The Book Of Lost Things

On the second night, they sat in the light of a big fire, huddled beneath thick cloaks. Roland had told David that he was free to sleep in one of the cottages nearby, but none of the others had chosen to do so and David did not want to appear weaker than he already seemed by taking up the offer, even if his refusal meant sleeping outdoors, cold and exposed. Thus he chose to remain with Roland. The flames illuminated the soldier’s features, casting shadows across his skin, enhancing the bones in his cheeks, and deepening the darkness in the sockets of his eyes.

“What do you think happened to Raphael?” David asked him.

Roland did not answer. He just shook his head.

David knew that he should probably remain silent, but he did not want to. He had questions and doubts of his own, and somehow he knew that Roland shared them. It was not chance that had brought them together. Nothing in this place seemed bound by the rules of chance alone. There was a purpose to all that was happening, a pattern behind it, even if David could catch only glimpses of it in passing.

“You think he’s dead, don’t you?” he said softly.

“Yes,” answered Roland. “I feel it in my heart.”

“But you have to find out what happened to him.”

“I will know no peace until I do.”

“But you may die as well. If you follow his path, you could end up just as he did. Aren’t you afraid of dying?”

Roland took a stick and poked at the fire, sending sparks flying upward into the night. They fizzled out before they got very far, like insects that were already being consumed by the flames even as they struggled to escape them.

“I am afraid of the pain of dying,” he said. “I have been wounded before, once so badly that it was feared I would not survive. I can recall the agony of it, and I don’t wish to endure it again.

“But I feared more the death of others. I did not want to lose them, and I worried about them while they were alive. Sometimes, I think that I concerned myself so much with the possibility of their loss that I never truly took pleasure in the fact of their existence. It was part of my nature, even with Raphael. Yet he was the blood in my veins, the sweat on my brow. Without him, I am less than I once was.”

David stared into the flames. Roland’s words resonated within him. That was how he had felt about his mother. He had spent so long being terrified at the thought of losing her that he had never really enjoyed the time they spent together toward the end.

“And you?” said Roland. “You’re only a boy. You don’t belong here. Aren’t you frightened?”

“Yes,” said David. “But I heard my mother’s voice. She’s here, somewhere. I have to find her. I have to bring her back.”

“David, your mother is dead,” said Roland gently. “You told me so.”

“Then how can she be here? How can I have heard her voice so clearly?”

But Roland had no answer, and David’s frustration grew.

“What is this place?” he demanded. “It has no name. Even you can’t tell me what it’s called. It has a king, but he might as well not exist. There are things here that don’t belong: that tank, the German plane that followed me through the tree, the harpies. It’s all wrong. It’s just…”

His voice trailed off. There were words forming in his brain like a dark cloud building on a clear summer’s day, filled with heat and fury and confusion. The question came to him, and he was almost surprised to hear his own voice ask it.

“Roland, are you dead? Are we dead?”

Roland looked at him through the flames.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I think I am as alive as you are. I feel cold and warmth, hunger and thirst, desire and regret. I am conscious of the weight of a sword in my hand, and my skin bears the marks of the armor that I wear when I remove it at night. I can taste bread and meat. I can smell Scylla upon me after a day in the saddle. If I were dead, such things would be lost to me, would they not?”

“I suppose so,” said David. He had no idea how the dead felt once they passed from one world to the next. How could he? All he knew was that his mother’s skin had been cold to the touch, but David could still feel the warmth of his own body. Like Roland, he could smell and touch and taste. He was aware of pain and discomfort. He could feel the heat from the fire, and he was sure that if he put his hand to it, his skin would blister and burn.

And yet this world remained a curious mix of the strange and the familiar, as though by coming here he had somehow altered its nature, infecting it with aspects of his own life.

“Have you ever dreamed of this place?” he asked Roland. “Have you ever dreamed of me, or of anything else in it?”