The Moors: A Rescue

                The world was dark.  It had been long since the skies deepened from the bright blue to a foggy purple, a haze for the bloodred sun to wearily roll across the godless heavens.  In the North, the once spritely winds that scattered seeds across the rich moors now only kicked dust about.  It rolled down the cobblestone streets of Dumonte, buffeting Mohogan’s trench coat with a dull layer of white clay.  The doctor tucked her chin nearer to her chest, pulling the collar up around her face and her bowler hat down to hide her eyes.

                The wind…its creak along the beams of the many apartments and their tightly closed shutters composed a wallowing chorus for Mohogan to walk by.  No other life moved along the dust of the crisscrossing ways in the once lovely town.  Gilded doorframes were rusted and balcony gardens were barren.  Though it was midday, the streetlamps were all lit, giving the gray streets a sallowed glow.  Mohogan stalked quickly through the pools of light, one hand tucked in her coat pocket as the other"gloved in gray"clutched the handle of a worn briefcase. 

                The hand in her pocket tightened, crumpling the slip of paper she held.  On it was an address, where Mohogan was directing her dark eyes and swift footsteps.  It had taken three days to reach Dumonte.  The journey had been long in the sense that the doctor had only stopped to sleep twice.  By the time she reached the western quarter of the town, she was spitting mud out of her mouth from yawning so much.

                Mohogan stopped and set down her briefcase so she could roll her shoulders.  The joints cracked and she glanced towards the nearby townhouse, one with crumbling columns and a broken window on the second story.  Inside was dark, save for a room to the right of the door were and oil lamp burned and cast a soft glow against a figure who peered from the window.  She stared at Mohogan with terrified eyes, and frantically pulled herself from the glass, taking the oil lamp with her.

                The front door swung open on a broken hinge and the woman from the window rushed out to the street, grabbing at Mohogan’s dusty sleeve.

“Are you the doctor?” she asked, her panic now brimming with relief in her eyes.

“I am,” Mohogan said taking her arm from the woman’s grasp and the crumpled address from her pocket.  She held it up, scanning the scrawl with her black eyes.  “You are the one who sent for me, then.”

“Yes, I’m Gissa.  My husband is"”

“Where is he, then?” Mohogan picked up her briefcase once more and walked through the front entrance.

“Ah"up the stairs and to the left,” the woman, Gissa, followed after, jerking the lopsided door shut behind her, though a film of dust had already covered the wooden floor.  “The death-sleep is starting to set in,” she babbled on, trailing after Mohogan up the stairs. “He can barely sit up anymore.”

                The doctor stood only for a second just inside the room, catching sight of the man on the bed before she proceeded to a nearby chair.

“How long has he been experiencing symptoms?”  She shed the dusty trench coat, tossing it over the back of the chair, then pulling off her gloves and hat to place them on the well-worn seat.  Thin, dark fingers rolled up her white sleeves.  She pinned up her long black hair to a loose bun on the back of her head, all the while looking the man over.  He stared to the ceiling, seeing what neither of them could.  His eyes wide and unblinking, mouth agape as he breathed in uneven gasps.  Mohogan studied his trembling hands, the dilated pupils before she opened her briefcase on the bedside table.

“I guess…it has to have been about six months or so,” Gissa said softly, watching her.  In the dark and glow of the bedroom, shadows smoothed along the doctor’s leather boots as she tied up her long skirts at her hip to keep from tripping at their low hem.  The cracked glass of the window creaked as the winds shuddered through the apartment.  Gissa pulled the curtains and hung back there, her hands clutching at the weaving of her corset.

“Is…,” she stopped, a deep breath filling her lungs before she tried again, “can you cure him?”

“Yes,” Mohogan said as she wiped her hands off with an antiseptic-soaked rag.  “Leave the lamp and exit the room.  Shut the door and do not enter until I fetch you.”  The doctor gave Gissa a long stare, watching the disbelief on her face.

“But, why?”

“Any disturbance might interrupt the process and destroy his chance for being healed,” Mohogan explained, going to her briefcase for a small glass bottle and an eyedropper.  “If you understand, then do as I instruct.”

A shuddered breath and a long look at her husband before the woman nodded and departed the room as she was told.  Her nervous digits pressed the door closed and footsteps drew away, down the stairs.  It was only then that Mohogan set about her work.

