Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Apparition in the Flesh (Figuratively, on Account of it Being Just an Apparition)

  I did manage to doze off before the apparition rose before us. It was commotion from the korreds – more so than anything the blue ghost was doing – that woke me up; but the ghost was indeed there, near us and off to the side of the hall.

  Freydis was already awake, sitting up with her arms around her knees. We roused Caiside as Ko-Rethal picked his way toward us between other sleeping rolls.

  “Here you are, my friends,” he said. His voice was low. “It has returned. Please present yourselves to it, and we will withdraw.”

  Freydis gave Caiside a hand up, and we moved to the apparition. The man – the same one I had seen before – shimmered a bit. Once again, just as I had seen him the first time, he was dressed as a traveler, in a cloak; and again he was hovering off the floor a foot or two. He was also just unnaturally tall; taller than he could have been in his life, I would think.

  The three of us stood before him. All the korreds had made themselves scarce, backed up into the far shadows.

  The man regarded us for a moment, and then finally spoke:

  “Hands. You all have hands.”

  We could not help but look down, all three of us.

  “Yes,” I said. “We have hands.”

  He nodded.

  “I did, also. When I was there, where you are.”

  This was odd, because the apparition we saw did indeed have hands. He looked like a normal man, except for his height. His image was somewhat blurred, from moment to moment, and his feet often disappeared into a blue mist. But he definitely had arms, and hands.

  “I remember my hands,” he said. “I would work with them. I would touch people with them. My wife. My son, my daughters. I could – mold clay with them. I worked my farm with them. My hands. It was good to have them. The little miracles we forget, you know. The pleasant things we did not acknowledge, when we were where you are now.”

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  And with this he held his hands out, and looked down toward them.

  “But I cannot see them, now,” he said. “I don’t remember if I ever have been able to, as long as I have been – this way. Sometimes I feel I am fading, you know. And that might be all right. That might be all right, my young friends. But I feel I should move away somewhere else. I should be moving, and not fading, you know. But I don’t see where to go.”

  He paused, and we said nothing yet. He continued:

  “These hands held a spear, many times. I was no warrior. I mean that I hunted. But there was one time when I defended. With a spear. Or I tried to. I tried to.”

  And now he closed his hands as if he were clasping the shaft of a spear.

  “I was no warrior. But I had to defend. Defend my party. I stayed at the rear, so they could escape. So that they could make their way to safety. We were pursued. We were pursued, right here in this Drearwold. It was not our land. We were passing through. And there were trolls, after us. They were after several of us families. And we had little ones. We could have outrun the trolls, but for them; so I stayed behind, to give the others a chance to run. We came to a narrow way, a place where one man could block the trolls. So I made that stand. They should have had a warrior, but they only had me. But I did the best I could.”

  I had not noticed him blink before, but he stopped and blinked now.

  “The last one away was my own daughter. My wife carried one, and held the other’s hand. My son wanted to stay back with me, you know. He was all of eight years old. Wanted to help his father. Be brave. But I sent him along. The look on his face. Stern, and sad. And frightened. And mourning. Already mourning. But he left. He listened to me. Off they went. My daughter, holding my wife’s hand, was the last to look back at me.

  “There were trolls. Multiple trolls. Not that I could have defeated even one, necessarily. But certainly not several. I stabbed out at them. Wouldn’t do to throw that spear, you know, since I had only the one. So I stabbed, pulled it back, stabbed again. Who knows how well I did. I don’t remember. I’m sure I struck them, though. I at least struck them. At least I did that.

  “But they overwhelmed me. I think they trampled me. My last vision is myself falling backward, the spearhead above me. And then – nothing.

  “And I don’t know if they escaped. I don’t know if my family and the others escaped. I don’t regret my try, but I don’t know if I saved them. They were heading south. We had come from the hills, but we had to head down. Down into the valleys. But I don’t know if I saved them. All these years. I don’t know. I have been looking for them, or news of them. Ever since. Wandering this Drearwold. And sometimes to the south. But no word of them. I don’t know what happened. It – twists me.”

  “What is your name?” Freydis asked him.

  “Should you not ask what was my name?” the man asked. A wry smile.

  “No,” she answered. “What is it?”

  The man paused, as if it required some thought, and then said:

  “My name is Waters. Arranden Waters.”

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