Rowan's Rising Journey

Chapter 7: Brown

Panic swirled out of Rowan's breath.

With his knees huddled close to his chest, he whispered, “Not again, not again…”

No one else was awake. He felt alone as he fought tirelessly with his mind. Black night-time silhouettes - trees that looked like they were casting spells with their branch-wands, rocks that resembled piles of giant bug corpses - invaded his reality like nightmares.

The music was coming.

His hands positioned themselves on the piano keys in front of him. They were polished ivory, and when his fingers pressed down on them they sent strings of colors up into the air. He watched as the notes lit up the night.

White, brown, blue, pink, white, brown, blue, pink… pink, green, green, brown…

It was a tranquil melody; sweet, gentle treble. Slowly, he felt feelings unfamiliar to him. A forgotten sadness swam into his heart, finding its way to his eyes. Tears leaked out - white, brown, pink, green - and fell up into the air alongside the splatters of note strings.

He gazed up at the colors with wet, swollen eyelids. His tears kept falling like raindrops. His fingers knew exactly which keys they wanted to dance on, and they did so with natural grace. The colors were so beautiful, he couldn’t help but raise his cold, soaked cheeks into a smile. The way the wisps trailed off like watercolor tadpoles transformed his nightmare into a surreal dream.

Watching the keys pour out sweet moonlit melodies made him smile bigger. His chest and shoulders shook with uncontrollable laughter. He could see the music, the whole music now: A spiral of colors floating toward a lonely hilltop some immeasurable distance away. The spiral spun all colors - warm reds, cool blues, shades of pink, shades of yellow, and everything in between. There were even some colors he had somehow never seen before.

A voice drowned in the piano music. He didn’t register it at first, but he realized the words after a minute.

“Are you okay?” It said. “Rowan?” It called out again.

Rowan’s focus changed from the piano in front of him to his brother’s worried face.

“Rowan, why are you crying? Hawthorn asked.

Rowan’s hands stopped moving, and the piano faded away. He blinked through his tears. “Uh, I… I…” Words refused to come. He wiped the tears from his eyes and tried again. “Why don’t stars fall?”

Hawthorn looked puzzled, then shrugged and looked up at the sky. “They’re meant to be up there.”

“I’m going crazy, Thorn,” Rowan said. “I’m crazy.”

“Why are you saying that?”

“I’m crazy.” Rowan wrapped his arms around his legs again. His eyes, still a bit teary, pierced the air in front of him like needles.

“No, you’re not,” Hawthorn reassured him.

“The music came back again,” he said sharply, “the saddest music I’ve ever heard, and there were all these colors, and I, I don’t even remember how I felt while it was happening…” he trailed off, his voice growing shaky. “I talk to a lizard, he talks to me, he says actual words…”

“I talk to him too.”

“Do you?” Rowan asked, lifting his head up to meet his brother’s eyes.

“You know I do. You witness it all the time.”

“Why do we accept it like that? All these… weird things happen to us, and… we don’t even know where we are right now, and we’ve been *okay* with that!” His heart raced as fast as his thoughts. “All those adventures we went on, were they for nothing?”

“No! Don’t ask that, Rowan. We always have so much fun, well, I do, at least…”

“It’s not about that,” Rowan said, his voice cracking. “It’s not about that.”

Hawthorn looked at his brother helplessly. His stronger, older brother, crying into his own shivering arms. A leaf from the tree above them abandoned its branch and drifted gently into the air, landing on his brother’s amethyst-speckled shoulder.

Hawthorn sighed and lay back down to sleep.

——

When Rowan woke up again, this time Donnelley’s face was in front of him.

“Get uppppp!” The lizard croaked.

Rowan slowly rose from the ground, shielding his eyes from the glaring brightness. He moaned in pain from the ache around his tired eyes.

“For a hero, you’re quite sluggish,” Donnelley said.

Rowan opened his mouth but found it difficult to speak. “Yeah, and... you’re quite fickle for a wise...lizard,” he managed to say.

Donnelley turned his face to the side to study him better. “We’re almost to our destination. We just have to continue straight up this hill,” Donnelley said.

“Thank god.”

“Don’t thaaaaank anyone but yourself.”

Rowan smiled a little. “There’s the wisdom I wish for.”

“Wisdom is all around you,” Donnelley said. “You don’t have to search for it.”

Rowan turned his eyes away. “We should get going,” he said. He stood up and stabilized himself before he could face-plant onto the dirt.

Hawthorn was sitting on a rock over near the pond. Thera was nowhere in sight.

