Speculative Fiction Centre

The skies wept in bitter sorrow when I parted the long–closed curtains of time.  I peered through, seeing shadows of the dark moon, yellow eyes gleaming hatefully as they crept from the thorn-beds that skirted the merging waters of two streams bordering a quiet village. 

A young boy pelted from of one of the houses, his arms churning for greater speed, with a message held tightly in his teeth.  His feet caught the wind as he vaulted the ring of rune stones, set by the founders around the village to hold the night demons at bay.   

Demon eyes glared hungrily, following the boy’s course, but they did not give chase and at first I didn’t know why. 

I looked closer and noticed the dark outline of a Guardian running beside the boy, matching his jump and stride with quick feet.  The Guardian snarled and demons slunk low, hissing dark wraths, as they fled the boy’s path.

The scene flickered in misty swirls. 

Night became day, and the demons changed.  Patterned dark fur covered their sleek black skin as the demons shrank.  Their long claws retracted as they lowered hands to the earth and eyes dimmed at last, hiding them in plain sight from unsuspecting strangers. 

Powerless now, under the sun’s bright glare, the demons crossed the rune-stones at will, skittering through the village aimlessly, keeping to the dry places, in search of rest. 

The boy and his Guardian made sport of the demons by day, chasing them into the trees.  Those they caught were baptized in the icy streams of melted snow—drawing squalls of impotent rage.

          Days flickered past, then seasons.  The boy grew stronger, bolder, but didn’t know or care that I watched him along with the demons.  In a fallow field between his home and the edge of the thorns, the boy constructed a fort.  He kept vigil at its turret sunup to sundown, awaiting his chance to harry the devils that plagued the land.
          The demons growled as they tested the wards each night, but hid more often now during the day, mocking the boy safely from the thorns.

          One lazy day as the summer wind wafted through ribbons of dry, brown grass, lulling the boy to sleep with its song.  The Guardian, too, gave into the warmth and rhythm, closing his eyes in slumber.  Hours passed.  The sun reached its zenith and descended toward the west.
          A shadow flitted by.

The Guardian raised his lids.  In seconds he was up, snarling the charge.  Roused from sleep, the boy sprang into action, rushing to the edge of the thorns.  The passing creature was not an impotent demon.  Tail high, the white striped cousin of the demons showered the boy and Guardian with its vile spray.  The demons watching laughed themselves silly while boy and Guardian vainly washed in icy waters of irony.  

          Years flickered past.  The boy grew taller, almost a man. 

Though the Guardian kept a constant vigil, the youth lost interest.  More often than not, he visited far-off friends, avoiding the fort for days at a time. 

One night while the boy was gone, a distant cry sounded from the road. 

Was that the boy? 

My heart pounded as the Guardian rushed from the fort.

Had the demons attacked his boy?  

He followed the road up a rise.  I heard a roar, then beams of light crested the hill. The Guardian froze in the gaze of a silver dragon that thundered by.  In its wake a trail of smoke wafted above the still and broken body of the Guardian.

          When the boy returned early the next morning, he was greeted by frost-kissed dew and an empty bed, instead of the warm tongue of his faithful companion.

My eyes teared

My heart sank with worry. 

Though tired, the boy ran, searching up and down the thorny banks.  Cold pierced my marrow as the boy reached an empty fort and tirelessly searched on, walking to the main highway.
          The boy came upon the cold body of his best friend around noon.  I felt his heart pound in my throat and tears streamed from both the boy’s eyes and my own.  He lifted the Guardian’s stiff body and carried him to their long-neglected fort. 

Outside, rain fell like tears as the boy forced the shovel deeper into the earth.  At first, he dug slowly, but guilt and anger gave power to effort.  He soon had a grave, deep and wide as if for his own body.
          But he dug on, jamming the shovel against a rock, the handle splintered in two.

Tears and fury finally spent, he wrapped a small black spaniel in a blanket and covered him with soil.
          Startled, I watched the scene melt with change.  The stout walls of the fort became a rusted old Buick with warped plywood forming the upper deck.  The turret became an old wringer washing machine and feral cats, not demons, darted in and out of berry vines along the banks of an irrigation ditch.

On his knees beside the freshly covered grave, the boy looked up saw me at last.  As our eyes met I knew he was me.

 I closed my eyes tightly on streaming tears, knowing I had looked back upon the loss of that magical time I knew as a child.