Her Red City (WattyAwards2013 entry- new version)

Her Red City-Chapter One, 'Many Steps'. Part 3

All motion had ceased during this moment, and started again with ease as soon as it had passed. Blue ‘walk on’ signs flickered into life below the windows, and each stamp-giver simultaneously gestured for us to pass through our respective gates. I did, but glanced over my shoulder before I was through, to see another child in scrubs sweeping up the ashes with a dust pan and brush, and my faceless man whispering a strange  tongue,  without a mouth, to another, and for a second time I could have sworn I caught him looking at me.

Beyond that strange entrance, an expanse of flat earth stretched as far as could be seen before us, and, some 50 feet from where I stood, a tall road sign lorded over the hundreds of dead below it. Arrows pointed in every conceivable direction but back, and below each arrow a line of pebbles trailed down the post, across the ground and into the distance. I joined the recently deceased in their mad dance; a crow-like circling around a tree of a map to find fate.

Upon closer inspection, and after a few minutes of struggle, I saw that each arrow bore a symbol, creating a confusing and seemingly meaningless nest of shapes. All around people held up their hands, looking back and forth from the arrows to their symbols. Everywhere I looked, skin flashed baring images of gates, clouds, palm trees and flames, but no-one shared mine.  As I circuited the thing with a furrowed brow, an old woman brushed past me and left a bloody smudge on my arm...I’d had a crippling fear of blood throughout my life before, but the usual nausea that swept through me did not arise- I simply felt that numb, non-feeling settle in again. I looked up at the strange sky and breathed in to my lungs’ very limit. The crowd pushed and pulled at me, carrying me along on a current. I was getting messier by the minute, and seemed no closer to finding my crown, when there it was; so starkly prominent that I was surprised not to have noticed the elusive thing before.

I pushed towards the base of the structure and traced the pebble trail down from the arrow, first with my eyes, then my finger, then on all fours, crawling through a web of unsure feet, doling out apologetic expressions as a few people tripped over me, and occasionally suffering half-hearted kicks in response. I followed the trail, sleuth-like, until I broke through the crowd to a view of a path, headed straight as a bloodhound to the horizon. I rose and stretched out cramped legs, looked back once, then started on my way.

All through this journey of mine, a deep-set need to obey, an instinctual urge to do as instructed, had chained itself to my core. I could easily have strayed, but the thought never crossed my mind. Perhaps it was mere intense curiosity- what could possibly be here for me when everything I had been sure of was gone? I dismissed my qualms.

The path I kept to was narrow, and as I trod it I grew further from the other paths, as if each was a spoke of  a wheel, leading from the centre of some colossal circle to a different part of the edge. With each step I grew increasingly aware that the paths around me boasted many travellers, while mine had none but me. I was alone, and became lonelier still, as each trail of corpses fell to the mercy of that empty horizon, under that empty sun, until they were dots, and then nothing at all.

As had the white hall, the stone path soon bored me, and I began various games to amuse myself, each forsaken swiftly- I ran backwards, I tip-toed as on a tight-rope, I took two steps with my left foot, then one with my right foot. Briefly, I marvelled that I was not yet weary. I seemed in stasis.

Soon my throat itched to sing, as it always did when my own silence became uncomfortable. Having no tongue, I resigned myself to sing within the confines of my head.

Though Asgarth’s above and Helheim’s below,

Ironwood, Ironwood, will always be home...

The lines seemed old and dust covered in my mind. Had I perhaps heard it before? The verses continued to form, yearning to spill out of me, and their formation certainly seemed to pass the time.

In this way, I walked on, and on and on and on.