She squeezed the eyedropper full of the clear liquid in the bottle and deposited three drops into each of the man’s eyes.  The liquid streamed down his face. His mouth closed, as did his eyes, though he still breathed abnormally. Mohogan then picked up a syringe and wrapped her other hand about the man’s elbow.  She pushed the needle into his arm and pulled back on the plunger, filling the glass tube with blood.  Black eyes focused; the blood was injected into a separate glass phial, closed and stored in the briefcase alongside three other small vessels like it. 

Lips pressed together, Mohogan threaded a curved copper needle with a shimmering fiber and brought it back over to the bed sitting at the stool that had been placed next to it.  She then stitched a zigzag down the man’s arm: a crooked line in an iridescent glitter with tiny pools of blood at the seven points.  And without missing a beat, she did the same for her own arm, by the same thread.

“When I think of a better method,” she muttered to herself, annoyed, before she snapped the excess thread with her teeth.  A thin finger plucked the short length of string that connected them and she shut her eyes.

 

"X"

                “Who are you then?” 

Mohogan looked up from where she was sitting and strained her eyes.  The sun….  The sky was blue again.  Everything was so bright.  Next to her was a boy with pale hair and a freckled face.  She got to her feet and looked down at him and his soft green eyes.

“My name is Mohogan,” she told him.  “Who are you?”

“Dejis,” he said, reaching his hand out and shaking hers.  “If you’re here, you must have come for the adventure. Come on, I’ll take you to the woods so we can get started.”  The boy turned and ran off, his bare feet making a quiet shifting sound as he rushed through the red wheat fields.  Mohogan followed after, watching him for a moment before getting a better grasp of her surroundings.  This place looked like an old thistlevine moor, where the scarlet grass was once harvested and pressed to make Crux Bitters.  But those had all been wiped out a few decades ago.  Of course, that didn’t matter here, Mohogan knew, but it helped put her in a bit of better context for the setting.

                The moor stretched for miles, up hills and to the horizon.  Every acre or so, a tall tree stood with children hanging about its branches or harvesters reaching up to take what fruit grew there.   Looking back, Mohogan realized they had departed from the agape entrance of a silo that reached so high into the air that its top was invisible, like a needle into the clouds.  Yellow sun burned down and the creaking symphony of bug and bird calls permeated the windy air.  Mohogan breathed in deeply.  The smell of the thistlevine was rich and sweet as the earth it grew in.  She sighed, returning to look at Dejis who had brought her to the boundary of the forest.

                “What’s the adventure?” she asked him as she joined his side.  He was crouching down in the dirt, picking up rocks and pocketing them.

“We’re really just going to find scarecrow,” he told her.  “But the adventure is to rescue the princess, okay?”  He got back to his feet and looked up at Mohogan, holding up a long stick he had retrieved.  “I’m the valiant knight and you’re the magician who will help me break the spells we may encounter in the woods, alright?”  She took the offered length of tree.  In her hands it transformed into a long, gnarled staff as white as bone.  She tapped its base on the ground a few times, getting a feel for the weight.

“Did you hire me or am I your friend?”  Dejis furrowed his sunburned brow and cocked his head to one side in confusion.

“You’re my only friend, Mohogan,” he said to her, shaking his head as if she were speaking nonsense.  “Don’t forget to put on your face paint or you’ll be in trouble.”  And he got down on his knees rubbing his fingers in the black paint below him before smearing it across his features.  A look toward her, “Come on, hurry up now, we have to rescue her before sunset.”

Mohogan looked down between her feet where a pool of white pigment was swirling.  She lowered herself, tilting her staff as she scooped up a swath of the color and followed suit, without rhyme or reason to a design.  But, again, that didn’t matter here.  It would look right no matter what she did.  The two stood once more and Dejis walked into the forest, Mohogan only a step behind him.

                Another setting adjustment; she looked around again.  The woods were dark and colorless with trees twisting around each other in some floral asphyxiation.  Ivy the color of nothing carpeted the ground and though light streamed in through the few gaps of the crowded canopy, it brought illumination to nothing.  The sound of their feet through the underbrush was like the quiet crushing of glass.  Ahead, Dejis was wielding his sword"a long golden blade"pointing it out in front as if he were going to cut whatever decided to jump in front of him in half.

“How far ahead is the princess?” Mohogan asked as she pulled her white hood up over her hair.   When she spoke, something shimmering and without substance fell from her lips.  The staff in her hand was warm and she held it close as they weaved through the trees.

