meals.

"Then came the crafty ape called Man," said the raven. "And little by little, the magic drained from the world, and everything had a name and so was circumscribed and tamed and given limits. The creatures of magic, the dragons and the unicorns and the tiny biting pixies, they found the chill air of this new reality was abhorrent to them, and they no longer thrived as they once had." It paused, tearing a long gelatinous strip from the sea-serpent's eyeball. "Good eye, this," it commented. "You sure you don't want some?"

They decline, with varying levels of politeness.

"Anyway," the raven went on. "Eventually, those animals whose bodies were made of myth and legend found that they were beginning to age and die, where they had always been immortal before. It was because the humans no longer believed, you see, and they had covered so much of the world and forced it to assume a shape they understood, that there wasn't enough wonder to go around, and wonder is what a magical creature lives on, most of all."

"This is bullshit," said Dash. "It's just a creation myth. Why don't you tell us about how a cow made of starlight licked humanity out of an iceberg next?"

"I was there for that," said the raven. "Where do you think the phrase "stupid cow" comes from? The British didn't invent that. The manticores did, when the little bald monkeys started hunting them as a test of manhood. Damn space cow messed it up for everybody, if you ask me. Now be quiet."

Dash subsided, which in Harley's view was far more extraordinary than star-cows and a nation of men in tweed and bowler hats who adopted the accent of the stinger-tailed lion-monsters whose heads and pelts they coveted.

"Where was I?" said the raven. "You made me lose the thread... okay, right, yes. So, humans were running around, ruining everything with their "logic" this and "age of reason" that, as humans are prone to do. Eventually, the miracles, those that were left, put aside old rivalries and gathered to discuss the problem. Some of them, the wolves who could walk like a man, or the jackalopes whose descendants had become rabbits and deer, decided to stay. Others, those who couldn't or wouldn't tolerate a world of salt and iron and rigid thought, decided to strike out for a new place to call home." He paused and tore another strip from the rapidly-diminishing eyeball.

"Now, this next bit, I only heard about," it said. "And I heard it from a cat, who are mendacious little bastards at the best of times, so be careful how much of this you believe."

Sara Sue and Harley nodded. Dash rolled his eyes.

"As it was told to me," said the raven, "The Lost Light is made of the sorrow of every immortal creature who had died, the grief of the ones it left behind, the weeping of human children who know enough to know there's something beautiful and eternal just out of reach of their sticky, grasping hands, the tears of old women who sometimes regain that knowledge with the passage of time, and the wailing heart of the world as it feels the magic ripped from it's core when something magical is gone forever. It is the most wonderful thing in the world, and the saddest, because just to look at it is to know every precious memory you ever forgot is there, and that you can never have it again."

Dash looked away. There was a long silence.

"A cat told you that?" said Sara Sue after a while.

"Well," said the raven. "I edited it a bit, for poetic license, you know. What it actually said was," here it adopted a lower tone, raspy as a cat's sandpapery tongue, deep and resonant as a mass of purring bodies sleeping on a warm hearth, "'And they cried for days, the stupid horned horses and the ridiculous fire-breathing lizards and the tiny winged motes of light, crying for all the things they'd lost, when if they had half a brain between them, they'd have tricked the humans into doing everything for them at the cost of a little feigned affection. It was pathetic. It gave me hairballs.'"

The raven sighed.

"Cats," it said in it's normal voice. "They have more magic in a single whisker than a unicorn does in it's entire body, and they don't care. My great-grandmother told me - this is when I was just a hatchling, you understand - that anyone could rule the world with the power of a single cat's tear, but it was impossible to get one, and that's why humans invented weapons."

Harley rolled onto his back, stared up at the night sky. Out here, away from the lights of the town, the stars shone bright in the blackness. He wondered if the dragons and the unicorns were out there, on a glittering planet of their own, and if they still missed the friends who had died in the human world.

"So, the Lost Light is tears?" he said.

"The tears are the physical component," said the raven. "The metaphysical part is, I think, more important. Grief and loss and sorrow, and the desire to be far away from wherever you are. That's how you open the door to the Otherworld. Or other worlds. The songs and stories don't seem to agree on that part."

Harley thought of the key around his neck, worse than useless in how it had fulfilled his wish. If the Lost Light hadn't come for him when he was eight, and Simon disappeared, it should have come when he was eleven, sitting on the edge of a bed in the emergency room at Eerie General while identical twin EMTs reset his broken arm.

