Chris & Kevin — Part III: The Old Man's Story

Beauty — Childhood trip — Pursuit — Waterfall

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Previously → Part II: Lakeside House: https://madwriter27.substack.com/p/chris-and-kevin-part-ii-lakeside

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“Beautiful ain’t it.”

“Excuse me?”

“The lake.”

“Oh. Yes. Yes sir.”

“Y’know I passed by your little welcome sign up on the road, I’d say, about as many times as the goddamned stars and I ain’t never been told that there was such a thing of beauty down here.” He shook his head with what seemed like scorn though he broke out in a chuckle. “Right down here. Just down here. Ah, but that’s the way of things, ain’t it.”

Chris politely nodded. He turned to face the lake and cocked his head at it, trying to see what the old man saw. Then he frowned. “It’s just a lake.”

The old man stirred and turned to look at him. Looked him up and down. “You live here?”

“Yes sir I do. Just right there.” He pointed at his house and his arm lingered there trembling slightly and all of a sudden he thought he might fall down gasping right then and there. Then the old man spat.

“What a waste,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“A waste.”

“The lake?”

“No. But never you mind. It’s the way of things, ain’t it.”

“Yes sir. I suppose.”

The old man nodded up at the waterfall. Glimmering and hazy in the dying sun. Like a mouth of bright light vomiting water onto the earth. “Say. You know the way up there?”

“Up there?

“Right.”

“There is no way up there.”

“Sure there is. There’s ways everywhere.”

“Well. That waterfall comes down from the Headlong river, which runs all sorts a’ loops up there in the Wavy Plains, which are themselves enclosed by those mountains you see up there.”

“I don’t see no mountains.”

“It’s getting dark and it’s cloudy but they’re there. So to get up that waterfall you’d have to climb outta the vale, ride on east a few weeks up into the Lapis towns, then get up those mountains there, and then you come down into the Wavy Plains and the Headlong and you reach this waterfall here.”

“Hmf.” The old man crossed his arms. “Well goddamn.”

Chris nodded in sympathy. “Yes sir. Though it’s a beautiful trip. My mother used to take us up that route all the time when I was a kid. Every spring, as soon as the snows melted. We’d sleep in the inns along the way and when we got there we’d camp by that waterfall and then jump right down home.” He said all this with a wide wistful grin on his face but by the end of his recollection it faded. He looked back at his house. Down at his feet. Shuffled a few pebbles along. “Well, sir. I, ah…” he let out a long pregnant breath he had been holding for years. “I gotta to go now. I’m sorry. I gotta to go. It was nice meeting —“

“A bit high, though, ain’t it?”

“Excuse me?”

“That waterfall. Jump all that way down.”

“I suppose. Sir. Though none of us ever been hurt.”

The old man was smiling mischievously. “I bet the view up there is damn fine.”

“It is. You can see just enough of the vale to make it look endless.”

The old man nodded to himself, satisfied. That rascal’s grin on his withered face was so out of place there he seemed possessed by some kind of trickster god. He seemed on the verge of saying something but he didn’t. He only sat there smirking at the waterfall as if they shared some private joke between them. Eventually Chris turned to leave again.

“We was ridin’ across the plain,” the old man said. Chris stopped.

“The Silverhearts were closin in on us,” he went on. “It was north up there in one o’ them black deserts up near Ashmouth. Everywhere you looked, just black earth cracked and barren and dead. Very rough country. Don’t even remember how we ended up there. Things can get hazy when you’re on the run.

“Anyhow we was ridin up there and the Silverrhearts were right on our ass, and they were on our ass for possibly a week, I think, maybe more, and we probably done pissed em off real bad cause it was a whole Blade they got comin after us. A whole Blade.

“And we couldn’t lose em’ no matter what we did. We’d hide our camp and hold no fire and they’d still be there. We’d ride through the whole night sometimes and they’d still be there come morn. Just relentless. I tell ya. That big swirl of black dust they kicked up with their daemonic visors glowin through the haze. Like this dark cyclone with spider’s eyes. I tell ya.

“ None of it’s true, what they say about em. The Silverhearts. People think they all righteous cause they hunt monsters but the only ones capable of huntin monsters are themselves far worse. Ah, by the gods. I tell ya.

“And so at one point we reached this cliff and there was nothing beyond it. You’d look down and just see a… a blur. Like there was some ground down there somewhere but it was so far even the world couldn’t quite see it. Our horses were about done by that point and so were we. We figured we had about till sundown. Plenty of arrows between us and some damn fine steel but what the hell for. Those among us weren’t human started prayin for the gods but I knew that to be foolish ‘cause there ain’t no god would come down to meddle with such meanness. But then —“ and, smiling, his head tilted back just slightly in reverence.

“But then was this waterfall, see.”

Part IV — “We Dyed It Red”: https://madwriter27.substack.com/p/chris-and-kevin-part-iv-we-dyed-it

Part I — The Town That Forgot Itself: https://madwriter27.substack.com/p/chris-and-kevin-part-i-the-town-that

Part II — Lakeside House: https://madwriter27.substack.com/p/chris-and-kevin-part-ii-lakeside