“She’s at the waterfall,” Dejis said.  “To get there, we have to get through the woods and past the King’s Gate, because the waterfall is in his garden.”

“What kind of king?” she asked him.

“An evil king.  His jester thought it would be funny to take our princess and put it in the King’s garden so that when we came looking for her, the King would punish us.”  Dejis scowled and came to a stop in the middle of a space in the foliage.  The light streamed through and made this one area alive, a circle of cornflowers and bright red toadstools among green grass.  And in the middle of it all was an leg.    “Oh no,” Dejis gasped, dropping his sword as he knelt down and lifted the limb.  Mohogan stood behind him, leaning forward to get a better look.  “The jester pulled the princess’s leg off,” the boy mourned, holding up the leg for Mohogan to take.  Tucking her staff in the crook of her elbow, she accepted it and gave the dismembered part a look-over.

                The leg was pale and thin with a tiny, pink-slippered foot at one end, a mauled, meaty mess at the other and a dirty knee in between.  Even so, it had many stitches along it, like its flesh had been pieced and sewn carefully together, each one fine and manicured in silver twine. 

“When we find her,” Dejis began, getting to his feet as he wiped a tear from his painted face, “you have to make her whole again.  I don’t have to magic to do it.”  Ah.  That was it. Mohogan nodded, tucking the leg into her white robe.

“I’ll take care of her,” she assured him. “Don’t worry.”  For a moment, Dejis stood in the circle of sunlight and looked towards the ceiling of blank leaves, soaking in the warmth.  “We better get moving,” Mohogan said, moving past him as she returned the staff to her hands.

                The two of them walked together through the gray and tangled woods.  And it didn’t take much longer to reach the edge of the wood, where a great stone wall stretched from one horizon to the other.  Uneven lines and varying thicknesses of black stone piled high over them.  Mohogan looked up, trying to find the end of it. She figured she could stand on her own shoulders three times over and still not be able to see over the top.

“The gateway is over here,” Dejis said, beckoning her away, towards the east.  “There’s no gatekeeper, but it’s not easy to get inside.  Sometimes, the gate is locked.  And other times, there are traps behind it.  So be aware.”  Mohogan nodded and braced the staff in her hands once again. 

“We’re not far, then,” she said.

“Right.  Once we get past the gate, it shouldn’t take long to get to the waterfall.  You can hear it, can’t you?” The magician paused and tilted her face towards the sky.  From beyond the wall, the soft rush of water rose like a mist over the stones.  The sky was bright with the evening sun, reflecting back the dusk aurora over the thin space between the gates and the achromatic wall that was the forest.  The air was close and smelled like the earth.

                The magician, with her black eyes focused on the small shoulders of her guiding knight, gave a silent sigh and recalled a similarly tiny back.  Only the one remembered had a sweep of raven colored curls down the spine.  A precious voice that lulled about little pink lips, singing lullabies and children’s rhymes with breath in the colors wild growing berries.  Those eyes, though so similar, were bright brown like caramel.  Mohogan’s eyes wandered back toward the wall and she did her best to stop thinking about such things.   But she counted backwards, the years, wondering how many it would take to get to the end.  And, not for her own sake, she was praying that there weren’t many left.

“Did you know,” Dejis suddenly said, the point of his golden sword skipping along the black stones of the wall as he held it out, “this is the third time that the Jester has taken the Princess.  I’m really sick of him bugging me like this; I’m the one who has to go out and rescue her every time.”

“You make it sound like an annoyance.  Do you not want to save her?  You’re her knight after all.”  Mohogan stopped when he did.  The boy swung his blade back and shoved it in the sheath again, his eyes wandering back to the wall to try and find the top of it. 

“I’m not her knight.  I’m my king’s knight.  And the princess belongs to my king, even though I was the one who made her.”

“As her creator,” Mohogan pressed a bit, “don’t you feel any responsibility for her safety and preservation?”

“Just as I am not hers,” Dejis answered, beginning to walk again, “she is not mine either.”  He took three steps and halted once more, turning to face the expanse of piled stone.  “Look, I’ve found the gate.”   He reached out and pulled on the handle.  “It’s not locked.”  Wrought iron, curled in spirals of ivy and roses, swung open and behind it, a garden. Mohogan came up and stood next to him, staring past the wall.  She felt small; her eyes darted about the scene before her and she couldn’t help but lean back to glance behind her once again to try and understand what she beheld.