He'd refused to give them his name, but when one of them asked who they should call to pick him up, he'd not been able to stop himself bursting into loud, hiccupping tears. One of them brought him a juice box, and they had both sat with him in his curtained cubicle, talking to him and each other in hushed, gentle tones. When their radios crackled to life with the news of yet another milk truck accident on Front Street, they'd asked him to wait until they came back, but as soon as they were gone he had slipped out of a side-door and run away into the concealing dark. He pushes up the sleeve of his borrowed sweatshirt and rubs at the thin, pale scar that runs the length of his forearm.

"Wait," says Sara Sue. "So to call it up, to get to... wherever we're going, wherever it took the Mayor... we have to make a unicorn cry?"

"Or kill one," said the raven. "Or any magical creature with a strong connection to that other place. A dragon will do. You'd think they'd be harder to take down than a unicorn, but they're surprisingly slow to defend themselves. Sentimental, too, if you prefer emotional manipulation to violence."

Sara Sue looks over at Harley, still tracing the raised path of shiny, damaged flesh with his index finger. He sees her glance and tugs the sleeve down, flushing. She doesn't comment.

"So, what now?" says Dash. "I'm not up for stabbing My Little Pony in the throat, even to get back at Chisel, but I'll show a dragon the mouse's death scene in the Green Mile."

"Poor Mister Jingles," the raven agrees, shaking it's head sadly at the memory. "If that doesn't move you to tears, you're dead inside." Dash nods.

"I didn't see it," says Sara Sue. "I hate Stephen King."

They look at Harley.

"I don't watch a lot of television," he says.

"I'm a bird, and I saw that movie," says the raven.

"I was powering a meat-prison and I saw it," says Dash.

"Stephen King's writing makes me want to kill myself, and I still couldn't avoid the trailers for it," says Sara Sue.

Harley shrugs.

"TV screens freak me out," he says. "I don't like how you can see your face in them when the picture's dark. I always feel like I'm gonna get trapped in there."

"Weird," says Dash. "Although, I was there when that happened to your brother one time, so maybe not all that weird."

"See?" says Harley. He gets to his feet, brushing dirt and twigs from his front as he does so. "Now. Where can we find a dragon? If it doesn't like Stephen King, I know Hazel's death scene from Watership Down pretty much by heart."

"I love that movie," says Sara Sue.

"Not me," said Dash. "That bit at the start, where the burrow gets destroyed and they all die trying to get free? It gave me nightmares. And that was before City Hall."

Harley looks at the raven.

"Thank you for your help," he said.

"Are you kidding?" says the raven. "You three are the most interesting questers to come along in centuries. Plus, you fed me."

"You could come with us if you wanted," Harley offers, but the raven shakes it's glossy head.

"I think you already know that everyone in this world has their role to play," it says. "A wise old animal spirit dispensing ancient knowledge to youthful adventurers is a nice, safe part for me. It practically comes with a guarantee that I'll live to tell the tale to the ones that come after you. The more active roles don't have such certain outcomes." It tilts it's head to one side and regards him through one dark eye. "Be prepared for that," it says. "Not just for you and the two you're bringing along, but for the ones that went before you. Your brother was an adventurer too, and not all the protagonists make it out intact."

Comments

[eviinsanemonkey.livejournal.com]

ooh yay more pay attention!

love this bit! I like the Raven. And the bit about Cats. And just everything. as usual.

[froodle]

I love cats and i cant wait til i own my own place so i can get one, but you know if they bothered to talk to any other creature, theyd be lying pieces of shit every single time.

Anyway, im glad youre enjoying it!

[deifire]

Love this installment! Everything about cats is absolutely true, and this line from the raven killed me: "Damn space cow messed it up for everybody, if you ask me."

And I adore that Harley still has a lingering fear of TV screens.

[froodle]

You know that space cow got so many dirty looks from the other magical creatures once they realised how bad the humans were going to be. The sea serpents are all like, hope that salty iceberg was worth it, dumbass! and the unicorns just shun it completely andthe dragons are like,sure wpuld be nice if i could go for a fly and not get arrows right in the one soft spot on my bod,thanks for that!

What is it about the holmes boys and tv screens tho?! Maybe its a sleeping beauty spindle deal and theres some evil fairy with a dumb hat cackling in the background everytime one of them goes near the tv guide.