“Thorn!” he called, striding over to the pond. He sat on a rock beside his brother. “Hey, it’s time to go.”

Hawthorn was staring into the pond, tracing the routes of some fish with his eyes. He lingered for another minute, then hesitatingly followed Rowan back to their sleeping ground. He told him all about the animals he had met as they packed up their belongings.

“You saw a goldfish?” Rowan asked incredulously as they mounted their horses. Goldfish were rare in their world because they were excessively hunted for their beautiful color.

“Yeah! It was so gold, it practically lit up the whole pond for a minute!”

“Amazing,” Rowan said wistfully. He almost wanted to go back to look for it, but he knew they had to move fast.

As Moongreen Meadow faded away behind them, so did the trees and woodland animals. Expansive green moorland surrounded them now. A ball of sun peaked out from behind some clouds. The elevation was ever-increasing, until they found themselves on a leveled large plateau, surrounded by tall hills.

Rowan was just starting to feel more relaxed when he saw something strange up ahead.

It was a demonic-looking hoard of ugly, brown things. They were monstrous creatures with a chimeric appearance: bodies resembling a combination of monkeys and lions, with monkey faces, no tails, and human hands and feet. Rowan spotted around twenty of them.

Donnelley leapt to the ground. “It appears that some deepseckies have found their way here from the Otherworld,” he said with some worry in his voice. “Your sword should be enough to ward them off.”

Adrenaline suddenly coursed through Rowan’s veins as his instinct to fight kicked in. He unsheathed his purple glowing longsword, and With a sharp kick to Huntresses’ sides, he galloped toward them.

“Rahhhh!” he yelled, channeling his inner animal as his hair flowed in the wind like waves. The deepseckies scattered about wildly, screaming. Rowan reached down and slashed his sword at one of them but missed. The targeted deepseckie jumped up and tried to punch him in the face, but Rowan managed to dodge the hit. Another one jumped from the side his face was turned and punched him in the cheek, engulfing him in pain. He sucked air through his teeth but kept fighting. He slashed and slashed for what seemed like a long time, dancing Huntress around the feisty creatures. He led her away to get a better look at them, and realized he had only knocked down three. It was becoming a struggle to catch his breath.

He looked across the plateau at Hawthorn. Worry ruled over his brother’s face, causing his brows to wrinkle and jaw to tighten. The look of his fear somehow invaded his own emotions, and a prickly coldness began to rise in his chest.

A few deepseckies left their crazed trance and ran toward him. He charged. His sword stabbed one right in its throat, spewing a fountain of blood. A few droplets landed on his shirt. He wiped sweat from his forehead, distracted for a second. Then two of the creatures started attacking Huntresses’ face, and Huntress reared up aggressively. Rowan fell off and hit the ground hard.

He didn’t have much time to process the shooting pain in his arms when the ground began to violently shake. He gasped when he saw it: a screaming giant, round and muscular, running toward the deepseckies. The giant’s arm swung at a cluster of them, sending them flying. He didn’t have to do it a second time; the rest were already quickly hobbling away. Their ugly shrieks followed them until they disintegrated into the air.

In shock, Rowan grabbed Huntresses’ reigns in an attempt to calm her down. “Sshh,” he cooed in her ear, petting her soft neck. He breathed deeply, then his eyes slowly rose to meet the giant’s.

They were surprisingly gentle. There was a bit of a twinkle in them, giving him something that resembled a caring expression. Rowan’s shoulders dropped with relief.

But just as he was about to thank him, the giant wheeled away and disappeared in a mystic fog, much like the deepseckies had.

Right then, the world seemed to spin. He watched in silence as Hawthorn cantered Champ over to him, but the atmosphere around him felt heavy. His aching arms clung to Huntresses’ back for stability.

Hawthorn dismounted Champ and set down his backpack, with Donnelley’s head peaking out from inside of it. He lay a hand on his brother’s sweaty back. “Are you okay?”

Rowan peered through strands of dirt-matted hair. “I don’t think I’m bleeding much. I’ll be fine,” he said hoarsely.

Hawthorn raised an eyebrow but opted not to argue.

Donnelley yelled from the backpack, “I tried to tell you there was no need for worrying!”

Hawthorn’s frown grew into a tired smile. “Your lizard was having so much fun explaining to me what was happening. You know how those things and the giant just vanished? That’s how they return to the Otherworld,” he said with subtle fascination. “He told me that creatures move between these worlds…” his voice trailed off, away from Rowan’s spinning world.