AS ISAIAH ENTERED the Parda the sun disappeared. Not as it did at dawn, or as the sky was covered by dark clouds. The sky remained a pale shade of blue – far from dark, and yet utterly sunless. The air felt crisper in there and the nearly motionless air made the silence seem hollow. Even in the nearby dead forests he’d gone through before, there had always been sound, if you listened closely. Rustling leaves, bugs crawling up trees, the flickering of wings or some distant stream of water. In here, there was none of it, and though it seemed any sound would have made his heart jump out of his chest, the silence seemed unnatural and unsettling. It scared him very differently than the open, dry dunes had. At least there, the winds had kept him company. At least there, he’d had a certainty (or perhaps a delusion) that nothing could appear out of nowhere. He would hear it first – see it first. Here he sensed anything could appear from everywhere, or at least (if he were to trust the oldling) anything he could imagine.
He walked for some time, barefoot as instructed, wondering if he should be mad enough to start dancing. But he didn’t know how to dance, and so, he took a breath instead, trying hard to think. Then, he remembered what the oldling had said about emptying his mind. He made an effort to look around without thoughts, like he’d often done in their garden when he’d been a boy. It took some minutes before the urgency finally slipped off of him. There it was. That beautiful ease. Just like that. “How could it be so simple?” he wondered, and as the thoughts came back, he once again focused on where he was. There – right there, in some forest he (and perhaps nobody else either) really knew. Trees and stones. Nothing in sight to fear and nothing unimaginable in the hiding. Quiet. Very, very quiet.
“You will have to master yourself before entering the threshold of these gates.” A broad,masculine voice leaped out of the void, and he turned to where it came from just to find there was nobody there.
“There were no gates...”
“You saw no gates, ignorant child.”
“I apologize for my blindness. Forgive me, I am only here to find my grandfather.” He turned around again – trying to find the origin of the voice – but as he’d feared, there was no visible thing talking to him. He started walking faster. Although he'd suspected he wouldn’t find his grandfather in any ordinary way, it didn’t seem the voice’s source was well intended.
“Run, Isaiah.” It was another voice speaking this time. One young, sweet and familiar – Amelia’s. He turned around again. Had she followed him there? Had he brought that poor, little girl into danger?
“Run!” It was a woman’s voice commanding him now, and he ran. He ran as fast as his bare feet could carry him, until he met with an odd mist that rapidly turned into a thick, cold fog. Suddenly he sensed little pieces of ice landing on his face. Melting on his heated cheeks. Looking behind him, the green forest was no longer there – nor were any of the voices. He allowed the chill, almost steam like air to enter him, and there, in the pale white of it all, he felt the same bravery he remembered having once felt inside a lucid dream. The coldness still felt real, so, he kept on walking fast to stay bearably warm. But he did not run, and he did not turn around.
After some minutes of listening to his own breaths, he finally heard the first true, natural sound of the Parda. It was no human sound this time, nor was it one completely unfamiliar to him. His heart started beating faster, as his mind threw it back to the first day he’d ridden with Cyra. To the moment the Zura girl had no longer been what worried him the most, and nature had shown him what true wilderness was. It took some seconds before he saw the materialized origin of the sound, its whiteness blending in and out of the fog as a cloud, before moving towards him. It’s coat, beautiful, and clean. Its body was long and slow and its breath loud and pacing. The fog and the little pieces of ice surrounding it, made it look unreal – still it seemed much more alive than the smaller brown bear he’d met that night that seemed so long ago now. Yes, "alive” was the best word, as well as the only word he could find for it.
He froze as the bear kept walking in almost majestic patience towards him. The two of them stared at each other as if they’d been the last two creatures alive. As if they’d reached the end of the world together, and both were wondering who’d be the last to remember the other. Isaiah broke the moment. Once again able to move, he stumbled backwards a step. He felt for the harakiri knife in his belt. Had it truly been a dream – had anything been possible – he could have saved himself by aiming it against the animal’s heart, or perhaps that deadly spot on its neck, once it attacked him. He could survive or maybe wake up. But the cold told him this was far from a dream. That this would spill more unnecessary blood on the white ground than what was needed.
With the touch of the handle, he felt a strange, sinister solution occuring to him. The idea that he could at least keep himself from being ripped to pieces if he died by his own hand. It seemed wrong, cowardly, and yet it was as if the blade called for that action. As if its purpose was to free him and this was the only way. Compelled, he pulled the blade out and held it towards his stomach. The bear, no more than twenty feet away now, stopped abruptly. It left him gasping as it stood up on two legs, exposing its true, massive height. With this, the knife slipped out of his hand as he fell down to his knees. In sudden surrender, he saw there was no victory in fighting nature. There was no reason to escape it once it had made its judgement, and so he decided he would not die a coward’s death. He had reached his destination, his final trial, and so he prepared as well as one could for the animal to rip him apart.
Three seconds went by, the longest he’d ever lived, but the bear did no such thing. Instead, it lowered itself down to the ground and out of the tense silence that followed, Isaiah swore he could hear the sound of drums. The beats hit him in the chest as sudden beams of lightning – almost as if it’d come from inside his body. He looked up, just to find the bear staring at him, and it felt oddly the same as a human stare would. Painful, exposing, but not unkind. He stared back, and its black eyes looked almost saddened for a moment, before it turned away – dissipating into the thick kingdom of clouds it’d come from. Once again, he’d been spared. Once again, he’d been abandoned.
Regaining enough strength to get back on his feet, Isaiah walked for hours in the fog before finally being too tired and cold to continue. “Grandfather!” he screamed, like he’d already done hundreds of times. Once again, nothing but his own echo returned to him, and so he sat down and wept. Sobbing like he’d thought a scared fragile little boy would, after having lost everything. Alone there in a world of nothingness. He thought of all the places he’d seen on his way. He’d had enough gold to buy a house, but instead he’d come here like a fool – well knowing it was a place for the doomed and the reckless. He thought of all the people he’d met. Any one of them, even the ones he’d thought rather awful, would have made him laugh out of pure joy if they’d appeared just then. “Anything and anyone at all.” He stuttered, with no attempt to scream this time.
He felt himself wishing neither of the bears had spared him. That Wind’s eyes had speared him on the spot or that the Zura commander had taken him to trial. It seemed so clear now, that suffering was the price of life. That was what adulthood truly was – the only certain privilege that came with it. Though wanting death needed to be the most selfish idea to have ever occurred to him, he felt too much fury to feel ashamed. Angry with himself for ignoring all the warnings – for ignoring his obvious weaknesses and unreadiness to enter a place like this.
For half a night he cried out loud and shamelessly, feeling so close and yet so far from death. When his throat was finally so sore it couldn’t bear making another sound, he laid down, understanding well what laying down in such a place might mean. His feet had gone numb a long time ago and the initial needles had passed. Soon, his entire body seemed increasingly senseless and after some time it even gave up shivering. As he laid there, looking up towards the moon that had found him in the fog (slightly less than full), he prayed it would be the last time he’d fall asleep cold. He prayed it would be the last time he would need to fall asleep at all.