Sure enough, it was a standard garden, lush and full of beautiful flowers, well kept plants, trees, ponds and decorative artwork.  But they stretched for miles beyond her sight.  And with every blink, Mohogan was sure that they were larger than she was familiar with, even if her exposure to such things was but a memory now.  And the colors….  Where the magician once believed green and yellow should have been, there was blue and red.  She shook her head.  This wasn’t a place to debate differences and mull over things like awkwardness in comparisons.  Though the monstrous bellflowers that arced right at the gateway in their unwelcoming orange did put her off a bit.  At least they weren’t black. 

                “Can you tell if there are any traps?” Mohogan asked now, as they had not taken a step inside.  She could only assume that Dejis noticed something that she had not. 

 “I can.  And there aren’t.”  He bit the corner of his mouth and tilted his head to one side.  “I’m wondering….”  Amidst that, he did walk forward, slowly, as if he was expecting that suddenly he would be wrong and some harm would be rapidly evolving from the precious state of safety.  But after his few cautious steps and the stillness between them, Dejis was comfortable proceeding and he beckoned Mohogan to follow him.  “It won’t take long.  We’re practically there.”  He smiled at her, the black lines of his face paint curving around the apples of his cheeks and in the crescent dimples.

One step past the iron gate and Mohogan found herself at the foot of the basin of the waterfall, jadedly wondering why they couldn’t just do that in the first place.  But it wasn’t like she was the one who had the means to willingly enable such a convenience.  Damn dream-stepping; she sighed internally. 

Mohogan didn’t have the time to linger on what was out of her hands, though, now that Dejis was kneeling next to what could only be described as a corpse.  The magician looked down at the two of them.  In his arms, the princess was limp.  Her pale, silver-stitched flesh cold and unbending in his cradle.  There was blood on her baby pink dress, right where a missing leg was obvious.  Eyes, white-less and completely blue with no pupils to speak of were fringed by soft strands of cotton colored hair, dirty from where she had been lying on the ground.  A ladybug crawled out of her mouth over pearly lips.  She didn’t breathe.

“We should take her from this place,” Mohogan said, crouching to put her hand on Dejis’ shoulder.  “If this is Evil King’s territory than it would be unwise to linger, wouldn’t it?”

“Look at….  Just look,” Dejis whispered, his arms shifting a bit.  In his palm, the princess’s tiny right hand rested, pale with shimmering seams.  “Look how lovely she is.”  When Mohogan looked to the boy’s face, he was smiling.  “But, she is not as lovely as she once was.  Please…you can fix her. And then I can take her home to where she belongs.”  Getting to his feet, the little girl held closely against his chest, Dejis glowed his slight smile up towards Mohogan.  At last.  She had come to rescue.

                Mohogan reached into her robe and procured the limb from its folds.
“I will do my best to restore her,” she assured the boy as she pulled the pink skirt back to reveal the mauled stump of her thigh.  Dark fingers moved the leg toward its origin and, as she gripped her staff with the other hand, Mohogan cast a spell.

“We, even in our darkness and struggle, do not forget the colors of our joy.  The red in the fruitful moors of the thistlevine, and the endless blue of the skies above us.  Though they may be shielded and lost to us now, we forever believe in their return.  Once more, we will be whole.”

 

"X"

                Mohogan would’ve slapped that woman.  She didn’t simply because the paranoid wife had chosen the split second after the objective had been met to burst into the room with her wild go-ons about how Mohogan was probably killing him in some inhumane fashion.  By that time, though, the only thing left to the treatment was just the falling action, which wasn’t really necessary. 

The man was steadily regaining himself by the time Mohogan was out the door with an envelope of cash in her pocket. But in her briefcase, she had four vessels of tainted blood, each unique in their strain of virus.  Mohogan sighed as she pulled her hat a bit lower over her bangs, thinking about silver scarecrows and memories of the red moors.  For now, they were lost to everyone.  And yet….

The doctor lifted her eyes towards the horizon.  Maybe it was sunrise; the glowing scarlet disk hung near the boundary between earth and sky.  Regardless, she was going to be walking for a long while with nothing but that red sun to watch over her.

“Hope you can last the week,” Mohogan said to the star as she continued through the dust-flurries.  “But if you can’t, I won’t hold it against you.”

Author's Note

Please review if you read. Even if it's only one word, I'd be appreciative.